Arc 0: Chapter 3 - Don’t Touch Rabbits

hot-headed /ˌhɒtˈhɛdɪd/

having an impetuous or quick-tempered nature.

No matter how hard one can strive towards perfection, they will still be stuck in that state, the state of “trying.” Perfection doesn’t exist after all. It is something that people convince themselves of, in order to set a make-believe goal. It is the end of the road that one could never reach. It is the dream that one wishes for, but complains that society is bringing them down and keeping them from achieving it. To put it simply, it is all an illusion, a fairy tale everyone keeps telling to everyone. And that is how the “perfect society” exists.

But there is no such thing as the “perfect” system. There never was.

That was the case with the robber, a lawful citizen that descended into poverty because of a right he was robbed of, more specifically because of a crime he was a victim of. At least, that was what he believed — if you consider starving yourself to death because all of your favourite “snacks” were devoured a crime against your right.

“Give me all the stock you got and no one gets hurt!”

Standing at the entrance to a convenience store, the only one he had found to still have some life to it in the barren town, he trembled as sweat dripped down from his cheeks. He pointed his gun at the only two individuals in the place, the store employee and a young woman cladded in a red gym attire. This was an optimal situation for him, the less people there were; the better his chances were at going through with this robbery.

“You think you can hoard all this food to yourself and leave nothing to the working people?” He said, “You capitalist ass kissers! Don’t you have a shred of humanity?!”

However, truth be told, the odds were heavily stacked against his favour: Erina Nightingale was there.

「Give me a break… I will literally kill somebody just have the day pass smoothly.」

Barely intimated, but fearful for whatever that panic-driven robber might do to others, Erina slowly reached for her pockets, yet the robber’s erratic nature had caused her to flinch and drop whatever was in her pocket on the ground. It was a pen; an antique pen. As the man was still focused on the employee, shouting for his demands to be met, she kneeled to grab the man off the floor.

“H-Hey!” The robber had noticed her odd movement.

「Shit… This can’t get any worse.」

“I said hands in the air! Don’t try anything funny!”

With a stern look on her face, she raised her hands up and away from her pockets as she pulled herself back up. “You do know you’re robbing an empty store, right?” She remarked on the robber’s odd decision to rob the store.

“Bullshit!” He said.

“No, it’s t-true,” the employee spoke up and frantically nodded, “Everyone bought their stuff in the dozen. We’re out of stock for almost everything.”

“Shut up!” The robber pointed his gun back at the employee. For a moment, he glanced at the slightly open room to the back of the employee and smiled. “You’re just saying what they tell you to say. Give me those boxes in the back!”

「Not the Taku Puffs…」

If the robber were to ever lay his hands on the boxes; she desperately desired, there was no telling what she might do. This was her punishment for abiding by the law, she believed. So, if breaking a few rules was her gateway to get what she wanted and get out of this ludicrous situation, then so be it.

Erina took a deep breath.

All of a sudden, she disintegrated from the robber’s sight, which baffled him, putting him completely off-guard. Before he could regain his composure, she was already next to him — her speed was incomprehensible.

“What the…?”

Just before he could finish his sentence, she reached for his hand and grabbed it, attempting to disarm him of his gun. The robber was completely taken aback by her absurd overwhelming strength over him. However, it wasn’t enough, and with there still being an innocent bystander in the mix, she needed to act quickly. Without a second thought, she lowered his arm with her right hand to point the gun away from endangering anyone else and then smacked her left elbow into his face.

Still, it wasn’t enough. She might have been very much strong; stronger than the robber, but he had his grip locked to the gun. He wasn’t about to let his only chance die down so easily.

Erina clenched her teeth, and her eyes were seething with anger. “Guess I have no choice.” She let go of the robber’s arm before pushing him as far away as she could from the counter.

Crashing into one of the display shelves, causing most of the items to fall off, the robber tried to regain his footing, “That hurt, you bitch! I’ll kill you!!!”

She paid no heed to the robber’s outrageousness. Instead, she calmly brushed herself off from any dust that her clothes might have gathered earlier. After that, she reached for her right arm and started rolling up the sleeve. What unfolded underneath was baffling to both the man and the employee, who stood behind the counter still watching with caution. There were bandages, old and battered, wrapped around her arm up till her elbow.

The robber was lost for words. He would almost mumble to himself from the sheer number of bandages covering her right arm alone, for her left arm was all the same, even her fingers, now that he noticed, were covered by those same bandages. Anyone seeing this unfathomable appearance of the girl would instantly mistake her for an escaped convict from an asylum of some sorts — not to mention the sick look of depravity and mercilessness in her eyes.

Erina Nightingale was mad.

“Shoot me…,” she was mad without a doubt. As the bandages started unwrapping on their own, a smirk was drawn on her face; a malicious smirk equally terrifying as her piercing eyes, “…if you got the guts…”

And with those last words, the trigger within was set off. The robber, despite being panicked and confused, felt wrath boiling from up to the brim on the inside. He had come into this place to take what was rightfully his; not to get himself chewed out by a random woman like a ragdoll. He could not stand further humiliation.

Just then, his finger clicked. The gun fired.

It blasted off directly at the woman, leaving behind only smoke and dust in the process and clouding the man’s vision. His trembling had stopped, there were only his eyes; his petrified eyes gazing into the smoke, struggling for vision. The sound of lead dropping echoed in his ears.

As his vision became clearer through the smoke, he noticed the bullet, the one that he had fired off, resting on the floor. The thought of missing his aim due to panic at the time came to him, but his mind was too clouded with shock to even think of what could have happened. It was then that he almost found himself screaming at the top of his lungs.

Before the bullet on the floor stood Erina, unscathed and unharmed, her right arm locked forward and emitting smoke as if it had been on fire. She had blocked the bullet with just her hand.

Any doubt the robber might have had before was completely thrown out of the window the moment he saw her; he was absolutely terrified of her. He quickly rose to his feet and attempted to back away from her.

Her right arm, now visible for everyone to see, was completely coated in a weird spiral of tattoos— no, they weren’t tattoos —they were words, many words and letters plastered across her arm, ingrained deep within her skin. Not leaving a chance for even a comment, the words on her arm glowed as heat and smoke proceeded to emit from her arm.

“You’re getting cremated today, shitface!”

The robber tried to run away but it was all too late. Erina shot her punch into his gut like an arrow from a bow.

However, he wasn’t the only one that felt the impact of her strike.

A sonic blast occurred from the moment her fist met his gut, blowing the robber away from her sight, and shattering the store’s windows. The blast range had been so vast; it had reached the neighboring street, affecting the cars nestling in the street and pushing away anyone it met in its path. Naturally, half the car alarms in the neighborhood went off, signaling all attention toward the store.

When she realized what the impact of her punch had done, Erina was shocked.

“Oops…”