Before I'd even adjusted to time moving forward again or accepted that this was real rather than being some nightmare, the Warrior grabbed me by my hand. "Oh, thank God," he yelled, yanking me by the arm toward one of the closest stores. "I thought you were going to become one of those things!"
"What things?" I asked, only barely keeping my balance as he tugged me forward. "What are they? What's going on?"
"How in the hell should I know!" the man yelled. As we moved, I noticed that his skin and clothes were still glittering slightly. In fact, I wasn't actually touching his skin. There was a thin layer of almost armor around him. "The voice said demons, so that's probably what we're facing."
He seemed to be a little older than me and was probably in his late twenties. Normally, I would have slapped him and informed him that I had a boyfriend for daring to lay hands on me, but in this situation, that seemed unwarranted. With his magical armor, it would probably hurt my hand more than it hurt him anyway, I grumbled to myself.
"Where the hell are we going?" I demanded, "This isn't the way to the stairs!"
"Stairs?" he laughed. There was a crazed edge in his voice. "You see what the first floor looks like? There ain't no way we're making it down there, and even if we do, that's a death sentence! We gotta find someplace to hide and lay low while all this dies down!"
I found it hard to fault that logic, but before I could figure out what to say, one of the orbs drifted by me, and against my better judgment, I decided to grab it. What if it gives me a second power-up, I wondered, while my brain unhelpfully added, What if it turns me into some sort of monster?
As it turned out, it did neither. Instead of activating, it solidified in my hand, and the words User Anastasia Laire has already been judged and chosen a class. If an orb is not given to an Unjudged User, this orb will expire.
10:00
9:59
9:58
Unjudged user, huh? I thought as I pocketed it.
That seemed pretty formal. However, instead of trying to divine the secrets from between those words, I took a chance and glanced over my shoulder. That turned out to be a huge mistake.
The orbs had stopped coming from the portal, but many of them were still in the air. When they hit the ground and popped without any human intervention, little imps, and other ugly creatures would appear. Those weren't the problem, though. The problem was what happened to some of the people that caught them.
Most people that touched the orbs froze for a moment. Then flashed words like Warrior, Hunter, Healer, or any of a dozen different varieties of Rogue or Wizard. There were even stranger ones like Leader, Explorer, and Daredevil.
More than half of the people I saw reach for one of those glowing soap bubbles didn't get a class. Instead, when the bubble popped, it covered them with some dark slime. Then, over the next several seconds, they morphed into something horrific beneath that slime. After that, they ripped their way free of their cocoon and tried to devour the closest person to them.
Every one of those monsters was different, too. Some of them were huge, bulky things, and others had extra arms or tentacles. None of them looked even remotely human anymore, especially in the eyes. Those had been replaced by hard, shiny orbs of pure black. There, I could see clearest of all that their souls had been extinguished.
As we reached the store, the bloodbath had turned into something closer to a fight. All around the floor, those people who'd gotten a class were learning to use their powers. Glittering swords appeared from nowhere, blasts of fire and lightning shot out of people's hands, and energy shields sprang into existence.
Most of all, though, there was death, and it was everywhere. The scene was more like a movie than real life, and I was having more and more trouble believing that this was really happening.
By that point, my knight in shining armor had dragged me inside a health food store that seemed completely abandoned. There weren't exactly any weapons. We were just surrounded by little bottles of worthless health food supplements, but he didn't seem too concerned by that. He just reached up and started sliding the security gate down into place.
Smart thinking, I decided, as soon as it got low enough that I could reach it.
The things outside had certainly noticed us. While only a few of the smaller ones were fluttering around the outside now, the bigger ones would probably start to move this way at any moment. I bolted for the light switches and shut them all off, plunging us into darkness.
"Good thinking, baby," the man said. "Looks like you're more than just a pretty face."
"Thanks, by my name is Anna, and—" As he moved in to kiss me, I slapped him hard across his face. It turned out that I was right earlier; it hurt my hand like hell, but it didn't even leave a red mark. "Hey, I knew everything is crazy right now, but that's hardly appropriate. I have a boyfriend."
