It's not normal, I am telling you. Fifty days. Fifty days without ever stopping! I get around to all the arenas of the Run so I can tell. That monster just kept going for fifty days no-stop, bouncing from fight to fight. Bossman will tell you that he's good for business and to drop it, but I can't help it.

It just... he scares me, man. He ain't normal.

- Sande, crime goon

The worst that Summer City had to offer could be found huddling around the second of the two great hills the city sprawled around and over. It included the Sprawl, where grimy factories trundled no-stop to process and package the food harvested in the fields outside the city, preparing it to be exported to the four corners of the nation; Poor Man's Rest, the rundown, rust-stained neighborhoods where both farmers and factory workers had their hovels; Sun's Reach was sparsely populated, most of its population living in isolated farms; Lantern Light, with all its brothels, bars, drug dens and illegal fighting arenas.

The bright colors, well-kept streets and cheerfulness of the other parts of the city – the port, Wharf's Bounty, the neighborhoods where the workers of the flourishing sea-related industry lived and where the tourists lodged and went to have fun, the Guild district – were nowhere to be seen there. In these places, the locals kept to themselves and were wary of strangers. No guide led his customers in those streets rife with drug sellers and prostitution, and tourists were strongly discouraged from wandering in it alone. Gangs fought for control of the streets and people did their best to stay out of their way and not to attract attention to themselves.

It was a poor land of poor people, kept out of the money flowing into the city by tourism and exports and constantly battling against poverty. They all hoped to move into the wealthier sections of the city, but few actually managed to fulfill that dream. The rest, crushed by low wages, long work hours and the demands of the crime bosses, were confined to only looking longingly from afar. The Run, Summer's dark side, didn't let go easily of his children.

The Guild and the more honest elements of the city government had been battling for decades to improve the conditions of what was considered a shame over their city. Their efforts had led to massive improvements over the seaside of the city, but anything similar had still to be seen elsewhere, and few hoped to see it happening soon. Corrupted officials on the payroll of the crime bosses of the Run, the rampant poverty and crime rates, and the external pressures to keep food production high and avoid instability only exacerbated what was an already difficult situation to mend. It didn't help that the people of the Run looked at the outside world with hostility, finding common ground more easily with the same crime bosses that oppressed them; more often than not, they believed their lies that they were better on their own, that the "outsiders" were out for what little they managed to earn and what little freedom they had. This distrust erupted more often than not in blood, and that didn't do any good to the cause of the Run, with the widespread image of the place being an unredeemable den of crime and corruption.

Sarkal Hill stood over that stretch of misery like a throne in a cesspool. Villas and wealthy gambling halls crowned the hill, with the worldwide famous Casino "The Devils" being the king sitting on the throne.

As it was, the fate of the Run was an ever-present sore spot in the politics of both the Guild and the city, with factions pushing and pulling, alliances forming and faltering, all on this same topic, with not a solution in sight. It was the twin soul of Summer City, a paradox well exemplified by the two hills standing side by side.

As the saying went: "From the Tower, you see two tits. From the Devils, it's horns."

Dark knew all of this because he had read it. His neighborhood – Siren's Tail. Funny name, but he was starting to hate the sea – had a little library with a rich collection of books on the topic. Sure, nobody ever opened them apart from him, but that was that.

Also, he liked that saying.

The sun was about to go up as Dark left the old warehouse into which Bloodfall had put its nasty roots. On his way home, he passed shabby nightclubs, misty dens promising all kinds of nastiness, empty bars and trashed establishments, "foreclosed" because they sided with the wrong side during a gang war. He saw a drunkard protest in a slurred voice as he was dragged out of a disco's side entrance, before being flung into the trash. A bunch of ratty kids ran away from a knife-wielding man screaming for them to give him back what they stole. An addict, recognizable by the bruises covering his arm, slumped in a corner, sleeping, unconscious, or dead. A cow-eyed, tired-looking woman addressed him. Not even her pimp's sharp gaze could make her "hey, gorgeous" come out sincere. Pleased, Dark flashed his teeth, sending her scampering.

Ah! Just about right.

Someone had left a car at the entrance of his street. Not left, Dark corrected himself, noticing the man with his forehead pressed against the horn. Annoyed by the sound, he grasped him by the neck and pulled him back against the seat. The pulse was still there. Weak, but there.

Dark riffled through the man's pockets. The wallet was gone, and so was the phone. They had even stolen one of the wheels. Go figure.

Dark took out his own and speed-dialed emergency. He explained in a few words what the problem was, closed the call and left the phone on the man's knees. Couldn't be bothered talking with a bunch of people asking questions he had no answers for. The phone was a small sacrifice: he had another couple of the things squirreled away anyway. He could steal more if needed.

Pushing the car out of the way, he made his way into 31st Street. More of an alley with dreams of grandeur really, but who was he to judge?

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Passing beneath sheets hung out to dry, Dark entered in a handkerchief of a courtyard, a little space carved between the surrounding buildings. Weeds grew from the cracked pavement, what little there was of it crunching beneath his feet. A window quickly slammed shut. He growled at the eye peeping from behind it.

A rusty ladder led to a door a floor up from road level. After barking away a couple of bums that found shelter beneath it, Dark climbed it quickly. Stopping at the door, he kneeled and felt inside the loose hinge. He took a thin, little stick out of it, the heart of a pencil he had bought a few days before. It was unbroken. Good. It meant that nobody had come snooping around. The last time it happened, he had to waste a night waiting for the guy to return.

