The city was crowded with people; it was like an overpopulated ant farm. The city was a dark metal maze. Thin alleyways formed streets, stray wires crossing over these. The city was full of people who pushed past each other, scuttling to work or trying to find their way back to their cubicle homes. The city had a feeling, a feeling that was close to Peter, like a piece of his heart that had been grafted onto the natural structure. The sound of rushing feet and wind from broken vents, the stench of bodies and waste, the sour taste that floated in the air, it was all so familiar to him. The people fought to avoid eye contact, afraid of sparking a conflict. Among them, urchins scurried like desperate rodents that would burrow into peoples' pockets and then hurry away with wallets in hand.
They didn't approach Peter. There was a clear danger about him, a wolf prowling through an unguarded barn. One urchin dared to come close to him. Peter shifted his hand onto the pommel of his blade, and the child ran away after having seen the teeth of the wolf. His hand shifted off the weapon, he had no intention of using it, especially not on a child. There'd been a time when he'd been one of them. Despite his desire for apathy, he still felt a pang of hurt at the sight of the desperate children in the street.
One of them slept restlessly in an alcove formed at the base of a shoddily constructed business center. Old bags and trash were stacked around him, concealing him well. Well enough that no one noticed him. No one but Peter. The hurt in his chest grew stronger. Against his better judgment he found himself crouching down beside the sleeping boy.
"Hey."
He said it as softly as he could. The voice that came out was like sandpaper. One hand reached out and shook the boy's shoulder.
Tired eyes cracked open. Slowly they focused on Peter. Those eyes first saw a dark patch, then a vague shape, then a person, and then a threat. The child's hand tried swatting away Peter's outstretched arm. He couldn't, it was like striking a concrete wall. He pushed hard, his body moving before the arm that reached towards him.
Peter looked at the boy with sad eyes.
The boy looked back with terror. Thoughts flashed in his eyes, then sulking to the earth he said. "What is it you want from me?"
Peter looked at the boy, really looked. They were young, but not very young. Probably about eleven or maybe twelve. "Do you want a meal?"
The boy evidently didn't want to go with Peter. "I, I guess -"
"You don't have to say yes." Peter put his hands on his knees and rose to his feet. His tired muscles reminded him of their existence with resigned complaints. A slight smile had entered onto Peter's lips.
The fear was still in the boy's eyes but pushing past that fear like a seed pushing through the earth and into the air he chose to follow Peter. The smile that Peter wore fell onto the boy's face.
He hadn't met someone like Peter before.
The two walked in silence, eventually finding a small restaurant. Peter handed a fading paper to the waiter and was rewarded with two platters of steaming food.
"How long have you been on your own?" Peter asked as he handed the boy one of the plates. As he took it he bowed his head in a silent show of gratitude. His hand took the fork from the plate and with careful motions he filled the utensil with a spoonful of the meal. Peter remarked upon the boy's manners.
"I don't know. Mother said I could take care of myself since she had more important things to worry about." He said his words joyfully, a simple meal more powerful than his memories. "That's how I ended up in the streets. I don't mind, it made me tough."
"I don't doubt it." Peter took a bite from his own plate. By his second bite the boy's plate was empty. He eyed Peter's food with desperate animal-like eyes. Peter slid his plate to the boy. "Is there any troublemakers in the streets?"
"Oh, yeah plenty…" A thought, a fear, entered the boy's mind. "But I'm not supposed to talk about it."
Peter couldn't push. There was no way he could protect the boy if he stirred up troubled in town before he left. The best he could do was share a hot meal and a word of advice. "Do you have a Deviation?"
The boy shook his head. Peter had probably chosen the wrong word.
"Sorry, what I mean is do you have a power?"
The boy nodded his head.
"What is it."
The boy shook his head.
"How about you show me somewhere else?"
The boy paused, it a took a few moments but he nodded his head in an undecided agreement.
Peter had noticed a mostly empty alley way; it would be enough to contain the boy's skill. Hopefully. Peter stood in the deep end of the alley with an expectant smile on his face. The boy was still hesitant. "It's alright… How about I show you some of my power first."
The boy shook his head violently.
"Ok." Peter stood up straight and took a deep breath in. The darkness all around him shimmered like a mirage. Shadows leapt off the walls and ground forming phantom outlines of his body. They all turned towards Peter and in one simultaneous motion they rushed towards his body and then vanished. "Did you like that?"
The boy nodded his head.
"Your turn."
