I hit the man in the dark coat at full speed, which wasn’t very fast because this body wasn’t built for speed. It was built for dying in a tavern fight. Well, in a tavern murder, because Joseph never stood a chance against Ren.
The impact knocked us both into the platform steps. He was solid, heavier than he looked, and he didn’t go down. I did. My shoulder hit the wood, and something cracked. Not broke, cracked, but the pain was immediate and bright enough to make me regret every decision that had led me here.
The man looked down at me. Same ordinary face, brown hair, completely forgettable NPC looks. He regarded me the way you’d look at a bug that had landed on your arm. Not angry. Not surprised. Mildly inconvenienced.
"You’re not supposed to be here," he said.
His voice was flat and conversational, like he was telling me I’d taken his seat at a restaurant.
I got up. My shoulder screamed. I got up anyway.
"Neither are you," I said.
He tilted his head. Then he hit me.
I’d been hit before, back in the real world. There’d been a bar fight in my twenties that I’d lost badly. This was different. This was someone who knew how to hit. His fist connected with my ribs, and I felt something give. The pain was so sharp and so specific that my vision went white for a second.
I dropped to one knee. He stepped past me towards the platform steps. Clara was right there, eight feet above us, turning at the sound of the commotion. Her eyes widened when she saw us.
I grabbed his ankle.
It was the dumbest thing I’d ever done, and I’d once written four hundred Chapters of a novel that killed me. I caught his ankle with my left hand. My right arm was hanging uselessly at my side, but I held on. He looked down at me again with that same mild annoyance, then kicked my hand away.
I grabbed him again.
He kicked me again.
Something in my wrist popped.
"Clara, move!" I shouted.
She didn’t move. She was frozen, looking at me, then at the man, trying to understand what was happening. She’d been carefree when I’d written her, but the story had given her weight, and right now that weight was pinning her in place.
Damn you, narrative.
The man kicked my hand free and stepped over me. I rolled onto my back, my ribs screaming and my wrist throbbing, and stared up at the sky. The fireworks were still going, red and gold and white, beautiful and completely irrelevant to my current situation.
The man was three steps up the platform. Two steps. One.
The hero hit him from the side like a truck.
I didn’t see it happen. I was on my back watching fireworks. But I heard it: the impact, the crack of the man hitting the platform railing, the sound of someone who weighed more than he looked slamming into wood hard enough to splinter it.
Ren had seen him.
He’d finished with the scripted attacker, turned, spotted the man on the platform steps, and moved. He was fast. So damn fast, because I’d built him to be fast.
The man in the dark coat went over the side of the platform and hit the cobblestones. He didn’t get up. I don’t know whether he was unconscious, dead, or something else entirely. He just stopped moving.
Ren stood on the platform, breathing hard as he looked down at the man. Then he turned towards me.
I was still on the ground. My ribs were cracked, my wrist was swelling, my lip was split, and I could taste blood. I looked exactly like what I was: an extra who’d tried to fight something way above his weight class and lost.
Ren jumped down from the platform and crouched beside me. His face was close, and those blue eyes were doing that thing again. Not concern. Not gratitude. Suspicion.
"Stay out of my way," he said.
I spat blood onto the cobblestones. "Trust me, buddy. I do not ever want to be in your way."
Ren stared at me. Five seconds. Ten. The festival was in chaos around us, people running, guards shouting, and the last fireworks going up in bursts of white and green. He stared at me, and I stared back. Neither of us blinked.
Then he stood and walked away, back towards the platform and Clara. I lay on the cobblestones, watching the sky and waiting for the pain to become something I could think around instead of something I could only think about.
The System chimed.
[Quest Update]
Secondary Objective: Intercept Clara Dale.
Status: COMPLETE.
[Companion Bond Available]
Target: Clara Dale. Confirm bond? YES / NO.
[Achievement Unlocked]
First Deviation: You have successfully altered a major narrative event through direct intervention.
Reward: Luck modifier increase.
[Luck Meter Update]
Current Luck: D?
Previous: F+
Change: +2 ranks.
[Author’s Archive Update]
Current Divergence: 18%.
