I dropped into my fighting stance, muscles coiled and ready. Across the training mat, handler Price mirrored me, his posture relaxed but precise — the easy confidence of a man who had done this ten thousand times before. We stared at one another for a long moment, the silence broken only by the low hum of ventilation and the distant echo of the facility around us.
I made the first move. It was a weak, full-blown right hook — telegraphed, clumsy, the kind of swing a beginner throws when nerves get the better of them. Price dodged it effortlessly, barely shifting his weight, and answered with a simple front kick that I was far too slow to block. The impact sent me crashing to the ground, the mat rushing up to meet me with an unforgiving thud.
"Up, bud. Try again," Price said simply.
I got to my feet slowly, stumbling as I rose. My pride stung more than my body. Think. Don't just react — think. I feinted toward his legs, telegraphing a sweeping low attack. Price launched himself upward exactly as I had predicted, tucking his leg as he leapt. I seized the opportunity, grabbing hold of his tucked leg and throwing all my weight into dragging him down to the mat.
It wasn't enough. He twisted mid-air with the loose, fluid grace of someone who had trained far longer than I had, and used my own momentum against me, sending my large body rolling hard to the other side of the mat. I hit the floor with a much harder thump than the first time.
"Bloody hell," I growled, spitting a thin line of blood onto the mat.
"Good one, lad," Price said, crouching down to meet my eye level, "but you have to think ahead of your opponent. You may have to get a little dirty for the job."
I grumbled, still lying there. Price straightened up and walked toward me, calm and unhurried. My body tensed on instinct — ready to move, even though I was slower than him in this body. But instead of any further attack, he simply reached down and lifted my heavy, tall frame off the mat with a steadying hand.
"Well, Riley," he said, dusting off his palms, "I think I can see what we need to work on."
"Really, sir?" I managed, the words edged with the ghost of pain.
"Yes. I've noticed that you tend to throw all your weight forward — like someone who was originally shorter than you are now. And you're not using your bulk to its full advantage."
I froze. The words landed somewhere deep and strange. He didn't know. Price had no idea that this wasn't my original body — that I was still learning the shape of it, still stumbling through the geography of these longer limbs and broader shoulders. He noticed my stillness but said nothing, simply offering me his hand.
"Well," he said, "I think we should go over the basics and retrain that body of yours."
"Yes, sir," I grunted, straightening up with a slouch that I couldn't quite shake.
I started mumbling to myself, running the fight back through my head. "I should have thrown a right hook first, followed it up with a side kick, then a forward punch — "
"Whoa, hold your horses, Riley." Price held up a hand, a flicker of surprise crossing his face. "That's... a lot."
Heat rushed to my face. I mumbled an apology, my voice trailing off into something embarrassed and small. "I'm so sorry, sir. I must sound completely unhinged — like some kind of stalker, obsessing over every move —"
I felt the pressure behind my eyes before I could stop it. I began to tear up, blinking hard against it.
Without a word, Price stepped forward and pulled me into a hug. I flinched badly — the contact unexpected, too sudden — but he didn't pull away. A large, steady hand patted the top of my head, gentle and unhurried.
"Riley. Calm down. There's nothing to apologise for, and nothing to get upset about. What you were doing — running through the sequence like that — that's not creepy. That's professional. Whoever told you it was wrong is incorrect. Planning your movements, thinking several steps ahead — that's exactly what a soldier does."
He rubbed my back slowly as I cried harder, the tears coming before I could catch them.
"I'm sorry," I managed between breaths. "It's just... no one has been that kind to me in a long time."
There was a brief quiet. When Price spoke again, his voice was lower, gentler.
"Well, I'm sorry to hear that. You're a good kid, Riley." He eased back, studying me with calm, steady eyes. "We'll take a break until you've fully calmed down."
"N-no, I'm fine — we can still continue," I said quickly, a little too loud.
"No," he said, simply and firmly. "Go take a break."
"But, sir —"
"No buts. Let me show you to your room."
I grumbled quietly, but followed.
* * *
We walked through the corridors of the facility, the silence between us comfortable in a way I hadn't expected. After a moment, I found myself speaking.
