Hello hello hello, my loyal fans! Welcome to an all-new and TOTALLY unedited chapter! I'm almost done with high-school now, so my updates oughta get faster, both for this story AND for Shadows of the Mind, so keep your eye on both of them. (And if you haven't read Shadows, please do) As I've said, this is not so much a fanfiction as it is a re-imagining of the universe of Yu Yu Hakusho. I'm trying my best to stick to the original plot while still maintaining the original vision I had for this story, but needless to say, a few details may get lost in translation. I'm doing well so far, and my outlines for the next few chapters look pretty solid, but we'll see how things go later down the road. For now, though, enjoy the first chapter of No Magic Needed!
As always, my thanks go out to KitsunexShi and EminaKotek-nightmare for their continued love and support. You guys mean the world to me. :)
Yu Yu Hakusho is not my intellectual property, and all the characters within this story do not really belong to me. I've taken new, fresh ideas of how they might be represented, but the characters themselves and their distinctive likenesses are not mine to claim. So please don't sue me. thanks. :)
Story begins...
Darkness. Total, absolute darkness. No sight, no smell, no touch. Nothing to taste, even. Nothing but a persistent, steady ringing that grew louder, and louder, and louder…
Yusuke woke up, unclenched his hands from his ears, and slammed a fist down on his clock. It squawked in alarm and went silent.
He withdrew his hand from the time-worn depression in the clock's casing and sank peacefully back into the realms of sleep.
Darkness, again. Pure, simple darkness.
A jolt shook Yusuke's body. The darkness swirled abruptly, resolving itself into an image of his floor, which was approaching at speed.
"Get up, you little brat!"
Yusuke rolled over, shaking off the impact with the ground, and blinked blearily upwards at the mass of tangled brown hair spitting expletives at him.
"I said get up, Yusuke! How many times have I gotta say it? I got you that stupid clock for a reason, you know! Know why? So I wouldn't have to do this every single fucking morning! And yet here I am, every fucking morning, hauling your stupid ass out of bed!"
Yusuke sighed, wiping a few specks of wayward spittle from his face. "Morning, Mom."
A small hand latched onto his hair and hauled him upright. "Gonna be afternoon at this rate, you lousy twerp. Come on, you're gonna be late for school." A haggard face glared out from beneath the foliage of hair. "Again."
He took a slow breath, and nearly dropped back to the floor as the stench of alcohol thundered past his nostrils. He choked back a cough. "Not like anyone but Keiko is ever that anxious to get there, anyway…"
A slap caught him across the face, nicely complementing the noxious assault of the alcohol. "Everyone else has a job, brat, including Kaiko! All you've got is school, but I'll be damned if that doesn't seem to be too much of a hassle for you! You've got no job, and you've got no money, so unless you wanna end up-"
"Like my mother, God forbid?"
An excellent right hook chased the slap across Yusuke's face. "One more smart-ass comment from you, and you will end up living on the street. No go shower, you look like crap."
Yusuke staggered off to the bathroom, ears ringing. He cranked the water up to full-blast and tried to kick-start his brain into life.
School. Right.
School was stupid, he reflected, as the cool water coursed across his skin. Only about half of the kids in the neighborhood actually bothered with it, anyway. The only shot at a decent, upstanding, high-class job these days was to park your butt in a classroom for the first twenty-five years of your life and achieve an advanced degree in some specific, specialized field of science. Needless to say, this plan did not suit everyone; many of the kids Yusuke knew had opted out of this quarter-century of academic hell, and had struck out on their own by the time they were eleven. It was easy enough for any kid with half a spine to find a place in one of the tribal street gangs that roamed the city, or even start up their own. These delinquent bands earned themselves decent income by relieving you of yours, possibly taking a measure of your good health with it if you were uncooperative. The families of these kids raised no objection, of course: any extra bread the kid could bring home was a godsend, and if he found himself a meal out on the street, that was one less mouth that needed feeding that day. So for the most part, a blind eye was turned on the home front.
Yusuke turned off the water and stepped out of the shower, vigorously drying himself.
And then, of course, there was his mother.
A heavy, metal box was hurriedly introduced to his stomach as he opened the bathroom door.
"Get your ass into gear, Yusuke! I already got your lunch together, do I have to dress you, too?"
He carefully extracted the container from his solar plexus. "Dammit, would you give me a minute?"
