"Everything in the night is covered in darkness.
Silence surrounds. Let the dream continue.
Pain within me, weeping and anger, like a whirlpool, drag me behind, enveloping everything.
The world is in darkness, my voice is gone, my path is lost. Soon I will vanish."
I sang along to the song pouring from my headphones, glancing at my wristwatch. In this case, I could afford to listen to music, so I chose "Silent Solitude" by OxT at random.
"Dirty deceptions and traps of betrayal—
In all of this, there wasn't a drop of meaning, alas.
Everything in the night is covered in darkness.
Silence surrounds. And the whole world sleeps peacefully.
And the universe again
Continues to repeat cruel dreams."
I have to wait on the roof of a building not far from the police station. It's best to infiltrate at 03:30 in the morning, when it would take the nearest hero patrol at least 15 minutes to reach the station.
"How many times will the bitter tale of past sins torment my memory?
Who is the one who could grant peace? How to atone for guilt?
Kindness and malice, feelings, faith in God—
I forgot about everything, as if I never knew about it."
The police station itself was a three-story building. The level of the security system is far from Tartarus, but it's not far behind standard hero academies. The layout of the rooms is standard for such institutions. The first floor is the reception, cells for temporary detention of B-class villains and lower, an interrogation room, lockers for changing, a gym, and even a shower. The second floor is the office for receiving calls from citizens and communicating with hero agencies, meeting rooms for employees, the armory, and my target—the evidence storage room. The third floor is the employees' workplaces and the security system control room.
"That dirt that I hid from eyes,
Is exposed by the cold and dim light.
My loneliness strikes the heart with pain,
Punished by silence.
Dirty deceptions, wounds from battles,
Prolonged wars are as evil as slaughterhouses.
People don't admit that they desire it,
Secretly continuing to imagine a sinful world."
The station is full of surveillance cameras; all exits are blocked in case of an alarm, and of course, there are employees assigned to the night shift. An attempt to disable the system through the control room is doomed to failure, because according to protocol, the central computer has its own low-category artificial intelligence connected to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department server. And thanks to a classified Quirk owner related to computers working for the government, the chance of hacking is infinitely close to zero.
"Phrases from days gone by
I can't drive out of my memory in any way.
I locked my heart,
So that voice in my head would finally fall silent."
Everything in the night is covered in darkness.
Silence surrounds. And the whole world sleeps peacefully.
And the universe again
Continues to repeat cruel dreams.
That's it, the time has come. I have 10 minutes to reach the storage room unnoticed. And 15 minutes to find and take the medications. I check my equipment, which includes a pistol, knives, homemade smoke, flash, and fire grenades (I didn't study the Support Course curriculum for nothing), a ball with a sticky substance, and a storage container.
I descend and make my way to the station's outer fence. I take a deep breath, closing my eyes, and make myself permeable to photons of light, which deprives me of normal vision, because light rays reflected from objects do not reach the retina. But I have another type of vision, although it would be more correct to call it a sensation. Since my escape from that place, I have constantly devoted time to returning the powers I used. As a result, that sensation of the surrounding space with its dark outlines of the environment and bright silhouettes has returned to me. The radius, however, is poor. One and a half meters compared to a hundred or more is nothing. But oh well. As a certain arms dealer from Russia used to say, "the first step is the hardest," or something like that. I push aside extra thoughts and focus on this sensation, which I call "Gaze" to myself. The pitch darkness in my mind is replaced by a sphere surrounding me, inside which I can see the environment with various shades of darkness. I head into the station from memory. I know where and what I need to pass through to keep the risk of bumping into a person at an absolute minimum.
From the tension, cold sweat runs down my forehead; during the entire journey to the storage room, two silhouettes almost flew into me. Next will be speed work. After all, I can't identify the right storage locker using "Gaze." I pass through the wall and turn off "Gaze," making myself perceive light again. I turn on the light and throw the ball with the sticky substance into the gap between the door lock and the wall. With a pop, the splattered substance hardens. I take out my pistol and shoot out the surveillance cameras. I approach the left wall with storage lockers, if looking from the entrance. No text, only numbers. Kuso. I quickly open them, almost tearing the doors off. Empty. Empty. Empty. Empty. Empty. Empty. Storage container. I quickly take it out and open it. Empty. Apparently, the contents were moved to another locker. Kuso.
Two lockers later, I find what I need—two jars, one with some solution and the second with green tablets. I quickly put them into my small container. When I close it, I hear the sound of a door being kicked in. I grab the handle of the container with my right hand, throwing a knife toward the door with my left, and focus on using "Choice" to pass through the floor. As soon as my feet pass through the floor, a stream of sand slams me into the wall opposite the entrance. The sand tightly clinches around my body. I look at the entrance. I see a muscular man with a mask on his face and a bushy mustache; one arm had turned into the sand holding me, and with the other, he was pulling the knife out of his shoulder. There was no blood. I try to ignore the rising fear and use "Choice." A slight cracking sound indicates the failure of the attempt. Again. Another failure. Again. Another failure. Again. Another failure. Again. Another failure. The sand squeezes tighter. The man, who can be considered a hero with 100% certainty, transformed his second arm into sand to better secure the criminal—me. Policemen enter cautiously behind him with weapons ready. I freeze. I'm caught. I'm caught. I'm caught. I'm caught. I'm caught. I'm caught. I'm caught. I'm caught. I'm caught. I'm caught. I'm caught. I'm caught.
