Carry me back to Cali - Ch 3 [Plot Battle: Kyu v Arthur]

”Damnit! Kyu, the cops are here! Get ready to crack some skulls,” my father yelled to me in Japanese. I certainly hadn’t heard that in a while, a long while, and it was kind of nice to hear my native language after so long. What did he mean the cops were coming though? How was he in Cali…oooooh, I get it now, I must be passed out and dreaming. Yep, there I was standing in the kitchen like an idiot, wondering what my father was talking about as he moved toward the front door with a loaded 1911, preparing to defend his home from invaders like this was the Beach of Normandy. Well, the cops blew the door open, lead by a quirk they called Battering Ram, who was basically a dude that was transformed into a ram; the animal not the siege engine. Dad was knocked sideways by the door, pistol going high and putting a hole in the roof, while the cops charged in and immediately started beating the life out of him. Mom jumped in as well, swinging a machete like some damn Roman warrior, but they put her down easily as well. Once her head cracked off the frame of the door, I finally had the balls to jump into action, running in there and blowing the place up in a way that I still didn’t know how. Somehow, I had let the kinetic energy out all around me, but it was powerful, far more powerful than anything I could conceivable control. Everyone was dead or dying, too far gone for an ambulance, including my folks, so I just high-tailed it out of there…

My chest was still heaving from the chase of a few minutes earlier, maybe twenty, but I wasn’t too sure because I had passed out at some point. I awoke with a ‘gyuh!’ and a start, wiping drool off the entire left side of my face, which had been stuck to the table. Couple people looked in my direction, those snooty looks that only hipsters could manage to give anyone they saw as beneath them, or ‘unhip’, or whatever the hell word they used for it. Couple even had the balls to say something to their friends about me as well, which was damn bold of them, considering who the hell they were messing with. Well, they were messing with a nobody, but pretty soon I’d be somebody, and they would remember to regret messing with me. Actually, I should make them regret it now, since I’m here and not doing anything, use them to relieve a little tension I was having. Getting out of my seat and walking over toward the guy that made the comment, some skinny prick with blond hair and only the eyeglasses frames, I grabbed his shirt and lifted him out of his seat; absorbing that momentum as it began. “You say something?” I asked him, my face still a little bruised and bloody, but not nearly as bloody as my clothes, or the inside of my mouth. He was adequately scared, but his friend, some chick with half her black hair shaved off the side and a Japanese word tattooed on her arm told me to leave him alone. I laughed, not at her trying to stop me, but the tattoo on her arm, because it wasn’t so much as a word as a phrase. ‘Easy slut’.

“Sure, I’ll put him down, no problem,” I told her, the released my kinetic energy in a burst right into his chest, not too strong as to kill him, but definitely strong enough to send him flying through the nearby window and out onto the pavement. His yelp was satisfactory, as was her scream, because it made me feel better. Damn, but I let my temper get the best of me and now I had to walk this path, so I dashed over to the register to build up a little more energy, then held out my hand to the barista back there while it crackled with violet white energy. “Sorry about the window, but I’m not paying for that. Also, I’ll take whatever is in the register, if you don’t mind.” She must not have, since she gave me the money that was in the register, which was rather nice of her. Candice, nice girl, brunette with a permanent pout due to her lips, and kinda cute with a little chub to her. Might have to come back and ask her out…but I might have already blown it. Who knows? “Oh, can I get a coffee and, if you’re not too afraid of a little bit of a bad boy, maybe your number?” Few minutes later I had this whipped delight of an expresso and a number. Turns out she loved bad boys, plus she hated hipsters, so it was a win win for me. Only got two hundred dollars out of the register though, but that would go a long way toward rebuilding my five hundred-thousand-dollar empire that Edna Dalton took. Bitch. Might as well find a new resting spot and figure things out, so I jogged away from the coffee shop until I found a suitable place. I had no idea they pressed the hero alarm.

Sometimes you wanted to just enjoy a morning coffee, you know? Relax on a bench, take a few sips of some kind of whipped cream expresso delight, look at a few joggers, and count the money I took from the register. What? I am a villain, after all, plus I don’t have a day job, so I gotta make this money somehow. Since my personal fallout with the Galente family, along with the Daltons hunting me, I’m a little strapped for cash. So here I am, sitting in this park, wondering what my next move is going to be. Sparse trees dot the area, a few people here and there but not too crowded, and a lot of very green grass on this sunny California afternoon. All in all, it’s a pretty good day, if you didn’t count the beatings, the double cross, and the fact that a hero was definitely on his way.