Prologue : S.S.D.D..... Until it wasn't.

My name is Maik Alphonse Daley and I was in Applied mathematics class when it happened, working through a Calculus equation. That morning was just like any other, up early for some stretching and to practice Qigong before downing some cereal with the family. My father was a small business owner and mother the secretary so you would think we were firmly in the middle income bracket but one look at the crumpled cereal box from 'Save A Lot' sitting on a table that was purchased from a yard sail before my parents had gotten married that was surrounded by 4 kids that were half dressed in hand me down clothes that sort of fit told a different story. That's not to say that we were poor per-say, its just that my parents had certain.... priorities when it came to the family finances. Quality food and fashionable clothing were not among them, probably because neither of them liked to cook unless they were entertaining for quests and only really worried about how we were dressed when we were being shown off.

A bus ride where I chatted with his few acquaintances while avoiding my nemesis later and the school day had started with home room. Just like every other day. The people with which I was on speaking terms with, friends even, only counted 2 people in home room, Elisha and James. Elisha was a perky blond with big teeth but a brilliant smile, gentle yet knowing eyes and a good work ethic, she was going to do great in collage with her upbeat attitude and other aforementioned qualities.

James was just cool, like the classic cool guy and everyone should have at least one friend like him. A reserve for the foot ball team, James was definitely buff football jock and looked every bit the part with his short dark brown hair, bright blue piercing eyes and strong jaw line. His only problem, some say, though never to his face, was that he was short, only 5' 4” but he never let it bother him and just worked at being his best self.

We chatted about this and that, cracking jokes about the latest funny short vids we had shared with each other on our group chat. At some point James brought up a pool party he was planing on having in a couple weekends and I say that I will try to convince my parents to let me go but I'll most likely be heading up to help clear some old land father had purchased or working on my apprenticeship, just like every other weekend.. We parted ways all too soon and I was off to Applied mathematics, a class that I shared with 2 other friends, Jose and Skip.

Jose was a true Spanish, like from Spain, with lightly wavy, short black hair, big eyes and over all rugged features he was quite self confident and self assured. Semi popular with the ladies due more to his looks than his smooth, sometimes stumbling talk, Jose was a classic hormonal teen in his prime but still managed enough focus to make it to the advanced classes.

Skip. Ohhhh Skip you beautiful soul. Ginger as the day is long and a dark sense of humor just as prevalent, with his bright almost orange hair, creamy white skin and freckles for days but unlike Jose skip was.... Cute Like the boy was holding out, praying for a beard because that's about the only way he was ever going to look rugged like Jose. Like he totally could have passed for a 13 year old except for his height of 5' 11”. We didn't have much time to talk though as the teacher was of the no nonsense sort and as soon as the second bell rang we were diving into the lesson.

23 minutes after that second bell I was nose deep in the calculus equation when a sudden wave of nausea and disorientation struck me. Not that I have ever personally partaken, aside from one experimental night with my cousin and coworker, but from what I had read I would have to describe the sensation as being stoned out of my mind and more than a little drunk at the same time. My whole body tingled in a way that made me so intimately aware of myself that I could start counting my bones. I flew down into my lungs with every breath, swam with the flow of my blood through my heart with every beat, gurgled in my stomach, still digesting some of breakfast, dove through the intestines with them doing more of the same, pumped with my kidneys to filter my blood and on and on, even to experience organs that I didn't even know the name of churning away with their specific functions. Heck I swear I could even feel my brain in that moment. Slumped over onto my desk and trying desperately to cope with the huge expansion of personal awareness I just managed to notice the over head lights flicker and die.

Vaguely I heard the internal monologue of my analytical mind comment. Well that can't be good. To which my creative mind promptly responded. No shit Sherlock. My primal mind was just drooling on itself to the side Uhhhhhhh.

Sending the usual quarries and commands to my nervous system to try and compensate for situations where motor functions were impeded didn't produce the expected results, I have smoked some herb and had a few drinks before, just never enough to make me.... Whatever this was. Instead my vision flickered, went hazy, blacked out entirely and then slowly faded back into perfect clarity except now I had an honest to gods HUD's display.

