What is the main difference between a fiction hero and a real hero?

Real heroes get tired.

And I’m not merely talking about running low on stamina in the middle of a fight. I’m talking about deep exhaustion derived from constant heroing, in general. Whether that is stopping the bad guys from killing civilians, planning the best way to evacuate a building or dealing with a hostage situation; the physical and mental stress builds up bit by bit until you find yourself with more problems than you can shake your stick at and no way of dealing with them whatsoever.

So making sure you get a break from time to time is always important.

Not even Villains are excused from this.

-Excerpt from an interview to the Hero AntiDragon after he collapsed from exhaustion in Day 3

To Lawrence, there were but a few things in this world that he would risk his life for.

One of them was, without a doubt, his bed’s mattress.

He didn’t know what it was made from. Luck had paid him a visit on a random day when, browsing the net in the look for his next job, he had stumbled upon one of those weird forum announcements about doing stuff for free as a hobby. In his case, it was mattresses. Leaving the oddness of the whole matter aside, and part of it as a joke, he had requested the fluffiest, comfiest mattress the post’s author could make.

He did not regret it.

Lately, he had been too busy to properly enjoy his mattress. This past Wakening Season hadn’t been exactly part of his plans. What with being mugged. And the minion thing. And half of his house blown to pieces. And him getting tangled into a conspiracy to take down the local Yakuza.

To be honest, it would have taken a divination power to expect something like that. And an appointment with the psychologist.

And stress pills.

But he was past all of that now! He was finally allowed to take a break. Resting a bit. Not worrying about construction companies or smuggling or anything too stressful. He would deal with all of that later. Right now, it was just him, his mattress, and a couple of hours’ worth of almost but not quite sleeping.

…

Yeah right. Like things actually worked like that.

“CHIEEEEF!!! We’re outta cereals! And milk! And toilet paper!!”

God fucking damnit, can’t a man rest properly on his house any longer?!

“Go look for them yourself…!”

The image of a ninja girl splitting a store clerk in half because “these cereals taste funny” suddenly came into his mind.

“On a second thought, I’m better off doing it myself.”

Lawrence sighed. It pained him to abandon this sanctuary of peace, but alas. Breakfast wouldn’t buy itself. So instead of just rolling in bed clinging his sheets and mumbling, he did that and then crawled away from bed like the decent person he was.

He went downstairs as slow as his feet would allow him (without the prospect of stumbling and making the rest of the way down rolling.) There was something in the air that made him feel… nostalgic. Coming from everywhere. It was the scent of old furniture, cement walls and human inhabiting. He had been living in this house for years, yet it was now, after all that happened, that he realized what “home, sweet home” really meant.

And his home had never felt sweeter.

It didn’t help that that peace was hanging on a wire thinner than a hair. And not nearly as resistant.

“Nope! I am not worrying about any of that! I’ll take a break now. Maybe a week or two. Depending on how much Chase takes to reach out for me.” The last few days had been horrendously exhausting, mentally more so than physically, and keeping up the pace with no slowdowns would be trying to outrun a lightning bolt. Besides, who said criminal masterminds need to be on the move all the time?

What do criminal masterminds do, anyways?

What was he supposed to do?

Questions for later. Right now the only question he was willing to make was “where is the closest FloorMart?” and “How much for this cereal box?”

Unsurprisingly, he found Mika on the living room, sprayed on the sofa with a bowl of the last remaining cereal and milk in one hand and the remote control in the other. Unsurprisingly as well, she was wearing nothing but a blanket. Again.

“How many times do I have to tell you to use clothes properly when you’re not alone? We are in the middle of the winter. You will catch a cold if you continue like this. Put some proper clothes on…” he said, reaching for the fridge in the adjacent kitchen-dining room and fetching an apple for himself. He wasn’t willing to go out with nothing on his stomach.

Normally, one would be surprised if they found a half-naked girl on their couch. Fortunately, this is not a smut story. Lawrence didn’t even consider Mika anything more than an overgrown child. And he had literally plucked her from inside the couch before. There were few things to be surprised about her anymore.

Should he be worried he was getting used to things like that?

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

…Nahhh.

Probably not.

“I’ll be leaving to run some errands. Anything happens, give me a call with the smart watch. You will figure out how. I hope. Any doubts you have, go to Emma’s and ask her for help. For God’s sake put on some clothes.”

“’Kay.”

“Then, I’ll be going.”

…

I hope Miss Emma doesn’t take it bad on me for using her as babysitter.

…Nah. It’s probably fine.

Yeah…

Winter hadn’t softened up in the past few days. If anything, it got worse. Worne YK was constantly blanketed in snow, and wind was chilling to the bones. Lawrence considered using his super suit, since it appeared to be not only filth-proof, but temperature-regulated and ventilated as well.

One of the few advantages of the suit being a result of one of his Features and not something hand-made or bought.

Looking like a circus ringmaster was kind of a downside though.

In the end, he decided against it.

The FloorMart turned out to be surprisingly close. It was even closer than the Cloudsweet, actually. Which would make things easier to carry. Lawrence remembered the time he had to help Ms. Rose with her groceries. He did not wished to repeat that experience again.

It was… unremarkable. Just your typical two store concrete building. He definitively wouldn’t have noticed if he was jogging through the sidewalk. The doors opened with a nice “beep” and he was let inside a seemingly endless hallway full of shelves brimming with everyday products. Luckily for him, the cereal boxes were in a shelf nearby. The price was… affordable, if not cheap. The milk cartons were lined up in the opposite shelve. And the toilet paper was… Not in sight. Lawrence sighed and walked up to the register box. There was a bored-looking store clerk tapping on his phone, looking like they didn’t pay him enough for what he did.

“Ehh… Sir?”

