[MUSIC LYRICS:
*Everything is covered in darkness at night.*
*Silence surrounds me. Let the dream last a little longer.*
*Pain inside me, tears and anger, like a whirlpool, drag everything down.*
*The world in darkness, my voice is gone, my path is lost. Soon I will disappear.*]
I hummed along to the song playing from my headphones as I glanced at my wristwatch. In this situation, I could afford to listen to music, so I randomly chose OxT's "Silent Solitude."
[MUSIC LYRICS:
*Dirty deceptions and traps of betrayal —*
*There was not a single shred of meaning in any of it, no.*
*Everything is covered in darkness at night.*
*Silence surrounds me. The whole world sleeps peacefully.*
*And the universe once again*
*Continues to repeat cruel dreams.*]
I had to wait on the roof of a building near the police station. The best time to break in was 3:30 AM, when the nearest hero patrol would take at least fifteen minutes to reach the station.
[MUSIC LYRICS:
*How many times will the bitter tale of past sins torment my memory?*
*Who could grant me peace? How can I atone for my guilt?*
*Kindness and malice, feelings, faith in God —*
*I forgot about everything, as if I never knew them at all.*]
The police station itself was a three story building. Its security system was far from Tartarus, but it was not far behind the standard hero academies either. The layout was standard for such facilities.
The first floor had a reception area, temporary holding cells for Class B and lower villains, an interrogation room, locker rooms, a gym, and even a shower. The second floor had an office for receiving calls from citizens and communicating with hero agencies, small meeting rooms for staff, an armory, and my target: the evidence storage room. The third floor had staff workstations and the security system control room.
[MUSIC LYRICS:
*The dirt I hid from view,*
*A cold, dim light puts it on display.*
*My loneliness strikes pain straight into my heart,*
*Punished by silence.*
*Dirty deceptions, wounds from battles,*
*Prolonged wars are as cruel as massacres.*
*People do not admit they desire that,*
*Secretly continuing to present the sinful world.*]
The station was full of surveillance cameras. If an alarm was triggered, all exits would be sealed. And of course, there were night shift employees. Trying to disable the system through the control room was doomed to fail, because according to protocol, the central computer had a low level artificial intelligence linked to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department's server. And thanks to a classified government agent with a computer related Quirk, the chance of a successful hack was infinitely close to zero.
[MUSIC LYRICS:
*Words from days long gone —*
*I cannot drive them out of my memory.*
*I locked my heart with a key,*
*So that voice in my head would finally fall silent.*
*Everything is covered in darkness at night.*
*Silence surrounds me. The whole world sleeps peacefully.*
*And the universe once again*
*Continues to repeat cruel dreams.*]
It was time. I had ten minutes to reach the evidence room undetected, and another fifteen minutes to find the drugs and get out.
I checked my equipment. It included a pistol, knives, homemade smoke, flash, and incendiary grenades (I did not study the support course curriculum for nothing, no I did not), a sticky compound grenade, and a storage container.
I descended and made my way to the station's outer fence. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and made myself permeable to photons. This deprived me of normal vision, because light rays reflected from objects no longer reached my retinas. But I had another kind of sight, or rather, a kind of sensation.
Ever since my escape from that place, I had constantly devoted time to restoring the strength I had used. As a result, that sensation of surrounding space with dark outlines of my environment and bright silhouettes of people had returned. The range was the problem. One and a half meters compared to a hundred or more was pathetic. But it was what it was.
As a Russian arms dealer I knew used to say, "The first step is the hardest," or something like that.
I pushed aside unnecessary thoughts and focused on this sensation, which I privately called my "Gaze." The pitch black darkness in my mind was replaced by a sphere around me, within which I could see my surroundings in various shades of darkness. From memory, I made my way into the station. I knew where and through what I needed to pass to minimize the risk of running into anyone.
Cold sweat ran down my forehead from the tension. During the entire trip to the evidence room, I nearly ran into two silhouettes.
Now I had to work quickly. With my "Gaze," I could not identify the specific storage locker. I passed through the wall, deactivated my "Gaze," and made myself susceptible to light again. I turned on the light and threw a sticky compound grenade into the gap between the door lock and the wall. The substance splattered and hardened with a pop. I drew my pistol and shot out the surveillance cameras.
I approached the left wall of lockers, looking from the entrance. No text, just numbers. Damn.
I opened them quickly, nearly ripping the doors off. Empty. Empty. Empty. Empty. Empty. Empty. A storage container. I quickly pulled it out and opened it. Empty. It seemed the contents had been moved to another locker. Damn.
Two lockers later, I found what I was looking for. Two jars. One with some kind of solution, and another with green pills. I quickly packed them into my small container.
Just as I closed it, I heard the sound of a door being kicked in. I grabbed the handle of the container with my right hand, threw a knife toward the door with my left, and focused on using "Choice" to pass through the floor.
My feet had barely gone through the floor when a stream of sand slammed me into the wall opposite the entrance. The sand compressed tightly around my body. I looked at the doorway.
A muscular man with a mask on his face and a bushy mustache stood there. One of his hands had turned into the sand holding me, and with the other, he was pulling a knife from his shoulder. There was no blood.
I tried to ignore the rising fear and used "Choice." A small cracking sound indicated failure. Again. Failure again. Again. Failure again. Again. Failure again. The sand squeezed tighter.
The man, who I could say with one hundred percent certainty was a hero, had transformed his other hand into sand to better restrain the criminal. Me. Behind him, police officers entered cautiously with weapons drawn.
I froze.
I had been caught.
