Chapter 2: The power to steal another's ability

Taiyou had arrived at school. He sat at his usual desk at the very front to the left side of the class. He wore his earphones and listened to music peacefully, until…

"Hey hey hey!" Sounded with a teasing tone from the back.

Taiyou looked back and as expected, it's Iwata, his classmate, who slowly approached him.

"What's up homie?" Followed with a laugh and sat right next to Taiyou.

Taiyou ignores him and pretends he doesn't hear anything. He pretends to be busy on his phone even though he's not doing anything with it.

"Say, we have homework and I'm having some troubles on some parts. It's fine if i look at yours right? We're good friends after all, right? Yea, where's your book anyway?" Came in a demanding and annoying tone.

Taiyou is annoyed by his antiques. A brilliant idea sparked up his mind and grins knowing it'll work. Taiyou hastily stands up and points to the door as he then lightly shouts in a surprised tone.

"Look! what's that?!"

Iwata turned his head to the door and finds nothing

"Huh? the hell do you mean-" He looks back at Taiyou just to find he disappeared.

"Where did you go?! How'd you even do that?!"

Iwata checks under some tables but Taiyou isn't there either.

Taiyou then reappears in an empty room near the canteen. He gets out of the room and sighs from relief.

"Well that was annoying, I had to stop time just for me to get away from that. Well at least I'm free for now."

Taiyou coughed a bit and walked towards the canteen.

Woosh - Cling

A knife flew towards Taiyou and stuck to the wall, barely missing his head.

"W- wha- what?!" Taiyou, caught by surprise, stepped back then looked at where the knife came from.

"Hey~" Came tauntingly.

"No… way… it's the ninth grader who keeps taunting me just to mess with me." Taiyou thought to himself.

"What the heck was that for?!"

"This?" He replied as he morphs his fingers into different kinds of knives and lifts his hand up just to show it to Taiyou.

"Dude, I don't even know your name!" 

"Shut it nerd, do I look like I care? i thought i'm the only one who has this power but it looks like someone else does too!"

"What do you mean? Power?" Taiyou got defensive as he tried to hide it.

"Don't play dumb on me, I saw you appeared out of thin air in that empty room over there through the window!" He pointed at the empty room and it followed with a smile.

"I want to rule this school, you'd only slow me down so you're my next target!"

Taiyou, a bit annoyed, stared expressionless.

"Fool…"

Bzz

Time has stopped.

"Wait, did stopping time made a sound?" Taiyou looked up as he asked himself, utterly confused.

"Whatever" Taiyou returned his attention to the ninth grader and grins.

"Fool, how foolish of you to challenge my ability…"

Taiyou walks around him and observes the finger knife.

"Fascinating indeed, though no match for me" He says confidently.

Taiyou posed like a Chuuni, covering his face with one hand and the other pointing at the ninth grader. He then laughed like a chuuni.

Cough Cough Cough

Taiyou coughs and begins to wheeze. He then keeps coughing more and more. It feels as if he had gotten asthma, a terrible one. He started to lose his breath and had fallen to the ground on his knees. 

Vrr

Taiyou resumed time.

His breathings got better but he's still coughing heavily. The ninth grader doesn't look surprised.

"Oi, what's wrong with you? Ha! tried to use your powers on me huh?!"

Taiyou, still on the ground gasping for air, looked up at him but didn't reply.

"My turn now!" 

The ninth grader prepared his attack. Seeing such a move, Taiyou ran away through the hallway. The ninth grader chased him down and threw his knives at Taiyou.

Some of the throws missed as Taiyou tried to dodge it, but most of the knives got to the trajectory to hit him. it's just that every near hit, time stopped on its own. Taiyou resumed time after every stop to keep him from losing breath.

Bzz

Vrr

Bzz

Vrr

Bzz

Vrr

Taiyou constantly started to lose his breath from taking too many near hits, which is slowing him down. Students in the hallway screams seeing the chase as they panic seeing knives getting thrown everywhere. As the chase goes on, Taiyou is about to reach a dead end. Fortunately, there's a staircase to the left and so Taiyou runs up to it. They continued the chase on the 2nd floor.

"This can't go much longer, I need to catch my breath to be able to land good hits on him! I can go for it now but it's too risky" Taiyou thought to himself and looked back.

Bzz

Time has stopped.

"Screw it."

