Douglas Blaine had done some things he wasn't proud of, in his youth. Acted in ways that he could only look back on with shame. At the time, he'd excused his misdeeds as just one among many trying to get by. The slums of Manchester were a rather ruthless place, and surviving there had required standing up for oneself. But Doug had taken that a step further. He'd become a thug. The promoters for the semi-pro boxing circuit he'd made his way through never knew just how apt the name they gave him was.

Aside from the crime and the fighting and the general mayhem he partook in, wronging innocent people on a daily basis along the way, what embarrassed him most in retrospect was the attitude he'd adopted. The arrogance. The constant displays of dominance, always having to be the biggest, toughest guy in the room.

It was only when he met Mabel that he realised how pointless it all was. She showed him that there was no use for his ego, and there was a better man inside of him, just waiting for the right chance. That had been her greatest trait. Always seeing the best in people. Even in a thuggish bruiser like him.

In chasing after her, he'd left a life of crime behind. Found a new path. On it, he got himself an honest job running his own gym, discovered the joy of raising children, felt the melancholy of seeing them grow up and leave the nest to start lives of their own. Then came grandchildren, and retirement, and the ability to look back on achievements a man could be proud of, for the most part.

For many reasons, he was glad Mabel hadn't lived to see what had become of the world, passing away of the Big C a few years back. Seeing her gentle soul be subjected to the horrors he'd witnessed over the past 48 hours would have broken him.

Worse than that, though, was the thought of her seeing what he was forced to become in order to survive. He hadn't been forced to really delve back into his old ways yet. But he knew it was coming. Honestly, he'd considered sticking his middle fingers up at this cruel system nonsense and letting the beasts ravaging the world take him.

But he knew he couldn't do that. If there was even the slightest chance Maisie and Drew were still out there with their families, he had to survive and make his way to them. Maisie was based in Brighton, and Drew was in Cornwall with his family on holiday. But that didn't matter. He had to make it to them. Had to know.

And so he humoured all this Youth bollocks, letting it lead him by the nose towards the power he'd need to survive and forge his way north to his children and grandchildren.

He'd figured out early on that the system wanted him to act how he would have when he was young and dumb and arrogant. At first, he'd just thought it wanted him to fight. It had given him Youth points for punching the monster that burst into his room at the retirement home, after all. But then it had started giving him more points for little moments here and there when he slipped back into the old ways, seeking out that invincible state of mind that had served him so well in boxing and general criminality.

The fuckers running this thing wanted him to turn back the clock, so to speak, and they gave him a bunch of abilities related to time, as if to rub it in even more. He'd seen similar stories play out in enough people at this point to hazard a guess that every single surviving human being on Earth was being tortured similarly. Sadism, on a mass scale.

Someone or something had a lot to answer for.

But first, Maisie and Drew.

And for that, you need to get yourself together, old man. No moping. Gotta channel that old Doug the Thug bollocks and hope Mabel isn't watching all this from the afterlife.

Admittedly, that was easier said than done, right now. His skull had been rung like a gong. He hadn't felt this dizzy since that bout against Beastly Bob back in '62. Or was it '63? He didn't keep track of his old boxing accomplishments much. Another damned bastard of a thing the shame his youth saddled him with: he couldn't even look back at objectively impressive achievements fondly.

It was like there was a clear line in his life. There was the Doug before Mabel, and the Doug after Mabel, and he just couldn't bring himself to have any pleasant thoughts about the former. Maybe that was unhealthy. He was sure some psychotherapist quack would have a thing or two to say about it.

Doug shook his head as if to dislodge the thoughts. Had to focus. They were in a bit of a crisis here, he vaguely recalled. There'd been that giant monster, and that crazy John kid—whom Doug suspected had something similar to him going on; like hell was that guy's system about saving people—had insisted on fighting it alone while the rest of them held off the rest of the monsters.

Doug hadn't complained about that. Even at his most, ah, unpleasant moments, he'd still recognised there were lads out there who were stronger than him, or had easier access to deadly weapons, at least. He'd never been the absolute leader of the packs that roved Manchester's slums. Following someone else's lead didn't contradict the task the system had given him.

Sitting around on your arse while everyone's still fighting does though, you old coot. Get it together and focus, dagnabbit.

He had his Revert ability running, and it was doing away with the punishment that rock monster thing had put him through. Slow going, though. He'd been on his backside for a good few minutes now, it felt like, and he was still a little dizzy. More than a few aches and pains lingered in his joints, too. Though this state of affairs was a damn sight better than the frail old thing he'd become in the retirement home, feeling some days like he was just waiting to see Mabel again.

Doug sighed. He'd never be able to talk about any of that out loud, unless he wanted to lose half the Youth points he'd built up. Younger him never would've shown such weakness.

It was so stifling.

At least his vision was starting to clear up, letting him see John throw Chester over his shoulder and dash back across the massive room at impossible speed, right towards where the rock monster was now apparently sprawled on its back, its legs crumbled. An impressive feat among many impressive feats for the black-haired young man. There didn't seem to be any lesser monsters around, too, perhaps owing to the fire raging at the other end of the arena. Around him, the others seemed to have done a much better job at healing, but he'd had enough wits about him to understand that they were all trying to level up by attacking the monster.

