1 An Ordinary Beginning

On the day that the person destined to become Earth's first superhero would awaken to his superpowers, he began his day with no special pizazz or any particular awareness that he was about to begin his walk towards superheroism, in fact, the only notable fact he could think of was that today was his eighteenth birthday. He awoke in a perfectly average bed for a man of his height, ignorant to the reality-warping that had occurred to both him and the bed, and got out of bed at the same time that he always had.

He began his day by checking his cellphone, reading group chat messages, and then going and taking a shower. The very first indicator that his life was about to change in any noticeable way was that the man in the shower was not a boy any longer. As he showered he was left supernaturally, and temporarily, unaware of the changes his body had undergone.

The man in the shower was someone almost maddeningly attractive. He had the tanned skin of an idealized Latino, the muscles of an incredibly attractive, well-toned comic book superhero, and a physique beyond that of someone who could only be described as a sort of fictional, or hypothetical "Peak-Human". He was also over a quarter of a meter taller than he had previously been, towering over even the tallest other students at his school.

His senses began to intensify and he found himself gradually gaining an almost unconscious awareness of distant events, things occurring well out of earshot for the average man or woman. His mind was numbed to the strangeness of this by the process which was occurring while his initial powers awoke within him, and instead, he was processing this as if his senses had always been this sharp.

He chuckled as he heard jokes told in his native language, Spanish, spoken by "neighbors" who lived on the top floor of the large apartment complex he lived in. He ignored the sounds of vigorous, passionate love-making being made in the romantic dawn of the early morning, which were coming from distant "vecinos". He could smell the pleasant scent of Honduran food, which happened to be, rather unsurprisingly, the most common type of food available since, despite the fact that he was Colombian-American, he was living in Honduras.

As he glanced at the shower in front of him he could see minute imperfections and the natural wear and tear caused by the age of the wall. He had always needed glasses, but now, on his eighteenth birthday, his eyes were far from flawed. The young man's eyes were beyond flawless, perfected to exponential degrees, allowing him to see beyond the entire spectrum of light, and in fact possess fully supernatural vision, capable of operating in darkness or peering through any sort of magical illusions, had any been around for him to see through.

His sense of touch was totally enhanced as well, effortlessly allowing him to subconsciously detect various minute changes to things around himself, such as the location of individual water droplets being shot out of the showerhead he was using, or the precise locations of cracks in the floor near himself.

His enhanced senses were the first of the mutations he was undergoing. By the time he had gotten out of the shower, another was subtly manifesting. He was calm now, supernaturally so, despite the fact that he was filled with energy. As the young man donned the uniform his private school required he wears and began to make breakfast he retained a calmness that, though he didn't know this, would categorize the rest of his life.

He made himself a basic breakfast, ate it quickly, and then left the apartment his family lived in. He entered a quiet hallway consisting of a pair of stairwells, a door leading to the other apartment on his floor, and an elevator. He silently walked up to the elevator, backpack slung over his shoulder, cellphone in hand, and pressed the button that would call the elevator. The second he did the distant thing began to loudly make its way towards his floor. He uneventfully made it to the bottom floor of the building and had time to browse the internet before the school bus would arrive.

He spent several minutes on social media websites, including taking a picture for his profiles which mentioned that today was his eighteenth birthday. He possessed a new sense of quiet confidence that he had previously lacked, which fused quite well with the potency and importance of social media in the modern age and allowed him to unknowingly tease the internet by giving it a glimpse at the new and improved Nathan Hernandez mere minutes before any other person would see him. He posted them not knowing the impact that they'd have on his social media presence, still oblivious to the superpowers he possessed or to the significant changes he had undergone on a mundane, physical level.

When the bus first arrived, a big blue bus that was most likely created in the United States and eventually arrived here in Honduras, Nathan climbed abroad the thing with a level of grace he had never had back before he turned eighteen. As students, many but not all of whom were younger than him glanced at him they immediately noticed the changes he had undergone and starred at him in confusion. Even the bus driver stopped and asked him for his student id, which he pulled out of his wallet and showed the driver while chuckling awkwardly.

Nathan made a quiet joke about how he had become a man in Spanish, causing the bus driver to chuckle, mostly out of pity, and glance at the laminated card. The card was also subject to reality-warping changes and showed Nathan in a transition phase between his previous form and his current form, and the driver sighed. He glanced up at Nathan, apologized in Spanglish, and then motioned for the student to sit down. Nathan walked, with supernatural speed, to the back of the bus and sat down beside a few of the other high-schoolers on the vehicle.

They approached him and began speaking with far more friendliness than they had previously shown the reasonably popular senior. His supernaturally calm mind accepted this and spoke to them with equal eagerness. In their eyes, he had just changed over the summer and they hadn't noticed it yesterday, the first day of the school year, because he had been part of the senior festival, the odd private school's first tradition for seniors.

