Day 2 - System Integration in Progress
Later That Night
The Moon Residence
Erin spent time with her mother in the kitchen until Eun-ha calmed down, then left Eun-ha to her devices while she went to her room and started practicing martial art forms to blow off steam. She started with Taekwondo, since she had spent the most time with that over the years. Not because she didn’t want to spend time on others, but when her sensei died, she lost access to a teacher for everything not offered in Middletown.Which was everything that wasn’t Taekwondo.
When she received a notification that the system registered two new skills, she checked the notification, prompting the System AI to read the details of the new skills.
Martial Arts:
Description: General martial arts skill; Indicative of progression in martial arts as a whole, not a specific martial art.
Positives: Skill level can directly impact ability to improve existing martial arts or learn new ones. The higher this skill, the quicker one can develop martial arts skills.
Negatives: Martial arts are not considered an effective strategy against ranged weapons.
Taekwondo:
Description: Korean martial art that utilizes striking techniques including closed and open hand, and kicks.
Positives: Contains some of the most powerful kicks in the martial arts world.
Negatives: Some of those powerful kicks can telegraph the action long enough to allow a fast opponent to block or dodge.
Realizing this could be more than just venting her anger, Erin moved on to another martial art, Bokator. She hadn’t trained this to tournament skill level with her sensei, and only practiced intermittently over the years. She was certain it took longer for a system notification to trigger, but when it did she focused on the notification to prompt the System AI narration.
Bokator:
Description: Cambodian martial art characterized by the heavy use of weapons such as bamboo staff, sword, and short sticks.
Positives: Contains a variety of techniques for different scenarios, and helps condition the body as a natural effect of training.
Negatives: Techniques can be complex, making learning difficult. Has a reliance on weapons. Is less applicable in modern self-defense scenarios.
This went on for some time as Erin practiced the other martial arts she had varying degrees of training in. Muay Thai, Karate, Aikido. Once they were all added to her skills list, Erin started mixing forms, continuing the creativity that her sensei used to encourage, even at a young age. Her Sabom also encouraged this, but asked her to limit techniques to Taekwondo while sparring with other students at the dojang. Here at home though, her only limit was space.
When practicing her forms, Erin often fell into a trance-like state. She considered that her Focus ability may likewise be tied to this, but she could look for answers to that in the help menu later. For now, she just wanted to work on creative forms. Karate to Taekwondo and vice versa were easy to switch between, even Aikido. Muay Thai and Bokator carried a few similarities that could match up. The hard part was transitioning from Muay Thai or Bokator into the others. The forms could be hard to align without resetting.
It was during one of those resets trying to connect forms that she noticed her mom standing in the doorway, silently admiring Erin’s practice.
“Eomma, how long have you been there?”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“Only a few minutes Ttarai. You’ve always been so talented with martial arts.” Eun-ha smiled at her daughter. “Your father was so proud of you, he’s still proud of you, up there watching us from above.”
Erin smiled, then winced, then smiled again. “I miss him mom.”
Eun-ha went to Erin, pulling her into a hug, “I know Ttarai, we both do. Can you imagine what he would be like with all this alien and game stuff?”
“He would have laughed, ran out to the store to get more food and water, then declared we were going to save the world.” They both laughed and nodded in agreement, despite the tears gently falling down their cheeks.
“When you came along, his exuberance and positivity tripled overnight.” Eun-ha said, reminiscing about her lost love.
They held each other for a while before Erin noticed how dark it was outside her window, “Is it night already?’
“Yes, you’ve been up here most of the day. I came up to tell you dinner is ready.”
With timing matched only in a story, Erin’s stomach chose that moment to growl at her. She looked at her mom and they both burst out laughing. “Yeah, I could eat something.”
They started downstairs when they heard the sound of a window on the second floor shattering. Turning to run back up the stairs, Erin stopped when she heard the voice outside.
“Hey bitch! I’m BAAAAACK!”
Erin slipped past her mom and leapt down the stairs, running to the front window. Out on the lawn she could see Joey and his friends, illuminated not by the street light, but by the flaming objects held in their hands. One of the thugs, frozen in a blue energy field, his hand empty. Erin’s anger flared like a volcano seconds from erupting.
She started to move to the front door, when she was interrupted by her mom’s yell. “Ye-rin! There’s a fire upstairs.” No sooner did her mom finish saying that, then the upstairs smoke detector went off.
