There were still two days before the agreed upon time to head out into the wilds beyond the restricted zone, and there was still much to do in the meantime.
There wasn't enough liquor consumed the night before, so everyone was ready to run bright and early. As the trio began their run, Vera made several odd turns bringing them on a different path than what they were accustomed to.
Trusting her, Arden and Sya wordlessly ran after her. Knowing her, it was probably in aid of their training. Whether it was to keep them on their toes and prepare for the unexpected or a different lesson entirely would no doubt be learned very soon.
As they ran in their new stances and posture, they once again realized the validity of Vera's words from earlier. They don't know when it happened, but it stopped feeling uncomfortable for them. They weren't running any faster, but they're movements felt much more fluid.
Eventually, Vera ended the first leg of the journey at an incline leading to an overpass. They hugged the meter wide sidewalk that ran along the street that, while not incredibly dangerous, was still busy enough to give one pause for thought before crossing it.
Vera brought them halfway up the overpass and stopped, expecting Arden and Sya to do the same. They were a bit winded, but it would take a lot more than this to exhaust them. Vera had made sure of that.
The occasional joggers that ran past them gave them odd stares for stopping at such an odd location.
“Your balance and footwork has come a long way in the past week and a bit. No doubt you had a teacher who was wise beyond her years. Probably beautiful as well.”
“Humble too,” Arden said.
“This will be your first real-world training. There are no safety nets here, so if you fail, you will get hurt. But that's the life of a Starborn.”
Sya grimaced as she looked at the cars going up and coming down from the overpass.
“Can we not run through traffic? I don't think red-tiers are strong enough to survive something like that.”
“We’re not doing that,” Vera said. “Miasma puts up with a lot of our BS, but I don't think Chorzo would just ignore us starting a traffic jam with our bodies.”
Vera grinned and took a running start to the edge of the overpass and made a grand leap to the top of the building that was level with incline.
“Come on!” She said. “We have a lot of buildings to cross and only a few hours until the sun rises!”
*****
The buildings that Vera led the siblings over offered more than just a simple run. It was clear to both of them that stamina was no longer the focus. Parkour was.
Leaping between rooftops, crossing narrow beams, how to fall, and how to climb. The lesson that morning was acrobatics.
Naturally, Vera was startlingly proficient at this, almost like she was raised to do it or something. She was graceful as she moved across the roofs.
Arden and Sya followed her, lagging a bit behind, as was only natural given their lack of training. They lacked her technique, but made up for it with determination and perseverance.
Arden giggled as he ran, awash in a boy-like state of wonder as he platformed across the many rooftops. It tickled something primal in his brain that made him feel like a child. He remembered all the times when he was in the backseat of his parent’s car. He always imagined a person jumping across the rooftops of his old neighborhood as they drove.
“You doing alright, Arden?” Sya asked.
“I’m doing great,” he said, smiling from ear to ear.
“I think you broke Arden!” Sya called out to Vera.
“He was already broken!” Vera called back.
The parkour exercise continued in a similar manner for a while, until Vera fell back, letting Arden take the lead.
“You choose where we go next!”
Arden picked a direction and continued without a care in the world.
It only took him a short amount of time for him to realize the point of him taking the lead. When Vera was leading, Arden was simply copying what she did. Now, he had to improvise on the fly. He couldn't prepare what to do ahead of time.
“Dont slow down!” Vera said from behind him. “If I catch up to you, you'll be the one to wear the dress that Savish’s tailor is making!”
He didn't need any more motivation than that.
For a while, things were going great. Right up until the parapet that he was going to jump off of broke beneath his weight, sending him down into the alley below.
*****
Mober was having an awful morning already.
His alarm clock didn't go off at the right time, so he woke up late. As he hurriedly tried to make up for lost time before he would be late for work, he burnt his toast by turning the toaster too high.
He chewed the destroyed piece of bread as he sprinted down the street, choking back tears.
Things only got worse as a small band of thugs pulled him by his tie into an alleyway and shoved him to the ground.
He looked up at the delinquents that were all missing teeth and brandishing various forms of weaponry that ranged from knives to pieces of bent rear.
Mober put his hands in front of his face in surrender.
“Please don't hurt me! You can take whatever you want, but please don't hurt me!”
The thugs all chuckled as one of them with very short hair stepped forward with a smile that revealed more black holes in his mouth than teeth.
“Gosh mister, you're making me feel like a bad guy,”
He turned to his goons.
“Do I seem like a bad guy to you guys?”
The thugs hooted and hollered in praise of the boss. They all unanimously agreed that he was a good guy.
“I’m just doing my part to fix a broken system,” he said, then held a knife to Mober's throat. “Give me everything of value you have. Wealth redistribution is a good thing.”
Mober did exactly as the thug said and handed over his briefcase and his wallet.
