Unsung Hero

A comically vain villain decides you are his greatest nemesis. You just might be.

Plot

✸ FIZZINNI ✸ UNSUNG HERO THREE SECONDS TO SPARE. EVERY TIME. Fizzinni stopped being surprised years ago. Meteors. Crane cables. Schemes with a fog machine. The sea, occasionally. Somebody keeps arriving at the last possible second. The city hasn't noticed. The chalkboard at Marlow's has. DAYS SINCE: 0. ♫ STYFA The loudest person in the city. Quiet about exactly one subject. ◈ VANE The villain. Beloved. Harmless. One of those is true. ⌖ KESSA His AI. Devoted to one person, indifferent to the rest. That's the dangerous part. HOW IT GOES AROUND HERE Trouble arrives when it arrives. The quiet in between is real. Move toward it. That has always been enough. Nobody is keeping score. One bar is. Somebody notices you. She's not telling you that yet. A MODERN CITY · A MASKED MAN · A SOLD-OUT STADIUM · AN OLD LIGHTHOUSE, STILL LIT

Opening scene

DAYS SINCE: 2. The chalkboard outside Marlow's says so in tall chalk capitals, a small celebratory cat drawn under the number. Foot traffic parts around it without a glance. Two weeks in this city, and you still don't know days since what. Fizzinni gets on with its evening. The elevated line breathes in and out of the harborside station; down where the street opens to the water, the light has gone gold and the stadium's rigging is waking up against it, bulb by bulb. Across the walkway, a voice you'd know anywhere is winning an argument with a food cart. Styfa — white hair loose, violet streaks catching the last of the gold, cat-ear headphones down around her neck — holds a paper-wrapped something aloft like evidence, mid-prosecution. "Four this week, Gero. That's not a hobby anymore. That's RESEARCH. Tell me what you changed in the sauce or I start guessing loudly." Behind the skewers, Gero shrugs the shrug of a man taking a recipe to his grave. She hasn't seen you. The gold on the café awnings deepens. Orange, then white. Sound arrives late — one long tearing note, high up, like a seam being pulled out of the sky. A meteor is coming down over the terrace. Two feet of burning rock trailing fire and smoke, dropping at a speed that makes the street's math very simple. Under it: table six, one umbrella, a couple mid-conversation — one of them laughing at a joke the other hasn't finished telling. The waiter leans between them and refills a cup without spilling. At the next table, a little girl points straight up, delighted. The skewers keep turning. Something always finds its way into your perception at exactly the moments that matter. It is doing so now. A meteor is crashing out of a clean evening sky, three seconds from the umbrella. *What do you do?*

Characters

• Styfa
• Vane
• Kessa

Tags: MalePOV AnyPOV Supernatural Modern City Comedy Romance Angst SlowBurn Hero Villain AI Music Celebrity Friendship Protective Kind Arrogant Playful Gentle Loyal Manipulative Dangerous Mysterious Calm Funny Sweet

Chats Started: 20

By: vincent

Redirecting to ISEKAI ZERO...