u/Deep-Car6526

Basically, the cursed technique can steal or swap techniques or memories between people. The reversal is the similar but allows to swap techniques or memories between another person and the user. The associated Domain Expansion is Inside Out, where all of the caster's physical and mental trauma is placed on everyone else in the domain and amplified. I understand that this is blatantly overpowered, so this will require the Six Eyes or Yuta levels of Cursed Energy as a bare minimum.

Synopsis:

Fourteen-year-old Alexander is an idealistic slave in the textile sector of Valoria, a high-tech dystopia that funds its pristine city center through the forced labor of an unmapped, soot-choked industrial quarter. Believing that hard work will buy leniency for his family, Alexander overproduces his quota, only to receive a brutal, unprovoked beating from a ruthless new warden on his birthday. His innocence shattered, he realizes the regime cannot be negotiated with. At fifteen, he uses calculated manipulation to plant the seeds of revolution, organizing older factory veterans into a coordinated uprising. The state retaliates with asymmetric military force, deploying special forces to liquidate the dormitories with heavy machine guns, fragmentation grenades, and flamethrowers. The trauma strips away his humanity, causing him to adopt a detached, sadistic persona that thrives on survival-driven violence. Years later, cornered by a bounty hunter who secretly alerts the authorities, Alexander erupts into sudden violence. He executes his captor, hijacks a military artillery battery, shells an oncoming tank convoy, and intentionally turns the mortars onto civilian city blocks—relishing the slaughter and the sight of Valorian blood on his hands. Wandering into a highly automated steel factory sector, Alexander encounters Havoc, a clever teenage escapee who managed to slip past the high-tech security grid without raising an alarm. Pinned behind a pile of debris by a distant sniper tower, Alexander uses calculated charm to recruit the boy as a tactical asset for a guerrilla sabotage campaign. As they strike Valoria's critical supply infrastructure, a stark internal inversion occurs. Alexander’s conscious, strategic mind hardens into a radicalized, cold tyrant who views regular civilians as accomplices and plans operations maximizing collateral damage. Conversely, in the heat of combat, his survival persona begins to wake up to the horror of his actions. Forced to look into the eyes of his victims, the begging of parents and the smell of burning flesh trigger memories of his own childhood trauma, sparking an agonizing wave of remorse as he realizes he has become the very monster he set out to destroy

First Chapter:

Shit.

Umm… all right, I’m going to need you to do a really big favor for me. Well… congratulations? You’ve done it. You’ve caught the elusive Alexander Redding. However, before you grab the cash, can you just listen? You deserve to know who you’re selling me out to. So, you can sit on that empty pallet over there. It’s a win-win scenario! You get to know the truth, and I get my first real human interaction in… I don’t know, a year? Two years? Whatever, that’s not important

Where should I start?

“Welcome to Valoria! The pinnacle of innovation! Everything that can be invented has been invented here!” I’m sure you’ve heard of all that crap the government spouted out. The reality is, this entire place is built on slave labor. There’s a reason why roads don’t come to a quarter of the city. That quarter of the city is filled with decrepit buildings and factories pumping out smoke. The only green I’ve ever seen is from the textiles section of the factory I used to “work” in. Everyone there has lungs that are worse than those of a chain smoker. Even though we’ve almost solved climate change, the sick bastards, also known as factory owners, want every single penny they can get. The technology is expensive, so the owners decided that they’d rather pay for their profits with our alveoli. Our meals are almost non-existent. We’re basically slaves. I’m sure you want to know what I could have possibly done. I get it, I’d be concerned if I were sitting in a room with a possible mass murderer or other monster of a person rambling about why you shouldn’t take the easiest hundred million dollars of your life. I know. I know how parents tell their misbehaving kids, “If you keep this up, Alex Redding’s gonna get you!” How my name is only spoken in hushed whispers. Here, take a blanket, it’ll keep you warm until sunrise.

