Idiotic Mastermind and His Pupil
Testing_The_Bonds_Of_Those_Born_Broken

Everyone in the arena was incredibly excited so far. After all, the first few match ups had been something really special to behold. The first, between a woman in a dress that apparently practiced MMA and a weirdo that was able to manipulate microwaves somehow, had proved to be a great opener. The rest were just as good with pair ups like a man claiming to be a synthetic robot from the future and a Rastafarian looking man that utilized the art of voodoo or the woman that flew without the aid of machinery or any form of magic and a small boy that could manipulate gravity. So of course things were looking to get ramped up even more with this match.

On one side was a middle schooler by the name of Katie Weirame. She is on the smaller side, wearing her blue hair up in small pigtails on the sides, a bubble-gum pink leather jacket, and a set of black jeans. Her cocky smile exudes an almost oppressive aura of self-confidence. She claims by the power of penguins(?) and lolz(?), she was able to manipulate sporks of doom!...whatever the hell that means.

Anyway, on the other side was Kumagawa Misogi who said that he could create illusions and manipulate people's hearts without saying a word. He wears just a white t-shirt and black pants. Possibly the blandest attire in the tournament so far but that had the effect of gaining even more attention from the others as being different. His general attitude is far removed from that kind of energy though. He looks more like he wants to curl up on the hard concrete and sleep than fight.

They both stand at opposite ends of the arena.

Katie holds a brown sack large enough to fit an old pc monitor, presumably full of sporks, and twirls it with surprising strength and dexterity for someone so young.

Kumagawa, however, merely stands with his hands in his pockets.

The klaxon that calls for the skills and blood of those within the confines of the arena calls for them both to begin. With that, Kumagawa takes his first step forward and Katie tosses her bag in a parabola across the distance separating them, silverware and plastic spilling all over.

A second step. The sporks all start levitating off the ground. A third. They all point towards him and fly.

Just before they make contact, he disappears. Katie's shock lasts only for a moment until she looks up.

A giant steamroller had somehow appeared 30 meters above the ground. She leaps out of the way as it crashes down on the ground, fragments of the concrete fling everywhere.

She coughs a great deal from an injury caused by one of those fragments before she can manage to speak, "Wow! I don't know how you managed to do that but that's pretty impressive!"

On top of the steamroller, lounging in the driver's seat, was Kumagawa. But he hadn't appeared like that to taunt or gloat. Rather, his mind was on something else in it's entirety.

[Hmm. Still doesn't feel right. Maybe if I screamed WRRRRRRRRY! or MUDAMUDAMUDA! for like a hundred or so volumes, it'd be better? Somehow? Hrm. Guess I need more data on this.]

He rolls off the steamroller like one might do down a hill in some effort to recapture their youth. As it usually is in those sorts of overzealous actions, he falls flat on his face. Everyone is too surprised by this to laugh or exclaim at the pain he might have suffered but he lept right back up before they could even register that.

Katie was no slouch herself, firing off the sporks behind him at his back. He disappears again but reappears not one centimeter in front of her. She punches out at him but he simply moves his upper body to the side to avoid the blow. This does not, however, stop the rain of sporks from impaling his back.

As he staggers to his knees, Katie steps back a bit. With his hair obscuring the view of his face, it was hard to tell if he was even conscious at that point.

"You surprised me again. Jeeze, what were you even doing? Oh. Well I guess it's pointless to ask you now huh?", she laughs at his broken form.

[Huh. I would have thought that you would have gotten a lot angrier if you had found out what I did. But wait, maybe you're actually the type to be happy about something like that?! Kyaa! What manner of pervert have I managed to tango with?!], he says as he snaps his smiling face back to look at his opponent.

"What're you-"

Her knees suddenly smack together as she brings both her hands to her crotch.

"WHO'RE YOU CALLING A PERVERT WHEN YOU CAN STEAL SOMEONE'S UNDERWEAR FROM UNDERNEATH THEIR PANTS?! HOW IN THE HELL DID YOU DO THAT?!"

