According to the map application that Mineta had opened up on his phone that had been mounted in the center console, the time before you arrived at your location was estimated to be around an hour from the airport. And as much as you would have been fine listening to the entirety of the Shrek album, once Mineta hit traffic on the freeway it became nearly impossible to listen to Smash Mouth, with how hard his data was throttled. Not wanting to succumb to boredom, you figured you might as well make the most out of Mineta's company by using him as a captive audience to ask questions, and to most importantly entertain yourself as you gazed out past the sea of taillights, to where the distant skyscrapers of Mustuafa's inner city resides in the horizon.
"Hey Grape, how familiar are you with Musutafa?" You asked casually— still refusing to put on your seatbelt, while knowing fully well that the constant beeping coming from Mineta's dashboard about your aforementioned refusal had been annoying him since you two departed from the airport.
Taking a deep breath to calm his nerves down before speaking to you, Mineta kept his eyes forward on the sea of traffic ahead and lightly released pressure from the brake-pad before replying back to you with, "I'm very familiar with the area— I was born and raised here, and even graduated from the Hero Academy not too long ago."
"Cool, cool… What's the 'Hero Academy'?" You bluntly asked, to which caused Mineta to stomp hard on the brakes.
Looking over his shoulder with a look of disbelief in his wide-open eyes, Mineta silently analyzed your lazy expression— appearing to judge whether or not you were being sincere with your question, or were once again trying to get on his nerves. Only when the car behind him honked their horn at him did Mineta finally turn his head forward— driving forward a few meters, before inevitably coming to a slow stop. "… You're telling me that you came all the way over to Musutafu, and somehow you NEVER heard of the Hero Academy— despite the fact that the theme of your restaurant is ABOUT glorifying heroes?!"
"Yeah— haha, ha!" You chuckled bemusingly— finding Mineta's frustrated voice to be funny, especially with how high-pitched his voice was. "Soooo… Spill the beans, Grape: what's the Hero Academy, and how was it?"
Hearing another heavy sigh coming from the front of the car, you sat as comfortably as you could in the back of Mineta's car as he recomposed himself, yet again. "So, I don't know how things work wherever you're from, Ashta-San-"
"-Florida— I'm from Florida, Grape," you interrupted— inciting another moment of frustration from Mineta, who needed a few minutes to calm himself down before continuing where he left off.
"… Like I was saying, Florida-Man: here in Japan, citizens are required to register their quirks through the government, and even then that's not enough to be permitted to use them in public space. To do so, citizens have two options: either they can register and pay out of pocket to work with a provisional license under a professional hero agency, or they be enrolled when their teens through the Hero Academy, and have all that stuff paid for along with getting top-notch training to be successful," Mineta explained calmly— a sense of nostalgia audible through his voice, as he continued on to drive through the sea of cars ahead of him. "You can be an adult and still go through all the hassle of becoming a pro-hero, but compared to a graduate from the Hero Academy, they're either going to be stuck being an underpaid sidekick,or will have a nightmarish time trying to move up the ladder."
Nodding your head casually as you extended an arm out behind the middle headrest of the backseats, you asked Mineta, "So if that's the case then, what happened with you? How did a graduate of the Hero Academy go from being on their way to becoming a 'pro-hero', to ending up having to drive some shitty beater-car for a living?"
Mineta seemed to take offense to what you just said, as he didn't respond to your question until he had finished brewing over it for about five minutes straight. "… For your information, I AM a licensed pro-hero! And just so you know, the only reason why I'm driving your ungrateful ass to the ghetto is because being a pro-hero nowadays doesn't pay you crap anymore! Not like it used to…!"
"That sounds like an excuse to me, Grape. If you were passionate about being a pro-hero, you'd do it— no matter the pay," you argued, to which caused Mineta to audibly twitch with anger while moving the car slightly forward.
