“You have got to be shitting me! Instead of tearing my hands up every time I yank one of these bastards out, I could have just made black, tentacle fingers and scooped the shit out of them!”

As Jake was lamenting his limited intelligence, a small group of earthlings slowly made their way towards the forest area surrounding the cleared zone, north of the city. 2 guys and 2 girls suddenly stopped in their tracks, taking in the spectacle of a brown haired, brown eyed, young man kicking clumps of dirt around like he was trying out for the local soccer team. Slowly the group approached this strange creature and one brave soul amongst them, a guy who looked like Malfoy’s asian twin, sporting cheap leather armour and a crappy bronze sword, decided to make first contact.

“Hey, are you alright?”

Snapping out of his rampage, Jake whipped his head around like Willow Smith to gaze upon the group.

“Um, yes?” He answered, suddenly unsure of himself.

“Listen, we are going to try and subjugate some Furry Frogs if you want to party up? We have a couple close combatants and a couple ranged damage dealers but you know how 5 is the magic number. Party quest creds are split 5 ways and any creds from the kills are split evenly. I’m Ximing by the way, the other guy who looks like a brawler is Stuart, and the 2 girls over there are Amy and Anna. They are both sisters who’s dad was an American prepper so they know how to use those bows.”

Jake swivelled his head to inspect the other group members. Stuart looked like he was friendly with the local steroid distributer, big, muscly, and black as midnight. Amy was the shorter of the 2 girls and probably a couple years younger at around 20, about 5’5”, blond haired and blue eyed while Anna was a couple inches taller and her locks were more dirty blonde but the resemblance was uncanny. They weren’t gorgeous like most first female encounters, but more friendly? Jake supposed, was the best description of their faces, plane Janes of the Californian coast.

Yes, Monitors and fancy tech was seen in this world, however when it came to fire arms Prime simply skipped along. The main reason being that imbuing each bullet with a persons mana was almost impossible at a fully automatic rate, even if prepared before hand the mana never seems to sit well with the gunpowder so alchemists just decided to stop making it. when that happened the world of Gunsmithing simply ceased to be cost effective. So back to the basics they went, especially when wood was an excellent conductor of mana as it thrived in this world naturally. Jake found out the basics of the story on his morning stroll when he noticed that in every weapons shop window, bows were the norm. Thinking that it was a little out of place, Jake searched the local ‘Mananet’ on his band for information. Although the Mananet doesn't hold the resources of the library and is really more of a forum for the cities populace, Jake was still able to find a couple people’s queries about this strange occurrence. It seemed like some Texan was complainingabout the fact that he couldn't get his hands on a Colt or Desert Eagle, was finally directed to the public library where he begrudgingly had to look in a history book on Alchemy. That was when shit hit the fan as “Every Texan is born and buried with a gun”, or so he was posting everywhere.

“Why would you want a random person though? I mean there must be tons of people to ask right?”

Ximing, seeing the honesty in Jakes eyes was a little shocked.

“Dude, did you not realise that the clans have picked up a crap load of our people? At like 8am this morning they went around on a mad recruiting spree hoping to find people with good traits. Some of us rejected because we are Class G straight off the bat and wanted to try our luck, but a lot of H people joined up for the safety and security even if they will most likely be cleaning toilets.

Hell, even some G guys got offers to join as a Clan apprentice, this one guy had ‘Bill Wayne’ as his trait and it said something about him being Bruce’s illegitimate brother so he gets perks in gadget creation and suave. The Shadow Clan picked him up like a stripper grabbing singles.”

> Batman is amongst us! Well I guess that means Fate must take into account who we are and what we aspire to be when we are assigned a trait, thats pretty awesome as it gives you the potential to climb and reach for it but requires you put in the work to Class up. I bet the Clans took those people in to find the ones with potential and those without will probably become serfs or disappear. Gandalf, or whatever (Gerard) did say that this world wasn’t a nice place after all. Oh right, reply, stop looking off into space.

“Um, no. I kind of got an early start to the day. What traits did you guys get? Is it cool to ask that?”

Smilling Ximing replied.

“Yeah its cool, no harm in asking. I got the ‘Heaven Severing’ trait which pretty much helps me imbue mana into my sword, it’s a bit tricky because theres no numerical value of a persons mana, but come on, I'm not gonna complain when mana is a real thing. Stuart got something called ‘Herculean’ that boosted his strength stat and the girls got some kind bow stuff that helps their arrows or something, its not really my area of interest. What did you get?”

Jake caught himself before he blurted his trait out.

> I don’t think people will take it too well if I tell them my trait is a virus. Resident Evil really didn’t help my generation see things logically.. Or all the damn zombie movies. Maybe I’ll just go with something that explains my trait broadly, yep, going with that.

“Mines called ‘Hidden Weapons’ and its pretty much a cool way of smuggling weapons into my body. NO! Not what your thinking of. They don’t go up there, the weapons kind of meld into my skin? Like this see.”

“Damn, your like a member of Assassins Creed with that thing. At least you don't have to worry about a spring mechanism if it literally comes out of your wrist.”

Jake had just formed a thin, double edged knife about 3cm’s wide and 15cm’s long protruding from the underside of his wrist. This way he figured he could take on a rogue appearance and it would minimise the amount people saw him manipulating his body. Thinking over his past days of weed collecting, although he REALLY didn't want to go hang out with these people, he figured the experience of hunting would be worth it. Plus, joining their group quest would net him some much needed credits, after all he had been slumming it a bit until he could hand in his picking quest.

“I guess I’ll be the group rogue then. I’m Jake, lets hunt some Fuzzies.”