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---   Troubled Teen   ---

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There was a blue sky, with white cotton clouds in the distance and nothing else.

Well, nothing else but me, but it wasn’t really ‘me’, it was… me without the worries. No body, no thoughts, just my mind souring through an empty sky.

I could just be free, flying, with nothing else to do, think or stress about.

 

…

 

I awoke with a start, the bright morning rays easily piercing through the flimsy curtains covering my window. I sat up with a groan as I wondered if my mom purposely bought ones like that just so I couldn’t sleep in. The yellow light illuminating my room, making my white walls softly glow with the rise of the morning sun. I yawned and stretched, cracking dozens of joints from my back to the tips of my fingers while still feeling mildly disgruntled at getting woken up like this.

But my vague annoyance at the world was interrupted by a nagging feeling at the back of my head, like I’d forgotten something.

I glanced around my room, searching for a clue amongst the vaguely organised mess. A pile of my generic city clothes on the floor, nothing interesting there.

My desk full of disorganised pieces of paper and sticky note reminders, nothing there rang a bell.

I took another sweeping look of room hoping something might be able to remind me of what I’d missed.

But I saw not a thing but the soulless posters hung on my walls that did nothing but fill the space and furniture that looked like it’d been ripped out of an Ikea display. I wished I could make the place more personal, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what I wanted.

After sighing and adding another problem to the list of things to do eventually, I noticed my school bag laying half-opened on the floor, a couple of familiar pieces of paper sticking out the top.

Oh, that’s where my notes went.

My notes for what?...

Right, the final exams.

When were they again? I reached around the side of the bed to pick up my phone on the floor, checking the time. 8:43 AM, and my exams started at… 9:00.

Leaving me fifteen minutes to make the twenty-minute trip to the exam that you had to be fifteen minutes early to.

F#ck.

I launched myself out of bed and practically diving into my closet, sorting through the pile of clothes that should probably be washed, but was still in that middle area of ‘not that smelly’. I found the school uniform and slipped into the creased clothes, smoothing out the collared shirt the best I could so I at least met the minimum standards. I didn’t really have it me to care that much about my appearance, but everyone else seemed to care and that meant I had too. As soon as I managed to get most of the buttons done up, I grabbed my bag and ran out of the room while zipping it up.

Then I faced my next challenge, the treacherously cramped hallway filled with my parents’ personal museum of all of the tourist traps they’ve fallen for. Each side of the already small passage was lined with idols and trinkets, the crude handiwork was obvious even to a high school student. I shimmied past all of the shelves and tables filled with woodwork and carved stones, stopping before one of the few things from the collection I genuinely despised. It was a large mirror around the same size as a person, with cheap wooden edges that always gave me splinters whenever I got dragged into moving it around the house.

This thing always seemed to creep me out, making creepy reflections of me whenever I walk by it at night and always highlighting my worst features whenever I looked. Making my unshaven stubble look like dirt and muck smeared on my face, twisting my body ‘till it’s even more lanky than usual and making my face completely forgettable. It somehow made my meagre looks look even worse every time I looked into it, like right this very second.

I stared at my reflection for a moment, appreciating the absolute mediocrity of it. A face no-one could remember, even I barely could. I noticed my messy long hair and decided to take a minute out of my borrowed time to quickly neaten it up, taking a comb made of ivory that’d been left on a nearby shelf and getting rid of the obvious knots. While I did so, I noticed my thin arms and body, and wondered if I should try working out like most of my friends.

“Nah, why’d I want to be a gym rat like them?” I laughed to myself, wondering why my whole group of friends were obsessed with getting muscles, I really couldn’t understand the appeal.

I shook my head, breaking the distracting train of thoughts and refocusing on the bigger problem at hand, me possibly failing my final exam of high school. I rushed out of the hallway with a renewed sense of acute anxiety, flying into the kitchen like an agitated raccoon. I ignored my mum who was busy experimenting with some veggie that I’d never heard of, and probably in the process of creating a new and unholy food group that’d be worshiped by middle aged moms everywhere.

“Hi sweetie, late again?” She sarcastically asked with a soft smile.

“Who knows” I rhetorically answered, before both of us laughed, our habit of being unbearably sarcastic whenever the other messes up being one of our oldest jokes.

“See ya’ this afternoon” I said happily, latching onto my newfound good mood and grabbing a couple bananas to replace breakfast. I waved goodbye to mum as I launched myself out the front door, running on the cracked tiles with weeds popping through the gaps.

