' myths purged in small places. '

━━━━━

Broken bones and torn skin, the youth reaches her ashen palms outward for mercy, but this cold place in which was some people call home is void of the mercy she needs. She is alone, hungry and lonely.

She asks herself continously, when will the pain stop?

It is frightening. The entire concept of time.

Two hundred and thirty-five days pass and the youth still remembers the first day she had to beg for scraps, to live like a rat, breath the putrid stench of the slums. Her parents have abandoned her.

They were weak creatures. And oddly, quirkless. They were both broken creatures, so irreparably lost that they seeked comfort in the clutches of their weakness.

Cowards, she thinks. She's spiteful today. Every day it's a different feeling. Twenty four hours pass and the feeling recedes and is replaced by brand new emotions. Supposedly stronger and more unforgettable.

She forgets anyway.

But the first day, the first sixty seconds, twenty four hours. Her parents were weak, but they lived. They could have decent meals and a roof and walls to protect them. The youth hated that life. Four hundred eighty minutes of torment by her classmates that mocked her parents' unsightly sight.

More than one thousand seconds of teachers throwing looks of pity and disdain. For the youth whose parents were quirkless, for the youth unlucky enough to be born to a poor poor family.

The youth had resented that life. And although, she came around to having a quirk, the rumors and the pity looks never stopped. She abhorred every single person she has crossed paths with, detested her parents most of all. Creatures, so weak and vulnerable that they couldn't even love her.

She detested that place. But it was a hundred times better than the environment the youth is currently in.

She feels the familiar sensation of anger brewing in her veins and she directs it all to the cowards she was unlucky enough to label as parents.

Two hundred and sixty-six days have passed since she received a quirk. The ability to distinguish time of objects and living creatures. She thought that it was a sign. A harbinger of change. She would finally be free.

But no.

Thirty one days have passed since her parents abandoned her in a dark alleyway, in an unfamiliar town with an unfamiliar crowd. With accents that felt foreign and everything just too swift for her to process.

They hated her. Envied her. In a society, where people looked up to those who were superior in every way, who ran to the superior for salvation and dub them heroes, those unfortunate enough to never receive quirks might as well be dead. Both the youth's parents were that unfortunate and much to their chagrin, their unloved daughter wasn't.

They were jealous of the fact that she was normal. Different from them, but acceptable in society.

So they abandoned her. Cowards.

They gave up on her, so she gave up on them too. She watered the ugly blossoms anger had grown in her chest, tended it and let the roots take hold of her heart.

One hundred and forty four seconds pass before the youth clutches to the hem of a wool coat of a passing woman. The youth reaches up her ashen palms for scraps but the woman only looks at her in disdain and roughly shoves her dirty hands away.

In a world where almost everyone had the strength to help, why do they continue to ignore the cries for help?

The tears don't come. They've stopped coming since the sixty seventh day, after one thousand six hundred eight hours of perpetual anguish. They do not deserve her tears, the tears of a god, she believes.

She feels so dry and the only thing that makes hope cling to her are two coins propped on her lap. She cannot afford bread with it. So she clutches the cloth (?) of the next passerby and to her disdain, it's a cape she's holding. Seven seconds pass before the hero crouches down and gently pry away her pale, dirty fingers from her cape.

The youth can barely hear the words he say for her hearing is clouded by hunger, but judging from the pallid expression on the man's face- he cannot help her. The youth is livid. She is aware- he can help her but he chooses not to because in this superhuman society with quirks, they've branded good as defeating villains and rescuing civilians from gargantuan incidents. A child begging food is no issue, irrelevant even. It will give him no glory.

"I have my awards ceremony, I can't be late."

That was what she could vaguely make out.

Lips are barely turned upwards but the youth glares at the man's direction. Her throat is parched and it feels like there's a dessert in her entire system, blowing harsh sandstorms and laying dry dry.

It barely escapes her mouth. "Twenty four minutes and... sixteen seconds."

