The Extra becomes the Villain's Bodyguard-Chapter 41: PUBLIC OPINION

The President’s broadcasts, while offering a semblance of hope to some, grated on the nerves of many. For days, during the initial onslaught, during the nights filled with unimaginable horror, and the days spent scavenging for scraps amidst the ruins, the government had been absent.

Leaders and politicians were nowhere to be seen.

"We are resilient. We are rebuilding. Together, we will—"

The radio crackled as someone hurled it against the wall. The voice cut off mid-sentence.

"Resilient my ass," snarled Mark, his knuckles white around the barrel of his rifle. "Where the hell were they when the streets were burning and citizens massacred?"

For days, during the initial onslaught, the nights of unimaginable horror, the desperate scavenging through ruins, the government had been gone. Leaders had vanished. The military, the so-called "might of the nation," was not even there to help. The "state-of-the-art" weaponry the country had was not even used

Now, with a brief pause in the invasion, they perfectly staged broadcasts that felt like a slap in the face.

"Where were they when we were barricading our doors?" demanded Elena, her voice raw. "Where were they when my brother bled out in the street, screaming for help?"

The survivors, those who had clawed their way through hell alone, seethed with resentment. They had relied on their own wits, experienced kindness and cruelty of their neighbors.

"Resources were stretched thin," the officials claimed.

Some believed it. Most didn’t.

"Bullshit," spat a fat man, tightening the straps of his scavenged armor. "They hid. They ran. And now they want us to fall in line?"

In the vacuum of law and order, new powers had risen. The strong, the ruthless, the quick-witted—they had forged their own rules.

"We don’t need them," growled a woman named Tessa, her fingers tracing the hilt of a bloodstained knife. "We protect our own now."

For some, the collapse had been liberating. Debts erased. Rules gone. Desires unleashed. People felt equal.

"Two weeks," Marcus muttered, staring at the charred remains of his looted store. "Just 2 weeks and the world’s already in chaos."

Rapes. Murders. Theft. The vulnerable had suffered the most.

"They think they can just waltz back in?" some background character barked a laugh. "After leaving us to die?"

The survivors had tasted power... hard-won, brutal, theirs. Why would they bow to a government that had abandoned them?

"They’ll try to force us," Tessa said quietly.

An extra smirked, chambering a round. "Let them try."

The seeds of rebellion had been sown. And the President’s words was a major factor.

If they were forced to submit... then war was coming.

***************************

The government’s initiative dubbed the "Reform" Program, wasn’t a gentle nudge towards reintegration; it felt more like a blunt-force shove back into a mold that no longer fit. Their approach was heavy-handed, a forceful attempt to re-establish the old order in a world irrevocably changed. Checkpoints were manned by soldiers whose weary eyes held a mixture of duty and unease.

Their orders were clear: enforce curfews, confiscate unregistered weaponry (often the very tools that had kept people alive), and register all individuals displaying and their system paths.

In a random city.

"Stop."

The soldier’s voice was flat, his gloved hand outstretched at the checkpoint. Behind him, barricades choked what was left of the road, coils of razor wire gleaming in the sickly afternoon light.

Jace tightened his grip on his rifle strap, forcing his expression to stay neutral. "Since when do free citizens need permission to walk their own streets?"

The soldier’s jaw twitched. "Since now. Hand over your weapon."

A murmur rippled through the line of survivors waiting behind him. Jace could feel their anger like heat off a furnace.

"This rifle’s the only reason I’m still breathing," he said, voice low. "You really think I’m giving it up because some bureaucrat in a bunker said so?"

The soldier’s fingers drifted toward his sidearm. "Last warning."

Nearby, a woman in a tattered militia vest spat on the ground. "They weren’t here when the monsters came. Now they wanna play protectors?"

The Reform Program wasn’t just about order... it was a reckoning. Curfews turned settlements into open-air prisons. "Unregistered" weapons... basically all tools that had kept families alive were seized at gunpoint. And worst of all were the patrols forcing registration of everyone, branding it as a way to keep track and prevent crimes, while also designing a method of a way forward.

"Heard they took a kid last night," someone muttered in the crowd. "Just because he had activated his class while the majority of the people have greyed out paths."

"Wait... he did what? How did he do it?"

"No one knows, he was forced at gunpoint to show his status and was discovered his class was activated?"

