You know that feeling you get when you are being watched, yeah? I didn't get that. I got a tap on the shoulder. Sitting at my desk with headphones on blasting music over some shitty game I was playing and then, tap. My desk faced the same wall as my door. It hadn’t opened. The only thing behind me was a bed. Small room, cheap apartment. So yeah, it took me a moment to figure out what was going on. I may have screamed like a girl.

I jerked around to see a man sitting on the edge of my bed. Pretty sure I almost pissed myself. His mouth moved but I was too startled to understand. Or it could be the headphones I was still wearing. I grabbed my headphones off of my head and chucked them at the intruder. Don't ask me why I did it. He looked between them and me and raised an eyebrow.

"I think this is the first time I have ever been attacked by a media device." His voice was smooth but not deep. He sounded like every bank teller I'd ever heard before all mixed into one. Add in the look, classic European-American mix with dark brown hair and brown eyes and the most basic white pocket shirt and black pant combo and he really did look like a banker. For some reason I started wondering if maybe I had overdrawn my bank account again and they sent the banker hitman to break my knees or something. Which was ridiculous. Right?

"Are you the bank hitman?" okay so I may have asked that even though I knew it was stupid. My brain turns off in stressful situations. Or pretty much any situation where I have to interact with people I don’t know. I seem fine normally I just don’t do well when startled. Don’t judge me. The banker hitman/not banker hitman just stared at me. Was that pity?

"Well now that we have that out of the way," he said as he folded his hands in his lap and made himself comfortable on my bed. Yeah he thinks I'm stupid. "Let's get down to business."

"To defeat the Huns?" Why? Don't judge me I was scared. My brain left me high and dry so I did the only acceptable thing. Quoted movie lines.

"What? No. What is wrong with you?" He asked as he threw his hands up. Thankfully I managed to not blurt out that correct answer. Which was a lot of things. I did however put together actual words.

"Nothing is wrong with me! What's wrong with you? I didn't break into someone's house and start insulting them." Very proud of my mouth because my brain sure as hell didn’t put all those words together. He paused and frowned then dropped his hands and nodded his head in apparent agreement with me.

"That is a very good point. To be fair though I didn't technically break in. But that is beside the point." He looked away from me and seemed to take in my room which made me wince and shrink down. "You have a very interesting taste in decor." He looked back to me and smiled.

"Um, thank you?" Not really sure if he meant that as an insult or not. Seeing as most of my room was taken up by a bed and desk, he could only be referring to my rather large stock of assorted games, anime, and book paraphernalia littering my walls and shelves. Posters covered my walls ranging from crazy bloody video games to the cute girls from some of my favorite shows, which of course I had to buy the figurines for as well and those covered my shelf in a varying degree of poses.

Again don't judge me. Looking around at it all with another random person sitting here with me I have come to the realization that most of this is weird and kind of creepy. And a little sad. I really need to go outside more.

As if he knew I was working myself up to throwing a rad pity party the intruder cleared his throat a few times until I looked back at him. "So.... yeah things to discuss and such." He looked a bit embarrassed for me. I'm just glad he didn't look down at my bed and see the sheets and pillows. Now that is embarrassing. And suddenly everything felt super surreal.

There was an unknown person in my room with me who wasn't there before and didn't come in through the door. Is he really even there. Maybe he doesn't even exist at all. I'm probably passed out at my desk again after gaming for too long. Hopefully my alarm wakes me up in time for work. The man narrowed his eyes and cocked his head. "My name is Yurel Udeop. And yes I am real."

"With a name like that I'm glad you are just a dream. I would feel bad for anyone having to actually pronounce that last name." It really was an awful last name. He pretty much proved that this was a dream of some form. Reading my mind and such like that.

"I am not reading your mind. Everyone just always assumes they are dreaming, or in the case of the last person I talked to, a bad drug trip." He grimaced and shook his head. "And yes Udeop is a terrible name but it's a family name, I'm sure you understand." Yeah I understood. I got stuck with Filner. Zach Filner. It's an awful name. Yurel nodded when he saw me grimace as well and then he clapped his hands together. "Now that we have the formalities out of the way I can come to the meat of the matter of why I am here.

