"Everything was thrashed, yea. The "I got half of my mantlepiece stuck on a tree" kind of thrashed. I ain't got no mantelpiece thankfully, but let me tell you, it was thrashed. First the Villain, - this big lizard thing – thrashed the place, then they thrashed all over again when the Hero – that stone guy – arrived. They thrashed it together, rolling all over the street like they were playing in the sand.

I didn't stick around to see how it ended. When stone-guy pulled out a streetlamp and hit the lizard on the head with it, I decided that a few photos weren't worth the trouble anymore.

Still, no worries. The Office will cover the damage. It's slang for the Office for Villain Damage Coverage and Urban Reconstruction. You saw them. It's the guys with yellow hats. They are all over the place the moment an Incursion passes, measuring, knocking down stuff, talking with everybody, just before the bulldozers arrive. Those guys.

Well, the Office is their nest. I heard it has a budget the size of the Moon, a maze of contracts and sub-contracts and an army of workers and collars. It has to, right? With all those Incursions popping out left and right. And it's not like those Heroes stuck around after the dust settle. Someone has to.

Call them if you got some damage, but God help you if you try being smart and get paid over nothing. These guys got eyes like drills, and you'll end with a suit pulling up to your house to hand you a bill big enough you can use it as a blanket.

Trust me, I tried.

- From an unknown witness

He hated her.

Everything made sense before she arrived. Everything was fine. Everything was good. The world was a nice place. All the pins? In place. The hamburgers? Cooked. The humans? Running.

It was how it was supposed to be. They – those little stupid humans – running and flailing and shooting their little guns, while he broke stuff and threw them around. Them hating him. Him hating them. It made sense. It all made sense.

Then she arrived. With her words and salute and bone-breaking punches.

It threw everything out of place, put everything in question. And made him feel very, very dumb.

From striding destroyer to moron. What a jump. And all because of her. That stupid Hero.

He recovered, stumbled back to a four-legged position, but not to fight. He couldn't. His heart wasn't in it anymore. Or, well, maybe it would have been, if something else wouldn't have happened.

The shadows stopped healing him. No, more. They went away altogether.

He could feel them. Huddling in the corners of the alley, hiding in the dumpsters, writhing softly and silently. But they didn't move, didn't arch out of their hiding spots to mend his wounds and make him stronger. They didn't whisper anymore. They had gone silent.

That did it. He was getting out of there.

Question was: how?

Acquamarine came hard and fast, forcing him to awkwardly jump back on all four. All of a sudden, he didn't feel like tangling with her again. Thankfully, his longer limbs were helpful in maintaining distance.

More or less.

The bubbles she had at her feet made her move as fast as a race car and ten times more nimbly, devouring distance quicker than he could put it, forcing him to duck and weave out of the punches. At least, now that he wasn't trying to put his own shots in, he could more or less follow her, and stay out of the pain. His skin stung something fierce where her bubbles had landed.

As he struggled to remain out of her range, his roving eyes found an open manhole. The water had long drained away, leaving a round hole in the middle of wet asphalt. A bad idea honestly, with all the water it had to be down there. But what else could he try? No way he was losing her on foot.

"You can stop, you know?" She quipped. "Breaking a street isn't so much. Not for us." There was not even the chance of duplicity in her clear stare. "You can start again. Do it right."

Maybe it was because she said it while trying to brain him. Or maybe because he absolutely despised how she seemed to be right at home in his thoughts. Whatever it was, he clamped down on the chance, shredded it to pieces and jumped on those. No thanks. He was going his way, or he wasn't going no way at all.

As he struggled to dodge, his eyes caught sight of a loose stone. More of a big shard, honestly. I must have dislodged in all the commotion.

He kicked it, sending it lodging itself into one of the feet-bubbles. It didn't reach as near as close to Acquamarine's foot, but the intruding mass somehow interfered with the workings of the strange thing.

Acquamarine stumbled.

In any other situation, Dark would have taken the chance to try and get a good hit. If he didn't know by now she probably just dodged or parried or summoned a tsunami or something to stop him. Also, he was out of strikes for today.

He broke into a run, Acquamarine yelling after him, more in annoyance and exasperation than in actual surprise, like she just knew he'd pick that choice and ruin her day.

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

He hated her.

With his build, the manhole wasn't a tight fit at all, and the world abruptly changed from sunny and smoky to cool and shadowy. Dark almost felt his humor do a little jump.

The fall lasted barely a second. He hit a concrete bottom and then he was running, holding his head down not to hit the low ceiling. There were no lights, but he didn't need them to see the catwalk ringed by an iron railing, giving on a wide channel filled with slow-moving sewer water.

It felt like running beside a line of crocodiles ready to snap at his feet, but he ignored the sensation and focused on running.

Tubes big and small ran across the ceiling and walls of the tunnel. Everything was damp with water, just to remind him how quickly that place had filled itself with the stuff.

Expecting for a river to come surging at any moment, he almost jumped when he heard a splash and a swishing sound behind him.

"Stop already." Acquamarine's somewhat annoyed, somewhat concerned voice bounced down the tunnel. "The more things you break, the harder it will be."

He ran faster. At least he got to hear her getting annoyed already.

Spears of water lanced out of the central channel, slamming into the wall and into him when he didn't manage to dodge. He stumbled, put a hand where he got a nasty hit and kept running. He wouldn't be able to take many more blows, not without the shadow regeneration. He was starting to get numb in an uncomfortable amount of places.

