I leaned against the wall, tapping on my phone as I waited for Dan to show up at our usual meetup location at the bus stop closest to Clementi train station.
A bus came by and I found Dan getting off the bus with a smug look on his face wearing a casual T-shirt and pants with a zipper hoodie thrown over his shoulders.
"Sup bro," He greeted.
I raised an eyebrow at him, "I thought you would be driving here instead."
"And have my car get tracked to identify me? Not a chance, bro. I not that stupid."
I shrugged, "So you got a plan for this vigilante thing?"
"I thought you did?"
"When it's just myself, yes. I did not take you into account for this."
"If it's just you, how would you have done this?"
"Well… I recently found out that I could jump pretty high and also fall from pretty high without worrying about fall damage."
Dan chuckled, "Fall damage? What are you now? A game character?"
"I might as well be, to be honest."
"What? Do you have some kind of level up system now? Is that how you're getting stronger?"
"Maybe. I can see your status screen, you know? Under your title it shows that you are a certified idiot."
"Fuck you lah. But seriously, I was going to just suggest we walk around."
I raised an eyebrow, "Just… Walk? We're not going to cover a lot of area by just walking around."
"Not that you have a better idea right now, right? So let's go. There's a convenience store nearby so let's go buy some drinks first."
I narrowed my eyes at him, "You weren't serious about the vigilante thing were you? You're just using this as an excuse to go have a night walk."
"Ha! Even if it's true, is it bad? If we see something happening then we can just go and stop them anyway, right? Besides… You really think our country so dangerous meh? There's barely any crime here."
"That's before the awakening… The crime statistics almost tripled after the awakening happened."
"But that was when we still had foreigners around what… Now different already."
I turned and started walking, "Tell that to the crime I witnessed the other day. Some lizard guy was robbing some office worker on his way home."
He fell in step beside me, "Ha? Really ah? Got people so suay [1]one meh?"
I nodded, "Low crime doesn't mean no crime, ok? There's still criminals out there but they're just hiding themselves better."
He made a noise of acknowledgement, "Hmm… I guess so. Then again we just had that assassination on our Mortal God right within our own city so I guess anything is possible."
Right… I almost forgot about that one… More because I know for a fact that they didn't succeed but people like Dan wouldn't know for sure about this one.
Dan tried to change the topic anyway, "So if the Mortal God turns out to still be alive… Are you really going to sign up as a Guardian?"
"Bro, I already signed up as one. I'm just waiting for them to give me the confirmation that I am selected."
"Hmm… Then is there any reason why I suddenly received this letter in my mailbox the other day?" He asked, fishing out a folded piece of paper from his pocket.
Curious, I took it and read its contents, only to realise that it was an invitation to be shortlisted as one of the Guardian candidates for the Mortal God.
Oh wow… I did give Olivia the suggestion to recruit him after that day but I figured that it probably wasn't happening after the assassination attempt… Seeing this here means that she actually went ahead to process my request and sent out this letter to invite him herself.
Now I feel a little worried about her because it feels like she's doing a thousand different things at once.
From what I know, she's dealing with the aftermath of the assassination attempt, the restructuring of the ministry, the organisation of the potential Guardians, negotiations with other countries for my help and many other things that I'm not currently aware of.
I can see why she was placed as the acting director of this department…
And ironically… She would much rather be fighting on the field than dealing with all this paperwork.
I handed it back to him, "I dunno. I had nothing to do with it."
He rolled his eyes, "Sure… How's your sister by the way?"
I hesitated, "I… Believe she might be being bullied."
"Ha? Really ah? Who? We go beat them up now."
"She doesn't want me to be involved… She says they were former schoolmates so it shouldn't be a problem once she goes to Uni."
"Screw that lah, these kinds of people need a boot smack in their faces. When you going to smack them, bring me along hor!"
I couldn't help but chuckle, "Sure thing, bro."
As we neared the convenience store underneath one of the apartment blocks, I quickly noticed that something wasn't right.
From here, I could see that one of the glass doors were shattered and the metal handle that would have been on the door was dropped outside, meaning something had hit the door from the inside and broke it.
Then inside the store itself, one of the shelves had toppled against another shelf to spill its contents all over the floor.
I shared a look with Dan and he was giving me the exact same look I was giving him.
I know I said that there might still be crime happening around us but… Even this is a little too coincidental, don't you think?
It's not even close to midnight yet, you know? So there's still people up and about even on a Sunday night.
Surely if someone wants to cause trouble at a convenience store like this, there would be witnesses and the police would be called, right?
I made sure my face mask was secured on my face before I started running towards the convenience store, Dan following after me with the hood of his jacket up.
Voices could be heard coming from inside and I stopped right outside the entrance to peek inside.
A Malay guy seemed to be wrestling with some Chinese guy who was trying to pummel him from above while another Malay dude was busy trying to open the cash register.
A third guy whom I was unable to see the features of had his back turned to us and was stuffing a bag with some of the stuff that was on the shelves at the back of the convenience store.
It was obvious who were the bad ones seeing that the Malay guy on the floor was wearing a collared shirt with the convenience store's logo on it while the other two were wearing black clothes and masks that hid their faces.
I'm not sure if either of them are armed and whether they even had powers or not, but we were basically outnumbered by one if we were not to count the staff as someone on our side.
I turned back to look at Dan who was waiting for me with a serious face, his earlier joking attitude nowhere to be seen.
I nodded at him before pointing at the guy at the cash register and he nodded, showing he understood.
Without saying anything, I rushed into the convenience store, running past the cash register without even looking at the guy that was there.
Dan should be able to deal with that guy while I help the staff that was being pummeled by the other robber.
My footsteps caught the robber's attention and he turned to see who was making the sound, only to see my fist flying towards his face.
I held back to make sure I didn't accidentally kill him but the pop that resounded from my fist meeting his cheek made me think I might have dislocated his jaw.
Still, it had the intended effect of knocking him out and the robber crumpled to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.
The staff member on the ground looked up at me in surprise and instead of looking relieved, he was shooting me a look of fear instead.
Granted, I was also masked just like these robbers so for all he knew, I was another robber here to rob him as well.
I pointed at him, "Call the police! I'm a vigilante!"
Trusting that he would at least be able to deal with that, I turned to the third robber that I saw earlier, only to see that he was pointing his index finger at me in the shape of a finger gun.
He did the action of shooting the finger gun and I felt something hit me in the chest, like someone had just thrown a stone at me.
I frowned and charged towards the guy, his eyes widening in surprise and did the action a few more times and one of them hit me on the head but it was more of an annoyance than anything else so I ignored it and rammed into him to throw him onto the ground.
I then choked him out and he struggled helplessly against me before he finally got knocked out.
I tossed the guy onto the ground, checking that Dan had also incapacitated the other robber.
That prompted me to turn to the staff member, only to see that there were holes on the wall behind where I had been standing earlier.
Were those… Bullet holes? Was that the guy's power? He could shoot invisible bullets from his finger?
And… I managed to tank them… Guess I know what kind of power I got from Dan now.
[1] Suay= Hokkien for unlucky/unfortunate