Chapter 3:

The dilapidated building with its heavy, metal door and iron wrought bars over the windows was a testament to the types of visitors the owner expected to drop by. Not surprising, given its location. Depending on the neighborhood, some alleys could have a downright friendly atmosphere. With garages open to peddle wares, and mom's pushing their kids in strollers without a care in the world. Then there were alleys like this. Seedy, disgusting environments covered in thick shadows. Broken bottles and discarded needles could be found on every turn, and everyone walked around with their hard, sunken eyes turned towards the ground lest they anger the wrong person. It was a sad fact that Yuu felt comfortable in both types of alleys. Nevertheless, Tokyo had changed. What was once a relatively safe city was now a hotbed of activity. Criminals tried their hand at petty crimes left and right while heroes sought the inverse. Mumbai had been no different. The world was a different place from what he once knew.

The level of danger was something to note, but it didn't impact Yuu that much at all. Though it had been a startling realization to find out he couldn't plunder every ability out there, the heteromorphic ones especially, his large array of abilities meant he could still work his way through any situation. The bipedal, bear of a man in Mumbai had learned that the hard way when an explosion tore off his arm. Yuu had spent too many years in too many dangerous environments to grow complacent and only rely upon Plunder. A small girl with a knife had taken his eye because he wasn't prepared. He would not get taken off guard again, no matter the circumstances.

Yuu walked through the dingey, dangerous alleys with his head held high, daring anyone who thought he was bluffing to take their best shot. Most who tried found themselves either down an ability, injured, or both. Fortunately, it seemed like his quick demonstrations were more than enough to ward off further attempts, at least in this ward of the city. That suited Yuu just fine as, for now, he had business with the shitty building and its needlessly large, heavy metal door. After a few polite questions had been posed to the right people, Yuu had learned that this was where everyone who was anyone of worth came if they needed to make connections. The interest he had in actually establishing contacts among the underground of Tokyo was minimal, at best, but at the very least he needed an ID that appeared to be legitimate and above board. Tokyo had changed, but it was still his home. All it took was a few days to remind him of that fact. Regardless of where life took him after he had paid his respects to his family, he wanted to be able to walk around the city without worrying about the police trying to arrest him for being an illegal immigrant. The one he had gotten in Mumbai was worth holding onto, but he wanted one of a slightly higher quality.

There was no sight of any kind of buzzer or door-bell, so Yuu elected to hammer his fist against the metal with a minor strength ability activated until someone came to let him in. Only about thirty seconds had passed when heavy creaking and the unmistakable sound of locks being shifted led to the door swinging inward and revealing a girl who couldn't have been much older than Yuu with a cigarette dangling from her lips. She had rather tan skin with black hair pulled up in a high pony-tail and her bangs trimmed just above her eyes. She was dressed in nothing but a black sport's bra and a pair of brown shorts that barely reached her thighs. Undeniably a gorgeous young woman, Yuu couldn't help but allow his eyes to be drawn to the series of tattoos that extended from her wrists to her biceps on each arm. Designs of mythological creatures, artistic renditions of symbols, and two little bells that might be found on the end of a pet's collar, all intricately designed and incredibly well drawn. The girl eyed Yuu up and down with a blank expression before removing the cigarette with two fingers and blowing a trail of smoke to the side.

"You here to see Giran?" She asked, hard, brown eyes meeting his own without fear or apprehension.

Yuu nodded plainly. "He's the broker, right?"

It was her turn to nod. "The fuck do you need from him?"

The woman's surface thoughts were primarily focused on Yuu, her lack of knowledge as to who he was, and concern as to whether he was secretly with the police or heroes, but there was surprisingly no concern for her boss. Her level of suspicion was justifiable given that he was a complete unknown cold-calling a guy who was supposed to know a lot of people, but it was also annoying.

"Same thing everyone else who reaches out to him needs, his connections." Yuu stepped forward and met the girl's distrustful eyes with his one, forcing her to look up since he had quite a few inches of height on her. "Now, do you want me to shout out why I'm here for all of the world to listen in on, or are you going to invite me in so Giran and I can conduct business?"

The girl's face was perfectly blank, but her thoughts told a slightly different story. Nevertheless, she acquiesced to his polite threat with a small nod, the cigarette finding its way back into her lips as she stepped to the side to allow him entry. The inside of the building was just as brutally efficient and ugly as its exterior. Concrete flooring, plain walls, and furniture that had definitely seen better days, dark curtains that covered every window and allowed almost no light inside. An old fridge that had certainly seen better days was stuffed into a corner. The whole room smelled faintly of cigarette smoke, cheap booze, and sex. All in all, it was reminiscent of the various rooms he'd stayed in during his travels when he was in poverty-stricken regions or hiding out in the rougher neighborhoods. The nostalgia he felt was downright peculiar.

