Blade

Dan woke up to a gust of wind that almost blew him up to his feet. When he looked around to find the source, the thought of his violent suppression just moments before quickly fled from his mind.

"Boss!" he screamed, running after the emerging figure. Lucius loosened his grip and let him go freely as Kent folded his arms and gazed upon the reunion.

The force of the figure's emergence blew the once neatly-tied-back hair into a messy whirlwind while the tattered, blood-splattered clothing under which an arm was torn off only moments ago dangled in the wind over the regenerated limb. The newly formed skin on the arm was clear and untarnished by the mess of the battle, giving off a faint luster, almost as if it were fake.

Perhaps it was due to Sid's usual cold guard being down in a moment of hazy half-consciousness, but Dan was taken aback by how he never noticed something so overtly obvious.

As his partner's defenseless figure slowly uncovered itself from the steaming piles of flesh and bones below, he wondered to himself amidst tears if all these recent events were but a wild dream and if this person in front of him was truly the cold and powerful fighter he had always known.

Yes, ever since that day when they met. He never even had the slightest suspicion. After all, he was always so strong.

Dan thought back to the days when being tossed around was all he knew. He wasn't always the mass of muscle he is now. He was rather scrawny, in fact. He never ate well so his body never grew accordingly. At that point, he had grown more than accustomed to the fact that that would be his future.

That is until Sid saved him.

He was the leader for every child Dan had known existed back then. Of course, those ragged adults would always say "go searching" or "fix this", but Sid's command was the only one every kid always obeyed.

One day, after doing an "inadequate" job scouting, Dan's entire body was damaged in such shades of black, yellow, and blue from a particularly bad beating that he wasn't sure if he could move right ever again. The pain took him across his body and bent inward to his quivering lungs and shriveling stomach. It goes without saying that he'd go to bed without dinner. That's why he was terribly confused when the texture of hard bread pressed against his nose as he was lying there in his rough, scrappy nest. As he forced his eyes open, the twisting figure of another kid stood over him.

"Hey there," said Sid. Dan's mind flashed with the future of another beating, that perhaps the adults got uncharacteristically tired of it and sent a kid to do the job, but the tone in his voice erased that fear. He exuded the energy of adult confidence that encouraged kids such as him to follow. His dark-red, finger-like locks were covering a black eye, and though he was missing a tooth, his smile shone like nothing else could in that dark storeroom. "I'm here to save you, you pathetic little shit."

His senses catching on to the presence of food, he snatched the morsel away and hungrily gnawed at it like a dog at a bone. The bread was hard all around but just short of soft in the wrong places. The taste had a terrible tang, a certain acridity, reminding him of the mud-ridden beetle he had once eaten in place of nothing else.

However, the feeling of the food entering down and spreading through his body was unmistakable. It was the feeling of life's flickering flame dancing just a tad brighter. His eyes grew thick with a mixture of pain from the rough meal and a sense of directionless gratitude.

"Whoaahaha..." Sid, putting a hand on Dan's shoulder, chuckled with half-closed eyes. "Slow down. It'll last longer." He took a seat next to the feasting child. "Besides, I don't have any water for you, so if you eat that fast you'll end up choking."

The hungry child wasn't even remotely in the mindset of taking that sort of advice to heart as he was already coughing dryly from completing the stale meal.

"More... " groaned Dan, who only ate enough to jolt himself awake and feel how empty his stomach really was as he slowly crawled toward Sid, "give me more..."

"What do I look like," snapped Sid, pushing the boy away lightly, "shithole's youngest baker? That's all you get."

"GIVE ME MORE!" said Dan, taking Sid by surprise and climbing on top of him before shaking his benefactor, "I KNOW YOU HAVE MORE! GIVE IT TO ME!" Dan's hands were in a frenzy, slapping the kid and searching every pocket for

"Get the hell off of me!" shouted Sid, bolting back up and throwing a nasty hook into Dan's face, sending him reeling back, with a terrible uppercut launching him up and then harshly back down to the floor.

