1.1
The darkness at the bottom of the bay was uncomfortable. It left me with nothing to focus on and so my mind wandered to unbearable places. It was while considering those painful recollections that I came to the conclusion that there was a sentient force with a profound love of irony in control of the world, and it hated my guts.
Statistically speaking, car accidents were not uncommon, but to lose my mom in one three years ago, and now my dad in another on Christmas Eve could be nothing but directed maliciousness.
Had I been getting too hopeful? Was it too full of myself to think that maybe things were getting better? School had been absolute hell ever since my former best friend Emma Barnes had turned on me and put bullying stereotypes the world over to shame, but things had been looking a bit brighter before Christmas break. Emma and her partners in torturing me, Sophia Hess and Madison Clements seemed to have been getting bored with me. The shoves from Sophia lacked a certain energy, and Emma's weakening verbal barbs seemed to imply that they were laying off, maybe finally moving on to a more interesting target.
I had even started to talk with one of my classmates. We were a long way from being friends, and I wouldn't say that I trusted her, but when you spent every school day being abused or outright ignored for fear of your status as pariah spreading, even one person acting a bit friendly, normal even, was like an oasis in the desert. I wanted to get her a present to show my gratitude, so Dad volunteered to drive me to the mall to find one.
We didn't even make it half way there. The roads had been a bit slippery after a bout of freezing rain ushered in a Brockton Bay style grey Christmas. Dad was giving me advice on how to spot ice and on the importance of driving slowly for when I turned 16 and could take the test for my permit. It was advice the driver of that truck must have never learned. One patch of black ice and a shitty little grey pickup was all it took to take away the last of my family. I can only hope dad hadn't seen it coming and didn't have to suffer. One second we're passing under a green light while he gives me his opinion on "ten and two" and the next, the driver's side of the car is crumpling in on itself.
There was pain, so much blood, and then darkness.
I woke up sometime later, after the firemen managed to pry me from the broken shell of dad's car, in the back of an ambulance. The paramedic watching over me did his best to impress upon me how much of a miracle it was that I hadn't been injured in the crash. Completely forgetting about the pain I had been in, I asked about my dad.
I came to loathe "miracles".
After that, a number of people came to "check up on me." Their faces blurred together in my mind and after an indeterminate length of time I was shuffled around to a few locations before some familiar voices pulled me out of my detachedly numb haze. Kurt and Lacey Dawkins were a couple who worked together at the Dockworker's Association. My dad had been their boss and one of their closest friends.
It seemed that since I had no surviving family, my dad had marked the pair as the ones to call should anything happen to him leaving me with nowhere to go. Words like "shock" and "trauma" were tossed around by a man in a stuffy grey suit as he spoke to the two in a clinically detached monotone. Eventually, Lacey broke off from the pair to kneel down in front of where I sat.
"Hey Taylor, you remember us right? Lacey and Kurt? We haven't been over much lately but we used to come have barbeques with your mom and dad." She winced a little at her own statement but otherwise did an admirable job of pretending that my dad hadn't just been killed in an accident. She seemed to be waiting for a response, but I could only manage to raise my eyes to stare blankly at her. She glanced back at Kurt briefly before giving me a sad little smile and continuing on.
"Danny asked us if we could look after you if for some reason he couldn't be around. Is that alright with you, coming to stay with us?" I couldn't bring myself to say anything. I was simply empty. No words came to mind, and I couldn't be bothered to so much as nod my head. Lacey soldiered on anyway.
"Well, our house has always been too big for just the two of us. Kurt would always argue with me over what to do with the second bedroom so it's a bit bland right now, but I'm sure in no time we can get it comfortable for you." After another short period of silence, Lacey took a deep breath and rubbed her hands together, standing and turning back to Kurt and Mr. grey suit.
It was in their bathroom that I first tried my hand at suicide. With the bullying following my mom's death, I'd found myself considering it before, but had always talked myself out of it with thoughts of "not letting the bullies win" or "not wanting to hurt my dad." Now I was empty. There was no drive pushing me forwards, and no voice in the back of my head feeding me doubts. I just felt profoundly tired. I wanted this all to end. I didn't want to hurt anymore, to care anymore, to feel anymore. So, while sitting in Kurt and Lacey's bathtub, I tried to take a pair of scissors to my wrist.
