Small pieces of bone, none of them my own, stuck out from my flesh. It was hard to tell if they punctured deep enough into my skin to hit bone. It had all just melded into a shared aching pain throughout my body. I couldn’t pick out all the points I received injuries, but it didn’t change the fact that I needed to kick myself back into gear. It was one of the only options my body could afford in all of this madness — just getting back up and onto my feet.

That numbing pain in my body had come with another consequence. The lights of the car were on me before I could collect myself, shining bright in my vision. A groan escaped my exhausted lips as I tried to pick myself up, using the ground and nearby wall as supports to at least stand and stare my attackers down.

I spotted Max from the destroyed windshield. Still squirming, now more restless than before–likely panicked and disoriented. It wasn’t enough to be kidnapped but the sudden explosion of a man beside him wasn’t doing any favors. I tried to say something, but only coughs left my lips.

Richter’s door had opened, getting out of the vehicle and strutting towards me with his hands deep in his pockets. He smirked; heavy with pride. His cheeks were bloated as a chuckle escaped his lips. I could almost taste the delight he felt watching me struggle to pick myself up. He was soaking up the sight, basking in “victory.”

“Damn. That’s just sad.” He clicked his tongue,” Y’know, there’s something funny about Keys. People say we’re like lions. We might get in packs or if we find a straggler we’ll end up ripping them apart. Shit, thought it was just propaganda. Tonight though? And those twirly thumbs back at the Black Ring? Guess there is some truth. So, it’s funny. You don’t got a’ black ring from what I see… so are ya just some random straggler? No normal fuck can rip the hood off a car like a soda can. So, show me.” Richter spouted as he approached, letting out more boastful chuckles.

He got close, too close, but still kept his distance as if he was fearing that I’d pounce on him. From this range, there’d still be the chance that he could put one of those arms out and force my whole body to pull itself apart. I never considered death up to this point, but that… was a horrible way to go. He reached into the pocket of his vest and pulled out a revolver, waving it around casually and almost hypnotically to focus my attention on it. I couldn’t tell the more pressing threat. The idea of him shooting me or blowing apart the gun to finish me off with the shrapnel with his ability.

Both were most likely fatal. Both at point blank. Both he could make sure to do the job right.

From the looks of it, he wasn’t hesitant about killing me nor rushing. Just deciding to spare me based on if I played along.

I moved my hand slowly to the collar of my jacket–hesitant to move quickly with a gun staring me down–and tore the fabric of my jacket to show off my neck without mistakenly tearing it all away. The last thing I wanted to do was to reveal my face to these thugs. Yet, they probably cared more about the Key symbol on my neck.

Richter chuckled, more vigorous than his last, almost seeming to laugh at the idea of him being wrong. He pointed the gun upwards, right up to my chin with a low snicker.

“I kinda want to offer you to join the club. Keys are a valuable resource- humies are pretty, well, easy to come by for the most part. Go on the street and I can fetch a few… huh, I guess we’d call them gazelles? Explode one in a group of five, I get the remaining four. If the four don’t join, I get the last three and well… you know your subtraction and stuff. If the rest piss me off or try to call the authorities then, boom I guess. Buuut, I’m also going to be honest. Ya’ fucked up me and you. I wanted to pop a few guys cause they wanted a kid. I also wanted money. Now I have neither. I can get the kid to work into the gang or something now, but well, I still got fucked. One out of three. Not adding up, lil’ buddy.”

Richter mused, waggling the gun around in that same hypnotic sway. His genuine words made things more dire. He did consider recruiting me, but he was also honest about piling up bodies. They both felt like threats specifically against me. I couldn’t do anything about it.

There was no point in trying to grab the gun from him if I couldn’t elongate my arms, especially as the soreness began to set in and my muscles became lethargic. Praying for a burst of adrenaline was the miracle I needed.

“Well, no point in pissing and crying over a bunch of spilled milk and burnt eggs. Just clean it up, right?” Richter chuckled, steadying the gun properly so I’d be staring down the barrel; watching him smile all the way through.

“Why do you care about the kid anyway, Mr. No Ring? Just took a stroll to the docks or something? Wanted to beat some thugs? Be a hero?”

Huh, that was. That was a good question. Damn.

Richter’s eyes lit up at the sight of me trying to gargle and cough the words out, before I managed to finally draw up the strength to speak.

