This had been a hell of a week. And it wasn't even Wednesday yet.

The woods I'd just taken Mirko on an impromptu date in weren't all that large. Being this close to such a massive economic centre, they probably could have been classified as a densely forested park more than anything else. It would only be a couple minutes of walking before I would be out of the trees, so with that in mind, I picked a random direction, and I started walking.

Well, walking and overthinking, which at this point may as well have been the title of my biography.

Giving Mirko my number might have been the stupidest choice I'd made so far, and that included making the gentleman thief influencer a father while eviscerating the most dangerous mafia group in the country. It was up there with having a prospective hero student coming to the place I technically lived regularly. It was probably on par with what I was going to be doing in a couple of months, which was going to blow even the idea of a secret identity to smithereens.

Not listening to what my dick was telling me to do was the only thing I'd learned from high school. And yet here I was, disregarding my entire education, because a bunny girl gave me crazy eyes and an orgasm.

…Actually, when I phrase it like that, it all kinda makes sense.

So lost in my own head and the thoughts that were circling the drain, I almost missed the movement from the corner of my eyes, stopping just a breath too late from avoiding the brittle leaves and sticks on the ground. The contingent of police officers, five in total from what I could see, all stopped too, their heads snapping in my direction and ears on high alert.

Literally. All five had a pair of canine ears standing tall on their heads, though a few flopped down almost immediately by virtue of their species limitations. The rest of their features were a mixture of human and dog, with one man near the back having only the ears and some whiskers visible, while the policeman leading the group had the entire head of a bloodhound.

He held up a hand to stop the rest from advancing, taking a caution step forth and raising his head slightly. Even from where I was standing, I could hear him sniffing.

The pulses of Overhaul I sent out should have picked up on them. It should have told me exactly what they were made of and where they were. Except it hadn't, because I wasn't sending out pulses of Overhaul into the ground. Because I was too preoccupied thinking about recent events.

Post nut clarity my ass.

I stayed perfectly still, foot held in an awkward position halfway between the ground and air. The wind whistling through the trees would mask my heartbeat and breathing. The camouflage of the Quirk would only be helped if they also happened to have a dog's colour blindness.

It was the nose that I was worried about. If they smelled me hiding, then things would become very awkward, seeing as I was fleeing a scene that included one of the top hero candidates.

"It's fine." With one final sniff, the lead officer turned away from me dismissively, his voice one of the deepest I'd ever heard as he instead faced the path they'd been pushing between the trees. "Just smells like a rabbit."

Taking that as my cue to move, I inched behind the nearest tree, before sending my hair up the trunk to wrap around the thickest branch I could see. I reeled myself up into the leaves, just in time to avoid one of the officers as he broke ranks and poked his head around where I'd just been hiding.

"Do we get rabbits around here?" His nose twitched, drawing his attention up to the branch I was now sitting on. We made eye contact, though only I could tell, before he shook his head and apparently disregarded what his senses were telling him. Rabbits didn't tend to climb trees, after all.

The lead officer scoffed, his gruff voice apparently enough all on its own to make the other man scramble back into formation. "It would only take two and a few months, wouldn't surprise me."

The small squad steadily passed me by, picking their way through the brush. Only the man bringing up the rear, with the least animal features on display, gave my new hiding space so much as a cursory glance. No alarm was raised, which I could only assume meant that I'd gotten away with it.

"Hey, speaking of…" That was the one that had poked around the tree. I could no longer see them, the last man having disappeared behind the extensive lattice of cherry trunks. "You guys think Mirko fu-"

"Son of a fucker, where the fuck is that fuck mothering pager…"

The voice cut off with a strangled squeak as Mirko's irate grumbling came within earshot. Probably for good reason too, because if I could hear her, then there was little doubt in my mind that she could hear them.

I had to hand it to her, she really did sound like she'd managed to lose the device. It must have been the extensive experience she'd had in being pissed the fuck off.

"Ask her yourself, sounds like we're getting close."

"...Nah, I'm good."

Smart man. And speaking of being smart, the ground wasn't working for me. I may have gotten lucky with the first ground I encountered, but if I came across more police with sensory Quirks, I'd be in for a world of trouble.

