I’ve been awake for what feels like twenty minutes yet I still haven’t moved. That explosion fucked me up.

I just sat there, my back against the locomotive wall, in sore agony. Everything felt sore and shaken. The end of my ponytail was slightly singed, and I had a few burns on my exposed face. If it wasn't for my leather jacket, I’m sure it would be much worse. The jacket in question was also burned. It didn’t smell all that great.

But as bad of shape as I was in, I can’t help but think that I got extremely lucky. If that berserker wasn’t directly between me and the blast; and if we were any closer to it, then I would be a battered, burned, and unrecognizable corpse right now.

Even though it stopped snowing while I was asleep, the fires had also gone out. I was cold, sort of wet, tired, and hungry high up in the mountains. What a fucking lovely day.

At least I can see the planets rings clearly. Earth didn’t have rings. I think it would have looked better if it did. Rings are cool.

…

…

…

I should move. Find someplace warm. Find some food.

I’ve had that thought six times now, but I still haven’t moved. I just feel too tired. It would be so nice to just close my eyes and go to sleep and deal with my problems later.

But isn’t that what I thought when I went to this spot? Go sleep then deal with my problems later? Its technically later right now.

…

…

…

I don’t know how long has passed since I woke up. I should get a watch- NO! A pocket watch. A nice pocket watch with a cool chain. Maybe an engraving? Definitely an engraving. OH it should be able to shoot lasers too. That would be great. Too bad I’ll probably die of hypothermia before that happens.

I’m too cold. I don’t want to move because I’m tired and cold. But if I don’t move then I won’t get that pocket watch. I turn my head towards my backpack. It's still up against the wall where I left it. I had considered making a magic circuit to keep me warm, but I’m all out of energy crystals.

All I got is the one in the prototype plasma pistol, but I can’t remove it without my tools back at home, which is god knows how far away. I reach over and open the bag to pull out the pistol.

The pistol is basically just a metal sheet with all the circuits written on it with wood covering the metal. The wood is fire retardant, I don’t understand how, but it is. Even though the wood is supposed to cover the circuits, it doesn’t do that good of a job at it as some of the circuit still peak through along the barrel. The energy crystal is housed in a small hole covered by the wood near where the sight would be if I bothered to make one.

It looks like a piece of crap, and while it may be one it's got over nine years worth of research put into it. If someone else got their hands on it, then maybe they’ll look into it but I doubt that they’ll really see all the blood, sweat, and tears my team and I put into this thing.

If I’m gonna die ...again, I should at least shoot something with this.

I spent the better part of both of my lives trying to make these things, so even if it’ll explode I might as well go out with a bang.

I pull the trigger once. The magic circuit begins its work and starts sucking energy from the crystal. The exposed circuits lightly glow, and the glow gets brighter and brighter as more magic is sucked from the crystal and amplified by the circuitry. I lightly smile at the sight.

This would make most if not all of the magic engineers in this world lose their shit. I’ve basically made a small mana refiner in this gun. It takes mana from the crystal, then makes it more potent. This concept is nothing new in this world, but I personally guarantee that this is the smallest one in history. Too bad it explodes on discharge.

The glow from the circuits reach their brightest, that means it's ready to fire, or explode. With my right hand, I aim the pistol at the opposing locomotive wall. Just as I’m ready to pull the trigger for a second time, I notice that my hand is warm. Not just warm, its getting hot. My pistol is burning my hand!

“Shit!”

I drop the pistol to the ground and clutch at my right hand. It's a little red, and still warm. I look at the pistol. Its melting the thin layer of snow around it.

I... don't think that was supposed to happen.

I lean over to grab my pistol, only to find that its too hot to touch. I rummage through my bag again to find a small length of cloth. I wrap it around my hand then pick up the pistol with it.

It's fine at first, but the heat quickly penetrates the cloth and starts burning my hand again. I throw the pistol and the cloth on the ground. The cloth lands on top of the pistol, and begins to smoke.

Its smoking…? No way. No fucking way.

In the center of the length of cloth, which was smoking the most, a small flame flickers into existence.

FIRE!

I had fire. I had heat. I can’t let this fire go out. Not if I wanted to live. I shot up with speed I wouldn’t dream about five minutes ago. My eyes run back and forth around the corpse of a locomotive looking for something to burn. I spot a dead tree near the wreckage and I run over to it as fast as I could possibly go. After snapping some branches off the tree, I run back, only to see that the small fire had gone out. The cloth had been completely burned.

NO!

