The following is a non-profit fan-based story and the author is unaffiliated with ONE, Shueisha, or Viz Media, who own the rights to One-Punch Man. Please support the official releases.

While not intended to take place at any specific point in the One-Punch Man chronology, "Human Evil" follows the events of the anime unless otherwise noted and makes specific references to events through the end of the first season. From there, it's considered to go off on a detour and do its own thing and may meander back to later canonical events if it feels like it.

Much like bicycles, the plot may not stay on the marked paths.

^V^V^V^

:: HUMAN EVIL ::

by

Seraph of Winters Past

^V^V^V^

Chapter One

"Yes, They Really Make Buses Like That"

I was there when Mumen Rider fell.

Of course, I happen to be in a lot of places and not necessarily the ones that you'd expect. It happens when you're... well, this isn't my story. This is just mine to tell. But where does one start to tell that story? It's... it's not as easy as you'd think. Do I start with him bleeding on the pavement as the cold rain punishes his failing body? Do I go further back to the day he first realized that it was within his power to change the world and became a hero, knocking over the first domino leading to tragedy?

Let's start early on a Wednesday, not long before the fall. Let's start when the sun's not that high in the sky but it's already scorching. It started off so well, with a chilly breeze and refreshing dew on the grass. Now the mercury's at 30 degrees Celsius – or about 86, if you're in the small portion of the world that still clings to the Fahrenheit scale – and it's rising. The power grid's going to overload and thousands will be left without air conditioning, and you must know what happens when things heat up. Here's a hint: in a closed system, when you increase the heat, you also increase the pressure.

It's simple thermodynamics. It makes automobiles and locomotives function with their pistons and internal combustion, but it does unpleasant things to humans. They boil and their emotions rise unchecked until they explode. Not... not explode into meat-chunks. We're still being metaphorical here. We're talking about violence and disorder. We're talking about unrest and discontent. Heat tends to remove inhibitions, washing away discretion and rationality with sweat. Gather a bunch of those people together into one place, ready to do something rash as they lose control, and humanity breaks things.

That's why you need a metaphorical steam vent to relieve the pressure. You need something to bring things down below a simmer and quiet the discontent. You won't get that with the average hothead with a hero's certification, fighting to increase their rank and generally making things worse for everyone else in the process. And especially not with the eccentric supermen at the very top who neither know nor care about the average person.

But you'd get that with Mumen Rider.

Mumen Rider is a unique specimen in the Hero Association. Denying all opportunities to advance, preferring to stay in the lowest echelons where his meager abilities can do the most good, he does more good than many above him. Many welcome the advancement to B-class with intense relief, knowing that they no longer have to perform one act of public service a week to retain their certifications. Many in C-class struggle to meet the quota and drop out well before they can reach that point. Mumen Rider, though? If the man whose only ability is "Riding a Bicycle Really Well" goes one day without five good acts, then he's done something wrong. That's what he tells himself, anyways. It's a ludicrous standard that nobody else would even attempt after their first week on the job, and he's been doing it before the Association even formed.

Why, though? Why does he do these things? Maybe it's because if he does the little things that stop small problems, they won't grow into large ones. Maybe that's it, but it works. He's stopped so many robberies with a kind word, halted so many muggings by offering snacks and spare change, talked down so many jumpers from bridges, and saved so many lives from traffic accidents that he's become the biggest fish in a small pond, the pinnacle of C-class, and today's no different from any other.

"One for you," he says as the ice cream truck pulls away, handing an ice pop to an eleven-year-old boy who'd been ready to ride a bicycle through a grocery store window until Mumen Rider rolled up two minutes ago. He moves on to the second of four – the one with the winged helmet, who'd set up the ramp for the jump – and says, "And one for you, one for you, one for you..."

Then he stops, taking a moment to look at the treat in hand. It's styled after a human face with vanilla-white skin and feathered blueberry hair. He finally puts two and two together, looks at the packaging for the first time, and smirks. He asked the driver for five ice pops and didn't specify what kind, so of course he handed out the official Hero Association Brand Sweet Snow on a Stick, now available in all of your most recognizable and colorful superhero personalities. What better way is there to appreciate your favorite than to eat his or her face off of a stick? Amai Mask, whose visage Mumen Rider's currently staring at, must've milked the promotion for all that it was worth.

