RELAY || Virtual Reality AU

5

By the time a light appeared in the distance, Toshinori had slumped down at the side of the tunnel with his back against the wall, knees drawn up and arms draped across them. The lantern sat a few centimetres in front of him, illuminating a small circle of concrete around which it rapidly faded off into total darkness. He'd ruined his night vision staring at it, most likely.

That was probably why he heard the approach before he saw anything of it: a faint squeaking which grew and reverberated along the tunnel until it was hard to tell what direction it was coming from at all. It wasn't until it drew closer still that he was able to tell what sort of noise it had started out as, and by then the light was visible even to his night-blind eyes.

Now there's a detail they'd never be able to programme.

It was a rather absurd thought, perhaps, but something to hold onto. He might be a shadow of what he had for years regarded as his "true" self in the real world, but there were still some positive experiences to look forward to when it was all over. He planned to make one of them a thorough examination of all the little things his senses had missed out on through years of being supplemented by virtual equivalents.

He got to his feet, partially stifling a groan as he stretched out his stiff and aching limbs. At least the wait—while cold and uncomfortable—had given him a chance to properly catch his breath.

After all, just because he wasn't a hero out here in the real world, that didn't mean he had no dignity at all.

"Lights are out at the stop too," the boy said as he pulled up, panting.

He was stood on a manual cart for track maintenance, with a lantern resting on the base. The contraption was small—there was barely enough space to stand on either side of a central crank which propelled it—but the boy seemed comfortable enough, leaning across the handlebars he had been pumping up and down to get the thing to move as he spoke.

"I checked, and they're still on in the corridors beyond that," he went on, as Toshinori picked up the boy's own lantern and held it out wordlessly. He accepted it with a nod of thanks, and continued: "It happens like that sometimes. The tram network pulls more power from the grid so it's on a separate circuit-breaker. And back when there were more people around, this line used to be pretty busy so there's still a lot of maintenance gear even though the repair crews hardly ever show up to use it. If you're heading back later I can help you get there, because they won't be along to fix the outage until tomorrow, most likely. I've borrowed these carts before—the crews all know me, so it won't be any trouble."

Toshinori stared at him for a long moment, taken aback despite the fact that realistically, none of what the boy said was all that outrageous. He'd heard people mentioning power cuts in the real world. He'd even been briefed on protocol if something like that were to happen to a population centre while they were logged in—or, heavens forbid, to himself. He'd never thought past the effect on the Interface though, or stopped to consider the practical steps people would need to take if an outage affected trams or other services.

It had been a long time since he'd really thought about the infrastructure of the real world at all, and here was this boy, juggling what could have been a minor nightmare an with efficiency and confidence which many adults lacked. He was fit, too, to be able to work his way along the tramline using the manual crank of the handcar.

It wouldn't have surprised Toshinori to hear that the boy was in the Hero programme based on his appearance. The course tended to throw out the most atheletic teens, and it would have gone a long way towards explaining his surety with the situation. Familiar with disaster and yet still young enough that he hadn't lost his dedication to the would-be mandatory fitness requirements for all Heroes.

Still, Heroism was the last topic Toshinori wanted to bring up at that moment. Not when he was just a shadow of his former self; the world's greatest hero being rescued from the dark and the silence on a creaky handcar which rattled along the tramline, lanterns illuminating nothing but the monotonous walls of the tunnel and their occasional markers by workmen of years gone by. Some of the graffiti probably predated his entire life. Almost certainly it would be older than the boy sat opposite him, pumping the handle to get them to the station with a steady rhythm, despite the sweat just visible around his temples in the gloom.

They didn't speak. Toshinori had no idea what to say—he'd never been all that good at holding conversations with young people at the best of times—and the boy looked as though he were using every bit of strength he had left to keep the pace up as they rattled along.

"Be...there soon..." he panted eventually. "Just...a little...further... ah! "

With the last syllable, Toshinori realised that a faint glow which had been just visible as an off-centre halo behind the boy's head wasn't a hallucination brought on by prolonged darkness at all. The small circle of world illuminated by the lantern had come in range of the station at last, and off to the left of the tunnel was an opening towards the main street, with the welcoming glow of overhead lighting at last.

"Made it!" the boy cried, and sank down onto the bench on his side of the handcar with a sigh, letting his arms drop to either side of him.

Toshinori waited a moment longer for him to move, before giving up on that plan altogether. It was obvious that the boy was exhausted and going nowhere any time soon.

"Young man-" he began, but the boy waved him off.

"It's alright, just a little worn out," he said, smiling tiredly. It was a rather eerie sight in the lantern light. "Haven't got caught halfway like that in a while."

Toshinori cleared his throat. "Well, I'm glad it's nothing more serious," he said. "But I was going to say thank you, as it happens. I owe you a big debt for your help this morning. I'd have been in quite a spot had you not been there with your lantern."

The boy shook his head. "I come this way all the time," he said. "Chances are I'd have been along later if you'd caught a different tram."

Well that was telling, if nothing else. "You have...family here?" Toshinori asked, hoping that his voice didn't sound too pitying. After all, the boy had to know why he'd come, too.

The nod and glance into the middle distance was enough to convince Toshinori that he was right in any case, even though the boy said nothing.

"Well, I should be getting along," he said after a short, rather awkward silence, levering himself upright once more. "I am most grateful for your help young man. I don't know many boys your age who could have held their wits so well in the dark. May I ask your name?"

"M-my name?" the boy spluttered, looking startled.

"Well it would hardly be right for me to walk away and not know who I'm indebted to, would it?" Toshinori asked. "It would be wrong of me not to offer some sort of reward, but I came out without anything this morning. I want to credit your account at least."

"Oh that's not—" the boy said, cutting himself off as Toshinori shook his head.

"Young man, you rescued me from a very long wait in total darkness. I know full well the value of hard work and good deeds, and they deserve compensation of some sort. At least let me put a good word against your name in return for your help."

"It's...Midoriya," the boy said, mumbling slightly. "Midoriya Izuku. But really, you don't have to do anything. It's honestly nothing...I was already there, so it wasn't as though I could have left you behind."

"You'd be surprised," Toshinori found himself muttering. 

The dark did strange things to people. It wasn't often that people was confronted with the stark, suffocating reality of just how far below the open air they really lived. Both the Interface and the carefully constructed tunnels of the residential districts did a good job of perpetuating the illusion that clear blue skies were just on the far side of walls and ceilings. It was only during power cuts that there was a total absence of any light altogether, and that really rammed home the fact that the surface was several hundred metres—at least —above. 

It could have been far further, for all Toshinori remembered. Like most people, he tried not to think about it much wherever possible. Humanity might have been living underground for centuries, but they were surface creatures in their hearts, even after so long.