Chapter 4: Team Purple Part II
As soon as the Three-Pointer spotted us, without hesitation, Shinso scooped me up from the ground, held me under his arm, and bolted us away from danger for the third time that day like a true hero. Sure, I would have preferred if he carried me with a bit more grace, but beggars can't be choosers. He was the legs of this duo; and if it was easier for him to carry me like I was a duffle bag, I will play my part and be a cooperative duffle bag. Especially when there were missiles involved.
Fortunately, my role as a satchel was short lived when Shinso took a sharp left turn and dove down a narrow alleyway. The screams of missiles flying stopped soon after we were out of sight of the Three-Pointer, and we were once again given a small respite from the UA exam, however short it might be.
Shinso dropped me—once again, thanks for the carry but ouch—and nearly fell over. He was hunched over with his hands on his knees, panting heavily with his skin glistening and clothes darkened from sweat.
"So... what's the plan?" Shinso wheezed. I was a little hesitant to answer because I had a strong feeling that he wasn't going to like this plan. But running away wasn't getting us anywhere and my plan was the only thing I could think of that could get us some points and fast.
I took a calming breath before replying, "We need to get on top of that Three-Pointer."
He choked on his spit and stared at me as if I grew a second head. "W-What?"
Called it. "Look, if you want points, you need something to fight the other Villain Bots."
"So, you're suggesting that I use the Three-Pointer to fight on my behalf?"
"Exactly!"
"That's stupid," he stated, shaking his head. "As soon as we go back out there, it's going to start shooting at us!"
"Unless we get behind it," I countered. "It only fires missiles when it sees us. If we get in its blind spot—either behind it or on top of it—it won't see us."
"And what's stopping it from turning around and finding us?"
"I'll take care of that," I said. "A couple of my grapes trapping it to the ground will stop it from moving."
He nodded. "Okay, I'll give you that. But how do I get it to fight for me?" Shinso asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Get in front of its camera. If it sees your face, it'll start shooting indiscriminately. And with you controlling when it shoots and doesn't shoot, it's basically a gun to you to fire at other Villain Bots."
He stared at me for a moment; I could almost hear the gears in his head, running simulations of my plan. But it was taking too long.
I raised my hand to—
"Stop trying to slap me!" he shouted, pushing my hand away.
"We don't have time to debate over this!" I argued. "We have less than five minutes before this exam is over and this is our best bet."
He huffed and glared at me before his shoulder dropped in defeat. "If I die, my ghost will haunt you."
I rolled my eyes. "Thanks for vote of confidence," I deadpanned before raising my arms up like a child wanting to be picked up. "Now let's go!"
Much to my surprise, Shinso turned his back to me and kneeled, essentially telling me to hop on. He was giving me a piggyback ride, which was perfect. Instead of being dead weight in his arm, I could volley my grapes at the Villain Bot to stop it from turning towards us while he made a mad dash for its blind spot.
And it would be a lie if I said I didn't enjoy feeling tall again.
After climbing on his back and giving him a moment to catch his breath, Shinso bolted out of the alleyway like a bat out of hell. The insomniac paid no mind to the projectiles coming at us; he kept running in a Z-formation, dodging the onslaught as best as he could, whereas I focused my energy on trapping the Three-Pointer where it stood.
As planned, once the Three-Pointer was stuck in place by my grapes and we reached in its blind spot at its rear, the Villain Bot stopped firing missiles. I hopped off Shinso's back and climbed up to the top of the robot's turret right to start throwing grapes onto the street behind us.
Shinso looked at my actions with a questionable look. "Why are you—?"
"Robots can come from both sides," I interrupted, cluttering the street with grapes. "You focus on the ones coming from the front and I'll make sure we aren't caught off guard by an attack from the back."
He nodded in understanding. He then hurried and climbed the Three-Pointer and made his way to the head of the bot. Once there, he leaned over until he was face to (upside down) face with the single, glowing red dot camera on the Three-Pointer.
"Target acquired!" the Villain Bot called out, firing a single missile down the street. It flew straight down the block before it hit one of the faux buildings, leaving a large crater after impact.
Shinso looked up from the Three-Pointer to the destruction that he caused, wide-eyed. "This... this might actually work!"
