The streets were dark, what few lights left unscathed by entropy were spotty and frankly just adding more shadows. Seth walked out a side door of his apartment, cap kept low to cover his hair, scarf pulled high to cover his face. He had to be ambiguous, keep his apartment off the gang’s radar as best he could. Reprisals were a fact of life he’d rather avoid. Walking a few alleys over, he exited into the main street and crossed it without worry. No one goes out at night without backup or a death wish, so no one will bat an eye at a lone shadow crossing with purpose. He doubled back to the corner, the blood on the sidewalk was still there. And tinging the air with an all too familiar memory. But this grotesque breadcrumb trail was the only path he had. Leading straight to the murderer who thought they were safe.
The side streets worsened as the main grew distant. Abandoned buildings on all sides, no lights beyond ramshackle pop ups, and the ever present feeling of being watched. Seth walked the blood trail, hands buried in his coat pockets, head low to keep his gaze unknown. He didn’t need his eyes to get his bearing anyway, or to know there were people following him. An errant footfall in an alley, crackling glass in a nearby hovel, a slightly too dark shadow. He was in their territory, and they didn’t like it. But they kept their distance, watched him walk the trail straight to its origin. A final staining pool, dried to clumps and form fitting clots, a distressingly familiar sight. And smell. But one far fresher and accented by the slight addition of gunpowder. Although the dilapidated sewer nearby was making him regret even breathing.
He scanned the ground, but only the trail away told a story he could read. But he didn’t need to look for answers. An electrical spark, a flipped switch. The kitbashed streetlight over him crashed on, violent fluorescent hum illuminating this street corner stage. Figures in the dark creeping from their blinds, shadows accented by wielded instruments. Three in behind, one a brighter spot than the other two, another electric super. Two more ahead, a slight sheen on the left one, the other emitting a solid rattling sound every time they took a step. One final sauntering up on his left from the street. He was surrounded, but his opponents still hesitated just outside their spotlight.
“Hey… whatch ya looking for?”
The man on his left, still stood in the street and leaning a pipe on his shoulder seemed to be the leader.
“Don’t feel like talking? Too intimidated?”
The punk walked onto the stage, hoodie, jeans, and a half assed smirk. Reminded Seth a little of Razor. In over his head and bluffing through it.
“Well!? You just going to stand there or-“
“The man you murdered here…”
The punk’s smirk hardened as Seth spoke, an edge tainting a little too much.
“Did you think you were safe from the consequences?”
The group flinched, they were afraid of this, they were all complicit. The punk took a step back. Far too late.
“HE’S A FUCKING DOC-“
As Seth slammed into him head first.
A ringing head-butt recoiled him off his feet, startled the rest like this was some middle school drama class. Untrained and laughable reaction times crawling along, even in his waned and wounded perception. One from the back, the electric super was fastest, a tire iron trying to swing wide. The electricity in his body seemed disproportionate, unfocused. DC flow amid AC hardware. It leaked into the iron as he swung, but what hope did it have. Seth chopped the corner of the iron as he stepped into his strike, sending it flying out of his hand into the stage’s brick backdrop. His other hand pressed to the super’s chest, exerting control they didn’t have. The power dissipated with an imperceptible degaussing as his chopping hand slammed back forward in a balled fist. He was knocked away as the wind shot out of his lungs.
The man with the sheen over him tried to press the distraction, the rattling one close behind. Once in the light it was clear the sheen had substance, like full body laminate. The rattling one was a woman with bony and spiky plates over her body, like natural armor. Both wearing… matching leather jackets? Seth didn’t care, they were needed on the ground. Switching back, he ducked under the shiny unbalanced haymaker the man threw, bring his own on their gut. The laminate squeaked as it and the man crinkled. The bone rattler tried to strike Seth’s extended arm, intent a breaking it in half. But his arm squeaked out of the laminate under her slow armored arm and hooked it. He slid close, grabbed her caught hand with his, kicked her foot out, and spun her around. Bony fingers squeaked off laminate as she tried to grab hold of the crumpling human gym floor, but found herself facing him again as she was spun back round. At speed. An irksome cacophony followed as they were flung to the ground together.
