I changed the bandage on my shoulder, added a few on the wounds still on my legs, got dressed including layers and two pairs of socks, both wool, as I watched my watch countdown the time. 22:29, less than a minute to go.
Then, it turned over and my breath started to come out in bursts. I slipped into my, admittedly thinner, backup sleeping bag with one of the foil sheets around my skin and the towel wrapped around that. Heheh. There was a sense of deep satisfaction that I had been clever enough to prepare for this. It was a good thing too, I could already feel the cold working its way through my meager protections.
I decided to change up the order and the words for today, “Status. Status Display. Display Status-”
Noth- no wait, this time there WAS something. My jaw dropped and a smile started to form before I was forced to dig deeper into my covers to fight off the, quite frankly, ridiculous cold.
Doubting Thomas
Class: Basic B
Rank: exceedingly average Human
Level 1(5)
Earned Feats:
Bonus Feats:
Body
4
The Strength of your Body.
Mind
4
The Strength of your Mind.
Soul
4
The Strength of your Soul.
External Will
0
The inner spark manifest, the Will to Shape Reality
Internal Fortitude
6+ 7!
How do you carry on when all is lost? How deep is your well?
Tis but a scratch: 1
Divine Spark
0
Do you believe in miracles now, heathen?
N/A
Luck
1+ 2!
To clarify, Humanity had an average luck of 20. Losing His Favor was your choice to lose, but regardless, that’s pretty unlucky. Humanity’s luck reset to (0)
N/A
(Right Lady, Wrong Time: 1)
(Fortunate Son: 1)
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Potentiality
-9.99
Ranges between (-10 and 10). Potentiality Curve is another word for…
N/A
This was what I was talking about! Was it on some sort of delay? I didn’t know about any of that, it didn’t matter. Well, it did, but now I had a System. The thought, ‘this is it?!’ flashed through my head, I brutally squashed in the next moment. Anything was better than nothing and I was sure there was more to find. Just from this alone, I had a good amount of follow up questions, but querying any part of my stats or their descriptions didn’t bring any additional answers, no matter what combination of words I used. So then, I guess I’d have to take what I was given. I would digest what I could see with an open mind before diving into the Feats. One piece at a time.
The first few were obvious, I didn’t bother past light skimming, Body, Mind, Soul. Although it was a bit strange, I guess I was now operating on the understanding that we did, in fact, possess souls. Finding ‘proof’ in a way that didn’t include the uncomfortable reality of me slowly, and inevitably, freezing to death in my car, surrounded by wolves would have been preferable.
External Will… I didn’t have any idea what that was, but Internal Fortitude gave me a clue. “Tis but a scratch” must have been from getting wounded, then being blind, and bandaging myself up or some combination of the three. I wasn’t sure what level of effort was enough to get past the threshold but going through the single most difficult thing of my life, so far, it would have been disappointing to not have gotten a point or some acknowledgement. I wasn’t sure if I felt more ‘fortitutional’ by the effort, but maybe I was?
Internal Fortitude, struck me as a bit of an odd concept the more I thought about it. Could you tell if you had more Fortitude than before unless you were already scraping the bottom of the barrel? It seemed like the only times you could tell if you had more was when you were least likely to notice it. I wasn’t really having a detailed debate on my current emotional state when a wolf’s face was unpleasantly close to my own
Actually, I did have the debate on whether or not I’d try and find my way back blind or if I’d try to outlast the blindness and stay on the hill. But, looking back on it, that felt like even less of a choice. The idea of waiting there was ridiculous, but maybe that was it? It’s easy to say that now, safe in my car and the decision reaffirmed by hindsight and my current safety, but it’s entirely possible that ‘Internal Fortitude’ is what helped me grit my teeth and try and figure a way back to the car. I’d take more of that any day of the week.
Next was Divine Spark and it mentioned Miracles. That felt entirely above my pay grade and I sure as hell wasn’t going to be waiting for one of those. As far as I was concerned it was already a Miracle that Casey had been taken out of here before all this shit popped off. There was a selfish aspect there as well, I don’t think she would have taken this as well as I thought I was, and personally, I barely felt capable enough to take care of myself. Adding another person while my ass is dangling in the breeze would have been rough. It would have been nice to have her in the sleeping bag though and for more than simple body heat. Although, now that I think about it, I’d be ok with just having her body heat.
Luck… I silently cursed. I always hated having this stat in RPG’s. A bullshit stat that was either completely useless, completely necessary, or outrageously overpowered.
“What are the Feats, “Right Woman, Wrong Time” and “Fortunate Son” from?”
Asking together gave me now response, but asking about each separately got me a response.
Accept Bonus Feats?
“Yeah… sure. Yes.”
Are you sure?
Stupid system, “Yeah. I’m sure. Fucking accept all Bonus Feats.”
