A/N: Ahhhh, my lovely readers. Today's chapter is particularly special. I tried writing it as fast as I could, spending quite a few long nights fighting through headaches until I got it reasonably the way I want it. Why? Because it's part of a birthday gift. Happy Belated Birthday to dearest friend Miri9119! I know I couldn't get the chapter ready in time, but I barely made it within the same week, so it still counts!
Spoiler Alert, this chapter is gonna be about as long as the object in the damn title, so I'm rather hoping that doesn't piss any of you off. I never mean for these things to get quite so wordy, but you never learn how much you have to write about until you start typing.
Enjoooooooooy.
Disclaimer: I do not own One-Punch Man.
Chapter 5: Crazy Train
Fubuki crossed her arms and tapped her foot impatiently, waiting for the scheduled bullet train to arrive and pick her up. It was running late for some reason. Typical.
She spared the area a sweeping glance. Empty. Somehow, some way, she happened to have the entire station all to herself.
The silence was eerie, but then again, she knew she had to prepare for plenty more of the same now that she was officially losing her personal assemblage of subordinates.
The Blizzard Group was dissipating. Since the new policy of the Hero Association was going live in less than two days, she had to painfully watch member after member take their bow and leave her company. She could tell by the wet shine in their eyes that they wanted to fight this 'Rule of Two' with all their combined might, and while their resolve to do so had deeply moved her, she managed to talk them down from it. If any recognition could come from petitioning against the organization that funded them, it wasn't exactly the kind of attention she wanted for them. The best she could do was to tell them to swallow the bitter pill, and to assure them that this was not truly the end for the Group. In fact, she convinced them rather to see it as an opportunity to expand the gang's influence by swimming with the bigger S-Class fish. If there was any advantage to be had from this arrangement, it was that they were in a potential sweet spot for a little Divide and Conquer.
Still, it was with no small part of herself that she hated this position too. She devoted nearly two years of her youth to pulling this posse together, and now it's taking three effortless days to backslide right back into where she had started: by herself. The proud achievement of unifying all fellow B-Classes under her banner was looking more and more like a pipedream, but she knew Sekingar's reputation, and she knew damn well that butting heads with him and the rest of the board committee was like dancing with career suicide. If her sister couldn't complain her way out of it, then she might as well be half as lucky.
Fubuki gave her arms a submissive rub, feeling a bit exposed without having the familiar black suits around to support her flank. On her own, Blizzard was still quite a force to be reckoned with, but she found herself already missing the comfortable shade of the towering Mountain Ape's shadow and Eyelash's over-eagerness to hold every door open for her and slip her sunglasses off whenever they stepped indoors.
But most of all, she missed Lily's bright and cheerful smile.
The fond memory of the young girl made the esper's face sag with loneliness. As she recalled, Lily was among the first wave of followers to leave, though her sad puppy eyes clearly communicated that she would have given anything to stay. But since Silver Fang's residence was practically half the Alphabet away from their headquarters, the girl needed to get a head start if she had any chance of making it in time. It was so like her not wanting to disappoint anyone with late attendance.
Fubuki wondered to herself if Lily had already made it to Bang's dojo okay, but the distant thought was interrupted by the familiar roar of a train as it pulled in front of her, screeching to a halt.
She took a heavy sigh and stepped onboard.
The clean fragrance of the well-maintained transport graced her nose as she surveyed the long aisle for a quiet corner to sit. Each window section had four seats which were split off into two pairs that faced each other. The compartment had passengers, but most of them were gathered towards the front, leaving the back half pretty much empty.
She ambled down the aisle a bit, surprising a girl in a yellow hoodie who gasped as she walked by. Fubuki took a seat in the next section ahead, doing her best to make herself comfortable.
She planted her elbow on the armrest of her chair and turned to stare out the window, watching the train accelerate and pull her out of the station and into the vast fields of green farmland that existed between the city limits.
She did her best to take her mind off the fate of her group. She felt like a mother hen the way she fretted over each individual member's diverging path. There should really be no reason. They were all in B-Class, and they would each have S-Ranked heroes to look out for them too. The matter was nothing to grey her hair up over.
And then there was yet another protruding thought – of her little big sister, Tatsumaki.
Where reality most fits, she told that plain-looking "Caped Baldy" her location out of impulse rather than much else. Something about seeing her overbearing, domineering, higher-than-mighty sibling raise such a racket at the assembly just made her want to do it. The opportunity came along maybe once in a blue moon to get a one-up on the woman that had long eclipsed her ambitions in every conceivable aspect, so the temptation was far too great for Fubuki not to take advantage.
Where there should have been satisfaction, however…came a looming sense of dread that gave her goosebumps.
What if she had already caught on that it was her? It didn't take a great detective to realize that not many people actually knew where the Tornado of Terror kicked up her feet at night. It was this lingering, foreboding feeling that made her eventually come to wonder if it was such a bright idea to tell that bald guy where her short-tempered atom bomb of a sister was in the first place.
She shook the thought from her head, hoping that she was just being paranoid.
A half hour stretched by with silence as her only company. She soon found that the soothing motion of the ride eased her conscience a bit. Just as she was closing her eyes to rest, there came a sudden sound.
"Umm…Miss Fubuki?"
She craned her head to look up at where the soft voice had come from behind her seat. Recognizing that it was the yellow hoodie girl that she had passed, she relaxed her face.
The girl appeared to be around teen-looking age, if not early twenties. She had short, dark brown hair and lighter brown eyes. And even by advanced standards, her face had cute features. Her timid, gentle smile deepened as she hung over the esper's chair and spoke again. "I knew it! I knew it was you I saw pass me…!"
Fubuki tightened her lips to give the stranger a hard stare. "Who are you?"
"Uh-uhmm…" The girl rubbed her head sheepishly. "I just wanted to…to say how I'm such a huge admirer of yours. I'm Swim! I'm a hero too…!" She shut her eyes with a hint of discouragement. "But…yoouu probably haven't even heard of me since I'm only in Class C."
Fubuki narrowed her eyes, not entirely appreciating the feeling of talking over her shoulder to someone who was almost breathing down her neck. "What do you want?"
Swim's eyes shot open in surprise, as if remembering the reason she had come to introduce herself. "Oh! I-If it isn't too much trouble…" She held a small pen and paper out to her with noticeably shaky hands. The girl blushed with bottomless apprehension. "I was hoping to…get your autograph…?" She pushed the objects she held down towards her a bit further to emphasize her wish. "Please…?"
To say Fubuki wasn't in the mood to interact with anyone was the understatement of the week. It evidently wasn't clear to this girl why the esper made a point to hold a seat at the most vacant corner of the train. She wanted to be left alone.
Yet looking into those eyes, she realized that this girl had the same pleading puppy stare as Lily, and it was by that same token that she just couldn't find it in herself to tell "Swim" to take a hike. Besides, despite how elegantly she dressed, Fubuki didn't receive requests for her autograph every day – and was therefore rather susceptible to flattery.
She tried to play off the gesture as an annoyance by rolling her eyes like it was the sixtieth fan to ask for her signature since getting out of bed. "Fine, I guess… But come back around here and face me properly. I don't appreciate people talking to me from behind."
"Ah! Sorry!"
Despite the embarrassment, the lesser hero's smile widened happily at the acceptance, and she hopped down from the chair to walk around and greet her idol with full visibility.
"Th-Thanks so much, Miss Fubuki!" She praised sweetly as her idol proceeded to scrawl her name on the paper. "Actually…is it all right if I call you…Boss?"
The esper broke away from what she was doing to give the younger girl a quizzical look.
Understanding the need for elaboration, Swim continued, "I-I mean, I know I don't actually work for you or anything…and truth be told, my hero career hasn't been going so well lately. Even by C-Class standards, I'm not that impressive… In fact, the hero I was paired up with has already refused to work with me and quit the association." The girl turned her head down in shame. "I was thinking about quitting for the longest time too…so today I thought I'd take the train to see the ocean and clear my head."
"…Okay?"
"But you know…I always thought that if I ever made it into B-Class…it would be awesome if you would let me to join your group! Because someday…" Her face beamed. "…I wanna be just like you, Miss Fubuki!"
The older woman examined the junior hero who had just proclaimed her interest in joining her gang. With such a sweet and innocent face, Fubuki couldn't help but wonder how much this girl truly knew about how half of her manpower was acquired in the first place. Her underlings had grown fond of her now (at least she'd like to think so), but it certainly didn't start out that way. It took time to gain their loyalty and trust, and she was wondering if and how she should explain to this girl the method she used for recruitment that so many other heroes had frowned upon.
After a moment of pause, Fubuki opened her mouth to answer, but just then the compartment door next to them slid open, and both girls turned to see someone carrying a tall stack of boxes their way. Because of their cumbersome size, the boxes hid the guy's face from view as he approached them.
It was only when he set the them down next to the chairs and took the empty seat next to Fubuki did she get a good look at his features.
Metal arms…feathery blond hair…edgy golden eyes with black sclera.
'Hey…' Fubuki narrowed her eyes at him in recollection. 'He's that one S-Class hero from yesterday. The one who was with Big Sis's new partner…'
The two higher-ranked heroes both heard an airy gasp escape from Swim, who quickly recognized him too.
She put her hands over her mouth in complete surprise at the coincidence that an S-Class hero had boarded the same train that she had already found the exalted leader of Blizzard on.
Her star-struck eyes shimmered brightly as she remarked, "D-Demon Cyborg?" with a squeaky voice barely audible from behind her clasped fingers.
Genos stared up at Swim for a long matter of seconds with an unreadable expression. She fidgeted nervously under his prolonging gaze until he finally spoke.
"Your jacket." He stated without blinking. "It is very yellow."
"Oh!" The two pink circles on the girl's cheeks turned a shade pinker. "Th-thank you!" She did a quick doubletake to think more about what he just said. "Umm…thank you?" She was hung up on whether his statement was intended as a compliment or simply an observation.
"Genos."
The young cyborg turned to face the woman that he didn't even realize was sitting next to him.
"Fubuki." He returned. "B-Class, Rank 1. Sole founder and leader of the B-Class clique, the Blizzard Group."
"H-Hey!" The esper retorted, offended by his phrasing. "It's not a clique!"
"Club."
"Not a club either! This is the Hero Association, not some preppy high school!"
Genos tilted his head in a vague attempt to understand her problem, but passively brushed it off. "I have taken small liberties to do some research on you since yesterday's introduction."
"Oho~" Fubuki flashed him a foxy grin. "Interested in me, are we?"
"Of course." Genos replied without missing a beat. "You are without doubt related to that undergrown weed, Tatsumaki. Therefore, I have placed you under intensive scrutiny until I can be certain you will not pose as an irritant for my master."
