​Our Favorite Intergalactic Battle Barista

I woke up screaming—a sound only achievable by heavy metal vocalists and women in labor. My eyes shot open to blinding fluorescent lights, and my body jerked against restraints biting into my wrists and ankles. And several more across my apron, holding it down against me.

”CHUCK IS COMING!” I shrieked, voice raw, throat shredded. It wasn't a sentence I'd ever thought I'd be screaming in bed. Then, a half-second later and only slightly more coherent:

”WHY AM I TIED TO A BED?”

The restraints didn’t care. They just clenched tighter the more I struggled—little BDSM death-hugs bolted not just to the bed, but into the damn wall. And likely attached somehow to the foundation.

That’s when my HUD blinked on, bright and chipper like a digital golden retriever:

[STATUS EFFECT: POST-BREW COMA — Duration: 3 Months, 2 Days, 13 Hours]

[RECOVERY PROGRESS: 29%]

[BODILY FLUIDS REPLACED: 78%]

[FUN FACT: You’ve been catheterized for so long, you’ll need to relearn your potty training. Also, you whistle while you pee, and not in the way you'd think.]

“Three months?” I rasped, my voice sounding like a cheese grater scraping drywall.

The room tilted in lazy circles. White walls. Beeping monitors. A suspiciously oversized needle jammed in my arm. My legs felt like limp noodles.

“Oh no,” I whispered. Realization hit like a brick to the face. “This is a black site. They’re harvesting my organs. Or my Essence. Or my organ-flavored Essence smoothies.”

The door hissed open. Two soldiers entered, rifles up, faces hidden behind mirrored visors.

“The Subject is awake,” one muttered into his comm. “Alert Colonel Riley.”

“Colonel? You guys know there’s a difference between ‘patient’ and ‘hostage,’ right?” I croaked. “Hint: it’s the number of fucking guns.”

No reaction.

“Cool. Cool-cool-cool. Just checking.”

They stood like mannequins. Very armed mannequins. Which didn’t normally worry me, most guns weren’t able to break through my Awakened skin. But just then I was feeling vulnerable.

Then my HUD pinged again:

[SYSTEM NOTICE: ASSISTANCE REQUIRED]

[Select an Option: A) Painkillers, B) Emotional Breakdown, C) Joke]

“I’m good,” I muttered.

[You selected: C — A Joke.]

“No, I didn’t.”

[Why is my favorite position called ‘The WOW’?]

“Christ, no.”

[Because it’s where I flip your MOM upside down and go at her—WOW upside down… MOM, get it?]

I took a deep breath. The System had a really weird bedside manner.

“Not funny if you have to explain it.”

The door hissed open again. This time, Riley walked in.

She'd changed. Her hair was shorter now, buzzed on one side, with a jagged scar running from her temple to her ear. Her uniform was different too—black tactical gear with silver rank insignia that definitely wasn't standard military issue.

“Jerry,” she said, her voice cool and measured. “You're back with us.”

“Riley? What the hell happened to you? You look like you got a promotion in the apocalypse.”

“That's exactly what happened.” She dismissed the guards with a sharp gesture. They left without a word. “We've been busy while you were out.”

“I was out for three months? You look more like it’s been six years.”

“Yeah, well, after the Big Greenie incident, you started screaming about the end of the world, then fell into a coma so deep doctors wanted to declare you brain dead.” She approached the bed and began unfastening my restraints. “Apron wouldn't let them pull the plug. It's been... standing guard. Had to restrain you, because you were… flailing.”

I glanced down. My apron was suspiciously innocent-looking. It gave a little flutter, like it was waving.

“You've been communicating with my apron?”

“More like it's been threatening anyone who gets too close.”

I tried to sit up and immediately regretted it. My muscles felt like overcooked pasta.

Riley tossed a roll of tissues at my face. It bounced off my chest and landed in my lap with a cartoonishly ripped bodybuilder flexing on the label: “The Quicker Picker Upper.”

“Eat it,” she said, nodding to the roll, dead serious.

I blinked, then raised an eyebrow. “What the hell is this?”