I practically ram the branches into the pistol. I make sure that there’s as much contact between the branches and pistol as possible. I watch the branches begin to smolder against the pistol and I blow on it as much as my little lungs would allow.

“Burn! Burn god dammit!”

The branches smolder and smoke then finally ignite. I hastily put the burning branches on the ground and sprint back to the dead tree. Once I’ve snapped off as many branches as I can carry, I run back over and set the branches down next to the fire. I sit down and start periodically feeding the fire with the branches.

“Haah”

That was a rush, but now I had fire. I had time to think of my next move. Although I have no idea what that would be. I had shelter, the corpse of the locomotive, and I had fire. I guess my next move should be acquiring some kind of food source.

I saw some animals while I was on the train. Maybe I could hunt some.

At the thought of hunting, my gaze shifts to my pistol next to the fire. The circuits were almost blinding to look at now and the supposedly fire retardant wood was smoking and burned black, but it wasn’t on fire.

Looks like it's going to explode.

I turn my head back to the fire and feed it a little more. A half second later I realize what I had just thought.

“My pistol is going to explode!”

I grab two branches then pick up the pistol with them. The points of contact between the pistol and the branches start smoking almost immediately. Trying my best not to drop it, I shuffle over to the cliff face as fast as I can. As I reach the cliff I throw both the pistol and the branches over the edge.

They fall for a few seconds before the pistol violently compusts. The explosion wasn’t nearly as big as the other one, but I still fall flat on my ass because it was so loud.

“Well, there goes that.”

All my effort and hard work just exploded. Fan-fucking-tastic. I really want to shoot something right now, but I can’t because I couldn’t even make that work with nine years of experience. I walk back over to my fire, hungry and angry.

“I bet the other Seconds don’t have to deal with this crap.”

They had magic. No, that was wrong. They had amazing magic AND a gift from their god on top of it. They probably have hot meals and a warm bed, hell I’ll bet at least one of them was reborn as some sort of prince or something.

All I’ve got is this fire, blown up locomotive, and my bag. Oh right, lets not forget the cold, blistering winds and frequent snow storms I’m sure to experience while I’m up in this frozen wasteland. I don’t even want to think about Daddy right now...

…

…

…

My sulking is interrupted by a pang of hunger.

I haven’t eaten in a while, so I should probably start looking for something edible.

Although I have no idea what I would eat and I don’t know if I can keep this fire going, I’m starting to run out of wood.

I reach over and look through my bag to fish out a small survival knife covered by a leather sheath and some more cloth. It’s something Daddy had given me the first time we went to the market.

I don’t know why he thought it was a good idea to give a small child just over three at the time a knife, but Daddy works in mysterious ways I guess.

I unsheath the knife and tie it to the end of a long branch with the cloth. I had a spear. The best medieval era weapon ever. If I was a little more physically inclined, I bet I could take down a tiger with this thing.

Too bad I’m tired, hungry, and four years old. Lets hope there aren’t any tigers on this mountain.

I stood up and prepared myself to start foraging for food. I say ‘prepare’, but I can’t really do much to prepare in my situation. I already had my jacket on and I just made the spear, so all that really amounted to was putting on my backpack.

I need food and fire wood. Thankfully the sun is still high in the sky so I have a while before it really gets cold.

Picking up one of the branches I haven’t thrown into the fire, I put the end of it directly into the flame while holding onto the other end. Once the fire gets the branch going I pull it out. It wasn’t a good one, but I had made a torch.

I hope this keeps me warm while I’m away from the fire. Well, no sense in putting this off any longer. Lets go hunting.

In order not to get even more lost then I am, I followed the train tracks back the way the locomotive was going before it was blown to kingdom come. I wasn’t exactly happy about my current situation but it's much better than it was an hour ago, so that at least gave me some satisfaction. After all, even though I was four and a half years old and three feet tall, I wasn’t dead yet. Somehow.

Lets keep this living streak going. Record to beat: 33 years.

…

…

…

Nevermind. I’m totally going to die.

I haven’t found anything I could eat and I haven’t found any more wood to burn. My torch had burned to its other end quicker than I was hoping, so I had to toss it aside because I couldn’t hold it anymore. I still had my spear, but it hasn’t really had a chance to be useful. I had been walking for what felt like forever, but I know it was probably only two hours or so. The sun was still in the sky, albeit lower than it was earlier.

This fucking sucks. I’m so damn hungry and cold.