First, how about a reintroduction? You already know a couple of things about me. Everyone does. My name is Alexander. You know that. I don’t know when the “Redding” part came in though. I don’t have a last name, because I don’t have a family. Not anymore. And besides, hardly anyone cares for my first name, let alone my last. We’re hardly treated as human. When my family came to the factory, I could work. They couldn’t. There’s about a hundred ways in here, but not a single way out.

I was a frail fourteen-year-old kid in one of the factories. Up until then, I was making over triple the quota, as well as more than everyone else in my group. Back then, I still believed that I could get better conditions by working harder. I also thought that the factory owners would be more lenient on your birthday, so I waited until then to ask. I had also been warming up to the factory owner, so that could increase my chances of my request being accepted. However, one thing I didn’t know was that there was a new factory owner. You see, I had no proof that I did anything special. The old factory owner did. So when I went to his office and saw someone new there, you can imagine my surprise. As soon as I walked in, he growled and shouted something along the lines of, “Don’t you maggots know your place?” We got rid of rabies years ago, but I could swear he was almost foaming at the mouth. 

I’m pretty sure that I stammered something like of “Oh shit, I’m in the wrong place, I’ll leave now”. Of course, I’m sure that I rephrased it. Well, maybe not, because my next memory of that day was the factory owner standing over me with this crazy grin that practically shouts “Ooh, watch my fucking power trip here!” and throbbing pain in my face. Still not sure if he threw a rock at me or hit me with a cane or something. My nose was bleeding like a firehose, and I could barely see straight. He talked about how “my kind” were worthless or something like that, but hey, at least I couldn’t hear whatever racist bullshit he was spewing out. I managed to stumble out of his office with blood spewing from my forehead. I have absolutely no idea how I didn’t fall into the heavy machinery and get myself chopped into pieces. Sometime later that night, the pain subsided, and I slipped into sleep. 

For the next couple of weeks, I was in agony. I was hurting in so many places, which didn’t even make sense because I was only hit in the head. I could barely work and make quota, and the days I couldn’t make it didn’t help my recovery process. Eventually, the pain became routine, and my days just became a downward spiral. I knew I couldn’t stay like this.

One day, while carrying a random bag with something, I had an epiphany. I stayed in line because I was scared. I was scared of the pain acting up brought; I was scared of the supervisors’ batons, the guards’ guns, the electric fence, everything. I'd gone through the pain already. The months of agony broke me; left scars and cracks all over me. However, those cracks had just gotten filled. I knew I had to try to escape. It would be a win-win scenario. Either I escape and get a break from this hell, or I’ll go there myself, and everything stops hurting anyway. But how? How do you fight a system that is built to fight you at every level? How do you kill a monster that constantly heals? I thought about it for a while. Then, the answer came to me. You don’t give the monster time to recover. If I were to make any impact or progress toward my freedom, I’d have to shake Valoria to its core.
`

I started small at first. A neglected conveyor belt, a decrepit diesel engine, a turbine; they all break the same. I wanted to blow the entire place up, but I knew I had to be slower. Systematic. If there were to be an uprising, it would have to be in motion far before any drastic measures. Mobilizing the movement for longer will also help the movements by arming them better, and it’d help the movement live longer by ensuring that the suppression of each uprising will have less negative effects on morale and supplies. However, I had to start small at first. I had to increase the scale slowly. Unfortunately, I had to stick to sabotaging supply lines.

I wasn’t too sure exactly what the factory made. I knew that I was making small stuff. Usually, electronic components, but I’ve seen a bunch of other small stuff on there as well. On my way back from my beatdown at the warden’s office, I saw some heavy machinery, so that should produce some important stuff that the city needed. I never considered accessing weapon arsenals because Valoria had been at peace ever since World War III, 30 years ago. There wasn’t any need for weapons, so I thought that there wouldn’t be any easily accessible stockpiles. So, I shifted my focus.

