"I couldn't go less than 2,000 Jenny, not for a specimen this fine." Said the fishmonger.
"It's gotta be a day old, your lucky I'm even offering to take it off your hands. 1,500." Josuke retorted.
"No, caught fresh today. I simply cannot do less than 1,950."
Tsk. "2,000…and you throw in one of those sodas I know you have behind the counter."
"2,500 and you get Tuna, and I throw in four colas. Ice cold, ya? Sound good? Special deal, just for you." The fishmonger offered.
Josuke jumped at the chance. Those soft drinks would be a nice treat for Coco, Sen…their grandma, and even himself. Food, especially fresh food, was always something of a rare commodity in Meteor City. Most of the city lay on the westernmost island of the Federation of Ochima of the Southeastern Continent. The island must have once had a name as even children knew it had once been a trading post centuries ago, but any proper name it once had was now long lost to a history that spanned 1500 years of international dumping.
Like most islands to the west of Ochima, the land was naturally arid and dry, growing anything edible was a challenge, but not impossible, though no one grew anywhere near enough to sustain the city's population. Fisherman could fish, but those that did had to go much further out to sea as most fish near the shore had been rendered inedible due to pollutants in the water. No, rather, Meteor city was fed through its symbiotic relationship with the various mafia families of the world.
While mafias provided guns, gold, and food, Meteor City provided the people, people, and people. Legions of untraceable unknowable faces to galvanize the shadow governments of the world. After all, it was one thing to commit a crime, another thing entirely to do so, and know the authorities would never be able to tie it to you or your organization, at least not in any official capacity.
"Oh yoohoo! Joe-boy!" A womanly voice called from several stalls down. It was Mrs. Ponto, a woman well into middle age with a body one could tell had given birth to several children.
"Well, aren't you looking beautiful today, Ms. Ponto. What can I do for you!"
"Oh, Josuke you flirt you. If I were just 20 years younger, oho. Anyhoo, I wanted to thank you for helping to repair our table yesterday, we'd all be eating on the floor if it wasn't for you. Take these apples, on the house."
"Aw, Mrs. P, you don't have to-"Josuke began before having a small basket of bruised apples shoved into his arms.
"No no, I simply won't take no for an answer, you. They're yours and that's that." She said with enthusiastic finality.
Before Josuke could try to return the kind gift, he felt the pull of a small hand on his shirt sleeve. The young boy's face was unfamiliar, but that was to be expected. What struck Josuke was the look of worry on the boy's face, and the words he said next. "Mr. Fix. Look." He said pointing to a young woman several feet away.
Said woman was surrounded by a handful of men in black designer suites and dress shoes, and clearly looked uncomfortable. Several bystanders seemed as equally irritated as Josuke but held themselves back when looking at the firearms the thugs blatantly showed off.
What rotten luck. This isn't gonna be a fair fight for them at all. Josuke thought as he silently strode to the woman's rescue.
"Aww, c'mon sweetheart. They say every meteorite's gotta price. How much?" A bald man, their leader, said, to the amusement of his lackeys.
"I-I don't know what you're saying. I-I've never even-, p-please leave me alone"
"Wohoho, boys! You all heard that? A bona fide virgin, in this dump. And they say the gals here are born hookers! Ha!" The thug finished with a raunchy laugh, one that was echoed by his men.
Attempting to push through the men that surrounded her, the bald man grabbed her arm before bringing her close to put his arm around her neck.
"Now now, sweetness. We can do this the hard way or the easy way. Personally, I prefer the h-"But the bald man didn't have a chance to finish before a single voice in the crowd called out to him.
"CATCH BALDY!" Josuke yelled as he tossed one of his gifted apples to the man.
Shoving the woman to one of his goons, the leader of the group of thugs caught the apple midair before staring confusedly at both Josuke and the apple in abject disbelief that anyone would even dare to interrupt his fun.
"Why don't you pick on someone who actually wants a word with you two-bit thugs," Josuke said as he finally came within a few feet of the man and his possie.
"Oye. Do you have a death wish or something?" the bald man began before staring down at the fruit he had caught. It felt like it was moving from the inside like it was rippling, and were those…sparks?
*POP!*
The apple exploded into several hundred pieces, spraying its juices and flesh around the men and bystanders, surprising them all. Most importantly though, it gave the harassed woman a crucial few seconds to flee while her harassers were distracted.
"You think that was funny, you punk!" The leader said, veins protruding from his head in anger. "When I'm done with you, you'll-"
"Oh, how rude of me." Josuke interrupted. "I didn't even bother to offer any to the rest of you."
Not missing a beat, Josuke threw the bag of apples he had been steadily charging with Hamon into the middle of the hooligans, who watched the apples fall around them.
Hamon. It meant ripple and was one of the few things other than his first name that Josuke knew about himself. Intuitively, Josuke knew that it was a type of energy that came about from the form of his breathing. Granny had once called it a unique application of a thing called ten, though she had refused to elaborate on what exactly that was.
Josuke laughed raucously as the falling apples each began to burst in midair, causing many onlookers to move away in surprise, and the goons to dive for cover.
Clearly disturbed by what had happened, the thugs, now drenched in apple juices picked themselves up in visible worry, though to their credit, did not use the chance to run away. Only their leader looked more angry than distraught, red in the face as he was.
Sticky, and too full of hate and humiliation to see reason, the bald man approached Josuke, pistol drawn, his gusto, steeling the hearts of his cohorts, who drew their firearms in turn, wicked grins on their faces.
"You got a problem you punk-ass piece of shit!" Their leader yelled before pointing his pistol at Josuke's head.
Anticipating this, Josuke had already begun to charge Hamon into a glass pop bottle he held in his right hand.
What a waste. He thought to himself. "Hey, you're kind of ruining my evening. I'll let you scum off if you leave now and promise not to make any trouble."
"J-Just who do you think you are!" The bald man screamed in disbelief. "I'm Yohan of the Staymos Familia! You think we're just gonna lay down and take insults on our asses from a bottom-feeder like you! You're dead! Your family, dead! Your mother, father, lover, all dea-!"
*POP!* *SMASH!*
Having been slowly filled with Hamon, Josuke's soda had fizzled with such explosive force that the aluminum bottlecap rocketed toward Yohan slamming into his nose with a sickening bloody crunch as his cartilage was disfigured, and he was knocked onto his back.
"Ma-My Nothe!" Yohan screamed in pain, blood running down his face.
Josuke put down the rest of his groceries before slowly walking toward his downed foe, ignoring the shaking guns of the panicked men.
"First thing," he began, "I've never heard of the Staymos Family, which means you probably aren't half as important as you think you are. Most experienced mafia know you don't just waltz into Meteor City, any part of Meteor City , and start acting like you own the place. You think anyone here thinks they owe you something, anything?"
Yohan tried desperately to back away from Josuke's imposing figure, stopping only when the pompadoured man loomed over him.
"Second. If you're here, you can't be anywhere near important enough to make any decisions. Dons don't send anyone they consider expendable to a place like this. Which makes you…all of you, very expendable. Capeesh?"
By now several of Yohan's men had begun to run away, but not all. Some continued to trail shaking guns in unsteady hands at the stalwart teenager.
"Thirdly," Josuke continued bending down, voice full of mock sorrow. "I feel kinda bad, ya'know. That was kind of a cheap shot I took on your nose. Lemme fix that up."
"No! Don toth me you fweek!" Yohan screamed in fear through a bloody nose. But before he could react, using lightning-fast reflexes, Josuke had already jammed two fingers into the bald man's nose to painfully pull the gangster to his feet.
"You monther, lego of me, w-whaaaaa?!"
"Y-Yohan, you're nose! You're damned nose!" A nameless suit screamed in surprise.
Slowly, miraculously, blood that had flowed down onto Yohan's face and clothing began to flow back into the injured man's nostrils. The smashed cartilage of the appendage slowly began to shift left and right, almost but not quite taking on its original form. The man's gang could only watch in wonderous horror as their bald friend's nose healed, but into a flat and all-around uglier form than it had previously been.
"There we go, good as new," Josuke said in a chipper tone. "Now why don't you all run along now and stop causing everyone so much trouble? Otherwise, I'll uh, have to get serious…"
Lifting himself up, Josuke turned around to try to find Coco, confident he had broken all notions these fools would have had toward causing any more trouble. But he was wrong. Only when he had taken several dozen steps away did he hear the sound of gunfire in the air, and the bald man's grating voice call out in fury.
"Don't you walk away from me you rat-bastard! You don't walk away from Yohan Tost! No one does! Not some loose ass hooker, and not some stupid-haired idiot!"
Where previously there had been some whispers, angry noises, and panicked shouts from the local vendors and bystanders who had remained, only abject silence remained. Throw a gold doubloon in the street and no one would have moved. Everyone, every single person who knew Josuke, or had even the most rudimentary knowledge of Daggertown's resident repairman knew that a cardinal taboo had just been broken.
"What did you say about my hair?" Josuke asked faintly, shaking in something that could be anger.
"Ya scared?! Well, you ought to be! You're about to die you-"
*cruuuuunch!*
Yohan would never get to finish his sentence. Within half a second, faster than the eye could see, Josuke had covered the distance between himself and the man who had insulted his hair, sending a Hamon-charged fist into the man's face, shattering jaw, cheekbones, and everything in between. Yohan's body itself would have been sent flying, save for the invisible hands of Crazy Diamond who had caught the body, allowing for a few more body shots before dropping the pummeled body to the ground, only so Josuke could viscously proceed to stomp the now barely conscious man.
"Who! Do! You! Think! You! Are!?" Josuke howled at the man he continued to kick. "This is the hair of a man, a man! A Pompadour represents courage, spirit, and vigor. All the things you wish you had, you bald-headed mafia scum! I'll kill you!"
"K-K-Kill him!" A nameless suit yelled.
Shot after shot rang out from Yohan's crew as they turned their guns toward Josuke in horrified panic and began to fire.
*Blam! Blam! Pow!*
For half a minute nothing but the sound of gunfire filled the air. Followed by a far more pathetic noise.
*Click..Click Click….Click.*
The sound of empty gun chambers, accentuated by the weak hiss and smoke of a dozen hot empty barrels.
It was a sight to behold for the Staymos Family soldiers who had only so recently come to Meteor City. Here they had just unloaded enough ammunition to kill several dozen men at this individual, this kid. And there he was, ignoring them. Choosing to instead kick and savage the man who had insulted his hair. Empty shells surrounded his body or had ricocheted harmlessly into the air, their eyes unable to see or comprehend the invisible figure that had effortlessly caught and blocked them all. All they could do was stare in absolute awe at the incomprehensible predator they had provoked. That is, until someone else in the crowd finally had enough.
An empty glass bottle was thrown at one of the gang members barely missing the man's head.
"Not so tough without your guns, huh!" A young girl yelled from the crowd.
A rotten tomato followed the bottle. Followed by pans, knickknacks, and anything else the angry people of Daggertown could throw at the mafiosos who clearly didn't know their place. Dropping their guns, the thugs finally began to run, hounded by angry townsfolk who were determined to make sure these hooligans learned a hard, if not deadly, lesson.
As all this happened around him, Josuke continued to pummel the now unconscious, barely breathing bundle of flesh at his feet. He was deaf to the world around him. All that was on his mind was to punish the man who had dared to make fun of something so important to his identity. Josuke of course didn't know why he held his hair in such high regard, but it didn't matter. He did, and this man had to die or come damned close. Then a feeling he couldn't ignore caused him to restrain himself.
Two arms enclosed themselves around his torso. Dainty, small, delicate hands no one would have expected had the power to restrain such a wild beast. Her figure, her body, behind his. Her calm heartbeat called out to his raging uncontrollable fire. Begging him to come back to her.
"They're gone now…" Coco said to him softly, arms squeezing him from behind. "Please come back to me…"
"Yeah…yeah, I'm sorry, Coco. Let's go home."
"…Yeah."
And they did.
Elder Grecha Abelnite felt it before she had got any official word of what happened.
Tsk. That boy will be the death of me…someone must have insulted his hair…again.
That boy really needed to learn how to control his killing intent. One day instead of sending the peons running, someone would sense it and take it up for the challenge it was. Someone should teach him how to control his aura, his Nen, but not her. It was too early. She still didn't trust him.
Oh sure. Maybe he had made himself a fixture of the town, even helping people who couldn't pay his fees. People liked Josuke, including (to her chagrin) her granddaughters. But there was a part of Grecha that still couldn't quite trust Josuke. It wasn't just that the boy had no memory of his past, a fact she had come to believe. Or the fact that he had appeared out of the blue, many people came to this Hell to escape the world and disappear. Class A criminals, fugitives, mothers, fathers…everyone.
No, Grecha couldn't trust Josuke for the simple fact that a tinge of fear remained from the first day she had laid eyes on him almost two years ago.
She had done everything right. When word of the Badland Beast had first reached her, she had sent people to investigate and handle the troublemaker. When that hadn't worked, she had hired several mercenaries, issued a bounty, and informed her nearest peers, Elder Gesto, and Elder Monty of the problem. Then things had gotten out of hand, children had gotten involved curious as they were, and she had had to call for a curfew. Then she had practically begged Gesto and Monty for their help in capturing the mysterious man in hopes their combined strength would be enough to put a swift end to the troublemaker.
She still remembered the day they had tracked him. He had moved slowly throughout the badlands, leaving a trail of bodies that grew larger the closer they came to his location. They had felt him long before they saw him. Nen, the psychokinetic energy of the mind and spirit had utterly oozed off the boy in untrained ren that had left all three elders intimidated.
What was worse, the boy had been utterly starved and sleep-deprived. They were not even facing him at his best. Then there had been his Nen ability. An utter brute that gave each Elder pause. She would in the coming weeks after his capture would come to know that it was called [Crazy Diamond]. Glorious and terrible, it was a pink humanoid Adonis of a conjuration that radiated power separate from its wielder, daring anyone; bounty hunter, mercenary, even Elder, to approach it they wanted to taste its lethal power and speed.
The Elders had used the hired hands and thugs to gain information, something that would ultimately save their lives. They discovered that Crazy Diamond had a very specific range they estimated was between 1-5 meters, though it had no problem firing projectiles with respectable accuracy at fools who opened fire at its master.
Eventually, Elder Gesto spied a group of children huddled in an abandoned truck, and it quickly became apparent that Josuke had been protecting the missing students all along from the mercenaries she had hired. Then Coco appeared, and all hell broke loose.
They intervened then and were able to get Coco and the children to safety. Then they had been left to face and capture Josuke. Tired, weak, and still utterly terrifying.
Gesto used his [Black Catcher] to manifest a wolfish armored dog made from an intangible smoggy Nen to distract Crazy Diamond. No matter how fast the armored conjuration could punch, Black Catcher continually reformed while attacking and carrying out its secret mission. Gaining a piece of clothing, a strand of hair, and a drop of blood from Josuke.
This was aided by Monty and his [Rope-a-Dope]. A conjured red rope he could manipulate freely either for combat, or to bind a target. A condition he had placed on it to strengthen its power was that he would only use the rope once a week in exchange for increasing its strength and his manipulation over it sevenfold. If he broke this condition, seven months would be taken from his life. This drastically increased the power of his ability which he hid with Zetsu to coil around the tired Josuke.
With his movements limited, Black Catcher had no trouble retrieving the necessary ingredients for Grecha to fulfill and use her own Nen ability, [Strandman]. A natural manipulator, her ability was unique in that she first created a doll from her own hair. Using the piece of cloth, hair, and blood that Black Catcher had retrieved for her, she added them to the doll to fulfill the conditions necessary to control her target into doing several specific actions, one of which was forcibly inducing sleep, which she promptly did, finally putting an end to the several days of panic he had created.
What followed next was nine hours of screaming deliberation at her home as she argued heavily with her peers over what to do with the boy. They had argued that one so dangerous should be put down, but Grecha hadn't been convinced. He had saved Daggertown's children after all. Yes, he was dangerous. But shouldn't they give him the benefit of the doubt? Let him explain himself. In the middle of their argument, Coco had all but burst into their meeting to give the Elders a piece of her mind, including her grandmother. The nerve of the girl.
Still, Grecha couldn't help agreeing with her granddaughter and used her final authority on matters over Daggertown to ultimately end their discussion and spare the boy's life. Gesto and Monty were friends from her youth. They'd ultimately see the wisdom in her choice, or they could punch grass for all she cared. They only demanded she be responsible for her final decision, which she understood and accepted.
It was early. She had time to decide whether she would train the boy or kill him. Training anyone in Nen was always a risk in Meteor City for any Elder. Most who attained that sort of power tended to go their own way when the opportunity arrived. Leaving Meteor City to find their bloody fortunes in a larger, softer world outside the rusted shores of their Junkyard homeland.
Briefly, Grecha thought of the Phantom Troupe. Such wasted potential. Her own sister's granddaughter had joined them, poor, miserable, misguided girl that she was. No, that wasn't fair, she had made her own decision to join the troupe, Grecha had to accept that.
But every Elder needed a successor eventually. It was still early. Grecha herself hadn't started learning from her grandfather until she had been in her 30s. Coco was still young; she could enjoy her youth. There was time. And if all else failed…well…she and that Josuke were already something of an item, even if they themselves didn't realize it. She could teach him then when it was more official. Possibly groom him for succession...not that she liked or had accepted the boy. The boar!
A squeak of the door signaled that Coco had returned.
"We're home!" "Sorry for intruding…"
And she had brought her idiot….
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Please read, review, and leave a comment. It sustains me.