Prologue
Tiff tried her best to keep her face neutral. If she showed too much interest, she’d get flagged as a tryhard, or worse, a nerd. Not that there was anything wrong with either. It was just that, as a new 16-year-old in her third year of high school—only three weeks into the school year—those labels made one stand out for all the wrong reasons. And the last thing Tiff wanted was to stand out. She was content to skirt by, invisible to the world around her.
A world where jocks tormented nerds mercilessly. The strong had always picked on the weak when people were young and dumb. Those plain and mundane stereotypes quickly lost their power and meaning once everyone graduated. In fact, not that very many people in Tiff’s class or even age range would understand, but the dynamics of power usually reversed once the teens entered the working world. The once weak, helpless, unfortunate souls sometimes became presidents and managers of influential companies. They often took dark joy looking down on their old tormentors after the second-rate athletes finished their short, usually unfulfilling, and poorly managed careers. Then, reality hit—they still needed to work for another 20 to 30 years. Payback was often ruthless, compounded with heavy interest.
Tiff often wondered if that was one of the reasons most bad guys were reedy, spindly little figures that might blow away in a stiff breeze, while relying on inventions or henchmen, while the heroes were big, beefy, mountains of muscle that tended to punch their problems away.
According to Mr. Hendricks, their teacher for Introductions to Powers and System Startup, that was a common misconception and stereotype. History had shown that just as many Villains had strength-based perks as Heroes often had technology- and “softer arts”- based perks, like energy manipulation or even flying.
But that was, sadly, irrelevant to most kids for the first month or so after they encountered the “mandatory elective” called Introductions to Powers and System Startup. Such a name was, of course, too much of a mouthful and was instantly shortened to IPSS. Obviously, no teenager in their right mind called it that either, most often opting to call it PISS instead.
Such an unfortunate name, Tiff sighed to herself as a snicker burst out somewhere to her left. Sadly, she couldn’t devote any more concentration to the front of the room where Mr. Hendricks was droning on, as her attention span was already shot. She was looking forward to going home for multiple reasons, not simply because she was addicted to the latest video game she stumbled across in the Summer Sale. Part of her simply wanted to escape any unwanted attention sent her way from things completely outside of her control.
“-ties into whatever requests the System makes of us-“
RIIIIINNNNNNNGGGGG!!!!
“-and that’s the bell,” Mr. Hendricks sighed and took a deep, steadying breath as any perceived attempt at paying attention was abandoned in favor of scrambling for backpacks before a mad rush to the door. Ever the optimist, he decided to get a few more words in before his students fled.
“Remember, there’s a test on Friday, but it’s all basic, general stuff, as not everybody has Awakened yet. Once January rolls around and everybody has, we’ll start getting into the real meat of how the System works.”
Several groans rang out at the mention of tests, despite how eager and excited every single person in the room was to start working on Quests. That, however, did not stop the burning sensation Tiff felt as all the eyes suddenly swiveled her way, silently judging her.
In their class of 32 kids, Tiff was the only one who hadn’t Awakened yet. Awakening only ever happened after a person turned 16, and her birthday was September 3rd, just a few weeks ago. She just barely made the deadline for her year of schooling, where kids born later were held back a year and, by extension, older than their peers in their grade.
But just because everyone else already had access to their Systems didn’t mean they knew what to do with them. It was expected, encouraged sometimes, that as soon as a child “Awakened” and gained access to the System, they’d play around with it. However, despite the tempting allure of potentially unlimited power, most kids instinctively understood that messing around with the System before they truly understood how it worked was a bad idea. Mostly due to the fear of potentially screwing up the rest of their lives.
Such occurrences were incredibly rare when a child could actually ruin themselves before adult supervision could kick in and properly guide them, but historically, it did happen. Those were the outliers, the very rare few, and in some cases, such kids were going to head down the path less traveled regardless of any amount of foresight or guidance.
Most of those were kids who Awakened to something more than the standard “Common Citizen”, which was what 97% of the world woke up to as a level 1. Getting pre-assigned a Class upon awakening was incredibly rare, even more than getting pre-affixed with an Affinity. Despite the common childhood dreams of becoming astronauts and firefighters, very few children woke up as Heroes. Most were of the neutral or common variety and had to work their way up from there. Only the very lucky started out as “Sidekicks” day one.
“Miss VanDyne, a moment of your time, please.”
