The Park

"Genji, I'm home!"

"Hey, mom." I looked up from my work. "I have hot water on the stove. How's work today?"

"Just more of the same, Genji. But," she held up half a dozen blood bags. "I come bearing gifts." She set the bags down on the counter, then moved to the kitchen for tea leaves. "I haven't had time to write down what the donors' Quirks are, but I can tell they're strong."

I looked over at one of the label-side-up bags, then-

"Whoa!"

-blanched in surprise at the name. "Mom, I-uh, no kidding. Doesn't one of these belong to a-"

"Hmm? Oh, yes, those." Mom walked over with a fresh cup of tea in hand. "Don't worry, she can afford to give it away wholesale. She picked up two more bags, each with the exact same name on it. "See?"

"Wow. I mean, wow. Thanks, Mom." This was definitely going to improve the storage capacity; heck, the number of Monsters I could hide on me had just tripled. Still, best to be frugal with it.

"You're welcome, Genji." Mom pushed my drawings aside to make room for her tea. "Maybe now you can leave the house more often this summer?"

"Oh, about that, uh…" And that brought Mom's mood from pleasant to crestfallen. "No, no, I am planning to get out more, but there's something I wanted to ask both you and Dad, you know, after dinner. He said he'll be back with leftovers from work."

"I know, Genji, he messaged me as well." Mom held up her phone. "Sounds like there's extra chashu for tonight."

My lips reflexively licked in anticipation, but my gut… wasn't feeling as relaxed. I certainly hoped they both weren't doing what I thought they were doing. Not when what was going to happen wasn't happening for a very, very long time.

"Can I ask you something, Mom?"

"You just did, Genji, but go ahead." I took a moment to palm myself before continuing.

"Both of you aren't doing anything that'll hurt your paychecks, right? I know I was raving about the end of the world back then, but-"

Mom held out a hand to stop me, then made a big show of thinking by pacing back and fourth, absentmindedly scratching a horn, and so on. The response she eventually gave me was very, very unhelpful.

"Not yet."

"Mom!"

"Takanashi, I understand running is important for running after the villains-" Manga panted as his feet beat the concrete. "Except we've done nothing but run for the past two weeks!"

"He has a point, Gen-chan." Tooru added with lightly labored breath. "A change of pace would be nice, don't you think?"

"Way ahead of you two." I answered, biking alongside the two. "Summer break's around the corner, so don't worry."

See, I had a few other things in mind for my friends' training, like a little bit of parkour, sparring with Quirks, and so on. None of which we could do in the privacy of our houses or in public, not unless we wanted to break something serious. There were also things I wanted to try making that would cause a mess at home.

I also thought it would be nice to have another place to discuss canon freely, let alone someplace bigger.

"So, what's your plan?"

"Do you remember how Yagi trained Izuku?"

"Who's Ya- oh, right." Manga nodded, but his question mark was still there. "But you're not actually suggesting we go all the way to Dagobah beach, are you?"

"No, no." Tempting as it was, I really didn't want to risk running into All Might at too soon a time. "The place I'm thinking of is much closer than that. In fact, we're almost there!"

We continued for about another mile, finally stopping just at the entrance of the place I'd picked out. Once Tooru and Manga caught up to me, I proudly pointed a hand at the derelict sign in front of me, proclaiming,

"Tooru, Manga. Welcome to Bracca Park, home to trees, a pond, and God knows how much junk over the past few years. And for the duration of this summer, it's now our job to clean it!"

My friends' initial reactions were confusing at first. They couldn't seem to decide if they should stare at the derelict park they were tasked to clean, or the misunderstood taskmaster who assigned it to them. But then they settled for keeling over in a cocktail of dread and exhaustion.

"Uh, guys?" I hopped off the bike and crouched over to them. "Didddnn't say it had to be a perfect job, or an everyday sort of thing, either. Now, do you two mind un-possuming yourselves so I can explain the game plan?"

Tooru sat up, but as for Manga…

"Go ahead, Takanashi. This patch of ground feels cozy."

