《Boot-Strap Hero》 The Return Normann Hawkins blinked rapidly, trying to clear out a sudden dizzy spell that had settled over him. He drew his hand back from the translucent blue menu screen in front of him. An orb of blue and dark violet floated behind it, drifting back and forth in a strange spiral pattern as if it were impatiently waiting for him to make a decision. Normann had. It was the easiest choice for a person like him to make. He wanted nothing to do with the orb, the SYSTEM it forced onto people, and all of the horrors that came because of it. Constant media showered him every day with the reality, and no amount of fame or power would erase the suffering of those who became operators. He had no desire to be one, let alone fight. He was a teacher; so, sure he¡¯d defend his students, but he wasn¡¯t an actual fighter. He¡¯d shown that many times in his life, and this wasn¡¯t an attempt to fix that because there was nothing to fix. He wasn¡¯t the type of person to charge head first into a fight, slaughtering monsters and possibly innocents for guilds and corporations in the name of profits. Normann knew exactly who and what he was: a fat, depressed 27 year-old man who still lived with his parents because he was too passive to go out and find someone or somewhere else to live. Why would he, of all people, be selected to fight when there were hundreds, thousands, millions, literally any one else really, who would be a better candidate to save the world? Why would he want that power to kill and die in horrible manner, never to see his family again. It made no sense, but the words floated in front of him, the screen of the SYSTEM hung before him:
YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN BY THE SYSTEM TO JOIN THE HONORED DEFENDERS, THE JUST WARRIORS, AND THE RIGHTEOUS BRACE TO BEAR THE CHALLENGE SENT TO YOUR REALM. OPEN YOUR SOUL UP TO [THE EMBODIMENT OF OMENS] AND WIELD THE POWER OF MYTHS AND STORIES. LET INTEGRATION COMMENCE AND MAKE WHAT IS YOURS INTO REALITY? {ACCEPT}\{DECLINE}
holes in reality nearly tore the world apart. These holes, labeled Rifts by System, unleashed monsters that destroyed everything, killing thousands. Death wasn¡¯t the only thing the System brought, though. With Rifts and monsters, power came too. People were altered fundamentally into operators, allowing their soul access to the strange and horrible magic the Rifts carried. Power that took humans away from everything that made them who and what they were. Power that only grew as one fought and killed the monsters, faced terror in the Rifts in countless forms. All for what? More power? Wealth? Death? A simple choice for him; he wouldn¡¯t amount to anything more than being a teacher, why bother. This was enough, his life was enough; certainly not worth trying to kill himself over the absurd belief of power and wealth. Those weren¡¯t for a person like him. He wasn¡¯t a fight, no matter how hard he tried with his friends in their games and play-combat. He wasn¡¯t aggressive enough. He was, though, slow, lazy, and incompetent in so many ways and things. Normann surprised himself that he had job that required him to care and help others. That he somehow still had it. Maybe they couldn¡¯t find anyone else and were just stuck with him. Every day, that reason made more sense than anything else. The only saving grace in his was his halfway decent intelligence. Not that it mattered, not that he did something with it, but it¡¯d enough to breeze through college and everything else that life threw at him. Figured out what was needed and was able to survive anything that came his way. Normann made it this far, and no one had learned the extent of his failings. He certainly wasn¡¯t going to tell them. Being selected the System hadn¡¯t changed anything. In the end, the choice was easy to make. No matter the stories and delusions of grandeur he dreamed of each night as he fell asleep, he was an ordinary human of no worth. A nobody. His choice was easy. The last words on the transparent menu stared at him, one of bold and depressed while the other was grayed out. He pulled his hand back from the ¡°DECLINE¡± button; he remembered reaching out and pressing it. He choose that button specifically. It was important that he pressed it. Except it wasn¡¯t the button in front of his fingers.
