As Adrian made his way to the bus stop, waiting to catch a bus, he saw two men following a woman into a dark alleyway.
The woman clearly looked frightened, like a cornered cat, but the movement of the two men in leather jackets with large snakes embossed on them were well practiced. Their eyes had a cruel glint within them.
Adrian hesitated. Should he or should he not interfere? The woman clearly seemed to be in danger, but Adrian himself was just an ordinary person. If those two snake jacket men were ability users, at best he might be hurt, but at worst he could even be killed.
After more hesitated, Adrian eventually clamped his fists and turned away from the bus stop towards the dark alleyway. He tried to be as quiet as possible. He knew what he was doing was extremely dangerous, but he didn't want to exacerbate the issue by acting foolish as well.
Adrian tiptoed behind the three into the alleyway, and hid behind a scattering of cardboard boxes that seemed to have been dumped there by the shop near by. The alley was dead quiet, and lacked any lighting.
Adrian held his breath as he looked at the two snake jacketed men talking to the woman. The woman looked weak, and to Adrian a little scared. He still didn't interfere yet, not knowing if the two men were ability users or not.
"Bitch, you can't just raise the price like that!" One of the two men growled loudly in anger. Adrian was shocked when he heard that and he realised that these two men were trying to make some kind of transaction with the woman.
The woman replied quite calmly, but Adrian couldn't hear what she said. However, the two men looked at each other with a hint of greed in their eyes. Adrian suddenly got a bad feeling that whatever they wanted to do had failed.
Seconds later, the two men attacked the woman. They both seemed to also be strength type ability users. Their bodies bulged to three times their initial mass and veins popped out everywhere as they took off their jackets, looking at the woman with cruel and somewhat crazy eyes. Adrian was paralyzed by fear. Both of them were strength type ability users! He had no chance to save the woman at all, yet when he looked at the woman, she didn't seem afraid at all.
Suddenly before Adrian could react, the woman's hand moved like a shadow and stopped. Seconds later, the two terrifyingly bulky men looked on in horror as their faces were split into two and slid to the ground. The two men were dead.
Adrian wanted to scream in terror, but he forced himself not to. His heart was pounding like he had just run a marathon and he started feeling dizzy. Then he remembered that the terrifying woman would have to exit this way and quickly crawled into one of the cardboard boxes, clamping his eyes shut and closing his mouth with both his hands as he tried not to make the hint of a sound.
Every passing moment felt like an eternity to him, but he dare not make a sound. After what felt like forever, Adrian finally looked at his watch and found that at least two hours had passed by. Slowly, he crawled out of the cardboard box and looked towards the area where the two snake jacket men had been murdered like chickens, only he was stunned to find that there was no hint of a crime scene at all!
Adrian walked out of the alley way and rushed home as quickly as possible, his heart pounding with fear.
Back at his small apartment, Adrian locked the door and slumped onto the floor. His back and forehead were covered in sweat and he was panting, in panic. After a few minutes he calmed down and disappeared into the kitchen to prepare a meal.
Only after eating food did Adrian finally relax. He realized that he had come extremely close to death today and cursed himself for trying to act like a hero. In this world there were too many secrets and he as a 'cripple' had no right to be meddling into them.
Later, Adrian opened his laptop and began browsing videos of self defense training. Every since he had begun to be bullied, Adrian felt the need to at least learn to defend himself and protect his body when attacked. He began secretly practicing self defense skills from video tutorials at his home, and today's event made him feel a sense of forebearing urgency.
"I can't practice haphazardly in this manner at home. I need to join a self defense class." Adrian mumbled to himself as he watched the tutorial video. He went on google and searched for self defense class in his locality and found one.
'Self Defense Class - Daily group practice at the Siamese Training Hall, under Mixed Martial Artist expert Jimmy Orville.'
Adrian googled Jimmy Orville's name and found that it was an old man who used to be a professional mixed martial artist three decades ago. Three decades ago sporting events of ordinary people had already begun to decay and couldn't compete with sports played by ability users.
The new sport called Ability Colosseum had far surpassed ancient sports like Mixed Martial Arts, Judo or Wrestling as combat sports. Thus, Adrian didn't put much faith in the 'expert' tag in the advertisement, yet Adrian just wanted to be able to defend himself from the constant bullying and minimize his injuries.
Looking at the fees however, he blanched a bit. As a student, he didn't have a lot of savings, but he eventually signed up for the class online, choosing to go for training from the next day.
After finishing that job, Adrian began scrolling through the video feeds only to see a powerful battle between two ability users taking place at the other end of the city. They were two flame ability users, though the nature of their abilities was quite different in application. One of them was controlling flames like a whip, while the other was throwing fireballs from his palms.
Both of them had terrifying power and their battle had caused severe destruction to the nearby surroundings. Just in the feed, Adrian could see that several ordinary bystanders had been injured by burns or collapsing debris. As usual, the webaites censored any criticism of ability users in the comments.