Hector Miranda let out a contented sigh as he snuggled into the plush pillows covering the massive four poster bed. This was the life — relaxing in luxury after a long night of drinking and fucking, a pair of nines passed out on each side. It had taken him hours but he’d finally worn down each girl’s stamina to the point that they fell asleep as soon as their bodies hit the bed. Not that he was complaining; a night-long orgy was one of his favorite ways to pass the time. He had to find something to fill the hours with in this world without the internet and basketball, after all.

Had it really only been a bit more than half a year since he’d ended up in this world? Just two seasons since he’d stumbled down a mountain and into the path of a patrolling Gustilian platoon? It felt like so much had happened since that fateful day. But now here he was, the rising star of the Gustilian army, with fame, fortune, and smoking hot girls climbing over each other to be the one he chose to bed each night.

A rank odor wafted into Hector’s nostrils, making it abundantly clear that he reeked of sweat. Time for a bath. He grabbed several handfuls as he climbed over the still forms of tonight’s conquests. Gustilian women tended towards the meatier side of the spectrum, which matched his tastes. Naked as a jaybird, he strode casually into an adjacent room, where in the center sat a large wooden tub filled with clear water.

The rudimentary nature of the bathroom served as a stark reminder of the many amenities that Scyria lacked when compared to Earth, but Hector didn’t really miss his homeworld much at all. Growing up in Argentina, he’d watched as his national basketball team, built on the backs of a group of players known as the Golden Generation, changed the sport on a global level. All through his childhood he’d dreamed about being a part of the next wave of Argentinian basketball. He’d practiced and trained every day, working on his skills and understanding of the game. He’d joined every league he could and played as much as possible to get the most experience. He’d even had the luck to grow tall, standing at an impressive two meters. But when the time had come, he’d been passed over for others. Despite his skills and feel for the game, they’d told him that he was too slow, that his jump wasn’t high enough, that his wingspan was too short, that he was too weak.

Unable to realize his dreams, Hector had ended up playing professionally for a second division team in the Japanese “B.League”, fighting through the low pay and poor conditions in an effort to show the world his greatness. Yet every time he tried to get a spot in a more prestigious league, the spot would be filled by somebody stronger, somebody faster, somebody longer. That was when he’d realized that talent was everything on Earth. Hard work and practice meant nothing, because in the end, talent won over skill every time. It wasn’t fair.

Hector grabbed a small wooden pail from the floor beside the tub and stepped into the cold water. In one smooth motion, he scooped up a pail’s-worth of bathwater and poured it over his head. An invigorating chill cascaded down his bare body, washing away the sweat. Droplets of water glistened in the light of the three moons as they fell from his powerful muscles. He smiled. Nobody could say those things about him anymore. These days he could outrun a car. These days he could lift a boulder the size of a house over his head. These days he could jump over a basketball hoop with ease.

He wasn’t entirely alone in his awesomeness; most people here seemed capable of some sort of minor miracle. A select few were even able to rival aspects of his physical prowess. But that was where the similarities ended. Yes, he now possessed a body that would make heroes of myths turn green with envy, but he felt that was almost a secondary feature, a byproduct of his transformation. His true gift wasn’t physical prowess. It was something far better.

Hector reached for the soap, only to find it missing. He’d forgotten to grab it from the edge of the small table near the room’s entrance. This presented a problem — he wanted to get fully clean, but he didn’t want to get out of the tub before he was finished. Luckily, he had a solution. Hefting the empty pail in his right hand, he chucked the wooden container bottom first in the direction of the doorway, the bucket spinning in a perfect spiral. The pail caromed off of the side wall, then the back, and careened towards the table in a loose tumble. As if guided by an invisible hand, the bucket clipped the soap as it bounced off the edge of the table, knocking the soap off the counter. Still tumbling, the bucket bounced against the ground, its opening rotating up just in time to catch the falling soap before the container’s remaining momentum tipped it on its side and sent it rolling in a slow, wide arc that ended just beside the tub.

Bending over to pick up his prize, Hector chuckled at the thought of what his coaches would think if they could see him now. It would take a normal person hundreds of thousands of attempts to pull off what he’d done on his first try. But this outcome wasn’t the product of luck; no, it was skill. Ultimate, innate skill. As soon as he’d come up with the idea, he’d known the proper angle, speed, and rotation to throw it, as well as where and how to hold it, as if he’d thrown that very bucket a trillion times... but he’d never held the thing in before in his life until just that night.

That was his gift — mastery. As soon as he held an inanimate object, it was as if he was the world’s preeminent master of it until several minutes after he let it go. It didn’t matter what the object was. As soon as he grabbed it, he knew exactly how to use it properly and perfectly. With a sword in his hand, he could parry the blows of ten people at once. With a bow in his grasp, he could hit any target within range. If a feat was possible, he could do it and make it look easy.