Sending Overhaul into the tree and down through the roots, I mapped out the surrounding forest in my mind, feeling around for a means to leave. Another minute of ground travel would lead me to the road we'd been on before being forced into a detour, but that road was also now swarming with cars. Three guesses as to who or what they were there for.

I'd have to swing around to the north, to a stretch of the same road that didn't feel occupied. A journey that would have been about ten minutes on foot, weaving between the trees. For me?

I withdrew Overhaul, pressed my phone's power button through my jeans pocket, and launched myself from the tree.

The flock of birds that had been passing overhead scrambled out of the way as I rocketed right through their ranks, my hair trailing out behind me. Even if stealth was the name of the game, I couldn't quite swallow down all of the exhilaration being so high up inspired. The forest stretched out below in my vision, an ocean of greens and browns smeared together upon a natural canvas that I likely would never tire of seeing. There was just something magical about nature, even when the world I now lived in seemed to defy it at every turn.

The road I was aiming for was much narrower than the main one we'd come down, with no structures on either side. It wasn't even paved, being mostly dirt with what I could only assume were intermittent patches of gravel. An access road for people who took care of the area, perhaps? Or a really long driveway for a house I hadn't seen. Either way, it was my ticket out.

Landing wasn't as daunting a task as I had been expecting. I hit the ground feet first, with all the confidence of a man who was fleeing from his mistresses' house after the husband came home, and ate approximately as much shit when my feet sank into the ground halfway up to my knee.

Thankfully, my hair was the most intelligent and aware part of my body. Before I could even fully process the fact that I'd fucked up, it was shooting downwards, planting itself into the ground before me and arresting my momentum entirely. The shock jarred against my bones and set my ears ringing, but that was a level of pain that I would happily take over having to reset and reattach both my legs to my hips.

That just would have been embarrassing.

"Head in the game, Mineta, come on." I sighed, shaking the cobwebs from my thoughts and doing my best to banish them off to a place where they wouldn't be distracting me. My motorbike flowed out from my body, forming up underneath me as I pulled my phone out of my pocket, checking for any notifications.

Three missed calls from Twice, one from Gentle. A message from La Brava about not being available tomorrow… and a voice message from an unknown number? Huh?

I shrugged, leaning against my bike as I opened the message. It must have been a wrong number; this phone was brand new for the Michael Wise persona. The only person other than myself to have access to the number before this morning was La Brava, and that was just so she could set up the proper records.

Even so, I was curious.

"Hi Michael, this is Momo! I got your number from the notebook you left me but I guess I should have waited, you're probably busy- I mean you're obviously busy, we all will be after today, but I- uhh…"

The English was perfect enough to be a native speaker, but there was no mistaking the voice coming through the tiny speaker. I pulled the phone away from my ear to shoot it a dubious look as Momo continued to stumble over her words, which eventually petered out into a silence that was long enough to turn incredibly awkward.

I hadn't left my phone number in those books. That would have been a monumentally stupid idea. I hadn't even been completely convinced that I would have kept the persona alive and functional until after we were already leaving the estate, and that was only solidified by it being the only name Mirko knew me by.

But still, how? Gentle never touched the book. Twice had only flipped through it looking for pictures, and I'd watched him the entire time. La Brava had read some of it last week while I was making myself lunch, but that was only because she wanted to see what I was leaving the 'pretty heiress' with… son of a-

"I wanted to thank you. Sincerely, without you, I'm not sure if I would be here. I know Mother and Father both feel the same way, even if… Father is in a difficult spot right now. I don't know all the details, but… thank you. Having this number makes me feel much safer!"

For a problem that I probably caused in the first place, That stung a bit more than I was expecting. My motorbike hummed to life, silent as a whisper on the breeze, and with a few strands of hair sticking the phone to my ear, I took off back towards civilization.

"This notebook is fascinating! There are so many things in here that I haven't considered before, so many combinations to try out. Does Overhaul International use some of these in their designs? That's so impressive… oh my gosh, I'm so sorry, I shouldn't be asking you for corporate secrets like that!"

