In the Reviews section, one of you asked what "blps" is.
"Blps" means "Body Lengths Per Second", the measuring system that Gokiburi Genki uses as a measuring system for his speed/per second.
*MHA*
"Alright, folks! We'll proceed to the afternoon portion of the Sports Festival after a one-hour lunch break! See you then!" Present Mic announced, countless Heroes and civilians alike beginning to leave some seats. "Hey. Eraserhead. Wanna grab some food?" he said moments before the mic cut out.
"What the hell happened to us? How'd we end up with zero points…?" Tetsutetsu wailed in shock.
"It… Must've been in the chaos left in Gokiburi's wake…" Ibara spoke up, shuddering as she nursed the bald spot on the right side of her head. "We were so-focused on his headband we must've gotten tunnel vision."
"Ibara, are you going to be okay?" Itsuka asked worriedly.
"Yes… I'll be fine… I just need a little water and sunlight…" the modest girl sighed. "I let the fact that he was from the General Course make me arrogant, so maybe this is divine punishment…?"
"But what happened back there?" Setsuna asked. "You sounded like you were in so much pain."
"I don't know… It's like… When he wrapped his teeth around my vines, it felt like I was being melted alive," Ibara said casting a scared glance towards the oily-haired teen off to the side.
"To think someone like that was hidden away in the General Course…" Monoma moaned, lamenting his own failings in the previous event. "Part of me is ecstatic watching him pull the rug out from under 1-A so many times and making utter fools of them, but when it happens to our class… I have mixed feelings."
Elsewhere, 1-A exchanged their own thoughts on the previous event.
"This sucks, but congrats all the same, Mina," Tsuyu hummed, fuming that her own headband had been taken without her knowledge.
"Bakugou only picked me because I could melt Todoroki's ice. This win didn't really say anything about my strength," Mina said with a very "Meh…" attitude.
"Man, what happened at the beginning was way too close…" Ochako sighed, recalling the first minute of the Cavalry Battle where they almost flung themselves into the spectators' stand.
"My apologies. I was not aware-enough of our adversaries' abilities to anticipate the use of an oil slick of all things," Iida apologized. Such a tactic had almost cost his brother his life early on in his career, so he should've had the presence of mind t avoid such a trick.
"N-No, it's my fault. I saw him trip Kacchan right before we started gathering teams together, and I was so fixated on trying to ascertain the nature of his Quirk, I neglected to mention it until we'd already fallen into his trap," Midoriya apologized.
"Clever is the falcon that hides its claws…" Tokoyami said cryptically as he cast a glance toward the two-time first-place winner.
And it was true. No-one in the Hero Course so much as knew about someone like Genki, or Shinso for that matter, yet these two General Course students continued to succeed where others failed, one remaining under the radar while the other was smack dab in the middle like a neon light.
"That fucking bug!" Bakugou raged. He couldn't tell what was worse. Having someone from the General Course beat him, again, or having Mineta of all people beat him; either directly or indirectly not mattering.
"Ugh… I've still got this crap in my hair…" Kirishima grumbled.
"In the next round, I'll fucking kill him!" the explosive teen raged.
As the students of Class 1-A and 1-B lamented their losses, Shoto looked Izuku dead in the eye, the two's gaze held for several moments before he jerked his thumb behind himself, prompting the green-haired teen to follow.
*MHA*
"We're alive… We're really alive…" Mineta whimpered as his grip finally slackened, and he fell to the ground in a tired heap.
"The heck are you tired for? I did all the running," Genki rebutted.
"Hey, half the time I couldn't hold on any longer, but I was too scared to let go! Cut me some slack, alright?"
"Moving on… Mei! I don't know if I've said this enough, but these Support Items you made are a-Mei-zing!" he complimented, Mineta groaning at the pun while the inventor happily beamed at the praise. "If I make into the Hero Course, you have got to help me upgrade my costume!"
"As long as you tell everyone the gear is a Hatsume Mei Original, I'll consider it," she said helping him out of her gear. "And besides… Having someone so-interested in my tech means I'll always have someone willing to field-test my babies~" she giggled, giving her own boots and foam gun an appreciative pat, ideas ruminating in her head to turn her riot foam sprayer into some kind of… "Mochi Gun" after seeing Mineta's Quirk in action. "Thanks for the help, Mr. First Place! A pleasure doing business with ya!" the Support Course girl said giddily as she walked away, humming a merry tune as she went.
"Hey man, in case I forget to say it later… Thanks. For getting me through all that," Mineta sighed.
