75 Gentle Push
"I'm sure it's lovely, but I'm allergic to, uh, chili! Yeah, I'm allergic to chili! Here, madam. Keep the change." The man stepped back from the hotdog stall and extended his arm to give the woman a fifty-dollar bill. An anxious smile can be seen on his handsome face while his hands was visibly trembling.
Zel could sense the man looking his way, but his attention was focused on the strange change in his surroundings when he was approximately five meters away from the man. It was as if he could feel something slowing him down, like the air got denser.
"This is too much!" The woman who had just taken the bill said so, but her hand had already taken the bill with both hands. A regular hotdog sandwich costs a dollar, and a fully loaded one was two dollars. She got quite the tip, seeing as it is worth a quarter of her daily profits.
"Why don't you take a soda, too? Or maybe a fruit punch?" The woman had already kept the money inside her pocket and took out a can of soda and a large plastic cup, evidently filled with orange juice.
"I'm alright, thank you. Have a good day." But the man looked like he didn't want to stay in that stall any longer than he had to, and practically running away. He dashed off towards the other side of the street that was the exact opposite of Zel's current direction.
'Ah! What an idiot.'
Zel looked at the front of the stall and saw a backpack the man probably left behind. The woman who was selling the hotdogs wouldn't be able to see it from her point of view, so it was up to Zel to decide.
Should he give it back or ignore it?
"Hey! Mister rich guy! You forgot your bag!" Zel quickly decided to run to the bag while yelling at the top of his lungs. He raised the bag when he got to it and shouted twice over. The man was barely ten meters away so he should have heard him, but the man didn't turn around at all.
"Dude! Your bag!" Zel might be nice but he wasn't an idiot. He quickly ran to catch up to the man while carrying the bag with one hand. Holding on to the bag was stupid because he could be charged with theft. There were now two reasons for him to give it back, both moral and legal reasons.
"The heck are you running for?" Zel was surprised when he was about five meters away from the man. The reason for that was because the man was running away from him!
"What the fuck!" Zel was running at his fastest speed for almost half a minute now, and he wasn't catching up to the man. Zel was even more unnerved when the man threw his hotdog away just so he could balance himself, presumably so he could run faster.
This was the last straw for Zel, so he circulated a small trace of mana to his mana core and activated a skill, [Unarmed Combat]. Last time he used it, his strength increased by 8, but it should be lower now since his body wasn't really that trained in it. At most, it would probably give him enough strength to get the backpack to reach the man and get this mess out of his hair.
"Oi! Catch your damn bag!" Zel threw the bag with his temporarily increased strength before stopping his momentum. He had done his best, he didn't care anymore about what happens to the man and his bag.
(Lord Tiger, that man had a similar energy signature with the man you detected last night.)
Toph, who was busy generating a report quickly chimed in when she found a familiarity with the man Zel was chasing. She was late in telling him as her current processing ability was limited by Zel's own lack of reserves.
"Ow!" It was at this moment that the bag hit the man's back and he fell face first to the ground. It was strange, however, that he moved his head to the side before he got hit. It was as if he was about to dodge the bag but underestimated its speed. Dodging by itself wasn't strange but dodging something you can't see was.
"Oops." Zel looked at the man's back that was facing the sky. His brain couldn't process how the man could make a spectacularly pathetic fall like that without any acting on his part. He didn't even move for a while, making Zel think he was dead. Thankfully, that wasn't the case as the man turned his body to make it face the sky.
'Halt all other functions and scan him.' Zel thought to himself, knowing that Toph would understand him. He could detect traces of mana from the man, but the ability he was using was foreign to Zel. It felt like a mixture of mana instead of the usual monotone presence they gave off.
(Target has not been identified from the Lord's memories, there are no instances of interaction with this person in all known timelines.)
Toph took a few seconds before replying as she had to comb through his memories without the use of a mind palace. If Zel had it rebuilt, it would have just taken a second or two. But while memory scanning was completed, there were other ways to scan the man in front of him.
'Oh, great.' Meanwhile, Zel was looking at the trouble coming their way from the distance. A man who was gasping for air as he placed his hands on his knees for support. This wasn't what he wanted to see on his first day returning home.
(Target's mana emissions are low quality, making it possible for him to either be a high-grade ranker with excellent control over his mana or, the more likely case, he is an entry level ranker. More data is needed to confirm.)
"What are you two doing?" A man wearing a police uniform came from the side, a suspicious look evident on his face.
He was about to get a hotdog sandwich for himself when the woman selling the hotdog suddenly had a weird expression on her face, her eyes were looking at the direction behind him. So, he ended up letting his curiosity get the better of him and got to watch as a man ran from a boy barely half his height.
'How is that kid so fast?' The cop ended up running after them but had no way of catching up, as their speed of running was almost twice his. Luckily, the chase ended abruptly when the boy threw a bag at the man and made him fall to the ground.
"My name is Officer Lance, you can just call me officer. Identify yourselves and tell me what's going on. Sir, is your face alright?" The cop looked at the man's face and found it hard to keep a stern stance when he saw his condition. That didn't look quite right, though it wasn't that bad, it still looked pretty painful.
'Why are you acting like your back hurts more than your face?' While it looked like a good throw, the man who is bleeding through his nose was caressing his back instead of alleviating the pain on his face.
Is a kid's backpack throw much stronger than getting your face dragged through a concrete road?
"I, I'm fine. Shame about my hotdog, though." The man quickly stood up when he saw the uniform of the cop before him. Wiping some of the blood off his face with a handkerchief and showing that his nose wasn't broken out of shape.
He didn't want any more attention that he already got, and he wasn't really about to make it hard for the kid. It was his stupidity that made the situation escalate to this, he should have just stopped when he had the chance. He's going to divert and deny everything, like he always does.
"Your hotdog?" Officer Lance and Zel both took a look at the hotdog sandwich on the ground and saw that it was being eaten by a few wild birds. It wasn't wrong to consider that sandwich gone. But that hardly mattered now, and the two couldn't tell if the man was serious or cracking a joke due to his unfathomable smile.
"Ahh, pardon me. My name is Leonard Prime, a freelance writer. Here's my driver's license if you want some identification." Leonard took out his wallet without minding the pain wracking inside his body. He could already feel the nanomites working their magic and knew he would be fine. The only problem was to get this cop out of the picture so he could leave without totally ruining his image to the kid.
"My name is Zel, Zel Huertazuela. I don't have an I.D. with me. Are you going to take me to jail?" Zel acted his age and gave the cop a frightened look. He even made his voice crack a little to show his inner turmoil. His manner of movement made the two men before him feel bad for the kid.
"Let's just get this cleared so no one feels bad. Alright, kid?" Officer Lance gave Zel a pat on the shoulder before facing Leonard. Having seen the whole thing, he thinks that no one here was really a bad guy, though Leonard was suspicious. Why was he running away? What was in the bag?
