Surviving Apocalypse With Powers Of Fictional Characters

Chapter 9 - I have a job interview tomorrow

In an elegantly decorated room, filled with calming cream colored curtains.

The fragrant smell of air-freshener wafted inside the room...making the three most special people inside the police station settle down comfortably inside an air-conditioned environment.

...

"What do you mean, Mel?" (Zack)

"You see, after accidentally killing the zombie that attacked me...a strange voice spoke to me in my head..no, rather than speaking, it announced something. It congratulated me for awakening a..system? Enhanced something system?" (Melissa)

Enhanced System? What on earth is that? There are other systems besides the HERO System?

"Did you notice anything different to your body? Like...becoming stronger? Or faster?" (Chai)

Melissa shook her head.

"Have you tried to...maybe, communicate with that 'System' in your head?" (Zack)

"I did. It didn't respond at all.." (Melissa)

"This might be similar to a gaming system like the video games we use to play. Try saying a few keywords along the lines of 'open' 'status' 'system' 'menu'. We'll write down the ones you've tried." (Zack)

"Okay. Here goes, I'll start with…"

Open Menu.

"...."

Nothing.

Status Menu.

"...."

System Menu!

"...."

Still...nothing.

They wrote down about 7 keywords, when the 8th finally opened the system.

"System Open!" (Melissa)

A white, rectangular screen popped up in front of her. Success!

[ ENHANCED SYSTEM ]

Name: Melissa Tan Yee Mei

Race: Human

Strength – 6 (0/6)

Agility – 7 (0/7)

Vitality – 5 (0/5)

Intelligence – 8 (0/8)

Dexterity – 9 (0/9)

Luck – 11 (0/11)

Class: Tier 2

Health Points: 37/37

Exp: 1 [Unused]

Equipment: None

____

"GUYS I DID IT! IT POPPED UP!!" Melissa screamed with joy.

"What does it say? Spit it out!" (Chai)

"Okay, don't rush me! It says here..my name..my race..uh, there's a whole list of it. I'll write it down on a paper."

Melissa took a black pen and an A4 paper and wrote down what she saw.

Chai and Zack looked at the paper. It's very similar to the a MMORPG game that they used to play.

"Can you upgrade anything? Like your stats points" (Zack)

Melissa tried to mentally add the points.

She tried to touch the screen, and she tried touching each of the words.

Nothing came up...until she physically used her finger to touch the word 'Strength'.

[Strength: Affects the "melee" physical power of the individual, allowing it to deal damage even if no weapons are equipped when a sufficient amount of Strength is invested. The Strength value is also multiplied to the Weapon Attack value for even more damage increase]

[ Do you want to upgrade Strength?]

[YES/NO]

She pressed YES.

[Insufficient Exp. 5 Exp more are required ]

She frowned.

"Says here I need another five experience points to upgrade my Strength." (Melissa)

"Then you'd have to kill 5 more zombies." (Chai)

Melissa froze for a second. The near-death experience was ingrained in her memory, enough to cause her body to shiver again and again.

Zack and Chai were awkwardly silent.

PAP!

Chai smacked his forehead hard, startling Zack and Melissa.

"Ahh! Dammit I forgot I have a job interview tomorrow!"

Melissa and Zack looked at Chai with weird faces. Don't tell me this guy is still thinking about a job in an apocalyptic future?

"Pfft – !"

"Ahahahahaha!!"

Melissa couldn't hold it anymore, and laughed out loud. Zack smiled warmly to Melissa, and showed Chai a thumbs up secretly.

…

"Time to test ours." (Zack)

Zack has revealed to Melissa that they received a similar system in their minds, too. She spontaneously screamed "Ahh!".

The look of someone just figuring out their friend's lame & confusing joke, was plastered all over her face. She then narrowed her eyes at the brothers.

SMACK!

Melissa slapped Chai on his back. That was why they wanted to dangerously killed the zombies earlier!

"Hey! Why me! He's guilty too, you know!!" (Chai)

"As*hole, don't drag me down with you!" (Zack)

The situation became relaxed again, after laughing and Melissa venting her anger to Chai.

