“Hey look, some guy’s going around beating up fighters in random gyms.”

She took a glance at Alisa’s phone and instantly recognized the ‘guy’, it was none other than Vaun! Well, at least he was just beating people up and not killing anyone.

“Isn’t that the boy from the other day? He’s a pretty good fighter, maybe you should go take lessons from him.”

What kind of mother tries to send their daughter into the tiger's den?

“Not happening, won’t you regret it if I go missing after visiting him?”

“You’re being delusional Ally, you still haven’t accepted that you’re the one at fault? The least you could do is apologize.”

“…”

She wasn’t a fool. She could understand why no one believed her, even she was starting to find it hard to believe herself. She knew that once you started looking at someone with guilty lenses everything they did would be suspicious. A simple gesture or action could signify some deep meaning that didn’t even exist. Maybe she should take a step back, just follow him around all day and confirm that he wasn’t suspicious.

***

Everything was going pretty well. My feats were already being spread around on the internet. I only had a few more gyms left before I covered my targeted area. I entered the next gym and pulled the same trick. Within a minute I was up on the stage and facing off against the reigning champion. Throughout the day I had been alternating my styles, from slams, to slaps, to chokes, but never my legs. Those would remain as my secret weapon and build a sense of mystery as to why I never used them.

“Three… two… one…”

I flashed forward and spun into a backhand, launching my opponent across the stage and instantly putting him to sleep. Before I could leave the stage a strangely clear voice cut through the crowd.

“I’d like to fight you!”

I turned to face the voice and found someone who somewhat resembled me, in the sense that they had killed someone before. Not with a gun or some other bullshit but like they had looked their victim dead in the eye before sending them off. I could just sense it in their gaze.

“Sounds good to me, come on up!”

He climbed up on stage and didn’t even bother to put on the gloves. As expected of a good fighter! I tossed my gloves off as well and prepared for a fun fight.

“Start when you’re ready, no rules. We only stop when one of us is dead.”

I didn’t bother to take too much caution and rushed straight in. When I did he reached inside his pants and began to pull out a pistol. How exciting! I had been holding back to not cause too much damage or suspicion but now I could ignore the rules a little. I boosted my speed from the two times I was using to my maximum and near instantaneously appeared in front of him. I launched a hook into the shoulder of the arm reaching for the gun and shattered it.

The rest of the force transferred into his body and he began to fly away but I grabbed his broken arm and pulled him into a hook that landed directly on his sternum. My knuckles pushed the bone away and buried itself a few inches inside of his body before springing back out. The gun had flown to the side already but this weirdo could have any assortment of things. I grabbed him under the jaw and lifted him over me then slammed the top of his skull onto the floor of the ring.

“Stop!”

Why was this idiot always around? I didn’t have to look very hard to find her because she had already rushed onto the stage.

“Put your hands up!”

She wasn’t even in a police uniform today. It was very bold of her to confront me while she was off duty. I knew that if she wasn’t so beautiful I would have killed her several times over already, but since she was I could bear with it for a little.

“Are you blind or are you just pretending to not notice that he pulled a gun on me? Look, if you use your eyes you can see that there’s a gun right there.”

I pointed to the gun and waited to see what shenanigans she could pull out of her ass this time. She looked at the gun, looked at the man and looked back at me.

“I apologize, I misread the situation. Everyone please make a path so emergency responders can apprehend this man.”

How surprising. She actually had a brain.

“Good job, finally remembered how to use your brain eh?”

I jumped off the stage and made my way towards my car. A hand landed on my shoulder and her obnoxious voice penetrated my ears.

“Where are you going?”

“I have other things to do, not everyone can spend their time pestering people and get paid for it.”

“I know that I have been unreasonable and caused you a lot of inconvenience-”

“But it’s only because I had to make sure you weren’t the suspect. You are too predictable, just like every other cop. Everyone who’s competent doesn’t want to join the police force because their skills are better applied elsewhere. So what are we left with? A bunch of incompetent fools who choose to work for a system that doesn’t work. Have fun terrorizing the innocent, because you clearly can’t figure out who the guilty are.”

***

She didn’t want to admit it but the events of the past few days gave his words some truth. When a single person could do in a day what an entire organized system couldn’t do in years then there was obviously something wrong. When she thought about all the girls they had failed to protect she knew that whatever she said wouldn’t make a difference, the results said everything. But what could she do? It wasn’t like she could just abandon all the rules and do everything her way… or could she?

If he could do it, what was stopping her? She was just a little weaker than he was, plus it wasn’t that he was smarter, it was just that he was playing with a different set of rules. How could someone who was only allowed to fight to incapacitate beat someone who could fight to kill? She finally understood why they couldn’t catch the killer, they were playing on different fields. You couldn’t beat someone in a race if you weren’t running on the same track.

