Aaron Cyrus March 7th,20XX

“Huh?”

The psychopath looked on in horror as his hand dropped to the floor and the needle in his hand crushed the bones in his hand. I pushed myself off the wall I’d been propped onto and headbutted him backwards, then used my powers to weigh down the clothes he was wearing.

He hissed out a strangled sound that showed he was having difficulty breathing, but I wasn’t in the state of mind to care.

I didn’t use my powers on his body since there was too much of a risk of killing him, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t hurt him. Sam caught on quicker than I expected and turned away, but it was too late.

While I didn’t know his exact weight, we’d trained enough together in the past that I could take a guess. There was the risk of crippling him, but again, I was a little past caring about his bodily health.

He screamed as he felt his body get thirty pounds heavier and cursed as his knees hit the hard stone surface of the cave floor.

I thought that would be enough to get him out of commission, but he was more resilient than I’d given him credit for.

A relatively recent memory came into mind, and I decided to try something else.

My body screamed as I pulled out more energy than I could afford to and lifted both Sam and the other guy into the air. I made them as light as I possibly could to emphasize the difference when I removed the influence.

The psycho let out an ear-piercing scream as he felt his body rise up into the air, and his limbs flailed about in the air. The ruckus he raised was only beat by Sam, who cursed violently and desperately tried to hold on to the ambient rocks around him.

“Wh- What? How are you doing this?!”

The psycho pinned me as the perpetrator first, but I kept my face as blank as possible. While I wasn’t stupid enough to admit to doing anything, I wasn’t in a good enough mood to put up an act.

I didn’t waste energy gently letting them down and ripped away my powers from their bodies like an old band-aid.

The sun had steadily risen while all of this happened, and the cave was significantly brighter than it was before. The waves made a gentle sound that contrasted with the tragic scene in the cave, a mere few feet away. Thankfully it wasn’t the season that the waves would completely fill the cave and drown any unfortunate inhabitants.

I shuffled around until the case was behind me and felt around for the sharp-looking scalpel. At this point, I wished I had Archer’s abilities, but since I was making wishes, I supposed I should have wished that none of this had happened or that I had someone to set me free.

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A painful groan escaped my lips as I nearly dislocated my shoulder, but I finally got my fingers around the scalpel. It cut the pad of my index finger, and I smelled the raw scent of blood. It was a sizable cut, but my senses were already on fire from the previous night of drinking.

It took some maneuvering and more finger-flexibility than I thought I’d had, but I finally managed to cut the thick ropes off my hands. There was a zip tie underneath them, which explained the poor circulation to my fingers, but thankfully the scalpel was sharp enough to cut it through.

The nerves in my hands and fingers sang as I shook them out and tried to promote proper blood circulation.

I walked around in a circle and stretched out my legs for a few seconds before heading over to the other victims. Or well, I didn’t know if they were victims, but odds were in their favour.

But before that.

I walked over to the two crumpled forms of Sam and the psycho. They looked in poor condition and were barely conscious, but they were alive. Sam somewhat woke up when I fished through his pockets for a phone, but he didn’t say anything, and his pupils rolled around dangerously.

“A-Aaron?”

A feeble voice called my attention from the cave entrance, and I saw a miserable-looking Filip hurtling toward me. His clothes showed the dangerous journey he’d made to get to the cave, and a patch of redness stained the left side of his face and showed an injury.

“Filip! I’m here!”

He used his hands to climb into the curved mouth of the cave and crawled his way up to his feet. His hands shook as he patted me down to make sure I was in one piece.

“God, Aaron, I’m so sorry. He talked about it before, but I didn’t know he’d actually go ahead with it!”

His eyes trembled as he looked around and saw both Sam and the psycho lying on the floor, but he said nothing and instead looked around to the rest of the space.

“God, what have they been doing here? Ah, we need to get you out of here.”

“Filip! Calm down. Did you bring your phone?”

“ah! Oh yeah, I have yours too.”

He was usually such a calm and cold-looking guy that It was heartwarming to see him so worried on my behalf. I somewhat wondered why he’d had my phone, to begin with, but in the light of what Sam had done, I figured I could afford to ignore it.

I was so tired.

“Filip. There should be something else sharp in there. Call the cops and ask them to come here, then help me help the others out.”

He finally looked around and realized that there were more than the four of us.

“Oh! God, yes! Yes! You go help them out… but take it easy. I’ll-“

“Call the cops, yeah.”

It might have been faster to just leave here and pretend none of this ever happened, but I couldn’t risk any of this coming out in the future and not being documented. Nothing had happened, but I couldn’t risk anyone having any doubts.

I’d had enough fun being as reckless as I possibly could, but it was time to come back to reality.

“Ah!”

“Just relax your arms for a second; I’ll get these off you in a second.”

The woman groaned as I sawed at the thick rope around her wrists and tried to set her free. She was the first of many, but she was also the most conscious.

“Just keep laying down. Help is on the way.”

They had definitely injected her with whatever they’d wanted to put into me. I didn’t know what it was or even what it would do, but local law enforcement could deal with that.

“I’ve called the police! They’re on their way!”

He got to work cutting people loose, and soon everyone was free. Most of them couldn’t move and simply stared at the ceiling or the wall in a stupor if they were still conscious.

“One second, I have to make a call of my own.”

It wasn’t like I didn’t trust the local law enforcement here, but if I had a more significant hand to play, it would be stupid not to. Besides, I had to apologize for my sudden disappearance. It was time to get back to reality.