The girl wasted no time in crawling onto the moth-eaten couch, her bare feet splayed out over it as she simply watched him look around. There was an average sized TV playing a hype piece for the high school sport's festival that he'd been hearing so much about. It was crazy to him that high-school students were the stars of the biggest sporting event of the year, but maybe he'd check it out and see just why everyone seemed so excited. From what he'd heard, it sounded like it was a disgusting display of kids being exploited and made to engage in blood sport to satisfy the masses. It was possible that he was mistaken though. Motive was always difficult to discern. His time on the student council had taught him that much. The sleezy guy selling nudes of his classmates was a prime example. The actions he took were still shitty, but the money was to help take care of his extremely sick family. The world wasn't black and white, even with the choices he'd made in life, he was well aware of that fact.

"Where's Giran?" Yuu asked the girl, already scanning her mind just in case she tried to lie, though it proved unnecessary.

"Through there," she said, pointing with the same two fingers that held her smoke towards another door, though this one was wooden, with the corners slowly rotting away.

Yuu didn't spare her another thought as he followed her directions. It was rude of him, but people like her rarely valued social niceties, so he wasn't going to waste his breath. The door led to an equally run-down hallway, with stripped off paint and holes in the dry wall that revealed the wooden frame. The lone lightbulb, surprisingly not flickering, at least provided ample light for Yuu to navigate to the ajar door on the left-hand side.

Inside, seated behind a surprisingly well-kept mahogany desk with a single laptop and a mug of coffee on top of it, there was a middle-aged man with parted gray hair and squinting eyes lurking behind a pair of circular glasses. Just like his associate who answered the door, the man had a cigarette resting in his mouth, but unlike the girl's, his was hand-rolled and held between his teeth, revealing his calculating smirk and the large gap from where he'd lost a tooth. The suit he wore looked was crumpled and worn, as if it had been slept in more than once, like a salaryman who kept spending nights in the office. The man did not cut a very impressive figure but looks were often deceiving. If nothing else, the man's eyes were calculating. He didn't know who Yuu was, but even without telepathy it was easy to see that he wanted to.

"Well, well," the man began, rising from his ripped leather chair, "it's not every day that strangers show up on my door-step looking to make a deal, but I'm an amicable businessman always open to new clients. The name's Giran. Might I have yours?" He punctuated his introduction by extending a hand for Yuu to shake, revealing stained by well-trimmed nails, likely a courtesy of the tobacco he chose to roll himself.

Yuu took the proffered hand with a firm grip. "Call me Yuu."

"It's a pleasure," Giran responded, his smirk widening ever so slightly as their handshake fell before he gestured to the lone chair in front of the desk, an old, cushioned arm-chair. "Please, please, take a seat. I'm sure we have much to discuss."

"I don't actually think our business will take too long, to be honest," Yuu said, taking a seat and leaning back so he could comfortably cross his legs. Without so much as a twitch of his eye, he activated one of his abilities that allowed him to essentially scan a 3D area and learn both its blueprints and contents. Information gathering abilities were comparatively rarer, but damn useful all the same. The confirmation that there were no strange devices in the immediate vicinity gave Yuu a bit of confidence that he was not being filmed or recorded for blackmail purposes down the line. He hadn't expected to find anything but caution never went amiss.

"Maybe not," Giran agreed, "but I like to learn little bit about my clients. It helps establish good, long-term relationships. Rest assured, I'm a very discreet man."

Yuu actually believed the man's claims. Though he was commonly referred to as a broker by those who were in the know, it was more apt to call Giran a networking consultant or a head-hunter. The man's reputation was that he knew everyone who was anyone in Japan's underground. If he was untrustworthy, there was a high likelihood that someone would have arranged his death years ago. Assuming his reputation wasn't inflated by falsehoods, then it was obvious that slimy bastard knew how to walk the line as everyone's friend and no one's enemy. A tightrope balancing act, but a downright impressive balance to strike.

"How about we start with why I'm here." Yuu phrased it kindly, but he wasn't really asking, a distinction that Giran seemed to accept in stride.

"Of course, of course," he steepled his fingers together and rest his chin upon them as he leaned over his desk. "Now then, what manner of services do you require, hm?"

"I need a new identity. Proper paperwork, documentation, the whole lot." Yuu had no intentions of opening a bank account or paying taxes, but he wanted to appear like a normal citizen in the off-chance someone with ties to law enforcement ever came knocking on his door asking questions

"Looking to disappear, eh?" Giran laughed, leaning back into his seat, and beginning to type away on his computer.

