The Tick vs MY HERO ACADEMIA! Issue #25
Silence had filled the bar, as they watched the final leg of the tournament. It was quite the ending, as Tomura saw the Green Haired Child... that he now had a name to go with that bastard. Still, such strength! Such power!
He was knocked from his revelry by a knock at the door. ... ... ... they were in a bar, why would someone just knock on the door?
"Delivery for Mister Chippendale?" Was called out from behind the door, Tomura looked over to Chairface.
"Excellent! She actually pulled through! I can't believe it!" He practically clambered over to the door and signed for the crate that was rolled in.
... ... ... Tomura wasn't sure what to say, he wasn't sure why the crate was shipped to their hide out, it wasn't much of a secret lair if they had package delivery. "What is that?" He finally asked, as the deformed American gangster got a crowbar out.
"Do you follow 20th century history? The Cold War between the Americans and the Soviets? Well, both sides developed super weapons of incredible power! The Soviets had the Red Scare robot, designed to assassinate the US President... the Americans developed a most perfect weapon. A weapon that instead of defeating All Might, would make All Might... defeat himself!" He finally opened the crate, and pulled away the cover! "BEHOLD! The WMCC X-1!" Tomura looked at the American superweapon, then to Chairface, then back to the superweapon.
"How is a chair supposed to cause All Might to defeat himself?"
This was it. The closing ceremonies for the Sports Festival for the Freshman Leg of the festivities. I... I had won. First place. It was... exhilarating. I... I beat Katsuki and... I didn't know what to say. I hope they didn't ask me to do another speech.
Izuku could hold his head high. Winning the Sports Festival was... well, it was something he's wanted since the first time he watched it on television. The awards ceremony was a simple enough affair, he got a gold medal! He never got an award like this before! Tenya managed to swing bronze, which wasn't too bad, and Katsuki...
"... ... ... RARGH! How can you be so calm about this, four eyes! SECOND PLACE IS FIRST LOSER!"
Okay, so Katsuki was being Katsuki.
"You know, Katsuki, maybe if you just took a deep breath and didn't, you know, act like everything was a personal insult against you, you'd enjoy life some more."
"Who the hell asked you, Midoriya! You won first place!"
"Being number one isn't everything, Katsuki." The blonde looked at him with enough force that Izuku was sure that if anything was unfortunately enough to pass between them they'd be crushed by the weight of that glare alone.
"Being first is EVERYTHING! Ugh, even when you win, you still lose!" Katsuki walked off, tossing his silver medal aide.
"Bakugo is going to have to learn how to deal with a lot of things before he manages to be a hero." Tenya said, looking at the bronze award he got.
"Katsuki's always been explosive. Literally and metaphorically. You gotta learn to roll with the punches. I mean, not literally or anything." Izuku offered, shrugging. "He used to be my greatest friend, then... I went away and when I came back..." He sighed.
"Eight years of having his ego fed till it bloated didn't do his personality any favors. He's smart, he's strong, and he can be a great hero if he just took a step back and looked at himself."
Katsuki Bakugo was... he wasn't as upset as he thought he'd be, despite second place. Midoriya was still too infuriating! Telling him to swallow his pride! Saying he'd always save him if he needed it!
He let out a roar and punched the blue wall in front of him!
... wait, wall in front of him?
He looked up and... he had just punched a person! And they completely ignored it! Looking at who he had hit, who had completely ignored him, he had saw the vigilante that had been running around his home town. The Tick, wearing of all things, a necktie! There's no way that he believed that was a proper disguise for a super hero!
"Hey, sport! Heck of a fight you just had!" The Tick said to him. Great, he probably wanted to talk and from what he saw on the news and on the forums... he'd probably have as much luck getting past All Might as he would the Tick.
So he just leaned up against the side of the exit tunnel and crossed his arms. "Wasn't that great. I got second place. I was supposed to win! ME!" He tried to state cooly, but that bit came out too much like bitching for his taste. Fucking Midoriya, making him behave like this, like a damned bitch!
"You know, you got an attitude problem, sport. And I think I know just what it is." The large vigilante took a seat on a bench next to wear Katsuki was standing. It bowed under his weight.
"Attitude problem? What attitude problem! I'm the greatest! I just gotta show these side characters where there place in the hierarchy is! Like I did with Icyhot!"
