A harsh wall of sound forced Samantha out of bed. It was the fourth time it had happened this morning and she fucking hated it.
She kept her alarm clock set between stations because radio stations suck. They're stupid and they suck and the DJs suck and the music is only okay and incredibly repetitive and Jesus Christ the commercials and her alarm clock tended to slip between stations anyway and non-existent god help her if it landed on a Christian radio station. The XGXHXBBGBXHBB of the not-stations was better than all of that. Mornings suck.
Know what would be better? Sleeping until you woke up.
Still, she hit OFF instead of SNOOZE and mumbled her way into the bathroom to get ready to earn another day's worth of not dying.
There was a mirror. She didn't bother. Shower. Shower then food. Shower then food then work.
Shower happened. She washed the important bits, then dried the bits. She dragged a brush through her hair. Stupid goddamn hair. Girls have to have hair. The mirror showed her the linen cabinet behind her where she kept her dog grooming kit. She could just shave it all off. No more shampooing and combing and drying and "Are you sick?" when she didn't put in enough effort. But, no, she worked in sales. Samantha the sales girl at [REDACTED] couldn't move cameras and DVDs with no hair. Goddammit.
The least makeup she could get away with. Khakis. Blue polo. The most comfortable shoes she was allowed to wear. She got the lunch meat and cheese out of the fridge, slammed some bread in the toaster, and started breakfast. Then she pulled up the app for a ride. The driver showed up as she finished her sandwich, grabbed a diet cherry soda out of the fridge, and prepared to face another day of the opposite of Groos's definition of freedom: pointless busywork.
----
The Event happened while Samantha scrolled through her feed in the back of her rideshare. It disrupted all electrical and electronic systems, hitting the car with a double whammy. Fortunately, they weren't on the highway, yet. The car locked up, like most of the cars around them, slamming Sam and her driver into their seat belts. Others weren't so lucky. Some cars, and especially big pickups, just kept moving at speed. Without their power-steering or brakes, a lot of people got hurt.
The cacophany was immediate. With nothing else to do and no understanding of the situation, many leaned on their horns. Others tried their phones. Some, far more than you'd think, got out of their cars, made sure they were okay, then started checking on their fellow travelers.
The top of Sam's left breast got bruised by the seatbelt when her driver's car slammed to a stop and her sparking cellphone flew out of her hands onto the floormat. She bit her tongue as her head slammed forward and she started coughing and gagging as the sudden flex caused her throat to close. Her driver swore and held his right wrist.
Then there was silence as everyone got a notification.
RACE CHOSEN - DEFAULT - HUMAN
STATS ASSIGNED - DEFAULT
SKILLS ASSIGNED - DEFAULT
CLASS - LEVEL TOO LOW
The words hovered in front of Sam's eyes no matter where she looked, and faded after 21.6 seconds. Sam didn't time it. She just... knew.
Picking her phone up off the floor of the car, she didn't bother asking her driver any questions. With his swearing and stabbing at his own phone, he was as lost as she was. Looking around, Sam found herself caught in a logjam of stalled and crashed cars. She was at a loss for what to do.
Then she saw the smoke.
One of her neighbors had been trying to change lanes and the truck had gone up and over the rear corner of a sedan. What would have been a flip on the highway had, at low speeds, turned into a grinding slice as two oddly shaped pieces of metal tore themselves apart. The truck's fuel line got sliced before sparks lit the fuel and the truck slowly tipped over onto a car in the next lane over. Sam could hear screams through the shattered windshield of the pinned car.
Sam put one hand to her chest and the other to her mouth. She shook her head as the words faded. She struggled with her seatbelt and got out of the car. An appreciable fraction of her fellow commuters were crowding the road, getting in her way. She had to get to the people in the car.
"Move! ¡Movíos! Fucking fuck!"
INTIMIDATE +1
The crowd cleared up as she shoved her way through. As she got close, the burning fuel, plastic, rubber, ... the burning car started to hit her. She tried to shield her face with the crook of her elbow as she got closer to the tangle of car and truck. The car had only had the driver in it, who had opened the door and scrambled clear, screaming. The pickup's driver was still inside, weakly pawing at her seatbelt as the smoke choked her.
Sam jumped on the hood of the car, then the roof, then pulled herself on the canted sided of the truck's cab. Of course the door was locked. She slid back down to the sedan, then the street and took stock.
"Anyone! Anyone! Hey!" She yelled as loud as she could to get the crowd's attention. "I need a tire iron! A baseball bat! Anything I can smash a window in with! Now!" The crowd stared. "NOW!" A few people started moving.
In a minute, some guy handed her a tire iron. She grabbed the L-shaped prybar and jumped back up on the sedan. Instead of attacking the cracked glass at the bottom of the truck's cab, where the driver had lost consciousness, she started slamming at the windshield at the passenger's end of the cab.
The crowd started muttering, then yelling, as she cracked through the outer layer of glass, but when she took the sharp end of the tire iron and stabbed through the inner layer, enough people understood that the crowd quieted down. Smoke poured out of the hole Sam had made.
INTELLIGENCE +1
IMPROVISED TOOL USE +1
She shook her head, trying pointlessly to clear the words, and stabbed the tire iron through the hole, then gave it a proper highschool swirly to widen the hole. Then she jammed the prybar end of the jack into the edge of the skyward edge of the windshield and started levering it out. One of her fellow travelers grasped what she was doing and shouted an explanation to the others. Within minutes a few more tire irons were in the hands of volunteers standing on top of the car fire, prying the cab open to save the woman inside.
CHARISMA +1
Sam stumbled from the truck to the sedan, then collapsed on the pavement afterthe glass finally tore free. She coughed until she thought she might hack up a long.
CONSTITUION +1
TEMPORARY CONDITION : SMOKER'S LUNG (1 HOUR)
A few people dragged Sam and the pickup's driver clear of the fire, urging people to get far in case the gas tanks exploded. Others started spreading out, looking for more trapped people. Someone offered Sam a bottle of lukewarm water. She gratefully rinsed, spat, then took a swallow. Her anonymous benefactor moved on to the barely sensible driver of the truck, gently lifting her head and giving her sips.
CHARISMA +1
YOU HAVE LEARNED : SKILL : MOTIVATION
Sam had no clue what the fuck was happening.
Judging by the sirens and plumes of smoke, neither did anyone else.
YOU HAVE UNLOCKED THE MECHANIC JOB. WOULD YOU LIKE TO TAKE THE MECHANIC JOB? YES/NO
Sam was glad there were other people around to pull her away from the burning cars, because she had no idea what the hell was going on and she really wanted to go back to bed.
Yeah. That's a good idea.
Her chest hurt.
YOU HAVE PASSED OUT
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