A/N: I've been surprisingly productive this week. The next chapter probably won't come quite this quickly, but you never know - hope springs eternal!
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"You washed your uniform last night, right?"
My face couldn't help but flush at Hiratsuka's direct line of questioning. "I said I would, didn't I?"
"Good," Hiratsuka said. "Keep working on that list from yesterday for now," she said. "I'm going to make a few calls." With that, she stepped out of the office for a second, phone already up to her ear.
I sighed and once again turned my attention to the interminable list of quirks and missing persons. It wasn't easy. At some point over the last year or so, I had gotten all too used to having Regeneration on tap to fix me up after workouts, and after getting tossed around like a rag doll by Shiromeguri-senpai and Hiratuka-sensei over the course of last night, I was feeling sore. I'd actually alarmed Komachi with how creakily I limped to the shower this morning, and while hot water and over-the-counter painkillers had been helpful in loosening me up I definitely wasn't operating at a hundred percent.
It was probably just as well that I hadn't done much stockpiling last night; partly it was because I was too sore to focus, but I'd also brought up the possibility of updating my costume to match my new name to Kawasaki, and she'd been… enthusiastic, to say the least. We'd gotten into a whole long discussion about color schemes, fabric choices, the merits of eliminating the cape to avoid drag versus coming up with ways to add a stiff inner liner to the cape for lift in flight and a little bit of additional armor, whether I should come up with some sort of personal emblem; Kawasaki was passionate about costume design in the same way that the majority of my classmates seemed to be so passionate about heroics. It was cool. I couldn't help but admire the fact that she knew what she wanted to do with her life already - even now, up to my neck in Hero Classes and sinking quickly, I wasn't sure that I could say the same.
As tired and sore as I was from the day before, it could be worse. A traditional hero would doubtless be out patrolling by now, while I got to do desk work in a padded chair. It was just one more argument in favor of the life of an Investigative Hero… no matter how tedious the paperwork was.
Luckily, it didn't last for long. "Hey kid," Hiratsuka-sensei called out from the stairwell. "Use the restroom if you need to, and grab anything you want to bring with you. We're going for a ride."
"Uh, sure," I said, scooping up my cell phone and putting it into one of the pockets on my cape's inner lining that had a button flap to keep things securely inside. "Where are we going?"
As I turned the corner, I saw Hiratsuka already in uniform, mirrored shades over her eyes and trenchcoat already donned. "You know how yesterday you generated a bunch of leads?" Cyberpunch asked rhetorically. "Today we're going to follow those leads and see where they take us."
"Oh," I said, my pulse quickening. "I mean, yeah, okay, that's great!" I hurried over towards her, following as she started heading down the industrial-style steel staircase. "So how does that actually work? Like, in practice."
"Basically, we talk to friends and family of the people who disappeared," Cyberpunch said. "We try to see if they had any known enmities, owed anyone money, had any history of drug use or moving around a lot, that sort of thing. If we find that, for example, we're seeing a lot of people with stolen quirks who have a history of heroin use, that gives the investigation a clue to look into drug distribution networks, possibly following that lead all the way back to the boss." She looked over her shoulder at me as we hit the bottom of the stairs and grimaced. "Except that we can't tell any of the people we're asking why we're suddenly asking about their missing loved one, just that 'a person with a quirk similar to theirs is a person of interest in an ongoing investigation', so … just be forewarned, we're going to be having a bunch of extremely awkward conversations."
Great. My favorite. I grimaced, but nodded at Cyberpunch to show that I understood. "I take it I'm going to be sitting back and watching you interview people, then?"
"...Mostly," Cyberpunch said. "On a completely unrelated subject. I'm guessing you still have copies of the quirks you got off of the Nomu, right?"
"Yeah," I said, a little confused. "Do you want me to, uh, describe them to family members or something?"
Cyberpunch didn't say anything for a second, instead leading me across the parking lot to an isolated garage tucked away in the back. She hit a keyfob, and the garage door slowly opened, revealing a gorgeous, cherry-red convertible. "Remember how I said that every time you use your quirk, I have to fill out paperwork?" She asked. "If you don't think that you can do this, say so, but do you think it's possible that you could tell if two peoples' quirks were similar enough to be related to one another?"
I tore my eyes away from the impressive-looking ride to consider the question properly. Was identifying a family relationship between two people based on their quirks something I could do? I had done it with All Might and Midoriya, but their quirk was a special case. At the moment, I had just two sets of family-related quirks in my inventory. Sleep and Willpower both 'felt' pretty similar to each other, as did Haruno's Vampire and Yukino's Yuki-Onna, but I didn't have any quirks that were similar but not blood-related to compare them to. "...Maybe," I said. "It's not something I've tried before, but I can give it a shot."
"Sounds like there are some hand cramps in my future, then," Cyberpunch said cheerfully. She pressed a button on a keyfob, causing the car's headlights to flash. "Hop in," she said. "We have a lot of interviews to get to."
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"It's not that bad, Bakubaku," I said, trying unsuccessfully to stifle my giggles. I couldn't help it! His hair! It was actually combed!
"Quit fucking laughing, Airhead," Bakubaku snapped, "It's not like you're any better, you look like a fabric store threw up all over you!"
I looked down and smoothed my ruffled petticoats. Best Jeanist had taken one look at my Super Sentai-inspired costume and had immediately decided that it needed 'fixing'. And I mean, that was a little bit ouch, kinda - I didn't think my old costume was that bad - but the fact that I had a Pro Hero helping me with my costume was definitely cool. Still, though… "You think so?" I said, looking down at the costume Best Jeanist had whipped up on a moment's notice. It was full of ribbons and ruffles, sort of like a Magical Girl outfit in the same red and white colors as my original hero costume had been. "I mean, I'm not really sure this look is me, either, but I think it looks neat."
"Ahem." Best Jeanist coughed into his fist to get our attention. "As I said earlier, projecting an appropriate appearance is an essential part of modern professional heroics. Now, I could stand here and talk all day about why that's the case -"
"We know," Bakubaku griped. "You already fuckin' have."
"- but rather than continue to belabor the point in the hope of convincing you, I think I will simply let your outfits and coiffure do the job for me," Jeanist finished, pointedly ignoring Bakubaku's whining. "As we go on this patrol, I want you to take note of how people look at you on the street, their attitudes towards you. Think about your attire and self presentation might be affecting the reactions you are getting from them."
"Yes sir!" I said, snapping to attention.
"Tch. Whatever," Bakubaku said, staring off to the side so he didn't have to make eye contact. He was just like a little kid sometimes, honestly.
It was nice to get outside. Sure, yesterday had been super neat, what with Best Jeanist showing us all around his agency and getting to meet all of his sidekicks and seeing what a real hero office looked like and everything, but even looking at a bunch of super cool monitors on the walls and fancy-looking hero doohickeys that I couldn't tell what they did got old eventually, especially when it was eighteen degrees and sunny out! As the three of us walked down the street together, Best Jeanist in front and me and Bakubaku behind, Jeanist started talking all about how he usually patrolled, and how it let Villains know that an area was being defended, but also let the people feel safe and helped build relationships with them - stuff like that. I mean, I was listening, I swear, but I kept getting distracted when people looked at me and I had to try to figure out if maybe those guys would have smiled as much or if that little girl's eyes would have gotten so big if I had been wearing my old costume instead.
To be honest, it was kinda hard to tell, because practically nobody was paying any attention to me and Bakubaku with Best Jeanist himself walking right in front of us. That was, until three little boys walked up to us. "Hey, I know you! I saw you on T.V.!" The boy in the middle, the one whose head looked kind of like an eggplant said while pointing rudely at Bakugo. As Bakugo turned to look, the kid added, "you were stuck inside some kinda big slime villain with another guy! The other guy was totally crying!" He laughed.
The other guy who got grabbed, that was Hikki, right? Crying? I totally couldn't picture it! As my brain processed that little statement, Bakubaku spun around and shouted, "I wasn't stuck, you shitty brat! I was fighting my way out, you hear me?"
The three little boys started tearing up and crying at the shock of getting yelled at so suddenly, and I guess I panicked a little bit, because all of a sudden I was crouching down in front of the kids, giving them my biggest, friendliest smile. "There, there, Bakubaku didn't mean to yell at you guys," I said, using my quirk to chop off a piece of ruffles on my sleeve where it wouldn't be missed so I could use it as a hankie for all their tears and boogers. "He's just loud. He's kinda like fireworks, you know? Like, at first they're all BOOM and scary, but then after that they're really pretty!"
