The room was rumbling, constant beats of bass drumming into my throat. If I had any need to breathe, it would be uncomfortably difficult to do so. Given that I did not have any need to breathe, I instead tried to enjoy the reverberations I felt. I had always enjoyed it, but this was the first time I'd gone to a place which could stir up the feeling in a long time. And it wasn't under particularly happy circumstances.

Flashing lights constantly moved about the room, highlighting some and leaving others in shadow, never seeming to settle on any particular group. Beyond the occasionally skilled shuffler who the crowd would give space, people were formed up into blobs, the shadows or lights making them seem like one consistent shape rather than a number of individuals. The high number of tails, horns, and other mutant body parts helped that assessment. All in all, looking for a bald man who you had seen one picture of was exceedingly difficult. Not only were there many bald men, as the universe had conspired to make male-pattern baldness not easy to cure even with quirk-based procedures, but as the room shook and the people shuffled, it was hard to get a good look at any one of them for more than a few minutes.

I'd reported what I had learned to the police, they were gonna find out where he was meant to be staying, I'd got the club's security to be on the lookout for him if he comes in, which left me searching for him in the crowd in case he was already here. Funnily enough, the last time I'd been to a place like this I think I was doing the same thing. I couldn't recall the exact details now though, and even if I could it probably wasn't important enough to devote thoughts to the memory.

The music was in a transitory state, one DJ preparing to leave as another was walking on stage, the initial parts of the next song meshing with the end of the current, repeating and building onto itself until it was ready to fully switch. That meant it was around 10:00, per the list of who was performing. I guess that they'd been raking in more profits recently, enough to bring in more and bigger names. Back when I was here they'd usually have one for the whole night. Sadly, I couldn't spend much time just enjoying the show. I'd searched through the crowd for long enough, he probably wasn't here. The club only had one dance floor, and he was in neither of the lounges.

Before leaving the place club, I decided to do one last run-through of the employee only sections. Just to be safe. Working my way through the dance floor, a number of tables and a bar, I arrived at a door labeled employees-only. Surprisingly, no one did anything to stop me as I opened it and walked through into the small breakroom. The music's melodies muffled slightly through the walls, though the bass still came through clearly. The new DJ seemed to be more progressive house than drum and bass. Shame that I wouldn't get to stay the night.

The break room was empty, and moving through a doorway without a door I found a room meant for loading in equipment, though no one was there. Odd. Didn't a DJ just leave? I wasn't entirely sure about the specifics of what goes on behind the scenes, but I wasn't at ease with its emptiness. Boxes were stacked here and there, and the bass kept beating, but the space felt wrong. The technicians for the stage didn't set up back here, so I'm not sure why I expected it to be more crowded. It was dark, a few meager lights from the ceiling did little to illuminate the area's dirty concrete floor and black walls. A garage door on the right wall faced the alleyway. It was one of those liminal spaces, if I had the definition right, a place meant to have people mucking about which didn't. Not that the place had much muck, the phrase was figurative.

"I really need to focus," I muttered aloud. Even if there were people back here, the words would have been drowned out by the music. Here, far from the stage the music flooded in, hypnotic rhythms interrupting your ability to concentrate, like a siren pulling sailors out into dangerous waters. Thinking about the phrases I would use to describe my surroundings was pointless when I was looking into a murder. I walked further into the room, circling its perimeter multiple times. It seemed that the loading area and break room were the only things they had back here. It didn't really make much sense for a fifty-three year old partygoer to be here anyways. But, with my curiosity for the night satiated, I began to close my eyes.

However, as I did so, I saw a small groove along the floor. Kneeling down, I recognized it as a locked trapdoor to an area below the club. Possibly a storage or electrical area, but there were no signs pointing to it being anything specific. My desire to triple-check the club came back in full force, and I closed my eyes, a different destination in mind. When I opened them, it was far harder to see, with my body being a sort of amorphous slime. I slipped through the trapdoor's cracks.

Below the trapdoor was a staircase, and after sliding down a number of stairs, I reformed, going back to being person-shaped. My quirk was, by all means, exceedingly useful. I had tried to explain it in detail before, but it was often easier to simply tell people that I could teleport and shapeshift, rather than explaining that the teleportation was simply a result of shapeshifting. Regardless, here the bass was nearly silent, the room subject only to occasional thumps.

