"What's with the commotion today?", Jay sighted at the cancerous noise that entered his ears.
Even breathing the same air with other people was a deplorable experience he always tried to avoid, since, as he often liked to say, unless proven to be good all people were corrupt and selfish.
In the morning subway, one could encounter all sorts of people.
College students, tourists, entertainers, and of course, lower-class employees.
Jay always belonged in the last category, unable to attend college due to his bad grades.
Forced to take many part-time jobs, even working as a waiter in a nightclub, he was left with no choice but to spend his time in school sleeping.
Despite his constant effort to make money, life was not easy.
Being underpaid due to being a minor and having to pay a large amount of money for a downtown rooftop apartment, he wasn't able to leisurely enjoy life and slack off like other children his age.
Even after becoming an adult, because he lacked any degree or qualifications to work at a respectable job, he resorted to working low-class jobs with minimum wage and unpaid overtime.
But he always considered it a better alternative to being forced to work in a labor camp.
The only fate for those that lacked proper housing was being sent to special camps where they were forced to perform physical labor in exchange for food and housing.
Although on the outside this seemed like an effective way for the government to increase productivity and the homeless people to survive, the shocking reality was hidden from the general public.
The people sent to those camps worked on a 14-16 hour basis and were treated worse than slaves.
The food they ate lacked any kind of healthy nutrients and their lodgings were rundown buildings, wherein each apartment lived 4-6 people at once.
Originally Jay's life was similar to that of a normal child living in an urban area, with a loving mother and a caring, hard-working father.
But sometimes life has a strange way of taking back the good things it has given.
At age 14, his world shattered and any chance of living a normal life was taken from him when his parents died in a car crash.
While his parents were returning from a business trip, a black Rolls-Royce crashed into the side of their vehicle utterly crushing his father and impaling his mother to the nearby steel construction bars.
From that point on, his life went downhill.
Jay later found that the driver responsible for the death of his parents was the son of the Minister of Education, who in turn paid a large sum to the authorities in order to destroy all evidence of the accident, including the corpses of his parents.
Mourning in front of his parents' empty graves only made his feelings of resentment fester.
His only relative, an alcoholic uncle with a gambling addiction, gambled away all the inheritance money his family had left him.
At age 16 Jay lost his home due to his uncle's debts and had to move out to a small rooftop apartment with him.
As time progressed, the abusive nature of his uncle started to show, hitting Jay with his fists whenever he was angry or drunk and resorting to his belt when his fists began to hurt.
After months of repeated beating, a switch flipped in Jay's mind.
His suppressed rage engulfed him and one night, while his uncle was passed out from drinking, he choked him to death with a small wire.
With a lot of effort, he managed to make it seem like his uncle had hanged himself, even fabricating a barely passable suicide note.
Luckily for Jay, the corruption of the system aided him, as the police officers that arrived at the scene, were aware of the debts his uncle had and thus weren't interested in further investigating what happened to trash like him.
...
With an air of confidence, I marched into the waiting area for the public official's position.
Inside were a bunch of people holding large briefcases and wearing formal suits.
Thanks to my enhanced perception I could easily notice the beads of sweat sliding down their face and the stressful twitching of their muscles.
Without further consideration for the other people in the room I sat on a cheap chair and waited for my name to be called.
After some moments of extreme boredom, I heard a loud high pitched voice that almost caused my casual headache to reappear.
"Get your hands off me, pervert!"
A woman was yelling at a man in the corner of the room.
She was wearing high heels, a very tight skirt which was revealing her slender and curved figure, and an unbelievable amount of makeup.
The man, probably in his late 20's, had a tall slim physique with blue eyes, blond hair, and a classic taper haircut, and in comparison to the other males in this group, including me, was handsome enough to be a model.
His puzzled expression was showing, with the woman continuing her accusations.
"Don't try to deny it, I am going to sue you for sexual harassment"
Tired of her constant talking, I rose up from my seat and approached the nagging woman.
{Speech}"Hey lady I was watching you the whole time and this man didn't even pay any attention to you, let along touch you", I yelled at her with my voice altered to sound more intimidating.
