Alrighty party people, onto chapter 2!
Jade Mantis: Year One
The main fact of the matter was: Inko never set out to be a vigilante. Not originally.
When the story begins, the woman named Inko had just come off a particularly grueling shift at the establishment where she worked as a waitress. Now, you had to be a very particular type of person to enjoy non-stop customer service, and Inko was not that type of person. What she liked most about that job was that it paid her enough to keep a roof over her head and food in her stomach. Walking home from that grueling shift, Inko passed the local convenience store and remembered her annoyingly bare shelves from that morning.
For context, the world had not been particularly kind to the young woman. Inko had been forced to take care of herself for a good chunk of her life, leaving the young woman with no shortage of survival skills and common sense. Common sense dictated that she duck down, stay where she was, and stay out of it. Unfortunately for common sense, Inko had a heart too big for her head.
With another glance towards the terrified cashier that didn't look much younger than her, the tired and hungry waitress kept low and considered her options. After running several situations and outcomes through her head, Inko quietly grabbed a can of soda yelled at the robber for attention, and threw it. As luck (and small object telekinesis) would have it, the soda can struck true and beaned the gunman right in the head. Disoriented, he fired in Inko's general direction, and her chest burned and tightened as the freezer section door shattered. Stupid Stupid Stupid Stupid What the fuck are you doing?
Inko's on the fly plan had worked though, as in his disoriented state, the gun's recoil had slackened his grip instead of tightened it, leaving it vulnerable to her telekinesis. Her throat tight and chest aching, Inko ripped the gun out of the robber's hand before lobbing another soda at his head. Getting a critical hit, the criminal fell to the floor, unconscious.
Normally coming off that kind of adrenaline high would leave a person tired and shaking. In some mixture of shock and denial, Inko calmly grabbed what she intended to buy and put them on the counter with the gun.
"No charge." The cashier insisted, starting to bag the items.
"But I don't want you to get in trouble." Inko half-argued, still feeling a bit woozy.
"I'll be fine. You just head home and enjoy your instant ramen, on me." The young lady smiled, seeing that her rescuer was just about dead on her feet. Inko, rarely one to turn down free food, just vaguely stared at the zip-tied up robber for a few seconds and exited the premises.
She walked the route back home in a habitual daze, not really registering anything going on around her.
"I'm home," She greeted her cold and empty apartment. It was the stereotypical hole in the wall usually occupied by starving artists or waitresses without a roommate. She lived in…not the nicest neighborhood, but she hadn't been bothered too much. She really didn't own anything worth stealing anyway.
Lying on the floor as the food cooked, she turned her head towards the solitary thing pinned up in the apartment: her hero map.
She got the maps for free from the tourist bureau and the box of pins was less than a dollar. She started marking areas with villain activity so she could avoid those hotspots. Recently, she had noticed that Mustafa had just as much villain activity as the other parts of Tokyo, but less than half the attention from licensed heroes. Looking up at her patched ceiling, Inko could start to guess as to why. When the timer dinged and the ramen was ready, Inko noticed that the nice cashier had snuck in a packet of pomegranate flavored granola bars. Aww, that was so nice.
As Inko sat there, eating her ramen and granola bars, she had no idea that this was a serious turning point in her life. All other big changes in her twenty years of existence had been pretty well telegraphed. To be clear though, Inko was not thinking about donning a mask and face off against villains. Not yet anyway. Right then, she was just eating, the pomegranate granola bars the most delicious thing in the world to her at the moment.
It started out small. Facing a near-death experience, she devised a plan to quit her crappy waitressing job at the diner and for the new restaurant/bar that would be opening up nearby. A risky venture, sure, but Inko was riding enough of an 'I could have died' feeling that risk didn't bother her as much as it should. (Besides, she wouldn't be quitting her old job until after she had the new one lined up).