Tiff groaned to herself and caught a few looks of pity thrown her way from her fleeing classmates. Nobody wanted to stay late after class, especially if the teacher singled them out. The only thing keeping her from devolving into an anxious puddle was the fact that she had been held back and asked the same exact question every single day since school started. She marched to the front of the class to Mr. Hendricks’ desk and spoke up before he even had a chance to open his mouth.
“Not today,” Tiff chirped, trying to appear upbeat and not anxious as she peered up into the man’s questioning face. It wasn’t that he was an incredibly tall individual; Tiff was just short. At 16, she still had a chance to gain a little bit more height, but as she hadn’t had a growth spurt for years, it was unlikely she’d go any higher than her current petite size of 5 feet even. Mr. Hendricks gave her a lopsided smile and nodded. He, too, was tired of asking the question over and over again, but at least both parties understood it wasn’t done out of any nagging, pestering, or complaining. The question was simple, almost clinical, kept brief, polite, and professional.
“Don’t worry. It’ll happen. Sometimes it just takes time.”
Funnily enough, she wasn’t worried until he mentioned it, and now she was starting to feel that pit form. What if she didn’t Awaken? What if she were the only one to never receive the System? She shook her head and cast away those unwanted thoughts. Literally everybody, no matter how weak and inconsequential, was part of the System.
The unasked question was, as always, “Did it happen today?”
Slightly paraphrased, of course.
Some days it was, “Have you Awakened today?”, and others, “Has your System come online?”
Every time, Tiff’s answer was some variation of “no” and “not today.”
Nobody was more eager to finally get access to the System than her, but she knew she wasn’t the only one tired of hearing the same thing over and over again. Mr. Hendricks did have a valid reason for asking her, though; since she was the last one in his class to awaken, he couldn’t start the full curriculum for the year. It didn’t really matter to him when his final student joined the rest of them; he’d gladly wait until the semester rolled over if need be. The poor girl’s classmates would not be so understanding.
Fortunately, all of the students had some grace to give, both having gone through exactly what Tiff was going through themselves, and the sole fact that this was the beginning of the school year and they still had a case of summertime laziness. Anything that delayed their coursework was a welcome setback. Until they realized they’d just have to play catch-up later, but that thought wouldn’t hit most of them until sometime in October.
“Remember, if you have any questions at all, feel free to ask.”
Tiff nodded amiably, shouldered her cumbersome backpack, and marched out the door. The question itself was harmless, but Tiff and Mr. Hendricks both knew that if she truly did have questions about having her system come online, there was very little he, or anyone, could give her in the way of information. Despite all the advances of humanity, how brilliant some of their best minds were and how marvelous their inventions were, they knew next to nothing of the System they shared their lives with. They knew they could summon up their Stats and Quests by willing them internally, not just shouting them out loud, and what some of the vague, cryptic descriptors it shared with them meant. And that was part of what this class would teach them, once they were all on a level playing field.
What they did not know was exactly when any given individual would finally “unlock” their Status. The most they could say was that some time after their 16th birthday, anywhere from several breaths after the exact moment their age ticked over, to several weeks (the record was nearly a full month). For Tiff, it had been less than 14 full days since she had her birthday, less than 2 full weeks. The people around her were getting antsy, but it wasn’t time to worry.
Besides, Tiff thought about it as she was herded in a line so much like cattle heading to a stable, as she joined the others taking her school bus back home. Some people say it’s good luck to Awaken late. The longer it takes, the stronger you’ll be!
That was, of course, completely unfounded. There was no tangible evidence to support either way on the relationship between one’s eventual Status and how long it took to Awaken it.
Just as well, because it kept Tiff from worrying about the other side of that argument. The one that claimed it was bad luck to Awaken late, and she would end up weak and useless because the System didn’t know where to put her and it was trying so hard to find somewhere that would actually fit.
The ride home was blessedly uneventful. Tiff kept to herself, occupied with her thoughts, scrunched against the window of a seat roughly in the middle of the bus as kids around her shouted incoherently at each other and threw wadded-up balls of paper. She’d been hit with one once before, not intentionally, as somebody had actually apologized (if that’s what a hastily muttered “oops, sorry” as the ball was retrieved could be called), and she was dismayed to learn that it was somebody’s balled-up homework sheet.
