Rumors

Daniel was more or less asleep for the majority of his classes.

In his second to last year of secondary school, He found himself miserable, whether losing focus during lessons, or bombing tests that would have been a breeze for him a few years prior- Ending up with him in his current state, given up on meeting the meteoric expectations of those around him, and despondent towards most every part of his life at this point.

Pulling his light bag to his shoulder as he hears the bell ring, he stands to his fairly average height of 175 centimeters before leaving the class, tuning out any and everything the teacher managed to say on his way out.

With no way to go elsewhere, and another hour or so of classes after school break, Daniel would often find himself just meandering around the school grounds, occasionally listening to peoples conversations as he made his way around, but mostly just doing his best to numb the feelings of anxiety eating at him; And today would be no different, With a straight, dead face, he makes his way past groups of people laughing, talking, mostly tuning out the conversations.

Though the more words that slip past his attempts to isolate himself from other peoples problems, a pattern becomes apparent in their words-

Patterns in the other student's words weren't rare, rumors events and the like all had people yammering on and on about the same things- but this was different, This was everywhere, different voices, the same words, the same topics, the same emotions of :Excitement, Fear, Worry, Anger.

For the first time in a long while, Daniel starts to pay more attention to the words, the strange though likely exaggerated stories and rumors stirring within him a curiosity he thought had long been throttled.

Not having felt such a positive emotion in a long time, He feeds it as it desires. Rather deftly, he starts to listen into the chatter around him, discretely hanging around different cliques of people thanks to his plain looking face, as well as commonly found brown hair and eyes, for extended periods of time before moving on to different collections of people, noting the things he was hearing.

"Dude, did you hear about all the attacks?"

"I heard that a whole bunch of gangs got almost wiped out"

"Like a gang war?"

"No, no my brothers friend said something about it, they're saying it was one person, ran through their neighborhood and tore people apart"

"Sounds like bullshit"

"I said the same thing, But then I hear the same thing from like 3 other people, Makes me wonder what's really going on"

Having always been a rather cynical, skeptical person, Daniel takes the first few stories as exaggerations, moving on to different groups of people, listening to their stories intently, the curiosity inside of him building steadily.

"It's such bullshit- A bunch of people I know got their accounts deleted for even talking about it. I don't know how they expect to cover up a bunch of 'apparently unrelated' assassinations when they're banning people for even talking about it."

Something within Daniel tells him that something big had happened the night before, spanning all across the globe, whether first or last years, male or female, they all had the same words on their tongue: Murder, Assassination, Silencing, Censorship, Cover ups, Conspiracy.

Walking briskly, a start contrast to his typical meandering, Daniel starts to eagerly connect dots, and his conclusions brought him to the same destination of his gut feelings.

'Someone's planning something big.'

Daniel begins to speculate.

It has to be one group of people, or at least one person calling the shots as each of the apparent assassinations had too much in common to be coincidental, apparently unconnected people, only one perpetrator seen by any given eye witness.

Also, the strange terrorist group has to have insider information, Since it seems like in each case of someone fairly important being attacked, any attempt at investigating their backgrounds had been almost instantly, ruthlessly silenced, from police investigation to speculation on the Internet, people investigating were promptly kept quiet; Where-as the supposed gang related killings were talked about freely, no obvious attempts at keeping people quiet in that regard.

Daniel's thoughts begin to race alongside the bell, signaling the end of school break.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

12 hours prior

Clad in fairly tight black clothing and a golden mask covered in assorted symbols, A man of rather short stature does his best to maintain his composure as he pulls each of his hands in opposite directions, twisting and snapping the neck of the person in his grip, before tossing the corpse to the side like a ragdoll with a grimace.

"Fucking traitor"

crouching in preparation for a jump, A light white glow emanates through his clothing.

Crash

The ceiling gives way as he springs up from his legs, launching himself high into the air and out of the fairly normal looking building he was just in.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Daniel spends his next classes scribbling webs of things he heard, like a web of words. He writes like a crazy person, eyes slowly widening with a passion not felt within him for a very long time, each line he draws between bubbles getting him closer to the 'truth' but also bringing up lists of new possibilities for him to delve into.

