Light That Fire and Watch It Burn

Valkyrie.

It was a name that had once flown high amongst the crowd. It was the name of a world renowned boxer who could’ve been champion. But it was soon disgraced and forgotten within weeks. She became known as the one who leaped close to the stars but like all the others, failed to soar. She became yet another—

Fallen Icarus.

Valkyrie. She was supposed to have been one of the greatest boxers of her time, but the origins of her story were never a boxer to begin with. She was a thief by trade, stealing whatever she could to get by. And through that, she continued living each day worrying about putting food on the table and finding a place to sleep. She didn’t have time for superfluous thoughts.

Not even for dreams…

Eventually, she amassed a significant amount of wealth for a lowly thief. She didn’t know what to do with it, so she decided to buy something that would provide some quality of life changes to her thieving career. And when she dug around the black market for something unique, she landed on a fence who had long since been spreading word that he had a one-of-a-kind pair of cybernetic ocular enhancements stolen by a legendary, unnamed thief.

It was called Prototype X-Razen and was yet to be released to the public. The augment supposedly had superhuman levels of enhanced vision, improved reaction time, and the unique ability to see through objects with its x-ray vision. As well as having a number of other optical features, the tech was supposedly decades better than all other ocular enhancements currently on the marketplace.

With the x-ray feature alone, no lock or wall would be impenetrable. This, Valkyrie knew. She could theoretically see through the mechanisms behind any type of security. She’d be unstoppable. And as she’d already upgraded her legs, nobody would be able to catch her. However, the problem lied not in the ware itself but rather in the cost and the credibility of the fence. He was questionable at best, and the item was priced at a whopping two million dollars—one million for each eye.

Any normal person would’ve questioned the validity of these eyes, but one day, she said, “Ah, to hell with it,” and bought the enhancements. And after a quick surgery, it was successfully installed. The enhancements worked.

The first few weeks were fantastic. Her eyes felt better than ever, and it seemed like all the features were working phenomenally. However, she soon realized that the promised x-ray features weren’t as viable in conventional thieving scenarios as she had initially believed.

The more she utilized them, the harder she had to strain her eyes. It eventually became a liability. The feature was useless unless used in split second intervals, so if they were used for longer, it would temporarily blind her. And that temporary blindness was long enough to be considered a significant inconvenience.

In most work cases, she needed the x-ray features to be consistently activated for her to unlock any sort of high-quality security lock. If her eyes turned off midway during an important heist, she’d be completely lost and vulnerable for lack of better words. The entire process was more tedious than before, so it was simply better not to rely on those features at all. But that also meant that she had wasted all that hard-earned savings on absolutely nothing. 

It was frustrating. She was back to square one, and she’d have to work like usual. Exactly the way she did before she’d gotten her ocular upgrades. Nothing had gotten easier for her. Especially now, since she was more worried than ever trying to satiate her starving stomach. But as if all of this wasn’t bad enough, her entire life was flipped upside-down once more when she was cornered one night by a group of mercenaries.

They were out for blood. Her blood.

She didn’t know what she’d done to piss somebody off, but now she had to fight for her life. And when the first punch came flying towards her face, her x-ray vision instinctively activated. For a split second, she could see the muscles and ligaments pulsating through the man’s arm. She could see where the bones connected to his elbow. Where his arm swiveled at the shoulders. She could see everything. It was like time had suddenly slowed. And from the movement of the muscles, she could already predict the trajectory of the swing—

She dodged to the left; the hand barely grazed her chin. Another swing from a woman came from the right, but she swiftly ducked under. The third member—with an open hole in his cheek—lurched his arm upwards; she could see the barrel of a gun slowly rising with his hand. He had his fingers on the trigger, ready to pull when it was aimed at her head… But with nimble steps, Valkyrie shot forward, slammed the man down, and ran. And before she knew it, she was gone like the wind. Too far for them to reach.

As she was huffing and puffing in an abandoned alleyway, letting the adrenaline finally subside, she felt happy. Almost as if she had experienced something fun for the first time in her life. And after a few more days of thieving around, she wanted to feel that again. That intense adrenaline rush, that thrill you feel before death. She wanted to feel that addicting feeling of her heart pumping through her chest.

She wanted to fight. Badly.