[It's actually a pretty easy skill to learn if you have the time and motivation for it. It doesn't even require any particular power to do so, just hard work and practice. I may not be the type for that but when it comes to women's panties, I'll gladly abandon my ego!]

"What?! What is with you? How haven't you passed out from the pain by now? Are you just hopped up on morphine? Are you insane?"

He slowly stands back up in a jagged fashion. If this was a movie, this would the moment where the audience might have cheered the hero with an unbreakable will springing back up to face the villain.

But maybe it was because of that disposition of his that no one could feel like his actions right now could in anyway be seen as something to cheer for.

[Whaaaaat. I'm just a pure hearted boy. I would never touch anything as illegal and immoral as that. My body is just used to this kind of treatment is all.]

With a pair of black panties pulled back on his thumb, Kumagawa slings the panties at Katie's enraged face. In the instant that she had to tear them from her face so she could see, flashes of metal fly for her.

She tries to use her power but it proves ineffective as they stab into her left shoulder.

"Gah!"

[So that power can really only be used on sporks huh? Must make it pretty inconvenient when any other eating utensils are used. Or if you're in a fight with anyone that's not a cook. Though I'd have to say that it'd be more interesting if you could somehow use that weird ability of yours to manipulate screws instead. Would make my loss ironic or something.]

"Do you even know what irony means?", she asks as she holds her limp, trembling arm

Kumagawa's smile disappears from his face as he stares blankly. He looks around as if the answers could be written on the walls somewhere. Scratching his head and his face scrunching up in confusion, he uses all the mental abilities at his disposal to answer the question.

[Um is it when a man and woman love each very much-]

"No. No. Absolutely not."

[Eh? Really? What do I know? My only education has been of the free ninety-nine variety. And I didn't exactly do it with honors either. But I doubt we're in this to brush up on our English. Oh wait, I only know Japanese don't I? Actually how have I been managing to talk to people out here? There shouldn't be this many people that even know English either for that matter. I should only be able to deus ex machina my way around so much, what the hell is even going on?]

Katie tears the forks and knives from her body.

"Well whatever, I'm not going to let you win using that bluster and idiocy of yours. I'm going to win this stupid tournament so I can make a name for myself and I'm not going to deal with this crap any more."

Her right arm swings wide, bringing the multitude of sporks her side. Several of them stab into the wounds on her shoulder and elicit a cry of pain from clenched teeth. She moves her shoulder experimentally.

"You may be right that I can only manipulate sporks but that gives me more range in what I can do."

[That's pretty cool. I probably do that too if I wanted to but I don't wanna right now. Right now, I feel more like this.]

Ten steamrollers appear of nowhere and come screaming through the air. In response, the sporks fuse and meld into three giant sized sporks. They strike a few of the construction vehicles and force them into the others, sending all but two into the ground.

Katie's body jerks to the left unnaturally just as they come crashing down. She winces but Kumagawa gives her no reprieve, already beside her with a large, red, jagged blade swinging for her neck. But it stops just mere centimeters from her skin.

Right through his elbow was a spork with an elongated handle originating in the concrete, his sword disintegrates into the air.

"Yeah. She mentioned that you might be trouble. That's why she gave me Hundred Gauntlets to deal with you if we ever met. It really is too bad. I don't know why you wouldn't use All Fiction even right up until the end but even if you had, it wouldn't have helped you any. It can make events events not happen but Hundred Gauntlets can make it absolutely happen no matter what. Which, in case you can't follow the flow here, means I can kill you. Permanently. Now," she mutters with a flourish of another spork from her shoulder, "I'll put an end to that wanderlust of yours."

[Yep. Thanks to you, I won't have to look for her any more.]

His arm that should should have been sealed shoots straight for her face. She's shocked but on instinct the spork's handle stretches out to stab into his neck.

[That'd be more useful if what you were hitting wasn't an illusion, like everything else.]

His voice comes not from in front of Katie where his body was but from directly behind her. She turns toward the source and watches a massive screw impale her in the back.