"Hey, I should be thanking you. If you hadn't agreed to partner up on me and give me the down-low on your class' Quirks, I would've been up shit creek without a paddle. Knowing's half the battle."
"Still, we were lucky that crazy chick decided to team up with us and loan out all that cool stuff," Mineta said giving the pink-haired girl a look before remembering "the one rule".
Don't stick your dick in crazy.
"So… Wanna go grab some lunch? No homo."
"Sure… You buyi-"
"Hey, what'd you stop for?" Mineta asked as his teammate froze mid-sentence, his antennae shooting straight up as his eyes began to dart around nervously.
"MY BABY BOOOOYYYY!" a womanly voice cried happily from one of the tunnel entrances, all eyes on the ground on them as Genki was suddenly scooped up and swung around like a ragdoll.
"O-Okaa-san?! When'd you get here?" Genki gawped.
"That's your mom?!" Mineta gawped, the eyes of several of his peers looking on in curiosity as Genki was peppered with kisses by the sudden arrival.
Genki's mother looked very much like him, and it was obvious where he got his looks from at a glance; albeit, her genes were obviously diluted, since Genki's mother was markedly more-feminine than her son, and had yellow eyes instead of brown. Her shoulder-length hair which was colored blond, had only a slight oily sheen to it, styled up in twin ponytails with foot-long antennae similar to her son's own sticking out atop her head. Her attire consisted of a black pantsuit and red tie, largely conservative aside from the small swell of her bust and hips.
Though she could be mistaken for a schoolgirl from her youthful appearance, being an inch or two shorter than her son with flawless skin and youthful demeanor, she was actually in her early forties.
"Ohhh! I'm so proud of youuuuu!" the woman cooed as she hugged her son, swinging him around like he were weightless. A lance of pain shooting up his arm and causing him to wince, the woman immediately stopped, setting him on his feet and giving him a once-over. " . . . You really pushed yourself to get this far, didn't you?" she asked, a look mixed between worry and pride on her face.
"I had to, mom. Plus Ultra-style, as-cheesy as that sounds to say out loud," Genki admitted.
"Well… At least you take more after your father under the hood," the woman admitted drumming her knuckles on his chest. "Mineta-kun, right?"
"Y-Yes ma'am!" Mineta answered as the woman turned to him.
"Could you take my son over to Recovery Girl? I'll get a nice meal for the two of you by the time you get there. Three if I can find that nice girl from the Support Course," she hummed thoughtfully as she walked off.
"So… That's your mom, huh?" Mineta hummed.
"If you say she's a MILF, no-one will ever find the body," Genki growled lowly, an angry hiss rising out of clenched teeth.
"N-Not even remotely what I was going to say! I like my women tall, busty, and curvy!"
"You pig!"
"I can't believe you just said that!"
"Get kicked by a horse and die!" several of the nearby girls chided.
"I regret nothing!" Mineta proclaimed.
'What the hell have I done…?' Genki wondered, realizing just who he'd taken with him to the Battle Tournament stage of the Sports Festival.
He could only hope his other partner would show a little more restraint.
*MHA*
As it turned out, Shuzenji Chiyo, aka Recover Girl, had been quite busy after the Obstacle Course Race had been concluded.
In addition to the dozens of cases of first and even second-degree frostbite caused by Todoroki at the very beginning, multiple students had also been injured attempting to surmount the Robo Inferno. While The Fall did have adequate padding and safety nets, there were still a few injuries from those who fell partway though, but at least no-one died. As for The Minefield, there had been a bit of hearing damage in addition to the bruising and spraining for those that had triggered the mines, and of course… the embarrassing requirement of fresh pants when blue change to brown and maybe even yellow.
It was of course, as the last of the students from the Obstacle Course Race had received their treatment, that the most-injured from the Cavalry Battle needing care arrived in her office, a storage room down one of the maintenance corridors labeled Recovery Girl's Temporary Nurse's Office.
"No rest for the wicked, I suppose," the woman hummed as she beheld the General Course-student in front of her, blinking her eyes as she saw her face. "Gen-chan? Is that you?" she asked adjusting her visor. "You've gotten so big since I last saw you."
"Wait, you know her?" Mineta asked.
"A while back I was in an… accident… and Recovery Girl saved me from spending a year in a full-body cast," Genki said nervously.
"What? Did you really do that badly in the Entrance Exam?" Mineta asked.
"No, that was for something different, but patient confidentiality means I'm not at liberty to say anymore," Recovery Girl replied. "So… What seems to be ailin' ya?" she asked getting straight to business since he was on a time crunch.
"I… kinda elevated my body temperature so I could eject oil and hot air under high pressure, so my arm's a bit sore," Genki said rolling up his sleeve.