It was an odd architectural feature. The room did store a number of crates along the walls, but besides those it was largely empty. Very large, the room expanded past just the area of the loading room, it seemed to be built under the entire club, occasional pillars helping support the dance floor which was the room's ceiling. I got an eerie feeling from the room. It was different from where the first victim had been found, yes, but it had enough similarities for me to be uneasy.

My search actually concluded, I decided that it was time to head back to my apartment. Stallion Tenets, room 313. I felt tired, any extra sleep I had gotten from that morning went to recovering from my drunken stupor, rather than to being able to stay up late. So, I closed my eyes, and opened them to see my apartment.

Now that I was more aware, I could see that it looked like a hurricane had swept through. Beyond the broken glass next to a landline and answering machine, the carpet was stained by a number of spills, the couch that I had slept on had a nasty tear cutting through it, and as I walked into the kitchen which sat behind a small island in the main room, I noted that every single drawer and cabinet had been pulled open, some number of drawers piled on the floor.

Gently swearing off alcohol with my hand, forehead to chest, shoulder to shoulder, I walked into what could in dire circumstances be called a bedroom. The drawers on the bedside, no, it was an air mattress, mattress-side table were also torn out. The mattress sat against the right wall from the door, and wasn't inflated. I suppose that's why I had taken to the couch the night prior.

Plugging in the inflation apparatus, I took to using the small computer which sat on the wall opposite of the mattress. The light whirring as the mattress inflated was the only noise in the room as the computer booted up. If it could be called a computer, of course. It was ancient, a 4:3 aspect ratio accompanied with an old, clunky beige keyboard, which quickly joined the whirring of the mattress, creating a chorus as I typed.

"It's not that poetic," I mused to myself, feeling annoyed as the computer took multiple minutes to load a webpage. It could be poetic, if you let yourself live a little. Then again, it was too late as far as I was concerned for long thoughtful tangents. So, I cut the line of thought short. Finally, the screen lit up with text, I began to read.

Chisel's Taphouse. Had I really spent a night drinking only to come home and drink more? I powered off the computer without looking at anything else. I'd check the place out tomorrow. Hopefully whatever I did wasn't too bad. The air mattress had, by this time, finished inflating. I collapsed onto it, no blanket or pillow assisting me, and closed my eyes.

You were in Amsterdam. You recognized it. You liked it. The brown bricks of buildings lining beside a body of water, the bikes, the people. It was the morning, the sun had just begun to rise, starting to color the sky blue. It wasn't warming the city up yet, though. Regardless, you weren't sure why you were here. You began to walk. There was no destination you had in mind, you only wanted to follow a direction and see where it would take you. And so you walked, on and on down the streets, until the buildings began to repeat.

Upon noticing this you decided to observe them closer, looking for some way of identifying if it really was a building you had already passed. They were all brown and brick, white detailing marking windows and doorways.

It was likely just your imagination, you thought, but as you turned around to face the street you realized it was empty. No one was walking, no one was talking, no one was even there. It was silent. Empty. Devoid of anyone who might be willing to offer a hand of help. This silence went on for some time, the only noise arising to interrupt it being your own footsteps as you took down the street, looking for anyone who might confirm that everything was find. But you saw no one. Just more streets with the same building running along their sides.

After some time a noise began to ring in your ears. A light buzz, ringing straight to your brain. You looked for a source, but found none. And it accompanied you as you continued your search. Soon, however, you paused, a new noise joining the buzz. Bells began to ring. Church bells.

The coming song was met by a rumbling, a shift in the air, pressure changing. Then the sky changed colors. You turned to look at a cloud. A mushroom. You never heard the explosion.

You were in Tokyo. The buildings were different here. Taller, metal and glass structures pointing to the sky. The bells had stopped. People busied about their day, passing around you as they hurried to whatever their destination was. They seemed to be in a hurry. It was noon, the sun stared at you from the sky. It was warmer now, and the air was dryer.

Taking to walking once more, you found more of the same buildings. If there was any difference between the ones you now walked by and the ones you just did walk by, you couldn't tell. More glass, more metal, but no more life. You turned to look around and once more found that there were no people. It was now that an alarm began to scream, alerting to something, but unlike before you could feel nothing change. Nothing shifted. It was all still. You waited, the alarms continued as you stood by the closest underpass.