"Sir... may I ask what kind of hero you are?"
Price considered this, his expression thoughtful.
"Honestly? I wouldn't consider myself a hero. I'm more like a soldier — military, through and through — than any kind of hero." He paused. "I came to Japan to recruit and train people for a team I'm forming alongside Lazwell. We're building something across Britain, Australia, and a small part of Russia. I was called here to train heroes in Japan, so here I am."
"Oh, wow," I said. "That's... really interesting."
"Yeah," he agreed, with a quiet chuckle. "Interesting is one word for it, lad."
We talked as we walked — about quirks, about the military, about how the two worlds sat beside each other without quite touching. I was genuinely surprised to learn that the military was composed almost entirely of quirkless people.
"Wait — really? The military is mostly quirkless?"
"That's correct. Most people in the military have no quirk at all. In a way, it makes them mentally stronger — or at least differently forged. A lot of them have been through the kind of hardship that builds a person from the inside out. The bullying, the dismissal, the constant pressure of being considered lesser. It gives them something to push against. There are a very few with quirks who do make it in, but they're the exception, not the rule."
He said it plainly, not as a lecture but as a fact — just answering my questions as they came. I listened quietly.
"Well, Riley," Price said, stopping in the corridor, "here we are."
I looked around and opened the door. The space inside was built like a small apartment — a compact kitchen and a modest living area furnished with only the essentials. Functional. Nothing wasted.
"I'll leave you to explore," Price said, and with the soft click of the door, he was gone.
"Yes, sir," I murmured into the empty room.
I moved through the living area and down a short hallway to the bedroom. The door opened onto a medium-sized room — larger than my old room had been, though not by much. There was a bed with plain white sheets and two pillows. A window sat centred in the far wall, covered by a thin white screen curtain, and beneath it stood a desk with a rolling chair. To the right of the desk was a dark brown wooden bookshelf, its shelves entirely empty.
Even bare like this, I thought, I like it.
I crossed to the small closet on the left side of the room and opened the door. Inside, neatly organised, were uniforms for active duty and plain clothes fitted for my new body. I stared at them for a moment, then sighed.
I should have known there wouldn't be anything remotely hero like items in here.
I shuffled to the bed and sat down on the edge of it, the mattress giving quietly beneath my weight.
Why did they save me? The question surfaced before I could stop it, slow and uncomfortable. Why go to all the trouble? Do they have plans for me — some use they intend to put me to?
I groaned and rolled onto my back, staring at the ceiling.
I don't know who to trust anymore.
I didn't need saving, I told myself, glaring at the closed door. And why change me into this — a mid-twenties body, mostly British-built, taller and broader than I'd ever been? I'd even picked up a British accent along with the body, without meaning to. Words I'd never used before slipped out naturally now. I'd never cursed in my life before this, and here I was swearing like I'd been born to it.
I shifted again in the bed, restless thoughts turning over and over, until — without realising it was happening — I began to drift. The weight of the day pressed down, and slowly, my eyes closed.
* * *
Later, when I was fully asleep, the door opened without a sound.
The President stepped inside. She stood for a moment, looking at the sleeping shape beneath the sheets, then turned to the guards who had followed her in.
"Take the boy."
They nodded and moved quietly to lift my sleeping form. She walked ahead as they carried me out of the room, her heels silent on the facility floor.
"Bring him to the lab. Begin the training."
They moved through the corridors until they reached the laboratory — a cold, precise room filled with softly humming equipment. The guards transferred my body carefully to the scientists waiting there. Working in practised silence, they hooked me up to a large machine: sensors at my temples, pads along my spine, monitors tracking the slow rhythm of my breathing. The device connected to both brain and body, capable of simulating — at an accelerated pace — the full weight of battlefield experience and combat training.
From the shadows at the edge of the room, a figure stepped forward. General Shepherd moved slowly, studying me with a long, appraising look — up and down, unhurried, the way a man examines something he intends to make use of.
"Well, well," he said. "This kid's new body is certainly something."
"Yes, General Shepherd," the President replied, her tone measured. "The quirk that produced it is remarkable. Our intention is to use the PMSS — the Physical Mental Simulation System — to compress months of training into weeks. Both mentally and physically."