It hadn’t been filled out yet, and Tiff wasn’t sure whether that made it better or worse. She took solace in the fact that it probably wasn’t some poor kid’s chemistry sheet or something because not only was the worksheet empty, those kinds of notes were like gold to the rest of humanity that weren’t living calculators.
Tiff distracted herself by imagining what it would finally be like to be a part of the System herself. No matter how much she heard about it from people she knew and respected, from experts studying the System itself, nothing could prepare her, or anybody, for experiencing it themselves. Integration was something entirely unique, a phenomenon shared by everybody and yet so deeply personal that it could only truly be understood after undergoing it.
Would she become a standard Citizen, like the majority of her peers? She watched as her fellow students slowly dwindled as they trickled off the bus at their various stops. More than half a dozen buses serviced her high school alone, and she’d been seeing the students on this particular route for years now, so she knew them well enough to tell when one or more of them got uncharacteristically excited or depressed. They were also uncontrollable chatterboxes. She knew, whether she liked it or not, that not a single one of them was anything other than the expected “common” (unaffiliated on the Alignment scale) Citizen.
Or maybe she might become a bus driver? Tiff glanced at the hardened middle-aged woman who drove their bus, who looked like she could go a few rounds with a professional wrestler and might come out on top. It was clear to anyone with eyes that the woman had a class, but Tiff didn’t know if anyone had ever had the courage to ask what it was. Nothing said a person needed to spend their life doing what the System told them to. She could be a Bodyguard for all Tiff knew, who just so happened to want to drive school buses.
Tiff was one of the last students on the bus when her stop rolled around. She heard the squeal of the brakes as the vehicle lurched to a stop, and Tiff looked up to find that the number of kids had dwindled to a scant few stragglers. The unfortunate few, Tiff always grumbled to herself as she gave a silent nod of thanks to the driver as she slumped down the steps and out the folding doors. The driver, as always, gave her a curt nod back before rumbling along to the next destination. There weren’t many left and Tiff could only wonder at how glad the driver would be when she was done every day. Despite being one herself, Tiff was sure that dealing with loud, emotional teenagers was extremely tiring.
Glancing at her phone told Tiff it was 3:17 pm. Her school let out at 2:45, so the drive had taken just about half an hour. What a waste, in her opinion, when it would probably take her less time to walk the distance herself. The VanDyne family lived at most 2 miles away from the school, closer to a mile and a half, but her parents insisted that she take the bus anyway. They weren’t a poor family, living comfortably in the upper reaches of the lower middle class, but their neighborhood was rough. Her parents, especially her older sister, demanded that she never walk home unaccompanied. Ever since Victoria graduated and started working full-time, Tiff had to take the bus.
If only the route went counterclockwise, Tiff lamented. She was the third-to-last stop. There were two more stops: at the intersection next to the shopping center across the street from the school, and at the school itself. Did that make her stop technically the second-to-last? Strictly speaking, stopping back at the school wasn’t listed on the route’s schedule, as that’s where the buses got parked when not in use. But enough kids either fell asleep and missed their exit or simply forgot to get off, so they’d be unceremoniously dumped back at school at the end of the day, making it an unofficial stop. How those students managed to get home afterward wasn’t the driver’s concern: she already did her job.
Tiff’s stop wasn’t directly in front of her house, so she had a little bit of walking to do regardless. Instead of a 25-minute walk, it was more like 10. She wasn’t bothered by much, since it was very much the middle of the afternoon, and she only needed to pass a small park and a corner strip mall with a convenience store, a barber shop, and a donut place. Her mouth watered at the thought of a maple cruller, but she didn’t need the calories and would rather save her money anyway.
“I’m home!” she called out to nobody in particular the moment she shut her door behind her and kicked off her shoes. It was a ritual or game of sorts, seeing if anybody else was around, guessing who might shout back. If she didn’t hear anybody, that didn’t necessarily mean she was alone; sometimes nobody heard her, since she was the quietest of the three kids, or maybe her dad was busy working and couldn’t yell back.
“Small big sis!”
A cheery, overly energetic voice informed Tiff that no, she was not, in fact, alone. It wasn’t much of a surprise to her that her younger sister made it home before her.
“Not hanging out with your friends today?” Tiff asked as the slightly taller form of her little sister rounded a corner and glomped onto her.
“At least let me get my backpack off.”