She just needed to train to her utmost limit- no! There was no limit! If she went into training thinking there was a limit then she was only setting herself up for failure. Fortunately she had already stumbled upon the perfect opportunity to become stronger, in fact it was walking out of the door at this very moment! She rushed over to it and tightly grasped it.

“Please train me to become stronger!”

“You never cease to find a way to annoy me.”

“I’m begging you! I’ll follow your instructions down to the letter!”

“That’s odd, how come I can hear sincerity in your voice?”

“I just want to become stronger, that's all! I won’t even be a cop from today forward!”

***

What a weird kid. Except she was older than me. I don’t know what she’s playing at but I won’t deny someone who wholeheartedly wants to grow stronger.

“Fine, follow me. I gotta finish my business first but we can start training later.”

“Yes sir.”

I continued on my way to complete my little publicity stunt and she trailed along behind me with her car. This could be a ploy for her to follow me all day long but just for the chance that it wasn’t, I would play along.

***

“How’s his condition?”

“To be frank, he’ll never be the same. His sternum is completely disintegrated, his shoulder can barely be reattached, his skull is shattered, and his spine is crushed. He’s a lost cause Mr. Smith.”

“How about the situation with the police?”

“The chief is trying everything he can to push it under the rug but the public has been closely scrutinizing them, everything is extremely volatile right now.”

“What do I even pay him for? As for him, see what you can do to restore him.”

***

“To be honest my workout regimen is kind of random, it’s just a bunch of stuff that I mashed together based on my needs. Personally I prefer to start my cycle with something easy so we’ll be doing combat today. I want you to throw as many straight punches as you can at full force, don’t hold anything back.”

“Yes sir.”

She began her furious beating of the air and I monitored her condition. After a hundred and something punches she gassed out and collapsed.

“Recover as quickly as possible, for your next set I want you to bob left and right as fast as you can as many times as you can.”

After a few moments of rest she stood back up and began bobbing through the air.

“Go all the way to the side.”

This was a considerably less exhausting exercise and she was able to maintain it for a good three minutes before collapsing again.

“Your next round is hooks, use your entire body, these should be able to puncture into someone’s body.”

…

“Your last set is sweeping kicks, once you finish, start from the beginning and repeat until you can’t move anymore.”

Although watching her train was very entertaining, I had other things to do. I opened a social media account with the moniker ‘Reaper’. It was a bit cringe but I had to build an image for myself. On it I simply posted the names of famous martial arts schools. Tomorrow I would begin my mad hunting spree and create a legend.

“Will this really make her stronger?”

“It worked for me.”

“It looks like the type of training you see in martial arts movies.”

“Maybe martial arts are actually based on my training.”

“You have no shame do you?”

“What good is having shame? Shame only serves to prevent you from doing what you want.”

“You have such a strange sense of logic.”

“But you have to admit that it's still logic.”

“The longer I know you the more I think you are actually an alien.”

“You might be right.”

I returned her wide eyed look then pulled out my phone and started pressing random buttons.

“The target is right next to me. Coordinates are three-four-period-zero-”

“Shut up!”

She clamped my mouth shut with her petite hands and glared into my soul. I raised my hands up and pinched her cheeks. She swatted my hands away and crossed her arms.

“Stop treating me like a child.”

“It’s hard to treat you like anything else when your features are so childlike.”

I purposely cupped my own chest and made a lifting motion. She unleashed a flurry of punches into my chest and ran back inside. She might make a good fighter. What should I do while waiting? The internet! I hadn’t checked on the commotion I had caused yet. I searched up news related to killings and found multiple interesting articles.

‘Insane Killer? Or a Misunderstood Victim?’

‘How a Vigilante Managed to Take Down Human Traffickers’

‘Police- Incompetent, Flawed, or Corrupt?’

‘The Nations Long Standing War With Crime, And How One Person Is Fighting It Single-handedly’

‘Should We Reconsider How Our Police Force Is Managed?’

I didn’t expect such positive responses, did people already forget what I did to Mr. Richards? What had even become of that video anyways? I searched up the police family massacre video and found only a discussion thread. I clicked on it and read through the comments.

‘Apparently the video is cursed. Everyone who has watched it has died in a freak accident, but the scary part is that they all died the same way as one of the victims.’

‘It’s also been completely purged from the internet, even the government isn’t capable of that.’

‘Me and my friend watched it yesterday. What should we do?”

‘Record it so we can see how you die.’

‘That’s a good idea’

The video was cursed? If that was the case then I should get my hands- or rather my mouth on it. Being able to curse people would be a pretty cool ability to have. Even if I couldn’t get the video I could just recreate it. I asked everyone in the thread to send me the video and patiently waited for a notification. Within minutes videos and links were flooding my inbox. I didn’t open any of them because I didn’t want to risk having my mentee targeted by a curse.

