“This child cannot be allowed—”

“—To think such a thing would...”

“Unfortunate.”

“Poor child—”

“——Two monsters born in the same Family, it must be a sign of your—”

“—Measures have to be taken!”

“This child must not obtain—”

“—I'm so sorry, Rin.”

◇

Rin woke up with a terrible headache. Possibly the most painful one in all her life. She brought her hand up to rub her forehead and frowned at the realization that she wasn't in a room she recognized. No, could this place even be called a room? There was no furniture, the window she could see from the corner of her eyes was destroyed beyond repair, the floor above could be clearly seen through the various holes in the ceiling, and despite being large, it was full of dirt and dust and probably rats. It was so run down the term 'abandoned building' naturally rose in her mind.

Which begs the question, why was she in such a place?

She wanted to ponder on that but her migraine didn't leave her the luxury of thinking. Now that a little time had passed, however, she noticed that there was something very wrong inside herself. She felt weirdly energetic. Very energetic, like she had just drunk a carafe of coffee. Although the sensation was novel, it wasn't exactly pleasant.

It was night, and only the soft ray of the moonlight kept the darkness at bay.

Rin stood up from the hard thing she was laying on with slow breath. There, just in front of her, talking with two other people, she saw Aiden. He was close to her. Very close. Or, at least, that's how Rin perceived it. In reality, a good few meters were separating them.

“Oh, finally awake, princess?” the man said, turning to her. “And here I thought it'd take you a few more hours. All's well, though, I grew bored of waiting.”

Rin immediately winced, closed her eyes with a deep frown, and brought her hand to cover her ears. ‘Did he really need to speak so loudly?’ The words kept ringing in her mind until the man's loud footstep replaced them. She felt vibration course through her body each and every time Aiden's shoes crashed into the ground. And it kept getting worse the closer he was to her.

What was happening?

“Just try to relax, you'll get used to it over time,” Aiden reassured. “You might want to open your eyes, though.”

The voice was too loud for Rin to distinguish anything, but she opened her eyes nonetheless. Just in time. It seems Aiden wasn't the one that approached her, after all. Her reflexes acted first and brought her arms down in a defending pose before a powerful punch slammed on them and sent her crashing into a run-down wall. A little more and she would have been propelled out of the room and straight, Rin guessed, on a snow-covered street. Plus, she had the impression they weren't on the first floor of whatever building they were in right now. In other words, she could have died.

Her hands trembled from the blow and disarray assaulted her. She could only look up at her aggressor.

A boy, probably her age if not a little older. His hair was rather long for a man, reaching a little past his shoulder, colored black with a slight tint of blue, and was unkempt and messy. His facial features was plain at best. If not for his black eyes— for his ‘dead’ eyes, he was the type of person you'd forget instantly.

One look and Rin could attach the word 'Broken' to him.

He moved and she felt a chill.

No sooner had she escaped from the dent she had made on the wall that she saw it destroyed with another punch from the boy. ‘...How much strength does he have?’ Rin thought, going a bit pale. ‘No, wait, how did I...’

The boy didn't let her think. He was not only strong but also fast. Inhumanly so. Rin barely managed to avoid the punch going straight to her face. The wind that caressed her skin then made her certain she should not be able to survive even one of the boy's strikes. Her bones should have already shattered.

Another punch came in and Rin dodged to the left. She took two quick steps backward to increase the distance but the boy didn't let up. She used her right hand to deflect another blow, twisted around to avoid a kick, blocked the follow up with her forearm, and so on all the while trying to get some space.

From Rin's perspective, the boy's movements were... amateurish. He just kept swinging blows after blows relying solely on his strong physical capacity. Predicting his attack wasn't really difficult. The problem was, or at least one of them, Rin felt sluggish—No, not sluggish, more like she lost some control over her own movement. Like she was moving an unknown body entirely.

Thus, she inevitably tripped. And the boy apparently didn't know what 'mercy' meant. He kicked her right in the stomach and made her roll and cough on the ground.

“Well, I never said it was easy to adapt to my power, you know,” Aiden said in an amused tone and Rin immediately glared at him. “Aw, come on, don't look at me like that and, you know, concentrate on analyzing the situation.”

