Yuri slowly steps out of the car. "Who sent you?"
"Does that matter?" The woman smiles. "What's it to you, corpse?"
"I'll pay you double. No. Triple what you were paid."
"And how can I trust that?"
My father clenches his fist. With a shudder, he turns around to look at me. "I'll give you my son as collateral. You can hold on to him until you have the money."
She pauses, I'm mortified. My father doesn't like or even tolerate my existence, sure, but to use his own son as a bargaining chip with a psycho bitch is beyond fucked.
Then, she barks out a laugh so bright it seems almost cheerful.
"Oh man, you're funny. I knew you were a piece of shit, but to think you'd offer up your own family." She can barely stop laughing. It's so infectious it even makes me chuckle. "Ah, you're too good. Now then, die."
It happens in fractions of a second. Three rapid fire blinks is all it takes for hell to descend upon this mountain road. My father is standing to the side of the car. I blink, his upper torso falls apart, cut into small little pieces by something invisible. I blink again. His legs fall to the ground, the rest of his body a red mist.
I blink for a third and final time, and the limousine is disassembled, my arm separated from my shoulder. It's too quick to feel pain. I don't even register it.
Another slash cuts through the car, and I can't even look as it kills my mother.
My other hand flies to my neck.
I pull the pin. My fingers fly off.
For a moment, there is nothing. I remember the smell of blood, the missing weight of my arm and the cleanly cut limousine.
The next moment, I'm standing in a fiery wreckage. The car is cinders, the leather ashes. My arm is back, black bomb fuses covering it like a sleeve.
I exploded. I am a bomb. There is a warhead where my head should be. The limousine is no more. I am what remains.
Me and the assassin.
She looks at me and laughs. "What a hideous quirk you have! Useful, though. You can grow limbs?"
I can't find my voice. Even if I could, what would I say? I can pull the pin, I can transform myself, but after that? Do I know how to generate explosions? How to use it like Reze did? No.
That requires skills I don't have. I was hoping I'd have time to practice this power. It is clear now that the world won't afford me that luxury.
"Your parents are dead, little man," she says, stepping through the fiery wreckage to tower over me. She is tall and lean, and I am small and frail. But I'm the one with the bomb for a head. I should scare her.
But I don't. She scares me.
"You gonna fight me?"
I raise my arm, sparks igniting. I'll blow her to smithereens. It's kill or be killed, right? I can kill her. I have to.
I hesitate.
It costs me my arm. I don't even see it happen. One moment I'm getting ready to blast her away, the next, there's a stump where my arm should be.
"Huh, when did that happen," I say, my voice muffled. "Huh?"
"So you can talk! Why didn't you say so?" She kicks me in the chest so hard I ragdoll fifteen feet away.
My arm regenerates, slower this time, healing back starting from the elbow and down to the fingers. I use it to prop myself up, only to find it's gone again, severed clean. I crash onto my side.
She's too fast.
My ribs heal where she kicked.
She drives her foot into my back. "You don't break, do you? I suppose I could cut you to fine dust. Want me to try? Answer quick. Three, two, o-"
"No!" I shout.
"Too bad. One. Ze-"
I explode, her slash digging into my back and severing my spine. It doesn't cut all the way through. I explode the air, my back, anything I can think of, anything to blow her away. Everything around me explodes, my body a bomb.
I see a flash of light and I brace myself for my eardrums to rupture. They don't. I guess I'm immune to my own explosions.
The explosion drives her away, the weight of her foot gone. I manage to stand, my injuries healed.
She's uninjured. Of course she is. "Nasty quirk, kid. Where was all that power from your parents?"
"They're nothing like me," I say. "You did me a favor by killing them, horrid witch."
"Hah! I know you're not talking. You look positively horrifying." She points a long finger at me. "I bet you have no friends, huh? Ugly kid like you."
"You talk a lot." I stand as tall as I can, but I can feel something fading. My wounds refuse to fully close. I'm at my wicks end. "If you're gonna kill me, have at it."