When she showed up a few days later for the interview, dressed in her best blouse and lucky pink sweater, Inko's confidence was starting to fade but she was determined to go through with it. The owner, Sakura Vronskaya, was an older woman with a kind spark in her eye despite her harsh accent. The woman had moved all the way to Mustafa from St. Petersburg to open her own bar/eatery, will genuine Russian cuisine and genuine Russian vodka. The Strekoza would be a little taste of Russia in Tokyo.
"Now, how much experience do you have bartending?"
Now, Inko was never much of a liar, even with her own potential happiness on the line. "None at all honestly." Okay, maybe this whole 'risk' thing wasn't such a good idea. "Most of my time was spent waitressing, but I love learning new things and I'm sure I could pick it up quickly." Vronskaya-san gave her a look that caused all of Inko's courage to melt right out of her shoes.
"My apologies for wasting your time, ma'am."
"Wait," Vronskaya politely demanded. Inko turned back, not sure what to expect. "Do you drink much?"
"I honestly can't afford to."
"Don't want to impair your judgment?"
"I'm flat broke. I literally can't afford to."
Vronskaya smiled. "You know, you have a bit of a mouth on you." Inko looked down, a fist curled into her chest. "No, I like it. What was the first thing that popped into your head when I said that? Be honest."
"…that 'two years of customer service will do that to you'." A hesitant smile popped onto her face when she said it. The Russian woman laughed, not harsh or mocking, but instead full-bellied and genuine.
"Now, what's your Quirk?"
"Movement of Small Objects, ma'am."
"Hm, telekinesis? That's one of the most versatile quirks out there. What kind of limits do you have?"
"Well, the thing has to be within my line of sight, or I know exactly where it is. Also, I can lift anything with my quirk that I can lift with my own strength." Vronskaya looked incredibly interested, a full-toothed grin.
"Would you mind demonstrating?"
"Not at all." Inko returned. Looking over the dining area, Inko pulled a chair down off the table and pushed it in underneath. Standing up, she spotted a white tablecloth folded up on the bar, she grabbed it with her Quirk, shook it out, and laid it atop the table across the room. Then, in a move that would have you humming 'Be Our Guest' under your breath, she grabbed plates, cutlery, and the other tableware, setting the table for two. In a touch of melodramatic inspiration, she even pulled over an old candelabra and set it at the center of the table.
"Do you have any—"
Vronskaya, enraptured, pulled a matchbook out of her pocket. Not touching, Inko telekinetically grabbed the matchbook and hovered it over to the dining area, pulled out a match, struck it and lit the candles before shaking out the match. With a more confident smile, she handed the matchbook back to Sakura Vronskaya.
The woman eventually recovered. "You're hired."
"What, I mean—"
"You just re-enacted a Disney movie in my restaurant, you're hired."
Things sped along from there. Under Sakura Vronskaya's tutelage, Inko learned memorized how to make almost every cocktail known to Eurasia, a firm grasp of the Russian language, and how to throw a solid right hook. "You're a bartender darling, it's going to come up." Now besides mixing drinks and memorizing cocktail recipes, she picked up all sorts of extraneous abilities and talents, like spotting fake ID's and learning some of the politics and inner working of the criminal underworld from drunk cops and former jailbirds.
Inko learned how to pick locks after one of the waitresses accidentally locked the key to the supply room inside the supply room. Figuring it out twenty minutes later with a now-broken bobby pin, Inko found that picking locks was actually pretty fun, and started working on almost every lock she could with paper clips.
Wanting to get in shape, but having absolutely no money, she started jogging in the mornings. Then, Vronskaya had all the staff take a multi-week self-defense course 'just in case' something happened. Needless to say, Inko took notes and had a lot of fun.
By the time Inko's twenty-first birthday rolled around, Inko could pick locks, throw punches, speak two more languages, and run a kilometer before getting winded. On top of having weirdly intimate knowledge of the heroes that operated near Mustafa and when they were most active. So really, is her becoming a masked vigilante really that much of a stretch?
