Chapter One: Ctrl + Alt + Del
What if you had the power to take life ... at the touch of a key?
Blood dribbled sloppily down his chin, staining his work shirt as he grabbed for the man's back. His fingers closed on two handfuls of flab, slippery with sweat, grime and goodness only knew what else - so that as soon as he pulled the slack body up, it fell awkwardly, head twisting against the shoulder blade to show a bloated, pale face.
Aizawa resisted the urge to give him another kick in the side. After all that, the drunk was still wearing a perverted smile.
"Aizawa! You okay?"
When he spoke it came out shaky and slurred.
"Yeah," Aizawa pressed his sleeve to his face, staunching the blood oozing from his nose. "Think he broke my nose."
To make someone's heart stop ... with a few simple commands?
"It looks broken," Ide cringed. "I took first aid, I could push it back into-"
"NO!" Aizawa flinched. "No. Thanks."
"... there's a name-tag here... says his name is Buyo Takashi..." muttered Ide. Aizawa, however, wasn't listening. On his hands and knees, he took the young girl he'd just saved by the shoulders. Since he'd dragged Buyo off her, she'd done nothing but cry uncontrollably in the corner of the dank alleyway, obviously drunk and probably drugged on top of it.
"She'd be about your daughter's age," Ide said, folding his arms.
Aizawa ignored him.
What if YOU were the balance of life and death, with the ease of...
"You shouldn't let your personal feelings get in the way of the job," Ide grumbled. "You should have just arrested him."
"You saw him, he never would have come quietly," Aizawa spat a mouthful of blood onto the ground.
Control.
The young woman's cries began to die in her throat, though she was still shaking violently. Looking into big, tear-filled blue eyes, Aizawa immediately recognized the tell-tale signs of drug abuse. She couldn't have been a day over fifteen.
"What's your name?" he asked patiently.
Alt.
"M-maiko," she hiccupped. "M-my n-name's Maiko."
"Okay, Maiko, I'm Aizawa-san, this is Ide-san. We're going to take you home, okay?"
"She's obviously drugged, we should take both her and Buyo back to the station-"
"Shut up, Ide," he snapped.
Delete.
Pain shot through his heart in an instant, ripping through each vein and spreading through every inch of his body. It dragged a scream from his deflated lungs and sent him into a fit, writhing on the ground, muscles straining and twisting unnaturally as he tried to clutch at his aching chest.
"Aizawa!"
In the distance, Aizawa could hear shouting and screaming – one of the voices oddly familiar, almost exactly like his own – Ide roaring his name and the girl in another fit of tears. The voices, the agony that clawed at his insides, the dull thump of his heartbeat in his ears, the ragged breath rushing forth from his tortured lungs, were all fading fast.
What would you do with it?
"Wh-what's wrong with him! Why isn't he breathing! What happened!"
"I don't know! Aizawa! AIZAWA!"
Yagami Raito slipped off his earphones, mouth twitching into a smirk as the figures on his screen flashed briefly, illuminating the name 'Shuichi Aizawa' in blood red.
He counted silently to three.
"MATSUDA! I've lost Aizawa's vital signs! The software won't tell me anything about it! What do I do!"