Huh. So I did land in General Studies.
There were twenty-seven drowned, maimed, and exploded robots in a scrapyard somewhere that attested rather to the opposite. Water Dragon Bullet might've been a mainstay, but she could make hand seals fast enough to drop the Great Waterfall Technique on robots, too. Or rather, "villains." Then again, if a hero didn't understand the laws they were supposed to be enforcing, it probably wouldn't turn out well.
Is that a bad thing?
Dunno. It's not the hero course, but the idea of actually taking a spot from one of those kids… Well, it would be a waste. She wasn't planning on being a hero. General Studies, from what she understood, didn't tend to get fun things like provisional licenses or whatever, so that could be a bother if she was ever caught using her powers, but being a role model to children who weren't her brother? Meh.
Kei shrugged to herself, setting the announcement hologram aside. The big blond guy who signed off reminded her a bit of Gai, but unfortunately the impact of his reputation had been nearly stonewalled by Kei's dead-eyed stare. It seemed to put him off a bit.
No use worrying about it now.
Isobu mulled that over. It will be easier to escape scrutiny if people do not think we are important.
Step one complete, then.
Kei looked around the bland, cookie-cutter apartment she'd been assigned by the school's administration. She'd done her best to customize it, slapping down furniture from storage seals and using a store-bought futon decorated with puppies and kittens. Her wall scroll hanging was the second beacon seal, acting primarily as a mailbox for anything she needed to get from home. She'd carry the original in her school bag.
As for the rest of the apartment, Kei wasn't impressed. She paid rent for a two-bedroom apartment back in Konoha for her and Hayate—paid in advance until the end of next year, now. The three-rooms-total scheme felt off, much like everything else.
Normal people didn't have their records faked. Normal people around here had school until April or near enough, high school exams or not. Ubiquitous school uniforms made it difficult to escape truancy officers day or night.
Too bad Kei was, through the use of some rather basic techniques, a shapeshifter. One Transformation technique later, and Kei's fifteen-year-old appearance was neatly replaced by a fair mockup of Shiranui Genma in more typical street clothes instead. Eighteen-year-olds got to do things without being stopped by cops.
All right, then. Time for a fucking crash course in life in superhero-riddled Japan, then. She locked the apartment and left, with her wallet and a GPS map in hand. She needed to get food, a train pass, and probably a guidebook to local culture to go with the mission stipend.
No time like the present.
Kei wandered the streets for hours. Quite aside from having grown up in a shinobi village, which had neither cell towers (ever) or paved roads (half the time), the city was bigger than anything from her old life either. Advertisements blared in every corner, which was typical, and everything from corner stores to massive shopping malls carried hero merchandise, which made Kei feel like more of a tourist than she was. It seemed like, at some point, more typical sports teams had been partially displaced by superheroes. Sure, plenty of other points of interest existed, but Kei had always been a sucker for bright colors even if she refused to admit it.
So, she absolutely sought out hero merch. And by far the most popular topic was All Might.
Kei knew several things about the man: a) he was a teacher at UA High School this year, b) he was hugely popular to the point of probably starting religions, and c) he was basically the only pillar holding this wacky superhero-centric society together, through his role as the World Symbol of Peace.
And this place may be at risk of total collapse.
Kei nodded to Genma's borrowed reflection in the storefront, to make up for not being able to do so to Isobu's face. Gotta love the house of cards we've got here.
It is at least visually interesting. Isobu sent a brief flash of neon signage spiraling through Kei's mind, and Kei glanced inside her grocery bags for the bright, grinning All Might onesie she'd bought for Naruto. Sasuke would get Endeavor the Flame Hero, whoever that was.
Sure, nobody would understand what the hell the reference was, but he'd find it interesting to chew on. The bunny ears even kind of resembled Sensei's hair if he ever bothered to style it, and the Uchiha clan was hilariously fond of fire.
The rest of the week passed like that, with Kei slowly adapting to fast-paced urban life in disguise and as herself. It was, for the most part, mainly a matter of memorizing train schedules and not getting frustrated when she inevitably got things wrong. Landing herself out in a place called Hosu had been a bit weird, but she played with her GPS settings until she got the train route back figured out. From the windows during long train rides, she got to watch hero-villain brawls as life went on behind yellow traffic barriers, like criminals with Quirks held up the commute every day. Maybe they did.