“Mmm,” was Amy’s only reply as she nuzzled her head into Tiff’s hair. Amy was larger and stronger than Tiff, so she had to frog march her way upstairs to her room to put her stuff away.
“You didn’t answer the question,” Tiff sighed. She loved her sisters and wouldn’t miss hanging out with them for anything, but that didn’t mean they were inseparable. Amy had her own group of friends she liked to hang out with at school, while Tiff was mostly a loner, with only two or three solid friends of her own.
“Mmmmneed to study,” Amy sighed in a dramatic fashion, eventually letting go of her prisoner to fall down onto Tiff’s bed as if slain.
Tiff squinted at her. “Responsibility” wasn’t necessarily the first thing she thought of when she looked at Amy, who was very much making herself at home on Tiff’s bed.
“That’s not like you,” Tiff squinted. “Are you well? Do you need to see a doctor?”
“Hahh,” Amy barked out a dead laugh. “Mattie’s got rehearsal over the weekend and I want to go to the show. There might be a party afterwards and I wanna go.”
Tiff relaxed and nodded. That made more sense. Mattie was one of Amy’s regulars, and while Tiff didn’t know the girl well enough to say what she was rehearsing for, she knew that Amy knew their parents wouldn’t let her go to any sort of show if it meant dodging her homework. Amy wasn’t stupid, but she was incredibly active, and if she wasn’t forced to sit and do her schoolwork, she’d legitimately forget about it. Their parents were kind but strict. The only real question was whether or not they’d let Amy go to the after-party.
Fortunately for Amy, she was still young enough that to her, a good party was closer to a sleepover than it was a social mixer. Chances were higher for pillow fights than for alcohol.
“Mom and Dad out?” Tiff asked, more interested in what was for dinner than in what her parents were up to. Amy had her face buried in a pillow, so her reply was muffled.
“Dad’s on a conference call. He said something about ordering pizza.”
Tiff held back a grimace. There wasn’t anything wrong with pizza (in fact, it was amazing), but she felt bad for her dad. If he was on a conference call, that likely meant things were serious. He worked as an IT guy for a small guild of Troubleshooters, so the most he had to do was generally tell them to “turn it off and on again.” If they needed more than that, he was likely going to be working late and didn’t have the time or resources to cook dinner. Tiff resolved to save him some of the better slices.
Not the best slices. As much as her family loved each other, pizza was a free-for-all and hands might get thrown if two people reached for the same slice.
Tiff set to work unpacking from another uneventful Monday back from school. She ignored her sister loafing about and treated her like a rather soft and squishy log, going so far as to roll her over once as she was in the way. That only made the girl giggle, but did nothing to motivate her to study on her own. If she didn’t put in the work, she wouldn’t get to go to her party, but that wasn’t Tiff’s concern. Tiff eventually settled at her desk and worked her way through the remainder of her homework, which she’d mostly completed on her breaks and lunches, since it was still early in the school year and almost everything was a refresher.
Around 5 o’clock, she heard the door open and a muffled gasp as Amy shot up from where she was snugly playing on her phone on the bed.
“Foooood! I’m dying! Starving!”
She shot out of the room so fast that Tiff could have sworn she teleported. For somebody claiming to be on the verge of death, she had a serious second wind.
“No, down! Bad girl!”
Tiff could hear Victoria, their eldest sister, laughing as she scolded Amy, and Tiff could practically see her holding a couple of boxes of pizza high above her head. She sounded like she was fending off a particularly large and happy dog, and honestly, that description fit Amy pretty well. It fit most of her family pretty well. If circumstances were so different, she’d understand if people thought she was adopted.
Her mom was a strength-based Meta and was huge.
Her dad was a Techie, but he was still rather tall, considerably normal by comparison to some at 6 feet tall.
Her big sister Victoria inherited many of their mom’s genes, standing 6 and a half feet herself and working towards a Brawler Mercenary Class.
She had no idea what Amy would receive when her own System came online, but Tiff couldn’t envision a world in which the human-shaped power plant didn’t turn out exactly like her mom and sister and do something very physical with her life.
And then there was Tiff.
By comparison, she was downright tiny. 5 feet tall, maybe 90 pounds soaking wet, and she would rather think her problems to death instead of punching them.
But that was okay.
She was normal; it was her family who were outliers, and she loved them regardless.
Yes, she was normal, about to have a normal dinner, at the end of a boring, normal day.
And she wouldn’t have it any other way.