2 Chapter 2 A System?
Jake set his coffee down and began to scroll through the comic. As he did so, his phone began to vibrate. He looked at it and saw it was his sister telling him that the meteor shower should begin any second now but he just ignored it as he was enraptured by the comic.
From the very beginning of Jake's life, he always loved superheros. Since the second he could read, hell even before he could read, he would be seen flipping through comic books and just looking at them. When he was 5 years old, he would dress up as Superman and Superman became his favorite hero since then. The allure of Superman was that he is all powerful but he still chooses to help the weak and powerless. If Superman wanted to he could absolutely destroy everything, probably even the planet but he doesn't. Instead he becomes Earth's guardian hero. Why? Because even though he isn't even from Earth, he has taken it as his home planet and cares about it, the good and the bad in it.
Unknown to everyone on Earth, the "meteor shower" they were anticipating was going to change everything for all of them.
As the first "meteor" entered Earth's atmosphere, it entered in a fiery blaze but people soon began to realize that the fiery ball didn't stop falling like most meteors. It was when the first meteor struck that people began to panic. Each meteorite that hit were between the size of a fist and a car.
Poor Jake was just sitting there in his room when a meteorite the size of smart car crashed into the room next to his, sending him flying into the wall, knocking him out in the process. The meteorite gave off a pulse that caused his computer to glitch and send an electric current into the mouse that was still in Jake's hand. As the building began to fall apart around him, he somehow managed to be perfectly next to the wall so when the ceiling fell it fell perfectly with him safe.
Jake remembered waking up several times, head ringing and a voice in his head saying,
[Synchronizing to new host....
Host synchronized....
Host's body failing....
Analyzing....
Fractured skull, fractured the 5, 6, and 7 ribs, severed lower spinal cord, fractured hip, abrasions and open wounds on back....
Analyzing....
Fixing host....]
"What is this...." were the thoughts running through his mind as he opened his eyes only to see that he is inside of an ambulance while an EMT tries to operate on him. The next time he regains consciousness, the same voice is talking in his head.
[Host's body at 20%....
Repairs necessary....
Scanning host....
Found host's ideal image....
Restructuring body to be like 'Superman'....]
Jake didn't even have time to register what the voice was saying as severe pain racked his body as his bone structure began to change. If a scientists were to dive deeper and look at his DNA's structure, they would notice that the fundamental strands of his genetic makeup was being altered into something...nonhuman.
Doctors began to operate on his back to stop the bleeding only to find that under the bloody clothes and bandages, there was no severe open wounds. Dumbfounded, they did several tests and found that he had several fractured ribs and other bones and the most important injury to his body was that he severed his spinal cord.
Deep in Jake's subconsciousness, a logo appears. It is a symbol that he has known as a symbol of peace and power. Superman's "S" appeared as a stream of numbers appeared next to it along with what looked like two different strands of DNA. One strand was Jake's original DNA and the new one was a code that was implanted into his DNA that altered his body. His organs didn't move around or anything like that but what did happen was his bones became more dense, his muscle fibers became stronger, and his skin became tanner and just below the epidermis layer was another layer that began to rise to the surface that felt normal at the touch but nothing could get past it. Thankfully for the doctors, the IV drip that they gave him was before his skin became impenetrable for such things like needles or the several other mysterious cases would have had him being dissected by scientists in a heartbeat.
[Bodily repairs at 100%....
New body made....
Host, wake up....]
After several days of not regaining consciousness, Jake is woken up to the voice in his head telling him to wake up. With a start, he sits up from his hospital bed and memory after memory come rushing back to him, making his head hurt. The room next to him blowing up, hitting the wall, waking up in the ambulance, the voice inside of his head, they all came back at once and it took him a while to process things.
[Host is awake....
Hello, Jake Griffs. I am your system....
I do not know how I came to be but I know that from past memories, that with me in your life, you will never be the same again....]
"Who said that!?" Jake said as he looks around the room, hurting his head in the process as his brain can't seem to adjust to quick movements yet. While holding his head, he notices that his room is empty. The voice responds,
[I am inside of you....
Congratulations on waking up the Superman System....
You can now become Superman....]
Jake, trying to process what was going on, heard that the voice in his head say that he can now be Superman. With a blank look on his face and says, "What the fuck is going on here?"
