21st, Monday, 12:27 AM.

When we climbed onto the roof, Claire Stansfield was waiting for us. I thought we would have had to search the roof and then carriages to find him, but he was just standing right in the middle of the train, his back was towards us and he held his arms outstretched, seemingly enjoying the wind as it rushed by, the perfect opportunity for a sneak attack.

"Claire!" Dean yelled suddenly as he stepped in front of us, and Claire turned around at the sound of his name, smiling.

God dammit, Dean.

"It's been a while little brother!" Claire called back, the wind doing its best to take away his voice.

I looked at Dean to see his reaction, and he had a strange look on his face, somehow managing to look somehow, happy, sad, and angry all at the same time. I watched as he started to say something before hesitating, he tried again a moment later, clearly struggling to find the right words.

"Why are you doing this?!" Dean yelled back finally, frustrated.

Claire just shook his head in gently, the smile on his face seemingly genuine.

"You'll have to be a bit more specific, Dean!" Felix said amused, almost sounding like he was about to start laughing.

"You killed all those people!" Dean shot back immediately. "You're the Rail Tracer!"

"Is that what they're calling me?" Claire said more quietly, sounding bemused.

Dean made an angry noise at the non-answer, but Claire just shook his head again, still smiling.

"Claire!" Dean said sounding anguished, "You can't keep doing this!"

Claire just watched him curiously, waiting for him to continue.

"You're sick!" Dean tried again, "Just come with me and we can find you help!"

Claire tilted his head, and something changed in him at the words, his smile was still present but now it didn't reach his eyes.

"I don’t need help, Dean!" Claire called back.

Claire wiped his fingers up into his hair, sweeping the tangled web of hair and blood out of his face, the motion caused him to leave faint smear of blood across his brow in the process.

"I don't need help Dean, why would I?" Claire said once more, and his eyes were filled with a strange intensity as he stared at his brother. "Nothing here is real, it's just an image my mind has projected onto the world, everything is just a dream."

I didn't understand what he meant, I glanced back at Dean wondering if this was some sort of brotherly meme, but he was looking at Claire with incomprehension. What was he saying exactly? That we weren't real? That none of us were actually on this train? or that the train didn't exist?

"This world is just a long, long dream I'm having." Claire continued sounding once again amused, but there was a strange undertone to what he was saying. "Each and every one of you is just an illusion, you don't really exist."

Claire Stansfield really was insane, I wasn't an illusion, and this definitely wasn't a dream, the guy had somehow convinced himself that everything was fake, he was sick, just like Dean had said.

"My mind dreamt up this world," Claire said with a laugh, "I sit at its centre as the only real thing in it."

Claire smile widely, but this time it reached his eyes, he looked excited and alive.

"So what will happen if I die?" Claire asked curiously, but nobody dared answer.

I don't know what exactly, had broken him to make him like this, but I felt like I could almost understand it. Mom, Dad, Gaston, and Belle, when each of them had died I had retreated into myself, to hide away from the world, I tried to tell myself that it was just a sick dream, that I would wake up to find that they were perfectly fine. That I would walk into my kitchen and Gaston would be standing there making breakfast, unharmed and alive.

I had tried to convince myself that they hadn't actually died, but the world turned cruelly on, each of them had stayed dead and gone. The illusion I had tried to build couldn't hold up to reality, so it had shattered, and my dream reached an end.

Claire’s dream had never finished, whatever tragedy had brought him to this, it had left him broken. He had retreated into himself, just like I had, only he had never come back out, he had convinced himself that it was all a terrible, terrible dream, that he was the only thing that was real, to avoid the pain, he had distanced himself from reality.

"I just can't imagine myself dying." Claire said honestly, "But if I did, then everyone would simply disappear!"

Claire let his hand drop from his hair and then raised both of his arms out wide as if to embrace us all.

"I am the only one in this world who won't disappear, the rest of you are just the images I see, as if in a dream." Claire said intently, before falling silent.

Everyone was quiet and we just watched him for a while, trying to reach some kind of understanding, but Dean recovered after barely a moment.

"Why did you save that woman in the carriage then?!" Dean yelled, angry and hurt. "If we're all fake, why did you save her?"