“I wanted to save him. I had to.” The words left my lips with a few coughs. If these were going to be my last words, I tried not making them disingenuous. Saving him hadn’t been the pure focus though, I could tell. What was it then?

“I promised his mother I would.” I could see us both try to rationalize it. Sitting there in confusion as a “promise” was about to get me killed. Yet, then there came that boiling feeling. The tensing of my body and the steady overflow of new adrenaline. I didn’t want to die here. I needed to think. Just act. Just do something.

All of that came to a pause as I watched Max go ballistic.

He squirmed violently, trying to search for something desperately after the mention of his mother. Flinging his body from side-to-side before the side of his head slammed against the car window’s glass.

The cracks on his face stretched, fragmenting at a faster rate. He constantly began hitting it and hitting it and hitting it. The bashing enough to draw Richter’s attention away to watch his tantrum. That same sound could then be heard everywhere. The sound of the cracking glass reverberated violently through the ground around us and from the glass shards spread onto the streets. It wasn’t just the shattered window from the car, but instead every nearby source of glass around us. Nearby buildings, parked vehicles, streetlights–the phones. All shaking and emitting that same noise, before they all shattered in a violent resonance. An explosion of shards which brought with it the blaring noise of car alarms; covering the block with fragmented silica and blaring with noise.

Richter’s cries of pain were discernible despite the blaring noise. He crumbled, grabbing at his bleeding leg while recoiling from the noise of the alarms. Throughout it all, my body forced itself to move. My body made itself move, as if possessed knowing I wouldn’t get this chance again. I poured nearly all the weight, force, and momentum I could gather from my tired body and sent it into his wrist with the bare skin of my knuckles. I felt the bone in his arm and wrist crack easily, sending pieces of bone out of his arm. I wanted to hunch over and vomit, the sound of the crack echoing within my ears, but I couldn’t stop; because it worked, of course it did. Richter dropped the gun, disarmed from both pain and his arm being rendered unusable. Still, my body kept moving and instead I swung a fist forward. My knuckles landed right in the center of his ribs, and my eyes watched both the air and the fight leave his body as my fist pulled back. His eyes nearly rolled back into his skull as he went backwards in the air, landing on the asphalt road.

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It was after my body remembered. Remembered it wasn’t supposed to be moving as I fell over, having to pick myself back up with my own will. I limped to the vehicle, gasping for any air while the feeling of danger and adrenaline steadily left my system. I wasn’t going to be able to keep moving at this rate. The sound of commotion had begun stirring in the atmosphere around me, it gave me a bit of a second wind to get this over with and leave.

The driver of the car laid there, gasping for air as fragments of glass from his window and mirror had lodged themselves into the sides of his body–he looked at me, twitching slightly without the ability to do anything else but react. I moved past his door to pry the door of its hinges. At least it would make things easier for any paramedics. Next was Max, doing the same except keeping the door attached to the car this time.

He had fragments of glass from the window sticking out from his skin, but he wasn’t bleeding or in any notable pain, instead the fragments just seeped into his skin–closing the fragments created during his episode.

He immediately pulled back as I opened the door, his body moving toward another pile of shards. Another mass-shattering wasn’t going to be good for either one of us.

“Max, Max! It’s okay, it’s okay. Your mom! Sarah! She asked me to pick you up. We’re going home.” I said, trying to get him to stop his twisting and turning, and it seemed to work as he just laid there shaking and hyperventilating into the covering over his mask.

“I’m a friend, I promise. Can I get your blindfold off?” I asked, still approaching him steadily to watch his hesitant nod turn into a frantic plea. It didn’t take me long to oblige, gently pulling the blindfold from his eyes to watch him react to me. I could see that jump, but immediately held my hands out, shaking them hurriedly.

“Hey, hey!” I rushed, pulling on the hole I made in my collar and then lowering my mask a fraction to where the boy could see my eyes. “I’m like you, I came to help you, like I said your mom sent me. I’m getting you home, okay?” I repeated again, and this time Max seemed to steadily calm himself, speaking into the covering as I approached him visibly to peel it off the piece of tape.

“May I? This might hurt a bit.” He nodded, and so I pulled it right off. He recoiled a bit at the stinging before looking up to me, a bundle of tears still welling up in his eyes.