"Yeah, I get it. You were probably smart growin' up. Strong, too. So your peers, parents, and professions fed you the puppy treats of praise, letting your ego grow fat till all it can do is waddle along the sidewalk of life, in search for it's next snack.
"... what?" Nothing about that sentence made any damned sense. He knew the Tick surely wasn't all up there, in his head space, but nothing about that made any sense.
"Or you're more like a fish! A Big Fish, true, but you lived all your life in a small pond, and then when you discovered the river, you swam upstream... only gaining in size and entered the very ocean! Only to find that the seas were filled with other very Big Fish!"
That sentence made just as much sense as the last one! That is to say, none at all! "The ffffffuck are you talking about?" He was confused and it showed on his face and he wasn't thinking about his loss any more, but seriously, what the fuck was the Tick talking about.
"I believe, Young Bakugo, what Mister Placeholder is saying, is that until you joined UA, you were exceptional. But now that you're here, exceptional is the bare minimum." Katsuki whirled around and saw him! The Symbol of Peace himself! The Number 1 Hero of All Japan!
"You got all that from him? And who the hell is this Placeholder person?" This was just too confusing. All Might started to laugh... then the Tick did the same.
"Nick Placeholder! Dagobah Muckraker! Got anything you want to say on the record, Premature Explosion Lad?" The too wide grin on the Tick's face annoyed Katsuki. The too wide grin on All Might's face was just as bad. They weren't laughing at him, but... fact was, the two understood each other and that was scary.
On the other hand...
"So wait, what you're saying is that all those side characters... were in fact the main character of their own story." He paused, before laughing uproariously. "Yes! YES! It all makes sense! I'm so fucking amazing that even the extras are badass! So of course I didn't win! A hero that never loses is boring! YET ANOTHER OBSTACLE FOR ME TO OVERCOME!" He laughed again, before racing out of the tunnel.
"I don't think the lad took the lesson we were trying to teach." The Tick looked to All Might. The other hero just shrugged.
"Admittedly I'm not a very good teacher, but I'm sure this will all work out in the end." All Might looked at the blonde running out of the tunnel and out of the stadium. "Probably."
With everything said and done, Izuku and his friends were exiting the stadium. A shower a change of clothes, and... really they should have stayed to watch the rest of the festival, but honestly? It was time to celebrate. Izuku managed to get first place. Tenya managed to get third!
"Hey, Midoriya... I'm... gonna have to take a rain check. Pony wanted to celebrate the fact I got to round two of the final leg." Ochako said, as they were walking out. That was fine, that was alright.
"Much as I want to hang out, Monoma is going to need his ego satisfied for barely making it into round 2." Itsuka said with a sigh.
"I don't see why you hang with him, Kendo. You deserve a lot better then that dude." Good ol' Minoru, always looking to see if he had a chance. The ginger haired girl shrugged.
"Maybe, but Monoma isn't as bad as you think he is. And class 1-B has to stick together, especially with the top five positions going to 1-A." That made sense. She probably made friends in her class as well. Alright, still he had the rest.
"Actually, I'm gonna head on home early. Maybe catch a nap." Hitoshi said, yawning. "Still, I'm... satisfied. I might not have made it to the end, but... I got further then I thought possible. And I didn't have to use my power to do it." He thought about it for a moment, then a moment longer. "Though, I would have preferred to have made it pass the obstacle course on my own." He finished, looking at Izuku. "Not that I'm complaining! I think I would have preferred if you just picked me up onto my feet."
"Much as I hate to agree with Shinsou, I think I feel the same. Next time, Midoriya, you just need to pick us up, you don't need to carry us the whole way through." Minoru agreed with the Gen Ed student
Izuku thought about what they said. It made sense. One of the biggest complaints his teachers had for him was that he always tried to save people. He never let them stand on their own two feet. He still remembered the words from Aizawa just the other week.
'Midoriya, you're going to break your back from carrying your classmates like that, and then where is the world?'
"You guys are right. I should've just picked you up like that, but..." He tried to find the words to apologize to the two.
"Don't worry about it, Midoriya! Just don't make it a habit and we'll be cool. Anyway! Me and Kaminari are going to try and see if we can't collect some digits from these Management cuties we saw in the stands." Minoru hooked his thumb over at Denki, who shrugged in agreement.
"... guys, what'd I tell you about acting creepy?" The first day he told them to not creep on chicks.