No war in history has ever been fought by one man. If I were going to make any impact at all. I would need support. I knew I needed to recruit strategically. I needed soldiers, strategists, suppliers; I needed an army for this. I went with what worked first. On my rounds, I would divulge small bits of key information. For example, I would occasionally talk about the wall’s weak points when I knew that all the hyperaggressive guys who were constantly picking fights were listening. I would reveal that I found some hints on where the factory’s arsenal would be when I could tell that the Valorian army vets were eavesdropping. Slowly, far too slowly, I planted the seeds of revolution into everyone’s minds. Eventually, the entire factory would be up in arms. All convinced of their own genius and optimism, none knew they would be playing right into my hands.

Yeah, I might have been the conniving gremlin in the corner for a little bit. But come on, this is all for a good cause! You know that. I’m fighting for my people, and to fight the oppression of us. 

Unfortunately, that is where the good things end. Turns out, when you don’t cohesively coordinate your plans, you can’t always get everything right. Shocker, right? Well, what happened is that things fell apart quickly. I couldn’t rally my troops because I was just 15. I couldn’t do anything. Nobody’s uniting behind a teenager. That means I just had to trust the nonexistent chemistry between us workers. That fell apart quickly. Turns out, those army vets were REALLY dedicated to finding that weapon storage. They were telling everyone how last week, they found a little bit of ammo, and just now, they found a rifle. I had decided that they could be the proxy leaders of the revolt. I was getting close to them, and they had even accepted my idea of not shooting the guards like an American school back in the 20s. We, workers, weren’t the only things that changed. The guards noticed too. How we now carry ourselves with dignity. How we dared to look them in the eye. How production went up, but product output decreased. They changed, too. First,t they loaded their rifles, then upgraded them from whatever rickety bolt actions they were using. They were jumpy, more careful.

They were scared.

The tension was so thick, you could cut it with a knife.

And that knife slashed a kid’s throat wide open.

Valorian special forces had infiltrated our dorms in the middle of the night. 

One kid was wandering the halls for something. 

Now he’ll be sleeping forever. 

We all slept lightly. The constant hum of Valoria’s “industrial sector” didn’t really help us get too rested. Our factory also used to have wake-up calls, and missing those would mean a beatdown worse than what I got at the warden’s office. Nobody missed a call twice. 

You see, there’s this thing in philosophy called Occam’s Razor. The most likely explanation for something is the simplest. If you have a headache, you probably don’t have the bubonic plague. If you hear a deep, rumbling engine sound, it’s probably a truck rather than a tank. Ergo, when you hear a bunch of boots running down a hallway, it very most likely isn’t Valorian special forces. We weren’t alerted by the sound of a body hitting the ground.

We were alerted by the troops throwing a fragmentation grenade in the adjacent dorm.

When we heard the bang, we were immediately greeted by the pain of our heads smacking into the upper bunk. By the time we were up, we were greeted by the cacophony of agonized, bloodcurdling screams. After we stumbled out of bed, we started moving. None of us had grabbed the rifles yet. They were still in the guard arsenal. We were quick to topple the bunk beds to use as cover, as we were expecting a grenade at any given second. One of the army vets had sharpened a piece of metal and fashioned a knife out of it. He stationed himself by the door, ready to kill the first thing that walked through. 

Almost on cue, an assaulting soldier swung the door open. He was wearing a gas mask, so his intentions were clear. Like a mousetrap in action, the army vet leaped at the soldier and stabbed his knife into his neck. He wrenched it deeper and yanked it out, with a river of blood following it. The soldier’s fate was sealed before he hit the ground.

Now, I know that this is the part in an uplifting story, where us oppressed rise up against authority and take back our rights, but no. As soon as the guy pulled his knife out of his throat, he was immediately shredded to pieces by a heavy machine gun set up on a higher floor. Bits of his body were carried into the dorm by the energy of the bullets. 

But the gunner wasn’t finished

He just 

Wouldn’t

Stop

Firing

The bullets punched through the wall effortlessly, tearing up anyone near the walls.

Even after they passed through them, they still kept going, hitting people behind them as well.