“I-I want to go home…” Max’s voice cracked, but it was better to have that voice there.

“Then let’s get you home.” I uttered, grabbing at his other bindings and pulling them apart. The sound of commotion became more notable with the incoming police sirens. There was no better time to move than now. I don’t want to imagine what would happen if Max was found here with Richter at the scene of a public disturbance.

I took the boy in my hands, picking him up and out of the vehicle and setting him down onto the street. “Give me just an extra second…” I pleaded, moving to grab a pen and paper from the glove compartment and the vehicle and writing something down hurriedly before tearing at the other sleeve of my jacket. I bound Richter’s arms together and dropped a paper onto his unmoving but still breathing body, tearing a new v-shaped collar on his shirt to reveal the key symbol on his chest.

“Don’t let hands touch anything. Bad Boom.”

Without any time left to spare, I took Max up into my arms and ran away from the sirens as they got closer and closer. When they arrived we were gone.

∎∎∎

[Late Night, 9:15 PM]

Sarah had been looking down to the floor of her apartment as she was slouched against her couch, a sigh escaped from her lips as she looked at the cracked picture of her and Max. The bags beneath her eyes depicted the fact that she still hadn’t slept throughout the day, instead just waiting for someone to come knocking at her door with news. Anything at this point would’ve been preferable than just sitting there waiting.

The sound of someone knocking against the door caused her eyes to light up followed by swift depression. Pessimistic thought swept away that excitement as she stood to her feet, lazily dragging her feet as she approached the door.

“Mom?” The words were muffled, but the weight they had nearly caused her to fling herself at the door, slipping on her way there. She pried at it to open before realizing she needed to first unlock it. In the next second of fiddling around to open the door she immediately went almost numb, before she collapsed in front of her son just bringing him into a hug, it was likely that if he stood far from the door she would’ve pounced at him to receive the same result. She was loudly sobbing, in the halls– Max joined her in her cry, something that lasted almost ten whole minutes before they brought themselves inside.

There was another exchange, them both apologizing to one another and then Max’s mother telling him off before she began to blame herself. It was just a back and forth, but they both had genuinely missed one another.

Sarah went into the kitchen as Max told her he was hungry. Once Sarah went into the kitchen, Max searched around for something in the cupboards. He found what seemed to be oven mitts before then searching around to pull out a first-aid kit. He grabbed it, making sure to move out of his mother’s sight before lightly tapping at the window and avoiding alerting his mother as he gently pulled it open. He set the first-aid kit down, looking as I slowly poked my head up to stare at him with my uncovered eyes. Having situated myself on the building’s scaffolding.

“Mom’s friend, you wanted this?” He whispered in a gentle voice, moving the first-aid kit closer. I only nodded, we agreed on a bit of a trade during the way here as I pulled the first-aid kit towards me. In response, I handed him a note.

“Get him registered. Safety for future.” It read.

Max looked confused by it, but he didn’t have enough time to question it as Sarah ran to the window. “Max, you know you’re not supposed to go near the windows!” She exclaimed, eyes widened as she got a glance at my masked face in the darkness, only partly illuminated by the lights in the apartment. She let out a frightened scream, she rushed at me to pull her son back and away from the window.

Before she could get a proper look at my face any longer, I tucked the first-aid kit beneath my armpit and secured it before leaping off the fire escape. She let out another scream, this time one of shock and surprise, but I could tell she was securing Max. Sarah probably didn’t expect for someone who looked to be a burglar to just jump from the fifth floor of her apartment building nor did she wish for her son to witness it.

Once things had calmed, I could tell she was pursuing it from the fire escape on the third-floor. She seemed confused in her investigation. Not a bloody paste or a person running out of her vision. She peered around the streets below for what seemed like an eternity, making sure that I wouldn’t have made my return before she stumbled back into her apartment and closed the window behind her. During that point, I tried my best to descend the floor without alerting her any further.

At that time Sarah seemed calm, approaching her son by the creaks in the floorboard and bringing him forward.

“Max, who were you speaking to?” She asked.

“Your friend. He said he said you sent him to get me.” Max replied.

She was likely distraught following that piece of information, because I never did hear what she had to say. Well, that didn’t matter now. I was done and needed to rest my wounds.

Emphasis on rest.