Alone in the city (introduction thread)

Kazuo was alone. That happened a lot lately. He didn't really have any friends. He was a nice guy but to call someone friend was hard for him. The only true friend he had was his grandfather. He was a great and respectable man. He was the one that taught Kazuo martial arts which had helped him many time in life. When his father tried to bash his head in with a monkey wrench it had helped. When idiot kids from school had tried to bully him it helped. Kazuo didn't doubt that it wouldn't be the last time his training in martial arts helped. It was a good skill have especially for someone like him. He was a mutant, the most hated kinds of people in the world. It used to be parking officers, now it was mutants. Kazuo had done a good job hiding from the world. There were only two people that knew. His grandfather and his dad. His grandfather had been supportive about it. He didn't really know what to do but to keep it a secret but he allowed Kazuo to test his powers. He had a gift, it would be a waste not to use it. His grandfather always told him to be discreet though, people didn't understand mutants. People always hated what they didn't understand. His grandfather also felt that his father should know. Kazuo was against that, Shinji Kiriyami had always been against mutants. But his grandfather insisted. When Kazuo told his dad his father called him a monster and told him that next time he saw him he would try to kill his own son. Kazuo hated his father even before that, but after that day he knew he would never see his father again. Not unless he had absolutely had to.

Kazuo walked slowly and a bit bend over. He knew it was bad for his back but what was the harm. He had been working out at the gym. He didn't really do a lot of sports but he enjoyed the gym. He couldn't use any of the electrical running machines though. The machine would mess up as soon as he started running. He had to just use the weights and things like that. It kept him in shape and he did quite some running for his martial arts training. In the weekends his grandfather and him would go to a house they owned in the country. That's where Kazuo had learned all he knew about martial arts. In the city his grandfather owned a small apartment, nothing special. Just the essentials really. His grandfather used to live in the house full time but when Kazuo moved in that became impossible. So he rented a small apartment in Manhattan. Kazuo knew his grandfather missed the house with the giant garden and the wildlife around it during the week but he kept up with it for his grandson. One of the many reasons why Kazuo respected him more than anyone.

As he walked Kazuo started to feel tired. It wasn't because he had slept too little but because he needed power. His energy recourse was electricity. He still had to eat and drink (never to much as it would make him implode) but his main recourse of energy was pure energy. He didn't need to sleep, he needed to charge. Sometimes that made him feel like a machine but it was easier. It gave him the night to do what ever he wished. Of course he would spend the nights alone but walks around the city or homework would make it easy to get through. Kazuo spend a lot of time listening to music. He had an Ipod nano (he couldn't have a touchscreen one as he would mess it us the first time he touched the screen) with ten gig memory. It was barely enough for all the music he had. It was the perfect device for him. It didn't have enough electrical load that he would mess with it. He could actually charge it's battery himself if he wanted. He hadn't taken that risk yet though. If he gave too much power the thing would explode and Kazuo liked his Ipod. Right now it was playing born to run by Bruce Springsteen, what a classic.

Kazuo checked his surroundings. He had to make sure there was no one around. He stood next to a lit street light. Still checking if there was no one there. He took out his earphones to hear if there was any noise near him. He heard nothing, he saw nothing. The coast was clear. Kazuo pointed his hands at the street light and tensed his muscles. The electricity from the street light poured into him. He felt less tired first, then awake, then fully focused. The perfect thing about New York street lights was that it was connected to a major generator which held a huge amount of electricity but when he sapped it only one street light went out. It was perfect for Kazuo. A broken street light, it happened. An entire street of broken street lights was a bit more suspicious. When Kazuo felt charge enough to last him the night he checked again if there was no one around before walking away. He needed enough electricity for a while. He had to stop sapping the sockets at the apartment about two years ago. To get fully charged up he started needing more and more energy since the amount his body could hold became more as he grew older. When he was fourteen he got himself fully charged from the buildings electricity which caused the entire building to have a blackout and cost his grandfather 600 dollars for electricity. Kazuo never made that mistake again.

The building Kazuo lived in wasn't that big. Kazuo lived on the fourth floor. He usually took the stairs, he didn't trust elevators. Kazuo's powers gave him so much trouble. In IT class at school he was scared to death that he lost control over his powers for a second. Blowing up a computer wasn't really something that he wanted on his school record. As he walked up stairs he got a weird feeling, as if something was wrong. Nothing actually seemed wrong until he got to his floor. The door was open. How could that be? His grandfather never left it open. When he walked inside he saw everything was messed up. The entire apartment had been beaten up and broken. His grandfather's record player had been destroyed, the TV had been smashed to pieces and his grandfather lay dead on the floor. Blood was flowing from his head, he had been killed. The walls had red paint on them all saying different things: “Die mutant.” “Die Muut die.” “In hell you shall burn Mutant scum.” Who could have known? How could this have happened? He had never been careless, no one knew! And now his grandfather was dead, he wasn't even the mutant in the household. How could this be! This couldn't be! Kazuo's powers reacted to his incredible rage. Nearly all of the power he had just acquired came out of him in an incredible surge of electricity. Everything around him exploded and bursted into flames. The power went out in the entire block. Kazuo's surge of power was incredible. He screamed letting out all of his rage. When he nearly had no power left he collapsed to his knees with tears flowing over his cheeks. He crawled to his grandfathers body, one of the only things in the room still intact and sobbed. The man he respected most was dead because of him. It was all his fault.