"You are here to give me superpowers so I can save the world!" The exclamation left my mouth before my brain even got the info. Why am I like this? I blame popular culture. Yurel gave me a pitying look and slapped his hands over his face. I copied. "Sorry, I don't do well with scares or sudden shocks. And having someone magically appear behind me with no warning is kind of a shock." I say as I rub my hands across my face. I received a grunt in return.

Oddly the grunt made me feel a bit better and my brain seemed to finally start working as intended. Maybe. Yurel could have killed me probably before I even realized it since, you know, he ninja teleported behind me. So probably not going to kill me. Probably. I finally managed to pull my hands away from my face to look back over at him only to find him rubbing at his eyes with his own hands. Oh wow I think I broke him.

Yurel sat for a long moment before finally letting out a deep sigh and lowering his hands from his face. "You know, I'm used to having things thrown at me.” He looked down at my weapon of choice for him. “Although that was a first," I winced and scratched my head. Oops. "There is normally a lot more cursing and threats and all around violence." He looked at me in confusion. All I could do is shrug.

"Would it have done anything for me to be like that?" Being honest with myself, I'm pretty sure even a real banker could kick my ass. I wouldn't even put money on a fight between me and Yurel since he can apparently teleport into locked rooms. He just grinned at me.

"It's actually rather refreshing. Trying to talk to someone while they attempt to damage you is not very fun. Sometimes it is exciting though. I find firearms to be incredibly fascinating. I think I may have to find a way to add them in at some point in time." He seemed to get lost in his own head for a minute which I could understand and relate to. Unlike me though, he snapped out rather quickly and rubbed his hands together. "Right, can think about that later. At the moment we have much bigger things to talk about."

"Okay....?" I just stared at him and waited. He continued to grin as he swayed lightly where he sat. He look way too happy. It cant be healthy to be that happy. After we sat there for a good minute I had to finally ask. "Are you ok?" He jerked as if startled and then his grin dropped slightly.

"Yeah sorry, it's just nice to be able to sit once and awhile and not have to be in a fight or something else incredibly stupid. Sometimes just sitting in silence can be good for the soul." I just nodded like I understood and agreed even though I personally hated silence. Couldn't even sleep without light music playing in the background. I didn't tell him that though. Always agree with the guy who can teleport. "Anyway," he continued and waved a hand to seemingly brush away the last topic. "I am here to give you a... deal I guess you could call it."

"Like a deal with the devil?" I blurted out before even thinking. Again. I thought my brain had started back up but it seems to have stalled out. I flinched at my own words and hunched down into my chair with a quiet "sorry". I could feel his glare even though I couldn't even look at him.

"As I was saying I am here to make a deal with you." He said in a huff. I think calling him the devil hurt his feelings. Or he was annoyed with my stupidity. Or both. "It's not really a deal per se, it's more like." he paused for a minute and let out a deep hmm sound before smacking his closed fist into his palm. "Yes, not a deal, a job offer. That makes it sound much less, well, evil and shady yes?" I had to agree. Being offered a job sounded much better than making a deal with the magical appearing man in my room. Still sounded shady as fuck though.

"Not to be rude um Mr. Yurel but I currently have a job." A shitty one but it paid the bills and had a decent schedule. He just waved his hand again and dismissed what I said.

"Not that kind of job. Well I guess it is a paying job. With money and benefits and those kinds of things." He nodded as if agreeing with himself. "It's more like an opportunity to open a new horizon in your life while also helping me in the process.” Well yeah that made it sound even more shady. It’s like the painfully average evil villain recruitment speech. So far I’m not impressed. “You can always say no and you wouldn’t be the first one to do that but I would recommend that you listen to the offer first.” Well yeah. It would be stupid to not listen to the offer. It would also be something I would totally do. Fight or flight was telling me I had wings at the moment.