Also, Wikipedia existed here. Kei binged articles harder than she had in her old life in its entirety, at least if she counted a) her somewhat spotty memory and b) the lack of a looming essay in her immediate future. Having so much information at her fingertips, compared to the nigh-impenetrable maze of "he said, she said" that made up shinobi intelligence networks, was both overwhelming and familiar enough to be comforting.
This place was so weird.
She got to know her neighbors, spinning a story about needing to leave her parents behind to attend UA. Shikoku was too far, she said, and the elderly residents of the building nodded their heads knowingly. Kids these days always wanted to be heroes, but it was nice to see young people interested in public service no matter what form it took. Only a dedicated, independent girl would push herself so far, they said.
She wasn't sure the folks who lived on her actual floor in the building bought it, but oh well. Most of them were businesspeople who worked in and around the most hero-dense part of the country, so she could skate any suspicion by waving UA's name around like a flag. Not that anyone would fail to recognize the uniform, once she got it and threw every scrap of leftover childish enthusiasm into showing it off.
And she got care packages from drop-in friends.
"Special delivery!" Obito's voice rang out during dinner one day, and a Kamui portal opened to drop both him and Hayate almost on top of her futon. Which, of course, she barely ever put away.
"OW!" was Hayate's response, having been dropped half on his head and almost into a bowl of udon.
"Hayate! Missed you, goofball!" Kei promptly grabbed him with both arms around his ribs and squeezed him hard enough for him frantically tap the futon in surrender.
Kei didn't buy it, but she did let go.
Hayate tackled her, barely missing the udon a second time.
Obito cackled, landing neatly on the other side of the futon with a wide grin. He propped his head up in both hands as the Gekkō siblings continued to try to get each other in submission holds. "So, how's the last week been treating you?"
"It's—ow!" Kei pinched Hayate's side, making him yelp and skitter back, before adding, "Been fine, Obito. But boring and school doesn't start here for like two months."
"Two months?" Hayate gaped. "I have to keep staying with the Hokage for—"
"For technically not at all," Obito said, cutting across him. "I mean, I've got room and the Yamanaka clan would totally—"
"Why can't I stay here with you at least sometimes?" Hayate griped, interrupting Obito in turn. "You get to see this weird place, with 'trains' and 'cell phones' and all this other weird stuff we don't have."
"Because I'm the one who got the mission," Kei told him, standing. "And, well, just look out here."
Hayate got up and followed Kei to the window, with Obito trailing and peeking over both of the Gekkō kids' shoulders.
Though the view wasn't great, Kei's apartment was on the fifteenth floor. The two boys pressed their faces to the window until she unlocked the sliding door and let them out onto the balcony, though Obito needn't have waited. All three of them piled out onto it, dodging a potted aloe plant and staring out into the city skyline.
There was a lot of skyline.
"Whoa," Hayate breathed. "Sis, the lights—it's so bright even this late?"
"Holy shit," said Obito, leaning as far out onto the railing as Kei would let him. "People live in places this big?"
"All packed in like sardines, yeah," Kei told them, settling her weight onto her back foot. "And I'm the only one of us who won't gape like a fish all the time."
"I think we could probably—" Obito began.
"Obito, no," Kei said flatly. "You two can stay over sometimes, if you want, but this is a mission." Kei glanced back into the apartment and the still-lit nightstand lamp. She'd put it on the floor for lack of better options. "Only on the weekends. I have to attend school soon."
"I heard about that," Obito admitted, then clapped her on the shoulder. "Better you than me!"
"Same," said Hayate, pushing away from the balcony railing.
Kei groaned. "Shut up."
"You sure you don't want to head home for a bit?" Obito asked, as though that was within the bounds of his role as people-mover. Technically, Hayate wasn't supposed to be here either.
"The only reason I'm staying the entire two-month gap is because I'm required get a feel for the place," Kei said, shaking her head. "It's been a week. I'm learning. Maybe once I have neighbors invested enough to ask where I'm going on weekends…" Kei frowned. "I'm supposed to establish something like a life. The other students and uninformed hero-teachers can't know why I'm here."
Neither boy hid how much hearing that disappointed them. Sure, they tried, but Kei could read chakra and right now theirs and hers was the only available data.
"I got you stuff," Kei said into the silence.
"So did we!" Obito and Hayate reported, before elbowing each other for speaking in unison.
Gifts were exchanged (Hayate made a face at the identical onesies, then smiled at the local sweets, while Kei and Obito compared kunai with posable action figures), the boys were ushered away, and Kei continued acclimating to Tokyo with a promise of being in the apartment at the same time next week.
That was different.
No, that was familiar. A good kind.
True enough.