[Sorry. I lied. You did hit my arm although everything else, including the voice, was just illusions in a matter of speaking. If it's my delusions or if it's me making you hallucinate, I don't know. Or care for that matter.]

All the injuries from that fight had vanished as he makes the redundant gesture of dusting himself off.

"But...you were still able to use All Fiction on-"

[That's because it wasn't that. It was Non Fiction. She was never able to see me gain that one huh? It can undo things that have been undone so if your Hundred Gauntlets can make it so my All Fiction gets undone, Non Fiction fixes that little discrepancy. Really didn't wanna use either of those though. I wanted to win using my illusions and that weird aura I have that pisses off everyone. Didn't even get a chance to work that in there but that's just how skilled you were. Really should've put a bit more thought in what I was bringing in. A magical beast slaying sword does nothing against a regular girl. Guess I really can't win just yet. I'll have to work on that some more I suppose.]

He just shrugs his shoulders, shakes his head, and sighs.

"Yeah but Ansh-"

[Knows that I'm here? That's debatable. Odds are, you aren't the only one in this universe that she gave a skill to. She probably wanted to spread out her range of detection by having some of you around the place. All the same, I don't need you calling her over though. Pretty cool though that you had my old skill on you. Not sure how that happened since she had given it to me but leave it to her to be able to do something shady like that. Maybe she had Hanten-chan copy that just to welcome me before she left my universe. Makes my feel all warm and nostalgic inside when someone so dear to me gives me this kind of a welcoming party!]

Kumagawa leisurely walks up to her and removes the screw from her back. Despite her injuries being made 'nothing', the pain itself was too much for her to stay conscious. He grabs onto her before she can smack her face into the ground. The entire arena was dead silent. They have no clue as to what happened or how things turned out this way. The judges don't even know how to score this but since

Katie was knocked out, they gave it to Kumagawa anyway. With that, his match was over.

It had been just an hour after the Kiharas had invaded to bring chaos and panic in Baggage City.

Kihara Enshuu walks over the corpses of the ninja she had just killed. Her job was supposed to be hunting down various contestants but all she had really been doing was wandering about here and there. It wasn't very hard to find where people are in a cold place like this. Just seek out some of the warmer areas and comb through there a bit. If no one was there, she would just set up some traps for when they would come.

This was how she does things. It was said that she was not qualified to be a Kihara but there is a certain distinction that has to be made there. She may not be able to extract the level of insanity from within without the aid of her monitors but that didn't make her any less dangerous.

Rather, it could be said that she had the potential to be the most dangerous due to her retained innocence that the others had lost in the process of becoming Kiharas in full. They all knew right from wrong but jut merely chose the latter when it came to their work.

Enshuu was never given that fundamental knowledge from the beginning.

She sighs, "I really don't like doing this at all. Hm? What is it Noukan-ojisan? That guy we met yesterday? Hm. Yeah. He is a pretty big threat but I think if it's Byouri-obasan or Ransuu-ojichan, they could handle him. But I don't know if I could even touch him, much less kill him."

[Good thing then that you won't have to, Enshuu-chan!], the frivolous voice calls from behind her.

She turns casually to the walking natural disaster. Her devices start flashing their symbols like a cascade of warning signs.

"Hm. Hm. Yes. I'll be counting on you, Amata-ojisan. In this situation, the most Kihara-like thing to do would be," she mutters as she pulls out a grenade launcher from inside her coat, "this."

Inside the launcher was a custom made, thermobaric grenade that also had a highly heat resistant, flesh eating bacteria contained within the biogas that fuels the explosion. This bacteria was much like a swarm of piranha in that it will immediately seek out and destroy any detected living tissues. She hadn't really planned for her own safety for this attack but the explosion should open the hall up to the outside air, which should kill the bacteria after it has done it's job. That 40mm round was has just touched the tip of Kumagawa's nose.

The explosive force of both the grenade as well as the air rushing in from the vacuum created by it, puts Enshuu on the ground. As she lowers the hand covering her face, she tries looking down the hall lit only by the glow given off by the melted off bits of metal and floating embers. Though that light is being rapidly extinguished by the freezing air pouring in from outside.