Bottom line is that I was miserable. My boots were soaked from walking in the snow for so long, every part of me was cold and sore, and I was so hungry that I could probably resort to cannibalism right now. But even though my legs felt like jelly, I still marched on.

I have a record to beat and god damn it I wasn’t going to let my second life end prematurely just because I got caught up in some petty international incident!

So I walked on. But as if to spite me or just make my life harder, it started snowing. AGAIN.

Are you fucking kidding me. I swear to fuck, if one of Caboose’s siblings is fucking with me right now.

Caboose had mentioned in passing that he had siblings. It also looks like he’s playing whatever game he’s roped me into with other gods. So it’s possible that they’re trying to sabotage Caboose’s chances of winning. In other words, they could be trying to fuck me over.

I could assume that each of his siblings is sponsoring a Second, just like what Caboose is doing with me, but there's something I don’t understand.

There are six Seconds including me right, at least according to Caboose, and there are six gods worshipped all across Lesotis.

It all adds up right?

Wrong.

Why?

Because Caboose isn’t one of the six gods being worshipped.

According to my extremely limited knowledge, the six gods go as follows:

The most prominent god worshipped in the western side of the continent of Azor is the Goddess Vulkria. Worship of Goddess Vulkria is heavily pushed by the Othium Empire. This just happens to be where Daddy and I live.

Well, just me now...

The most prominent god on the eastern side of Azor is the God Izo. Because all there is in my neighborhood is Vulkria propaganda I really don’t know much about the God, but according to Caboose he would be pretty good at explaining that whole worm situation.

The next four don’t really have much of a presence on Azor, so I know even less about them than Izo, but I at least know their names.

The Goddess Tara.

The God Arkigit.

The Goddess Vitara.

And finally the True God Nunas.

At least according to that story book Daddy read to me every once in a while. I don’t know what the ‘True’ in front of Nunas means, but it's probably important. Too bad I don’t really care. What I don’t understand and actually do care about however is where Caboose fits into all of this. Well actually, I can sort of guess.

Assuming that Caboose’s siblings are these gods, then why isn’t Caboose mentioned in any of the lore? Most likely because he had a terrible relationship with his family.

I mean look at the guy, do you think he’s the type of person to call his mom every weekend to make sure she’s doing okay? No. Caboose seems like the kind of person who would disappear off the face of the earth the minute he got his own place.

Combined with his general demeanor, I can’t imagine that his siblings have that high of an opinion of him. So it's possible that no one in this world even knows who he is. I don’t know for sure though, I haven’t asked and I don’t plan to. I could only see me asking about a god that may or may not even exist in the eyes of the people causing trouble.

Plus if word gets around about me asking, then that could give the other Seconds a trail to find me.

I wasn’t going to give away my precious anonymity that easily. If no one knows who I am, then that means they won’t be looking for me. Yay for being a complete nobody!

…

…

...

The snow is really picking up now. It's actually getting hard to see. Of course it's cold, but everyone already knows that, but the train tracks are almost completely covered. I need to find a place to hunker down for a while before I freeze to death.

Its honestly a miracle I’m still moving here. I’m sure I’ll have to get my feet amputated with how wet my boots are. How long ago was my last meal? Only Yesterday morning? Sure as hell doesn’t feel like it.

I trudge through the snow storm and do my best to follow the increasingly hard to see train tracks until, ever so faintly, I see an orange glow off further along the tracks.

Civilization! Maybe? Or is it the light people see when they die? Either one gets me out of the snow so it's really a win-win for me.

I would run to it, but my legs are too numb to do anything more than walk. So I walk ever onward, determined to get out of the snow, until finally, I can make out the shape of one of the train cars.

Shelter!

Although a lot was happening at the time, I remember the train cars being warm. I trudged through the thick snow and lumbered over and up onto the train car. Snow had piled up in front of the door, but I could still turn the handle and the door opened inward so it didn’t really matter.

The door swung open and I climbed over the pile of snow in front of it. Once I was inside and closed the door, all the tension I had practically melted away as I collapsed onto the floor. It was so warm in here. And not the bad kind of warm where you’re on fire. No, the good kind of warm. The kind of warm that takes effort to experience.

As I was enjoying the sensation of not being frozen alive, the uncomfortable sensation of wet boots and socks completely ruined it. I yanked off my boots and socks and threw them across the car.

Now that that was taken care of, I laid back and closed my eyes to go to sleep.

…

…

…

Then another pang of hunger hit me hard.

So fucking hungry.

