Calamity's Champion (System Apocalypse)

A/N: Just wrote this on a whim because I had the idea stuck in my head for a few days. Don't know if it's going to go anywhere, so I'm posting it in a couple of places in order to get feedback. However, this might wind up being a one-shot because I'm not huge on having to keep track of character sheets and numbers. Still, I do have an idea of how to get around that. We'll see.

Summary: Max is just a dude living his life (and maybe spinning his wheels a bit). Until something comes to Earth promising Utopia for everyone. There's just one small catch. Utopia comes with a price. But frankly, it's a price anyone should be willing to pay.

-x-X-x-

“Okay I know how this looks, but it has to be one of you two. I’m innocent.”

“Yeah, sure Red. Black and I have literally been together the entire game, hand in hand. There wasn’t a chance for either of us to kill, I know it’s you.”

“Then Black is marinating you, Blue! I’m serious, I’m crew! I’ve been doing my tasks; I fixed the sabotage a couple rounds back! You have to believe me!”

“Uh-huh. You know the bad guys can fix sabotages too, right?”

“Black! If you’re not marinating Blue, then Blue is marinating you. Come on, can’t you think of a single moment where Blue was out of your sightline long enough to be able to kill?”

Max lets the question hang in the air for a moment, sitting back in his computer chair while doing his best to fight to keep the smile off of his face. Finally, he answers.

“I mean… there was one time where the lights were out I guess…”

He makes sure to inject just the right amount of uncertainty and confusion into his voice. Meanwhile, beneath his desk, his leg is shaking slightly. It would probably be enough to give the game away if either of the people he was playing with could see or hear it.

“What! Don’t let Red get in your head, Black. We were together for multiple double kills. It has to be Red; he’s just grasping at straws at this point!”

And then… ding! The telltale sound of a vote being cast as a checkmark appears next to Blue on the game interface.

“Seriously Black, the more you let Red talk, the more time he has to sway you.”

Max can’t quite fight the grin now. But then, he doesn’t have to anymore. Unless he’s the one who’s been bamboozled somehow… he’s already won.

“I guess you’re right…”

“Wait, Black you-!”

Ding!

Red’s protests cut off as Max votes for him as well, prompting the player behind the color to groan in response.

“Fuck… I guess that’s it. It’s over now.”

Ding! Red puts his own vote in… for Blue. The final vote tally is two votes Red, one vote Blue. The game moves onto the next screen, where Red is thrown into the lava, ending the round. And with that, the victory screen comes up and…

“WHAT?! THERE’S NO FUCKING WAY!”

Blue’s exclamation of surprise is almost immediately drowned out by voices from all of the other players in the twelve man lobby who had been dead and watching the game play out until now.

“Yooo! That was INSANE!”

“Blue, you moron! Black killed me during the Lights Sabotage like three feet away from me!”

“Black, holy shit that was crazy, you fucking devil!”

Everyone had something to say. Max just leaned back in his chair, basking in both the curses and praise tossed his way. He's grinning from ear to ear, really feeling the love... and the hate, heh.

"I told you Blue. He marinated you. He marinated you so fucking good."

Even Red is sounding a bit more gleeful now, because while he did lose, he at least didn’t lose as badly as Blue did. He went down swinging, instead of being Max’s patsy from start to finish.

“Shit man… Black, that was cold. Ice fucking cold. You’re a goddamn psychopath!”

Max’s smile twitches a little bit at that, but he can tell Blue doesn’t really mean it. Sure, the other player is upset… but he can hear the note of respect and awe in his voice as well.

“Alright gang! That was quite the LG for tonight! Same time next week, I hope to see some of you attend again, but if not, we’ll fill with other people from the server! Goodnight everyone!”

“Night!”

“Thanks for hosting!”

“Good shit, as always!”

Max gives his own goodbye as the host brings things to a close. LG, aka Last Game. It was pretty late, to be fair. They’d been going at it for over three hours and while some people had come and go, Max had stayed the whole time. Wasn’t like he had anything better to do on a Saturday night.

Leaving the voice channel behind, Max lets out a sigh… and then shoots off a quick PM to Blue to make sure there really were no hard feelings. He gets a response back in moments, thankfully.

Oh yeah man! You’re all good, it’s just a game. Hah, you got me good… but I’ll be wiser to your tricks next time!

Max smiles at that. Not everyone was as cool with it as Blue. Despite signing up to play a social deception game, sometimes people just couldn’t handle being lied to… or they thought they were the Big Dog and would never fall for ‘such obvious tricks’. Either way, it relieved Max that he hadn’t burned any bridges tonight.

Not that he and Blue knew each other from Adam. In fact… Max barely knew anyone from that server. It was why he tended to refer to them by their in-game colors in his head, instead of their usernames. Easier that way. Best to not get attached.

