“What Skills do you think I should purchase?”

I raised my eyebrow, “You know my consultation services come with fees.”

“What about the friend price?”

I hesitated then nodded slightly, yeah, she did help me convince the old-timers but that was for their own good. Speaking of, I swept the bullets into my fanny pack. Before I put away the .45 ammunition, what looked like an old sheriff on pick-anyone-of-the-million-tv-shows-about-old-cowboy-cops walked up, “Thanks for the info kid, how much .45 ya got?” He had a 1911 on his hip.

“Full box of 50 hollow-point and another that has,” I checked, “30 rounds of ACP.”

He set a low whistle then set a box of .38 special JHP +P on the table.

“You’re kidding right? Why didn’t you bring that out before?”

He shamelessly shrugged, “Sorry kid, before, I didn’t believe you, then after… well, it’s an apocalypse for everyone.”

I bit down on my anger then nodded, “Fair enough, box for a box work for you?”

“How about both of yours for mine?”

“How about I only let you fuck me once a day, eh?”

We stared at each other and neither of us spoke. Oh, that’s how It was going to be? Like that? We kept our stares leveled at each other, both disregarding the few looks we received from some of the surrounding people. I wasn’t going to be speaking first, even if the worm of tension hollowed out my internal organs and left me a broken husk. I had played this game before while blind and being hunted by a pack of wolves, some shitty old-timer didn’t have a chance.

“Alright kid, that’s fine. Throw in the coffee and we have a deal.” He grinned wide. Shameless bastard.

I rolled my eyes then grabbed his outstretched hand and looked him in the eyes, “Deal.”

After he walked away, I opened the box and made sure the ammo was in there, something I should have done before, before dumping most of them into my fanny pack alongside one of the 10-box of shotgun shells. The rest went into my backpack.

I sat back and mentally patted myself on the back, Not bad for my first apocalypse trading session.

“Men.” Lena spat somewhat good-naturedly, “So, Mr. Big Shot Negotiator, are you going to help me or not?”

“Well, I don’t know,” I looked at my fingernails in mock over-casualness, “It seems like that deal doesn’t favor me much… You know, it is an apocalypse for everyone.”

Her eyes glinted, “Already sexually pressuring women and it’s barely a week into the apocalypse, a real piece of work.”

I started and looked at her then around to the mass of partially armed people around me that hadn’t been particularly friendly and just in case she actually was a pure mental case who legitimately thought that, I quietly hissed out, “I was not!”

“Well, I could say you were and everyone would believe me.” She grinned, “and I wouldn’t do that, of course, but that lesson I just gave you is the price for helping me with my Feat Skills.”

My head subconsciously twisted in slight horror, she was absolutely right. If I was going to be solo-traveling to LA, I’d be interacting with people as a traveler. I’d be at an innate disadvantage when trading with a group, especially inside their base and surrounded by them. It’d take just one person who wanted something that I had without wanting to give me anything for it to claim that I did something, or even one woman claiming that I made a pass at her.

“Yeah, that’s actually a pretty good lesson. Alright, I’ll take it, how many Feat-points do you have?”

“6.”

Damn, that was a good amount. I guess they weren’t just twiddling their thumbs here. That’d be good to remember too, other people were leveling up, not just me. After a while, I could picture people becoming monstrous. Or monstrous people becoming more monstrous. If I didn’t make sure to use the Law of Averages to my advantage, pretty soon I’d just be an average-superpowered person, who was traveling solo, surrounded by superpowered people. Maybe even groups of them.

“You have the List of Purchasable Skills with Feat Points up right now?”

“Just call it the Skill Shop.”

I waved that idea immediately off, “When I can open it by calling it the ‘skill shop’ then I’ll call it that. Is it open?”

“Yeah.”

“Say, ‘Share List of Purchasable Skills with Feat Points.’ Tell me what happens.” Nothing.

“Okay say that, but say my name after it.” She did and it didn’t work. “Before now.” Still nothing.

I opened my own Status and there were some definite changes that needed exploring, but she caught me when I got that spaced out look that came from looking at your own screens. I found what I was looking for, Doubting Thomas.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Shit. “Okay, one more time then we’ll just move on. Say it again but say, ‘Share List of Purchasable Skills with Feat Points with Doubting Thomas’.”

She gave me a look but did and her screen appeared in front of me with a five minute timer ticking down. There were the basic ones, Test Affinity, the Snapping not-magic-but-totally-actually-magic skills, External Will, and a few others. Comfort of the Living had the description, ‘Become a source of strength for those of failing Fortitude.’ So Support Skills existed. It also meant that even if the Adaptive skill list hadn’t been updated, there was still some individualization between what Skills you could select. That was good to know, it was pretty cheap too, just one Feat Point. Did that mean that unlocking it through Feats reduced the cost or was it something else entirely?

“Wait. You’re that ‘Doubting Thomas’?” I groaned but she was merciless, “You’re basically a celebrity!”

“Do you want my advice or not?”

“Yes, yes okay.”

“Then forget about all of that and tell me what type of apocalypse you want to have?”

“The one… where I survive?”

I brushed that off, “You want to shoot guns, fight with swords, you know. That type of thing.”

“I guess… I guess I want to help people?”

“So like a support class.”

Saying, ‘class’ must have made something click.

“Tom.”

“Yes?”

