Six Years Ago

I had been spending more and more time wandering through the city and away from the temple. Ever since I had gained these new found powers, now that I had become the thing I had hated for so long I struggled to understand where I fit.

I had gained a Super, to become a Prime because I had accepted finally that I was not a copy, that I was my own man. Now I had become an even more perfect replication. Just what did that mean?

No longer afraid to head into the city, I did not care if I saw another Levi. Finally secure in the knowledge of who I was. The words of man I had created and spoken with had become the mantra to my life now.

“Remember who we wanted to be. You owe me that.”

I still had no idea who that was. There was a hole in my mind that I did not know how to fill. I desperately missed Valkyr. I wanted to talk with him. To see him, to see him smile at me again.

This responsibility was mine alone. It was lonely in a way I had never felt before.

I turned aimlessly down another alleyway. This area of town was still clean but run down. People here were obviously trying their best to keep up appearances but there is only so many times you can clean something before it becomes worn. That is what this part of the town was, worn. The houses, the roads, the people. Beaten down by the organised crime that had moved in. Beaten down by their own pride.

A man shuffled by, pushing his cart of old shoes and slippers, calling his sales more out of habit than expecting anyone to buy.

An older lady moved the plastic boxes full of food around in the stand out the front of her shop. Not that many people could afford the extravagance of eating store bought food but this was her job, probably her parents business as well. There was no way she was going to give up.

Her eyes said otherwise when she met mine.

I turned away. I didn’t want to give her false hope, a foreigner in this area might have money. Might be interested in buying something and letting her go home tonight with a bit of dignity.

My almost empty pockets burned, so did my soul. The Supers should have changed the world for the better. When it first happened, when the roulette of life finished spinning and started to bestow powers on random people it was heralded as a new dawn for humanity. This would change things. It was no longer money, family or connections that allowed you to rise to the top. It was random.

Now was the time for Paul Stokes. The trucker who had busted his arse his whole life to provide a meagre life for his family. Who had spent his life on the road, barely seeing his family yet still making it work. He who could now hear everything other people thought.

It was a gift!

A Miracle!

He hung himself two weeks later.

Now was the time for Daquin Misserly. Self-proclaimed hood rat and proud of it. Who was now unstoppable, literally. He was invulnerable and could walk through anything. No jail could hold him, no vault was safe. He brought his crew along with him and gained incalculable wealth.

Now he is a paranoid lunatic. Everyone he worked with is dead as he was the only one with powers. Trapped, alone in a luxury apartment back in Arcadia. He doesn’t trust anyone and does nothing with his money.

People learnt quickly that just because you got Powers that it was not a blessing or a curse. It just was. People are people.

Mostly, people are bastards.

Some of the most famous Supers took over cities and rule them like kings, others are more vigilante like, stopping crime and other Supers but leaving the city to run itself. Most though? Life went on, the world adjusted.

I had changed so much in the last few years. The man who I was at creation was so different to who I was now. Being created thinking that Supers were doing the right thing and were the natural leaders of the world. Not having the Power myself had quickly shown how fucking self-centred and disgusting that thinking was. Levi Prime only thought that way because he was a Super.

After living without, after seeing the world as the terrifying place where it seemed to bend and break at the whims of psycho’s with reality altering strength and there was not one good goddamn thing I could do to stop it? Where the Supers were more concerned with their own power and status than helping humanity?

Supers had become the nouveau rich except there were no guillotine strong enough to stop them this time.

A burst of sound and stale cigarette smoke from the pachinko parlour brought me back to reality. Looking around I had no idea where I was. The smell of the cigarettes faded with my thoughts.

Still not sure who I wanted to become or what to do about being a Super. I needed to make sure I understood who I really was before seeing Valkyr again. There was no way I could go back to Arcadia when I would now be whinging about something new. The ghostly words of the other me before being absorbed were still stuck in my brain stopping me from celebrating this new change.

My eyes focused on a man up ahead, clothes as faded and old as he was, wiping his forehead with a white cloth before tying it around his head. I slowed down to watch him bend over a small beer barrel and with a grunt of effort lift it off the path and carry it inside his little restaurant.