It didn't work.
Not in the, "they broke the door in and caught me before it was too late" kind of way either. No matter how hard I tried to drive the tip of the metal scissors into my wrist, my skin stubbornly refused to be pierced. More than that, I didn't even feel any pain. There was a sensation of touch or maybe impact but no pain whatsoever. It was like I were simply poking at my wrist with a finger instead of slamming a sharp metal point into my skin.
It was at that moment that I remembered the pain from the accident and how it had vanished by the time I woke up. A desperate sort of dread settled over me and I realized that my unwanted miracle was a full blown curse. I had become a parahuman and at the very least was superhumanly tough.
My scream probably woke the neighborhood.
I fled shortly after. Kurt had burst into the bathroom, catching me in the tub with a pair of scissors and made the obvious (and correct) conclusion. He lunged to get the scissors away from me and I let him, they wouldn't do me any good anyway. As I stood to run, he tried to catch me but it seemed that I had some form of super strength as well. He was hardly an obstacle as I brushed him aside and burst past Lacey out the front door.
I ran for a long time heading deeper into the docks. Neighborhoods in need of repair transformed into entire abandoned blocks. I wasn't getting tired, but eventually stopped anyway. I found a tall apartment building that looked like it had been gutted by a fire and made my way to the top. I didn't even hesitate before throwing myself over the side. The sidewalk took some damage, but the impact didn't even feel jarring to me.
That's what led me here, to the bottom of the bay. Even if I couldn't end things with cuts or impacts, I still needed to breathe right? That was apparently untrue as well. Breathing water felt strange. It wasn't exactly uncomfortable, just bizarre in a heavy syrupy sort of way. I didn't even feel cold. I had fled into a wet December night with nothing more than a pair of jeans and a baggy sweatshirt on and jumped off the nearest pier into the frigid murky waters and it may as well have been room temperature as far as my body could sense.
A hysterical sort of laughing sob made its way out of me then. The sensation of gritty water being forced out of my nose was also strange. I felt absolutely defeated. Apparently it wasn't good enough for the universe to shatter my world and my life, I was to be denied the peace of death as well. Surely this was hell and I was being forced to atone for some unspeakable sin.
Eventually I sloshed back to shore, working my way up the rocks that protected the bank from erosion, while water poured out of my mouth and nose. Every breath forced out another murky spray. I found myself irrationally infuriated by it. Taking a deep breath, I forced out a gurgling scream. Feeling more water in my lungs I took another breath and screamed again and again, repeating until no more water came out. Then I screamed again anyway, howling my frustration and despair for the world to hear.
It wasn't fair. I had dreamt of getting powers my entire life. I would tie a towel to my back and pretend to fly around like Alexandria, and now of all times the mocking hand of fate decides to grant my wish.
Eventually I got tired of screaming and simply knelt on the rocks defeated and stared blankly at my hands. I realized that I wasn't wet. My hair wasn't either and not even my clothes had the decency to drip when they should have been soaked. It's weird, the things we focus on when we have nothing left.
With another hysterical laugh, I got back to my feet and just started walking. I paid no attention to my surroundings beyond turning when I couldn't go straight anymore. A car honked at me once. I must have been in the street. It wasn't until I heard a shout from close by that I looked up from my feet.
"The fuck you think you're goin?" The voice had a thick Asian accent. Blankly, I looked up to see who they were talking to. Standing in front of me were a couple dozen men, all Asians and wearing combinations of Red and Green. I knew who they were immediately: the Asian Bad Boyz, one of the biggest of the gangs fighting for control over Brockton Bay. They were led by an infamous parahuman named Lung who had supposedly gone toe to toe with the Endbringer Leviathan and came out ahead, before it sank half of Japan. They had all turned to look at me and I felt a brief thrill of instinctual fear before I remembered that I was trying to kill myself anyway.
Apparently, I had been staring blankly at the man closest to me for too long. He pulled a butterfly knife out of his pocket and deftly flipped it open. "You gotta death wish girl?" For a moment I just kept staring, arms hanging limply at my sides before the question registered with me.