Thankfully, as I started talking to them, the kids calmed down. The bravest one, with poofy hair and kinda puffy lips, actually looked up at Bakubaku and snickered. "...Your Hero Name is Bakubaku?" He said.
Oops. As my heart sank I slowly turned around. Bakubaku was fuming mad, so angry that even his hair was poofing out of the nice part Best Jeanist had put it into. Or maybe that was a coincidence, and it was just the humidity or something. But either way, when he started shouting it was even louder than before I'd calmed the kids down. "My Hero Name isn't Bakubaku! It's Claymore! And you better remember it, because I'm gonna be the Number One Hero, dammit!"
Since I had to do something, I stood up and did a pose next to him. "And I'm Tapestry!" I said, smiling so hard I thought my face would fall off. "Thanks for coming out and saying hi to us, you guys!"
Luckily, it seemed to help. The kids backed away, but they kinda waved at me and were giggling a little bit, so it was better than them being scared! "Bye Bakubaku! Bye Tapestry!" One of them shouted as they left.
"Dammit Airhead!" Bakubaku shouted at me as I finished waving goodbye to the kids and turned around. "Stop calling me weird shit, already!"
I put my hands on my hips and glared back at him. "You stop calling me names first!"
"Ahem." Mortified, I stood up straight and put my hands behind my back on reflex. I couldn't see Best Jeanist's face behind the high cowl of his hero outfit, but his eyes looked kinda halfway between frustrated and trying not to laugh. "It seems like there are a few more pointers I have to give you two about how to interact with the public…"
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"Now remember, when you're doing a witness interview," Cyberpunch shouted to be heard over the roaring wind blowing through her convertible's open top, "the most important thing, is to look like you're paying attention." This was more like what I had pictured, when I was daydreaming about the life of a Pro Hero. A fast car, roaring down the open highway with the wind in my hair, dashing to the scene of a crime - or a witness interview, in this case, but still. If seeing her office for the first time had been maybe a tiny bit of a letdown, this car totally made up for it. It was totally worth the fact that it was kind of hard to hold a conversation. "I mean, actually paying attention is important too," Cyberpunch added, "but more than that. You need to make people feel like what they're saying matters," she said. "That we're not just jerking them around."
"Right. Makes sense," I shouted back.
"So, even though you're just going to be listening," she paused her conversation for a second to change lanes around a slow-moving sedan, "you should make sure to stay engaged. Stay off your phone, try to keep looking at them, take notes on what they're saying if you think that'll help you stay focused."
I nodded. "I can do that," I said. "When do you want me to check their quirk?"
"It's an on-the-record interview with a cooperative witness," Cyberpunch said, "or should be, anyway. Wait until I get the witness's consent." As she shifted on to an exit ramp and started slowing down, the wind died down enough so that we could talk more normally.
"Sure, no problem," I said, looking around me curiously. The part of Tokyo's Hosu ward that we were driving through looked a lot more like my residential neighborhood than it did the part of Chiba where Cyberpunch's office was, but whereas my neighborhood was generally clean and tidy-looking, this part of Hosu looked… decayed, for lack of a better word. Occasional pieces of litter marred the grassy strips at the side of the road, and the exteriors of the apartment buildings I saw looked cheap and poorly maintained. I was willing to bet that the only time the neighborhood saw Pro Heroes was when they came in to help the police make arrests - or to take witness statements, like we were doing. "Anything else I should pay attention to?" I asked.
"I mean…" Cyberpunch said distractedly as she started scanning the streets for a parking spot, "use your common sense? You know, don't loom over the interviewee and terrify them, don't track mud in the house, be polite and respectful, there's all sorts of stuff that'd be good to do or not do but like 90% of it is pretty obvious. When in doubt, either keep your mouth shut, or watch me and do what I do."
"That sounds manageable," I said. Despite saying so, though, I was nervous. It wouldn't have been the first time that a Pro Hero made something sound simple, only for me to later find out that it was anything but. As Cyberpunch parked the car and stepped out, I was confused for a second when she just stood there for a second rather than making for one of the apartments. "Um, which building are we going to?" I asked.
At my question, Cyberpunch started slightly, then gave me a defeated sigh. "Just give me a minute," she said. She rummaged through her pockets before pulling out a pack of cigarettes. "I try not to smoke in front of impressionable kids," she said, half-condescendingly, half-apologetically, "but I don't want to go into an interview while I'm on edge, either."
As she continued searching in her pockets for her lighter, I stretched out my index and middle fingers, then held them in front of her cigarette. A sudden flame licked up and lit the end as I channeled Endeavor's quirk. "It's fine," I said, doing my best to hide my nervous excitement at getting to use my quirk like this. I'd joked about lighting peoples' cigarettes before, but I never thought I'd get the chance to actually do it! "If I was the sort of person who would start doing stupid things because I saw other people doing them, I'd probably have more friends," I joked.
Startled, Cyberpunch blinked a couple times, her cheeks flushing as she adapted to the unexpected lungful of smoke. "You're going to be dangerous in a couple of years," she muttered, but before I could ask her what she meant by that she looked at me and glared. "Tell you what, if you forget you saw me smoking when I was supposed to be a role model and a good influence, I'll forget I saw you using your quirk in the field when I told you not to. Deal?"
Oh, so not only do I have to keep my mouth shut, but you avoid having to do paperwork? And what do I get out of this, exactly? Still, there was a dangerous glint in her eye, so I hurriedly agreed. "Deal," I said.
I felt incredibly conspicuous just standing around on the side of the street in costume while Cyberpunch smoked, but to my surprise we didn't attract much in the way of rubberneckers. If anything, the few people in the neighborhood who saw us seemed keen on looking the other way, as if by doing so they could avoid our attention. Once she finished her cigarette, she led the way up the stairs of a dingy white apartment building that had clearly seen better days.
The door opened practically by the third knock, as if the occupant had been waiting anxiously by the door. She was a housewife with mournful, expressive eyes; at first glance, I thought she almost looked grandmotherly, but after a second I realized that what I had initially taken for snow white hair was actually feathers. A wattled coxcomb sprung up from the center of her forehead, and in place of a nose she had a yellow beak. "Come in, come in," she said. "I'm sorry about the mess. Thank you so much for coming."
"Not at all. It's us who are sorry for troubling you, Kakin-san," Cyberpunch said. As we walked in I awkwardly tucked my cape in close behind me to keep it from knocking over the umbrellas in the stand by the door or brushing against the knicknacks on the shelves. For all the woman's protestations about the mess, the place wasn't actually that bad; it was more that it was just cluttered, as if the inhabitants had more mementoes and other such items than the limited space could hold. "I know we just spoke on the phone, but as I said, I'm Pro Hero Cyberpunch, here on behalf of the National Police Agency. My hero name can be a bit of a mouthful, so if you'd prefer you can just call me Hiratsuka or Shizuka, whatever you're comfortable with." Smoothly - much more smoothly than she had searched for a cigarette - Cyberpunch reached into an inner pocket of her jacket, removing a business card and handing it to the woman. Belatedly, her head jerked as she followed Mrs. Kakin's gaze in my direction. "And this is Pro Hero-In-Training Myriad, interning with me from U.A. high school. He's shadowing me today."
Nervously, I bowed. "Nice to meet you, ma'am."
Mrs. Kakin nodded to me distractedly before turning to Cyberpunch. "Can I get you two anything? Water? Tea?"
"Just water is fine, thank you," Cyberpunch said, and I nodded in agreement. As Mrs. Kakin handed the two of us glasses, Cyberpunch took off her mirrorshades. "Kakin-san, we're here today because we're trying to identify a person of interest in an ongoing case. Unfortunately, the case in question is a sensitive one, so I'm going to be a little constrained in what I can tell you, but the individual we're investigating has a quirk similar to the registered quirk belonging to Kakin Michi. That's your son, right?"
Tears sprung to Mrs. Kakin's eyes. I forced myself to watch awkwardly as she reached for a tissue and dabbed at her eyes. "Ever since he went missing," she said, her voice breaking, "I've been wondering if one day I'd be getting a call, saying that they'd found Michi in a ditch or something somewhere. Hearing that you're investigating him is -" she stopped, looking up at Cyberpunch with a moment of dismay. "Is it, is it a person you're investigating? Or is it a-" her mouth moved a couple of times, but no sound came out. "Are they alive?" She managed.
