Chapter 2: Rebirth
Have you ever woken up with every bone and muscle in your body aching so bad it feels like you've been beaten up by 50 men?
With your mouth so dry it feels like you've decided to go snacking on the beach, like, actually on the beach?
With your head pounding so fervently it's like you've got a club all of your own banging away right between your ears?
If you've ever been out for a heavy night of drinking then you'll probably know exactly what I mean.
Usually, after a heavy night of drinking I'd at the very least end up in my own bed.
Yeah, that wasn't what had happened this time.
As my eyes opened and took stock of the room I'd woken up in I couldn't help but think of shows I'd used to watch, things like Star Trek.
Yeah, no, this definitely wasn't my room.
My room was gross and it was small.
I rented a flat in a crappy estate in the middle of London.
There was barely any floor space that wasn't covered in dirty clothes and the occasional wrapper from a chicken wrap.
The bulb in the light hadn't worked for years, and I still couldn't be bothered to replace it with a new one.
The whole room shook and shuddered when a train went by the window, and it always had this weird smell of damp that prevailed no matter what I or the landlord ended up trying out.
This room didn't smell of anything, it was brightly lit by a set of overhead lights that were fitted into the metallic ceiling and it was way bigger than anything I was used to.
Had I ended up in prison somehow?
No, it didn't look like a prison cell, either.
A prison cell wouldn't have a window with blinds drawn down over it. That was the sort of thing you'd more likely get in a fancy swanky hotel room overlooking the Marylebone.
I swung my feet out of the bed and drew myself up to my feet.
There wasn't a pulley for the blinds, but there was a slider built into the wall. Okay, clearly wherever I was wasn't just fancy it was really fancy.
With a swish along the slider interface, the blinds smoothly began to fold into one another, and the sight before me took my breath away.
Space.
I was… in space.
My window looked out onto a massive space station. My room was part of some kind of circular disk that was slowly spinning around a central unit a few miles inward.
Further afield, the planet that the station was orbiting. It looked to be some kind of water world, with only a thin band of land around the equator of the world. Storms raged across the northern and southern hemispheres, but the central band seemed completely untouched by waves or weather.
Further afield than that, twin suns twinkled in the distance, casting their dual glow across the entire system.
My memories of the otherworldly encounter I'd had with a supposed death god in the void came flooding back all at once.
Against all odds it hadn't been some bender induced dream, it had been the truth… and I'd been reborn.
"This can't be happening," I muttered under my breath, unable to rip my eyes away from the fantastical sight before me.
A click from above and behind broke me out of my enraptured daze.
I whirled around just in time to see a football-sized orb emerge from a hole in the ceiling, wires detaching in a shower of sparks.
"Do not be alarmed!" The orb said in a strangely natural voice, "The process will be completed imminently!"
Before I had the chance to react the wires still dangling from the underside of the orb launched themselves toward my arm.
I tried to move out of the way, but only succeeded in stumbling into the bed where I fell flat onto my face with a muffled "oof."
The cables wrapped tightly around my arm and flipped me back over onto my back. Before I knew it the orb had flung itself toward my now outstretched palm.
I winced as the cool metal collided with my skin and then seemed to pass straight through it and up into my arm.
Before I could freak out my vision seemed to flicker and glitch for a moment, before the word INITIALIZING imposed itself in big bold letters across my eyesight.
I didn't get a chance to figure out what any of that meant.
There was a nearly inaudible swish of the door to the room opening, followed by the very audible sound of what I could only assume were energy weapons of some kind whirring up to full power.
I turned, slowly, so as not to startle whoever was aiming at me and tried to keep my response measured as I took in the three beings before me.
For the most part, they looked relatively human.
Two arms, two legs, two eyes and a nose and a mouth.
Their skin colour, however, was a vibrant pink and their ears were pointed like you might expect to see on a typical fantasy elf.
They were dressed in near-matching uniforms, the only difference being the colours of their shirts. The woman in the middle was wearing a green shirt, while the two to her sides were both wearing yellow.
"Make any sudden moves and you're gonna have more plasma running through your system than this station's power relays, got it?" The woman in the middle said.
I nodded in response, I wasn't sure I could trust myself with words at that point, and the strange energy weapons they were pointing my way looked like they meant business so I didn't want to risk getting blasted.
I slowly raised my hands up into the air to prove that I had nothing to hide. Even that was enough to make the yellow shirts shift uncomfortably.
If I was going to be given the chance to relive my life in a new world, then why had I been put into a position like this?
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone