"If they're talking to each other with anything other than smoke signals, they're as good as ours."
"Assuming you're right about this, you mean?"
"No, I'm certain there's something off. Haven't you ever gotten a feeling that you've walked into something that'll be catastrophic?"
"...I did once, but I stopped worrying about it when a gremlin gave me a suitcase full of money."
"Oi."
There was a sad, strange, and very alien part of Momo that was actually enjoying her current circumstances.
Her father wasn't too far gone into propriety or the 'proper' way to act that he didn't indulge her whenever she wanted a hug. Her mother would look for excuses to drag her into her arms. Unlike what many would have assumed about a household with as much wealth as hers', Momo was no stranger to close contact with immediate family.
That same sort of close contact with someone she wasn't related to? A young man the same age as her, who had just risked his life to save hers? Whatever had been shot at them, it must have come from outside, through the doors and window she'd had her back to. There had been a rather thick and well-stocked set of cupboards between those same windows and Michael, and he'd chosen to leap over them to make sure she would be alright.
The solid expanses of his body that he couldn't strain to keep from her, the parts of his chest and legs that he didn't have the leverage to keep from pressing down onto her, weren't helping at all.
If there were worse conditions to be under when she was touching a boy for the first time and he was touching her, she didn't have the context to even imagine them. The exquisite dress she was wearing and the charcoal suit it was bunching up against did nothing but stoke the fire she could feel burning in her chest. It pulsed in time with her heartbeat, and also the adrenaline flooding her system, because someone had just tried to kill her.
You will be a hero, young lady, get a hold of yourself!
The ground beneath her head shook slightly, knocking her out of her thoughts. It also would have knocked her cranium against the tile if Michael's free hand, now somehow devoid of omelette, hadn't reached around her waist and pulled her slightly upward. The smile from before was a distant memory, his features just a bit too tense to be considered neutral.
His other hand came down from the wall, pressing into the ground next to her head. She had a split second to figure out what he was going to do before his arm unfurled, and she could only curl herself further inwards in an attempt to make her weight less cumbersome as his lone arm launched them back over the counter.
Right in time for the wall he'd made to explode inwards, burying where they'd just been lying in stone and sharp flecks of tiling.
Momo didn't scream as her feet brushed against the top of the counter, but the gasp that managed to escape the strangling sensation of fear clogging her throat felt just as loud. Michael hadn't stopped moving, twisting around in one fluid motion so that most of her was covered by his larger frame. His free hand snapped out, rippling heatwaves wavering in the air between his fingers, those same fingers curling around the shaft of a dart that had been flying directly towards her face.
In the quiet of the kitchen, only marred by the shifting of gravel and scuffling of shoes on the remaining tiles, the echo of it snapping may as well have bounced off the walls. His hand didn't fall, but the way his fingers loosened allowed all three pieces of the dart to fall to the ground, mangled beyond recognition.
Much like the kitchen before her. The uniformed men that were climbing in through the broken windows were just as foreign to her impressive memory, their armoured suits hanging off frames in some cases and bulging grotesquely in others. Far from the fitted perfection that her family would have provided for. The only things about them that she could recognise from a glance were the guns that they carried, all of which were difficult to come by in the country, and all of which were aimed at the man shielding her.
From where she was standing, Momo could see five in total. Hunched over the ruins of what used to be their cover was a large man with purple skin, his stolen suit nearly bursting at the seams of his broad shoulders. The sneer on his face only widened when he noticed her gaze, lips puckering in a kissing motion that she didn't even attempt to hide her disgusted reaction to.
The man that had walked in second was almost emaciated by comparison. Where the others had suits that were stretched uncomfortably, his was almost falling off his thin frame. His hair was long and white, the ends tapering off into what she could now see were long, thin darts. The clear liquid dripping from the tips of them was a mystery that she had no interest in solving.
The other three that had packed themselves into a firing squad in her kitchen were less distinguishable. They were all a similar height and build, with nothing to suggest a Quirk mutation along their bodies. The guns they were holding were larger than anything she'd seen the suited men wielding in the days before. Did that mean they'd been in possession of them before, or was there more to the security detail than she'd noticed before?
"Who are you?"
How Michael was managing to stand tall in the face of hot leaden death was a question to ask another time. It was obvious now that he'd had some kind of training, you didn't get muscles like that from Matter Manipulation. Unless you did? How did his Quick actually interact with the rest of his body as opposed to external matter?
Another question for another time. For now, they needed a plan.
The audible house alarm wasn't going off, but the hidden one was. The small remotes that were on every wall in the house didn't just control that room's heating and cooling systems. The light on the thermostat that was slowly pulsing between red and blue told her that the police were on the way. In ten minutes the estate would be surrounded, and last she heard, Mirko had been in the area.
Getting to watch one of the strongest female heroes in the world at work would have been motivation enough alone to get through this alive. All she had to do was keep either herself or Michael from eating a bullet. Along with their families and, if it wouldn't be too much to ask, her staff too.
The thin man smiled. It took more courage than Momo would have liked to admit to not simply duck behind Michael and hope she never had to see something like that ever again.
