Tommyinnit Oneshots

Refuse to Fall

A young boy attempts to escape the burning building. He pushes the sleeve of his shirt to his mouth, keeping his breaths slow and shallow to prevent the smoke from contaminating his lungs. His running is lopsided, his body jerking left and right instead of graceful bipedal movement. He dodges to the side as a piece of the ceiling crashes down. He stumbles forward, tripping over his feet to land across the ash-covered ground. He rolls a few meters before his body slams into a wall. A cough racks through his entire body, and he fails to notice the final chunk of the roof hurtling down, bathed in flames. The hairs on the back of his neck raise. With this command, his body hurtles into motion, powered by instinct instead of reason. Two golden limbs shoot out of his back that resemble spider legs made out of glittering metal. The legs cross over one another to form an 'x' right above his head, and the piece of the roof breaks apart when it hits the center of the shape. The pieces fall harmlessly around the boy.

With a breath back in his lungs, the boy stumbles to his feet once again. He wipes the sweat off his brow as he hurdles forward once more. The spider legs retract back into his back, returning to the yellowish glitter-ink tattoo that forms on his skin where his spider legs were once. There were a total of eight of these tattoos, but the boy never used more than two at a time. He doesn't dare use them now even if they would make travel easier. He would rather scorch his skin vaulting over the fallen pieces of the roof than use his powers.

The boy finally finds what he's looking for. The natural gleam of sunlight through broken glass reaches his eyes from a door that was falling off its hinges. The boy ran towards the door, ducking and jumping to avoid fallen debris in his path. He feels a sharp pain in his leg when he lands from one jump, but he refuses to slow down or stop altogether to check to see how horrible the wound is. It won't matter how injured he is if he doesn't get out that very second. Staying in that building any longer would be suicide for many reasons. The fire wouldn't be the biggest of his worries... no, it was the people that had set the fire that he was most terrified of.

The boy slams his shoulder into the door. It takes a lot of pressure to force the door to fall the opposing way towards the ground outside, but the boy doesn't stop until he manages to do just that. He falls onto the grass, hacking up the smoke that was stuck in his lungs. When he is done, he pushes off his knees to take in huge breaths that were meant to alleviate the pain, but only served to make his lungs ache sharply. The boy rubs his heart for a few seconds. When the pain temporarily goes away, the boy starts running again.

The fire wasn't contained in that one building. All the neighboring buildings had been set ablaze as well. He could hear screams from within these buildings, but he doesn't have time to stop for any of them. For all he knows, it isn't the other captives that are screaming but the scientists or extremists who found a predator that has been sedated for far too long. No, he couldn't help anyone nor could he put up a good fight. All he could do was run. He would run until his legs gave out or someone shot him on sight. He wouldn't stop because it was death if he did.

The boy keeps racing along the grass that surrounds the paved paths. He can see the huge gate at the end of the road large enough for a few vehicles. If he can make it through the gate, he'll be home free. He would be able to hide in the forest, and he could stay that way until the humans believed they had eliminated everyone or no longer cared about where he was. He could survive in the wild. At least, he would survive a lot longer out there than he would within these walls.

The boy ignores the sounds of gunshots behind him. He hopes that whoever is holding the guns won't see him. He is so close to the gates that he can almost smell the forest. He can make it... he knows that he can. And he does. He slides past the grand walls that have kept the building that held his cage hidden from view for all his life. He was on the other side, and freedom tasted as sweet as he always imagined it would. He was free to live and breathe and think, all for himself without anyone interfering or commanding him to do otherwise. He was no longer an experiment to be tested and understood. He didn't want the same revenge as the others. They wanted to slaughter the scientists that had held them captive and the extremists that would never accept them. The boy decided that his greatest requital would be to live a life that was all his own despite what was fated for him.