Intermission

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The teen felt his body throb as he opened his eyes. The first thing he noticed were the many bandages wrapped around mainly his shoulder and legs. 

In his attempted escape from the church, he'd sustained many injuries, including two gunshots, yet why did he feel quite nice and spry?

He looked around the room he'd found himself in.

It was old-fashioned and held a vintage feeling, with pleasant green-lilly wallpaper and rows of neatly placed hospital beds. Framed iron-wrought windows were wide-open, letting in a cool breeze and natural light.

What wasn't old-fashioned was the tech in the room. 

By his side at a table was a glowing holographic display that displayed everything from his heartbeat to his age to his current temperature.

As he sat up, the holographic screen blinked, and a crisp bell sound rang out.

Immediately, the teen heard the sounds of footsteps approaching him from an open doorway across the room.

The teen slowly massaged his shoulder, sitting cross legged as three people walked into the room.

There was a stout nurse of European descent with auburn hair and a stern expression on her face.

There was his man Sova, dressed more simply in a beige fall coat and khaki pants.

And then there was her.

She was a petite Asian young woman who the teen had to admit, was extremely pretty. The woman was very energetic-looking, with messy cloud-white hair tied back in a messy bun and fair unblemished skin. Her face reminded him of an idols, with a delicate defined jawline, thin pixie-like nose, and two storm-grey eyes filled with liveliness.

Dressed in a oversized sky-blue hoodie, with a pair of black parachute cargo-pants and some nice white sneakers, she looked at him rather curiously. 

The teen as usual, knew exactly who this was.

Windgirl.

The overpowered Korean chef who could peak in, turn you into kimchi and dash away scot-free in about four seconds flat.

Ungodly knife-wielding updraft over-the-wall sniping.

Somehow always escaping…

The human apache helicopter.

Yeah.

"Watch this!"

He remembered hearing this line at least hundreds of times.

It was Jett.

The teen blinked. It was just so weird meeting people he'd once thought to just be characters in a video game. But here they were in front of him in the flesh, living and breathing, completely in the semblance of reality.

They were "normal" humans.

The nurse sproke briskly in a heavy accent.

"He is fine. Healing very well from what I see." 

She nodded her head and walked out of the room, leaving the teen alone with the two.

The teen stared at the Korean and Russian wordlessly, slowly digesting all that had happened.

"I live!" 

The teen said this joyfully, arms spread high in the air. 

"Indeed you do. I apologize for leaving you injured and unattended for, but time was of the essence."

Sova spoke in that calming accent.

"But sadly, we aren't here to celebrate your recovery.."

"Dude! I saw you bouncing around like that! Crazy stuff, I really mean it." 

Jett gave a bubbly infectious laugh, her eyes filled with curiosity.

"Thanks." The teen replied happily, rotating his shoulder slowly. Being complimented by cute girls really lit up one's day.

"That was some flight you were getting to. I saw the CCTV and you were running circles around Brim! Good work, made cleaning up so much easier." 

"Ahem. As much as I would love to engage in more conversation, we have some questions to ask you." 

Sova interrupted the Korean radiant, his glowing blue eye staring at the teen closely.

"Sure. Blast away." The teen snapped his fingers, eyes glancing over to Jett before darting back.

"Who… Are you? There are no records of such a person with your face or fingerprints ever existing. And no traces of any information being wiped. It was as if you appeared for the first time in that very church." 

Immediately, the teen began to think. Since he didn't seem to have any form of existence, it seemed he hadn't been reincarnated into a new body. He'd just been transmigrated into this church with a Kingdom uniform and absolutely no context.

Despite not having time to check a mirror or something, he was still rather sure that he was in his body. There was that candy-cane-shaped scar on his forearm from a lawnmower accident and the messy ink-black hair that came down to his shoulders.

The teen sighed as he began to speak.

"The name is Jason Chao. Second-generation Chinese-American, fluent in both Mandarin and English of course. I was born and raised in sunny California, and enjoy using Italian curse words in incorrect grammatical form for no reason. I love a good bowl of hong shao rou on white rice with a side of mango green tea. As for why I'm here, I have no idea." 

He finished his sentence with a serious expression, to convey his legitimacy, but Jett just began laughing at him.

"Pffft! What kind of introduction is that dude? By the way, I'm Sunwoo, but you can just call me Jett. This serious Russian guy over here is Sova." 

Jett slapped Sova on the back cheerfully, and the hunter rolled his eyes.

"What Sova wants to ask is how you outran gunfire. That speed is not normal, but you don't seem to have any of those radianite waves or whatever they call them."

Jett flicked her finger to a miniature holograph that had appeared from a black tablet in Sova's hands.

It was himself running about the church courtyard in that oddox inhuman manner, legs barely touching the ground for less than a second at a time as he maneuvered about like a fighter plane.

The bullets just whizzed on by as Jason watched. It was extremely fascinating to be honest, seeing himself achieve such feats, not to mention it was on holographic video, which was something he'd never had seen in his previous world.

