RELAY || Virtual Reality AU

1

Toshinori heard the explosion before he saw it, which just went to prove that no matter how good the programming of the Interface was, it would never quite feel like the real world.

Of course, there were other factors contributing to that as well—not least among them the fact that here, in digital form, he had the strength to change weather systems with a single mighty SMASH . It was something which came in handy for putting out fires, that was for sure.

His body was fast too, faster than it could ever be in the drab, narrow tunnels of the real world. Another highly useful feature of his digital existence, because while the world around him was undeniably artificial, it could still cause very real trauma. And ahead of him, trapped by the effects of the unfolding disaster, were equally real people who needed saving before they met with exactly that fate.

Despite the danger to his digital form—fundamental laws of physics aside, the programmers of old had been pretty thorough when ensuring that people felt pain and injury within the Interface—it wasn't hard to conjure up his signature smile as he rushed to the scene of the crime. People were still inside the crumbling buildings in the vicinity of the explosion, unable to log out all the while their hearts raced with adrenaline, fear, or pain. They needed rescuing. They needed a Hero.

He was all that and more...for a little while longer, at least. Time to put himself to use.

*

Blinking past the space was almost too easy: a rush in each and every sense of the word. He was going to miss it. He already did miss it, each time he logged out to reality and had to relinquish a body capable of speeding halfway across a town in time to catch a skyscraper before it fell.

If he were brutally honest with himself, he was also going to miss the awed cheers which that sort of thing tended to rouse from the watching masses, and the wave of subtle gestures as they all triggered their screen capture commands. It was gratifying, no doubts there, even if it wasn't the reason he'd become a Hero all those years ago.

The building above him pressed down hard. He shouldn't have been able to feel it, of course; the strength lent to him by his Exploit should have rendered the towering structure about as troublesome as a stack of building blocks. In years past, his only worry would have been the balancing act required to keep it steady while the screaming inhabitants evacuated. Now and then the weight did vanish entirely, too—although that only made the returning burden and the burn of the intermittent exertion worse.

But he was a Hero, and everyone was watching, so Toshinori fixed his smile in place and ignored the intermittent screaming signals his brain received, despite that they were telling him his everything was about to rupture. It wasn't true. He was perfectly safe. His Exploit had it under control. The towering structure above him was well within the limits of his strength and all he had to do was hold still while the civilians inside fled to a safe range. If they were still inside when it came down, the fact that technically their bodies were safe would mean very little. The mind could be—was —a very fragile thing.

*

He escaped the interviews early when the day was saved, leaping across the city to a quiet spot where he could catch his breath. The after-effects of his exertion lingered in false positive signals which fired throughout his body. It was a difficult feeling to describe, and the closest he'd come was in likening it to pins and needles—multiplied a hundredfold in the first hour or so after over-exerting himself. He'd taken on too much work for one day, and now he was paying the price.

This far away from the chaos of the city, the only sounds were birdsong and the wind in the leaves of the trees. It was a favourite retreat of his; secluded and peaceful and entirely unlike the places normally associated with the persona he had created for his work. As All Might, he took up far too much space. Loud and confident and exactly the kind of person he'd always dreamed of being when he'd been handed the power to change the world.

The bushes rustled to his left and a small creature of some sort—a squirrel, probably—poked its head out. Toshinori sighed. He wondered if they still existed in the real world, far above and a world away. He'd promised to make time to visit, when he was younger. He'd promised a lot of things in fact.

And he'd kept most of those promises, too. By all accounts he'd done a sterling job, ridding the Interface of countless numbers of hackers and griefers—like the idiot who had thought it would be a good idea to blow up user housing "for a laugh". In the distance, the skyline was already flickering as the district was rolled back to pre-attack status. Another disaster successfully averted. The general public could go about their lives in peace once more, safe in the knowledge that the culprit had been detained by one of the other heroes at the scene, and immediately given a two-month ban as it was a first offence.

A moment's thought brought up Toshinori's HUD. He clasped his hands together, reaching for the real—and therefore currently invisible—switches which would toggle the keyboard controls on.

He'd prefer not to have to log out until the end of the day. Reorientation was a time-consuming process, made doubly hard by his current predicament. Still, much as he usually tried to ignore the toll it was taking, when he saw his vitals pop up alongside the regular Interface statistics, he had to wince. There was no escaping the reality in front of him.

The graph showing his heart rate over the past hour stuttered up and down wildly. The sensors tracing his brain activity displayed similar chaos, spelt out in bald charts. Overlaid against the general population's averages—even against the averages taken from Heroes while working—his peaks and troughs were wildly out of control. The advisory in the corner of the screen had popped up, suggesting that he immediately disengage from the Interface and seek medical attention.

He wasn't about to do that, of course. The warnings were there to warn users who might have undiagnosed medical concerns requiring immediate intervention. Toshinori didn't have that problem. He had a far worse one: he knew exactly what was going on.

The virus was taking its toll.