It had been like just any other ordinary day for me.
Wake up at 6 a.m., spend 5 minutes convincing myself to get out of bed to go shower, go actually shower, spend another 20 minutes after I get out of the shower debating whether or not I should go make breakfast or eat at least something just so my stomach won't hurt while I'm at work.
Eventually do actually get up and go make a bowl of cereal because it probably be more filling that just a granola bar, even if I will have to wash the bowl afterwards.
Finally after finishing breakfast which took another 15 minutes because I scrolled through my phone to entertain myself while eating, I actually began to get dressed for my job.
It had only been a little after 7 at that point, and with my job being at 8 and the commute being only 10 minutes I still had plenty of time to spare, courtesy of having grown up with a mom who was late to everything making her son grow up to start getting ready for everything early.
It's not a bad trait per say but it definitely did take some time out of my day that could've been better dedicated to something else, say, sleeping?
It didn't matter though, after brushing my teeth, getting dressed, making sure my hair looked appropriate and scrolling through my phone for another 20 minutes, I finally hopped in my car and began driving to work.
I worked at a shipping warehouse nearby, wasn't a great job but I like it compared to some of the other ones I've had before primarily because I didn't have to deal directly with customers, and this specific job had fairly lenient supervisors.
That and the people who worked there also didn't have a stick up their ass but maybe that's just what most coworkers were supposed to be like. Or perhaps I just didn't like most people, I was more of a reserved quiet person after all.
It had happened while I was driving.
I had still felt pretty tired all morning, my body still shaking off the remnants of sleep which clung to me.
My early preparations certainly didn't help, hell I could probably have squeezed another hour of sleep in if I just did sit on my phone all morning, but old habits die hard.
That combined with the fact that I had stayed up well past 2 in the morning binge reading my favorite novel "Super Fracture" certainly didn't help.
It was a fairly uneventful night too, sadly the past few weeks have had chapters which were some more of the action lacking ones, seeing as the novel, had just recently finished the largest arc yet and was now calming down going to back to the daily lives of the characters.
I didn't necessarily dislike those chapters, its nice to have a break from the action after all, but I really craved those chapters which gave me goosebumps as I read them.
Back to the point, because the recent chapters had ended up being so lackluster comparatively, it meant that after getting up to date with the most recently uploaded chapter, I had gone back on a reading spree of my favorite chapters that night which had quickly descended into my current semi-sleep deprived state.
Driving on the road had always been boring for me, that plus how it was too early in the morning for me too care to put on some music because of a crappy cord which would sometimes just stop working, meant that my morning was like just any other.
Driving down the freeway, getting off at my exit stopping at a red light, going on green, hearing a car honking in the middle of it as I look to my left and see headlights right next to me...
...
I woke up with a sharp inhale, grasping my head after my sudden jolt upright.
God my head hurt.
After massaging my scalp for a few seconds I also rubbed my eyes, feeling them gradually become less constricted as the rest of my body woke up.
As I sat there registering the fact that I had not in fact been turned into a Live Leek video, I gradually began to feel an incongruity with my environment.
Finally fully opening my eyes and looking around at the room I sat in, I realized that I was not in fact wrong with my gut feeling.
While my own apartment wasn't necessarily barren by any means, it was certainly... ehh... minimalistic... to put it nicely.
Its not that I didn't have any interest or hobbies or anything, but I just didn't find much value in having a bunch of decorations around my apartment. No one other than me ever really saw it anyways...
But this apartment...
This was truly barren. Even by my optimistic standards.
I was laying on a mattress on the floor only having sheets a blanket and two pillows laid against the wall behind me.
In the opposite corner of the room was a plain looking door, a light switch, I think... It was kind of hard to tell in the dark and finally what looked like a traveling bag put against the wall next to me, a jacket or some sort of clothing laying on top of it.
Placing one hand on the ground and another against the wall I stood, briefly balancing feeling increasingly uneasy not only due to my dream but also because of the unknown room.
I approached the light switch on the opposite side of the room and I was indeed right.
There wasn't jack shit in this room.
Turns out there was a window with the blinds closed above the seemingly makeshift bed that I had been resting on.
Explains how I was able to see some stuff in the room despite there being no observable light source anywhere else.
Looking back at the bed, and bag, which I presumed to be a simply travel bag? Or maybe a clothing bag?