Fubuki's playful grin diminished into disappointment. "Master? Surely you can't be referring to the bald man with that laundry sheet of a cape hanging off his back…"
"Master Saitama holds a very deceitful appearance, it is true." Genos agreed. "I have done research on that too. I am now 86% convinced that this is an intentional façade meant to lull opponents into a false sense of security and seize the element of surprise. It has been quite successful thus far."
Fubuki's eyes narrowed with annoyed suspicion. Oh goody – another weirdo. Here he had a charming, beautiful woman sitting right beside him, and he managed to turn a perfectly good pick-up line into some odd obsession about Caped Baldy.
If there was even any to start with, the Blizzard of Hell's faint interest in her new visitor had flown out the window. Now she was back to just wishing to be alone again.
"U-umm…Demon Cyborg…sir?"
Genos turned his gaze back up towards the shorter girl who was still standing in the aisle next to them. Her pointer fingers were pressed together in a nervous manner as she struggled for the words to leave her mouth. "I-If you could…after Miss Fubuki's done…I would be deeply honored to collect your autograph too."
Genos and Fubuki exchanged glances at the request, and the latter closed her eyes and snapped her head away in irritation, haphazardly tossing the pen and paper into his lap to show that she was done with it.
Not knowing what else to do, Genos silently complied, using the advanced calibration of his mechanical fingers to strike a perfect signature on the page before she could blink.
Swim's eyes lit up as he returned the paper to her. "Th-thank you both so much!" She threw her head forward in a deep bow. "You've made me so happy!"
The reclining pair nonchalantly gave her a matching shrug.
Suddenly, the boxes sitting next to Genos began to jostle and rumble around, despite the smooth traction of the train ride. The girls looked at it with two different degrees of disturbance written on their face, prompting Genos to explain himself.
"They are crabs." He informed them with a guiltless look which seemed to imply that he thought what he was carrying around was completely natural. "Crabs for my master."
Before either flanking female could even think to ask him what he needed living crabs for, the same door next to them opened again, and through it came walking the second strangest thing Fubuki had seen that day.
A man of moderately tall stature; appearing even taller thanks to the silver-plated armor that covered his frame from head to toe. Instantly the first feature that popped out to all three of them were the two big curved horns jutting out from the sides of his helmet right where his ears should be. Just the way he stood with closed fists pressed into his hips in the stereotypical 'power pose' was enough to tell them that he was a hero of some kind too.
While Fubuki and Genos were still trying to discover why the man seemed so familiar, a re-ignited excitement in Swim's face told them both that they were about to find out very soon.
The metal-clad man turned to address an unseen person behind him who had not yet stepped through the door. "If you hate crowded spaces that much, this is looking like a much quieter place to sit." Good God, even the way he spoke was heroic. The man had a fairly deep voice which echoed hollowly through the full helm disguising his facial features.
His footsteps thumped heavily as he neared the three other heroes, stopping only when Swim jumped out in front of him. "Wild Horn? No way… You're here too…?!"
"Hm?" The man tilted his helm to look down at the girl who was at least a good head shorter than he was. "Why hello there, little lady. And who might you be?"
The question must have flown right over her head, because all the giddy girl did was vigorously shake the hero's gauntleted hand, overcome with delight at the notion that not just one or two, but three popular heroes had all come on the same transport as she did. She blessed her luck, tearfully thanking Kami for having her choose this exact moment on this exact train to go traveling.
But the surprises weren't over yet.
The second person had finally stepped through the door, and everyone caught glimpse of the icy blond hair that was neatly brushed to the side of the newcomer's face with elven grace.
Fubuki and Genos were both surprised to see who it was, but Swim elevated the meaning of "surprise" to a whole different galaxy.
The doe-eyed girl stiffened up like a deer in headlights. She stood completely paralyzed by the stunning vision making its way towards the small group. Unbeknownst to her, she was still locked with Wild Horn in the frozen handshake, and when the B-Class bull caught on that she was without her faculties, he made a polite attempt to pull his hand away. He encountered some trouble, however, as the girl was gripping him with more strength than he imagined a person of her size capable of.
As he finally managed to break free of her, Swim clasped both of her hands over her heart as she looked off into the distance at the newest guest, trying to convey with her mouth what her brain seemed to have so much trouble trying to process.
"Fl…Fl…"
It was as if the name was being blocked from her vocabulary like the broken link of an Error 404.
The man approaching her gave an unappreciative stare for the way she gawked at him with her mouth hanging open. His long white cape seemed to drift freely behind him against a non-existent breeze as he adjusted the ornate eight-pointed star clasp that held it up from the front.
"Fl…Fla…"
Error 404: File still not found – you silly bitch.
The man of the minute ignored the girl's continued stutters and leered over at the other two heroes sitting down. Wishing not to draw any more attention to herself, Fubuki turned her head back towards the window while Genos chose rather to acknowledge him head-on.
"I recognize you," the cyborg gave him a dangerous stare, although as in many common cases, he didn't actually intend for it to look so dangerous. "S-Class, Rank 13—"
"FLAAAAAAAAAASH!"
Finally overcoming her mental block, the C-Class girl let out his name in a rapturous squeal.
The blond swordsman winced painfully at the unnecessarily loud announcement of his presence. 'Oh God…' He mourned internally as the girl continued fan-gasming in front of him. 'Not another one.'
"Oh my gosh! Ohmaigosh ohmaigosh…! I can't believe this is happening." She celebrated, clapping her hands lightly together from her joined wrists like a kid in a candy shop. "You're here, and…" She turned back to the other hero who had just arrived. "Wild Horn, is your partner really Flashy Flash?!"
"Ahaha…" The armored hero rubbed the back of his head, "Eyyyyup. You better believe it."
"M-Mister Flash, umm, sir! I-I mean sama! Err, I mean milord…!" Swim was unsure of how to properly address him. "It would make my whole year if I could get an autograph—" Her target of praise callously brushed right past her to take the empty seat across from where the other two heroes were. "…from…you…too." The girl's words were left to hang.
Even though the effort felt moot from behind his helmet, Wild Horn gave her an unseen apologetic glance before mirroring his senior partner's action and filling the last available seat next to him.
"Demon Cyborg." The fair-featured young man spoke back to Genos in an even tone. "I recognized you too… Only a little bit, though. Admittedly, you didn't make much of an impression on me during the incident at City A."
The cyborg's effortless frown deepened at the comment. "Perhaps it would profit you to realize that I caught neither hide nor hair of you during the action either, Flashy Flash."
The caped ninja's steel-blue eyes gleamed coldly. "Of course you didn't. The food chain only bends in one direction. No one catches me – I catch them."
Before Genos could muster up any sort of retort, Flash's attention had already moved on from him, turning instead to the woman in the black dress sitting one seat over.
"Jigoku no Fubuki…" No one saw her face from the way she had it to the window, but the esper's shoulders shuddered unpleasantly at being called out. "It's quite irregular to see the queen so far away from her worker bees."
Aggravated by his insinuations directed at her Group, she snapped her head to face the S-Class speedster with angry eyes and gritting teeth.
"They are not 'worker bees,' and I've never once called myself a queen. It's Boss Fubuki to them – and Miss Fubuki to you."
Flash crossed his arms with a raised eyebrow. He made it a casual hobby to match wits with the nearest capable brain, but being challenged by a weaker hero just wasn't a welcome part of the game. "Oh? That's curious. And what makes you think I'll start addressing a common thug with such a gaudy honorific?"
"Thug…?" At some point, Swim had tuned in to the conversation, and she was baffled by Flashy Flash calling the Blizzard of Hell such a damning thing. "Wh-what do you mean? Miss Fubuki is wonderful…"
Flash didn't dignify the girl's presence with a single glance, but answered regardless without taking his eyes off of what he considered to be the watered-down shadow of Tatsumaki.
"You mean you don't know?" He asked the rookie hero plainly. "I suppose that's not so surprising. It's not the first thing she tells people about herself. But you'll find that word travels pretty fast. Many of us already know how her group managed to grow so much in just under a year. I'll pass you a hint: it has nothing to do with popularity – and it certainly has nothing to do with money."
"You're going too far, Flash." Fubuki warned him, although she secretly questioned the logic in doing so. Could she actually handle someone like Flashy Flash?
Perhaps she won over in terms of raw power, but power wasn't the reason he was sitting pretty in S-Class while she wasn't. The clue for that mystery came with his name. Supposedly, he won every encounter by preventing them from even escalating into actual fights. He could slash, stab, puncture, and maim all before the threat even knew he was there – and those were the tactics he used against monsters. Like many other humans, a fleshy specimen like Fubuki wasn't exactly built for heavy punishment. One clean nick of an important artery was all it would take.
Ultimately, Flash did exactly as she feared and called her on her bluff.
He leaned in, giving way to a grim creaking sound from his chair. "Accounting for how much your little sheepling over there seems to realize, I actually doubt I've gone far enough."
Feeling the unsettling energy rise from between the two conflicting heroes, Wild Horn decided that it was time to try and intercede. "Hey now Flash, come on. There isn't any need to kick a hornet's nest around with Blizzard-san, is there?"
"Stay out of this, Wild Horn."
"Your Power Ranger cosplayer friend has a point." Fubuki pointed out.
The suit of armor tilted his horned head with befuddlement. "Cosplayer…?"
"But seriously though," She continued pressing at Flash, "why are you coming after me like this? It's not like you're personally involved in my affairs, and even if you were, it still wouldn't be any of your business."
"Please excuse him." Wild Horn tried appealing to her. "It's just that Flash has a very strong conviction, and he doesn't care for bullies that much…"
Fubuki dropped her jaw in outrage. "So you're calling me a bully now too?!"
"Ack! N-No, that came out wrong. I only meant—"
"Excuses be damned." Flash cut his partner off. "She knows what she does is wrong, but she still does it. That's the thing about tyrants. To them, power is like a bag of potato chips – they can't stop until the bag is empty." He let loose a small grin. "I assume that's how you know Tornado is your sister."
"Heh." She gave him a glaring smirk. "Funny thing that you should mention my sister. Right now you so remind me of her."
"Is that a compliment?"
She raised her eyebrows, condemning him with a look. "What do you think?"
The slight amusement Flash displayed fell from his face, replaced with a hard scowl.
"Um…Miss Fubuki…?" Swim was almost too timid to speak up as she looked to her female idol with those same innocent pleading eyes. "What's he talking about?"
"Tch…" The esper glared down at the corner of her window, biting her lip on what to say next. Eventually she just snapped her head to face Genos, who was still holding on to some deep thought. "W-Well? Why aren't you jumping in? He insulted you too, didn't he?!"
As if waking from a lucid dream, Genos snapped his head up and fired more words at his fellow S-Class hero. "Well if you think that food chains only bend in one direction, you have clearly never heard of omnivores!"
