A typical school day…

  At fourteen years of age, Nox Walker wasn’t sure why her parents had named her Nox, after the Latin word for night. Nor did she care. After all, when she’d been seven, those parents had cast her aside and pced her in an orphanage that, even if it wasn’t the worst possible pce to grow up, was still far from what she considered ideal. Besides, at times she had to admit the name suited her. She did like the night. It was when the world slept, giving her the freedom to roam as she wished. Plus, even if it didn’t suit her pale complexion, it did match her long, pure-bck hair and pitch-bck eyes.

  “Miss Noxious,” Mrs Albright snapped, her voice radiating contempt. “Stay awake in my css, else it’ll be another trip to the principal’s office for you.”

  Nox blinked and, ignoring the snickering the teacher’s words had sparked among the css, she tried to focus.

  “Sorry,” she told the ninth grade teacher. “I just don’t feel like I have much to learn from someone who can’t properly pronounce a student’s name. A name that’s just a one sylble word, I might add. If you want, I can stay after school and try to educate you.”

  “It’s detention for you, again,” the teacher literally snarled, her eyes gring angrily at the student.

  “Of course,” Nox said, vigorously nodding her head. “Maybe this time you’ll get it right. After all, I’m sure even you’ll be able to learn it… eventually. Maybe. If not, I’ll still give you points for effort.”

  The teacher’s hand shed out, grasped the girl’s hair, and savagely yanked her from her seat. It wasn’t something the woman would’ve done with any of the other students who had parents to speak up for them, but with this ever-so-annoying and rebellious girl, it was open game on any abuse she’d so far dared try. After all, even the girl’s parents had given up on her and cast her aside. Nor did the orphanage seem to care.

  With the girl now on the ground, the teacher switched her grip to the back of the girl’s shirt colr and tugged. Not giving the student a chance to stand, she dragged her to the cssroom door. It wasn’t the first time she’d done this, and during one of those previous times the teacher had felt something in the girl’s shirt give… and it was her fervent hope that one day the shirt would just rip right off. What excuse she would give should that ever happen she didn’t know, but she figured if no one had cared about the girl so far, no one would then. Whatever happened, it would be nothing less than what the trouble maker deserved.

  “Bye bye,” Nox croaked, waving to the css as she was dragged out the door.

  Outside the girl was allowed to get to her feet, after which, with the teacher’s hand still firmly on the back of the girl’s shirt colr, that girl was marched towards the principal’s office. After all, even Mrs Albright knew there were limits, and if she was to drag the girl through the whole school some goody-two-shoes might compin about her righteous, and very proper, discipline of an unruly and recalcitrant student. It wasn’t as if she wanted to do this… not really. It was the result of the girl’s own disrespectful behavior. As far as the teacher was concerned, the girl who liked to sleep in css, and who loved to mock her, was a noxious creature and so was very aptly named.

  “Hey Mack, hey Callie,” Nox cheerfully greeted two of her friends as they entered the secretary’s office to find a line of well over two-dozen delinquents sitting as they awaited their turn with the principal.

  “She was being disruptive, and I still have my css waiting,” Mrs Albright told the overwhelmed secretary who just nodded.

  “Liar,” Nox told the woman’s retreating back. “I was peacefully sleeping when a vicious hooligan assaulted me.”

  “Take a seat,” the secretary commanded… Well, it sounded more like a weary plea.

  Taking a deep breath, Nox sat down and tugged at her colr. Once when the teacher had yanked her around like that, the sound of fabric ripping had sent her heart up into her throat; and so she’d sewn another, much sturdier colr onto the inside of the shirt’s colr, as well as reinforced the buttons with extra thread—ensuring no wardrobe malfunctions would occur. Even so, she had no way to reinforce her throat. She was also sure the woman’s assault on the poor shirt had become more and more brutal over the months, as if deliberately trying to…

  “Wanna bet on the wrestling matched tonight,” Callie asked, dashing over to sit beside Nox.

  “Nay. With the forecast calling for thunderstorms and hurricane force winds, they’ll probably be cancelled,” the girl replied.

  “Hmm. Yeah, probably,” Callie admitted, grinning infectiously. It was how she made most of her money. Take bets on the weekly wrestling matches, and when the weather cancelled those matches, refuse to refund the money she’d taken by saying that neither side had won.

