Dusk City 6:55 am Revit District. Wild Boys Territory.

  Men in dark uniforms stood in formation blocking the entrance into an alleyway. The cold February morning making the hot breath coming from behind their full face masks visible.

  Special Detective Eustice watched on from his car, waiting for his colleague to arrive so they could discuss the incident.

  Specifically talking, the large Spatial tremor detected from this particular alleyway a little over an hour ago.

  “How long till that old man gets here Eustice. We should be eating breakfast by now, but we have to wait for Mr. Skin and bones.” Johnny, his younger but certainly not smaller partner, complained while taking a hit from one of those e-cigs that were all the rage these last few years.

  “Protocol Johnny, what else. Unless you want to deal with the pencil pushers, or worse the Boss riding our asses instead.” Eustice responded while popping some tic-tacs into his mouth to stave off the hunger. Johnny wasn’t lying, and the two of them being meta’s made their daily intake of food quite important. Especially Johnny being the wall of flesh that he was.

  “I get it, I get it, a (Code: Visitor). We get a few of those every year, and it’s just some stupid Jumpers who teleported while near a Mirror Zone. Don’t really see what all the fuss about this one is. Bag and tag them. If they’re lucky, someone from their world will give enough of a shit to pay the fee.”

  “Well, this time it’s different. At least that's what the Brains at HQ are telling me.”

  “Like what?”

  “We can’t trace it,” Eustice stated emotionlessly.

  Johnny caught of guard rose so quickly his head indented the roof, almost bursting right through it.

  “Your kidding, right! The guy or gal must be a spotlight in the dark after popping into our world. What was the phrase again? Vercoustic Resonance? That’s how they find them, right?”

  “Well, whatever came through isn’t responding like normal, and that’s got the big wigs worried. Some are even suspecting deeper visitors from the POND. Remember 2025? They certainly don’t want another Devastator Wurm wrecking the city.”

  Before Johnny could add more to the conversation a new car, the color of the deep ocean, pulled up next to theirs, forcing their conversation to come to a halt. It was time to work.

  “Put your coat on at least, you might not need it, but we still have to dress appropriately in front of the doctor.”

  “Gotcha Eustice, but we have to go to Susans Dinner after this, it’s the only place that can fill me up properly with how hungry I am at the moment.” Johny padded his rock solid abdomen only receiving a head shake from Eustice who had downed the rest of his tic tacs. The sugar would help him deal with the Doctor’s personality.

  Or at the very least mitigate the worst of it.

  Forehead One's clothes were indeed an upgrade to the loincloth Drew had been wearing at the start, but the man’s apparel still reeked of alcohol to his dismay.

  Also didn’t help that he was walking around without underwear, the cold biting through the dress pants straight to his shriveled-up sack. He had left the man with his underwear, not due to dignity but because there was no way he would put on someone else underwear. Who knows the conditions they might be in, he'd much rather wear the rancid loincloth.

  The sun had risen, but with how cloudy it was, the morning was dreary, the dark concrete jungle city showing its worst.

  After having stripped Forehead One earlier, Drew was surprised to see another window pop into his vision.

  Different from the score meter, this one was more like a quest, telling him what he should do, and he couldn’t really argue with it, especially after going through Forehead One’s smartphone.

  “You’d think this system thing would have notified me that it had dropped me off in a different world,” Drew grumbled. He’d been excited to rush home and surprise Lia and his Uncle, but now he had to pick his brain on how to return back to his own world.

  He found himself Dusk City, the mirror location of Dawn city, in what many consider the most closely aligned parallel earth in the POND. Usually referred to by the scientific leaders as E-2 this Earth was almost identical to their own besides its people and the greater crime rate it suffered.

  If his world was to be considered heads, then this would be tails. Completely different from E-3, which developed in a different direction. Or E-4, which they barely had any information on.

  Signing, Drew made himself appear as ordinary as imaginable keeping his head down and ignore the hands here and there that went into his back pockets only to not find anything.

  Forehead one didn’t keep a wallet, instead carrying around a small wad of cash held by some rubber bands, which Drew had stored in the front pocket of his coat. Unless someone put their arm in his face they would find it difficult to get to it.

  The surroundings became less slum-like and eventually, he found himself in front of a Drift store, the metal bars barring the window and only allowing a wide enough view outside to peer in somewhat.

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  Drew didn’t hesitate and pulled the door open and walked right in.

  The musky scent of old clothes rushed him, but after hours of smelling the alcohol on his clothes, it was like a scented candle to Drew.

  “Welcome to Thrifty Drifts, take a look around but don’t try to rob us or Steve over there will twist you like a pretzel.” A cheery young man in his early twenties smiled brightly at Drew not paying his booze-stained clothes any mind.

  “Hmph.” A tall, muscular man covered in brown fur-like hair grunted, making his presence known to Drew who just nodded back. Those arms did look like they could do some serious twisting.

  “Thanks, just looking to get some new threads. Some drunk poured his bottle on me and I can’t stand the smell anymore.” A believable explanation disguised as a request informed the young man at the counter of what Drew was looking for.