Pulling off his headset and shutting off his computer, Max pushes out from the desk and stands up, groaning as he stretches for a moment before turning and clearing the handful of feet between his PC setup and his bed. It’s late and he’s a bit fried. If he was smarter, he’d brush his teeth before bed at least, maybe even floss too… but meh, his next dentist appointment wasn’t for another few months. He could afford to miss a day here and there until then.

He's exhausted enough from the gaming that he doesn’t even think about anything that can give him existential dread as he lays there in bed, slowly drifting off. Nor did he make enough mistakes in the three hour session that he finds himself overthinking what he could have done differently like usual.

Instead, Max closes his eyes with a smile on his face, feeling pretty damn good for once. It’d been a good night. If only every night could be as good as this one.

-x-X-x-

GREETINGS PEOPLE OF EARTH! WELCOME TO UTOPIA!

Max’s eyes snap open as words blare in his mind. Not in his ears, but in his mind. He’s still lying in bed in the darkness of his studio apartment, and from the lack of light leaking through his faux blackout curtains, its still dark out. And yet…

YOU HAVE BEEN SCOUTED AND CHOSEN TO JOIN THE REST OF THE UNIVERSE IN PERFECT PEACE AND HARMONY!

Okay yeah. Either Max had gone crazy, or something insane was happening. Now that his eyes were open, the words weren’t just blared into his mind anymore. They were also in front of him, moving when he moved his head, like they were emblazoned onto his vision instead of actually hovering in the air.

YOUR WORLD, WHILE FRAUGHT WITH DISEASE, WAR, AND FAMINE, HAS NEVERTHELESS BEEN DEEMED WORTHY OF INTEGRATION INTO UTOPIA!

What the fuck? What the actual fuck? Sitting up in bed, Max tries to make sense of what’s happening, of what he’s reading. He had never had a history of mental illness before. Was he dreaming, maybe? Reaching over, Max tries pinching himself, only to hiss when it does in fact hurt. That meant this wasn’t a dream, right? That meant this was real. So some… otherworldly entity was integrating Earth into Utopia? That seemed like it could only end in tears.

HOWEVER!

Ah. There it was. There was always a catch.

AS MUCH AS IT PAINS US, THERE ARE COMPACTS IN PLACE WHICH DISALLOW THE IMMEDIATE INTEGRATION OF WORLDS WITHOUT… A TEST.

A test. Right. Uh-huh. Max resists the urge to roll his eyes. Can never know who might be watching, especially when they’re apparently transmitting right into his head. Into everyone’s head? This didn’t exactly feel like it was a personal message meant solely for him…

UTOPIA CANNOT BE FREELY GIVEN. IT MUST BE EARNED.

Earned. Right. So what, a hundred years of slave labor each and then they’d all get to live forever in Utopia? That was how it went, right?

YOU MUST SHOW US THAT YOU ARE WORTHY OF PEACEFUL AND HARMONIOUS COEXISTENCE WITH THE REST OF THE GALAXY. YOU MUST SHOW US THAT YOU CAN RISE ABOVE YOUR POTENTIAL END.

If they were talking about Earth having to establish world peace before it could join the greater community, then the human race was already fucked. Max had been naïve enough when he was younger to think that a unified world government like in some forms of Science Fiction was inevitable. Now? Well, even though he was still only in his late twenties, he no longer believed such a thing would come in his lifetime. Nor would it happen without a whole lot of death and bloodshed first.

UTOPIA FOR ALL COMES WITH A COST. A BARGAIN STRUCK MILLIONS OF YOUR MILLENNIA AGO, BEFORE THIS WORLD EVER SUSTAINED LIFE.

Oh? A bargain? With whom… or what?

THE CALAMITY WILL ALWAYS HAVE ITS DUE. HOWEVER, THE PRICE IS EXTRACTS ON YOUR WORLD IS UP TO YOU. YOU AND YOU ALONE WILL DECIDE WHETHER THE TOLL IS SMALL OR LARGE.

That sounded fucking ominous. The Calamity? A price? Sounded like they might be experiencing that death and bloodshed he’d just been thinking about sooner rather than later.

ALL OF YOU WILL BE INTEGRATED INTO THE SYSTEM OF UTOPIA. SAVE FOR ONE. ONE AMONG YOU WILL BE INTEGRATED INTO THE SYSTEM OF THE CALAMITY.

What.

THIS INDIVIDUAL REPRESENTS YOUR TEST. YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO IDENTIFY THEM BY THEIR LOOKS, OR THEIR SYSTEM. YOU WILL NEED TO IDENTIFY THEM BY THEIR DEEDS. FOR UTOPIA TO FLOURISH, CALAMITY’S CHAMPION MUST BE REMOVED.

Max gawks. Removed? As in… killed. They were going to give nearly every single member of the human race one type of ‘system’, and one poor shmuck would get the other type. The ‘bad’ type. Supposedly this was like one of those gamified novels he’d taken to reading in recent years… but this… this didn’t sound like a test. It sounded like a fucking ritual sacrifice.

