Haru sat on the pavement, staring at the mother who clutched her daughter tightly. Her lips were parted, her eyes wet with tears but no sound came out.
It was like she'd been frozen in time.
Haru pushed himself to his feet and walked closer. He waved a hand in front of her face. Nothing. Not even a blink.
He turned slowly, scanning the street. The truck had already stopped a few meters away, the driver half out of the truck, one foot hanging in midair. A few people nearby were frozen mid-run, eyes wide, mouths open in silent shock.
Only the sunlight still moved, faintly shimmering instead of shining, drifting just slow enough for him to see it shifting across the pavement.
'Do I…' he muttered, the thought sounding absurd even in his own head, '…do I have the Speed Force?'
He glanced over his arms and legs, expecting to see lightning dancing across his skin. But there was nothing, no sparks, no glow. Just the quiet hum of his own breathing.
Haru turned in place, still trying to make sense of it all. That's when he noticed a tiny glint beside him, a fly, frozen mid-flight, its wings caught mid-beat.
Curious, he leaned closer until he could see every detail of it the texture of the wings, the fine hairs on its legs, even the faint shimmer of light reflecting off its eyes.
Curiosity got the better of him. He raised a finger and lightly tapped it.
Pop!
The fly burst like a water balloon, tiny droplets scattering through the air before hanging there, suspended like glitter.
Haru blinked, staring at his fingertip, then at the spot where the fly had been. "Oh, crap…"
Then his thoughts spiraled.
'Wait if just a fingertip did that to a fly… and I don't have the Speed Force so no protective aura then how the hell is she okay?'
His gaze snapped back toward the little girl. She was still cradled safely in her mother's arms, frozen mid-motion, not a scratch on her.
'And how am I not hurt? If I saved her using super speed, that means I fell on my back at super speed too, yet there's not even a scratch on my clothes. That can't happen unless… I've got some kind of barrier or something similar protecting me.'
He ran a hand down his arm, half expecting to feel static or heat but there was nothing.
'Ok definitely not the Speed Force, there was no lightning, no energy discharge. My body absorbed the impact completely. That means it's something internal, maybe biological.'
He looked at his hand again, flexing his fingers slowly. 'A bio-field, maybe? Like what those theorists thought Superman had the aura that let him save people mid-fall without breaking them in half.'
He froze mid-thought.
'Wait… does that mean I'm inv-'
INVINCIBLE.
'Wait, no… I mean, invulnerable.'
'But now that I think about it… super vision, X-ray vision, thermal vision, super speed, and possibly invulnerability. Am I… a Kryptonian?'
He frowned immediately. 'No. That's impossible. I know I'm human. I was there when I was born. I've seen both my parents bleed, get hurt by ordinary things. So there's no way I'm half Kryptonian either.'
He glanced around at the frozen street again. 'And this world, there's nothing out of the ordinary here. No aliens, no meta-humans, at least, not that I've seen so far. So where the hell are these powers coming from?'
"Ah, shit."
Haru's stomach dropped. 'I used super speed… in front of people.'
His thoughts went a thousand miles a minute. 'Wait can't I just leave? It's 1992. Smartphones aren't a thing yet, same goes for traffic cams, and as far as I know, only the girl and maybe her mom saw my face.'
'Ya just leave.'
Without wasting another second, Haru turned on his heel and bolted.
//////////////////////////////////////////
Haru bolted down the street, feet barely touching the pavement, the world around him frozen like a photograph. All he could feel was that he was excited from seeing the world blur past as he moved past cars.
But then it hit him. School. He still had to go to school today.
Swearing under his breath, he turned back around and started running in the direction of his school. He skidded to a stop in a narrow back alley. The street he'd just raced down lay silent behind him, the mother and daughter still frozen mid-motion at the crosswalk.
He glanced at them briefly before darting away again. As he reached his school, he looked around at the other kids, some his age, some a bit older, completely frozen in place. Panic gnawed at him.
"How do I turn this thing off?" he muttered to himself.
Haru walked behind a trash bin and crouched, eyes darting from one frozen student to another. The world was still suspended around him. He took a deep breath, trying to calm his racing mind.
"Okay… think." he muttered. "If I can move this fast, there has to be a way to lower the speed, like when throwing a punch you can adjust the level of strength you output. But how do I apply that to speed that works without me even having to move?"
'It's not just my body, it's my mind too. It's processing the world at super speeds.'
"So what I need to do is slow down my perception of the world to the speed I want to go. How does that even work?!" he yelled putting his hands on his head and starting to scratch frantically.
"No… I've got focus." he says as he removes his hands from his hand
'Wait… I've been focusing this whole time, I have been running on adrenalin and locking onto a goal. What if I need to do just the opposite and…. just relax?'
So that's exactly what he did. And like a horn breaking through the silence, all the sound returned.
He sighed in relief
'It worked.' He stepped out from behind the trash bin and began heading past the gates of his school.
And so his first day of school went on, as normal as it could be when you've just discovered you have super speed except for the nagging thought at the back of his mind, telling him he needed to go out for a run and see just what he could really do.
////////////////////
Outside the school, Haruya stepped through the gates, walking as fast as he could at normal human speed, blending in with the other students as they spilled onto the street. Then, carefully, he slipped into a nearby alley, unnoticed, eager to finally stretch his legs and see what his super speed could really do.
"All right, let's take it slow first." he muttered, getting into a runner's stance. He focused… and then launched, accelerating from zero to 500 mph (804 Kp/h) in an instant.
He tore through the streets of Kouh Town like a bullet while dodging cars until he spotted train tracks and decided to follow them. A straight line would make it easier to find his way back if he got lost. No trains seemed near, so he thought.
'Let me let lose a bit'
KRAKA BOOOM!!!
He jumped from his cruising speed of 516 mph to a whopping Mach 2.6 (1,994 mph) instantly breaking the sound barrier. The air around him heated to a temperature lethal to a normal human, but Haruya barely registered it.
He moved so fast that he didn't notice the tracks curving, and he ran straight past them. He was so consumed by the thrill of speed that he didn't even notice the ground beneath him vanishing.
He was running on water.
'This… just feels right… so right.' he thought, a smile of pure euphoria spreading across his face.
The wind whipped his hair back, and for the first time in a long while, a weight he didn't even realize he'd been carrying seemed to lift from his shoulders.
He closed his eyes and with a leap, water droplets exploded into the air around him, catching the setting sun and scattering light like stars on Earth. He leaned back, his head slightly tilted blue eyes still closed, arms spread wide, palms open yet relaxed, left leg extended slightly forward, and he savored the moment as if it could last forever.
But it didn't. Midair, still moving at impossible speed, he crashed into an abandoned building.
BOOOOM!!