Yuki

Indeed he could hear every thought and feel every feeling like they were his own and it was excruciating to the old man. He felt what the youths felt on the roof as they all threw themselves off the building and plummeted to their painful deaths. All it took was old Hector telling them all to jump and they did it without question.

That was the night Hector discovered he could fly.

Not literally, but the old man levitated off the ground in the eyes of his victims, a few inches at first but then a foot off the ground and he could do this by projecting this image into the minds of his victims. Hector could project any image he wanted after that; images of loved ones would lure children out of windows and to their deaths, wives would impel husbands to slit their throats in the bath tub and husbands would drive wives to hang themselves in false suicide pacts.

Hector could do it all himself and he treasured this mysterious power that finally allowed him to strike out at his enemies and everyone else.

Until little Yuki appeared as if out of nowhere.

One night, Hector Drood was taking a moonlight stroll through the dreams of the remaining few occupants of The Arcade Street Block when he found he was blocked from one mind.

So he went after her. She was standing in the hallway of Floor Fourteen, at the end of the long, dull foyer with her bizarre little pyjamas.

Hector Drood giggled a high whine that betrayed no happiness at all, because the person who was blocking his powers was a little infant girl, a Japanese girl with thick raven hair down to her back and a little kitchen knife with a red handle, the same colour as her little bow.

"Hello little girl. Would you like to see a magic trick?"

The little girl didn’t move, instead she played with the little knife and Hector sensed at once how much this little Japanese girl loved knives, all sorts of knives, all shapes of knives for all uses.

"What’s your name girl?"

"Yuki."

Her accent was thick with the Japanese lilt, her little girlish voice was lofty and vociferous: this was when Hector Drood cringed as he remembered his wife. He looked at this little girl, the girl who loved knives so much and he smiled a crooked smile at the girl whose thoughts he couldn’t read.

"Oai dekite taihen kouei desu!" Said Yuki happily in a girlish lilt.

"I don’t understand you little girl."

Little Yuki sighed and tugged at the little ‘Hello Kitty’ design on her petite pyjamas before talking, all this time her other hand was clasped firmly on the sharp kitchen knife.

"Shitsumon ga arimasu."

Hector cursed the day he didn’t learn Japanese from his ex-wife and directed his gaze straight at the small girl Yuki.

"Why don’t you stab your fucking eyes out you little bitch?"

Yuki didn’t move at all and a beam of light from the lamps in the hall flashed across her knife menacingly. Hector Drood’s eyes widened in shock, shock because nobody had ever resisted his unique powers of persuasion, his mouth let out a gasp in disbelief because he couldn’t understand who this little girl was.

Little Yuki stood there in the hallway no more.

"Nemutai desuka?" She snarled crossly at the old man.

That was when Hector felt something powerful shift through the air, it was understated at first but then it became a potent jolt through his biology as a fist of thought punched him through three concrete wall, sending jolts of unbearable pain through the old man’s body.