Listen to: "Everything in its right place" - Radiohead
The aftermath of the ambush didn't leave room for silence. The streets still rattled with the faint echoes of collapsing metal and the dying whine of quirk-charged debris skittering to a halt. Kaito landed beside me, rifle low, visor cracked at the edge from some earlier close call.
"That wasn't random," he said, panting. "That was precision. Somebody wanted us boxed in."
I dusted concrete off my shoulder and resisted the urge to shake the tremble out of my hands. My heart was still hammering like an overclocked engine, adrenaline refusing to fade.
"Yeah," I murmured, glancing down the alley where the last attacker had limped away, leaving a trail of glowing blood that pulsed like it had a heartbeat of its own. "And they're not done."
The rules I laid down during the fight still lingered in the air like static. My quirk always had a half-life, the world resisting its alterations after a few minutes. But this time, it felt different. Heavier. Like something bigger was pushing back against me.
"Who do you think sent them?" Kaito asked, adjusting the remains of his damaged helmet.
I let out a long breath. "Someone who understands how to move pieces on a board. Someone with reach."
And deep down, I knew exactly who.
A message blinked on the HUD overlay of my visor: Location ping: Unknown Sender.
Coordinates.
A challenge.
Kaito raised an eyebrow when he noticed me pause. "You got something?"
"Yeah," I muttered, squaring my shoulders. "Looks like they want to meet face-to-face."
The address wasn't far. That alone set every internal alarm blaring. Nobody brazen enough to pull a stunt like this would also be stupid enough to leave their base of operations in walking distance.
Unless they wanted me to find it.
Unless this whole thing was still part of the plan.
Time slowed to a crawl.
Not in the cool, cinematic way you'd expect—no bullet-time, no stylish head tilts or clever quips. Just raw, unfiltered adrenaline dragging every second out until it felt like I was wading through molasses. My ears rang with the aftershock of the kinetic blast, and somewhere behind that ringing was the sound of Kaito cursing over comms.
The street was a graveyard of twisted metal and broken glass. The attackers didn't waste time gloating. Another one peeled off from the pack, a tall figure moving with deliberate, almost lazy strides. His hands were in his pockets, and his face? Calm. Too calm.
I learned the hard way that anyone who walks into a fight looking that relaxed is either suicidal or unstoppable.
Spoiler: It was the second one.
The second he moved, I felt it. Spatial warping. The air around him distorted like a heat mirage, and the world cracked—not literally, but close enough. My Rule snapped into place on instinct: 'Distance between me and the target cannot shrink unless I allow it.'
For half a heartbeat, it worked. The distortion around him hit an invisible wall, a ripple where space bent but couldn't pass. He smiled.
"Smart quirk," he murmured, voice like worn leather. "But you're playing checkers in a chess match, kid."
And just like that, the rule snapped. His quirk didn't shrink the distance. He made the street fold. The world around me tilted, the ground flipping like a page, and the next thing I knew, his fist was inches from my face.
'Impact negation.' My old faithful.
The blow connected, and the force shunted sideways like I'd just redirected a train off its tracks. I stumbled, caught myself, and adjusted my stance.
"You're not the usual street trash," I muttered.
"Neither are you." His smile grew a fraction wider, and for the first time, I realized he wasn't alone. Behind him, the other attackers had finished circling. A net, closing tighter. A pack of hunters herding their prey.
And I was the prey.
But here's the thing about being cornered: it makes the next move beautifully simple. There's nowhere left to run, so all that's left is forward.
'All rules apply at once, for thirty seconds.'
A last resort. A cheat code. My own kind of Domain Expansion.
And as the glow flared to life around me, for the first time tonight, the odds tilted.
Time's slow-motion grip shattered the moment my rule ignited. Reality didn't bend to my will—it snapped.
In the span of a blink, every condition I had pre-written surged to life: kinetic redirection, damage dampening, predictive reflexes, even range compensation. My body wasn't faster, my brain wasn't sharper—the world just moved in tune with my expectations. A symphony of imposed certainty.
The tall figure's fist came for me again, but this time my counter wasn't defensive. My footwork shifted, weaving through the tilted geometry of the warped street, closing the gap between us before his brain could catch up with what his eyes were seeing.
'When I aim, I hit.'
Simple, but effective.
My strike collided with his side, bypassing his spatial armor like it was wet tissue paper. He staggered—just enough for me to pivot, grab his arm, and flip him over my shoulder, slamming him into the fractured pavement.
The shockwave from the impact cratered the ground beneath him. But even as the dust cleared, I could feel it: he was still conscious. Still calculating. Another variable in this fight refusing to stay solved.