My creative brain chimed in first. W.T.F. Followed by the analytical It would appear to be a stat sheet. One that clearly denotes our person. My primal mind just growled at the offending thing blocking my view. GURRRR ! Still in my altered mental state, my thoughts were sluggish and unfocused, detached even, more so than usual at any rate.

Name : Maik Alphonse Daley

Species : Human Race : Celtic / Germanic

Age :18

Gender : Male

Height : 190 centimeters

Weight : 78 Kilograms

Strength : 81

Flexibility : 89

Dexterity : 123

Endurance : 80

Durability : 76

Intelligence : 142

Smarts : 164

Wisdom : 126

Perception : 42 / 137

Charisma : 109

Chi : 171

aura : 165

Beyond that was an absurd list of skills which seemed to go on forever, typing, running, jumping, swimming, walking, breathing ? On and on it went and was just too much for my addled mind to take in at that moment. Besides, it looked as though I might have the ability to modify the stat sheet. According to the pop up that appeared when I focused on the blinking icon at the top of my stat sheet, I did and I could make adjustments to my current status.

Internally, the various aspects of my collective consciousness contemplated, my intellectual mind going first. Interesting. My creative mind throwing its 2 cents like flash bangs. Oooooo lets play with everything and see what we can really do. While my primal mind just expressed a strong desire for bigger endowment. Though, strangely my body wasn't having much of an opinion as it just writhed from the overload to my system.

Sense my analytical mind usually took the lead with the uncertain I started with my name and was surprised when I found that I could change it. From there my creative mind swiftly ran past my analytical mind and took over control of the inspection, as per usual.

Why is it in metric ?

Metaphorically shaking its head, my analytical mind went to examine the attributes. Strength, Raw physical power. “81 ?” Some quick calculation later I deduced that 78 times 2.2 was about the weight in pounds, 172 Lbs, that my max overhead press at 180 Lbs so the 81 was essentially how many Kg s I could lift over my head, or so I assumed while in such an altered mental state. Given that some of my other stats were significantly higher I got the impression that I might be a bit lacking in the muscle department. Flexibility was obviously how limber and stretchy I was while Dexterity seemed to be the measure of my fine motor functions.

I guess all that knife throwing practice paid off.

Endurance, it seems was just the amount of metaphorical gas I had in the tank to perform physical activities. Durability was interesting. An over all stat that quantified how well I could resist damage, factors like bone density skin hardness, tolerance to hot or cold and how well my blood could clot wounds to prevent bleeding. Intelligence was the shear amount of Information that I could process and store while smarts was how well I could make connections between known information and extrapolate conclusions. Wisdom, it seemed, quantified a combination of my will power, survival instinct and emotional intelligence.

I ran into a hiccup with perception sense there were to values listed and it took some effort to focus on the second value long enough to realize that it represented my perception with my glasses on while the former with my glasses off, Ouch. Charisma was more about communication than anything else as it seemed to govern how clear my body language was, how smooth my tone and how charming my facial features, all aspects of being able to better communicate without words alone. Chi, of course, was new, very new. This was a measure of my bio energies and could be used in seemingly limitless applications, from augmenting one of the other attributes to effecting the world around me.

Stolen novel; please report.

My analytical mind postulates. Phenomenal. The shear diversity of application is going to open whole worlds of possibility to us. While my creative mind started playing music in my mind space. Can we go back ? This is the moment. Tonight is the night. Well fight till its over. So we put our hands up, like the ceiling cant hold us, like the ceiling cant hold us. Primal was just emanating Hunger & lust for power.

Lastly there was Aura and it seemed to be the measure of how well I could manipulate my Chi and project it beyond my physical person. Creative mind was giddy and waiting for Analytical to finish before blurting out. Everything's changeable, including our species. OMG. O.M.G. Oh My God, what do we want to be ? I want to be an elf princess. Analytical mind firmly bitch slapped Creative at that point. Focus. There are likely down sides to changing our species. Still we should check to see if we can preview the results. Primal bit down on Analytical's metaphorical leg and Creative dog piled on to try and override Analytical's will in what changed would be made to Make's stat sheet. It was more of a bar brawl than a fight given Make's altered state of mind.

