Wow only a week between updates is this what success feels like?

viva la on with the story.

Henry arrived at the Pear Store a quarter hour later to find three people in masks stuffing electronics and the contents of the cash register into a duffle bag.

It took a bit longer for the robbers to notice Kid Danger in the doorway considering Ray wasn't there to smash a window or announce their arrival, but it wasn't too long before they noticed him.

And then immediately pulled out two guns and point them at him.

Kid Danger simply rolled his eyes and let out a small groan in the back of his throat. "Okay, look guys. Let's get this over with—the silent alarm's already gone off and I'm still hungry and we all know you're going to be in jail within the hour so just do me a favor and put the guns down."

The robbers glanced at one another, as if thinking. Henry thought that they might consider just surrendering.

And then two shots rang out. Of course, they weren't a problem, Kid Danger just ducked out of the way of the whizzing bullets. He whipped his body back around to face the robbers. Two still had their guns trained on him while the last one was stuffing as much into their duffel bag as he could with a vigor that implied that they weren't planning on sticking around much longer.

"Really? We're going to do this the hard way?" Kid Danger deadpanned. One of the robbers tightened their grip on their gun—they must be from out of town if they were surprised that the bullets didn't hit him. (They were considerably more difficult to dodge, but not impossible.)

The blonde looked down and nudged his toe under the edge of a pearpad on the ground, kicking it and causing it to flip up into his hand. He then chucked the device at the gun-dude on the right, hitting him right in the head and causing him to yell and drop his gun.

Henry then took the chance to charge at the man, grabbing his gun and dodging another bullet from the robber on the left. He then straightened up and trained the stolen gun on him.

"Dude, seriously. I'm not up for this today." He said in annoyance, and then knocked the man in the head with the butt of the gun, effectively knocking him out.

Suddenly there were hands around his waist as the first robber picked Kid Danger up and tried to grab the gun back from him. Henry promptly brought his elbow down on the man's shoulder blade, twisted, and kicked him in the gut. The man let out a grunt and then threw Kid Danger against a display case, causing it to shatter and cave in on him.

Henry tapped into his Hyper Motility and delivered another kick, this time to the man's chest, effectively sending him…all the way across the room?

The blond blinked in confusion for a moment. He knew the speed of his powers increased the strength of his attacks (Schwoz had explained it to him shortly after he had defeated Drax), but he had never sent someone clear across a room before.

The man didn't get back up, he was obviously knocked out as well. Kid Danger brushed some of the bigger pieces of splintered wood and shattered glass off himself before sitting up. He winced at a pain in his shoulder and reached behind him, pulling a shard of glass out of his shoulder. He threw it to the side, and went to tie up the two robbers, but there was another distinctive click of a gun being cocked.

Ah, crap. The third robber. He forgot Ray wasn't here. He normally handled the others.

Kid Danger whirled around to confront the third robber, who had zipped up the duffle bag and thrown it over their shoulder. They had their gun trained directly at him, and for the first time in a long time, they didn't hesitate to just straight up fire at him.

And Henry wasn't expecting that.

Sure, it's not like he doesn't deal with guns on a daily basis, but usually the people behind them hesitate to use them or just use them as leverage.

Ray had trained Henry to act on that moment of contemplation, that sense of overwhelming power, because sometimes it could be the only opening you could find.

That wasn't the case with this last robber. There was no hesitation, unlike their partners. They just straight up waited until Kid Danger was off guard and fired at him.

And Henry didn't have time to react—well he wouldn't have, anyway if something really weird hadn't happened.

When the gun fired, Henry felt a surge of adrenaline, or at least adrenaline was the closest thing he could describe it to, go through his body. It was like everything in his body was suddenly dunked in a million gallons of coffee, or something. His blood was rushing through his veins and his heart was pounding at an indescribable rate and it felt absolutely amazing. It felt like he could sprint for a hundred years, or climb Mount Everest in a day, or jump to the moon and back.

And Henry was so engrossed in the feeling, he didn't even realize that the world around him was moving in slow-mo. Not exponentially slow, but like that phone camera setting slow. He could see the bullet coming towards him at about the rate a basketball would travel through the air.