“Is. There. Magic?”

My eyes darted side to side, suddenly uncomfortable with the level of intensity I was getting, “Uh, yes? I think so?”

She twitched then settled still. Too still.

“How… do I get magic?”

She was creeping me out a bit.

“Test Af-”

“Purchase Test Affinity!” She paused as the tinkle feeling swept through her, then shouted, “Purchase Water Affinity!” before I could say another word.

The Skills turned from ‘1 Feat Points’ to ‘N/A’ immediately on her shared screen. Her Water Affinity had only been 1 point. Her Earth Affinity was different at 2 Points now that I was looking at it.

“You good?”

She snapped her finger and nothing happened.

“You have to Purchase External Wi-”

“Purchase External Will!”

She snapped her fingers and a small stream of water shot out, like if a kid was spitting pool water at a friend.

“Okay, just wait a sec-”

“Purchase Ea-” I slapped my hand over her mouth and she broke out of the trance.

“Stop. Stop right now.” I was serious, “Do you see what it says under Earth Affinity?” She glazed out then nodded. “In the first message we got, Gabriel, may that motherfucker’s wings rot off, said that the ‘Earth was pissed at us and wanted us off of it, do you remember that?” She hesitantly nodded, probably not entirely remembering.

“Then who the fuck do you think it’s referring to as ‘Gaia’ there? You want to connect yourself directly to some malicious pseudo-god? Do you know what would happen?” She shook her head in the negative.

“Yeah. I don’t either. Just because it’s on the list doesn’t mean that it’s safe to select. This isn’t some video game. Can I remove my hand?” She nodded. “And you won’t do anything stupid?” She paused and I narrowed my eyes before she rolled hers and nodded. I pulled it off, slowly.

One man snapped his fingers and lit a cigarette. It looked damn cool. Oh shit. Other people had been listening in.

Another person shot out a burst of water from a snap of fingers, I stood and screamed ‘everyone stop!’ but not before a lady snapped her fingers and a big clump of dirt materialized in her palm and started to fall between her fingers. A sprout popped out of the little mound of dirt and then… and then she started to scream. The sprout grew and grew as roots writhed under the surface of her skin as they continued to spread within her flesh. By the end of the horrified silence there was a tree in the middle of the auditorium with a woman trapped in an eternal scream inside of its bark.

“Fuck! The system isn’t your friend! If it says ‘Gaia will become aware of your specific existence’ then you probably shouldn’t choose it!”

“Well, what the hell! Why didn’t you tell us that?”

I ignored a few grumbles that started in response to that, “Look around you, idiot! You think your family pets trying to murder you while you were blind was normal? Or friendly? This is all fucked and you need to think long and hard before you do stupid shit. Is anyone still able to see Gaia’s Brown Thumb on their List of Purchasable Skills with Feat Points?”

A few hands raised up, “One of you,” I just decided to point at the most receptive person, “You, read it out loud so everyone can hear.”

“Spout a small bit of dirt or shoot a rock from a snap of your fingers. (Will bring Gaia's attention to your specific existence).”

“We’ve been deafened, blinded, pouring rain, heat, cold, and fucking zombies. The animals are not your friends. The Penitent System is not your friend. The Earth is not your friend. ” I realized that calling the system ‘broken bullshit’ and ‘not user-friendly’ was far from obvious, especially to these people who hadn’t even managed to start the process themselves. I almost started to feel bad, though… It was kind of a good thing now that I had concrete proof that the System did, in fact, have real dangers associated with it.

“Okay okay, just listen. While the System isn’t friendly, I do believe that it will make us stronger if we use it, but you need to think really hard when you choose something. It won’t stop you from killing yourself, shit, it’ll even sell you the tools to do it. Remember, it said that the Earth and the Beasts weren’t our friends. And they too… got the System.” I sucked in an involuntary breath at that. I didn’t want to think about that, so instead, I looked around at the gathered people.

There was fear, but I saw steel too. Regardless of how careful they could be, I think the human-corpse tree in the middle of the auditorium really made it settle in, “On that note, I think the Skill ‘Inner Peace’ is also a trap.”

I sat back down and rubbed the sides of my head.

“Thanks for… making sure I didn’t do that, I just got so excited because it’s magic and Gai-” I held up a hand.

“You’re welcome and now that I’m thinking about it, I wouldn’t even mention that name, just remember, I’m sure those aren’t the only traps. Classes, Skills, whatever else. I wouldn’t be shocked to find that even some already possessed Quality ends up being a trap when used or activated. Unintended consequences, it’s not some safe, every-skill is useful RPG. Even the harder ones might just have useless skills, but this is different. You need to think twice before you go purchase shit from this broken Penitent piece of shit.” I rubbed my forehead.

“It definitely isn’t like Final Fantasy… So, will I never be able to use Earth magic? It’s the only other one I qualified for besides Water magic.”

“It’s an Affinity and since it’s controlled by the ‘External Will’ stat, maybe after you bring that Stat up enough it might be possible, but I don’t know. I don’t have the Affinity, and even if I did, I wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole and a hundred External Will. That’s just me though, everybody has their own apocalypse.”

Speaking of skills… “Do you know where I can find a sword? Oh and you should probably get that Internal Fortitude boosting skill. I’m pretty sure that’s both your will to live and your magic tank.”