  “You won’t take me alive,” a massive, muscle-bound man/boy suddenly bellowed, drawing the eyes of everyone in the room. In a dispy of muscles, he stood, flexed—ripping his shirt in the process—and hurled himself towards the exit, sending the two burly security guards the school had hired to intimidate the students flying.

  “Poor Jake,” Callie said, licking her lips. “Those muscles might be pretty nice to look at, but he’s definitely mixing those steroids with something. Not good Jakie. Not good at all.”

  Nox, not wanting to hear another lecture from the girl on how great muscles were, silently nodded. Personally she didn’t see the appeal. And given Callie was a straight-A-plus student whose only crimes were the bookkeeping rackets she ran, she also failed to see why the girl was so focused on muscles, or on Jake in particur.

  Screams came from the hallway, and Nox figured Jake was now showing off his strength by walking down the row of lockers outside, giving each a taste of his massive and very devastating fists. Whatever he was doing, the screams weren’t those of pain or outright terror, but more of shock, so she didn’t worry too much about it. Plus it was what he did each Friday. Why he hadn’t been expelled was anyone’s guess, but it might, or might not, have something to do with the well over two-hundred straight wins on the wrestling mat.

  “See you Monday,” Callie called back as she casually strolled out of the room behind the secretary and the principal who were frantically rushing after Jake. Their eyes literally screamed—not again! A surge of students followed them.

  Nox cracked her knuckles, looked around the now empty room, and also stood. Even before she’d reached the door the bell rang, signalling the end of the school day. “Perfect,” she mused to herself, joining the chaotic swarms of students rushing through the hallways.

  Soon she was beside a door with a poster of none other than Jake himself featured in shirtless glory while flexing his muscles. Over the image were the words: ‘Wrestling Club! Come and join us now! You know you want to!’ On the bottom of the poster below the image were the words: ‘Remove this poster, and you are dead meat, scum!’

  The poster was one Nox herself had pced there several months back, and might expin why Callie had taken to talking to her about Jake and his muscles so much. The intent though had been to cover the window, and, despite covering the windows in the cssroom doors being against school policy, so far no teacher or guard had dared remove the simple sheet of paper. Jake had never punched a single student—aside from when on the wrestling mat—but his gigantic form was both awe-inspiring and fear inducing.

  Nox stepped inside and drew in a deep breath. Here she knew she got the same look in her eyes as Callie did when talking about muscles. It was one of the school’s computer bs and was filled with row upon row of computers that beat hands down anything she could access at the orphanage where she’d been abandoned.

  Carefully checking there was no one inside, Nox made for the storage room door at the back of the room and pulled out a pin. The door opened in seconds. Sure, technically the lock should’ve been more difficult, but she’d had a fair bit of practice over the st few months, plus the school in an effort to save money had skimped on buying decent locks for the inside doors.

  Inside the storage room she knelt beside a set of cupboards and soon the lock there too fell to her lock-picking skills. Slipping inside, she used the pin to jam the door so that if someone tried to open the cupboard door, they would believe it was locked. She then settled down and closed her eyes for a long nap. A few people might enter the storage room for paper, but no one would try the cupboard doors.

  …

  Breathing hard, and filled with longing for her precious computers, Nox’s eyes flickered open from a euphoric dream where she’d been in the world’s rgest computer store with an unlimited budget. She gulped, licked her lips, and tried to calm down as she listened at the door.

  The girl nodded. There was no sound, and she couldn’t see any light around the edges of the cupboard door. Removing the pin, she slipped out and, after flicking on the light switch, she took the time to use that pin to lock the cupboard door.

  Next it was the door to the storage room, then she stepped into paradise—sixty computers with not a single person around to use them. Nor would anyone disturb her this te. At 9pm the doors to the room were locked until 6am. Sure, security might rattle a doorknob or two as they made the rounds, but they wouldn’t go to the effort of actually unlocking those doors and peering inside.

  Sitting down, Nox logged onto one of the computers and slipped a thumb drive from her pockets. Soon, with a few clicks of the mouse, every computer in the room came to life. All of them top of the line. And all of them hers to command. It was going to be a fun night.

  Patterns filled the monitor of each computer and Nox looked around the room. She nodded. The bit of code she’d put together was working as it reached out and accessed each computer to solve a rather complicated math problem. Sure, the equation could be solved via more mundane means, and she’d had the math nerds calcute the answer for her, but she wanted to see what her bit of code would do.