"Who we are isn't important." His voice was surprisingly smooth, the hand holding the gun and his hair perfectly steady as they both kept Michael in their sights. The rest of his body, for whatever reason, was shaking like a leaf in the wind. "We represent a group that is very interested in the heiress' Quirk. Step aside and we'll make your death relatively painless."
Of all the responses that Momo was expecting to that statement, laughter wasn't high on the list. It seemed she wasn't the only one; even the purple skinned-man, who hadn't stopped leering as her since almost crushing them both, was taken aback as Michael let out a sharp bark of laughter that was almost identical to his father's, swaying forth a step to lay both hands down on the counter.
He hadn't moved to either side. Momo followed him in that step, feeling much safer once her hands were brushing against the back of his suit, but it wasn't lost on her that none of the gun muzzles could have reached her even after he moved. She'd still been safe, even with him putting some distance between them.
She'd also had a clearer route towards the door to their side. Not that it would have done her much good, given that she was their target here. Her leg shone for a moment, her Quirk's activating light hidden below the counter and behind Michael's back, the simple action taking up much of the breakfast she'd managed to eat before it was ruined.
"Relatively painless? Safe to say you've never been shot." There was no way she imagined the shade of purple his hair turned this time. It was subtle, maybe almost a trick of the light, but she was close enough to feel the puff of heated air that was drifting off his head.
Momo tried to take a step, to move around him and line up a shot for the taser she'd just pulled out of her leg, only to stumble to the side. Michael's arm snapped backwards, her weight continuing to be absolutely no bother to him as he stopped her from kissing the tiles.
Those same tiles had crawled up and over her shoes without her noticing, trapping both her feet within domes that she wouldn't be able to break through without some significant effort.
She was trapped. But the only person who could have trapped her was…
"Stay behind me." If she couldn't see his lips moving, feel the breath dancing across her face, she might not have even heard his hushed voice. "Don't move, alright?"
Another dart made of hair zipped towards them, aimed at the thigh she'd exposed in her stumble. It didn't get any further than halfway across the counter before Michael's hand lashed out, one of the forks they'd been using for breakfast punching through the mass of hair and impaling it to the counter.
Suddenly, it clicked. They needed her Quirk. They needed her alive, even if they didn't care about Michael. As much as he was physically shielding her, she was also shielding him.
It was a fact she wasn't alone in realising. The thin man, expression soured by the failure to snipe her, gestured to the side. One of the men that had been standing behind him moved to the side, picking his way across the piles of stone littering the ground to get a different shot. At the same time, the purple man let out a gleeful cackle, bounding towards and then through the counter, both of his hands outstretched towards her.
Michael turned his attention towards the purple man bearing down on them. The thin man's hair was rising once more, taking advantage of the distraction that had been caused to get another shot off. If he wasn't worried about hitting his companion, then either that purple skin would stop the darts, or they weren't all too deadly to begin with.
Unfortunately for him, Momo hadn't been raised to not question the orders that others had given her. Staying still was never in the equation.
The taser was still in her hand, all five prongs she'd made for it sparking with more electricity than was strictly legal in this corner of the world. Whether by coincidence or the shocking amount of insight she was learning he was in possession of, Michael darted off to the side more suddenly than had been expected, taking the tiles covering her feet along with him and allowing her free reign of her movement once more.
He also took with him the focus of the gun muzzles and hair darts, giving Momo the precious second she needed to line up her shot.
Her finger squeezed down on the trigger in the same moment that the aggravating laughter was cut off with a wheezed hacking. From the corner of her eye she could see as the purple man tried to smack the approaching hand away from his neck, only for his eyes to widen to comedic levels as fingers she could personally attest felt like steel closed around his windpipe.
All five of the sparking prongs were let loose. Her accuracy, incredible even before she started training her Quirk and body, ensured that all of them landed exactly where they needed to be. Four in each of the intruder's necks, with the one spare bouncing harmlessly off the single window that had survived the assault. With them secure, she was free to step to the side as Michael used his assailant's momentum against him, sweeping his legs out from underneath him and slamming him to the ground with enough force to send out a spider-web of cracks.
The building whine of voltage was barely audible over the distant howling of sirens. With no small amount of satisfaction, Momo flicked the button she'd built in below the trigger, turning towards Michael just in time to watch as the hand he was holding the would-be assassin down with began to spark with electricity.
"Oh hey, we had the same idea."
Something small and metallic disappeared into Michael's pocket. The collective screaming of five men being blasted with more volts than was probably strictly necessary would have drowned out any questions she could have asked about it.
They would be fine afterwards. She was a hero, after all. But perhaps there was some vindictive satisfaction in watching the men who'd interrupted their breakfast thrashing on the ground.
"Matsumoto, is everything alright over there?"
"BLASTED MISCREANTS- of course, Young Master."
"How about dad?"
"He's-"
"SIR CLUCKLES WILL TAKE NO PRISONERS, PEASANTS!"
"Is that a rubber chick-"
HONK.
"AAARRRGGGGHHH!"
"He is well."
"...Right. I've got something here, meet us back in the room from earlier. How are Momo's parents?"
"They're-"
"Oh dear, darling, you missed one."
"Well that just won't do!"
BOOM.
"AAARRRGGGGHHH!"
"...They are well."