Ring! Ring! Ring!
"Shut the fuck up!" Adam groaned as he slammed his hand down on the alarm clock.
A second later he hummed in confusion. It had been 10 years since he last had an alarm clock...
What the hell is going on? And wasn't he just fighting that Kraken? If it could be called fighting, anyway.
'Sister...'
A soft gasp left his mouth as he squeezed his eyes shut, forcing the tears to stay in their place. He had to figure out what was going on, not grieve.
After all, there was a chance she was still alive. He was pretty sure that after the Kaiju killed her, it had ended him as well.
'A kaiju that those exalted let loose on the city.' He thought as he squeezed his left hand in frustration.
Krik. Shrk.
"What the fuck?" He whispered as he looked down at his hand.
Those robotic noises... were because he had a bionic arm?
Was that because the Kaiju had only damaged his arm? It seemed highly unlikely, but that was more realistic than somehow teleporting 10 years to the past, before even the first Kaiju appeared.
He stretched his hand for a second, listening to each of the whirring, robotic sounds it emitted. Whoever fixed this up... they also knew where he lived. And cared enough to save him.
'Or experiment on me.' Adam thought, feeling that that was far more likely. Who would care about some stupid Wasted?
Sighing, Adam decided he probably wouldn't get any answers just by sitting around so instead he stood up from his bed, stretched, and then walked to the door. His heart was pounding as he wondered what would await him on the other side. One of the few nice people left in the world, or some evil mad scientist—
"Hey, idiot! Time for breakfast!" His sister said as she sprung open the door.
Those tears he had viciously held back were starting to fall now, and he didn't know if he wanted to stop them this time. After a few seconds of standing there, Adam raised his hand and tenderly touched her cheek.
"Are you– is this real? You're alive?!"
Confusion washed over Cynthia, causing her to glance behind him and look at his bedroom. As far as she could tell, there was no weed.
Looking back at him, she asked, "Uh, idiot brother, yes I'm alive! Is the anesthesia messing with your head again?"
Despite her harsh words, he could see genuine concern across her face. Blinking back his tears, Adam wrapped her in an embrace as he whispered, "If it is, I don't want it to stop."
She squirmed from underneath his grasp, completely overwhelmed by this sudden display of affection. "Hey, uh, weirdo! It's not that serious, yaknow. Dad makes breakfast every day; you don't have to be such a ball baby about it!"
'Dad?' Adam thought as he fell completely still.
'He's alive?'
He quickly left her embrace and then bolted down the stairs. Cynthia stood there for a second, completely confused. She knew that his recent injury caused quite a big change in his life, but still. Why the hell wouldn't she be alive?
...
Adam descended the stairs so quickly that he almost tripped on his own feet. Steadying himself just before collapsing, Adam practically jumped down the last few sets of stairs.
Laughter erupted from the kitchen as his father heard Adam scrambling into the kitchen. "That excited for breakfast, eh? Good thing too. You know what those videos say, one of the best roads to improvement is a hearty breakfast early in the day."
A soft gasp left Adam's lips as he looked at the windowsill of the kitchen: the vase holding his parents' ashes was really gone. Turning his attention away from the windowsill, that simple gasp turned into his heart leaping in his chest.
For the first time in 8 years, he saw his father flipping pancakes while his mom cracked some eggs. They were making a family favorite homestyle breakfast. Each person would get 2 pancakes, 3 pieces of bacon, 2 fried eggs (scrambled for Cynthia), and some homestyle potatoes.
It was a slight upgrade over canned food, Adam's magnum opus.
His mother looked back just as she saw his arms go limp. Disbelief was evident on Adam's face as his eyes twitched and those cursed tears fell like an unstoppable waterfall. Dropping the egg in the bowl, his mother quickly walked over to him and murmured, "Hush, hush. What's wrong? Is it the accident? I promise it'll be ok."
Her reassurance rushed into him like a freight train, knocking all the air out of his lungs. Unable to continue standing, or maybe not even wanting to, he fell into his mother's embrace. It was a feeling he thought he had lost forever, its absence so horrible it could never be forgotten.
Somehow... his family had returned. All of them. As far as he could tell, the only thing different here was his arm.
'An accident.' Adam thought for a second before pushing aside the thought. Later, he could think about this bionic arm and apparent regression. For now, his sister and he had a family again.
...
After breakfast, it was time for his parents to go to work and for Cynthia to hang out with her friends.
'In a few years, those friends would become Eric,' he thought with a smile as he rubbed his human hand over a family portrait.
It was all still so surreal to Adam. However, he couldn't get too caught up with these emotions. Whatever it was that gave him this second chance, he didn't know whether it was a benevolent force or not.
Additionally, what he did know was that in a month hell itself was going to rise on the earth. If everything remained the same, his parents would survive for a little while. However, Faye...
She died on the second day.
Before he could even ask her out to prom.
The portrait began shaking in his hand, so Adam moved it onto the desk beside his bed before gazing at his bionic hand. If there was anything that would help him change things around this time, he knew this was it.
"So, what's your deal?" He asked aloud as he moved his arm around, checking it at every angle.
Then, it began vibrating before the center of the hand cast a bright light, showing a holographic message that read:
[Activating the Villain system!]