I grabbed my bike that’d been left leaning against the front fence, unchaining it and jumping onto it. I started aggressively cycling down the side path shoved onto the side of the road, holding a banana in one hand and unstably clutching the handlebars in the other.

I honestly felt like I might crash my bike any second, multitasking like this certainly wasn’t my strong suit. But alas, the struggle to get to school on time had to continue as I came to a stop when I reached an intersection.

I anxiously stood there with on foot holding me up, staring at the red little man on the pole across the street, wishing for him to turn green. As I stood there, I renewed my resolve to get through this and achieve a decent enough score to get into an okay university.

A sigh leaked from my mouth, and I wondered if university was going to be any different from high school, if I’d be able to find a course that I actually cared about. Currently it just felt like a cardboard cut-out of a life, something everyone told me was right, but just felt hollow and lacking in any sort of passion.

I did math course because I was good at it, not because I liked it. While there was some gratification in being good, or rather prideful satisfaction in being better than most people, it didn’t make the activity itself anymore enjoyable.

Another sigh left my mouth and I wondered when I’d start caring about my life more and this general apathy that left every option feeling bland and wholly uninteresting.

Maybe things would change when I finally got a girlfriend, maybe-

I snapped out of my thoughts as I noticed the little red man turn green, unsure of how long it’d been flashing for I pushed off on my bike and raced across the road.

After chucking an empty banana peel into my bag, carefully glancing back to make sure smudges didn’t get on my notes. I looked back up at the traffic lights and was surprised to see a red man staring back at me.

That was fast- *HOOOOOOOONK* *HOOONK*

I looked towards the sound of the truck horn in a panic, absolutely helpless as I watched the optimus prime look-a-like barrel straight towards me and-.

 

And then, my vision went black.

 

 

 

 

 

…

 

 

 

 

 

Isn’t something meant to happen? Did I… Die? All I could see was pure darkness, Up, down, left to right, forwards and backwards, just inky black. I felt like I was floating, weightless and adrift in a liquid I couldn’t feel, like one of those sensory deprivation tanks.

Am I getting reincarnated?

HA! if I was, it’d probably be the Buddhist version, and I’d end up as a cockroach.

But jokes aside, I’m figuring that this whole experience is probably a coma.

Wait, how do I know that I really didn’t just… die?

I shook my non-existent head vigorously, the implications of being dead a bit too heavy to consider. Like what would my friends and family do, maybe a funeral?

Nah, mom would probably try and cremate me and spread my ashes somewhere, she did love more meaningful stuff like that.

Oh god, my computer… Hopefully they don’t check that. Not that there’s bad or disgusting stuff on there, just some novels and comics that would be really, REALLY, hard to explain.

I abruptly stopped that train of thought, already falling into that familiar spiralling pattern of thinking that I knew well. I tried to distract myself with other musings, like if I was getting reincarnated, who would be the guide.

I nerd-ily recalled some isekai books I’ve read, an angel maybe? Ooh, there’s that apologetic old man stereotype,

‘oopsies, I made a mistake, want to get an overpowered reincarnation kid?’

Anything but that, I really wouldn’t be able to help myself from trying to punch an all-powerful entity if God committed manslaughter and then claims ‘oopsie daisy, I accidentally let you get turned into a red stain’.

Though it would explain allot of the genocides, diseases, miseries, and billionaires the earth has had to deal with.

I grumbled to himself for a while, well, at least I tried to, but I couldn’t really tell if I still had a mouth. Or anything else for that matter.

 

And so, with nothing else to do, I waited a while.

 

 

 

 

Then a while longer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And longer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A bright sparkle of white shocked me awake from my sleepless stupor, the ray of light coming from a thin slit in the black walls around him. For a few moments I was shocked into stillness, unbelieving that I could escape this limbo.

For the few moments after that I wondered if going into the light might mean finality, that myth about the light at the end of the tunnel when you’re dying worried me.

‘Don’t go into the light’, that stuff, but all of those thoughts went out the window when I saw the light flicker.

Screw it, risking dying and going to heaven is better than this stagnant hell.

I rushed towards the crack with limbs I didn’t know I had. Actually, when I first came here, I definitely didn’t have any, but now I felt hands and feet that I could climb forwards with, using them to do just that. I reached the small gap and used my hands to pry at the crack, my hands feeling unwieldy and strange as I pulled away pieces of the blackness, replacing it with more blinding light.