That said the social students were talented at multitasking and began to text both each other and others throughout their classes and families. Quickly enough one of Nathan's friends texted back one of his "primos" and pointed out that today was Nathan's birthday. The student in question saw the text, delivered through a group chat, and quickly wished the foreign student a happy birthday, which resulted in a quiet remix of "Happy Birthday" and "Feliz Cumpleaños".

At the very moment that Nathan made it to school, it was seven fifty in the morning, on a cool day in mid-August. The very moment that he stepped off the bus he heard a strange voice that came from nowhere but was clearly speaking to him, and as he quickly noticed, was only audible to him.

"Good morning, changeling." The powerful voice whispered, directly into the mind of the newly empowered teenager. Nathan, consciously utilizing his supernatural calmness for the first time ever and decided to respond to this voice. His enhanced mind, which was still numbed to certain key changes to his physiology, was able to deduce that the strange voice was somehow linked to his mind. He accepted this, thanks to a healthy childhood interest in superheroes due to having grown up during a sort of golden age of superhero media, and opted to respond internally before he did anything that would have been obviously and visibly weird.

"Good morning... Strange voice in my head." He responded, unsure of how to address the mysterious voice. For a few moments, he was met with an almost comforting silence from the odd voice, before it responded.

"As a system given to you by a powerful omniversal entity 'I' possess a limited consciousness and a minor degree of sapience. As such I am aware that this is strange to you, someone who at a glance appears to be a native of this universe, which up until now has only had limited exposure to even the ideas of superpowers and whose most advanced magicians are incredibly weak. So allow me to begin by apologizing for how alien this all is." The voice responded, which quietly reassured the young hero. The voice wasn't done speaking, however, and with each word it uttered time around Nathan seemed to slow quite dramatically.

"Now, you need to understand something quite important... You are a changeling, that is someone who possesses superpowered blood and is from another universe, who was dropped in this universe by some sort of superpowered parent at the very beginning of your life. This is a universe where superpowers did not exist until your placement here, and in fact, the only truly natural superpowered being in the world at the moment is you. That will change in the relatively near future, but for now, the only source of superpowers in this world, aside from other such alien beings, would be magic. Fortunately for you, magic is also, for the moment anyway, quite diminished here." The voice explained, and as it spoke Nathan's unconscious mind began to fill with information.

"Now that you are eighteen your powers are awakening deep within you. At the moment your powers will be incredibly weak compared to what they will be in time, as your powers are like muscles that need to be worked, stretched, and trained, before they become as powerful as they can be, but your powers will still make you an incredible entity among the mundane populace of this planet." The system revealed, its voice beginning to fill with excitement as it spoke.

"I am currently scanning you to determine what powers are going to awaken first within you but as a changeling, I know for sure that you possess a few, particularly strange abilities universal to creatures with your origin." The thing informed Nathan, whose eyes went wide as he realized he was about to discover what sort of powers he possessed.

"Your first and perhaps most important superpower is your ability to absorb attribute points from other living beings. In your world, the game known as 'Druids and Demons' is quite popular, and thankfully, you are aware of it as well, which gives me a reasonable point of comparison to begin this explanation..." The voice uttered, causing Nathan to chuckle, as he was aware of the nerdy hobby and in fact had character sheets for the game in his backpack, which he intended to share with some of his friends.

"There are six primary attributes, and countless secondary ones, which you can absorb from other living beings through a touch. I will call them what they are called in 'Druids and Demons'; might, toughness, grace, intelligence, wisdom, and charm. For your sake, I will refer to these things with terms that are as close to game terms as possible. You can drain 'points' someone else has in these six attributes, and eventually in other ones as well, and add them to your own. You can also sense how many 'points' someone else has in the six attributes with a glance and the right amount of intent, on a scale from one to twenty. Any number within the range of ten is perfectly average for an adult human." The system revealed, to which Nathan nodded, as that tracked with how the game worked as well.

Nathan also took this chance to glance at one of the students who had gotten off of the bus ahead of him, a younger student named Alejandro. As he did he attempted to see the boy's "attribute scores", and was surprised to find that just by wanting to do so he could easily see six numbers and six words floating above the boy's head.

"Might... 6." Nathan began, before reading off what he somehow knew was a perfectly average set of scores for a child. The young boy had sixes across the board, aside from grace which was a five, and charm which was a seven.

"Hmm... I am still scanning you, but you appear to have some version of the 'Natural Harmony' mutation. How convenient! With that power, you are able to use and understand your powers very easily. At the moment it's still mostly cut off, due to the fact that only your powers as a changeling and any mutations you have, at a low potency, are active and none of your true superpowers are yet awake. But it is still quite handy for you to be able to activate your changeling abilities with nothing more than intent. In fact... Why don't you go and use your powers on Alejandro? Take your draining touch for a test drive." The voice urged.

Nathan paused, considering whether or not to try it out. The young man had many questions and readied himself to ask them.