"More like reappear," Yuu corrected, a smirk laced with bits of arrogance sliding onto his features. "Right now, I might as well not exist, but I'd like a fake back-ground to fall back on, just in case."

Giran nodded in understanding as he reached up to adjust his collar. "A public identity for above-board purposes, makes sense. Not a request that's unheard of. A bit rarer of a reason than what most of my clients request new identities for, but I believe I know just the woman who can help you out."

"How much is an introduction going to run me?" Yuu wasted no time in getting to the heart of the deal. Giran thought of himself as a businessman rather than a villain. The type of individual who had clients instead of accomplices or cohorts. Money mattered to most people quite a lot, but to men such as Giran, it was everything. Luckily for Yuu, his ability to interact with computer code meant that ATMs were practically free money dispensers. If there was one thing he did not have to worry about, it was cash.

Giran chuckled as he exhaled a puff of the scented smoke. "Name alone is worth some, an introduction is worth a fair bit more. Plus, if you want an introduction, suddenly my name is tied to yours, so, I'll need to know a bit more about you first. Never fear though, I wouldn't dream of sharing what I learn."

"Your version of attorney client privilege?" The question was meant as a jibe, but it only served to make the broker's smile that much more widely.

"Something to that effect, yes."

Seeing no point in delaying the process unnecessarily, Yuu spread his arms wide as if to mime that he was an open book. Some information about himself he would never share, such as the full scope and scale of abilities, but there were many things he could share with absolutely no consequences to himself. According to any records that might exist, Yuu Otosaka went missing almost three centuries ago. Whatever useful knowledge anyone might think to pull from that fact was all theirs, they were welcome to it. "What would you like to know?"

"Just a little bit about yourself. Maybe your name, age, where you're from? A favorite hobby, perhaps? I just like to know a little bit about my clients." Giran's words were benign, but the meaning behind it carried a distinctive, slimy edge. The man was simply off-putting in a way that few people were. He operated out of a rundown shack even though he had wealth aplenty. The suit he wore was deliberately ruffled, just as his desk was conspicuously bare. Everything about Giran suggested that he wished to be perceived in a certain way. The reason as to why was a mystery to Yuu, but the overall persona of his newfound business partner was simply unnerving, and it left him on edge.

To combat his slight discomfort, Yuu decided to be a bit cheeky, something he thought Nao would've appreciated. "Yuu Otosaka," let him look up that name and see where it got him. "Age, 20." A lie, but a small one. Yuu had come to enjoy the pleasures of alcohol in his years of traveling. His ID would say 20, so he might as well get used to the lie. "I was born here in Tokyo, though I moved around to a bunch of different neighborhoods growing up." An honest answer, but a meaningless one. "As for hobbies, well, I'm fond of traveling."

"Traveling, huh?" Giran latched onto that answer rather quickly, taking a long drag from his cigarette. "Where all have you been?"

Yuu couldn't help the genuine smile that came to his face, though just like when he had been in high-school, it closely resembled a sneer. "I've been to over 130 different countries on six separate continents." Yuu had initially tried to be systematic in his approach to plundering abilities. The early plan was to clear a country completely before moving on. The more notoriety he gained, the more difficult that became. His actions as the One-Eyed Grim Reaper were known around the globe. Entire governments had begun black-listing him, even if the majority of people had no clue as to the reason why. Ability users were relocated, people were sent to kill him, it became a mess. The feasibility of clearing a country and then leaving was simply unrealistic. Instead, Yuu switched tactics to stay on the move. All he needed to track ability users was a map, and hell, even a globe sufficed. No one would be able to truly hide for him, so the process did not have to be systematic. Over 130 countries were not clear of ability users by the time he took his little nap, but he had been to that many. "You could say I've been around the block."

A low whistle of amazement left Giran's lips, the man's cigarette briefly forgotten in his hand. The few people with whom Yuu shared edited versions of his adventures with usually had a similar reaction. Most people simply didn't travel that much in life, and were frequently surprised that others did. "Well, color me impressed. Where was your favorite place to visit, and more importantly, why were you traveling?"

Why? Because I made a promise to rid the world of abilities. "I was traveling for business related reasons. The… company I worked for had ambitions on a global scale." A vague answer, but Shunsuke's syndicate was close enough to a corporation that Yuu barely considered it a lie. At the very least, the answer satisfied his impromptu interviewer. It was good that Giran understood not to push for details when he didn't need to… it had probably kept him from being killed all the years he'd been in business.

"What about your favorite country or city? Surely you have one?"

Yuu had to consider that question for a moment. A genuine answer cost him nothing here. "I greatly enjoyed my time in Greece and Hong Kong, specifically. For different reasons, of course, but still. I would happily return to both." Yuu trailed off for a second before snapping his fingers, cutting Giran's reply off before it could even begin. "Throw Argentina onto that list as well, actually."