All Bonus Feats will be automatically fucking accepted.
“Wait a second, I didn’t say tha-”
It felt like a thousand needles stabbed me somewhere around my back and on my forearms. Ants carrying little knives, a million of them. It was gone just as fast as it had arrived and I was drenched with sweat. I already felt twitchy at the memory of the pain, fuck the extra points. That was ridiculous.
“What the hell was that?”
I grabbed each of my forearms in turn then pulled back the sleeves to my wrists and twisted my hands. There was no blood, nothing was wrong with them. Then I rubbed at my back, away from the wound, and nothing felt off there either. No blood on my hands. Weird.
“Bonus Feat Description. ‘Right Woman, Wrong Time’ Description. Details on Bonus Feat ‘Right Woman, Wrong Time’. What is the Feat, ‘Right Woman, Wrong Time’.” You know what they say, fourth times the charm!
Right Woman, Wrong Time: You found the perfect woman, real heavenly material. Too bad it took you so long.
‘Took me so long?’ I wasn’t even that old. Stupid Heavenly timeframes. I bet it would have been just in time if we’d both been 14 or something. I asked about ‘Fortunate Son’ next.
Fortunate Son: Be the first Human to get a Luck Feat.
Well, I guess I did feel a bit lucky. Now that you mentioned it, I do feel damn lucky. All things considered.
So, since it started at (0), that means “Right Woman, Wrong Time” gave me the first point, earlier than anyone else. That must have happened right at ‘The Snap’, I saw ‘Right Woman’ and instantly thought of Casey, then ‘Wrong Time’ as she got whisked away before I could… I shot up and searched for my discarded pants. Oh no, oh no, it was gone. I felt like shit for a few minutes but then took some deep breaths. I was still going to go look for my .45 and the flashlight after all this divine global warming bullshit was done. It was just another thing I would have to find.
Potentiality and Potentiality Curve in the description could mean a lot of things. I went with my gut which read as ‘Survivability Curve’. I’d keep an eye to see what swung it in different directions. It’d probably be more helpful if that dickhead angel Gabriel wasn’t putting his finger, or wing, or whatever on the scale.
After I convinced myself that I was shivering on purpose, to build warmth, I passed out.
----------------------------------------
I woke up thrashing, hardly able to breath. I gasped and opened my eyes and felt like I was drowning. It hurt to open my eyes and I felt dizzy. What the hell had happened?
It was like I was inside a sauna, in the middle of a hot spring, located in the middle of hell. A car-sized oven. I looked around as I kicked off the last part of my sleeping bag and ripped the space-blanket into two pieces of scattered foil. Cheap piece of shit. Can’t hold up to the consequences of its actions, trying to cook me like a Thanksgiving turkey, then tears like cheap crap once its schemes failed.
Why in the fuck was it so hot? I could see shimmers of water vapor rising in my car. I looked to the front and saw the plastic of the dash doing its valient best to not melt. I took a deep breath and coughed at the humidity that tried to crawl into my lungs. I scrambled over the back seat and screeched as my hand touched a spot on the leather where the sun met it. HOT HOT HOT.
I, for some reason, had a collection of the reflective sun screens in the kangaroo pocket behind my seat and deployed them all out around the car, blocking the windows. I sat there for a moment and looked at my watch, 07:26, before quickly realizing that I needed to get the fuck out of the car.
It wasn’t hot OR cold, it was hot AND cold. For fucks sake, some consistency wouldn’t be the worst.
I started ripping off layers, then started to shift them around as I felt a burning on my forearm. My arm had been unmoving for a few seconds and instantly showed a fresh sunburn. I dismissed the potential for a cool pattern and put back on my long sleeve and the loosest pair of pants I could find while struggling not to heat-death myself. I was already sweating through both of them. The wool socks came off and I put on the first cotton pair I could scrounge up and my pair of hiking shoes.
Hat. I needed a hat. I had a fishing hat, it was perfect. I strapped the holster around my waist and then put on a pair of shitty work gloves that I had managed to rummage out of some deep recess of my car. I was dizzy and getting dizzier, so I drank and drank. I could hardly stop myself, and then of course, puked inside of my car. That was dumb. The smell made me dizzier.
I put the water bladder on my shoulders. If I was going to go outside then I was going to be ready, even if I was being slowly baked alive in my car.
Sunglasses and hat on, shitty agricultural gloves tight-ish, weird blade and .38 ready.
I chugged another huge gulp from the gallon bottle and gave it a moment for it to settle before opening the door, slowly. I could hardly see, even wearing sunglasses. It felt like stepping on the surface of the sun. Not seeing any mutts around I shut the door and stepped into the shade. I was high-alert and felt like I was high just off of the heat. It looked exactly the same, no, not exactly the same. The vegetation was way bigger, trees, bushes, all of it. Prehistoric level shit. What the fuck.