HOLY FUCK IT'S A SHARK THAT EATS PEOPLE [Darren]

Some days you just couldn’t predict. For example, today. Darren woke up to the delicious news that one of their classes was reported and that their day would end earlier. The delinquent decided to use the occasion to go see his boxing coach and tell him he’d take the damn fucking pro test if he wanted him to so bad. The coach was happy to hear that he would take the damn fucking pro test. The test was in Tokyo, he informed Darren, so Darren headed there on the bullet train.

He thought it would be a good idea to jog from the train station to the arena by going through Tokyo park. It was a good idea, in fact. The weather was nice today, with blue skies and a refreshing breeze. There were trees, sanded path, birds and bees and butterflies and all sorts of wholesome things that made the air feel purer to breathe. There were children playing in sandboxes, on playgrounds, or just chasing each other on their bikes. It was perfect for a run -- Darren liked dodging the children chasing each other on their bikes, it added challenge -- perfect for a day out with the family, perfect for a romantic picnic, and also, apparently, the perfect day for literal monsters to rise from the ground.

The earth suddenly trembled. Then, it trembled louder and more worryingly, and then, twenty meters from where Darren had stopped running and yanked out his earbuds, dressed in black shorts and dirty white running shoes, a red t-shirt for protection and nothing else, the earth tore itself apart and a shark-man-thing rose up.

The lead singer in Darren’s band was a goat-rabbit-dog-man-thing and a fellow student at hero school. Some people found his appearance terrifying. At this moment, the delinquent couldn’t help but think that these people really were little bitches and sons of. He tried to picture them in this situation, found it very funny, and then he figured he had better things to do right now when the beast roared and displayed more teeth than Darren was comfortable seeing in one mouth.

Better things to do, like saving that idiot kid, for example. There always seemed to be an idiot kid who fell flat on his ass and just stood there crying instead of getting up and hauling ass. Darren sighed, and with a short sparkle leaped in front of the kid, grabbed him below the arms and lifted him up on his feet. “Kid?” he said with a smile that immediately faded. “Get the fuck away. NOW.”

Darren’s shout was enough to send the boy running away to safety with all his might, crying even louder. Scaring the shit out of kids was still the quickest way to get them to haul ass properly, Darren figured. Cian-sensei would surely disagree.

He did not let the monster off his sight for more than a second, darting quick looks at the thing. It was slow, thankfully so, but it seemed to be strong, very strong. Darren’s instincts were painting him a very clear picture of what would happen if he found himself trapped between these jaws.

The blonde delinquent gulped a little, but he was grinning. He was starting to feel the adrenaline, completed Cian-sensei’s checklist before it overtook him. No one else to get to safety; most people had the instinct to haul ass, but a few bravely idiotic souls stayed behind to film with cell phones, tablets or digital cameras.

“Everyone get the fuck away and get to safety, or y'all gonna die! Call the police immediately and don’t try to play the hero, that’s my job! I’ll try to hold down our friend Sharky here while help takes its sweet time to come,” he said, pumping as much loud confidence and bravado and dumb jokes in his voice as he could to mask the fear that was starting to take hold. He clapped and shouted wildly, to get the sharkman's attention. "Come here, boy! Come to papa!"

The adrenaline coursing through his veins doubled. Oh man, oh boy, oh fuck. I might not survive this, thought Darren, grinning even wider. Under similar situations, some would have fiery eyes. Darren was usually more of a sparkle man. But in this situation, facing this giant beast that must have weighed three times his weight, at least, his blue eyes went dead cold.

He was afraid, but strangely calm. His head was cool, and he could think clearly. Of course, the dudes filming wouldn't get away, not before the police tore them from their filming spots. They were after their own fifteen minutes of glory. Some clowns had made uTube channels out of following heroes around with quadcopter drones. Let them do it, he thought. Natural selection, he justified himself. If these idiots want to die narrating my exploits, be my guests, I warned em', I did my job, he thought. He couldn't be held responsible for all these idiots, not just himself alone, that was the police's job. He had a fight to focus on.