There were limits, of course. He never gained any sort of permanent knowledge or understanding. This strange, wondrous skill worked on an almost subconscious level. He’d want to do something and then he’d do it, the actions just flowing out of his body like some sort of hyper-charged muscle memory. But that muscle memory extended to more than just executing singular actions. It encompassed all the instincts of the ultimate expert. He would fall into a perfect stance. He would feel the proper way to use what he held. He would be able to feel if the object was going to break. He just wouldn’t be able to explain the reasons for any of it.

With such an impossible power, it was no surprise that he’d become a celebrity in this country of knights. All it had taken was a single tournament to rocket him to stardom. The audience had oohed and ahhed as he’d danced through the early free-for-alls. Designed to weed out the weaker entrants, those battles for him had been little more than exercises in free-form improvisation as he’d fought with whatever he could get his hands on mid-fight. A shield, a whip, a club, it didn’t matter — he was unparalleled no matter what he held, a whirlwind of destruction that earned him the nickname “The Storm”. Then, in the later one-on-one duels, he’d made the crowd gasp by purposely choosing his weapons to match his opponent every time, embarrassing his foes in front of everybody through displays of superior skill.

Sufficiently rinsed, Hector stepped back out of the tub and grabbed a nearby towel. The water dripping off his body pooled around him on the smooth stone floor. He had to admit that the Gustilians' ability to construct whole buildings out of stone was rather impressive. The floor beneath him felt so solid that he would have thought he were on the ground floor if he hadn’t climbed two flights of stairs to get to his room. Of course, not all buildings in Gustil were made from solid stone; only important buildings and the homes of the wealthy got the full stone treatment. The rest of the poor sods had to make do with wood like the sad losers they were.

Hector wasn’t a loser anymore, so he’d taken up temporary residence in the penthouse of a fancy hotel. No creaky wood for him, not even now while on vacation. In the interest of national morale, the Gustilian Army’s top brass had decided to send him on a tour around the country to show off his awesomeness to the public. He personally loved the idea, since it basically meant he was being paid to go on holiday. He would arrive at some city, put on a few shows for the locals, and sample the region’s food, fun, and females while he was there.

His current location was the city of Nefin, home to three-quarters of a million people. The city held the distinction of the number one tourist city in Gustil, though in this society “tourism” basically meant this was where the rich people from the capital owned their second or third homes and spent the hot summers. It was cooler here than in most of Gustil thanks to its close proximity to the ocean, the water only a kilometer or two north of the city wall. You wouldn’t find any beaches here, however. Sitting in the shadow of the enormous mountains known as the Divide, Nefin stood well above sea level. Instead of beaches, there was only a cliff — a sheer vertical cliff hundreds of meters high. Down below, the deep sea battered the cliff side with wave after wave, slowly wearing away at the bedrock. To Hector, it was as if some giant had taken a giant chainsaw and cut out the rest of the earth.

Even if there were a beach, nobody here would go anywhere near it. The locals seemed to fear the ocean for reasons he couldn’t quite understand. Something about giant sea monsters. He chalked it up to the same superstitions as their gods and everything else. He didn’t believe in that nonsense, Scyrian nor Terran. He didn’t believe in any religion other than himself. Sure, his family had dragged him to the local Catholic church every Sunday throughout his entire childhood, but he’d never been interested in such things, especially Catholicism. He hated the whole idea of being a “servant” to anything or anybody, even to a “higher power”, and it didn’t help that Jesus was one weak-ass higher power. The dude always seemed like such a little bitch.

As soon as he’d become old enough to live on his own he’d stopped attending any sort of religious service. When his mother asked about it, he’d just lie. What she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her, right? For a split second, the thought of his mother led to thoughts of his family, and to how they were doing after his disappearance, but he mentally shoved those thoughts aside. Nothing he could do about it, after all. They were there and he was h-

Naked and still holding the small bucket in his hand, Hector froze halfway just before the bedroom doorway, his body suddenly still and his senses set to max. Closing his eyes, he concentrated fully on his hearing, trying to filter out the sounds of his body and the rooms. There. He hadn’t imagined it. Every so often he could hear the soft scrabbling of somebody climbing their way up the outside of the hotel, and trying to be a quiet as possible about it. His head twitched as his ears caught new sounds elsewhere outside. Correction — three people. And they were getting closer.

His eyes darting about the rooms, Hector felt his heartbeat quicken. Two windows in the bedroom, one in the bathroom. One person per window. Whoever they were, they were coming for him, not that this wasn’t obvious from the start. Who else would they be here for? One of the sluts on the bed? Not a chance.

