Righteous anger burned through me for the rest of the day. Under a red mist, I found myself back in my apartment, furiously putting together a new kit. All I could hear and see was the slap, and Marilyn's fear, and the shame of it burned me. Mark was a good man. He had been good to me and he looked out for my Grandad as he got older. And I just stood there and watched him being threatened and abused, unable to do anything about it.

  “Fucking useless!” I spat at myself through gritted teeth.

  Frantically, I began tearing up small strips of cloth, pouring in the chalky mixture to create more Chalk Bombs. I only had enough left to make two or three. As I poured the volatile mixture, I tried to remain calm, remembering the half a dozen times I had accidentally slipped or dropped powder in my room and covered the whole place in chalk, almost blinding myself on a couple of occasions. I took a couple of deep breaths and then began pouring from the large mason jar again, trying to evenly distribute the powder as best I could.

  Once the mason jar was empty, I picked up the wraps and carefully tied them off at the top, trying to pack the bags as tight as I could so that they would explode on impact. The tighter they were, the more fragile they were, and I had to remember that when carefully secreting them into the pocket of my jacket.

  I didn't have time to make many Bang Rocks. I sat down with my small chisel and furiously etched out the "Rune for expulsion of force," as the book called it, on a smooth pebble. I wasn't quite sure what that meant exactly, but all I knew was it created a bang and could theoretically be carved into anything. But upon experimentation, I realised that it took far more than just a simple Rune to blow up anything bigger than a small pebble. I still didn't understand where magic came from, how it even worked, or why I was able to do it. I was certain though, simply copying Runes wasn't the entire process, but it seemed to work sometimes.

  I thought back over the fight from last night. and I remembered that kicking Zombie in his knee had taken him out of the fight and probably was the only reason I managed to survive. Oh and the other one had turned and ran. If just one of those men had stayed in the fight, it would have been three against one, and I’d probably be dead.

  I scratched my scalp in frustration and paced around the room. I needed something more. I needed something that could be used offensively. Crazy thoughts raced through my mind as I realised that a simple kitchen knife was more dangerous than any magic I could wield. But I was no killer. I wasn't about to stalk the streets with blades, playing mad vigilante. I didn't want to kill people; I wanted to help people.

  I knew blinding them was a good tactic, but at the same time, I wasn't sure if they would fall for it a second time. As I scoured through my notes, flicking through page after page of my terrible handwriting and even worse drawings, frustration welled in my chest. I had dozens of drawings and blueprints for weapons that I had never even come close to being able to create.

  I snarled and threw the book away from me. After two years of research and learning, this was the best I'd come up with: a rope that I couldn't call back, pebbles that sometimes exploded and sometimes didn't, and Chalk Bombs that were just as likely to fall flaccidly to the earth as they were to blind my opponents.

  As I tore bad-temperedly through the pages of my notebook, I came across something. The spark of a vague memory danced across my mind. It was a club with a similar Rune to that used on the pebbles carved into it. I looked closely at it and then began to think. That weird ooze in the back of my mind, where creative thoughts seem to come up from, bubbled excitedly.

  “This could work!” I said to myself.

  I'd come up with the idea for the weapon in the very early stages of my fantasies about being a vigilante, and I'd forgotten all about it. But now that I looked at it with a greater understanding of how the Runes worked and what type of materials to use for them, it didn't look like a half-bad idea.

  I remembered the man wielding the club yesterday and how effective that had been at brutalizing me. I thought about the knife that Goldilocks had wielded. I would definitely have the reach advantage. I ran my tongue around my mouth, my brows creased in thought. I quickly got to my feet and searched around my room. Of course, I didn't have a bat. I didn't play any sports… but Grandad did. I tore out of my room and then froze in front of my Grandad's room.

  "Sorry, Grandad," I whispered, looking down the hall into the living room where his ashes were.

  I opened the door gently and crept in. The room was musty and dark. I had maybe been in here twice since Grandad had passed away. I didn't like it in here: it reminded me of death. Quickly, I walked across to Grandad's cupboard, pulling it open, searching through the very back of it past old tweed jackets, and there I found it. It was an old cricket bat. Apparently, Grandad used to play when he was little. It was a narrow piece of wood, maybe less than the width of my hand and quite slim. It was made of old, tough wood that had stained dark from decades of use, with red circles all over it from where Grandad whacked balls with it.

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  I felt it in my hands; it was light, surprisingly light, and it wasn't very long either. I gave it a couple of practice swings, and it felt almost like what I imagined a short sword would feel like.

