The silence inside The Rust Bucket was absolute.
Not a single gambler dared roll the dice; even the flickering holographic lights seemed to hold their breath as Barok, the indomitable area commander of the Iron Syndicate, knelt defeated with Deku’s shoe pressing down on his head.
Barok’s massive shoulders heaved as he fought for air, his mutation veins pulsing frantically in a desperate attempt to harden his skin and throw the teenager off.
But every time he tried to channel his inner power, a strange, suffocating pressure wrapped around his core, neutralizing the energy before it could ignite.
“I-I yield…” Barok choked out, the words tasting like ash in his mouth.
“Who… what are you?”
Deku didn’t answer.
He slowly lifted his foot, stepping back with immaculate composure as he adjusted the collar of his ruined, slime-stained uniform.
Ding.
The familiar digital chime rang softly in his mind, followed by the system’s crisp text:
[Quest Completed: Break the Local Commander]
Objective Achieved: Iron Syndicate area commander subdued.
Local dominance established in Sector 9.
Rewards Unlocked:
– Spatial Distortion (Tier 1) acquired.
– Subordinate Network Unlocked.
[System Note: The weak recognize true authority. Next regional scan initiated.]
A sharp wave of energy washed over Deku’s muscles, tightening his core and sharpening his senses even further.
He could feel the ambient hum of the room—every ragged breath, every drop of sweat rolling down the terrified thugs’ faces.
He was no longer just a surviving stray in a dystopian wasteland; he was becoming its undisputed center of gravity.
“Clean him up,” Deku instructed coldly, gesturing toward the kneeling syndicate leader with a flick of his wrist.
He turned his dark, piercing eyes toward the shivering bartenders cowering behind the counter.
“And bring me a status report on everyone operating in this quadrant.”
As the syndicate members scrambled to obey out of sheer, unadulterated terror, Deku walked away from the gambling den and stepped back out into the neon-lit, smog-choked alleys of Sector 9.
He needed to map the perimeter, understand the deeper supply lines of the corporate weapon factories, and see what else this world had hidden in its refuse.
His footsteps carried him deeper into the labyrinthine slums, far past the neon strips and into the quieter, more desolate residential rings where the rusted modular housing units were stacked like rotting shipping containers.
It was here, amidst the dripping water pipes and flickering emergency lights, that he noticed her.
She wore an oversized, frayed mechanical jumpsuit that hung loosely off her slight frame.
Her dark hair was tied back in a messy bun, and her hands were stained black with grease as she painstakingly rewired a broken hand-held filtration unit.
Deku stopped, his dark eyes narrowing slightly as he observed her.
Unlike the mutants or space-time users who flaunted their volatile powers on the main streets, this girl radiated an absolute absence of energy.
There was no internal mutation pulsing beneath her skin, no spatial distortion warping the air around her fingers.
She was entirely, fundamentally unevolved—a relic of old humanity surviving in a world of monsters.
As if sensing a presence, the girl looked up.
Her eyes—wide, clear, and carrying a quiet, profound resilience that refused to break—met Deku’s cold gaze.
She didn’t cower like Pip, nor did she puff out her chest like Barok.
She simply looked at the slime-covered high schooler with a calm, guarded curiosity, wiping a smudge of grease from her cheek with the back of her sleeve.
“You’re standing in my light,” the girl said softly, her voice steady despite the obvious danger radiating from the stranger before her.
Deku didn’t move away.
Instead, a strange, unfamiliar ripple stirred deep within his chest—a faint, microscopic crack in the frozen indifference he usually reserved for the weak.
Kim Miyoku, a quiet whisper echoed through his mind, as if the system or his own instincts were labeling the anomaly before him.
In a world where power meant everything, the powerless girl staring back at him might just prove to be the most interesting variable of all.