"That went pretty well."
If I had still been Michael Wise, the look I shot Twice would have earned me a grounding that we both knew wasn't going to be enforceable. Thankfully, with my hair unfurling back down my body and purple spreading from the roots, we didn't have to upkeep the charade anymore.
That hadn't gone well. That had been almost disastrous. If it hadn't been for the two minutes of brainstorming before we got to the estate proper and La Brava screaming instructions in our ears all throughout, we probably would have rolled through the gates of the Yaoyorozu mansion in the back of an armoured van. Instead, I could see the steering wheel of our borrowed Toyota (Impressive that they were still in the market even after all this time) in the white knuckled grip of Gentle, his unfettered and downright bored expression doing an incredible job of hiding just how much tension was radiating off his body as we crawled through the veritable army of police cruisers.
The shit-eating grin on Twice's face told me without words that he was damn well aware of how terribly shit could have gone sideways, but he was climbing that hill and he was more than willing to die on its peak because nothing in the world could amuse him more in that very moment.
Curse his ability to get me to respect his absurdities. Curse it!
Everything had been going well. Shockingly well, in fact, since I'd stepped away from the meeting and passed along how many assailants I'd felt making vibrations through the ground. Guiding Momo into the least sheltered room I'd seen in the house to draw out whoever was gunning for her had been risky… if the person she'd been with didn't have the ability to raise the recently deceased. Not that she'd even needed it with her brain moving quicker than even I'd anticipated to get us out of the situation.
Perhaps she wasn't the greatest with people, if the way she'd occasionally space out or freeze up while I was talking to her was any indication, but she would be a fantastic hero given time.
The Meta Liberation Army… I could already tell they were going to make themselves an issue. Hazy memories that hadn't occupied my mind in the near year since I'd been dropped here wasn't exactly the greatest information to go off of, but thankfully I wouldn't be alone and relying on them. I had an internet connection, and a La Brava. I may have had to change the name in their servers to avoid immediate suspicion, but they still had a kill order out on the person wielding Overhaul; it was perhaps in my best interest to not ignore that for too long..
Which begged the question; how did they know about it? And, more importantly, would they recognise it in use?
I couldn't recall telling the name of the Quirk to anyone that didn't help me steal it, and it made little sense for that limited group to leak the knowledge to a place trying to kill it and then… keep hanging around it. Gentle and La Brava didn't strike me as the type, Eri still wasn't allowed to talk to strangers, and Twice was goofy and legally insane, but he wasn't stupid.
So either I had fucked up and just didn't remember, or even in death, Chisaki still couldn't stop causing problems.
Really, that was a level of petty that I could only aspire to. It wouldn't stop me from asking Twice to make another clone of him so I could smash it to pieces with a pipe, but I had to respect just how much of an asshole you had to be in life for it to carry over into death.
Just for his sake, I could only hope Hell was plagued with diseases. And Quirks. And diseased Quirks.
Fucking asshole.
Really though, the possibility of the Meta Liberation Army breathing down my neck for two reasons that coincidentally had nothing to do with one another wasn't the issue. It was an issue, but future Mineta could deal with that when he had more information and a better understanding of just where shit went wrong.
No, the real issue was that I'd decided that it would be far easier to let La Brava set off the cut silent alarms. The sooner we got processed out, the sooner we could leave. As far as the law would be concerned, it would have been an attack on a prosperous family and their esteemed guests, and nobody dying on either side could be written off as a Quirky miracle.
If we were poor, or had weak Quirks, then it probably wouldn't have been quite so easy to brush off. Quirk use even in self-defence was still a touchy subject, and on paper we were foreigners, but on paper we could also go bitch to the boss of the boss of their boss. Antiquated laws weren't worth the hassle of questioning us for surviving.
In, out, answer some questions, be a moody teenager who just had a brush with death, and throw some fabricated influence around to escape the situation and figure out where the fuck I would go from there in the two months before the school term started. So no, letting the alarm go through hadn't been the problem.
The problem came in the form of who, exactly, had responded to the call.
The same fucking rabbit that had led us to this situation in the first place.