No one could have survived such destruction. Even with whatever tricks he had at his disposal, escaping death was something that belonged more to the realm of gods than some weirdo that entered the Natural Selector. Enshuu, and by extension the Kihara thought patterns within her phones, was satisfied with this result.

She pumps her fist above her in celebration.

"Yay! I think that worked Amata-ojisan!"

[Now I just feel bad.]

Her previous cheer had been taken with what little warmth and light the hall had. That supposedly average Joe had stood up, snow slumping off his body, as though to defy whatever god had added that to his description from birth.

[Jeeze. You really put a lot of thought in that huh? The explosion itself was to distract me from whatever was in there that kept eating at my body. But that refreshing breeze seems to have stopped that. If it hadn't been for that, I might have had to keep dying and respawning over and over. Well, I might have gotten through that anyway but I still give you 25 points!]

She stands herself back up, keeping her eyes locked on the enigma in front of her.

"Why?"

[Oh that'd be because of a skill I got from this cute-]

"No, why're you just standing there? You could have just taken me out in the time that I had let my guard down."

[Haha. But I doubt you really had let you're guard down to begin with but that's neither here nor there.], he waves his hand dismissively as he walks toward her, [I told you that I was your ally, didn't I? I wouldn't hurt you no matter how much you hurt me!]

"But even if you were my ally, I still tried to kill you."

[Even treachery has it's charms!]

The devices call for her, "Yes. That makes sense. Yuitsu-oneechan says that I should just follow along for now and wait for an opportunity. There's no way that a human can be that invincible so I'll just have to find a way to kill you using all the Kiharas at my disposal. After all, once they're dead the immortals are just really long lived. But that can wait for later, I suppose."

[You've got quite a big family, don't you?]

Something heavy and warm is draped over her small frame. Her head tilts up to Kumagawa's face, who had just placed a coat he got from somewhere on her.

[Well anyway, Enshuu-sensei-chan, where to now?]

She remains silent as she stares at her monitors. She's unsure of how to react to this gesture. None of the Kiharas seem to be agreed on that matter either.

Some say to rip his testicles and eyeballs out so they can be switched. Some say to abandon the coat since a Kihara shouldn't care about their personal safety. Some say to attack at the boy's mind by tearing him down psychologically somehow. Some say to simply act thankful so he could be lulled into a false sense of security.

So instead of waiting on a consensus to be reached, she simply wanders away to her next destination.

There's much work to be done after all.

Unknown to her, the ninja further back into the hall had something shining dully from their chests but even if she had looked to them now, the silver radiance in that dark had been deteriorating. Moments after, someone among them opened their eyes wide.

Due to the intense temperatures of Baggage City, quite a few of the above ground buildings had extensions running as far as their full height topside. Although they didn't have any of the complexity that Academy City's underground facilities had, they still were quite grand in it's architecture. Perhaps that's their reputation for trying to catch up to the world's center of science in action.

The motley duo had just come to an open area of one of the underground complexes and hide by an entrance. They had been watching the scuffle between the voluptuous, dancing maid and the young, showy-looking ninja for awhile now. They had initially wanted to step in when it was just the ninja fighting the guard but when the maid appeared, Kumagawa stopped Enshuu from going in.

"Can we attack now?", Enshuu asks as they watch a ninja get knocked out by some maid.

At some point, they too had come across some of the military forces that guarded the city. But they were already taken out. By who? Who knows. It did, however, enable Enshuu to add a bazooka to her inventory. She currently sits on top of it like it was some military carousel horse, the business end pointed toward her enemies.

[Not yet. Not yet. I want to show you my side of things.]

She tilts her small head in response.

[That woman over that looks like a maid but dances like a professional stripper is one of those Abnormals that I spoke of.]

