4/6/54

ALEXANDER GALDUR

I watched them from the roofs. When I saw them running, my first instinct was to rush after them and engage immediately; however, my restraint told me to hold off. Now, I was stalking them from the rooftops.

By using my gear, I was able to grapple across the roofs and keep an eye on my target. After running away, they managed to lose any pursuers—besides me—and any attention—besides mine. At the moment, they were walking through the crowds of people and slowly approaching an alley I was also well acquainted with. That alley was shockingly good when losing people and making clean getaways when you’ve done something you weren’t supposed to. Plus, no matter how many times it’s used and no matter how many people use it, no one suspects it. No one but other criminals, that is.

They went into the alley, checking over their shoulder a few times to confirm they were in the clear and finally rested after the first turn in the alley. As I slowly crept down the fire escape of a nearby building, carefully watching my steps so the rusted metal wouldn’t give me away or give away, I watched as they took down their hood and started rummaging through their hoodie.

They had faded, grimy, slightly tanned skin. Their hair was, as described in the bounty, silver and pulled into a dirty ponytail that reached their knees. Grant it, however, they were on the shorter side, so the long hair was only really long when compared to the person in question. Looking at their face as I got closer, it was feminine.

With an oval shape and high cheekbones, they would’ve been decently pretty if it weren’t for the layers of filth caked onto it. In addition, their eyes were sharp and focused, staring down at their bounty with an intensity born from living a rough life. They were eyes I knew all too well.

I froze momentarily, just for a second, just because of the sympathy I felt, but the fire escape suddenly groaned under my light frame. Then, to make matters worse, just as my target looked up, a window next to me was forced open as a middle aged man in an alcohol-stained wife beater yelled at me.

“Who the hell are you!? Get the fuck off!”

Startled, I backpedaled, encountered the railing, and felt my heart stop and my weight disappear as the rusted metal just fell out.

Suddenly, I was facing the sky, towering buildings facing both my sides, appearing as if they were growing higher and higher, and the feeling of the approaching ground making my spine tingle in fearful anticipation. In a moment of instinctual movement, I somehow twisted around to face the ground. I saw a thick support pillar that connected to a useless bit of architecture higher up, and I quickly activated my grappling tongue.

It slapped against the pillar, and using my momentum, I slammed my feet against it and slid down. After reaching five meters from the ground, I whipped the tongue to force it to dislodge from the pillar, and I pounced.

My target was so stunned by the events that had just taken place that they didn’t move when I slammed into them, pushing them against the wall in a painful—for both of us—crack and thud.

Something in my right arm gave away, and my shoulder was no longer where it was supposed to be. Until it was when I fell onto the ground from her, successfully shoving my joint back into its socket.

… FUCKING OW! THAT HURTS, DAMNIT!

As I was recovering from the sudden dis-and-relocation of my shoulder, I heard the person I had just bodychecked groan and whimper in pain. Looking up, I could see they were holding their ribs, bracing themself against the wall. Then, they looked down to see me holding my shoulder while looking at them.

We held our little staring contest for a few seconds as neither of us knew what to do. Then they kicked me in the chin, and I felt my head get thrown back!

I would’ve yelled motherfucker, but that kick messed up my mouth and it came out more like, “Mockaferer!”

They began a limping speed walk, trying to get away, gasping for breath despite the low speeds. Must’ve broken a rib in the tackle. Hm, too bad. Especially because I started glowing and sprinting after them in a much faster limp.

My arm and chin hurt like hell, but my legs and torso were fine, so I could deal. Then, a string shot out from my target’s finger, slung around a thin metal pole, wrapped around my leg, and pulled my leg out from under me as it slammed into the metal pole.

In response, forcing past the pain of my soon-to-be-bruise, I created a flash bang a meter ahead of the escaping bounty, and they let loose a shriek of shock as they were blinded.

Then, in a slower limp than before, I reached my target, quickly grabbed hold of my weapons and began with a cross that led into a left hook that hit the general area of their body that they were holding onto. I didn’t forget to activate my gear to turn it into a terrifying taser, but I did somehow forget about how my right arm was still messed up. The cross was weak, only causing damage because of the electricity, but the hook was significantly more effective.

The spikes stabbed into their left side, and the smell of cooking flesh sparked with lightning running through my bounty’s side. A shrill, shaky scream rang through the alley, and I continued with two jabs into an off-hand uppercut.

Stolen novel; please report.

The uppercut left smoking lines of jaggedly torn fabric and flesh and the jabs left painful-looking puncture marks. I quickly turned my rapidly depleting magic off to watch the situation and evaluate. The bounty wobbled in pain, but they were still determined to fight. This desperation, they probably thought I was some random psycho trying to kill them; though, they would probably still fight like this if they knew they were about to face the consequences for their actions.