The entire group fell silent. Question marks were practically dotting above each of the other heroes' blank faces.
"A…Are you serious…?" Flash blinked. "The window for that discussion closed like five minutes ago."
"Yes, but the point remains!" Genos retorted.
Fubuki slapped a hand over her miserable face. At least the focus of the argument had shifted away from her.
Flash on the other hand was appalled by the lack of wit to be found floating amongst the group. Why did he even choose to sit down here? It's not like anyone here was friends with each other…
"To hell with this…" He muttered beneath his breath. "I can feel my braincells wither just by breathing the same air as these people. I'm moving."
Feeling discomfort around the woman he inadvertently helped to offend, Wild Horn stood up out of his chair too. "W-Wait, Flash. I'm coming with you."
As they both started walking away, Fubuki let out a great sigh of relief…
…But what happened next made clear to her that she hadn't held her breath long enough.
"Braincells cannot wither just by breathing air, you fool!" Genos shouted after him, going directly against Fubuki's will and testament by provoking the swordsman further. "Incredible! Do you really understand nothing about biology at all?!"
Blizzard gasped, feeling the poison of all the stress she just breathed out come back into her lungs as Flash stopped dead in his tracks. The ninja's face was stricken with a dark shadow as he glared menacingly out at them from over his shoulder.
"What…did you just call me?"
The bloody tone of his voice had even Genos suggesting that what he said was a bad idea.
Before anyone else could react, Flash had practically warped right in front of the cyborg using a burst of speed impossible for the untrained eye to follow. He had murder written in his eyes.
"Demon Cyborg, what the hell were you thinking?!" Fubuki spat, finding herself unexpectedly siding against him. "They were almost gone! In fact, why are ANY of you even here?! I was here first, and all I wanted was to be left alone!"
"This is a public transportation. I have a right to be here." Genos explained to her, apparently forgetting all about the new enemy he had just made still standing over him. "Listen closely. I have put carefully research into the optimal temperature and humidity necessary in preserving fresh crabs. And using advanced thermal imaging, I have swept the entire compartment of the train and found that right here is the closest I can achieve for those ideal conditions. For the sake of my sensei's delicious crab pot, I shall not yield my position, even though, as you have earlier stated, you were here first."
Fubuki blinked at him with a flustered expression, unsure of how to even process this argument. Before she could respond, Wild Horn eagerly took the floor.
"You have crab meat in there?! Awesome, I love crabs! Mind if I—"
Genos snapped his head towards the armored hero with so much malice that even Flashy Flash took an unconscious step back.
"You touch those crabs." The cyborg seethed after the deadly pause. "And I will have your horns."
"Whoa man." Wild Horn instinctively reached up to the two distinct spires he took special pride in maintaining. "Don't you go threatening the horns. Don't you know these're the first things you get for messing with the bull?"
"Oh who cares about your stupid horns!" Fubuki yelled. "All of you just go away! I already told you I want to be alone!"
"That's funny coming from someone who likes to be surrounded by minions to do her dirty work all the time." Flash sneered back.
"That…That's not true!"
"Zowie, Miss Blizz," Wild Horn chimed in, "you're like a real live ice queen."
"And stop calling me a queen!"
"Let it go…" Genos admonished.
The argument quickly grew heated, and with Fubuki and Genos rising out of their seats, the scene had escalated into a four-way free-for-all. As they continued to raise their voices and shout over each other, other passengers on the train turned to give them uncomfortable, in some cases frightened looks. Swim stood off by herself outside the small circle of rabbling heroes, feeling isolated and helpless as she pleaded for them to calm down.
"No…" Her insides ran cold. She began shivering, pressing her hands against her ears to muffle the chaos. With her face devolving into a look of horror, she desperately continued pleading to them; her voice getting weaker and fainter with each failed attempt. "Please…all of you…please stop this… You have to…"
"You have a total lack of respect! What would my sensei say if he were here!" Genos yelled.
"Well he's not, and I couldn't give less of a damn what your 'sensei' thinks!" Flash fired back.
"Can't you pricks just take this outside?" Fubuki asked irritably.
"But the train's going like 320 kilos an hour!" Wild Horn protested.
"Precisely."
Against the much louder vocalizations of her seniors, the sound of Swim's pleas dissolved long before they could reach anywhere near the epicenter of contention.
After a minute more of enduring the heart-breaking scene of her idols fighting each other, the young girl had finally had all she could possibly stomach.
She took a deep breath and shut her eyes as tight as they could go.
Then…
"STOP!"
Fubuki, Genos, Wild Horn – and even Flashy Flash – fell silent at the sudden shout, turning to stare in awe at the person they had each forgotten was even there.
Swim now visibly trembled from where she stood, as if she could shatter from a single touch. She breathed heavily from the exertion of having emptied her lungs, gripping the bottom of her jacket in an effort to keep herself together. Her cheeks and nose were both flush with red, and they could clearly see that it was from an emotion altogether different from the overwhelming cheerfulness she had when they arrived. Hot tears were welling up in her eyes, making them shine with her grief. She bit down on her lip in a vain effort to keep it from quivering, but every few seconds, the small hiccup of a sob would escape.
The image of her happy, bubbly face changing so drastically into what it was now had utterly robbed the other heroes of any belligerent words they might have had left for each other.
"…What…" The girl fought for the strength to speak without breaking down, "…are you doing?"
The four heroes remained silent, all continuing to stare at the girl who fought so hard not to cry at the miserable picture she had seen. A few more long minutes crawled by.
When Swim had finally composed herself a bit more, she spoke again. "What are…all of you doing?"
The people in question each picked a different corner of the train to evasively stare at.
"I…" She snuffled again, raising a sleeve up to her cheek to brush a stray tear away. "I mean…I know that I'm just…a lowly C-Class hero…" She nodded softly, feeling another wave of depression tighten against her chest in remembrance of her hopeless position. "I'll probably never make it from here. I'll never be like one of you… I'll never be…someone that other people can look up to; the way I look up to you… But you know…I was fine with that. Because even though I'm not special…I could still support the people who are. Cheering you guys on from behind the curtain gave me more satisfaction than I ever found by trying to do even a tiny bit…of what you guys do all the time."
She paused to clench her hands into tight fists for a moment before releasing them. She lowered her eyes to stare down at her feet, slowly shaking her head in sorrow.
"That's why…I don't understand it." The heroes she was speaking to each reluctantly turned to face her again. Instead of seeing tears, they saw that she had managed to fortify her face into a determined, but disappointed expression. "I just don't understand…how all of you have so much power…so much potential to inspire new heroes like me…and instead…I have to watch you use it to rip into each other! Do you know how much it hurts me to see that? Do you know how it feels to see the people I look up to treat each other as badly as the monsters they pledged to protect us from?!"
She turned to glance over at the hero closest to her, doing her best to offer up a smile in spite of how much she was clearly hurting.
"Wild Horn…you're so busy that you probably don't even remember this…but when A-City was attacked by the invaders, you saved a very dear friend of mine who was working in a collapsing mine you evacuated. Without your leadership and inspiration, I would probably be attending a funeral right around now. I thank God every day for brave men like you."
The horn-helmed hero let out a humbled sigh.
She turned to the next man in view.
"Flashy Flash…my neighborhood suffered from a horrible infestation of Gator Men almost a year ago. If you hadn't been there to chase them back to the sewers and kill their alpha, all my friends and family would've become homeless."
Flash slightly narrowed his eyes, leaving the rest of his impassive face unchanged.
She nervously pressed her pointer fingers together again. "I-I know you probably think of girls like me as pests…but in my college sorority, we gather every weekend and talk about boys. That almost always included at least one hero. Most of my friends like Sweet Mask, of course…but even though they think you look too feminine…I always thought you were way cooler! Like a prince out of a fairytale."
His face softened into almost a warm smile at her words before immediately collapsing when he digested the whole message. "Wait what? …They think I look what?"
Feeling no desire to jump into specifics, Swim hurried on, this time looking at the only cyborg in the group.
"I know more than most people that you get a lot of fans too, Genos. Not just because I happen to be one of them, but also because without a shred of doubt, your absolute biggest fan is my own little sister. How else to say…I can't compete with her. She's totally obsessed with you. And she has better reason for it than a lot of other girls do: you saved her life. I'm certain you do that kind of thing for people pretty often, but this time was different. This time…you nearly…died…"
The young woman almost seemed to choke on the word of lasting finality.
"And I honestly hope that she'll get the chance to know you better someday, because I've never seen a person sacrifice themselves the way you did for someone they've never even met. You'll be that girl's hero forever – my entire family's hero forever… And one day…one day I hope you'll understand exactly what that means."
Genos raised his eyebrows in curiosity, doing his best to recall from memory exactly which girl it could have been that he saved. He saved a lot of people, true, but that was usually the last he heard of them. He pondered what might have made this particular victim's circumstances so different that he still persisted in her thoughts.
"And Miss Fubuki…"
The woman being spoken to crossed her arms intently, waiting to hear what she had to say.
"I may not know the exact story behind the Blizzard Group… From what Flashy Flash mentioned, there seems to be quite a lot I don't know in fact…"
"Tch…" Fubuki scoffed lightly, passively glaring off to the side at some invisible object.
"But…that's okay." Swim smiled harmlessly at her, hoping that her idol would catch glimpse of it from out of some corner of her eye. "It's okay that I don't know a lot about you. Because…while I look up to all of you guys as strong heroes…you're the one who first inspired me to become a hero myself."
Upon catching this detail, the esper forced herself to turn her head back to look at her.
"Your confidence…your elegance…your beauty…you're the ideal reflection I hope to see in my mirror someday. But somehow, I could never find it in myself to be jealous of you. Even if I tried to be your rival, I could never win as many hearts as you have. You're still so young, but you've worked so hard that you already have an entire group of people who adore you as their leader. Not just anyone can do something that amazing – it was you. You have your life all together in front of you…don't you see?"
Fubuki stared at her for a moment with a face of stone before giving her a sad smile. "I have it all together…" She repeated to herself bitterly. "Is that what you think?"
Swim blinked at her with a weak, clueless stare. "What?"
The esper shook her head dismissively. "No… Nothing."
The younger girl gave her a reluctant nod before resuming her point.
"The real reason I'm saying all this is because my admiration for all of you…it isn't the fake or shallow craze you all seem to think it is. Whether you've saved someone close to me or inspired me to change my life just by how you live yours…all of you have had a hand in my development as a hero. But…"
Her voice began cracking again as the grief revisited her with greater force.
