I needed to patch myself up, badly.
I couldn't raid the first aid kit at home. My dad would notice it's missing. He loves his accounting job so much, he regularly takes inventory of our house. I put on a coat and wandered into the woods that laid between my neighborhood and the tenth floor.
Behind a random tree was a shortcut that took me down to ground 0, the very footprint of our city. I think it was an old maintenance elevator. Conveniently there was a corner shop essentially right next to it.
All and all it was only five minute journey, and the prices in ground 0 were ridiculously cheap.
I bought a pack of bandages and was ready to put them on. Until I saw a car drive past me and then suddenly stop.
The door swung open, and a man walks out, dammit. He slowly and carefully approached me, holding a knife. I immediately ran in the opposite direction. He chased after me. After hoping in the elevator I thought I lost him.
Until he jumped out from behind a tree, cornering me.
This guy was fast, he had to wait for the elevator to come back down and he somehow still beat me here. I began to doubt that he was a random mugger.
"That's a nice jacket kid. Hand It over, you're phone and wallet too."
"All this effort for petty robbery, is the economy really that tough?"
"Don't piss me off, just hand it over."
There was a feeling in my gut, it was confidence. I clenched my left fist and focused my power, and the flame returned.
"How about you get a job instead you lazy bum."
I hit him with a punch. I heard a resonating tone carrying through the air, it kick my hair up like a light breeze. It knocked him out instantly, I watched as his body fell to the ground. A grin creaked onto my face.
But I couldn't celebrate for long, because I felt cold somehow.
I looked down and my gut was bleeding profusely. My hand was also pretty much broken. this fight probably did more damage to myself then I did to him.
I fell to the ground and started loudly groaning in pain. Turns out it's very easy to stab an unarmed man. Apparently, a real pro can jab at you so fast you don't even realize you've been stabbed. Maybe I needed combat training before getting into more fights, if I even live long enough to train.
"Ah, this was such a bad idea.", I start hissing my teeth to stifle the pain, " Am I gonna die?"
I blacked out completely, the blood loss was life threatening. All I saw was darkness, my mind was blank. Until I suddenly took a sharp breath and jolted awake.
I was in the corner store, laid out on the counter, I was shirtless and bandaged up. The bandages were covered in a weird sap.
I tried to get up, but I was stopped. He was standing over me, the owner of the store. We called him Liu. Liu was a middle-aged Chinese migrant who learned English from a free phone app. He was also a grim and cantankerous old badger.
"Liu, I didn't know you were a trained physician."
"No fancy white people doctor, I learn traditional Chinese medicine."
"Well thanks anyway, I guess."
"I see you fight. Big boy, strong left hand. I can train you."
"I think I'm done with fighting Liu."
"No, no, no. Boy have to fight. Boy strong, boy get pretty girls."
"Look Liu, I gotta go before my dad gets worried. Also, you probably want to buy the premium version of whatever app you're using."
We talked some more but the language barrier slowly deteriorated the conversation. Eventually he relented and allowed me to go home.
Despite the flawed understanding of the English language, I could tell Liu was a very wise man.
I stepped outside of the shop, I was gonna walk home which would absolutely suck. But then I saw the mugger's car, that was abandoned on the side of the road. I step inside, he left the keys, how careless of him.
His glove box was open. It was filled with weapons, thousands of dollars' worth of money, and after some riffling around, I found pictures of myself.
My breath stiffened; my heart pounded. Of course, this attack was far too strange to be a random robbery. He was tracking me, and it looked like someone paid him to do it.
Even though my dad refused to get me a car, I had already earned my driver's license as soon as I was old enough to get one. So, starting the car up the car and driving was an issue. But there were a few things I needed to do first.
The car was quite small, comparatively. So it was able to just barely fit in the elevator. I took it up to the forest on the tenth floor.
I started by finding the mugger, he was still laying there. I checked his pulse: alive. I slowly drag his body to the car and toss him into the trunk. Moving him around gave me a lot of time to think of my next step.
Now this was the nerve-wrecking part, I rammed the car into a tree, the car alarms blared and the air bags inflated but I was unscathed.
I dragged the guys body into the driver seat and left it there. That punch surely scrambled his brain, he probably didn't remember what happened.
Then I buried all his weapons and the photos of me. I even hide the money… okay I stole the money, my dad was a cheapskate, do you blame me?
I understand this all makes me look like a serial killer or something. I swear, I was just a quick thinker, this was the first time I had done something like this. Sorry if I sound defensive, It's just my appearance causes me much grief.
All the kids at school assume I'm a psycho, they even gave me a nickname.