You noticed a sewer grate on the street next to you. It never would have taken your gaze if it were not shaking. If it were not starting to shake faster. If some terrible mixture of water and slime didn't rise from it, covering your vision.

Finally back in your apartment, you got out of bed. There was a soft, consistent beeping. While it was soft, you were too concerned with going about your day to give in to its embrace. The TV at the end of the bed was off. You tried to flip it on, but as you did the lights in the room went out. Was there a power outage? You took to the window, staring outside to see if it affected the rest of the area. The beeping continued.

There was nothing but trees and mountains. Where once there was a street, there was now a plot of ferns untouched by man. The stars were shining, colors sweeping across the black sky. We closed our eyes.

I opened my eyes. The same beep from the morning prior rang through my answering machine. My dream had been… odd, putting it lightly. My behavior in it was odd, the locations themselves were odd, and it was just generally off. I remembered it rather well, given both the universal tendency to forget dreams and my personal one to forget long nights of poor decisions.

Sliding off of the now-deflated mattress, I fell onto the floor. Oh. I was goop. Reforming into a person, I stood to look around the room. Same as I had left it the night prior, bad as that might be. I'd clean it later, when I had a free moment. Check in with Ace, try to find Mr. Varlington and work on all of that some more, then check in at Chisel's and take responsibility for anything done in a quite foolish, foul manner, which may or may not have happened.

Best to start with the first thing on that list. Out of the bedroom, into the living room which wasn't alive enough to call a living room, and to the answering machine. Hopefully it would have good news. I looked down at the broken glass next to it with disdain. Today I would get a paycheck, it would be nice to have rent dealt with. Well, no, that meant talking to whoever owned the apartments, and that wouldn't be nice. Whatever. I reached to the machine.

Ace's voice rang through, "We could use your help down on Charlton Place, today is the day, remember? Threatening letter I mentioned was dropped off by hand, camera caught the guy who did it, I know your computer can't handle it so just come into the office when you can. After the bust," and with a click the message stopped.

Ah, right, today was the day. For… something. I held a hand to my equivalent to a chin, waiting for the thought to come to me. Oh, the mob thing. That was it. Was it already that late into the month? Before spending any more time thinking about the date, I took my thoughts in another direction. The mafia had been on the decline for a long time. It had gotten a lot more prominent when quirks first started appearing, and then starting losing ground to gimmick gangs.

Outside of Chicago and NYC, I think that the classic gangsters style criminal underworld was pretty small. Newmount's family was an offshoot of Chicago's, but they'd been stumbling for a while. As proven by the fact we were about to arrest a higher up who had slipped up and given us the location he was about to make a deal. Their incompetence was astounding. Not that I was complaining.

Charlton Place was a rundown street in an older part of the city. Back when it was difficult to refer to the city as a city due to the lack of urbanization. Back when it was tiny, less than a hundred thousand people. Granted, that was before quirks were even a thing, and before the US of A started to grow urban areas more rapidly, so a good eighty years ago, but the older part of the city's neglect made it seem even smaller than it was back then.

The city was by no means a perfect grid, winding paths and alleyways cutting off any pattern of square blocks that went on for too long. That fact was only amplified by this part of the city being older, and while less compact, the non-road paths tended to be rather out in the open. In short, it would be hard for people to run if their business got interrupted. Charlton Place was a street with a dead end, at the end of which was an alley which led to a clothing store. Ending that path of thought I stepped further back from the rooftop edge.

I had shifted from my apartment to the rooftop I had been told to go to. We'd planned this out a few weeks beforehand, and it was pretty simple, for me at least. It was around now that I should have someone walk up to join me. Then, I'd just have to—

"Right on time," a woman's voice sounded behind me. Then I'd just have to confirm we were moving in, and I'd clear it out, was what I was meaning to think. I couldn't carry a radio around, so I'd asked them to have someone set up a place I could go to easily. Afterwards I could wait for a go-ahead, clear it out, then come back to confirm that I'd cleared things. A little convoluted, but it was easier for me to take out the guards and then have the police move in than for them to risk getting into a firefight. Besides, this wouldn't be too difficult. I had been doing it since—

"Bird in the nest?" Ace asked through a radio. I turned around to see that it was the police officer from yesterday, Lisa I think, holding the radio. Thankfully, now wasn't the time for dealing with the consequences of my actions. It was strictly professional. Nodding to her, she answered. "One way to put it. Y'all ready to send 'em in?"