"But when I'm forced to watch all my heroes – all these great people in front of me hate each other…it's like…" She took a deep breath and exhaled in an attempt to bear her soul. "It's like…forcing pieces of me to hate myself!" She rubbed her eyes to staunch the hot rush of water escaping them. "I know I'm just one fan…and it kills me to say this…but if seeing heroes fight like this is what it means to be one…then…then maybe it really is time for me to walk away. Because…I believe in good heroes… and because...!" She tried to swallow the lump in her throat. "…I don't want my outlook on that to change!"
While Swim froze with despondence where she stood off from the rest of the group, the other four remained as inanimate as statues. For the longest moment, it stayed that way between them. No one seemed to know what to say, or how to comfort her.
What eventually happened next surprised everyone.
Flash took his first few tentative steps towards the dejected girl. After spending such a long time in silent stillness, the movement gave her a jolt, and her shoulders trembled nervously at his approach. She made a hasty effort to clean up the mess on her face as the taller man drew closer, having no clue how he would react to her doleful outburst.
He stopped directly in front of her, narrowing his fatal eyes as they shrewdly examined her face for the first time.
The sudden act of him leaning down caused her to flinch in fear, as if reflexively preparing for him to strike her. However, when she opened her eyes, she saw that he had kneeled over to pick up the paper she was using to take their autographs, which had apparently fallen from her hands during the commotion.
As he rose back up to meet her with a stoic face, she mutely watched as he clicked the pen and began to scrawl something on the small page. When his fingers stopped moving, he turned to focus on her again.
"Hold out your hand, girl." He commanded with a neutral voice.
The order didn't need much elaboration on her part – Swim did as she was told. In fact, she did better.
Raising two shaky hands out in front of her, she gave him the same look as a rabbit would give a fox that had cornered it – droopy ears and watery eyes included.
He surprised her with tenderness by softly taking the petite hands into a single gloved one of his own, using his other to plant the paper in her palms.
He took a step back to give her some space as she looked down at what was written.
Her eyes slowly widened with disbelief.
In an immaculate, almost runic form of cursive was a small message polished beneath the other signatures of varying styles.
To a fan and fellow hero that doesn't come along every day.
~Flash
Swim looked back over at him, her mouth slightly open in speechlessness. She wasn't even certain that her mortal eyes were worthy to admire the holy art of this resplendent penmanship.
"I don't just do these sorts of things upon any random request." He informed her. "Do try your best not to lose it."
She slowly nodded her head, eyes glistening with wonder at the unexpected act of kindness.
"I am a realist…so I always found being compared to a fairytale prince to be rather droll." He admitted to her with a straight face. "But since I doubt that will stop you from doing it…" He regally draped his cape out to the side with one hand, crossing the other over his chest as he lowered his head into an elegant bow that could only be inherited by royalty. "It was unbecoming of me to speak with such unprincely manners in front of someone who holds me in high esteem. I will try to be more mindful of my conduct in the future. So, for this unsightly act, I hope this is enough to gain your pardon."
Hidden behind him, a certain esper's eyes were shooting unfriendly daggers at the back of his head. 'I'm the one you disrespected…' She thought bitterly. 'Where's my apology, you prissy Legolas bastard…'
"A-ah…!" Swim raised her hands defensively in protest to Flash's gesture. "N-No! It's fine! Please, you shouldn't be bowing towards someone like me…!"
"Aren't you worth it?" Another voice that sounded metallic called over to her. She watched Wild Horn advance to meet her, stopping right next to his partner. "Please don't cry…" He added on, clasping one of her hands firm but gentle in both of his. "Nothing makes this old girder jock feel worse than seeing such a sweet girl waste precious tears like this. I'm sorry for having my part in it too. If it'd help…I'd be honored if you'd accept my autograph too."
She gave him a briefly curious look before shutting her eyes to accompany the radiant smile that swept over her mouth. "Yeah…please!"
He nodded, softly pulling the paper from her to fill the vacancy beneath his senior partner's handiwork. "I hope you give your friend I saved my best. I've worked in a mine before too, and let me just say that even when you take away the savage aliens, the working conditions still suck the big lemon…"
Before she could respond, she heard another pair of footsteps join the circle. She turned to see that it was Genos who appeared next to her to regard her with a look. His stare was cold – as it almost always was – yet somehow it also seemed to contain traces of respect.
"Sadness is an emotion commonly associated with humans." He remarked. "I apologize that it must be so unpleasant. However, it is unnecessary to elicit such feelings for such reasons as this. You must carefully consider whether you truly want to remain a hero, because if you do, there will undoubtedly be more misgivings. Ones not only concerning us, but many of your other peers as well."
Swim gave him an uneasy look, but took his advice with a reluctant nod.
"Having said that…" He continued, and she braced herself for more criticism. Unexpectedly, he gave her a smile instead. "You have a lot of heart. I think my master would approve of you. And if my master approves of you…then I approve of you. Perhaps you should meet him some day."
"Th-thank you!" She bowed towards him. "I would love to! He must be a great man to mentor someone like you, Demon Cyborg."
In the midst of being humbled by their consecutive praises, Swim was almost unaware of the shadow that had swept over her shorter stature. Looking over her shoulder, she gave a small startled jump when she saw Fubuki standing close to her.
The esper had her arms neatly folded over her chest. "At least Genos got one thing right…" the regal woman stated. "In the ranks of the Association, you can and absolutely will encounter more conflicts like this. Some of them will involve us again. They might involve your friends. They might even involve you."
Swim swallowed with a nervous gulp as she listened to the woman lecturing her.
"Honestly! What did you think being a hero meant? That you were never allowed to have disagreements? That we were all going to exist harmoniously in some hivemind of righteous justice? Even friends fight with each other. And that isn't always necessarily a bad thing. You'll never know the depths of your connection with someone else until you venture out and test those waters. You've mentioned before that you were thinking to quit being a hero. Well if you want to stay, you'll eventually need to adapt like one. Because whining won't fix every problem you run into."
The small C-Class lamb looked to the male heroes surrounding her front. All of them nodded at her, affirming their agreement with the Blizzard boss.
"I…I guess you're right." Swim yielded to her point.
It was almost uncanny how her superiors seemed to complement one another's approach with her, even if it wasn't exactly collaborated. Wild Horn – and even Flashy Flash of all people – softened her up with kindness, which worked in tandem to make the pragmatism of Genos and Fubuki's advice seem less harsh. Simply put, they had collectively struck a balance between encouragement and criticism – the work of only the finest teachers.
"Sorry for making such a scene. I guess I'm a little sensitive…Haha." Swim apologized, rubbing her head meekly. "Even if I were to quit my job as a professional hero…I'll probably still bump into conflicts wherever I end up instead. It's a sad reality to face…but I guess life is full of them, huh?"
"But make no mistake," Wild Horn heeded, "all of us are comrades. Come hell or highwater, we're united by purpose to protect the innocent, and hopefully this strange new pairing policy will help strengthen that purpose. But, well…if you wanna leave, I won't pretend not to understand why…" The bipedal bull shrugged his broad shoulders. "…For what it's worth, I hope you do choose to stay, though. Don't get me wrong; the benefits to this line of work can really blow for lower classes…but like my old man used to say: 'Never resent humble beginnings.' I started off working the railroad, and look where I am now."
"So…" Flashy Flash adjoined. "What's your decision? Trust your conscience before making it. We're all here to witness your resolve – whichever direction that points to."
Swim swept an uncomfortable gaze over them, realizing that the four champions had formed a box around her – each one occupying a corner of it. It's not like she thought they were trying to intimidate her, or pressure her into giving a definite answer. Rather, she had never been more humbled in her young life than to realize that these heavy-hitters were taking time out of their day to witness a decision that was – let's be honest – trivial to their own affairs. She knew that ultimately no one could nor would make this choice for her; this wasn't something any hero could protect her from. And she acknowledged that standing in the light of all her role models made this a very important day to decide her future.
It had to be now. She had all week to think about the future, and now it was clear that the future had lost its patience.
"I…" She closed her eyes and exhaled slowly before opening them back up with decided confidence. "I want to do it. I want to continue trying out this hero business."
The senior heroes cross-examined her words, along with the face she wore when she said them. Deciding in silent unison that her resolve was in earnest, they each gave her a sign of support, each coming in four unique forms.
"I think…" Swim breathed in deep again, as if trying to get something off her chest. "I think I wanna try by starting right now."
The others watched her turn serious as she slipped her small backpack off her shoulder and opened it. From out of it, she pulled a tight roll of paper and proceeded to unfurl it in front of them.
"I mentioned to Miss Fubuki that I took today's train to go see the ocean and clear my head." She looked up at the esper to give her an apologetic grin. "Aaaah but I'm afraid that was only…half true."
Fubuki crossed her arms, listening intently for this 'other' half of the truth.
"You see…I was hoping not to trouble the Association by involving its heroes in a personal family matter…but after today…I think it might be time to swallow my shame and ask for your help too."
Flashy Flash furrowed his eyebrows sternly. "What's this about?"
Swim avoided his wary eyes, timidly twisting the bottom flap of her jacket between her hands. "It's…my sister. She's been missing for about a week now…"
Upon hearing this, the others gave her a cautious look.
"Your sister?" Genos echoed with concern.
"Mm." She nodded her head, looking dismal. "Admittedly, I wasn't too worried at first. I keep a close-knit neighborhood watch with other C-listers, and every so often, she liked to run off and disappear for half a day or so." Swim paused for a moment to try massaging the stress out of her temples. "I…I just assumed that she was playing with her school friends since they all live around the same area."
"Did you file a missing person's report to the police?" Wild Horn asked.
"Yes. After hours of frantic searching, that seemed the next sensible thing to do."
"It was." The armored hero confirmed. "Good call."
"But now…" The girl started shaking again. "I mean…she's never been away from home this long before. My parents are a mess. We thought about hiring a private detective to help investigate her disappearance…but we don't have that much money. So on top of searching for hours every day with my neighborhood watch community, all I really have to rely on are the authorities… But since there's a lot of crime in my area, they already have their hands full with other cases." She fearfully bit down on her lip. "I just…I feel so…helpless."
"So why were you also saying you're taking the train?" Fubuki asked.
"Oh!" Realizing she forgot to fully explain herself, Swim's eyes fluttered alive. "Sorry. It was to put these up." Swim stretched out one of the posters and held it up for them to see. Presumably, the girl hanging in the large picture was the lost sister. Below the photo was the word "MISSING" drenched in deep red font, along with details about the girl's height, weight, etcetera.
She indeed looked like a younger version of Swim, smiling sweetly at them through the image. She even had the same short brown hairstyle. Appearing roughly ten years of age, she wore a sleeveless top with red and white stripes. Since the photograph only covered her appearance from the waist up, there wasn't a whole lot more to go on.
There was, however, one particular detail that caught Genos's attention almost right away.