{ACCEPT}\{DECLINE}
The ¡°ACCEPT¡± button had been highlighted and depressed while ¡°DECLINE¡± had been grayed out. The entire screen glitched, like an old tube television struggling to find a channel, and a red haze hummed behind the screen instead of its previous blue and dark violet. The letters pixelated briefly, turning black and a different font only to transform just as quickly back into its clean white text. Normann had selected ¡°DECLINE¡± and the System had otherwise insisted. ¡°Well,¡± he said softly as the screen disappeared, leaving a misshaped orb of white and red light, gold flecks within it, hovering drunkenly in front of him, ¡°fuck. The orb shot forward, crashing into his chest and knocking him down into his chair. He slammed down hard enough to slide his chair back and cracked his head against the wall. He whipped back and buckled over, his eyes focusing on the orb burrowing into his chest, pulsing with a dark radiance that threatened to burn away even light as it consumed him. It ate through his shirt, burning away the sparse hair, the flabby skin, the weak muscle, the dense bone, until it was inside him. It flared within him, a nightmare of heat and fangs all to consume. Energy lit him from the bones outward, a stark heat spreading out from his sternum, lungs, and heart, to the rest of his body, inch by agonizing inch. The unreal heat from the orb pulsed along his veins and arteries, coursing through all of him to his fingers and toes. From bones and sinew to muscles and ligaments to skin, the light of the SYSTEM crunched down and bit away at him, gorging itself as it devoured him to leave something horrible in its place. Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. He couldn¡¯t stop staring at the horrid light within the orb as it transformed him. He wanted to scream, but everything squeezed as hard as it could, taut against the onslaught consuming him. His jaw clenched, his teeth cracked. Red and light flared in dark brilliance to some enigmatic beat he didn¡¯t understanding as blood rushed out in pace with his pounding heart only to be met by the inalienable and immaterial maw of the SYSTEM. It was wrong. All of it was wrong. Somewhere in the remains of his mind, hidden beneath the consuming light and the enveloping pain of his dissolving body, he knew what was happening, the way it was happening, was wrong. Twenty three years worth of data, from the first Rift to now, spoke of the process. Every survivor recorded what their so-called ascension was like, the glory and power they felt. His scream of agony and desire died as the light consumed his throat. It ate, cell by cell, and excreted something horrific in its place as it crawled through everything that made him. The light gorged an all that was him, crawling over and through and in him as he turned to ash and sand and dust and all else that was left in the face of an inscrutable entity that wanted him gone. The incongruity of the situation, his own pain masked any thought every the basest of them but somewhere in the mind that was once his as it was overwritten by the light and horror and pain, a thought had passed through him without lingering: whatever was truly happening, this sideshow of suffering and horror as the core consumed him entirely, was wrong. The crunching and burning away of the body turned metaphoric and the light flared as its gnashed its teeth upon his soul, as the SYSTEM tore out all that- Normann Hawkins shot up and pushed the desk away. It scrapped across the linoleum floor, tearing gashes as the feet dug into the ground, and screeched over the blaring fire alarm. Cords tore and the computer crashed to the ground, the monitor shattering to pieces around him. His head ached and body burned. Empty Sky, did everything hurt? His arms and legs shuttered as he struggled to think through the ripples of pain leaving his body His anima stormed violently within him, nipping at the edges of his self in a threat to escape. It cracked with errant bolts of intent, attempting to tear itself free of him. The world spun and he reached out instinctively with left arm, though his hand hadn¡¯t been around for decades. Except fingers caught his weight and a palm slapped against mortar blocks to hold him up. Normann looked over to see his hand, five fingers attached to a palm attached to a wrist. ¡°That¡¯s¡­¡± he said and stopped as the word hit his ear. He glanced slowly around the room, eyes widening as the anima within settled beneath the shock of where he was and the voice he heard. knew this room well. Normann had been a teacher before his conscription, and up until that moment he was stolen away, he taught in this room. He stood in a dream he had many times, of a