"You don't have a minute, dumbass!" she replied, dragging him to his room. She pressed her topiary of hair dangerously close to his face and enunciated her words with exaggerated care. "You are late for school. People who are late do not get minutes, am I making this clear to you?"
"Crystal," muttered Yusuke, nearly passing out as the alcoholic aroma attempted to asphyxiate him.
"Good." His mother threw him into his room. "Get dressed."
He struggled into his uniform. That was all his mother ever did. Go shower, go to school, go get groceries, clean up this mess, nag, nag, nag. Most parents left their kids well-enough alone these days, but not his mother. No, she didn't care what the case was for other kids, she only cared about riding his case, making sure he was always doing something. It didn't really matter what, he just had to be doing something. Perhaps she took so much of an interest in keeping him busy because she, herself, had nothing better to do.
Yusuke threw his bag up over his shoulder and flicked off the light, heading for the door.
He nearly made it past the kitchen.
"Are you still here?"
Yusuke stopped, closing his eyes. "No, I'm not."
His mother turned away from the mountain of dishes in the sink. "Don't you take that tone with me, kid. Tell me you aren't forgetting something."
"I'm not forgetting anything, Mom."
"You sure? No homework, nothing? I know you had homework, did you bother to do it?"
"Yes Mom."
"You've got everything?"
"Yes, Mom!"
She narrowed her eyes. "You're lying to me. I know it. You're gonna come tearing back in here in ten minutes looking for some stupid thing or another."
Yusuke stepped towards the door. "Going to school now, Mom."
She yelled after him. "Hey! You better come back after school, you here? I'm gonna need you to grab some more groceries, I'm almost out of crap to feed you."
"I could just live on whiskey and peanuts, couldn't I?" he snapped back, "Always seem to be plenty of those in this house."
He ducked outside and slammed the door, hearing an expertly-thrown plate smash against it as it closed. He sighed. "God, I hate Wednesdays…"
He turned from the door, gazing at the splendor of Hakusho in the morning light.
The primary feature, of course, was the Capitol.
It towered above the skyline like a vast monolith, completely dominating the sprawling urban landscape. They'd stopped referring to it as the Palace years ago, for official reasons, but its rough, purple walls and rounded crown of a roof made it hard not to think of it as such. Old and faded, the massive structure still seemed very regal, a literal pillar of strength of the city, and arguably its most defining feature.
The main contender for that honor, of course, was the Kakai wall, stretching out from either side of the Palace like a pair of giant arms, engulfing the central regions of Hakusho. Much like the Capitol, its sheer, impossible size was unmatched in nearly the entire city. It seemed to go on forever, stretching onward as the viewer turned around, with its distant corners and long shadows breaking up the endless ring of stone. It's color matched that of the Palace, an old, faded purple, and it boasted a similar aura of royal splendor that had withstood the tests of the elements, time, and occasional mortar fire.
Sheltered within the Kakai's strong arms was the region of Ningenkai. It was the heart of Haksuho, stretching for leagues in every direction. The vast majority of the region was a dense, urban jungle that sprawled every which way on an inconsistent grid pattern of streets and alleyways. Towers of apartments carpeted the landscape like a fungus, shading the streets below from all but the most direct noonday sun. A spiderweb of decrepit and recycled walkways stretched between the buildings, creating trails and footpaths far above the street that redirected pedastrian traffic, allowing the cars and trucks below to zoom by at ridiculous speeds.
Yusuke slung his bag up over his shoulder and began trudging down the rusted catwalk that led to his house. Outside of the streets of Ningenkai, Yusuke had to admit he knew almost nothing of Hakusho. He knew that on the other side of the Kakai was a region called Makai, sparsely populated by thieves and cutthroats that preferred the relative freedom of life outside the wall. He'd met a few creeps that claimed to have been there, but he'd never seen it himself, apart from the towering expanse of Maze Castle looming over the southwest, a building so old that the Kakai itself bent inwards to avoid it.
He also knew that on the other side of the Palace, the wall wrapped around a third region, a smaller one, called Reikai. He'd never been there, either, but many of its tall spires peeked over the top of the Kakai, fanning out behind the Capitol like a great, feathery tail. At one point, Reikai had boasted almost mythological splendor, serving as a virtual nervana to the people of Ningenkai. Or so he'd been told.
The catwalk bent around to the right, pointing Yusuke directly towards the industrial sector of Tokogawa. In contrast to all economical logic, high-rises and grand towers soared above the dismal smoke stacks and skulking factories, standing like oases in the urban desert of Ningenkai. Yusuke had heard that this had something to do with some massive corporation or another, but whatever the reason for it, it provided a much more accessible nirvana than the distant region over the wall.