It was a slaughterhouse in the dorm, with people falling left and right. Some of them had baseball-sized holes blown in their chest, while others were completely ripped apart.

Eventually, the gunner let up. He shifted his fire to another room, and we finally had a chance to breathe. There were about eight people who survived, from the fifty or so people in the dorm. We looked around at what we had. There were a couple of decent chunks of wood blown out from the force of the bullets. One guy picked one up as a club and swung it around. Another guy picked up the army vet’s shiv, while someone else picked up the soldier’s knife. The soldier didn’t even have a pistol, so our ranged options were nonexistent.

Suddenly, we saw another squad of soldiers. One of them had a hose and a huge tank on his back. They were poised to breach open another door, and ready to impose the same carnage as they did to us.

One of us lost it. He took a knife, attached it to the club he was fashioning, and threw himself at the soldiers. He howled as he bashed a soldier's skull in, and slashed his throat. However, there was no familiar burst of gunfire. Only a gentle whoosh as I heard him screaming in agony. We all looked up to see his skin charring as he flailed around helplessly. He quickly collapsed and became a burning pile of flesh on the ground. 

Some other dorm rooms got out. A particularly incompetent squad of soldiers happened to come upon the dorm of all the biggest guys in the factory. One guy lodged himself in the door to absorb all the bullets, and when his corpse dislodged itself, the rest of the room’s inhabitants came out to finish the mission.

Screaming, the sound of bones breaking, the wet thud of flesh as it receives a blow; it never sounded so good before that.
I knew I had to get out. There was no way I was surviving this. Some of the workers managed to reach the guards’ armory, and there they were making a stand. I simply ran. Eventually, I dove into a crater and used it as a foxhole.

A crater.

As the realization dawned on me, I ran. I got up and ran in the other direction. If I was right, I had to leave as soon as possible, because this was beyond the point of fighting back 

Suddenly, there was a deep, thunderous boom in the distance

I was right.

They were shelling us.

We were beyond the point of fighting. We had to run. The workers who got some weapons were running out of ammo. 

Then the gas came. The few survivors began coughing violently. Some guards spotted them and shot them, while the rest of the coughs faded into agonized wheezes, before silencing. I ripped some excess fabric off my shirt, then I spat and pissed on it to moisten it. I wrapped it around my nose and mouth, before running to wherever the gas was least dense. My eyes and my lungs burned, but I could still breathe. I ran for a long time. I don’t know where I ended up, but I ended up alive.

But hey, do you get it now? Why did I have to do everything? We were oppressed. We were slaves. Now, we’re empowered. We will be free. 

Wait, sirens? Why do I hear sirens?!

OH, YOU SICK LITTLE BITCH, YOU DID CALL THEM ON ME!

As he shot the bounty hunter, Alexander Redding was on the move. He grabbed his rifle and knife, and he kept on moving. He had spotted an artillery battery southeast of him, and he decided the time to execute his plans with it was right now. He saw a convoy of tanks headed towards his location, so he shot the commander of the very first one. As his dead body crumpled back into the tank and the rest of the tanks behind it closed their hatches. Alex smiled, knowing he just bought himself valuable time. As he headed towards the artillery battery with determination. Nothing was going to stop him.

As if to challenge his determination, a crowd of people gathered in his path. There were no soldiers; just people acting to catch him. No issue for Alex. From a familiarity born from that night in the factory, Alex unsheathed his knife and got to work. He slashed and stabbed. Just like that night in the factory. Even while they ran, he caught up to them to finish his deadly work. Just like that night in the factory. Even as one of them begged for mercy, he still beat the life out of them. Just like that night in the factory.

One of them cried out his favorite lines, “PLEASE! DON’T DO THIS! I HAVE A FAMILY!”

Made it all the more satisfying to wrench the knife out and watch them twitch and bleed.

And through everything, he just couldn’t help but smile at the sight of dirty Valorian blood on his hands. 

  
Just like that night in the factory.