“You’re not the only one with weird-ass abilities anymore, Battle Barista,” she snapped, like the title personally offended her. “Yeah, when I first heard it, I laughed. Out loud. For a while. But while you were busy napping for three months, we’ve been figuring shit out. Turns out, the System isn’t trying to kill us. It’s trying to help us. Clumsy as hell, but trying. It’s just doing it the only way it knows how.”

She paced, voice rising with that distinct get-the-whiteboard-out energy.

“It’s flooding the world with mana—raw, unfiltered, no lube magic. This stuff was supposed to roll out over centuries. Instead, boom. All at once. So now? The System’s latching onto whatever it can. Archetypes, memories, random-ass job descriptions. Earth’s basically a magical scrapyard with a mana overdose. Which, by the way, is why every alien wants to lick it.”

I stared at the tissue roll like it might blink.

“That,” she said, pointing, “is edible. Infused. Mana-dense. Tastes like feet. But it’ll fix you up. We couldn’t give it to you while you were unconscious—it requires a ‘willing participant.’ And apparently, the System doesn’t think you can give consent while unconscious.”

Good to know it has boundaries.

I tore off a piece and chewed it slowly. It dissolved like cotton candy and did taste almost exactly like how feet smell. My veins lit up. My heart did the cha-cha. And for one brief, terrifying moment, it felt like I was connected directly to the power lines.

[CAFFEINE LEVELS: APPROACHING “FUNCTIONAL HUMAN”]

[MUSCLE ATROPHY: IMPROVED]

[ALL STATS: RECOVERY LOCK HAS BEEN REMOVED. STAT RECOVERY SPEED INCREASED]

I coughed, hacked up a little dust, and tried to sit up again. This time, my body listened.

As she spoke, I felt it—beneath the fog, beneath the hollow ache in my bones—something stirring. My limbs still felt like I’d wrestled a vending machine and lost, but the dying sensation had dulled. My breath wasn’t as shallow. The tremble in my hands wasn’t fear—it was power trickling back in. Slow. Real. Like blood finding forgotten veins.

Not all my stats were back—my HUD was a patchwork of red bars and flickering error codes—but it was enough. Enough to stand. Enough to fight. Enough to remember what strength felt like.

And it was coming back.

Whatever the hell came next, I wasn’t dying anymore.

I was reloading.

“This shit is amazing,” I muttered.

“Don’t get greedy,” Riley warned, snatching the roll back. “It’s rare. Overuse’ll fry your kidneys and quadruple your cooldowns. One hit per person. Monthly reset.”

“So, I'm guessing things didn't get better while I was out?”

Riley laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Oh, you could say that.” She grabbed a tablet from the table and flicked it on. “Let me show you what you missed.”

The screen lit up with footage that looked like it was filmed by someone having a seizure while riding a mechanical bull. Screams, smoke, and flashes of green and blue energy sliced through the air. Buildings cracked. People ran. Reality warped like it was melting around massive blue portals.

“What am I looking at?” I asked.

“San Francisco. Two weeks ago. The Xarnathi were just the warm-up. Since then? Four more alien syndicates have tried staking claims like Earth’s a vacant lot with a pest problem. Spoiler alert—we’re the pests.”

She swiped to the next video. The screen lit up with smoke-choked skyline, buildings gutted like fish, and then her.

A towering figure loomed atop a crumbling skyscraper. Humanoid-ish. In the same way a fever dream is nap-adjacent. Limbs too long, posture too perfect, like an AI-generated monarch. She wore a regal cape that shimmered with stitched commandments, and a massive golden crown.

“That’s Cassandra,” Riley said, dragging a finger across the image. “Calls herself the High Empress of Virtue. Sixty-eight feet tall. Leads a hive-mind of purity-obsessed zealots. The System translates their collective name as—and I swear I’m not making this up—the Karens.”

I squinted. “That’s a huge bitch.”

Riley side-eyed me, but didn’t dignify it with a comment.

“And that,” she said, flicking to the next file, “was just one of the headliners.”

Swipe. New footage. “We’ve learned a lot about our new friends.”

A shopping district in chaos.

Swipe. New footage. Goblins with neon tattoos zipped through burning streets on rustbucket hovercrafts, hauling anything that wasn’t nailed down—and a lot that was.