Yusuke glanced over the railing to check his position, then vaulted off the catwalk onto a second one several meters below. It wasn't that he particularly wanted to get to school faster, he just didn't feel like walking any longer than he had to. Besides, he was about the only person within ten miles who could take this route safely, and what was the point of a privilege you never took advantage of?
Of course, that wasn't to say his privelege always went uncontested.
"Hey guys! C'mere and look at this guy!"
Yusuke glanced up, still walking. Across the way, and slightly upwards, a small group of teenaged ruffians had sauntered up to the rail, leering down at him. "Where d'you think you're goin', punk? You walkin' around on our walks without our say so?"
"Get lost, morons," Yusuke snarled back. "This isn't your turf, either."
There was a moment of awkward silence. Yusuke grinned to himself at the thought that these poor sods had probably never had a lone guy talk back to them before in their lives.
"What'd you just say?" said the apparent leader, motioning to the others. "You lookin' to start somethin', punk?"
Yusuke eyed the rest of the guy's group, which was making its way menacingly over to his stretch of the walk. "Not especially. Just pointing out that these walks belonged to Kazuma Kuwabara last time I checked, and he usually prefers to have me beat his ass personally, instead of sending a bunch of goons out to take his licks for him. Besides," he muttered, as said goons advanced on him, "you aren't nearly flamboyant enough to be associated with Kuwabara."
"Shut up! Yeah, we ain't with Kuwabara, but his sissy ass ain't around to give a shit, now is it? Not since he went soft."
Yusuke paused, turning back to look at the speaker. "Say what?"
"You ain't heard? Kuwabara's done, man! He gave up! Just walks around lettin' every momma's boy kick the shit outta him without so much as spittin' in their eye! He's done! And that means these walks are now the rightful property of the Futama-Yami Gang! And you, you smack-talkin' bastard, are tresspassin' on our property."
Yusuke raised an eyebrow as the grinning thugs drew level with him, and dropped his bag to the floor with a thud. "Well, then I guess we're just gonna have to work out the same deal as I had with Kuwabara, now aren't we?"
The nearest goon chuckled and spat at Yusuke. "Yeah, how 'bout you bend over and we'll all take turns-"
There was a brief period of intense violence, occasionally punctuated by a small scream or the metallic clang of a thick forehead slamming onto the catwalk.
Yusuke stepped over an unconscious form, dusting himself off, and jabbed a finger up at the gang leader, whose following had suddenly dwindled by several members. "Here's how it's gonna be: I walk these walks whenever I want, wherever I want. You and your boys won't bug me, and in return, I won't crack you like an egg. Deal?"
The boy shook slightly, his face sheet-white. Hs mouth opened and shut for several moments, before he finally organized his trembling legs enough to turn and bolt down the block.
Yusuke watched him go. "Good. Done deal, then."
He turned kicked a limp body off of his bag, scooped it up, and resumed his trek.
For tradition's sake, or perhaps increased security, the school only had one entrance: the front door, on the ground. Panic rooms had been installed, for the sake of fire safety, but traffic in and out of the building could be a nightmare some mornings.
This was not one of those mornings.
Keiko was the only person waiting for him as he left the walks and stepped into the overcrowded parking lot of Public School 38.
"Yusuke! What are you doing? You have fifty-seven seconds to be in class before you're late!" she gave him a brown-eyed glare. "Again!"
"Chill out, I got here as fast as I could…" he muttered, walking past her.
She followed him, her brown hair bobbing fretfully as she jogged to keep pace with his longer strides. "No you didn't, don't even pretend. Your little shortcut route to school can be run in fifteen minutes and thirty-six seconds, and walked in twenty minutes and twenty five seconds. I know Atsuko gets you out of the house every morning with at least thirty minutes to spare, so clearly you were dawdling." She began shoving at his back, urging him to speed up.
Yusuke stumbled forward. "Alright, I'm sorry, I ran into some trouble-"
"More like trouble ran into you, I'm sure. Come on, fifteen seconds left, let's go!"
"Hey, chill out, will you? The world won't end if I'm fifteen seconds late to class."
"Oh, and since when did you start caring about the world?"
With a final effort, she shoved him into the classroom, unbalancing both of them and sending them tumbling to the floor as the bell rang.