COME TOGETHER AS ONE UNDER UTOPIA. HUNT DOWN THE CALAMITY AND REMOVE ITS TAINT FROM YOUR WORLD. ONCE THIS IS DONE, ONCE THE CALAMITY’S SEED HAS BEEN EXCISED, YOU WILL BE ABLE TO JOIN US AMONG THE STARS!

A witch hunt. It was an honest to god witch hunt, with the promise of riches and eternal happiness galore at the end of the rainbow. Jesus Fucking Christ.

GOOD LUCK, DENIZENS OF EARTH!

And just like that, the ‘voice’ is gone. Silence reigns for mere moments before it’s replaced by a far more understated set of words, however.

System Initializing. Please Hold…

But which System? For the briefest of moments, Max feels an ice cold sensation rush down his back at the thought of getting chosen as ‘Calamity’s Champion’. That would be so fucked. He forces himself to laugh a moment later though.

There were what… eight billion people on Earth at this point, give or take? The odds of HIM being the one chosen for that bullshit were next to none, right? There was no way. Still, he felt bad for whoever the fuck did get saddled with the role. Imagine being the sacrificial lamb for the entire goddamn world. Couldn’t be him.

System Initialized. Welcome Maximillian Caravaro to the System of Utop- System of Ut- Sys-S-S-S-Syst-t-t-tem-

Max’s eyes widen as he watches the words bleed and glitch out in real time. His heart clenches as they begin to reform. There was no way. It was just… a bug. Just a glitch. But it didn’t mean-

Welcome Maximillian Caravaro to the System of the Calamity.

Bullshit. Utter bullshit. What were the fucking odds?! Max wanted to scream, but instead all he could do was watch in muted horror as an honest to god character sheet began to populate in front of him.

Name: Maximillian Caravaro

Class: Champion of Calamity (Scout)

Level: 1

-

Health: 110

Mana: 110

-

Strength: 1

Constitution: 1

Dexterity: 1

Intelligence: 1

Wisdom: 1

Charisma: 1

-

Active Skills:

Ruin

For a long moment, Max just stares. Lots of it was pretty normal stuff. Except, of course, for his class being ‘Champion of Calamity’ (and what the fuck did it mean that Scout was next to it in parentheses?) and his Active Skill being something as foreboding as ‘Ruin’. But before he can even really process all of that, there’s something else.

Ding! New Quest received!

Quest: Destroy something (anything really!).

Bonus Objective: Use the Active Skill Ruin to do it.

Reward: x10 Levels

Bonus Reward: x5 Levels

Again, Max stares. Ten levels? That was a lot, right? It sounded like a lot. But then, what did he know, really? Still, it wasn’t like he was going to do it. He wasn’t just going to destroy shit because he was told to. And that Bonus Objective was also sketchy as all hell. What if using Ruin allowed people to track him down and recognize him as the Calamity’s Champion all the faster? They all wanted him dead now after all, and through no fault of his own.

The weight of that hits him then, and Max has to rush to his bathroom, overwhelmed with the sudden urge to puke his guts out. He had literally just become the most wanted man in the world. Everyone would want to kill him… and they’d be right to do it too. If the words were telling the truth, Utopia for all was locked behind a single, flimsy thing… his damn life.

Feeling suddenly lightheaded, Max pushes away from his porcelain throne and stumbles back towards bed. He doesn’t make it all the way there before the darkness encroaching on his vision overtakes him. A moment later, he hits the carpeted floor of his bedroom with a thud, having passed out from the stress.

-x-X-x-

When he comes to, it’s because someone is patting him on the cheek. There’s also, as he blinks his eyes open, light leaking in from the curtains over his window, signaling that it’s been hours since he was last conscious.

Was it all just a dream? Except… Max lived alone. Jerking away from the hand, his eyes snap fully open and look up to its owner. He freezes in place as he stares at the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen leaning over him with a wicked grin on her lips.

“Ah. Finally awake, I see. That’s good. We have a lot of work to do.”

He’d wonder how she got into his apartment, if not for one key thing… the woman isn’t human. Horns curl back along her scalp, her skin is a deep scarlet red, and her eyes are yellow. That’s to say nothing of the spade tail, nails that look more like claws, and sharpened rows of teeth that she licks a long tongue on before pulling it back inside of her mouth.

“Who… who are you?”

“Me? I’m your System-Appointed Assistant, Max. You should have summoned me ages ago, but fortunately I’m given the leeway to summon myself if six hours have elapsed since the System of the Calamity’s initialization and you haven’t done it yourself. You’re already a bit behind, I’m afraid.”

She pauses to buff her nails (claws, not nails) for a brief moment before fixing him with a Look.

“We’re going to have to work hard if we want to stay ahead of all of the hounds at your heels, sweetheart. Otherwise the rest of your life is going to be VERY short indeed.”