|Weak Hero| Operation: Rewind

Chapter 1: Fade to Black

Everyone had thought that things were starting to look up. It had been fifteen years after the initial Black Out Blight that the first baby without defects had been born in South Korea. People had become hopeful as the survival rate of young victims increased to seventy two percent. It may not be a hundred percent, but it was a vast improvement from the near zero percent chance of survival in the early years.

People thought that things would start looking up. It did, initially. Youth were being saved and living past their timer hitting zero. Babies were being born and thriving. The threat of humanity dying out was pretty much gone.

But then, everything went to hell. Natural disasters began to grow worse and worse. They also became more frequent. The people began to panic, saying that the world was coming to an end.

Then an asteroid began hurtling towards Earth. 

The people in charge decided that the best course of action would be to fire a bunch of missiles and explosives at it to alter its path. There were some scientists that were against the idea, but they were all pretty much punished or fired.

Little did they know that their plan would fail. It would only only succeed in destroy parts of the surface of the asteroid that would result in more pieces crashing into the Earth. Humanity simply didn't have enough firepower to change the course of an asteroid of that size.

XXX

Thirty three year old Professor Seongje Keum entered his apartment. He was exhausted from a day's worth of work. He slid off his lab coat and tossed it onto the armrest of his couch. He undid his tie as he grabbed a beer from the fridge and plopped down onto his couch. He leaned back and rested his feet on his coffee table as he turned on the TV.

In his younger years, he had been known as Wolf Keum, the Purple Demon of Ganghak. He had spent his youth as an adrenaline junkie, fighting anyone and everyone as he pleased. He enjoyed hearing the crunch of bones, the splatter of blood, and the thud of unconscious bodies falling to the ground. He loved seeing his victims' terrified faces and he loved watching bruises bloom under each hit.

Those days were long gone now. 

During his high school years when he lived on his own, Wolf mainly relied on money his old man sent for rent, bills, and food. Though, his father oftentimes was forgetful and some months didn't send any at all. Wolf covered any shortage of money with cash he stole from his victims.

Joining the Union resulted in him earning easy money. He didn't really have to do much. He just had to meet with some old geezer from time to time and beat up certain people. He was even still allowed to beat up anyone he wanted so long as it didn't interfere with the business side of things.

After the Black Out Blight had happened and people began getting numbered and slowly dying, Wolf's father still sent money but at an even less frequent rate than before. The old coot didn't even bother checking to see if his son was still alive.

Wolf hadn't known what he had wanted to do with life. He couldn't see himself working a normal nine to five office job. The only things he could actually see himself doing involved some form of fighting, like MMA. But even those had rules on what types of attacks were allowed. He could maybe see himself becoming a construction worker, getting paid to do manual labor.

He had thought back to Jake Ji. Just one more day...if Jake had survive one more day, he could've survived. Jake would've been alive right now if he had just survived until his birthday. 

"I'll be seeing that fucker soon anyway," Wolf commented as he cracked open the beer can. "Who would've thought that I'd survive to see the end of the world?"

Wolf studied his ass off to get accepted into a prestigious university. Fortunately it was a full ride scholarship since his old man had completely stopped sending him any money once Wolf reached the age of majority. The bastard didn't even attend his high school graduation ceremony, not that Wolf even cared about his old man's attendance.

He honestly didn't know why he chose to become a doctor. He didn't care about the people he saved. Jake had been the longest person to survive after the tattoo timer on his arm had reached zero. He had survived fourteen days after zero. No one else had survived that long. Jake's father and brother had donated Jake's body to help with the Black Out Blight research in hopes of finding a cure. It was because of Jake that the survival rate had increased to seventy two percent.

Maybe Wolf had chosen to become a Black-Out Blight researcher out of survivor's guilt.

Jake had always been strange in his own right. Most people would praise Jake Ji as the good amongst the bad. They would say he only joined the Union to avenge his brother and say that he was a good guy.

Bullshit. Jake and his friends looked down on other people, although not as bad as rich snobby kids whose parents had a lot of power. Jake was also an adrenaline junkie just like Wolf and he also enjoyed the thrill of fights. He just tended to hide his psychotic and manic smiles most of the time.

Jake had been the first one to reach out to him, calling him and saying he was going through his contacts. Not long after Eunchan died, Jake had once again reached out to Wolf to let off some steam. Jake had spent the night at Wolf's apartment. That should've been it, but Jake continued spending time with Wolf, even going to the movie theaters with him.

It was Wolf who had been by Jake's side during his last moments.

Wolf was surprised that he had attended Jake's funeral. Then again, he had been surprised that Jake had wanted to spend time with him, someone who he hadn't even been really that close to, over spending all of his time with his brother and father. The funeral was small and the only attendants we Wolf, Kenny, and Jake and Kenny's father. 

All of Jake's friends were dead and Jake had gone to join them.

Professor Seongje Keum took a sip from his can of beer. It was crappy cheap beer from the nearby convenience store that he had bough ta few days ago. His days had been too busy for him to go properly shopping at a grocery store for the better quality stuff.

He finished the can and then stood up to grab another. The world was ending and he'd rather not be sober for it. 

He stopped by the bookshelf in his living room on the way back from his kitchen. It was filled mainly with all the textbooks and research books he had bought to study and take notes on to help him on his quest to finding a cure to the numbers. There were also a handful of sci-fi books on the shelf that he read for his own personal enjoyment.

The loneliness started to creep in on him. He hated spending time in his apartment. He would rather spend the night going through his research papers until he collapsed from overworking himself. He only headed home today because there had been no point in continuing his research when the asteroid was going to crash into the Earth.

He grabbed the one manga book he owned. It was an edition of Hop Magazine from fifteen years ago with an issue of Won Piece in it. He had bought it only because he had promised Jake. He had expected, he had wanted, Jake to live just one more day and the Hop Magazine would've been his birthday present to him.

Wolf flipped through the pages as he sat down and cracked open another can of beer. He had read through the edition many times in the past, evident by the worn out condition of the book and partially torn pages. The paper had darkened too, now sporting a yellowish tinge.

He chugged down the beer and felt a very faint buzz. The cheap shit wasn't strong enough to get him drunk with only a few cans. After finishing his second can and finishing going through the entire Hop Magazine, he stood up and this time he grabbed the rest of the six pack from the fridge. 

Just as he was about to start chugging the cans of beer, there was a knock at his door.

I really loved misSTEAK (misCOWculation)'s fanfic, All My Friends are Dead.
The ending made me sad. I had hoped Jake would survive. He had been so close and only needed another day, but he ended up not making it.

I decided, why not write a time travel fix-it story about it?
Will this be a crack-fic? I hope not.