"Interesting… Mind sharing how you injured your eye? Not many people your age are walking around with scars that profound." Giran glossed over the specifics and went straight for another question.

Yuu brushed the hair away from his left eye, showing off the thick scar clear as day. "What do you think happened?" He decided to turn the question back around on the unsettling criminal broker.

Giran lurched forward, his tongue briefly flicking out from the gap in his teeth as he intensely stared at the injury that cut off half the light of the world from Yuu forever. "I'm no doctor, but that looks a lot like some of the knife wounds I've seen in my day. Scar is too long and too clean to come from some kind of stab wound, by my estimation. It's healed over pretty well, as far as I can tell." An impressive analysis. Yuu would bet that Giran either had some medical training, or he was very well experienced in examining knife wounds. Maybe both. "Has to be years old… who in the hell took a stab at your face when you were… what? 15?"

"16," Yuu corrected, which was technically not true since he was about to turn 16 when he first sustained the injury, but it was close enough. "A bare-foot girl did this to me. Short little thing, but she knew how to wield her weapon well." Yuu pulled the collar of his shirt, revealing another knife wound before raising his hand to show the third scar. "I won the fight, but she did quite a number on me." Try as he might, he couldn't help the bitter tone that entered his voice. That day was filled with nothing but regrets for him.

The chair creaked loudly as Giran leaned back into it. He scratched the stubble under his chin as he appraised Yuu with a discerning eye. "There's a lot more to you than you're letting on, isn't there?"

Yuu cocked his head to the side. "What makes you say that?"

"The way you carry yourself," Giran's reply was immediate. "Despite the scars, there's more self-assurance in your body language than what most people are capable of, and I don't think you're simply bluffing. No, I'd bet money that you're either something special, or at the very least you believe you are…"

"Who can say?" Yuu punctuated his rhetorical question with a half-hearted shrug.

"I can," Giran murmured, his voice leaving no room for argument. "Say, are you interested in a job?"

Yuu cocked his head to the side. "Probably not, but what's the offer?"

"A client of mine is gathering people who are, how to phrase it…" A satisfied smile slid onto Giran's face. "People who are dissatisfied with the status quo. Something about you makes me think you'd fit right in."

Yuu's eye narrowed at the man across from him. Somehow, in the course of their conversation, Giran had gleaned more than he should have. The culture of their society wasn't one that Yuu was very fond of, but how the damn broker realized that was a mystery to him. Unless he has a mind reading ability? With that passing thought, Yuu was suddenly very on edge. If this man could read his mind, then he would die right there and then. No matter what difficulties it brought his way, no one was allowed to read his mind and walk away.

"What makes you think I'm not content with the way things are?" Yuu posed the question, but he did not expect an honest answer. Reading minds really was one of his favorite little abilities.

Giran's chuckle did not amuse Yuu, but it was expected. "C'mon, kid, people don't show up on my doorstep if they're happy, play-by-the-rules kinda people. And you specifically? Nothing about you is normal. A mysterious job that led to you traveling the globe? Scars that wouldn't be out of place on a seasoned hero?" The surprisingly honest and simply very perceptive man shook his head. "No, kid, you may not want to join up with my client, and that's fine, but don't sit there and tell me you're happy with the world around you. There's a fire in your eye, that much I can tell for certain."

Not a mind reader, but he's too insightful for his own good… Yuu rose from his chair, his face blank. "My introduction?" They'd bandied words long enough.

Rather than taking offense at sudden cessation of conversation, Giran grinned as if he'd just won the goddamn lottery. No words passed between them until the broker reached into his blazer and removed a business card with no information beyond a single phone number. "That's my number, shoot me a message letting me know who you are, and I'll get back to you with a time and place within the week. You'll get your introduction, and then you can pay me."

All in all, it was a fair deal. "Until then," Yuu murmured, nodding his head towards the unsettling man, and turning to leave.

"I look forward to it." Giran's parting words followed him until he got back to the rickety wooden door that led back into the decrepit entry room.

The girl from before was still seated on the couch, her eyes riveted onto the screen. Her cigarette had since been replaced with a bottle of beer, the brand of which was unfamiliar to him. "You need something from me, or are you just staring at my tits?"

Yuu wouldn't deny that he had glanced at her sizable chest, but he would not describe it as staring. "Just wondering what you do here?" He was genuinely curious. Despite Giran's eccentricities, the girl in front of him just seemed out of place compared to the sleezy businessman.

The girl looked his way, a single eye-brow raised in confusion. "The fuck are you talking about? I live here."

"You live with Giran?" Yuu asked, utterly dumbfounded at the possibility that this gorgeous albeit strange girl was with that middle-aged, gap-tooth bastard.

