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[Unlikely Meeting]
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| Three days later… |
...
Inside a store, two men stood at the cash register—one of them hurriedly stuffing money into a bag, while the other kept watch.
However, for some reason, he also stood tensed and paranoid, his fist in the form of a cannon raised toward what appeared to be the clerk of the store they were robbing, who had his back against the wall with both hands up.
The cannon man turned to his partner, kicking the counter.
"Come on, hurry up! Haven't you heard? The past few days, every single crime in this part of the city has been falling apart spectacularly. If we don't get out of here fast, the same is going to happen to us!"
"Huh?! And you didn't think that was worth mentioning before we started this?!"
"I need the money, man. I'm desperate."
"Damn it—and how come? Is All Might patrolling around here or something?"
"No idea. I heard from another crew that lately the heroes in this sector have been foiling everything before anyone even gets a chance. It's like they can see the future or some crap like that!"
"Shit, Shit... alright, just—let me focus."
He picked up his pace, stuffing the bills in faster.
A few seconds more and he zipped up the bag and swung it over his shoulder, giving his partner a nod.
"Alright, let's move."
As soon as he gave the word, the two rushed out of the store.
They had a vehicle waiting right outside, so the moment they stepped out the door they threw themselves in and slammed the car doors—startling the driver.
"Woah, the police get alerted or something? Why so rushed?" The driver asked, adjusting the mirror to look back.
"Just go." The one with the bag said immediately, jabbing a thumb at his partner. "This idiot forgot to mention that the heroes in this sector have been shutting down every other crew who's tried anything the past few days. If we don't move now, we're just going to be another number on their daily reports!"
"For real?! Urgh—alright, fine." The driver clicked his tongue.
-Screeech!-
The next instant the car lurched into motion, tires shrieking as his foot hit the accelerator and the vehicle tore away from the curb.
Before long they were back on the road, weaving recklessly between other cars and missing collisions by inches.
But thanks to that, they were also now well clear of the crime scene.
"Hahaha, must be lunch hour for the heroes!" The one with the bag laughed, glancing through the back window to see nothing but ordinary traffic.
They were completely in the clear.
"We're off, baby!" The driver laughed too.
But just as the mood was lifting—the cannon man went rigid in his seat.
"Hey—watch out!"
Only then did the driver notice the figure standing in the middle of the road.
He didn't even have time to hit the brake. For a moment, he was certain he was about to run them down.
"Shi—!"
—But what followed was the complete opposite.
'Huh?'
By the time he processed what had happened—a millisecond after squeezing his eyes shut—the street and the figure were still there.
Only… upside down.
No—it was the car that was upside down.
That's when it clicked.
The car had crashed, and somehow it was spinning through the air.
How?
He had absolutely no idea.
'Well, damn.'
And so he closed his eyes, resigned to what was either imminent death or immediate incarceration after most likely ending up hospitalized.
Then, the big impact came.
-Thud!-
—Only, not nearly as hard as he'd braced for.
"…?"
He slowly opened one eye, looking around confused, before slowly opening the other.
The car was sitting normally on all four wheels, settled on the street as if nothing had happened.
Somehow… it had landed properly?
'What?'
Looking through the mirror, he saw his partners looked just as stunned, staring around in utter bafflement.
For a second or two, none of them moved—trying to process how what should have been a disaster had left both the car and the street more or less intact.
A second or so after that, however, he stopped trying to understand it and focused on getting out of there.
They were on the run. He could worry about whatever happened just now once they were safe and sound.
So, he slammed his foot on the accelerator.
—But nothing happened.
"The hell?" He frowned.
The engine was dead.
He twisted the key. The machine groaned, but still then refused to start.
"You've got to be kidding me." He threw his head back into the headrest in frustration, then turned to his partners. "The car's dead. We move on foot!"
"What?!—why now?!"
"What the hell even just happened?"
"I don't know, and we can figure it out later. Let's go already!"
And so the three got out.
The moment the car doors were slammed, they scanned their surroundings quickly, looking for the best escape route—one where the police wouldn't be able to trail them…
"Huh? Isn't that—"
"It's that guy!"
—When they noticed the same figure that had been standing in the road when they crashed, still there, facing away from them.
The cannon man squinted, getting a better look—and his eyes went wide as the details of the person's outfit registered.
"It's a hero! It's a goddamn hero! He's the one who crashed us!"
The other two snapped their heads toward him, then back to the figure.
Black hair. A sleek, modern-looking mask. A long black coat hanging from his shoulders that covered most of what was underneath, except for black trousers and plated boots.
The man with the bag gripped it tighter, teeth clenched. "How did they get here?! The police should barely be mobilizing right now. No way the response time is this fast, let alone for a hero to already be on scene!"
The cannon man spat. "Don't know. But forget running—looks like we're going to have to make our own way out!"