His black and gold eyes shot open in alarm, and he snatched the poster from her hands to get a closer look at what he saw.
"Th-This is…!"
Just then, a ringtone went off, disrupting all thoughts on his new discovery. The cyborg pulled the beeping flip phone out from his pocket and answered the call.
"Genos here." After watching him listen to the chatter on the other end for a few seconds, the other association members saw his features contort with fear. "What?! Are you certain?! Which exact train?"
At the mention of a train, concern rose among the rest of the hero circle.
"What?" Wild Horn asked him. "What's going on?"
Genos ignored him and continued listening to what the voice was telling him; his expression growing more and more grave by the second. "Outbound for City Z…arrival time 2:22pm…" He hung his mouth open in shock. "Ours?!"
"For God's sake Genos, tell us what's going on!" Fubuki demanded in a raised voice, trying to hide her own nerves.
Genos made the next few seconds really last as he stood paralyzed by the information he was still processing. But he did eventually utter one word.
It wasn't a big word.
Or a complicated word.
But it held enough weight to make them all empathize with his panic the instant it left his mouth.
"Bomb…"
Everyone's ears perked up.
Swim felt a sharp stab to the heart, replaced shortly after by a cold, harrowing chill. "Did…did you just say…"
Before she could even repeat the word, Genos spun around and shouted out to the rest of the passengers.
"Everyone, get out now! There's a—MMPH!"
Before the warning could take flight, Flash shot straight over and slammed a hand over his mouth to silence him. "What the hell do you think you're doing?! Do you have a malfunction?" He hissed. "We're soaring at almost 200 miles per hour!"
"He's right." Wild Horn added. "The train is coasting at deadly speeds. These people have nowhere to run." Despite the composure of his words, he was thankful that his face was concealed by armor so that everyone else didn't have to see how shaken he was. "The worst possible thing to do right now is rattle the monkey cage and cause panic. Y'all heard what that Sekingar dude said about making people panic…"
Still muffled by Flashy Flash's hand, Genos regarded them both with a wide-eyed stare before his face softened in understanding. When Flash was certain that the cyborg wouldn't shout again, he safely removed his grip.
"Wh-what do we do?!" Swim beseeched, using every ounce of her restraint not to pace about frantically.
Genos carefully surveyed the entire compartment of the train before holding the cellphone back up to his ear to speak into the transmitting end. "Y-Yes. I am still here." He pulled away from the phone briefly to inform the others, "Yamamoto-san, from the Association Staff. He is providing me with the details as they come in. I will remain in contact with him. In the meantime, I highly advise that you plan our next course of action."
As he returned to the phone call, the rest of the heroes looked at each other intensely.
"If there really is a bomb here…" Flashy Flash started, "then the first natural step would be to look for it."
As the ninja turned to speed away, his partner stopped him by grabbing hold of his arm. "Wait." Wild Horn warned.
Flash stared back at him in annoyance. "What is it? We don't have time for this."
"Please trust me. Just…just let me think for a moment. At least before taking any action on your own."
Flash narrowed his eyes in umbrage at being stopped by a B-Class hero. But something mysterious – perhaps a natural instinct or trained intuition – prompted him to humor his underclassman. "Well make it fast then – I am not a patient man, and there are more lives hanging in the balance than just yours."
Wild Horn let go of his arm and turned to look at the girls. "Hmmm… We've been on this ride for almost an hour, and nothing's happened yet. I'm starting to assume that the main target isn't the passengers on this train."
"That's true." Fubuki agreed. "If the bomber really wanted us dead, then he probably could've set the bomb to explode either before or shortly after the train's departure. It wouldn't make sense to wait this long… Unless…"
"Unless…" Flash shadowed her word. "The real target is Z-City Station – the circuit's final destination.
"And the scheduled arrival time for this transport is 2:22." Swim put a ponderous finger to her chin. "But that means…" She let out a gasp with renewed panic. "…we only have about twenty more minutes!"
As if the possibility of death was just now dawning on them, they all unanimously snapped back to face the armored bull.
"You've had enough time to think." Flash incited. "Do something, or I will."
"Okay!" Wild Horn eagerly clapped his hands together. Taking advantage of the obscurity from his helmet, he secretly glanced around for what he was looking for. He found it – clear across the long hall on the other side of the compartment. "Flash." He whispered over to his partner. "Pretend that you're just talking to me."
"I am talking to you."
"Yeah, but that's not what I—ugh," he twisted his horns in distress, "I mean pretend not to notice, but do you see the surveillance cameras? There's one above each exit door on both ends of this junction."
"I see them." He confirmed. "So what?"
"I want you to take 'em out." His partner replied. "You need to be quick. There won't be a point to this if you get caught on feed."
"I need to be quick?" The S-Class hero produced a rare smirk. "Who do you think you're talking to?"
Before anyone could think to respond, Flash's entire body seemed to blink entirely out of existence for less than a second before reappearing in the exact same place. It happened so fast and sudden that none of the other heroes were even sure if they trusted what their eyes had seen.
"Done." The speedster stated calmly with closed eyes, smacking his hands together to dust off some chalk. "Next."
The others looked to both sides of the compartment, amazed that even though they hadn't heard a single sound, they saw that the two surveillance cameras guarding the long section had been completely pulverized. Flash had sprinted the length of their train segment – twice – in about the same time it took a person to sneeze.
"Kudos!" Wild Horn complimented him. "Nice to see your reputation precedes, my fleet-footed friend."
"But uhh…Wild Horn?" Fubuki asked with some concern for the moral integrity of her temporary allies. "Why did you ask Flashy Flash to vandalize public property?"
"A precaution." The horned man answered. "We don't know much other than that there's a bomb on this train. But there's also a distinct possibility that the person responsible for planting it might've also hacked the surveillance and be watching us. I can't say I know for sure if it's true…but if he happens to have a manual trigger, and he sees heroes like us trying to interfere…" He fully faced towards her to emphasize the danger: "…He could detonate the bomb prematurely."
Fubuki and Swim both swallowed hard in revelation of that horrid ending.
"But now that Flash took care of the cameras undetected," Horn's voice turned slightly upbeat, "the possibility for that outcome has drastically decreased…I think."
Fubuki gave him an unamused look. "You know…ending speculations with 'I think' doesn't instill a lot of faith in my heart."
At this moment, Genos rushed back to the group, having hung up on his call. "Z-Station!" He announced hurriedly, "The bomber's target is Z-City Station."
"Yeah, we kinda gathered that already, thanks." Fubuki replied wearily.
"They have IDed the suspect." The cyborg mentioned. "He is not on this train. I have run its length front and back, and I could not find anyone that matches his description."
"Well, I guess it's nice to know that we're not dealing with a suicide bomber…right guys?" Swim tried for optimism.
"Now that we know we won't be blown up on a whim, we can concentrate on finding the device." Wild Horn took another moment to think before further adding, "But because we don't know if we will in time, our other goal should be to stop this train."
"I tried all emergency brakes." Genos explained. "They have all been sabotaged. I suspect that it was the terrorist's doing."
Flash clenched his fists so tightly that everyone heard his knuckles pop from the pressure. "When I catch up to that coward…" he seethed through his teeth, "…I'm giving him a free penectomy."
The other heroes shuddered at the inference of his chilling threat.
"There'll…be time for that later." Horn assured him, albeit nervously. "But survival comes first. Everyone needs to search for anything that looks out of place. A loose panel, a locked door – something big enough to wipe out a train station can't be difficult to find!"
"You seem to have a lot of confidence ordering us around." Fubuki pointed out, both impressed and annoyed at the natural leadership skills he was displaying. As a leader herself, being controlled like a chess piece wasn't exactly something she was used to – or wanted to be.
"Well," Wild Horn replied bluntly, "once you've rolled around with a construction crew for three-plus years, you start to realize how much smarter people think you are when you don't waffle your words."
"Flash? Genos?" She called over to the two alpha males with them. "You're both in S-Class. Are you fine with just doing what he tells you?"
The two young men traded looks before Flash spoke up for them both. "If we can do it, can't you?"
Fubuki grimaced, but submitted with one last defiant shrug. "Ugh…fine."
"Still…" Swim pointed out. "It might be hard searching that thoroughly without making other people suspicious…"
"If anyone asks, "Fubuki advised perfunctorily, "improvise. Tell them your chihuahua dog broke off its leash and you need to find her before she craps in someone's breadbasket." Swim nodded with acceptance.
"Alright then, ladies and germs…" Wild Horn declared as they turned to go, looking like a paladin party leader at the head of the group. "…All hands on deck!"
They scattered to different corners of the train, feeling around every nook and cranny of every spare room and juncture. A few more minutes crept by, prompting the heroes to grow increasingly erratic in their search. They felt like mice scurrying dizzily through a maze, hitting their heads at every dead-end corner.
At the speed he was going, Flashy Flash might as well have been invisible. But if he slowed himself enough to let people see him, everyone would have noticed him bouncing off practically every possible surface in the narrow space.
Fubuki was glowing with a light blue, having activated her powers to heighten her senses of awareness as she scanned the area like a human metal detector.
Genos was busy on all fours looking under passenger seats, and when he had the misfortune of stumbling upon the chair where a middle-aged lady wearing a skirt was sitting, he received a scream and subsequent slap to the face for assumedly (understandably) sneaking a peak under her umbrella. Being struck didn't hurt him, but Genos nevertheless took it as a sign that there were no explosives to be found up the confines of the aging woman.
After some valuable minutes had been spent, Swim suddenly called out to them. "Guys! Over here!"
Everyone stopped what they were doing and made their way towards her.
"What is it?" Fubuki asked.
"The bathroom." Swim pointed.
"Can't you just hold it in?" Flash petitioned. "This is kind of important."
"EHH? N-No, that's not what I meant…!" She stammered. "The door says 'occupied.' But it's been saying that since we started searching. So I knocked on the door, and no one's answering…"
Everyone's eyes shot open in realization.
"Move." Flash commanded.
Not a second after the girl took two steps to the side, a blurry mess of motions swept over the door, and it gently collapsed into hundreds of perfectly uniform square pieces.
After the door had finished crumbling, everyone looked inside the small bathroom and uttered two key words in perfect unison.
"Holy shit."
Inside the pocketed room was a great mountain of wires, timers, buttons, and duct tape all crudely weaved together into a franken-mass big enough to take up every inch of the available space.
"Okay, ummm…" Wild Horn hastened to lean forward and examine the mega device. "Let me just…take some time to wrap my head around this."
"You're going to try to disarm it?" Fubuki asked him. "Do you even know what you're doing?"
"Well, err…sort of?" The suit of armor scratched his head. "I was part of a demolition project once…" He turned back to face the bomb, grimly emphasizing under his breath, "…once."
"How similar does this explosive appear to the one you used back then?" Genos inquired.
