"This time, she'll have no choice but to say yes!" a boy said out loud, holding a comically large bouquet of roses and a giant heart shaped box of chocolates, desperate to get somewhere.
Class had just ended, and he was sprinting through the halls. When he reached the entrance of the school, the boy found the very girl he was looking for. Long flowing strawberry blonde hair, pale skin, piercing blue eyes, smooth skin, perfect proportions, the embodiment of beauty in his eyes.
"Erin!" The boy yelled, which caught the girl's attention.
"Erin, I have something I need to confess to you!" The boy said before getting down on one knee and lifting the two items for Erin to take, to which she had yet to do. "Please, you have to go out with me. I loved you since you froze me to the wall during PE practice, and my heart hasn't stopped beating so hard since then. I know you've said no before, but I've gotten stronger; I'm now a high level like you!"
Erin looked down at the boy, then at the enormous gifts handed to her, completely ignoring the boy's words. She didn't really have a use for roses, but she could enjoy a sweet or two.
"Please, please, PLEASE," the boy begged. "You're so pretty, and gorgeous, and strong. If the strong Ice Queen and the Telekinesis King came together, we could rule this school like royalty!"
Once the boy shoved the items at her, Erin was ticked off.
Dropping the items to the side, Erin lifted up a hand, and ice formed around the boy's body from the ground up. The ice grew and grew until it formed into the shape of a heart.
"You mentioned something about a heart, right?" Erin commented, before picking up only the box of chocolates and leaving.
"Wait! Where are you going!" the boy shouted after her. "It's so cold here, how am I meant to get out?"
"Like all the other times, you wait for it to melt," Erin called out behind her, leaving the school grounds.
"Did he seriously try to confess to her, AGAIN?" An onlooker said to their friend.
"Well, I would," his friend said. "She's gorgeous and a level 5 ice ability user, the highest in our class!"
The guy scoffed, "Even if she were as high as a level 8, there's no way I'd even bother. Think about it, have you seen her with anyone else? I don't even know if she has friends."
His friend was about to say something, when he realized his words rang true. "... You're right, actually. Does she even talk to anyone?"
—
Pressing on a finger print sensor, the door to Erin's home unlocked. She immediately tossed the chocolates onto a table, and headed to a dojo, worn down from years of use. Dojos weren't exactly common anymore as they were from an old era, and were seen as ancient compared to something more modern like VR fighting games.
She put on a hair tie before walking up to a humanoid dragon-like training robot, and it lit up, sensing her presence. Erin did know there was a benefit to mixing both the old and the new.
"User: Erin Heley, please state level of difficulty."
"Medium," Erin stated before stepping back, and unsheathing her crystalline sword.
The robot whirred to life, revealing mechanical claws previously hidden away, and, not wasting a moment, Erin jumped around the robot's claw strikes, dodging every blow.
Her movements were swift, and graceful, barely giving the robot a chance to hit her. The robot slashed downwards with its claws, but she side stepped out of the way, and thrusted her sword into its chest.
"Hit detected!" The robot's speaker said, "difficulty increasing!"
Both of the robot's limbs swung back 180 degrees, and slashed at her with great speed. She tried to block with her sword, but when she found she couldn't overpower it, she stomped her foot down, causing ice to form under the robot, uprooting it off the floor.
"Medium difficulty defeated! Would you like to try again?" The robot said, but the girl walked away with a neutral expression.
Despite what her face said, internally, she was thinking that it wasn't enough. The only way she won was through her ice ability, which, while strong, could not compare to the true threat to humanity.
Over 30 years ago, when humanity was just starting to travel the stars, the Dalki, a group of humanoid dragon-like aliens, came to earth in advanced spaceships, and commanded that humanity was to either hand over all of its resources and become their slaves, or face annihilation. Humanity obviously refused, leading to a brutal all out war.
The Dalki's technology was advanced, far more than humanity's, and despite all of human kind's inventions, the Dalki's tech was 5 steps ahead. Many human lives were lost, and it got to the point where extinction became a genuine threat.
Eventually, groups of hidden families all over earth decided to reveal their secrets to the world, these secrets being abilities, powers that would allow you to command the earth, control water, summon lightning and more. They did so by distributing this knowledge in the form of books. With the power of abilities, human kind was able to force a standstill. This had led to a truce between the two races.
Of course, Erin wasn't stupid enough to think the truce would last. Even though the peace treaty was officially formed 5 years ago, the Dalki would still send scouts to the many planets humans now inhabited, causing destruction with only the weakest of their kind.
Memories of what had happened long ago flashed through her mind, and she began shivering, hugging her own body tightly.
"No— Don't— Don't even think about it," Erin told herself, shaking her head to clear her thoughts.
Leaving the dojo, Erin passed by many rooms, all barely used, before arriving in her bedroom. She lived alone in a medium sized house, one that was very silent most of the time.
Erin didn't need to worry about the bills as she was given a generous inheritance, one that was more insult than anything as it couldn't buy back her parents' lives. Still, it meant she had all the time in the world to train and grow stronger.
Taking off her hair tie, Erin shook her head to let her hair flow freely, reaching her back, and she prepared to head to bed. Erin rested her head on her pillow and stared at the ceiling.
"I can't rest. Not yet... not until every one of those Dalki are eliminated."
—
On another part of the world, wheelless floating cars were passing by a boy who was walking alone on the sidewalk.
This boy had curly black hair, with beige skin, brown eyes, acne, and black rectangular glasses that had more tape on them than anything. He wasn't particularly tall, only about 5'11" and a little scrawny.
As he walked, a large guy bumped into him, causing the boy to trip onto the floor.
"Wow Quinn, watch where you're going," the larger guy sneered.