I wasn't late again was I? I'd set an alarm. Maybe they called earlier just in case. Whatever. "Send him in," Ace answered. Time to earn my keep. She looked up at me, and began to talk, "It's a go, no—"

I never heard the last thing she said as she blinked, giving me an opportunity to shift to the store. Obviously, it wasn't just a store, it was a front for the shipping of illegal goods. Like evil toboggans. That was the official, police-mandated name of it. Legally speaking. As opposed to the illegally worn toboggans. Those were both not legal and not spoken. They were worn. Because they were hats. Not that they were really hats, that was all a humorous euphemism for drugs.

Sitting just beyond the camera pointed at the entrance of the store I looked in. I recognized a door which supposedly would lead to a basement. None of the people on this floor were armed, people in the basement probably would be, but that was fine. I'd just have to get in without them noticing, which would be fairly easy. Really, I was overthinking things. It was time to go with the flow.

Walking into the store, I was met with a ring of the bell signalling my entrance. The camera had prevented me from using my quirk to enter, since the store lacked windows (which probably broke some regulation somewhere), but once I got past the camera I was in the clear to walk behind a clothing rack and disappear. Now behind the door to the basement I was greeted by a set of stairs. Did every building in this city have a comically large basement? Was there some sort of person with a non-euclidean space-shifting quirk that decided it would be funny to fuck with architecture?

My arms were not of particular use, and neither was my size. Squashing down into a harder to notice blob with a number of spider-like appendages, I travelled along the wall of the staircase. I expected there to be a guard watching the doorway, and when I reached it I peaked down barely from its top to see that I was correct. Only a pistol, and he wasn't holding it. Probably just there to tell people to walk away. This was the place, so that didn't mean much. He wasn't paying enough attention to have seen me. That meant that I could really get started, no more meandering about with funny thoughts.

I appeared behind him, human again, and moved my hand over his mouth. I was stronger than most people, whether it was due to my quirk or a personal quality I couldn't tell you. A healthy non-lethal amount of choking later and he was on the ground. Now to the next room. There was a door behind where the guard had been standing. After sliding the enforcer's unconscious body to the corner so that it wouldn't be spotted, I gave the door a slight push and stepped to the side. Hopefully the other guards would be idiots.

"Frankie, you good man?" a voice called down the hall. Two pairs of footsteps towards the door, another voice, "Must be a draft." Good, they were idiots. I shifted to hang on the ceiling above the door. "Frankie?" the first man asked as he entered and turned to the corner I had laid Frankie in. The moment the second one walked in I dropped. He fell with a thunk, and as the first to enter the room turned towards me I slid my leg under his knee, tripping him.

Catching him as he fell and muffling his mouth, I straddled him. We struggled as I tried to hold his pistol away from me, and eventually due to the power of oxygen deprivation he fell unconscious. That was close. Way too close. I was sluggish, slow, and had avoided just punching him out of fear for causing brain trauma. I wouldn't have done that anyway. I was holding back. I stood, scoffing as I looked down at the three. Maybe it had been too long since I'd seen action. This was nothing. Well, no time to spare thinking about that.

I continued into the next room. Per the schematics this was the last room before the one where the meeting was taking place. Big business deal with the family and whoever it was we were gonna find. Clear it, report back, then enter and apprehend. Focus.

I don't need to open the door as long as it isn't being watched. If it is being watched, this doesn't work anyway. Close my eyes. Ceiling of the next room, tendrils to hold onto it. Open my eyes. This room is the largest so far, and isn't empty. Stacks of boxes. Guards, five of them. One is isolated. Four of them. Bang on a rack, one walks towards the noise. Three of them. They've noticed. One is pulling out a phone to alert the next room. Now or never.

They couldn't watch every angle around them. As one looked at their phone, they left a spot above them unobserved. I move there, and I fall. It seemed falling on people was my go-to. Well, if it ain't broke. Unlike his phone, it is broken. As is his face. The other two turn to shoot at me, but I'm already gone, behind a box. The next room had heard the gun fire. Let's hurry this up. Two people standing back to back, swiveling to look everywhere. I could appear above them again, they won't react in time. But dropping on people was boring. Instead I push the box I'm behind out towards them. When they turn to shoot at it, I appear behind them. Punches, strangling had been too slow. The room was clear, but they knew I was here now.