"Well, see, that's the tricky thing about bombs meant for terrorism…" Horn explained morbidly. "They aren't made to be disarmed. And judging by how this looks, I doubt our criminal friend lent us the courtesy of an easy picking."
"Can we just throw the bomb off the train?" Fubuki asked, glowing sharply as though she was already preparing to do so.
"No! STOP!" Wild Horn held an arm out at her. "Do not. Move. This device."
The blue energy around the esper slowly dissipated as she reluctantly desisted.
"What about destroying it?" Genos asked. "Flash and I are both capable of obliterating a target instantaneously."
"It is absolutely not a good idea to use brute force as a first resort." Wild Horn advised. "We don't know how sensitive this bomb is to motion. And based on its bold size and where the bomber left it, it's almost as if he's daring us to try attacking it."
"What do you propose then?" Flash asked.
"Listen, guys," Wild Horn began, "ordinarily in a situation like this, the single smartest thing to do is haul as much ass away from this death machine as we can. But seeing as that's not an available option…" He breathed a deep sigh at the suggestion he was about to make. "…we're gonna have to try defusing it."
"Defuse that?" Fubuki motioned wildly towards the clusterfuck of technology. "Look at that beast! I can't even tell where it starts and where it ends."
"I won't make you do it, missy," Wild Horn assured her. "Genos, do you happen to have any experience with disarming bombs?"
"Is blowing up bombs considered disarming them?" The cyborg asked in earnest.
The horned hero slapped a hand over his shielded face. He was afraid of that answer. The Demon Cyborg might as well have just asked him if mayonnaise was an instrument.
"Never mind… Guess it'll have to be me. How long before the train arrives?"
The cyborg's golden pupil flashed into a circular time dial. "Eleven minutes, twenty-three seconds."
"Okay!" Wild Horn turned back to the massive device and exhaled coolly. "I know I can do this. The bomb looks big, but that was probably just done to intimidate us with showy details…" He sounded like he was trying to convince himself as much as the others. "The mechanism only needs a small handful of things to work. Soon as I find where all the blast caps are kept, I should be able to trace the circuit up to where the battery juices them."
"Do you need us to do anything?" Flash asked with concern.
"For now, just sit tight." His partner replied, leaning cautiously over the weapon. Feeling optimistic, he added "I think…I think I'm already starting to get a feel for what this guy was doing! This might actually end up being a one-man job so long as nothing unexpected happe—"
"What the hell is that?!" A brand-new voice shouted from behind them.
They turned to see a panicked man in a grey business suit peering straight past them at the gigantic contraption that Wild Horn was kneeling over. Before the occupied heroes could even get past their surprise at how the passenger managed to sneak up on them, he proceeded to cry,
"IS THAT A BOMB?!"
They all blinked at him.
…Fuck.
Terrified, the man turned tail to run wildly down the aisle, repeatedly shouting "BOMB! THERE'S A BOMB!" He made it nine or ten feet before Genos tackled him from behind, knocking them both into a tall stack of boxes which collapsed to the floor.
Genos had managed to reliably subdue the civilian beneath him, but when he looked up and saw the faces of the other passengers rising from their seats, he knew it was too late.
"Did…he just say bomb?" A young woman asked with a petrified look.
"That's what I thought I heard…" Another person answered. More voices joined in.
"That…can't be true…!"
"Is there really a bomb here…? Are we all going to die?!"
The audible words of frightened travelers began to louden and blend together into a singular cacophony of unintelligible shouts.
The heroes, who up to now had been so successful with their discretion, had plunged headlong into a new depth of despair. They stood watching speechlessly as everyone flooded the center space of the compartment in hurried panic.
Genos sat dazed on the floor next to the boxes that had just collapsed, and when he turned to get a good look at them, his face fell mortified as he recognized what they were.
"No… This cannot be…"
The numerous sounds of snips, snaps, clicks, and clatters rang in his ears with dooming familiarity. He shot to his feet and watched in terror as a writhing tidal wave of claws, spidery legs, and hard shells rose up from the breached confines of their imprisonment.
"The crabs…"
He snapped his head back to shout in anguish at his colleagues:
"THE CRABS HAVE ESCAPED!"
As if the horrified mob of passengers behind him couldn't get any louder, the disjointed sight of abundant ocean life whipped them into a hysteric frenzy. The sea-salted devils must have caught delicious scent of their fear, because they practically exploded off of each other; skittering, leaping, and snapping into everyone they could hit. Adding to the chaos of the crustacean invasion, people were pushing, shoving, elbowing, clawing, and trampling each other as they rushed to find an escape that would continue to elude them.
Sandwiched between the ticking of a devastating bomb on one side and Neptune's Revenge on the other, Wild Horn knew he couldn't work in these conditions.
"Seriously?!" He cried in disbelief. "Who the shit brought live crabs aboard this engine?!"
"Take a guess." Fubuki jerked a thumb out towards a certain cyborg who was hopelessly attempting to scoop them up in his arms and shove them back into their boxes.
"Perfect." Horn muttered before turning back to what he was doing. "It'll be a major problem if the muddle works its way over here and rolls into me while I tamper with this charge. Flash! Fubuki! And…sorry little miss, I didn't catch your name?"
"S-Swim…"
"Swim." He repeated, as if committing it to memory. "You mustn't be afraid. Whatever happens, we're all right here with you. You aren't alone."
She bit down on her lip, trying to muster up strength in front of her armored coach.
"Now Swim," he continued, "I need you to go with Uncle Flash and Aunt Fubuki to act as crowd control while I tickle this bomb."
The other two mentioned heroes crinkled their noses at the titles he had taken upon himself to bestow them.
"You're a hero, right?" He reminded her. "So can I count on you?"
She gave him a sharp nod. "Y-Yeah! I'll do my best!"
Without any sort of warning, she turned and dashed gallantly in the direction where Genos and the others were still struggling with their shell-spawned neighbors. Once she entered the twisted rave, she was almost immediately knocked over by the first wave of crabs, and it became abundantly clear that she had rushed in without any sort of calculated plan under her belt.
"Ridiculous…" Fubuki uttered through grinding teeth as she prepared to join the fun.
"Be nice, she's trying." Flash defended half-heartedly.
As the two followed her into the fray, Genos had since given up on the live recapture of his inconsolable ingredients. Holding his glowing palms out in front of him, he relied on automated targeting features to zap the buggers out of existence. When one of the beams missed its mark and ricocheted a few times, he quickly learned that that was a bad idea.
Flash narrowly dodged the refracted ray of energy, but it singed his cape on the rebound. "You idiot! Think about where you are!" He sneered as he jumped in to snatch Swim from the growing mound of crabs she was sinking into.
Fubuki scattered a bunch of them using her psionic potential, blasting several through windows at high speed. "Next time I board a train…" she proclaimed jadedly, "I'm stopping to make sure you guys aren't on it first."
"Likewise!" Flash returned before being set upon by a cluster of crabs that had somehow managed to make it all the way up to the ceiling before bearing down on him. The ninja threw himself over the smaller Swim, shielding her from the brunt of the impact. His thick cape managed to ward most of them off, but as in every life case, there came exceptions.
He winced as they sank through his clothing, scratching into his back with sharp protruding legs and deep-dug claws. "Dammit, cyborg!" He shouted over the chaos. "What fresh circle of Hell did you find these little bastards anyway!"
"We need a safe place to dispose of them!" Fubuki shouted back. "This isn't working!"
"What about the bathroom toilet?!" Genos suggested.
"You mean the one currently being blocked by the huge powder keg?!"
"Fl-Flash…!" Swim cried out in pain from underneath him. "They're pinching me…! It…It hurts!"
Flashy Flash's face contorted into severe displeasure as he struggled to push himself upward against the oppressive weight. "God…" He swiftly scooped her up into his arms and shot to his feet. "…DAMMIT!"
Before Swim could get her bearings, Flash continued carrying her bridal-style as he bounced everywhere at maddening velocity, lashing his tailwind in all directions to stave off stragglers. As much as he wanted to just whip out his sword and slice every one of the godless animals to ceviche, there were too many people turning and twisting in all manner of directions for him to risk in the retaliation.
Meanwhile, Wild Horn resumed careful tinkering with the machine, and in an effort to calm the nerves in his shaking hands, he had resorted to muttering a small, paraphrased nursery song.
"The Blast Bone's connected to the…Circuit Bone~" He carefully dissected a strip of duct tape that held several fuses in place. "…The Circuit Bone's connected to the Please-Don't-Blow-Me-Up—"
He continued tuning out the ensuing riot behind him, as well as Flash rushing back and forth past him multiple times while holding Swim as the two left a long trail of angry crabs in their wake.
"Four minutes remaining!" Genos called out. "This is taking far too long! Time for my next resort!"
"Eh?" Fubuki questioned. "What next resort?"
Without answering, Genos grabbed hold of the ceiling and hung off to kick the train's side door open with both feet. The door flew clean off its hinges, exposing everyone to the outside world.
"Wh-what are you doing?!" Fubuki shouted. "What if someone falls out?"
"I will attempt to stop the train from the front." He explained. "You do whatever you can from in here."
With that, he flew out and was gone. A moment later, the entire train rumbled violently, accompanied by a loud screech.
In reaction, Flashy Flash stopped sprinting, letting a dizzy, motion-sick Swim seep out of his arms. "What the hell… Did Demon Cyborg just wrap himself around the front hood of the engine?"
"Wild Horn?" She called over to the hero still crouched over the machine. "We could really use some good news…!"
"I've got it down to the wire…" He called back. "Literally. I just need to make sure I pull the right plug."
"Go help him." Fubuki instructed Flash as she proceeded to walk away.
"And where are you going?" He asked.
The Blizzard of Hell stopped to glance down at Swim, who still had a few tiny crabs clinging to her jacket.
"To be a hero." The esper replied.
Seconds later, a blue glow surrounded one of the panicking pedestrians, and he began floating off the floor and out the exit Genos had created.
"Everyone remain calm." Fubuki declared. "I will help you all get off the train one-by-one." Without waiting for anyone's permission, she picked up the next passenger up with her powers and repeated the same strategy.
'I see…' Flash thought to himself as he watched her work her (literal) magic. 'She's trying to minimize the loss of life by clearing the train. Falling out of it at this speed would be fatal for the passengers. But using her powers, she's able to nullify the kinetic energy while setting them down to avoid injuring them!' Despite himself, he let a grin escape his face as he continued to watch the Blizzard leader remain busy. 'Jigoku no Fubuki…you may yet prove useful after all.'
When he watched the final passenger float out the exit door, he turned to walk past a still-shaken Swim and reappear beside his partner.
"We've run out of time." Flash announced. "Move aside. I'll do it."