Snatch POV
A pair of people dressed quite extravagantly were walking along the night street. However, dressing extravagantly is a normal occurrence for people with their profession. A young man in a blue tight-fitting suit yawned infectiously, covering his mouth with a hand wrapped in a metal cable, while the second person looked at him with disapproval, though with understanding. Compared to the young man, he had a more intimidating and brutal appearance. A muscular man with long hair and a mustache, a combat vest was worn over his bare chest, and his legs were hidden by brown military-cut pants and massive boots. The upper part of his head was covered by a blue mask with eye slits. Such was the appearance of the Sand Hero: Snatch.
"Energo, you don't look very energetic. And we're not strolling through the city; we're patrolling it."
The intern from Ketsubutsu Academy addressed the man with a groan and a dejected face.
"Mentor, how energetic can I be when it's almost half past three in the morning and we've been walking around the city for two hours and haven't found a single, even the most backwater villain. I'm going to die of boredom. All the villains are probably already sleeping in their beds. Only we are like..."
Energo shut up under Snatch's stern gaze. He knows his mentor—Sajin Higawara—as an extremely kind-hearted and empathetic person. Who, due to his father's disability received because of villainous showdowns, wanted to become a hero and save people. That is why he is extremely responsible and critical of his and other heroes' actions. He despised heroes who sought money and fame, as he sincerely believed that a hero's calling is to save people as effectively as possible. So that there wouldn't be families weeping over the coffins of loved ones. So that parents wouldn't bury their children because of psychotic killers. The contrast between his harsh exterior and gentle character still caused dissonance in the intern's head. A woman's scream interrupted the noise of the night city.
"HELP ME!"
Quickly glancing at each other, the real and future heroes dashed toward the place where the scream came from. Turning into an alley, they saw a scene of a villain with a hyena's head trying to silence a beautiful woman in a white dress. Noticing the hero, the villain begins to flee deeper into the alley with loud curses.
"Energo, look after and calm the civilian. I'm going after the villain."
Snatch said, already running after the villain. The chase lasted no less than ten minutes until the hero managed to hook the villain's leg with a sand whip. In the next second, the villain was already wrapped in a sand cocoon. Contacting the intern, Snatch made sure he was alright and acting according to protocol for such cases. Ending the call, the man began to recall the location of the nearest police station, as he and the villain had run quite far from the patrol area. As it turned out, they were not that far from one station.
Approaching the entrance of the station, the hero was unpleasantly surprised by the rising alarm signal.
"It seems this night doesn't want to end peacefully in any way..."
Handing over the hyena-headed villain to the policemen at the entrance, he ran to the second floor as directed by the officer on duty. Pushing aside the policemen trying to open the door, he turned the upper part of his body into sand and forced the door open. The room was in disarray, some locker doors were almost torn off, and an intruder with a strange suitcase in hand waved his hand at him. Feeling something entering his shoulder, Snatch ignored it and slammed the villain into the wall with a stream of sand, quickly enveloping him.
Then he noticed the knife sticking out of his shoulder; fortunately, it was still in a sand state, so it wasn't hard to pull it out. And then, already with both hands in the form of sand, he began to hold the struggling villain. He didn't like the cracking sound very much. When the villain in the smiling mask froze, he began to examine him more closely. An indistinct mumbling began to come from the mask of the small-stature villain. Chuckling, Snatch already wanted to ask how the villain got in here.
But suddenly a wave of goosebumps ran down the hero's spine. Something dark, mad, and hungry began to pull from the person in the mask. Higawara, trying to understand his sensations, heard a trembling and far too young voice.
"No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. I don't want to be caught. I haven't taken my revenge on them yet. I haven't become strong yet. I haven't met him yet..."
The longer the voice sounded, the more confident it became, and the sensation of horror grew. The crackling that had quieted down broke out with new force, and lightning bolts of a black-purple shade began to run through the sand. Suddenly, with a loud crack and lightning, the left hand breaks free, throwing pieces of hardened sand aside, and grabs the rest of the sand.
"...It can't all end like this. I reject this ending."
The villain screamed with red eyes burning with madness and hatred. Following the last word, a wave of air spread from his body, tearing the sand and pushing back the hero and the policemen. Snatch didn't lose his head and directed his sand hands, which took the form of a beast, toward the opponent. But the person in the mask, who landed on his feet, dodged to the side too strangely. It seemed to the hero that for a brief moment air resistance and gravity ceased to exist for the villain. The shots fired by the policemen did no harm. Dodging strangely and sharply, the villain began to approach Snatch. Clenching his teeth, the Sand Hero increased the pressure and frequency of his attacks, desperately trying to hit the opponent. The cacophony of shots, the rustle of sand, and the cracking of broken furniture with locker doors were interrupted by the sound of an explosion and the subsequent screams of policemen being burned alive. Turning around involuntarily, Higawara saw people enveloped in flames with horror. From horror and rage, the hero who desired to save people roared. Preparing to bring down his rage in a hail of attacks, he stared at the empty space where the villain had just been. Fingers in black gloves appearing before his face caught him off guard.
A new cry, full of pain and despair, sounded in the police station. Sajin Higawara wanted to push the villain away, but he couldn't because of the weakness and cold that had set in, which the heat of the burning bodies behind him could in no way prevent. He didn't see how from his head, gripped by hands with thumbs stuck in the eye sockets, and from the rest of his body, streams of mesmerizingly beautiful energy, predominantly orange, rose and flowed into the body of the villain with the smiling mask. The last thought in the Sand Hero's consciousness was regret that he would no longer hear his daughter's voice.
Pulling his fingers out of the eye sockets, the villain allowed the body to fall limply. He tilted his head to the side thoughtfully. He took out a sticker and stuck it to the corpse's forehead. He turned toward the discarded container, which he picked up and soon disappeared. The policemen who ran in after putting out the bodies of their colleagues examined the corpse of the respected hero with pale faces, reading the inscription on the sticker.
"Tyki Mikk was here )"
End Snatch POV