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"No, no, no..."
"This can't be real!"
The man looked like a vagrant on his best day. He stared at what used to be his home — now a pile of rubble — not even noticing the liquor bottle slip from his fingers and shatter on the ground. He couldn't wrap his head around it. His mansion, just gone.
He waved the dust and smoke aside and charged into the wreckage, searching for whoever was responsible for this.
Battered furniture and broken household junk were scattered everywhere, buried under fallen roof planks. In the middle of it all, he spotted a patch of red and green , fabric, by the look of it. Something like a Hawaiian shirt.
"A... person?"
He followed the edge of that shirt, tracing it between the jumbled planks, until he found a man lying there with his eyes closed.
Black hair dusted gray from the debris. Asian face, decent-looking, tall and lean. The type who'd be asking for trouble walking these streets after dark.
"Is this guy dead?" The vagrant glanced up at the hole where his roof used to be, took in the overcast sky, then looked back down at the man in the rubble. He raised an eyebrow. Whatever had come down with enough force to wreck the place like this should've been more than enough to kill someone.
"Still breathing?"
"Shit... there goes another medical bill."
The man's chest was rising and falling. Still alive. The vagrant took a couple of steps forward and started shifting planks, getting ready to haul this guy somewhere he could be looked at.
The doctors around here were all useless, but useless was still better than leaving someone to die in a pile of wood.
And once this guy was patched up, he was going to get some answers. Like how exactly someone falls out of the sky. And then they were going to have a very serious conversation about compensation for his beloved shack.
He got closer.
Heard the sound coming from the man's mouth.
His dirty face went a little green.
"Hoo-ah... hoo-ah... zzz..."
This guy wasn't unconscious. He was asleep.
The house was in pieces. And this man didn't have a scratch on him.
The vagrant stared at the broken planks around the body, at the completely intact figure beneath them , just a little dusty , and felt a deep, bewildered confusion settle over him.
"Hey!"
"Get up!"
"You destroyed my home!"
He snapped out of it, grabbed the man by the Hawaiian shirt, hauled him upright, and shook him like he owed him money.
The alcohol on his breath hit the air with every shout.
"Urgh!"
The man's eyes flew open. He saw the vagrant's face up close, caught that smell at point-blank range, and his stomach cramped instantly. Whatever he'd last eaten came back up , fast, and with force.
Right into the vagrant's face.
"FUCK!" The vagrant lurched backward, caught his foot on a plank, and went down hard.
"Ah!"
Back of the head on the ground. His eyes rolled. He was out.
Natsuki: "??"
Natsuki stared at the unconscious man for a moment.
Well. That happened.
Crap. I knocked someone out.
He swept a quick look over the vagrant. Just a knock to the head , brief blackout, nothing serious. He patted the dust off his shirt, took stock of himself, then looked around at the wreckage surrounding him.
Wooden shack. Completely destroyed. And the most likely culprit for that was, in all probability, with reasonable certainty, perhaps, possibly...
Him.
Lesson learned. Don't sleep while driving.
"Still." Natsuki took in the architecture outside, the graffiti, the signs. The style clicked. "New universe. Made it."
This was America.
Emmmm. Wake the guy up first.
He walked over, crouched down, and checked the vagrant over. No real damage. Good.
"Now how does this work again...?"
He pressed his palms together, one flat against the other, and aimed them at the man on the ground. He let a thin thread of energy build, then shifted it, converted it into something else.
Hisss...
"Oh, it works." Half his strength back and this was easy enough. A stream of water shot out from between his palms.
The pressure started low. Natsuki adjusted, fine-tuned, kept at it , and within seconds the Ultra Water Stream hit something close to a pressure washer.
HISSS!
"BWUAGHH!"
The vagrant came to screaming, soaked head to toe and cleaner than he'd probably been in months.
"You!"
"Who the hell are you?!" He shoved himself upright, glaring at Natsuki — who had just cut the water , with unmistakable wariness. "Who sent you?!"
As he spoke, his foot came down on a plank beside him. The plank flipped up. A shotgun popped out of the rubble like it had been waiting there. He snatched it out of the air, clicked the safety off, and leveled it at the stranger in front of him.
All that stumbling around, and the drunk was gone. His eyes were sharp. His hands were steady.
Fell from the sky. Wrecked the house. Not a scratch on him. Sprays water from his bare hands.
This guy was way too weird.
"Who sent me?" Natsuki repeated the question, watching the vagrant's movements. That draw , the way he'd kicked the board, caught the gun , that wasn't how a street drunk moved. "Huh."
Seriously?
I land in a slum and the first person I meet has a whole secret identity?
This is something else.
"I'm from the M78 Nebula," Natsuki said, straightforward. "Sent by the Captain of the Space Garrison. You can call me Natsuki."
The vagrant stared at him.
"..."
He must've hit his head on the way down.
"You expect me to believe that?" He looked at Natsuki the way you look at someone who's just said something deeply stupid.
M78 Nebula. Space Garrison. What is this, a bad novel? Nobody makes up something that ridiculous. You'd have to try to come up with something worse.
"I mean, what do you want me to say?" Natsuki spread his hands. "I told you the truth and you don't believe me. You want to give me a script to work with?"
The vagrant's guard dropped , just a notch.
Because whoever this guy was, he clearly wasn't taking any of this seriously. And the organization didn't send people who rambled about space nebulas with that kind of face.
"Jared."
He lowered the shotgun. "Jared Gardner. And my identity... well. You can see for yourself. Just a drunk who scrounges wherever he can." He watched Natsuki carefully as he said it.
He wasn't telling the whole truth. That much was obvious.
Natsuki studied him back. The Ultra Water Stream had done a thorough job , cleaned up, the man was easier to read. Early forties. Hard Western features, the kind that looked like they'd been through things. The beard was a mess, brown hair going in several directions at once, but underneath all that, the face was sharp.
Not a vagrant. Or at least, not just a vagrant.
"Honest people really do have it harder and harder these days," Natsuki said, mostly to himself.
➤ Next: Monarch — Words Unspoken
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