Quinn, the boy with curly hair, gritted his teeth and got up, "If it weren't for my glasses, then there's no way I'd miss a lumbering jerk like you!"
A visible vein formed on the larger guy's forehead, and his face turned bright red.
He coiled back his arm, literally, as it changed into a spring, and shot it into Quinn's gut, causing him to drop to the concrete sidewalk again. It was too fast for Quinn to react.
"You're just a stupid weak powerless level 1! You're worse than useless!" The larger guy shouted. "You don't even have an ability!"
Before Quinn could get up, the larger guy kicked him back onto the ground, then his arm stretched out behind him, far longer than what was humanly possible, as if it was made of rubber, and slammed it into Quinn's body. Despite getting physically assaulted in broad daylight, anyone passing by simply turned their head away, not wanting to cause trouble.
After the guy was done with him, Quinn hobbled back home, holding his bruised body.
'I'm sick of this, I'm sick of how this world works,' Quinn bitterly thought, as he opened the doors to his apartment.
It was only a single room, one that had a walk in kitchen, a TV, a desk, and a bed. Just slightly above the bare basics. No one other than him lived there.
This apartment was provided to him by the military after his parents joined the war against the Dalki, and had no more living relatives. Because they gave their life in battle, he was given a small stipend of money to spend on basic necessities like food and water, with a little extra pocket change if he was lucky.
Walking over to the drawer besides his bed, he opened it up, revealing a strangely heavy book, one with a dark red hard cover that was shaped to look like a mouth, not unlike jagged jaw bones with sharp teeth. It was an ability book, or so what Quinn thought.
This book was apparently the only thing that his parents could give him after their deaths, but he was long past sad about it. Instead, he was more than frustrated with the mere fact he couldn't even open it. Quinn often found himself spending his extra money buying things to try to open it. Pliers to pry it open it, matches and gasoline to burn it, a pot to boil it. Nothing worked.
"If you were going to leave me with such a indestructible book, then you should've at least left me some instructions," Quinn thought out loud.
Deciding to have another try at it, just in case the previous 100 times had been a fluke, Quinn tried to pry it open with his bare hands, desperately trying to dig his finger nails into the book.
Nothing.
Sighing, Quinn placed the book back, and sat at his desk chair deciding what to do next. His eyes passed over his calendar, and a thought passed in his mind.
'I still have time, right? I still have 7 more months until I have to leave,' Quinn contemplated, "With the draft coming up, the military is going to offer me an earth ability book since I don't have an ability...'
With the threat of war with the Dalki on the horizon, the military initiated a draft that required every 16 year old to go through military school. It was an effort to get humanity to become stronger, and while Quinn was considering their offer, he wanted to try something else.
While he had the book that his parents gave him, it was really annoying him. With how many things he's bought over the years to try to open it, he could've bought a new ability book. This time, Quinn wasn't going to feed into the sunk cost fallacy, and decided to look online for a way to get more money.
Quinn decided to head to the local library to access the computers there to see what he could do to make more money out of the money he currently had, and one such thing that stood out was an investment. When searching stuff online, one of the things he could do was buy something at a cheap price, then sell it for even higher. It was also called scalping, but Quinn elected to ignore that part.
Ever since the last Dalki war, humanity was able to learn how to travel to other planets by salvaging Dalki technology, and discovered portals that teleported them to other planets. What they discovered on these planets were powerful beasts, some with strange powers. After killing these beasts, humans found out that they had crystals in them that, when mixed with things like armor, weapons, and machines, strengthened them with the same powers that the beasts had.
Because of this, beast crystals were considered a universal currency that everyone wanted. Of course, affording beast gear was already off the table, but maybe Quinn could use a singular beast crystal for his investment.
Currently online, someone was asking for a specific beast crystal from a deathbat beast and seemed to be willing to pay tons of credits for such a thing. It was strange as there were a few comments replying to the offer asking why they would want such a useless crystal since it couldn't be used for beast gear.
'This was it,' Quinn thought, 'the perfect opportunity.'
If the crystal was so useless then it was bound to be cheap to get.
Quinn spent a lot of money to hire someone to travel off planet and acquire this crystal, which dipped even into his food budget and forced him to sell what little furniture he had left. Since he was going to military school in a few months, it wasn't like he needed those chairs or table for long. It was going to be worth it if he could pull this off.
After a few weeks or so of waiting and stealing some extra food from his school, he went to the Local Shipping Department to pick up his crystal. It was a building that allowed people to purchase and sell items online using teleporters. He checked online on one of the nearby computers to see if that someone still wanted the deathbat crystal. He smiled, then sent the crystal to the buyer.
Almost immediately, Quinn received the cash he needed, and he was about to buy a cheap ability book, but even with the money, the most he could afford wasn't anything he wanted for the rest of his life. The thing about picking out an ability was that it required a ton of thought, just as much as buying a house, or a new car, maybe even more considering you could always get a new car, but once you learned an ability, you could never change it.
Instead, Quinn decided to put his money into a bank and collect the interest later. Quinn didn't need to spend the cash right now, plus it was better to spend it on a higher level ability book if he could help it.
After doing a lot of research into some reputable banks, he found one that seemed trustworthy. Quinn was about to select the 5 month investment time, but a tall man in the department's uniform came by and told Quinn he was hogging the computer all day.
Frantic that he might get beaten up for such a thing, since it happened too many times at school, Quinn wasn't able to double check the information and quickly hit submit on the bank's website. Looking at the tall man then back at his bank investment, Quinn's heart sank when he saw the screen.
He hadn't put in an investment for 5 months, he had put in an investment for 5 years.
He couldn't even stick around to register what happened when he was kicked off, and shooed out.
As Quinn stood there, frustration and dread crept in.
"My money.... What am I going to do now?"