Bleached sand, sprawling dunes, a starless sky, and a pale, cold moon.

He knew this place, intimately—he didn't remember what it was. He only knew that it had been home, once. There was a great hunt and greater pain. There was panic and the glint of claws and fangs and more and more pain.

He fled. He fled from home, like a beaten dog. But they came after him, now with the silver of steel.

He killed those that stood before him, trembling fools one and all, but they would not relent. He broke the veil between worlds and left them chasing ghosts but they would not relent.

He delved where no one went before him, let his pursuers be devoured by the insatiable Surge. But more came and more died, and they would NOT relent.

So he had to go deeper, dive farther, crack the walls between dimensions open like bone. He gave them their chase, and with it, he gave all of himself.

Cleaved by jagged realities, torn by man-made weapons, and harried by the treachery of his kin, he was but a sliver now.

And he laughed because he was alive. Maybe only just, and his soul was slack in the grip that was his will, and he was hurt more than he ever had been—but he was alive. Alive enough to slip away and build what was lost anew.

It was a good time to sleep, to dream of the bleached sand, the sprawling dunes, a starless sky, and a pale, cold moon.

Soon he would wake again, he knew he would, and then he just needed to eat and grow strong again.

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All was quiet again. It was only Akio, the alley, and the broken brat; let's forget the other rubbish for the moment. This had not been part of his pre-planned and relaxing outing. The displeasure rumbled a deep note in his chest that needed release.

"Fucking brats. It always has to be these buck-toothed motherfuckers. Fucking animals. Snotty shits left, right and fucking center," he hissed under his breath.

He abhorred the little pests. Always on his case. Always putting their noses where they don't belong! Butting in whenever things were going his way, for once in his damned life!

And they always managed to... to crawl out from somewhere, someplace, and get all up in his business. Again and again and again. It wasn't his fault that they looked at him the way they did. It was theirs! It had been their fault, since forever!

Pimple-Eyes this, Leatherface that, worse things he dared not think of. The vile little shits, oh, how they kept insulting him. They always did, even if they didn't. He could see it in their faces, he could see it in their beady, evil eyes. Mongrels, one and all. The beasties threw rocks at him and when that didn't work they threw them in his way. They were the reason he couldn't go Pro! They denounced him when he wasn't looking. They lied to the teachers! They took from him the single good thing his Quirk had given him.

How people put children, willingly, on this damned earth he would never know. But he would do right by them, that he would, and teach these... godawful creatures a lesson.

He was Akio, otherwise known as 'Silence', and with his god-given talent, he would be the stick and the cane that today's monstrous brats needed. One or two might break and fold, but that was life and this was his calling.

Now it was only a matter of skipping cities and laying low and singing small. He just needed to clean up after himself and be on his way.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

But really, he had been unlucky today. He didn't catch just one, but two of the snot-nosed rats moseying about in his playtime. This city had become a much better place right away. Bagging two brats and some wanna-be, hypocrite of a hero. He would sleep good tonight.

“Yes, yes, clean up and we. Are. Good.”

A twitch at the edge of his vision had him spin back around.

The boy, the ugly mutt with the shivers, was convulsing. He was rattling about like a fish on land and it was quite disturbing to watch—inasmuch as it managed to disturb him, which wasn't all that much, for clarity's sake. Yes, it was weird, no, he wasn't scared.

Now, Akio was many things, but he was never a cruel man. He was just, unlike those addlepated insects by his feet.

It would take just one more, good old-fashioned thrashing, and then it would be lights out and bye-bye for the kid.

Languidly, for this was a luxury in its own right, his tongue slithered its way out. With great care the powerful limb wrapped around the trembling body. A small part of him chided his carelessness: surely the fizzing spittle at the boy's lips and the exponentially worsening pallor of his skin portend of a disease of some sort. Probably worms or something equally disturbing.

Whatever. It would be tomorrow's Akio's problem.

Hoisted back in the air again, so tiny and frail and easy to crush, he was about to make good on the latter; when the chiming and clinking of chains made him pause.

It was a melody, haunting in the lonesome and silent alley, of steel on steel.

Suddenly there was pain. Bright, alive pain that thundered down his elongated tongue. A fire burned his empowered limb, acid ate away at his flesh, mucous was scorched into slag by whatever eldritch flame was at work here.

Involuntary he dropped the slack brat and carefully rolled his wounded tongue up. Almost as an afterthought, he noticed the length of steel links trailing the falling body.

His great eyesight gave him ample time to watch hundreds of tiny, razor-teethed mouths opening up on the metal. The teeth clicked up a storm and hundreds of grey tongues lolled out and... tasted the air it seemed.

Akio was not a pious man, at best of times his belief was evinced by using God's name in conjunction with whatever slur was zipping through his mind at that moment. This, however, was different.

"Jesus Christ and all that's holy," and if that wasn't enough, in a mockery of the crippling he trounced the boy with, the kid's body began to crack and pop more violently than before. Limbs spasmed and bent in inhumane ways, joints popped like kernels on a hot pan; arms and legs, they bashed and bashed against the stone, and to his surprise, the stone gave way in a smattering of splinters.

A shiver dawned and crept along his back, from neck to toes it sent his mind running. He had no time left, not when the boy was living through some kind of Quirk-related exorcism.

The only choice left was to flee. Fortunately, his Quirk made that one a breeze.

After a moment of concentration, his field of unawareness receded from a dome into a wetsuit of pseudo-invisibility. Every inch of skin was covered in his Quirk's metaphysical ability to shunt any form of focus off of him or designated areas, and then he spun on his heel and ran off. This was his power and it suited him just as well after what abomination his Quirk had turned him into. Being a form of mutant-reverse-chameleon had its upsides after all.

But, it was too late.

Akio felt eyes lock onto him, even before he rounded the first corner. A baleful, malicious gaze swept over his back and left ice in its wake.

A collective gasp rang out from the noisy pedestrians that had suddenly become aware of the alley that had always been there.

He didn't need to look to know who it was that they were seeing, or rather, what they were seeing. Yet, he had to turn, needed to. Something compelled him, a force that was primeval in nature: to glimpse into the unknown, albeit another part of him was begging him not to.

Limbs contorted beyond human-likeness, every muscle squirming beneath skin that was too tight; sporting a length of animated chain from his chest, chomping wildly at the air; hands with fingers like the gnarled branches of a dead tree...

Whatever humanity was left in the boy after he had dropped him to the pavement was gone.

That thing, that sallow... ghoul wearing human skin, was not of this world. Sure he was exaggerating a bit, but the sight truly made wetting himself a reasonable course of action.

He had thought he knew malice and hate and spite and all the vices that bore evil like him. After all, he had lived a life of pure mockery. He was spiteful. He was hateful. He hated how his 'friends' had treated him. He hated his miserable life and all the million reasons why he couldn't have the cool fire or ice or whatever-Quirk.

This was different.

This was hate in its uncompromised form. It didn't hate him for this or that contrived reason. It just did not, in any shape or form, think him entitled to keep on living.

It was pure in a way.

And it had been crystallized into two soulless, abyssal eyes, trained right on him.