In a vast white expanse of nothingness, a young man is seen floating aimlessly. If one were to take a closer look, they would notice him talking even though there was no one else here.
"Welcome everyone to another episode of the boring show! Today, I'm going to try to see if I can try to spot anything new."
Examining the void around him, he strained his neck and squinted his eyes.
"Now let's see, we have… nothing, nothing, nothing, and you'll never guess this… more nothing."
The young man said with excitement as though he just discovered the most interesting thing in the world.
"How did I get here again? Where even is 'here' exactly? Why did I even..."
Without completing his next sentence, he flinched and stopped talking. In fact, he appeared to be trying to stop any and all motion on his body.
'It hurts... it always hurts. Trying to move my limbs is painful, it hurts when I blink, and breathing is excruciating. Just the fact that I exist hurts the most of all. It's like I'm being picked apart bit by bit, and just before I can die, I get put back together again.'
He gritted his teeth as he held back a tear from welling in his eyes.
'If you won't let me leave at least let me die in peace.'
After an unknown amount of time, he was interrupted from his thoughts by a voice that came from around him.
[Scanning process is now complete, beginning reconstruction and transfer.]
He looked down and saw his body quickly disintegrating from the bottom-up and before he could let out a yelp, he was gone.
"Aaah!" Yelled a frail young looking boy as he awoke from a nightmare. He had brown hair, green eyes and wore a pile of poorly sewn rags.
"Can you keep it down? I'm trying to work here."
Said a man who looked middle-aged and was sharpening some knives not too far from him.
"Sorry about that. I had that dream again."
Said the young boy as he stood up from his makeshift bed of scraps.
" You mean that one where you get erased from existence? Are you sure you're not just finally going crazy from all the stress of living in the outskirts Eon?" said the man as he finished sharpening the knives and attached them to a strap on his waist.
Eon let out a chuckle before responding with smug look on his face.
"As if. Unlike you, I was born in these outskirts. Plus you've been raising me for as long as I can remember to be tough and brave. It will take more than a couple nightmares to freak me out Grampa."
The man frowned and responded.
"I told you not to call me that. I'm not that old. I'm only 47."
"In the outskirts, you can thank your lucky stars if you survive to reach the age of 18. So someone like you might as well be a fossil around here."
Hearing that, the veins on the man's forehead began to bulge. But just before he could make an angry remark, Eon continued speaking.
"Besides, you're the one who said I shouldn't call you my dad even though you're the closest thing I have to one. That's why I thought calling you grampa would fit."
The man was stunned by his words for a few moments.
"Huh! Makes sense I guess. I still don't like it though. Think of something else to call me."
Eon was not surprised that his emotional speech had no effect.
"But I worked really hard to come up with that one."
Eon said with feigned annoyance.
Even though Eon said he was alright, the man didn't believe him. He had raised Eon all by himself for the past ten years. He saw the worried look in his eyes he tried to hide by averting his gaze, the way his hands trembled with fear and the way his left eye twitched which revealed that he was obviously lying.
He released a contemplative sigh as he thought to himself.
'what am I gonna do with you?'
After giving it much thought, he steeled his resolve and spoke.
"Eon, we need to talk"
Caught off guard by the sudden seriousness in the man's tone, eon started to get a little nervous.
"What is it?"
The man hesitated for a bit before speaking.
"I've been thinking about this for a while now. You're a good kid and you help others but I won't always be here to look out for you."
'I don't like where this is going' Eon thought to himself worriedly.
"So I want you to go to school using the credits we've saved up."
'Oh no!'
"You're pretty smart so I'm sure you'll do well in school and when you do, a good family will probably adopt you and then you'll finally get to…"
Before he could continue, he was abruptly interrupted by Eon.
"Wait a minute, who said I wanted to go to school? Plus, I don't need another family because I have you. So don't even joke about that anymore."
The man looked Eon in the eye before continuing with a raised voice.
"Look eon, I'm being serious right now. You need to start seriously considering what to do with your life."
"No I don't." Eon yelled back.
"You can't stay in the outskirts forever, there's no future for you here. So promise me that you'll at least consider it" was the reply from the man. He didn't yell but his words carried weight with them.
Eon could feel the worry in the man's voice. He didn't want to admit it but it made sense.
He made an annoyed grunt then replied.
"Ugh! Fine I'll think about it. But I'm not making any promises"
Hearing that, the man gave a relieved sigh.
"I'll take that for now. Thanks kid."
"Yeah whatever Grandpa Max."
Eon said as he grumpily walked away. Once he was out of sight of the man, he let out a long yawn and rubbed his sleepy eyes.
"It's not like it matters. Since I'm about to die again anyway."
If you haven't already figured it out, Eon had been infected by the Nightmare spell.
