"We are looking at a testing period of 5 months at minimum and 6 months at maximum according to the guys in the department. Only then can we achieve the target delivery date to the client. But to do that, we need to speed up things on your end."
I sighed at my old foe/best friend, who also happens to be my biggest headache most of the time.
"Alex. You know that we are nowhere near ready for Testing and QA. The hardware constraints we are working with because those bastards at Ford are cheapskates and want us to build them a functional assembly code for their robotic arms for their new EV chassis, not to mention the complexity of the Assembly code working with multiple assembly arms in sync like they want so that they can replace thousands of workers at once is not something you rush out the door to meet a deadline."
"I refuse to have that kind of a botched project on my resume. Hell, forget about me. I've been running the Senior and Junior engineers ragged for the past three months. Do you know how many complaints I have to deal with every day? And you are telling me to speed things up even more? They'll quit the moment I even utter the first words of 'another crunch'!"
Alexander Grenn. My childhood friend, and my biggest nemesis in the company as the Project Manager, gave me a pitiful look that I simply could not ignore.
"Dave. The guys upstairs are riding my ass about this project. I can't tell them what you just said, or we will both get fired on the spot. You know it."
"....Yeah. I know."
I could not help but sigh again at his words, knowing that he was under just as much pressure as I was.
"Fine. I'll talk to the team. But make no mistake, if my guys quit because of this new crunch, I am not going to be held accountable. And I want that in written from HR. Tell that to the idiots in suits who know nothing about what we do and give unreasonable timelines to the clients all the time."
Alex chuckled at my words.
"I'll tell them, but in corporate language, as usual-whoa there!!"
His expressions changed on the Zoom call as a smaller body tackled him from the side, revealing a child with shoulder-length blond hair like her father and cute blue eyes like her mother.
"Dad!! You said no work during our movie marathon!!"
"Sorry, Sam, I'm just wrapping things up here with Uncle Dave."
I chuckled as Samantha, Alex's daughter, eyes lit up and turned to the camera, happily waving her arm.
"Hey Uncle Dave!!"
"Hey, Sam. So, Alex broke the movie night rule to make me work overtime, huh?"
She nodded vigorously at my words and pouted at her dad.
"Yeah!! He promised there would be no work calls tonight, but then he took that call from someone and then called you right after!!"
I laughed at the ten-year-old's words.
"Yeah, your dad is very good at breaking promises. So, what is today's theme?"
"Disney!! We were on Frozen when he called you!"
"Ooh! That's a good one."
I looked at the time, which showed 11:30 PM, and nodded towards Alex.
"Don't hold her up anymore, Alex, and go back to that marathon. We can discuss this tomorrow."
His eyes softened as he held his daughter at my words, knowing I was right.
"Alright, I'll talk to you tomorrow morning. Good night, Dave."
"Goodnight, Alex. And Goodnight, Sam. Have fun with the marathon for me as well, yeah?"
"Ok!!"
I chuckled again as the lively little girl forced her father to quickly end the Zoom call, leaving me in the silence of my room filled with all kinds of stuff and the distinct hum of my gaming PC.
With a sigh, I got up from the chair and went to the fridge nearby to get some beer to cool myself down a bit.
However, by the time I returned to the pc, I saw something that should not be possible.
An email sent by an unknown sender to my work email address.
An impossibility, as this is an internal email address that nobody outside should be able to reach, regardless of the circumstances.
"The hell? who's playing pranks like this? Can't be Mike, the guy's on vacation and his email is turned off by HR for the entire duration."
I set down my beer and opened up the email, only to be met with what looked like a CYOA sheet, but with a strange format I've never seen before.
I used to play a lot of tabletop and online games involving CYOA back in high school, and even in college, with Alex and Diana, so I know what exactly I am looking at, but I don't understand who is bold enough to use a work email for something like this.
'Is it really Mike then? He is the only one mad enough to pick a fight with HR like this most of the time and somehow come out unscathed.'
Looking at the details thoroughly, I saw things that stood out to me. Specifically, terms like Aura and Semblance.
Isn't this basically a CYOA for that old web series? What was it called? Ruby or something spelled wierdly? I can't remember properly. It's been over ten years since that show was ever mentioned by anyone after that divisive ninth volume of theirs.
Not like I know exactly why people were divided about it. I only watched one volume before life got its hooks in me, and I had no time left for anything else after that.
With a shrug, I sat down and started to go through the CYOA, filling in things while thinking through various scenarios from the limited information I had.
It's always been like this with Alex and I. We always design our characters meticulously in our own style.
Alex tends to min-max everything while I make my characters as well-rounded as possible. Diana, on the other hand, used to be very casual in her character creation, but somehow was always the last one standing in our runs all the time.
Once I created the background, powerset, and other things in the CYOA, I decided to name the character based on the overall theme of the character design before finalizing it and sending it back to the same, unreadable address from which it came.
I don't care if this was a prank or something else. I think it was fun to distract myself from work-related thoughts for a few minutes and indulge in an old hobby like this once again.
'Speaking of work. The guys will riot if I don't give them a proper reasoning for the upcoming crunch.'
At that thought, I sighed once again and got to work on thinking about how to break the news to my team.
Although, something feels strange.....What's that smell of something burning? And why is the PC so damned loud all of a sudden-?
———————————————————————————————
The news reporter stood in front of the building with smoke coming out of one of the windows and spoke through the microphone.
"We are at the scene of the incident with the firefighters already trying their best to control the situation. However, based on initial estimations, the chances are looking grim for anyone in the affected apartment to survive."
"We still don't know the root cause of the fire, but from what we did manage to find was that the apartment belonged to a man called David Thornton-"
The news report went on and on before the theme changed, and a different show started on the TV that was left running by the father-daughter duo, who were drooling away on the couch after their movie marathon.
Not knowing that the only remaining family they had left had died that night.
And somewhere out there, across the multiverse, on a world called Remnant.
A new soul entered the equation.
———————————————————————————————
In the forests of Mistral, a temporary shelter built by a travelling caravan lay in ruins. Its charred tents, broken campfire holes, and the blood flowing with the dead bodies lying about painted the picture of what exactly happened.
An ambush. Not by predators, or the monsters that call this world home, but people.
The marks of bladed weapons and gunshots clear on the dead bodies that were left to rot.
Yet, not everything was dead in this place.
Within one of the ruined tents of the caravan, the body of a 10-year-old boy that had been unmoving to this moment, thanks to the bullet wound in his head, twitched.
Steam started to waft off the body as he shone with an unnatural orange glow, similar to heated metal.
Slowly, the boy opened his eyes, dazed and confused, not understanding what happened and where he was.
Then, as he sat up, the molten bullet flowed out of the wound, startling the boy who shot to his feet, only to shoot through the small tent's roof thanks to his Semblance amblifying his body.
As the boy crashed to the floor, unable to understand what was happening around him, the wounds on his body, originating from the scuffle with the bandits, along with the bullet hole, closed up rapidly as he continued to glow a threatening red in the darkness of the forest.
A crimson beacon of power in the darkness of a world that wishes to devour all light.