“For example, the Xarnathi,” Riley said. “Not conquerors—scavengers. They showed up early, figured they’d strip the place for parts before someone bigger moved in. Still hanging around, mostly looting, setting fires, joyriding stolen cars. Fast, reckless, about as evil as raccoons on meth. First come, first steal. Some of ’em even went semi-domestic—living with locals now. But that’s mostly in Portland and parts of Florida.”

Swipe. A slow, rumbling march shook the next shot—giant stone trolls, moss growing from their backs, tearing down skyscrapers like kids knocking over sandcastles.

“The Gravethralls. Troll-kin. Tough as hell, move like glaciers, think cities are landscaping projects. Far as we can tell, they want the planet to build a massive resort on.”

Swipe. Floating monasteries drifted over a shattered skyline, blue-skinned monks descending like judgment day’s chill little brothers.

“The Cerulians,” Riley said. “Enlightenment fanatics. Worship something called the Great Flying Spaghetti Monster. Don’t ask—it’s just like it sounds. Apparently, they’ve been drip-feeding propaganda here for years, trying to soften us up for ‘ascension.’ A few of them were Reddit mods.”

Swipe. A battlefield framed in smoke and neon flared next—massive scrap-metal mechs stomping through the ruins, piloted by tiny, wide-eyed catlike creatures barely bigger than a toddler.

“And the Mewsari,” Riley said, almost fond. “Small, wide-eyed, look like something you’d rescue from a storm drain. Then they climb into a mech and level a city block. When they arrived, every cat on Earth switched allegiance overnight. Turns out they were never ours—just embedded envoys, waiting for the signal. Now more than half of former cat owners—who’ve started calling themselves Cat Companions—are helping the Mewsari set up strongholds like it’s the most natural thing in the world.”

She flipped the screen off. “Five factions. Five reasons Earth’s about thirty bad minutes away from being sold for parts.”

There was a silence, and Riley didn’t rush to fill it. She let me get there on my own.

“We’ve got bigger problems,” I said, locking eyes with her.

“This Chuck you keep screaming about?” she asked, voice tight. “You’ve been shouting his name in your sleep for two days. Who is he?”

I flicked open my notifications. The countdown had ticked down slightly.

[39 Days Until Chuck’s Arrival]

“Chuck’s from a different version of the System,” I said. “He calls it the Network.”

“There are other Systems?” Riley asked, one brow lifting.

“Yeah. Competing ones. Fighting over the same prize, far as I can tell.” I exhaled, the weight of it settling in my chest. “And judging by how I felt when I saw him? Our System hates the Network. It’s mutual.”

She frowned. “But our System’s already falling apart.”

“It’s not about peace. It’s about territory.” I pushed off the bed, feeling the stiffness in my joints crackle. “Earth’s the new kid with no walls and a lot worth stealing. If we’d had the full initiation period, we could’ve built alliances, defenses, maybe carved out a place of our own. But right now? We’re just rich, undefended land, and every syndicate with a pulse wants a piece.”

I steadied myself, staring at the monitor still flashing faint warnings. “And Chuck—or whatever he’s become—he’s worse than anything walking this planet. The Network’s pissed. They’re sending him to claim Earth, lock it into their system. And if we think the footage we just saw was bad?” I shook my head. “It’s nothing. Things are about to get a hell of a lot worse.”

Riley stepped closer, steady and sure. “You’re not alone anymore.”

She caught me as I staggered, helping me upright—and that’s when I noticed it. The shimmer around her blade, the quiet hum in the air, the way her presence hit heavier now, more solid.

“You’re Awakened,” I breathed. I triggered Inspect without thinking.

[KATRIN RILEY — COLONEL, NEW WAR ARMY. AWAKENED — LEVEL 7]

“Level Seven,” I said, low and impressed. She hadn’t just survived while I was out—she’d surged. Earth’s mana saturation was changing everything, and Riley had ridden that spike like a pro. But if we wanted to survive what was coming, we’d need a lot more than one fast climber.

She nodded, calm and sharp. “A lot’s changed. Once we got ahold of your blood—everything changed. You cracked the door open. We just figured out how to walk through it. Mana levels are rising daily. No signs of slowing down. If there’s a peak, we haven’t seen it.”

Adrenaline hit like a shot of hot espresso. If Earth was this loaded with mana, then it was time to grind—and grind hard.

But then something clicked. My blood.