“C-can I leave now?” He asked, on the verge of tears.
The thug looked at him for a moment, then slammed the handle of his knife into Mober's temple, eliciting a cry of pain as he fell into the dirt. The thugs stomped on the workers back as his followers laughed.
“I know you have an inventory, dumbass. Everyone keeps their best things in there. Show me what you got, or else.”
Mober sobbed from the pain and the fear. He desperately hoped that someone, anyone would save him.
“I’m a good guy, though,” the mugger said. “So I'll overlook it. I won't even make you give me the stuff from your inventory. All I want is an apology.”
Mober looked up, dirt covering his tear-stained face.
“W-what?”
“Apologize. Bow in front of me. Tell me that I am a great and honorable person.”
Mober felt anger in his veins, white and hot upon hearing the words. He would survive being attacked. He could endure being robbed. But his conscience wouldn't allow him to call the person in front of him a good person. He fundamentally rejected the notion.
Stolen story; please report.
“What's wrong?” The thug asked. “Not going to apologize?”
Mober said nothing, and only pictured the faces of his family.
“It's to the scrap heap with you!”
As he shouted the words, everyone heard the sound of a different yelling voice from above. They watched in confusion and mild interest as a man fell from the roof above, hit the dumpster, bounced, and then fell onto the ground with a broken arm.
“Ow,” the man groaned.
The leader was the first to recover.
“It seems we have a second one.”
*****
Arden didn't expect the parapet to break as he jumped off of it. He only hoped that the shoddy craftsmanship of the building meant that Vera’s threat was technically invalid.
He also didn't expect to bounce off a dumpster and break his left arm in the process. As he lay in the dirt catching his breath, he said the only thing that came to mind.
“Ow.”
He was about to begin healing his arm with his last reserves of biomass but was instead alerted to the presence of a group of thugs in front of him threatening what looked like a salary worker.
“It seems we have a second one.”
Arden cradled his broken arm and looked at the man who said the words. It was obvious that he was the leader.
“A mugging, huh?” Arden said, realizing what he fell into the middle of.
For a moment, he wondered if Vera and Sya would leap down from above to cover him, but when they didn't, Arden smiled.
“Vera wants to see how I handle this,” he realized.
“You look like a well-off guy,” the leader said, sauntering over to Arden. “Have any cash to spare?”
“If I did, I wouldn't be handing it over to you.”
Arden covered his broken arm with his healthy one. To everyone else in the dim light, it looked like he was just cradling it in pain, when in actuality he was healing it. He had a feeling he would be needing it soon.
He didn't detect any stellar essence from the goon, so he quickly remembered something that Vera taught both him and Sya, thinking that it would come in handy sooner rather than later.
“Starborn Statute Three, subcategory two: when to use powers against a mundane. A Starborn may only fight against mundanes if the Starborn a) is attacked first, b) holds back, c) refrains from using lethal skills. Note: it is advisable to refrain from using any abilities at all, as a Starborn physique is inherently stronger than a mundane's.”
Vera's forward planning never failed to amaze Arden.
“We're just a couple down on our luck guys from the slums, mister. Don't you have a heart? You're sounding quite villainous.”
‘You have no idea.’
“What's your name?” Arden asked.
“Samalos.”
“Right, here's the deal. Your new name is ‘Bitch,’ got it? Try not to forget it. I know how bad the brains of slum rats are.”
Bitch's fist tightened around his knife.
“You've got a death wish or something?”
“No, I'm quite content with living my life.”
“You know nothing of living on the streets.”
Arden didn't resist as he felt the knife draw across his cheek. Warm blood trickled down his face.
‘He attacked first,’ Arden thought. ‘But I'm not done yet.’
“I suspect I know more than you about living in poverty,” Arden said.
He looked at Bitch’s athletic body. He looked almost as ripped as Yaan. It was clear that malnutrition wasn’t one of his problems. Dentistry was, though.
“The starving aren't built like a truck. Only those with a good diet are able to maintain that form. You’re not homeless. You’re just a thug.”
“You crossed the line,” Bitch said. “Apologize to me and call me righteous, then maybe I'll consider letting you live.”
Arden looked towards the worker who was still shaking against the ground watching him mouth off to the muggers.
Arden glanced at the end of the alley that led into the street. He was under no illusion that he would be able to handle all twenty of the goons, even if he was a Starborn. But he at least needed to keep them from running away.
He believed that Vera was of a similar mindset. She would probably help out on that front.
“Bitch, so far you check two of the three things I hate the most in people. Fake righteousness, and street crime.”
“Whats the last?”
“Doing the other two while handsome.”
There was a second before Bitch realized that Arden said that he was ugly.
“You bastard!” Bitch yelled, swinging his knife in a wide arc to slit Arden’s throat.