At this point I felt a manic energy driving me, an instinct to escape this claustrophobic hell. I pushed at the enlarged hole and easily broke through, tumbling and falling onto hard cold stone, a warm goo covering me and making a *splat* when I landed.

I groaned, squinting a little with confusion as I heard a pathetic noise come out my mouth.

Why did I sound like an infant cat begging for milk?

With a bit of effort, I managed to roll over onto my back and look around, seeing a large dome of dark blackish stone above. I found myself in a large cavern of stone, with a circular roof, the whole space was unexpectedly plain except for the other two things in the room with me. I froze in confusion when I glanced at the two pairs of shiny metallic pillars on either side of me, my breath hitching in my throat when I realised that the two things next to me were the clawed feet of something much bigger than me. I hesitantly looked up, my eyes following the legs up to the two creatures lording over me, my brain switching off as I tried to process the sight.

There were two massive, towering silver dragons elegantly sitting by me, they looked like a mix between their eastern and western archetypes. Thin and elegant creatures that looked like lizards with legs angled beneath them instead of going off to the side, a pair of thin wings made of a silky membrane tucked close to the body. At their tails, the body was long and thin, getting fatter at the midsection where the legs and wings were attached. Emerging from the body was a long, elegant neck, with a triangular lizard-like head on top, the eyes completely blue with a black slit in the centre, like a cats. I admired those eyes for a moment, appreciating the sparkling intelligence in them before reconciling myself to my fate.

I don’t know which god was crappy enough to give me a new life, only to dump me in-front of two massive dragons, but I was ready to get eaten and return to the familiar blackness.

The one on the right leaned in closer, peering at me with a squinted eye. And in this moment of terror before the end, I showed the dragon every bit of courage I had and squeaked in fright, sounding yet again like a pathetic kitten.

“Well, they’re… loud?” a deep raspy voice questioned, coming from the giant dragon-y creature on the right, something like a frown contorting its face. However, the one on the left unfurled one of its wings and slapped it on the nose, making it squeak in pain.

“Well at least they inherited your yelp dear” the left one sarcastically said, the voice similar but smoother and a bit less rough on the ears. Meanwhile on the ground, I looked back and forth between the two in confusion, trying and failing to figure out why I could understand them and what exactly was happening.

It was right then a too-good-to-be-true thought resurfaced, and having dismissed it before on the grounds that it was ridiculous, I indulged the idea for a moment and looked down at my own body.

And to my ecstatic surprise, there was nothing human about what I saw. There was only a lizardy body covered in familiar silver scales, with two gooey wet wings splayed out and stuck onto the stone.

This…

This a dream come true. De facto reincarnation baby! And into something much cooler than my fleshy body.

A giggle escaped through my mouth in my excitement, and I shut up quickly when I heard the chittering noise that come out. I wondered if any noise that came out through my mouth would sound like it should, it felt like there was some sort of filter twisting everything I speak.

But my thoughts were derailed when the two dragons returned their attention to me, staring at me with unbridled focus.

“Can I check yet?” the one on the left asked, and I decided to name… him? Well, I’m assuming the dragon is a ‘him’.

I’ll call him ‘Father’ it’d be weird if he had the same name that I call my real Dad, And the other one on the right can be Mother.

“Just wait would you, we’ll see soon enough” Mother chuckled, leaning down towards me and licking some of the remaining goo off of me. The parents caring action sending me into shock and blanking out any thoughts in my mind.

After the shock passed, panic filled its place.

I was being licked and the germ freak inside me burst out, the kind of repulsion that occurs when a dog tries to get a bit too friendly with its tongue. I tried to protest, but only pathetic mewls came out, only inciting the two new parents to lick me even more.

In desperation I attempted to run, putting down one foot before falling onto my face miserably, my legs getting tangled up beneath me in less than one step.

How was walking with four legs so much harder than two?

Father let out a chuckle at my clumsiness, moving onto licking my head and I shivered at the warm touch, feeling extremely uncomfortable. I let out a sigh and reconciled myself to my new parent’s care, not much I could do about it.

Then, it occurred to me, if I’d gotten reincarnated into a fantasy world, then… it might just exist…

I held my breath and concentrated with all my might, sounding out a single word in my head.

system

 

…

 

My disappointment leaked out with the lungful of air, a miserable mewl escaping my scaly lips and Mother, with a slight smile full of teeth, leaned in and rubbed her head against mine. I didn’t even have the heart to fight back, feeling listless as she rubbed the side of my head gently.