I had never been so glad for the fact that my costume came with a mask. Guilt at never having asked that question, at never having worried until I suddenly, horribly, knew the answer rushed through me. To her credit, even without a mask, Cyberpunch didn't flinch. "I can't tell you much, Kakin-san," Cyberpunch said, "but right now it isn't entirely clear one way or the other."
"What-?" Mrs. Kakin said, worry and heartbreak warring with confusion in her eyes.
"What I can tell you is that your son isn't the only missing individual with a compatible quirk that we're investigating," Cyberpunch said, "and it's entirely possible that the individual in question is unrelated to your son. What we're looking for right now is something that can help us make the identification one way or another. I can promise you that if it does turn out that your son is involved with this case, you will know everything that the police can tell you as soon as we know it." Was it dishonest for Cyberpunch to keep giving Mrs. Kakin hope, all so that she could keep her calm for the interview? Was it manipulative? Or was it just kind? I didn't know.
"Of course," Mrs. Kakin said chokingly. "Of course." She wiped her eyes with the tissue again, waving one hand freely in the air as if to try to calm herself down. "God, if you're being this secretive, it must be something villain-related, mustn't it? I hate that Michi being mixed up with villains is suddenly the best option." Cyberpunch didn't react to her statement at all, just listening with a look of patient sympathy on her face. "At least then he'd be alive." Again, I felt my skin crawl with guilt.
Cyberpunch waited long enough for Mrs. Kakin to collect herself, then pulled out her tape recorder. "Kakin-san, is it alright with you if I record our conversation?" She asked. "It will make it easier for me to make sure that we don't miss anything from your testimony if we have to go over it later."
"Yes, that's fine," Mrs. Kakin said.
Over the next half hour or so of interviewing, a picture of Kakin Michi slowly evolved. A thrill-seeker as a teenager, he'd initially been content with ordinary excitement like skateboarding, but had fallen in with a bad crowd and gotten involved with drugs and petty crimes like shoplifting. When he'd gotten arrested, though, he'd made a break with his old life, saying goodbye - or so she thought - to the friends involved in the illegal side of things. In part that had been because the police had gotten him on Villainy charges - the adrenaline rush from the act of spray-painting a building with graffiti and running from the cops afterward had been enough to trigger his super speed, and between that and his obviously heteromorphic traits the police had pinned him with charges of Minor Villainy. Luckily, the judge had declined to send Michi to jail, tasking him instead with fines, community service, and probation.
And in between the more clinical descriptions, the pieces of the case that the police would actually care about, another picture of Kakin Michi developed as well. He had been a playful, talkative kid. Argumentative with his parents, but someone who would help the neighbors take out the garbage, or spend all weekend helping his friends fix up their bikes. An aspiring musician. And with every word I heard, I felt my stomach twist up even further. When Michi disappeared, the police hadn't taken it seriously - it had been clear to Mrs. Kakin that in their eyes, her son was "just another mutant druggie," and had probably run away to another province to avoid the terms of his probation.
"But my boy isn't just some thug," Mrs. Kakin said tearfully. "He changed. He promised us that he wasn't going to do things like that anymore!" She reached up to one of the nearby shelves and pulled down a family photo, looking at it mournfully for a second. "Who looks at a boy like this and automatically thinks, 'Villain'?"
Me, for one. It wasn't the fauxhawk of feather-hair Michi had been born with, nor the skatepunk band t-shirt in acid tye-dye he wore in what should have been a wholesome family photo. It was the massive, toothed beak he had, the one that I still occasionally saw in nightmares. I looked at Cyberpunch significantly. "Mrs. Kakin," Cyberpunch said. "My intern Myriad here has a quirk that lets him do quirk analysis, which is part of why I brought him along with me today. Would it be alright with you if Myriad scanned your quirk? It would help him compare your quirk to the quirk of our person of interest, and it might help us know one way or another whether it's Michi or not."
Mrs. Kakin looked a little confused, but she nodded. "Of course!" She said. "I-is there anything I have to do?"
I stepped forward and reached out a hand towards Mrs. Kakin, freeing up a quirk slot as I did so. "Um, just touch my hand, please," I said.
She did. Her quirk reminded me of those old myths and legends of superhuman feats from the pre-quirk era, of mothers who had lifted cars over their heads because their children were in danger and so on. Like the Nomu's quirk, and presumably her son's, her quirk enhanced the function of adrenaline - but where his quirk enhanced his speed, hers enhanced her physical strength and pain resistance. "Thank you," I said to Mrs. Kakin, then stepped back to think for a second.
How similar was it to my existing Adrenaline quirk? I swapped back and forth between them for a second, paying close attention to the echoes each power caused deep within my body as my body attuned to each quirk in turn. They felt similar, evoking a strange sense of power above my kidneys, but when I attuned to Mrs. Kakin's I somehow intuitively knew that once that well of power was squeezed out of my kidneys that it would find a home in my muscles and skin, enhancing the muscles' function even as it deadened sensation from pain nerves in my skin. Meanwhile, the Nomu's power was clearly destined to go deeper, sending nerve endings into overdrive, overriding constraints on muscles and the brain to have them activate at a thought while somehow deadening the false signals that the user's nerves going haywire would otherwise generate. They were similar - incredibly similar - but I just couldn't say for sure whether they were related or not. If only I could look at them both at the same time! Briefly, I tried activating them simultaneously using Ooze, but that just resulted in both of their profiles being overridden by Ooze-information.
Then I suddenly had a thought. "Sorry Kakin-san," I said, extending my hand once again. "Would you mind if I touched your hand again, for a little longer this time? There's something I want to try."
"Of course, dear, whatever you need," she said.
As her cool, dry hand wrapped itself around mine tightly, I focused on how my quirk perceived hers. Whenever I touched someone, my quirk gave me an impression of their quirk, as if it was 'asking' me if I wanted to copy it. I didn't always bother seeing what a quirk was before I copied it; when I was only brushing up against someone for a fraction of a second it was a better idea to just copy reflexively and discard the quirk later if I didn't want it, but I definitely could scan people's quirks without copying them if I wanted to. At the first re-contact, I got the subtle sense of rejection that was my quirk's way of telling me that I already had Mrs. Kakin's quirk, so I dropped the copy that I had already made.
And then I switched to the Nomu's quirk. As I focused on the sensations my body was giving off and compared them to the ones it was receiving from Mrs. Kakin, I felt something strange. It was like looking at a Magic Eye puzzle, one of those optical illusions where if you unfocus your eyes just right, a three-dimensional image suddenly looks like it pops off the page. Only in this case, I could clearly 'see' how the adrenal glands over the kidneys were nearly identical, and how the differences between the two quirks were wholly in the way the body metabolized that adrenaline. It was like the sensation of my body being the wrong shape that I got from abusing Ooze-Mime, but weirdly echoed, like I was seeing things in stereo. Wincing, I almost yanked my hand free of Mrs. Kakin's grip, feeling weirdly nauseous and dizzy. "What's wrong?" Mrs. Kakin said, leaning forwards. "Is it a match? Is it Michi?"
It was, but I so did not want to answer that question right now. I couldn't bear to look at her teary, hopeful eyes, not when I knew Kakin Michi's gruesome fate. Panicked, I looked pleadingly at Cyberpunch, who thankfully stepped in and put her hand on Mrs. Kakin's outstretched hand before she could touch me again. "That's not really up to us to determine," Cyberpunch said. "We have to submit our findings to the National Police Agency before they can clear us to tell you any more than we already have." She looked at me questioningly, and while I couldn't exactly read her mind, I knew what she was probably asking. I nodded. "With that said, ma'am, based on what we've seen so far and what you've told us, I think it's fairly likely that you'll be hearing more from the NPA very soon."
"I- of course," Mrs. Kakin said, retracting her hand apologetically. She looked at me with heartfelt gratitude. "Thank you, young man," she said. "Thank you for giving me answers."
Swallowing hard to force down my nausea, I did my best to give her a smile - not that she could see much of it through my mask. It wasn't just whatever that weird sensation had been when I compared the two quirks - it was everything. My guilt at having to stay silent, the way my mind couldn't help but wonder what Zaimokuza's parents were feeling, the growing feeling of wrath at the monster who was kidnapping people for their quirks, and the repeated, fresh reminder of my own apathy and inadequacy as a friend. "You're welcome," I managed, before standing up abruptly. "Sorry," I said. "I think I need a little bit of fresh air. Cyberpunch, is it okay if I step outside for a minute?"