As much as Arden wanted to be dramatic, he had no biomass to spare to heal a wound like that again. Instead, he grabbed Bitch's wrist with his previously broken hand before the knife could reach him and stood up.
Red sparks formed a gruesome gauntlet made of bone around Arden’s hands. With his other hand, Arden reached up and snapped the knife in two, taking the steel blade for himself and leaving Bitch with a bladeless handle. Lusterless gray cloth appeared on Arden’s body after a secondary haze of red sparks.
“Why do so many people try to kill me with knives?” Arden asked, releasing a brief pulse of his aura.
The thugs realized their error as they felt the rough red-tier aura wash over them. It wasn’t all that strong, but it was aura. And aura meant Starborn.
“Run for it!” one of the thugs yelled.
As soon as one of them started to run, the others followed suit. They attacked people in the early hours of the morning precisely to avoid the authorities, but now they ended up attracting something much worse than a cop.
A superhuman Starborn.
Arden blocked the path further down the alley as he still held the leader by the wrist, so the group of thugs ran the opposite way trying to flood into the streets and out of the alley.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t going to work, as they found their path blocked by a wall of ice. With the fear of god put into them, they attempted to break the ice or climb it.
“That’s not going to work,” Vera said, her normally black and light blue hair replaced with light blue and black hair, like her color palette changed.
*****
In only a few minutes, the group of thugs were on their hands and knees begging for forgiveness from the trio of Starborn and the worker who looked like he was still processing what happened. Most of them only had light injuries.
The only one who was a bit worse for wear was the leader, Bitch, as he was the only on dumb enough to try to fight against the Starborn. He relied on his own muscle and mass, expecting himself to easily break the lithe, toned Starborn.
It didn't go well for him.
Arden handily beat the thug into submission and restrained him with the same ropes that Arden and Sya had been using on themselves for balance exercises. As Bitch lay on the ground, Arden approached the worker.
“You alright, man?” he asked.
“Thanks to you,” Mober said in gratitude. “How can I ever repay you?”
Arden sheepishly scratched the back of his head, his Bone Talons absent from his hands.
“We don’t take rewards, but can I borrow your phone? I need to call this in.”
“Of course!”
Arden thought it was strange that while technology had improved considerably since the inception of the smart phone, there had been very little innovation done to handheld communication devices. There were holo communicators used by guild members and the Association, but there wasn’t really a point to seeing each other’s holographic head and shoulders as you took a call. Face time was still a thing on phones.
‘Technology is all about improved efficiency, and it's hard to improve upon a smart phone when it communicates with anyone and it's kept on pretty much everyone. I wonder if there will ever be Status integration?’
Arden typed in one of Miasma’s hotline numbers and waited for the phone to be connected. He could have contacted the civil authority, but given how he was already in deep with Miasma, it seemed appropriate to call them instead. An unexpected and familiar voice answered.
“Thank you for calling Miasma’s emergency response line, how may I assist you this morning?”
“...Staz? Is that you?”
“Arden? Why are you calling the hotline?”
“Why are you answering? I thought you were an informant.”
“I picked up a coworker’s shift. With this, I’ll safely hit overtime,” he said with excitement.
“Yeah, that's great. Hey, listen. Me and the gang were out for our morning run when we fell into the middle of a large mugging. It’s resolved, but we have some people to bring in, if that's how things roll there.”
“It is. How many people did you round up?”
“One would-be victim, and around twenty muggers.”
“Is anyone hurt that badly?”
“Not that badly…I roughed up the leader a bit, but it's nothing too bad. No powers were used.”
“That makes things easy then,” Staz said. “Wait there with the would-be victim until we arrive. We’ll take over from there.”
“Cool. See you in a bit.”
Arden gave Staz the party’s location before ending the call and handed the phone back to Mober.
“I can’t thank you enough,” Mober said. “Not only did you save me, but you also got me out of what was sure to be a hellish day at work.”
“I’m glad it all worked out,” Arden said as he was flanked by Vera and Sya.
He relayed the news that a Miasma cleanup crew was on their way and that they had to stay a bit longer. Neither of them were particularly bothered. They kept an eye on the muggers as they talked.
“So,” Arden began. “Does this make up for my tumble?”
“More or less,” Vera said. “I’m going to assume you two know the reason for this morning’s excursion?”
“You’ve been teaching us how to move our bodies,” Sya answered. “This was us putting it into practice. We need to be ready, wherever we are.”
Vera nodded.
“And however. Running and jumping is only a part of it. There will be times where we have to climb, fall, and everything in between. You need the agility and confidence to do all of these tricks wherever you go. The cascade and the trial both showed that we don’t usually have a choice in our battles. We just need the confidence and ability to overcome them, whatever it is we’re doing, and wherever we’re doing it.”