"Wait…I've…almost…got it…" Wild Horn was struggling to untangle a bundle of thin multi-colored wires.
The S-Class hero exhaled sharply through his nose before pushing his way in and grabbing the entire collection of fuses in one hand.
Wild Horn flew into a panic when he saw what he was about to do. "Flash NO—!"
Before anything else could be done, a bright wave of green enveloped all four heroes remaining on the train, and they were flung outside into the light of day.
Violently scraping his legs against the tracks, Genos clung to the front of the bullet train, ceaselessly bidding the transport to halt in its path. It didn't. If anything, it was accelerating. On top of tampering with the brakes and controls on the train, it appeared that the terrorist had also managed to somehow increase the speed limit.
'Forty seconds left until we approach the station…' He grunted with exertion, watching the timer floating in his augmented eye. '…I have to stop it before then!'
Sensing someone far ahead of the train's course, Genos struggled to look over his shoulder, grunting in surprise when he saw the shape of a lone figure standing in the middle of the track. It was still too far away for him to see who it was though.
'What is that idiot doing on the tracks?!' Genos desperately wondered. 'Do they have a death wish?! The train will flatten them!'
In a last-ditch effort to stop the ride, he activated a huge thruster in his back which burned away his shirt to dust. Adding the force of his built-in engine seemed to pay off. The train began to crackle with static and decelerate.
Genos let loose a wide grin for his impending victory. "Yosh…!"
But his smile was short-lived when he caught sight of the green aura that had completely eclipsed the long vehicle he was hugging.
"Out of the way."
Just as he put together who the high-handed voice belonged to, he found himself shooting upwards hundreds of feet through the air.
The green glow intensified on the rushing vehicle, eventually snapping it free from its rails and pulling it by its nose upwards towards the sky. Before long, the whole train was swimming through clouds, each segment twisting violently into one another, eventually making the whole transport look like a crumpled wad of old homework.
When it was high enough out of harm's way, a great flash escaped out of it, followed by the resounding boom of a colossal explosion. Fire and debris prepared to plummet back down, only to be sucked up by some invisible vacuum, getting smaller and smaller until not even a plume of smoke remained.
The train was gone.
The heroes who had been pulled out of it had been running to catch up. Genos had finally come down after being catapulted, and when they found him stuck in a nearby tree, they knew they were close.
"What just happened?" Wild Horn called up to the cyborg easing his way out of the leafy canopy. "Where did our train go?!"
"For someone to be able to move such a large object…" Fubuki strained her eyes as she spotted something floating higher in the sky.
Haloed by the sun was a small silhouette that she recognized all too well.
She felt her stomach sink when her suspicions had been confirmed.
"…Onee-chan."
Despite the gravity of her impending situation, Fubuki was forced to bring her attention back down to earth as she spotted somebody running out to them from the tracks. Well…make that two somebodies.
"That was soooo cool!" The newcomer shouted, pulling another person behind him who seemed to be tied up in some sort of cable cord. "Glad I got here in time to see it."
Upon recognizing the voice, Genos's eyes came alive. "Saitama-sensei! You are here!"
Saitama came jogging around to the group of tired heroes. "Yo, man. What's up?" His smile faded when he saw the mess of twigs and leaves poking out of the cyborg's arms and hair. "Annnnd why do you look like you've been taming your wild side…and failing?"
Genos took a steady moment to process what he meant before brushing the all-natural forest crown off his head.
Flash, Fubuki, Horn, and Swim all stood off to the side, taking in the odd interaction between "Master" and "Disciple."
"That's his sensei?" Flash gave off a puzzled stare.
"Apparently…" Fubuki shrugged.
"But he looks soooo…" Wild Horn was searching for a polite way to put it. And not quite succeeding.
Swim, on the other hand, might have been the only person in the group who didn't mind a bit. For one thing, she knew she didn't look overly impressive to anyone either. But she also reflected back on what she told Genos about him aboard the train: 'He must be a great man to mentor someone like you, Demon Cyborg.'
Honoring the old principle not to judge a book by its cover, Swim simply elected to smile softly at how content Genos looked just by being around him.
"Sensei, who do you have tied up behind you?" The disciple regarded the disgruntled man who was doing his best not to be noticed.
"Him?" Saitama blinked, as if suddenly remembering that he hadn't come by himself. "Just this jerk I bumped into while I was doing some shopping. He pulled a nasty prank on me, so I took him along to keep him from doing more."
"Wait a second…" Genos flashed his bionic eyes on the man, and the whir of technology accompanied the facial recognition scan he was currently screening him with.
Genos let out a huge gasp.
"The wanted bomber!"
The other heroes perked up and ran right over to get a closer look at the guy who had caused them so much trouble. The Serial Bomber shuddered under the combined pressure of revolted, and in some cases, murderous looks.
"No way…" Even Flash looked surprised. "The bomber has already been caught?" He did a doubletake with the terrorist's captor before gesturing "By him?"
"Hey…" Saitama complained pettily while scratching an armpit.
The moment was shattered as a certain someone who had been watching them from a distance finally descended from the heavens. But as everyone who was present knew very well – it was no angel.
Tatsumaki had her arms folded as she lowered her float and swept her harsh gaze over the entire company.
When her eyes set upon Saitama, she scowled. And when they set upon a certain sister who was actively avoiding her look, the scowl deepened.
Deciding to wait on such matters for a bit longer, she introduced herself to the discussion in the same charming fashion she always did – with a nice raw criticism.
"Two S-Class heroes on the scene, and this was the best you all could do?" She stuck her nose up in acrimonious judgement. "Puuuh-thetic."
Flashy Flash wasn't about to take that sitting down.
"Ohh… My sincerest apologies!" The ninja dipped his head in an exaggerated bow. "How sloppy it was of us to forget that we had mind powers."
The green-headed esper brushed the sarcasm off with a flippant shrug. "Hmph!"
"And you threw me again." Genos added with an annoyed glare.
Tatsumaki spared him an indifferent look, spotting all the leafy green and woody brown fragments of nature that disheveled his appearance.
"Huh. Oh yeah, look at that, guess I did… Well Happy Monday, tree-fucker."
The cyborg growled loudly at her impudent response.
Her attention left the two slighted men and fell on Fubuki.
"Jeez…" Her glare almost seemed to soften with concern as she addressed her younger sister. "Why didn't you just run away?"
Fubuki turned to briefly lock eyes with her sibling before throwing her head back to the side to glare away again. "This had nothing to do with you though." She murmured back.
"OooooOOOOOOoooo…" Flashy Flash, Wild Horn – and yes, Saitama too – all let out the united vowel noise in reaction to Fubuki essentially telling off her older powerhouse of a sister.
Neither of the espers appreciated it – for two separate reasons.
Tatsumaki's went without saying, but for Fubuki, they may as well have painted a big bullseye on her ass and given the other woman a nuclear warhead to drop on it.
Rather than burst out at them with indignant demands to shut up like everyone expected her to, Tatsumaki's face remained unchanged for a moment as she seemed to calmly assess the situation. For Fubuki, the uncharacteristic silence of her older sis was unsettling, to say the least.
Suddenly, Tatsumaki closed her eyes, and her face broke into a smile.
It didn't appear to be sinister, or even mischievous.
It was just this sweet, bright, charming, lovable smile that almost everyone witnessing had no idea that her bone structure was even capable of producing.
That same smile invoked an agonizing chill throughout Fubuki.
It chilled her skin.
It chilled her blood.
It chilled her bones.
It chilled her soul.
Because out of every person standing there with her in front of this delusive little monster – only she fully understood what that sweet smile truly represented.
"Fubuki-nee," Tatsumaki called out her name in a sickeningly gentle voice. "My big cute little sister…"
'Shit.' Fubuki thought, biting down hard on her lip as droplets of cold sweat started to form on her face. She thought about making a break for it, but she'd have better luck outrunning the long shadow of death. As it was, it took every ounce of her concentration just to keep herself from visibly shaking.
"Could we find a nice quiet spot together? Just the two of us?" Tatsumaki pleaded clemently before adding with an innocent pout, "I just wanna talk a little, that's all~"
At this point, Fubuki's heart was practically running loops all along her ribcage like a motorcycle in a circus globe. Everyone else was watching to see how she would answer the request, so she needed to pick her words with excruciating care.
"Th-That's nice…" She had to fight just to get her voice not to croak. "But I'm a little busy at the moment, so…"
Tatsumaki's close-eyed smile didn't change. But a huge, angry vein visibly cropped up on her cheek. "…Come again?" The honey in her voice had been replaced with vinegar.
"So…" Fubuki put a fist to her mouth to feign coughing, "m-maybe a little bit later we could—"
Her excuse had gotten no further before she found herself wrapped around a tight-fitting green bubble. Her feet had left the ground, suspended in the air with the rest of her body by a firm, invisible force.
Fubuki looked out at her sister in terror. All traces of 'Sweet' Tatsumaki had been wiped clean and replaced by the savage countenance of an unholy demon.
"Oh, you wanna do this your way?" The witch seethed through wide, merciless eyes and gritted teeth. "Okay then, I'm flexible – let's have this your way."
Everyone watched in awe as the tiny creature proceeded to pluck a helpless Fubuki away from them with an outstretched hand and drag her next to her own floating space.
"Wait a sec," Saitama called up to the smaller esper, "what exactly are you planning to do with her, Tattoo Monkey?"
The girl snapped her head back down to pierce him with a hard glare. "You know good and goddamn well that is not my name! Don't move from that spot. I'll handle you in a moment…" She turned her head over to where she had her sister giftwrapped in psychic energy. "…But family first."
Fubuki swallowed hopelessly as the two continued to rise higher into the stratosphere, leaving the rest of the group alone.
"Miss…" Swim sank to her knees in paralyzing fear. "Miss Fubuki…"
Flashy Flash watched their two shapes shrink into the sky before giving his head a dismissive shake. The less he knew about the situation for those two, the better.
"Well, you guys do what you want. But I'm leaving before that crazy bitch comes back." The speedster decided.
"Miss Blizz ain't that crazy…" Wild Horn defended.
"No, the other crazy bitch." His partner clarified in annoyance.
Flash turned to approach Saitama and Genos, who still had the botched terrorist sitting next to them. He stopped in front of the bald hero and gave him a thorough inspection. At first glance, he didn't catch anything spectacular about him. But there was something…something that felt off about this strange somebody from Class B. The swordsman could tell that he was different somehow…but he couldn't decide if that difference made him stronger, or just weird. For the time being though, he might be worth keeping an open eye on.
"Did I hear the cyborg say that your name was Saitama?" The princely hero asked.
