Invincible: The Lawbreaker

The first time I truly broke the world, I was eight years old.

I had been running home from school, my backpack bouncing against my back, my breath coming in quick, sharp bursts. The streets were still damp from the morning rain, and I could hear the distant hum of traffic, the chatter of pedestrians, the city's endless noise filling the air.

Then I tripped.

My foot caught on a loose brick in the sidewalk, and my body lurched forward. Instinct took over—I braced for the impact, for the rough scrape of pavement against my skin.

But it never came.

Instead, I felt nothing.

I opened my eyes, heart pounding. The ground beneath me was… wrong. It wasn't wet. It wasn't rough. It wasn't anything.

I had erased friction.

I slid forward, the momentum of my fall carrying me like I was on ice—except there was no resistance, no slowing down. My body skidded over the pavement, faster and faster, the world blurring past me. I tried to stop, to grab onto something, but my hands slipped uselessly against the surface.

Panic set in. I was accelerating.

The street ahead was a blur. People turned in confusion as I shot past, a human projectile on a collision course with a busy intersection. Cars roared through, their tires splashing through puddles, their drivers unaware of the kid about to skid straight into their path.

I barely had time to think.

Stop.

The word wasn't spoken. It wasn't even a conscious decision. But something in me responded, an instinctive pulse of control.

Friction returned.

I hit the ground hard. The sudden force sent me tumbling, the impact rattling through my bones. Pain bloomed across my arms and legs, my palms scraping against the rough pavement. But I had stopped.

I lay there, gasping, my body shaking. Around me, people murmured, a few asking if I was okay. I ignored them. My mind was somewhere else, replaying what had just happened.

I didn't slip. I didn't fall.

I made the ground stop working.

That was the day I realized I wasn't just different. I wasn't just stronger or faster.

I could break the rules of the world itself.

I went to tell my father.

He barely glanced up from his work, eyes fixed on the glowing screen of his laptop. His fingers flew across the keyboard, his mind light-years away from me.

"Dad…" I started hesitantly, holding up the glass. He didn't respond. I stepped closer, setting it down with a small clink on his desk. "Dad, I—"

"Not now, Kaito." His voice was cold and flat. He didn't even look at me. "Go to bed. You have school tomorrow."

I didn't go to bed right away.

I sat in the dark, staring at my hands. They looked the same as always—small, pale, ordinary. But I knew better now.

I had made the ground stop working.

That wasn't normal. That wasn't something people could just do.

I flexed my fingers, then clenched them into fists. A part of me wanted to believe it was just my imagination, a trick of adrenaline and fear. But deep down, I knew it was real.

And I had to be sure.

I swung my legs off the bed and stood up, moving slowly, cautiously. The wooden floor was cool beneath my bare feet. I focused.

Friction. Gone.

I lifted one foot and pushed off—gently at first, just enough to see what would happen.

The world responded instantly.

My foot slid forward without resistance, my body following. And soon, I felt how it was to kiss the floor one more time. "OUCH!" I grunted as I slowly got up. 

Now, at that time, for my age, I was quite the genius. I had a problem rationalizing everything. This naturally led to me trying to grasp the full extent of this power.

I spent the next few minutes pacing—well, sliding—around my room, trying to make sense of what just happened.

The pain in my ribs from that last fall reminded me that my power wasn't just some weird fluke. It was real.

I could erase friction. And soon after, I realized that it was... not only friction. It was every single law that ever existed in this universe.

Friction was just the beginning.

That night, as I lay awake in bed, my mind raced. If I could erase friction—something so fundamental, so constant—then what else could I break?

Laws weren't just rules made by people. They were the invisible forces that made the universe work. Gravity. Motion. Energy. What if none of them truly applied to me?

I needed to test it.

Carefully, I sat up, moving quietly so my father wouldn't hear. The room was dim, shadows stretching across the floor. I stared at the glass of water I had left on my desk, the way the liquid inside shifted ever so slightly.

I reached for it.

Buoyancy, I thought. Gone.

The change was instant. The water inside the glass sank—hard. Not a single ripple, not a slow shift, but a sharp, unnatural drop as if it had suddenly gained weight. The surface flattened, the liquid pressing against the bottom of the glass like it no longer knew how to float.

