How did one person turn into forty-seven? Of course he knows how. He was there for all of it. But the corpses strewn in front of his apartment are ugly, like weeds in grass. Tama picks up a severed head and aims it at a broken window in the building across the street, like a morbid beanbag toss. A grin as it leaves it hand, sailing neatly through the open window. Nice.
If you had asked him a month ago if he thought he’d be murdering nearly fifty innocent people outside his apartment, he would have taken it for a bad joke. But now, looking at the bodies and pooling blood, he can’t help but laugh. They don’t matter. And, It’s not like I had a choice. They found me. I had to defend myself.
He knows that’s not the real reason. He’s strong enough that he never has to kill unless he wants to. Nothing can hurt him, so there’s nothing to defend against. So why did I do it? The answer is obvious. I wanted to.
Since his first kill, a day hasn’t gone by where he didn’t think about the feeling of a pulse dying under his fingers; warm blood spraying on his skin. He picks up a headless corpse and throws it through the same window, listening for the soft thud as it lands.
Killing is the ultimate act of control. Tama hasn’t had control over any parts of his life. Everything he’s ever done feels like it’s been guided by someone else. Parents, partners, landlords, lawmakers, the Hero Association... None of it was ever up to him. But now it is.
From now on, everything he does will be his own decision. He’s broken the most important rule of being a hero. He’s done something unforgivable. Nearly fifty times. Another body follows the first, its leg catching on the edge of the window before it falls inside the building. I’m a killer.
He doesn’t feel evil, though. Not like a villain, but he supposes he is one. Mostly he feels the same. Of course, he hadn’t been so nonchalant when he was actually tearing flesh; when he’d felt bones breaking under his fingers... But in the quiet after, he just feels like Tama. A Tama who’s found a new hobby, maybe.
More bodies follow, stacking behind the windows of the abandoned building. They don’t matter. None of these people (or, ex-people) matter. Tama spent his first twenty-five years getting kicked around and when he finally makes things right, the police come to his door. What kind of justice is that? They wanted to arrest him for eliminating evil. Isn’t that what a hero does? And he laughs again as another body sails across the street.
So they deserved it for trying to arrest him. If they’d just left him alone, he wouldn’t have done anything else. Maybe. Looking down at a face, frozen in terrified surprise. You should have known better than to come here.
He can feel himself getting defensive, though, and tries not to look at the eyes anymore, launching the body toward a window. He misses and it takes out part of the wall, but it doesn’t look like it was a load-bearing part. That’s probably fine.
A quiet moment. Now what? They’re just going to send more. Heroes, military. I’ll have to keep killing. That part doesn’t bother him too much. He likes his new hobby. It is a little lonely, though. “Genos,” he whines to the empty air around him. “When are you coming home?”