"Ah, no. I mean, yes. Yes I, uh, do." He jerked his hand in a gesture over my shoulder.
"Then get the hell outa here before we have to teach you a- hai?" He flinched back, blinking disbelievingly at me. "What'd you just say?" Distractedly, I stared out over his shoulder at the collection of gang members gawking at me with disbelieving looks. My eyes were drawn to one in particular, a big guy without a shirt, displaying his many dragon tattoos for the world to see and face concealed behind an ornate metal mask, also in the likeness of a dragon. In a detached sort of fascination, I realized that I had actually managed to stumble across Lung. The gang member addressing me seemed to recover from his confusion and stormed up to me, reaching out aggressively for my shoulder.
"You think this is some kind of-" His heated question was cut short as his hand came in to contact with my sweatshirt. His eyes went wide and he exclaimed something to himself in another language, and leaned forwards as though he were trying to push something very heavy. I could only feel the sensation of a hand resting on my shoulder, but no other force. Suddenly he jerked back and took several cautious steps away from me. Lung turned to face me fully as the first muttering of "cape" chorused out from the group.
A number of the gang members drew guns as Lung took a step forwards. It may have been a trick of the light, but he seemed to swell slightly, growing a few inches taller. He held a single hand up and out to his side and the members with guns paused in their attempts to aim.
"You are not wearing a mask." His voice was deep and seemed to command attention. "What do you want?" I blinked at him, the words taking a moment to catch up to me.
"Want?" I repeated. My voice sounded exhausted even to me. "I just want it to end." Lung's head shifted slightly to one side.
"End?" He clarified. I simply nodded. "You seek a warrior's death?" Shrugging weakly I shook my head.
"Any death." I mumbled. "Doesn't have to be a warrior's." With a rueful snort, Lung crossed his arms and seemed to sneer down at me.
"That is no problem of mine. If you are too weak to continue living then end it yourself." I shook my head again with a bit more force this time.
"I can't, I tried." I looked up to meet his eyes directly, my voice gaining an edge of desperation. "I tried! It didn't work. I can't hurt myself. I can't even drown myself. I have nothing left and I can't even just end it! Maybe- maybe you could do something though. You're really strong right? If it's you..." I trailed off as Lung stormed his way closer, towering over me menacingly.
"My strength is not for your convenience. If you wish for death by my hands it will be earned in combat. I do not offer mercy killings." I felt my hands curl into fists as I flinched away to stare at his feet. Beginning to tremble with a mixture of humiliation and desperation I felt myself slowly nod.
"Fine." I agreed, the desperation the only thing driving me forwards. My head snapped up so I could glare at him. "Fine! If that's what it takes I'll do it. I'll fight you for as long as it takes. Is that enough?" Behind Lung, the various gang members began to slowly back away, clearing the area for the expected brawl. I raised my fists up in front of me in the stereotypical fighting stance ubiquitous to television and movies. Lung merely snorted derisively.
"If you can even land a single punch, then maybe-" Impatient and sick of being looked down on, I lunged. In that instant, I felt something shift. Though I still couldn't really feel temperature, I suddenly had the impression that the air behind me cooled. Conversely, my body seemed to heat up as though I were warmed from within by a hot drink. Lung had only a moment to jerk in surprise before my clumsy right hook caught him in the chest.
I must have been stronger than I thought, considering how quickly Lung shot down the road, bouncing off the pavement twice before crashing through the sheet metal siding of one of the many warehouses that lined the streets this far into the docks. Through clenched teeth, I huffed short, quick breaths in and out, the flood of emotions from the accident finally catching up to me.
"I am sick and tired, of everything!" My shriek echoed through the quiet night even as a flare of light from the hole into the warehouse where Lung disappeared to, heralded his counterattack. The long gout of fire washed over me with all of the effectiveness of a gentle breeze. I couldn't even feel the heat, unlike the warmth I felt from within. Nevertheless, they were in my way. Raking my arm to the side as though I were trying to clear away a bothersome cobweb, I was slightly surprised when the flame actually fizzled out. On the ground around me, there was a misty circle of frost accompanied by the growing sensation of warmth and fullness beneath my skin.