Whipping around with their right arm, string shot out and grabbed some broken glass bottles a little bit away, and slung them at me. Most of them failed to do anything but scratch up my gear, but one lucky shot slashed right across my eye. Thankfully, the glass only cut up the skin around my eye, not the actual organ itself, but I was blinded by the concerning amount of blood that suddenly filled my vision.

Too close!

Something lurched in me. Small tentacles of inky blackness launched from the shadows near my target’s feet and grabbed onto their ankles. In a yank, it pulled them down, and they face-planted with a painful crunch. When they looked up, they were dazed and confused, eyes glassy with most likely a concussion, and their nose was compressed into their face.

I don’t think they knew what I just did, but in between the broken nose and the concussion, I’m not sure much was going through their head. Finally, they passed out from the accumulated injuries, and I collapsed against a nearby wall to catch my breath.

That… really just happened.

I… I better get them out of here.

While my mind struggled to comprehend and process the events that had just taken place, my body moved in autopilot and placed my unconscious quarry on my hoverboard. I silently and thoughtlessly dragged them along to the market square. When I left the alley, Deimos was waiting for me outside of it, his own hoverboard under his arm.

He looked me over, making sure I wasn’t hurt, and we trudged through the crowds of people. Thankfully, everyone who saw us opened up a path, not wanting to get in the way of the work of someone dragging an unconscious body through the street. My legs started hurting at some point from all the walking, and my mind had recovered just barely enough to register that. The fight, despite not being too long nor hard, was mentally taxing.

Afterall, I had just attacked somebody. Not only that, but a month or so back, they were just like me. Stealing to live—no, survive. I’d been searched for by some bounty hunters before. They were never very good at their job or just didn’t care enough to look around much. Now I was one of them, and I had just beaten somebody who I had no connections with. My heart hurt, and in spite of my brain reasoning that we had to, I felt wrong. Even with what we did being objectively right and good, it just didn’t matter. Who was I to do this to them? I wanted to be somebody who helped, someone to make a difference and be a hero. They were bad. They deserved this.

Then don’t I deserve the same to happen to me? No… Didn’t I deserve something worse?

For existing…

For hurting…

For everything.

I exhaled hard, the pressure building up inside coming out as a heavy-hearted sigh. Deimos took notice.

“We’ll stop once we get your payment. It’s hard doing something like this, and it won’t get better. You’ll just need to endure.”

I looked up as Deimos continued facing forward, his brown eyes, normally warm-feeling, were cold and focused on the distance. For the remainder of the time, we both walked in a suppressive silence, the atmosphere smothering any potential conversation.

We eventually arrived, our kidnappee still silent in the sweet release of unconsciousness. At this point, I was kind of worried for their health. My only experience with unconscious people was hard to gauge because I was mostly unconscious around those times. It was a nice change of pace to be the one knocking others into being comatose instead of the other way around.

As we finally reached the bounty hunters’ office, I got my victim onto my back and managed to wrestle my hoverboard into its deposit area. Deimos opened the door and I walked through, the wretched smell of sweat and mildew stinging at my nose. The creaks followed my footsteps as the same front-desk man from before asked without looking up, “Name?”

“Huh? Oh, Lucas Greymore.”

“Mhm, aight, aight… Ah, there you are.” He clicked on a keyboard with all the enthusiasm of a depressed sloth, “Take ‘em to the back and go sit o’er there.”

He pointed at a chair behind me that sat to the right of a large, heavy, and stupidly-well protected door. When they carried my catch off, the amount of security checks that happened really made me realize that despite this place’s appearance, it was internationally funded.

Bounty hunters in general really kicked off sometime after magic was introduced. They were originally called adventurers after being started by some nerd with one too many fireballs and a little too much testosterone for his own good. After a few decades, they changed the name so it wouldn’t be so cringe-inducing, and therefore, bounty hunters became the handymen of the post-magic world. Their jobs consisted of just about anything; if you had the cash, they’d do the job. Simple.

After about a half hour of just sitting around while my thoughts bounced around from subject to subject, the man from the desk came up and snapped me out of my thoughts.

“Hey, hey! O’er here, pal. The job’s completion’s been confirmed, so do you want your payment on cash or card?”

“I, uh, cash, please.”

“Mmm, got it. Let me get the stuff.”

He walked out of view, soon coming back with a wad of money in his hand. He gave it to me along with two quarters and walked away with a grunt. Deimos then soon picked me up and led me through the process of completing the quest via the building’s atm-like machines. I was unfocused the entire time, the tantalizing weight in my pocket being far, far too distracting.

When we got home, I silently and swiftly moved to my room, sat on my bed without taking my armor off, and I pulled out the money and counted it.

Three hundred and twenty-two dollars. And fifty cents.