"Ugh, god damn it, bro. Where the fuck is my Trinity Prime chassis? I've already opened seven relics! DE, please, I'm begging you!" I slapped my hands together in a desperate prayer to the DE gods. I prayed for the prime part I wanted, staring at my last two radiant Neo relics, practically begging to be cracked open.
"Breathe, Orin, breathe," I muttered, taking a few deep breaths to calm myself down. I queued up for a Neo fissure capture mission in the Void and watched as the ten-second countdown ticked away before the mission began.
And I guess DE heard me, because once all of my teammates reached the extraction point, there it was, in all its glory. Waiting to be chosen. Waiting to be crafted into a frame I loved. I immediately jumped to my feet in pure joy and yelled, "W-!"
Yet sadly, I didn't even get to finish my "WOO" before time seemed to slow down. Everything turned to shades of gray as a black semi-truck came crashing straight into me. I could even see parts of my wall destroying my pc setup that I spent thousands on, but I didn't feel sad about it. Strangely enough, it was painless, and since the truck was moving in slow motion. I could even see the first point of contact: my arm bending at an unnatural angle, with my bones sticking out.
Pretty uncool of the semi-truck doing that, if I do say so myself. But it was definitely nerve-wracking watching my arm slowly dissolve into a gray mist. But just as suddenly, time snapped back to normal, right as my face kissed the front bumper of the semi-truck.
My last thought was how funny it was that I lived on the fourth floor of an apartment, and yet somehow, I was killed by a semi-truck. Welp, I guess I don't have to deal with bills anymore. So fuck you, Henry, for being a shit landlord. I hope you get traumatized by my splattered corpse.
But I guess God wasn't done with me yet. One moment, I was giving a semi-truck a big ol smooch, and the next, I was falling from fucking space.
Well, great. I got completely ass-fucked by a semi-truck, and now I was about to become another big splatter of guts on someone's yard. Just another big funny joke. But something was wrong as I fell from space… actually, two things were wrong.
First, I was completely on fire, engulfed in flames, but I felt no pain. No burning flesh, no screaming nerves. Just this eerie warmth, like I was wrapped in a cozy blanket. I couldn't even move my body, but I could move my eyes in any direction I wanted, a very, very weird moment.
Second, and this one really made my brain short-circuit, the world below didn't look like Earth at all.
There were massive deserts that stretched farther than I could see, colossal sandstorms swirling like living things, entire patches of land that were just… gray. Dead. Lifeless. And then, scattered across the landscape, were these massive glowing lights, pulsing with colors I couldn't even name, popping up randomly and disappearing seconds after.
They shimmered, twisted, and spun in weird ways, like super weird portals floating midair. No, not portals; that shouldn't be possible… right? Yeah, they looked like portals. Well, that was what my gamer senses told me, at least. Bright, chaotic, beautiful, and completely out of place, portals were everywhere, and I mean everywhere. The sky, the oceans, and the lands were covered in these portals.
So, to sum it up: I was falling from space, on fire, painlessly, toward a world that looked like it was designed by a sleep-deprived game dev on drugs. I was in some sort of apocalyptic earth cause this shit was crazy.
But after falling for what felt like minutes, though it was probably less, I finally reached the ground. As the ground came closer, I thought I was about to become another big red splatter on the side of a large, half-collapsed building.
I braced myself for the impact… but it never came. Instead, I heard this strange mechanical whirring on both sides of me, and at the last second. My plummeting speed dropped drastically in an instant as flames appeared on my lower back.
Actual thrusters roared to life beside me, slowing me to a full stop with a sudden but controlled force. Before I could even begin to panic, I was being carefully guided through the air like some VIP package delivery and gently lowered onto the rooftop of the only still-standing high-rise building in sight.
The place looked like it was still under construction, with walls missing, scaffolding everywhere, and random tools scattered across the concrete floor. A tarp flapped in the wind, and half-empty toolboxes lay nearby.
I stood there for a second, completely stunned, trying to process what had just happened. Was I dead? Dreaming? Lots of questions went through my mind as I looked all around me.
[OK, ok, calm down, Orin. You fell from space, and now you're on top of a building. Thrusters came out of your ass, and, yeah, I have absolutely no idea what to do.] I tried to calm myself down by taking some mental deep breaths and thinking of my next step.
Welp, next logical step? Peek over the edge and at least try to figure out where the hell I was, because I had no clue how to handle this situation. My mama never prepared me for falling from orbit and landing on a skyscraper like a flaming meteorite situation. May God bless her soul.
So I stood up, or tried to, anyway, and attempted to crawl toward the ledge. Key word: tried.
No matter how hard I focused, my body just… wouldn't move. I tried wiggling my fingers. Nothing. Legs? Nada. Head? Still as a damn statue. The only thing I could move were my eyes, and even that felt off.
And then it hit me. I couldn't see my arms. Or legs. Or anything that resembled a human body. And worst of all? I felt round.
Like, uncomfortably round. Spherical, even. I looked around as much as I could, and the weirdest sensation crawled through me, I could feel my shape, and it was definitely not human.
[What the actual hell am I?] I thought, as a cold wave of existential dread began to creep in. I started to panic, massively, because I had no clue what I was anymore. But the weird part? I couldn't feel panic.
I felt… calm. Unnaturally calm. Like something deep inside me was flipping the emotional "off" switch every time I started to spiral. Of course, that just made me want to panic more. I thought maybe I was drugged, hallucinating, or having the wildest mental breakdown in history. But every time the panic began to rise, a strange cooling sensation swept through me, like ice water in my veins, if I even had veins anymore.
It was like my own body, or whatever I was now, was sedating me from the inside. So, left with no way to move and no way to scream, I did the only thing I could: I started examining my surroundings as closely as possible. Scanning every detail. Observing. Because that was literally all I had left.
But honestly? Nothing was interesting. Just some scattered tools, a tarp flapping lazily in the wind, and the skeletal framework of an unfinished building. Nothing glowing. No dramatic signs from the heavens. No sudden realization or godly message etched into the floor.
After a while, I just gave up looking. Maybe this was it. My new life. Was I being punished for something I didn't even remember doing? Some god decided, "Yep, you get to be a ball, stuck in the middle of some apocalyptic wasteland." Great. Just fucking great.
Realizing I was just going to be a ball, stuck on top of a half-built skyscraper in some unknown world, I took another deep mental breath. Because, you know, I couldn't actually breathe. Or speak. Or do anything except sit there and exist. So I did nothing. There was nothing to do.
And just as I started to accept my spherical prison, letting the existential dread settle in like a weighted blanket… something changed.
A transparent blue screen blinked into existence right in front of me, hovering in the air like a heads-up display from some video games. White text began to type itself out across the surface.
(
(1%... error... error... error... Activating failsafe... error... Activating failsafe... error... Activating failsafe... error... Activating failsafe... error…)
(Failsafe not established. Connection to @$(*@% severed. Orders not received. No current orders or commands in the database. Shutting down system… error… error)
[What the fuck?] Hundreds of repeated red texts covered my vision as I tried my best to understand what was happening.
—
Well, give me your honest review of what you think about Orin starting.
Comment on any mistakes or changes I should make!