"So what if I'd save her," Claire said amused. "In my mind, it's the certainty in myself that I possess which allows me to have that kind of mercy or compassion."

It took me a moment to unpack that one, what was he saying exactly? That he would let people live occasionally because he was self-assured? self-confident? Strong? I couldn't make the connection; this kind of philosophical stuff went over my head.

"So remember this, little brother," Claire said seriously, "Mercy and compassion are virtues that only the strong are privileged to possess."

"And I," Claire said darkly, as a grin slowly spread across his face. "am strong."

I didn't have time to parse that because Claire had suddenly started moving towards us. Claire didn't look like he was going to stop any time soon, so I dragged Dean backward to next to me with nearby wires, and Aural immediately stepped up in front of us, her thin knife glinting in the passing lights.

Oh shit, here we go again.

Battery had been standing still during the entire discussion and she absolutely cratered the roof of the train as she threw herself forward at an absurd speed, appearing next to Claire in an instant before slamming her left foot into the roof to stop her momentum and then lashing out with a kick that tore through the air towards his torso. Claire leaned backward until he was completely horizontal as Battery's right leg slashed through the air just above him and his clothes were whipped around from the force, she spun in an almost complete circle before she twisted her foot slightly and then used the movement to raise her kicking leg high into the air before she brought it down without mercy towards him. This all happened in the space of a second, they were moving fast enough that the details were starting to blur together.

Aural had started forward the moment Battery had attacked and had almost reached them; moving just as fast as both of them, she clearly had some form of enhanced speed as well.

Claire, from his horizontal position, put his hand on the floor and then spun his legs out in a circle, Battery's left leg was swept out from under her in an instant and she started to fall to the ground. Claire reached for her face as she fell and her eyes widened, I speared a wire directly where his hand would impact her face and thickened the end of the wire in an instant, it bloomed into a pane of metal in-between them, but Claire simply aborted the attack, taking a moment to step backward as Aural's knife flashed through the air past his face, he lifted his leg to avoid a blast of light that came barrelling out of Dean's hand before ducking backward out of range.

I quickly created another shield nearby in case I had to intervene once more as Aural turned into her missed attack and carried the momentum into a backhanded swipe but Claire simply reached out to push her forearm aside with his hand, with a twist of his wrist he pulled Aural gently past him before spinning across her body back towards Battery.

Aural was left teetering on the edge of the train, the wind threatening to drag her off, her black dress was whipping around violently in the wind. I pushed her back from the edge with the shield before refocusing on the fight once more, Battery had managed to stand back up and was now retreating out of Claire's reach, she needed a moment to recharge her spent power, so I would oblige her.

Three giant wire constructs, shaped like hands grew into existence and I sent them forth to attack with a chain of punches one after another, striking at him in a steady beat, he dodged the first few attacks before suddenly changing tactics. Claire reached out and slapped the first construct away with the back of his hand, the entire thing disintegrated from the force, it was the first time I had actually seen his super strength with my own eyes.

It was terrifying.

I thickened the shields in response, if he had continued his attack against Battery before, his hand would have gone straight through my shield like it was paper, the second hand attacked low and Claire stepped onto it, tensed his leg before stomping it down into the wires. The hand was destroyed beneath the massive force and his foot continued on to the roof of the train cratering it and leaving a massive hole behind, the entire length of the train shuddered from the impact. The third construct I broke into three smaller hands and kept up the rhythmic attacks, I created more shields, one for each person in case he started tossing shit around.

Aural re-entered the fray, flitting around my rhythmic strikes to attack from bizarrely low angles, she was lashing and stabbing at Claire's legs, trying to disrupt his footwork. Claire seemed to barely notice her as he weaved between each attack, brushing them away like gnats and still somehow advancing towards us at the same time.

I was reminded once again of just how ridiculous this guy was. I knew intellectually there were people out there that could no-sell me, people with defenses that were strong for me to penetrate, capes that could overpower me with brute strength or capes with strange powers that would mess with my head but this was an entirely different beast.

I couldn't even land a single hit on the guy, he was blocking attacks from blind spots, dodging four different capes attacks simultaneously with multiple changing disruptions on the field like the wire hands. Some of our attacks were coming from strange angles, timed to give him the least amount of time to dodge and we still couldn't hit him.

It was infuriating.