"This stupid city has taken everything from me. The only thing I have left to lose is my own life and I can't even give that away!" A screech of tearing metal preceded a ferocious roar as Lung tore his way out of the warehouse in a full on charge. He was definitely bigger now, as was obvious in comparison to the size of the hole he'd made on his way in, and his body was wreathed in flickering orange red flames. Picking up speed, he barreled across the street towards me lowering his right shoulder and spreading his arms for a cross between a tackle and a grab.
Closing my eyes and lowering my arms, I waited for the impact. When it came, there was a clap of displaced air but the blow barely registered with me beyond the sensation of contact. I felt Lungs arms wrap around my back and with an audible grunt of exertion I was lifted off the ground on top of his shoulder.
It probably said a lot about my state of mind how irrationally angry that one grunt made me. Lung, a parahuman powerful enough to take on the city's entire Protectorate lineup, was having trouble lifting me.
I snapped.
With an anguished scream, I pulled my hands up to my chest and pushed. Lung instantly jerked back and flopped to the ground as though he had been pulling on a taught rope that suddenly tore in half. I dropped back to my feet with a crunch of crushed asphalt that was punctuated by two dulled metallic thwacks. I looked to the ground at my feet and discovered the source.
Lungs arms, partway covered with gleaming silver scales, were slowly rolling to a stop on either side of me. There appeared to be clean, straight line cuts near the shoulders that had severed them completely. Uncertain, I turned my attention back to Lung in an attempt to figure out what had happened.
He had managed to roll enough to get his legs beneath him and was awkwardly trying to stand upright. This was made difficult by his sudden lack of arms, but even now I could see meaty protrusions starting to work their way out of the clean cuts through his shoulders, as his innate regeneration kicked in. There was a loud tear and his pants suddenly sunk to the ground as his size increased again. The toes of his enlarged feet were already beginning to elongate into sharp talons.
"Oouu..." he rumbled, voice slurred and distorted. There were several audible pops and then with a clatter his metal mask fell from his face to hit the ground. His jaw had elongated into a sort of segmented snout, splitting into the start of four equal sections with increasingly pointed teeth. The red orange flames cloaking him had brightened into a sulfurous yellow. I guess he looked vaguely draconic in a weird sci-fi/high fantasy fusion sort of way.
As he struggled to regain his balance, he was watching me with an intense cautiousness, waiting for his arms to regenerate. Or rather, his eyes seem to be flickering between my face and something directly over my right shoulder. I turned part way to see what had his attention and found a black sphere about the size of a baseball hovering less than two feet from my face in the air behind me. It was black in an "absolute darkness" sort of way, and even around it there was a halo where the light of the street lamps seemed to be dimmed by passing through. Wisps of icy mist were forming in the air around it, swirling in elliptical patterns before escaping the orb's area of influence to freeze a slowly expanding area of the damp street around me.
As I studied the construct, I gradually became aware that I could sense it in a much more direct way than simply looking at it. Like the sense of a third hand I never knew I had, I could instinctually tell the position of the sphere in the space around me, its dimensions, and its shape. I mentally flexed my fingers around it and the shape morphed, squeezed out into an elongated thin elliptical rod. With another thought, the elongated rod slowly descended to the ground and then sank straight into it without resistance.
Confused curiosity distracted me from my current situation as I forced the black thing to slowly carve a circle in the street around where I stood. As it moved through the solid asphalt, leaving an empty furrow behind it, I sensed that its total "value" was decreasing as it moved. Raising it from the ground, the decrease slowed to a trickle but didn't stop completely.
Distracted as I was, I failed to notice when Lung's new arms finished regenerating, fully covered in silver scales now and with fingers that tapered down into sharp talons. Intent to take me by surprise he charged, forgoing brute force for a directed stab of incredibly sharp digits directly at my throat. It was the most effective attack on me so far, but even that wasn't saying much. His claws didn't get more than half a centimeter into my skin before they were deflected off to the side and behind me, shaving off a thin strip of skin.