Worriedly, Cyberpunch nodded at me, extending a hand as if to clap me on the back before withdrawing it abruptly, as if she was afraid of setting me off. "Go ahead, Myriad. I'll finish up here." Stumbling from dizziness, I forced myself to walk out onto the balcony and made my way using the railing to the stairs, where I sat and put my head between my knees to try to get the dizziness to stop.
A few minutes later, I was starting to feel better - physically, anyways - and was even vaguely wondering if I should go back inside when I felt a feather-light touch on my shoulder. "Doing alright there, kid?" Cyberpunch's voice asked.
I stood and turned to face her. "Yeah, sorry," I said sheepishly. "I just - I needed to get out of there."
"Don't worry about it," Cyberpunch said sympathetically. "I've been there. You get used to it eventually."
It was relieving to hear, but I couldn't help but feel like I had fucked up. My first interview, and I had to leave the room because the subject matter had gotten too heavy? How lame was that? "So… what happens now?" I asked. "Mrs. Kakin… those two quirks were definitely related. I don't know how to describe it -"
"Well, do your best to think about how," Cyberpunch said, "because the next step is you going back to the office and filling out a whole bunch of paperwork explaining it so that the NPA can follow up on it. Once Michi's confirmed as a victim, the police will start tracking down all of his known associates, trying to figure out when and where he was last seen. If we're really lucky, we'll find a concrete lead - but it's more likely that this will be a pin in the map, helping us pin down All For One's geographical profile and preferred victimology."
I took that in and nodded. My emotions were completely unsteady, to the point where I couldn't focus long enough to pin any of them down. Some mind-numbing paperwork sounded like a pretty good idea right about now. "I'm ready to head to the next interview if you're ready to go," I said anxiously. "I just needed a minute."
"You gonna puke in my car if we drive right away?" Cyberpunch asked with a combination of sympathy and wariness.
"No, no," I said, waving my hands in front of me for emphasis. "I'm feeling better, really."
Cyberpunch looked at me suspiciously, then with a movement that was unbelievably fluid for how fast it was suddenly reached out and poked me with her left hand. It wasn't until I looked down that I saw she wasn't wearing a glove. "Yeah, you seem alright," she said, withdrawing contact so quickly I almost thought I'd imagined it. "Was that your first time doing something like that?" She asked.
"Yeah," I said. "I mean, to all of it. That was a … pretty tough conversation. I can see why you wanted that cigarette," I joked, trying to make it seem like I was less affected emotionally than I was. It was probably a forlorn hope, given that she had just poked me with her mind-reading hand, but making the effort helped to calm me down anyways.
"I thought we agreed you would forget about that?" Cyberpunch asked, mock-glaring at me. "Anyway, if you do start feeling sick later, let me know right away. Quirk Feedback is no fun, and I do not want to be scrubbing it out of my leather seats later."
I stopped. Dead. My feet completely refused to move. It was like a bomb had gone off inside my brain. "Say that again," I demanded.
"Huh?" Cyberpunch said, tilting her mirrored sunglasses down on her nose so she could look at me over their bridge.
"Say that again," I repeated. Behind all of the darkness and despair brought on by that interview in that cluttered apartment, the sudden surge of hope I felt was like day was suddenly breaking.
"Uh… I don't want to scrub your sick out of my leather seats?" Cyberpunch said, sounding unsure. "Is that offensive or something?"
"No! Before that," I demanded.
"Tell me if you start feeling sick?" She asked, and at my continued vibrating state of anticipation finally understood what I meant. "Quirk Feedback is no fun?"
"You're a genius, Cyberpunch-sensei!" I shouted, exuberant. Even the guilt and misery I was feeling couldn't defeat the sudden surge of joy those five words had brought me. "Quirk Feedback! I overstressed my quirk!"
"Oh...kay?" Cyberpunch said, taking a nervous step back. "And?"
"And I've been trying to figure out how to overstress my quirk for years!" I shouted, not caring who heard me. "Nothing I did actually worked! I haven't been able to train my quirk at all since I was a little kid! My Quirk Counselor couldn't figure it out! And you solved it! You're amazing, sensei!"
Flushing with pride, Cyberpunch put her gleaming metal hand behind her head. "Ah, well, I feel kind of nauseous too when I take in too much information with my Psychometry, so it just kind of made sense, I guess? It was just dumb luck, really."
"Yeah but still! If you hadn't said anything, I would still completely have no idea!" I said. "Hold on, let me try it again," I said, suddenly grabbing for Cyberpunch's hand.
Almost as suddenly, my arm was twisted almost to the point of pain, Cyberpunch's hand in a vice-like grip around my wrist. "Not right before you're about to get in my car," she said sternly.
"Oh. Right," I said, suddenly deflating, but with a relieved smile still firmly on my face.
Cyberpunch chuckled. "Come on, kid. This calls for a celebration. I'll buy you lunch."
As we got in the car and drove away, the wind rushing through my hair almost made it feel like I was flying.
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Shadowing my mentor from above sounded like it should have been easy. What could be simpler than just cruising over the city and keeping an eye on someone? Unfortunately, it seemed like my mentor was determined not to let me have an easy time of it. He darted to and fro between buildings, sliding effortlessly across the pavement faster than even Yukino or Shoto could manage when they turned the ground to ice, fast enough that I had to really pour my quirk on to keep up - and then he would stick out an arm and grab the pole of a streetlight, whipping himself around it at a ninety degree angle. My quirk wasn't built to change directions that fast, damn it!
And every time I lost the sight of his purple and green costume, by the time I caught up to him, he would be in the middle of doing something to help out the city. Sometimes he would be spraying gang tags with graffiti remover; other times he would be walking little old ladies across the street or cleaning up pieces of litter that had been left on the side of the road. Suddenly, however, when he slid to a stop it was in clear view of me, and as he did so I heard the walkie-talkie on my belt crackle to life. "Alright, Hayama-kun, that's enough for now. Come on down."
My quirk wasn't exactly made for gentle landings. Because it reinforced my body more the faster I was going, it was always tempting to just let myself plunge feet-first at maximum speed towards the ground, letting my quirk absorb the impact as I came to a sudden stop. Unfortunately, just because I was invulnerable when I was diving didn't mean that the ground was equally tough. I had found out the hard way that coming down at maximum velocity was a good way to punch through the pavement and wind up stuck in the topsoil like a lawn dart. If I was lucky, I would even manage it without hitting any water pipes or power lines. So instead as I started getting close to the ground, I started 'flying' upwards, letting my quirk bleed off my momentum until I could drop at a more manageable speed. "Sure thing, Slidin' Go-sensei," I said as I landed, no longer needing the walkie-talkie now that we were standing face to face. "Is something wrong?"
My mentor stood with his hands on his hips, a studied pose that I was sure was intended to look as 'heroic' as possible. "Not at all, Hayama-kun," Slidin' said. "I just wanted to remind you that in case I wind up confronting a Villain or need to make an arrest, that your job is to hang back and watch," he said. "Even if it looks like I could use your help, I don't want you risking unauthorized action without a license. You have a bright career ahead of you, no sense throwing it away now just because some bureaucrat with more hair than sense decided arbitrary limits on what hero interns were supposed to do, right?"
"I'll be careful," I reassured him hastily. "Do you think it's likely that you'll have to?" I asked.
"Well, we're getting to the portion of my patrol that cuts through gang territory," Slidin' Go said. "Nagoya's been having a lot of trouble with juvenile delinquency lately, so there's a chance that we'll see some action today." Beneath his black bandanna mask, I could just make out his eyebrows furrowing with concern. "Especially since it's right after UA's Sports Festival - kids get all excited about trying to copy the things they see on T.V., and wind up getting themselves in trouble."
"Well, sorry for the inconvenience then?" I joked.
Slidin' smiled. "Don't worry about it," Slidin' said. "These kinds of kids are always looking for excuses to try something," he said with exasperation. "If it wasn't the Festival, it'd be something else. Anyway, if you want to make yourself useful while you're hanging around up there," he said, pointing up to the sky, "give me a call on the radio if you see any groups of people congregating or loitering where they shouldn't be."