He simply…ducked out of the way. His body seemed to look a bit hazy. But it was weird because his head was as clear as ever. And was that lightning crackling in the corner of his vision? Kid Danger watched the bullet pass him and nail into the wall behind him, and then turned back to the last robber. He reached to his belt and pulled out his laser, pointing it at them and firing.

Suddenly, the feeling was gone, and everything snapped back into normal speed. The last robber collapsed on their bag in a limp position, and Henry suddenly.

Felt.

Awful.

Complete 180 to what he had felt less than a second ago.

Whatever just happened had just drained all the energy from his body. Henry's head was pounding, his limbs were shaking, he was gasping for breath. He was seeing black dots in his vision, he was so hungry his stomach felt like it was eating itself. He felt like he hadn't slept in a week—no, worse than that. He felt like he had actually done all of the things he had wanted to do when he was on that energy high, or whatever it was.

Kid Danger collapsed to his hands and knees, shaking his head. He focused on breathing for a few minutes as police sirens finally sounded in the distance.

He literally felt like he might pass out.

He sat there on his hands and knees as the police stormed the place and handcuffed the robbers. He gave his statement and account of what happened while still sitting on the ground. The officers seemed a bit confused but didn't question him about it. One of them offered him their hand to pull them up and he accepted more or less to not be rude.

There had been some growing tensions between Captain Man and the police station lately. Ray was getting fed up with them for letting criminals go or just plain letting them escape among other things. Henry was starting to get angry with it too—the police never fought actual crime anymore. They pulled over speeders and busted the occasional drug deal, but they always left the heavy duty stuff to Captain Man and Kid Danger. They never even bothered to offer backup anymore. They just showed up to clean up the mess at the end.

But nonetheless, they still needed to be on the station's good side, so they have to put up with its corrupted system.

Kid Danger swayed on his feet a bit, and leaned against the wall, minding the shoulder that was punctured by the piece of glass. He said goodbye to the police as they cleared the store. He rested for a minute more, groaning and nursing his head before his phone buzzed.

He pulled it out and pressed the device to his ear. "Hey, Charlotte." He greeted, "What's going on?"

"There's someone spray-painting some graffiti on the park building, you need to get down there." The other teen's voice sounded through the phone; Henry let out a groan of annoyance.

"No, Charlotte something really weird just happened and I feel like crap. I think I'm dehydrated and I'm pretty sure there's a good-sized cut in my back from a glass shard. I can't fight right now."

There was a pause on the other end and the sound of shuffling papers as Charlotte thought. "Are you positive you 100 percent can't do it?"

There was a pause as Kid Danger sat up, reaching his left arm up above his head. He felt the twinge of the wound in his shoulder, and let out a gasp of surprise as it almost sent his weakened body to its knees again.

"Yup, nope, can't do it." He breathed, "Is Schwoz back now? I'm pretty sure I have some glass still in there somewhere."

"Yeah, yeah, he just got back, we'll get some medical stuff out and have it ready when you get back." Charlotte hesitated. "Also, elaborate on the weird thing when you get here, okay?"

Kid Danger gave a noise of agreement before pulling the phone away from his ear.

"And make sure you let the cops know about the vandalizer!" His friend's voice sounded through the device.

"I will, bye, Charlotte." Henry said and hung up the phone.

Kid Danger was back down in the Mancave twenty minutes later, and on the couch with his vest and under armor off within another minute.

Charlotte handed Henry a container of Gatorade as Jasper checked the injury. There was a lot of bustling around for a few minutes before the other blond indeed pulled out a shard of glass that had snapped off the original out of Henry's shoulder.

Henry grunted at the pain, and took another sip of the Gatorade as Schwoz checked his vitals again. There was a noise of surprise from Jasper as he stopped cleaning the wound.

"What is it?" Henry asked, trying to stretch his neck to see the injury. Jasper reached over and grabbed a pair of magnifying goggles to get a better look at the wound and blinked a few times. He then leaned closer to the injury and squinted, not believing what he was seeing.

"That's….unsettling" He thought out loud in a very not-Jasper way.

Charlotte moved beside him to see what the commotion was about. It took a few moments for her eyes to see what the other teen was seeing, but when she did, they bulged.

