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Remembering one’s name shouldn’t be hard. People can go to a friend or family member and wait for them to call it out. Or if desperate, ask them if they remembered it. And if very desperate, one could go to the authorities and ask them. Sadly, he could do none of those things. He had no family or friends who would or could acknowledge his existence. Not in the here and now.
Smile had been the closest thing to a friend in this place, but he was gone. Despite him wishing otherwise, Smile had died being the hero he had always portrayed himself to be. What Fear did with Smile’s body had been cruel, and what Dragon Boy had done was worse. But Fate had decreed it so, and despite what many of his believers thought, X did not have the power to do *anything.* Defying Fate did and would have a great cost, and he likely wouldn’t succeed. He had known that.
He had hoped he would get a mandated lunch break though.
He snapped. Colors saturated to an unnatural degree around him. Unnatural to the dimension he and his attacker had been standing in. The fire around the attacker blazed and the word “sizzle” flew from the smoke. X took a step back and “fell” into another path. Blazing Sun, ranked 25 in the rankings last X checked, followed him. As expected. X had to watch the strings carefully to keep Fate from snatching him again.
Snap. He floated in the middle of a six foot deep pool and then up. His suit was soaked but Blazing Fire had bigger problems. Pulling himself out of the pool with one hand, he snapped and stepped into the stitching of the towel left on the law chair. The water on his clothes flew off in droplets that decorated the towel, and then he stepped back out. His throat grew dry. He needed to recharge. He couldn’t do anything without the energy to keep going.
The tile beneath him cracked, and he coolly danced on the tops of the tiles as they shuddered up from under him. They brought him five feet up in the air before yanking themselves back down to the ground. Cerami. New hero for MG. Ability to manipulate earth-based compounds like clay and marble and plaster tiles.
X let himself fall and snapped as his soles connected to the cracked tiles. The lines of the world blurred and gained a new looseness to its edges. He clambered smoothly over a 45 degree incline to slide down the next with a cloud of dust behind him. The view of the dimension he now called home flipped back and forth in the corner of his eyes as he skipped over cracks made fissures in his current reality. The tile he was on was being spun. He should have known better than to enter a dimension on a moveable two dimensional plane.
Too late to snap out easily to the third dimension. Best to pave a path to another second dimension. He snapped and the colors went from blurry to sharp and heavily outlined, and his breath hitched. He hid the breathing, as he needed Cerami to think him unbothered. Powerful. Invincible. Any modicum of trust would aid in the next snap he made. He was running low. They were in a residential area and no fridges in sight. He had to make what he had left *last.*
He winked at Cerami staring at him stunned from where she stood in the third dimension grass, and he strode along the thin path of the flat fence. She recovered quickly, he hoped for a few more seconds, and slammed several tiles into the wood fence. He took the split second before the, to his eyes, swollen and overly rounded tiles smashed into the thin reality on the fence’s plane to snap and stand on the fence’s opposite side and then snap again into a beautiful blur of thin-lined color of the driveway.
He had one more snap before it was too much. He would have to clock out or quench his thirst. He surveyed the area while the rounded, swollen third dimension roared with activity as wood splintered and stone shattered and things meshed and unmeshed in ways this dimension could barely comprehend.
A bark, and the mind-spinning rounded reality quieted under shadow and a tan, furred paunch. Ahu. The Civilian Hero had found him. Despite the voice in his own head that screamed at the foolishness, he snapped and sat powers-spent with a cranky dog on his black suit pants. He would need to change into his spares or at least pass a dog brush before returning to his day job.
The splinters and cracked stone formed a splash “boom” around them, and Cerami had stars around her head in the street’s plane nearby.
“You happen to know if there are more of them?”
“Of course there’s more. You think the Hero Commission was going to let you saunter away like that?” the dog barked. For a medium-sized canine, this one’s bark was almost as bad as his bite.
“One would think they have the decency to allow me a lunch break,” X, or whoever he was in this form, slumped and placed his chin on Ahu’s head. The gruff pup huffed.
“I don’t think wanted fugitives get those. I would snap your fingers and get going because there are more where they came from.”
“Sorry. Not now. Currently out of juice.”
“*Out of juice,*” the number nine hero growled. “This is not the time for games. Have you forgotten you revealed your identity to the world at the start of the tournament? They’re not going to overlook you even if you look like the most boring guy in existence. Especially if you’re draped over me like some wet towel.” The pup finally started to squiggle and squirm in whoever-he-was’s grip and flipped head over tail when the grip released. He chuckled at the glare sent his way by narrowed doggy eyes. “Get going you fool!”
“Nothing for it then,” he sighed. He sat up and placed his chin on his hand as his elbow propped his arm on his knee. “Guess I’ll have to die. There are worse ways to go then headhunted by heroes.”
“The tournament is going to be a headache and a half if you suddenly go missing during the halfway point. How the Hero Commission or agencies think they’ll be able to cover that, I have no idea. And don’t start on how I don’t know anything about anything, because I do know this. You ain’t dying on my watch. So get up and get going.”
His ribs ached at the burn filling his chest. Given how few people acknowledged his existence as person, it was always a precious surprise when the saw whoever-he-was instead of X. He was X. But he was also a man who didn’t even get to remember his name.
“Fine. I’m going, I’m going,” he groused standing himself up to his feet. “You wouldn’t happen to know any stocked vending machines nearby.”
“I think I saw one at the convenient store a block and a half east. Would that satiate your thirst and get you moving again?”
“If I still have my head attached to my shoulders, it should.”
“Keep talking like that, and you’re never getting near Xinya.”
“Oo. I’m in consideration for meeting Xinya,” he smirked as he and the dog hero spedwalked onto the sidewalk and to the supposed convenient store. Could be that the Civilian’s Hero was walking him into a trap. He might have just enough juice to make the dog into a permanent chalk drawing before he was eliminated. A bit petty, but if Ahu wanted his head, he would prefer the dog simply lunge straight for it. “What an honor.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. Xinya herself asked to meet you. She wanted to thank you for saving my life or some other nonsense that girl gets in her head.”
They rounded the corner, and a dozen arrows sped towards them. He saw the vending machine, took his coin out of his pocked, and flipped it into the air.
“Wouldn’t want to miss the chance to meet your precious person,” X said, snap flattening them under the arrows and coin landing at their feet. Picking Ahu up, he stepped on the coin, slid through black and white shades of the convenience store’s outside wall to pop up beside the machine. Using the last of his reservoir, he snapped Crosshairs into the pole he was dashing past. The coin somersaulted between his fingers and slid into the coin slot. His regular colorful can of soda popped out. He smoothly picked it up, clicked it open, and sipped. “I better get back to the tournament then.”