“Hm?” The store clerk left whatever he was doing, turning his head to Lawrence. “Oh! Sorry, sorry. What can I help you with?”

“Do you have toilet paper here?”

The store clerk laughed. “This is FloorMart. Of course we have toilet paper. It’s in the second row left, middle section. If I were you, I would buy the purple ones. Better quality for the same price” he pointed at a shelve a few rows away.

“Oh, that’s good to know, I guess. Thanks.” Lawrence smiled. Talking with someone without having to put on a charade of some kind was… relaxing. In here, he was… just a civilian.

He also felt strangely… nervous. Like this was… wrong, in some unsettling way.

Nononono, this is perfectly normal!

Maybe the last week had taken a toll bigger than he expected.

Shaking his head, Lawrence headed to the shelve the store clerk had pointed him, passing through piles of hair conditioner, liquid soap, and (oddly enough) little cat figurines with a robotic paw and eye.

He remembered those from… somewhere.

Finally, he found the purple toilet paper packages and grabbed one.

And…

…Nothing happened.

“What am I expecting? A hand sanitizer suddenly coming to life and biting me?”

Yeah, that was really-

“?!”

In the time he rummaged through the several hygiene items in display, two people had entered the store. One of them was a woman he felt vaguely familiar with, a blonde young beauty wearing glasses. Seeing her gave him goosebumps, but he didn’t remember hercompletely. And it was the other one who grabbed his attention.

It was a man wearing a hoodie (no caterpillar here) and a facial mask. He was wearing gloves, and looked just like any random mugger in those movies. Everything about him was utterly suspicious, and Lawrence didn’t doubt that this one was up to no good. But then the guy literally snuck his hand on the blonde lady’s purse.

What was weird about that?

Well, the fact that the purse was closed, and he snuck his hand throught it. Not inside it. Then he grabbed her wallet and put it on one of his hoodie’s pockets.

Lawrence gawked. The lady didn’t seem to notice, and apparently it wasn’t this man’s first time on this kind of thing, because he walked onto the counter with all the confidence in the world, asking for one of the cat figurines. And something about a jester figurine. Lawrence was left there, staring silently at the man, while the woman waited patiently behind him for her turn.

Did nobody see that?!

He looked around. Nope. No one. He was the only soul who had witnessed the crime. Well, him and the criminal per se, but he wasn’t about to turn himself right in, was he?

What to do? Should he do the right thing? Should he tell someone? Should he alert the police? Or maybe, maybe he could pretend none of this had happened? Why risk himself? What could a normal civilian do against a Meta…?

And then it clicked.

Of course.

That was what was bothering so much.

He was no longer a civilian.

He was a bone fide Criminal Mastermind on his way to world dominion.

Of course he was feeling so strange! He was being… civilian-ish. He had heard about it before. The tingling of Metas. The Supers’ Twitch. Once a Meta, always a Meta. He no longer belonged to the world of common people.

It was something that was already lost for him.

And truth being told? He didn’t care at all.

I have to get used to my status. I have a minion under my command. I have an ally to make deals with. And I have enemies to beware of all the time. But most importantly, I have a status to maintain. And, wasn’t my goal to make of the world a fairer place?

Let’s start by taking out the trash.

Unconsciously, Lawrence smiled. The twitch was growing stronger. It was the first time he had felt it, and yet it felt like an old friend visiting. Or, was it? Looking back, he wondered. What about the bloodthirst he had felt when fighting Chase’s men in the sewers? What the excitement when he negotiated with Chase himself? It took everything his Features had to offer for him to stop smiling. And there he was again.

Was it the result of linking to the System? Or was it Lawrence’s repressed eccentricity?

Who knew? Who cared?

Of course, he was still on his sane mind. He wasn’t about to make a fuss… Not out of this, at least. No, he was still a Criminal Mastermind. Stealth and discression were a given. But who said one cannot be a show-off discretely?

Lawrence smiled again.

“Why, hello sir! Perhaps you could show me those jester figurines? They sound quite interesting!” He approached the wallet thief with all the confidence in the world, backed up by his Chaos Borne feature. The man looked at him warily, seeking for any holes on his suspicious demeanor, but Lawrence’s acting, bolstered by the Supers’ Twitch that had finally caught up, was rock as solid. Considering he wasn’t threat, he nodded and led him to one of the farthest row of shelves.

Perfect!

“Alright, so these are from a book that- guHAGH?!” Lawrence’s fist connected with the man’s face, launching him into a nearby shelve. The physical boost provided by the Conqueror’s Spark was still strong and going, it seemed. A rain of miscellaneous items crashed upon the mugger, burying him between canned meat and figurines.

Ooh! Is that an Axe Princess figurine? My, what an unexpected development! And why am I thinking in this strange tone?

Bah, something to care for later. Now! To admonish punishment to this man…!

Oh, no. He remembered. He wasn’t going to make a fuss. Now the store clerk was coming…

Oh, well. He would have to fix it somehow.

The man was standing up. Lawrence grabbed him by the shoulder and shoved him in a wall, locking eyes with him. “You tripped with one of the shelves” he said, eyes gleaming a disturbing tone of purple as he used his charisma to the max effect, effectively mind-tricking the thief into believing his words as he recovered the blonde woman’s wallet. The next moment, the store clerk showed up in a corner.

“Sir? Everything alright?”

“This man tripped with one of the shelves. I merely stood by to help him up.”

“O-Oh, I see… sir, are you alright?”

“Uh… uh… sure?”

“Good. Then please make sure to put all the items back on their place. All of them” the store clerk said with quite an eerie look.

“Of course, you will, will you not?” Lawrence seconded the look, which felt even scarier. What with the madness-purple glowing eyes.

The thief seemed to shrink back on his place.

“Y-Yes?!”

“Good lad”

Today was shaping into a good day, after all.