I could have sworn my entire skeleton shivered when she closed in. Hopefully nothing had been picked up by those ears of hers'. The disguise had held up well enough under the inspection, but that hadn't stopped her eyes from following me as I was led through a storm of questions.
I probably hadn't done the best job, seeing as even Momo had picked up on my discomfort. No matter where I went, she would follow, and it was easy enough to figure out that she hadn't stopped placing herself between where I was standing and where Mirko was inspecting the room.
Like the big, strong man that I was, I took the opportunity of protection without a second thought and hid behind her. Nothing could convince me to move, not even the second time I caught sharp red eyes boring into the side of my very breakable skull, sunk in my seat beside her, and then listened in utter confusion as Momo shot a quick glance at me and muttered something about leprechauns being adorable.
If I didn't mishear that one, then I had some questions. Not that I'd really stuck around long enough to hear the answers. I didn't even take the time to retrieve my notebook, which was fine, because I was going to leave it to Momo anyway.
I had copies, and the world was going to go to shit soon enough for her to want the added protection. It was the least I owed to her after everything she'd been put through. After a quick goodbye and a hasty bow to her parents, I was out of the door and back in our car, my phone in my hand and no mercy on my mind as I dove back into terrorist servers that were still even now trying desperately to delete everything we had seen and altered.
Not a chance. By the time Twice and Gentle were back in the car, La Brava and I had everything we would need.
After what felt like an eternity, our car rolled through the gates, and Gentle let out a sigh so explosive that it could have taken over for our engine as he started us on the journey to the less wealthy sections of the city. Already there were vans taking up any available space around the road, cameras out and flashing against our tinted windows as we accelerated past. How had they known what was happening?
…How had they known?
"Gentle," the suspicion took hold of my mind instantly, my eyes narrowed against the line of vehicles and the supposed journalists they held within. "Take us on a scenic route back home."
His eyes flickered up from the road, glancing at me in the rear-view mirror. The thoughts going through my mind could have probably been read off my face, because there was no complaint or question as we veered off the road and onto a much narrower street. The skyline of Tokyo in the distance was quickly replaced with the much less auspicious outline of trees and lower tapered roofing. Thankfully the turns were gradual enough for our longer car to not get destroyed on them.
A few more streets that I could only assume were random, and anybody who had been following us for either a follow-up attack or a scoop would be left guessing. That would be more than enough time for us to disappear after returning the car. We might have needed the Wise identities later on, and the last thing I needed screwing us over was bad credit.
The car was silent for a while as we drove. With Gentle scrutinising the road, Twice fiddling around on his phone, and La Brava having cut off communication on her end so she could concentrate, I was left with nothing but my thoughts and the moving landscape outside my window. The moving landscape, with random flashes of white and purple hopping across the buildings as we passed them, and a brown blur flitting between the trees…
Hold the fucking phone.
"Oh shi-" was as far as I got before Gentle slammed on the brakes. We hadn't been going very fast, but it was still enough force to lurch me against my seatbelt and for Twice to roll to the ground with a delighted whoop. Clawing my way out of the harness, I tilted my head around the seats, ignoring Twice's maniacal laughter at my feet and catching Gentle's wide-eyed glance in the mirror, before it darted back down to the road.
Standing right before us was the very last person I wanted to see. Well, second last, if you included All for One. Maybe third if Chisaki's ghost could be counted as a candidate- you know what, she wasn't the last person I wanted to see but she was definitely on the list.
Still, she was smiling. It wasn't a very nice smile, and it included far too many teeth, but maybe we could take that as a good sign-
"Come on out, you purple prick! I know it's you!"
Fuuuuck.
"Come on out, you purple prick! I know it's you!"
She'd known the second she entered that room and laid eyes on him.
Hadn't that been a shot of adrenaline straight to her spine. Sniffing around rumours in a part of the country she very rarely spent any time had led to her being the only hero in the area available to respond to some rich loser's distress signal.
Except it wasn't just any rich loser, it was Yaoyorozu. The old bastard that had planted her ass in the ground all three times she'd managed to goad him into a fight before he'd vanished from the hero scene entirely. If someone was actually giving that family trouble, they were really stupid, which she wanted to see just so she could laugh at it.
