Bzzzzzzzt.
Fluorescent tubes flickered bright overhead, a wet insect whine overhead drilling right through the bone of his skull the second he pushed through the door of the convenience store. Cold air kissed his face, gas-station AC chasing the last of the late-night Cali heat off his scars.
2023. Eleven damn years past where he came from, give or take.
That was hard enough to deal with; displacement across space was hard enough to handle on the big and small scale but time… Sky licked his lips. Yeah, somehow time was the weirdest part. A decade in the future and this city felt so neat and orderly it felt built from a kit — all clean lines, bright signs, cars that hummed instead of growled.
Man… As much as Galaxy and Paragon were hectic hellholes, they still felt more comfortable than the sterile little simulation of a place people actually lived. Even the future looks…Sky bit down a hiss. It just looks fake here.
He wanted apple juice.
The thought flicked into his mind as he walked through the small stacked aisles.
Just some dumb craving clawing up from somewhere low in his gut, something sugary and sweet that wasn’t a soda. His blue was running thin as it was and whenever it did, his own body just started begging for whatever it could get. Apple juice. That was for certain. And noodles too — yakisoba, the cheapest kind you nuked in a microwave until the flimsy plastic bowl was hot enough to melt its toxins into the mess of boiling hot soy sauce.
Still tasted damn good, though.
He just needed something that would fix what remained of his day, the day that had been hell already. Can’t even smile at a kid, man. Now, here he was — two hours after sunset — hunting snacks like that was supposed to fix anything. Tomorrow better be better, for real.
Something deep in his chest already doubted that heavy but Sky shoved past it the same way he shoved his hands deeper into his hoodie pocket. Gray hood pulled up, his SDN lanyard was half-swallowed under the zipper, plastic badge riding low and tapping his stomach with every step he took.
Blue eyes flicked up, the clerk at the counter looking away a second too late. He hadn’t missed it the entire time, the eyes tracking him aisle to aisle. It could have been for a whole number of reasons, but Sky figured his skin was at least two and the hood definitely didn’t help.
Yeah… Two bottles of apple juice found themselves into one hand, three yakisoba bowls in the other before he parked himself in front of the jerky rack. Eyes tracked their way up and down the setup, Sky staring all over the Teriyaki and the Honey BBQ and some BS called "ghost pepper mango" that had no business existing on God’s green anything.
He wasn’t really sure how many personalities a dead cow needed, but eighteen felt like too many. Either way, it was too much sodium, all of it. Who gives a shit?
A hand reached out to grab a bag of Teriyaki as the bell above the glass door let out the usual jingle, thin and tinny. Sky barely even clocked it; too deep in his internal jerky debate — Is 20 grams of protein enough for anything? — to clock the guy stepping in behind him.
"O-open it. J-just open the register, man, c'mon—"
Sky blinked, head turning slow to spot a skinny dude under a hoodie two sizes too big, grip sloppy and shaky as he jabbed a gun out at the clerk behind the desk.
You holding a gun or a bar of wet soap, c’mon? A sigh left him as Sky set the noodles down slow on top of a rack of chips, both bottles of juice right beside them. "Yo.”He turned around fully. “Bad idea, my dude."
“Y-you! Who the… Sh-shut up! Get the fuck down, get down! The gun swung his way instead, both hands shaking around it now as the mugger found a new target. “I'm — I'm serious, okay?”Blue eyes blinked, Sky staring half-lidded at the shaky gun instead of the guy. “Never said you weren’t, my dude, but you can’t take a bullet back.”“I'm not playing! Get the f-fuck down!"“Word?”“Don’t f-fuck with me!” Cheap metal with a dull gray finish waved Sky’s way, a .38 by the looks of it, hammer barely thumbed back right.Small gun or not, the scarred hero was sure it was still enough to ruin the rest of his week if it caught him wrong at least once. Four ton bench didn’t mean much at all, not when it came to shit that wasn’t moving or hitting.
At best, it just made him bullet-resistant, not bulletproof, and there was a difference between those two words that mattered a whole hell of a lot right about now. Catch him in the liver or clip a lung without his aura up, and he was probably calling in sick tomorrow.
"...do I wanna risk it?"
He blinked, suddenly realizing the mutter had slid past his lips on its own."I said get down!" Somehow, the kid's voice cracked a whole two times before he got those four words out; an incredible feat for someone who was probably done with puberty.