She proceeds onto clutching people's clothes and she gets lucky when a student drops onto her lap a few coins that could afford flavored bread and some water. Pitiful. What she had been reduced to. A flower cut apart before it could even bloom.

People began screaming. Explosions have began littering the area a few kilometers from where she lay. Mustering the tiniest scraps of strength she has left, the youth manages to pick some coins and paper bills from the hysterical mass.

This was a month's worth of dinner. She turns to the direction where the hero from earlier headed. The same direction with the explosions.

He touched her fingers when he pried them from his cape and in that instant, the youth had distinguished his time. The remaining hours, minutes and seconds he had left before he reached his end. She could have saved him, but he was like them. Like her parents who refused to stand up, act, even when they could. That coward deserved what was coming to him in seven seconds.

Tick. Tock.
Tick. Tock.
Tick. Tock.
Ti-

The youth wears a wicked wicked smile when she feels it. The halting of the clock inside his body. The final Tock he ticked.

He deserved it.

And she savored the pleasure of knowing that she could have saved his life, but she didn't. She got to decide. To choose if he would live or not. She had power over that man and she used it. By refusing to inform him of his coming death.

She was hungry, agonized and alone, but she had power. The youth wraps the rag she wears a scarf around her neck tighter, covering her nose and mouth and she clutches the money inside her dirty pockets.

And she stares at the sky, with leaden eyes as the clouds are blown by the wind. The fire from earlier casts off greys onto the expanse of blue and the people continue to fled to sanctuary.

Thirteen firetrucks wail past her and the youth's finger brushes against the surface of one of the trucks that halted because of bumping into a civilian whose legs had been mangled by debris.

Three hundred and eighty three seconds. Meaning that the efforts to quell the fire will fail. It makes the rush of power within her faster. Stronger. She could have saved them. More than dozens of people, but she didn't. It felt amazing to wield such an ability over people and she savored the chaos.

Besides, they never bothered, so why should she? Why should she care for people who didn't even bother glancing at her direction, offer even a crumb of bread and a glass of water? The world is not fair, so why would she be fair?

True to her words, the fire truck explodes and triggers a series of explosions on the other firetrucks. Tires, beams and poles get thrown haphazardly and a civilian gets pierced by a pole. The fire gets closer to the town and some heroes have started arriving. The youth walks faster, eyes darted towards the evacuation center, swiping fruits and vegetables from carts vendors had left behind as she passed.

She bites into an apple and relishes in its sweet sweet taste. It makes her stronger and she satisfies her hunger by eating more. Crumbs and some rivulets of water dribble from her calloused chin, but she doesn't mind.

She touches the concrete in the town and feels the time of the objects connecting and churning within it. The nearest one was of a lamppost a couple of meters away. The time was still far away. So far from its final Tock. The fire would be stopped there.

The youth smiles and eyes the color of flames scan the surrounding, looks past panicking people to find- gasoline. A jug of it. Next to the man who had been pierced by the pole. She's limping as she makes her way towards the man, bumping into some civilians in the process, but they don't really care about her. ( Who would? ) Ten fingers grapple the fabric of the man's cloth, rips it, soaks it in the gasoline and surreptitiously, she waters the ground with gasoline. Picks up a fabric. Cotton. Easily combustible and she places it near the lamppost and ties it to the entrance of a nearby electronics shop, throws another slosh of gasoline and the scent is addicting. Her fingers are trembling in excitement as she does it, fast, clumsy at worst, but it was amazing.

Why let it stop there?

Why let their agony be shortened when it could be a spectacular show? Hell, the entire town should burn.

She feels the time again and she's satisfied to find out that half of the town would be turned to ashes. Let them burn, she thinks before biting another apple. Let them return to dust.

She crosses the street, passes the alleyways, heads to the farthest point from the fantastic setup, she created. No one could stop it. No one would want to stop it.

And then they tell her that she is broken, that she is ruined. But lo and behold, the youth rises and with the determination burning in her eyes which now appears like crimson flames lit from the straws of misery and flickers of despair, she reminds everyone what she will we become, what she is.

"I am not ruined. I am ruination."

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