Keiko swiftly pushed herself up, blushing furiously as she found her seat amidst the susurrus of giggles. She didn't look at him.
"Good morning to you, too," Yusuke muttered to himself, feeling a pang of guilt as he collected himself off of the floor. He was perfectly content to degrade his own image without shedding a tear, but he hated marring Keiko's perfect reputation, especially when she was trying to improve his.
"Hehehe, what were you two doing-"
Yusuke turned a steely glare on the anonymous loser who'd spoken up. The kid fell abruptly silent and shrank down in his seat.
He smirked to himself. See, Keiko? Sometimes street cred comes in handy.
He plopped down in his seat at the back of the class and zoned out promptly as the lecture began.
The day passed in a dim haze, as most of them did. The professors droned on endlessly, the students blurted out answers, and people shuffled from one organized holding pen to the next. Occasionally, his hand mustered the energy to raise a pen and jot down a note somewhere, but then the fruitlessness of the situation caught up with it, and it sank back down beneath a crushing wave of apathy.
His one respite from the doldrums of the day was lunchtime. He'd long since popped the lock on the door to the roof, and since there was no real way to escape up there, no one had bothered to replace it. No one but him really came up there, anyway. He'd been sure to 'strongly discourage' any visitors.
Well, all except one.
"Knew I'd find you up here," said Keiko, stepping out onto the roof.
Yusuke nodded, staring at the distant, shining towers of Tokogawa Industrial Park. "Hey, Keiko. Sorry about the whole mess this morning…"
Keiko sighed. "It's alright, I shoved you to hard, it was my fault."
Yusuke shrugged. "Alright, point taken." There was a large 'K' emblazoned across one of the tallest towers… Now, what did that stand for…
Keiko blinked at him for a second, and then let out an exasperated sigh and sat down next to him.
Yusuke snapped his fingers. "Kurama®! That's the name!"
Keiko jumped. "What? The name of what?"
He gestured at the distant buildings. "I was trying to remember what company it was that built up the industrial park like that. It was Kurama®, wasn't it?"
Keiko looked out over the city. "Yes, it was. It was also quite a while ago. Five years and three months, I think, since the construction first began."
Yusuke looked away. "Yeah, well… they just seemed, I don't know… particularly shiny today."
Keiko shrugged. "Well, they would."
"Weren't they in the news or something? I feel like I;ve heard their name mentioned recently…"
The girl turned and regarded him. "Yusuke, don't you pay attention at all?"
He winced. "Sometimes…"
"History has just been made, you numbskull! Kurama® just signed off on a deal that might change the course of history! King Enma just officially declared them a separate sovereign power! Those towers," she gestured emphatically, "are now a completely different country!"
Yusuke looked back at them, furrowing his brow.
"… No…" he said, after a moment. "That can't be right. There haven't been any other countries around for thousands of years."
"Exactly," said Keiko, rubbing her temples. "That's why it's such a big deal."
Yusuke jogged through the halls with the end-of-class bell still ringing in his ears. He burst through the doors and strode confidently into the lot, taking in a refreshing breath of smog and carbon monoxide. Ah, freedom!
He hesitated before heading home. There was still something nagging at the back of his mind. He checked his watch: his mother wouldn't be sober at this hour, anyhow. No sense in hurrying.
He turned and pushed his way through the streaming crowd towards a small ramp leading up to a slightly-less familiar set of walks. Less familiar, but not totally unfamiliar.
A few twists and turns brought him within sight of the strangest cut of orange hair that man could ever have conceived.
"Hey, Kuwabara!"
The questionably-styled youth turned and shouted back across the chasm between the buildings. "Whadda you want, Urimeshi?"
"Nothin' much," Yusuke hollered back, carefully negotiating the path towards the boy. "My ass-kicking foot is feelin' a little stiff, though, so I figured I'd loosen it up a bit. Got a moment?"
"Fuck you, Urimeshi," the boy responded, turning and stalking away.
"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" Yusuke taunted as he drew level with him.
"God damn it!" Kuwabara whirled around and threw a screaming punch into Yusuke's face. Or at least, he started to.
Yusuke stood, arms folded, staring at the knuckles quivering just in front of his nose. "Huh," he muttered, "You really have gone soft, haven't you?"
Kuwabara drew his fist back, snarling. "Maybe I just don't feel like moppin' the floor with you today, how 'bout that?"
"That would make this a pretty regular day, then, wouldn't it?"
"Go to hell." He turned and walked away again.