"Hmmm… I see…" the woman hummed as her visor scanned the appendage, evaluating his condition. "Well, if you'll just fill out this form and take a seat, we'll get you squared away in time for your next hurdle."
"You know about that?" Genki asked as he sat on the nearby bed.
"Of course, dearie. Do you think I'd really let something like the Sports Festival happen without knowing what's going on?" she asked gesturing to an old TV in the back of the room.
"I suppose not…" he said taking the clipboard. Grabbing the attached pen, his arm winced, the teen handily changing the pen over to his left hand and getting to work.
"Ambidextrous, are you? That's a rare trait, even with eighty percent of the populous having Quirks," Recovery Girl hummed as the oily-haired teen crossed the ts and dotted the is.
"Well, you know… Having ganglion all over my body comes with its advantages," Genki admitted, filling out the last of the form.
"That is true," Recovery Girl admitted. "You know… Even if your father's been retired for a while, I'm sure he still has enough pull around here he could've gotten you into the Hero Course on recommendation," she stated, causing Mineta to sputter since the only people he knew of that got in on recommendation were from elite families.
"Maybe… But part of me had this stupid macho thing going where I wanted to get into Yuuei on my own merits. That if I couldn't get in on my own, I didn't really deserve to be here…" Genki admitted as he rubbed the back of his head. "Also… I…" he paused, his face drooping. "I didn't want my father to possibly find out he'd been a 'has-been' for too-long to get me into Yuuei just on his word alone."
" . . . "
*Thwack*
"ITAIII!" Genki cried as the woman struck him with her cane.
"Try to give us non-Mutants a little more credit than that," Recover girl scolded. "We do know how to express gratitude, even to those that wouldn't pass for 'human' in the pre-Paranormality age."
"I'm sorry… You're right…" Genki admitted. "I just… I didn't want everyone to think I only got in because of institutionalized nepotism or something like that."
"Hoh? I didn't think you young'ns cared for six-syllable words like that."
"Yes, well… If the Hero thing doesn't work out for me, I can still go into the new family business if things don't pan out," Genki admitted.
"Don't sell yourself so short just yet. You've done a heckuva good job making it so far. Most years it's only Hero and Support Course students that make it past the first round, so it's actually quite refreshing to see the General Course get some representation," Recovery Girl said with a smile. "Of course, you can't go out there roughed-up like that, now can you?"
Extending her lips and pressing them to the oily-haired teen's forehead with a *Chuuuuu*, Genki's right arm emitted a green, almost-magical glow as the bruising and swollen veins began to disappear, leaving only unmarred skin in their wake.
"Whoo… Got a little dizzy all of a sudden," Genki said swaggering. "Don't remember that happening last time."
"Well, you were practically dead to the world and on an IV drip the entire time. It's understandable you don't really remember," Recovery Girl hummed. "Here, take some candy. It'll give you energy," she said pointing to a jar on the counter.
"Arigatou," Genki bowed, taking a handful of candy and popping the sugary treats into his mouth, feeling his energy slowly return as he broke them up between his teeth and swallowing the remains.
"Well, if there isn't anything else you need here, make sure you get a nice filling meal before you do anything else. Wouldn't want you eating away at yourself, now would we?"
"No, ma'am. Thank you for everything," he said bowing slightly.
"It's my pleasure. Run along now, your adoring public awaits."
"Yeah… For as long as they don't know what my Quirk is," Genki said sadly.
"Give your peers a little more credit than that, too. This isn't middle school anymore. Your future classmates are a bit more-mature than that."
"You say that like I'm a shoo-in to get in."
"Call it a woman's intuition," Recovery Girl said with a smile. "Run along now, or you'll miss your cue."
"A-Arigatou gozaimasu!" Genki bowed again as he rushed out of the room, tucking Mineta under his arm as he went.
"So… What the heck happened to you that you would've been in a full-body cast for a year without Recovery Girl?" Mineta found himself asking.
"I don't like to talk about it."
"Fair enough."
*MHA*
Leaving the tunnels and stepping out into the festival grounds surrounding the arena, meeting back up with his mother who'd somehow managed to track down Mei, the mother, son, and his teammates all went out towards the food stalls, the scents of cookers and fryers filling the air.
After a few moments, to Genki's surprise, passerby actually started smiling at him. Congratulating him on his victories, patting him on the back, giving him their well-wishes and even stepping out of the way for him, this kind of adulation was something completely foreign to the bug-like teen, since everyone tended to shy away from him once they learned what his Quirk was and the negative connotations that came with it.