Nothing even bothering to check his watch once during the lesson, letting whatever the teacher bothered to say wash past his ears without a care in the world, it doesn't take long before the end of school bell rings in his ears.

Looking down at pages and pages of scribbled notes and theories, he feels no regret for wasting the class time, not like a disappointment like him could do much with it anyway; but the notes in his books, the theories, He feels truly drawn into the goings on as he packs his bag and once again drifts from the classroom, though this time with some drive in his step,

It doesn't take long for stray words from peoples mouths to chip at his motivation, stray words once again showing a pattern, this time a whole lot different from before:

"I can't believe someone would try and falsely 'expose' the government like that"

"What a joke, I can't believe I thought that stuff was all real"

"Did you see the statements that got released?"

The consistent theme of people speaking makes him a bit anxious, so, pulling out his rather outdated phone, He goes to the 'video' people are all talking about, seeing a governmental PR agent speaking about the supposed 'rumors' being spread by terrorist agencies.

"Hello citizens, We're well aware of the rumors being spread among the population currently- We would just like to inform you, that social media sites have experienced an unprecedented breach in security, And that in most cases of the supposed disappearances, both the accounts talking the mention them, as well as the people responsible for making it appear as though these accounts got removed, have all been under the control of hackers with the specific intent to make our, and other global governments lose credibility amongst their populous. As such, from us to you, we would like to remind you to take things such as this with a pinch of salt in order to avoid chaos and confusion"

And just like that, Without bothering to look at inconsistencies in rumors and the government's statement, the fire of motivation burning within Daniel is snuffed out- Replaced by an all too familiar self loathing.

'I can't believe I really fell for all that garbage- that's what I get for putting my skepticism on hold I guess'

Putting his phone back into his bag, He makes the walk home in a glum mood, angry at himself all the way.

'And now I wasted hours I could have used catching up in classes scribbling a net of rumors like a madman- My grades are really going to crash and burn at this point'

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Waking up after doing his best to block out his frustration from the day prior, Daniel stretches slowly, looking down at his pudgy body with a frown before picking up his phone from his bedside table. The timer on his phone telling him that he was late for school, he doesn't really care.

lazily scrolling through social media apps, the havoc from the cyber attacks the day prior still apparent, large accounts permanently banned, communities of crazies speculating that this was all a cover up for a cover up for a cover up etc…

Growing quickly bored of seeing people doing better than him online, Daniel puts the local news on loud before crawling out of bed and getting changed into his uniform groggily.

Listening to the droll voice of the news reporter, Daniel jolts in surprise as he hears shouts and screams coming from the live feed, tossing the shirt he was putting on to one side to see what was happening on the news feed.

What greets his eyes makes them widen instantly, he sees a masked man wearing , rather short in stature, tossing the news caster into a wall with enough force for the wall to crumble under the impact, before turning to the camera and taking the seat of the person he just tossed to one side.

With an obviously distorted voice he begins to speak.

[Fellow humans, I apologize for any distress I may have caused you with my actions the night before last, However they were necessary for the greater good of our species. Anyhow- I would like to seek from every one of you assistance in is likely the greatest threat we have and will ever face.]

The man pauses for a moment, looking to one side with irritation before moving in that direction.

More shouting, though this time joined by gunfire, comes across the news broadcast.

Then silence.

Less than a minute later, once again the masked man returns, though his mask bears cracks and grooves, his clothing doesn't seem to sport any damage.

[My apologies once again, As I was saying- This problem will require humanity as a collective to grow stronger, as such I have released techniques similar to those in fiction, techniques to gain powers you would consider magic, across the internet. And as much as what I'm saying may be deemed misinformation, I trust that soon enough it will become obvious that I have not been misleading anyon-]

Gunshots once again echo in the news feed, though this time it cuts to static, the connection having been broken off.