"W-Why you…! UGH! Well then, freakin' FORGIVE me then for not wanting to PANHANDLE in between getting my ASS-CHEEKS kicked on the street! I guess I'm just more passionate about NOT being a friggin' hobo than I am passionate about throwing my big-purple BALLS at petty criminals!" Mineta shouted out from the top of his small lungs, as he began to shake with anger while proceeding to slam his hand down on the horn. "Don't these friggin' jerk-ops know that I got places to be…?!" You heard him mutter, which honestly made you chuckle out loud as you playfully slapped the back of the middle headrest.
"What's eating you, Grape? You seem to have a lot of frustration trapped inside those big-purple balls of yours," you asked with a cheeky grin spread across your lips— staring back through the reflection of the rear-view mirror to look at Mineta gritting his teeth at your comment. "Fwahaha, hah…! Alright, alright— sorry for messing with you, Grape; I'll ease off ya, for now," you said with a slightly apologetic tone in your voice— shooing Mineta's attention away from you by nonchalantly waving your dangling hand at him, which caused him to let out a frustrated huff before looking away from the reflection of the rear-view mirror.
"Gee, THANKS…!" Mineta seethed, before letting out an elongated sigh as he slowly lessened the grip he had around his steering wheel. "Tch… I'm almost TOO afraid to ask you, but… Did you have, like… Any other stupid questions that you're just DYING to ask me? Or can we just sit here in silence?" Mineta asked in a low-whiny voice— sounding almost as though he were the cusp of shedding tears with how emotionally drained you had made him.
"Yeah, but it's just one question— no big deal, right, Grape?" You replied almost smuggly, as you fought hard to give into the temptation of going back to purposefully harassing the young man for your sick-kicks.
Silent at first, Mineta hesitant to respond to your rhetorical question before finally giving in with a defeat breath escaping his lips. "Ngh… Yeah, I guess so… Why? What did you want to ask me, Ashta-San?" Mineta asked in a dreary voice— clearly not in the mood to be messed with anymore.
"I just wanted to ask you what you thought about All Might's Family Diner? Have you been there yet, or is this going to be your first time checking out the place yourself?" You asked him; finally showing your driver mercy by finally talking to him like an actual human being.
You heard Mineta letting out a nervous whimper as he suddenly tensed up behind the wheel— a bead of sweat forming on the side of his face, as he struggled to come up with an immediate response to your question. "Uhhhhh… Actually, no, I haven't been there myself yet… I'm… P-Probably not gonna end up checking it out though: I actually knew All Might before he disappeared from the public eye, and it just seems distasteful to give the time of day to a place that's profiting off of his likeness so blatantly," he finally managed to reply, after having spent nearly three minutes thinking of what to tell you.
Given your history with dealing with liars and deceivers, you knew better than to believe Mineta's obvious cover-up. While you didn't doubt his previous connections to All Might, you could tell that there was another reason as to why your suddenly clamed-up driver was reluctant to make a trip down to your workplace. And although you chose not to further poke and prod into Mineta's personal business, you were able to come up with your own assumption as to why he couldn't go to the family diner; once he eventually dropped you off several blocks away from All Night's All-American Family Diner— approximately three-hundred meters away from it, according to what you were able to take a glimpse at from his phone's GPS.
To say that you were dropped off in the ghetto of Musutafu would have been putting things extremely lightly. The sidewalks for as far as the eye could see were covered in debris from some of the nearby buildings that were left in war-torn ruins, and the run-down stores and homes that looked to be mostly intact had iron-bars mounted on the outside of their windows. To put it bluntly, the part of Musutafu that Might Tower chose to put their family establishment in looked like complete shit. For Japanese standards, what you saw before you was unacceptable— luckily for you though, you weren't Japanese, and the war-torn streets you saw before you were leagues above what you've seen in places like Detroit and the entirety of Missouri.