"Wait, you think we're fucking?" The girl physically recoiled as if she'd just smelled something foul and took a large swig of her drink. "Fuck no am I sleeping with Giran. He just pays me to work out of that room sometimes."

The knowledge that Giran had multiple places he worked from was rather interesting given that the three people Yuu had interrogated had all directed him to the ramshackle building.

"You need anything else? If not, either leave or grab a drink and sit. You just standing there is annoying." The girl used her half-empty bottle to gesture to the ratty part of the couch that wasn't occupied by her feet.

During Yuu's mission abroad, he hadn't spent every single second of his life consumed with fighting or stealing abilities. There had been inevitable downtime. Hours where he enjoyed moments of rest or grabbed a bite to eat. The days he spent traveling in far-flung portions of the world either on a bus, with a caravan, or sometimes only a lone guide for company. The hours upon hours he spent on flights or in airports. Whenever he found those moments of brief reprieve, he found himself engaging with the people around him. The encounter with Sala Shane taught Yuu that everyone around him had a story to tell. Not everyone was receptive to his efforts to make conversation, and even those who were, not all of them were interesting… but Yuu had come to appreciate engaging with people for no other reason than it might be a pleasant way to spend some time before his mission called him ever onward.

Without saying a word, Yuu walked over to the fridge, pulled out a beer that was surprisingly cold, and walked back over to the couch. He needed to decompress a bit after his conversation with Giran, and despite his relatively close proximity with the off-putting man, a beer with a pretty girl was as good of a distraction as anything else. Said girl continued the trend of not speaking as she reached forward to snag a bottle opener off of the… could he even describe a piece of wood somehow stuck against a couple of cinderblocks a table? Regardless, she passed him the bottle opener, allowing him to get a taste of what he guessed was some kind of Pilsner.

"Aren't you hot in that thing?" The girl, whose name he still did not know, abruptly asked, tapping her foot against his coat, inadvertently drawing his eye to the red and black ankle bracelet she wore.

The truth of the matter was that he wasn't hot at all, even with the non-existent air conditioning in the building and it being the middle of May. One of the abilities he'd plundered in Mexico allowed him to be perfectly comfortable no matter the temperature. Rather than explaining that fact though, Yuu shrugged and divested himself of his coat and gray hoodie, throwing them both over the armrest beside him and leaving him in his red t-shirt. "I deal with temperature pretty well," Yuu murmured, unconcerned with her continual staring.

"You're strange," the girl eventually said, propping one arm on the couch as she rotated to look at him, no longer watching the television.

A lone, imperious eyebrow rose on Yuu's face. "Of the two of us, you really think I'm the strange one?"

The girl rolled her eyes dismissively. "Never said I wasn't strange; just said you were."

Yuu couldn't help but snort. It was technically true, but it was also a case of the pot calling the kettle black. "What's your name?" He asked her plainly.

"Izumi. Your turn." His guess that she didn't care for social niceties was right on the money. Only providing her given name was beyond abnormal in Japan, but he would play along and follow suit.

"Yuu."

The now identified Izumi hummed as she took a drink and turned back towards the TV. "You have plans tomorrow?"

Slightly caught off guard by the question, it took Yuu a moment to respond. "Not currently, why?" He could not get a read on his odd new companion even a little bit. She was blunt, more-so than the vast majority of people he'd met, but she didn't just say what was on her mind, it was as if she carefully selected which moments to be blunt during, and which to hold her tongue.

Using her free hand, Izumi gestured towards the television and the non-stop segment on the U.A. Sports Festival. "Tickets are still on sale. The seats will be ass, but I'm going if you want to join me."

The offer was completely random, but even then, Yuu found himself inclined to accept. There was no harm in doing so given that he had to wait to get his new ID anyway. Why not show up in person to watch a hundred first year high schoolers beat the shit out of one another? In all seriousness, U.A. was the premiere school for heroes in Japan, which basically meant it was the premiere school for training abilities. In spite of himself, he was curious to see how the students at such a prestigious institution fared against the average heroes and criminals he'd seen on the streets. Beyond that, he was curious to see how they would measure against himself. "Sure, I'll join you. Though, I wouldn't have expected a girl like you to be into heroes."

Izumi took the comment in stride. "Cause I know Giran?"

Unwilling to admit that he had also read her mind and learned of her worries about cops or heroes raiding her home, he simply nodded. "I doubt he'd rent a room from you if you were the type who dreamt of being a hero."

