The Ability Era

1: Lucky

Paul Miller – "The Locksmith"

"I'm hit!" an obnoxious voice yelled with a squeal. It was Paul's squad mate and partner Pedro Garcia, a fat guy with a neck beard and long curly brown hair. He wore a green shirt with palm trees on it and khaki shorts, his belly could be seen sticking out near the bottom of his shirt. He was trying his best to take cover behind a stack of crates but the shooter managed to hit him in the left shoulder which stuck out from behind the crate.

"Pull out! YOLO!" Paul yelled to him as he tossed a smoke grenade.

Their opponents were four men with automatic assault rifles, all wearing matching black suits, even matching red ties. On their head was a black helmet of sorts that covered their hair with a futuristic looking red visor that covered the top half of their faces. Probably some aim assisting item, Paul thought. All Paul had now was a pitiful basic pistol.

The grey smoke spread instantaneously throughout the whole room and the suited men started reloading, one of them was still shooting in the general vicinity of Pedro. Pedro pulled out of cover and began running towards the exit of the crate-filled warehouse. He managed to escape while the smoke was up, and Paul was getting ready to make his escape but then he realized the smoke was dissipating quickly.

"It was supposed to last five minutes!" Paul said aloud cursing. He decided then to stop buying cheap items and avoid shady merchants. But it might have been too late to put that into practice.

One of the suited men, laughed. "It's over. You'll soon learn not to cross the League of Litigation."

"Your guild name sucks dude," Paul said. "LOL? More like Lots of Losers."

Paul poked his head over the box as he was speaking and noticed one of them was loading a rocket launcher. One of them spotted him peeking and began shooting.

"Come on guys," Paul said beginning to panic, "I'll double the goods just give me a week."

"It's too late for that now Locksmith," one said.

Paul believed it was over; this time there was no way out. He could run to the main exit but he would get shot down immediately. If he stayed behind cover he would explode. He wanted to at least go down swinging but he had run out of ammo on his only weapon. He was fairly poor in this world; he could only afford the basics, food, water, and shelter. This operation was his ticket to becoming stronger, he figured the LOL members had some decent loot and they did. But it all ended in failure and Paul cursed himself for losing to a bunch of lame generic evil businessmen looking people.

He suddenly heard the sound of an automatic weapon shooting but not at him. The confused shouts of the suit men brought Paul to peek again. The men lay on the ground dead. Bullets littered the dull grey floor and behind them in the back door stood a girl. She wore a green military cap, and green camouflage pants and jacket over a white tank top. Her blonde hair was neatly in a ponytail and her eyes were light blue. She was about 5'5" (just a few inches shorter than Paul) and she appeared to be younger than Paul who was 20.

"Who are you?" Paul asked confused.

She ignored him and didn't even spare him a look. She approached the bodies and began looting them. She picked up all their weapons and they evaporated into thin air in her hands as they entered her inventory.

"Excuse me?" Paul said walking up to the bodies.

She turned to him and pointed a bayonetted rifle which had appeared into her hands instantaneously at him.