Taiyou quickly runs towards the ninth grader. He hits him straight in the eye. multiple other punches are thrown towards the face with several uppercuts. Taiyou lands strong and quick punches as he himself is getting chased by time.

Vrr

Time has resumed.

The ninth grader flew off and his head broke through a class's wooden door. He's down, unable to get back up, unconscious.

Taiyou breathes heavily and coughs heavily. Panting, he holds on to his knees to keep himself up.

"I… I did it… again…"

Taiyo collapsed towards the ground, a loud thud was heard. The sound of chaos, panic, shouting, and screaming students all over the hallway fades away. He falls unconscious.

* * * * *

Taiyou wakes up on the bed of the school medical room. To his left, he could see many students gathered up outside watching him through the window. Taiyou could hear the students outside calling for the teacher after seeing him wake up.

"Well this is bad, ugh i hate being the center of attention. they're just going to keep asking me questions." He humph as he's still looking at the window.

"Well, at least my breathings are better now. I don't even feel weak" He tilts his head and he paused for a moment.

"So I'm not the only one who has powers huh?" He sighs.

"this made things much worse than it has to-"

The teacher suddenly barges into the room. He's tall, able bodied, the P.E. teacher and also Taiyou's homeroom teacher. 

"Eh, are you okay? Is your asthma still getting worse?"

Taiyou is caught by surprise, he flinched back.

"Eh, Mr. Henry? uhm, no, not really i think. I'm doing fine right now"

Mr. Henry grabbed a cup of water.

"Here, drink up. Hurry drink it up okay. Hold on, wait here."

Mr. Henry left the room. He tells the students who are watching to leave so they won't disturb Taiyou. Taiyou drinks the water as he watches Mr. Henry shouts at the students who won't leave. Taiyou checks his phone as he waits for the teacher.

The ground suddenly shook violently. The entire building shook and the people inside scramble in panic as they try to exit the building. Mr. Henry barges right back in the Medical Room.

"Taiyou, get up! Can you run? Quick, Exit the building before it collapses!"

Both Mr. Henry and Taiyou with other students exited the building. As they're outside the building, everyone is caught by surprise. In front of them is a giant that is taller than the school building.

The giant is a human, still wearing clothes. His face shows how much he wants to destroy the building. The bloodthirsty look he has, he grins before he strikes a hit at a cluster of students.

"NO!" Taiyou shouts and his eyes widen.

Bzz

Time has stopped.

Taiyou hesitates but he knows what he must do. The giant's fist almost hits the students. Taiyou runs towards the cluster of students and climbs on top of the one nearest to the hand. He then climbs the hand and carefully climbs up the arm. Eventually, he reaches the shoulders.

"Do I really have to do this? how am i going to beat this guy?"

Taiyou looks at the giant's face.

"The only way for someone the size of a cockroach to hurt this guy is to hurt his eyes right? now how would i do that…"

Taiyou looks at the ears of the giant. He approaches it and checks if it has a good structure to climb it, by climbing on it.

"This could work" he nods.

Taiyou climbs up the head by climbing the ears. As he gets on top, he grabs on to a hair strand.

"I'll grab on this just in case"

Taiyou slowly climbs down the face and steps on the nose. After getting a good foothold, he sighs.

"Here we go, please don't slip off and die like an idiot." He calms himself down.

Taiyou grunts, he uses his right foot to kick the right eye and his left foot at the other.

"This should do"

Vrr

Time has resumed.

The giant hits the cluster of students. Followed by a groan from the giant as his eyes was kicked. He falls backwards and is about to cover his face with his hands. Before the giant does, Taiyou jumps down from the nose and hangs on to the collar of the shirt. the giant kept groaning.

Taiyou looked back at the cluster of students. His face is filled with shock and regret that made both his mouth and his eyes open widely upon looking at it. He realized his mistake.

He had forgotten to move the students away from the impact. From his current distance, he sees the lives of many students were taken and many were injured. A massive puddle of blood could be seen with dead bodies all around and inside of it. It was a horrific scene, something that he cannot forget in such a short time. the expression of grief, fear, pain, and shock all could be seen just around the puddle. 

As the giant fell backwards, it tripped on a tree and fell on his back. Taiyou stood on top of the giant's chest. He ran towards and then jumped on to the giant's right eye. He bounces on it multiple times.