The three readied themselves. One drew a long, sharp blade from the horn-like protrusion on his forehead.
The other raised his cannon-fist, steadying it with his free hand.
Lastly, the driver pulled out a regular gun.
And yet—even as all three leveled their weapons, the hero remained with his back to them, much to their annoyance.
"Oi, what are you so relaxed about?! You think you've got us?!"
"You're going to have to try harder than that!"
"You know who we are?! We're the infamous—"
Before any of them could finish, the hero turned his head.
A somewhat quick and smooth turn of the head.
And with just that…
"Ugh—!"
"Ack!"
"Oof!"
—Thud!—
All three dropped unconscious simultaneously, hitting the pavement at the same time.
The hero looked them over for a moment, then swept his hair back as the sun hit his face.
Then a head popped up through the ground, taking in the scene with a speechless look for a moment, before laughing weirdly.
"You were right again… seriously, how do you keep doing that, Auros?"
And with that, he pulled himself the rest of the way out of the pavement, landing smoothly on both feet.
Mirio.
He turned to Taka, who was still holding the pose—letting the sun catch him just right—before finally stepping out of it and walking over to the unconscious pile.
"What is a hero but the antithesis of evil. Given that, isn't it only natural that a hero can perceive such deviousness, even from far away?"
"Uhm… maybe?" Mirio scratched his cheek, not entirely sure that logic held up.
He didn't get much time to question it, though.
—Weee ooo weee ooo!—
Soon enough, police patrols began pulling up, and with that, the official procedure got underway.
Both Mirio and Taka gave their account of what had happened while the three unconscious criminals were carried off to the patrol cars.
Minutes later, Taka was the first to be released from it, since Mirio was technically the senior and the one required to give a full report.
With that freedom, Taka leaned against a lamppost, arms crossed, taking in the results.
The street undamaged, not a single bystander hurt, and an efficient arrest that could barely be traced back to him—even though the three had clearly gone down the moment he looked at them.
But that could easily be attributed to adrenaline crashing in after the car went flying, and that it coincidentally went away when he glanced at them.
Praising himself inside his mind, he huffed in quiet satisfaction, before his gaze drifted to the crowd of bystanders who were recording with their phones.
Sadly, none of them had caught the car crash itself, as it was too sudden, but luckily a few had managed to get the head-turn moment.
'Another good clip for the internet.' Taka thought, letting out a small snort.
As he did, a screen popped up at the edge of his vision.
<[+68 Aura]>
He glanced at the crowd. Most had stopped recording and were cheering at him instead.
Some even looked like they wanted to come over for autographs—but the police perimeter was in the way.
So, of course, he wasn't about to just let that sit.
He reached into his inner chest pocket, took out a pen, and tossed it gently into the air.
It floated upward for a moment, like gravity had lost its control over it—then shot toward the crowd, stopping and hovering right before them.
A beat of stunned silence passed as the crowd stared at it confused, then those who'd wanted autographs realized what it meant and started scrambling for notebooks and anything else that would work.
And so the pen got to work, signing things left and right, while Taka just leaned against the lamppost and watched.
A few people even took a photo with the pen for some reason.
But before long the crowd began dispersing, and the pen drifted back to him.
Taka turned to the status screen now open beside his head.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
[STATUS PAGE]
▸ Strength: 7,500
▸ Defense: 15,000
▸ Aura Projection: 120,000
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Total Aura: 145,191
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
'Yet another fruitful day.' He thought, smiling faintly behind his mask as he closed the screen.
About ten minutes remained in their shift, so this was almost certainly the last incident of the day.
He was quite satisfied with it. So far, he has been keeping up his promise of making the most of this internship.
Both in aura, and in learning the ways of the heroes.
It had been roughly a week since he'd healed All Might, and a week and a half since the festival ended. His aura had grown by another 20k in that stretch, reaching 145k. Close to 150k, yet still not quite there.
Regardless, it still baffled him how quickly it had grown. It was 50% stronger than the day of the festival, achieved in barely over a week.
That just went to show the scale of people that had been watching his stunts on TV. Even after the festival was over, his passive gains remained enormous.
Of course, as the days passed the passive gains were dwindling, but his reappearance in public through the internship had steadied them again somewhat.
Nowadays it was about a thousand aura per day—sometimes more, sometimes less. The same rate he'd hit the day he crashed that music festival, only now more consistent.
If he had to heal All Might today, he wouldn't end up nearly powerless the way he had a week ago.
'And all of this is thanks to Nighteye letting me participate directly.' Taka thought, his mind going back to the second day of the internship.
He'd woken up ready for another round of concealing his abilities and nudging Mirio toward crimes in a not-very-subtle way, and then Nighteye had informed him that he was permitted to participate in arrests directly—although still with certain restrictions to it given that he was still an intern without a provisional license.