The room went still. Not quiet—still. The kind of still that follows a wrong note in a song.

“You did what?” The anger hit before the logic did—hot, sharp, and crawling up my spine. “You used me? You’re injecting people with my blood like I’m some kind of mana vaccine?”

Riley didn’t blink. “We didn’t have a choice. People were dying. Your DNA—your connection to the System Core—gave us the breakthrough.” She gave a half-shrug. Too casual. Too practiced. “If I brought you in… listen, we needed your help. But we didn’t even know if you were going to wake up.”

“Colonel,” I muttered, the word sour in my mouth. “So that’s how you earned your stripes.”

“Be pissed. Doesn’t change the math,” Riley said, calm like it wasn’t a knife to the ribs. “Your blood saved thousands. Survival rate jumped from under one percent to fifteen.”

“That still means eighty-five die,” I said. “So tell me—how many?”

Her brow creased. “How many what?”

“How many people got the injection who wouldn’t have otherwise? How many more deaths are on that miracle percentage of yours?” My voice cracked, heat flooding in. “Before, you were Awakening a handful. A few test cases. A few hundred casualties. But now?”

I stepped forward. “What’s the death count now, Riley? Since you started using me.”

She looked away.

“How many?”

When she finally answered, her voice didn’t waver. But something in her eyes did.

“Once we figured out how to synthesize what we needed from your DNA… we scaled up. Fast. We’ve Awakened two-point-seven million.”

I blinked. Tried to run the math in my head, but it wouldn’t line up. It wouldn’t fit.

She gave me the real number like a bullet through glass.

“Fifteen million three hundred thousand didn’t make it.”

The air got thin. My knees almost buckled.

Fifteen million.

Because of me.

My body. My blood.

My fault. This whole thing felt like my fault.

Fuck. I felt like one of those brooding anime protagonists—dramatic, overdrawn, full-on grimlord mode. But come on. Try getting told you’re responsible for millions of deaths. Millions. Yeah, also millions of lives saved. Maybe even a future—hope, strength, all that poetic shit. But don’t sit there and pretend the weight doesn’t hit you sideways once the numbers stop being numbers and start becoming faces. Once it lands—really lands—it guts you. And then keeps digging.

Don’t be such a fucking chūni, I snapped at myself.

Easier said than done. I could feel it unraveling—the sick, slick justification clawing at the back of my mind. They were going to do this anyway. I made it better. I gave them a chance. I didn’t know. I didn’t—

Didn’t what? Say no? Fight back? Run?

I stared at the floor, waiting for some piece of logic to pull me back up.

Nothing came.

But Riley was still there—unmoved, unbothered, unflinching.

“Yeah,” she said quietly. “Fifteen million died. Boo-fucking-hoo. Cue the tiny violin and a dramatic backflip into self-pity. More died last week from the attack in France. And you know what, once enough of us level up, maybe we could stop that from happening again.”

Then she looked up, and there was no softness left in her.

“Fifteen million dead. But the ones who lived? They came back changed. Strong. Awake. Weapons for freedom. Shields with names. And whether you like it or not, you gave that to them. You want to curl up and fall apart? Do it later.”

She stepped closer, her voice like a blade pressed to my throat.

“Because right now? We’re out of time. And the war doesn’t care how guilty you feel. For helping people? Come on.”

The shame hit harder than a fist, buzzing under my skin. I shoved myself upright.

She was right. I hated it, but she was. There was a war on. I shoved myself upright. I would deal with whatever emotions I was feeling later. Into the box it goes. I needed to grind.

[SYSTEM ACCESS: PARTIALLY RESTORED]

[USER STATUS: SUB-OPTIMAL]

[STATS AT 80% CAPACITY — COMA PENALTY ACTIVE]

[ABILITIES LOCKED: 70%]

[ADDITIONAL EVACUATION REQUIRED]

“Todd,” I muttered. Silence. Not even static. That wasn’t normal—Todd had been a constant presence since my Awakening, a running commentary I couldn’t shut up if I wanted to. His sudden absence felt like losing a limb I didn’t know I had. It made me nervous.

“Todd?” Riley echoed, eyeing me warily.