Doug had been healing himself in his own way without having to jump into the fight, so he hoped he wouldn't have to take objection to this state of affairs. He reckoned his younger self wouldn't have felt the need to act up, in these circumstances. No penalty came in, so he figured the system agreed. However the heck it measured such things. Was there some higher power out there with a file on his life, judging whether he was acting close enough to his younger self? The absurdity of the thought actually brought a smile out of him.

Alissa evidently noticed, as she let out a sigh. "Please don't start, Doug. Whatever you're thinking, just don't."

Her words saddened him a little. All she'd seen from him since they met was a worse version of himself, so he couldn't blame her. The old man he'd become would have been more interested in swapping stories and small talk, but she couldn't know the true him. No one could. All they'd see for the foreseeable future was the closest thing to Doug the Thug that he could tolerate portraying.

I wonder what this bastard thing would've made Mabel do.

Another reason he was glad she wasn't around for all this. Just a few days ago, he couldn't have imagined being happy that Mabel was gone.

There was a lump in his throat, and his younger self wouldn't have been caught dead with tears on his face, so he was forced to suck it up. He turned his attention to what John and Chester were up to, hoping to distract himself.

The two young men were a study in contrast at that moment. John moved so fast his form blurred, and struck with deadly, practised precision. Chester, meanwhile, whimpered in fear and pain, writhing on John's shoulders as if escaping would immediately transport him back across the room and away from danger. What was it the lad had said his system was about? Drawing attention to himself? Doug could see that.

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John took them both close to the giant rock thing, then paused to gesture. Chester just whimpered again in reply. With a growl of frustration that sounded rather strange in his sped-up state, John grabbed Chester's unbroken arm and literally forced him to land a punch on the monster, eliciting a rather unmasculine shriek from the younger lad. The rock thing started to pitch as if about to roll over, and they were forced to retreat a few steps.

John's superspeed spell came to an end, and he growled at the younger man, his frustrated voice carrying across the room: "Come on! Just punch the damn thing properly!!"

Chester's reply was too quiet to hear.

"Level up, and the pain will go away!" John snapped back, cutting him off mid-sentence. "We're all waiting on you, man. Everyone's watching."

Chester went still, and then suddenly his body language relaxed, shoulders slumping like he'd exhaled all the pain away. The arm that had been broken was abruptly back in the right position, and the boy was no longer nursing the signs of a couple painful bruises.

Ah, I see. He gained a bunch of points because he realised everyone was watching him and felt embarrassed. Enough to level up. Poor guy.

That was another case where Doug wasn't convinced the guy had told the whole truth about his system. He wondered if anyone had been completely forthcoming about how theirs worked. He couldn't blame them. It'd be hypocritical. Doug knew he hadn't, instead feeding them all a vague spiel about gaining time. The American girl seemed closest to honest out of all of them, and even she had looked a little shifty when explaining how hers worked.

John was probably the most interesting though, he thought as he watched the boy carry Chester back to the main group, darting back into the fight as soon as the burden was off his shoulders. With the others, their superpowers gave clues as to the true nature of what their system asked of them, if you thought about it for a bit. For John, it wasn't so obvious.

He was just so versatile. And Doug didn't believe the system was torturing him by forcing him to be adaptable. Was it just the act of involving himself in combat in general that bothered the boy, and the system was poking at that? That didn't seem right either, judging by the little dominance display when they'd first met.

Honestly, Doug reckoned John had something similar to his own system going on, forced to adopt a persona he deeply despised. For one, it was obvious he wasn't meant to be a team player, instead going off and doing his own thing. Was that it? The system wanted him to be a one-man army, working alone when really all he wanted was to be close with others?

Watching the boy rush back towards the monster, firing green-tipped arrows that appeared from nowhere in an invisible bow, Doug couldn't help feeling a little bad for the kid, if that was the case. He'd have to find a way to include him more without making him lose points.

For now, Revert had done good enough work that he felt comfortable getting back to his feet. The others had been talking quietly amongst themselves for a little while, and he moved over to them.

"—could have died right there," Jade was saying with some heat in her voice.

"There have been lots of times when we could have died, lately," Lily murmured in reply. She was idly fiddling with the string of her crossbow as she watched John loose arrows into the prone golem, steadily chipping away at the rocks that made up its torso and head. John's shots were far less accurate than what Lily had displayed, and Doug wondered if that irritated her.

"I'm not denying that." Jade ran the tips of her fingers over the visor of her medieval helmet. Her eyes narrowed. "It's just… I worry we've been a bit too reliant on John. Looking back, I was starting to think he's pretty much fucken invincible. A whole one-man army."

Doug couldn't help but smile at that, and he quickly turned the expression into a smirk before anyone could see. Younger Doug would've had something to say, here. "Bah. He's human like anyone else. Catch him in just the right spot with a mean uppercut, and he's down for the count," Doug said, summoning mental images of his grandchildren to help push him through the awful feeling that came with forcing such useless bravado.