  “Of course, you look much too young to be drinking anyway. If you’re looking for something cheap we got some wares in the back left corner for someone around your size. Underwear too, and don’t worry we clean everything before putting it on display, besides the underwear that is, that’s new of course.”

  “Thanks, much appreciated,” Drew said as he headed where the young man pointed for him.

  Ten minutes later Drew found himself dressed in a thick black hoodie, some tight sweatpants for easy movement, a pair of running shoes, and a sports bag slung over his shoulders. He’d chosen to donate the clothes which the young man took without a thought, even promising him a 5% discount.

  “That’ll be $79 after the discount!” The young man keeping his upbeat tune the entire time rang Drew up. Thankfully Forehead one was carrying around $450 bucks on his person so Drew was able to pay without an issue. Although he needed a bath at least it wasn’t as bad as before.

  “Here you go,” Drew said as he handed over the cash.

  “Always a pleasure doing business with respectable customers!”

  “Is it alright if I ask if there are any cheap motels around? I need somewhere to stay. I’m still new to the city life.” Drew was quite tired and wanted to complete his goal so he could also look at the other options on his menu.

  “Why of course. Just head down Jule’s Ave for 4 blocks and turn on Turning Street and you should come to a 101 Motel stop.” Drew thanked the overly eager to please young man before heading out, nodding once more to Steve who Drew was sure hadn’t taken his eyes off him the entire time.

  The rest was easy enough and keeping his sports bag close to him he made the 15 minute trip to the motel.

  Now he sat on a dusty bed with the sound of humping bodies echoing through the thin walls next to his room.

  At first, he’d been worried that they would deny him a room due to his age but the lone old lady at the front didn’t even look at him, too distracted on her phone. She told him 250 for a week and gave him the key after he paid. He was honestly amazed how someone so careless could be hired but he pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind, instead moving into the small bathroom so he could tune out his neighbors fucking.

  “Ok, Menu.”

  “Let’s see what's next. Inventory.”

  An 8x8 grid popped into existence. Different from the window it displayed a lifelike replica of Drew next to the grid. His replica was wearing the same exact apparel as him.

  “That’s quite detailed, hmmm but shouldn’t I be getting some stats or bonus, like in an RPG?” Moving his hand over to his replica Drew tapped on his pants.

  Going through the rest of his clothes he came up with the same answer each time. None of his clothes were special so It was fair to assume they wouldn't give him anything. But that didn’t necessarily mean he wouldn't find any in the future.

  “Maybe they need to be above F tier? Nonmeta’s are classified under that so maybe this system follows a similar mindset.” It made sense the more Drew mulled over it. These were mundane clothes, not some magical wizard's robe, or high-tech syntectic bulletproof fiber.

  A lust-filled scream reached Drew in the bathroom breaking his train of thought.

  Does restraint not exist for you folk! Vexed at his neighbors, Drew pounded the wall connecting his room to thiers.

  He didn’t know if that solved it but he could no longer hear anything else from the other side, which was good enough for him.

  Now that he wasn't restricted to the bathroom anymore he got to experimenting more with his inventory.

  He spent the next twenty minutes messing with his inventory. He found that he could place anything smaller than the size of a basketball and it would take up an inventory slot. He just needed to imagine putting it away and it would disappear, and just do the opposite to bring it back out. With some batteries from the remote to the old tv, he also discovered that similar or identical items stacked. How much he wasn't sure but usually it was either 64 over 99 in games, so he hoped it was the latter.

  His next test was to see if he could put stuff in his bag and have it only count as one item, but it seemed the system wasn't so easily fooled as the items contained in the bag were separated and assigned their own slot.

  ‘Looks like finding ways to cheese might not be as easy as I thought.’ Drew pondered while munching on a pop tart he had purchased from the vending machine down the hall.

  There were more things he wanted to test such as if food would stay fresh like in games or if he could store living things but he still had more menus to go through and his body was starting to demand sleep.

  ‘Skills then, the rest tomorrow.’ Deciding that skills was the most important one as it was where most of his abilities would come from.

  “Skills.”

  Drew's eyes almost popped out of their sockets as he reread the first ability.

  Just the passive ability guaranteed that as long as he survived any ordeal he would eventually perfectly heal from it. The Special was even more ridiculous and would put his regeneration into the (D) Tier, as well as the scaling being important. Most people didn't realize it but the stronger your body was the more energy that was required to heal it. That's why most Bruisers gained mutations that benefited regen, otherwise, the time to heal for them would be even longer than if they were a non-meta.

  Reigning in his excitement he continued down the shortlist.

  “The classic map. Was expecting this but still this is amazing!” A kid during Christmas wouldn't be as ecstatic as Drew was and he wasn't even done!

  “Huh?” Drew just stared flabbergasted.

  If his two previous presents had been two new toys then finding this was like someone had rewrapped his old undies and gifted them to him.

  “Now this I would classify as a steaming pile of horseshit.”