Just as I’d given up all hope, a wavy blue screen flickered into existence, my misery forgotten as I perked up, Mother chuckling in delight as her baby cheered up. The blue square eventually stabilised, somewhat, showing only a stuttering and glitchy screen before him, all the information on it garbled and the words literally spinning all over the screen.

STOP SCREWING WITH ME! I raged, a squeak of raw adorableness coming out of my mouth as I cursed the god who has been messing with me ever since my rebirth.

“Are all children this… emotionally unstable?” Father complained, looking at his partner who was still comforting the upset baby.

“Babies are meant to be temperamental dear” she chuckled, looking up from the fidgeting child, who was desperately trying to scavenge some tidbit of information from the useless blue screen that the parents couldn’t seem to see.

“So can we name them?” Father excitedly question, his partner’s good humour being visibly worn down.

“Honey.”

“yeees?” the father earnestly answered, before another wing smacked him on the nose.

“As I’ve made clear m-a-n-y times, wait” she sighed, backing back down at me before looking back at her partner.

“In the meanwhile, let’s go fetch some meat, they must be hungry.”

When the two finally left, I was busy attacking the blue screen in front of me, using my newfound claws to uselessly attack the phantom.

After that I paused for a second, wondering why my emotions seemed so rampant and out of control. I mentally shrugged and noted it down as a downside of a baby’s body.

But then the screen in front of me flickered green, my annoyance forgotten and overwhelmed by the possibility of a cheat-like existence to be in my hand-… paws.

I eagerly waited as the spazzing of the screen relaxed, a shape slowly forming. It had a green background with a white centre, black lines chopping up the clear space into little boxes, most of them being filled with random characters.

It’s

It’s…

It’s an excel spreadsheet.

Huh, even gods use excel.

I shrugged again, even I couldn’t go against the supremacy of excel. Though I threw away my thoughts of excel when I saw some boxes of information that I could properly read, hidden among the swathes of nonsense.

[Age: 0]

[Name: _______]

[1s4#2: Infant Drake]

[Level: 0]

Huh, this is useless. You really don’t need to tell me my age, I was born a few minutes ago. Though, it seems that I’m an infant drake, if I’m inferring that bit of mumbled text properly. While not being a dragon is disappointing, being a drake isn’t a letdown, still better than before.

But aren’t systems meant to give you quests and rewards? Not much to a system if all it did was tell me my age and a blank slot for my name.

[New Quest: reach Level one]

[Reward: picking a 1s4#2]

And as I questioned the point of the system, it gave me something I couldn’t really decipher.

Oh well, I’ll just figure it out when I reach level one.

I felt the disappointed in how crappy the system was, but then I heard my new parents returning, Mother holding a still dripping piece of meat in her mouth. She dropped it at my feet, the morsel squelching as it landed.

I stared at it for a second, eventually identifying the pile as a minced… something. While I did feel hungry, I wasn’t quite… that, hungry. I still had some of my dignity as a civilised being left and eating raw meat was a big step over my boundaries.

The two parents gave each other a concerned look, oblivious as to why their child was being so fussy. But before they had a chance to coax me into trying it, a loud clang echoed throughout the room, the sound of steel on stone reverberating through the tunnels.

The two parents immediately swung their heads towards the entrance to the room, absolute focus in their eyes as they listened for noises coming from outside. I held my breath, caught up in the serious atmosphere as we all perked up our ears- wait we don’t have any ears… just holes in the side of our heads, like lizards, I realised as I glanced at Mother to see the little pit in the side of her head.

But my internal dialogue was interrupted by the quite sound of faraway chatter, the sounds of joking and camaraderie in a language I’d never heard of before. Father picked me up in a talon with an anxious urgency, taking me to the back of the stone room and gently pushing me into a little alcove.

Before I could move Father picked up a stone around the same size as me and used it to block the entrance to the little hideaway, the space barely big enough to fit me even while I was curled up. Even though I hated how claustrophobic it was, I sat there and let it happen, the panic of my two new parents all the convincing I need to know that the situation was serious.

But in all honesty, I was curious as to what the hell was the happening. I moved to the entrance of my little hole and was about to try and push the rock a little so I could peek out. But I quickly changed my mind when everything abruptly went silent. A cacophony of steel sliding against steel ringing out soon after, the palpable tension of promised violence and bloodshed thick in the air.