It appeared when I got out of hospital.

OK, that sounded ominous, but it's nothing more than the truth.

Maybe I should start at the beginning. I am Taylor Hebert and the 'it' I am talking about is the small emerald-coloured shield that is currently hanging around my neck as a necklace.

I first saw it in a dream after I was admitted to the hospital thanks to those three bitches Emma, Sophia and Madison trapping me in my locker for seven hours. The dream had been really weird. I was floating in a white void when four weapons appeared in front of me; a sword, a spear, a bow and a shield.

When I looked at them, I had the urge to choose one of them. Reaching out with one hand, I hovered over the spear and felt something…and was repulsed by it! Whoever had had that weapon before me had been a no-good womaniser! Yuck!

Turning to the sword, I once more reached out and was repulsed again. The previous owner of this weapon had been a loner trying to look cool. Not my style.

The bow, when I got around to it, had repulsed me also. I could feel a self-righteous sense of justice and self-satisfaction coming from it that disgusted me. No way was I going to touch that with a barge pole.

So I had turned to the shield and reached out to it. I had gasped as feelings flowed into me, familiar ones. Betrayal. Pain. Isolation, Rage. Fury. Despair. Hatred…Hope.

He…the person who had borne this shield before me had been betrayed, horribly betrayed. Just like I had been. I grabbed the shield just before the world turned black.

When I woke up, it was floating above me. Green, with a glass-like orb in the top section. It had slowly floated down and vanished inside of me. That had been the last I'd seen of it until I left the hospital. Then it had dropped into my pocket.

I had strung it on a chain that had belonged to my mother and wore it as a necklace, telling dad that it was a present for myself that I'd found in a thrift store. he had accepted that before heading off and withdrawing me from Winslow. Thank god.

Over the next week and a bit, I had learned how to control the size of the shield, from the size it was while around my neck (the size of a modest candy bar) to its full size (the size of the dish we used to serve the turkey on at Thanksgiving). Amazingly enough, it didn't feel heavy or unwieldy whilst still having weight.

I have to say though, for a Parahuman power, creating a dinky little shield isn't exactly what I'd call useful.

Looking at it, I sighed and decided to start trying to make it do something, anything, other than grow and shrink. It didn't float and it didn't have and kind of switches or anything on it. I was really getting frustrated with the damn thing. Just about the only thing I hadn't tried was wearing the damn thing ordinarily!

"Oh…I'm an idiot." I muttered when I realised that. Taking my shield, I placed it on my left arm and strapped it on. And, as I suspected, there was an immediate effect. The jewel mounted on the topmost portion of the face of the shield glowed and a little window appeared in front of me.

[Greetings, Chosen Hero of the Holy Shield!]

You have been selected to wield one of the Four Holy Weapons, and are now the Shield Hero! Great power and responsibility are yours now. Use it wisely.

I blinked. What the hell?

As you may have noticed, you can shrink the shield down to small sizes for both concealment and convenience, but that is the least of the power that you possess. By defeating foes, you can acquire armour, money and materials, as well as information. To continue with your tutorial, please close this window.

Numbly, I closed the window, making another one pop up. This one looked a lot like a stat sheet that I'd seen when Dad dug out his old D&D stuff from before Scion.

Name: Taylor Hebert

Age: 15

Level: 1| Next Level: 50 EXP

Race: Parahuman

Job Class: Shielder

Title (1): Hero of the Holy Shield

Title (2): Unaffiliated and Unknown Parahuman

STR: 10

END: 9

AGI: 12

INT: 20

WIS: 15

LUK: ?

Special Status: [My Body is the Shield] (Defence Value of the Holy Shield applied to entire body in addition to any armour worn), Betrayed (-50% to Relationship Gains in civilian guise.)

The stats…were numerical representations of my physical and mental abilities? Ok, this was officially the weirdest power that I have ever heard of, even surpassing that guy who gets stronger every time he eats a banana. Or the woman who can materialise giant forks to fight with.

These stats represent different parts of your physical and mental being. STR represents your physical strength, END represents your physical endurance, AGI represents your speed, agility and dexterity, INT is your intelligence, your ability to problem solve, WIS is your wisdom, your ability to memorise facts and figures. Finally, LUK represents your literal luck, bad or good.

Your Level represents how strong you are overall, and viewing the level of an enemy is a general guide to how powerful they are. It is not an absolute guide, however, so be wary of judging your ability to defeat enemies by levels alone.

Well that made sense, generally speaking.

Special Statuses are conditions and abilities that are either absolutely unique to you or affect you on a deep level. The first of your current Special Statuses, [My Body is the Shield], is a passive effect of the Holy Shield that is so entwined with your very being that it cannot be removed until you die. It applies the defensive value of the Holy Shield to your entire body, granting you a tremendous advantage to your defences.