"Look. Be careful with that.” One hand came up, palm open and fingers spread. “Otherwise somebody 'bout to get hurt."
The robber’s eyes blew wide, gun wavering hard now between Sky and the equally wide-eyed clerk. "Wh-who are you talking about?"
"Most likely…" Sky shrugged, shoulders rolling loose as he cracked his neck. "Me."
"Fuck you!" The guy roared the words, gun up and finger ready to squeeze it.
Two strides closed the gap before readiness could turn into anything else. A hand rose in a sudden blur, knuckles cracking across the gun with barely any strength. The effort might have been minor but, to a bad grip, it might as well have been the hand of God. In a split-second, the weapon went skidding off across dirty linoleum with a clatter loud enough to make the clerk flinch.
The kid's eyes went huge, panic taking the wheel completely as he found both his hands empty of a weapon. Instinct and indignation seemed like close friends, though, as both seemed to fuel his next actions; a free hand diving into his hoodie pocket.
Click-clack.
The guy lunged blindly, something flashing in the air as Sky took a step back. The step back was a second too late as that some-thing sank straight into his shoulder. Blue eyes blinked down at the piece of cheap metal — just under the collarbone — punching through his jacket and burying itself into meat.
It stung.
Barely.
He frowned at the cheap faux-wood handle sticking out of his shirt; the ‘pain’ more like getting bit by a real determined mosquito, dense muscle stopping the cheap steel an inch deep.
With another blink, he looked slowly back up at the robber.
"...really?"
Before the other guy could even speak, five fingers snapped out in a blur and fisted the collar of that too-big hoodie. Fabric tight in a vice grip, the smell of sour sweat and stale weed filled his nostrils as Sky yanked him in close and brought his head down.
Bone met bone.
The sickening crunch of cartilage giving way echoed over the hum of the refrigerators, a pair of eyes rolling straight back.
Sky let go of the collar and the robber dropped to the ground, all the grace of wet cement on tile.
A hand rose up to his left shoulder, fingers tight around the plastic hilt. Without even a grunt, the knife came free with a wet, sticky shuck. "Damn it."
He clicked his teeth, wiping the minimal smear of blood off the blade onto the unconscious guy's jeans, switchblade already folded shut before he dropped it away into his own pocket. Free knife.
Shoulder rolling, Sky tested the muscle as he turned back to the counter; clerk still shaking as he rose up to his feet. Sky waited for that exhale, all the wide-eyed relief and civilian gratitude he was used to. He’d saved enough people in Paragon to know how this went.
The clerk was shaking, sure, but the guy's eyes weren't on Sky's face.
No, they were locked dead onto his unzipped jacket.
Sky blinked down, his own eyes landing on the bright blue SDN lanyard hanging free from the confines of his hoodie, badge catching every ugly watt of that buzzing overhead fluorescence.
“I thought I told you people…” Something in the guy's expression flipped — fear curdling instant into something meaner. "We not paying for a subscription."
Sky blinked, the words not landing at all right as he took them in. "...What?"
A hand gestured down, finger aimed at the unconscious guy bleeding a thin line from his broken nose "I just… I just knocked out the dude robbing you, bro."
"Yeah, and now you want the protection fee, right?" A finger shook his way, the man clearly not listening or paying attention to what just happened.. "I know how this works, man, you people show up, send a bill. I never called Dispatch, I never signed nothin—"
“Nah…” Sky blinked, nothing like that in what he remembered from the SDN manual. "Nah, that ain—"
"Take what you want and get the hell out. Fucking corporate shakedown." The clerk's voice cracked up loud, hand already reaching under the counter. "I'm calling the real cops."
Sky's jaw locked so hard his back teeth squeaked. Be fuckin' for real right now. "Real cops." He let out a breath through his nose, short and hard. "A'ight. A'ight, cool. You do that."
"I will."
"I said cool, ain’t I?"
He turned toward the candy rack instead of arguing it further. None of this was a fight worth having, not with a man whose hands were already shaking bad enough he could barely hold his phone. Apple juice and noodles found their way back into one arm in two quick grabs, and he turned around walking to the counter.
A hand reached right over the register, past the flinching clerk, and snatched six bags of teriyaki beef jerky clean off the display rack; each one shoved deep into his jacket pockets. “Thanks for the tip, my man.”
Sky turned his back, kicked the unconscious robber's leg out of his way, and pushed the glass door open.
"...dick."