Taiyou, filled with frustration, yells.

"DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE!"

The giant in pain tilts to his right. Taiyou fell off the giant, and attempted to climb back up but the giant had already spotted him. The giant tried to grab Taiyou, he opened his hand and blocked Taiyou's escape with just one hand and closed in fast to grasp Taiyou.

Bzz

Time has stopped.

Taiyou catches his breath. He then looked around to see if there was any way to escape the giant's grasp.

"It's no use, despite time being stopped i still can't get out"

His surroundings are covered by the giant's hand and there aren't any gaps big enough for him to slip through, he sighs.

"This is gonna hurt…"

Vrr

Time has resumed.

The giant grabs Taiyou and lifts him to the air. He grabs Taiyou so tightly that Taiyou's entire body is in pain. The giant brings Taiyou to his face.

"You little brat!" The giant grips tighter and tighter.

Taiyou screams and groans in pain. The giant then threw Taiyou at the school building. Taiyou flies off and crashes at the 2nd floor school window. Passed through the student desk and chairs as he fell towards the floor with several desks and chairs piled on top of him. Taiyou lays on the floor, still conscious, unable to move a muscle. the sound of people screaming in fear outside could be heard.

"I want to give up," he sighs.

"There's no way I could beat a giant. It… hurts…" He rests there wanting to surrender, reluctantly letting the chaos unfolds outside.

Taiyou looked around the classroom and recognized the room.

"hold up… isn't this…"

Taiyou looked around the room again and he spotted the ninth grader he fought earlier. His head is still stuck to the door.

"It's him! maybe if i could just-"

Taiyou tried to get up from the floor and kicked away the tables that were restricting his movements. He then stands up and quickly heads towards the ninth grader.

"Hey, hey, hey, wake up!"

Taiyou got the ninth grader's head off the door. He shook him violently to wake him up.

"Oi, wake up! I need your knives!" 

Taiyou kept shaking him but he wont wake up. Taiyou grabbed the finger and shook it too.

"Come on, morph a knife for me." 

Taiyou kept shaking his fingers. Suddenly, a white light then glowed from where they are currently making physical contact.

"What the-" 

Taiyou tried to let go of the finger but he failed to do so. The light streamed into Taiyou and his body glowed.

"What?!" Taiyou is surprised, unsure of what's happening.

Taiyou's body glowed for a while and went back to normal. He stepped backwards to check the condition of his body.

"my body feels weird…" 

Taiyou stretched his arm then,

his fingers turned into knives.

"Eh-?! isn't this his power?!? Why do I have it? how-?" Taiyou is caught by surprise even more now.

"Wait, does this mean I can't stop time now?"

Bzz

Time has stopped.

"Oh nevermind, I still can."

Vrr

Time has resumed.

"So I took his powers? does this mean that he's…"

Taiyou checked the ninth grader's breath and heart beat.

"He's dead... so, I killed him…" his expression falls flat, he sighs and stands up.

"There's no time."

Taiyou ran towards the exit of the building with haste. Outside, he sees the giant messing with the students and teachers. The giant laughs as he kills another student by crushing him in his hands. Taiyou walked towards the giant as he hid his new ability.

"Oi, idiot" Taiyou shouts at the giant. The giant turns his attention to him.

"Leave or else!" Taiyou threatens him.

The giant laughed at Taiyou's threats. The giant throws a punch with his right arm at Taiyou.

Bzz

Time has stopped.

Its fist is only 5 cm away from Taiyou. He morphs his fingers into knives and climbs up the fist. Taiyou does several long deep cuts to the arm as he runs up the arm. Taiyou reached his shoulders and stared at the giant's face.

Vrr

Time has resumed

The giant punched the ground, followed with a groan as his right arm to the shoulder began bleeding out from its deep long cuts. He spotted Taiyou on his shoulder and immediately slapped Taiyou. 

Taiyou disappeared and the giant missed. Blood suddenly spills out around his neck. With just that, the giant collapsed to the ground. Blood is still spilling out and the giant is dead. Taiyou stands in front of the corpse and watches its blood flow everywhere. The puddle of blood reached Taiyou's feet and is still flowing further. Blood is also dripping from his knives.

Taiyou turns backwards, he sees every student and teachers there gazing upon him. Silence filled the atmosphere, no one said a word. fear is written all over their faces.