I realized now that due to the camera I couldn't just shift all the way up to meet with Lisa. Instead I would have to shift to a place the cashier couldn't see me, walk outside past the camera, and then up to Lisa. Because I couldn't move into an area being observed. Great. Honestly, the plan was stupid, I didn't need to let them know I had cleared everything up to the room the higher-up was in. That was dumb. I burst into the next room, kicking the door. Or, I had planned to, it was locked, and my kick only made my leg hurt. Fuck. My sloppy job at taking them out and our sloppy planning was ruining this. It was like there was a mental block preventing me from doing things properly. Preventing me from doing this how I did back in—

"This is private property!" a snooty, nasally voice sounded from behind the door. Right. Sure. "You have ten seconds to open this door," I said. God I hate my job. After ten seconds of silence I decided that I should try to get through the door. Close my eyes, make myself flat like paper, and slip through. If they weren't staring at the door, it would work. I always felt a light sense of if an area was being looked at. I knew that side was being looked at, but this side of the door wasn't.

Open my eyes, now the size of a centipede. A supremely dense centipede, but it served my purposes the same. I crawled through the door, and they stared at me. Two of them, standing next to a table with purple cloth draped around it. One I recognized, they were in a suit, the one we were after. The other was in… robes? Odd. The one in the suit moved to stomp on me, but I skedaddled around them, disappearing under the table. Now unobserved I quickly re-appeared, full-sized, under the table they stood next to.

Standing and throwing the table back, I realized that it was an exceedingly cheap table, though the cloth looked expensive. I moved quickly, grabbing a gun from the man in the suit's hand. Twisting it, I unloaded the magazine and cycles to make sure it couldn't go off. Taking it from his grip, I held it in my left hand.

"You got a phone?" I asked the mobster. I looked at him more closely. Bald, brown beard, his suit was blue and he had a tacky yellow and orange patterned tie. Bottom of the barrel. While he fumbled through his pockets, I turned to the man in robes. He wore a flat reflective mask which obscured his face, while a black hood covered his hair. Despite my breaking in, he seemed remarkably calm, not shifting an inch. The mobster, however, was sweating profusely as he handed me his phone.

Dialing Ace's number, I took a step back to keep both in view as I spoke. "Cleared it out. Come on in."

"You were meant to contact us when you got to the last room."

"Camera in the front would've made that take longer than it took to just move in and apprehend."

"I thought there was a window?"

"You wanna complain or do you wanna come in?"

The phone clicked off, and I handed it back. We stood in a triangle for a minute or so. Then the lights cut off.

"What the fuck?" the mobster said, walking into me in the dark. I pushed him back, and as he fell the lights turned back on. The man in robes was gone.

"What the fuck?" I echoed the phrase.

"So a cultist disappeared when the lights went out, and you didn't think to mention that you can't move through things cameras are watching?"

"Ace you and I both thought that building had a window."

"Oh my fucking god," Ace sighed, sitting back in his chair. This was a relatively small detail, and were it not for the fact that who I had now taken to as calling Robes was capable of teleporation. How was I supposed to know that was his quirk? Ludicrous.

We'd filled out the appropriate paperwork, made the arrest, it was overall a success, but the fact we didn't get whoever the mob thought was important enough to try and deal with made the victory hollow. Turned out it was an exchange of money for orders, not drugs. Whoever was ordering around a mob so incompetent that they leaked the location and time of a business deal was likely more important to deal with. And, given we were told that the supposed 'higher-up' didn't know who they were, that just made things worse.

"Whatever, onto another topic, you said you have footage of the letter-dropper-offer?"

Ace looked up at me for a second, staring blankly in my direction, before turning to his computer and pulling up the appropriate video. It was footage of the hallway of the victim's apartment. A week before we found the body. The wood floor and off-white walls of the hall were unchanging except for the grain of the camera for a few moments. Then someone in robes…

God fucking damnit. They looked just like the one who was at the mafia deal. I said as much to Ace. "Keep watching," he replied, pointing as the robed figure dropped the letter through the bottom of the door. After doing this, they turned around, and walked to right below the camera. They stared at it, the blinking light indicating that it was recorded reflected in their mask. Ace paused it.