simpler life without the pain of death gnawing at him as he fought. He returned his often in his sleep, escaping to when he wasn¡¯t something grand and power, but a human again. He tried to walk out to the student desks and chairs, to the white boards lining both sides of the long room, to the books on the far wall. Normann took a step, but neither leg moved as it should; he tried to grab the chair near him, but its wheels spun it away and he collapsed to the ground and finally looked at himself The legs that stared up at him were not his. His period of starvation as a conscript had eaten away at most of his muscle and body, leaving a thin frame barely able to stand. He regained some weight in the sixty years since, but his body wasn¡¯t what it had been and had always felt so strange to see the skeleton in skin when he rarely went without his frame. These weren¡¯t skin and bone legs; but trunks of solid muscle. Normann pressed against them, using his hand to feel the steel wires that were muscles. He felt with both hands for a moment, before pausing to stare at the left hand which shouldn¡¯t have been there. During the Chernobyl Labyrinth Raid, thirty seven years ago, he¡¯d been forced to step up and protect a backline Augmenter who wasn¡¯t paying attention; despite his own failings with combat, he stood on the front line and used a flimsy sword best he could to hold off a horde of mutant ants. If he hadn¡¯t, the entire heavy squad would have perished. Instead, he sacrificed his hand into the maw of an ant the size of a mini-van, saving a healer from being torn in hand. Jezebel tore him a new one as she tried to stitch him up; he didn¡¯t remember much of her yelling then other than telling him she cursed him out against when he was healed up. The hand was fresh, unscarred. So was the arm attached to him. In fact - Normann checked his throat ¨C he doubted he had any scars. The skin felt new, without a single hair on it. When he was fifty seven, just after his conscription was ended and he was formally added at to a heavy squad, Normann¡¯s throat had been torn out by group of Folly demons in a Heavy delve. Jezebel cursed at him again for that. Left him with a deep gravel that barely came out in a whisper. Normann dragged his left hand down his throat to his bare chest to the exposed pearlescent crystal embedded in his sternum. It had fused perfectly with his skin, the transition zone smooth and nearly indistinguishable. As it should be. As a normal operator had. It wasn¡¯t his core though, not the one he had since he had been conscripted. For nearly a hundred years, he possessed open sore that leaked anima. Charred and rough, his core exposed him to the world, staring out through a faulty integration process, but that¡¯s what happens when humans attempt the work of an eldritch nature. Instead of an open wound bleeding both anima and blood, he had a normal core. Maybe. He couldn¡¯t remember a core that looked like this. A large patch of chest, as wide as a hand-span and stretching the length of his sternum, glistened in poor fluorescent light. Hard as steel and slightly translucent, an iridescent sheen revealed a dark and deep ocean with something far beneath the surface pulsed in time with his heart. A second heart of anima that burned with a power from another level of existence granted to him by the SYSTEM. It raged as a storm within his body, steady and almost serene, but it was his and, unlike before, was in tune with his body rather than burning him out and working against him. This wasn¡¯t his core; not the malfunctioning one that he had lived with for ninety three years. It was the same color and texture as the artifact grade core he activated only seconds ago when he was standing outside the [Lasting Sunrise] Mythic Raid. ¡°It worked?¡± his voice sounded so strange to his ears. Youthful and painfree. Normann touched his core with his right hand and stared at the healed left hand. He stood straight; no pain in his ribs from the shitty Hammers of the Honored healers, the ones who just made sure he could stand and sent to the front lines to die like the rest of the conscripted. He could breath easily, though the air was dirtier than he remembered, giving it a toxic tang that the world didn¡¯t have any more. Probably less industry spewing out its poison. Not a strong taste, but noticeable now. ¡°It fucking worked?¡± Normann barked out, barely containing the hysterical laugh boiling in him. He tapped his chest twice, two fingers on where his sternum should be, and summoned his HUD. His menu appeared in front of him. Just as it had ninety-three years ago. Or would it be eight years from now? It didn¡¯t matter, except it really did. Because it fucking worked. Figures and numbers flashed briefly before turning translucent and fading into the periphery of his vision, waiting for him to turn his attention to it. Once the HUD filled in a set of three bars at the bottom of his vision, a menu popped up, revealing his character sheet. A second one covered it immediately, dimming the first menu. This one had only a simple message typed on it, black text on a red field:
The Return: Pt 2 Normann Hawkins hadn¡¯t seen that message, not since he first integrated ninety-three years ago. ¡°That¡¯s not right,¡± he said as he looked around the room. It wasn¡¯t ninety-three yeas ago, not any more. He had moved through time to when he was first offered the opportunity to become an operator and declined it. Standing in his classroom of his youth, back when he was twenty seven years ago, Normann hadn¡¯t been integrated at this time. He declined and life when on. He would eight blissful years despite the chaos and destruction around where he wasn¡¯t an operator and forced to fight. Eight years before he was forcibly integrated with the [Core of the Penitent Lost]. No other operator, not even other Penitents, had seen a similar one. He assumed they hid the truth as he did or that it was just an anomaly that manufactured cores had. Ignoring the confusing time dynamics at the moment, Normann had other issues to focus on, like what if anything had changed for him. The SYSTEM¡¯s appearance in his HUD had altered from the Blue and white vibrate colors to the more ominous red and black. He doubted that cosmetic changes were the only thing, especially with a different core infusing his body. The [Core of the Penitent Lost] did not alter his body this much, though he wasn¡¯t certain it was due to his new core or something else entirely. Normann tapped his chest, right in the middle of his Core, and focused on his HUD. Wwith a brief haptic buzz at the base of his skull, a new box appeared in his field of vision, titled ¡°Character Sheet¡±:
OPERATOR NAME: NORMANN EDWARD HAWKINS AGE: 25 YEARS (ERROR¡ªTEMPORAL FLUX DETECTED) RANK: NORMAL¡ª1 OF 5 COMPONENTS INTEGRATED (ERROR¡ªCORRUPTION WITHIN COMPONENT/CORE DETECTED; SEEK LOCAL ADMINISTRATOR FOR ASSISTANCE) CURRENT LEVEL ¨C 0 OF 10 ATTRIBUTES: BRAWN ¨C 2 FLUIDITY ¨C 0 WIT ¨C 3 PRESENCE ¨C 2 FORM ¨C 6
¡°Well, this is interesting,¡± he said staring at his attributes. Each attribute represented the ways that anything interacted and existed within the world, the SYSTEM¡¯s method of informing just how much a single being could change reality around them. Brawn was the attribute governing how well an entity moved the world around them, interacted with it. Most viewed it simply as the strength behind attacks, but it also affected how strong an operator was with their abilities and utilizing their anima. Fluidity referred to how well one moved within the world, both the speed and agility incorporated within it, making it easy to navigate the world without being stopped or hindered by anything. Wit was the attribute that showed how well one perceived and understood the world around them, like a combined version of the classic role-playing-games¡¯ intelligence and wisdom stats, but also including how capable an operator was with magic runes, enchantments, and rituals. Presence focused on how others perceived and interacted with the entity, a mix of beauty, charisma, and charm though the attribute also affected how easily an operator could hide or be noticed. Form was a strange one, representing how an entity took up space within the world. Endurance and vitality, recovery and health, stability and structure: probably a few others things, all wrapped together to indict just how the operator stood within the world. The numbers for a given attribute were somewhat relative and arbitrary: a 0 did not mean that a person was incapable of moving, but that they were the weakest possible. A normal human possessed attributes in the range of 0 to 3, with the average leaning more towards 0 than not. A human with a 3 Brawn would be considered at an Olympic athlete level of strength, while a 3 Wit meant they were geniuses. Normann didn''t have these attributes his first go around. When he obtained his core the first time, only a single attribute was above a 2, and three of them were 0s. He was pathetic and weak then. It seems sending his mind back to his past had altered how the SYSTEM viewed him or perhaps a better integration with his new Core provided higher attributes, though that made little sense as well. Perhaps the altered attributes explained his body not being as he remembered. He wasn¡¯t a rail-thin skeleton any more, like he had been before he went back in time. Nor was he a sloven slob as he always remembered