There had been no moment of realisation, of a bolt out of the blue but I could feel my thoughts shuffling around.

Maybe it was not about changing the whole world, there was no way that I could make everyone’s life perfect. Of taking the pain of existence away for everyone. But I could help who was in front of me. I could make life just a little better here and there.

Maybe that is who I wanted to be.

Maybe that was enough.

Striding over to the collection of kegs I waited until the old timer reappeared and said in my schoolboy Japanese “Please let me help you.”

Ignoring the usual social plea’s that it was unnecessary I lifted one of the barrels with ease and carried it into the darkness.

That is how I found myself seated at the dented and scarred wooden counter of Hiro-San’s restaurant with cold drink in hand. Hiro-San had shrugged when I said no to the offered beer, instead pouring a barley tea form his own battered jug. Once I had helped carry the barrels in, another delivery was made of some sad looking pork and bundles of wilted sprouts which I also brought behind the bar. Not without him telling me it was not needed every step of the way.

Jingling the coins in my pocket, I had enough to pay for a meal. I knew that Hiro-San would not accept payment so I planed on just leaving them on the counter when I left.

Sipping on the cold tea I watched Hiro-San potter around the stove. He had the practised movement of decades. He was slow and methodical but there was no wasted effort or energy. I realised I was watching a master craftsman, someone who back in Arcadia would have a line around the block of young people waiting to get in. Of trying the new hotness and going on about finding a hidden gem.

Here? He was a forgotten footnote of history, scraping out a living.

In that moment I was ashamed. Deeply, uncontrollably ashamed. Of who I was, of how I had been drinking myself to death and running from my problems. I had lived my life so concerned with myself that I had ignored everything around me. Of how I had treated the people around me and hurt them over and over.

“Remember who we wanted to be. You owe me that.”

I caught my thoughts in a spiral. I could make new choices.

The door slid open. I turned to see two men attempt to swagger in but the restaurant is so small that they were forced to stop and awkwardly sidle past the chairs calling out for Hiro-San.

They barely gave me a glance, apparently foreigners were invisible to them.

Hiro-San appeared behind the counter and looked shocked before being able to cover the expression. He invited the men to the back of the restaurant and headed down there. They followed talking loudly about the state of the place. I am not fluent in Japanese but understood enough to follow the conversation. Enough to know that the two men asked Hiro-San if I understood Japanese and heard it when Hiro-San lied.

I tried to not be too obvious about watching as I sipped on my tea but I heard them. I heard them threaten Hiro-San and demand their protection payment early. I heard Hiro-San beg for time, for clemency.

I heard them laugh.

In that moment I knew I would kill them.

I didn’t consciously think that, I thought I would follow them out and try to get Hiro-San’s money back. To get them to stop. But in my heart I knew I would kill them.

All my scattered thoughts were coming together. Of not being able to change the world. Of not being able to be who I wanted, of seeing the way that the Supers got away with anything they wanted and ignored the crime happening under their noses because it didn’t touch them. Of this neighbourhood barely existing yet the people here were still carving out a life and these two fucks showed up to beat this man down.

Again and again.

Of Hiro-San not giving up, of following what he wanted and being who he saw himself as even as they tried to cut him him down.

Quietly slipping the coins to pay for the tea onto the counter I got up and left. I waited outside, mind roiling. Not even trying to hide as there was no point. I am the only foreigner in a six block radius. I didn’t even know how I was going to get the money back but I did not have the space in my mind to even worry about that.

These men were going to pay.

The wooden door slid open and they stepped out.

“Hey. Dickholes.” I called out in English without thinking.

They turned with questioning looks on their faces. “What do you want?” They responded in Japanese.

It took a moment for me to understand what they said and to figure out how to respond.

“I want you to give me what you stole and to never come back.” I said in Japanese, my hands relaxed and now loose by my side.

This was the right thing. I felt calm, my mind clearing, almost as if I was floating. A small voice whispered in my mind “Be who we want to be…”

The lane way we were standing in was deserted, most of the shops shuttered and closed. The smell of frying meats reaching up to me, carried by the soft breeze. The two men looked at each other and then back to the crazy foreigner.

