DANG
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Class was of great annoyance to him that day. Sure, Starlight High was of great annoyance every day–from the long drive it required of him to get there, to the packed classes. But it’d been of special annoyance that day simply because of the fire alarm. The fire alarm had gone off one hour into his four-hour Quantum Physics and Relativity class and almost at once, everyone had stood up all at once in a bid to get to safety. It was during this pandemonium that his phone had taken a particularly nasty fall and its screen had shattered horribly.
Dang sighed and rested his head on his desk while all around him, people nearly trampled each other to get to safety. Once he was the only one in the classroom, he sighed and rose to his feet. Slowly, he placed his books back into his bag, then bent over to pick his phone up off the ground.
“What a drag,” he sighed.
If he left the class through the regular exit, he’d have to push through a crowd of unnecessarily panicked people again. So, he took an alternative exit. He took the window.
Now the walls of the classroom were particularly tall and scaling over them to get through the windows ought to have been a particularly daunting task; but not for him.
He got a running start at the wall, leaped onto and kicked off of it. He scaled it in less than three seconds. He slipped out the window onto the corridor outside, getting a pretty good vantage point at everyone evacuating the Charles Darwin Building. He looked away from the panicked crowd and scanned the rest of the campus. He saw no signs of smoke and that meant one of two things–either all of this was just a drill, or someone else had pulled the alarm either as a prank or for some other reason.
If it’d been a prank or something else, it didn’t really concern him. He could have just left with everyone else, but he’d have been even more annoyed later not knowing why his class had been cut so short. So, he tugged at his backpack’s straps, fastening it properly, and then broke into a sprint.
Scaling over railings and sliding down escalators was pretty easy for him. The hard part was trying to find the culprit responsible for the alarm going off. It took him twenty minutes to find them and as it would turn out, the alarm hadn’t been a prank at all.
He’d gone around peeking behind every door in the building when finally, he’d spotted four people in bird masks in the Quantum Lab, gathered around a cylinder that housed a glowing blue tube. They were currently setting up something, possibly a machine. Dang stayed by the door for a moment watching them, trying to understand what they were trying to do.
It was only when a silver backpack they had in their possession morphed into a large case that he realized they were trying to move whatever was in the cylinder. He sighed and studied the Quantum Lab–there were five cameras in the lab. He sighed and glanced around, studying his surroundings.
If he did intervene, he didn’t want the cameras identifying him as the person who’d stopped them. It’d lead to him getting a whole lot of annoying attention from the students and professors there–he preferred for his college life to have some normalcy to it, considering the total absence of normalcy in the other aspects of his life.
He found a paper bag poking out of a trash can that must have been used to house some ice cream since it was a little damp and smelled of strawberry and waffles. With great reluctance, he punched eyeholes into the paperbag and slipped it onto his head. He folded up the sleeves of the flannel shirt he had on, and made his shoelaces even tighter–these were practices he believed aided his mobility and helped in combat, even though he was sure he could have taken those guys on in his sleep.
Once he was sure he was ready, he returned to the Quantum Lab and tried the doorknob. Locked. “Of course," He sighed "What a drag.” he muttered again, before kicking at the door. The strength he’d thrown into the kick blasting the door clean off its hinges, sending it flying dangerously through the lab. The thieves had to duck to avoid their upper bodies from being sliced off by the door–such was the speed and force with which it shot through the air.
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The thieves rose to their feet slowly and looked at each other, as though they hadn’t been expecting anyone to come crashing their party.
One of the thieves pulled out a gun. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded, pointing the gun at Dang. His grip was steady. He’d done this before.
Dang sighed and relaxed his shoulder, closing his eyes gently.
“What do you want with that?” he asked calmly, not opening his eyes, not glancing upward. He was getting a sense of the environment around him–left, right, up, down. He could feel their breathing, despite the distance between them, and he’d know exactly when they were about to make a move.
“That’s none of your business, buddy,” another thief growled. “You best keep it moving if you know what’s good for you.”
He heard the second thief pull out a weapon. The whirring sound this weapon made indicated it wasn’t a regular pistol. Probably some high-energy rifle that fired compressed blasts.
If that was the case then it meant these thieves had funding and backing. That was the only way they could have that sort of tech. This led to Dang’s next question.
“Who sent you?”
“Didn’t you hear him?” another thief demanded, pulling out another weapon that whirred. “Get the hell out of here!”
Dang sighed and cracked open his left eye. It glowed blue.
“Resonate,” he whispered.
At once, he felt his skin harden, energy coursed through him through him, causing him to exhale sharply. He looked to the thieves who still looked a little confused. Clearly, none of them understood what he’d just done.
“Are any of you special?” he asked cooly.
“Okay, that’s it,” growled the fourth thief. “Kill this freak.”
The thief with the pistol fired, but Dang moved his head a little to the side just in time for the bullet to whizz harmlessly past his right ear; even though he’d have been fine if the bullet had touched him.
Another bullet was fired and Dang sidestepped it. He’d have been perfectly fine if the bullet touched him, but he preferred to not have his shirt ruined with bullet holes. The thieves with the high-tech rifles powered up their weapons and in three seconds, simultaneously charged and fired green beams at him.
He wasn’t sure if he could take the hit but he held up a hand nonetheless and much to his pleasant surprise, it didn’t hurt. Sure, the beams were a little warm to the touch, but they didn’t hurt or anything of the sort.
Once the thieves realized he wasn’t taking any damage, they ceased fire.
“What the hell are you?!” one demanded in a fearful voice.
But he wasn’t going to answer that question. After all, they hadn’t answered any of his. He opened his other eye and smiled. “Resonate,” he said again.
This time, both his hands glowed green, the same shade of green as the blast he’d just received. He aimed his hands at the thieves who, at once, backed away fearfully. And then he fired.
It ended there. The blast didn’t kill them because he hadn’t fired it off powerfully enough to cause death. As soon as the thieves dropped to the ground, he inspected their items, hoping for a sign that might point to whoever had sent them or what they intended to do with the thing in the cylinder.
However, by the time the police sirens started to sound outside, he’d discovered nothing. He sighed and made his way out of the lab, tossing the paper bag away on his way out of the building, careful to be sure no camera picked him up.
The day didn’t get less annoying after. He stuck around until the cops had rounded up the thieves, after which he stopped to get a turkey sandwich and a strawberry milkshake with two of his classmates, Lia Jacobs and Steven Chang, both of whom were a year younger than he was at sixteen and seemed hyper-excited about what’d just happened.
“Fun stuff like this never happens at Starlight High,” Steven said while jiggling a milkshake around in his hand. “It should happen more often.”
“You want the school attacked more often?” Lia asked, examining Steven as though he were insane. She had dark blue eyes and light, honey-scented blond hair that was currently tied back in a ponytail. Her face was smooth and perfectly angled, and overall pleasant to behold.
“If it means shorter Quantum Physics classes, sure,” Steven shrugged and then laughed out loud like a maniac. “Who do you think Paperbag Hero was?”
“Who knows,” Dang snorted. “But good thing he was around, right?”
“Yeah,” Lia agreed, although she shot Dang an odd look he didn’t notice.
Once they were done, they bid each other goodbye and headed to their respective homes. Lia and Steven lived in the city like normal teenagers did. In fact, they lived only a few blocks away from each other.
Dang, on the other hand, lived in a decommissioned observatory in the mountains. He liked the peace and quiet it afforded him, and it also meant there wouldn’t be any questions or investigations raised when he stepped out at night for his contract work
Uncaring and tepidly, he stared at his wristwatch while he waited for a cab.
It was almost time.
He sighed. “What a drag.”