Shepherd's gaze didn't move from my face.
"See to it that he comes out of this a proper soldier."
"He will, sir," she said.
The machine began to hum, and then, with a soft beep, it came to life.
———
I groaned — and then I froze.
What happened to my dream of becoming the number one hero?
The thought came from somewhere far away, thin and distant, like a voice calling through fog. I blinked and looked around. The bedroom was gone. The ceiling was gone. Above me was open sky, pale and overcast, framed by the jagged canopy of a dense forest. The air smelled of damp earth and something sharper beneath it — smoke, cordite, the acrid bite of discharged gunpowder.
In the distance — not far enough — there was shooting. Shouting. Screaming.
Then a voice appeared inside my head. Not outside — inside. A soft whisper that seemed to echo from everywhere at once.
Grab the M4 carbine. Protect yourself.
"Who are you?" I shouted, spinning, searching the trees.
A bullet answered me. It struck my left shoulder with a force that knocked me sideways, and I went down hard, clutching the wound as blood began to well between my fingers. I bit down on the sound trying to claw its way out of my throat. The pain was real — horribly, completely real — and I gritted my teeth against it until the first wave passed.
Think. If I can hear them shooting, they can hear me.
I began to crawl through the long grass, keeping low, keeping quiet. My mind raced even as my body moved. They had dropped me — whoever they were — onto an active battlefield. No briefing. No weapon. No training in any of this. The voice had said to find an M4, but where —
I crested a shallow rise and looked down the slope. Below, in an open field, two forces were locked in a fierce, close-quarters firefight. On one side: soldiers wearing a flag I recognised. The Union Jack. On the other: a tan, rocky military uniform bearing a flag that turned my stomach the moment I placed it. Not modern German. Older. A Nazi German flag.
I looked down at myself. My uniform bore the same UK patch as the soldiers below.
I grumbled under my breath and crawled toward a glint of reflected light near a rocky outcropping at the edge of the grass. The M4 carbine lay propped against a stone, as if someone had left it there deliberately. I reached it, grabbed it, and turned it over in my hands, trying to remember — from old films, from things half-read — how to hold it, how to aim, how to fire.
How did I even know what it was called?
I didn't have time to answer that. I raised the weapon and fired. The first three shots were clumsy, thrown wide. On the fourth, I found the rhythm of it — breath, squeeze, follow through — and the shot connected. I rolled immediately, pressing into the ground as a returning volley of bullets cut through the air above me.
"Bloody fu —"
"Soldier! Get your arse over here!"
A voice, broad and British, cutting through the noise. I ran toward it in a low crouch, keeping to the grass, closing the distance as fast as my damaged shoulder allowed. Behind an abandoned house at the far edge of the field, a small group of British soldiers were hunkered down — five of them, faces hard and alert.
"Son, you finally made it off that side of the field."
The man who spoke was stocky and weathered, with a shaved head and a clipped ear that told a story of its own. He looked me over with the blunt assessment of someone who had seen plenty of new faces and lost plenty of them.
"Hello, sir," I said, settling in beside them, rifle up and ready.
"I would say it's good to bloody see you," he said, "but we're still very much in the field. Aim through that hole — nine degrees left of centre." He said it quietly, without drama.
I moved into position, put my eye to the scope, and adjusted.
"Little more... now."
Bang. A clean shot, right on target.
"Damn," he said, almost to himself. "You've got good aim, son. Train that up properly and you'll make a fine sniper."
"Yes, sir," I said.
"Right. We're safe enough for introductions. I'm Sergeant Chris."
We shook hands — a firm, brief grip.
"I'm... Iz-Simon Riley," I said. The name felt strange in my mouth still, but I let it sit.
"I see, soldier."
And so it began. In the strange compressed time of the PMSS, Sergeant Chris and I fought together, retreated together, learned together. He was a hard teacher — direct and impatient with excuses — but he answered every question I asked, and I asked a great many. He taught me how to move through a field, how to read cover, how to think like a soldier rather than react like a frightened civilian.
In that world, two years passed.
In the real world, two weeks.
And that was the beginning of of darkness