Steven Jones - College Dropout

Hello all. I've been lurking around this story for a few months and decided that I might as well give this a try. Not really much else to say about all this honestly. A few extra details though: I am using novelai for image generation for if someone wants to make their own branches. The prompt and seed will be posted every chapter, though not the undesired content. I am also thing up a few twists or new concepts to add to my branch, so if you guys are interested in any of that, let me know so I can try implementing it.

The droning of my alarm clock suddenly woke me up. I groaned into my pillow in frustration as it continued to blare on. After a few more seconds, I finally find the energy to turn the damn thing off.

Damn my head hurts. I'm hungover I quickly realize. I really shouldn't have stayed at Riley's for as long as I did, but she's the only one who doesn't judge me for dropping out of college. It's not my fault I crashed and burned. I was never the best at school, something I _always _told my parents, but no matter what I said or how loud I said it, they'd deny it and bury their heads in the sand. "You're our son," they would say. "You're destined for greater things." "You're wasting your potential."

Fat load that "potential" did me. Hell, it's been over a year after I graduated, and I still don't know what I wanna do with my life. Meanwhile my dear little sister is a some sort of prodigy that shit talks me whenever I'm around.

I release another groan as I roll onto my back. Why am I even up so early again? Oh, right, work. Shit. Welp, gotta pay off student loans somehow, especially since mom and dad aren't paying for it like they promised. Not my fault that the tuition was stupidly high for even a single full semester. I wanted to go to a community college, get my feet wet and find a passion, but nope. I was sent to a four year university instead with a major I didn't even really like. Fucking hypocrites.

Deciding my internal rant could wait, I pushed myself up and onto my feet. I threw then threw on some old clothes that I hadn't yet washed and made my way out of my room.

If there was one thing mom and dad did right, it was letting me stay home while I worked and got some money. My best guess is that, on some level, they realized the hole they dug me, and by extension themselves, in and decided to give me some leniency. Sure, I now had to pay for my own supplies and groceries, but at least I wasn't paying out the ass for rent. Small mercies.

As I descended the stairs to get something to eat, I heard some noises coming from the kitchen. As the area in question came into view, I saw my younger sister, Kylie, making breakfast for herself. Nothing fancy from what I could tell, just some eggs and bacon. I'd love to have some of that for myself right now actually. Unfortunately, Kylie's a bitch. Exhibit A...

"Oh, it's you," she called out with disgust in her voice.

"Fuck you too," I immediately shot back, unafraid of any retribution from her or my parents. Her because she didn't see the need to put in the effort, and our parents because she didn't talk like that with them around the two-faced bitch.

She sighed exasperatedly. "Why mom and dad ever decided to keep you around, I'll never know."

"Oh, I'm sorry. Am I stepping on your pwetty wittle toes?" I mocked with faux concern.

Kylie scoffed as she turned back to the pan filled with her breakfast. "Just don't eat my shit."

"Wasn't gonna," I shot back as I opened the pantry. I reached up into my section and pulled out my cereal box. A cereal box which, on closer inspection, felt a lot lighter than I remembered. I opened the box and growled. "Did you eat my Frosted Flakes?" I asked "politely", my temper rising.

She let out the fakest "tee-hee" I'd ever heard and said, "Oh sorry. I didn't realize that those were yours. Silly me."

I just let out an angered grunt as I grabbed a bowl and started filling it. Once I finished doing that and poured in some milk too, I began to make my way to the table. I pulled out my phone and started going through my apps to see if anything interesting was happening when I happened upon a app I didn't remember downloading. The icon had a typical anime girl's face in the center with the ring of a camera's shutter or whatever it was surrounding her. As for the app's name, all it said was "New-U".

Dammit. Did I have a virus or something? I thought about deleting it, I really did, but I realized I didn't use my phone for anything other than text, calls, and memes anymore. And honestly, I had been looking into getting a new one recently anyways. So it was with small amounts of hesitation that I tapped it. After a short loading screen, something finally popped up. The UI was pretty basic, just two boxes with one on top of the other and a red circle down at the bottom.

I tapped the top box, nothing happened. I tapped the bottom, same thing. When I tapped the circle, a notification popped up with the app asking for permission to use the camera. I accepted and lifted my phone up to view my surroundings. Turns out the top box displayed whatever was being viewed from the camera, while the bottom one remained blank. My best guess was that I had to take a picture of something.

I tried using it on my bowl of cereal, but the app reported an error.

'Error. Invalid subject. Please have the frame target a valid subject.'

Okay? And what was considered a valid subject.

The clattering of a plate on the counter drew my attention away. I eyed my sister as she prepared to serve herself breakfast and paused. Not "what", but "who" I quickly realized.

I brought up my phone, the edges of the top box on the screen lighting up green when it landed on my sister. I tilted my head as I thought of what might happen next. Would it just apply a filter or something? I was actually getting pretty curious.

"Hey, loser, what are you doing?" Kylie called out.

I looked back up to her to see that she was angrily glaring at me. I looked back down at my phone and shrugged. In for a penny as they say.

"Hey, I'm talking to-!"

She suddenly stopped. My eyes shifted back to her and saw that she was grown still. Completely frozen in place at that. As some dredges of worry for her began to climb up inside of me, I tried to ask what was wrong, but found my mouth wouldn't move. In fact, with a little time, I realized that I couldn't move anything at all aside from my eyes.

No, that wasn't entirely accurate. Something else was moving too. My phone's screen was flashing, pulsing. Specifically the previously-empty lower box that was now filled with an array of words. I glanced back and forth, from the words to the picture, to my sister herself and saw the relation between the three. The words seemed to describe what I, that is the phone, was seeing at that point in time.

A cursor blinked on and off within the box. Could I edit it? But what would that do? I've apparently frozen reality by using this app. Does that mean I could also use it to... change it as well? Manipulate reality to my wishes?

I don't know just yet, but a quick test should confirm it.

Prompt: younger sister, schoolgirl, brown hair, medium hair, wavy hair, blue eyes, swept bangs, angry, narrowed eyes, medium breasts, white dress shirt, red bow, blue skirt, from side, thin waist, looking at viewer, indoors, kitchen,

Seed: 1406364999