"Bro, how much experience points you have now?" (Zack)

"As of now...59 points. Yours?" (Chai)

"57 points." (Zack)

"Not bad at all. Hey, did you get the notification to choose skills?" (Chai)

"Yeah. I tried saying the keywords we suggested for Mel's system in my mind, but nothing worked." (Zack)

"I guess...we either have to say it aloud, or find the right key words...System! Open selection menu!" (Chai)

"...."

No response.

"Hero system! Activate!!" (Chai)

"...."

"GATE!! OPENN!!!"

"I call upon the power of the Moon!!"

"System System no...OPEN!"

"JARVIS! Lay me down the menu!!"

"...."

Chai literally recalled every single fictional opening word he could think off.

Melissa was laughing on the floor and Zack was holding off his laughter while recording Chai's gestures on his smartphone.

"Pssh, like you could do any better." (Chai)

"Look, the keywords to re-activate the skill menu might be a unique phrase, exclusive to your powers."

Zack then got into deep taught.

"What's the name of your skill again?" (Zack)

"Er...Kame School Martial Arts." (Chai)

No way. This bast*rd might actually get the OP-est character in the whole universe. But then again, there were also other minor characters in the Dragon Ball franchise with that skill.

Krillin, Yumcha, Grandpa Gohan. It can be any of those characters.

(F*ck, if Chai's god-given character is Master Roshi, I am so gonna laugh my as* off in front of him, haha.)

Zack snickered.

"Okay. What's Goku's real name?" (Zack)

"Duh, Kakarott man. You know this to- WHOAAA!!"

Chai screamed and startled over a white rectangular screen came up.

"It's the Status Menu! F*CK! F*CK! F*CK! OMG OMG OMG!!!" (Chai)

Melissa was dumbfounded at Chai's excitement. The current Chai was jumping around up and down like a monkey who just ate a plate of red hot chili peppers.

Zack's eyes were opened wide in shock! He originally wanted to start with the most overpowered character in that franchise, and laugh along the way when he failed to get the good ones.

Who knew this pretty-faced punk actually got Son Goku's powers!!

"You lucky dog!" Zack smacked his friend's shoulder.

Chai cooled down after awhile, he shrugged and lifted up both of his hand, signaling that he can't help it.

Who asked him to become so awesome? This grandfather here has some dogsh*t luck!

{ HERO SYSTEM }

Name: Jeremiah Chai

Race: Human

Class: HERO Tier 1

HERO : Son Goku

Health Points: 320/320

HERO EXP: 59 [Unused]

Character Skills:

Saiyan Physique (Lv. 0) – (0/50)

Kame School Martial Arts (Lv.1) – (0/100)

Equipment: None

Power Pole (0/500)

Flying Nimbus (0/1000)

IT'S HERE IT'S HERE IT'S HERE IT'S HERE IT'S HERE IT'S HERE!!

Following what Melissa did previously, he wrote down everything stated on his status menu. Zack understood immediately what most of the items in the menu meant.

Yet, he was trembling. Not from fear, but with excitement! His best friend has the limitless potential of Son Goku from the Dragon Ball series!

On top of that, he had yet to discover his!

"Fu*k yeah, I'm gonna be a Super Saiyan soon! Wahahaha!!" (Chai)

Just when Chai's hands moved upwards and going down with the motion to press a button, Zack quickly catch his brother's hand!

"Hey!! Why'd you stop me??!" (Chai)

"Bro, shouldn't you read the description of the skills first? I mean, it wasn't easy getting all those experience points." (Zack)

They literally risked their lives for it! If they level up the wrong skills at the wrong situation, they might be dead sooner than they expected!

Chai nodded and followed on to click on each wording on the HERO System.

"Okay it says here..Saiyan Physique Lv.1: Toughness, Resilience & Physical Structure increases. The other one is the second level of my current skill, Kame School Martial Arts. Says here...increase stamina and accuracy." (Chai)

(Seems that Chai's skill's description is quite...vague.) Zack spun his mind analyzing his best friend's system and Melissa's.

As both of them were dealt with choices, they began to analyze the extent of their current capabilities.

...

