MHA Paragon

I only had a moment to register the impending catastrophe before the massive hand closed around the train car, ripping it off the tracks. 

People screamed as the train car warped like a tin can underneath the giant's fingers, shattering all the windows and sending glass flying.

But being crushed to death was the least of anyone's concerns as the hand lifting them into the air cocked back before throwing the cart like a football. 

 My feet left the floor as the train car spiraled through the air, and everything became weightless. Terrified screams ripped through the air, along with the howling wind, as people were thrown from their seats and off their feet. But only for a moment. 

With a loud crash, the train car hit the side of a building with enough force to nearly tear it in half. But instead of coming to a stop, the train cart deflected off the building, spiraling even further out of control. 

Despite the chaos unfolding around me, I felt time slow down to a crawl. I looked around at the frozen expressions of fear plastered on the faces around me. They were normal people who had been going about their regular morning commute and suddenly encountered a life-altering event. I could feel their terror and fear heavy in the air like a weighted blanket. I then looked over at the massive rent torn out the side of the train from where it had collided with the building. 

Suspended in mid-air, I stared at the group of school girls violently thrown from their idle conversation, and just to the left of them, the mother, her arms outstretched towards her son, who had grabbed onto a pole for dear life, saving him from sharing his mother's fate. 

Flung from the train cart at such speeds and heights, none of them would survive. Clear as day, I could imagine the way of misery that would spread from their deaths, a son growing up without his mother, and how many parents grieving their daughter's death. How many lives would be thrown into disarray and derailed...just like mine.

At that moment, my body seized as if pure electricity was being injected into my nervous system, and a creeping burning frost spread from my spine to the rest of my extremities. A silent scream ripped free from my mouth as my body seemed to tear itself apart from the inside out. 

My heart pounded as my veins swelled, standing out against my pale white skin as they darkened, eventually shifting from a dull green to a pitch-black with an oil-like sheen. Soon, every single vein and artery in my body was visible from head to toe, covering me in grotesque black tendrils that seemed to writhe underneath my skin as blood pumped through them. 

The tendrils became conduits for the frost and electricity coursing through my body. As the sensation shifted, so did the pain, replaced by an overwhelming sense of clarity and power. My eyes widened to the size of saucer plates, revealing that even the tiny capillaries in the whites of my eyes had turned black. 

My thoughts were going a mile a minute, time still at a crawl, but I noticed everything slowly speeding up. Whatever altered state of mind I had entered wouldn't last forever, and my borrowed time quickly drew short. So, for the first time in what seemed like an eternity, I stopped wallowing in my self-pity and moved. 

Everything snapped back into motion, and the screaming resumed as the three school girls and the mother were thrown from the train, but I was already on the move. 

I threw out my right hand at a whim, and I watched as the black veins around my wrist exploded, but instead of my blood flying through the air, a dark tar-like substance erupted from my skin. Like a second limb, I could feel the substance and instantly seized control of it. The countless strands of black fluid suddenly congealed into a singular tendril that latched onto the side of the train before rapidly contracting, sending me flying through the air. With a gracefulness I didn't know I possessed, I flattened my body and spun, narrowly avoiding the jagged metal lining the hole in the wall of the train as my tendril detached, sending me flying into the air. 

My eyes bounced around like pinballs as I scanned the open sky, looking for the group of girls and the mother. I located them, but their forceful ejection had scattered them far apart, making saving them all the more challenging. But I barely stalled, crossing my arms as they exploded with even more of the black substance. 

I cast my hands out, sending two thick tendrils piercing through the air. I watched as the tendril from my right hand snagged the mother, with the end unraveling like a net that closed around her . Meanwhile, the tendril from my left hand split, forming three separate but thinner lengths, each successfully homing onto a girl. 

With a grunt, I yanked my arms back as the tendrils retracted, pulling the four people to me as we plummeted out of the sky. 

I winced as four high-pitched screams assaulted my ears in addition the air howled around us, but I didn't let it distract me. My mind raced, trying to think of a solution as quickly as the ground rushing to meet us at Mach speed. 

Gritting my teeth, I let out a roar, and like flipping a switch, my body unraveled. In an instant, I transformed from a being of flesh and bone to an amorphous blob of black fluid. But I was still conscious, and all my senses were intact. Every surface area of my new form seemed capable of relaying sensory information in an almost overwhelming stream; I could see 360 degrees, and instead of hearing from the left and right, everything came at me in waves. 

But I forced myself to focus. There was no time to filter things out, and I needed to act now. With a thought, my amorphous form took shape, spreading out to encapsulate the schoolgirls and mom in a sphere as I formed a harness around each, securing them in place. 

Meanwhile, the outside of my spherical body was changing rapidly, transitioning from a liquid into a solid that shone like obsidian or onyx at a visible rate. 

'It's not enough,' I thought, panic surging as I realized the weight of four innocent lives rested solely on my shoulders. Suddenly, years of structural design engineering and physics courses surged to the forefront of my racing mind, and with a startling revelation, I started to change. My previously smooth surface segmented, forming countless hexagonal panels locked together atop a skeleton frame made of elastic rope like strands. 

I could feel the strain on my mind as I attempted something so complex with my new body. It was like trying to run without even knowing how to crawl. But somehow, I managed, and when the transformation finished, I felt my new form resonate in my mind just before I slammed into the ground. 

I felt my body strain as the kinetic energy from the impact threatened to rip me apart, but I had chosen hexagons for a reason. Out of all geometrical shapes, hexagons were the most resistant to deformation under stress thanks to their area-to-perimeter ratio and six-fold rotational symmetry. 

So, instead of splattering against the ground, I maintained my shape, though that didn't diminish the pain. I felt the initial impact along with every skip across the course pavement, all while the girls and mother screamed inside of me.

Eventually, after what felt like an eternity, I felt myself come to a rest, and with an aching sigh, I dropped my transformation. Like ice cream, on a hot day, I melted back into liquid form, leaving the girls standing on solid ground before I reverted back to my human body. 

I only managed to stand for a moment before I collapsed onto my knees, short of breath, light-headed, and my heart pounding in my chest. My entire body ached, and I watched as my veins returned to normal and my accelerated thoughts came to a stretching halt along with the worst migraine of my life. I let out a wordless moan of agony and pain, afraid to move a singular muscle. 

"Oh my god, you saved us!" 

Somehow, I managed the strength to lift my head, and I looked up at the mother, who stared down at me with tears in her eyes. 

"No need to thank me. It's not that big of a deal," I muttered before I felt my eyes roll into the back of my head as I passed out.