A cold grin slowly grew on his face. Tiptoeing to the closest window in the bedroom, he paused and listened again. Somebody was close — just a few meters. His grin widened. Silently, he raised his right foot and began to count to twenty. Nefin architecture seemed to stress large, tall windows with the bottom of the frame no more than half a meter from the floor, perhaps in an effort to maximize airflow in the hot summers. This inn was no exception. At first he’d found the large gaps annoying. There was always a draft and he had to keep the shutters on every window fully closed so as not to broadcast the minutiae of his nightly exploits to the whole city. But he’d changed his mind now, because the low window meant he could do this.

Once his mental count hit twenty, Hector kicked his foot forward as hard as he could. There was a nanosecond of resistance as the sole of his foot met the thick wooden shutters, but with his impossible strength the wood might as well have been paper, shattering the lower half into pieces. A split second later his foot hit something else, something soft and fleshy. He could feel bone snap under the force of his mighty blow. A cry rang out.

“Surprise, fuckers!” Hector laughed as the voice quickly grew softer before suddenly cutting off with a sickening thud from down below.

There was a moment of stunned silence before the window to his right slammed open, a long, lithe woman rolling into the room. Wearing a tight black outfit that seemed tailored for flexibility and speed, the woman rose to her feet with a deadly calm in her eyes. Her short green hair accented her cute boyish face, lending her an attractive tomboyish quality, but her body was sadly lacking in curves, her chest as flat as a board and her body far too muscular. A seven at best. In the woman’s hands two long hooked knives gleamed in the moonlight.

Hector grinned a predatory grin and readied his wooden bucket in his right hand. Sure, several weapons sat in the corner on the other side of the room, but he needed a little excitement in his life. Even bedding gorgeous women got old eventually. Plus, using a real weapon would be giving these mysterious assailants more respect than they’d given him. Three people? That was all? It was positively insulting!

The woman charged him, her knives held low and out to her sides. As she came within range, she struck with both weapons, one slightly after the other. Hector stepped to the side, out of the path of the first blade, and parried the second attack with the bucket, using the lip to catch the curved blade and pull his opponent off balance. With his free left hand he delivered a mighty punch to her gut, and immediately had to fight back a hiss of pain. It was like punching a rock!

The force of the blow sent her tumbling back, but she immediately popped back up as if none the worse for wear. Hector shook his hand to drive the pain away.

“Who are you people?” he asked. The woman just grunted and charged again.

Dodging and blocking the flurry of swipes and thrusts, Hector slowly backed away until he found himself cornered between the outside wall and the wall between the bedroom and bathroom. Her prey trapped, the woman went in with even more fervor, trying to press her advantage, but Hector just chuckled and jumped straight up, kicking off of the wall so that he flipped easily over her and her attacks. As he passed overhead, Hector pushed the pail down over her head with an amused smirk, cutting off her vision. His assailant went stiff in panic for a split second as the world went dark around her, before trying to dodge away while removing the bucket, but it was too late. Hector’s leg swept her off her feet, toppling her to the ground.

Before the woman could even react, Hector’s strong hands had seized her ankles. If directly hitting this woman hurt, he’d just have to let something else hard deal the damage! With a quick jerk, he lifted her off the ground legs first and swung her about, the bucket popping off and bouncing towards the doorway to the bathroom. The woman put her arms around her head as Hector swung her through the nearby furniture as hard as he could, including a nearby dresser and table, before letting her go and watching her fly across the room, crashing through one of the bed’s bedposts and breaking it in two on her way through. She slammed into the wall on the other side of the room and slumped down to the ground, woozy but still conscious, the impact knocking her two knives from her grip and sending them skidding across the floor.

Shrill shrieks pierced the late night air. All this commotion had roused Hector’s bedmates from their slumber. They stared with confusion and horror at the broken shutters, the pieces of destroyed furniture, and the stunned woman slumped against the wall. Oh, right. He’d completely forgotten about them.

“What are you still doing here?!” he barked, annoyed at their lollygagging. “Get the fuck out! You’ll get in my way!”

The girls fled quickly as he approached the downed woman. Groggy as she was, she was still trying her hardest to stagger back to her feet before he got to her. She wasn’t going to make it. Towering over her, Hector raised his foot up, ready for a stomp, when his ears caught a soft whistling sound coming from his right side. His instincts screaming at him, he jumped backwards and landed on the bed as a large curved sword rocketed through his previous position. Then to his shock, the sword’s vector changed, arcing towards him, the blade seeming to home in on his position. He rolled desperately to the side and the blade missed him by less than a centimeter before seemingly being pulled back by something.

