Chapter 60: 56.  A Challenging Start (Start of Book Two)

It was an early Monday in late August, and Jay was trying to sleep in a cheap motel in a small Central Florida city. Much of Jay's life had changed dramatically over the course of a weekend. Three nights ago, he was just another eccentric teen sneaking into the most fantastic party you'd find in the entire area. He had to parkour his way around guards before getting knocked out by a mean karate hottie. All so he could confront his childhood friend who had ignored him for years. And ask her out.

Instead of coming out as a madlad high school hero, Jay joined a multiverse-traveling group of Champions with Systems, Skills, and magic. He became an actual hero standing against the oncoming apocalypse. Then he had undergone three timelines, endured several dungeons and many monsters, and killed his way through an army of assassins.

Jay might find some trouble sleeping after these past three nights.

His eyes snapped open. The alarm clock's buzzing red light illuminated the darkness. His high Perception made the glaring red light bright to him. He closed his eyes to ignore the alarm clock and the light streaming through the motel room window blinds. The neon signs outside thrummed with an electric roar filling Jay's ears.

His 80 Perception could be a pain if left uncontrolled.

He was stuck between the hours of midnight and dawn. Sleep would be hard to find. Jay tried anyway, rolling over in a fit. Instincts guided him when his face neared his [Faerie's] resting form. Kleo had come to exist after Jay guided her to kill her own dungeon master–then she somehow transformed from a toy monster and was released from the Toyreveler Dungeon.

His nose brushed against her little doll-size form.

She kicked his lip. She snorted like a little gremlin.

Jay turned to the other side of the pillow. He settled for a bit. The comfort of a bed and the need for sleep started to weigh on him.

Jay started to drift.

And drift.

His mom screamed.

They shared a room where two beds separated them by a couple of feet. It could have been inches.

Jay bounded out of his bed and reached his mom almost instantly. His [Faerie] familiar flopped off his pillow and found her master kneeling beside his mom.

"Which is it?" Jay muttered. Which nightmare was attacking his mom?

He waited, watching his mom thrash and moan. She kicked and shoved at the air, tangling her legs with the sheets. Jay figured all of this activity meant she was suffering her worst nightmare. The one where Jay couldn't touch her or get close until she snapped awake on her own and settled down.

When her eyes opened, she scrambled out of bed and away from her son. She looked at him with wide-eyed fright before searching around the room for a weapon. Her hand seized the telephone, ready to sling it at him if he moved any closer.

Jay knew this song and dance, unfortunately.

He waited at the same spot beside her bed, not budging an inch. He knew his mom hadn't grounded yet. She hadn't separated the nightmare from reality.

It took a minute or longer.

Thankfully, Kleo took a cue from her master and settled on his shoulder. They waited silently as his mom shuddered with every breath or choked on half-formed sobs.

After a while, she asked, "Is that you, Jay?"

"It's me, Mom," he answered.

"Oh, good," Jhara said with ragged pleasantness. "You're the son, not the sin." She nodded to herself. "The son, not the sin." She carefully placed the phone down and paced about the room. "The son." She gave Jay a wide berth of space. "Not the sin." 

She laughed at a corner of the room like it had said the funniest thing ever. It took her minutes to settle down and pick up where she had left off. "It's okay. It's not him."

Jay shifted into a seat and leaned against his mom's bed. There was a nothingness inside of him he hadn't felt in a while. It was months since his mom had a big episode.

Tonight looked bad. He'd have to wait her out before he could hug and comfort her. She wouldn't accept his touch right now. No matter how much she repeated that he wasn't the sin.

He knew what to look for before the System and levels. But now with his high Perception, he saw every shifting muscle tensing inside of her like a frightened animal ready to bolt away. Her heart was racing. The emotional gravity of her trauma was heavy. Huge. And suffocating.

"Let me have a go," Kleo requested quietly.

Jay thought it over.

His mom was highly sensitive right now. Kleo had shown much of her brash and bratty side since their meeting. But there was a lot of wisdom contained in that small black and purple doll-like body of the [Faerie].

"Go for it," Jay agreed.

Kleo's back thrust out twin jets of purple gravity magic that served as her wings. She bounded off Jay's shoulder and shot across the room. She activated [Orbital Mastery] since Jay's mom was someone they had a personal attachment to, allowing Kleo to float around Jhara with passive zero-g movement.

Jay felt nervous.

And hopeful.

"Not the sin?" his mom asked, puzzled by Kleo's presence as if she'd forgotten her.

"I'm a creepy girl," she answered. "And you're Momma Jhara."

"A girl," Jhara said. "There was a time I wanted a girl. I don't want a child anymore now."

Jay gripped his knees and swallowed a painful grunt that wanted to come out.

"But you got two," Kleo said. "The son. And me. A girl."

"My son," Jhara said distantly. "And a daughter?"

Kleo bumped into Jhara's chest. "Yeah, I can be that. So, let's be huggy and luvvy, Momma."