The bald hero shrugged. "Last I checked it was…"
Flash's eyes narrowed scrupulously. "I suppose I owe you thanks. You saved me from a deal of trouble hunting down that scumbag behind you…"
The bomber shuddered upon receiving an icy glance from out of the corner of the ninja's eye.
"Ahh, it was nothing, really." Saitama rubbed the back of his head.
"Indeed," Flash replied, "but to the people you saved, it might be something. If you would permit me, I would like to carry the extra mile by taking him off your hands for you."
Saitama put a finger to his chin to think about it, unaware of the criminal frantically shaking his head in the negative behind him. His wish was denied however, when Saitama replied, "Sure, I guess. I have a place to be anyway."
Flash gave him a single nod before sliding past him and directing his full attention on the restrained culprit.
"Ahh, the man of the hour." He gave the bomber an uncharacteristically evil smile. "I'm so lucky that I finally get to meet you. We are such great admirers of your work."
The wide-eyed terrorist spotted a few stray crabs still hanging off the hero's cape by their pincers. There was even a smaller one dangling off a bang of his hair.
"Oh yes, we're huge fans of yours, Mister Bomber." Wild Horn had come up to join Flash in looking down at their new prey. Unlike his S-Class partner, he was mostly crab-free, save for a sizeable Dungeness that hung from one of his horns by a claw. "And we would love to have your autograph—"
"—in the form of a handwritten confession." Flash finished.
They both gave their knuckles a sound crack, standing with long shadows looming over the poor prisoner. A warm puddle seemed to be emerging from underneath where he knelt.
"Hey, Horn."
"Yes, Flash."
"Make our new friend comfortable."
"Loud and clear."
The bull reached down and firmly grabbed the man by the front of his muffler, dragging him high off his feet and hanging him from his horns using the cords he was already bound with. Being the shorter of the two, the criminal had no choice but to dangle from his back as the B-Class hero began his journey towards the police station with him.
Flash prepared to follow behind, but stopped next to Swim, who was still staring up at the sky on crumbled knees, wondering when – or even if – her role model would be coming back down.
"Swim." He broke her from her trance.
"Hn…?" She turned to stare at him in a daze.
Without smiling, he gave her a slight nod of acknowledgement. "…See you around."
"Oh, um…" the girl tried to put up a polite smile, despite how nervous she still felt for Fubuki. "N-Nice to finally meet you…Flashy Flash-sama."
He regarded her with one last glance over his shoulder as he turned to catch up with his partner. When he reached even pace next to Wild Horn, he spoke one more time to their third wheel.
"Hey, Bomber-kun. Do me a favor."
The man's face was pale with fright as he turned to listen.
"If a piece or two of you happens to go missing on the way to the PD…" Flashy Flash pulled out his sword, running two fingers along the fine edge of the blade. His eyes gleamed over at him with icy loathing. "…just tell them you were like that when we found you."
The man's face was all but pouring with sweat, and as he dismally hung his head in defeat, he uttered the only word anyone heard him speak since they captured him…
"Mommy…"
The cold drift of high elevation made Fubuki feel more vulnerable, if such a thing was even possible.
She was all alone now, and even if she believed anyone was capable of handling her sister, no one would be coming to help her from this high up.
Although she preferred walking unlike the other sibling, Fubuki too was capable of such feats as levitation. But when a bigger (well…stronger) esper has you wrapped around their finger, it no longer matters how far or fast you can fly. The way Tatsumaki had pinned her arms to her sides and suspended her muscles, there was nothing to stop the older empath from turning her on her head and flinging her hard into the planet with a mere thought.
Her elder sister remained floating in front of her, granting her a slight reprieve of silence before she spoke.
"If you and I were enemies instead of sisters…do you know what I would do to you?"
Fubuki didn't answer, but in her own mind, she was a very good guesser.
Tatsumaki must have taken the silence from her as a form of challenge, because she let the taller woman suddenly drop for a few meters, prompting Fubuki to scream before the green light of her older sister caught her again.
"Do you know what I'd do?!" Tatsumaki shouted the question to her face. Fubuki shut her eyes tight to her, willing her mind to take her someplace more pleasant than here.
The green-haired empath's face grew void of emotion, and knowing that she wouldn't get her answer, she cut right to the chase.
"For being such a child, you sure have grown up fast." She acknowledged. "But I see your body isn't the only thing that's gotten bigger. Your ego did it too."
When she saw that Fubuki still had her eyes shut, the smaller sibling reached over and snapped her fingers right next to her ear, giving off a loud, explosive crackle that startled them back open.
"I'm talking to you, damn it."
"I can hear you just fine." Her sister pushed back.
"Ooooh," Tatsumaki feigned surprise, "you can, can you? Well you sure as hell don't listen like it…"
"What do you want me to say?..." Her sister asked, already fighting to keep her lunch down.
"Say you'll listen." Tatsumaki replied. "Surely it can't be that complicated, even for a bonehead like you."
Fubuki gritted her teeth in humiliation, already feeling tears starting to push up to her eyeballs. "Fine…" She mumbled. "I'm listening."
Tatsumaki puffed up her chest with a deep sigh before continuing. "Little sister. I am a private person. Not a trusting one. But when I shared deeply personal details with you – such as where I live – I did so because I trusted you. And along with that trust came a responsibility that you failed to uphold. I went well out of my way to let you know how mad I'd get if you passed my info along…and you did it anyway. So look what happens."
Fubuki lowered her gaze, afraid to look her sister in the eye for a myriad of reasons.
"Yeah, I knew it was you." Tatsumaki told her. "I almost didn't want to figure it out, but it wasn't hard. You're my only living relative left, and I only keep stuff like this to family." She leaned forward to get up in the other woman's face. "Telling that bald weirdo where I stay was a complete disregard of my wishes…and a flagrant betrayal of that hard-to-earn trust."
"Pff." Fubuki had to scoff at that.
That got Tatsumaki's attention in a hurry. "You got something to say to me?..." She growled.
"For once in my life, I do." Fubuki replied. "You wanna lecture me on trust? You don't know the first thing about trust. You're supposed to trust someone that you actually know – and you don't know me. You never took the damn time."
Tatsumaki gave her a disappointed look. "Yeah…" She muttered. "I guess I really didn't know you after all."
"And then besides," Fubuki fought on, "is it really so awful that one extra person knows where that slummy apartment of yours is? What's that egghead gonna do that you're so afraid of? Be your friend? Because God forbid you actually made one – that would be terrible!"
"Don't make this about me, you overdressed skank! This is about something you did!"
"What did I do, huh?!" Fubuki was startled to find herself shouting as loud her sister. "What have I done wrong?! Introduced you to one guy?! He could be a decent person for all you know!"
For the first time during the exchange, Tatsumaki was the one that fell silent. Her recent memories dragged her back into her room, where she continuously stared at the picture and small message left by her supposed partner.
"But I guess you don't know…" Fubuki continued with a hard glare. "And you'll never know. Because no matter what you say…the only person you'll ever trust or care about is yourself."
Tatsumaki's head jerked back towards her to give her a full view of her face. "You arrogant little shit…" Her eyes weren't just mad. They were full of hurt. "I was right… About your ego… You're a few good years behind, but at this rate…I'll bet you grow up to be an even bigger bitch than me."
Fubuki gave her an angry smirk. "But I'll be known as the bitch that tells the truth. And you'll find that honesty keeps more friends than pushing them away."
"Oh fuck your friends. Fuck all that shit. With powers like mine, I can take perfect care of myself!"
Fubuki gritted her teeth hard, as if she could physically feel her own words bounce off her sister's thick head back at her. She always knew how pigheaded she could be. But if reason wouldn't permeate her skull, then maybe something else would.
The taller esper thought hard about this. Did she dare?
…Yes.
"But you know…" Fubuki brought up slowly. "Being by yourself won't put any meat on the table…"
Tatsumaki raised her eyebrow, completely missing the euphemism. "Huh?"
"No sex." Fubuki explained, grinning with delight as the word ignited a look on her sister's face that she didn't recall ever seeing before. "And…" There was no turning back now. Time to go in for the killing blow. "Isn't it kind of bad…for you to be a virgin at your age—"
"ENOUGH!"
It was only too late for Fubuki to realize that she had pushed her too far. In a single waving motion of her hand, Tatsumaki had completely inverted her sister with a flip. From her restricted movement, Fubuki could barely hold her black dress down to keep her undergarments from showing.
As she already began to feel woozy from the blood rushing to her head, her sister exacerbated her precarious new position by harshly grabbing a handful of her hair. She winced in pain from the rough contact. Even seeing Tatsumaki from upside-down, the younger esper could read enough off the face in front of her to see that she had overstepped her bounds. Where there had before been a tinge of pink from embarrassment, there was now full red fury.
"I don't have any more patience to waste on you." Tatsumaki's voice seethed out as a slow burn. "Since you still don't seem to fully realize why this little field trip was necessary, I'll spell it out…" The grip on Fubuki's head tightened even more, prompting her to grunt in discomfort. "Stay out of my business. Stay out of my life. Fuck however many guys you want, but you will never ever speak to me in this manner again. Do you understand that?"
Fubuki had lost the will to talk. Between how frightening her sister looked and how rough she was handling her, right now she was actually fearing for her life. On the verge of blacking out, she acted on instinct to preserve herself by giving Tatsumaki what she hoped she wanted.
She let out a weak nod, shutting her eyes tightly as tears began to roll inversely down her forehead.
She felt herself slowly float back into upright position, silently suggesting that her sister was placated. At least by enough.
Fubuki peeked out from her weeping eyes to see her sister's back facing her. Tatsumaki was staring out into the distance, her expression hidden from view.
"And another thing…" The green-haired sprite added. "Next time I tell you to come with me, I expect you to fucking come. It only came to this because you made me tell you twice." She turned her head to face Fubuki from over her shoulder, concluding with a slightly calmer tone, "Don't make me have to do that in front of strangers again. You embarrassed us both today."
Having said all that needed to be said, Tatsumaki released her sister from her psychokinesis, allowing the green energy to disperse from Fubuki's body. Despite the younger woman's emotional state, her own lighter blue variant of energy automatically replaced the force that had left to keep her from falling.
After seeing that Fubuki would be okay to fly herself home, Tatsumaki silently turned to make her way back to where a certain baldy had better still be waiting for her.
Left floating by herself in the middle of the sky, the younger of two very angry girls pressed both hands against her face as hot tears continued to flow through her fingers.
From between beaten sobs, she managed to free three small words from herself as her delicate body continued to shake with uncontainable grief.
"I…hate you…"
A/N: Shout-out to this being the longest chapter I've ever written for…literally anything in my life. 40 single-spaced pages of this shit, all done within a single week. Kinda concerned that I can't feel my pulse right now, but a solid review or two might get the blood pumping again.
If you've made it this far with me, thanks for being my crew!