Rolling himself off the far side of the bed, Hector looked up to find a man with long, thin limbs and a curved sword in each hand, standing in the doorway to the bathroom. The third enemy had finally appeared. Wasting no time, the man drew his arms back, his shoulders seeming to bunch up, before he swung both his arms forward. Hector’s eyes widened as the man’s arms seemed to stretch, the limbs elongating until they snapped at him almost like whips, the sword in each hand coming after him with unexpected speed. Hector threw himself to the ground, using the bed as cover to avoid the blades, and grumbled. What the hell was this annoying Fantastic Four bullshit?

Hector juked, twisted, and dodged his way around the bed and towards his opponent, using his superior strength and flexibility to avoid the man’s whip-like strikes. Luckily for Hector, the room’s walls and the posts of the bed worked to constrict the possible directions the man could strike from. Clearly frustrated at his lack of success, the man’s shoulders bunched up again and both swords rocketed straight at Hector even faster than before, but this time Hector was ready. In fact, this was what he’d been waiting for.

Springing to the side, the swords whizzing just centimeters from his flesh, Hector grabbed the nearby bucket and spun about, sending the wooden container hurtling toward the new opponent as blinding speed. His arms outstretched to several meters long, the man was unable to bring his arms up quickly enough to block. With a sickening crunch, the pail smashed into his face, pulverizing his nose and sending him rocking back. The bucket bounced off of his face and tumbled through the air in the beginning of a slow arc, but before it could move more than half a meter Hector was already there, flipping through the air towards the impromptu projectile. With a swing of one mighty leg, he executed Scyria’s very first bicycle kick, sending the bucket slamming back into the man’s head with brutal force. The pail splintered into tiny pieces and the man dropped to the floor like a sack of bricks.

A rage-filled grunt brought Hector’s attention to his left, where his original opponent had finished picking herself up. Finding herself weaponless, she let out a defiant scream and sent a fist his way, but Hector simply caught her by the wrist, grabbed her shoulder with his other hand, and threw her to the ground. “I’m disappointed,” he said as he grabbed the woman roughly by the back of her neck and lifted her roughly into the air. “I thought you would be more fun than this.”

The woman squirmed and fought but given that he was behind her, she couldn’t generate enough force to make him even bother to care. Without her knives, she couldn’t do anything to hurt him as she was. “This is your last chance to tell me who you are and why you’re here,” Hector said, twisting the woman’s head so they could look each other in the eyes. She responded by spitting in his face.

“Fucking bitch!” he growled. “Fine! Let’s get this over with. I bet you think I can’t kill you with your hard body bullshit. Let’s find out, shall we?”

Hector forcefully pulled the woman over to the broken bedpost. The pole, once over two meters tall, now stood at little over a meter, the tip of the wood a sharp jagged edge left over from the break. With his right hand still holding her by the neck, Hector grabbed the top of her head with his left hand and squeezed, making sure to get a good grip. “You can make the outside of your body hard, but can you do the same for the inside?” he asked, malice dripping from every word. He let go of her neck with his right hand and grabbed her jaw with his vice-like fingers. “Say ‘ahhhh’!”

The woman struggled frantically, but she was no match for Hector’s vastly superior strength. With a triumphant grin, he forced the woman’s mouth wide, and then plunged her head towards the jagged bedpost with overwhelming force so that the spike entered her mouth and stabbed its way straight into her brain with a disgusting ‘shluck’. The woman’s body twitched violently for a moment and then went still.

How boring. With a sigh, Hector straightened up and surveyed the room. Pieces of wood from the broken table, dresser, shutters, and bucket were strewn about the floor, leaving the room looking like a war zone, and that was before you looked at the freshly cooling body beside him. The impaled woman’s dead eyes stared vacantly forward as blood dripped slowly down the bedpost, her body slumped awkwardly against the end of the bed. It was a gruesome sight, but somebody would clean it up. That somebody being somebody else, of course.

Just as he was about to head down and notify somebody about the attack, the crash of a gong rang out off in the distance, loud enough to wake the entire city. Another crash followed moments later. Leaning out the broken window, Hector realized the sound was coming from the city’s north wall. The city was under attack! He glanced at the dead woman behind him and the limp but breathing form near the bathroom. Perhaps this wasn’t a coincidence...

Either way, Hector knew one thing: an attack was a great time to show off his greatness. Quickly he dug through the wreckage of the hotel’s dresser and pulled out the most fashionable clothes he could find and threw them on. He had to make sure he looked fine when the whole city watched, after all. Once he was finished dressing, he sauntered over to his personal weapon collection and tried to figure out which weapon to take with him. He had knives, several swords of varying sizes, a mace, an axe, a polearm, a bow... The choice wasn’t an easy one, since he was equally incredible with all of his options. Finally, he decided on the polearm, since its size made look the most impressive. His preparations complete, he grabbed the unconscious form of his male attacker, slung him over his shoulder, and leapt out of the window towards a nearby rooftop. Time to turn some heads.