“By the way... when do you think His Majesty became an awakener?” Jeremy askedYoussef thought for a moment, trying to come up with a timeline in which the emperor could have awakened without noticeably being absent from the public eye. But he couldn’t remember a stretch of even a week since the founding of the empire where Aron hadn’t made an appearance. “If it happened after the empire was founded, it was probably in the first few weeks. But that isn’t feasible either... so he must’ve awakened much earlier than that.”The younger man nodded at the idea that Aron had awakened before founding the empire. He hadn’t made that many public appearances at all up until The Last War, only showing himself when it was absolutely necessary, he was forced to do so, or when he introduced his first products.“Even if he did awaken earlier, it just goes to show that he’s a very patient man and seems to have hidden it quite well. I can’t think of anyone I personally know that wouldn’t parade their n
Lab City.Aron was in a lab, his focus on a smartphone-sized brick of metal. His fingertip was tracing back and forth on its surface, leaving behind line after line of glowing golden rune script.“No, that’s not it...” he sighed, tossing the brick over his shoulder, where it landed atop a waist-high pile of other metallic bricks of similar size and shape.He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, his perception turning inward in meditation until he saw his runic heart. It rhythmically pulsed, flashing a dark gold light with each cycle of contraction and expansion. Over the past ten weeks he had spent in Lab City, he’d been deciphering the trillions of lines of rune script that had been carved into his heart by the system, focusing on increasing his library of useful runes beyond those imprinted in his memory by the knowledge he’d bought from the system.What he had discovered was... absolutely nothing. He still couldn’t grasp how they worked or what they were supposed to do. Wo
“Shit! Run, you fucking idiots!”Master Sergeant Jose “Tekillya” Cuervo was in a ruined city with the rest of Reaper Team 22. It had started as a nice, quiet little metropolis full of busy little worker bees going about their day, until a supervillain had kidnapped the son of the city’s mayor. Reaper Team 22 had been sent in to neutralize the criminal, save the child, and prevent the situation from spiraling out of control and escalating to an absurd level.Obviously, something had gone wrong. Tekillya fervently cursed Murphy as he ran at top speed, the shadow of an entire skyscraper surrounding his team. As it turned out, the kidnapper was part of a team of criminals, and one of them had ripped an entire skyscraper off of its foundation and simply thrown it at the hapless reapers.Naturally, it wouldn’t kill them if it hit them. It wouldn’t even really cramp their style all that much, much less part their hair on the wrong side, but it would still be embarrassing. After all, who wou
The world was still in the recovery phase after the economic and financial crash. Thanks to an immense amount of stimulus and other aid payments on behalf of the government, companies had been hiring people in droves, driving down the global unemployment rate by quite a lot.However, due to the disparity in education among the population of some former countries—either as a result of devastating wars or just plain bad leadership—some areas were still suffering. The economic growth seemed to have passed them by; after all, if they don’t know a program exists to help them, how can they be helped? Thus, they were only surviving on life support thanks to the Coeus Foundation donating funds and building free clinics and schools and such. But recovery in the worst areas would still remain slow until their education levels caught up to the global standard. And that, unfortunately, was a problem that only time could solve.Among those areas still in the grip of an economic downturn was the fo
Although the Bank of the Universe building had been requisitioned by the empire, they’d done a deep scan to ensure it would be safe for use as a temporary branch of their bank. After the scan discovered no issues, they had decided not to renovate it, as it would be a waste of resources. Some things had been done, however, such as upgrading the security system and installing a monitoring VI to ensure rapid reporting of any issues to the higher-ups for further evaluation and decision making.*A superpowered individual is currently attempting a bank theft. Situation: rainbow. Casualties: one. Damage: white. Evacuation in progress.*(Ed note: Rainbow is the key word for situations involving awakeners, since they introduce a level of uncertainty into how dangerous any given situation is. So it could be anything from harmless to catastrophic at any given time.)……The moment the report came in, the imperial agencies sprang into action. Orders were passed to the imperial health agency, the i
(Ed note: Trigger warning: gore)When the negotiator mentioned that his hostage was almost dead, Kim Ho Song’s hands stopped burning. However, the girl already had scorched flesh on her neck and had fainted once again. This time, though, she was actually on the brink of death, her brain having nearly been cooked by the heated blood flowing to it through her carotid arteries. Her situation was critical.“Listen here, you unblessed peasant filth, I’m superio—” he began, but before he finished his sentence, something passed through the wall, buzzing like a swarm of bees, and hit the left side of his waist. It passed through his entire body, shredding everything around his pelvis and leaving a cavitation wake so severe that even his skin and the organs in his abdomen practically exploded from the overpressure and following vacuum. Then, after it passed through his body, it continued, passing through the other side of the vault and finally digging itself ten meters deep in the ground in th
A few minutes earlier.*A superpowered individual is currently attempting a bank theft. Situation: rainbow. Casualties: one. Damage: white. Evacuation in progress.*The pod barracks in the cube outside Pyongyang dimmed and a red light began flashing. Ten extended-stay VR pods hissed open, revealing a squad of ARES troopers. They climbed out of their pods and jogged to the armory, where they drew their kit. They had already been briefed on the mission in the simulation, so they knew what they needed to do.All that remained was to execute the plan.The men had relatively few nervous jitters, trading jokes and insults back and forth as they drew their equipment, geared up, and headed toward the roof through the express deployment elevator in the middle of the enormous structure. An unenhanced, normal human would suffer severe injuries due to the G force of the elevator itself, but to the enhanced ARES troopers it felt like little more than taking off in a passenger jet would to that sam
“Sir! Sir! A moment of your time, please?” a reporter that happened to be lucky—or perhaps unlucky—enough to be at the scene asked the hostage negotiator. He had been in the bank to make a deposit when the robbery took place.Moments like these would make government officials’ careers in the past. They would use them to propel themselves to fame, then use that fame as a springboard to either work their way up into a higher position in the government, or quit their low-paying government jobs and enter the high-paying public sector. And it was all on the backs of the misery of others.“No comment for now. The investigation is ongoing, and we’ll release a statement to the press after our work is completed,” the negotiator answered. As the on-site commander had rushed into the bank behind the SWAT team and medical rescue, the negotiator was temporarily in charge. But even though he could have given out some tidbits of information to whet the public appetite, thereby gaining a reputation a