The house nearest to him was a fairly average one, not dissimilar to the place John had grown up in, if a tad smaller. The dark green front door had been battered off its hinges, and there was a foul, red stain in the carpet in the reception room. Coats that had been knocked from their hooks and shoes that had been sent spilling from their stands littered the corridor beyond. Immediately to the right was another broken door, leading to a living room containing several more stains. A child’s play pen sat in one corner, covered in gore.

  The TV was on, which probably shouldn’t have surprised him. It was playing an emergency alert, text scrolling down the screen. He stopped paying attention to it when he saw the advice to “stay in your home”, instead stepping into the room—making sure to keep that mess in the corner out of his line of sight—to grab the remote and flick through the channels. All were playing the same alert. He managed to get the time from the menu, at least: it had just turned 3PM. That was good to know. He’d lost his phone at some point and hadn’t noticed. He used the thing so infrequently, the fact it wasn’t in his pocket any more hadn’t registered.

  Under the compulsion of morbid curiosity, his eyes inadvertently strayed to the corner of the room he’d been avoiding. His gaze lingered there for barely a second before he was storming out of the room.

  John was tense as he continued on to the kitchen, trying with everything he had to put that scene out of his mind. His jaw was clenching so hard he worried about his teeth, but he couldn’t get it to stop. With trembling hands, he turned on the tap at the sink and spent a moment splashing water on his face, then washed himself down with a cloth where he could.

  There was nothing else downstairs save for a conservatory and a small bathroom, so he headed up. Three doors greeted him, all closed. The nearest, right off the stairs, led to another bathroom with a bath/shower combo. Another of the doors led to a child’s bedroom he only glanced in before moving on to the main bedroom.

  Before he went rifling around in their stuff, John paused to acknowledge the framed pictures sitting atop the dresser. They all showed a bald man and blond woman, documenting their life through their twenties and into their thirties. Both were pretty average. Nothing about them stood out, particularly, aside from the impressive motorbikes that showed up in many of the earlier images, their riders decked out in leather. But they were smiling in every photo, and the only time they didn’t have lovey-dovey eyes for each other was when a new person joined them in the pictures; a cute little girl who had her mother’s eyes and her father’s smile.

  John leaned against the dressed for a long while. He didn’t know whether to consign their faces to his memory or try to force himself to forget. Millions of stories like that of this young family had probably played out and come to a tragic end all across the world in the last hour or so. Nothing about this one would be unique or special. Weighing himself down with the specific knowledge of them would only make things harder for him, he knew. Something like that was too heavy for anyone to carry. Better to compartmentalise.

  To his regret, he felt he had no choice but to lock these feelings away in a box deep inside him. He told himself he’d unpack them later, but really he knew he wouldn’t. Couldn’t, perhaps.

  With a deep breath and a silent apology, he pulled open their drawers and started searching through their clothes. It appeared John had lucked out in terms of sizing: the man of the house had possessed a tall and slim build similar to John’s own, so soon he found a long-sleeved black shirt with a logo of an oddly stylised yellow-lined face with crosses for eyes and its tongue poking out on the front. He didn’t recognise the brand, but it fit well enough.

  A pair of thick black cargo trousers were his bounty in the next drawer, and John changed as quickly as he could, snatching up some socks too. He avoided the underwear drawer, judging that as too far, for now. He could always raid a clothing store or something, later. This stuff was just to tide him over.

  Discarding his ruined old clothes, he went searching through the other cupboards with much more purpose, recalling what the photos had showed him. It didn’t take long to locate his quarry.

  Sure enough, hanging in one of the closets was an array of padded leather biking jackets. It wouldn’t quite constitute armour, but he figured they’d afford him a lot more protection than a hoodie. Coolness factor was another consideration, too. Fashion had never been his forte, but he was fairly sure biker jackets were stylish. He hadn’t seen anything to indicate such things would make a difference with his aura yet, but he figured it was a reasonable assumption to make. Aesthetics were a big part of badassery, in his mind.

  The young couple had dozens of the jackets stored away, with a variety of styles. Most were black, with various patches sewn onto them, representing brands, locations, events, and so on. John found himself admiring them, reading the story of the unknown couple’s lives before all this. They’d evidently travelled a lot, all over the world. He saw patches for races and rallies in China, India, Brazil, Spain, Sweden, and more.

  Taking those felt like it would’ve been disrespectful, so it was a good thing there was more to their collection than the jacket equivalent of global postage stamp scrapbooks. The closet had clearly been arranged to be divided along that line, because the nature of the jackets abruptly changed.

  The first he saw without patches was a black jacket with flame patterns sewn onto the sleeves and hem. Next was a piece with angel wings on the back and black tassels hanging from the bottom of the sleeves all the way up to the armpit. Another had an image of a dog with the text ‘bad to the bone’. After that was some kind of Akira special edition merch, with a still image of that iconic motorcycle slide scene stitched to the back. They were all pretty fucking awesome. He could see why the couple hadn’t parted with these, even after they’d evidently given up their biking adventures after having a child.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  But there was one that he knew he was taking as soon as he saw it. It just fit too well with the kind of ‘badass’ aesthetic he was starting to think the Aura system appreciated. Frankly, it had caught his eye from the beginning, its bright colour standing out so starkly among all the black.