"Hey," Mumen Rider says, catching the first child's attention. He's about to shove the green-helmeted visage of a man with goggles down his gullet and now Mumen Rider's got a vested interest in this. Gently smiling in that disarming way that only comes out around kids, he asks, "Care to trade? No offense, but I'd prefer that I didn't go down a potty mouth."

"Buuuuust!" his three friends roar and the boy in question hangs his head in feigned shame. The boy in question singles out the brainy boy with a shark helmet and tells him, "Oh shut up, Squid!"

"Manners, Otto!" barks his older sister, who's already eaten all of Terrible Tornado's limey hair. She swipes the Mumen Rider pop from him and slides the Amai Mask replacement into his sweaty hands. Much indignant chewing of a superstar's face ensues, and things are peaceful for a little while.

Mumen watches a school bus pass by. It's unlike most of the ones you know: whereas some countries literally slap a yellow coat of paint on a prison bus and call it a day, sending all sorts of subliminal messages to children, Z-City takes a more interesting approach to shipping children off to school by shaping their buses after animals. It's not a yellow brick trundling down the street towards him, but an oversized corgi complete with ears on the roof and the hood sculpted into a canine face. Its cheeks are flushed red and it even makes a barking sound when the driver honks the horn, which he does every block or two. What's really important right now's that it's somehow even more fuel-inefficient than a regular prison transport bus with all of these protrusions and molded forms, but this has the equal and dramatic effect of blasting a really strong and invigorating breeze in all directions as it passes. Mumen's taken his trademark green helmet off while he treats the children and now he lets the cool air pass through his dark hair with a quiet and thankful sigh. "When you finish up, what are all of you going to do?"

"Go back to schoooooool," they mutter.

"Very good," the Cyclist For Justice tells them. "A proper education is the key to a successful future! Truancy is more of a serious crime than you'll know and can hurt your chances advancing to a decent high school."

"Yes, Mumen Rider," the children drone.

"I missed too many classes," he goes on to say. "I went, but I kept seeing bullies, and they kept beating me up, and I kept going to the nurse's office. First day of class, there were these two upperclassmen who called themselves the Uniform Rippers, and they... um..."

They're staring at him, and not in a good way.

"Ah, hah hah haaaah," he chuckles, rubbing the back of his head. "Just enjoy your sweet snow and go back to school."

He takes a moment to scan his surroundings. He's been still for too long and he's getting anxious. Sure, he's taking care of Wednesday Incident #9 and it's not even noon, but that's no reason to slack off. He's scanning for old ladies to escort across streets, kittens to pull down from trees, children to herd back to school, dogs running off their leashes, pieces of litter strewn about, cars parked by expired meters...

It's distressingly quiet. The old ladies are sitting inside by their fans and cats and avoiding the heat. He's herded the last of the children to their proper places. Nobody's stupid enough to take a dog out for a walk with blacktop so hot that it'd scald their paws. The closest thing to litter is a missing person poster on a telephone pole. And the parking meters? People have been disturbingly punctual about those lately now that the word's gotten out that someone's actually enforcing those.

Okay, that's not entirely true. Someone spent all week dropping coins into expired meters and nobody knows who it was. Honest, guv'ner.

It's not that I want something bad to happen, he tells himself. Just... it's like mom used to say before she died. I only get nervous when nothing happens.

And for his patience, something happens.

It starts with something not quite a sound, but close to one. More of a dull susurration that moves underfoot in a sort of aimless way that doesn't seem right. The worst of it passes in an instant, but it remains on the edge of awareness for an uncomfortably long time: not enough to identify, but enough to tip him off that something's afoul. He's crisscrossed the city so many times and seen so many strange and deadly happenings that he recognizes the subconscious signs that all hell's about to break loose.

"Roll out," Mumen Rider says to the children. They stare up at him in confusion, but his eyes are hard on the distance and he's not exactly forthcoming with an explanation. "Be anywhere else and don't skip class again."

The boy with the winged helmet demands, "What do you-"

BOOM!

Mere words can't describe how loud it is! Sure, I could qualify it with decibels and describe what else happens at that volume, but that's no substitute for being at the murder of a quiet moment. Weighed against the silence proceeding it, it's utterly inconceivable that so few windows shatter and so few people are launched from their feet. You can't appreciate what it's like for the shockwave to blast the hot dust and steam into your face. You're unfamiliar with this kind of overpressure knocking the air from your lungs. The sensation of an afterwind drawing you back toward the blast's origin has to be experienced to be understood. You'll never know what it's like to have the blood vessels in your nose burst from the concussive force.

