New York City. The global marketplace where dreams are made true. It's the world's financial, entertainment, and technological center. It's known for many things, from Broadway to its cultural mishmash of cuisine, however, there is one thing that New York is also known for.

Superheroes.

Though superheroes were nothing more than fiction in this world.

At least, that's how things used to be. 

Ky Tempus, a high school senior, gamer, and comic book enthusiast, sat at his desk refreshing his email page. It was 11:59 AM and at noon he would know if he was selected for the beta of the hit new ARRPG: Hero x Villain Online. 

It was marketed as an Augmented Reality game for mobile phones where the player could walk around in the real world to stop crimes or commit them via the mobile app. Upon stopping or committing each crime, the player would receive experience points toward being a hero or villain. If two players were to come across each other, they could choose to either work together or battle.

It'd become a worldwide phenomenon off of the premise alone and millions of gamers all across the world were itching to try the closed beta test for the potential new giant of the mobile game industry.

Only one hundred players per region would be selected, and their lives would be changed forever.

The clock struck twelve, and a new email from the developers appeared on Ky's screen. His heart jolted as he inhaled slowly. He exhaled, his mouse clicked, and the email filled the screen.

Hello Ky Tempus,

Congratulations!

You have been selected for the Hero x Villain Online Closed Beta Test!

We have left a package at the address listed on your application. This is your Hero x Villain Online Starter Kit! Instructions for the next phase of the process will be inside.

Thank you for your participation and welcome to Hero x Villain Online.

As Ky read the email, his eyes were wide, quivering with excitement and an ear-to-ear smile grew on his face. Like a speedster, he rushed downstairs and opened the front door to see a package with his name on it. Oddly enough, there was no delivery truck in sight.

He grabbed the package, rushed back upstairs, and began tearing the box apart like a child on Christmas morning. Inside, he found the Hero x Villain Online starter kit, which came with a download code for the mobile app and a pair of contact lenses.

Ky downloaded the app first, following the instructions left in the starter kit before ending up at the game's menu. There were three options listed: Map, Alignment, and Powers.

Curious, he clicked the alignment tab first, though every section in this tab was blank yet still labeled. He noticed a section labeled 'Allies' as well as ones for 'Criminal Record', 'Alias', and 'Nemeses'. 

He then switched to the map, which showed objectives and crimes scattered all around the city. Each objective offered three types of points: Skill Points, Hero Points, and Villain Points. Excited to see what he could potentially spend these points on, Ky swiped over to the section labeled, 'Powers'. 

At the top of the screen, he could see that his character's powers had already been chosen randomly for him.

[Time Manipulation - The ability to control and manipulate time.]

[Skill points - 1]

[Hero Points - 0]

[Villain Points - 0]

Ky's eyes lit up upon seeing the hundreds of potential abilities he could unlock under the Time Manipulation move set. Each unlockable ability was labeled under one of three sections: Hero, Villain, Neutral. 

Abilities labeled as hero or villain required a certain level of heroism or villainy to unlock. However, it seemed the neutral abilities lacked any sort of restrictions. 

'Well, I only have one skill point, so I guess I'll spend them on this one.'

[Ability - Time Warp. Warp time forward or backward for one second. Warp length can be upgraded.]

[Cooldown: 1 Sec (CD = Amount of time that has been warped)]

[Unlock ability? Yes/No]

[Ability Unlocked!]

'Okay… Now what? Oh!' Ky was so excited to see what the app had to offer, that he had forgotten all about the contact lenses that came in the starter kit. He thought it was a bit odd for a game to come with contact lenses, however, the possibilities of what these contact lenses could do excited him.

Ky took the lenses into the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. Before him was a young man with auburn skin whose glasses shielded his sharp eyes that always looked as if they were half awake, even after a full night's sleep. He removed his glasses and opened those eyes as much as he could before he placed a contact lens into each one, but they didn't seem to do anything. 'That's weird. They just seem like regular old-'

"Agh!" Ky's eyes suddenly felt as if holes were being drilled into his pupils as the contacts began melting into each eyeball. He fell forward, holding himself up on the bathroom sink as that pain in his eyes started transferring throughout his entire body. The pain was so intense, that Ky swore he could feel his entire nervous system.

Meanwhile, as he writhed in pain, knocking over his toothbrush, hairbrush, and hygienic products off the counter, he could see things starting to appear in his vision, a HUD similar to that of a video game. He could see a health bar for himself, along with the cooldown for his Time Warp ability in the bottom left corner. 

A map of his surroundings started to materialize in the bottom right corner and a red circle with an exclamation point appeared in a far-off corner of the map. As the symbol appeared in his vision, words appeared in all capital letters in the middle of his visual field.

[CRIME REPORTED]

It felt as if his brain was being assaulted with more information than the human mind was supposed to handle until all at once, the pain stopped.

Ky got back up on his feet and looked at himself in the mirror, breathing harshly. He was horrified. This was not what he signed up for. 'I need to get these things out!'

Ky tried, but the contact lenses had truly melted themselves onto his eyeball. It was as if there was nothing there. 'What the fuck…'

Wanting to know if his kit was defective or if things were working as intended, Ky stumbled back into his room and reached for his phone on his desk. However, it was as if his motor functions were still recalibrating and he knocked his phone off of the desk. 'Shit!' Ky reached out and as he did so, the world around him started to move in reverse, and so did his own body. 

The phone began defying gravity, flying upward before landing on the desk just before Ky's hand had accidentally swiped it. In the bottom of Ky's vision, he could see the cooldown reset for his Time Warp ability.

'Holy shit! What was that!? Did I just… reverse time?' Ky looked at his own trembling hands in horror. 'This was supposed to just be an AR game where you walk around the real world, stopping fake crimes while leveling up your made-up hero… But I…'

Ky's horror soon shifted to laughter as he rotated his hands around. 'I'm a real-life superhero!' Ky continued to laugh before looking at the baseball on his desk. He walked over to it, grabbed it, then chucked it at the wall. Before a full second could pass, Ky reversed time and watched as his own body and the ball were forced back into the position they were in just a second prior.

He exhaled humorously before grabbing his phone to check social media. He saw a few posts from other players discussing what had happened to them and their stories were all very similar to his. The only difference between everyone's stories was that they each had their own unique powers. Some had super speed while others had super strength or the ability to create constructs.

Many of the other players had already begun farming for skill points and Ky could feel himself getting left behind.

'I guess there's only one thing to do. Time to level up.'