But that latitude, however qualified, was enough. It had let him farm aura far more actively on every incident they crossed.
He also noticed, with time, that Nighteye was looking at him less severely than he had on day one. Maybe he was just imagining it, but he didn't dwell on it.
'Nezu must have told him something.' Was what Taka concluded—though without asking, he couldn't be sure.
Not that he intended to ask. He was here for the internship. Whatever arrangement those two had made between themselves was their business, so long as it didn't bother him.
And so that's how the four days had gone. Three more remained, which meant more chances to farm aura and keep growing—but the rate would almost certainly slow soon.
Relative slow, granted. It would still be enormous compared to his passive earnings from before the festival. Just not what it had been this past week.
"Well, a storm isn't meant to last forever. Calm always follows." He muttered, gazing forward, then sweatdropped slightly. "… Except maybe on Jupiter."
A few more minutes passed before Mirio finally wrapped up his report. Then, the two left. Their shift was over, so it was time to return to their base of operations.
As they made their way back to the agency in silence, calmly waving at civilians who became excited as they saw them, Mirio turned to him with an easy smile.
"Seriously, Auros. Since you joined, our shifts have been getting more and more intense."
"Sorry about that." Taka sent him a wry look.
But Mirio stopped walking and did some kind of loose, flappy arm dance.
"No need to apologize! Thanks to all this, I'm even closer to my million of people saved. If anything, I'm looking forward to the next few days even more!"
Taka could only stare at him.
After a beat, he let out a quiet, relieved huff.
'Good. That's one less thing to worry about.'
He didn't know whether Mirio was genuinely easygoing, had simply decided to take things at face value, or respected his privacy enough not to ask, but the blonde hadn't once pressed him on how they kept stumbling across criminals.
At some point he'd just started to go along with it. The fact that Nighteye had stopped questioning the method and simply told Mirio to use his best judgment probably also helped.
Either way, if tripling his usual workload didn't bother him, who was he to argue?
'That just means I'm the only exhausted one.' Taka thought, rolling his shoulder and holding back a faint groan.
Luckily, the day was done. The rest of it was his.
'Maybe I'll go home for a bit.' He thought, watching the sky shift toward orange.
It wouldn't take more than ten minutes, so it was very doable.
'Although—first I'll grab a souvenir. Eri liked apples, didn't she? Maybe I can find somewhere that sells candy apples so I can bring her some.'
That said, a candy apple was more of a festive thing, and today wasn't exactly a festive day, so there was a high chance he wouldn't find any around.
'I'll just ask Nighteye. He's the hero in charge of this zone—he'll know.'
Worst case, he'd travel the entire country for a candy apple.
He was capable of it.
...
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| Half an hour later… |
...
Taka, now in his regular clothes, walked along the street with squinted eyes, scanning everything around him.
"He said there should be a stall around here somewhere that sells all sorts of candy… but all I see are pubs and restaurants."
He pulled out his phone to double-check the address.
He was in the right place.
"Then where the heck is it?" He asked himself, looking around with a deadpan and scratching his head frustrated.
To make it worse, the sun was going down, and all the stores were lighting up their neon signs—turning the whole street into a dazzling mess that made it hard to pick out anything specific.
Taka kept scanning, his expression souring as he went around the zone more than once and still found nothing.
'Should I just clone myself and cover more ground at once?'
Just as desperate options were starting to seem necessary, a voice came from behind him.
"Ah, it's you, you bastard!"
Taka blinked. Then frowned.
Were they talking to him?
Based on the distance and the direction the voice had come from, it appeared so.
He turned around, looking for whoever had said it—and blinked in genuine surprise when he saw who it was.
"You…"
"What are you doing here? Wasn't ruining my life once enough?! Have you come back to finish the job?!"
Purple ball-shaped hair, impressively short, a face with roughly the same punchability as Midoriya's.
Impossible not to recognize.
'Well, I'll be damned.' Taka thought, scratching his chin. 'It's Mineta. What are the odds?—And what's he complaining about?'
"I ruined your life?" He asked, confused.
"Yeah! Don't tell me you forgot!" The purple menace pointed a finger at him accusatorily.
Taka tried to think through what he could have possibly done.
The only time they'd been anywhere near each other was at the entrance exam—
'Oh.' Taka blinked, the answer arriving flatly.
Not only had he taken Mineta's spot in Class 1-A, but he'd also obliterated most of the robots in their shared battle zone in the process—which would have made scoring anything near sufficient considerably harder for the guy.
Mineta probably didn't know about the first part. What was bothering him was almost certainly the second.
"I do remember."
"So you admit it! You bastard—because of you I got stuck at a much worse hero school. Every other school's exam was too hard for my Quirk to deal with. If you hadn't been there that day, dealing with those robots would've been easy peasy!" Mineta dropped to his knees, tears flowing freely.
