As a reward for our efforts in the sports festival, UA gave all students a few days off. I just think they needed the time to clean up and restore the campus from the damages that several hundred thousand wild sports fan and pro heroes did to the place. The exchange program organizers saw this as an opportunity to offer their American guests some traditional cultural experiences. So, Pony and I, along with our host families, were off for a weekend of sightseeing at and around Mt. Fuji. Ectoplasm-sensei was to be our guide.
We met Friday at 0800 in front of Shinjuku Station in central Tokyo.
"It's sooo crowded," I whined as the seventh salaryman bounced off me as we stood outside the south entrance. The kinetic energy generated by a single person walking next to me is too slight for me to notice its unconscious absorption. But standing in a mass with tens of thousands of people rushing to work, constantly moving and colliding with each other, was generating sufficient energy that I was getting a little antsy from the continual influx. "Shouldn't we have arranged to meet after rush hour was over?"
"I like crowds," Ectoplasm-sensei grinned. Of course, with his lipless mouth he was always grinning, but you could hear it in his voice. "Besides, we wanted to get an early start to see all the sights in the beautiful Fuji Goko region. I suppose we could have meet at 0600. We would have avoided the crowd then."
Kyoka-chan jabbed my side with an ear jack. "No. this is just fine, sensei," she rushed to assure him.
"The Hados should be here soon. Then we can get started." The masked man concluded. I wondered why he was in costume. He was drawing more than a little attention. I'm convinced half of the people who ran into me did so because they were staring at the teacher. I guessed he felt he was 'On Duty'. A few moments later Pony and her family arrived in a taxi.
Mrs. Hado was paying the driver while Pony and Nee-chan came bounding over, weaving through the crowd. "Ohaio!" Pony chimed. She was excited and fell back into her California habits, hugging Kyoka-chan and me. She started towards Ectoplasm-sensei, but he took a step back and she stopped, blushing.
"Ohio Gozaimasu, Sensei," Nee-chan bowed. "Thank you for this opportunity and for your guidance."
"Think nothing of it," he replied in English. "When possible I think we should speak English this weekend. Part of this exchange is the opportunity for UA students to improve their English skills, so neh?"
"Does that include parents?" Nee-chan asked, smiling at her mother.
"My English is just fine, de wanai Pony-chan?" Mrs. Hado bragged.
"Almost perfect, Hado-san." Pony praised diplomatically, though it sounded pretty good to me.
"Right! Let us get to the train." Sensei clapped his hands and started forward. The crowd parted as much as it could to make way for him. I motioned the ladies to proceed me, but they demurred. I had seen this before. My Grandma had taught me the ladies go first, but women in Japan, especially older women, did not seem to be comfortable with that. I outwaited them and was able to bring up the rear of the procession.
Almost an hour later we were traveling through a somewhat rural region in the mountains southwest of the capitol. While the ladies carried on a conversation, I was half asleep looking out the window. We had been roughly paralleling a river for the last several miles. I was surprised at how picturesque the Japanese countryside was. I knew there were lots of mountainous areas in Japan, but seeing them was different. I was looking forward to seeing Fuji more closely.
We were in the front car of the train and, as there was no engine pulling us, I was able to see directly ahead. As we came out of a small town, I saw we were about to cross the river on a long bridge sitting high above the river and the farm fields on the other side.
As we crossed the bridge, there was a loud explosion and two pillars of smoke just ahead of us. A section of track dropped away, leaving nothing but air. Time suddenly seemed to stand still. I reacted without thinking.
Moving much faster than I thought possible, I dove through the front window, glass shattering around me. My hands touched the window frame briefly, helping me flip around so I was upside down, directly under the front of the car. I grabbed onto a metal part and pulled myself around into an upside-down squat, feet braced against the undercarriage as the car began to plummet toward the ground.
I absorbed as much of the train's downward momentum as I could. Most of it went to my muscles, but the ten percent or so of the energy that I could redirect I pushed to reinforce the train's forward motion. Then I kicked off.
Physics says that force is mass times acceleration and that one body, exerting a force on another body, exerts equal force on itself but in the opposite direction. Kicking off of the train I was applying a lot of acceleration to both myself and the train. The carriage out-massed me by several orders of magnitude. Therefore, I had to use my strength to add tremendous acceleration, causing the train to move against gravity's pull.
It worked. I shot down towards the ground at a velocity far exceeding terminal velocity, while the train car sailed upwards and forwards.
The first carriage crashed back onto the track, pulling the next two cars with it. The connection between the third and fourth car failed and the fourth and fifth cars started downwards. Automatic sensors had applied the brakes all along the train when the first car left the tracks. As the fifth car plunged over the edge of the broken track, it broke away from the rest of the cars. The final five cars shrieked to a stop on the intact part of the bridge.
This mean there were two cars plummeting towards me.
I bounced off the ground, shooting back up. I was just in time to catch the two falling cars, one hand on each connector. Instinctively absorbing their downward momentum, I increased my strength and caused them to stop without the fatal jerk. The absorption of the passenger's kinetic energy was not as effective as so many were not in direct contact with the car as they tumbled through the air.
Catching the carriages, I was pushed back to the ground. Again, I absorbed the impact on landing, transferring what kinetic energy I could to the cars, vectored to cause them to land with as little shock as possible. They settled into the soft mud of the farm field, barely missing a small building that had been crushed by the falling track. A truck on the adjacent road pulled to a stop.
Just then four clones of Ectoplasm coalesced next to me. "Start clearing these cars. I'll check on the injured. I'm authorizing you to use your Quirk for the duration of the emergency." He had fallen back to speaking Japanese and it took a moment for me to understand him.