Completely comfortable in the lackluster environment you were dropped off at, you and your child-sized All Might t-shirt took off toward the direction of the family diner. Whistling a catchy tune as you strolled through the uneven pavement of the sidewalk, you couldn't help but to notice the abundance of digital billboards and televised advertisements being broadcasted high above decrepit rooftops, and on the television screens that were posted behind the front-windows of the various shops and family-owned restaurants you were passing by.
Almost all of the advertisements were from a company that called themselves 'Endeavor Corp', which used the same predatory tactics of marketing that you've seen plenty of times used by the United States military to entice the viewer to come to one of their various recruitment sites that they had all throughout the prefecture. Judging by how frequently you were seeing their advertisements within the impoverished neighborhood you were walking through, it was obvious to you as to the demographic that Endeavor Agencies were targeting. It was upsetting— certainly— but then again, you didn't see it as any concern to you.
Why would you? You were hired on to dress up in a costume for the sake of entertaining children while their parents go drunk— in no shape or form of your contract did it mention having to protest against a major private military corporation. Although, credit where it was due, you had to admit that seeing all those men with their sleek futuristic-black armor and high-tech weaponry within those advertisements was pretty kick-ass— had you not had more important matters to attend to, than you would probably have ended up ditching your sketchy job, in favor of finding your nearest Endeavor Corp recruitment office.
But alas, that wasn't in the cards for you.
What WAS in the cards for you however was trouble, as ten minutes into your funky stroll you noticed two sketchy looking men in black-hoodies beginning to trail behind you— both having emerged out of the same alley you passed by not too long ago. You'd been down that road before— well, not literally down the particular road that you were walking down, because you hadn't even been to Japan in decades. Rather, it wasn't the first time you'd ever been shadowed by a multitude of strangers who had obvious intentions to hurt you— no, far be it.
What you were prepared to do to them couldn't be seen by any wandering eyes— that would put your plans at jeopardy, and you couldn't afford to have that happen to you.
One of the advantages you had presented to you in your concrete jungle of an urban environment was that not only were most of the apartment buildings unlivable and hadn't seen occupants for what you could assume were for years, but there was a closed-off construction site, surrounded in tall tarp-covered chain link fences that was easily accessible through its unlocked chain link gates. From what you could assume from what you've seen thus far, the plentra of concrete slabs and steel beams that had been staged around the entirety of the asphalt-covered grounds of the construction site were more than likely supposed to be used at one point to begin rebuilding some of the war-torn structures surrounding you and your stalkers— before inevitably being left to rot, much like the rest of the urban decay.
With your back still facing toward your still-approaching stalkers, you remained completely still as you turned your head toward your left shoulder— imagining how badass and cool you must have looked, as you gave the two of them a bombastic side-eyed look. Looking the two masked men in hoodies dead in their confused and ill-intent eyes, you let out a huff of air through your nostrils as the autumn air blew against your muscular body— a nippy breeze managing to get underneath your child-sized t-shirt, and causing you to squirm slightly as you slowly turned around to confront the two hooded men.
"… The force is with me, gentlemen; if you two strike me down, I'll just cum back harder than you two could possibly imagine," you said in your best Obi-Wan Kenobi impression— completely butchering his famous quote, and causing the two hooded men to become visibly confused. Watching them quickly looking over their shoulders to exchange concealed glances at one another, you made a finger-gun at them before muttering to word "bang", as you pretended to shoot the larger one of the two in the head.
The larger hooded man who you pretended to shoot froze, and proceeded to nervously inspect his forehead— letting out an audible sigh of relief, after discovering that your quirk wasn't shooting invisible bullets out through your fingertips. "Damn it, Geten-Kun— that crazy bastard actually got me…!" You overheard the large hooded man mutter to his hooded accomplice, who in turn shook his shadow-obscured head at him while staring back at you with his barely visible eyes.