"…" Taka sweatdropped, feeling a twinge of guilt over how things had played out.
The guy wasn't wrong. Mineta's Quirk was actually well-suited for that particular test, since it was just immobilizing villain-bots and turning them off. With his Quirk, he could do it without much trouble.
However, other schools ran different exams, so his Quirk's effectiveness wasn't guaranteed.
'Maybe I should apologize. I wasn't technically in the wrong since the exam was competitive by design—but I still feel a bit bad.'
He was about to say something, when Mineta kept going.
"… Plus, I heard you U.A. bastards are already using your hero costumes. I can only imagine what a glorious sight that must have been, hehehe…"
"... Alright, bro." Taka sighed, swallowing the apology he'd been preparing.
And thus, he turned and was about to take his first step to going back to his search.
"Oh, you're just going to walk away now?!" Then, Mineta called after him.
Taka shot him an annoyed look, and for a moment actually considered giving him a small aura blast.
But after a second, he let it go with a sigh, calming down.
"Listen—I'm sorry about that day. I could have still passed comfortably and with flying colors even if I'd left some robots for the others. I was too focused on myself at the time to think about that… so yeah. Sorry."
"…"
Mineta went quiet, staring at him with the face of someone who had absolutely not expected an actual apology.
After a moment, he smiled, chest puffing smugly.
"It's fine. As long as you get it I don't mind. But if you're really apologetic, if you gave me the number of any of your girl classmates, I'd consider us fully even—"
"I'm trying to be decent here, man. Don't push it."
Mineta reeled back slightly, smiling wryly.
"Sorry. Got carried away."
Taka gave a nod, and let out a faint huff as the fallout from one of his early aura-farming decisions settled itself just like that.
'I did go a bit overboard that day.' He snorted inwardly, recalling how fixated he'd been on standing out. 'Besides this, who knows what else I set off without realizing?'
Hopefully nothing serious. The other entrants had not passed the exam in the show either, so dominating his own battle zone probably hadn't altered too many futures—other than Mineta's.
Still, although he hadn't been as indiscriminate in his robot monopolization that day as Bakugo would have been, he was still a bit blunt in how he'd bulldozed his way to the top.
Maybe it was worth looking into at some point.
'Worst case, I unknowingly created my future nemesis.' Taka winced at the notion of such a cliché situation.
The day of the U.A entrance exam, a young aspiring hero had his chance taken away by the ultimate talent swallowing everything like a blackhole. Bitter and thirsty for revenge, he turned to a life of crime, swearing revenge against Taka and slowly preparing for the day he'd enact his revenge for once and for all.
'What a dumb plot.'
While Taka had such thoughts, Mineta seemed to have something on his mind as he saw Taka's somewhat sour look.
"Well, don't stress about it." He waved a hand, before shooting Taka a thumbs up. "Honestly? When I watched you and your classmates at the sports festival, I felt a bit relieved I didn't make it in. If I had, I would've been surrounded by complete monsters."
Taka's mouth twitched at his positivism.
Meanwhile, Mineta rubbed his chin, then broke into a grin as his nostrils flared with a distinctly Mineta expression.
"Besides, the school I ended up at isn't all that bad either… the girls in my class are quite the sight."
Taka rolled his eyes—but still ended up letting out a short snort.
'He really does stay true to his character. Even without U.A., he's exactly the same.'
His will was truly unbendable. In the show, no matter what the universe threw at him—Mountain Lady shattering his view of heroines and showing him the full "intern experience", Mina attempting to reform him through brainwashing—he always bounced back unchanged.
He had a depravity of steel.
In a way, it reminded Taka a little of himself from a year ago, when he'd written all sorts of absurd things on his career plan. Like winning the lottery, or making love to thousands of women.
Though in his case it had been less genuine conviction and more a product of not caring what his class thought of him at the time—plus a certain bad influence named Seiji.
'Right, Seiji—I should get back on track.' Taka mentally slapped his forehead.
Snapping out of it, he glanced around, then turned back to Mineta.
"By the way—you don't happen to know where I can find a candy apple around here, do you? I was told there's a stall somewhere that sells such things, but I've been looking for a while."
Mineta looked startled by the topic change, then thought for a second, eyes lighting up.
"Oh, yeah. There's one down an alleyway near here." He gestured for Taka to follow. "Come on, I'll show you."
"You could just point me in the right direction, you know." Taka looked at him confused.
"They also sell my favorite grape soda there, so now I'm tempted. Might as well walk you there while I'm at it, right?"
With nothing to refute that, Taka shrugged and followed.
It seemed his problem had been solved by an unlikely ally.
Life truly could take the strangest turns.
...
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-To Be Continued...-
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(A/N: Well well well, the discarded character makes a comeback, who'd have thought?)