1 The Day It All Changed

When I was a kid, things were easy.

My best friend and I took on all of the world's challenges, no matter what they might have been. We were an unstoppable team.

Her parents went through some stuff and her father ended up dying. I stood by her side as long as I could after that moment, but I was unfortunately limited by my age in how much I could do. I was only 10 years old when that happened to her. I promised her I would always be around to help her and she would never have to go through everything alone.

2 years later and she admitted her mom was moving and she had to follow, which meant I wouldn't see her anymore. I remember the day she told me that and my heart simultaneously aching. Losing somebody like that to the long-distance left a mark on me I still remember to this day.

We promised each other we would keep in touch when we got phones, and that we would play together one day again.

I believed that every day... until I knew it wasn't ever going to happen. Destiny wasn't coming back, no matter how much I wanted her to.

I thought about her frequently and wanted to go back to being kids to spend more time with her, but the world just doesn't work like that.

The people I met in middle school and high school are all rotten beings. They only care about boosting their ego with anything they can, whether it be posting pictures online, sharing opinions nobody cares about, or bullying a certain group of people. Everybody could never amount to what Destiny amounted to.

The song in my car finally stopped playing and came to its dramatic close. I was driving to work in my terrible car to my terrible job. Life didn't seem anywhere near as exciting as it used to, and Destiny's absence only further proved it.

I got a text on my phone that asked me about homework. Looking at it, I could tell this person was only reaching out to me so they could get answers for the homework. I scoffed, at least try to be subtle about it.

Traffic was stuck and had been like this for around five minutes now. What was the hold-up?

"Sorry, everybody! We're having some problems! It'll be a second!" A man wearing a neon green vest said. I sunk behind the steering wheel in irritation and sighed loudly. This sucks... I'm so sick of this.

I responded to the text, saying I knew what they were trying to get out of me, and I blocked them. I was way too irritated to get homework for some pathetically smart high schooler. I was in my 11th year, just leave me alone.

"What the hell is that?!" I heard from outside of my car. I didn't even bother to look up, I didn't care about it, whatever it may have been. I looked up from my phone to get a glimpse but was glued to my windshield once I watched the support beam to the bridge collapse onto cars in front of me.

I jumped out of my car and began to run the opposite way. I wasn't being involved in this! Not until I saw kids banging against the back windshield, pleading to be released from the confines of their cars.

I stupidly ran back into the first kid I saw trapped. The steel beam fell right into the middle of the car, closing off the doors and trapping them. They couldn't be opened based on the way they were bent.

"Back up!" I yelled at the kid. He shot back towards the steel beam and covered his eyes as I broke the windshield. Any broken pieces of glass were chipped away and I safely got the kid out. "Run towards those adults over there!" I told him. The kid nodded and ran off, profusely thanking me.

I repeated this process about three times from the cars that I could. All of the others had been evacuated, and only one car was completely crushed by the steel beam. I freed the last group of three kids in the backseat of a van and turned to look back at the adults. Emergency services finally arrived and told me to get off of the bridge.

I walked off towards them, but the collapsing bridge finally caught up to me. Chunks of cement plummeted into the large river below me, and the second support beam began to fall right on the top of my head. I looked up and in a mere instant, it fell on top of me. I felt a ton of pressure... then I felt like I was floating.

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"Welcome to the Lobby!" A strange, colorful man said. He was dressed in eccentric clothing... how weird.

"Lobby? Is this what they call Heaven?" Another man said. I turned my head to see a man about my age staring at the colorful man in front of us. These people really need names, this is confusing...

"Greetings Heroes! My name is Yggdrasil! I am the one who leads those to death... or rebirth. As it just so happens, I have orders to send you guys to another world to be heroes!" Yggdrasil said. I sat in front of him, unamused.

"No thanks. I have a promise I made to a friend. Can you send me back to Earth if possible? That would be ideal." I told him. Yggdrasil had a conflicted look, as did the Heaven Man standing next to me.

"Sorry, Anima, you don't have a choice," Yggdrasil said to me. So, he knew my name... then I guess his reputation wasn't false. He was telling the truth after all.

"Fine. Then, tell us about this world we're going into," I asked Yggdrasil, but he only shook his head with a smile.

"That would ruin the fun! So, I won't. But, I will let you two pick your weaponry and one unique skill. As for weaponry, you may have either melee, magic, or ranged. As for skills... the sky's the limit!" Yggdrasil explained. The Heaven Man turned to me.

"My name is Fuki. If we're going to be Heroes together, we should get to know each other. What would play well off of each other? Better question, what do you think would be your strong suit?" Fuki asked me. It was nice to know my partner was such a good man.

"Magic sounds cool, but because you're so nice I'll let you choose and play off of you," I told him. I was excited to hear a person ask me what I thought would be best with good intentions. Fuki didn't seem to be like any other people from my area.

"Right on! Well, I can pick melee and you can do magic, that way you can be ranged or close-range magic caster with me! Then, it's decided... now for our skills..." Fuki murmured to himself. What skill would I want? I don't even know which ones there were.

"What kind of skills do you have?" I asked Yggdrasil. He went on to explain that we could directly manipulate the stats of our characters with skills, or we could obtain certain statuses and keep them, such as extra movement speed, extra luck, extra health, extra stamina, extra anything. With this in mind, Fuki declared that he wanted a skill where he could have amplified stats to a small scale. His health would be increased by 30% at the highest, along with most of his other skills. Unfortunately, Yggdrasil said that the highest we could go is 30%, so his skill peaked there.

"I'm still not sure... we should synergize our skills as well," I told Fuki, but he seemed sure about what I should pick.

"Well, think about it! If I had my extra stats and you could support those stats of mine, then I think we would have great synergy. So... what if you gave your crafting extra stats that way your potions do more for me?" Fuki asked. I'll admit, I didn't think of that, and it could work very nicely.

"Sounds good! Yggdrasil! I've chosen my skill. I'd like the maximum boosted stats for everything that I can craft." I told him. He smiled, granting me my newfound skill for Fuki and my future endeavors.

"Then, as a magician who may craft with the highest efficiency and a melee hero who has the highest base stats known to man, I rebirth you both into the world of Erinautis! Be reborn as the world's heroes!" Yggdrasil shouted out.