+100 Youth

Her point was sound, really. The events of the last few minutes had proved that John wasn't some infallible killing machine.

"Exactly," Jade said, pointing a finger at him. "There's no doubt he's the strongest here—"

Doug had to quickly mentally evaluate whether he should contest that claim. Conceding the title of 'strongest' implicitly was an entirely different matter to acknowledging it out loud.

He decided to say nothing. There was a limit to how much he was willing to slip into the Doug the Thug persona, and the system hadn't yet punished him for not going all out with the act. Technically, it should have been punishing him for not acting like a selfish ponce and robbing people, after all. This should be fine.

"—but that doesn't mean he's some demigod who's always going to be there to hold my goddamn hand. It feels like I've been riding with training wheels. I need to hurt— I need to get stronger."

"We all do," Chester said, a little shakily. He'd collapsed to the floor and hadn't moved from his seated position since John had dropped him off. His hands were shaking, and his eyes were screwed shut.

That was another thing Doug didn't think he could let go. It wasn't even a Doug the Thug thing; even his older self would've taken objection to young Chester's attitude, much as he understood it. So he moved closer and slapped the boy on the back, the hit reverberating through his hockey armour. "Get it together, lad," was all he said.

Chester nodded, fisting his hands in his lap. His eyes remained shut, though. How did a lad with such an impressive weightlifter physique end up this way? Doug knew there was a story there, but now wasn't the time.

"The point is," Jade said, still watching the battle, "we can't rely on one person if we want to survive. He can get away with being a loner, evidently, but we can't."

Doug wanted to object there. Probably should have, for the sake of his Youth points. But he didn't. "We make a good team," he said instead. "Maybe we should go hunting for some blue portals. Refine things a bit. Gain experience. And points for spells and whatnot."

"Are you talking about leaving John?" Lily asked.

"No," Jade said. "Frankly, we should stick with him for as long as we can, just for the protection he provides by proximity. Like I said earlier, if we'd been facing that thing alone, we would've died."

She gestured towards the downed rock golem. The rocks making up the bulk of its body were almost entirely blackened now, reminding him of the colour a guy's skin had gone after being bitten by a spider, when he was over in Australia one time. John still flitted about it, firing his special arrows with far lower frequency now, picking his targets carefully. It could barely move at this point. As they watched, there was another spherical eruption of air as some of its chains broke apart. John reappeared a distance away from the creature, his back to them. Then he charged back in.

Doug chuckled under his breath, shaking his head. The young lad was committed.

Still, he felt the need to point out: "You can't say that for sure. If we didn't have John with us, we might have employed a different strategy. Hell, the fight to get here would've been harder, but more points between the lot of us would've meant more abilities, and that might have given us something as effective as his arrows seem to be."

"That's kind of my point," Jade said, frowning. "Maybe we could convince him to let us run a blue portal while he watches on? He seemed fine doing that kind of thing earlier…"

Doug shrugged. He looked at Alissa. "You're quiet."

"I have nothing to contribute," she said wryly. "John or no John, I feel my fate is settled."

Doug arched an eyebrow. "How so?"

"There is a limit to how far I will go for survival." She pinched her skintight bodysuit, and a look of revulsion crossed her features. "This already has me close to it. The way you all talk, it is clear you expect to get stronger and face an escalating series of trials. If that is so, it will not be long before the rest of you stand as far above me as he does now." She shrugged, but the motion was anything but nonchalant. "From what I gather about these systems, it seems they are meant to torment us all. A test, perhaps, to see how much we'll throw away about ourselves in order to save our lives. Forgive me for saying this, but I cannot help thinking that my trial is harsher than most."

Rubbing his chin, Doug pondered that. She wasn't wrong in her supposition that not all systems necessarily had to be created equal. There'd been a couple of moments where he'd dearly wished he could swap out his for any of the others', as they sounded so much easier than what he'd been saddled with. But then, that was the point, wasn't it? Of course being accurate with a ranged weapon sounded harmless to him. And he was sure an explanation of his own system would sound trivial to Lily, in turn. The struggle was the whole point.

An uncomfortable silence settled between them after Alissa's words, and Doug let it be for now. There was nothing to say that wouldn't sound hollow. He certainly wasn't going to spout any of the braggadocios nonsense his younger self would have in this situation. Oh, Doug the Thug would have berated her for being defeatist and giving up and blah blah blah.

But this old man had grown quite a bit over the last 60 years. Enough to recognise that the bravado he'd always projected had merely been a sad attempt to cover for his own insecurities, and he no longer felt the need to put the woman down to prop himself up.

-100 Youth

Doug held back a sigh. He felt his eighty-seven years in every one of his creaky old bones, for a moment, before it went away again. A warning that came with every loss of Youth.

The silence was finally broken by John appearing beside them.

"The monster's almost dead," he told them. "We need to get out of here before it blows up."

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