"Fair enough," she replied, upending her bottle over her mouth, and draining the last of the alcoholic beverage. When she was done, she swung her legs off the couch and went to retrieve what he guessed would be another drink. "I just think it's a fun event to watch," she called back to him, her voice slightly muffled as her upper-body was inside the fridge. "Even though they're just a bunch of fucking kids, they can use their quirks better than what most people even dream of. You can see some cool fights through the UQFC circuit, but I don't know, people like knowing the kids will be risking their lives on the streets in a few years' time. Adds that extra bit of spice."

A twisted sense of validation swept over him as Izumi confirmed some of the suspicions he held. Though, he did take her words with a grain of salt. Something told him that a girl such as her was not the most reliable of narrators when it came to cultural commentary.

"Well, there's even more spice if you pay a visit to one of the illegal fighting pits. Those are where the real fucking freaks show up." A downright wicked glint entered her eye as she hopped back onto the sofa. "You would not believe some of the shit I've seen at those events." Izumi exhibited absolutely zero shame in admitting she'd attended said events multiple times. A part of Yuu actually appreciated the honesty. This girl was refreshingly straightforward compared to people like Giran.

"Let me guess, they were all no-holds-barred, brutal fights where people died more often than not?" Yuu had encountered an ability-user fighting pit twice in his travels. Crowds had laughed and jeered as children used their super-powered abilities to try and harm one another. Sick fucks. There wasn't so much as a single non-ability user left alive by the time he left those facilities. Those were two of the few occasions when Yuu actively sought to cause as much death as he could. Kidnapping children and forcing them to fight for their lives just so they could survive another day off of table-scraps and rainwater… Yuu had relished the destruction he brought unto the downright evil people who organized the creation of such a place.

"Some of them were," Izumi confirmed, adjusting herself on the cushion. "Others weren't, all depends on the terms of the fight. Lots of money changes hands during those fights. Bets worth more than my yearly fucking income."

Yuu doubted that was saying much given the state of her home, but he refrained from insulting her outright. "Is that why you attend? Quick way to earn some cash?"

An offended scoff was his reply. "Please, like I give a damn about anything like that." She met his eyes with a challenging glare. "Do I really strike you as the type of girl to give a shit about materialism? I have a goddamn super-power and this world still expects me to be a corporate wage slave until my hair turns gray and my tits drag against the floor. Fuck. That." She reached out to grab a broken ashtray, a lighter, and her cigarettes off the travesty of a table. "I'd rather find myself an in unmarked grave than bow to the whims of those rich pricks and their licensed enforcers."

A few moments passed before Yuu realized just exactly who the licensed enforcers were supposed to be. "You're referring to the heroes?"

"Mmhmm," she replied, unable to talk as she lit her toxic cylinder. "Who the fuck else would I be talking about?"

"I spent a lot of time overseas, I haven't been back in town long enough to really say." The truth of the matter is that since his return to Japan, he'd really only seen positive reception towards heroes. There were undoubtedly a lot of anonymous internet forums where they were castigated, but by and large, the majority of the populace seemed happy with the work heroes and police did.

"You're Japanese, right?" Izumi asked, giving him another appraising glance. "You look Japanese."

"I am," Yuu confirmed with a nod.

"Well then, let me give you the run-down about the good old homeland… It's all fucked."

"How so?"

"Everywhere you look, state sanctioned violence runs rampant." Izumi leaned forward, a hint of passion entering her voice. "Most people don't give a shit because they're culturally brainwashed into believing that the powers-that-be are the only shit-stains that can be trusted." Another long drag was taken followed by a swig of beer. Yuu remained quiet, almost surprised at how curious he was to hear her continue. "I mean, c'mon, all of these neutered fucks would rather stay in the assembly line and let themselves take it up the ass until it's time to die rather than wondering if maybe, just maybe the societal paradigm we've all been told to accept might be worth changing."

"What kind of changes would you like to see?" Yuu found himself genuinely asking. This random girl he'd met by chance was strange, but her perspective was one utterly foreign to him. A lot about the world looked the same, but she was a great reminder to him that looks could be deceiving.

"Basic shit, like letting people actually use the goddamn quirks we were fucking born with! But no, god fucking forbid I dare to use my power in a public space without a hero license or I'll find myself attacked, beaten, and thrown in jail!" Izumi snorted as she stood up to pace, cigarette in one hand, beer in the other. She was passionate, that much no one could deny. "If people were willing to pull their heads out of their asses, they'd realize how fucked it all is, but no! They bow and scrape to the notion of 'public order' that their masters on high spit down upon them." Without warning, her neck stretched, like her body was elastic, her face suddenly no more than an inch away from his. "Right now, the only people allowed to truly be themselves are the self-righteous bitches that enforce the will of whoever is in charge. The type of people that will ignore someone struggling to get by because their job is predatory, their wages shit, and they can't make the bills that have been stacking up. Those same people are more than happy to slap on some spandex and swing their fist the second that poor bastard with too much debt decides to get back at the world that beat them down." Her neck retracted as her arm matched the elasticity to take another drag. "Law and order," she scoffed, "the entire concept can eat my fucking ass."