The youngest one – the one that they rag on hardest – has it worst. A missing person poster blows up against his face and blinds him right when he's trying to recover his balance. He tumbles to the ground clutching his ears in what may as well be a silent scream now that everyone's hearing has been blown to tinnitus. He never hits the concrete: Mumen Rider scoops him up and holds him on his feet until he's sure the boy's not going to keel over again. He starts to say something, realizes that it's pointless when he can't even hear himself speak, and picks out the origin of the disturbance.

It's not hard. He just has to wait for a human tide to plow into him. The impact does a better job of bowling him over than the shockwave and soon he's fighting to stand up again as a mass of kicking, stomping feet do their best to keep him down.

"Ow!" he cries unheard as someone plants a boot on his back and kicks off. "Agh! Get oOOF! Watch ouaaagh! Dang it! My knee! Urk!"

I hope the kids got out!

The pressure lets up just long-enough for him to spring to the side of the mob and find his bike and helmet fallen by the little grocery store. He snaps on his helmet and is about to mount up when he sees another group of scared and fleeing civilians running his way. He's got no way to know how many more are behind them or what shape the road's in. So, he decides to do one of those things that he's really good at: improvising.

"Justice Climb!' Mumen Rider shouts against the metallic whining in his ears, more to psych himself up than to warn anyone. He slaps his bike against his back, holding it by the toptube, and scales a fire escape ladder. He huffs and gasps, ribs sore from the beating he took on the ground, but he's an athletic beast who rides dozens of kilometers a day and he's built up the stamina to ascend five stories of external ladders and hit the roof ready to go.

"Here we go," he says as he scans his environment. A plume of smoke billows up in the distance and he's pretty sure that he's found his target. "Here we go, here we go, here we go...!"

^V^V^V^

"Oh no!" a little blond boy shouts as he dangles his sister's doll out the window. "Barbie can't take it anymore! She's gonna jump!"

"Give it back!" the girl cries, trying to force her way past him to grab the doll back. But he's almost twice her weight and he's got the literal upper hand, so he just holds her at arm's length while their parents try to call the police about the shaking.

The boy laughs. This is way too easy. "She's tried thirty jobs in the last year and she can't hold any of them down for more than a week! Life's not worth living!"

"I'm gonna tell mommy!" the girl shouts. She stamps her feet and glares daggers at her brother. "She'll take away your Playstation!"

There it is again. That susurration. That low rumble below hearing. It echoes somewhere in the inner ear and makes the floor shake so subtly and completely that you'd never notice it unless you were totally aware of your surroundings. It's building up to detonation, building up to the point where the world can't hold it. Building, building, building...

"Here it comes!" the boy says, fingers going slack. "The bitter end!"

Gravity starts to assert its influence over the doll. As though in slow motion, the hunk of plastic and polyester slips through his fingers and begins the terminal plunge. The sister tries to stop it, but it's too late! No power that she yet holds can arrest the fall.

But the air's full of power.

Supersaturated with unearthly force, it does all sorts of strange things. It crackles and murmurs. It rings with a high-frequency noise that only dogs and – for some inexplicable reason – star-nosed moles can hear. It rejects the laws of physics as we understand them and obeys new masters. Gravity no longer applies, and the little doll hangs in the air as though suspended by an invisible puppeteer. Now, the girl's young-enough to accept this without question and grab the doll out of the pregnant air, but the boy just stares slack-jawed and disbelieving of what he's seeing.

"How the flying f-"

And then the air explodes with a sound beyond description, beyond belief, beyond imagination! It bursts and ruptures, and the building leaps a whole ten centimeters from the ground. You may not think that's much but, when you're not firmly attached to anything, the heat of the moment can stretch it out a lot longer than that. The floor comes down and leaves just about everything suspended in air for the briefest of moments. For most, this isn't a problem: just a short stint as airborne specimens, and then it's back to the ground.

Unfortunately, the menacing little boy is leaning out the window when this happens...

The fall's more like thirty meters for him, which accounts for just under two and a half seconds. That's not even enough time for his sister to realize that he's gone. I'd say that his life flashes before his eyes, but that's not really how this kind of death works. Believe me, I've been there for a lot of them. Instead, what he's got is about two and a half seconds to contemplate his life choices. Your life only really flashes before your eyes when you're really dying due to brain cells... no, no, you're not here for a biology lesson, are you? Let's just say that two and a half seconds is less time than he wants, but it's more than he can bear. Faster than he can believe, too slow to accept, the ground rises to meet him.