himself being when he was young. He closed out the screen, and his HUD faded back from his focus, turning nearly invisible except when he focused on them. Normann sat down heavily, and the chair dropped slightly. The integration process wasn¡¯t exhausting physically, but it felt as though this were the first time he¡¯d been able to relax in weeks. ¡°Kinda is,¡± he said; he hadn¡¯t decided if his liked his voice without its gravel and raspy timbre. The low tone was at least familiar, so that helped. Normann closed his eyes and exhaled heavily in an effort to remove the tension he carried for the longest time. A moment ago, everything was normal. He stood outside a rift to the [Lasting Sunrise], a Mythic Raid that started with a two hundred and forty of the top S-Rank operators, thirty heavy squads. Six of them walked out of the raid, including him. It was supposed to be the last Rift humanity needed to close according to the SYSTEM. The theory was that all other Rifts would close and humanity wouldn¡¯t need to suffer under the constant onslaught from them, finally able to rest and recover. Two hundred and thirty nine S-rank operators and one C-rank walked into the [Lasting Sunrise] and six walked out. The five greatest of all of them survived, as did Normann Hawkins, the lowly Penitent. Six weeks fighting, nearly non-stop, grinding through dozens of bosses and scenarios, victorious despite the heavy loses each step of the way. They fought for a world finally at peace, when they and no one else would have to fight to survive. They had walked out victorious, expecting to see, well, Normann didn¡¯t know what he expected exactly, but certainly not monsters bloating out the sun with their numerous or toxic plumes littering the earth. Humanity was supposed to have been safe, but with their entrance into the Rift, something horrendous occurred and cost the world itself. Instead of seeing the peace and serenity that so many had died for, that they depended on, they were met with a shattered horizon of a blazing city overrun by various demons, monsters, and eldritch horrors. For the first time that Normann could remember, Lucas stopped smiling. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. Six against a horde was suicide, and Normann stood back as four charged the unleashed monsters. At C-Rank, he was the weakest and already exhausted every ounce of anima in him, he had nothing left. Pennant Oliver stood next to him as he watched the four friends run to their deaths. Considered the smartest operator in the world, he revealed to Normann about one of the rewards they found at the end the raid, the artifact grade [Core of the Embodiment of Omens]. More importantly, Oliver told him to use it. It shouldn¡¯t be possible; no operator could use a second core. Normann¡¯s was a constructed piece of shit and finicky at times, and while he was meant to be fodder for the armies that had fought against the hordes spilling out from collapsed Rifts, he had leveraged his abilities to great effect, leading to him standing with the other powerful operators. He aged in comparison to his nigh timeless and godly companions, and he had no real combat abilities or means of learning magic. But apparently Oliver had known something no one else did. The artifact-grade core glowed in Normann¡¯s hands as his comrade-in-arms explained the truth of the matter. Oliver rushed through his explanation: he believed the core to actually be and how it was to be used. The [Core of the Embodiment of Omens] was a tether to a moment in the past when Normann originally interacted with the core, a moment that Oliver assured him occurred even if Normann couldn¡¯t remember it. As they spoke, a new screen, red and white with flares of gold with black text, stared at him, waiting for him to accept the impossibility. If he did, he¡¯d overwrite the second-rate core he possessed. But the second half of what would occur was more outlandish: Normann would be drawn to the other side of that line to the past, back in time to a choice that he didn¡¯t remember making. Oliver revealed his core and the secret he carried with him since becoming an operator all those years ago. Through their HUDs, he shared the truth that led him to the insane possibility of time travel; he possessed a [Core of the Embodiment of Discovery], not a [Core of the Orphan of the Storm] as Normann previously believed. Another artifact-grade core. Their existence was theoretical and Norman now held one and Oliver possessed another. None of that mattered because the world was lost and humanity at their final end. With the insanity that was Oliver¡¯s theory and reality of Normann¡¯s transportation into his past self, maybe things didn¡¯t have to end. Possessing a new core meant that he would have different abilities. He flicked his hand to the side and the menu changed, turning the page to a portion that the defined the components of his frame. As expected, four of the five components slots were empty, with only the core filled in:
