Born To Run (and kick ass)

A few hours ago, a group of friends like any other were sitting around in the crib of one of its members, watching TV, drinking, talking, fulfilling the human need for interaction in the uniquely satisfying way that hanging out and talking with your good friends provided, that indescribable feeling of homeliness.

They were perhaps a little different from the idea people had of the average group of friends, as they were born and raised into the poorest neighborhoods of the region, and they all have complicated childhoods, which at one point intertwined. The bond thus formed would last for life.

Keisuke, the de facto leader and the one who rented the crib in which they hung out, was providing for almost all of them by dealing coke. Aoki was just out of prison after a pickpocket attempt gone wrong and struggling to find anyone willing to employ him. Ryota and Kaito had part-time jobs on barely more than a high schooler’s salary, and Takeru couldn’t work anymore, and seldom spoke either.

Some of them were kinds souls. Some of them weren’t so nice. Some of them would pose a challenge to an extremely judging deity with a poorly thought-out morality system trying to sort them between eternal suffering and eternal bliss. In another life, they would have been delivery men, small-time manager, perhaps lawyers, perhaps the owner of a private hospital.

But in this world, they were dealers, store clerks, ex-convicts, temp workers, or dealing with extreme PTSD. And tonight, what they had seen on the news spurred them into action. They had enough of this life, so they threw it away. They wanted their slice of the cake too.

Upon closer examination, both top and bottom hinges of the door had been smashed, the top one cleanly, the bottom one in a way that made it worse for the purpose of opening it and forcing them to try and work it off the frame. The steel curtain which normally guarded the door had been cut with a power saw and left on the side. It was a wonder the noise didn’t attract anyone sooner.

Takeru was the one who was working on the door, a faint bubble of white air barely visible around him. He had impressed everyone when he supported Keisuke’s idea. Keisuke wanted him to stay home, and Takeru vehemently refused. He said that they would need his power.

Aoki hollered to check something out. It was a dude with white hair and sunglasses in the night. Darren saw it too, and no one seemed to have noticed Darren as he was coming out of a comparatively darker alley.

Darren also saw a guy draw what looked to be a gun at the intruder. Blue electricity sparkled on him.

Keisuke intended to say “Back the fuck off,” but right as he was about to say the words a dirty white running shoe crashed on his wrist and the gun escaped his grasp. The dirt white running shoe was attached to a leg clad in dark shorts with red stripes, itself attached to body clad in an equally red meshed t-shirt. The whole ensemble belonged to Daimon Darren.
The leader of the small-time thugs yelped in pain, but no sound came out of his mouth. When the gun crashed a couple meters away, accidentally releasing the hammer, striking the pin, igniting the primer and firing a bullet between G and the thugs, no sound came out either. In the confusion, no one seemed to notice a barely visible bubble of thin white air expanding and enveloping everyone in a ten-meter radius.

That was Takeru’s quirk. The effect was simple, yet useful: for as long as he maintained it, no sound would come out from within the zone, and no outside noise would come in his zone of absolute silence. No one would be woken up by the sounds of their fight just as no one had been woken up when they cut open the steel curtain and smashed the hinges.

The thugs were more used to their friend’s quirk than Darren, who had recently jumped in the middle of them and kicked their leader in the wrist. That was an offense they would answer to with even greater violence.

They coordinated quickly despite the sudden total absence of noise, which surprised Darren greatly, enough that he had no choice but to block the aluminum baseball bat and the steel chain that were coming at him, guided by the hands of Kaito and Ryota. Aoki was squinting at G as if trying to remember him.

His guard was tight and he was tough, but damn it hurt like hell. The pain was a reminder that metal weapons weren’t something that Darren could quite block yet as he backstepped away, his body lighting up with his quirk for a tenth of a second and pulling him back as if yanked by a leash.

While Kaito and Keisuke -- who was rubbing his wrist painfully -- squared up in front of Darren, Aoki and Ryota were to take care of G. Aoki had the crowbar and Keisuke pulled out a switchblade, darting quick looks around to try and locate his gun. Takeru was still working frenetically on the hinge. That was fine. No one expected Takeru to fight.

