Assassin Crow Evolution

Chapter 1: The Shell

Jimmy rode his bike to work. He wasn’t trying to be economic, he just couldn’t afford a car.

The morning air that breezed through the city, supposedly refreshing, made him feel sick. Struggling to support his livelihood, even as a working man, amplified how sick he felt.

At twenty-two years old, he was already fed up. Sometimes he hoped to be put out of his misery.

"Mutterficker..." he sighed.

Five minutes into his ride to work, he spotted a crow. It felt so random that he debated if he was still in bed, sleeping and dreaming.

"The fuck?" He said, "I haven’t seen one of those in a while. We’re in the middle of a fucking city."

Jimmy looked at the crow for just a moment before he lost interest. As he looked forward afterwards, he realized that he had slightly turned his steering wheel to the right.

Before he knew it, he crashed against a street lamp. There was no time to react.

He flew forward, and hit the lamp head-first. He heard a crack before he fell to the ground.

The crow, an accidental accessory to this crash, hopped towards him. One comic little hop at a time, the crow approached, and curiously investigated the crash.

Jimmy could not move. There was a massive burning pain in his neck, which he craved to shake off, but couldn’t do so no matter what. That exact spot was thumping like an industrial iron press, violent.

Second by second, his pain broke all scales, and yet he could not even scream. Relief seemed unreachable.

The crow titled its head sideways. It looked him in the eye.

It focused on a desperate, shiny tear that rolled out of Jimmy’s eye. Thirsty, it pecked at him.

The crow missed. It pecked Jimmy right in the eye, breaking through the pupil, and its beak went into his eye by an inch!

The shock of pain this caused, pushed Jimmy to the deep end. Paired with his prior pain, he died on the spot!

The sweet release of death freed him of all pain. He could not feel what his brain could no longer intercept, and spit back as a signal.

Darkness, and an uninhabited silence followed.

...

Darkness engulfed him, and yet it wasn’t comforting, or as silent as he expected it to be.

It started out silent, until it wasn’t, until he reached the point where the prior silence was a distant, unformed memory.

Jimmy didn’t know what to expect in regards to what life after death would be like. He thought about it before, a lot, but then again, this was his first time experiencing it, so he was confused. He was horrified to discover that he was conscious again.

’Is this what death’s like?’ he thought, ’Stuck in the dark... unable to move... wait a minute! I can move!’

Panic engulfed him. He started throwing his body around, and this was when he discovered that he was trapped.

His back hit against a hard interior. He couldn’t see what it was.

’What is this?’ He cried silently. ’Why am I being punished? I didn’t die on purpose.’

"Caw!" A loud, deep call echoed, and he froze on the spot.

’What?’ He tilted his head, ’Am I still not dead? Did that damn crow peck both my eyes out?’

Yet, if he was alive, he did not understand how he could move all of a sudden. He remembered his neck injury paralyzing him.

Nothing added up. Nothing made sense to him.

Such mystery frustrated him beyond bounds, because no matter where he was, he had this insatiable urge to figure things out, piece puzzles together. This puzzle grinded his insides more than his job ever did.

The caws that followed haunted him. They were loud, and yet they were like an echo. In a way, he was convinced that these caws chewed away on his consciousness. He considered himself a smart man, and as of recently, he felt dumber by the second, and there was nothing he could do about it.

’My god...’ he thought, ’Horrifying...’

Jimmy wasn’t supposed to be able to move, and yet he could, so this was all he did in the following five minutes. It was all he could do.

Rocking back and forth, and so on, he noticed a pattern. The wall in front of him, initially promising darkness, became a source of light every time he hit it with his head.

The ’sources’ of light were more of a tiny fragment, seemingly insignificant, but since he didn’t see any other option, he chased after it.

He kept hitting the wall with his head, or at least he tried to, but there was an obstruction in front of him. He was half convinced that someone had leashed him with some sort of a face mask, a strong one, as if made out of iron.

Jimmy used that supposed mask to his advantage. He kept hitting the wall. It was a bonus point that this obsessive process didn’t hurt him. He could barely feel the impact, and nonetheless feel pain.

After what felt like an endless strand of time, he broke through the wall.

A large beam of light hit his face as if the gods personally came down here to purify him. He was blinded by it, and yet, he couldn’t see beyond half an inch in front of him.

His eyes were closed, and the light itself was piercing through his pupils.

’Can’t open my damn eyes...’ he thought, ’Maybe I’m blind?’

A second later, he started crying out instinctually. He didn’t plan it, he just did.

Tiny chirps blessed his ears. Unharmonized, but distinctive.

"Was that me?" He finally spoke up, but heard more chirps, "It is me!"

"I’m a fucking bird?" He panicked.

Jimmy could only see shadows, as he couldn’t open his eyes, but the shadows had distinct shapes. They looked like the shadows of birds, he knew that much.

Paired with their caws, and his chirps, he was more and more convinced that he was a bird now. He had no idea how that was possible. No one ever said to him that people got turned into birds in hell, but if that was the case, this was nothing short of a sadistic joke from the gods!

"So I just hatched?" He said, as he clumsily walked over the shell, feeling its sharp edges, "This makes less sense than being stuck in darkness..."

Jimmy tried to work on the fact that he was a bird now. He was safe, for one thing, so he had time to think it over.

Minutes later, other tiny chirps broke out, and wiped his concentration clean.

Suddenly he was toppled over. He felt a subtle, warm body on top of his. Tiny in figure, but enough to put some pressure on his guts.

"Get off me, bird-faced motherfucker!" He chirped.

No one listened. He was just a babbling baby. A hatchling that no one could understand.

Jimmy struggled with the tiny birds around him for a moment. They were his siblings, no doubt.

He couldn’t see them yet, his eyes remained closed, but he was already annoyed by them.

He was nowhere closer to figuring out how he got here. This seemed like a puzzle that refused to show its full set of pieces. He knew that much, and he pondered if what he knew was enough to satisfy his curiosity.

It wasn’t. Yet, no one seemed to care if he was upset about it.

...

The next couple of days were quite repetitive.

When he wasn’t sleeping, he was either wrestling with his siblings, a battle which he lost often, or he was eating.

His parents fed him this sludge of mashed up food. Usually insects, but from time to time, he could sense that he was eating mashed up meat. It came pre-chewed, so his tiny little stomach didn’t struggle to process it.

To his surprise, life was good this way. He didn’t understand how he got here, but as hours passed, he cared less and less about it, because he slowly lost the ability to comprehend the intent behind his questions. Food and warmth grew more important to him over those couple of days, and pushed his questions out of his head.

Other than that, being a helpless hatchling did have advantages. He had no responsibilities, and ate the equivalent of extravagant food a few times a day. He felt great.

The food helped his body grow rapidly. He was merely growing a few grams heavier per day, but it was plentiful, as a few hours into day three, he was finally ready to open his eyes.

To his luck, it was night time when he opened his eyes, so he wasn’t blinded by any sudden light, but then again he felt unlucky.

Three days ago, he was born in darkness, trapped in a shell.

Today, he opened his eyes to the enveloping darkness of the night-time sky. It was almost poetic. A sad poem no doubt.

"Eh, it doesn’t matter," he said, "It’s not like I can go anywhere."

Jimmy could see the nest, and that was all he needed right now. He was comfortable here, and felt protected.

Having nothing else to do, he thought that this was a good time to take a nap.

However, just before he got comfortable under his mother’s nice, embracing feathers, something bright popped up in front of his eyes. He was nearly scared to death by it.

[Congratulations! You’ve been chosen to bear the Crow Evolution System!]