*
*
*
[Snatch'S Pov ]
A pair of extravagantly dressed people walked down the night street. For people in their profession, dressing extravagantly was normal. A young man in a tight blue suit yawned contagiously, covering his mouth with his hand, which was wrapped in metal cable. The second man looked at him with disapproval but also understanding. Compared to the young man, he had a much more imposing and brutal appearance. A muscular man with long hair and a mustache. His bare torso was covered by a combat vest, and his legs were hidden in brown military style pants and massive boots. The upper part of his head was covered by a blue mask with eye holes. This was the appearance of the Sand Hero: Snatch.
"Energo, you are not looking very energetic. And we are not taking a stroll through the city. We are patrolling."
The intern from Ketsubutsu Academy groaned and answered with a gloomy face:
"Master, how can I be energetic when it is almost three thirty in the morning, and we have been walking around the city for two hours without finding a single villain, not even a low level one? I am dying of boredom. All the villains are probably asleep in their beds. Only we are out here like…"
Energo fell silent under Snatch's stern gaze. He knew his mentor, Sajin Higawara, as an extremely kind hearted and empathetic person. Because of his father's disability, which he suffered during a villain attack, Higawara wanted to become a hero and save people. That was why he was extremely responsible and critical of his own actions and those of other heroes. He despised heroes who sought money and fame because he sincerely believed that a hero's duty was to save people as effectively as possible. So that there would be no weeping families over the coffins of their loved ones. So that parents would not bury their children because of psychotic killers. The contrast between his fierce appearance and his gentle character still caused dissonance in the intern's mind.
A woman's scream cut through the noise of the night city.
"HELP!"
Exchanging quick glances, the hero and the hero in training rushed toward the source of the scream. Turning into an alley, they saw a villain with the head of a hyena trying to silence a beautiful woman in a white dress. Noticing the hero, the villain started running deeper into the alley with loud curses.
"Energo, watch over and calm the civilian. I will go after the villain."
Snatch said, already running after the villain. The chase lasted at least ten minutes before the hero managed to hook the villain's leg with a sand whip. The next second, the villain was wrapped in a sand cocoon. After contacting his intern and confirming that he was fine and following protocol for such cases, Snatch began to remember the location of the nearest police station. He and the villain had run quite far from their patrol area. As it turned out, they were not that far from one station.
Approaching the station entrance, the hero was unpleasantly surprised to hear an alarm.
"It seems this night refuses to end quietly."
After handing over the hyena headed villain to the police officers at the entrance, he followed the dispatcher's directions and ran to the second floor. Pushing past the officers 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 cabinet doors were nearly torn off. And the intruder, holding a strange suitcase in his hand, threw something at him. Feeling something enter his shoulder, Snatch ignored it and slammed the villain into the wall with a stream of sand that quickly enveloped him.
Then he looked at the knife sticking out of his shoulder. Fortunately, it was still in its sand state, so pulling it out was easy. Then, with both hands in the form of sand, he began to restrain the struggling villain.
The sound of cracking did not please him. When the villain in the smiling mask froze, he began to examine him more closely. An indistinct muttering began to come from behind the mask of the short villain. Snatch grunted and was about to ask how the villain had gotten in.
But suddenly, a wave of goosebumps ran down the hero's back. Something dark, mad, and hungry began to emanate from the masked man. Trying to understand what he was feeling, Higawara heard a trembling, very young voice:
"No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. I do not want to be caught. I have not gotten my revenge on them yet. I have not become strong yet. I have not met him yet…"
The longer the voice spoke, the more confident it became, and the feeling of dread grew. The cracking sound that had stopped resumed with renewed intensity, and black and purple lightning began to race across the sand. Suddenly, with a loud crack and a flash of lightning, his left hand broke free, throwing pieces of hardened sand aside, and grabbed the rest of the sand.
"It cannot end like this. I reject this ending."
The villain shouted with red eyes burning with madness and hatred. Following his last words, a wave of air spread from his body, tearing the sand apart and pushing the hero and police officers back.
Snatch did not lose his composure and directed his sand hands, which had taken the form of beasts, toward the opponent. But the masked man who landed on his feet dodged to the side in a very strange way. For a brief moment, the hero felt that air resistance and gravity had ceased to exist for the villain.
Gunshots from the police officers caused no harm. Dodging strangely and sharply, the villain began to approach Snatch. Gritting his teeth, the sand hero increased the pressure and frequency of his attacks, desperately trying to hit his opponent.
The cacophony of gunfire, rustling sand, and cracking of broken furniture and cabinet doors was interrupted by the sound of an explosion and the subsequent screams of police officers burning alive.
Involuntarily turning around, Higawara watched in horror as people were engulfed in flames. From horror and rage, the hero who wanted to save people roared. Preparing to unleash a hail of attacks, he stared at the empty space where the villain had just been.
Fingers in black gloves appeared before his face, catching him off guard.
A new scream, full of pain and despair, rang out through the police station. Sajin Higawara wanted to throw the villain off, but he could not because of the growing weakness and cold that the heat of the burning bodies behind him could not stop. He did not see how from his head, clasped by hands with thumbs stuck into his eye sockets, and from the rest of his body, streams of mesmerizingly beautiful energy, predominantly orange, flowed into the body of the villain in the smiling mask.
The last thought in the sand hero's mind was regret that he would never hear his daughter's voice again.
Pulling his thumbs out of the eye sockets, the villain let the body fall limply. He tilted his head thoughtfully. He took out a sticker and stuck it to the corpse's forehead. He turned toward the discarded container, picked it up, and soon disappeared.
The police officers who ran in, after extinguishing the burning bodies of their colleagues, looked with pale faces at the body of the respected hero. They read the inscription on the sticker:
{"Ticci Micc was here. Smile."}
[End Pov - Snatch]