  "This could definitely work," I said, gripping the rubber handle tightly, although the rubber had decayed so much and fallen apart that I could only see the string underneath it. I would have to do something about that, but it could work. I closed Grandad's cupboard reverentially and quickly exited his room without touching anything else.

  I grabbed a bag of salt from the kitchen and some duct tape and went back to my room. Spreading my notes around me on the floor, I looked at the bat and then at my notes. I didn't need an explosion Rune; I needed something similar. Very carefully, I flicked through the spellbook, looking for something that expelled force without destroying what it was housed in.

  Something in the back of my memory jumped. I knew there was a Rune like that! As I flicked through my notes, which were often less than helpful translations of the original text, trying to find what I was searching for. It took me maybe half an hour of searching all my different journals, cross-referencing them with the spellbook, and going back and forth until I thought I'd come up with something. It was, at best, a hack job, but it could work.

  I theorised that if I carved the explosion Rune onto the face of the bat and then carved a matrix of protection Runes on the back of it, I might be able to strengthen it just enough that it wouldn't fall apart but would still explode the way the pebbles did. That way it could expel a small explosion upon impact with something. I took a deep breath, picked up my carving knife, and slowly got to work.

  Like I said before, I don't think magic is just carving and copying Runes onto stuff. It didn't seem to work like that. It required concentration; it required a deliberateness of thought, like you had to imagine exactly what you wanted the outcome to be the whole time you were carving the Runes.

  What did I actually want this enchantment to do? With the pebbles, I had to always think of them exploding. I had to think of them shattering. I had to think of the sound they made. I had to think of the feel, and I had to keep that in mind the entire time. If my mind wandered, if I lost concentration or got tired, inevitably, the enchantments would fail.

  Fortunately, today I was brimming with motivation. I kept thinking about that thug who had slapped Mark, and I kept thinking about what would happen when the bat connected with his head, how it would explode and send him flying. I kept that image in mind as I carved the complex little Rune. As I was carving, I realized that it didn't need to be a little rune, so I expanded it, and made it bigger until it covered at least a third of the bat's face. The wood was soft but dry under my hands, and I'd wished I'd taken some time to maybe oil it or something, but I didn't have time for that, so I kept going, carving slowly, careful not to splinter or chip the wood.

  When I was satisfied with the explosion Rune, I flipped the bat over and began to do the same thing with the matrix of protection on the back, thinking about how I wanted the bat to be strong, to stay whole, to absorb the explosions and the impacts, and to stay in one form, complete and unblemished.

  Darkness was fully upon the streets by the time I'd finished the Runes. I blew some wood chips out of them and looked them up and down before completing the final step, which was to lock them. I called it locking them; I don't know if that was the official word for it, but that's what it was. In the same way that someone painting a canvas will spray it with that lacquer stuff to keep the paint from running, this was sort of the same thing.

  I took the salt and carefully poured it over the Runes, filling up the carvings. I let the salt settle on the front, and something like a humming filled the air. It wasn't a noise; the only thing I could compare it to was getting too close to the glowing billboards around the city and feeling the hairs on your arms react to the electric buzz of them.

  I carefully blew the salt off the front and watched the Rune settle, darkening as if it had always been there. I flipped over to the back and repeated the process, letting it sit just a little bit longer to fill up the intricate little Runes. After carefully dusting down the back, it was ready. I took a deep breath and straightened up from my hunched-over position, my back aching and drenched with sweat.

  I stood up and felt the heft of the bat in my hand. It felt good. Slowly, I took the duct tape and taped up the handle, wrapping it around three times to ensure it had a solid grip. Then I gave it a few practice swings. There was only one way to find out if it would work, so I grabbed a tennis ball from my room, climbed out of my window, and hopped up the fire escape to the roof of the building.

  I bounced the tennis ball a couple of times, took a deep breath, then threw it in the air. As it came down, I gave the bat a mighty two-handed swing… and missed. I cursed, then did it again and missed the second time. I sighed, shook my hands out, and bounced the ball again, this time I watched the ball carefully before swinging. There was a whomp of energy and the tennis ball flew from the bat as if shot from a cannon. I didn't see where it landed; it went far into the darkness and I couldn't even hear the impact of wherever it bounced.

  Grinning wolfishly, I looked out into the darkness of the Mulberry Estate. Wherever those thugs were, this time it was gonna be different. This time I wouldn’t be the one running!