When I finally came to, I immediately wished the unconsciousness had lasted longer. My ankles and knees ached like an arthritic octogenarian's, my left wrist throbbed and shook with all the hallmarks of a serious sprain, all four of my limbs plus my back were cramping as if from excessive exercise with no warm-up or cool down, and an invisible steel vise was slowly squeezing my head into oblivion. Worst of all, Jerry's hallucinations had proven contagious.

Name: Maya Wennefer Bio: female human, 17y3m2d

Powers [2/2 pts]

n/a

Attributes [2/2 pts]

Might 3, Agility 4, Reason 2, Vigilance 3, Ego 4, Luck 1

"J, she's awake!" a deafening whisper scratched against my ears and left my brain ringing like a gong. Then a crackling, blindingly bright blue light tore through the darkness and stabbed into my eyeballs, leaving me whimpering. "Oh hell, her fever's gotten worse!"

"Water..." my voice rasped, parched throat protesting. I hadn't felt so out of it since the Freshman post-exam party when I'd won the drinking contest, Tommy's accusations of cheating aside. He just was - and still is - a sore loser and/or wanker. We threw him in the pool when he refused the hundred-yard naked dash forfeit and everything. It was glorious! The following morning, not so much.

"Here, drink." An open bottle was pushed against my mouth, pure liquid relief flowing out of it as two familiar faces looked down, backlit by flickering blue light. Shamelessly gulping down every last drop, I sighed contentedly when my mouth no longer had the taste and texture of sandpaper.

"What happened?" I tried speaking once more, this time the words coming out far more easily. Then I took a look around the lab - the very dark lab illuminated only by Jerry's lightning magic. "Wait, how long was I out for?"

"Err... ten hours?" the redheaded girl guessed. "Power's out and my phone went dead some time ago." Jerry got his lightning a bit closer at that moment and I winced, once again feeling red hot pokers stabbing through my eyes. For some reason Mandy reeled just as badly. Was she feeling the same for some reason? "Anyway, we think you got sick. That fat zombie's goop was more than just gross, you know? We cleaned you up as well as we could but..."

"Eh, it could have been worse." Such as getting zombified while sleeping I didn't say, but the two of them obviously heard it. "At least we know this magic thing works. You were right, Jerry." My scowl cut off the nerdy boy's satisfied smirk. "And that's the only time you'll hear me say it for a very long time. How come you didn't mention feeling like you were dipped in acid and your brain nearly exploding when you got the blue box? Not to mention goofing about skills and intelligence when nothing about them is mentioned?" If I had been feeling better I'd be strangling the idiot at the moment. "It was our lives on the line and you gave bad info? What's wrong with you?"

"Err... my character sheet is... not blue?" he tried to explain not very convincingly. Mandy an I exchanged a glance, the redhead giving an imperceptible nod that she'd seen it too. "But there's totally a skill list and an Intelligence rank - it's my higher stat at eighteen!"

I blinked. How many points did he put into it? How did he even get them? These sounded like good questions so I asked them out loud, Mandy adding her own to the list. And we had to make a list, write everything down because something fishy was going on.

"Well, I started with one skill choice and five stat points? Kinda common for RPGs, you know?" His fingers tapped nervously against the floor. "My stats... guess sharing them makes sense since we're helping each other. Eight strength, twelve dexterity, ten constitution, eighteen intelligence..." he sighed "seven wisdom, nine charisma."

"Well that's just fucking great..." I groaned, lying back down and trying to rub the headache away.

"What? They're n-not that b-bad!" Jerry stammered, his confidence deflating like a punctured balloon. "They were better than average even before spending points!"

"Not what I meant..." The headache refused to go away; getting infected by zombie goop was the worst. "Jerry, I don't have a strength stat. I have a Might attribute and it's only a three. None of the attributes match your stats, there are no skills but there's a Powers tab... nothing is the same at all."

"That's... it makes little sense..." he made the understatement of the century. Nothing about the entire messed up situation had made sense since a portal tore open in the middle of class. "Different systems? What would be the point?"

"Why would there be a point?" Mandy finally interjected with an irritated huff. "It's magic, right? It's supposed to be magical and fantastic, not make sense!"

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"Huh... that's one way of looking at it." Which would make an even bigger mess of things, if true. "Too bad we can't afford to stay and discuss any longer. Help me up, would you?" The two of them pulled me upright but I still felt like a stiff breeze would knock me over, let alone a zombie. Being no use to anyone like that and feeling more like blindly testing the blue box rather than waiting to be eaten, I put both attribute points into Might.

The difference was both immediate and enormous. With just the first point all the aches, the exhaustion, the sprains faded not as if from rest but as if the injuries had been less significant to begin with. The cramps went away entirely and even my pounding headache was somewhat reduced even as I grew lighter on my feet. I imagined that's what a professional athlete would have felt if they'd been on the receiving end of the same exertion, the same beating. The second point made the effects even more pronounced; forget about athletes, if I'd been a serious martial artist breezing through the same events with only minor injuries that's how I'd have felt. Then there were the other changes.