D minus. Two ranks above where I’d started. Still terrible by any normal standard, but two ranks above the worst luck in the world. Right now, lying on cobblestones with cracked ribs and a swelling wrist, two ranks felt like winning the lottery.
I guess now the narrative would attempt to correct itself.
The script had been broken. I’d changed a major event. Ren was supposed to save Clara alone, and I’d inserted myself into the scene. The story would definitely push back.
I lay on the ground and watched the fireworks end. The last one went up, a burst of gold that hung in the sky like a second sun before fading away. The square grew darker as the crowd scattered. Guards were rounding up the scripted attackers, and the two narrative-generated attackers were down. The man in the dark coat was gone.
I hadn’t seen where he’d gone. Nobody seemed to be looking for him, probably because nobody else had any reason to suspect he was different from the others.
Clara was on the platform with her father. Ren stood nearby, talking to the guards.
The festival was over.
I sat up slowly, and everything hurt. My ribs, my wrist, my shoulder, my face. F+ luck had been bad. D? luck was better, but it didn’t come with painkillers. I would’ve really appreciated it if it did. I bet if Ren were in this situation, the Hero System would conjure a recovery potion out of nowhere. But not my System. My System wasn’t generous like that.
Clara looked down from the platform. She was watching me, but not the way she’d watched me before, with suspicion and calculation. There was gratitude in her expression now.
I tried to stand. My legs held, barely. I leaned against the platform steps and took a breath, which turned out to be a mistake because breathing made my ribs scream.
The System chimed again.
[Companion Bond Available]
Target: Clara Dale.
Confirm bond? YES / NO.
Warning: Companion bonds alter narrative structure. The hero’s scripted path to this companion has been severed. The script will attempt to repair this breach.
I looked up at Clara. She was still watching me. She’d seen me grab a man’s ankle while getting kicked in the ribs. She’d seen me put myself between her and an attacker when I had no business being there. She’d seen me get beaten for it.
I didn’t deserve her trust. I’d engineered this whole thing. The letters, the attack, all of it. Every move planned, every word chosen to put me in this exact position.
But she didn’t know that. She just saw a man who’d been hurt trying to protect her.
I confirmed the bond.
[Companion Bond Established]
Companion: Clara Dale.
Bond Type: Trust (Level 1).
[Companion Ability Unlocked: Clara’s Insight]
Description: Clara can sense when Joseph is in danger within 50 meters.
[Narrative Alert]
The hero’s scripted path to Clara Dale has been severed.
Script hostility level: Rising.
I stood in the dark square with cracked ribs, a damaged wrist, and D? luck, and I’d done it. I’d intercepted Clara Dale. The companion bond was active. The story was going to try to fix what I’d done.
Clara came down the platform steps and walked over to me. She studied my face, the split lip, the bruise forming on my cheekbone, and the way I was holding my ribs.
"Who are you?" she asked.
I looked at her. The woman I’d written about in a single sentence was standing in front of me, asking who I was.
I didn’t have a good answer.
"I’m just a chill guy who knew the right thing to do," I said.
She didn’t believe me. I could see that. But she didn’t argue or push for an explanation. When she helped me walk towards her father’s house, her hand on my arm was steady.
Across the square, Ren was watching us. His expression had changed. It wasn’t suspicion anymore. It was something colder, something that calculated, measured, and remembered. He was watching me walk away with the woman who was supposed to be his, and he was filing the moment away for later.
[Narrative Alert]
The Hero has noticed you.
Hero’s hostility level: Rising.
That was scary as shit, but I was too battered to care.
I’d started this as an extra with F luck and a six-hour death sentence. Now I had D? luck, a companion bond, and the supposed MC starting to wonder if I was a problem. After all, as far as Ren knew, he was the main character. He had no reason to suspect that the man who’d just interfered with his big heroic moment had once been the idiot responsible for writing his entire life.
The story was going to get harder from here. I knew that. The script would fight back, Ren would keep watching me, and the man in the dark coat was still out there somewhere.
But right now, with Clara’s hand on my arm and the festival dying behind us, I had something I hadn’t had since waking up on that tavern floor.
I had a freaking chance.