"You're full of surprises," he rasped, coughing up a thread of crimson as he propped himself onto an elbow.
"You haven't seen half of them yet," I shot back.
Kaito's voice crackled to life in my ear. "Two more incoming. No visual, but the seismic footprint's unmistakable. Heavy hitters. You got a window to pull out?"
I didn't answer. The answer was obvious: I didn't. Not yet. Not until I knew who sent these people and why they'd cornered me like a lab rat. Not until I drew them out.
The one on the ground wiped the blood from his mouth, glancing skyward. "You won't win, you know," he said casually. "This isn't about you. It's bigger. We're just the introduction."
His phrasing stuck with me. Introduction. Meaning this was just the prologue to something worse.
The world stabilized as my thirty-second rule window burned out, the glow flickering from my limbs like dying embers. Whatever game I was playing, the next round was already loading.
And the players? They were just getting started.
The world felt like glass underfoot. Brittle. Ready to shatter.
My Rulebreaker Drive flared, and for a moment, I stood at the epicenter of a different reality. The attackers froze, instincts screaming at them that something had shifted, even if their brains couldn't name it yet.
And then I moved.
In that thirty-second window, the world bent to my will. Gravity, friction, momentum—all under my thumb, all obeying a single unspoken truth: My survival is non-negotiable.
The first attacker lunged, a blade materializing mid-air like some half-baked anime power. Too slow. My quirk inverted inertia on the blade, turning its swing from deadly to weightless. I sidestepped, grabbed the hilt midair, and let my own kinetic force finish the job, flipping him face-first into the asphalt.
The others followed suit, more cautious, more organized. That told me all I needed to know: pros, not punks.
One tried suppressive fire, quirks enhancing their bullets to phase through cover and still seek me out. Nice try.
'Impact delay. All incoming projectiles suspend on contact for ten seconds.'
The air thickened with floating rounds, a frozen snapshot of death that never landed. My boots cracked pavement as I closed the distance, elbow driving straight into the shooter's gut, sending them crumpling like an old newspaper.
Ten seconds left.
That's when he reappeared—the calm one. Mr. Leather Voice. No theatrics this time. Just pure, calculated movement. He didn't charge; he walked. And for the first time, I noticed the gleam of something beneath his skin. Tech. Cybernetics, maybe. Or worse: Quirk augmentation implants.
"Let's see how far you've really come," he said, and I felt it before I saw it—a gravitational spike, pulling my center of mass sideways.
'Orientation lock. My center of mass remains fixed.'
His power buckled against the rule, but this wasn't a normal fight anymore. This was chess at light speed.
Five seconds left.
We traded blows. Physics bent around us like soft clay, rules overlapping like ripples in a pond. It wasn't about strength. It wasn't even about speed. It was about which of us could predict the other's next rule first.
Two seconds.
He overcommitted, a fraction too confident. I let him close the gap, rule-break my own inertia, and sent him flying backward.
Time's up.
The Rulebreaker Drive flickered out. The weight of the world crashed back into place. My lungs burned, my muscles screamed, and the pain finally caught up to me. But I was still standing.
The street was littered with unconscious bodies. All but one. The calm one was already pulling himself upright, dusting off his coat, expression unchanged.
"Impressive," he said, brushing a smear of blood from his lip. "You've outgrown this city."
And then he left, vanishing into the shattered skyline before I could lock another rule.
The night air felt colder after the adrenaline crash, like the entire city's pulse had slowed along with mine. I wiped the sweat from my face with a shaky hand and scanned the wreckage.
Glass crunched under my boots as I limped toward the last standing streetlight. My Rulebreaker Drive was spent, and the absence of its power left a strange ache—like a phantom limb I'd grown too attached to.
For all the rubble and bodies, the real fight hadn't even started yet.
Above me, the neon skyline flickered like a dying heartbeat. Somewhere beyond those towers, the calm one was reporting back. I could almost hear the conversation: data on me, my quirks, my limits—all cataloged and filed away for the next round.
This wasn't over. Far from it.
But for tonight, the streets belonged to me. The predators had retreated, tails tucked.
I slumped onto the curb, letting my head fall into my hands. My gloves were torn, my jacket shredded, and under the bruises and scrapes, the same bitter truth gnawed at my chest:
Even with all this power, I was only stalling the inevitable.
Somewhere in the distance, sirens began to wail. Late, as always.
I stood slowly, bones creaking, and limped away from the scene before the cleanup crew arrived. The hero system would spin its usual narrative: unidentified villain group scattered, civilian casualties prevented, situation contained.
But I knew the score.
This wasn't containment.
It was war.
And I was still fighting it alone.