" Will they share how to do it?"

" Hey, shouldn’t you be concerned about the kid."

"Yeah.. I’m sorry.."

Jace’s stomach twisted. The government hadn’t saved them. It had hidden. And now it was back, not with aid, but with demands.

Jace met the soldier’s eyes. "You really think this ends with us obeying?" he asked quietly.

The soldier didn’t answer. But his hand stayed on his gun.

"This isn’t over!" he said handing over his gun.

"Hey! We are not done yet... you WILL register your path!" the soldier said.

*******************************

Not everyone resisted the Reform Program. Many, especially those who had suffered under the chaos, welcomed the return of structure.

"You call this freedom?" snapped Dr. Alvarez, a former ER surgeon, gesturing to the bullet-scarred triage center where she’d worked since Day One. "Is freedom watching neighbors being executed over a can of beans?"

She thrust her ration card at a protesting scavenger. "I’ll take the government’s ’tyranny’ over that nightmare."

Others agreed. Shopkeepers are exhausted by looting. Parents who’d slept in shifts to guard their children. The elderly were left to starve when brute strength became currency.

Some voiced out:

"The System is giving power to monsters!"

"We need laws, not just survival!"

"Let the military burn out the rot."

General Elias Thompson saw the numbers and the nightmares.

In a secured briefing room, holographic maps flickered with red zones. Footage played of a man shrugging off .50-cal rounds, his skin shimmering with some weird phenomenon.

"Some have already awoken classes," Thompson growled, stabbing a finger at the screen. "They’re encouragements for anarchists who believe they can be gods. That arsonist in Sector 7? She’s a walking disaster waiting to happen."

His analysts agreed.

"We either control it now," he warned, "or we spend the next decade fighting lunatic warlords who can level buildings with their minds."

****************************

The resistance movement didn’t coalesce around a single ideal... it erupted from a volatile mix of conviction, self-interest, and disillusionment, creating a force as unpredictable as the System itself.

For people like Anya, the Reform Program wasn’t just oppressive... it was illogical.

"You want to take my weapon?" she scoffed at the checkpoint. "When you were useless with all the weapons you ’rightfully’ have?" she added.

"NO KINGS. NO LAWS. TRUTH IS ONLY WHAT WORKS." Some started chanting.

Not all resistance was noble. Some were just in it for the love of the game.

In the neon-lit black markets of the Scablands, a man sat in a dark room. The Reform Program’s trade restrictions threatened his empire.

"They call me a criminal," he grinned, flicking a coin through the air where it hovered, defying physics. "I’m just the first to play by the new rules."

Others like him, Gang lords who’d turned their bodies into living weapons.

Black merchants seeing profit in lawlessness...

Then there were those like Dr. Eli, a former scientist who was intrigued by it. To him, this wasn’t collapse... it was metamorphosis.

"The old world died of its own rot," he lectured in a private research facility. "we are at the brink of evolution."

His dream.

Ability-based meritocracies with everyone at an equal starting point.

"No more masters. Only evolution."

*******************************

There were others caught in the middle of this... the innocent.

Mrs. Chen, who had kept six orphans alive through the worst, wrung her hands as she watched the confrontation from her boarded-up storefront. "I just want things to go back to normal," she murmured to no one in particular.

At the newly reopened community center, a government psychologist documented the trend. "Approximately 38% express support for registration, 41% oppose, and 21% are too traumatized to choose. The largest cohort isn’t pro-government or pro-system - they’re simply anti-suffering."

Meanwhile, the rebellion was taking shape.

A particularly effective piece of rebel graffiti summed up the mood:

"They had their chance to lead.

They failed.

We won’t follow again."

On the military’s side.

The General stared at the latest casualty reports. Three more enforcement teams were dead - not from monsters or mutants, but from citizens. His aide ventured carefully, "Sir, perhaps if we approached the high-level users differently—"

"No." Thompson’s fist hit the table. "Every warlord in history began as a ’reasonable exception.’ We either enforce the rules equally, or we lose control completely."

"Do not negotiate! They have systems so do we!"

At the Greenhaven Distribution Center. When troops moved to arrest a popular leader, about a hundred unarmed civilians formed a human chain protecting the guy’s escape.

At that moment, the Reform Program’s fatal flaw became clear:

You cannot regulate what people see as salvation.

You cannot command loyalty that must be earned.