“My System support,” I explained. “Part-time saboteur, full-time comic relief. Usually annoyingly present, suddenly suspiciously absent. Sounds suspiciously like Patton Oswalt. Don’t worry about it.”

I staggered one step. Then another. Still standing. Called that a win.

“You might want to back up,” I warned, just as my stomach twisted. In a weird way, this was a good sign. I was purging the last of the overdose.

I dropped to my knees and purged a stream of glowing blue sludge across the tile. It smelled like burnt espresso and shame. The floor sizzled where it landed.

“Jesus!” Riley recoiled.

I wiped my mouth, grimacing. “Caffeine withdrawal plus System reboot. Bad mix. But, I feel a lot better now.”

[PURGE: COMPLETE]

[REMAINING VOMIT: ~1.2 GALLONS]

[SILVER LINING: THIS FLOOR WAS UGLY ANYWAY]

The puddle twitched, shuddered, and something small and gelatinous began to pull itself together—round body, tiny eyes, way too many teeth.

Riley didn’t hesitate. Three sharp gunshots. The thing popped like a party balloon full of nightmares.

“Does that happen every time?” she asked.

“Yup,” I croaked.

I gagged again. This time, the ooze shaped itself into a tiny coffee cup with legs. It took two wobbly steps. It made a sound, like it was trying to speak, and then collapsed.

“...Okay. That's new.”

It was actually kinda cute, in a sad, gross little way.

Before we could figure out what the hell that coffee-cup abomination was trying to say, alarms blared through the bunker like the world itself had just flinched.

Red lights slammed to life. Sirens wailed. My HUD lit up like it had something to prove:

[GLOBAL EVENT: SYSTEM STABILITY FAILURE]

[EARTH ANCHOR CORE UNDER ATTACK]

[ETA: 3 HOURS UNTIL CORE BREACH]

[FAILURE TO STOP DESTABILIZATION WILL RESULT IN IMMEDIATE INCONVENIENCE TO ALL OF EARTH’S INHABITANTS]

The last line pulsed. Inconvenience was underlined. That felt pointed.

Then—footsteps. Fast, clumsy, familiar.

Pena burst into the room, panting, goggles askew. Faint blue circuit lines pulsed under his skin—he was Awakened. He survived the car accident with Big Greenie and Awakening.

I let out an unexpected breath of relief.

He caught my eye and lit up like a kid.

“Level five, baby!” he shouted. “And I got options! I can boost kinetic energy, generate localized gravity wells, and—I shit you not—I can make my bullets curve around corners. Like in that one movie. Oh! And check this out!”

He mimed a finger gun and made a pew-pew noise.

A real bolt of kinetic energy blasted from his fingertip.

It ricocheted off the ceiling, pinged off the wall, and exploded a perfectly innocent oxygen monitor in the corner. The machine hissed, sparked, and fell over in defeat.

“Pena,” Riley said calmly.

Pena winced. “Okay! Okay, that’s on me.” He held up both hands. “My bad. Still figuring out my recent upgrades. Level Five hits different, right?”

Riley’s eyes drifted, unfocused but scanning—like she was reading a prompt only she could see. Her expression tightened, jaw set, every muscle in her face locking into place. She looked like someone switching off the part of themselves that felt. Cold. Focused. Ready to kill something. Or be killed trying.

“They’re hitting the Earth Core early,” she said. “I thought we had more time.”

She waved her hand and a blue projection came to life—probably one of her abilities. It fit her whole tactical-commander-with-blood-on-her-boots build. I’d ask her about it later, if we made it that far.

The holographic Earth spun into view, flickering with data. Two signatures lit up—one red, one silver—both converging fast on the planet’s center. Direct line to the Core. No hesitation. No detours. Just a straight shot to the kill switch.

“The Gravethralls and the Cerulians. Trolls and monks. Working together. Fuck.”

Pena winced.

“What’s an Earth Core?” I asked, feeling like the kid who transfers a year late and shows up with a backpack full of the wrong textbooks. Before I got knocked out, I was the weird older guy who used to go to your school, knew all the teachers and floated through the halls like he had tenure. Now? Same guy—except all my friends graduated, moved on, got married, had kids, and left me hawking pizzas at the local Cheesy Hut.

Funny fact, I actually used to work at a Cheesy Hut. Good times.

