The year, 20XX. A teenager reads webnovels in a high school classroom, staring out the window whilst longingly waiting for something interesting to happen.
Every day had been the same, all his life. Wake up; go to school; come home and play games or read; sleep. He was tired, now, but more importantly, he was bored. Bored out of his mind; so bored that the virus and the riots of 2020 were exciting, to him. He felt like a shell, like a video game character being controlled by some higher being. Maybe, he thought, there would be something interesting to come out of the year.
He hadn't expected to die in America's race riots, run over by a truck; so cliched he wished he could sue the writers of the universe.
[-]
Will Franzen was a normal child, in his youngest years. 'A healthy baby boy!' smiled the doctor to two loving parents, the father a retired captain in the Aerial Dropship Command, the mother a therapist. 'Mama!' was his first word, and 'Rock!' was his second, much to Karl Franzen's dismay. The child's only real incident in his youth happened when he was nine; he was chasing after his cousin when he ran into a pole. After that, though, he grew quiet, reclusive, and had a crazed drive for information. Then, on his tenth birthday, he asked for a Granfield. His parents, of course, laughed. Of the hundred-billion citizens of Mannerhaus, perhaps ten million had the capability.
Maybe it was God's intervention. Maybe it was his rebirth that screwed up the ratios. Maybe he was just lucky; that reborn teenager tested positive. He knew better than most around him, though, of its implications. After all, twelve year olds playing holo-games in the park weren't attuned to fighting in quite the same way as a C(0)D veteran, right?