Suddenly reminded of the fight I was in, I began to turn back to face him, noticing the way he stumbled with the sudden loss of traction on my neck. Then, he literally exploded. A super hot white flame burst from every inch of his skin, superheating the air around him and causing it to explode out in a powerful shockwave in every direction. The force was enough to make me wobble slightly to the side, even as it tore out great gouges from the street around us, but it to me it felt like no more than being hit by a small wave while standing in the ocean.
Before I was even fully turned, I decided to make use of my new black thing and brought it to bear in the air behind me. It snapped into alignment, one of its pointed ends aimed right at Lung's chest, and shot forwards. In a display of surprising agility for his size, Lung dropped to the ground and rolled forwards, just barely dodging my quick projectile. It continued on, piercing deep into the ground before I stopped it, instantly arresting its momentum, and pulling it back to the surface.
It broke into the air just as Lung got to his feet in a low crouch, a ball of bright yellow flames appearing in each hand. With a quick visualization, the black rod began to spin, rapidly becoming a whirling saw blade like disk. I shot it towards him horizontally and in response, he hurled the flame ball in his left hand at the disk while he simultaneously dove to the side, throwing the right one directly at me.
Instinctually, my right arm came up to protect my face and the dense ball of flame broke over it, flaring out to consume my whole body in an inferno. The fire obscured my sight, but I could still sense my black projection. When it impacted the ball of dense flame sent to meet it, there was no expanding explosion this time. Instead, I felt the two cancel each other out. The flame rapidly vanished, leaving only a miniscule portion of the Dark Stuff left over. It seemed to lose cohesion and burst apart, unleashing a frigid wave of air on the surrounding area that snuffed out the fire blast surrounding me.
With my sight restored, I was just in time to see Lung charging towards me, a roar of challenge echoing through the night, before he was on top of me. He lashed out relentlessly, throwing strike after strike into whatever part of my body he could line up a shot on. Sometimes I would be hit with a fist or a palm, punctuated by loud cracks as the impacts transmitted to the pavement beneath me. Others, his strikes took on an air of finesse and he attacked with raking or stabbing claws. He was a whirlwind of motion, attacking over and over but never leaving his limbs extended for long. When his claws struck, I felt small divots dug out of my skin, but there was no pain, and shortly after the warmth within me began to fill them in, smoothing out the blemishes.
I quickly got sick of being treated like a glorified punching bag and moved to deliver my response. Focusing on my body, instead of a slow spread this time the warmth surged within me, accompanied by a soothing cold that seemed to seep into my bones and give my body structure. I took an aggressive step forwards between his swinging arms and threw out both my hands like I was trying to push him away.
Lung flew away from me, accompanied by the sound of cracking asphalt where my leading foot had slammed down. Almost immediately, he impacted with the stone facade of a rundown tenement at a very shallow angle, cratering the masonry and deflecting into an uncontrolled spin on a path almost parallel with the street. Shortly after, his flight was interrupted as one of his whirling limbs caught on a steel beam supporting the skeleton of what once had been an industrial warehouse. It diverted his trajectory enough to send him crashing down into the concrete floor of what was once the warehouse's basement before the first floor was stripped, and sent him ricocheting into the foundation.
With a thunderous crash, a large cloud of grey dust and rubble was thrown into the air, obscuring Lung from sight. With a shriek of protesting metal, the beam he had impacted on his way in toppled over, sending the rest of the skeleton structure into a cacophony of protesting groans. Finally, with a rumbling crash, a quarter of the skeleton's roof closest to the impacted beam gave into the stress, collapsing in on itself and causing the dust cloud to grow even larger.
Back on the street, I clenched my fists as I started to tremble. That "push" had seemed to drain a decent portion of the warmth from my body, leaving the newly noticed cold decidedly in the majority. It felt strange: uncomfortable without the excess of the warmth. In addition, I had a strange feeling of weightlessness that set my stomach metaphorically tumbling. No wait, I actually was tumbling. Somehow I had started to float into the air. Only, I wasn't just floating. My speed was gradually increasing as I went straight up. I was uncontrollably accelerating away from the ground. In other words, I was "falling" towards the sky.