The last two squared up as Seth came off his spin, a pipe and a baseball bat shakily brandished. They seemed unpowered, but unwilling to give up. The girl on the right struck first, obscuring umpire armor keeping her protected. Her bat stopped its wide swing in Seth’s hand, to her muffled shock. The man swung his pipe, from the opposite side, scrap metal armor clanging as it too stopped in the other hand. The two found themselves pulled forward with their weapons and bashed across their protected faces with them, as Seth forced them forward like he’d done to Maglev. Heavy armor weighed them over as they fell back, their weapons adding matching concrete drum beats. The lot on the ground, Seth let his perception fold to the sounds of the groaning gang. Only for it to shoot back up under fearful desperate glare.
The starting click of a hammer being pulled, an old style revolver. A quick glance to the side showed the potholed pavement empty, the punk back up and looking to kill again.
‘Fuck you!’
A fast twirl, right extended, left doubling back hard. The punk didn’t even have time to pull the trigger as the right gripped the stubby barrel and the left slammed the revolving cylinder proper. A metal flash and the cylinder embedded into the backdrop, leaving nothing but an empty barrel for that hammer to strike pitifully. And a disarmed murderer drowning in the deep shit he’d just jumped in! Seth pulled him in, no time or wisdom to let go. A short reverse sweep threw out his legs, a hand brought high and balled hard, and all his weight used against him as he was slammed to the ground. With all the fury this resolve had marked him as deserving and all the fire matching into that guilty heart.
The stage almost cracked, but the punk’s spine wasn’t far off. The hand that brought him down yanked him back up by the hoodie strings, the punk hacking for air. Seth knelt down to him, but kept the air and the other fist high and wanting to bash his head off if given the chance. He watched the bruise over his nose from his head-butt fade from the punk’s face, he had healing power it seemed.
‘Good! It’s time to answer!’
The healing punk opened his mouth first between coughs.
“When the *ghu* hell did the Dockers get a s-supe!? You boys are supposed to hate us?”
Seth squinted at him under his cap, trying to keep a bit of menace.
“What the fuck is a Docker?”
The punk looked shocked, broken teeth realigning as he worked out his confusion.
“W-wait… you’re not retaliation? Then what the fuck was this shit about!?”
Seth yanked him close and poured all that menace down on him.
“I’m here because you shot a man in the street and tossed his still bleeding corpse on the main road like it was nothing!!!”
His eyes flared their unconscious blue outline, the fire trying to mask his pain leaking out bad. The punk cowered, but-
“The fuck you mean nothing!? Hell we didn’t even shoot him! He shot at us!!”
Seth’s glow dimmed, menace replaced by confusion.
“What are you new here? That fucker was a Docker looking for marks! We didn’t make it 3 feet before he shot at us for trying to tell him to scram! Hell, we only killed him by accident! We tried to wrestle the gun out of his hands and the idiot cut his own throat on one of Masty’s spikes!”
The menace waned, the grip on the hoodie strings losing out as he pulled out of the punk’s face. Honest eyes refuting his assertions.
“And the fuck else are we gonna do with the body, leave it to rot! You see how many potholes are in this street! You think an ambulance is gonna make it out here!?”
The masking fire dimmed away, Seth’s grip too loose to keep the punk up. He slipped back and banged his hooded head on the concrete.
“Ahhh!”
The punk rubbed his doubtlessly healing head.
“The fuck you think we are, fucking pushers? Hell we’re practically neighborhood watch!”
Seth leaned back up, looking around at the ‘gang’ that still sorely sat on the ground around him, seeing them as they truly were. They were younger than he was, the unpowered pair looking more like teenagers with-
“QUAK!!!”