"It can't be helped… In this day of age, one can never be too cautious as to what their opponent is capable of, Imasuji-San… Luckily for us, this American-Dog seems just as incompetent and weak as the last one," the who you presumed was named 'Geten' muttered back to the one he referred to as 'Imasuji'— minus of course the honorifics that you refused to acknowledge, as you were indeed an American-Dog. "You there— American-Dog! You are amongst the many who came in flocks to this godforsaken part of Musutafu who bear the symbol of fallen peace… What my colleague and I desire to know is why, precisely? Where are you going, and why on God's green Earth are you wearing that ridiculous-"
"-Please skip to all that yapper, and get to the point— I've got minimum wage to earn," You quickly interrupted— showing absolutely no respect for either men, who were both taken aback by how little regard you had for them.
Roaring out a battle cry of defiance, Imasuji grabbed a large handful of fabric from his hoodie— ripping it off angrily and tossing it aside; and causing his white mask to fall off of his pissed-off face. Staring at the short-haired blond man's bulging muscles that he had on his massive body, it became more apparent to you without the hoodie that Imasuji was considerably larger and bulkier than you. Had you two been on friendlier terms, you would have asked him what his diet was, and what his workout routine looked like; but alas, he was too busy augmenting the muscles inside of his body to begin enveloping himself in an armor of strength pink-meat. Gross.
"Arrogant BASTARD! Is this some sort of GAME to ya?! Are you that moronic to think we're just FUCKIN' around here?!" The enraged blond man with spiky hair shouted through what you could assume was roid-rage, as his added reinforced muscle made him stand at around nine-feet in height.
"Absolutely, I think you two are a joke," you replied honesty— smiling pleasantly at the two quirk users, as you put both your hands sassily on your hips while watching as ice-cubes from all across the ghetto began traveling behind Geten, where he used his quirk to create an entire sentient serpent out of the ice — the aforementioned ice-behemoth towering over you at approximately fifty-meters in height, as it stared down at you past its frozen snout to glare coldly at you with his blank eyes. "Do you honestly think ANY of this impresses me?! Pffff, yeah right— get real, heh," you chuckled bravely, as you casually picked up a dusty steel-pole from the ground— silently using your quirk right under the noses of your opponents, who were both under the rightful impression that you were just some sort of American Idiot, or perhaps even an All American Reject.
Narrowing his eyes at you from underneath the shadow of his fur-lined hood, Geten continued to rob the children of the hood of their ice-cubes to create a volley of ice-projectiles that were beginning to swirl around him like a shield— Imasuji digging his massive muscular-made fingers into the ground, to begin tearing a chunk of asphalt from the rebar beneath his feet. "Enough of the games, you fool! Tell us where you and the rest of Might Tower's cannon fodder are going, and we may yet consider sparing your pathetic life!" Geten threatened, giving you one last warning as you watched his ice serpent defying the laws of gravity as it took to the sky like a majestic dragon.
You were many things: an asshole, a sarcastic jerk, broke as all hell, and someone who traveled across the Pacific Ocean— all without ever being told what your pay was going to be, or even if you WERE being paid to work at a knock-off Chuck E Cheese. But on Ye Himself, there was one thing that you WEREN'T, and that was a goddamn snitch. Still not taking either villain seriously, you gave the two a confident and taunting smirk as you felt the back of your and dominate hand burning the more you reinforced not only the steel pole in your grasp, but every fiber of your physical being through effortlessly using the photonic particles around you to rewrite the properties of what you had at your immediate disposal— the mental energy needed to calculate the quantum equations to do so practically non-existent, as you had more than enough practice to know your way around your own meta ability.
Perhaps they noticed the sudden change in your demeanor, as the two didn't even bother to wait for a quip or even an actual chance to respond to their demands. Swinging your reinforced steel pole down to create a draft in front of you, you skillfully used your educated mind to accurately estimate the trajectory and position of where Geten's ice projectiles were going to be shot from, and how much force was going to be behind each one in order to calculate the counter-force needed to create a gust of wind powerful enough to reverse the hooded man's attack back at him.