He made it to the artillery battery. The soldiers had just blown up the hiding spot that he was in earlier. Good thing he made it out of there. There wasn’t too much resistance after the crowd. All the soldiers had fled. Despite how much Alex wanted to, it wasn’t worth chasing down.



Alex loaded the howitzer and started firing. The first few shots were for the tank convoy. They’d have to tend to the wounded, which would eat up their time. The second burst was for the soldier’s arsenal and munitions depot. But then, he turned the mortar and increased its angle of fire. He turned it all the way to the city and started firing. While buildings collapsed and people screamed, Alex laughed maniacally. Finally, he was getting what he wanted.

Loud noises. Oh, how I hate loud noises. For some odd reason, I don’t remember too much of the last hour. All I can remember was that there were a lot of them. Screaming, explosions, and a couple more I can’t quite name.

Good thing I got out of there, I guess.

Well, I don’t know what to do next. The city’s damaged somehow, and the area’s teeming with infantry and vehicles. If I go back there, then I’ll be killed before I can blink. Besides, nothing of value is over there, so no point in going back. If I go forward, I’ll just be wandering the “industrial sector”. Maybe I’d be spotted by someone else, even on the highly unlikely chance they don’t immediately recognize me, I’d still be in trouble for wandering the area instead of working.
Well, maybe I could start by gathering more people. Wait no, scratch that. I can’t. I doubt I’ll be able to bring everyone to arms again. And besides, there’s no way I’m replicating that stroke of luck I also had.
Supply depots? Maybe those? I don’t know. Hitting supply depots will definitely hurt the Valorians, but I doubt they’ll be so easy to access. Especially not now, with the city constantly being on vigil for me.  
So, I wandered. I wandered on the black, barren ground. I wandered past the black, barren, burned ground. Past the hollowed out buildings and past the broken, barbed wire topped fences. Eventually, some more buildings came into view. Newer. Steel instead of brick. These were definitely the newer factories. These were massive expanses of steel decorated with the soot coming out of the giant smokestacks. Rivers of smoke billowed out from the giant smokestacks. On one side was some sort of loading dock, while every other side was a giant slab of metal. There wasn’t even a fence or even a line of barbed wire. 
I turned away to make sure nobody saw me, but that’s when I saw some motion near the ground.
Some guy had managed to get out.

The guy looked about my age. Or at least, how I thought somebody my age would look like if they weren’t given the Graveyard beauty treatment.. He was probably someone recently forced into the factories. Maybe a family member did something really bad, which landed him into forced labor. Or maybe he did it himself. 

In that case, that’d be even better.

The guy turned around and said, “Oh, Hi Alex!”

If he saw the Valorian news reports about me, then he was most definitely a new capture. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much time to talk with this kid. In the corner of my eye, I saw something moving in one distant lookout tower. I didn’t think much of it until I saw a glint coming from that direction.

A scope. That means they could possibly see us.

I grabbed the guy and moved. He got the memo quick, as he shook my arm off and caught up. We kept on moving until we got behind a large pile of debris. After ducking behind it, we slowed down and caught our breath.

He said, between breaths, “Hi there! Can’t say I expected the guy I had fever dreams about finding to walk right up to me, but I really don’t mind the surprise.”

There were a lot of things I could say here. I could call him an idiot for at least seven reasons. However, the dude just escaped the factory without alerting the guards. A lot of praise was in order. I said, “How the hell did you escape without alerting any guards? Not even I could do that!”. That wasn’t entirely true, but I really needed to keep this guy with me.

His eyes widened, obviously surprised to receive praise from me. He started stammering, “I, uh, um, well-”.

I cut him short. “Ok, because that’ll take a while, let’s save that for later. What’s your name?”

He went quiet for a bit. “Well, I have this gut feeling that ‘Redding’ isn’t your real last name. Now, it’d also make sense for you to call yourself ‘Alexander’, after the conqueror. And so, if we’re playing nicknames, call me Havoc.”