Complete and utter silence had thrown a certain wild delinquent for a loop. He had fought in weird conditions before, but never without sounds. It was a new experience; one didn’t quite appreciate how much information our sense of hearing gave us on our surroundings.

Darren’s eyes were more focused than ever and his arms were sparkling and flying to meet blows. He could only do so much. The knife was the more dangerous one, and often he had to take a hit from the bad on the shoulder or the forearm to block a stab or a slash. Clearly, it wasn't neither of them’s first rodeo, and especially Keisuke was a finer knifeman than he looked.

The two guys he was facing were obviously more used to fighting in complete silence than he was. Alone, they wouldn’t be such a thread, but the tightly knit group of lowlifes stuck together, and the total was greater than the sum of its parts.

Alone, his life in palpable danger, only hanging by the thread of his hands, the adrenaline pumped through his veins like never. He couldn’t hear his heartbeat, but he could feel the blood flow in his veins. In the complete silence of the area, his concentration sharpened like it never had. This had the effect of drawing a horrible rictus on the blondie’s face. Kaito hesitated a little, and he could not be faulted; Darren was looking downright crazy right now, and there was quite some truth to the idea.

A glance over his left shoulder was enough to remind him he had been lucky, as he saw Ryota get bitten by a huge insectoid creature that came out of nowhere. There was a mask of terror on his face, but the sight of his friend Ryota in danger was enough to turn terror into courage, perhaps even foolhardiness.

With a poke to Keisuke’s shoulder to warn his friend of the danger, Kaito charged angrily, screaming a silent war cry at the top of his lungs and bringing his bat down crashing on Goliath’s head. Keisuke, after a quick glance behind, steeled his nerves and faced Darren, preventing the boy from intervening -- not that Darren wanted to mess with the giant creature that came out of nowhere anyway, as much as it seemed to be on his side. Rampaging creatures seemed to be on your side when they rampaged against your enemy up until they rampaged on your ass.

The gun was still laying on the edge of the battlefield, unseen by the belligerents. The fifth man of the crew, Takeru, was still working frenetically on the hinge, trying to wrestle the door off with the energy of desperation. He kept shooting worried glances over his shoulder.

He caught sight of the gun on his latest glance and froze up.

The man, or the boy rather, was no older than twenty, and his face was not the mask but the face of terror. Ryota was being eaten by a giant armadillo thing that he didn’t know the name of and was probably still scary at its regular size. Ryota had always been nice to him. The others were all fighting for their lives.

Trembling like a leaf in a storm, Takeru slowly got up, his brown eyes fixated on the gun through the ski mask, and took a first, heavy step towards the weapon.

The fight had soon turned into a mess. Goliath, the giant armadillo who seemed to be on Darren’s side, but he wasn’t sure, threw the man it was holding in its maw at the one who just hit it with a crowbar. The two men ended up on the ground. Kaito got up first and helped his friend do the same, and they faced the monster, clutching their weapons. They were scared.

The blonde boy shot a quick glance sideways. The white-haired man who seemed to control the armadillo -- judging by the fact he was the only person present who was not afraid of the thing -- was having what seemed to be an argument with another thug. He wasn’t sure. He had his own fight to focus on.

The man in front of him knew his switchblade all right. Darren had to use his quirk if only to give himself a margin of error. He couldn’t cut it too close, or he would get stabbed, and if he got stabbed, he would definitely be in trouble. Darren didn’t like being in trouble because then his mom got involved.

Kaito and Ryota were surprised when the monster shot a jet of water behind him, but then they shot a glance and they caught sight of Takeru, and they saw the gun slide and they understood. What they didn’t expect to see was Takeru running towards the gun. They shouted for him to stop. It was useless.

As he ran away from the battle, his zone followed him and before they realized what was happening, most of the combatants were outside of it. Darren was shocked by the sudden return of sound, and the lapse in concentration caused him to dodge too late and get a cut on his left forearm. It was a shallow cut, but clean, and it bled.

With the return of sound, a nearby window lit up, and a human-like figure appeared in it. Someone had seen what was happening. It was only a matter of time until the cops arrived.