๐ข๐ฏ๐ต๐ช๐ฉ๐ฆ๐ณ๐ฐ๐ช๐ด๐ฎ - ๐ท๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ถ๐ด & ๐ท๐ช๐ณ
Jun 4, 2018 0:48:23 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Jun 4, 2018 0:48:23 GMT -5
Goddamn, he thought to himself as he wrapped the laces around his fingertips once before pulling them tight. The leather in his shoes groaned at the sudden stretch but then relaxed around the shape of his blistered, bandaged feet.
Tobias's mind wandered to his coworkers as his gaze absentmindedly fixed on some distant point on the Downtown Manhattan skyline. The sky still had a subtle peach tint to it--not quite time to head out yet for the evening. He still had some time to deliberate, whether it be on some semblance of a plan of attacking the night (which, he was never the type to plan much of anything, save for his work, where it was absolutely vital) or on something meaningless, something pointless (which, he usually ended up doing).
It's a Friday night. He exhaled a sharp huff through his nose, once, as he finished tying the laces. What is everyone else at the office doing right now? They have the weekend off--they always do, hell, I'm their manager. They're going out or going clubbing or going out to dinner--something, anything. Even staying in, watching a movie. And what am I about to do? He shook his head in disbelief at his own self, blinking. I'm about to go beat some thugs up. Again.
But how can I not, though? He finished off the boot. He flexed his ankle out, trying the tightness of the laces, before setting his foot back down on his hardwood floor, satisfied with it. Even with that small tap, it set off an indistinguishably small chain of events in the floorboards around him--at least, indistinguishable to a normal human being's ear: somewhere far below and around him, boards chafed and screeched against each other, a nail groaned and shifted in its place, and a mouse startled awake with the same chuff a rudely awaken cat would make. A much smaller, much more different world belonged to him, and him alone.
Regardless of how he came upon these abilities--innate as they were, and Tobias kept his wild theories on how he could've acquired them to himself, where the prying hands of medicine and academia, and whoever the hell was monitoring his Internet searches, for that matter, couldn't get to them--he came to the realization that he had to devote them to some kind of higher cause. He'd played the victim long enough (despite continuing to play it on the harder mental health days). With supposedly superhuman senses that he learned through counseling sessions weren't normal, and a clearly obvious enhanced physical strength and endurance, he felt an obligation to help the helpless.
His motivation ate at him, in all honesty. The young man never thought of himself as sappy or sentimental, or motivated by anything else but himself and whatever carnal desire drove him in any particular moment, but, again, something in him finally snapped. He couldn't remember if it was a commercial or a news article that discussed foster children and the tendencies that their lifestyles tended to take, and it broke his heart again. For whatever reason. It was like seeing an ASPCA advertisement with sad-looking puppies and kittens after a breakup. Tobias thought of every single person that hurt him, and one day, he simply couldn't take the thought of any other kids as vulnerable as he was getting hurt.
One of his neighbors had been mistreating a foster child that his wife begged him to take in, out of the pure kindness of her own heart. He heard it all. Every step he took towards her room, every protest, every silent tear and hushed crying. One day, he waited just outside the apartment building that they shared, while he left for his car late at night to cheat on his wife, he beat the hell out of him. And he listened to every tendon and bone snap and he didn't care. He couldn't find a shred of remorse, even as he washed this lowlife's blood off his face and knuckles and clothes later that evening.
After that, some semblance of a routine followed. He would walk and wait and listen and observe, then take care of business for the victimized people who couldn't. Teenagers. Victims of domestic abuse. Children. Sex workers. The foster children held a closer place in his heart, but he'd never tell them--the only person he could think of that knew was the admissions staff at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, since he felt a sob story was exactly what his application needed to distinguish him from the rest, and it worked, obviously. How else could he have become an executive at a mechanical engineering company at the age of twenty four?
He blinked again, and it was dark. His amber eyes were met with a glittering host of buildings and traffic and headlights and dreams embedded in the skyscrapers and the streets. "Oh, sh-t," Tobias said aloud, in shock at the sudden change of scenery. Had he really been lost in his thoughts for that long? Apparently--obviously. He stood from where he was sitting, then pulled the hood of his jacket over his head, and pulled the dark, solid-colored bandana that had been resting comfortably around his neck up to cover his nose and mouth--not totally unrecognizable, but the all-black getup blended in enough with the night for him to keep wearing it.
So, like a cat, he propped open the window above his bed, climbed out, closed and locked it behind him, then scaled the fire escape delicately all the way to the top of his apartment building. The image itself was a little ridiculous: a muscular, 6'3" man, standing on the edge of a metal rail with the self-assuredness of a gymnast, or a cat, for that matter. Once he comfortably climbed up to the roof of the building, he perched comfortably, taking a moment to stretch his arms and legs, but most importantly, he waited diligently for any disturbance in the night. He heard a few happy, celebratory screams from cracked-open windows, and appropriately sad sobs, but one shout in particular was enough to catch his attention.
It was a woman, undoubtedly. And by the sound of it, she was being chased--and she was running. A clear, loud, "Get away from me!" was audible. That was his cue. With a sharp exhale, he launched himself from the edge of his building to the edge of the next, and ran along the edge until those pursuing footsteps were louder, and louder, and louder; or, in other words, until another normal person could hear them clearly.
Then, with an expert flair, he jumped down onto that building's fire escape, and swung off the rail with a gymnast's leap, gripping onto a lower one with his hands. And then, with a precision that he didn't even expect, he landed from there right between the woman and her pursuer, effectively stopping the both of them in their tracks. The woman being pursued didn't surprise him, and neither did her assailant: she was slim and gorgeous, clutching a purse for dear life in her bodycon dress, and he was dressed in nice jeans and a button-down shirt. No doubt a club interaction gone wrong. Someone didn't get her message.