It had a jacket on top of it but I think I also saw a toothbrush or maybe a phone charger peeking out of one of the zipper pockets.
A new thing I noticed however was another door. This one was off to the left of the makeshift bed, somewhat close to first door I noticed but this was showing absolutely no light under the door.
Grabbing the handle and opening it, I peeked inside and verified that it was a simple bathroom.
A uh... very simple bathroom. It didn't have anything in it, literally. No shower curtains, bathroom mats, shampoo.
There was nothing on the sink or in the shower besides a single bar of soap still wrapped up in packaging on the counter of the sink, hell the only other thing I noticed was a single roll of toilet paper in the holder.
I closed to the door after making sure I didn't see anything else and turned back around to the bed room.
I'm not one to judge peoples standards, but this looked like someone hiding out in an abandoned apartment.
The apartment itself looked fine, the carpet wasn't particularly stained the paint wasn't chipping and the lights looked somewhat new, but the actually content of the room?
If it weren't for the bed I would genuinely think a homeless person was camping out here with a bag of clothes.
After taking a final glance around the room, I finally approached the other door and opened it revealing an room with actual furniture in it!
The room directly in front of me had a window directly opposite to the room I just came out of, a couch on the right side of the room, and a small table with an equally small T.V. placed on top of it.
To the left of me was a kitchen and a slightly larger table seemingly a dining table? and right behind the table was two sliding glass doors seemingly leading to a balcony showing that it was fairly dark outside but seemingly getting brighter.
It must be becoming morning, that or I totally missed my entire shift today, not like I really cared much at this point since I didn't even know where the hell I was.
Happy that I knew that I wasn't actually in a abandoned building anymore, I walked to the double glass doors, opening them and looking outside and seeing...
A city.
A city...
I don't live in a city.
Fuck, the closest place that I would actually consider a city was over 45 minutes away from me!
Looking around I could see signs of people beginning to get up for the day.
The environment was gradually getting more and more noisy, although to be honest maybe that was just me beginning to process the my surroundings.
That plus the unmistakable smell of early morning smog, made me confident about the fact that I was apparently in a city.
A city I could not name nor recognize, inside of an apartment that I had no idea who it belonged to, and had no idea why I was here.
Before I could really begin to freak out however I noticed that some of the people I could see down on the street looked kind of... strange.
I wasn't quite sure if I hadn't still woken up or not but I swear that a man across the street had... 4 arms?
It didn't look like anyone else noticed this, the man simply walked by everyone else like he was just your average everyday joe, which honestly I would have also noticed had the number of limbs he had not been off.
But he wasn't the only one.
A lady doing what I could only presume to be hailing a taxi, looked like she had a tail peeking out from behind her, or at least something dragging behind her.
A kid with an extra eyeball. A elderly woman with strange legs bent backwards walking digitigrade. A humanoid wolf person man-thing? A woman with pink hair! Wait, no, that one is actually somewhat normal.
Feeling like I was waking up in an alien world it finally hit me! I'm still dreaming! Of course!
Why didn't I think of that earlier?
Eh, it was probably just the dream state of moving along no matter what weird shit was going on around you. But, I mean, this is awfully detailed for a dream, and usually you can't quite think or realize that you're dreaming when you're actually in a dream.
As I was debating whether or not my mental state was doing alright, I began hearing a commotion down in the streets.
Looking down I noticed a man on the other side of the street facing away from me... hovering. Yes hovering.
He wasn't hovering that far off the ground, hell he was holding a conversation with what looked like a police officer who was standing on the ground, but you could tell due to the height difference and how his feet were slightly pointed down that he wasn't touching the earth.
A small crowd had of what looked like a roughly a dozen people had formed around him and the officer, looking like apparently a celebrity had appeared.
Some of them were cheering, some offering him stuff which I can only image to be for autographs and the others just mostly being excited to see him.
But my mind wasn't focused on that.
His outfit, a dark blue somewhat tight suit, a helmet with no mask on it, and most importantly a slightly short cape or perhaps cloakish looking piece clothing on his back.
On the back of the cloak however, there was a symbol, a seemingly simple symbol, it looked almost like an upside down symbol for an Ohm with a line running straight down through it.
But I knew what it meant.
It was the symbol of the Hero's Association, and more importantly, the Hero's Association from Super Fracture, my favorite novel.