"No one thought to report this for suspicious activity?"

"Nope."

I sighed, sitting back. Figuratively, I didn't have a chair, I was leaning over Ace's shoulder. You would think that two years in we'd have invested in a chair. Then again I may truthfully just not be very good with money. Figure it out when I go to Chisel's.

"You should take off this weekend. We're gonna have a busy month after this. I'll keep looking for Mr. Varlington," he told me. I knew this was his way of being nice, but it still didn't feel good to be told to just sit back while a murderer chatted it up with the mafia.

I sighed again. It was odd that I was sighing, I didn't have a mouth opening for air to go in or out at the moment. Just a beak. It was more so the motion than the action. He was right, of course. It was getting late. I was a contractor, it's not like I had specific hours.

"I'll head off for the weekend. Let me know if you find anything," I said, turning to look at the reflective mask of the suspect. "Be careful out there, Ace." He nodded to me as I stepped away from his desk.

Time to head to Chisel's, I supposed. I needed figurative fresh air. I'd walk, clear my thoughts. Rushing from place to place was jarring. Disorienting. Tiring. Generally unpleasant. I headed to the stairs, intending to make my way to the first floor. I was, however, halted by a box of donuts. Free. Was it an officer's birthday? I really hadn't talked to many, outside of the Chief on the occasion that I needed to and Ace. Outside of those two, it was basic niceties which didn't mean much.

I took one. A pink, sprinkled, stereotypical harbinger of weight gain. When I attempted to use my quirk to open up a mouth, I found that I couldn't. Turning, I could see Lisa staring at me.

"How are you gonna eat that?" she asked, though the tone implied she was pondering it herself more than she was asking me.

"Close your eyes and I can show you."

"You better not disappear again. Once is unnecessary, twice is annoying, thrice is just unexcusable."

"Sorry about that," I began, but she simply looked down, closing her eyes. I waved away another detective who was looking at me from across the room. My 'eyes' were positioned such that I would always see my beak, which explained my need to close them. That done, I made a seam, as I had done the prior morning.

Lisa looked up as I opened my maw, wrapped my tendril of a tongue around the donut, and consumed it.

"The hell is your quirk meant to be again?" she asked.

"Confusing."

"I can just make things spiky."

"If you think about it, that's also confusing."

"Ehh," she held her hand flat and shook it side to side.

I squinted. Or, my own personal approximation of the same motion. From her perspective I was likely just standing still. I squinted at that thought, too. While I was in this conversation I may as well look for clarification as to what it was I had done at Chisel's. I was going there anyway, so it would be good to prepare my apology. Pretend I knew what I had done. "Hey, so, can you tell me what I was doing at Chisel's Taphouse? I'll be honest I don't remember. At all."

She squinted at me. I was still squinting. Metaphorically. Leaning back, she replied with a laugh. "You were way, way, way too drunk. And also you started to sing. Loudly. They had to call me in to send you home."

Fuck that sounds embarrassing. "I'm gonna go… apologize," I said slowly. Spacing the words out. "Good luck with that," she said. I felt the donut in my torso. If I shifted away now it would probably fall to the ground. That would be gross. I had planned to walk anyway, so that didn't really change things. I simply signed a small salute as I turned to walk down the stairs, out of the building, out towards the street, and down the street. Knowing the layout of the city I began to walk. Chisel's Taphouse was to the south. I didn't walk often. It was good to see things from this level. The buildings were not overly tall, the skyline was not the largest and the mountains made even the tallest in the city look small, but it was interesting to look at the architecture.

The bar was in uptown. So named because it was in the eastern part of the city which went up the side of a mountain. Equivalent to another city's downtown, it was the most urbanized part of the city and both figuratively and literally looked down on the rest. The roads began to incline lightly as I walked. Not too steep, the mountain was small and the majority of the city sat in a valley, but still a noticeable rise. I stopped as a child ran out in front of me, avoiding bumping into them like I did the other person however long ago that was.

"You alright?" I asked, but they ran away, grabbing onto an adult's hand. Ah. As the adult turned around I decided that I had seen enough of the city. Probably a bad idea to appear like you were trying to talk to someone's kid while incidentally following the same road. And so, I headed to Chisel's.