Yusuke jogged after him. "Seriously, though, you feelin' alright? Ran into a bunch of punks this morning saying they own your turf now. Real losers, too. I mean, I usually leave trash like that to the janitor, but they told me you'd gone soft, so-"
"I have Not. Gone. Soft. Asshole." Yusuke drew up sharply to keep the accusing finger from jabbing him in the eye.
"Then what happened, man? It usually takes three guys to keep you from your daily suicide charge into my fist."
The finger was lowered, replaced by a hint of a smirk. "Winnin' ain't everything, Urimeshi. But fightin' ain't everything, either. Honor's what matters. A guy ain't nothin' without guys to watch his back. And if they gotta watch your back, you gotta watch theirs."
Yusuke blinked slowly. "Could you say that slower, in some way that doesn't make you sound like a bad movie cliché?"
Kuwabara rolled his eyes. "Look, my last tangle got a bit out of hand, alright? People got hurt, cops got involved, long story short, my boys and I are in trouble. If I fight again, we all get canned. Expelled, too. And one of the guys just got himself an honest job, and he might lose that along with all the rest of it."
Yusuke raised an eyebrow. "Wow. No kiddin'?"
The broad-shouldered youth heaved a heavy sigh. "Yeah. So, no fightin'. And I gotta keep my grades up through the semester. That one's killin' me."
"Harsh."
"Yeah, I know…"
"So now what? You run away screaming every time someone cracks their knuckles at you?"
Kuwabara's laughter echoed off the tall buildings. "What, Kazuma Kuwabara runnin' away? Ha! That'll be the day."
Yusuke looked skeptical. "So… what? You just stand there and let these bums hit you?"
The boy shrugged. "Yeah, pretty much. It's no so bad, really. I've taken my fair share of beatings, really solid ones, too, nothin' these bastards could ever measure up to. I can handle it."
Yusuke winced. "Yeah, but eventually…"
"Eventually some psycho'll come along and really lay into me, but I get myself to the hospital, there's a doc there that I know, he stitches me up pretty well and doesn't talk about it much." He grinned maliciously. "I got the names of each and every one of the bums, though. Once I'm off this damned thing, I'm gonna be payin' me a few visits."
Yusuke smirked. "I gotcha. That's still a hell of a beating, though… I don't think even I've put you in the hospital more than once or twice."
Again, Kuwabara barked out a laugh. "You wish, Urimeshi. You ever put me in the hospital over an honest fight, and I'll eat my hat." He looked puzzled. "Course, I don't have a hat… I think Mike might have a hat he'd loan me, though… 'Course, he might not want it back, after…"
Yusuke chuckled. "Always the glutton for punishment, aren't we?"
The orange-haired youth cocked an eyebrow. "You wait 'till I'm swingin' again, then we'll see who's getting' punished."
"Yeah, I'm sure," Yusuke checked his watch, His mother oughta be somewhere near sober by the time he got home. "Alright, I gotta get home. You tell those punks hangin' out on your turf that I'm used to considering it free-range, got it?"
"Sure thing. I'll tell 'em you're such a pansy that I felt bad for you and let you pass."
"As long as you also share the number of times this pansy has beaten your pasty-white ass." He fired back, walking away. "And don't take that out of context, either. Don't want you getting too excited."
"Fuck you, Urimeshi!"
"In your lonely, pathetic dreams!"
Yusuke strode along the walks, deep in thought.
It was starting to get later, and a few more people were out and about, running a few errands before dinner. The crowds kept the general hooligan level down, allowing the bustling pedestrians to go about their business relatively peacefully.
Kuwabara's honor code was renowned throughout Hakusho, as far as Yusuke could tell; he hadn't traveled far, but everywhere he had been, people had heard of Kazuma Kuabara. He wouldn't allow his gang to fight girls, period. He would even go out of his way to come to a girl's rescue, if he came across one who needed it, and had achieved some of his most widely-known victories through a valiant rescue mission against impossible odds. The hits his gang made were only ever on the bigger stores or the higher-class individuals who could take the loss, never robbing a struggling family buisiness or mugging a homeless man. And he never, ever fought dirty.
He would however, fight anyone and everyone who was his age or older, and wasn't openly female. He seemed to fight for the sheer joy of it, taking on all comers and wading into impossible battles just to challenge himself, and his honorable gang was not above going out and actively looking for trouble. And despite Yusuke's jabs, he had actually built up a pretty serious reputation as a brawler, second only to Yusuke's.
