5.
Drake was on the stairway, working out his 'role', whatever that was. School filled a role, his mother had said that. No good, even working twice as hard, he'd never match Jin or Naya.
His lead feet stopped on the second floor. His automatic mind retreated, leaving cold hearted reality around him. The walls around him were piss yellow, brown at the bottom, making a pattern best flushed. To hammer a point. Music blared through the passage.
There were two gates. The front stayed open for the mini store. The second blocked access to the second floor. A tenant demand.
He was in front of a white grate with clouded windows, one with a seven-year-old crack.
Style for the unstylish.
Taking his keys hurt, it'd never dawned on him how embedded to his thigh they were. Part two involved typing in a keypad for the iron gate.
He groaned up at his home, the seventh of ten floors. He stared at the elevator and shook his head. He wouldn't take the chance. Not after the day he'd had.
Reality rewound for the hundredth time.
Attacked… by a two headed horse… That happened.
They'd nearly avoided it right up until Naya hugged him and it attacked again.
It passed through the water, rock and concrete as if it wasn't there.
Then Naya controlled it.
She also gained super strength or at least enough to hold a giant pike.
And she… the next part was important… nearly killed him with it. Was she a crazy person? She did literally try kill a man… why was he okay with it?
Well…
He had gained an armoured troll.
It did as told, he just had to will it.
Thinking about it, things weren't bad. Bad was trying to comprehend it.
So now that I've got this amazing thing in me what should I do with it?
His parents would be gone but his mother would return after walking his brother to primary school. The kid wasn't too young to go alone but…
Ten-year-old, Yoko Rina washed up on the river mouth a month ago, drowned by local gangs. The boys immediately handed themselves over to police. They were right to, the outrage unlike anything Drake had ever seen.
The homes of their families were vandalized… as a start. And Rina lived two floors up.
Drake stopped outside his bed.
"Nope." He muttered, turning to the bath.
The shower spritzed to life, cool unsalted air filled the room tickling his skin, there'd be time to linger in it as the heat would take a moment to be squeezed out the geyser, like blood out a rock. It gave him a moment to ease off his civvies. He'd skipped school, and his reason was weak. The storekeeper had asked for help with deliveries for cash. He had not insisted Drake leave school. That was all him.
There was a reason to go to school again.
Jin was back and, like a video game, he'd just been given an adventure with Naya. A story they'd tell their grandchildren.
Smiling, Drake bounced to the sink taking nino glasses and filling them with water to swap out them out for the kamidana for an insanely quick prayer before running back to his room. The water would warm soon but wouldn't stay that way.
He spread a clean uniform, packing civvies. He didn't want to worry about coming back.
Afterall she'd be there.
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Yamamoto Jin