Striking a pose similar to something that the late Michael Jackson would do once you were done manipulating the light particles around you to photonically engineer the wind your swing made, you watched with sadistic pleasure creeping into the back of your mind as Geten flew back from the force of your counterattack— the old part of you laughing on the inside, after having caught a glimpse at all the bloodied holes you had created in his torso.
Despite what you initially thought of him, Imasuji wasn't the thick-headed wannabe you initially expected him to be, as he showed enough restraint to stand by to observe as Geten's autonomous serpent proceed to fly in a spiraling motion upward toward the sky— gaining velocity, before suddenly taking a nose dive straight down where you were standing at the ready. Armed and ready, you took the stance of a major-league baseball player— pretending that your steel bar was a Louisville slugger, you already had the correct calculations in mind as you waited for Geten's ice serpent to get close enough for you to strike.
"… So long, Gay Bowser," you uttered with a glimmer behind your eye, you actively used your quirk to manipulate the force behind your swing using the photonic particles generated through your burning right-hand to not only bat the fifty-meter long ice dragon away from you, but you managed to launch its rag-dolled body out of the construction site without shattering its ice-body— a true feat that show cased you just how sharp your brilliant mind was still.
Appearing as though he was still trying to wrap his feeble mind behind the physics-altering feats you were capable of, Imasuji's jaw surely would have been hanging loose where he stood in shock— had his mandible not been practically forced closed, by how the augmented muscles that were wrapped around his head like a helmet. "I-Impossible— that's fuckin' impossible…! H… H-Hey! HEY! YOU! What the HELL are YOU?!" Imasuji demanded, while trying to mask the paltible fear in his voice with all the bravado he had in his body— shaking violently and becoming more angered by his own reaction, before finally exploding in rage as he screamed on the top of his voice, "ANSWER ME!"
Sneering at the panicked man that was trying so desperately hard to hide just how afraid he was of you, you were seconds away from fucking up another quote you had heard decades ago when all of sudden you felt a disturbance in the world— the constant feed of data you were in tune with via your quirk detecting an unprompted change in the fragile veil that was called 'reality'. Your blood began to run cold— or at least it would have, had you had any left inside of you— and as you opened your mouth to try to force a quip out, you found yourself too paralyzed with fear to even utter a single "my name is Jeff" joke.
Your airless breaths became vapid, as you noticed from the corner of your eye Imasuji spinning around to face toward the same direction you too were fixated on. For behold, where the gates in and out of the perimeter of chain link fences were, there stood the black silhouette of a mighty unit that donned an even mightier fedora— the blinding rays of photon particles behind him disorienting you, and causing irreversible blindness to the shrieking Imasuji, who you couldn't care any less about as you saw him flopping down dead on the ground with his eyes completely burned to ashes.
"DON'T YOU TALK ABOUT ME, YOU SON OF A BITCH," you heard a thunderous and somewhat nasally voice echoing out from in front of the source of the powerful light— your knees buckling beneath your weight, as you stood seemingly weightless as the godrays behind the pudgy man dulled slowly. enough for you to
Shielding your eyes still as you gazed upon his mighty presence, your demeanor completely changed once more as you called out to the figure, "Who said that— what is that," all while narrowing your eyelids while leaning forward to get a better look at the figure. Once you were able to focus better through the still dimming light behind him, you were able to see the robust man's pasty white skin, his small beady-eyes that he kept behind a pair of glasses, and his brown jacket that matched his intimidating fedora.
"IT IS I: THE LIGHTBRINGER!!" The fedora-wearing man announced to you, as the light behind him became fully absorbed into his large body. It was only when you noticed him pulling out a magical flintlock from seemingly nowhere did you know that it was too late to retreat. The Lightbringer— AKA: 'Linkara'— was about to take you to a place where bad comics burn; where he was going to teach you a lesson that you won't learn.
"OH, SHHHIIIIIIIIIII-"
BOSS BATTLE COMMENCING: LINKARA: THE LIGHTBRINGER.
OPEN THE GATES!
To be continued…