Eon used to be a regular kid from the outskirts. A few days ago he started having strange dreams. That was also around the time when he got his memories from his past life. They weren't totally back yet but he recovered enough to realize he had been reincarnated. For some reason, most of the memories were from anime, cartoons or novels.
Under normal circumstances, he wouldn't care about any of this. He was Eon in this life, whoever he was may have been previously wasn't important. But he had this strange suspicion that the world he was currently in was a fictional one from his past life.
'According to what I was told, the nightmare spell tests people with trials where they can get super powers upon passing.'
Eon tried to concentrate and remember where he might have heard this before in his past life.
'That doesn't sound like any fictional world I'm familiar with. If I didn't already know this was NQSC, I would have thought I was in Gotham cause of how gloomy everything is.'
Eon exited an alleyway and made it to a bustling street. He saw people walking around hurriedly. It was as though even the thought of staying in this area any longer set them on edge.
He ignored the weird stares people were giving him and joined the stream of people on the sidewalk.
'i'll leave these thoughts for later. I'll solve one problem at a time.
He quickly scanned through the crowd around him and assessed various factors. He estimated their financial status from how they were dressed, Their guard from how much they concentrated on their environment, and how easily it would be to escape from them if he were caught.
After years of trial and error he had perfected the art of larceny.
"Target acquired." He whispered to himself as he focused on a woman a few steps away from him without directly gazing at her.
He deduced that the woman was from a middle class family due to the fairly expensive handbag she was carrying. She also seemed to be lost in thought and wasn't paying attention to her surroundings.
He quickly calculated that she would be within his range in approximately five seconds and began his plan.
He suddenly started coughing while scratching his body like he had a weird probably contagious disease. Of course the only disease he had was the nightmare spell, but no else had to know that.
At exactly five seconds later, he bumped into the lady, then stumbled and fell backwards.
"Oh! I'm sorry. Are you…" She started to say but suddenly stopped when she saw the the young boy dressed in rags who seemed like he was on the verge of death. She hesitated for a brief moment but then she just walked away with hurried steps.
Eon noticed the look in her eyes. He couldn't quite make out what it was. He wasn't a mind reader after all. But he assumed it was probably disgust. People like them always looked down on people like him after all.
He didn't wait a second later, he had to get out of her sight before she noticed something was amiss.
He entered a nearby alley and observed what he had managed to grab. It was rectangular in shape and had a screen which turned on when he pressed a button on the side.
"Score! I was hoping for a purse or something but I managed to get a communicator terminal."
It was basically this world's version of a smartphone.
"I can't get much use for it personally, but I'm sure to find some high paying buyers."
As he was deciding on which buyer would be the easiest to scam, he was distracted by a message that popped up on the screen.
It was a notification from a hospital. Apparently the woman had a daughter who was infected by the nightmare spell. The woman needed to pay a huge amount of money not just for the sleeper pod but also to pay whatever awakened is assigned to keep watch. She also seemed to have been selling a lot of her stuff based on the transaction records.
"Huh! What are the odds?"
Eon gave a tired sigh and before he knew it, he was already running after the woman.
"Damn it. I hope I can still find her."
He didn't have to look for long, after running round the corner, he found her about to enter a taxi.
"Hey!" He yelled as loud as his lungs would allow him.
The woman turned towards him, obviously startled by the kid running towards her.
As soon as he reached her, he handed her the terminal and tried to think of a valid excuse he could give for why he had her communicator.
"I think you dropped this."
Eon mentally face palmed.
'Come on, couldn't I think of a better excuse.'
The woman didn't seem to question it and collected the terminal.
"Thank you so much. I don't know how I dropped it. Also, I'm sorry for bumping into you earlier. I must not have been paying attention."
Eon was surprised at the woman's response but appreciated it nonetheless.
"It's fine. Just be more careful next time."
Eon walked off before the woman could say anything else.
His stomach growled reminding him that he hadn't eaten anything yet today. His discomfort was only amplified by the sleepiness that refused to dissipate.
"Well that was a colossal waste of time." Eon thought to himself. But for some reason, he wasn't as disappointed as he thought he would be.
'She needs it more than I do anyway.' He thought to himself in order to console his greed.
As he entered the nearest alleyway, he observed his surroundings and noticed he was in an area he had never been to before.
'Did I really get lost that easily?' he thought to himself mockingly.
That's when he felt it. A gaze he couldn't trace, someone was watching him.
A boy stood in the shadow of a broken ventilator shaft, the boy appeared to be sixteen years old. He had pale skin, black hair that fell across his face and dark unreadable eyes.
The boy walked towards him like a predator inspecting something that invaded his territory.
"You're new. You lost or something?"