June 21st, 1995

  'God this feels weird.' and 'Where the fuck am I?' were the first thoughts I had, followed up by 'God this feels weird'... again.

  Thinking was hard at the start. I didn't realize where I was and what was happening for a large span of time. The diapers, constantly being on my back, and boobs to the face clued me in after a while, but it took much longer to realise that I'd been reincarnated than it should have.

  Eh, chalk it up to the baby brain.

  Anyways, time was a strange thing to keep track of as a newborn. While I was aware of what was happening, it was more like I was in a complete haze, moving through the motions. The glaze my mind was in didn't help, and the repetive nature of my new life just made reality kind of flash by me.

  The first noticeably strange thing to happen in... well, ever, happened as I woke up one night (day? so hard to keep track of everything...).

  Okay, so, some clarification. Baby eyes are utter crap. Have you ever borrowed someone's glasses and think 'whoa, I can't see a thing through these!'? Yeah, it was like that, but cranked to 11. I couldn't make out words, and other than shapes, outlines and colours, nothing really registered to my vision. The same could be said about my other senses.

  So, when the pop-up appeared in my vision, crisp and clear and pixeled in that 90's style RPG font, I yelped (cutely, probably, stupid baby vocal cords), flailed at the strange thing in my face, and pissed myself.

  A diaper change fixed one of my problems. The notice didn't go away until a very slow and precise hand came up and poked the close button, which took a lot longer than I'd like.

  The pop-up wasn't a hallucination, or at least I didn't think so. The ramifications weren't something I could really parse, but the thought was in the back of my mind at the time whenever I tried to think or do anything.

  By the third pop-up, I'd been coherent enough to realize that, while I was growing taller and heavier, my physical prowress wasn't changing much, the application of it thought, that was slowly increasing. I could lift fourty pounds without a problem, other than a precarious grip, the small toys I had went flying across the room with accuracy that a normal infant couldn't have a grasp on. While I couldn't stand up, I crawled stupidly fast, something along the lines of a meter a second.

  It was an obvious oddity to my parents. More than once, I'd been taken to a clinic or hospital to understand my strength, but all signs pointed to me being a normal human.

  Around this time, I'd tried to use my vocal cords more often, mostly humming to myself and sounding out words I picked up from my parents. It got me a different pop-up, a few weeks after what i found out was my sixth month on this planet.

  It was a huge jump in my vocabulary, especially since I could understand my parents' language now. I had a few hundred core words that I could actually pronounce, simple things like 'mine!' or 'food!'. It freaked my parents out once again, and another round of tests were done. This time, an MRI was included.

  While the doctors explained to my worried parents that my cognitive centers were extremely developped, and yes, that it was weird and extremely unccomon, it wasn't anything bad. In fact, other than that abnormality, I was a healthy baby. I barely understood this at the time, but with the few words I understood, I could piece this together quite well.

  What I took from this thought, was that while my ability to learn new things was variable, once I reached a certain level of ability in a skill or ability, I didn't deteriorate in that subject anymore. This was why, even if I'd just been hearing snatches of phrases and conversation between my parents here and there, I had picked up on the words and kept them once I'd heard them.

  I hadn't realized it, but I was missing the knowledge I had in my past life, a good grasp of written English being the only thing I'd kept. Oh, I had a grasp on the ins-and-outs of my past life, and everything up to the last time I'd fallen asleep were remembered, but how to use and apply that properly? No, I'd lost all my skills and talents, as well as some learned traits.

  It was kind of disorienting, but not something terrible, all things considered.

  I came to the conclusion that I'd have to re-learn english to access whatever RPG system monitored my progress. This was easier than you might think, mostly due to finding out more about my situation.

  I slowly became aware of my location over the course of my first year of life. The canadian flag flying on the flagpost outside the house was the first clue, and the visible ocean view that could be seen on a third of the horizon made it clear I was somewhere on the coasts of Canada. I wasn't aware of where exactly I was in the chilly country, but it was in a city named Menagwes.

  There wasn't a desktop computer or anything similar in the house, and the cubic television that I'd sometimes watch was an LCD but was ridiculously big, easily 50 inches wide. What really clinched the timeline was the VHS player and the Sega Genesis in the cabinet under the TV.

  So. Menagwes, somewhere on a coastline in Canada, during the 90's. Cool.

