Mason Cane sat in the Hellhouse, the club house of his crew, the Hellbound. Mason had ridden up Friday night, as required by the club's rules. If you missed a Friday you owed $100 and he'd be fucked up the ass if he paid these assholes half a day's pay.
Mason had been at home when The System arrived, fighting with his old lady. Well, fighting was probably not the right word for it - he'd just finished putting her head through a few walls and was in the middle of strangling her when everything went red. He thought it was him again, but later on he'd heard other people talking about it and it turned out everybody saw it. When that damned announcement went out he felt like he'd gotten a get out of jail free card. He still had to dump her body but wasn't no one going to be looking for that bitch now.
He'd told the fellas at the House about it but they just laughed at him, told him he was making shit up again to sound badass. Mason didn't always tell the truth but that was because your average libtard or preppie elitist douchebag or fucking poser with a shiny new bike he got from his bonus money couldn't see the truth about him. He was made to be in charge. He was made to crush the weak. He was made to put the pussies in their places. Everyone treated him like he was dumb, but he knew he was smart. Maybe not book smart - you'd never catch him in some woke college - but he was smart enough to see the connections and shit everyone else missed. He knew about the government corruption, the Jews and the way they crafted American media to funnel all the money into their pockets, and the truth about how this country went to shit when women and blacks got the right to vote.
But no, everyone fucked with him because he didn't have any money and because he never did anything that amounted to much in their eyes. But he had a posse and they didn't. He had his lieutenants and they sometimes even got bitches from the hangarounds that would show up on Fridays. No one said they were supermodels but that was fine, Mason didn't give a shit about that. They danced on the poles and showed their titties and Mason never cared much about stretch marks or scars. That's what real women looked like anyway, and they weren't stuck up.
So when he showed up and they started asking him about being the first kill he'd told them about it. At first they looked shocked, but then someone laughed and said that The System must not have seen what really happened and that Mason probably just showed her his little dick and she laughed until she fell down the stairs and broke her neck. Mason was a big guy, a couple inches over six feet and had the muscles that come from hard labor, but he also had about fifty pounds of fat that came from too many beers in front of the TV.
Pretty soon they were all laughing at him and throwing out stupid fucking ideas about how he got the first kill. All of them made him seem like a real limp dicked pussy and he started seeing red again. He threw his beer at the mirror behind the bar and they all told him to get the fuck out. Mason had clenched his fists and thought about throwing a punch, but deep inside of him something was quaking with fear, like it always did. People always wanted to fight him because of how big he was, but he'd never been in a real fight - if you didn't count the times he'd had to teach his old lady a lesson or two. Every time he was about to he'd get too scared and beat it out of there as quick as he could, which only made him even more angry.
But not anymore. He'd gotten power on that first kill and it had been oh, so easy. He stomped out of the clubhouse to his Harley and grabbed the shotgun he'd started riding with after The System announcement. He went back in and, when they saw it, they all started laughing again. They stopped after he took the head off that skinny blonde fuck that had started it all though. Some of them started reaching for their pieces but they were all too slow. None of them realized who Mason was now. None of them had seen the power in him, but they fucking saw it now. He laughed every time one of them flipped backwards from the shotgun blast. He kicked their bodies even after they were dead and laughed even more at their stupid twitching. He went to fucking town on every inch of that place. Some bitch hiding behind the bar? Dead. Another one running for the back door? Dead. Some gay-looking fuck pulling out his phone to call the cops? Dead before he could dial that last 1. The old rider that had brought him into the club? Fucking dead. The old man may not have laughed, but he had stood there when everyone else did. FUCKING. DEAD.
Mason stood panting, blue smoke and bloody mist in the air. He looked around and should have felt his old buddy, fear, but he felt nothing. Actually, that wasn't true. He felt good. Fucking AMAZING! And The System decided he'd done a pretty good job too.
"Twelve humans, level 1, slain. Level 3 achieved."