Unbelievably, he falls short.

A strong, gloved hand snatches him by the back of his shirt. His body keeps going at over sixty kilometers an hour and he gets a nasty case of whiplash when his clothing finally arrests his momentum like a really aggressive seatbelt. His brain smacks the inside of his skull and he blacks out for a moment, awakening to stars shooting through his vision. Everything's a dull and painful roar in his throbbing ears and his skin's stabbed by a million invisible needles. His stomach churns and he doesn't know how he's alive.

"Got you!" Mumen Rider shouts as his wheels slam against the gravel floor of a rooftop "I'm so sorry...!"

The Cyclist For Justice banks hard and slices a tight turn, spraying out a shredding sheet of gravel and dropping the boy in the fulcrum without stopping. Racing for the edge, he can only yell back, "Take the stairs and stay inside until everything stops shaking! Ahhhhh-!"

And then he's across an alley and dashing off towards the still-rising plume of smoke without another word and he's gone. The boy just looks around, dazed and senseless, trying to process the fact that he's not meat chunks and gore on the pavement.

Speaking of meat chunks, a lot of those are working their way up his throat now that he's got time to feel properly sick.

"Blaaaarghgle!"

^V^V^V^

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And when all you have is a bicycle, everything looks like a ramp. He doesn't do anything flashy, but he finds inclines and pedals off of them as hard as he can, launching himself over alleyways and hitting the tarred or pebbly roofs on the other sides hard. They don't slow him down. Not in any meaningful capacity, anyways. Muscles burning, eyes dead set on the smoke, he picks up his lost speed and powers faster so he can make the next jump.

It sounds reckless. It sounds dangerous. And it is, but it's not the suicidal endeavor that you'd think. Mumen Rider knows these streets like the back of his hand and he knows how wide each gap is, and he's got the insane knowledge of his own capabilities that only comes from a life spent on the edge. He's studied every map of the city with a magnifying glass and can tell you exactly how many stories tall each building stands, and he'll tell you what buildings have their cornerstone dates carved in Arabic numerals, which ones use Latin, which ones cling to Chinese, and then he'll tell you the year without blinking.

The point is that when physical ability is coupled with detailed cartography and favorable geography, rooftops are just another road. And when the streets are flooded with fear and bodies and wreckage?

Shortcuts.

^V^V^V^

Mitsubishi Tomoe's ears ring.

It's the first thing that she's really conscious of. Nothing's real but that ringing sound, like a really small bell that just won't stop. Her mother used to do this really neat trick with a silver bell where she'd flick it with her index finger and the thing would reverberate for over a minute. It's like that, but a lot louder and more piercing. And it hurts. Blast, it hurts...

It doesn't stay like a bell forever. Or... no, it just gets drowned out by something else. It stays strong for a while, but then this other sound – maybe a dog barking? – rises up to challenge and overtake it. Just like the ringing, it doesn't seem to end. Longer than any dog should manage, it just lets out this l—o—n—g and level howl that shows no sign of dropping off. No way should anything with lungs manage to go on for so long.

There's activity all around her. Tomoe is... she can't describe it because she's not really there yet, but she's surrounded by moving things. She falls back on metaphor, on a time when her family went to the park and she walked into the middle of a group of pigeons. They all stayed still for her for a really long time until her sister coughed and they all launched into the air like silvery rockets. The entire world was a cloud of flapping wings that left her giggling for hours. It's not exactly like that and she's not laughing now, but the sensations around her are kind of like that.

Tomoe's baking. The air's so still and cloying despite that movement. The heat sticks up against her, pressing in like a living thing, like a kitten desperate for attention in the middle of the hot night forcing a furry neck and shoulder against her face. But a coldness emanates from within her. Surrounded by heat, she has none of her own. Maybe the heat wouldn't be so bad, but an existence right at the border of those two extremes is torturous.

And then something else enters her perception. It's a slow inhalation or something like it. She feels it more than she hears it, reverberating through all of her... body? She still has one of those, right? She feels all of herself shaking in the tiniest, most subtle way, but it grows in intensity and stillness until she feels about ready to burst. It blots out the bell, overwhelms the barking, pushes away the wings, and nullifies both heat and cold. It builds, builds, builds until it's the only thing left in the world, and she doesn't know how reality can take it without bursting.