  Now, why did me and my parents look asian, and why did they speak japanese exclusively to me?

  Simple. They immigrated late in the 80's to the foggy city, and both got jobs at a local phone company. Dad was some sort of IT service worker, and mom had a management position. They'd decided to teach me their native language first, before getting me started on local tongues.

  Learning English again was a simple but tiring afair, mostly done whenever I overheard someone talking the language and matching it up to words I thought they were. It still took me another six months before I could even say a lick of english.

  "Stat Window, Status Window, Status, Stats Window, Stat Screen, Stats Screen, Stat, Stats..."

  "Character Sheet."

  Trait List

  The character window was nearly entirely locked. The only interactive part, other than the tabbed lists, was the accumulated Character Points I had. Poking on the tab brought up on a small window.

  From there, I had the option of learning any skill instantaneously, picking an advantage, or increasing one of my main attributes.

  Attributes were the easiest to understand, but also quite costly. Both Strength, my ability to apply physical force along with my hit points and lifting strength, and my Health, which tied into how much I could endure along with my Speed and Fatigue points, cost ten CP for each point. Intelligence and Dexterity both cost 20 CP for each point, Intelligence manipulated my Will and Perception, as well as the pool of mental skills I could access, Dexterity dealt with my Speed (which altered my Move and my ability to dodge), and attributed to the power of my physical skills.

  Attributes

  Skills were a list of generalized skills, from Accounting to Zen Archery. There was also a sub-set of Techniques as well, but those needed the necesary skills to use them. Skills fell into five pools of type (Dexterity, Health and Intelligence, Perception and Will), and then divided into difficulty. I avoided this section for now. I was an infant still, there was no point in buying any of these until I'd actually need them.

  Spoiler: Skills

  The next section, and what I thought was the most important, were Advantages. This list of abilities were things I could learn through training or by having lucky genetics. Social, Mental or Physical traits were available to me, but the Mundane Background disadvantage clearly stated I couldn't access to more esoteric abilities available to me.

  Advantages List

  Done with all that, I started planning. With seven points available to me to buy stuff, I started browsing, but didn't find anything that really popped out at me. I'd finally decided to save up my points to store up my Attributes.

  At two years and two months of simplistic living as a baby, I'd finally accumulated enough points to boost my Intelligence by another point.

  I'd also fully understood spoken English and Japanese, but hadn't grasped or increased my base knowledge in the written form in either language.

  My fifth birthday marked another full 20 CP. I placed it into Intelligence again. It was a good birthday present to myself.

  The day after, I got another new message.

  I'd woken up with a much more dextrous body, and a very huge boost to my intelligence.

  My Dexterity had risen a full point, and my intelligence had gone from the 7 I'd reached yesterday to 10. I could finally think clearly, without the slowed down thought process I'd had before.

  It also showed me how utterly stupid I'd been. The difference between the me of yesterday and now was equal to a normal person and a genius. It was such a huge jump, I could do nothing but stare in stupefaction for an hour.

  The summer after my fifth birthday saw me constantly browsing through my father's and mother's small library on hot july and august days. The bookcase was a small thing, holding a hundred or so books in three different languages: English, French, and Japanese.

  I'd been trying to decipher how I gained EXP and Osmosis abilities, when I came to the conclusion that they were literal representations. I slowly grew more experienced over time at an unknown rate whenever I did anything. Osmosis on the other hand was picking up on cues and information that happened around me. It was why I gained Japanese Spoken so quickly, my parents constantly talked in their native tongue whenever I was around. English happened the same way, as my ability to comprehend it increased with the more I was exposed to it.

  Constantly trying to pick up Written Japanese for two hours or so a day for two months and some change saw me get a new pop-up...

  And suddenly, the few hundred words I memorized cleared up, and I could understand them without having to recall the specifics of the words. Simple phrases became easy to understand as well.

  I'd noticed during this time that my EXP counter was filling slightly slower, but had still filled a full CP, and had reached 97% around the time I'd gotten the pop-up.

  September rolled around, and something I'd been dreading finally started.

  While I'd been a very antisocial child, barely leaving the house unless my parents dragged me around, I still acknowledged that I'd have to interact with kids "my" age eventually...

  I was officially enrolled in a public school.

  Character Sheet

  Trait List

  Child Meta-Trait

  Social

  Mental