Battery suddenly appeared next to him in a blur, the roof bore the brunt of her stoppage once more and she lashed out with half a hundred punches in an instant. Claire wove through them with no extra difficulty, brushing some aside, blocking others, and avoiding the rest, until abruptly Battery's charge ran out and she immediately backed off again. I sent another hand at him to assist in her retreat and Claire scattered it with barely a moment's effort.

Fuck.

Nobody was this good, how was he doing it? He had to be at least a Brute, Mover, and Thinker all at once, super strength, super speed, enhanced reflexes, some kind of enhanced multitasking, and whatever he was doing to see the attacks in the first place.

Our motley assortment of capes were working pretty well together despite a lack of communication and we were all pretty strong capes individually, I felt like we shouldn't be having this much trouble.

Aural alone was an absolute beast, she was a Mover/Thinker, the public information on her said her powers were echolocation, enhanced agility, speed, and timing. It led to her being an incredibly deadly melee combatant and she hadn't even managed to scuff the guy's shoes for fuck sake.

Battery was a member of the Protectorate; she could move at absurd speeds after she had a moment to charge up and she hit with the force of a truck. I could barely track her top speeds, although the distance was helping me see the movements more clearly, she felt barely present in the fight, she would duck in after she charged up, get stonewalled by the guy's untouchable nature, and then have to retreat again.

Dean was essentially a non-factor, his blasts were slow in comparison to everyone else we were sending Claire’s way, and he probably wouldn't have been able to hit his brother if he were half-blind and dying of tuberculosis. He was providing good covering fire, and the beams were just another thing that he had to avoid.

Claire Stansfield was simply a monster, he was as far above us, as we were from the normies. He saw everything coming but nothing slowed him down, he was fighting a team of capes that would destroy any single non-invulnerable cape that I could think of, and he wasn't even pretending to try.

I felt personally attacked.

I knew he wasn't trying, because he was barely attacking us back seemingly content to defend and deflect our attacks while slowly moving around, occasionally pretending to advance on us. I'd seen hints of an obscene speed granted by some of his reactions, but he wasn't blitzing us, he was just letting the fight play out, like a treat rarely indulged in.

One of Dean's attacks hit the ground near Claire’s foot, marring the metal surface and drawing my attention for a moment.

"What do your range attacks do?!" I yelled at him.

They had to do something more than slight physical damage, Dean made sure to keep up his attempts to hinder his brother's movements while responding to my question.

"When they hit someone," Dean yelled back. "I can make them feel an emotion! Like sadness or whatever!"

What?

"What the fuck?" I yelled in disbelief, what a dumb power.

Dean glanced at me in confusion for a moment, the swearing drawing his attention.

"Try not to cry, Claire!" I taunted loudly.

Claire managed to look at me questioningly while fending off all of our combined attacks at the same time.

"Dean is going to hit you with his sissy-bitch beams!" I yelled at the top of my lungs.

Dean immediately looked pissed off at the comment, but Claire simply laughed.

Battery appeared again fist extended towards his face, but he simply leaned back to avoid it before reaching out past Battery's arm and clamped his hand down onto her shoulder, he made the absurdly fast motion look almost casual. Battery jerked to a stop like she was smashing into a brick wall and her shoulder dislocated with a massive crack that I could hear from here, she tried desperately to pry his hand off her with a strangled scream of pain.

Claire stepped on her leg in response and I watched with horror as her kneecap snapped inwards. Aural immediately started an incredible chain of flickering stabs at Claire's eyes that drew his attention away from Battery for a moment, I sent wires tearing through the air and chased him even further away. I jammed as many shields in between him and Battery as I could as I did my best to herd him towards the edge of the train. Claire made a series of short calculated hops and turns to avoid it all before he started to circle back around to make his way towards me.

Fuck this.

