"So, we're just not talking, now? Is that how it's going to be?"
Sekijiro Kan, or Vlad King, as he was more commonly called, looked over his shoulder from his place standing before the kitchen sink within his home. The man paused to await any sort of response and received instead only the sound of running water from the tap. Sekijiro heaved a colossal sigh and ran the plate in his hand under the water, shaking his head all the while.
"…Amaya. Please. We're fa-"
"You're a pussy."
"…excuse me?" Sekijiro asked as he turned the faucet handle to shut off the water.
"You heard me, old man."
Sekijiro turned and sucked in a breath through his nose, puffing out his barrel chest as he looked over his daughter.
Amaya Kan stood defiantly just beyond the border of the kitchen, her arms folded beneath her chest and a combative look upon her face. The young woman had her father's snow-white hair, though the tips were a deep red and hung down to her chin in a messy, unkempt style. Though she wore a typical school uniform, the girl had taken to modifying it to her liking- namely, opening the top buttons enough to show off her ample cleavage and adding countless black and red bracelets as well as elbow-length fishnet gloves. A pair of massive bat wings extended from her back, the leathery skin upon each marked with red and crème whorl patterns that resembled leering eyes. Her own eyes were the same shade as her father's crimson pools and seemed to harbor double the resentment and ferocity that the man was known for.
"…it wasn't up to me," Sekijiro grumbled as he turned the water back on and squirted some dish liquid onto the rag in his hand. "Not really."
"Bullshit!" Amaya accused as she stomped her way into the kitchen, her knee-high, heeled leather boots creating quite a racket upon the tile floor. "I get it, the circumstances suck, but you had the final say! How long have you been working at U.A.? Since before I was born, right? What do all of those years mean if you've got no pull in something as basic as this? I can't fucking believe you'd just roll over and try to play nice wh-"
"Amaya!" Sekijiro roared as he threw the rag down hard into the sink and whirled on his daughter, a soapy plate still in hand. "You need to learn that there are some boats that are not worth rocking! Structures that will not fall, no matter who tries to chip away at their foundations! All of hero society is held up b-"
"By stupid bullshit," Amaya interrupted.
"Yes," Sekijiro agreed with a nod. "By stupid bullshit. Fame-chasing, shady exchanges and favors, nepotism, and greed."
"Nepotism, huh?" Amaya asked with narrowed eyes. "You just can't bear the thought of letting me prove myself beyond what other people will think is nepotism if I'm given the slot I deserve. The thought of having your name stained by a bunch of unaware idiots for a few weeks at most just eats at your fragile little ego, doesn't it?"
"My fragile ego, is it?" Sekijiro asked with a growl. "And what of yours?"
Amaya balked at the accusation and transferred her hands to her hips, her various metallic charms and bracelets jingling upon her wrists.
"I have more than earned my place as a recommended student. I have the grades. I have the frivolous clubs, sports, and other stupid shit you forced me to do all throughout school 'for my own good'. I have the kind of Quirk that pros will beg for in a sidekick, and we have the money, if you want to keep fueling corruption. So, what's the fucking problem, Dad, other than your reputation!?"
"This has nothing to do with Quirks!" Sekijiro denied.
"…so, it's the Quirk, then," Amaya confirmed. "That's what this all boils down to, isn't it? You're scared of me."
Sekijiro drew in another deep breath and remained silent as he crossed his arms, his scowl deepening.
"You're scared that I won't keep it under control. You're worried that I'm going to misuse it, because our Quirks don't seem heroic in the public eye, and don't make for good TV. You're terrified that I'm just a better version of you, and that it'll become obvious the second my name gets out there as a U.A. student!"
"…enough," Sekijiro warned, his tone growing dangerous. "This discussion is over."
"I thought you wanted to talk?" Amaya mocked, her wings flaring slightly as she adopted a look of triumph. "Or am I not good enough for that, eith-"
"It is a lot of things, Amaya!" Sekijiro yelled, his voice echoing throughout the house as he dropped his arms and balled his fists.
"Then talk to me instead of going behind my back and pulling this kind of surprise bullshit when I've been working my ass off since I was five for a recommendation!" Amaya yelled back, her wings extending to their full length. "I've wanted this since I was old enough to know what heroes are!"
Sekijiro ground his teeth, before shaking his head and letting out a defeated sigh.
"…I'm not scared of you, Amaya," he began, "I'm scared for you. I'm scared of what you're going to do when you find out just how much corruption and red tape there is surrounding everything that comes with being a pro, and how badly it's going to bind your hands, especially as my daughter."
"Then I'll rip straight through it," Amaya said simply.