‘Power’—he said. The memory of what she had asked of the man right before losing consciousness finally settled back inside her mind. After she steadied her breathing a little, and made sure the boy had no intention of continuing his incomprehensible and one-sided assault, she looked at her hand.

The surge of energy, resisting an inhuman string of attacks, reacting and moving at an amazing speed, and the dreadful feeling of disconnection with her body.

‘...it all certainly makes sense if...’ She looked back at Aiden.

“Surprised, aren't ya?” A smirk tugged on his lips. “That's the result of my ‘Boost’— of my Singularity at play. Even I think it's pretty amazing. Though, I guess you'd need a little more practice before any if its benefit could be useful to you.”

She eyed him for a few seconds, trying to think despite the painful headache, and only then noticed Ursa's sleeping figure on the floor next to the man with a bottle of wine in her hand. If she remembered correctly, Aiden's ability was much like the Aura. The ability to increase someone else's strength, speed, sense, and probably much more to an inhuman level. If he had used his power on her, however, why couldn't she remember it? Better yet, why was she unconscious? How time had passed? Where were they? Who was this boy and why did he attack her for no reason? Was she... actually just dreaming?

Her mind was in chaos and she found it really hard to piece the puzzle together. To make it worse, it seems the unknown boy didn't like it when she was thinking. Another blur of movement later and Rin got her breath knocked out of her with a hard sensation in her stomach. Her body was flung into the air, rotated, and, with her face facing it, crashed into a wall for the second time, except she was much closer to being thrown out of the building. She could see the snowy ground outside from where she was, and if she had to guess, they were on the third floor of the building.

‘What is wrong with him!? And why are we so high?’ The new questions made her frown further.

She had her back to the boy right now but, she heard his movements. Enough was enough. Though she doubted she could do well right now, it was time to retaliate. She moved out of the wall, turned to the fast advancing boy, and threw a chunk of debris to destabilize the boy's balance.

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He shattered the rock with a simple flick of his hands, clearly unbothered.

Well, that wasn't what Rin had expected. The boy arrived, she was currently laid on the ground and certainly didn't have time to rise up. The boy lifted his feet, visibly trying to stomp on her face. She couldn't avoid this one, the wall prevented her from rolling out of the attack's path. Hence she used her hands to intercept the shoes (as expected it was filthy), and instead of letting the boy increase his stomping strength, she increased her own.

She moved her hand up the feet further to increase her hold, and, in a grand display of inhuman power, threw the boy toward the wall. The result, however, wasn't one she had expected. The boy smashed through the wall and was thrown out of the building.

Her heart instantly sank.

She felt like she was going to have a panic attack. She had only intended to make the boy lose some balance and then use the opportunity to get up.

Not...

Even from so high up, she heard the sound of the boy crashing on the ground. She stopped breathing.

“Don't worry, Rin, he won't die from something like this. Definitely a few injuries, though.” Aiden's voice brought her eyes to him. He was now slowly approaching her while gesturing for her to have a look. “His name is Edward by the way. Edward Warray. He's a quiet kid who sometimes has a mad side to him. I hope you'll get along with him.”

Rain tuned out the man's voice, hesitated but eventually took a deep breath. She rose her upper body up, moved closer to the big hole in the wall, and looked through it. There, a few meters below, she saw the boy's body wincing in pain. She instantly exhaled her breath, lost her power, and fell on the ground as all the tension escaped.

Now, that she was a little more... focused she could hear a few distant curses.

He was alive. Sh didn't kill him.

After calming her heartbeat, Rin immediately rummaged through her pocket and took out her phone. The screen was broken from the fight, but, thankfully, it still worked. She needed to call an ambulance. Right before she dialed the number, however, Aiden's hand came down and stole the phone from her.

“We don't do in ambulance, Rin. Come on that's like the basics.” He said while shaking his head.

“...What? Why?”

Aiden crouched just above her head. “Because we are criminals.” He pointed at himself and then at Rin. “Remember the deal? You work for me and I give you power.”

Rin opened her mouth yet was unable to utter a sound.