COMPONENT ¨C CORE EIDOLON ¨C {CORRUPTED FROM ------} PASSIVES: 1 OF 2 UNLOCKED PASSIVE ¨C CASSANDRIC KNOWLEDGE RANK F ¨C PROVIDES [READ THE BONES] BOON TO OPERATOR PERMANENTLY. IF THE OPERATOR RECEIVES A DEBUFF, [READ THE BONES] ALTERS ACCORDING TO THE ELEMENT OF THE DEBUFF TO PROVIDE ADDITIONAL BENEFITS. PROVIDES ACCESS TO [AUGURY LOGS] [READ THE BONES] ||BOON, MAGIC, OMEN, THREAT||PROVIDES THE OPERATOR WITH INFORMATION REGARDING RELATIVE HEALTH, MANA, AND STAMINA OF AN ENEMY DAMAGED BY THE OPERATOR. ENEMY IS CONSIDERED THREATENED FOR THE PURPOSES OF OTHER ABILITIES AND COMBAT [AUGURY LOGS] ||QUEST SYSTEM|| - ALLOWS OPERATOR TO ACCESS A UNIQUE QUEST SYSTEM OUTSIDE OF RIFTS
If his core acted like Oliver¡¯s, then he would assume that the name of the eidolon would appear differently, probably as [The Penitent Lost], which had its own issues given that the core was man made and far inferior to any from the SYSTEM. Given that it wouldn¡¯t be made for another eight years, he could play off his core from an extremely rare or newly discovered eidolon. At least the ability granted this time would be useful. When he possessed a [Core of the Penitent Lost], his first passive acted almost in the reverse. It provided a debuff to any enemy in range then would broadcast the same information out to all operators in a given range, and more as he ranked up. Useless at low ranks, as only he was capable of perceiving the information and in order to place the debuff on an enemy, he was required to attack and damage them. Operators who possessed that core often had terrible passives and abilities. Probably why most of them died within a year of integration. The changes to his passive and the additional benefit were interesting though. Now, instead of a debuff that he applied to others through combat, it was a flat boon on himself, providing him directly the information of those he fought. [Read the Bones] provided the same information, though the additional benefits would be interesting. The fact that he also had these [Augury Logs], though he wasn¡¯t certain what it meant by ¡®unique quest system¡¯. Would have to test it out later. Along with the other changes he now had. Normann traced the seam of his new core embedded in his sternum. Again, no raw skin or exposed core, just a sheen of crystalline skin that almost glowed in time with his heart. It felt smooth and followed the contours of his muscles and bodies. Once, it had been jagged and torn, an open wound that refused to heal, constantly burning and itching as his body attempted to repel the invading energy and power. Even as he ranked up, where other operators grew with their cores, he remained in constant conflict with it. Here and now, it was different. The integration was as others described to him. His magic still raged within him and would continue to do so until he obtained the rest of his components, but at least it didn¡¯t feel like it was fighting against him, wanting to hurt him, like it had before. This body wasn¡¯t his. Not the one he had grown into over the ninety-three years of being an operator. Time had not been kind to him, and neither had the Rifts and various raids. Ranking up was supposed to improve ones attributes, and while he somewhat grew stronger and more powerful, his body was ravaged by his flawed core, leaving him with the appearance of a middle aged man in a group of young lively people. The oldest and weakest of them all. This body wasn¡¯t the same. Life vibrated within, his anima, the power granted by the SYSTEM that enabled everything an operator did, swarming inside ready to erupt out and move. Ready for him to move. Ready for him to use. It was whole again, unshattered by humanity¡¯s failed attempt to usurp the power of unworldly beings, and it felt like it wanted to get up and move. He opened his eyes to stare at the ceiling. It was strange to be in a body that wasn¡¯t his, except it was. Something about it, he couldn¡¯t quite describe it, but it felt so different from before. Something was missing from his body and it wasn¡¯t a bad thing. Good, rather. Like a splinter he didn¡¯t know was in him had been removed and he could rest easier now. The power swirling around in him, and he frankly never cared about how it occurred biologically, and for once it was a pleasant feeling, as though it were at home within him. As if he belonged here and now. A feeling he hadn¡¯t ever had before. It was strange. But nice.