Yeesh. If that was his attitude to P.E., no wonder Manga was so bad at it. Or was he still leagues better compared to everyone not in the Hero Course? The Sports Fest really made it all muddy, especially with Todoroki-

Whatever. I shook my head and began laying down the training plan.

"So, we're only going to the park from Friday to Sunday. My parents couldn't afford to take us all the time, so I still want to have you two run or walk on those days whenever we want to go somewhere. Sorry, Manga."

Manga's dignified response was to grow a set of anger veins on his bubble.

"And this is important. We're only going to clean the back half of the park, anything away from the entrances. I still want it to look messy until the last possible moment, just before you two take the entrance exam at UA. I don't like the idea of randoms watching you two train, or me making… stuff."

"What stuff?"

I didn't have the guts to say it out loud, so I pulled a notebook out of my bag. Not the one with all of my Monsters, mind you, just various things made out of wood or metal. Oh, or plastic.

Manga and Tooru rifled through the notebook, then summed up their thoughts with one word.

""Seriously?""

"Well, it's not like I can ask the Support Course to make this stuff for me, can they?"

"But I could," Tooru pointed to a page, "At least for this and a few other things."

I skimmed the page she was pointing at, and it really didn't seem like they'd make sense coming from her. "Let's just see what I've made once UA rolls around, alright?"

I didn't think Bracca Park was that bad, to be perfectly honest. For starters, there wasn't as much trash compared to Dagobah, and you actually could see the grass and trees under the scrap. Okay, so the uneven ground might be a bit of an issue when moving the trash, and I wasn't entirely sure if the lake was something we could fix. But I could always chop the trickier pieces apart with my Monsters if it was absolutely necessary.

Thankfully for the family budget, Manga made sure that it wasn't on our first weekend there. Aside from learning how to use smaller words from smaller volumes, He'd figured out an extra trick on his own. See, if he spoke fast enough, he could effectively fuse two different sound effects together. For example, if you combined a wooden sound(kara-koro) with a sharp sound(cha), you'd get something close enough to a sword. But today, Manga went a little further; by quickly alternating between a vibrating sound(...shindo?) and a sharp sound, what he ended up with was a blade that vibrated at a Hz I certainly wasn't comfortable with.

"So, what do you think?" Manga asked with a gleam that was both reassuring and totally not concerning. That his focus was on a twisted hunk of car didn't help as much as I thought it would.

"I think you're going to scare your target audience, Manga." I replied from the relative safety of a tree.

"True. It's just for when I'm too close to the Nomu. Those things regenerate anyway, right?"

"I'm not even sure that thing can hold together long enough for that, man." I adjusted my perch to one offering a free hand."Just give me a second."

I pulled out my binder from my bag, pulling out one of my latest creations from my bag and summoning it. Before Manga had time to question that this one was still the size of a Gunpla Model, the blank-faced model quickly grew to human-sized height.

"Awesome, dude!" A budding question mark straightened into an exclamation point, with a thumbs-up formed next to it. "Is that-?"

"Let's just leave it at 'my mom is way too cool', shall we?" I ordered the Dummy to stretch his hand out to Manga, as a nonverbal request to hand over the blade. Manga complied, then positioned himself behind the tree I was perched on. After some final adjustments in position to avoid injury by shrapnel, the Dummy began cutting into a hunk of twisted metal, a good distance away from where we were.

Surprisingly enough, the blade did hold up as it chopped the trash into manageable chunks, no splintering, no limbs quivering, nothing. But the blade did become smaller as metal ground against metal. Still, it didn't look as if anything serious happened to the Growth Dummy.

"What else you got?"

"Not that much I'm afraid." "I did have a kid-friendly hammer, and a spring launcher. But I couldn't build a lightsaber or gun or anything like that." "Where's Tooru?"

"She's out collecting some of the smaller bits of trash with Mom."

"Tooru, what is it?"

"Hey, Gen-chan. Looks like your practice dummy is working perfectly. Can you have it hold up that sword?"