Eventually, my collective conscious got around to previewing the different changes that could be made, starting with race. They were ALL there. Half-ling, Gnome, dwarf, human, elf, goblin, Orc, troll, giant, various animal like people that ranged from just a few features like ears, claws and tail to full on furry s and more. Though many were grayed out and I couldn't quite make out any details.

Creative Complained. Ohh you tease. Tempting me with the unknown. Primal quickly lost interest sense there were still more than enough options. Move on. While Intellect mumbled from the bottom of the mental pile. There could be conditions required to become those races which we simply do not meet.

Upon previewing the various options though we discovered that there just wasn't all that much difference between the different species aside from some variation in skin pigmentation and certain abilities. For example both orcs and goblins had the ability of photosynthesis, seems they were actually plant people, while trolls had a regeneration factor like that of lizards which allowed them to regrow limbs. Dwarfs gained a bonus to endurance and durability but a minus in flexibility. Each race, other than human, had similar advantages and disadvantages though none actually had a higher life span as far as I could tell, otherwise the elf would have been a no brainer. I was similarly not interested in having fur, it was bad enough when flees invaded my dogs fur and I could not fathom what it would be like to have that happen to me, nope. So I remained human, though this left me with a lot of modification points. I like my name, my height was good, age was good, I was proud of my lineage and my stats were fair, except for perception.

From the bottom of the mental pile intellect tried to suggest that we improve perceptions when creative shouts over him. Holy crap we can even change our gender. We can totally become an elf princess. EEEEE. Primal wasn't so enthusiastic about that idea. Not surrendering penis.

We wound up toying with the idea of changing it, focusing on the option just to see what I would look like but sense we hadn't used any of my alteration points I had a total of 3 options, Male, Female and hermaphrodite. We just had to see, selecting the option for preview showed a version of our self that.... was kinda hot.

We fiddled with the setting, using up all of the alteration points as we did so in a free for all. Creative added the vagina, breasts and altered body hair. Primal retained my manhood and preserved what upper body strength I already had. Intellect focused on fixing the need I had for glasses. The end result was.... passable as masculine, in the right light and with the right clothes. Small yet perky breasts with wide birthing hips but even wider shoulders.

Creative was impressed. Ooooo. This might actually be even better then an elf princess. While primal grunted. Acceptable. But intellect had to interject. Cute, but quite impractical. Its a nice fantasy but.. The other 2 promptly silenced intellectual.

We would need to hit the gym more often to put on just the right amount of muscle to finish the look but damn..... Movement out of the corner of the eye and outside my stat sheet drew us back to the present followed by the voice of a class mate who had started talking. “Hay... does anybody know what happened to the lights. We felt that I was quickly running out of time and still needed to know what the other prompts meant.

Focusing back on the stat sheet we found our self back at the home screen, my creative mind having selected accept on the changes while my analytical mind was distracted. Analytical gave Creative the side eye before shrugging and then recalled the poor perception stat had at least been addressed, so all in all it was an acceptable outcome.

Did not feel so good. My body was sluggish and I felt as though I had the flue coming on. Had I made a terrible mistake. My head was still foggy and I tried shaking it to clear it but to no avail. There were others stirring as well now, including the teacher. Someone to my right bemoaned “My phones not working.” followed soon after by someone behind me. “Mines not working either.”

Absently I reached for my own device, fumbling with the button and pressing it several times and then pressing and holding it. Nothing. Dead as a door nail. My voice was horse for some reason as I expressed myself with a grunted whisper. “Shit.”

More and more people were expressing similar exclamations around the room with some people looking like they were doing far worse then I was but a few looking as though they were fairing better. I Pushed myself up from my seat only to suddenly feel my testicles try to retract up into my pelvis.

What ? Ohhh right, our balls were internal in the preview. There was a slowly building pain like my nuts were starting to be squeezed. I am beginning to suspect that this transformation with neither be instantaneous nor painless. Still I remained seated despite the dizziness I was also feeling from my foggy brain. One deep breath later and I made another attempt at making a more focused connection between my mind and my nervous system.