I threw myself off the train to avoid him and dragged myself around in a wide semi-circle, a stream of wires left in my wake, they abruptly surged upwards like a wave, increasing in volume a thousand-fold as they crashed towards Claire. For the first time in the fight he stopped advancing, he dodged backward past the others in an attempt to get away from the massive wave and when the wave reached Battery and Aural it opened around them before continuing past without touching them. I added another wave to the roof beside it, combining the two to encompass the entire width of the train and Claire fled backward away from it, with nowhere to run. I chased him back three carriages at least before the wave obstructed my vision of him briefly, the wave swept down the length of the train and surged off the end of the train before I allowed it to vanish, but he was gone.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Had he jumped from the train? My eyes snapped to check on Battery, but she was fine, well, fine was really a good descriptor giving that she was lying on her back and screaming in pain, but she wasn’t currently under attack at least, besides Aural was standing next to her, still on guard. I sent some wires down towards them wrapping them around Battery tightly before I picked her up as gently as I could manage. I sent her back down to where Miss Militia and Kid Win were still in the carriage below us, I lowered her through the hole in the wall and left her there, she was out of the fight.

I landed next to Aural with a stumble and Dean jogged towards us from the other carriage, I opened my mouth to tell them both to stay on guard when Claire crested the side of the train opposite us at great speed and clamped his hand down on his brother's shoulder, my mind reeled at the suddenness, and we all froze in horror.

Claire just smiled.

----------------------------------------

"Claire." Dean grunted out, trying for a moment to pull free of his grip, but quickly gave up when he didn't budge.

I couldn't speak, my mind was too busy trying to figure out how to save him before his brother tore him in half, Dean looked up at his brother after a moment before he spoke.

"What happened to mom?" Dean asked quietly, we were close enough now that he didn't have to yell to be heard.

I didn't know what to do, he could kill Dean before I moved any of the shields, hands or wires I had created, I glanced at Aural who was standing tensed directly beside me, leaning forward and ready to move in an instant, but she hadn't because she wasn't fast enough either.

Fuck.

"Ah," Claire said surprised. "I thought you might have forgotten in all of the excitement."

Claire looked more sane then he had appeared the entire night, his previous lack of lucidity had peeled back slightly to reveal the remnant of a human being underneath, he looked up at the sky for a moment and then spoke as if he was reading from a script.

"Sarah Stansfield. April 12th, 1996. Attempts to kill her ten-year-old son." Claire said evenly, "Sarah is convinced that her eldest son is an impostor."

Dean stared at his brother with wide eyes and had stopped trying to escape entirely. I was trying to figure out exactly what that meant, she thought that her own son was an impostor? A fake child? Someone pretending to be a child?

"Sarah insists that the boy has done something to her real son." Claire continues, "The son manages to escape before she can kill him, but he is gravely injured in the process."

Dean's expression is turning more and more to horror as the story unfolds, Claire could see his brother's reaction and was studying him curiously. I felt a sense of rising dread crawling up my chest, Dean must have felt it because his eyes snapped towards me before turning back to his brother.

"Sarah is committed to a mental asylum in perpetuity," Claire says clearly, but without feeling. "She tries to kill herself soon after."

"Stop," Dean said forcefully, as he started to cry. "I've changed my mind, I don't want to know, anymore."

"Medical staff manage to get to her in time." Claire continues mercilessly. "She falls into a coma soon after, that she will never wake from."

Dean doesn't respond, he just wipes at his face angrily with the back of his hand.

"It was good to see you again, Dean," Claire says genuinely before he shoves his brother off the train.

I've been on a hair-trigger the entire time waiting for the moment to act, but instead of ripping him in two, he threw him off the train. I managed to catch him in time about halfway to the tracks and quickly toss him back into the train with Battery.

Claire turned to fully face us both, he hadn't killed his brother on purpose, he knew that I would be able to get to him in time, was there a last shred of humanity left in him after all?

"You're really good," Claire said happily, to Aural. "What's your name?"

Ouch, what about me asshole? That kinda stung. Aural tapped her throat with her index finger and shook her head once.

"Oh!" Claire said with genuine surprise. "I hadn't realized, my apologies." Aural glanced at me, she had very expressive eyes.

Yeah yeah, I get it.

"Her name is Aural, spelled with an Au," I say to him while waggling my eyebrows behind my stupid mask. "Or an O if she likes you."

I elbow her in the side jokingly and Claire laughs out loud at the stupid joke; it figures that only serial killer's and psychopaths find my jokes funny. Aural turns her head to look at me, a single eyebrow raised.

I shrug, and she quickly presses her tongue into her cheek three times. I grin at her, with names like Aural, Climax, and Swallow they obviously had a sense of humor, I'm glad she didn't shank me.