"Told you!" I goaded. I then grinned. "And not a moment too soon because we got company!"
The insomniac's test drive must have attracted some attention. From the next city block over, three One-Pointers drove over to our street to investigate the ruckus. And when their red dot cameras spotted us on the Three-Pointer, they came charging at us. Shinso leaned forward to face the Three-Pointer's camera again but this time his head was parallel to the incoming threat. The Three-Pointer couldn't move much with my grapes holding it in place, but it could move enough so that it was now in alignment with Shinso's face. The Villain Bot issued its usual threat before launching another missile, this time hitting the center One-Pointer, blowing up all three at once upon impact.
"That's three points for you!" I cheered.
Shinso looked up at the remains of the three One-Pointers and blinked. "I have three points," he whispered in awe.
I felt pity for the guy, this must have been the first points he has earned since the exam started. But I didn't dwell on it too long; there were points to be won.
The situation escalated after that. Villain Bots started showing up to investigate the explosions and Shinso disposed of them, which led to even more Villain Bots showing up. Our plan quickly delved from a simple first-person shooter to a survival mode video game, fighting wave after wave of robots coming from both sides. I could guess the change in strategies from the robots was UA wanting to challenge us examinees on how we would perform when the enemies double while we were getting exhausted from fatigue.
Challenge accepted!
I was rapidly plucking and throwing grapes at my side of the street, stalling the hordes that were trying to attack us from behind. I stopped counting Villain Points after the fifth Two-Pointer tried to rush us; I threw grapes at anything that moved, made sure it stopped moving, and picked a new moving target. Wash, rinse, and repeat.
My bare feet started to burn from the overheated turret underneath me. My vision grew blurry as tears filled my eyes. The sounds of the missiles flying were so loud, and with me standing above the source, I gained an understanding as to why Bakugo was always shouting in the anime. It couldn't have been more than a few minutes, but I could have sworn that I had tinnitus.
Hell, I took a page from the book of Lord Explosion Murder and started shouting obscenities at the robots because it was the best way to ignore the burning sensation from my blood-soaked scalp.
Eventually, after what felt like an eternity, the number of Villain Bots slowly dwindled until there were no more coming after us. Great. I was exhausted, my head hurt, and all I wanted to do was pass out. The fewer robots, the better.
"Holy shit, are you okay?" I slowly looked down from the turret to see Shinso looking up at me in a panic. "You're bleeding a lot!"
I gave a raspy chuckle. I was already losing my voice too. "Can't pull these too fast or this happens," I said as I pointed at my head. "So how many points did you rack up?"
He jerked his thumb behind him, referring to the smoking warzone up the street. "Hopefully enough."
Looking back at my side, I dried my eyes with my arm and saw the purple spotted junkyard that was my handiwork. "Good."
"Two minutes, twelve seconds!" Present Mic's voice echoed through the mock city.
"Sweet," I mumbled tiredly. I sat down on the turret to give my body a moment of rest. "We're almost done with the death circus."
There was a moment of silence, and I was tempted to curl up and fall asleep right there and then, but Shinso spoke up and snapped me out of my daze. "So... uh..." I looked down from the turret to find him rubbing his neck bashfully and looking away from me. "Thanks... for everything. I couldn't have done this without your help."
Aww, such a tsundere.
I waved off the gratitude and yawned, slowly laying down on my back, enjoying the warmth of the turret on my bare skin. "It's no problem. Everything hurts like hell right now... but working with you is weirdly kind of fun."
"You really think that?" I could be hearing things, but I thought I heard some hope in his voice.
"Yeah," I nodded. "You're smart and you saved my ass more times than I saved yours. We just need to work out a little more, y'know? Hero work is very physically demanding. But yeah, we could make a great hero team. Like, we could be one of the greatest dynamic duos in all of Japan!"
"I..."
"And they'll call us Captain Grape and the Insomniac."
"...no."
"What? But those are great hero names for us! I have grapes and you look like your haven't slept in days"
"No," he insisted.
"How about The Purple Gremlin and The Missile Runner?"
"Those are worse!"
"The Purple Menace and The Legs!?"
"I'm taking my thank you back."
