Reminder

Michel Davis POV

That fucking monster killed Jake and Thomas. He tore them apart in seconds, even with what they said - what I had seen - that they could do. The sheer power that they had, power beyond what should be normal.

It was like something out of a comic book, but this was no comic book. In a comic book I, no, we wouldn't have failed. We would have been able to pay for Ida's surgery.

Why couldn't he just have gone quietly? Why couldn't he just have allowed us to take him hostage? It wasn't as if we were actually going to hurt him!

We would have been in and out, the money for paychecks in the post office filling our pockets.

My back hit the apartment wall with a dull thud, as I understood what this meant, what had truly happened. This… this was real. This was the consequence.

Jake was gone. Thomas was gone.

And it was all my fault. They just wanted to help people, and they had chosen to help me. Why the fuck couldn't Mom just have gotten that health insurance? It was just a few more dollars per week.

A knocking on the door snapped me out of my thoughts, and as I looked out my window and saw the flashing red and blue lights I knew what was about to happen.

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My parents yelled and yelled at me, as if I had done this for myself.

I wasn't a kid anymore. There was no juvie for me, no, it was big boy jail for me.

And the monster, John they called him, walked away. Self defence my ass.

One of the cops told me that with far too much glee.

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There was no surgery for Ida. Mom screamed at me for being stupid, and she had a pair of lungs. I knew it wasn't my fault Ida died, but she still said it. It wasn't, it couldn't be.

I did everything I could for her.

Two weeks ago I was robbing a post office and now it seemed like I would never be out.

Here, in the safety of my cell, I started thinking. Why me? Why did it have to be me to get that money?

Couldn't dad have done it? Why does she blame me, instead of someone else?

Why not him? Why not her? Why why why why?

I knew the looks I was getting from everyone now. Soon enough even Alex would stop trying to include me into the group, and then I would be all alone.

Why couldn't they just look at cross eyed Pete or bese Oliver instead? It made me hate them all just a little, and that small spark of hate quickly grew until I knew no more.

I fell asleep to dreams of impossible beasts, so monsterous that even John paled in comparison, and when Robin came to cave my skull in – not literally – but when I wanted him to look at someone else instead, it was like his eyes simply slid off me.

And then it happened again. And again.

I looked down at my hands, and I remembered John.

He took Ida from me, so I will take someone from him.

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John Doe POV

A shaker. Or I suppose that was what they would be called in the future, and that term would never apply to this sniveling waste of space.

Going around killing children with it because no one was there to save him when he was freezing to death just made what I would do next so much easier.

To think all he could do with this power was to kill children, even when it could do so much more.

Ice burst into existance around me as I sapped heat from the world around me, and I stored it.

He didn't use heat because that was too fast, too painless, something he would soon learn was false, as I walked around the room plunging it into subzero degrees, even freezing the water he was boiling into a block of ice.

"So, Mister Smith, is this all you could accomplish? Is this all your struggling has amounted too?"

A wet, raspy gurgle was all the response I got, and I reached my hand towards his head, and I pushed.

The vapor stung even as twenty spikes jutted out of me, but I kept my hand steady on his head until there was no heat left to hurt him with. Not just a shaker, a striker too.

I would need a new brute power soon, and I had spent two, almost three now, weeks chasing this useless lump of flesh, and while he had a useful power, I don't think it was quite worth it.

No use regretting that or the time I spent in a slump now, I still had the future to look forward too.

I long for the day Parahumans become more public, so I won't have too spend weeks looking for one.

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The caffee at this quaint little cafe was still just as bland, and it didn't seem as if Taylor would be showing up for our studying session.

As I was about to leave I saw a girl, Rosa I think her name was, that I think was in the same class as Taylor.

"Hello, Rosa? Sorry if I got your name wrong, but do you know where Taylor is? She wanted me to look over her homework, but she didn't show up."