I did as I was told, all the while scanning for any signs of a floating phone, or maybe floating clothes. She wouldn't dare strip now, of all times, right?

"Well, it's worn down, but I think I can make the characters out from here. And yes, Gen-chan, I'm still where you think I am, clothes and all. Your mom can vouch for me!"

"Wasn't going to ask…" I muttered under my breath. But at the same time, this was great! Now she wouldn't need to risk getting too close as much anymore.

At the end of the day, Manga's new weapon had cut most of the scrap metal down into perfectly manageable chunks, ready to be processed and picked up for recycling. I really, really hoped that some of it would be valuable enough to score some extra cash, only to be told it wouldn't be as exorbitant as I thought it would be by the people in charge. A shame, really; I also considered extra money for carrying soil and plants, to spruce up the park even further.

Oh, well. At least there was room for projects, now.

"Hurk… guh…"

"You don't have to stand so close to me if the smell is that bad, Tooru."

"Yeah, but I really wanted to see."

"Then please keep quiet. I'll get you a gas mask next time."

The first costume I had made for Tooru… wasn't that great. It's best quality was its ability to remain invisible, but even then you could see sparkles of light if you looked hard enough. Everything else, Tooru reported, was kind of garbage; the costume got itchy after a few times she wore it, and she couldn't exactly wear anything else to make it more comfy. But the worst bit? The costume pretty much fell apart at the seams when she tried washing it. She managed to salvage most of it, but it was going to take more than a patch job.

Hence, today's experiment. I had just whipped up a new, static-sized Monster for the sole purpose of making a nicer costume. This one was a composite made of just two quirks, the first being a pitcher plant Quirk to break down the remains of the first costume, some extra hair, and some cotton for comfort. I was considering adding a bit of Manga's kira-kira(shiny object) effects for durability, but decided it wasn't worth the possible loss of comfort. Besides, I could add it in later.

Of course, since this was, to reiterate, a pitcher plant Quirk, it was only natural the acid generated would smell foul. Something Tooru's bellyaching helped to reinforce.

The second Quirk was kind of interesting, to say the least. According to Mom, the guy who donated could generate silly strings from his wrists, kind of like those toy web shooters they used to sell back home. The problem was, the proverbial fluid in his case was composed of his stomach contents. So not only was the silly string edible and aromatic, but the poor dude would be left hungry by the end of it. Maybe he could've tried eating stuff like nails or boiling water, but something told me he didn't eat the Net-Net fruit.

Well, at least his Quirk would be put to noble use.

Even though I wasn't sure it would help, I had the monster shake its rump a bit, see if I couldn't speed up the digestive process. A few giggles and snickers later, it was time. I pointed the monster to a trash bag-laden area, and gave the command.

"Fire!"

And really, the amount of string it was spewing out was rather impressive, what with the volume of the original contents. But immediately, I noticed a problem.

"I can see the thread." I muttered. The whole point of making this was for an invisible costume, and it definitely could not be done using what was being spewed this very moment!

I waved for the Monster to shut the taps, before going over to inspect the string that had already been fired. A quick feel for the string did indicate more flex and comfort compared to hair, but- crabs! None of that meant anything with a string that was translucent, not transparent!

"What happened?" Tooru popped up next to me. I passed her the piece of string, and I could see it slightly droop a little bit. Still, her reaction was more positive than negative.

"Well, at least it'll be nicer to wear."

"Yeah, but it's still visible."

"Is it?" Tooru wrapped the string around her hand, then walked several dozen feet from me before waving. "Did you see me waving my hand?" she asked me once she was back.

"If I squint hard enough."

"Then I guess I'll just have to keep my distance."

"I guess you will, but man!" I groaned. "I was hoping this could render every other bit of costume material invisible. Like zippers, rubber soles, gloves, raincoats, wings…"

"Wings?"

I brought my other notebook out, turning to a newly drawn page. "If they can't hear footsteps…" I muttered sheepishly.

And judging from the neck, she was definitely shaking her head in exasperation.