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"Oh, okay." Jhara reached up shakily.

There was still a lot of tension in her body. But she started to relax a little when she gripped Kleo like a doll. Jhara pulled Kleo into an embrace.

Relief washed over Jay as his mom's emotional gravity lightened. Her sense of awareness grew. She looked longingly at Jay before she approached him carefully. She was still timid. He couldn't do much but wait.

With Kleo clutched like an emotional support doll, Jhara knelt in front of her son and touched his knee.

"It happened again," she said.

"It's been a wild night," Jay said.

She'd been hunted after, captured, beaten, and thrown out of a helicopter midcrash. She had been forced to flee for her life while an old crazy assassin commander chased her down to execute her. People would think that would be the cause of having some really screwed-up nights–especially hours after those events.

But that wasn't the case, really. His mom had deeper and heavier demons that couldn't be healed away easily by Brit's holy magic. The recent events had simply encouraged Jhara's mind to make a bigger mess of things now.

Jay wanted to hug his mom.

But she wasn't fully okay yet. She still saw traces of the sin behind her son's existence. Jay could tell through his emotional gravity sense. And he felt a weird throbbing discomfort in his left eye.

Controlling himself to the utmost degree, Jay edged around his mom carefully. He slid into slippers and a cheap gas-station hoodie.

"Kleo," Jay called, stopping at the door.

"I'll be here, Master," his familiar answered. "I'll keep her safe."

"Thank you." Jay hesitated with his hand on the doorknob. "Mom?"

"I'll get better," she said. "I'll sleep it off. It'll be alright."

Jay opened the door and entered the hall outside.

"I love you, Jay," his mom said quickly.

"I love you, too, Mom," Jay responded before closing the door.

He leaned back and let out a big breath.

Whew.

That was a lot.

And way heavy.

That was more than Jay wanted to deal with hours before school. He wanted that fluffy school arc where he could hang with the other Champions and have some laughs. But the start of this arc was already a doozy.

Jay was also unsure of why he kept referring to a mundane two weeks of school as an arc. That didn't need to be another huge narrative.

It had been fun, whimsical, and sometimes necessary to push narratives inside of the dungeon. Considering the stories involved was necessary when the System got pushy with Chance in the 'Overworld.' The real world. Pre-Apocalypse Earth. His Gravity Affinity could sense these things and much more.

How the System Apocalypse could have a heavy effect on Earth without being fully hooked up was a mystery to Jay. There were lots of mysteries, really.

What led to the assassins and the World Knife doing so much damage? Yeah, the Champions won, but those guys had way too many guns and support that crashed in on a Sunday night. Jay was certain the System Admins lurked behind the scenes and got involved.

What did it mean for his mom to have a system profile, even if it lacked levels and skills? Did that make her a bigger target of the system? What would the System Admins do next if they could use his mom's specialness against Jay? Or were there other angles that Jay was overlooking? Would YoAnna make use of his mom since Jhara was now a member of the Multiverse Protectorate Pantheon?

All of these questions made Jay lose his humor and start to worry. Because there was nothing he could do about them now. There was nothing to fight. Nothing to stick his short sword into or slam using gravity magic.

It was peaceful for the moment.

"Yet," Jay said, "I can feel the tremors. The very slight ripples. And my left eye throbs."

Jay closed his right eye–the gravity eye. He stared with his divine eye at a puke green patch of wall between cheap and faded paintings. With a bit of concentration, he felt for the vibrating power in his eye and linked them with his head. And for some reason, he could understand those vibrations in his head through his metaphorical gravitate sense.

There was something that must be done before school. But Jay was unsure what it could be. He could ignore the sensations, but [Eye of Venerated Madness] was a powerful Talent to have.

No matter if he was tired. No matter if he was in need of peace. The left eye of divinity required him to bear the burden of responsibility. To ignore the call would flirt with disaster, essentially. He just needed to make sense of it.

He could probably get more meaning from his divine eye if he invested in his Attributes. He had 20 Free Attribute Points now. If he used 19 for his Perception, he would hit 100 Perception. Hitting that milestone felt significant for his most important Attribute.

Or he could invest in his Resilience and Poise. With all the fighting and risk-taking he'd done, his squishiness could be the end of him. He could split 9 AP between the Health-based Attributes to get him beefier at 500 Health. Then he could split another 9 AP between his Chance-based Attributes–Conviction and Discovery. He'd have Chance x10. More Chance would increase his narrative leverage when plot armor and deus ex machina plays mattered the most.

It would be the safest thing to do.

"But it's my theme to throw caution to the wind and go for the big play," Jay said.

The big play would be pushing his Perception to 100 AP.

But Jay was uncertain if that was wise. He hesitated, feeling doubtful in ways he hadn't felt in a while. After all that happened, after nearly losing his mom, Jay might approach things differently. After so much challenge, he truly might have to change.

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