The answer: wait three more seconds.

There's a catastrophic release of tension and a sound like the end of the world. It's so powerful that she's not even aware of half of it. Being half-conscious takes the edge off a little bit but what she gets is like being struck by a colossal hammer shaped to hit all of her evenly and simultaneously.

Suddenly Tomoe's back in the moment. Her eyes are open and everything's right as it can be under the circumstances. The ringing's a persistent whine at the edge of her hearing: tinnitus, the white noise in the aftermath of a huge sound. The rushing around her is her classmates and chaperones swarming about in desperation. The heat's from the muggy air of a late-spring day and the cold… Blast, she's not sure where that's from, but she feels really funny and something's wrong with her.

Everything's wrong. Gravity's not sitting right and she's trying her darndest to slip out of her seat, and the only thing holding her in place is her seat belt. Everything's askew. Literally askew, she realizes: the bus is cocked at a 45-degree angle, and her window's pointed downward at the smashed façade of a lingerie shop and she's staring straight into the vacant gaze of a mannequin garbed in the most impractical set of underwear that the eight-year-old's ever seen. And she's seen some really unorthodox stuff in her mother's closet while playing dress-up...

Her mind snaps out of the memory with a sharp and stabbing pain in her forehead. Her hands instinctively fly to her head and she stifles a cry, curling up in her seat in a languid way and wincing. It comes away hot and sticky and red. Bloody. She looks down at herself and sees half of her white blouse stained just as deep a red as her skirt and the realization kicks in.

I was in a crash.

Her head jerks sideways and her wide eyes take in the scene. Her classmates are screaming and shouting, cut and bruised in uniforms as messy as hers. The adults are struggling to maintain order, struggling to open the doors, struggling to kick open the windows.

Professor Fujita's not moving. He's an island of stillness amidst all of this. He's cradling a young boy named Gorou in his arms, holding him close and tight despite the boy's struggles. Tomoe's the only one who notices. She doesn't get why the professor doesn't say anything for the longest time. She doesn't get why Gorou's struggling to escape him so mightily. Then she sees the glassy look in the professor's eyes and how slow the blood's dripping from a hundred puncture wounds on his neck and shoulders. Her eyes finally lock in on the aluminum tube protruding from his ribcage, formerly supporting the now-crumpled seat in front of them. It would've impaled the boy if not for the professor and Tomoe's eyes go wider and her breaths come shallow and ragged as the thoughts sink in. It's her first time seeing death in person.

What happened? She asks herself again and again, staring at the lifeless body and the boy trying to escape its clutches. What happened?! What happened?! WHAT HAPPENED?!

"Get back from the window!" Professor Moritsu shouts, wrenching her back into the moment. There's a fearful look in his dark eyes that only seem larger and wilder when framed by his pale skin and grey-white hair. He's pushing children back and pulling at his coworker, shouting, "Back! Back!"

Now she's curious. Her gaze darts towards the windows and her immediate reaction isn't horror but bewilderment. The massive face of a corgi stares back at her, grinning stupidly despite the situation around it. She's dumbfounded, wondering what's so funny.

I rode a Corgi Bus.

The face is off on its own. It's lying half-cocked on the ground, resting against a light post, and it's utterly lifeless. That's when she recognizes it as the same face formerly festooned upon the hood of the bus and she notices the wreckage strewn about what looks like an intersection. So that's what that long howl is: the horn's stuck on.

Angled upward the way that side of the bus is, she can't discern a whole lot about the street itself but she sees the roofs of a few cars smashed in and everything's covered in dust and broken glass. Smoke's billowing out of a few cars or something, or whatever it is that's burning, but Tomoe doesn't get why Moritsu's trying to get everyone back from the windows. It's not like any of the other cars are going to blow up. She's only eight but even she knows that things don't randomly blow up like they do in the movies.

And then she notices the giant freaking monster.

It's five meters tall and it's made of hands. Literally, made of hands. Some are smaller than hers and some are her father's size. And then you've got some that are the size of her father. There's no making sense of it or figuring out how it works. It doesn't have a front or back, it's just... hands. Hands, hands, hands for days. Hands for them, hands for you, hands for all the good little boys and girls. Give her a hand: she tried her best. Speak, hands, for me! It half hand-walks, half hand-springs across the street and towards the broken and miserable remnants of the school bus and suddenly Tomoe knows why Moritsu's trying to get everyone away from the windows.