"Geh!"

Sid didn't miss a moment. Before Dan's body had even realized the fight was over, Sid's hands were already behind Dan's neck and fastened him cruelly as their owner's knee took flight and sharply crumpled into the boy's injured chest.

"Try to take advantage of me when I've been so nice to you, huh?" Sid breathed with fury as he landed kick after kick into the boy's soft stomach, hitting him in such a sequence that his body couldn't have fallen even if his legs had not even a single ounce of strength. "that's what you get... that's what you get!"

Sid winded up for a finisher when Dan lurched forward as if he was rejecting something. Noticing this, Sid swooped in, grabbing Dan's neck so that their eyes were only a few hairs apart.

"Don't you dare throw that up... you hear me?"

Dan gulped. With the pressure Sid was putting on his throat, he couldn't throw up even if every muscle in his body wanted to. He couldn't even breathe. The fear forced nature down while the pain above his stomach welled up and escaped back to the only place it could go as his vision quickly blurred.

"I'm going to let go in five seconds. When I do, if you cry or make any sort of whimpering sound, I'll really kill you." Dan had been promised death by plenty of people before, but some ice behind Sid's eyes told him that this kid could really do it. In his cloudy vision, he thought he saw a silvery glimpse somewhere to Sid's side.

The steel grip was released and Dan's contorted frame crashed to the floor, catching his breath as quietly as he could so that he didn't disturb Sid as he had warned.

He gagged a few times, holding his mouth in the process so his body couldn't betray his needs and reject the meager meal. He heaved for a while, dryly, but then after some time, it was no longer the sound of that.

Stifling the stinging tears behind his face as well as he could, Dan moaned, "How... how can you save me... if I'm just going to be hungry again tomorrow...?"

His savior's face was unfazed as if this question was the most natural thing to ask.

"What's your name, ingrate?"

"Dan..."

"Dan? Just Dan?"

"Well, it's Dan for Daniel... um... mister...?" Daniel's cheeks must have reinvigorated for a second because his face went red as death at the fact that he just called a kid his age, perhaps younger, "mister."

He didn't think much of it as it left his mouth. Somehow, some part of it came naturally.

Sid was silent for a bit, wide-eyed, but when Dan grasped the courage to look back, he thought he saw a tinge of pink wander in the sides of the boy's face.

"I'm Sid." said the boy, renewing the conversation. "We'll keep it at that. You can call me boss."

"Boss..." whispered Dan. It was similarly awkward to "mister," but there was something different and comforting about the word. He said it just once but he whispered it in his mind once, then over and over again, perhaps practicing for the unknowable times to come.

"Here's the deal. I'm strong, so you won't be able to do anything to me." Sid said, jerking his thumb selfward. Dan nodded. His body certainly agreed with that. "You're weak, so you're best off listening to me."

And so Dan followed Sid. They took these first steps together and would see, feel, think, and lose the same things. Almost, just almost, Dan lost Sid amongst that magnitude of things. He clutched Sid's smaller-than-ever frame delicately, but firmly as if he was holding something precious and fleeting.

Dan laughed because the words didn't come; the tears made their way first. He jumbled his words together and what came out was: "Boss... you're a... girl...?"

Sid looked out from her frantic locks, still encumbered with the heavy scent of incineration, eyes half-working to gather the scene around her.

She could see her battle-worn figure, the place from where the bandages by her arm had burnt away with the explosion and unfastened her lifelong disguise. More so than that, the cool air she had fixed for her facade for so, so long had now finally passed.

Her lips whispered something up to Dan, who bent his large frame down so as to get a better listen.

"You bastard..." whispered Sid once he was close enough, "I'm gonna beat the shit outta you."

At that moment, a weightless fist met the side of Dan's face.

"Bos—" began Dan, but he was cut short by the weak but indubitably sharp thumb of Sid pressing into his left eye.

As Dan fell back screaming, Sid tumbled out of his grasp and back onto the steaming ground in unconsciousness, wearing the faintest of smiles on her face.