"Well, I believe we were in the middle of something?" Claire asks leadingly and takes a casual step forward.

Aural met my eyes for a moment and then started walking forward, looks like I'm the support, she pours on the speed and half-circles him before coming in from the side. Claire's eyes follow her the entire time, but he doesn't bother turning, I start bringing my existing shields and hands into range, ready to use them as distractions and defenses for Aural. After a second of thought, I generate another ten hands and shields each.

Aural takes three swipes at Claire’s legs before suddenly drawing a second knife from under her dress and slashing straight upwards, the knife glints as it ascends. Claire pulls his legs back from the swipes and then taps her wrist gently with the back of his hand, she drops the knife.

Claire plucks it out of the air in the same motion, before driving it down at her face without mercy, her eyes widen in shock. I barely manage to move the closest wires into place between his arm and her head, he tears straight through five of them before I can thicken them enough to halt his strike, he doesn't even glance at me as I attempt to tangle his arm.

Aural tries to nick his wrist with her second knife but he pulls it back tearing free of the wires with brute force, she switches targets to his toes, ducking low under my wires and driving a knife straight at his foot. Claire moves it to the side at the last moment and the knife glances off the roof with a shower of sparks that vanish into the wind.

Claire takes a swipe at her with his stolen knife and she dances back of reach, but this time he follows her, keeping up a steady stream of precise slashes and thrusts. Fast, but not blindingly so, he was just testing her, and she somehow managed to evade, deflect or block each strike in the chain. I was trying to trip him up the entire time, striking at his face with the hands but he would just slap them away in between each strike, disintegrating them through sheer force.

It was maddening.

Whether I attacked when he was attacking Aural or not he would still manage to deflect the attacks, and I noticed that the fight was slowly moving back towards me. I started to move some shields back into position in case he rushed me, when Claire suddenly grabbed one of my wires out the air and yanked on it, I was sent flying forward before I could even react.

Oh fuck.

I threw my hands up between us and tried to yank myself backward at the same time, but he still managed to kick me, right in the middle of my crossed arms. The wire amour covering my arms disintegrated in an instant and I felt both of my arms break from the force, followed by something in my chest a moment later, my crossed arms smashed back into my face and I blacked out for a moment.

I came too in a massive dent, half-buried in the roof of the train, the roof was torn in places around me and I could see into the carriage below me. People were standing in the cabin and staring up at me, further down the carriage.

Claire was standing a couple of meters away from me, holding Aural by the back of her neck and her feet were dangling clear above the ground. I forced myself to sit up and quickly regretted it, there was something wrong with my shoulders, and I couldn't hear the wind for some reason. I coughed and my mask chose that moment to crumble into a million fragments before scattering into the wind.

"Hey," I said strangely, my voice echoed in my ears like it was underwater, wasn't I supposed to say something witty? "Is only game, why you heff to be mad?"

It might have been my imagination, but I thought that Aural looked vaguely disappointed at my choice, as she tried to pull his fingers away from her neck without success, Claire just smiled.

"Felix." I said strangely, "Claire, Rail Tracer, what a dumb name."

Can't even draw trains without cheating, bitch.

I think I might be concussed because my thoughts were even more abstract than normal, we were probably about to die too, I thought stupidly.

I didn't want to die, I didn't think Aural wanted to either or Battery, Dean, Kid Win or Swallow or Climax. I couldn't stop this guy, not without killing him, he was too good, he was too fast, he was too strong, he was unstoppable. I highly doubted that he was unkillable, it was just that I didn’t want to be a killer, I didn't want to kill Dean's brother, I didn't want to kill Claire.

I never really seemed to get what I wanted, I thought, not really.

"Well, this has been fun," Claire was saying something again, but I couldn't understand the words. "It's about time I finished up, however."

Was he about to kill her? If he did, I would have to kill him, but I didn't want to.

"Claire," I managed through another fit of coughing. "Don't make me kill you, just leave. Please."

It didn't sound threatening; it didn't sound like anything really, I could kill him, I could put so many wires into the air that it would cover the sky, he couldn't avoid that many could he? Everyone in the train would die, Aural would die first, she was closest, I didn't want that though I didn't want to be a killer.

