I staggered to my feet as the sickening smell of sulphur attacked my senses. 

The world around me was ablaze with flames, eating away at buildings that had been reduced to nothing but rubble. 

As far as the eye could see tornadoes of fire stretched up into the air howling as they ripped away at even more of the landscape. 

Even the sky was a deep blood red. 

Though, that wasn’t the only thing that was weird about the sky above me. There was also the giant spaceship that seemed to dominate the entirety of the sky above me, it stretched on for miles and miles. 

To put it succinctly, I had no idea what was going on… and yet, I felt a purpose here in this obliterated landscape. 

It was as if I had seen all of this happen before, as if it were baked into my very memory. But… I’d never experienced something like this before. It was almost as if I were walking through a dream that someone else had dreamt. 

And yet, it also felt like this was exactly where I was meant to be. 

I also felt as if I wasn’t entirely alone. 

There was… a presence… A kind of strange pull coming from all around me. A connection that I’d never felt before, one that was empowering me and making me stronger. 

I turned my head to look behind me, and there they were, just like I knew they would be. 

Five absolutely gorgeous women, each one of them lending me their power to enhance my strength just by being close to me. 

It felt… intoxicatingly incredible. 

Four of the women, though, seemed almost distant. They were standing close enough to me, but their faces were somehow blurred so that I couldn’t make out any of their features. 

Only one of them was close enough for me to actually see. 

She had dirty blond hair that hung just above her shoulders, short but not too short. It swept across her forehead messily, but in a way that was clearly styled. 

Her face wasn’t too narrow, nor was it too round, it sat directly in the middle and was more than a little attractive thanks to her button nose and warm brown eyes and lips… lips that looked as if they were just calling out to be kissed. 

Her neck was slender, and around it rested a necklace that held a half moon pendant. 

She wasn’t wearing anything spectacular.

 A shirt that looked like it may have been a little bit too big, a tattered pair of jeans and a jumper that had one half of an arm missing… and yet, she still managed to be one of the most beautiful women I’d ever laid eyes on. 

In her right hand was a dangerous looking sword, deadly sharp with a slightly curved point at the end. Along the blade were a series of glowing red pieces of circuitry, that seemed to extend up into her hand and through her arm. 

Our eyes locked, and she gave me a cocky half smile. 

The smile made my heart flutter, and the attention from her seemed to increase my strength tenfold. 

I was knocked out of my admiration of the girl behind me by a colossal crash as something plumetted toward the Earth and down into the ground. 

As hard as it was, I managed to tear my attention from the girl. 

A mecha. 

An absolutely gigantic metal machine stood amongst the burning rubble, its robotic eyes staring down at us from afar. 

Thanks to its design it almost looked like the mecha had a face on its front, one that made it look incredibly imposing. 

It took a step toward us, the very ground of the Earth trembling under its step. 

But this was fine. 

Because I knew, instinctively, what I had to do next. 

My exosuit erupted from my body, the liquid metal launching out from the place it lived around my heart to cover every part of my skin. 

I glanced back at the girl, and she had done exactly the same. A metal bodysuit clung to her skin, accentuating her curves. 

But that wasn’t where things were set to end. The girl ran toward me, her hand outstretched. I took it, and then our suits began to- 

I shot out of bed, covered in sweat, and winced as the sunlight pierced straight through my eyes like daggers aiming straight for my brain. 

I didn’t remember going to bed. 

I didn’t remember anything, actually, not after walking through the door and having a conversation with my mum. 

“Ah yeah, sorry about that,” came the voice of the AI front the back of my mind, causing me to almost jump out of my skin, “Your pathetic squishy human body wasn’t designed to channel beings of ultimate power like me, so after your adrenaline wore off and you were home your body sort of went into an immediate catatonic shutdown to deal with the extra stress.” 

That sounded… a little bit more than slightly worrying if I had to be honest. 

“Will there be any other effects like that or am I basically good now?” I asked, slumping slightly in my bed now that I knew nothing was exactly wrong with me anymore. 

“You should be fine as long as your body takes in the required amount of nutrients and energy, nothing else to worry about,” The AI explained. 

The AI hadn’t lied to me yet. I wasn’t even sure if it was actually capable of such a thing, so I decided that I would take the construct at its word for now. If it broke that trust in the future I’d reevaluate. 

The interface’s explanation on why I had fallen asleep probably also covered why my mouth felt so dry and why my stomach was rumbling so damn much. 

I needed to drink, I needed to eat, and then I needed to figure out just what the hell I was meant to do in this kind of situation.