While staying still on the ground, I moved my eyes around the car. The car was filled with boxes(as most were) but one box was considerably larger than the others. The top was cracked open and some small marble looking things were spilling out of it.

Wait… are those berries?

Weak from hunger, I stumbled over to the large box and scooped up some of the suspected berries inside. They were a light purple and about the size of a small marble.

I mean, they look and feel like berries, so they have to be berries right?

Just as I was about to start shovelling berries down my throat to combat my oncoming starvation, I second guessed my choice.

What if they’re poisonous? I don’t even know what kind of berries these are, I’ve never seen them before. Actually, do berries count as fruit? What if the name of these berries start with ‘c’? Would I die instantly or something? Caboose never told me what would happen if I were to eat a fruit that starts with ‘c’.

I tried reasoning with myself, telling myself that it wasn’t a good idea to eat something when you could be allergic to it, and that it could also be poisonous at the same time. That worked, for a few seconds. Then I had another hunger pang, and my stomach decided to take the risk.

In the middle of a vast white void stood a house with a garden under its window. The ‘garden’ was overgrown with weeds as if it had lost its caretaker. The weeds from the ‘garden’ spilled over their territory and advanced on the concrete walkway up to the door. The screen-door had completely come loose and laid flat on top of the white void dyed green by the weeds. The door was open, inviting anyone in, yet the lights were off, as if turning them away.

In the dark basement of this collapsing mess of a house was an ocean of DVDs and Blu-rays. The light from the large cinema-esque screen illuminated a lone couch wading in the waters. The man sitting comfortably on the couch, wearing his favorite pair of pink pajama pants and a shirt that was clearly too big for him, watched the movie with a look of extreme displeasure.

As the film came to a close and the screen’s illumination faded away, the man groaned with palpable annoyance. He snapped his fingers. The DVD player ejected the disc, which then floated over and back into its case. Once the case snapped closed, it burst into flames and burned to absolute nothingness.

“That movie was probably the worst one I’ve seen so far.”

The man, a god named Caboose, was incredibly excited to see this movie.

“Maybe that was why Julie didn’t want to see it.”

A few years ago, Caboose had chosen his Second for a game of his design. For every aspect of that Second’s life, Caboose had spun a wheel. From specific genetic information to where they would be reborn, Caboose had made sure it was all random solely for the fun of it. However when it came time to choose a name for her, Caboose was stumped. He didn’t feel that he was good enough at naming to come up with good ones for the spin wheel. So he made an exception and asked her directly.

She thought for a while and used up Caboose’s short thread of patience, so Caboose just used a name from an amazing movie he had just watched. That name was Julie. When Julie got her new name she contested it immediately, providing two other names. At the time Caboose was a little confused by this, but now he saw why.

Julie had already seen the sequel. She knew how bad it was. She knew that it ruined everything so badly that no one would ever want to be associated with it. But Caboose didn’t listen. He had named her Julie and sent her on her way.

“Oh well, I’m sure she’s over it by now.”

Caboose knew in his heart that she wasn’t over it, and that the only reason she hadn’t complained to him about it yet was that she had no way of contacting him. Never before was he so glad he hid his rock under one of Vulkria’s leftovers.

“Well, I should probably check on her. I haven’t done that in a while”

Caboose snapped his fingers and looked towards the screen. It flickered to life and showed something Caboose did not expect. Julie was on a train, gorging herself on berries while quietly and creepily chuckling to herself.

“Wait, are those Talco berries?”

Talco berries were berries native to the country of Talcoya on the continent of Azor. They were considered a luxury everywhere but Talcoya. They were everywhere in Talcoya. However Caboose didn’t know that. Caboose knew of Talco berries because they were a staple in bars for having a small amount of alcohol in them.

“Oh this won’t end well, especially with Julie’s… condition.”

By random chance, Julie’s dissociative identity disorder did not go away when she was reincarnated. However most people wouldn’t know that Julie has DID, mostly because she only has one identity other than her main one. That would be her drunk one.

From what Caboose had seen by watching Julie’s death, Drunk Julie is in a league of her own. She’s aggressive, impulsive, and an adrenaline junkie. She’s stolen over four different aircrafts to fly to Italy on three different occasions and got shot down each time. It's really a miracle she survived the first two.

Caboose didn’t think that Lesotis was ready for a drunk Julie, but because of the contract he signed he could do nothing to stop the inevitable. He just looked on with a solemn and accepting expression as Julie’s chuckling became a haunting laughter.

Then Caboose turned the screen off, deciding it wasn’t really his problem.