My breath caught in my throat.

I let go of the effect. The water sloshed violently, confused by reality reasserting itself.

I swallowed hard.

It worked.

I tried again, this time holding my pencil in my palm. I focused, willing friction away just on that tiny object. The moment I tilted my hand, it slid off, hitting the floor and rolling endlessly. It only stopped when it smacked into my bookshelf.

My heart pounded.

I could change things. I wasn't just breaking rules—I was rewriting them.

A new thought struck me. Something more dangerous.

I looked at my other hand, at the way my fingers curled and flexed under my control.

What if I turned it on myself?

I hesitated. The idea was terrifying. Stupid. But if I was right—if my power really worked on anything—then I could push it further.

I stood up. Took a breath.

Gravity.

I cut it off.

The floor vanished from beneath me.

No, that wasn't right. It was still there, but my body no longer obeyed its pull. My stomach flipped as I rose upward, floating above the wooden boards of my bedroom.

I. Was. Weightless.

A nervous laugh bubbled up in my throat.

I had done it.

I was flying.

But the joy didn't last.

Because the second I panicked, the second I wanted to come down—

Gravity returned. Ouch, this was the third time that I had kissed the floor that day.

The next few weeks became an obsession.

I tested my powers in secret, always careful to do it alone. I wouldn't want father to know about.

Not because I feared punishment. No, he barely paid attention to me as it was. I doubted he'd care, even if I told him I could break the world with a thought. But something in me knew—this wasn't for him to know. Not yet.

So, I kept it to myself.

For the next few weeks, my life became a careful balancing act. At school, I was just Kaito Arakawa—the quiet kid, the one who barely spoke unless spoken to. But in the moments between, when no one was watching, I experimented.

I learned how to cancel air resistance in short bursts, watching leaves tumble unnaturally in the wind. I made marbles roll across the floor without slowing down, forcing my classmates to blame the weirdly slanted floors.

I erased momentum just as a classmate tossed a paper ball toward the trash can, making it drop midair as if it had suddenly forgotten how to move.

Small things. Subtle things. Enough to understand the rules I was breaking.

But I wanted more.

And, as with all obsessions, I eventually went too far.

It was a Saturday afternoon. I was in the backyard, hidden behind the tall fence that separated our house from the neighbors. The air smelled like damp grass, the sun casting long shadows across the ground.

I was staring at a rock in my hand.

Small. Round. Ordinary.

I was about to make it stop being ordinary.

I focused.

Durability. Gone.

The moment I clenched my fingers, the rock crumbled. Not cracked, not broke—crumbled—as if it had been made of dust all along. Tiny fragments spilled between my fingers, scattering to the ground like dead embers.

I inhaled sharply.

This was different.

Friction? Momentum? Gravity? Those were things I could feel. But durability? That was a law I had never even considered before.

I had turned a solid object into nothing.

I felt the rush of discovery coil in my gut like fire.

What else could I do?

What about heat? Could I stop something from ever getting warm? Or vibration? Could I erase sound?

The questions burned in my mind, each more dangerous than the last.

And then I heard it.

A voice.

"Kaito."

I spun around so fast I nearly tripped.

Father.

He stood at the back door, his sharp eyes watching me, unreadable as always. He wasn't supposed to be home this early.

My heart pounded. Had he seen? Had he noticed?

He didn't say anything at first. Just stared. Then—

"Come inside."

I swallowed hard. Did he know?

I dusted my hands off, trying to act normal, and followed him inside. The air in the house was cold, sterile. His office door was open. He walked in first, not even checking if I followed.

I hesitated for a moment before stepping in after him.

The door shut behind me.

"Sit."

I did.

For a moment, silence.

Then—

"You've been acting strangely."

A statement. Not a question.

I kept my face blank. "I don't know what you mean."

Father's gaze flickered to my hands. "You're hiding something."

I forced myself to stay still. If he knew, he would've said it. He wouldn't be guessing.

"I—" I started, trying to find the right words.

Then I saw it.

On his desk.

A file.

Thick. Labeled. And on the top, in bold letters—

PROJECT: LAWBREAKER.

Huh?