She turned to look at me, with a somewhat sad look on her face as she started speaking. "You didn't hear? She was like, kidnapped or something. And it's Rosaline."

Oh dear lord that accent will kill me one day.

"Kidnapped." I said, and by the look on her face I failed to keep my anger hidden.

"Yeah, apperently someone left a letter telling John or Jack or something like that to save her. Or atleast that was what Jack heard from Alicia, that heard it from Alice whose uncle works with the pol-"

I shut her up, my hand clamping over her jaw, although far more gently to than I would do to the one that did this. Someone is going to die for this, I thought, as I left the cafe, running towards an old dirty motel.

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A slight wrongness about the place filled me. It was a slight tingling that was barely there, but now in the dark and sound isolating, they aren't even hiding the real reason of this place, rooms dampening any sounds that made it out of them.

I knew I was in the right place now, and I knew I had just spent two weeks for nothing when I could have simply relied on my power.

It made me feel just a little foolish, as I stood before the door of room 207 with spikes jutting out of me granting me impossible strength and I gently pulled the door open, no need to ruin it even more.

I didnt bother closing it.

My eyes found Taylor quickly, tied to a chair, and then they swiveled to the other parahuman in the room.

I didn't know what power he had, neither did I truly care about that, so he could be a danger.

So I lunged towards the threat, hand poised to grab and break, and spikes ready to tear flesh apart, and I barely stopped myself from hitting the wall, my head swiveling around to meet the unknown parahuman, and I lunged again.

This time I hit my target.

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Michel Davis POV

Holy shit. That was close, and boy am I glad that I activated my power when I did, a second later and I would have been a goner.

John eyes locked with mine for a second, and for instants I thought he saw through it, but when his head swiveled around to look at the girl I knew it worked, and I started running.

Out into the hallway, and the dulled sound of my footsteps was never more terrifying, but it never made me feel more alive.

I did it. He made me fail Ida so now I made him into the monster he was.

One final stretch now, I thought as I pushed my body furter than I was used to, and I would truly have escaped this monster with my revenge.

I can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel now, just one more turn.

One more tur-

A spear made of some type of stone was embedded in the wall inches from my skull, and I saw him and nothing in my nightmares could have prepared me for him, an expression of rage carved into his face.

One second he was standing there, arm outstretched and panting, and the next he was standing right in front of me, the hallway beyond him covered in frost, and just as I got down he swung his arm, barely touching me with the tip of his fing- pain.

Pain beyond anything I had ever felt erupted from right eye. Pain that felt like the time I burnt my finger on a frying pan except amplified by a thousand times.

Bringing my shaking fingers to my eye I all I felt was charred skin.

"So, any last words?" said the monster, as he grabbed and held me up by my arm.

I spat in his face. I couldn't die here.

He dropped like I was a piece of trash.

I wasn't.

His fist closed around me head, and he lifted me against the wall.

"Well, this is worm, I don't know what I was expecting."

And then his thumb trailed, oh so slowly, up my face, and I knew, some part of me long since forgotten shouting it at me, that I could not escape.

I ignored it.

The thumb hit the corner of my lips, and I started thrashing in an impossibly strong grip.

It circled around my eye, and I tried without success to reach him with my hands.

And then he pushed, and I offered no resistance.

Pain beyond anything I had ever felt, even his flash frying of my eye, radiated through my body, and I knew it was over now.

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John Doe POV

I knew it wasn't the lesson he was trying to reach me, he probably wasn't even trying to teach me anything, bu the reminded me of one thing.

I am in worm now. Worm, where the world will end in thirty years.

Morals? Ethics? Neither truly apply now, not with the sword of damoceles hanging over all of us, all humans.

Cauldron, as innefficent as they were, were on to something.

Morals don't matter, and I while I owed this world no debts… I did live here.

And I would much rather not die.

And if a few people died along the way? Well then, so be it.

The only thing I regret not doing is letting the rat live for a little longer.

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