I nodded, ripping the doors off both carriages. Two Ecto-clones entered each of the cars. I took a moment to look around. I could see Nee-chan flying towards the rear of the train still on the bridge over the river. Mrs. Hado, who I recalled was a doctor of some sort, was floating slowly in the air behind her, carrying a crash kit marked with the red cross. I wondered for a second if the girl had inherited her flight from her mother. I hoped Pony and Kyoka-chan were alright.
I went into the left-hand car to offer assistance. I saw several men, women, and children laying on the floor of the carriage, bleeding and moaning in pain. I froze. I had another flashback. This time there were so many people under mounds of rubble, crushed pieces of concrete and shards of glass. They were bleeding and crying out and …
"Abunai!" Ectoplasm cried, jogging me back to the present. He was pointing towards a group of supers closing in on us. I shook myself and took a closer look.
There were five of them. Three were running along the road that was adjacent to the bridge, on the level of the farm fields. Two were in the air moving towards the train cars on the ground. They were all wearing a uniform of some sort, with black leggings and different colored tops. From Sensei's warning, I was guessing they were not here to help. He already had three clones moving to intercept the ground force so I looked to the flyers.
There was a flaming flyer in burnt orange and a bald fellow in magenta powered armor. Neither were Japanese. And both were pointing directly at me. What the kale?! I wondered if that might be a clue as to what they were after.
"You're comin' with us, seppo," said the flame thrower. In English, Australian by the sound of it.
"I don't think so," I replied, launching myself at the concrete abutment to get away from the gathering passengers. I bounced, aiming myself to intercept the power suit. He threw up a forcefield of some sort, which repelled me. Since I was now flying towards the orange guy I didn't mind.
"Gotcha!" He caught my arm as I went by. I used my momentum to swing him around, throwing him into the nearby river.
That left me in the air holding nothing, so I dropped back to the ground. Only to be met with a powerful punch from a big guy in light blue. I soaked the impact and smiled up at him. "That wasn't very friendly. Now why don't you tell me who you are and what you want."
"Easy enough," said the power suit, floating two dozen feet away. "We're the Outback Bashers. And we want you. We figured the extra pickings from this little bingle was just a bonus."
"So, come along quiet-like or we'll have ourselves a bit of a blue. Either way we get you." The big guy has a surprisingly tenor voice. In the distance, I heard a clap of thunder. I glanced over and saw several Ecto-clones flying into the air around a short guy in green. No help there.
"Did you blow up the bridge?" I asked.
"Not so much blowing it up as selectively collapsing just the part I wanted to. Not to brag, but I'm pretty proud of that particular job."
"You shouldn't have done that." I shook my head. This doofus had hurt who knows how many people and he was proud of it. I snagged a sharp shard of steel debris and tossed it towards his jetpack. I wanted him on the ground. A spinning blade flew out of nowhere and knocked my projectile off target.
"Can't let you stick Sixer. He's a dinkum cobber and the brains of the outfit. Besides Renegade is the only bladesman allowed in this donnybrook." I turned and saw the last guy, dressed in red, with two knives spinning in his hands. Messrs. Green and Orange were also making their way quickly towards me. I saw no sign of Ectoplasm.
Realizing that my fighting them where I was currently would endanger the passengers, I decided to take the better part of valor. "Come and get me then!" I leapt towards the riverbank, away from the bridge abutments. They followed.
At least I got them away from the train, I thought. There was not a lot else I could do. Without my specialized rubber balls I was concerned that any rocks I threw might seriously injure them. The same was true if I just smacked them, not that it was likely that I was fast enough to hit them despite how I moved during the crash.
I remembered the obliterated speedbag and pictured doing that to one of these guys' heads and shuddered. I didn't have any practice pulling my punches when my strength varied so much based on the energy I had absorbed at any given moment. After the train wreck, I was pretty stoked. I thought the powered armor guy and the giant could probably take a blow, but I couldn't be sure. If there was just one or two of them, I could try to grab them and hold on until the cops came, but not with five.
The Bashers didn't give me much time to consider my options. I could pretty much ignore Mr. Blue's attacks. And so far, Mr. Magenta had mostly coordinated from the air, just dropping the occasional concussive stun bomb which I could absorb. Messrs. Green and Orange attacked with energies I couldn't absorb, but I by this time was nigh invulnerable, so they were no threat either. I thought Mr. Red was the least of my worries, until he used some sort of martial arts throw to send me face first into the mud of the river bank. How was that fair?
As I lay there thinking the mud wasn't so bad, Sixer shot a capture net that seemed to tighten around me the more I fought against it. I started to panic and pushed harder against its constriction. It was tougher than steel, but I shredded it once I really tried.
I stood up on the bank, surrounded by the five. We were at a bit of a standoff. They couldn't hurt me and I couldn't attack without risking really hurting them.
Suddenly, Nee-chan descended from above and blasted the two flyers out of the sky. Then, a giant Ecto-clone, almost as tall as the train bridge, coalesced and swallowed us all in one big bite. The Bashers and I found ourselves entombed within the shell of the giant clone. I tried not to struggle. I figured I could break free, but that might release the bad guys as well. They were certainly having no success getting out on their own.
Ectoplasm's main form walked up, followed by Pony and Kyoka-chan looking ready to rumble. With them on the ground and Nee-chan in the air, I didn't think these outback bozos were going anywhere.
We never did make it to Mt. Fuji, at least not that weekend.