"But don't you know? I already did kill you twice, you just healed," she pouts. "It's plain unfair, really."
"I guess you're weak, then, getting outpaced by a seven year old," I taunt. I'll die. I'll surely die.
"Since when do little kids have such bravado?" She appears in front of me faster than I can track. When did she move? "I'm starting to like you, boy. Youre like an ugly toy I can fuck with without breaking. How about this? Come with me and I'll let you live."
I step back. Bad idea. I fall on my ass. My balance is off, and I'm tired. Just two explosions took the wind out of me. "You expect me to agree to that?"
She's practically foaming at the mouth."It's either you become my little errand boy, or you die."
I raise a hand, sparks forming at my fingertips. My heart pounds. Breath quickens. I hear the explosions, I see their shape, I know what I have to do. Visualize it. Shape it. Kill her. Once chance. Kill or be killed.
And yet, instead of a glorious explosion, the only thing my hand produces is a pathetic wisp of smoke. Great.
"About that deal…"
Know what? Errand boy actually doesn't sound too bad right about now. I've spent long enough running errands for money in my past life, busy with menial tasks for menial pay. I should be sick of it, I should refuse her. But am I an idiot? Are my principles worth my life? Not really. Not when I just got a second chance.
"Good boy," she says with a smile before kicking my bomb head in. My brain rattles in its cage. Most likely a concussion. "I'll just cut your legs off for the picture so it looks like I've completed my mission. Then I'll dice a deer to pieces, make it look like I turned you into mist. Then voila! Here's to a long and fruitful relationship!"
I barely register the words, my consciousness fading faster than I can think.
Geniuenly fuck my life.
*
It takes days to recover. My severed legs heal too slowly when I'm not transformed. I'm guessing I can heal quicker by ingesting blood, but where am I gonna find that? The crazy psycho bitch locked me in her apartment.
She leaves for days at a time, saying she'll be back soon, that she's going on a mission. Probably to kill more people. She leaves me no food, nothing, just abandons me.
She doesn't even make me do anything, says I'm not useful without my legs. I'm just a fucking kid. How will I ever make myself useful to a deranged assassin? Why did she even take me with her? Why did she let me live?
"You hungry?" She asks, lounging on the couch in a tank top and a pair of shorts. Beer in one hand, cigarette in another. Her snow white hair is tied back into a ponytail. She reminds me of how I used to live.
I can walk on my own now, my legs healed. Having such a small body is beyond frustrating, it restricts my options too much. I usually spend my time on the couch watching heroes on the TV until she comes home and makes me scoot over to a corner of the couch.
I scoff. "Do you care?"
She blows a loose strand of hair from her face. "Not really, kid. Not really. There's frozen nuggets in the freezer. Make them yourself."
My stomach rumbles. Frozen chicken nuggets it is. As it always is.
I watch the microwave plate spin. The apartment smells like cigarettes and dirty clothes. She obviously doesn't give a shit about her living space.
"You're an assassin," I mumble, climbing up on a stool to pop my nuggets out of the microwave. "You've gotta be able to afford more than this."
"Don't start complaining now." She doesn't even look at me. It's not that different from my previous living situation. Just a lot less comfortable. "I don't need someone to bitch and moan."
I sit on the couch and eat my 'dinner'. "What do you even want from me?"
"I told you, you're a toy I can play with. And you don't break," she says. "You'll see."
And see I do.
It begins a week into our new living situation. She drags me out of my bed (the couch), and out the door before I fully realize what's happening.
I barely gather my bearings, only to see that we're standing in an abandoned building. It's not that far from home, and she didn't bother hiding the location from me. The place is decked with all kinds of gear, by which I mean a satellite and a single Dell computer that looks like it's from the 90s.
"Your HQ?" I ask, sarcastic.
She turns around to face me. "You could say that. More like my gym."
I notice the slashes etched onto the wall, the steel shavings that probably used to be construction beams. Quirk Training.
All of a sudden, I know where this is going.
"Pull the pin, kid. You're gonna be my little dummy."