"But we're not creepin' on chicks, dude!" Denki adjusted his jacket's collar. "This time, we're a bunch of super cool freshman that made it to the final round of the fighting tournament!" Minoru nodded enthusiastically.
"Oh yeah! We're great big heroes now!" The purpled headed boy flexed cartoonishly. "Oh yeaaaah!" He clapped Denki on the shoulder, as the two headed off to the stands.
"Well, gosh! I think that just makes it the three of us!" Mei pulled Izuku and Tenya into a hug.
"How exciting." Tenya deadpanned.
"Are you still unhappy about that?" Mei asked, looking at Tenya incredulously.
"Unhappy? I'm still livid! You used me, Hatsume! You used me as a living billboard!" He all but shouted at her, before calming down. "I apologize. That was unfair. As was how you treated that fight. You had every possibility to win. That was your match to lose, not mine to win and I'm not sure I like it." He was about to keep going on Mei, but then his phone went off. He pulled it out and excused himself. "It's my mother. I have to take this. Hatsume, Midoriya... enjoy the rest of your day."
They watched him walk off, talking with his mother.
"And then the were two..." Midoriya looked over at Mei. "Unless you wanna check out as well, Mei?" The pinkette thought about his words, tapping her finger with a cheek.
"Let's see... I got a hand full of choices... Choice 1 is I spend the rest of my day fielding calls from various support companies that saw my little advertisement with Iida... on the other hand, choice 2 has my champion of a boyfriend buying me dinner and we might make out while I feel up his muscly body." She giggled as Izuku's face turned bright red.
"You're like a salad, Izuku! Bright red and dark green. And let me tell ya something, Izuku!" She leaned in close. "I love me some salad." And she planted a kiss on his cheek, feeling his burning hot skin.
"M-M-Mei! I wish you wouldn't tease me so much!" Izuku replied. She was almost too much from him to deal with, but she was probably the best thing in his life right now.
"You know you love it. C'mon, let's get dinner! We'll catch the high lights of your match with Bakugo later!" And with that, they headed out from the stadium proper.
Champion. It was odd to think about it. I liked to think that I was the champion of justice, having been a vigilante for some time and being a trainee hero, but... I won something I never thought I would have been able to do so. The UA Sports Festival. Even better, Katsuki was improving every single day, becoming less and less like a jerk. I think I was getting to him. I think he was coming around... and maybe... maybe when our time at UA was over, maybe I'd have my friend back.
"He was attacked? Do we know who did it?" The phone call that Tenya Iida received form his mother... originally he thought it was just his mother congratulating him on his third place, but no... she was crying and asking for him to come to the hospital as quickly as he could.
And here he was, in the hospital, talking with his parents. His older brother, Tensei, the Pro-Hero Ingenium, had been attacked. The police were there as well, talking to him about what had happened.
"We believe it was the Hero Killer, but according to the cameras on Ingenium's armor, the Hero Killer is no longer working alone." The police officer told him, filling the young trainee hero with dread. The Hero Killer now had allies? A disciple? Who knew who would work with such a mad man.
"Can I talk to him?" He asked. "Can he speak? Is he going to be alright!?" The rumor was that the Hero Killer had changed tactics with most of his targets. Now his victims were coming back with large, ugly cuts on their faces, fingers taken from their hands, and in one instance, a nose completely missing.
They all said the same thing, that the hero killer wanted to teach society as a whole a sharp lesson, but whereas the Old Stain would have just left a pile of corpses in his wake, the New Stain discovered that if he killed everyone he came across, there would be no one left to teach.
That did not change the fact that at least one of Stain's victims had turned up dead. He remembered hearing about it from his brother, that when they finally got the widow to identify the body, the coldness in which she only said good still made Tenya shiver. An investigation into the deceased was still pending, but the amount of misdeeds the hero had committed was startling and appalling.
"I'm sorry, but that's not possible at the moment. You have to understand, Ingenium lost a lot of blood, we needed to get his heart rate steady and the only way we could do that was put him into a medically induced coma." A coma? They forced his brother into hibernation!? "And even then, whatever it is about Stain's quirk that paralyzes someone... it's reacting badly with the drugs we used to induce his coma and we're not sure we can pull him back out." ... he felt distant, as he heard his mother wail, heaving sobs. The strongest woman he knew... and she was breaking down like a child.
He wasn't going to stand for this. He was going to catch the Hero Killer, if it was the last thing he did.