The two lulled into a brief silence as Yuu contemplated her words, the poignant and vulgar ones alike. Whether he agreed with her was up in the air, but if nothing else, he actually liked hearing her commentary on society. Her philosophical outlook was vastly different than the general consensus he'd seen online, on mainstream television, or even on the streets when civilians thanked a hero for stopping a random petty crime. Though, he did wholeheartedly agree with her disdain for the average person's utter unwillingness to think critically about the society they were a part of, especially the authoritative institutions that governed every aspect of their lives. Yuu knew better than to blindly trust in authority. The only reason Hoshinumi Academy had even existed as a safe-haven for ability users was because his brother had seized the initiative and financed it himself. The Japanese government had sat back and allowed people like Nao's brother to be experimented upon until his mind shattered. Then there was the bull-shit he encountered during his travels. Half of the places he'd attacked while hunting down ability users had been government sanctioned facilities, and those that weren't were owned by corporations or insurgent groups who had government connections and influence. The world had been filled with corrupt institutions then, why would it be any different today? The label of 'hero' didn't magically assign a right or wrong value to the actions they took. Depending on the society, a hero could be nothing more than an instrument of evil, and the crowds would still cheer and chant their name.

Izumi, apparently sick of the silence, continued on her tirade. "I'm not saying shit needs to be like the Troubled Century, but it's like we're all supposed to live in the age before quirks. Don't you think it's fucked that everyone is born with these incredible abilities, but most people are content to pretend we don't have them?"

"They are not all incredible!" Yuu's voice was like ice. Quiet, but utterly chilling. Izumi stilled, her eyes wide and her lips ajar. An unspoken tension settled over the room as he turned his one eye toward her. "For every person who loves their power, there's someone else made a victim because of it." Yuu couldn't help but picture the wreckage of his sister's school. He had never seen her body at that time, but he could imagine it.

Regaining her wits, Izumi eyed him cautiously. "You lost someone, didn't you?" She didn't wait for a reply. "Who?"

Yuu didn't care that he had traveled through time to undue it all, no matter how many years passed, he would never forget the sheer dread that welled within him when he heard his little sister was gone. "My sister."

"Sorry to hear that." Her words were likely nothing more than a platitude, and they rang hollow to his ears.

"It was a long time ago."

"But you still hate quirks?" The question was almost innocent in its delivery, as if Izumi was genuinely interested in learning if he despised that which most of the world heralded as a boon. Why she would care was beyond him; Yuu didn't understand this girl at all.

"I just think they've done more harm than good." He settled for a vague, half-answer that failed to encompass his emotions in the slightest. Did he actually hate abilities, or was he just trying to remove them because of the danger they posed to him and his loved ones? Did he accept his mission because he truly wanted to see a world free from super-human powers, or was he just following Nao's plan because she was Nao, and he loved her? The answer, like most things in life, was probably somewhere in the middle.

"All I know is the world with quirks," Izumi murmured, shrugging as she leaned her head back. "I've got my issues with the world, but the existence of quirks doesn't make the list at all."

Yuu rolled his eyes and prepared to rattle off all of the shit he'd learned from a few quick searches online. "Crime statistics are constantly at record highs, every war sees higher casualty numbers because of the sheer destructive force every single soldier has at their disposal. Discrimination runs rampant between those with heteromorphic… quirks." He had to catch himself from referring to them as abilities. Even with him being honest about traveling, the nomenclature was important for not revealing how out of place he was in the world. "Quirk-less people are practically second-class citizens, and like you said, all of this exists, and the state just claps themselves on the back for allowing an independent organization to hand out licenses to private citizens so they can enforce the law at their discretion."

Izumi pursed her lips in consideration. "Honestly, I think you're just biased."

"…Excuse me?" The amount of willpower and focus it took for him to not instinctually react with one of his abilities was astronomical. There were a lot of reactions one could have to his distaste towards abilities, but dismissive was not one he was about to tolerate.

Credit where it was due, Izumi did not lack for courage. She met his narrowed eyes without wavering. "I think you're fucking biased." She did not even give him time to have an outburst before continuing. "I don't know the details, and I don't need to, you already admitted that you have a personal reason to not like quirks, and that alone means your perspective is skewed. All that shit you just mentioned, all of it is a result of humans sucking ass, not quirks." Neither of the two broke eye-contact, the incessant prattle of the television the only noise to be heard until Izumi scoffed. "Besides, which statistics are you comparing the shit from the modern world to? The time right before quirks when the world was comparatively stable and safe? Or the 1940s, when the entire world was at war and the fucking 'good guys'," she used her fingers to mime air-quotes, her sarcasm palpable with every word, "dropped bombs that vaporized entire cities? I'll take quirks over the advancement of nuclear weapons any day of the year."