That's when a purple bar, which was only about 10% full, flashed in the bottom left corner of my vision and I felt energy, NO Chi flowing through me, at least it felt like Chi. Stronger and greater then ever before in my life. Power, pure and raw phenomenal power coursed through me.... And it hurt. It hurt like when my little brother had gotten a flash light taser for his birthday a couple years back then tested it on me. “HHURRRNnnnn”

I went right back down into my seat in a cold sweat and shaking as I focused on nothing but directing the energy flow through the proper pathways. It hurt. Everywhere the energy went hurt but I managed to direct its flow thought the chacras and my meridians, just as I had practiced with my Qigong several times a week for years now. (I grew up on dragon ball Z and Naruto, bite me.)

Absently I was aware that other people in the room were making various noises of pain while I focused of my Chi, giving it the instruction to heal and repair. Quickly, the purple bar was going down though a red bar in the bottom right only dipped a little bit. Over the next 20-30 minutes I just focused on breathing and directing the flow of my Chi. Breath in while pulling the Chi down from the crown and into my lungs before filtering down through my organs and digestive tract. Breath out to send the Chi up my spine back through the kidneys up to the heart and then up through the brain and back to the crown, repeat.

At this point at had a better grip on the enhanced levels of Chi which I now seemed to have, though on inspection my Chi bar was now only at 21%. I was going to need to be careful as I could really hurt myself with the kind of power It seemed I would have once my bar was full. Letting the world back in I saw some people laying down and being tended to by others with other still were slumped over at their desks much like I had been before sitting up strait to focus on my Chi flow. The lights were also on, Bonus.

I caught Jose's eye and saw that he was tending to skip and a couple of the girls from our class, all of whom had a cold sweat and looked as though they were in the early stages of fever. Frankly I wasn't actually doing much better but so long as I kept the Chi flowing through my channels at the current levels I seemed to be functional.

Slowly, carefully, I got up and made my way over to my friend before kneeling down. “I was kind of out of it for a bit there. Any news on what is going on.”

Jose just shook his head before wiping the sweat from his brow. “None of the cell phones work but I hear old analog land line phones still do. Some dean got the generator running and I heard that there is an old timey radio receiving broadcasts of emergency messages but things are at a stand still and I haven't heard anything about medical help coming for our friends.”

Jose worried gaze shifts back to the people on the floor who were wrapped up in whatever could be gathered for them. One of the girls actually had a blanket while the others girls had over shirts and back packs laid on top of them. Skip only had back packs on him. I could smell food in the room and looking around I observed cafeteria trays, suddenly realizing that I was pretty hungry.

Jose chuckled. “Hehh. You'll have to wait for the next food run. They have cooks working in the cafeteria but its probably going to be a while before they get back around to our building for more food.”

Nodding, I decide to take a seat the increasing pain in my groin making it irritating to stand. It was indeed a while before a dean would make his way back around to out class for another lunch run but before that happened several other people managed to rouse themselves up from their seats and most of the people who had passed out had woken up.

I was more than a little relived to see Skips open. Were his eyes always such a vibrant green ? Pretty. I don't think so.

I'm so happy and so eager for any distraction from my fears and the mounting pain in my pelvis we let Creative have some fun. Jokingly, I hold up 2 fingers and ask the ginger. “How many fingers James.”

Skip looks at me me funny and scrunches up his face. “2 ? And my names not James Maik, its Skip.”

I look at Jose in mock horror and exclaim. “This ones worse then we thought, he cant count and hes messed up his name.”

Jose tries to look at me sternly as though I had done something wrong, he really does but winds up smiling and turning away while shaking his head. Skip, for his part, had been looking at the two of us uncertainly until then and he did look at me sternly. I gave him a pat on the shoulder. “Welcome back buddy. Glad to see your okay.”

Skip smiled a strained smile and started moving to sit up. Analytical forgot to put a cap on Creative so the next thing I blurted out was. “So what changes did you make to your stat sheet ?”

A sudden and deathly quite swept over the room that caused what ever response Skip was about to give to die in his throat. For a moment I was worried that all eyes would be fixated on me but a quick glance around revealed that most people were glancing around at each other. “Awkward....” Analytical clamped a muzzle down on Creative before we made thing even more awkward.

This was the beginning of how everything changed for one Maik Alphonse Daley.