I'm definitely gonna be late for the pro test, thought the apprentice hero.

It was funny, wasn’t it? Always when he wasn’t even looking for trouble. It was always when Darren wasn’t even looking for trouble that he accidentally stepped in on sharkmen coming out the ground and cleaving people in half or more with a single bite. A grotesque head staring dumbly in the distance rolled to Darren’s feet. He fought an urge to kick it away when he remembered the livestreams would definitely end up on uTube before tonight. Instead, he started stepping to the side, slowly, to get himself in a better position.

He gulped. It was the bare minimum of an appropriate reaction to what Darren had just witnessed. Movies and video games were very realistic in 2070, but reality definitely had more of a crunch to it, more of a bite. Perhaps it was the blood-curdling scream of a man who knew he fucked up, knew he was about to die, but still definitely didn’t want to.

Darren couldn’t do shit to save the man. He was too far. The idiot got too close. As custom and logic dictated, he had prioritized the crying child over the adventurous reporter. His camera was resting in a pool of blood. Hopefully, he at least got one good picture of the beast. Otherwise, it was one hell of a both extremely stupid and absolutely horrifying death.

Darren’s amygdala couldn’t pump much more adrenaline in his bloodstream. For once, he was dead serious; what he witnessed had erased all pretense of cocky bravado from the delinquent usually overbearing persona, at least for now. He could hear his own blood thumping in the veins closest to his ears. He could feel it, even.

I could die. I could die. I could die. He repeated these words in his head like a mantra. They gave him strength. Tehy gave him focus. They helped him control his breathing. Darren was the kind of person who had to be reminded he could die, or he got too excited, messed something up, and died for real.

What the words couldn’t do anything about was his rictus. It wouldn’t go away even if he willed it too. Part of him might have been utterly terrified, but an equally important part was having the thrill of the delinquent’s life.

The beast turned its head slowly. The beast stared at him. The beast roared at him, and he could feel the roar in his gut more than he could hear it with his ears. The beast plunged inside the ground in front of him, and a mound of earth was headed his way. Darren knew what it meant. His survival instincts and his adrenaline junkie instincts agreed on a course of action instantly.

As soon as the shark dove, power surged like electrical current on his body, and a second later he was propelled backward and towards a tree. He crashed into said tree, absorbing the impact with his tough left arm and his tough left leg. It still hurt a bit, and he had no proper footing. It was okay. Autokinetic people didn’t need no footing, the surging electricity affirmed, and with a second activation was headed in the opposite direction, leaping well over the shark and a aiming for a few meters past where Sharky opened his first hole and ate his first man.

Darren kept looking down, ready to use his quirk again. Who knew how far the shark could leap? Better safe than sorry, decided the normally thrill-seeking student. His game plan was to keep the shark focused on him and away from people, until, I don’t know, until these damn cops show up to do their jobs… Right, not happening. Damn. I have to figure out something, and quick. Damn. Maybe with a bit of luck, it's dumb and it will keep charging at the tree, and crash on it or something. Fuck. I hope.

“From bad to worse” was an accurate description of the scene Darren found himself in. Not a second after he jumped off his tree, the beast started going at it like a wood chipper and soon the tree was looking much less like a tree and much more like very poorly cut timber. It looked as if a colony of beavers on crack had a go at it.

It was not just the fucked-up tree. The battle was taking place near the street, and many people flew towards their cars, started them in a panic and drove away as fast as they can. The problem was that “as fast as they could” was actually quite slow for a bunch of regular drivers in Tokyo traffic, so most actually went “as fast as the car would let them” and a few crashed into each other. Other tried to escape using their quirks; in seemingly an instant, there were fires, screams, broken glass and blood in the middle of Tokyo.

Darren only saw this happening in the corner of his eye, for he was understandably focused on the shark man. He had come out the ground for a second, roaring as savagely as before. Darren usually liked to describe himself as wild; he was reconsidering this characterization now.