In spite of his pride telling him to contest her every word, he couldn't deny that her words made sense. Especially in regard to the data he chose to cite that she was quick to contest with a surprising amount of historical references from times before he was even born. It was lazy of him not to corroborate just what exactly those statistics were being weighed against. Though, in his defense, he hadn't finished high-school… not that he was about to share that info with anyone.

"Humans are horrid," Yuu agreed with her assessment on that front, "which is why I think giving every single human the potential for more chaos and destruction is a net-negative for us all."

Izumi rolled her eyes, clearly demonstrating what she thought of that argument. "What a little-bitch answer. You'd really have the world go back to the state it was in before? When power only lay with those who were in charge?"

"How is that any different from the world today?" Yuu challenged, the drink in his hand forgotten as he engaged in an ideological debate.

"It's not… not yet, anyway," she said, a satisfied smirk on her lips. "Quirks at least give people like me a chance to not get stuck in the systemic shit that make victims of us all."

"What difference does your quirk make?"

Izumi looked at him like he'd just grown a second head. "Are you kidding me?" She smiled, it was the first he'd seen one grace her features, even through his haze of turmoil and contemplation, he thought it was a nice sight to see. Without warning, her arm elongated and stretched all the way to the fridge on the other side of the room. "I fucking love my quirk. It's the only reason I can live as I do. I can fight, I can flee, I can get into places I shouldn't, I can do things I would never be able to do otherwise." Yuu hadn't been paying attention and so he almost jumped when her other hand tapped him on his shoulder, her arm stretched across the back of the sofa where he couldn't see. "Maybe if I'd been born back before quirks I'd still have the same personality, but there's no fucking way I'd be able to live the life I do now, and that's all because of my quirk."

Yuu leaned his head back on the armrest, staring at yet another unfamiliar ceiling. Out of the periphery of his vision, he could tell Izumi was watching him, waiting for a reply, but he honestly didn't have anything to say. The argument she made, while impassioned, failed to dramatically shift his beliefs. While thought provoking, and a curious insight into the mind of someone who grew up only ever knowing the world with abilities, Yuu's stance remained unchanged. At any moment, he was ready to steal someone's abilities. The crusade he'd initially set out upon had failed, there was no denying that fact. To try and continue where he'd left off would be the height of foolishness. There were simply far too many abilities for him to plunder them all. To live for that goal would be a fruitless waste of time. However, he still possessed Plunder, and he would not hesitate to use it if he deemed someone undeserving. The criteria were fickle and ever changing. At that moment and time, he permitted Izumi to keep her ability. Who could say if he would arrive at the same conclusion when next they met?

"What about you, what's your quirk?" Izumi asked him, all of her limbs back to their normal lengths.

Yuu arched an eyebrow. "Why would I tell you that?"

A foot impacted his leg. "Don't be an ass, I showed you mine, so turnabout is fair play, now show me yours." She started to laugh at the obvious double entendre. "Or is it so useless you're embarrassed by it?" Her taunting grin was clearly meant to goad him into responding… and damn her, it worked.

There was actually no harm in sharing by his estimation. Though he had thousands at his disposal, above all others he possessed, there was one ability he was too fond of using to hope to hide it for any real length of time. Instantly and without any physical give-away beyond the shifting of his eyes, Yuu used his telekinesis to lift the couch they were both residing on into the air, for added measure, he made the empty bottles on the sham table start to dance and Izumi's ponytail started twirling.

"Damn," Izumi murmured, unable or unwilling to disguise the slight amazement in her voice. "That's an impressive amount of power and control right there…"

"I have a lot of practice," Yuu said, though it was obvious his modesty was faux in nature.

Izumi hummed as the couch was lowered to the ground and her hair once again under gravity's control. "What kind of work are you into that you hate quirks, but have a ton of practice in using yours?"

Yuu smirked as hundreds of situations where he'd utilized various combinations of his abilities sprung into mind. That information he had no intentions of sharing, but even then, he couldn't resist taunting her as a form of retribution. "Oh, you know, a bit of this, a bit of that... Use your imagination."

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Author's Note: I had a lot of fun writing this chapter. Don't worry, the random OC won't have a major role in the story or anything, I simply enjoy expanding the world beyond the usual cast of suspects, and she seemed like a fun way for me to do so. Plus, once I started writing her I realized she was a lot like a friend of mine, and that just made her all the more amusing to write. Anyway, that's all from me. Until next time, thanks for reading as always. Cheers.