More spears lanced out, forcing him to duck not to get smashed against the wall. He almost tripped, barely catching himself. Behind, he could hear her get closer.

He was starting to lose hope when the tunnel branched in three directions. Without thinking, he ran into the left one. He was ten paces in when the ground suddenly disappeared. He fell, barely getting a yelp out before splashing into water. The cistern was immense, but he had no time for sightseeing. Spotting a tunnel where the water flew out, he dove into it.

He kept running for what had to be minutes, taking turns, jumping over ladders or down into water tanks wrought out of concrete and older stone.

Eventually, out of breath, he stopped.

He watched right. Tunnel, water running on twin channels on the floor, leaving only the rounded corners relatively dry. Not a soul in sight. He watched left. The same. He listened, straining his ears. Sloshing and dripping of water, sounds in the distance, silence.

He had lost her.

Relief washed over him like… not water. Enough water. Fuck water. Something else. A shower. Whatever.

He slumped against the wall, barely holding himself from just falling down there and then. Now that he didn't have the chase taking his attention, all the aches came back with a vengeance. He was beat, all over, completely, like a drum used for a week of partying on a tropical island. There were fewer inches of him not sore than there were. He was a big sore, from head to toe.

Note to self: do not fight Acquamarine.

That gal was bad news. A hammer to your head, a wrench in your plan. He would definitely remember, the numb side of his face could attest to that.

Panting, he looked around, suddenly aware of a different question.

Why… didn't she just flood the tunnels?"

He barely finished the thought that the air seemed to go still, become heavier.

All of his alarm receptors went off all at once, and the second his mind managed to catch up, he was already running. For what? Well, for shelter. Something big was on its way.

A wave of wind blasted across the tunnel, slapping him in the back like a giant hand. He was sent sprawling, but he was already moving even as he touched the ground, scrambling in the water on all four.

A rumble echoed from the distance. Getting closer. Fast.

Cursing, Dark searched frantically for something to hide behind. No way he was going to hold out against what was coming, not that tight tunnel, not if he wanted to keep his feet.

He found a metal door. He shouldered it open and crashed inside. He saw in a flash a little room cluttered with old equipment, metal shelves and spare parts big and small. Not caring about it, he grabbed the door, slammed it shut and threw himself against it. He thought against it a moment later. Instead, he grabbed one of the shelves, shaking a little rain of parts as he did, and slammed it against the door. He piled as many pieces of tubes against it, then he threw himself against the haphazard barricade as well.

Then he waited.

Outside, the rumble grew, turned into a howl out of a throat of a giant. When the wave hit, it felt like a subway train was running full speed beside the door, trying to shake it apart with its flank.

Water spattered through the space between door and wall, a spurt managing to splash against his face, feeling like someone slapped him.

The entire barricade shook and jumped like an angry horse, and for an ugly moment, Dark was sure it wasn't going to hold. He saw himself spinning in a torrent of water, gasping and not drowning while the current ragdolled him around. But miraculously, the barricade held.

The avalanche of water passed as quickly as it had come, the deafening howl getting more and more distant, until it was a vague sound far away, like the wind rushing through an open window.

Dark waited with bated breath, expecting the next trouble to fall on his head. Hell, maybe Acquamarine was going to crash her way through his flimsy barricade and trembling hands. Any moment now.

But nothing came. There was only a faint dripping.

He was just about to let out the breath he didn't realize he was holding when the voice echoed.

"I understand." Dark jumped. Acquamarine's voice sounded like the heroine was standing just outside the door. "This is just what happens, you know? When you wake up and you find yourself with powers, with another face, another body. You think you are different, so different that there can be only war between you and the others, the ones that aren't different at all. That wouldn't ever be able to understand."

Dark blinked. He opened his mouth, found he had nothing to say and closed it. He listened.

The heroine sounded a bit sad, all her peep nowhere to be seen. "That's not true," she said, and there was a stone-solid stubbornness there. "It's only confusion. It's only your anger and your fear speaking for you. And then it seems like you're in too deep to stop. But that's not true. You just have to pause for a moment, and give yourself and the world a chance. That's all it takes. You didn't kill anybody. Things can be patched up. Sometimes it's difficult, sometimes it's easy. You can still do it. And if you can't, don't worry even then!" She brightened up. "We'll always be there to wait for you, to check you, to remind you that there is a place for you as well! For the Boundless Sea!"

Before realizing what he was doing, Dark was dismantling the barricade and opening the door.

Nobody. Apart from a flow of water draining away, the tunnel was empty.

Dark looked down. A puddle somehow had formed in the middle of the tunnel and was now flowing away. If he perked his ears, he could hear a soft echo coming from it, steadily disappearing in some distance hidden in the water now.

He shook his head. Thank you for the offer, but he would seek his own way himself, thank you very much.

He sighed, letting all the tension accumulated in his body drain away. Damn, he was beat. Tired to the bone. But he got away at least. That had to count for something, right?

And now that he was alone, he could finally find a corner to huddle in and rest.

A sudden splash echoed, making him jump. Nothing, just a piece of the pipeline falling down. Dark frowned at it. Yes, he was alone. Finally.

A thought hit him. He looked down the tunnel, eyes widening a bit.

The shadows were long and deep, but no voice came from them, no whisper.

He was… alone.