The beast roared again, seemed to look for him for a second. It found him faster than Darren would have liked and dove back underground. The delinquent didn’t have time to wonder about this, or if this thing was even remotely human. Blue electricity crackled on his skin.

Son of a crackwhore, this fucking thing could come out of anywhere. Move your ass! he told himself, and he did, well away from the latest hole the beast had made. It was probably localizing him with its hearing or some kinda anime-ass seismic sense, he had to keep moving, he had to find a plan. Darren's eyes locked with a nearby rock. He had an idea. Was it good? He decided he couldn't know, so he gave it a try.

He flew once again towards the rock, grabbed it, and hauled ass up a tree with liberal uses of his power, feeling the beast getting closer with the tremors. His heart was banging hard inside his chest. Thank you papa, thank you mama for this bomb-ass quirk, he thought between ragged breaths. No matter how awesome it was, he had been using it a little too much. It was no matter. Darren decided quite justly that stamina was the least of his concerns right now, and that he would have a lot more shit to deal with than a lack of stamina if he slacked behind and Sharky got a taste of his foot.

He lost no time it testing out his little theory. Perched on the branch, ready to jump away in case he was wrong, he threw his rock down as far from the tree as possible. The idea was that the noise would confuse the shark, if he indeed used a sort of echolocation.

If he didn’t, well… Thoughts for later, decided the delinquent. From his tree, he could spy a few police cars and red trucks converging on his position. Policemen were trying to establish a yellow tape around the place where he was fighting, paramedics were trying to rescue panicked civilians and treat the injured and firemen were trying to extinguish the fires while their higher-ups stood around in suits and ties, making themselves look busy and concerned by shouting at their phones in very impatient voices, with the occasional profanity.

One police car stopped a fifty, sixty meters or so from the tree he was sitting in and much closer to the action than the others, who had decided to establish the yellow tape at the entrance of the park. Officer Karuma wanted to be close to the action, so he had driven his FWD Suzuki inside the park. Darren spied it, but more alarmingly, he heard it as well.

Reeks of another mess in the making, thought the delinquent as his rock crashed down with a dull sound. Maybe it would distract the shark from the car. His legs were cocked like springs, ready to escape what might become another tree of doom.

Definitely trouble. Two cops came out of the car, guns in hand. The beast royally ignored his rock and instead, the rumble died down. God damn, they drew it in with their god damned fucking car, thought Darren. He blasted in their direction, and the grumble grew louder. God damn it, he was right. He blasted forward again, picking up speed and leaving a trail of sweat.

He saw the earth break down in front of him, and that’s when he activated his third blast, tackling the cop on the left. He felt something close with a snap dangerously close to his right foot. He tried to wriggle his right toes as he and the cop crashed and slid on the ground a few meters away. Darren got up on his feet and yanked the cop up too, and pushed him away to get him to run.

“Get the fuck out you idiot, unless you have a fucking fire-breathing quirk or something,” he lashed before he turned to face the monster, who was still out in the open air after gruesomely murdering another man. A handgun dropped next to his bloodied maw, still attached to a forearm.

God damn it, I have to do something or that idiot will not have time to escape before that thing dives underground again. God damn it. Fuck. I have to do this. Fuck. I could die. He launched forward, without using his quirk, simply running at the thing like a man with a death wish. His body crackled with kinetic current, and the instant he got anywhere near what he estimated the reach of the creature was, he banked left hard, taking the creature’s left side with a sudden diagonal move, hopefully just out of the creature’s range. With another activation, he took the creature’s back.

I’m faster in the air. I’m faster in the air. I could die. He propelled himself forward, correcting his momentum so that he hit the creature’s back with a long flying kick. Not long after he’d make contact, he’d pull back, having hopefully drawn the attention of the creature to himself and away from the hopefully-fleeing cop.

God damn, if that idiot doesn’t flee, that’s gonna be more people I let die. The more people he saved, the less trouble he would get in, he knew. Bet he’s gonna try to shoot at it. And he’s gonna end up shooting me in the leg. That’s just my luck. God damn. I could die.