"Your aggressive fighting style and experience with mid-ranged weapons shows a strong affinity towards close quarter combat. You have not shown aptitude with hand-to-hand combat but your close-quarters fighting style will inevitably lead towards that end. In addition you have a close relationship with your chosen vehicle, the motorcycle, and your fighting style should reflect that as your honorary steed. Your agility is lacking and will leave you imbalanced in future engagements. Three points available. All points allocated to agility. No other changes."
Mason Cane, Level: 3
Class: Undefined
Core Stats:
STR: 17
AGI: 11
END: 14
INT: 6
LUC: 10
CHA: 8
Combat Skills:
Melee Combat: Basic 1
Ranged Combat: Basic 1
Defense: Basic 1
Tactics: Basic 1
Special Attributes:
Enhancements/Impairments: Not active until special requirements met
Achievements:
Fifth kill. Immediate advancement of one level.
First human kill. Offensive reward to be issued at level five.
Mason laughed, face upturned to the ceiling in pure joy. He didn't like that his stat sheet said he was dumb but he figured that The System was just as ignorant as everyone else. It was then that he heard more bikes pulling up.
He ran to the door and looked out, shotgun reloaded. With relief he saw it was his crew. Sure, they looked lame to anyone else and they mostly just talked about doing illegal shit while getting high off a little meth, but with Mason leading them they could become seriously badass.
He stepped outside and waved at them. Some of them paused, legs mid-swing off the bikes, when they noticed the shotgun.
"Uh Mason, what's up with the heat?" Blake asked. Blake was tall and lean, whipcord strong from a lifetime of road work. He had a scar across his eye that looked super badass. He told everyone he'd gotten it in a knife fight but Mason knew that the dumbass plugged himself in the face with a grinder wheel when it broke. Idiot wasn't wearing safety glasses, not that it mattered since he liked the scar.
"Listen up guys, some shit I need to tell you before you go inside."
They all stopped, some of them sitting back on their bikes. The hangarounds they brought with them mingling behind the guys, scared.
"It's a new fucking world and we're not at the bottom of the heap anymore. You saw what The System gave me for killing someone."
"Yeah, what happened with that?" Rodrick asked. Rodrick was built like a bear and had the hair to match. He was the only one that matched Mason for size.
"Some fucking punk in a Tesla tried to run me off the road so I curbed stomped him for the effort." Mason said.
His crew exchanged glances and Mason started getting pissed again when he saw the doubt in their eyes.
"It doesn't fucking matter!" he shouted. "What matters is that I'm at the top of the food chain now and I'm going to need my lieutenants with me. Are you with me?"
"You know we are Mason," Blake said, "but what's with the shotgun?"
"You guys know how to identify shit yet?" Mason asked. They nodded their heads. "Identify me."
Mason watched as their eyes scanned him, then smiled as they all went wide.
"Level 3?" Elijah asked in wonder. Elijah was small and wiry and was whip-fast with a knife. "How'd you pull that off?"
"I took care of business. Those fuckers in there," he shot a thumb over his shoulder towards the clubhouse, "they never appreciated us. They never saw in us what I saw in us. They fucking LAUGHED at us." His hand tightened around the stock of the gun hard enough to make it creak.
"So I made them pay."
"What do you mean, Mason? Did you kill them?" Blake's eyes looked frantic.
"I killed all those sumbitches." Mason said with pride. "Every last one of them. So what you all have now is a decision to make. You can go in there and I'll make sure you join them. You can call the cops and I'll blow your fucking head off before you get that first 1 in."
He paused for a second, looking each of the men in the eye.
"Or you can ride with me."
They stood in shocked silence, glancing at each other. Mason felt the rage starting to bubble up and the gun started to come down when Blake spoke up. "You know we're with you, Mason. We're your crew. If we gotta fuck up the whole world we may as well do it together."
The rage left Mason as quickly as it had come and he smiled, the barrel of the gun dropping to the dirt. "Well fuck yeah then!" he said. "Let's rise to the top of this fucking shit heap!" he said to the whooping of the men.