“We stole nothing. We have a business agreement with the old man. Who are you to question this?”

I saw them rest their hands inside their coats. Guns were not easy to get a hold of around here so they were probably reaching for their knives. That should have been scary, should have been the wake up call that what I was doing was insane. It was not like I was a fighter or even if I was armed.

Still floating on the shifting of my world view, nothing was going to stop me now. This was the right thing to do. This is who I wanted to be. I would not stand by any more.

I slid a foot forward, raising one hand palm up towards the men while slowly twisting to the right. The basic forms I had been taught by Sensei as a meditation device coming easy to my body.

The men followed the rising palm with their eyes. So when I snapped forward with my other fist they didn’t even see it coming. Driving it forward with my whole body, rotating my hips to try and punch my way through the man’s mid section.

With an explosive grunt and cry he stumbled backwards and fell. I tried to recover my balance. My body was not used to this, my legs were still too short in my mind. The second man had drawn his wicked looking knife but didn’t strike.

“You idiot.” I said.

No.

I didn’t say that.

He said it. I said it.

My duplicate said it.

There was a second me standing there now.

The blow, the kinetic force of the punch. Of course. I was a Super now. I had created another copy, I had done what I had promised myself, literally, what I would never do.

I stared at me. Me stared at I. The two of us stared at each other, incredulity painting our faces as the realisation of what he, I , we had done hit us.

I was so distracted I barely saw the knife flickering towards me. I did see it, but not for long as I tried to flinch out of the way. That was the only reason the tip sunk into my left eye and not all the way through into my brain.

Pain burst like firecrackers in my mind. The world went black and red in alternating shades, the agony was unbearable. I went down. I tried to scream, to curse in pain and terror but I couldn’t. Unable to do anything but writhe on the ground, crying in great gasping globs of spit and sound.

My eye.

My Face.

OUR EYE.

We were three.

Our hands were slick with blood and spit, clutching our ruined sockets. Our other eye was glued shut in sympathy. The world ignored around us as we scrabbled on the ground like drowning rats.

I mimicked me. He mimicked me. The new me, my duplicate, joined me writhing on the ground screaming in agony, shattering the wet blanket of despair that usually covered this lane way.

The untouched Yuudai, the me created before they took my sight, took advantage of the shock of the man with the knife and fell upon him like a caged beast set free. Seeing your own face getting punctured, hearing the wet slurping sound of your eye collapsing under a knife is not something many men get to hear second-hand. It was enough that he fell upon the knife wielder with a rage and beat him to the ground, swinging his, my, fists again and again.

The red rage filled our mind, his mind. We didn’t even notice when he had stopped striking with his fists and just clutched the man’s head and slammed it against the cobbled street. Screaming incoherently.

Again.

And again.

And again.

It was over in seconds.

The first gangster recovered enough to struggle upright and tried to take in the insanity. His friends head was a mess on the ground, smeared by the man who had punched him. Or not him.

By me. By him. By us.

Two copies of that man were crying out on the ground clutching their ruined faces and bleeding everywhere in almost perfect unison.

The gangster did the only sane thing he could.

He ran.

Slowly this little nightmare scene calmed down.

The Yuudai on the man’s chest came to. The mound of flesh and blood that he was holding was no longer a head. It swam back into his vision and he released it. Slowly, very slowly, he turned to the side and began throwing up the tea we just had all over the cobbles, mixing with the mess already on the ground.

I, me, The Prime, managed to gather himself, myself, enough to realise what was going on and tried to concentrate. I tried to push through the pain. He felt hollow inside and tried to fill that void. The two copies begun to shake and shimmer and snapped out of existence.

I, Yuudai, was left alone, crying and rocking back and forth on the ground, the memories of the two copies and what they had done and been through added into the horror of what we had just experienced. I got to experience it all again in stereo.

It was too much.

I dragged myself upright. I avoided looking at the red smear that was all that was left of the man on the ground and stumbled out of the lane way and down some alleys. The pain in my body and soul was enough to keep me going, twisting and turning through the back alleys.

It was a long way back to the temple that night.