"Lucky guy," the Warrior chuckled. "But since it's pretty much gonna be our last night on Earth, what say we enjoy it together and leave him out of it."
"I— Why—" I gasped, having a hard time even understanding what this prick was saying. He stood there, his magical armor glittering in the dim light like he was some kind of hero, and all he was trying to do was get between my legs. It was almost as bad as the monsters on the other side of the gate devouring strangers. "You're a Warrior, and I'm a Healer. We should be working together!"
"That's the plan, baby," he smirked. "Now let's see what you look like under that top…"
"I'm a virgin!" I yelled, pulling my burgundy leather jacket around me even tighter. In that moment, I wished I'd worn jeans instead of this skirt, but I had no way of knowing this was going to happen.
"Even better," he said as his eyes lit up.
He was much stronger than me, and there was little I could do to stop him from forcing open my jacket. In fact, there was nothing I could do now that my arms were pinned at my side. I was nothing but a helpless healer. Then, I saw the cashier sneaking out of the gloom behind my attacker. Without warning, he hit the Warrior as hard as he could in the back of the head with a cheap metal folding chair.
The Warrior barely batted an eye. He just turned and saw how badly the chair had been bent beyond recognition by the attack. Then he laughed before grabbing the short guy's head by the hair and slammed him into the wall next to me so hard that he bounced once and then lay still.
"Poor little guy," the Warrior laughed. "Doesn't he know there's only room in this store for one in knight in shining armor? If he had played nice, I would have let him take a turn… After me, of course."
I was horrified by everything this man said and everything he did, but for the moment, I was free and took full advantage of that. I reached forward and put both of my hands on this wannabe rapist's chest in an attempt to hold him at bay. That's when I felt his heartbeat.
For an instant, I was no longer standing in a dark room, cornered by a man who wanted to violate me. Instead, I was surrounded by this man's vital statistics. I didn't know his name or his birthdate, but I might as well have seen those things, too. I knew everything else about him. I knew that he was blood type A positive, and I could see that he was a smoker. I could also see that he wasn't in the best shape because he had a mild heart condition and he was prediabetic. I could also see that he had no injuries, was carrying an asymptomatic strain of chlamydia, and that adrenaline was coursing through his system.
For a moment, I wondered if I might be able to lower that somehow or increase certain hormones that would make him fall asleep. All of that was too complicated. All I had time for was something simple. So I latched on to his heart condition and twisted as hard as I could, trying to stun him more than kill him.
Weakness has been applied to your opponent! He is very susceptible, and has been temporarily disabled, +25 exp.
The result was instantaneous. Even as the words flashed across my screen, I saw him stagger back two steps. If not for his grip on the metal security gate, he would have fallen on his ass.
"What the hell did you do to me bitch?" he spat.
"Cardiac Arrhythmia," I said coldly, backing away from him a few steps into the store. "It's an easy way to get a heart attack if you aren't careful."
"You think you can stop me from taking whatever I want, babe?" he laughed as he slumped against the grate and waited for his body to recover from what my magic had done to it. ""
I couldn't kill him, of course. He didn't know that, though.
I also couldn't keep that up all day. I didn't know exactly how much power that little spell had used, but it was at least a quarter of it. So, all of this was little more than a bluff.
While he slumped and tried to recover, I looked at the cashier, he'd practically brained. The kid was bleeding from a head wound and looked pretty bad. I wasn't sure how much I could do for him, but I couldn't do anything until the rapist asshole had calmed down.
"How about this?" he said, finally rising to his full height again now that he'd recovered. "You get on your knees, and you beg to suck my dick, and I won't try to make it hurt as much as possible when I take your cherry. That's a pretty great deal for a bitch that just tried to kill me."
At that moment, I was so angry that my heart pumped battery acid. I was about to tell him that I'd die rather than submit in no uncertain terms, but then, I noticed something and quickly sank to my knees instead. If I had to pay for my revenge with a little shame, then that would only make me savor it all the more.