I nodded. "Will do, sensei," I said, then crouched. As I sprang up into a vertical leap, I engaged my quirk, feeling the familiar rush of confused inertia as instead of falling back down to the ground I started 'falling' up, accelerating further into the sky. Following Slidin' Go was much easier from that point on, as if he had deliberately slowed down just enough to make sure that I didn't lose him. True to his predictions, it wasn't long until I saw a group of half a dozen kids wearing identical jackets, hanging out with their bikes - cheap motorcycles - on the steps of an abandoned temple. As high above them as I was, it wasn't easy to make out facial features clearly, but if I had to guess they probably weren't old enough for the cigarettes they were currently smoking. "There's a group over by the temple at your two o'clock," I called out to Slidin' Go over the radio.
"Copy that," he said, changing direction to start sliding towards them. The kids' reaction as they saw Slidin' approach was impressive. I couldn't hear them from where I was, but I could see them jolting into action, running for their bikes. Slidin' was faster. He cut them off, sliding in his trademark hands-on-the-hips pose until he was between them and the bikes. I dove down, landing on a nearby roof so I could get a closer look at the action. "-look a little young to not be in school at the moment," I heard Slidin' say as the wind stopped rushing past my ears. "Show me your identification," he said.
The kids looked at each other uneasily. The tension grew, until finally a short kid with greenish skin and bluish hair yelled "scatter!" and took off running for a few steps before summoning a phantom wave of blue energy beneath his feet and starting to 'surf' away down the road. Spurred on by their friend, the rest of the kids started running too, four of them pairing off while the last one ran alone, all heading different directions.
"Using your quirk while resisting arrest is a Villainy charge, young man," Slidin' said as he bore down on the surfing hoodlum. As he got in front of the escaping kid, Slidin' finally moved from his hands on the hips posture, delivering a brutal punch to the kid's solar plexus that lifted him off of the wave and stopped him in his tracks. I couldn't help but wince. As the kid collapsed onto the ground, gasping for air, Slidin' slid to his side and cuffed his hands behind his back, then started frisking him. "Let's see what had you so eager to escape," I heard him say. Unfortunately, Slidin's position wound up interfering with my line of sight, so I couldn't exactly see how he found it, but I did see tension suddenly erupting from the muscles in his back. "Drugs," I heard him say with disgust. As he stood, I saw him holding a small baggie filled with small red pills. "I should have known."
"What the shit?!" The kid on the ground said, struggling and straining against the handcuffs. "Those aren't mine, yo! I ain't never seen those before! You fucker, you planted that shit on me!"
"You scum are all the same," Slidin' said contemptuously, placing one foot on the kid's back to keep him from squirming away. "Always the same tired lies and excuses." He turned to look up at me where I was perched on the roof. "Hayama, mind running a sweep of the area? I expect that this young man's criminal confederates have long since fled the scene, but if by chance any of them have stuck around it won't hurt to see if I can round them up as well."
I nodded. "Yes sir," I called down, then flew up into the sky. As Slidin' had expected, the other kids were long gone - but at least one drug user had been caught and taken off the street, so it still felt like a win. Still, as I met up with Slidin' after the police cars had shown up and taken the kid away, he didn't seem happy. "What's wrong?" I asked.
"Hayama-kun," Slidin' asked. "If it were completely illegal for you to fly, starting tomorrow, what would you do?"
The question shook me. "I- I don't know," I said. "I suppose I'd have to stop, but… it'd be really hard, for sure. Even now the only reason I get as much air time in as I do is because I'm allowed to use my quirk for Hero classes."
Slidin' nodded solemnly. "I can't help but feel upset whenever I see good kids like this turn to the streets," he said. "A lot of them are kids with strong quirks, who are told by society that they can't use that part of themselves, that they have to keep it hidden - and rather than finding ways to work within the system, like you and I did, they turned their backs on society. Personally, I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with running off with some friends to experiment with your quirks, as long as you're not hurting anybody, but a lot of kids get sucked into the culture of the streets and reject society in other ways. Drugs, violence, theft - it turns into a vicious cycle." He sighed, heavily. "I always hate to see it."
I nodded solemnly in agreement. That kid had been my age, or thereabouts. But where I was allowed to fly all over the city, and sooner or later would be allowed to even make arrests and so on myself, he was headed to a jail cell. "Is that why you didn't arrest the rest of the kids who ran?" I asked curiously. "Hoping they would be scared straight?"
"Well, there were a few reasons," Slidin' said. "First, if I had wanted to arrest them all, I would have had to get pretty rough with them. Against kids, when none of them are clear and present dangers to themselves and their surroundings, I didn't really think that level of force was justified. Secondly," he said with a smile, "they left their bikes behind. If the bikes are registered, the police can track the kids down later using their registration information, and if not, well - that's what civil asset forfeiture is for." He shook his head solemnly. "But thirdly? Well, I won't say that hoping those kids will be scared straight and will avoid ruining their lives in the future wasn't a part of it."
After a moment of silence, I sighed. "If only there was a way to stop people from getting sucked into crime in the first place," I said.
"I'm afraid that any solutions are going to be of more of a political persuasion than something one hero can solve," Slidin' said, raising an appreciative eyebrow beneath his bandanna. "But it's worth thinking about, isn't it?"
It certainly was. I couldn't help but wonder - part of what made Hikigaya Hachiman so driven was the fact that he had a cause. I didn't have one, myself. Wasn't this something that might be worth fighting for?
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The sudden swings of despair and exhilaration from earlier in the morning still had my mind spinning. I spent the car ride to the commercial district in silence, and it wasn't until we started walking from the carpark towards the restaurant that I was jolted out of my stupor. I couldn't help but turn to Cyberpunch and give her a skeptical look. "Ramen, again?"
"Cup Ramen doesn't count!" Cyberpunch said, flushing with embarrassment. "I mean, it's your celebration, so if you'd rather have something else, we can find somewhere else to go. I just don't eat around this area that often, and this place was the first one that came to mind nearby and that I knew was good."
"You really don't have to do anything special for me," I said uncomfortably. "We can just grab something from a convenience store, or something. It'd be faster, anyway."
"Even if we're ready five minutes from now, our next interview won't be," Cyberpunch said, clapping me on the shoulder. "Relax, kid. We've got time. So, is ramen fine? Or should we drive around a little bit, see what looks good?"
I shook my head, not wanting to be even more trouble than I already had been. "No, you were right," I said. "Cup Ramen doesn't count."
The restaurant turned out to be one of those hole-in-the-wall joints, not much more than a single long countertop with a galley kitchen behind it. Maybe it was because it was a bit early for the typical lunch crowd, but the place was dead when we walked in. "Welcome," the restaurant's boss called from the kitchen, barely bothering to look up from the large pot of broth he was stirring.
As I awkwardly lifted my cape out of the way so that I could slide onto one of the stools, I looked up at the rows of handwritten tickets on the wall, showing the options on offer and their prices. "Um, any recommendations?" I asked Cyberpunch.
"Hmm. Well, the most popular item on the menu is probably the Tonkotsu," Cyberpunch said, "but personally speaking, I'm a fan of the Soy Tonkotsu right next to it. Speaking of which, I'd like a bowl of Soy Tonkotsu, thin," she called out to the owner.
He kept stirring. Just going by the lack of movement from the white cloth wrapped around his head to keep his hair out of the way, I almost wondered if he had heard her. After a second, though, he asked "And the noodles?"
"Firm," Cyberpunch said. "What about you, Hachiman?"
"I guess I'll have the same thing," I said. "I'm not about to refuse an expert's suggestions."
"I'm hardly an expert," Cyberpunch said, "and everybody has their own taste buds. I just know what I like."
After about a minute, the owner reached over the counter, placing two bowls of soup down in front of us, one after another. As I smelled the salty broth, my appetite, which had been somewhat suppressed by the lingering backlash of my overstressed quirk, appeared all at once. "Thanks for the food," I said, before picking up my spoon and chopsticks and setting to with a vengeance. I had to hand it to her - Cyberpunch knew her ramen. It was delicious. Before I knew it, I was already halfway through the bowl. As my stomach calmed down enough that I could remember to breathe, I looked up at Cyberpunch, who was eating a bit more slowly, alternating sips of soup and bites of noodles with sips of water. "Great recommendation, Cyberpunch," I said. "Thanks for treating me."
She elbowed me gently in the ribs. "It's lunchtime. We're off the clock, for the moment. No need for formalities." That said, Hiratsuka smiled at me gently. "And you're welcome. Even if you hadn't had that bad quirk reaction, I probably still would have taken you out like this. Witness interviews are tough, especially if you're not used to them."