I laughed and I could hear him laughing too. Now we just needed to wait for the timer to go to zero and—
The mock city started to shake like there was an earthquake and clouds of dust flew through the streets. Shinso and I, both startled, propped ourselves up and shielded our eyes from the dust and the wind. When it finally cleared, we looked up and saw it. Standing there at twenty-stories tall was the metal colossus also known as the Zero-Pointer staring down at us with eight glowing red dots.
Seeing it in the anime was one thing. Looking up at it as it looked down on us in real life was whole other clusterfuck! Seriously, what was the point of that thing aside from being a waste of government funding? What was this supposed to test—our life expectancies?
"M-Mineta?" I could hear the utter terror in Shinso's voice.
"...yeah?" I was surprised at how calm I sounded.
"You..." he gulped. "You have a plan for that?"
"I... do, actually."
"Really?!"
"Yeah, and it call Run for Your Life!"
The Joestar Secret Technique! It worked for Joseph Joestar, it worked for Kujo Jotaro, and dammit, it should work for us too.
Shinso, who probably never heard of JoJo's Bizarre Adventures, wholeheartedly supported the plan. He didn't say another word; he just grabbed me from the top of the turret, gave me the Duffle Bag Treatment, hopped off the Three-Pointer and ran off.
The Zero-Pointer, however, decided to follow us, casually running over all the Villain Bots that we subdued.
"Why is it after us?" Shinso cried out, carefully making his way through my purple ball pit of doom.
"How would you feel if someone used your biggest child to kill your other children?" I jested.
Many would deny this fact, but I would like to think that there was a correlation between my joke and what the Zero-Pointer did next. In a show of "paternal rage", it raised its massive fist and punched the ground, causing a tremor throughout the city. And with Shinso and I being so close to the moving skyscraper, we were sent flying from the shockwave of the attack—
"Shid!"
"Fuck!"
—and landed safely...on a pile of grapes.
I wasn't too worried about myself; the grapes only caught onto my track pants. And while I would have no problem ditching them and finishing this test in my underwear or au natural, Shinso didn't have that luxury. He landed facedown with his face, chest, arms, and legs stuck to the ground, and I didn't have anything that could remove him. Shinso himself was flailing on the ground like a trapped animal but everywhere his skin was touching a grape was not budging.
ShitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHIT!
The Zero-Pointer didn't seem to care and all I could do was watch as the behemoth crushed all the other robots under its massive treads and continued moving closer...
...and closer...
...and closer...
...AND CLOSER...
...and then it stopped.
The Zero-Pointer was a few feet from crushing us both and it just stopped.
Shinso stopped moving when he noticed that the earth behind him wasn't shaking anymore.
"Why'd id shop?" he slurred. I guess his had a grape stuck to his mouth.
"I don't...I don't know," I wondered out loud. Why did it stop? Was this the work of one of the UA staff members pressing the emergency button. But if that was the case, why was the top of the Zero-Pointer moving around like it was trying to get unstu—
I blinked. I looked at the treads again and the realization hit me at full force.
I burst out laughing.
"Whad happennin? Whad happennin?!" Shinso asked.
"It... It got stuck!" I hollered, clutching my bare chest in laughter.
"Whad?"
"The treads!" I explained between chuckles. "My grapes weren't strong enough to trap the Zero-Pointer to the ground, but they were strong enough to stick the Three-Pointer and all those other robots to the treads! And now they're jammed in there like rocks in a bicycle chain! It can't move forward!"
Shinso stilled at the explanation. I couldn't blame him. But I was too tired and too grateful at being alive right now to care.
"Times up!" Present Mic's voice echoed through the streets. Sirens wailed and the UA Entrance Exam was finally over.
I sighed and fell onto my back. "Thank God! Wake me up when someone from UA comes to get us out of this mess."
I closed my eyes with a smile on my face and allowed the exhaustion to consume me. But not before I heard Shinso mutter, "Dis essam es fukkin ensann!"
I couldn't agree more.
A/N: Mineta is God-tier and solos your favorite verse!
Also, I'm putting a poll up on my profile to figure out which class you want the Purple Boys to go to! Together Forever? Divide and Conquer? Either way, both classes are screwed.