A sudden wall of white feathers flinched Seth back, springing forth between him and the scrap armored hoodlum. A squeaky growl rising with a feathery ruffled neck. A… a duck just squarely perched on his squirming knee. Its ire marking him like so much blood already stained his hands. But none of the others bore this same ire, none of the malice that should be expected, none of the hate that should have come from being beaten down and wronged. His own ire melting hard and contorting closed in a massive backlash of utter-
‘god… fucking DAMN IT!!!”
He crumpled over, hands trying to shelter his whole head from the abject carnage left in the moral wake. A knowing hand already leaving this behind to stifle the inevitable flare up from his guilt ready to turn this fuckup into total backfire. The punk pulled himself back and up, still holding his spine a little as it creaked back into place.
“Fuck man… *crack* We were scared you were here to get back, but if your just an *owe* overly strong newbie, then hell I’d say we were lucky.”
The flare showed mercy as Seth slumped back up off the ground and took a desperately releasing breath trying to fucking not be in this situation as much as he was.
“Huggghhh… Fuuuuuck!”
He stared back down at the punk, all his menace deflated out of him, all the edgy heroics burned away by reality smacking him in the face. The punk wasn’t lying, no more bluffs or bluster on his face. Just honest truth that turned hero to villain for no good reason.
“I’m… sorry.”
He couldn’t help but grit his teeth as he couldn’t help but talk to himself under his breath.
“I try to be a hero one fucking time and I- Fuck that up too!!”
Hand ready at his chest, set to stifle another physical guilt trip waiting to crash over him. But it never came. The punk smiled at him, still a little wryly.
“Hey it’s alright, you’re just doing what everyone does when they come here. Shits just not… Well it’s a little black and white, just not THAT black and white. Ya know?”
Seth still couldn’t help but rub his face in humiliation as the rest of the crew stood up, not worse for wear but pretty beaten.
“Ugghgrrrr… I fucking hate this place! What the hell even is a Docker anywa-“
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“AAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!”
A scream from a few streets over threw Seth out of his embarrassment Someone was meeting the black rather than the greyish white. The glow in his eyes returned and his perception skyrocketed back into focus. Before the knocked down hoodlums could react as well, he was gone from their stage and taking a monumental step over them.
“Hey!! Hey wait that’s Docker territ-“
Seth hit the corner past the crew and the concrete exploded behind, shooting him down the darkened side street. There wasn’t any ambiguity this time, and there wasn’t going to be an ache to cut him down.
The territory swiftly changed for the worse. The dim lights turned nonexistent, the road to practically gravel, and much of the buildings to molding skeletons. But the screaming did not relent. An alleyway between still standing buildings, little more than concrete blocks. Seth could sense six… seven people, a few bulkier than normal. No obvious powers, but plenty of weapons. And a woman being carried off against her will.
He slid to a stop at the alley entrance, into a new stage light set far and deep in, the withered concrete below no match for excess speed. A smattering group lined the alley and headed into that light, close confines only good for two people side by side. None of them were facing him, none of them even cared about, none but the woman struggling over the shoulder of one of the bulkier goons. Her eyes full of tears as she beat against his back, and as they locked with Seth’s. An odd green hue dazzling in her hair as it draped like some sick curtain call. She had powers, just more than likely nothing useful. But none of that mattered, she was in trouble. Seth stepped off his recoil with an echoing crack, only now drawing the marginal reaction these goons could muster as the alley resounded with his challenge.All of it far too slow.
The concrete exploded again, his shoes were not having a good day, but neither were the last goons in line. A wanton roundhouse flew between them, heel slamming face backward and off their feet. The next goon got the other shoe to the back of the head as it wheeled up and around to plant on their shoulder. Twirling momentum carrier Seth over, turning this falling nobody into an excellent backstop. The goon was shot back as he kicked off, the rest of the group’s reactions finally maturing.
