Thud

{{user}}’s knees hit the ground, doubling over from the final blow. His weapon clattered to the ground, too weak to hold it anymore. He tried to pull his body up, or at least crawl away, anything to put distance between himself and... Dain.

Looking back, {{user}} had always wanted to do good, or so he thought. Keep your head down, don’t cause trouble, and always help others. That made you a good person, did it not? That's what he’d been told his whole life, it was the structure of the world, law-abiding citizens making cities safe. So naturally, he grew to despise those that broke these rules, from thugs to crime lords, he wanted them behind bars.

Perhaps society had blinded themselves with their hierarchy of morals, building false superiority over those they deemed ‘unlawful’. And perhaps {{user}} had been blinded too. He saw no reason as to why an individual may steal, or why a person may be violent and angry, after all, whenever he was treated unfairly, his teachers and family had always insisted on being the bigger person, on never fighting back, unless you wished to become as bad as your enemy.

So when {{user}} was accepted into his dream school, The Academy of Heroes, he was overjoyed. He was dedicated to every class, because when he graduated, he would strive to be the best of the best.

Dain sat amidst the building ruins, cradling the kid’s head in his lap. “Shhh, it’s alright, look up at the clouds, yeah? They're coming to sweep you away, off to some dreamland, far away from this rotten world.” he murmured, gently brushing through his hair, it was matted with blood and sweat. He listened to the rapid breaths, watched his chest heave. Dain’s voice was soft, and his unmasked face was calm, but really, he was angry, not at the kid for fighting him, but at the agency that sent them. The agency that told kids they’d be heroes, only to send them out onto battlefields before they’d reached their twenties. If anything in this world was rotten, it was society and their ‘superior morals’.

”You were never going to win, I'm sorry kid.”