"She's not. I don't know who she is but the Kihara side is saying that she's using some kind of esper power. It's probably something to do with her muscles or maybe she can manipulate her centrifugal force some how. You know, it's not very Kihara-like to be standing back and watching your enemies when you already have the means to obliterate them. I don't want to use that kind of violence but-"

Kumagawa pats her head as he chuckles, [Well then it's a good thing that I'm not a Kihara then, huh? It doesn't really matter if it pertains to the system that my abilities come from or not, there will always be Abnormals. There will always be Minuses. It's like Neapolitan ice cream, you can't have one flavor without the others!]

"But you could have them by themselves. There's no rule saying you can't have chocolate ice cream without vanilla or strawberry. Also, I think you should've used yin and yang for that metaphor."

[Hey, hey! That hurts my feelings Enshuu-sensei-chan-tan! Stop going to your phones just to channel your displeasure of me into something you can express! You'll make me cry!]

Despite his words, he cries anyway. Her usually hesitant face twists into one that looks as though she had just seen someone eat a still squirming cockroach. Her monitors flash with all the ugliness of a technicolor yawn.

"Why are there more honorifics now? Ransuu-ojisan says that's dumb. Amata-ojisan and Bunri-oniichan agree. Yuuitsu-oneechan says that you're gross. Byouri-obasan says you look the type to go raiding through even an old woman's panty drawer. Sousai-chan agrees with Byouri-obasan and says that you'd also be likely to be caught eating the used tissues of some girl that has a cold. Kouten-oneechan would like to ask if you also stalk random girls to see if they'll use a portapotty so you can hide inside the pit as she goes."

This kind of pressure from such a small girl might crush the hearts of even strong men but, well, his personality has been explained enough to guess at what happens next.

[Don't make me flip your skirt again. It'll please me more than it'll hurt you. And I can't guarantee your mental safety after that point. I might add them to my collection. Hell, I might add you to my collection by that point.]

The dark look on his face causes her to frightfully jut both hands onto the front of the skirt which lay directly on top the bazooka. To go further, her hands had just bumped against the button to fire the tubed death maker.

As it goes soaring over the maid, Kumagawa pushes her along as she clings onto the bazooka.

[GO, GO, GO! DON'T WASTE THIS MISTAKE OF YOURS!]

"IT'S YOUR FAULT ANYWAY- WAH!"

She had just tripped over a bit of fragmented rock created from the impact of the blast, causing her whole body to spin with all the drama of a Power Ranger being caught in some explosion. Incidentally, the maid just so happened to be in the radius of the bazooka's rotation. A heavy sounding smack is rung throughout the area as she goes flying, rolling, and banging across the floor.

The other monitors flashed with rage and the urge to maim but Kumagawa came smiling after her all the same.

[My goodness, Enshuu-sensei-chan-tan-dono! You've beaten an Abnormal with such ballerina-like precision! I'm so jealous of your skills! Wah, look out for the other loli!]

She harrumphs but begins to come to a very strange realization. Since when did she act so animatedly?

Now she wasn't some robot, wiped clean of emotion, but she was removed enough from those feelings to make it so she wouldn't express them as often as others simply because she didn't know how nor have any desire to do so. If she was capable of showing the normal type of range of emotions, she might not be suitable for the Testament type technology that hung from her, her personal, mental and psychological safety notwithstanding.

Enshuu kicks the caltrop that ninja dropped at her targets face.

Maybe it was because of how this strange and inexplicable boy would do the strange and inexplicable. Like that theory that says you can making a girl fall for you if you cross a rickety bridge with her, he's been doing all these things to open her heart up to him. If she was a regular girl, and if he wasn't such a dastardly perv, she might've started to blush at the prospect of it. But betraying her natural aura of innocence, she began to question his motives.

She shoots a second kick to score a hit in her target's gut with that metal sheet.

He had been following her after she had proved that she was someone here to eradicate all the threats to Academy City with impunity. You could say that he couldn't even consider her a threat but if that was the case, why follow her this far and help her? To keep the act up? That would be going too far considering that he had nearly died to her, by his own admission.

She adjusts her strike so that the kunai goes for her target's face.