All the thinking that Darren surprised himself with his ability to do had to be done over a voice in the back of Darren’s head that kept going “this is awesome, this is awesome, this is awesome.” The voice was the reason he had to tell himself he could die over and over.

None of this, however, could erase the mad grin he soon got back, even though he had to pace his breaths now. God damn. I could die. The mantra kept him sane. He didn't realize that he had blood on his white shoes, human blood, human blood that wasn't his.

God damn, how did that work?! But fuck, it had worked, his kick had distracted the beast enough that the other cop had the time to escape. He pulled back quickly, still. He was not taking any chances, even if the state of its skin gave him a hint that it was weakened.

The shark turned his head at him, and where he expected the blind furious roar of a savage beast, he was instead… Warned? That’s certainly how it felt like when the beast seemingly tried to intimidate him by showing him its maw, its size and all the bits and pieces of human beings stuck between its double row of teeth.

Darren had a cold sweat, not so much because of the human bits, but because it showed a disturbingly human intelligence. For the first time, he was starting to wonder what exactly the beast was, and the thought that it might be more of a man than a beast on the inside crossed him for the first time.

There was no time to wonder, though, cause the beast dug again, this time very close to the ground. He could see it coming, so his body naturally pulled back in a flash of kinetic sparks and he stepped away with a long, high step that was more a jump than a step.

He had to evaluate his target and the situation. The fire from the cars had spread to some of tree inside the park, and the firemen couldn’t get in, and likely wouldn’t even if ordered after what the fleeing policier told them between sobs. The fire was spreading now. He turned his attention back to the shark, stepping back again, and saw him swerve away from the fire.

Is he afraid of fire? Makes sense, he is an animal after all… Or a man with an animal quirk, maybe… Same fucking difference. He made a decision. He backstepped again, this time angled towards the fire, and again, and again. He was making a long circle and heading for the fire, to test his mad theory. Maybe he could make a makeshift torch and chase it away or something.

Fuck, it was worth a try. It’s not like he was gonna kick it back down his hole like a mole either, he figured. Even with his successful kick, the normally cocky delinquent of UA was taking his precautions. I could die was the mantra that kept his feet down on the earth when he was in the air and his head cool when the blood rushed to it.

The shark was hot on his tail, but thankfully, Darren was a quick bastard. With every activation of his autokinesis power, he managed to get away from the beast, and closer to the fire. Nonetheless, the shark kept tracking him with deadly accuracy. It headed straight in his direction.

Up to a point. The blonde delinquent’s brow was shiny with sweat, from both the exhaustion that was starting to settle in and the heat of the growing fire. Even he was feeling a fair bit of apprehension when he blasted towards the flames, disregarding the instincts that screamed at him to do the opposite.

But the gamble had worked. He heard jaws snapping behind him and to his right, and when he turned his head he saw the shark biting confusedly at nothing in particular. For whatever reason, the shark’s pinpoint tracking was not working right now. Darren didn’t have time to wonder about why and how. He stayed where he was, staring at the confused beast until it let out one last roar and disappeared underground. Darren jumped on a tree branch, and waited.

The tremors died down with his adrenaline, and after a minute of tense silence, he noticed the police helicopter above him. He was thrown a ladder. He glanced at the park one last time, saw that a few military trucks carrying what seemed to be seismic detectors were entering cautiously, probing the area with high-tech sticks.

The delinquent grabbed the ladder and he was spirited away by the police helicopter. On board was, to his surprise, or perhaps it wasn’t so surprising, the school principal and the nurse, who immediately started asking a bunch of questions. The delinquent sighed and said:

“I’m gonna be in trouble, ain’t I? Can I at least get a bottle of water first? I’m thirsty as fuck.”

A bottle of water was produced. The delinquent drank eagerly and looked down, noticing the blood on dirty white running shoes and his tibias. He fished for his phone to take a picture, ignoring the worried adults, but it had fallen out of his pocket in the fight.

Fuck, he thought. I hope they find it. That shit was expensive.