A pipe swung away at him, but Seth was a notorious grounder, skimming under the swing and swiveling about ahead of the batter. A momentum fueled fist slamming them in the side and off his follow through. He ducked low again as a real bat swung for his head, the over bulked wielder a tad faster than his compatriots and taking near up the whole alley. Kicking back and sweeping hard, Seth narrowly skimmed the wall as he kicked the feet out from both these wastes of space. But he felt like pitching a bit more. Shoe scraping to tatters he cut his momentum faster than the goon could fall, lurching under and shouldering overblown back before it could hit the ground. A tattered shoe slammed back down, and another goon coming up to bat unprepared. Trashed concrete cracked, and a bulk goon was catapulted into his friend. As they crunched together, last goon turned about, free hand trying to pulled up a poorly concealed handgun. Seth was still fast, but not bullet fast. He rounded the heap of trash humanity and swung wide with his left as the gun came up to battery. The exposed hammer behind its slide found only a finger to strike. The goon’s arm found another hand pulling it in from the elbow. And his knee found itself displaced under him. The last goon whipped down, excessive weight cracking free shoulder, and his hand rendered lighter as his weapon found a new master. As it bit off a bit of what it found and came back down on this piece of shit’s head, pistol whipping his meat filled skull out cold.
Seth’s perception finally folded, a slight unsteady balance as it came off. It was nowhere near what he used to have, but he still used quite a bit of energy to kick the shit out of-
“LOOK OUT!!!”
The woman was off her kidnapper and pointing as that genuine bat came round at Seth’s head. A flashed up block cracked as his opposite shoulder followed suit in the alley wall. He hoped that sound was the wood splintering apart, but the pinch and stab sure made it seem like it was his arm. The launched bulk had gotten back up, retaliation in his eyes and a fairly shattered bat getting tossed from his hands balling up. Seth kicked his knee out, but an opposing left rang his head off the wall. He was stumbled in front of the woman, vision resetting and ear ringing. Whatever the hell they put this guy on, it was effective. The rest of the goons shook off their respective injuries as the bulk goon pushed himself off the wall to tower over. Seth set his forearm back in place and shook his vision back in focus, but his reserves were draining and the local grid threadbare. And the other goons were not too keen on keeping this a brawl. Actually well concealed guns pulled from pockets and waist bands, but the death in their eyes sure didn’t seem to care for the bulk blocking their shots.
“KILL THIS FUCKER!!!”
The bulk only had time to turn his head befoe- *CRACK* a slug slammed his shoulder, collateral damage and comradery were foreign concepts to these- *CRAK*
“GGAAHH!!”
A shot kicked and splattered Seth’s shin, what perception he could build up lost in the oncoming hail. The only recourse left to guard for his life, and the woman’s behind. And to hope they- *CRAKCRAKCRAK*
“AAHHHH!!!”
The dark side of the alleyway was flashed to life, cracks turning the air to knives, and pain coloring the drab grey to red. Rounds missed and sparked, splattered what unlucky flesh they cared to hit. The bulk fell to the side, head popped open without a care as viscera aerosolized. The woman shielded herself, scrunching up as tight as she could, but errant ricochets scathed and invalidated her fear. The only one still upright was Seth. Lead shattering on and splintering hardened bone, splattering and cutting reinforced flesh, and burying itself in doubled muscle. Organs were battered, the unlucky perforated, a twice rebuilt heart really wasn’t liking getting beat to shit by wanton metal. Threads flared and flailed infinitesimally, their linkages breaking faster than they could heal. And all the pain throwing Seth over the limit. His only saving grace- *click click click* was they only carried so much ammo.
The alleyway was stained and pockmarked, air a steady falling mist of smoke and crimson. Seth’s knee gave out and splashed the pool growing at his feet. His shielding arms shaking low, strength waning away as torn tendons took their toll. He could feel the cold again, that draining spread sapping at his core. He just had fewer holes all the way through him. His electron threads kept him together, sealed what they could, caught what hit and dissipated as best they could. But they couldn’t keep up as the cold refused to abate. The splintering bone beneath stabbed at his every move. His lungs were drowning as traitorous ribs cut into them and complicated repairs. He was sure a kidney wasn’t there anymore. But he could still feel his heart beat, the warmth leaving him with every relentless strike, guilt overridden by real physical wounds.