I tilted my head and looked at him harder. Hopefully he couldn’t smell fear. Or see it. Judging by what he said earlier about people fighting him and stuff though I think he was just rather enjoying my complacence. And inability to fly away since he was sitting in front of the only window. I didn’t even think about the door. I waved my hand for him to continue and he grinned.

“Good. So here’s the job offer. I created a nice world based loosely off of this one. My friend did great work with this world and you humans are super interesting. One of my favorite things about you people are your myths, legends, and imagination to create whatever your mind wants. Its just simply… fascinating.” The slightly manic gleam in his eyes was disturbing. Or it would have been. Created a world. Friend did good work with this one. Throwing flags out like a referee.

Only crazy people talked like that. But he did just appear in my room. Maybe he’s a crazy person. But then how did he get into my room. My brain was flying a thousand miles and minute so it took me several moments to realize he was still talking.

“And I borrowed a few of humans more interesting creations and sprinkled them around my world. Bringing us to the crux of the issue.” Yurel sighed and rubbed his hands together as he leveled me with a serious look. “I created what you would call gods to serve as something like an admin between me and the world itself. I allowed the races to create their gods based on beliefs just like it is here on this world. I rather like the idea of intelligent creatures creating their own ruling body such as it is. It seems that I gave them a little too much leeway as I set the parameters though and we come to the real problem.” he paused to rub his chin and look out of the tiny window at the head of my bed. I took the moment to continue my now super sized freak out in silence.

“I can explain it like this,” he turned back to look at me and suddenly he looked really tired. “My experiment was meant to run autonomously from within while still allowing me to adjust from the outside. I am unsure exactly what happened though. I no longer have outside access to the internal process. I was locked out by the gods that I had helped create. A very real problem. Without being able to access internal processes, the world itself is pulling itself apart. That is why I require someone to go in and figure out what happened and give me the information so that I can regain control and stabilize the world before it destroys itself.” He grinned and nodded like it all made sense to him but I had a few issues.

He created a whole world? He fucked up somehow? In one breath he said he wanted the world to work itself. He created it to run without him. But he still wanted to run it from outside. He sounded like a middle manager not a god. Or a crazy person. Who can teleport. Can't forget that. So I had to ask the obvious question because now I was kind of curious.

“Didn’t you make it to run auto… whatever? So whatever happens to it is kind of its own fault right?” It seemed like a good question but the look he gave me made me think it was a very bad question.

“If you created something with your own hands. You took the time to mold every detail, work every part, and then breathed life into it. Would you care if it existed?” he glared at me. Yeah it makes sense. It's like his child or something. I would be pissed if something I made cut me off and then got itself killed. No wonder parents are fucking crazy.

My face gave me away as he nodded. “I have tasked many people for this job. All I need is information. You don’t even have to fix anything.” he clapped his hands and shifted his legs while staring at me. I gues that was the pitch?

“You aren’t very good at this are you?” Yurel did not seem to appreciate the question. It was totally a valid question. No information about what he actually needed to be done. Nothing said about compensation. No information about his other contacts in this so called world he created.

Do my bidding or die mortal would have worked a whole lot better. I just gave him a confused look and shrugged. “What happens if I say no?” Obviously a stupid question. To my surprise he just nodded again.

“Of course you can decline. Choice is one of the greatest gifts your kind has. I’m sure you understand that I would have to prevent any leaks of sensitive information though.” And there is the threat. It was said rather nicely too.

I didn’t ask for any of this knowledge. Too late now. Some part of my brain is reading this guy as super dangerous now, like sitting across from a hungry crocodile, or someone you owe a lot of money to.

I tried not to shudder as my body dumped adrenaline through my system. Brain came online at the worst time it seems. Only here to cause more problems. I pushed out a breath that came out much more shaky than I would have liked.

“It’s not really a choice. It’s do what you want or die.” Yurel just shrugged at my words.

“You would be surprised how many choose the latter. I think they assumed that I would not carry out my word. It doesn’t make any sense to me. Choice though.” he waved his fingers. I took in a breath and then let it out slowly.

“Alright I want to live. What do I do?” Yurel grinned in a way I hadn’t seen yet and my vision turned into spots of color before fading to black.