  Walking around the room, the girl turned each monitor to point at the center of the room, then sat down and waited as she swiveled around in a chair, idly flickering her eyes from monitor to monitor which used symbols to show the progress the massive supply of computational power was making towards solving the problem. In the center of the array of machines that were busy doing around seven-hundred-billion operations a second, the girl was in heaven. Forget guys and their muscles, this was what she recognized as power. Chain everyone in the world to a desk, and given them a pencil and paper—and they, the whole of humanity—would not be able to match the power that now hummed at her behest! And that thought thrilled her.

  Not that the universe cared one whit about the girl. When the symbols on several of the screens matched a certain configuration, and with the fiber optic cables connecting those symbols heavily resembling the circles of light used by otherworldly beings in their teleportation circles, the universe just decided to act.

  Nox fell to the cobblestone road… which she knew had to be wrong because beneath her butt there’d been a soft chair, and beneath that soft chair there’d been a very sturdy floor. In addition, beneath that floor there’d been another very sturdy floor, with yet another floor beneath that, followed by a basement. Below her butt there’d definitely been no road. Certainly not a cobblestone one lined with strange-looking buildings made mostly of stone.

  The girl blinked, looked around, and decided to just close her eyes. It had to be a dream, right, and since that dream clearly had no computers in it, she could safely ignore it.

  A hand picked the girl up and threw her from the middle of the road just as a carriage drawn by a horse-like creature came close to sending her to another world.

  “Idiot,” a man wearing a leather jerkin and trousers fumed before stomping off.

  Nox again blinked. She rubbed her knuckles, noting they were scrapped, and that her butt still hurt from the fall. But still, it had to be a dream, right? The two moons in the starless night sky—one a forest green and the other a dark blue—assured her it was. Her rumbling stomach drew her attention to the fact she hadn’t eaten since the school’s lunch period more than ten hours back.

  Standing, Nox looked round. Sure, it was a dream, but maybe there was food in this dream, and so she slowly ambled along the cobblestone street. To her shock, in this dream it seemed all the stores were closed for the night. Nor were there any vending machines.

  Tired of the dream that had neither computers nor food, Nox pinched herself. The scene around her remained the same. She pinched herself again. Next she spped herself. Sighing, she downgraded the whole event from crappy dream to nightmare.

  Scratching her head, the girl looked around. It was weird, but inside her skull she could feel a whole other nguage, plus the basic customs of the city she was in. For example, when the man had called her an idiot, the word had not been in a nguage she should know. The dream, nightmare rather, also filled in other details, such that in this nightmare world the monetary unit used was called the copper, and that the monetary system consisted of a number of coin types.

  There was the copper coin, on which one would see either a 1, or a 5, or a 10, or a 25, or a 50 inscribed, depicting just how many coppers that coin was worth. Then there were silver coins on which one could also expect to see a 1, or a 5, or a 10, or a 25, or a 50 inscribed, depicting how many silvers it was worth with 1 silver equaling 100 coppers. Simirly, above the silver coins, there were units of gold coins where 1 gold equalled 10,000 coppers; and above the gold coins there were simir units of ptinum coins where 1 ptinum equalled 1,000,000 coppers. All four coin types were the size of a dime.

  Nox frowned and scratched her head. Usually in her dreams such detail was restricted to computers. Yet in this dream she somehow knew a day was exactly 25 hours, and a year was exactly 1400 days—or 4 times as long as an Earth year. She also knew this was the City of Gunk which had a popution of around 30,000 human inhabitants.

  Taking a deep breath, she again pinched herself, and then gave herself another sp. Nothing. Shrugging, she looked down to study her outfit. Bck shirt with bck jeans and red joggers. It was pretty much the same as what she’d been wearing before she’d fallen into this absurd dream that didn’t have a single computer in it. The thing was, her cellphone was missing. It seemed the dream not only didn’t have computers, but had taken the simple, crappy one she could call her own away from her. That definitely made it an uber nightmare.

  Reaching into a pocket she pulled out a few coins to find she had 32 coppers to her name. If she had to guess, the dream had converted the money she’d been carrying on her into the local currency. Useful for someone being Isekaied, and which would be enough to buy her a few meals… but hardly any help at all if this wasn’t a dream.

  She focused on the word, ‘Blessing.’ Nope. Nothing. Frowning, the girl tried other words, such as, ‘Status.’ Again nothing. According to her newfound nguage, this world did have something called a Blessing, and if she was stuck here without one…

  Nox gulp, then spped herself again. Hard! She tasted blood in her mouth, but aside from that nothing changed.