There was now a confidence in the boy's eyes, he reached his hands forward and the darkness vanished for a second in a burst in ethereal light. Peter watched with trained eyes. The source of the light was small, hardly the size of a pea, but it made a heat so powerful that it reached Peter across the alley. With some training the power could be quite the spectacle: it was a shock that The Watch hadn't taken the child. His power wasn't too different from their star hero Starstrike's. Thinking of her left a sour taste in Peter's mouth, he'd never gotten along with her when they were growing up in The Watch's gifted program. A barrage of stupid memories filled his mind.
The boy looked towards him, a bright smile on his face. "Did I do well."
Forcing on a mask of joy Peter answered. "You did great." He'd planned to tell the boy to keep his power hidden, but he didn't have the strength to stomp out the child's joy. There was no safe path he could set the boy down. Peter couldn't reach a decision, so he made the mistake of letting his feelings take control. "Do you want to come with me?"
He walked forwards, hands held in his pockets.
"You know, I could teach you how to use your power."
This was a mistake; it would be of no value to him. Not unless he twisted the situation to fit his goals. That idea didn't appeal to him. The best he could do was get the kid into a program that would teach the boy how to use his deviation. He tried forming a solution to the problem he'd made. Distantly he answered the boy's questions. He felt them growing an affection for him. No… not now. He couldn't manage to help himself, there was no way he could help this child. A solution to his question didn't reach him before he reached his destination.
The I.H.G (Intercontinental, hunter's guild) had a burrow in every major city and settlement. To the untrained eye they were near impossible to locate, but it was easy with the street knowledge of Peter's new companion.
The burrow itself was concealed as an underground annex of a melancholy apartment complex. An identification pad was on the only entrance. Peter pressed his thumb into the device, it scanned the finger and sent a slight shock into the skin. It took a few seconds for unseen components to mull over the information they had been given. A click and the door popped open, letting the smell of cheap perfume spill into the damp city air. Peter entered, his new protege loyally following behind him.
Peter noted three members of M.L.M getting drunk at the bar. The sight made him clench his jaw. They would hopefully ignore him, so he would ignore them. And if they didn't, then he'd remove a few parasites from the world.
One of the M.L.M members noticed Peter's entrance and must have marked the dark markings on his skin. The markings were too uniform to be the result of a disease, and too… too off to be tattoos. They were clear indicators that he had some kind of deviation.
He'd hoped to avoid violence. But as the person who had noticed his markings cut off Peter's path, it became clear that he wouldn't escape it. The man in his path was far larger than Peter and in a show of intimidation he raised a mechanical arm to block his path. It was clean, not a single dent on its surface. That meant one of two things, either this man had little to no combat experience or he had been forced to replace his prosthetic after years of abuse. A quick look at the man's face made the former a clearly correct answer.
The bartender looked at the unfolding situation with distaste. "Why don't we take this outside?" Peter suggested.
"I see no reason for that." The man raised his arm to strike.
Peter made a shadow behind his opponent and swapped places with it. The strike passed through the shadow that took his place like a like a knife through butter. One quick kick to the knee sent the larger man crumpling to the ground. One of the other M.R.M agents pulled out a pistol and pointed it at Peter. A shadow formed in the seat next to the agent and with two quick strikes it broke the arm holding the gun and gave a devastating blow to the agent's jugular. Peter finished off the man on the ground with a heavy swing of his foot into their head.
The final M.R.M agent was older than the others. She made no move to attack. Instead in an irritated voice she said. "Stupid youths, they don't understand what it is we're fighting for… If you'd like, I'll buy you a drink to make up for the trouble they caused." The older women raised a benevolent cup in Peter's direction.
"I'll pass for now. But if you'd be willing, please watch my… my apprentice. I have business with the manager."
The women nodded. Peter sensed no malice in her, he assumed that he could trust her to watch the boy for a few moments. And if his assumption was incorrect, he knew the bartender would strictly enforce any attempt to break the policies of the guild. The only reason he hadn't before was that Peter had acted quicker than he could.
He pressed his thumb into another identification pad. The thing stung his finger more harshly than the previous one had. Hidden mechanisms whirred and shifted to allow a secure door to hiss open. Peter was about to step into the room when he felt a hand grabbing his shirt. He turned and saw the boy still loyally following right behind him. He had a worried look on his face.
"I'll just be gone for a bit. Go up to that man over there and ask for a soda." The boy was reluctant, but it was apparent that his upbringing had given him a sense of obedience that he couldn't deny.
Now free of the load he'd chosen to carry, Peter could finally attend to his work.