[Betrayed], on the other hand, is the status given to someone who has been backstabbed by one or more people that they had previously trusted. It reduces your ability to build trust in others, represented by your Relationship rating. [Betrayed] can be removed by you mentally moving past the act of betrayal done to you.

Fat chance.

Now, to continue, close this screen.

Doing so, an odd-looking screen popped up. It was blank for the most part, with three lines at different areas of the screen written in black, with an emerald green jewel rotating next to them at the left hand side.

- [Auto-Defend] (2) [MLV1/30]

- [Defence Up (Small)] (1) [MLV1/5]

- [Lesser Pain Resistance] (2) [MLV1/10]

This is the [Passive Skills] page. Here, you can activate or deactivate passive skills to suit your situation. To do so, you have a pool of Skill Points. At Level 1, you possess five skill points, all of which are taken up with the three skills granted to you by the Holy Shield.

[Auto-Defend], just like the name suggests, allows your shield arm to automatically move to block incoming attacks, whether they be ranged or close combat.

[Defence Up (Small)] grants you a slight bonus to your overall defence. The value varies between 5 and 8, but never more or less than that.

[Lesser Pain Resistance] reduces the amount of pain that you feel from enemy attacks by 20%. It should be noted that you will not feel pain unless the enemy breaks through your Defence with their Attack.

It took a bit longer for me to absorb this. If I was reading the explanation for [Auto-Defend] right, I was essentially Mastering my body to automatically defend myself from attacks. This left me feeling a bit queasy, as no one likes the idea of being Mastered, even by their own power.

Next, we will move to the Active Skills. Close this window to continue.

When I did that, I saw about four skills on the new window.

- [Holy Shield Form Change] (MLVMAX)

- [Holy Shield Absorption] (MLVMAX)

- [Shield Bash] (MLV1/20)

- [Light to Medium Armour Proficiency] (MLV1/30)

These four skills will be the basis of your abilities as a Hero. Those that are at MLVMAX (Master Level Maximum) cannot be improved or upgraded any further and are considered to be as strong as they can get.

The top two skills, [Holy Shield Form Change] and [Holy Shield Absorption] are the most important skills for you. [Absorption] allows your shield to absorb materials of all kinds into the shields; this includes animal flesh, bone, metal, wood or any combination thereof. [Form Change] works with that skill, as absorbing materials unlocks alternate forms of the Holy Shield, each with different active skills that can be used while it is equipped. Note that you will only have those active skills while that particular shield is equipped. Additionally, you can unlock some passive abilities via new shields that you can master and have equipped permanently, regardless of what shield you have equipped.

My eyes grew as large as dinner plates as I read on. Holy crap…this shield was way more powerful than I first gave it credit for.

As you have no doubt noticed, every skill has what is referred to as a Mastery Level. A Passive or Active Skill is automatically Level 0 when you first acquire it and is unusable. In order to use the skills, you must keep the shield it comes from active for a certain duration of time that varies depending on the shield. The more powerful the shield and its abilities, the longer it will be necessary to keep it active for. Once MLV1 has been achieved, you can assign skill points to the Passive Skills and use the Active Skills with the Shield equipped.

[Shield Bash], as the name suggests, is an attack that smashes the enemy with your shield, dealing damage equivalent to the Attack stat on your shield, with reductions if the enemy is wearing armour of is unnaturally tough.

Finally, [Light to Medium Armour Proficiency] allows you to wear light or medium armour, as well as granting you bonuses at higher levels of Mastery.

"Wow…" I whispered. This was…huge.

The final section of this tutorial will be regarding your equipment. Close this window to continue.

Doing so, I saw that the new screen basically had an outline of my body and lines pointing to it that had notes about what I was wearing on that location.

Head: -{Empty}-

Eyewear: Glasses

Torso (1): Old T-shirt

Torso (2): -{Empty}-

Back: -{Empty}-

Arms: -{Empty}-

Legs and Groin: Denim Trousers

Feet (1): Cotton Socks

Feet (2): -{Empty}-

Beneath that was a ten-by-ten boxed section with several boxes taken up by items…pieces of armour.

- Light Masked Helm of the Shield Hero

- Light Cuirass of the Shield Hero

- Light Fauld of the Shield Hero

- Light Bracers of the Shield Hero

- Light Greaves of the Shield Hero

- Red Mantle of the Shield Hero

A smile grew across my face as I ran down the list of armour. I had a costume. I had powers. I was a Parahuman.

In your faces, Bitch Trio!

An alternate way of having a Gamer! Taylor. Instead of the vanilla The Gamer interface, I used a similar system from; you will have guessed it, Rise of the Shield Hero. Taylor has been sent to the World of the Four Holy Weapons before (I think the author was influenced by Fushigi Yūgi: The Mysterious Play, replacing Gods with Holy Weapons), but never given Holy Weapons on Earth Bet for some reason. As for Ratings, I'll just go with Shaker/Trump 10.