Images of me drifting aimlessly through space, forced into eternal solitude by my inability to die flashed through my mind and I panicked. Throwing my arms out, I focused on the cold inside of me and pushed. Immediately, the same black stuff that had made up my orb from before began to flow out of my hands, and it coalesced into a steadily growing amorphous blob in front of me. Gradually, the sensation of cold receded, but my ascent didn't begin to slow until finally the warmth once again overtook the remaining cold. I slowed to a stop and then began to fall back towards the ground, but still refused to stop pushing the cold out of myself. In addition, I tried to focus on what I had done when I pushed Lung to summon more warmth, and thankfully it worked.
I had already been several hundred feet up in the air by the time I managed to reverse my unwanted ascent. Needless to say, when I hit the ground I made another addition to Lung's and my work to destroy the road. Rolling over in my new crater, I flopped limply onto my back to stare up at the mass of black stuff above me. It was steadily smoothing out into a perfect sphere and its size was easily comparable to a minivan.
A burst of light off to my right jarred me from my empty study of the black depths of the sphere. I sat up slowly. Not because I was in any pain, I simply couldn't be bothered to move any faster at the moment. Lung appeared to have recovered enough from his landing to begin melting his way out of the pile of rubble he was trapped under. I fixed him with a blank stare and watched as he gradually worked his way out from the molten rock and slag.
Operating on autopilot, I extended my right arm and spread my hand like I was trying to grab something. In response, the massive black sphere moved in front of me and began to flatten out into an enormous, thick sheet. I caught Lung's disgusting maw hanging open in shock an instant before he was obscured from my sight by the growing swath of blackness, and idly wondered to myself when I had started taking this fight so seriously.
With a single gesture, the sheet shot out ahead of me towards the area of the skeleton warehouse and Lung. It was an unstoppable wall of destruction. Any surface it touched or passed through simply vanished, as though it had simply been deleted from reality. As the matter in its path was vanished away, so too did the blackness' total "mass" gradually decrease in a harmony of mutual annihilation. On the surrounding buildings, I saw the glow of a bright flash of light, but if it was an explosion, the sound could not escape the embrace of my unstoppable force.
With a soft 'whump,' the rectangle of annihilation carved a smooth hole deep into the ground where the warehouse skeleton had once stood. When it finally vanished, the hole it left behind was as monumental in its depth as it was outstanding in it's perfectly squared corners. In a detached sort of way, I realized that I had probably just killed Lung: deleted him from the very face of the Earth. A crash across the street from the warehouse proved that realization incorrect, when I turned to see Lung tumbling from a crumbling hole in the side of a brick factory.
When he hit the ground, he rolled and his legs waved up into the air wildly, followed by what appeared to be a serpentine tail. I noticed that the normally silver scales of his bottom half had all been charred black. Looking back to the hole where he had only moments ago been, I remembered the flash of light and wondered whether or not he had propelled himself with an impromptu explosion.
Lung leapt to his feet, taking only a moment to gawk at the hole I had made before turning to face me and tensing like a cornered beast. I turned my palm to face the sky and spread my fingers. Above my hand a swirling mass began to form. It separated into two distinct spheres which began to slowly orbit one another even as they grew. One was made of the already familiar blackness, but the second was made of something new.
It glowed a brilliantly pure white, just like the hottest flames I had seen Lung use earlier in the fight. Around me, some of the hoarfrost left behind by my previous uses of the black stuff began to melt away. I didn't have long to take in this newest curiosity, as a flutter of movement in front of me caught my attention.
I looked up to see Lung turning away from me. His head snapped to the side to give the massive hole I'd made one final look before he took off, running away from me as fast as he could manage. He leapt, digging his claws into the side of a building and then cleared it with a single push. I took a step forward, ready to pursue him when suddenly what I was doing began to catch up to me.
I had very nearly just killed Lung. If he had been just a second slower, he would have been dead and it would have been my fault. Why had I done that? Why had I lashed out so relentlessly? I wanted to kill myself, not anyone else; and yet here I was, standing in the ruins of a battle zone I had been partly responsible for, taking in the aftermath of my clearly lethal attacks.
What the fuck was wrong with me?!
Trembling, my hands came up to cover my face as my breathing sped up to panicked gasps. The strength left me and I toppled to my knees, doubling over until my forehead hit the ground. My fingers clawed their way up to tear at my hair and I let out a hysteric, screaming cry.