Well, no matter. For Enshuu, she had already determined the most Kihara way of dealing with him early on. She may not be able to deal with him as casually as she had the maid from before and the ninja now but, again, it doesn't really matter right now.

She readies her hand to finish the ninja off but an arm cloaked in white blocks her view of the targets face as it knocked the kunai away.

This doesn't really matter either to her. She just adjusts her targets accordingly and lets her fist fly. But her new opponent, a man wearing a white jacket and helmet, kicks at her feet at just the right time to throw out her body weight from the equation of her fist to his head.

Apparently, it does matter.

She steps back a bit to get a proper look at her enemy.

"Kihara Enshuu, hm? I had heard you had not yet qualified as a Kihara," muttered the helmeted man.

"Who are you?"

"If you wish to harm these girls, I must make you my enemy."

"If you wish to save these girls, I must make you my-guh."

There was no feeling of it ever happening. There came no sound. There came no form nor sign of the attack. Yet, there still was the pointed end of a screw coming out of her chest as long and thick as your standard traffic sign post. She only knew of one behind her.

"Y-you..."

[Sorry, Enshuu-chan,] Kumagawa began, walking toward her with a gentle look to his face, [But you can't win a fight against that guy. If you fight him, you might get hurt. So I had to pierce you with one of my screws.]

Her body slumps to it's knees from both the physical and mental pain of being betrayed. But their was some other feeling emanating from her wounds than something as cheap as that. It was like the screw had pierced and soiled more than just her corporeal heart. She felt extraordinarily weak.

"I thought...I thought you were on my side."

[Yeah. I guess it's a little hard to see that but maybe it would make it better if I say that trick I've been using to escape death is something that doesn't apply to just me. Though, that'll just help for the psychosomatic pain you'll feel. After all, that screw isn't really piercing your body. If I had been thinking properly about which screws I was using rather than just saving you, maybe things wouldn't be so bad but...well you aren't even conscious any more.]

He crouches down to lightly brush her short, white hair from her face to behind her ear.

[I'll listen to all your complaints and take responsibility for ruining your life without thinking. It's not really something I would do but I guess that's why I'm doing it,]he whispers as he stands up and returns the mystery man's stare. Or at least, he thinks the guy is staring at him.

[You're pretty polite for a guy that declared himself Enshuu-chan's enemy!]

"...And you're pretty ill-mannered for an ally of hers. Though, maybe that's the only kind of allies a Kihara can gather."

[I dunno. She had tried to kill me since the beginning and even told me that she would continue trying to find a method of killing me so I don't think this is really my fault! Oh. Wait. Maybe that was a love confession?! Is this the fabled yan-tsundere?! Or maybe it's more like tsun-yandere?]

"Heh. No. You're definitely the type to be hanging around a Kihara. But still. What do you intend to do now?"

He chuckles as his grin stretches a little bit wider, [I'll just do what I want. SSDD.]

The man regards this before turning his back on that smiling monster, "Alright then."

[Eh?]

"Oh? I figured that you didn't want to actually fight me but was I mistaken?"

[Hm. Well if it's a matter of fighting or not, I don't really care to but it might be fun to take on someone like you!]

"Don't think someone opposed to fighting would think the prospect of it could be 'fun' but I was thinking that you were just going to distract me until you could take her away from here," he responds, pointing at Enshuu, "I don't quite know what it is you did but you went further than you would have liked right?"

[...]

"Then don't worry about me. As long as these two are safe, I have no intention of harming her. Unless, of course they sent you along with her to take this city out. I doubt that's the case though."

[Ahhhhhh. I see now. You're just making a detour too huh?]

It was almost hard to tell from the outward appearances but the man fists clenched up for a moment before he realized how the boy came to his conclusion.

"Yeah. This is just my way of fighting the role given to me before I do what I came here for."

[That won't last after you're done, will it?]

The man says nothing more. His conviction is already set. His will already tempered.

Just the same as Kumagawa's. The boy responds to the man's silence in kind, exiting stage right with the girl in his arms.