But for some reason… even in this cold bleeding spread… he couldn’t feel his life wane away. The pain was hollowing, smothering his mind, his mundane senses dying away, but the world… The world was getting brighter like never before. His would be murderers rendered luminous, nerve signals highlighting them beyond what he could stand. But the alleyway turned brighter still. Dim and close at first, but the ground, the walls, the discarded trash, even the lifeless body of the bulk goon ahead of him. All of it shined like the energy he’d sensed, used, pushed… and pulled. The electrons of the material world surrounded him, showed themselves as if by purpose, as if by realization too deep to reach. A deep… feeling far… too… empty…
“Ever?”
“Ever!!”
“Ever.”
“Ever…”
What is that? He’s calling, he misses me!! An awakening of his true nature, driven by pain and suffering. *Yawn* So then… he is learning he can do little to escape what he is…
Why do I feel it so closely? He must really want me back!! Perhaps he has given in, but such a connection could not withstand such distance. Hrrgghh… That oaf’s anger is as contagious as always… But it still has phenomenal applications…
Why is my prison vibrating? It’s so tingly!! A rather novel possibility, my tomb as a mast to latch and listen in. Or to expand my reach beyond its plinth. This world is still too noisy… And pompous…
Why do they hate power? Why do they lump my achievements in with him? They must not know, must not care. I want to show them!! I want to!! And hey… All this excitement has gotten me hungry…
“”””Again””””
The electron world surrounding him froze solid, blood loss or blood lust throwing his perception beyond its limits. The bastards had so little a care for anything but themselves that they would kill their own people to get back at their enemies! It felt deeper than that but Seth wasn’t really focusing on them right now. The world around him was drowning it all out, the hum and harmony of the electrons held tight by their atoms all around him turned his senses to fuzz and static. His mundane sight waning away, his okay hearing ringing its fray, olfactory senses pushed aside and muddled, and his world losing balance. But… something new was cutting through in their place. A tone, a rhythm. Radiant and concentric in its expansion. Deep sources and rising through every inch. A hum, his hum, his tune. The song of his threads, their ebb, their flow. His perception tightening in tune, turning static to sheet music, turning glare and shine to fields of starlight in set shape and form. And material substance. And kept going till only those rustling beads of curried energy were all that remained of this world.
His hand, the barest inch from the ground, touched down. And the hum of his threads flash out without care of what song it interrupted. Corrupting, stealing, wresting away the energy locked up in the concrete below. A in a single frame of this overdriving perception. The resonance that siphons given reign over what it hungered for. The highlighted goons returned from the cacophonous fuzz. But in the same instant they became clear… they disappeared.
His perception folding like a car crash, gravity pulling him down and the sudden filling of the pit in his stomach throwing him about. But the abrupt dusting of a perfect circle in the ground around him colored this satiety. He lurched off the slight drop and looked down, the holes left in his arms, the shattered bone underneath, it all healed as a resurgence of power came in. He’d pulled power from matter, solid inert concrete, and filled the gaps in his threading. Bones reset, organs and flesh healed back together. But that emptiness stayed and filled like so much hunger before. He looked up from the pit of dust he now sat in, eyes burning with a reacquired plasma. And a will failing to find mercy for what had been done. For what had been unleashed.
The world froze again, the murderous cretins offered no time to understand their doom! The world resolved better this time, stayed highlighted in its atomic existence. The stifled hums of infinite structures overshadowed by the resonance of a being ascending too fast. He rose from the pit, focus keeping the air around him from being rent to nothing. A barely holding out shoe touched solid concrete, a harmonious hand stretched out to the side, and the world stopped being so still. As a new disregarding of physics was perpetrated.
Seth was outside the alley again, momentum beyond all reckoning descending on already obliterated shoes. The alley was frozen for only a moment longer, but the gravity of what had been done was falling at last. The air did not rend and rebound, focus relenting and letting it tear asunder and add its fill. Desperate molecules and atoms now bereft of their outer layers and hardly affected by his instantaneous passing. The would-be kidnappers though… were not so lucky. A caustic blue path burned into the air followed from each to its final end point in his hand. And thus reality set in.