The despair I had felt before was shoved to the side, overwhelmed by a titanic sense of revulsion and self loathing. I had been trying to murder someone in cold blood. I had had a number of chances to deescalate: to slow down and walk away, but I didn't. I just kept pushing forward relentlessly.
My desire for an end was suddenly no longer a want, it was a desperate need. I had actively tried to kill another human. No, I didn't have the right to think of myself as human anymore. I was nothing more than a monster.
Thoughts of the black stuff that I had tried to use to murder lung filled my mind, giving me one final hope. I snapped upright, hands falling to my sides as I stared up at the black orb that twirled menacingly above me. This thing could annihilate whatever it touched, erasing it completely without a trace. If anything could kill me, certainly this could.
Without a second thought, the orbiting spheres separated: the white one drawing away from me as the black one drew itself out into the same spear like rod I had tried to use on Lung before. Without another thought, the spear of annihilation snapped into orientation, pointed directly at my forehead. As the tears began to trail down my cheeks, the first to come since the accident, I thought of my mother and father. If there were an afterlife, I dearly hoped I wouldn't end up in the same place as them. Not after what I had tried to do. Not after what I had become.
"I'm so sorry." I whispered into the night.
"Wait, stop!" the sudden shrill feminine cry was not enough to dissuade me. Without waiting another second, I closed my eyes and the spear accelerated for my head.
Only to vanish into my skin without leaving a mark.
My hands curled into fists at my side. "Of course not." I mumbled to no one, opening my eyes and trying to blink away tears that wouldn't stop.
I never felt the impact of a large beast hitting the ground less than fifty feet away, nor heard the frantic slap of sneakers on pavement as a blonde girl desperately sprinted towards me.
"Of course not." I said again, my voice cracking as I cursed the hell that was my life. A sudden impact with my side managed to somehow sway me more than Lung ever had, as a petite girl dressed in purple and black practically tackled me in her desperation to wrap me in her arms.
"You're not alone! You. Are. Not. Alone. I won't let you be alone!" Absently, I wondered why she was crying too. Her fists curled into my sweatshirt and she tugged at it frantically, trying and failing to shake me.
"Look at me! Look-" She pushed her way into my lap, straddling my legs and clamping her hands down on either side of my head. Her blonde hair was in disarray, some of it caught on the edges of the small domino mask she wore around her eyes. "At. Me. No matter what you think, even if you can't believe me now, you have value. Your parents gave birth to you and raised you with love so that you could have a chance at a future. No matter what happened, they would have always wanted for you to live, to have a chance to be happy."
"I don't deserve that." I interrupted in a broken whisper. Her mouth pressed into a tight line in response.
"Fine. If you insist on giving away your life, then I'll take it." I blinked at her, uncomprehending.
"Wha-"
"I said I'll take it. You're giving it away right? So then it's no problem. I'll take it and do whatever I want with it." Fumbling slightly, she stood up and attempted to pull me up with her by my sweatshirt. Finding that she couldn't she frowned slightly. "Stand up." I could only blink up at her, lost as I was in this turn of events. "You're mine now, so stand. Up!" She heaved, and this time I obliged, rising with her pull. She faltered slightly, one arm pin wheeling as the other clutched at my sweatshirt to help her keep her balance.
Once she had recovered, she quickly unclasped one of the pouches on her belt and pulled out a bundle of cloth. Stepping closer to me, she reached up and immediately began wiping down my face, cleaning away the tears that had stopped in my bafflement, completely ignoring her own. I fidgeted, trying to pull away from her.
"Stay still." She ordered me. Without conscious thought I felt myself freeze. After a minute, she appeared to be satisfied and stepped back with a nod. "Good." She said, more to herself than to me, before stepping up to me and grabbing me by the wrist. "Now, suck that back up and let's go. Armsmaster will be here soon so we don't want to stick around." She pointed off to the side where the white orb was still hovering. Mindlessly, I pulled it back to myself, and it too vanished into the surface of my skin.
"W-wait, wha-"
"I said let's go!"
As I let myself get pulled away, over towards the minivan sized monster I was only just noticing, I couldn't help but wonder:
What the hell is going on?!