"No," Sekijiro emphasized as he brought a hand up to rub at his forehead. "You won't. You can't. Some things are too big for any one person to take on, and this is one of them. I've always fostered your fighting spirt, your rebellious urges, and your disdain for bullshit… but you need to learn restraint. You need to learn timing. You may well cause great change in hero society, but your time is not now."
"Like hell it isn't," Amaya spat as she flipped her hair to the side. "You're the one holding me back."
"For your own good," Sekijiro reminded. "Someone has to!"
Amaya made a noise of disgust, her face twisting as she snorted.
"It isn't just that," Sekijiro continued, "we are given candidates from the major schools and asked to choose. The names we are given are almost always connected to wealthy, influential hero families. Do you truly believe that I want to keep on selecting those sorts of students as leaders? Or, if you're going to accuse me of being a pussy again, do you believe that Aizawa would do such a thing without tremendous pressure from Nezu?"
"Nezu can go fuck himself, if he's the one enabling this," Amaya seethed.
"Nezu is tasked with running a school," Sekijiro reminded. "A school for a subset of society that is coming under heavy scrutiny. The name 'U.A.' doesn't mean what you think it means outside of the realm of heroes, Amaya. He does what he needs to do to keep the lights on. That is all most people do, when it comes to making unfavorable decisions."
"That's not enough for me," Amaya replied, closing her eyes with a scowl. "I will make it to the top, and I will make the waves and changes I want! The world needs heroes who aren't afraid of red tape, stupid traditions, and weeding out corruption, even if it's in hero society itself!"
"And I hope that you do," Sekijiro replied. "But it's too late for me to reconsider, and I wouldn't, even if I could. The decisions have already been made, the students set up with their teams. You will continue to earn your way, and get no special treatment from sharing my name," he added as Amaya opened her mouth to say something.
Amaya closed her mouth and made a noise of frustration, before folding her wings back in and pinching her nose.
"…just tell me one thing, because we're clearly not getting anywhere," Amaya said, sounding defeated. "If I was just some stupid random little rich girl, and everything else was the same except for the fact that my surname is Kan… would you have picked me? And for that matter, was I recommended by my school?"
"You were, and… yes, I would. I'd prefer you over the Hagakure girl among the recommended students," Sekijiro admitted with a frown. "But as it stands… I'd rather another family suffer accusations of corruption, whether or not they are founded in reality. It wouldn't just be me under fire, you know. It would be you, as well."
"I can take it," Amaya asserted as she blew a strand of silvery hair from her eyes.
"And so, you can take this," Sekijiro justified. "Look at the flak that the Todoroki boy will be getting throughout the year, and perhaps you'll see part of the reason I'm holding you back. You will audition in the coming months, and I have no doubt in my mind that you'll make it into 1-A or 1-B, b-"
"I'll be in 1-A," Amaya said confidently. "After all this, you expect me to believe you'd allow me in your class? Stop pandering and trying to reassure me. I don't fall for that. You've made your mind up, and it's not going to change. I have every right to be pissed at you, the system, and every other rich kid that's standing where I should be this year."
"I'm sorry, alright?" Sekijiro tried. "Yes, I am partially to blame, and I know that isn't good enough for you. Eventually, though, I hope you can come to understand."
"Yeah," Amaya said as she turned away, her wings twitching as she began to walk out of view. "Whatever. Just don't expect me to audition with a smile. When the name Vlad King becomes totally irrelevant, I'll be kicking you down instead of pulling you up beside me, and you've got only yourself to blame."
Sekijiro watched his daughter disappear elsewhere into the house with a grumble of annoyance. After a minute of staring after her, he returned to washing the dishes in silence.
"You! Up against the wall!"
The woman being addressed let out a terrified whimper as she felt the cold barrel of a pistol pressed up against her forehead. She scooted backward immediately across the tile floor of the convenience store, joining the line of hostages cowering against the magazine racks. Her plain grey business suit was sullied with filth from the ground as she moved, though the woman hardly noticed. She kept her eyes upon the villain in front of her, until the subtle sight of something pink moving quickly through her peripheral vision caught her attention.
"Good," the villain sneered. "Anybody moves, you're gonna be made into an example for being so slow."
The victimized worker said nothing, her lip trembling as she stared up at her assailant. The villain's defining feature was in the tips of his fingers, which seemed to be entirely absent in favor of long, hooked claws. Each talon was a blindingly reflective silver like some sort of brilliantly polished sword. His pistol had no trigger guard to compensate, and one of his talons was a mere half inch from the curved metal capable of ending a life. He wore all black with a nearly featureless white noh theater mask covering his face, and wooden fangs protruding from the otherwise unremarkable mouth.