Or, they were really strong. Which she wanted to see, because ever since that impromptu dip in the lake, she'd been itching for a good fight.
Except, there hadn't been a fight. Just a whole bunch of morons passed out on the ground, the moneybags and their servants, and a stranger that had set off every alarm bell in her head immediately.
There were only two guys in the country that could do that, and that suit was nowhere near ugly or yellow enough to be the first one. She'd been across the room and in his personal space before either of them realised what was happening, and she could feel the man his muscles bunched as he suppressed the urge to instantly turn her into a fine paste along the carpet.
Oh yeah. She knew those muscles from her dreams.
He could act well enough, she'd give him that. The way he'd shy away from her attention and hide behind his little girlfriend while she'd shoot dirty looks whenever she thought Mirko wasn't looking. Girly obviously had no clue just who she was pawing at, which begged the question, how exactly did the Purger fit into the high society life?
He'd called the blond one dad. Did that mean the hair was only purple when he was using his Quirk? Was his father in on his actions, or had he somehow managed to keep them hidden even from his own family? The Yaoyorozu family couldn't have known; the old man would never let a criminal, suspected or otherwise, onto his property. She couldn't imagine he'd allow his daughter to cling to one, either.
Really, breaking them up would probably be the moral choice. But she'd have to bring him down first.
She waited, foot tapping against the road and arms crossed, maintaining eye contact with the tinted windshield of the car and hoping idly that none of them would notice the occasional shift of her thighs. He could hide, and he was good at running, but what would he do when she left him no choice but to fight?
Finally, after half a minute of nothing, one of the rear doors clicked open. The rapidly shortening fuse on Mirko's anger fizzled out with a cold splash of excitement as the first thing she could see climbing out was long, purple hair.
The man calling himself Michael straightened up, all false pretences of timidity stripped from his face. Unlike in the mansion, he met her stare with one of his own, holding her gaze as his hands ran down his suit jacket, unbuttoning the stuffy layer of clothing and throwing it carelessly back into the car.
It landed on the blond man's face, right as he was poking his head out. With a splutter, he tore the jacket away from him, chucking it carelessly over his shoulder. If Mirko's ears were to be believed, it landed on the floor of the car in a crumpled heap. Certainly not the kind of people to be attentive to their wealth, then.
"Vita-"
"Follow the plan."
His mouth clicked shut, cutting off whatever he'd been about to say. A name? A codename, perhaps? Had it even been in Japanese?
The man calling himself Richard shot her a dubious look. She barely noticed, her arms tightening further over her chest as the Purger slowly rolled his sleeves up. His hair was unfurling further and further down his body, now more than ever resembling the ocean of wine she'd felt her life being drowned in recently.
The car door clicked shut, and with it went any sensation in her body that wasn't anticipation in some form. He wasn't smiling. He wasn't talking. He wasn't slipping away on that damn bike of his or shutting her down in a single movement.
She was going to ruin him.
His hair finally reached the ground, some of the tips pooling around his feet while others flicked around unnaturally. Without warning, the road beneath the car folded away into a ramp, the movement sending a vibration through the ground that Mirko could feel all the way until it stretched out of the range of her animalistic senses.
It was a burrow, she realised. A warren large enough for the car his accomplices were driving, and long enough to reach halfway through the residential area at the very least. And he'd done it all without any noticeable effort.
He was going to ruin her.
There was no signal. There were no officials around to try and follow the car as it escaped through the new tunnels. There were no witnesses around to save her from any future cases of unauthorised brutality.
Good. She much preferred it that way.
Her foot slammed into the arm he'd raised to block. It didn't buckle, but the ground he'd tried to anchor himself to with his hair certainly did. With a push of his legs to aid the momentum, he allowed her kick to send him flying through the air, having the gall to look directly into her eyes and finally break his neutral expression with a cocky smirk before he disappeared into the treeline.
So he wanted to try running away again, in her natural habitat? With a noise that was one half gleeful laughter and one half warrior scream, she charged after him into the forest, kicking aside the entire tree trunk that had been flung to cover his exit.
The game was on, and she wasn't about to lose.