In the slimy gloom of the alley, the white erupted.
It was a white so pure, so aggressive, that it seemed to bite into the shadows of Northbridge.
Laced with golden accents that pulsed softly beneath the rain, the suit imposed a deathly silence.
At the entrance of the alley, Sam Kodd’s aggressiveness collapsed instantly, like a deflated balloon.
His bulging eyes stared at the straight silhouette that had just snapped upright in front of him.
Sam was a brute, a hallway tyrant, but he was also an absolute fanboy.
The kind of kid who had three posters of Hope in his bedroom and spent his nights analyzing first-generation fights on online forums.
His lips trembled.
The two goons behind him froze, completely transfixed by the apparition.
“H-Hope…?” Sam stammered, taking a step back.
“That’s… that’s impossible. You’re dead.”
Then, the silence stretched.
Sam narrowed his small, bovine eyes.
Something was off.
The build didn’t match at all.
The colors were right, the aura of power too, but the overall shape was wrong.
This “Hope” was too short, desperately skinny, and his shoulders were slightly slouched.
Unsurprising: on the inside, I was scared to death.
Sam’s face twisted with rage as he made the connection.
“Wait a minute… Frey? Is that you under that crap?! You dressed up to scare us, you freaking psycho?!”
“Yes, it’s me! Yes, it’s me, asshole! Call a damn ambulance! Get me out of here!”
I was screaming at the top of my lungs inside my own skull.
I begged.
I even cried.
But on the outside, the sealed mask smothered every single sound.
I was nothing but a spectator locked inside a prison of flesh and polymer.
Convinced that I was openly mocking him with a distasteful cosplay on the very day of his idol’s death, Sam saw red.
A vein throbbed on his quick-tempered forehead.
He lunged forward, his fist raised—heavy as a cinderblock—ready to smash my nose for good.
My asthmatic brain froze, unable to process the trajectory of the blow.
Yet, deep in my gut, information was transmitted without me understanding how.
A biological certainty, cold and mechanical, imprinted itself into my nervous system.
The suit activated.
Before Sam’s fist could even brush the white membrane, my body moved on its own.
This wasn’t human dodging; it was pure cinematics.
My head pivoted backward with a terrifying, almost obscene fluidity, letting Sam’s punch slice through empty air by a millimeter.
The suit didn’t wait for Sam to regain his balance.
It dictated the counterattack.
Against my will, my right arm rose, rigid as a hydraulic piston.
My fingers curled inward, leaving only my index finger and thumb sticking out.
A simple flick.
The kind of ridiculous gesture you make to flick a grain of rice off a table.
My index finger struck Sam’s sternum at a speed my eye couldn’t even register.
Mach 1.
A miniature sonic boom snapped in the alley.
The force generated was purely absurd.
Sam Kodd—two hundred pounds of muscle and fat—was literally lifted off the ground.
He flew backward for ten feet, charting a perfect trajectory before crashing violently into a pile of heavy trash bags filled with construction debris.
The impact was heavy, instantly knocking the wind out of him.
Then, the backlash hit me.
Classical physics is a bitch.
The suit had generated the power of a god, but my bones and muscles were still those of a high schooler who skips gym class.
At the moment of impact, the shockwave traveled up my arm.
I heard and felt my muscle tissue tear, one by one, in my shoulder.
My joint popped violently, threatening to dislocate under the pressure.
A white, searing agony exploded in my nervous system.
I screamed in pain, but the mask’s filter distorted my vocal cords.
What came out of my mouth wasn’t the cry of a seventeen-year-old kid, but a low, monstrous growl that rattled the windows of the neighboring buildings.
Hearing that beastly roar and seeing their leader swept away like a measly plastic twig, the two goons abandoned all dignity.
They shrieked in terror, dropping their bats.
Sam, groaning in his rubble, crawled on his hands and knees to scramble out of there.
In less than ten seconds, the alley was empty.
They had fled the monster.
“OK… OK, they’re gone. I want to go home. Please, just let me go home…”
I thought, on the verge of tears, the pain in my shoulder making me dizzy.
But the suit didn’t see it that way.
The direct threat was neutralized, but the area was compromised.
The parasite calculated the next move.
My knees bent.
Way too much.
My thighs contracted to the breaking point.
“No, no, no, stop! My femurs are gonna explode!”
The white-and-gold material recoiled like a giant spring.
The next instant, the ground vanished beneath my feet.
I was propelled into the air at a dizzying speed.
The wind blasted my ears as I shot upward, clearing the alley in a shower of glass shards that crackled uselessly against my suit.
I landed heavily, a few seconds later, on the gravel of a flat roof on the adjacent building.
The suit absorbed the entirety of the kinetic impact so my legs wouldn’t end up driven into my pelvis, but inside, my body was on fire.
I collapsed onto my side, seized by a violent coughing fit.
My muscles trembled with uncontrollable spasms.
My right shoulder was nothing but a furnace of pain.
Sensing the drop in adrenaline and the absence of predators, the white membrane finally began to move.
It peeled back at my neck, rolling away like a slimy second skin to free my face.
The crisp, biting night air of Northbridge rushed into my lungs.
I took a massive breath, spitting a string of saliva mixed with blood onto the roof.
Panting, tears in my eyes, I painfully crawled a few inches toward a large puddle of stagnant rainwater reflecting the city’s light pollution.
I looked down.
In the dark water, framed by the dim neon lights of the distant Northbridge skyscrapers, it wasn’t my miserable, pale face that appeared.
It was a gleaming white torso, outlined in gold, a soaked cape fluttering behind me.
I had survived the alley.
I had survived Sam.
But as I stared at that divine reflection hiding my broken flesh, the truth hit me with the force of a speeding truck.
I was no longer a speck of dust.
I had become a “Super.”