Although I wasn't really watching her, her joyful emotions when accusing the man and his confusion led me to believe that this was what happened.
She was probably trying to make the man leave from embarrassment in order to reduce the competition.
Not that I would care in the slightest if she was actually saying the truth, as long I could stop her from yelling.
"What .... ?"
{Speech}"Now LEAVE before I call the cops and sue you for falsely accusing him"
Baffled by my intervention, she quickly exited the room without saying another word.
-That was ... easier than I expected.
"I am in your debt"
"My name is Rick Sullivan, it appears we are about the same age, may I address you casually?"
The way he spoke seemed really strange to me, and if I hadn't met him in a job interview, I would have probably assumed he is some kind of royalty.
-But what business would one of those rich bastards have in a waiting area for a public official's position.
"Hi... my name is Jay Riemman , don't concern yourself with such things "
"By the way, you are really weird, do you watch a lot of historical dramas or something?"
I spoke my mind, maybe a bit more openly than I should have.
"Haha, you are one of the first people to say that to me. Duly noted"
At that moment, my name got called, saving me from having any longer interaction with the strange person.
Inside the small room were three people sitting at a desk.
I recognized the two of them.
The one sitting on the left was the assigned Branch director from the government, James Hawk, former director of the Department of Defense.
The one on the right was the National Security Advisor, Patrick Hollander, a man who is directly reporting to the President and considered as the nation's "watchdog".
Despite the initial shock of seeing such high ranking officials in front of me, I was more curious about the identity of the man in the middle.
Wearing a military uniform that brandished four stars and a black beret, his partial grey hair indicated he was in his late 40's, accurately fitting the description of a general.
His sharp gaze was piercing my body and the sheer amount of cold aura he emitted was enough to make one's blood freeze.
The other officers didn't dare to even look at him in the eyes and were extremely mindful of their actions.
The branch manager looked at my resume for only a brief moment and without any further consideration, addressed me while bearing an expression full of contempt.
"So what business does a person with no proper qualifications, if not any sort of qualifications, have to do here?"
"What possible reason could we have for hiring someone like you?"
His reaction, if not anything else, was expected, since even getting my resume in the final draft of candidates was through an old acquaintance of mine who works in Human Resources and owes me a favor.
Raising my voice to instill an impression on them, I began my efforts to convince them to hire me.
{Speech}"Well from your standpoint, isn't it advantageous if you hire someone like me, who you can easily fire at any time and that will never endanger your position in the future?"
"Haha you got a good point there, at least you know where you stand"
It was now the turn of the National Security Advisor to show his disapproval.
"No matter how intriguing your argument sounds, there is still a line that separates a government official from an uneducated person such as yourself"
{Speech}"Despite my lack of proper education, I am certain that my knowledge regarding the law and the structure of our government far surpasses that of an ordinary official..."
Therefore I began listing all the important government structures with a full description of the figures responsible for them and a detailed explanation about their function.
Of course, such knowledge could not be acquired overnight and was the result of my long and thorough research in order to take down the bastards who destroyed my family and then covered it up.
"Enough enough, it appears you fulfill the minimum requirements for the position"
Now all that remained was the approval of the mysterious man in order to succeed in the first step of my plan.
"Fools!"
"Are you seriously going to allow a stranger with no credentials to have access to information related to rifts?"
"Might as well tell the whole world about their true nature!"
"Listen here kid, I am not convinced we can trust you with sensitive information, sorry but you will have to leave"
One could say that compared to others, he was actually the most reasonable one.
If information related to rifts was leaked to the general public, a lot of people would venture into them aspiring to become stronger.
As he was criticizing the rash actions of the other two, he raised his hand, and for a brief moment, his watch slightly tilted, revealing a tiny crystal in his wrist.
-He is a challenger ... maybe I can use this to my advantage.
-If confidentiality is what he is worried about, I will give him something to make him trust me.
Concentrating on my senses, I reinforced my aura with a small amount of magi and then directed it solely at him.
Noticing my slight probing he turned his gaze at me and slammed his fist to the desk, breaking it in half.
"You are ... "
....