"Did you guys just grow shorter?" I asked them, wondering why everything felt tight all of a sudden.

"I'm pretty sure you shot up a couple of inches instead," Mandy disagreed, then pointed at my arms. "Not to mention... thicker. Serious muscle definition right there, and your clothes look a size or two too small now."

"Noo! I'm gonna look like some overmuscled amazon! A mirror, do we have a mirror?" Giggling, the redhead handed over a cute Victorian-style mirror from her purse while Jerry brought his sparking hands closer to provide some more light. After at least a few minutes of fussing over and trying to get a good view out of the tiny reflective surface the verdict was out. "OK, it's not that bad. More Hollywood action girl than real-life strong-woman. I can live with that." Problem was, if changing stats affected appearance then the changes would only grow larger. But that was future-me's problem; focus on surviving the zombie apocalypse now.

"Are you feeling better?" Mandy asked, more than a hint of worry in her tone. Apparently she'd seen through the brief deflection to the fear still gnawing my insides.

"I'm feeling a hell of a lot better..."

"But?"

"But I'm still sick." Just a glance towards the lab's barricaded entrance and I shuddered. When had we gotten used to the godawful stench? "We've all seen the movies, saw risen victims here, we know what happens to anyone dying to zombies." A couple stat points weren't enough to solve the problem, I could feel it.

"There's an easy solution to that," Jerry told me, smug smile back. "Kill more zombies, get more levels, till no zombie sickness can match our power!"

"Easy there, tiger," Mandy shot back. "Some of us don't have any powers yet." But she was already picking through what improvised weapons we'd scrounged from the lab, glancing at Jerry's lightning hands with barely restrained eagerness. Deep down we'd all wished for superpowers once. Most never stopped wishing even knowing it was impossible. And now the three of us, and probably more people in the school and beyond, had not only seen the supernatural at work for the first time but had stumbled upon a quick, simple, immediate method to gain powers, one that had already worked twice. It was easy to be eager... but forgetting we'd almost died several times already would be dumb. Caution was ne-

"Oh, I'm sooo stupid!" Quickly, I reached for the blue box again. "Jerry, when you got your skill, did you see anything about healing?"

"No?" He gave me an apologetic, sad smile. "I was far more worried about walking corpses about to eat my face so I got something to kill them with."

"Figures." The powers list in the blue box practically exploded as soon as I thought about it, turning into a literal sea of power names and descriptions too many to count. "The zombie hunting is going to be delayed just a little..."

xxxx xxxx

Two hours later and already sweating under a moderate fever, I'd yet to find a good option. It wasn't that the list didn't have healing powers; it had far too many. In fact, the more I looked, the more I found, each one slight variations of the other. There seemed to be no limitation to what powers could do; as soon as I thought of something, multiple ways to do it came up. The real limit was how much each power could do, at least to begin with, with restrictions or costs balancing out stronger effects. Heal mundane illnesses medicine from a drug store and a couple days of rest would do away with anyway? Doable at will. Heal any and all diseases instantly, with a touch? Only worked once per twenty-four hours and if another zombie bit you or someone else in the meantime? You were out of luck. Or you could do it at will, with the cost of sacrificing animals of roughly similar mass to the victim. Humans counted as animals, by the way.

My left hand, the one I'd been scrolling through the power lists endlessly, seized up in a nasty cramp. A glance found Jerry and Mandy smiling as they rigged a bona fide spear out of lab equipment for the coming zombie hunt so I swallowed a whimper and pulled at stiff fingers with my other hand till they loosened. My body was getting worse, fast. Priorities then; I was the one infected and I had two power options. Pick dirty fix now, leave one option open for emergencies.

"Self-recovery abilities." Vocal requests made navigating the powers list easier, I'd found. The endless sea of names and descriptions became a stream of thousands. "Continuous self-recovery." That narrowed it down to hundreds, from forms of regeneration, to healing by exposure to various substances or conditions, to situational bonuses such as extensive recovery while sleeping in proper beds or when hopping backwards on one foot.

I punched the closest wall. There really was no time to go through the list and now my right hand hurt, too. Then I got an idea... the only question was whether it'd work. "Continuous self-recovery that can help in my situation." No idea whether these magic character sheets truly understood us but nothing lost trying... and the list was cut down to a couple dozen options. Some general recovery options, some powers related to the immune system, even a couple weird transformations such as the option that turned me partially into black smoke, halted my metabolism entirely and let wounds slowly fade away as smoke-me returned to her original shape.

Nothing that could stop the zombie infection outright, but every option would work against it, slow it down at least and eventually get rid of it, maybe. If that proved not enough, if the infection got worse... well, that's what the second power option would be kept in reserve for.

"Maya, you ready?" Jerry asked. I nodded, pulled back my long blond hair into a ponytail and made my choice.

We had zombies to hunt and a magical horror invasion to survive.