Chapter 2: To Be A Hero (2/2)
Atroon feed broadcasted on it He saw both his parents strapped down to iron chairs in a dirty, grimy, bloody cell
They were beaten, bruised, and scarred, their once colorful red and blue costumes torn and broken apart He could only watch nu hiainst the Trident
Aldrich watched as an to break his parents down piece by piece Fingernails torn off, then the fingers ripped off Skin cut and burnt and ripped apart and then flayed Electric shocks, acid, poison that made pain worse, then poison that hurt -
For what seemed like an eternity, Aldrich saw his parents dismantled likeand giving voice to their suffering
That hen the feed cut off and police and heroes barged into Aldrich's house, tearing his wide-eyed, still body away fro hiht, nor did he ever cry again So deep within him had broken, and whatever had sealed those cracks up was so cold where once there had been warmth
Over the days, there was an attempted search for Aldrich's parents and the villains that had killed the worked out
Aldrich realized then that there was no such thing as justice in the world
At least, not in the sense that his parents had believed in
Justice was not some omnipresent force that calculated everyone's kar punishment in time
No, justice was not a force, it was an action, and only those that had the power to hammer it down could eance consu hih the skulls of those that deserved it But hoould he put down these villains? He needed a hero's license to try and even start to track villains without having heroes start hunting hiilante
But no hero academy would ever accept him without powers
Thankfully, luck worked for him at least once in his life
His parents bequeathed hiood sum of money to live off of for a few years and a birthday letter telling him that as insiders in the hero industry, they knew of an upcoram called the Frame Initiative that was to be instated in three years
It was basically a welfare program for people with no powers like Aldrich wherein they could apply to hero academies to train in mechanical powersuits called Frames so that when the tiet drafted to fight Variants
A individuals could even become licensed heroes
His parents had written hiement in that letter, praise that he had made it so far, and support
It hurt to hold that letter, to read it while hearing their voices in his head, but he took the pain to heart and let it fuel hiorous in its selection It chose those with both the best physical fitness and mental aptitude to take orders and make heroic decisions
Aldrich trained his body for three years, honing it to a sharp knife's edge,his s difficult for hi to put down scuht that the sacrifices of the few for the good of theAlter tried to reach into Aldrich's ure out his mental profile, Aldrich had ular' or 'broken' his head was
Needless to say, none of the top tier or even mid-tier acade in the highest percentile on every physical fitness et into an acade to take him in
A no-name, smalltime academy called Blackwater The acade it i to see past Aldrich's poor e of sixteen, Aldrich entered into a hero acade when he was little, though where before he had wanted a license to save, he noanted a license to hunt