“Mom! Mom, out the back! Now!” Erin met her mom on the stairs as she was coming down, and rushed her out the back door of the house. Unravelling the garden hose and turning it on to full, she started soaking the yard and the fence to slow the inevitable spread of the fire.
Grabbing her mom by the shoulder and handing her the hose, she tried to shock her mom out of the reverie she had fallen into. “Mom, this can’t control the fire, but it will keep the grass wet and slow the spread to the fence until the hose melts. If you need to, spray yourself to protect against embers.”
“What…where are you going?” Eun-ha sounded like she was in shock.
“I need to get help. There are men out front, mom, you need to stay here.” It took every ounce of energy to keep the rage that Erin felt from coming out in her voice. “I’ll be right back.”
Before her mom could protest, Erin ran between their house and the neighbour’s, heading to the front gate. With every step she took, the rage she felt doubled in intensity. Her skin started to tingle, and a buzzing-ringing sound built in her ears. By the time she was a few paces from the gate, it was all she could hear.
Looking out at the front lawn past the gate, she saw that more of the thugs were frozen with the blue energy field surrounding them. Her head started to ache, and despite the buzzing-ringing sound she could swear she heard the System AI.
“Sy…syst err…tem brzt err…error.”
The tingling on her skin increased in intensity, becoming electrifying.
“Abi…abil…ili…ty…zzzt…unregistered….abi…lity…acti…tivation-tion”
Erin felt the tingling expand inside her body, moving towards her core.
“Backup System initiated. Primary AI rebooting. User Moon Ye-rin, alias Erin, has unlocked an unregistered ability. Logged for analysis. Observation mode initiated. Silent mode Initiated.”
The buzzing-ringing sound stopped, and the world around Erin seemed to freeze. She blinked, and one of the frozen thugs was now in front of her, but sideways. No, she was sideways, parallel with the ground, kicking her right foot at his head. It connected. A bar appeared above his head, full and green, but flashing. The thug’s head separated from the body and the bar emptied in the time it took to flash once. As soon as she retracted her foot, the head froze in mid air.
She blinked again, bringing an axe kick down on another. A green bar appeared above his head, flashing. The thug’s forehead caved in and he bent over backwards. The green bar flashed to empty. Pulling her foot from the thug’s caved in skull, there was blood on it, but it sizzed, boiling away all viscera and fluids.
Another blink and Erin was launching a dozen punches into a thug’s chest and stomach. The green bar went down in chunks this time, but it was still empty before she got halfway through her barrage. Physical indents were frozen where some of her hits landed, craters in the body at other impact points. Every spot showing burnt clothing and skin.
Blink, a knife hand to the throat cut into the thug’s neck. The green bar above him flashed and emptied.
Blink, she slapped a freshly thrown molotov cocktail out of the air, then grabbed the thug’s throwing arm in an attempt to flip them, ripping his arm out of the socket instead. The green bar went down by half in one flash.
Blink, standing in front of Joey. The world unfroze and Joey stumbled back, falling on his ass. He looked around, seeing the state of his friends. Only one is still alive, and with every blood spurt coming from their arm, the bar above their head ticked down.
‘Wh…wh..what the fuck?!?” Joey stammered out. He pulled his own unlit molotov cocktail to his chest and fumbled with the Zippo, trying to light it. As the lighter caught, Erin’s leg kicks out, shattering the bottle, launching the flammable liquid and a rain of shattered glass into Joey’s face. The liquid catches fire and turns Joey’s initial painful scream from the glass shards into animalistic sound barely recognizable as human.
Erin blinks, grabs the bottle she knocked down, and blinks back to Joey. The bar above his head is at roughly seventy-five percent, and dropping quickly. As she speaks, Erin’s voice sounds different, deeper, more powerful. “People like you murdered my father and my sensei, then you came here tonight trying to murder my mom and I. Now I finally have the power to protect the people I love, and punish people like you.” She poured the bottle onto Joey, adding to the conflagration. The bar above his head, what part of Erin’s not-enraged mind registers as a health bar, takes another large dip before steadily dropping the remaining bit and bottoming out.
Turning back towards the house, the fire looked like it hadn’t spread far, but there were multiple individual fires now. She couldn’t put tha tout. Erin got half the distance to the fence gate, mangled nearly beyond recognition when she blasted through it, before she collapsed to the grass and passed out.