My spoon, which was on its way back up to my mouth, slowed. I'd been trying to play off how affected I'd been, but I guess you didn't get to be a famous Investigative Hero by collecting Pokemon Cards. "...Yeah," I said, my voice rough, no longer bothering to hide my discomfort. "Are they always like that?" I asked.
"Heroes rarely get to conduct witness interviews when people are having a good day," Hiratsuka said with some irony. "As a hero, especially as an investigative hero, having a well-developed sense of empathy is a crucial tool," she said. "In terms of separating fact from fiction, truth from lies, it's invaluable. The fact that you're able to approach people from a place of shared experience with them, that you can relate to them on an emotional level, is invaluable for getting witnesses to open up to you and trust you. But I won't lie and say that it doesn't occasionally have a downside."
Honestly, between the risk of getting messily murdered by Villains, having to deal with crying mothers, the shitty hours, and the fact that you had to deal with the media, it was a wonder that anybody ever bothered trying to become a Pro Hero in the first place. "I think that's probably the first time anybody's ever accused me of being empathetic," I joked, trying to lighten up the situation.
Hiratsuka didn't look amused. "Don't sell yourself short, Hikigaya-kun," she said sternly. "I'm saying, empathy is a strength. You just need to know how to use it. And, how to keep yourself from burning out from it."
"I don't think I'm in any danger of that," I said. My ludicrous quirk management schedule aside - which might suddenly get less ridiculous now that I had a hope of training my quirk! The thought that holy shit, I could overstress my quirk now, I could train, kept popping up in my head every so often, warring against the image of Kakin-san's tear-streaked face filled with unearned gratitude. But given what had happened to Zaimokuza - well, I didn't think I'd be running out of motivation anytime soon.
"I almost did," Hiratsuka said matter-of-factly. As I looked at her curiously, she pushed her bowl away, half-finished. "Do you know much about the Creature Rejection Clan? Or the Pro Hero, Scryer?"
"Uh, I've vaguely heard of the CRC," I said. "They're an anti-heteromorph hate group, right?"
Hiratsuka nodded. "They used to be a lot bigger and better organized," she said. "Back around… when I was a little younger than your sister, never mind how many years ago that was specifically, they were actually a fairly major threat. You see, Japan was a bit of a mess. Quirks had finally hit that point where there were more people with them than without them, Heteromorphs were becoming more and more common, violence and crime were at an all-time high… and All Might was still cleaning up the country, arresting new villains every week but never seeming to make any real progress." So, what, about twenty, twenty-five years ago? Depending on how much younger you were than my sister, then… As Hiratsuka glared at me pointedly, maybe it was that sense of empathy she was talking about, but I somehow came to the sudden realization that doing too much math on that particular subject might be hazardous to my health.
Seeing that I was sensibly keeping my mouth shut, Hiratsuka kept going. "People were looking for someone to blame for how awful everything was, and the CRC laid that blame squarely at the feat of Heteromorphs. Not that anti-quirk discrimination wasn't a thing before, because it was, but as more and more people had kids with quirks and the discrimination got less and less popular, the people who still hated people with quirks got more and more radicalized." Her eyes were faraway, as if picturing something in resemblance. "It got to a point where my parents wouldn't let me go outside without a heavy coat covering up my arm, spikes and all, because they were afraid that something would happen to me if someone affiliated with the CRC saw me."
"Damn," I said. It felt a little rude when she was talking about something this heavy, but I kept eating ramen anyways, doing my best to avoid audibly slurping noodles while she talked. "It's kinda impressive that twe- uh, however many years ago, the CRC were such a big deal, and now they're nobodies and heteromorphs are… well, I know it's not perfect, but the situation is a lot better, right? Did that Pro Hero you mentioned, Scryer, have something to do with that?" I asked.
"In a way," Hiratsuka said with a wistful smile. "He was a heteromorph, and he had a really big, impressive debut. Took down a few prominent members of the CRC publicly, gave a lot of people who had been living in fear hope that the future would be different. So, the CRC snuck into his apartment while he was asleep and murdered him." Well, that wasn't disturbing at all. "They chopped off his heteromorphic right arm, and took it as a trophy," she added matter-of-factly, in a voice that spoke of decades-old pain and disgust, held firmly in place by an iron will. "But, when they did that to a Pro Hero, they made themselves priority targets for the Hero Commission, and within a few years most of their leadership had been arrested and imprisoned, so in a way I suppose you could say Scryer helped."
No, really, why did people become Pro Heroes, again? "That's… pretty awful," I said. Suddenly, a thought struck me. There was something about the way she had said all of that - this sounded like it was personal, to her. "You said he had a heteromorphic right arm; was Scryer a hero you looked up to?" I asked.
Her mouth twisted into a wry smile. "You could say that," Hiratsuka said softly. "Scryer's civilian name was Hiratsuka Kazuma. He was my older brother." Her voice didn't falter; she didn't shed a tear or flinch. To her, it seemed, this was an old, familiar pain.
"Oh," I said. Suddenly, a lot of things Hiratsuka had said over the past few minutes, and over the past few days, made a lot more sense. "Uh. I'm sorry," I said awkwardly.
Hiratsuka shook her head. "It was… a long time ago," she said. "I've made my peace with it. But before I did," she said, the wistful note in her voice shifting to a combination of self-deprecation and warning, "I was kind of a mess. Going to hero school during the day, conducting illegal vigilante investigations of the Creature Rejection Clan on nights and weekends. I got hospitalized, more than once. I almost got kicked out of school. I only managed to scrape by with a pass on the test for my official Hero License because the Hero Commission was so desperate for warm bodies that the criteria were a lot looser than they are today, and spent longer than I'd care to admit buried on the back half of the Hero Rankings because I was prioritizing the CRC instead of Villains who were doing more damage at the time. And while I did contribute to the majority of the Creature Rejection Clan getting put behind bars for good, the arrest was made by the police, with the assistance of All Might and the other top pros."
All of that work and focus, only to be upstaged by All Might, huh? I wasn't going to lie - that sounded pretty rough. I didn't think I would shed a tear if Midoriya wound up being the one to take down All For One, at least not right now, but after a few years of being on the case I could absolutely see how that would sting. "But you got them, right?" I said. "You got the job done?"
"I did," Hiratsuka said. "And once the targets of my revenge were gone, I realized I was a burnt out wreck of a twenty-something, only a few more bad days away from quitting my hero career to be a martial arts instructor."
I didn't know what to say to that, so I just sat and stared at her. Yeah… I guess I hadn't really been bothering to think about what came after, huh. The silence stretched, until eventually I came up with a question. "Why didn't you?" I asked.
Hiratsuka smiled. "I got lucky. I opened up the dojo thinking I could gradually transition away from being a pro, but over time, as I found out that I enjoyed teaching and that what I was doing was making a difference in my community, a new cause to fight for kind of snuck up on me before I knew it." She shrugged and took a long gulp of her water. "Anyway, what I'm trying to tell you is, learn from my mistakes. It's okay to have a goal in mind, something you're working towards. But you have to take care of yourself while you're at it. Abandoning everything to charge headlong into revenge does nobody any good, least of all yourself."
"I see," I said. What else could I say?
She shook her head. "You probably don't right now, and that's okay. Just - keep it in mind, alright?" She reached into her pocket and pulled out some bills for the Ramen, tucking them under her bowl on the counter. "I'm gonna head outside and smoke," she said. "Finish your soup, take your time. We've still got a few minutes left before we have to head to our next interview."
As she walked out, I looked down at my mostly empty bowl. I wasn't exactly in the mood to eat, after hearing that, and what was left of the noodles were probably lukewarm and soggy by now anyway. Despite the fact that I didn't exactly have the luxury of being picky about my food at the moment, I pushed them away and decided to head for the restroom instead. Because in the end… I already had plenty to digest.
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I looked at the ominous yellow-and-white contraption with dismay. Like an oversized table with manacles conveniently placed at the corners and ready to restrain a human with their arms and legs outstretched, it would fit right in on the set of a Jason Bond movie. Rather than a slowly moving laser or buzzsaw ready to chop the hero in half, however, it had something much more terrifying - a pair of feather whisks on swivel mounts, ready to tickle the exposed sides and armpits of its hapless captive. "Uh… Sir Nighteye?" I said nervously, staring at my tall, angular, suit-clad mentor. "Um, if this is some sort of Fifty Capes of Grey thing… my heart isn't ready for that yet!" I squeaked, the words coming out in a rush.