Yusuke scratched his chin. The weird thing was, people generally liked Kuwabara. The authorities that caught up with him recognized that, while he was essentially just a big, dumb lug that didn't know when to fall down, his honor code was generally a better source of justice than the law was. There was no end of vicious creeps out there that were keeping the authorities well-employed, and any of them that Kuwabara took out made their job that much easier. With him loose on the streets, the city was a marginally safer place to be.
So why'd he get busted?
Sure, he was an idiot, but he'd never do anything serious enough to get arrested for, or even expelled. Given the specificity of the punishment, Yusuke was beginning to think someone had set him up to take this fall.
A loud crack, like a bolt of lightning, jolted Yusuke back to reality.
Some ways down the street, a hovercar screamed around the corner. It was clearly a custom job, sleek an blood-red, and there was some guy hanging out the window, firing a shoulder-mounted electrical cannon back the way that the car had come. Around the corner, in hot pursuit, came three jet-black police cruisers, lights flashing and engines roaring.
The shoulder cannon loosed another crackling blast, which snarled underneath the cruisers and tore into the wall behind them, chewing up the stone and spitting it out at the pedestrians below.
The crowd around Yusuke looked on, frozen in horrified fascination. The people on the crosswalks scrambled hurriedly to either side, anxious to be out of the path of this screaming red demon.
And then Yusuke saw the ball.
It was a soccer ball, a new one. Slightly below regulation size, perhaps, but then so was the little tyke scampering after it. The pair of them pushed against the tide of the crowd, steadily meandering out onto the walk that was swiftly being vacated.
The boy was small, no older than three or four. At his age, many parents would probably question him being out on the walks at all, let alone by himself. The walks were notoriously dangerous, and every week there were stories about a crumbling floor or aged railing dropping someone to a screaming death, but for someone of this kid's height, he might just as easily walk under most of the railings, broken or otherwise.
It was clear, though, that of the many people lined along the walks, the boy's parents were not among them. He seemed to pass beneath the gaze of the crowd, fixated as it was on the explosive chase that drew nearer and nearer. Not one of them so much as batted an eye as the young boy toddled swiftly after his escaping toy.
The ball rolled onward, making its meandering progress towards the middle of the crosswalk with the determined child in hot pursuit. The hovercars screamed closer.
Yusuke looked around. No one had moved. No one had even glanced away from the approaching vehicles. No one had seen the boy yet.
Feeling slightly out-of-place in the transfixed crowd, he leaned out over the railing and shouted down. "Hey! Hey, kid! What are you doing? Get out of there!"
The kid looked up and slowed his pace, staring dumbly at Yusuke. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a few gazes finally break away from the red hovercar.
"Go on!" he yelled, struggling to be heard over the shrieks of the electric cannon. "Get out of the way! It's dangerous out there!"
The boy paused, regarding him with a blank expression. A few voices from the crowd filtered into Yusuke's ears: "Oh my God!" "Who's kid is that?" "What's that kid doing out there?" "The car! It's headed right for him! He's going to be killed!"
Yusuke's head snapped around. Sure enough, the red hovercar was banking in a wild, evasive maneuver that was proving to be just a bit too much for the pilot to handle. The winding trajectory was aiming it straight for the crosswalk, which the pilot was probably hoping to skip off of to stabilize his flight. The tiny kid would barely slow him down.
"Goddamn it!" Yusuke swore, bolting through the crowd. He pushed and shoved at the mass of bodies as they pressed closer to the railing, trying to get a closer look at the stranded child, now staring in dull fascination at the oncoming hovercar.
Yusuke vaulted the rail, dropping into a roll as he hit the crosswalk below before rising into a full-out sprint. Seconds from impact, the noise from the approaching craft was deafening, obliterating all noise except for the dull thud of his boots against the floor and the ragged pulsing of his breath and his heartbeat.
Time itself seemed to slow to a crawl. The ominous red glow of the hovercraft loomed ever closer out of the corner of his eye, and his footsteps seemed ponderously slow, slamming down one after the other in front of him. He could feel every little twinge, every muscle in his body straining to its limit, struggling to propel him forward faster, faster, faster…
Yusuke lunged. His arms scooped up the small child almost delicately, gently tossing him to the far end of the crosswalk, safely out of danger. The whole thing was executed in a single, smooth motion.
And for the life of him, Yusuke didn't know why he'd done it.
Then there was an impact, like a sucker-punch from God.
And then there was nothing.