No real time between them, nor density or structure left to their existence. The faceless, pitiless, disregarded goons splattered to nothing against collaterally dusted walls. Spaces in what was once matter shot back with relieved density and devastating force. Atomic dust, bereft of connection and attraction much like the laceroids’ demise, stained the walls as the alleyway a new clinging black. As it was rocked by a hollow wake. Nothing left of the ones who tried to kill him, who dared to-
“GAhhhrr!!”
The pain in Seth’s chest returned with almighty vengeance as his perception folded down to nothing, flashes invading his overdriven mind and dissipating before he could understand or even see. Emotions, senses, prejudices, “What’s for dinner?”, the favorite couch in the Hotbox, “You’ll be what your meant to be!!”, this kink in my neck, “KILL THIS FUCKER!!!”
“HUUUuuhhhh!!”
Seth held his head as he shook uncontrollably, the flashes melding about and melting away into that ravenous resonance, but what he saw was burned in and refused to abate. He saw… felt… lived the memories of the goons… the people he just atomized. That wanton siphon pulled everything they were, everything they knew, everything they’d experienced and turned it back into dumb energy to fill a hole. Forcing him to relive lives that weren’t his like so many disjointed flashbacks of his dying mind. His hand tried to bury itself into his chest, the ache throwing everything it had to get its point across. He killed them. He didn’t give a fuck about what or who they were, he just fucking killed them! And this hadn’t been his first time.
The sudden deluge of physical guilt given new fodder in his control bereft wake tore away the power he’d taken in. His legs dropped out from under him, recoil doubled by hardcoded strife. A desperate breathe in tried to rationalize his choices, tried to reason this guilt back down, but the smell of urban decay masked by something he couldn’t even describe killed that hope. He released, no catharsis won, just a futile attempt to get it together. His scarf had fallen down, torn by an errant bullet, but discretion was long gone now. And his will was faltering too hard to hold back from accepting what was behind him.
He turned back toward the dusted and cratered alleyway, the space darker than he’d found it. Grey turning black and empty save for the splatterings glistening and pooling at the far end. Around the only bright spot left, around the shimmering hair of the woman he’d saved. The frightened expression on her face saying all Seth dreaded hearing in that silence. He’d gone too far… again. But, even as the ache flared again, he couldn’t keep the thought down that these goons deserved it. Burned in hate played back in blurred cannibalized memory. They hated this woman, hated him, hated their bulky compatriots, hated supers, hated everything but the idealized bullshit beaten into them. This was not a kidnapping… it was something far worse. But he couldn’t voice this truth, this god awful excuse, this-
“Thank You!”
He shot back up, the woman was crying, holding her bleeding arms tight and hunching almost over.
“Thank you…”
She knew what this was, knew what awaited her if he hadn’t done what he did. This was life here made manifested in its darkest. And it did nothing but drop his hatred of this place right square back on top of all this.
Footsteps coming down from the neighborhoodlums’ turf snapped Seth out of his gritting sobbing frustration. He really didn’t need more existential crap right now. They could handle helping the woman up, he had to get out of here before-
“HGrrrhh!!”
Before he passes out around a bunch of random people he sure as shit didn’t trust yet! He clawed back to his bare feet and stumbled into the dark, hoping that it alone would cover him all the way back to his apartment, back to working infrastructure. More alleyways and trash heaps, and he was back at the main, complete disregard for his previous clandestine maneuvers as he ran across the street to the side alley of his apartment. Stairs ascended as best they could be, weight almost dropping through his door before he caught it and slammed it back closed. His energy drain was terminal, his ache given free reign to tear his being asunder as he staggered across his room. Finally though he crashed into his bed, curled up as the pain ate away his consciousness. It was another long day ending in a pit of despair covered in linens. But… the ache seemed to dissipate as his fatigue found more foothold. This place was nothing short of hell, but all this pain at least told him he was still himself.