Claire just shook his head without responding, I was crying now, I noted distantly. The howling wind was tearing the tears from my face, off into oblivion, but I still couldn't hear it. Aural had stopped grabbing at the hand and had her finger pressed to her chest, near the shoulder. I didn't understand what she wanted me to do, and I watched as Claire lifted the knife to slit her throat.

"Please," I choked out.

Don't make me a murderer, I couldn’t quite say. Claire froze and I thought for a moment he had finally found some shred of morality leftover from when he had once been a human.

Claire looked over his shoulder at something behind him, turning slightly in the process. Oh, it was Dean, his upper body stuck out of a hole in the roof, his arm was outstretched towards his brother, a bright colour curled off his palm and evaporated. I looked back at Aural and she was now tapping her finger weakly against her chest. Light from a passing lamppost caught on the blade in Claire's hand and it blinded me for a moment.

Suddenly I understood, sound burst back into existence, the howling wind came back, I had seen all the pieces of the puzzle already, I just hadn't been able to put them together. Claire was able to block things that he couldn't possibly have seen while inside the carriage. Attacks from behind, and attacks from out of his line of sigh, I had thought that he had been using one of his other senses. I couldn’t discount that he had been, but it was more than that.

I had tried to stab him in the leg once back in the carriage, with a wire hidden underneath the debris, It had made no discernible sound and I had only attacked when he had been standing practically on top of it, he still blocked it, even under those conditions, because he had seen it, in a reflection.

He was using the reflections in the shattered glass scattered around the carriage to track everything out of his line of sight.

Dean had managed to hit him with a sneak attack, the only hit we had landed on him since the fight began, because the wind had blocked the sound and he had done it from three carriage lengths away, directly behind him, and out of sight. There was nothing reflective to see the attack coming, the knife had been in front of him, his own body and Aural's had blocked any chance of seeing behind him with the reflection.

Even my wires must have been reflecting vague shapes throughout the fight, at least to some extent. When I had blacked out all of my actively controlled wires had vanished, all of the shields, hands, and even the tiny wires I used to keep track of everyone, all of them had been reflecting the lights from the train and the light posts that we passed along the tracks, but right now the only reflective surface in sight was the knife.

Claire could react to anything within his perception, sneak attacks from out of his range were the only thing that would ever even approach him, but if he saw them in a reflection, or realized that it was coming with another of his senses he would simply avoid it. Aural had figured it out already and had been trying to get me to attack, the knife was dangling just out of Claire's line of sight, he was looking behind him at his brother, and the nearest light post was too far away for the light to catch on the knife. Claire said something to Dean, but I didn’t catch the words.

I wouldn't have another chance.

I created a single wire from my foot, it pierced directly up through Aural's shoulder, before passing cleanly into Claire's chest, he reacted immediately, snapping his gaze back around and lifting the knife to kill Aural, but for once he was too slow. I split the singular wire buried in his chest into a million branching tendrils that tore through his body in an instant.

Claire stopped moving abruptly and let out a strangled laugh, it was alarmingly loud and filled with mirth, he dropped the knife after a moment and gently pushed Aural away from him, she stumbled a couple of steps before dashing away from him, stopping alongside me then turning to face him.

Claire had an uncountable number of wires sticking out of him all over his body, they all originated from the middle of his chest, and the movements he had made to push Aural away had torn great rent's in his skin, I couldn’t help but think that he looked like a twisted version of myself when I used my power, he was completely covered in blood now, except his perfect white teeth, still pulled into a wide smile, a dark red puddle was expanding outwards from his feet.

I managed to drag myself to my feet with a combination of wires and Aural's help, I watched Claire for a moment before retracting the wires as carefully as I could, as if I did it gently enough he would somehow be alright. The second he was free he immediately took a step towards us and we both stepped backward in shock, he took another step and then stumbled before falling face down on the roof dead.

Dean was staring at the scene in horror, with his hand still partially outstretched. Climax and Swallow appeared next to him, climbing onto the roof through one of the holes before starting towards us. I pushed Aural towards her teammates before stumbling towards the side of the train, she watched me go silently.

"Try not to get arrested, dumbass," I said quietly and wrapped some wires around a passing lamppost. Aural nodded as the wires grew taunt and I slipped from the train.

I was now a killer.