Odd Path

Knock at the door

John smiled as he gazed upon his riches lying on his table at his home. He laughed as he managed to touch a piece of gold before it had fallen on the floor preventing it from making noise. Although he was technically wealthy, you wouldn't tell it by looking at him. Though he wore lots of cloth and well-made clothing, it usually looked run down and dirty. This was obviously on purpose. He would have better luck surviving out in the Wild West being barefoot and naked in the desert than he would with shiny, clean belt buckles and soft, vibrant clothes. It would be like putting his gun to his head at that point. Wearing nice clothes and expensive accessories was a one-way ticket to Bountyville. He would have any lowly bounty hunter on his tail the moment he walked out of his door. To combat this, he decided to live humbly in his three-room wooden shack, which consisted of a Living room that was also a kitchen, his bedroom, and a bathroom, all of which were not large enough to look even remotely comfortable to live in. However, being a bandit does come with some perks. One main one is knowing how to hide wealth. Instead of having a large manor and basking in the morning sun every day while everyone else judged harshly, he instead opted for a more subtle approach. John had decided to build himself a large basement area where he could hide whatever he wanted, even himself, and no one would be any the wiser. As he began to collect the large amounts of gold and money on the table to hide out in his basement, he stopped in his tracks and turned around slowly when he heard three solid knocks at his door.

"The hell? Why would someone be knocking at my door at 3:am?" He wondered to himself.

He slowly walked to his door and just before he could get a good grip on the handle, he felt a strong breeze pass from behind him as he noticed the familiar cold ring-like feel of the muzzle of a revolver being pressed on his forehead. The door had opened way quicker than he was prepared for. John froze and looked up at the man holding a gun to his head. He was muscular yet lean and had a short brown beard. His hat was milky brown. He wore a large red scarf around his neck. His chest had a large clip of revolver bullets wrapped around it. His vest was a deep brown and his long sleeve reminded him of a wedding dress, it was so white.

"Where's the money, John?" The man spoke.

"How do you know my name?" John asked.

The man then removed the muzzle from his forehead and bashed him in the cheek with the grip of the revolver. John fell onto the hardwood floor, dazed. He looked up to the man looking around his house, searching for his hard-earned money. The man immediately began stuffing the remaining gold and dollar bills into John's bag. Within a few seconds, he had stashed all the money that was on the table, into the sack. Just before the man left, he looked at the slightly injured John and asked,

"Before I kill you, is there any more stolen money I should know about?"

"N-no! There's none at all! Matter of fact that was all I've had for a while! So, what are you a "bandit bandit?" You only steal from bandits or is this like a one-time deal?" John said in a desperate tone. He wasn't normally this nervous, but something about this guy freaked him out more than usual.

The man pulled out his revolver and pointed it at John's head.

"I'm no bandit." The man said with the coldest look John had ever seen.

Just as the man pulled back the hammer on his revolver to take the shot, they both looked over to the open basement hatch as a very unique sound resonated from it. It was a loud crash that only a heavy pointed rock could make. A golden rock perhaps?

"Congrats. You almost lied to me." The man said as he coldly looked at the hatch. John then immediately rotated his body so that his right side was touching the floor and used his Achilles heel to sweep the man's legs from under him. The man jumped over John's leg and shot him in the same leg. John yelled loudly in pain. He held his bleeding calf muscle as it sent waves and waves of excruciating pain signals into his brain.

"That won't work on me. My Nor trumps all others in close quarters combat." The man explained.

John's eyes widened as he realized that this man was a Nor user as well. John tried to get up but was kicked down by the terrifying killer standing above him. John then reached into his pocket and pulled out a particular-looking two-pronged fork. The man, although confused, kept his aim steady on John's head. John then threw the fork at the robber as hard as he could. The man dodged to the right before he had even thrown the fork. It then hit the roof hard enough to put a small dent in the hardwood, however, no sound emerged from either object.

"You son of a bitch. You can predict what I'm gonna do, can't you?" John asked as he smugly grinned while he bled on the floor.

The man's face changed from its normal, calm, cool, and collected self, into a slight smirk.

"How'd you know? For all you know, I'm just a really good guesser." The man mocked
As the man spoke, he could feel get a tad bit drowsy.

"I didn't know, but I do now. I did have my suspicions though. You knew when to open the door so that my hand couldn't reach my revolver faster than you could pull the trigger. You knew I was going to sweep your leg, and you knew I was going to throw the tuning fork at you."

The man raised his eyebrow. His drowsiness seemed to be getting worse and worse.

"A tuning fork? The...hell is that?" He asked.

John grinned once more and began to speak.

"A tuning fork is a device used to see whether an object is tuned to the correct key. If the tuning fork is struck and the object vibrates that means it's been tuned correctly. However, my tuning fork is a bit different. See, mine was specially made to make the deepest sound it could make and be as loud as it could be. Why you may ask? Well...you're not the only one with a Nor ability here."

The man's face then became much more bewildered as he raised his pistol once more and pointed it at his head. John began calmly standing up.

"Don't...Get...up!" The man drowsily said.

"Or what? You'll shoot me?" John asked.

A deafening bang bounced around the shack as the man pulled the trigger and shot. The bullet then ricocheted off the wooden wall and hit a window, smashing it pieces.
John chuckled. The man had completely missed his almost point-blank shot due to his drowsiness. He then collapsed onto the floor and fell asleep.

"I had used the tuning fork to send out very deep, unhearable sound waves called "delta waves" which have been proven to help with sleep. My ability was able to redirect and concentrate the sound into your brain, effectively multiplying the effect and causing you to go to sleep on the spot." He spoke at the unconscious body on the floor.

John then limped over to where he threw the tuning fork and picked it back up. He then banged it against the wall and redirected and focused the sound waves that came out of it into the bullet hole in his leg after carefully taking the bullet out. He could see the skin surrounding the bullet hole begin to cover it up quickly.

"Ultrasound waves can speed up the healing process by 1/3 of the amount of time it normally would take in some cases. Using that knowledge, most surface-level injuries should be able to be healed up by my Nor ability within a few seconds at most."

After completely healing his wound, John then picked up the bag of money and started to heave it down to the basement. He almost had it inside the hatch when it suddenly became stuck on something.