Stuffing the pencil in his pocket, he pushed the door open and went inside.

The apartment was a little bigger than a broom closet. The furniture was comprised of a punctured mattress laid on the floor, a portable stove with a gas bottle, a small table and a few packets of junk food and beer cans. A little window was the only way for light to enter, or it would have been, if not blocked by a contorted cork made out of cardboard.

Dark took it out before throwing both it and his backpack on the floor.

As the light returned to the room, it revealed rows upon rows of claw marks. They covered every inch of the walls, a chaotic jumble of slashes, the result of a rampage of a wild animal. Both the inside of an asylum's padded cell and of the skull of its dweller. But there was meaning to them, Dark thought, caressing it with a grin. Oh yes, there was.

Six months. Six months passed skulking around the blood arenas of the Run. Six months spent smashing and getting smashed on bloody sawdust, while the blood-hungry crowd howled from above. To see. To learn. And he had learned. Oh yes, he had. He kept his eyes open, his ears perked, his flesh listening. And all that constant work had found its place over the walls of that dingy hole. His pride and joy.

Chuckling, Dark pushed a claw into the wall. Slowly, he dragged it down, adding another notch to his record. Lightman. The last opponent for him in that part of town. He was almost moved.

Each notch was an opponent crushed, a lesson earned. On how to break and not be broken. On the fight, on blood, on pain. Each a bloody mouthful ripped off a freak's flesh, to be added to his own.

Six months of near-constant fighting. And he had grown from it. Oh yes, he had. His flesh had grown scarred, his hands notched, his body powerful. He learned tricks and movements, skills and footwork, how to recognize powers and the way to counter them.

But that wasn't all.

After admiring the ruined walls for a few moments, he turned to the mattress. Kneeling, he ripped off the cover. Three overstuffed notebooks had been stuffed into the padding, hidden beneath ratty foam and sealed into a plastic bag. If his physical work could be seen in his body and in the notches of his home, that was where he enclosed his notes, his observations over the dozens of metas he had been battling almost daily. The result was a little encyclopedia on the methodical destruction of all transhumans on this side of the world. He had notes on the way you could break a power-user's reinforced bones the most efficient way and how to use altered physiology in a grapple; on how to fake being dead in a convincing way to fool a speedster and when it was the best way to move when under elemental assault. And of course, on the most efficient way to make use of his powers, and on the new ways he had learned of them.

Grabbing a can of bear, Dark sat down with one of the notebooks. He closed his fist, crumpling the can, before stuffing it into his maw. Crunching on metal and drinking the spilled juice that didn't drip down his chin, he reviewed his latest notes.

His jumbled writing would probably be unreadable to anybody, but to him, it was clear, if he squinted a little. Grabbing his pencil, he added some notes on speedsters' energy consumption and resistance. Nasty little critters. They were still quite the nuisance.

He didn't think to have seen much. Honestly, he would be surprised if he had seen one-hundredth of what the transhumans' world had to offer. It was the first lesson, the one taught to him by Acquamarine. That the world was so much bigger than he could ever imagine. And like all the lessons written in pain, he wouldn't ever forget it.

Closing the notebook, he stuffed it back together with his siblings, before zipping the bag close and shoving it into his backpack. That was his most prized possession, and he wouldn't leave it behind. The rest could rot.

Stuffing the cork back in the window, he stepped outside with the cans and the food.

There wasn't much to see with the buildings enclosing the courtyard, but he didn't mind standing by the railing of the floor, with the soft morning breeze rustling his hair, peeking through the little spaces between the buildings. Sure, the sun was going up and he hated it with a passion, but it was part of the training as well. He was trying to mellow his distaste for daily light.

Leaning over the rail, crunching on his junk food, Dark saw a line of tired-looking people standing by the road. They were farmhands waiting for the morning bus to come to pick them and bring them to the fields, where they would break their backs while being howled at by middlemen for a morsel of a wage. Buses would bring them back there at night, where they would catch a few hours of sleep before starting again.

Dark'd lie if he said he cared. That's how things worked there, and he lacked both the motivation and knowledge to change it. Still, he couldn't but consider himself so very lucky indeed. Those people were forced into an unpleasant job they probably hated because of things like hunger and poverty. He needed no such thing. If he was hungry, he could just blow his savings on junk food and alcohol. He didn't care for taste: his body only cared about caloric intake and seemed able to take it out virtually off everything. He'd be eating metal for all he cared if the damn thing was easier to acquire than food. He cared not for lodging: his scarred body didn't feel the cold of the night and if he fell asleep roadside, no vagrant could knife or gun him down. More importantly, he worked following his deepest aspiration, not out of forced need. Sure, he risked his neck every time he stepped out, what with heroes or cops being more than able to recognize him, but what was that if not added excitement? And he lived for it.

If there was something approaching happiness in the world, maybe his life was close to it.

But maybe there was something fundamental tying him and them. They were all alone. That seemed the constant for all those that inhabited the Run. Everybody was alone and nobody really cared.

Sure, it was a half-lie in his case. Mother was always there for him. But not even Mother would step in to stop him from being ripped apart. That had become clear to him for a long time. It didn't lower the affection he had for her one jolt, but it was the sad truth.

Funny. He had torn a street to pieces and got himself almost blown to pieces for that, and the answer was under his nose all along. Or at least, something resembling an answer. They truly were all connected one way or the other.

His reverie was broken by a figure entering the courtyard.

Dark nodded, lips curling up a little. After his stunt at Bloodfall, he expected just the visit.