Though I didn't often bother, I did keep a helmet in a tray that I'd connected to my bike. I slipped it on for once, covering the phone I was still using and, more importantly, how purple my hair was. There were a few police officers within view distance as I turned out onto the main road, though they did nothing but return the nod I offered them before I took off in the opposite direction.

So the road wasn't closed off to the public, that was good. I could have escaped them if they wanted to push the issue, but apparently friendliness was still effective for diffusing a situation before it could start.

"Get a grip on yourself, Momo… I hope your day improves! Call me-urk, I mean, get back to me whenever you get the chance! Or whenever you want, or if you don't want to I suppose that's alright as well… Uhm…"

"Mistress Momo? Who are you talking to?"

"Uhh, nobody! Nobody at all! Wait why are you openi-"

Click.

Chewing my lip, I kept my eyes on the road ahead, freeing up one hand from the handlebars to fish my phone out from under the helmet and slide it back into my pocket. It would be a relatively short drive back home, so I wouldn't bother returning any of those calls. I would need that time to figure out exactly how I was supposed to move on from here, and also kick myself.

Before now, it had been easy to ignore the effect I had on other people, no matter how obvious they might have been with it. Being a physical culmination of two of the least desirable people in the world was a good way of keeping expectations low and level. I had a job to do, an impossible goal to accomplish, and I didn't want or need any distractions on the way.

But I just had to bring part of the old me into this world. The part that always seemed to cause me the most issues.

The fucking face.

The prim and proper heiress of the Yaoyorozu family was supposed to be repulsed by my disrespectful demeanour. She was supposed to tolerate me only up until we could all walk away with our lives. I got what I needed, she got all that I was willing to give in payment, and then we would never see each other or think about each other again.

She wasn't supposed to send me a voice message gushing over my work, sounding like some kind of blushing maiden and making me feel guilty that I'd banged another woman into a crater less than an hour after leaving her behind. She wasn't supposed to want me to be a part of her life.

And I definitely wasn't supposed to be happy that it was a possibility.

Today had started off as a gamble. High risk, potentially game ending reward. It was the final step in turning the world on its head and having everything fall neatly into the places I'd carved out for them.

Michael Wise didn't have a place carved out for himself, and I didn't have the heart to leave him behind, even after all the damage he had caused.

Somehow, in some way…

I knew this was Chisaki's fault.

Fucking asshole.

"Ahh, Mineta. Welcome back, how did…"

Danjuro trailed off as he took in the look on the younger man's face. In all the time he had known him, he had seen Mineta happy. He had seen him angry. Sad. Jubilant, and occasionally, he had even seen him serene.

The furrow of his brows, the slightly glassy and distant look in his eyes, the frown that twitched along with every stray thought in his head…

He was confused. A rarity, given how quickly his mind always seemed to work.

"Yo!" Jin, immune as always to the norms of society, bulldozed through the contemplative air surrounding their sagacious leader with the grace of a rabbit themed heroine. "Did you bang the bunny?"

Truly, he had a way with words. Danjuro rolled his eyes, raising his cup to take a sip and waiting with baited breath for the sarcasm that would always lead into yet another war of words-

"Yeah."

Danjuro sprayed his tea across the table. Jin, seated just to the side of the blast and playing idly with the salt shaker, snapped his head up so fast that his neck audibly clicked.

"HUH?" With tea in his sinuses and salt all over the table, it was a miracle they were even able to get out even that much.

"Yeah." Mineta repeated, his head bobbing in the slowest nod Danjuro had ever seen. Without even moving his eyes away from the window he was staring blankly out of, Mineta picked up the cup that had been laid out for him, filling half of it with the tea that had been brewed in celebration of their success.

Still nodding at nothing, he meandered out of the room, not even the slightest bit cognizant of the state he'd left the residents in. It was only after a few seconds that Jin started laughing, the quiet chuckles quietly building until he was holding his gut with both arms, struggling to stay upright in his seat.

Wiping his mouth with a napkin, Danjuro took a steady sip of tea, holding the teapot above the rumbling table as Jin gave up on holding himself and collapsed to the ground, smacking into the legs of the table and all the chairs around him as he went.

It was only after Mineta had long since locked himself away in his room for some much needed sleep that he realised he'd never told him about his plans for the next day.