Before I was a barista, I’d worked just about every food service gig known to man. If this were D&D, my character sheet would read:

“Origin/Background: Fired from Every Fast Food Job Within a 30-Mile Radius.

Feat: 'You sure do get around.' Plus 2 to all Food and Beverage related skill checks.

Class: Jackass of All Trades.”

I made some mean french fries though. Briefly worked at a burrito place too. Hell, I even bartended for a day—long enough to shatter three bottles of imported liquor trying to do a cool trick. Shortest job I ever held? Fifteen minutes. Town record. Got fired before I finished clocking in.

Word got around. Pretty soon, I was that guy—the walking cautionary tale of the local food scene.

Not that I was bad, exactly. It's just... you crash enough registers, spill enough soups, and accidentally set enough microwaves on fire, and people start building a narrative.

It's like the old carpenter saying goes: “You build a hundred bridges, do they call you Vlad the Bridge-Builder? No. You build a hundred churches, do they call you Vlad the Church-Builder? No. You build a hundred hospitals, do they call you Vlad the Hospital-Builder? No! But you fuck one goat...”

Yeah. Reputation's a cruel mistress.

Weird thing was, it actually kept me working. Out of the fifty places I’d burned through, there was always someone desperate enough to call. Emergencies, sick calls, no-shows—they knew I was a disaster, but hey, I showed up.

Which, looking back, probably made me perfect for being a barista. In the end, it was the only job where I didn’t feel like a walking HR incident waiting to happen. The only place I actually fit.

Maybe that’s why the System locked onto it. Not because I was the best at it. But because it was the only thing I ever really won at.

Focus, dumbass.

I shook my head. Big cosmic war, incoming apocalypse, maybe dial back the autobiography.

The fact that my thoughts were drifting again—scattered thoughts, squirrel-speed internal monologues, random goat jokes—was actually a good sign.

That chaos?

That was part of my Class. A part of me being supped up by the mana the System injected into me. A side effect of my abilities rebooting.

I wasn’t broken.

I was learning to accept this wild mind. Even enjoy it a bit. Hone it.

I felt my stats reaching closer and closer to their normal levels.

Still. I reeled myself back in. Focused. Barely.

Pretty sure I’d missed an entire Riley monologue—the kind with charts, bullet points, maybe a slideshow—explaining exactly what was happening and what we had to do. My brain finally kicked in just in time for…

“You caught all that, Jerry?” she asked, eyes locking onto mine like twin laser sights. “Because if we screw this up—it’s not a setback. It’s the end of the fucking world.”

I nodded with the fake confidence of every guy who's ever zoned out mid-conversation and hoped context would bail him out.

“Hell yeah,” I said, scoffing. “Totally. Crystal clear. You’re the pitcher, I’m catching, Pena’s in left field eating nachos—I’m locked in, one hundred percent.”

I paused.

“…Quick recap might be good though. Y’know. For Pena.”

He raised an eyebrow but let it slide, the corner of his mouth twitching like he almost said something and thought better of it.

Riley closed her eyes for a beat, drew in a slow, steadying breath—the kind that sounded like it was holding back a scream—then opened them with razor-edged focus.

”Every System-linked world has a Core. It’s our identity tag. Our sovereignty. Without it—” she gave a vague wave at the room. “We’re a product. A clearance item, waiting to be picked apart. We need to protect it.”

I looked from her to the HUD still pulsing in the corner of my vision:

[ETA TO CORE COLLAPSE: 2:39:42]

“So,” I said, rolling my shoulders as the last of the dead weight bled out of my limbs, “we ready to do this thing?”

My stats had clawed their way back to baseline. I could feel the mana shift she’d mentioned, humming in the air around me. It filled my lungs like static and surged through my bloodstream like liquid lightning. Earth wasn’t just awake. It was buzzing. Mana was high, and I was feeling more and more ready to tear shit up.

Perfect time to grind.

I flicked my gaze to my other countdown:

[39 DAYS UNTIL CHUCK'S ARRIVAL]

Plenty of time and no time at all.

“Suit up,” I said, stepping forward as my apron flared in a totally unnecessary, overly dramatic gust of nonexistent wind—revealing way, way too much.

Both Riley and Pena flinched and immediately looked away.

“We’ve got a Core to save.”