  Its leather had been dyed an eye-catching neon red, with slightly darker accents rounding its thick shoulder pads, and black-and-gold lines accenting the piece like circuitry. Sporting a high collar that would almost entirely cover his neck from behind and numerous straps and buckles on the arms, as well as little patches, it had clearly been designed to be the most over-the-top cool factor biker jacket you could get. The grinning black skull made up of little gemstones sewn onto the back completed the piece.

  The moment he put it on, he knew he’d made the right decision.

  +100 Aura

  He felt like a complete tool on multiple levels. Quite apart from the fact he was almost certainly robbing a dead man’s clothes, this kind of aesthetic was just not him in any way, shape, or form. He was the type of guy who wore oversized hoodies and trousers with neutral colours so he could hide in them and escape notice. For most of his teenage years he’d thought of his clothes as camouflage, picking whatever would make him most anonymous, hoping to avoid giving anyone any ammunition to use against him. What was he supposed to do without a hood that could shut out the world?

  But if he wanted to survive this madness, he couldn’t be that person. He had no choice but to open himself up to humiliation and ridicule.

  Anxiety twisted his stomach into knots. It was getting hard to swallow past the lump in his throat. His heart was fluttering like he was falling, falling, falling and the ground was rushing up to meet him.

  Moving to the floor-to-ceiling mirror he’d been avoiding, he checked himself out. The jacket didn’t fit perfectly. When he zipped it up, it was clear the wide shoulders were hanging off his frame a little bit, even with Level 2 Strength. The cargo trousers were better. He went searching through the closet some more for a pair of black motorcycle boots with red accents. They fit a little tight, but they definitely suited the look better than his ratty old timberlands would’ve.

  Distracted as he was by assessing his outfit from multiple angles, it took an embarrassingly long time to notice the changes in his face.

  In recent years, looking in the mirror had showed him pale skin marred by angry red acne scars on his cheeks, sunken dark rings beneath his eyes, and a jawline that could best be described as “there”—neither sharp nor weak. Dark hair had started to hint at thinning out since his late teens, though he counted his blessings that it had only receded up his forehead a little bit so far. At his best, he’d been average, and he hadn’t been at his best in a long time.

  Now, it was like he’d finally got up off his ass and tried to do something about it years ago, and he was looking at the fruits of that labour. The first thing he noticed was the lack of acne scars. That had been his biggest insecurity all throughout his teenage years, zits covering his cheeks like a rash. Even when the hormonal acne had passed, they’d left behind a parting fuck you.

  He moved closer to the mirror, his hands unconsciously coming up to gently run the tips of his fingers over smooth skin. From here, he could see there were still hints of scarring. But the redness was gone. That was the important part.

  His complexion had gained some life—some Vitality, he supposed. Previously pale skin was now glowing, as they said. He finally understood that phrase. There was a sheen to his face that had nothing to do with sweat or oil. It was surreal to see no dark circles underneath his eyes. The black pores that had dotted his nose were gone, too.

  Laughter bubbled up from his belly, and he let it out. The sudden urge to see how the rest of his body had changed with his own eyes overtook him, and he quickly shrugged off the clothes he’d robbed. When changing earlier, it somehow hadn’t occurred to him, as he was so focused on the clothes themselves.

  His body hadn’t been as much of an insecurity for him, but there was never a point in his life where he could definitively say he’d been happy with it. He’d merely been… not unhappy. Apathetic to its existence, for the most part, aside from that one time the acne had spread to his shoulders and back, and he’d thought he would never be able to take his shirt off again.

  Standing in his boxers before the mirror, he saw the same vitality that had revived his face was present all over his body. His body that was corded with lithe muscle. His stomach wasn’t quite a six-pack, but he could see his abs. A hint of pecs puffed out his chest, and there was visible bulk on his arms and shoulders. His legs had beefed up, too. That was a part of one’s body he’d never really considered in terms of muscle, but he couldn’t deny that they looked much better with a bit of meat on them. No one would be calling him chicken legs if they saw them, that was for sure.

  Feeling this change in himself was different from seeing it. Elation grabbed his heart and tossed it in the air. He felt like he was flying. This was by far the best he’d ever looked.

  And all it took was some strange superpower thrust upon him at the end of the world. No real effort of his own. A shortcut.

  His shoulders slumped as that reminder slapped him back down to Earth. Still, he couldn’t stop stealing looks at himself as he donned his new outfit once more. It was hard to believe that was him. Even the few scars he’d accumulated in his life had vanished.

  When he was dressed, he stayed staring at that mirror for a long time, taking in the guy looking back at him. The red leather jacket with its collar popped. The black cargo pants tucked into stylish black-and-red motorcycle boots. There was just one more thing missing, though, and he spent a while rifling through the various cupboards and wardrobes and drawers until he found it, then returned to the mirror with the final piece of the puzzle in hand.

  Slipping on the pair of black aviator sunglasses, he smirked at his reflection.

  “Time to kill some monsters,” he said.

  +100 Aura

  But first, some more Aura admin.