"Listen, dude," he told the man, lowering his voice past the point of recognition, even if it was already muffled by the cloth of his bandana, "You better leave this chick alone before I make you." He paused, making intense eye contact with the man. "And you don't want me to make you."
Tobias's mind wandered to his coworkers as his gaze absentmindedly fixed on some distant point on the Downtown Manhattan skyline. The sky still had a subtle peach tint to it--not quite time to head out yet for the evening. He still had some time to deliberate, whether it be on some semblance of a plan of attacking the night (which, he was never the type to plan much of anything, save for his work, where it was absolutely vital) or on something meaningless, something pointless (which, he usually ended up doing).
It's a Friday night. He exhaled a sharp huff through his nose, once, as he finished tying the laces. What is everyone else at the office doing right now? They have the weekend off--they always do, hell, I'm their manager. They're going out or going clubbing or going out to dinner--something, anything. Even staying in, watching a movie. And what am I about to do? He shook his head in disbelief at his own self, blinking. I'm about to go beat some thugs up. Again.
But how can I not, though? He finished off the boot. He flexed his ankle out, trying the tightness of the laces, before setting his foot back down on his hardwood floor, satisfied with it. Even with that small tap, it set off an indistinguishably small chain of events in the floorboards around him--at least, indistinguishable to a normal human being's ear: somewhere far below and around him, boards chafed and screeched against each other, a nail groaned and shifted in its place, and a mouse startled awake with the same chuff a rudely awaken cat would make. A much smaller, much more different world belonged to him, and him alone.
Regardless of how he came upon these abilities--innate as they were, and Tobias kept his wild theories on how he could've acquired them to himself, where the prying hands of medicine and academia, and whoever the hell was monitoring his Internet searches, for that matter, couldn't get to them--he came to the realization that he had to devote them to some kind of higher cause. He'd played the victim long enough (despite continuing to play it on the harder mental health days). With supposedly superhuman senses that he learned through counseling sessions weren't normal, and a clearly obvious enhanced physical strength and endurance, he felt an obligation to help the helpless.
His motivation ate at him, in all honesty. The young man never thought of himself as sappy or sentimental, or motivated by anything else but himself and whatever carnal desire drove him in any particular moment, but, again, something in him finally snapped. He couldn't remember if it was a commercial or a news article that discussed foster children and the tendencies that their lifestyles tended to take, and it broke his heart again. For whatever reason. It was like seeing an ASPCA advertisement with sad-looking puppies and kittens after a breakup. Tobias thought of every single person that hurt him, and one day, he simply couldn't take the thought of any other kids as vulnerable as he was getting hurt.
One of his neighbors had been mistreating a foster child that his wife begged him to take in, out of the pure kindness of her own heart. He heard it all. Every step he took towards her room, every protest, every silent tear and hushed crying. One day, he waited just outside the apartment building that they shared, while he left for his car late at night to cheat on his wife, he beat the hell out of him. And he listened to every tendon and bone snap and he didn't care. He couldn't find a shred of remorse, even as he washed this lowlife's blood off his face and knuckles and clothes later that evening.
After that, some semblance of a routine followed. He would walk and wait and listen and observe, then take care of business for the victimized people who couldn't. Teenagers. Victims of domestic abuse. Children. Sex workers. The foster children held a closer place in his heart, but he'd never tell them--the only person he could think of that knew was the admissions staff at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, since he felt a sob story was exactly what his application needed to distinguish him from the rest, and it worked, obviously. How else could he have become an executive at a mechanical engineering company at the age of twenty four?
He blinked again, and it was dark. His amber eyes were met with a glittering host of buildings and traffic and headlights and dreams embedded in the skyscrapers and the streets. "Oh, sh-t," Tobias said aloud, in shock at the sudden change of scenery. Had he really been lost in his thoughts for that long? Apparently--obviously. He stood from where he was sitting, then pulled the hood of his jacket over his head, and pulled the dark, solid-colored bandana that had been resting comfortably around his neck up to cover his nose and mouth--not totally unrecognizable, but the all-black getup blended in enough with the night for him to keep wearing it.
So, like a cat, he propped open the window above his bed, climbed out, closed and locked it behind him, then scaled the fire escape delicately all the way to the top of his apartment building. The image itself was a little ridiculous: a muscular, 6'3" man, standing on the edge of a metal rail with the self-assuredness of a gymnast, or a cat, for that matter. Once he comfortably climbed up to the roof of the building, he perched comfortably, taking a moment to stretch his arms and legs, but most importantly, he waited diligently for any disturbance in the night. He heard a few happy, celebratory screams from cracked-open windows, and appropriately sad sobs, but one shout in particular was enough to catch his attention.
It was a woman, undoubtedly. And by the sound of it, she was being chased--and she was running. A clear, loud, "Get away from me!" was audible. That was his cue. With a sharp exhale, he launched himself from the edge of his building to the edge of the next, and ran along the edge until those pursuing footsteps were louder, and louder, and louder; or, in other words, until another normal person could hear them clearly.
Then, with an expert flair, he jumped down onto that building's fire escape, and swung off the rail with a gymnast's leap, gripping onto a lower one with his hands. And then, with a precision that he didn't even expect, he landed from there right between the woman and her pursuer, effectively stopping the both of them in their tracks. The woman being pursued didn't surprise him, and neither did her assailant: she was slim and gorgeous, clutching a purse for dear life in her bodycon dress, and he was dressed in nice jeans and a button-down shirt. No doubt a club interaction gone wrong. Someone didn't get her message.
"Listen, dude," he told the man, lowering his voice past the point of recognition, even if it was already muffled by the cloth of his bandana, "You better leave this chick alone before I make you." He paused, making intense eye contact with the man. "And you don't want me to make you."