Chai's first level of [ Kame School Martial Arts ] gave him a minimum punching force of 3,000 newtons, proved by punching the concrete walls previously in the weapons shop.

Chai also admitted that his speed and agility became faster. He was confident that he can run 100 meters under 10 seconds. On top of that, he mentions that his reaction speed is quite fast, especially during fights.

There are very limited ways to test reaction speed, but the simplest one would be the online reaction test.

As the internet is still available, it makes it easier for humankind to spread the awareness of the zombie apocalypse.

Chai googled up 'reaction speed test' and the first page came out. He clicked on the top link and proceeded with the test. When the results came in, the brothers were horrified by Chai's results.

It says here in the online test, that the average human reaction speed is about 0.2 seconds. But Chai scored 0.01! Almost ten times faster than a human being! Monster!

It was now Zack's turn. His super senses include all 5 senses. He could now see 150 meters clearly, and could still read the small prints ahead. When he concentrates his eyes, he could see dust particles clearly in the air, signalling a microscopic ability.

He could hear sounds from around 30 meters away. Zack tested it by asking Chai to speak slowly, as close to whispering some keywords to see if he could hear them.

Turns out, he can still hear the softest whispers from a human in a range of 30-35 meters.

Zack's sense of smell is also more s.e.n.s.i.t.i.v.e now. The smells are usually registered quickly into his brain, and he could smell something about 20 meters away. That is even farther than a dog's!

After several tests, they found out that Zack is quite s.e.n.s.i.t.i.v.e to the ground movements and vibrations in the air, indicating that his sense of touch is enhanced.

As for the sense of taste, they guessed that after Zack ate a few different food items, he noticed that the food just tastes richer than before. He can distinguish different flavors of ingredients in anything he ate so far.

…

"So what do you think?" (Zack)

"Well, we don't have that many skills, and right now, we can only add in a new skill which costs practically all of our points. 50 points! I would need another 100 experience points to upgrade from the first level of [Kame School Martial Arts] to the second one.

I'm not sure how many levels [Kame School Martial Arts] has, but based on the Dragon Ball's timeline, he only learnt it during his childhood to his early teenage years." (Chai)

"Yeah, you could be right, if the second level progression requires an additional 100 points, the third level might be 200, or even 1,000 experience points!

With your 59 points now, you could choose to start [Saiyan Physique], but you'd still have to kill 91 zombies more to upgrade [Kame School Martial Arts] to the second level." (Zack)

But the two best friends still had their doubts. The HERO System is still entirely new to them.

Melissa was utterly confused at first, but then she made a few references online about her new found system.

Melissa's intelligence stats was highest. She was speculated to the two youths that her real life capabilities might have correlations with her system stats.

For example, she is currently a full-time Post-Graduate student at the age of 21! Her peers, at most, were undergraduate students. Not to mention she was a straight As student in both her undergraduate and high school.

The trio then discussed further about the red sky phenomenon and what could have caused it.

"It feels like the world is in an eternal sunset." (Chai)

"Even sunsets don't last this long! The colours of sunrise and sunset result from a phenomenon known as scattering: molecules and small particles in the atmosphere change the direction of light rays, causing them to scatter, which affects the colour of light from the sky, depending on the wavelength of the light and the size of the particle." (Melissa)

"Yeah. It usually lasts about 2 minutes, 20 minutes Max. Something, or someone must be affecting the atmosphere's wavelength of light or particles sizes." (Zack)

There is too many unknowns so far. Who was the entity that announced humanity's end?

Could it be that the systems they received, were actually a self-defense mechanism to counter this phenomenon?

"Hey Zack, faster test out your system! You have [Super Senses] right? I think you could either be...Spider-Man, Black Panther, or uh...those Dragon Slayers from Fairy Tail!" (Chai)

"Relax..I have just the perfect first phrase word to test on."

KAL-EL!

The status menu showed up in-front of Zack.

{ HERO SYSTEM }

Name: Zachary Black

Race: Human

Class: HERO Tier 1

HERO: Superman

Health Points: 56/56

Exp: 57 [Unused]

Class Skills:

Kryptonian Physique (Lv. 0) – (0/50)