Again, a flash of pink caught the woman's eyes, and she closed them to avoid drawing attention. Unfortunately for her, the villain noticed the error, and turned away from his hostages to stand upright and survey the area.
"Hey!" he called toward the front of the store. "You see anyone!? They're actin' suspicious back here!"
The other villain within the store, a near mirror image of his counterpart with claws of an ebony sheen, was leaning up and over the counter with his own firearm pointed downward at a nervous cashier. The woman under threat was busy scooping money from the register into a large burlap sack, her lip trembling and forehead sweaty under the pressure.
"What?" the black-clawed villain called back. "What do you mean, acting sus-"
The man never finished his sentence as a nearby rack of sunglasses crashed to the floor, scattering eyewear everywhere.
"What in the hell!?" the villain cried as he stepped back and swept his gun around the area. "Who's causin' trouble!? You wanna die!?"
The man's calls were met with the sound of thundering footsteps from behind. He whirled only to find Eijiro sprinting toward him down a nearby aisle, his fingers bladed and arms pumping. The teen had cast off his clothing above the waist, and his exposed skin was angular and hardened into a rocklike substance. He gritted his teeth as the villain opened fire, causing two bullets to ricochet from his chest. Small, hardened bits of flesh flecked off of him like small pebbles, but Eijiro kept rushing forward through the numb sensation of pressure where the bullets had hit.
"Go down!" the boy yelled as he pulled back an arm and launched a haymaker for the villain's face.
The rock-hard fist connected with another midair bullet, sending the projectile whizzing off to the side in a collapsed, unrecognizable smoking heap. Eijiro's fist crashed into the villain's mask, shattering straight through the wood and sending the man to the floor in a crumpled heap.
"Toro!?" the other villain called from the back of the store.
Eijiro ducked just in time to avoid another bullet before running behind one of the nearby racks.
"Where are you!?" the villain called from somewhere Eijiro couldn't quite see. "Who the hell do you think you are, kid!? Show yourself, or I start executing people!"
The footsteps of the villain became louder as Eijiro bent low and began maneuvering around the racks. After rounding a corner, he caught sight of the masked man stalking his way up an aisle toward the front of the store. A moment later, Mina appeared around the corner of a rack on the other side of the aisle, holding a bottle of iced tea. Eijiro watched as Mina silently poured the liquid onto the tile floor, before she pointed at him, then the villain, and then the far side of the aisle.
"Fine, then! Let's see how brave you are once innocent people start dying!"
Eijiro's heart leapt at the villain's words, and he watched in horror as the man turned and began to run down the aisle toward Mina's corner and the assembled hostages. Without hesitation, he ran in the opposite direction and appeared at the front of the aisle, where he cupped a hand around his mouth.
"Hey! I'm the one you want! Come and get me!"
The silver-clawed villain turned and opened fire without hesitation, causing a bullet to clip Eijiro's shoulder and send more small chunks of angular, stony flesh flying from his frame. The masked man ran forward while continue to fire at Eijiro's position, only for the boy to duck back around the corner. Capitalizing upon the opening, Mina leaned out from behind the racks and hurled her bottle for the villain's exposed back. The glass shattered against the man's baggy black hoodie, and he turned and fired toward the corner, where Mina no longer was. A mere second later, the man began screaming in agony as the liquid from the bottle began to sizzle through his clothing and steady streams of smoke rose from his back.
A heavy fist smashed into the back of the villain's head as Eijiro attacked from the other side, and the man stumbled forward as he continued to scream. Without a second thought, the villain swung wide with a clawed hand and raked his talons across Eijiro's chest, only for his efforts to amount to no damage at all. A second swipe resulted in a single scour mark across the teen's shoulder before Eijiro bashed his forehead into the villain's, shattering his mask and sending the man to the floor.
"Don't move!"
Eijiro whirled, only to be met with an entire array of firearms pointed his way by men in uniform. Red and blue lights flickered from outside of the store front, and more and more men began pouring into the small building. Eijiro instinctively threw his hands up as his eyes grew wide, and he kept his skin hardened for fear of being shot yet again.
"Wait! I'm one of the good guys!"
"What are you doing!?"
Eijiro watched in horror as Mina ran to stand in front of him, her arms splayed out to the sides as she stared down the officers with contempt.
"We're heroes! We just stopped the people trying to rob the store!"
"Mina, don't cause t-" Eijiro began, only for a man in black slacks and a pale blue dress shirt to step forward through the crowd of officers and cut him off.
"We'll determine that down at the station. Disengage your Quirk and come quietly. As of right now, you're both under arrest."
Author's Note:
This chapter for the week of 8/31 is going up early because… reasons. Yay reasons!
-RD