The boy in the blue track suit flinched as a fist of stone rammed into his chest, knocking the wind out of him and his consciousness for a split second as sweat droplets from his jet black spikey hair rained forth.
Again.
His muscles screamed and tore for him to stop, the threat of the darkness in his eyes dragging his eyelids shut, fatigue in his mind echoing throughout his body as he drifted between the state of the awake and asleep.
Jumbled thoughts caressed his mind as he felt, again, his body crash onto the floor, the crackling pain now registering in his chest and back.
Get up.
In an alley, within the dying light, a figure in a hoodie, his face in the darkness, his pants resounding in the dark of the cold brick walls equal in hardness and temperature as his fists, whilst another slam was heard as the boy in the blue and dirty track suit fell onto the floor. His Quirk: Hardened Hands.
"Just what is this little shit?!"
He opened and closed his smooth, stone hands which now threatened to crack and crumble, evident of their trembling and fractures along their surfaces.
What a mugging gone wrong was the situation at hand. Half an hour ago, he was threatening to slit a man's throat with his dagger, before that boy in the track suit showed up, already looking shabby and dead beat.
Now, they were still in the same alley, squaring it up. It was his fourth knockout. And it was going to be his fifth recovery.
If I can't defeat him, I can't go on.
His fingers twitched upon the concrete. And with indomitable willpower, he forced his arms to carry the weight of his upper body, pushing him off the ground and shifting the weight onto his trembling legs.
The boy unnervingly propped himself up, painfully, the same blaze gleaming within his eyes, blood dripping down his head, with one eye bruised.
"Just stop it already kid!"
There was no escape for the villain except through him, as his back was against a wall.
If I don't do this, I will never amount to a hero.
With a gutteral grunt, the boy rushed up to him once again.
If I don't do this, I will never get stronger.
The man reinforced his hands once again, unleashing a right swing aimed to arch and smash his head in. The boy suddenly tilted his head to the left, and, taking a smash onto the ground with his left foot, twisted his right arm and shoulder forward, and unleashed a wound up uppercut from his right fist with astonishing speed.
Pulling his left hand backwards to guard against the blow was futile as it shattered under the force of the punch as it pulled through, his jaw cracking in its wake, with the side effect of the man flying backwards and into the wall behind him.
Panting, the boy slumped against the brick wall beside him. Coughing out blood, he noted to himself that it was his third time today.
Taking in breaths, he felt the tendrils of sleep grasp at him once more.
I still have 3 more kilometers to run.