And then he winced as he finished off the old veteran.

Watching Brimstone just collapse made him instinctively hold his breath. But Jason also knew that the man had been purposefully aiming to kill him. With ill intent.

Him or them.

Jason groaned, rubbing his temple. What was done was done, and he didn't regret it. The guy was trying to rip him apart with a machine gun after all.

"The first kill will be with you for the rest of your life." 

Sova spoke solemnly.

"Well, that or I would be filled with holes and in the crematorium." Jason held his hand to his heart, sighing a breath of relief.

"The footage recorded you going at an average of 160 kilometers per hour with bursts of speed that reached 241…" 

Sova tapped on the hologram, and a new graph filled with highs and lows appeared along with a running model of him. 

"What can I say? The anti-cheat ain't working." Jason shrugged his shoulders, chuckling at his joke.

Sova tilted his head in mild confusion, and Jett patted him on the shoulder with a knowing smirk on her face.

"Lemme see…" 

Jason said suddenly as he stood up on the bed, groaning as his back and legs crackled. He was dressed in blue sleepwear, consisting of plain long pants and a plain cotton shirt.

Then, with an almost casual two-step hop, he accelerated to the other side of the infirmary way faster than anything a normal person could achieve. 

Skidding across the ground, he reversed his momentum before he could fully stop, spinning about in a zig-zag pattern as he practically glided back on the bed within three seconds.

His stride was definitely something else.

Jason felt his legs throb a bit, but other than that, he felt pretty fine. Medicine and healthcare in this universe was truly something on another level.

". . . Damn. " 

Jett gave a whistle of admiration and Sova nodded thoughtfully. It was obvious that they were rather unphased by his display, but then again, they'd probably seen countless radiants with all sorts of wacky abilities in their time.

"What can I say? I could basically be the greatest errand boy known to man." Holding his hands out in a matter-of-fact way, Jason's face morphed into a wide childlike grin.

The speed and perception was truly exhilarating.

"So the data is correct… Not a single flare of radianite activity. Our resident scientist would be very interested to meet you." 

Sova examined him slowly. Jason could vaguely make out data and even more diagrams processing through the man's glowing bionic eye.

As the teen stood there with a dumb-looking expression, his system acted up once more.

[ Current Possible Life Quests ]

[ Complete three quests to unlock multiverse travel ]

[ Join the Valorant Protocol: Two Lives ]

[ Investigate PRIME with Sova and Jett: Three lives ]

[ Loot Icebox: Two Lives ]

His eyes scanned over the three quests he had current access to. The first and third ones made sense. Jason had gone down the Valorant lore rabbit hole many times already, so he pretty much knew what these entailed but PRIME? 

He had no idea what PRIME was, but it seemed to be important, seeing as it gave him the most amount of lives out of the two. But at the same time… Wait a minute.

Nope. That couldn't be, right?

Cosmetic skins couldn't be part of canon in this world could they?

Jason shook this rather terrifying thought out of his mind.

So, if he finished three of these Life Quests as they were called, he could travel to another different world? The prospect of something like that made his heart beat faster and faster in anticipation and eagerness. 

As much as he hated the fact he'd been shot twice and almost died, being transmigrated to another world was many a teenager's dream. To think he could go to even more was just so exciting!

The teen turned his attention away from this dose of dopamine he had just been injected with and back to Sova.

"But a question still stands. There is no record of you wheresoever. No Jason Chao ever existed in any part of California, and none with your appearance either. It's as if you appeared in that church on that very day…" Sova narrowed his eyes.

"Oh yeah! By the way, I think I'm from another reality." Jason gave the two agents a casual thumbs up.

He wasn't going to tell them that they were video game characters. Nor was he going to tell anyone about his system. But in a world where access to other alternate realities was one high-energy portal away, Jason felt that exposing this wasn't that big of a deal.

He felt them immediately tense up. So it seems that they did have contact with their alternate-reality selves.

"I dunno bout you, but I've never heard about this 'Kingdom' in my life even though it seems to be on pretty much everything, nor did we have the technology to make actual sci-fi holographs." 

Jason pointed his thumb back at the holographic screen, which of course displayed a Kingdom logo on the side.

"And we sure as hell didn't have portable fucking earthquakes! Like how does that even work?"

He was still salty about getting quaked, flash-stunned and almost ended by who he assumed was cyborg Swedish man. 

"You're not kidding are you?" Jett asked, looking at him in a new light.

"Nope. Not at all. I am really at this moment, completely and utterly clueless."

Jason lied between his teeth. He knew about exactly what was going on. He'd been somehow transmigrated into this both familiar and unfamiliar world with no identity whatsoever.

He didn't really know how the two would react to the revelations he was giving them, but Jason hoped that they wouldn't lock him up.

"So. What are you guys gonna do to me? I pretty much don't exist right now, so you could just lock me up or torture me in some secret chamber and no one would know or care. Please don't do that by the way, that was not a suggestion." Jason said meekly.

The two, radiant and hunter looked at each other and shrugged.