How does one even miss that?!

Everyone's heard of the monsters. Everyone's heard of the mysterious beings on the rise: in the last three months alone, there've been more monster attacks than there'd been in the previous three years combined. Something's drawing all the monsters out of the dark places of the Earth – or, worse, creating them faster – and nobody's got a reason why. Still, Tomoe never thought that she'd see one in person. And if she did, she never thought that she'd be in the line of fire.

But then, this day's been nothing like what she imagined it would be. It's just her imagination, but it seems for all the world like that monster's taking a special interest in her specifically and she can only stare slack-jawed and terrified as the monster closes the gap with frightening speed. She expected to go look at paintings and statues with the rest of her classmates. Now she's going to get eaten by a monster.

Eaten by hands.

Somehow.

Now, this is a tiny detail. It's something that she should never have noticed, and she's not even sure that she did. But, as her mind reels and her eyes fall upon the many-handed monstrosity, she notices that the light dims slightly. It's like something's moved in front of the sun, but not so totally that it's completely blocked out. A very small, very inconsequential shadow falls across Tomoe, and she's in just the right position and angled just the right way to see the rooftop of the building behind the monster.

Something falls out of the glare of the sun. Something man-shaped. Something in black clothing, padded with brown sporting gear and topped in a striking green helmet.

Something about to hit a monster from five stories up with a bicycle.

"JUSTICE CRAAAAAASH!"

^V^V^V^

Author Notes

(Originally uploaded on Saturday, April 13th, 2019)

I'm also not affiliated with Nickelodeon, which owns Rocket Power. Just saying.

In doing my research for this story, I discovered the wonder that is the Japanese school bus. My parents always drove me to school when I was a kid, but I think that I'd have actually volunteered to take the bus if it was literally designed to look like a tiger or rocket ship. If I have one thing to tell you in the wake of this introductory chapter where gravity goes on a field trip, Mumen Rider hops rooftops, and I nonchalantly murder at least one person in a car crash, it's that you should do an image search for Japanese school buses. As an American, I feel cheated.

But hey. While I've got you here, I guess that I should say a few more things. First off, this isn't going to be a very long story. At least, in terms of number of chapters. I did a really detailed outline that's longer than this chapter, but things change in execution and I tend to go into a lot more detail than is strictly necessary because it lets me bring up some interesting perspectives on a bizarre scenario. My intention was six chapters but Chapter One started getting a lot longer than I anticipated, so I've cut it in half and I'm going to post the rest as Chapter Two. So… right now, the goal's seven chapters. I should be so lucky...

Secondly, this chapter was originally going to start with Mumen Rider escorting an elderly lady across the street, but I scrapped it in favor of the ice pops because it actually fit the character (and theme) more. I also couldn't see him taking more than a page to finish the action and get the necessary exposition in. On one hand, the new approach means that you have longer to get to the action. On the other hand, you wouldn't get Mumen Rider, Terrible Tornado, or Amai Mask ice pops. In the balance, I think that we all came out ahead.

Lastly, while I don't have an update schedule, I'm going to try to post every week or two. I've succeeded at NaNoWriMo several times, so I'm no stranger to pushing out content regularly. I also don't plan to start another story until after I finish this one. Back when I first started writing here, I made the mistake of branching out into too many stories, losing interest in some, and just never finishing because I split my focus too broadly. If nothing else, I'm more focused than I used to be.

So, until next time, farewell! Reviews are always welcome.

(Edited on Monday, August 19th, 2019)

I've occasionally gone back and made some alterations to the story after I uploaded a chapter. Usually, it's because I notice a typo and rush in to fix it. As I started reformatting the story to upload to Tumblr, I not only found some more typos but a few issues along the way. Some phrasings were awkward, for instance, and a few things were either inconsistent or don't match up completely with what happens later on. Some things that I only thought of later would work better with foreshadowing and I figured out a few subtle ways to slip them in.

I really doubt that anybody's going to come back and read this story once they've finished it the first time, so I doubt that this note is going to mean much since nobody who's reading this saw what I went back and changed. Everyone actually reading this note would never know that anything was ever different. I guess that I'm just doing this for the record, to make no secret of the fact that a couple of new things retroactively slipped in but I'm not really changing the story. I thought about adding a stinger to this chapter since it's pretty much the only chapter without one, but I decided that it was a little too much. But hey: now I've got most of the first chapter to a sequel written out.