Nighteye looked at me sternly, his piercing yellow eyes matching the color of the frames of his glasses and the highlights in his otherwise green hair. "An almost passable last-minute attempt at a joke, Invisible Girl," he said, "but you should always remember to consider your audience when making attempts at off-color humor!" Uh… I hadn't really been joking, hero-sama! "This device is an important part of Bubble Girl's training routine," he said, gesturing at his blue-skinned sidekick, who fidgeted uncomfortably at having been put on the spot, "and the insinuation that her training has some sort of sexual component was bound to make her uncomfortable."
Bubble Girl blushed an even darker shade of periwinkle and looked down at her hands, where she pressed her index fingers into each other repeatedly. "It really isn't as bad as it looks, Tohru-chan," she said.
I made no moves in the direction of the bizarre tickle torture contraption. "Um, I'm sorry," I said, "b-but I still don't feel very comfortable with the idea of getting strapped into that thing either. Maybe if you could explain what kind of training it's for?" I said uncertainly.
"Of course!" Sir Nighteye said. "I believe I've already explained my philosophy that a sense of humor is a vitally necessary characteristic for a hero, so I won't elaborate on it again here. However, what I don't think I've expounded upon yet is the fact that the talents of a skilled humorist are also vital talents for heroics. A comedian needs the courage to go up in front of a crowd. They need the ability to predict their audience's thoughts, a razor-keen sense of timing, the ability to think on their feet, an ability to shock others with the unexpected. As a matter of fact, your own comic instincts were why I offered you this internship in the first place."
"My… comic instincts?" I repeated, confused.
Nighteye pulled out his phone, and swiftly pulled up a familiar Qwirker feed. I blushed profusely, but thankfully he didn't seem to notice. "Thousands of people all over Japan found your reactions to your team-mate using a healing quirk on you amusing enough to share pictures and gifs of your response to each other," he said. "In and of itself, that already caught my interest, but the fact that you yourself contributed to the online jests and japes after the fact solidified it."
What? He'd noticed that my Qwirker handle was 'InvisibleG1rl' and guessed it was actually me? I mean I guess it was a little obvious, but still, that was a famous detective for you! "I, um, thanks?" I stammered. Who'd have thought that some late night joking around on my phone and joining in on the fun because it was better than feeling like the internet was bullying me would have paid off like this?
"However!" Sir Nighteye said. "Many of these jokes, although you clearly have the right mindset, are frankly amateurish." Wow, gee, thanks. "And the only solution to that is further training. This machine helps cultivate all of the necessary talents of a comedian, while also adding in training to keep calm under pressure… and has the advantage, unlike many other forms of hero training, of being completely harmless."
I looked at the machine dubiously and shook my head - then kicked myself at having been too unsettled to realize I was in my hero costume, and crossed my gloved hands to make an X instead. "Nope, still not convinced," I said. Being strapped spread-eagled to that thing? In my hero costume? That was just a little bit too fetishy, even if he was supposedly a reliable pro hero! "I-isn't there something else we could do?"
Sir Nighteye sighed and fished a sealing stamp out of his pocket, then said, "Take this," he said, walking a few steps forward to hand it to me. "Careful, it's heavy." As my hands wrapped around it, his fingers brushing against mine, it was so heavy that I almost bent over double trying to hold onto it. Jeez, he really wasn't kidding! What did this thing weigh, like five kilos? As I was getting it back under control, Sir Nighteye walked over to Bubble Girl and talked to her briefly, leaning in close and touching her shoulder in a way that my overactive imagination couldn't help but wonder if it was a little sketchy, then stepped back to the center of the room, his back to Bubble Girl. "You have five minutes to either tag me with that sealing stamp, or make me move from this spot," he said. "If you can manage either, you can skip this particular training."
In other words, all I had to do was sneak up on him inside of five minutes, when he couldn't even put his back to a wall? Sure, the stamp was visible, and it was heavy enough to be a bit cumbersome to just poke him with before he could get out of the way, but wasn't he looking down on me a little bit too much? I might only be a Pro Hero in Training, but even a trainee had her pride! "You're on," I said, taking off my boots and bouncing up onto my toes. Surreptitiously, I slipped my hands out of my gloves as well, holding them by their cuffs, and palmed the stamp. It was heavy enough that I almost had trouble holding onto it with just three fingers, since my index and thumb were busy holding onto my glove, but I managed. "Here I come," I said.
"Four minutes and forty-five seconds left," Sir Nighteye replied. Oh, when he said five minutes, he meant from right then, huh? Well, guess I had to hurry. Quickly, I looked around at the surroundings for something I could use to break his line of sight. He'd wheeled his tickle torture contraption into his office, so there were shelving units, a water cooler, a desk… yeah, okay, I could start there. He slowly turned to face me as I walked behind the desk, following the motion of my gloves. I placed my gloves on top of the desk like I was getting ready to shove it at him, then hit a button on the cuffs so that the memory metal woven into the fingers would hold them stiffly in place. I pushed the desk slowly towards him, making a grating noise as it skidded against the floor. As I got it to almost within arms' reach, Nighteye spoke up. "Four minutes."
As silently as I could, I clambered on top of the desk, then picked my left glove up and put it on a stack of papers like it was grabbing them, while I kept my right hand, clutching the sealing stamp, behind the right glove for cover. I crouched down low to make sure that my voice wouldn't come out from somewhere higher than he expected it and said, "ready or not, here I come!" With a shout, I threw both gloves and the stack of papers at his face, then dove forward and to the side off of the desk into a safety roll, hoping that the flurry of fluttering papers and the screech of the legs of the desk as my jump shoved it backwards would obscure both the motion of a small sealing stamp flying off to the side, and the thump of my body hitting the tile.
As I lunged towards him from his blind spot, my heart sank. As he leaned gently to the side and pushed my outstretched arm sideways, sending me tumbling forwards, I looked up at his face. Surprisingly, he wasn't looking down at our hands, or anywhere at all - his eyes were unfocused, staring directly ahead. Crap. That was right. Sir Nighteye could see the future. Wait, did that mean he could see me? Struck by a sudden surge of embarrassment, I fought the urge to cover up. No, that didn't make sense - if he could see me directly, there was no need for him to have given me that sealing stamp as a handicap. "Three minutes," Nighteye said dully.
Still plenty of time. I walked quietly around him, heading for his back. Sure enough, as I got directly behind him, I saw him tense, getting ready to move. He definitely knew where I was. Suddenly I burst into a run, charging directly for him, but this time as I was running I tossed the sealing stamp into the air and ducked low. He whipped around in a perfect kick back kick that absolutely would have taken me out of the air if I had actually been jumping at him - and ducking under it, I kicked him in the back of his knee. It buckled, and he toppled over forwards. Even though as he fell he was already moving, ready to tuck and roll and bounce back up in an instant, the impact had staggered him for just long enough that I could snag the sealing stamp out of the air and bring it against the small of his back. "How's that?" I asked, victory making my heart race.
"Ha. Haha," Nighteye… 'laughed' humorlessly from his position on hands and knees on the floor. "That will teach me not to be so overconfident, I suppose." He stood up and brushed off his suit, taking a second to straighten his clothes back out and adjust his tie. "Well done, Invisible Girl."
"Woo!" I said exuberantly, punching one hand in the air. "No creepy tickle device for me!"
"Yes, I suppose not," Nighteye said dryly, taking off his glasses to polish them. "You figured out the limitations of my quirk rather quickly," he said.
"Yeah, well… I have a lot of practice being sneaky," I said, feeling kinda smug. "It's, like, my whole thing."
Nighteye nodded. "I see. Or don't, as the case may be. In any case, a deal is a deal. Let me just put the machine away, since we're no longer going to be using it, and we'll move on to the next phase."
"Wow, Tohru-chan!" Bubble Girl said as Nighteye wheeled the terrifying device away. "That was amazing!"
I picked up my gloves and put them back on, then clasped my hands together with interlocked fingers and twiddled my thumbs to show my bashfulness. "It really wasn't much," I said, trying to hide in my voice just how happy I was to be getting so many compliments today. "I just got lucky."
"Hmm, maybe so," Bubble Girl said, putting one finger to her chin thoughtfully, "but even if you beat Sir's quirk, his regular skills of prediction are still super good too! Being able to get a hit on him is still really impressive! Oh, I can't wait to tell Mirio-kun that you got a hit on Sir on your first try! He'll be so jealous!"
"Mirio-kun?" I asked curiously. "Who's that?"
"One of your senpai," Bubble Girl said, "A third year. The one that won the Sports Festival this year?"
"Oh, uh… I didn't watch it," I said, embarrassed. I had been a little too mopey about my early washout in my own festival to want to watch our senpais.
Bubble Girl's eyebrows lifted beneath the clear plexiglass visor of her costume. "Hmmm… then, have you heard of U.A.'s Big Four?" She asked. When I shook my head, she shrugged. "They're a group of your senpais who are kind of famous, I guess? There was a newspaper article about them last year when they all helped make high-profile arrests during their second year internships. There's Mirio-kun - Togata Mirio, that is, he wound up helping us out a lot with a big case last year - and then the other three are named Shiromeguri Meguri, Amajiki Tamaki, and Hado Nejire."
"U.A.'s Big Four, huh?" I said. Honestly, the name sounded kinda cool. And one of them got that famous interning here with Nighteye? Even if the whole Tickle Machine thing had been pretty weird, I was starting to get pretty excited about this internship. If I got to be that famous, I wonder what they would call me?
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As I stared up at the ceiling of the Cyberpunch Dojo, I was once again reminded that I had a long, long way to go. Grunting, I sat up painfully, taking Shiromeguri-senpai's hand. I supposed it was a form of progress that I was repeatedly 'holding hands with a pretty girl' without turning into a blithering idiot or developing an improbable crush, but it just went to show that you could strip the romance out of anything by adding in repeated applications of violence. Also, it was hard to get excited about handholding when both of us were wearing martial arts gloves. "That last try was pretty good, Hikigaya-kun!" Shiromeguri said. "You're making lots of progress!"
"Said Zeno to the arrow," I muttered sarcastically. "It sure doesn't feel like it," I said. It was telling that no matter how skilled I'd gotten over the past few weeks of hero classes, apparently any random third year hero student, offensively oriented quirk or not, could completely wipe the floor with me. Shiromeguri's quirk had been helpful when it came to getting the basic movements down - but as Cyberpunch said, I needed to learn how to handle myself in fights, and the only way to actually get better was experience.
Which was good, because while Shiromeguri's fighting skills were top-notch, as a teacher she kinda … sucked. "Um, so this time, when you threw that punch, you were kinda… like this," she said, standing and throwing a jab almost faster than the eyes could follow, "when you should have been more like... this, I think?" Her feet moved, and she threw another punch, but aside from seeing that they were a little bit different I couldn't really tell the two punches apart.
"Okay…" I said slowly. "So I need to pay more attention to my… balance? Posture?" I guessed.
"Uh huh!" Shiromeguri said brightly. Thanks, senpai, that was very specific and helpful. Not.
Before she could say more, Cyberpunch's voice rang out. "Alright everyone! Switch partners!"
"See you later, Hikigaya-kun!" Shiromeguri said as she suddenly bowed to me.
"Uh, right," I said, returning the favor awkwardly.
My next opponent was one of the dojo's students - a stocky, muscular teenage heteromorph, whose long ears and muscular tail said 'kangaroo' and whose blond-dyed hair said 'delinquent'. "Don't take it too hard, man," he said with a smile as he approached. "Everybody loses to Meguri-senpai."
I laughed awkwardly. "Good to know," I said. "Hikigaya Hachiman, nice to meet you."
"Midorikawa Shougo," he said, bowing. Again, I returned the gesture. When Cyberpunch called for fights to resume, Shougo took a low and wide stance, almost like a more traditional karate posture. The only exception was the fact that he was bouncing on his feet, using his tail for stability. According to what I'd learned so far, against someone in a low stance, the best option was to go for a grapple, but with that tail anchoring his posture I didn't necessarily trust that I would be able to tackle him effectively. Instead I came at him from the front, throwing a few jabs at him to try to get his measure.
The second that I overcommitted to a punch even slightly, he faded back, and then suddenly sprang forward in a massive roundhouse kick. I put up my arms to try to defend myself, but it was no use - Cyberpunch had showed me the proper way to block a kick, and even as he hit me I knew I hadn't done it right. The blow launched me off my feet, and I hit the mat hard. As I shook my head to clear it, I heard his derisive snort. "Not gonna lie," he said, "I kind of expected a UA student to be tougher."
"Says a heteromorph fighting a guy who isn't using his quirk," I muttered. As I stood, I went ahead and started up ooze-mime, attaching two tendrils to Death Arms. The amount of strength boost it gave me was less than I got from Stockpile, but it had the advantage that it wouldn't mess with my footing, just in case this guy could take advantage of the same openings as Shiromeguri-senpai. "Round two," I said, looking him straight in the eye.
As our fists clashed this time, I saw his eyebrows raise at the new and improved force of the blows. He started bouncing side to side, trying to parry the blows away to the side rather than take them head-on. Slowly, he got used to it, and as I watched him for tells I had my next move prepared. Sure enough, he quickly got tired of blocking and retaliated, throwing a punch at my chin. I swapped one of my Death Arms for Big Hands as I blocked, and convulsively grabbed and pulled on his outstretched arm with one hand even as I punched with the other, a move Shiromeguri-senpai had used on me earlier in the day. The gloves I was wearing strained and stretched under the sudden expansion of my hands, but my punch made it through, hitting him satisfyingly in the side of the face. This time he was the one to go down in a heap, and I couldn't help but smirk in satisfaction.
"Fuck, dude," he said, putting one hand to the side of his face even as he pushed himself up. "What the hell did you put in those gloves, bricks?"
"Something like that," I said with a smirk.
He looked at my now normal-sized hands suspiciously, but used one thumb to wipe a bit of blood away from his nose and shot me a grin. "Best of three, then?"
"Next partner!" Cyberpunch shouted.
I shrugged with hidden relief. "Maybe next time," I said.
In lieu of the more traditional bow, Shougo stuck out his fist towards me. After a second, I figured out what he wanted, and bumped it with my own. "That's a promise, then," he said.
Was there a polite way to tell someone that you didn't want to be hot-blooded shonen rivals with them? If there was, I didn't know it. I sighed as my newest partner - a girl with a Gorilla quirk - approached, and resolved to focus on the rest of my fights without tripping any more unwanted flags.
As it happened, the round of spars only lasted another round or two before Cyberpunch's phone started ringing dramatically, a high-pitched piercing sound. "Sorry everyone," Cyberpunch said. "I have to take this. Hero business. We're close to finished anyways - Meguri-chan, can you run everyone through cooldown?" She asked. At Meguri's affirmative nod, Cyberpunch started walking back towards the stairs to her office. I could just barely make out "Cyberpunch Hero Agency, what's your emergency?" before she got too far away to hear over the sound of the class.
By the end of the cooldown, she'd returned. "Sorry everyone," she said to the class. "I have some hero business that looks like it may take a few days, so lessons are going to be canceled through the end of the week. I'll send out reminder texts, emails, and refunds where necessary like usual."
"Does this happen often?" I asked Shougo, who happened to be standing next to me.
He shrugged. "Often enough," he said. "Kind of a pain when it does, but sometimes we get to read about sensei in the news after, so it all works out."
I couldn't help but wonder. Had there been a break in the Nomu case? Had my efforts earlier this afternoon already paid off? Burning with anticipation, after everyone else left the dojo, I approached Cyberpunch to ask. "So… what's going on?" I said bluntly.
Cyberpunch was smirking, looking entirely too pleased with herself. "Looks like you're getting more of an internship experience than I expected," she said. "So, you know how a lot of heroes do things like advertising deals, book signings, and handshake events? Publicity stuff to pay the bills?"
"Sure," I said, my enthusiasm dampening.
"Well, I take on private investigations," Cyberpunch said. I perked back up a little - that didn't sound so bad! Better than doing advertising, for sure. "And someone just offered me enough money to pay my bills for the next three months if I would come check things out at their job and make sure nothing weird was going on."
"Huh," I said. That kind of sounded like a sizable chunk of cash. "So where's the job?" I asked. "Am I coming with you?"
"Yup," Cyberpunch said. "Be here bright and early tomorrow, because we're going to be scoping out a movie set."
"Huh," I repeated. "See you tomorrow, I guess."
Getting to hang out with movie stars and see what went on behind the scenes? Maybe this whole hero business had some fringe benefits after all.