How the whole 'Jade Mantis' title came about is actually something of a funny story. You see, they were doing a theme night at Strekoza, where the staff would dress up like old comic book superheroes—you know, honoring the predecessors of the real-life profession everyone admired, blah blah blah. Inko was dressed in a Green Hornet costume. Wearing a fedora and green domino mask on top of a simple suit and tie, she felt incredibly fancy.
As she was walking to the work, Inko saw something going on. From the corner of her eye, she caught a couple being mugged. A person with a lion-type morphological quirk was holding a knife to the man's throat and demanding wallets and valuables from the woman. Again, the common sense solution would be to just keep on walking. Unfortunately, Inko's heart once again got in the way.
Now, this time there were no conveniently placed objects that she could bludgeon him with, but she also had to ensure that she could wrangle the knife away without hurting the hostage. She had a possible advantage with the lion quirk, as kittie paws were not designed for grabbing and holding, but she also had the possibility of claws to deal with. So her strategy would have to be getting the hostage released then incapacitating the mugger in quick succession.
Inko slowly crept up the alleyway, motioning a finger to her lips when the woman's eyes glanced over to her. Before anything else, she started by trying to gouge the Lion Man's eyes out from behind, as every natural instinct would override to try and save them. The man immediately starting clawing at her hands as she dug in, letting the hostage go. In his panic, she managed to grab the knife and pull it away before tugging his head back by the mane and putting him in a blood choke. Doing it right, he went slack in about ten seconds. Not wanting to kill the guy, just severely maim or injure, she let him drop.
"Who-who are you?" The rescued man asked, clinging to his female companion. They looked at her with a mixture of shock, awe, and gratitude. That look made Inko feel…very nice.
As established previously, adrenaline did strange things to a person's brain. So 'who are you' somehow translated as them asking who she has dressed up as. And Inko couldn't remember who she was dressed up as. Something about the color green and an insect?
Somehow, 'Jade Mantis' ended up slipping out as she absentmindedly folded the switchblade up and put it in her pocket. "You should probably call the cops." She thought aloud as she checked her watch. The couple nodded then pulled out their cell phones.
As they were looking away, Inko decided that she really needed to go back to work, her dark clothing masking her a bit as she walked on the more shadowed side of the alleyway. The 'Jade Mantis' was gone by the time the couple looked up again.
Now, one of the damsels in distress was a lawyer, who concluded from the disappearing act and the lack of restraining equipment that their rescuer was some sort of masked vigilante. Not wanting their rescuer to get in trouble or be fined for illegal Quirk use, described the incident in vague descriptions, claiming that they couldn't even tell for sure if it was a man or a woman, and they didn't give a codename to prove if they were a licensed hero or not. The police arrested the mugger and treated the whole incident with a general shrug, having absolutely no idea what this was the start of.
And Inko? Inko went to work as if nothing in the world was wrong, smiling like she hadn't just choked a bitch out earlier that evening. She had managed to place the incident out of her mind while she worked, too busy with drink orders and sparkling conversation to think about the thing she did. Unfortunately, coming back home held no such promise of distraction. Looking over her map of hero territory, she once again noticed how relatively infrequently licensed heroes ventured into Mustafa
Before returning the suit to the costume shop, she stuffed the switchblade into one of her kitchen drawers and pulled out her favorite leather jacket. She bought a similar mask, and a bottle of spirit gum glue to keep it on.
She was about to do something incredibly stupid.
Endnotes
All Might: In my debut as a hero, I rescued over one hundred people!
Jade Mantis: I threw soda cans at a guy until he passed out
Fun fact, Strekoza means "Dragonfly" in Russian, and the dragonfly is often used as a symbol of change!
So, I'm going to try to be uploading at least once a week or so (probably more often, but we'll see how it goes) I just hope that you guys will have as much fun reading this story that I've had writing it.
If you like this little origin story, comment below and let me know! More of Inko's mysterious past will be established as the series goes on. Also, fair warning: the chapters will NOT be in chronological order