‘Right...’ Her frown slowly loosened. ‘That was my choice...’

She looked away from Aiden and looked at the run-down ceiling with a blank look.

She had taken the hand of a murderer. She took it because she wanted the power to become a Noble. It didn't make sense, now that she thought about it. How does one become a Hero by working for a Villain? And yet, as she looked at her hand and at the hole she had made on the wall, she couldn't help the slight feeling of joy welling up in her heart.

She hated herself for thinking like that.

“Aw, come on, don't make such a face. Be like Ursa, look at the positive!” Aiden stood up and approached the wall. “It's not like I'm taking you prisoner, you know? You said you wanted to play 'hero'. Go ahead. Do whatever you want. That's our motto.” Aiden looked back at her. “When the times comes—Though I don't know when that is, nor even of it will come. Life is so unpredictable, after all.—I just need you to stand as our ally.”

Rin eyed him again, trying to search for his motives. Doing whatever he wanted without caring for the consequences seemed right up Aiden's alley, but, then, why was she here? Why did he strike up a deal with her? For what reason did he want her?

More specifically:

“Why...me?”

Aiden showed his teeth in another big smile and laughed.

“Why?” He said rather quietly. “Because you're an outcast. Just like us. And because, damn, you're crazy good at martial arts.”

Rin narrowed her eyes again and Aiden laughed again.

“What... are you after?” She asked.

The man showed his teeth, showing a little bit of insanity in the action. “You wanna know, right? It's thrill!”

Rin clenched her hand and tried to stand up. It seems the man didn't want to talk.

“There's one thing I need to clarify, though.” He said, returning his gaze outside. “This power I gave you? It's strong. Crazy strong. Except for a few exceptions—like that freak,” He pointed at Ursa. “You're probably stronger than any run-of-the-mill Elite out there. However,” He increased his tone and opened his right hand in her direction.

Rin felt her entire body pulsate.

“This power is mine. Not yours. I can take it back whenever I want.”

A surge of power emanated from the man. A white-colored, transparent like energy enveloped his body as he looked once again ahead. The word Aura popped in Rin's mind. Looking at his back, she once again reminded herself that this man was extremely dangerous.

“You understand what I mean, right?”

Rin could only at his back before the man leaped off the building.

Left alone, she slowly stood on her feet again, while pondering her next course of action. Since Aiden didn't tell her to do anything, that meant he didn't need her right now, right? Ursa's figure entered her sight. Apparently, the blonde had woken up at some point and was currently rubbing her eyes while taking a sip out of the empty wine bottle in her hand.

“I bet he thinks he's so cool when he's doing that,” She said with half-open eyes and a quiet voice. “I think it's lame.”

Somehow, Rin couldn't help but overlap Celia's figure on Ursa. They gave off this same ‘idiot’ vibe that she couldn't quite describe. Though based on the report she read about her, Ursa was probably more insane than anything else. And, while she was indeed telling the truth about not being a murderer, she was, in a way, more evil—or perhaps nastier— than what should be allowed.

Rin felt a shiver through her as cold wind finally entered through the hole. She looked at the collar at her neck, her regulator, and after taking it off, confirmed that it was out of power. And thanks to her luck, she had brought no spare today and the weather was especially cold. She considered waiting in the abandoned building until it was slightly less colder but dismissed the thought after another draft of cold wind coursed through her.

‘Running it is, then.’ She concluded, wondering where exactly was her home from here.

“Oh, and morning Rin,” Ursa said after nearly sleeping again.

She looked back at Ursa with a look of realization. ‘...Right, there is Celia, too...’

She recalled the last conversation if it could be called that, that they had. Celia was an Elite, now. No, more than that, she had run away right before Celia could explain anything. And, knowing her, she was probably worried sick right now.

Rin needed to go see her, right now.

“It's... night, though,” She said after returning her gaze to the hole.

She didn't know what time it was exactly, but, the brief glimpse of the moon she could see through the snow cloud made her aware that the sun wasn't going to go up any time soon.

‘Ah,’ Another hit of realization struck her as she rummaged through her pocket. ‘Aiden took my phone...’