"Heeheehee! Looks like you've got some fans," Genki's mother, introduced as Gokiburi Oki, giggled with a wide smile on her face.
"Maybe… But for how long?" he asked before his mother tugged on his cheek. "Itai-itai-itai!"
"Don't sell yourself short," his mother chided as she pat his cheek. "You've got the best of both worlds; the strength of your otou-san, and the eye-catching looks of your okaa-san," she said with a beaming smile. "You'll make a great hero, so don't give up before its even begun."
"I guess you're right," Genki admitted.
"So… your dad used to be a Pro Hero, then?" Mineta asked.
"Yeah. There was an… incident, a while back, and he retired shortly after," Genki answered, his expression souring for a moment. "Thankfully, he made some connections during his live-action movie debut from early on in his Hero career, so he was able to find a good job after that."
"Oh? What movie?" Mei asked.
"The live-action Terraformars remake from a while back," Oki said with a smile. "Your father was so dashing on the big screen," she sighed wistfully.
"Well he had to be. They copy and pasted him all-over the place. It was kinda creepy actually."
"Not the point," Oki chided. "So…" she said turning to his teammates. "What're you in the mood for? If you're hitting the Battle Tournament next, you're going to need your energy!"
"Well, if you're paying, I guess I'll take some teriyaki chicken," Mineta answered.
"A heaping helping of yaki soba for me, please!" Mei said excitedly. "But what'll you eat?"
"Heaping helpings of everything!" the woman said with a smile as she held up an impressive stack of bento boxes. "You're free to have some if you want."
"It's kinda weird I didn't notice that until just now," Mineta hummed.
"Yeah, I don't know how she does that either," Genki added. "The most I ever got out of her is 'mom power'."
"And that's all you will get out of me," Oki said with a grin.
*MHA*
As it turned out, winning the first two events of the Sports Festival despite being an underdog, or rather, because he was an underdog, came with some nice fringe benefits.
Not only did the vendors they visited give them extra-big helpings for no additional charge, but the stands they didn't even plan on going to gave them lots of free samples. Even if it was only for the social media exposure, it was still a touching gesture, and after all the running he'd done and all the oil he'd secreted, the teen was more-hungry than he'd realized.
Plus, it'd just be rude to turn away free food.
While Mei ate happily from both the festival food and bento boxes Genki's mother had brought with her, Mineta and those nearby could only gape in shock as Genki and his mother alike wolfed down many, many servings of food, not even the barest hint of distention in sight as piles of food disappeared into their gullets. Even those with larger body-types couldn't help but gawk as the two Gokiburi put away plate after plate of food.
Even Classes 1-A and 1-B had their momentary animosity for being unable to get the 10,000,000+ point crown abate as they beheld the sight of the two bug-like people eating with various expressions on their face. Some didn't care, some looked on with awe, some found themselves losing their appetite, and others… well, one other, scribbled furiously in his notebook like he were attempting to solve a riveting game of Clue.
Only, instead of trying to figure out who killed whom with what and where, it was what kind of Mutant-Type Quirk the two had, and what facets of it came from the mother, which came from the father, and which were spontaneous mutations exclusive to their offspring. Food preferences were just another clue he was trying to use to extrapolate the information he sought since one's Quirk did tend to influence their diet.
Eventually however, the hour-long lull came to an end, and the Yuuei Sports Festival's final event began in earnest.
*MHA*
AN:
For those of you that've read Arachnid or even Caterpillar, the inspiration for Genki's mother (bordering on "Cameo") should be fairly obvious. And if you haven't read them, I highly recommend it, because the battles and real-world science are all quite riveting, and inspired not only this OC, but the OC in my RWBY fanfic, Giant-Slayer.
As for whom Genki's father is, I've left clues scattered about as well.
Hero work isn't the only lucrative business involving Quirks. Obviously the cinematic endeavor would benefit from Quirks as well, since money normally spent on costly special effects can instead be used to heighten the quality of a movie as long as those adept with suitable Quirks can be found; in a weird way I imagine the trend of Practical Effects like in the original Star Wars trilogy would come back into play, allowing Quirks to become popularized, at least outside the age of Corporate Heroes.
It's obvious that Quirks wouldn't only be used to help people or break the law, with such powerful tools at their disposal, humans in the post-Paranormality world would find all sorts of avenues with which to use their Quirks, although they'd need special licenses to use them, just like with any real-life skill.
With a few more breadcrumbs about the MC's backstory sprinkled about, I hope you'll all Review and Follow, and stay tuned for the next exciting part of the Yuuei Sports Festival.
GO BEYOND!
EXCELSIOR!