"Woah…" She said in amazement and slight disgust.

Henry felt a bit of anxiety building. "What is it? Charlotte, Jasper, what's wrong?"

There was another prominent pause as both were transfixed at whatever was happening to him, before the coca-skinned teen blinked a few times. "Sorry, Henry but…your wound is…healing itself."

"…Is...is that not what they're supposed to do…?"

"Well, yeah, but they usually don't heal fast enough for us to watch it in real time."

"I am absolutely sorry, but what did you just say to me?" Henry started again in disbelief.

Charlotte sighed and grabbed a handheld mirror from the medical rack, holding it up to the blonde's shoulder and positioning it so that Henry could see what was happening.

Henry's skin, and what little muscles the piece of glass had shredded, were quite literally mending themselves in front of their eyes. Not at a grotesquely fast rate, but definitely fast enough for them to see the progress.

"What!?" Henry shrieked, jumping up and trying to force his arm forward more so he could see it directly, "That's not possible!"

"Well, it is, but it's called super-healing." Charlotte corrected. "What shouldn't be possible is you having that power…" She trailed off. Schwoz picked up his tablet and tapped a few things here and there.

The man, who had been watching the whole thing in an uncharacteristic bout of silence, came up to Henry and poked the wound.

Henry jumped in pain, and whirled around to his best friend. "Dude!" He exclaimed, annoyed.

The man ignored his exclamation, and only muttered something along the lines of "that's peculiar" under his breath.

Henry, knowing that he wasn't going to get any response from the man, just groaned and rubbed his temple.

"This day is going just great." He complained, mostly speaking to himself, "First, my stomach seemingly transforms into a bottomless pit, second, time decides it wants to go all wonky on me when I'm fighting, and now I have seemingly developed super-healing? Could today get any weirder?" He asked, looking up at the roof of the mancave.

"Wait, wait, wait, rewind:" Charlotte said, watching as her friend made his way over to the Autosnacker, "what happened when you were fighting?"

Henry waited until his meatball sub appeared to answer, taking the time it took for it to be prepared to think.

"I actually don't know what happened." He admitted, moving to sit back down on the couch, "One of the robbers fired a gun at me and suddenly I was like experiencing the ultimate adrenaline rush—except everything around me slowed way down for some reason."

Charlotte immediately blinked, confusion obvious on her face. "Did anything else happen that you remember?"

Henry paused for a moment, recalling what had happened. "When that happened, I felt like I could do anything, like literally every muscle in my body was buzzing with energy, but as soon as I snapped out of it, poof!"—he made a small exploding motion with his hands— "It was like whatever that was took all of that energy, and any energy I had before that, out of me. I almost fainted." He admitted.

Everyone had similar looks of bewilderment on their faces, and there was more silence as Charlotte tapped away on the computer.

"Oh yeah, and I also kicked someone twenty-five feet into a wall." Henry added before taking a bite out of the sub. He ate all of it in two minutes, and went up and ordered two more.

He let out a somewhat anxious sigh as he stared at the sandwiches apprehensively. "What's wrong with me, guys?" He asked. Jasper set a comforting hand on his shoulder.

Schwoz moved the information he had collected onto the monitor, and started to analyze it with Charlotte's earlier notes.

Charlotte stood up to let Schwoz sit down. "Well, the reason you can't seem to get full is because your metabolism has suddenly spiked to inhumane rates…which means that your body must be trying to support or fight something, but what?"

"Maybe Henry's growing an extra limb." Schwoz said, scrolling through the data. The three teens in the room stared at the man in a semi-horrified way.

"I would hope not…" Jasper mumbled. Henry and Charlotte nodded in agreement.

Schwoz shrugged the comment off, and instead minimized the data, picking up the Pearpad again. "I want to run some tests on Henry." He explained, "heartrate, top running speed, and how his Hyper Motility is doing."

Henry groaned. "Now? I'm not sure I'm up for doing it right—"

Schwoz walked past the gear doorway before he could even finish the sentence.

"…I guess I'm getting my workout clothes on then."

"Press F in the chat."

"Fuck you."

"That's not what the F stands for but valid."

oh worms thanks for reading.