Now I had nothing fun left to do. Should I do some training? I had real experience now but training wouldn't hurt. I imagined another version of myself in front of me and started sparring with him. Was I tripping balls again or was the other me starting to become a little too lifelike? He seemed to come to the same conclusion and we both stopped sparring.

“Are you real dude?”

“I’m not sure, there can’t be two of us and one of us is obviously not real. I think that one is me. So how did you create me?”

“You’re part of my consciousness right?”

“I’d guess so.”

We both stood there while thinking about what could possibly be happening.

“The dream powers!”

“The dream powers!”

“You’re just like me!”

“You’re just like me!”

“You know what they say. Great minds think alike.”

“You know what they say. Great minds think alike.”

We embraced each other and shared a tight hug. So this was what it was like to have someone who completely understood me.

“You know what to do right?”

“Of course.”

We erupted into an unrestrained fight and lobbed fists, elbows, and knees at each other. Nothing was off limits and had I not been fighting my own consciousness I would already be near death. He was simply as cruel and savage as I was. He was… the perfect opponent.

***

She could barely see through the sweat and darkness enveloping her eyes but she managed to catch a glimpse of Vaun shadowboxing. Was he shadowboxing? His actions were barely visible because of how fast he was moving but he was definitely recoiling from the force of a powerful blow every now and then. Was this the legendary state known as fighting your own demons? She focused on her own training and pondered how long it would take to reach his level.

…

One more! Just one more! I can still move!

She had managed to go through a few more cycles that got shorter and shorter with every revolution but she had finally pushed herself until she couldn’t move any more. This felt right to her though, real training meant you had no energy left to do anything when you finished. Millimeter by millimeter she turned her head to look at Vaun. He was still beating and getting beaten by his imaginary opponent but he wasn’t exhausted whatsoever. In fact, he seemed to be grinning.

Was this what kept her from reaching higher levels? Did she not enjoy training as much as those who were stronger than her? He was an oddball yet it was undeniable that he was harsher on himself than he was to others. Her eyes slowly shut and the energy in her body vanished.

…

She was awoken by gentle pats to the face. Her eyes opened to find Vaun facing her.

“I know you want to fight me, go ahead and try. Your body should be fine now.”

She tried moving her body and found that he was telling the truth. She stood up and got into a fighting stance.

“There’s no rules, do anything and everything you can to kill me. Don’t worry about my safety.”

Before she could respond she was sent flying away by a slap.

“Just fight, don’t think.”

She rolled out of the way of his stomp and tried to kick out his leg but the impact didn’t faze him at all. He kicked her stomach and launched her across the ground.

“You’re much weaker than expected, let's finish this when you’re stronger.”

His fist rapidly loomed towards her face and she rushed to block it.

“Wake up Ally, it's time for dinner.”

What? Where am I?

She clearly saw Alisa in front of her but Vaun was nowhere to be found.

“Where’s Vaun?”

“Your boyfriend already left.”

“Since when?”

“Around a minute ago.”

Another dream?

Her dreams had been getting far too realistic these days. Maybe she should go see a doctor.

***

I enjoyed visiting the zoo, the animals there were the only things I could never understand. It was surprising to me that humans, the most intelligent creatures, were far easier to read than a simple lizard or fish. I felt a sense of pity for them though, herculean bears, proud lions, lonely tigers, all manner of beasts with their own personalities and complex thoughts. But all trapped in small cages and unable to tap into their own potential.

Of all of them I had the most appreciation for the insects. These beautifully designed creatures were the closest things the earth had to super powers. From spitting out webs to spitting out liquid fire, these guys were just an assortment of singular traits magnified to the limit. I had never seen the zoo during the night but I was sure it would be magnificent. Seeing something at night just made it so much more mysterious and exciting. I’m sure my hyenas would be just as happy to see the zoo as I was.

***

“What’s the situation in Los Angeles?”

“Our agent is M.I.A. The signal of the dream anomaly has strengthened to a power rating of four and is rapidly approaching five. The curse has been wiped off of the internet and is now held in the hands of only a few private users.”

“Send a squad there immediately. I want that anomaly to be completely annihilated. Tell them not to mess around and destroy it as soon as possible.”

“Yes sir.”

***

“Can you hear it?”

“It’s louder than any other one we’ve hunted.”

“Where is it?”

“Follow me.”

[Writers Notes - Alter egos? Secret Organizations? Curses? Where’s this story going? Really makes you wonder though, in the thousands of years of human existence is there really no organization(aside from religion) that has managed to gain and maintain power?

And what if ghosts are real, I’d surely appreciate being able to become a ghost.

Also, that training method is real and used exclusively by me. It’s a form of functional training being overdone that works for me. Try it some time but make sure to loosen up your muscles first, don’t pull anything.

Disclaimer! - I am in no way responsible for any actions you choose to perform]