Itsuki and Shinso walked confidently through the crowd. They had just finished their second day of middle school.
Shinso, the timid and closed-off boy from kindergarten, had turned into something considerably more outgoing. All because of one influence. One person. It was a little strange, honestly, how much a single person could shift the trajectory of someone else without really trying.
"Wearing a school uniform is such a drag," Itsuki yawned. "Especially when it looks like this."
The uniform was a deep black gakuran paired with plain black trousers. Boring didn't quite cover it. It needed color, anything, even a stripe would've been an improvement.
Shinso glanced at him with a small smile. "Ehh, it's not that bad. High school is worse. Imagine showing up every day dressed like you're about to discuss taxes."
"Yikes."
'In the CIA there were very few things I genuinely hated. Suits were one of them. Specifically, suits worn around the kind of people who had enough money that they stopped being normal. Not that I inherently disliked wealthy people. I disliked the ones at the very top, the ones who had been rich long enough that they had completely forgotten what a consequence felt like. Those were some of the most genuinely unpleasant human beings I have ever been in a room with, and I once spent four hours in a safehouse in Tbilisi with a man who ate canned fish for every meal and refused to open a window.'
"I've got a few thousand yen on me, want to grab something?" Itsuki said, changing the topic
"Sure, I don't mind," Shinso replied with a smile.
They moved through the streets at an easy pace. Itsuki had always found Japan interesting to walk through, not because it was unfamiliar but because of how many completely different worlds existed within the same few blocks.
In one street: glass buildings, suits, the particular kind of silence that came with people who were always busy.
Turn a corner and you had girls in elaborate costumes outside maid cafes with clear thirst traps for the wrong company.
Turn another and someone was walking calmly in a kimono like they were still behind by at the very least three hundred centuries.
'I've been in sixty-three countries. All of it strictly business. And Japan is still one of the stranger ones to walk through on a Tuesday afternoon.'
He didn't consider himself judgmental. Different cultures, different histories, he had seen enough of the world to know that strange was relative. But some things still made him pause. The women-only train carriages, for instance, said a lot about the men in the society of Japan, the maid cafes as well, some things that would make the average western man creep out, but the average rich person cream.
'But who am I to act as a moral judge.'
As they turned a corner, he saw three thugs.
An enclosed space off the main street. He saw that they were surrounding a helpless child, a girl who could've been no older than eight, they had nasty smiles on their face and had weapons held firmly in their hand as if they were about to do something unpleasant.
Itsuki stopped walking.
He didn't consider himself a hero. He had no formal obligation to anyone. He wasn't the type to be moved by abstract moral duty. But he had spent enough time watching what people did to other people when they thought no one was looking, and there was a line somewhere, and three grown adults cornering a child was well past it.
He glanced to his right. Shinso's hands were balled at his sides and his jaw was clenched tight, Itsuki could tell he was in a fury.
"Hey, Shinso. Lunch is going to have to wait. That alright with you?" Itsuki said.
"Yeah," Shinso said quietly, already unbuttoning his jacket. "That's completely fine."
Itsuki did the same, sliding off his gakuran.
Shinso moved to go forward but Itsuki put his arm out in front of him, stopping him in his tracks. Shinso eyed him the type that told him to move but Itsuki remained firm in place.
"Think before you move," Itsuki warned. "Do you actually know what you're walking into?"
"A hero doesn't stop to think, you think All Might ran through 400 different backup plans before he saved people."
"You're not All Might Shinso, let a lone a Hero, you don't even know what runs through their head. Why do you think Hero school exists, not every chump can just be a hero. Think. Think!" Itsuki putted his fingers to temple.
Shinso's jaw tightened. "But she needs help right now."
"She does. And she'll get it. But if you run in there blind and one of them has a quirk that neutralises yours before you can activate it, or one of them has range and you don't, or there are more of them around the corner that we haven't seen yet, then you go down and she loses the only backup she has. Dead heroes are no help, and they certainly don't save anyone," Itsuki said, the same tone he'd use to explain directions. "Thirty seconds of thinking saves you from making the situation worse."
Shinso exhaled slowly and his hands unclenched. "Alright. What do we do?"
"We take distance first. That rooftop. From there we can see all three of them clearly, we won't be spotted, and we won't get flagged as vigilantes if someone calls the police before we're done. Also keep an eye on the surrounding area, we don't know how organised they are or whether anyone else is watching."
"All that just for three people?"
"Listen here Shinso, I used to think that overplanning for little things was useless," Itsuki said.
"Then I went to Iran."
Shinso stared at him skeptically. "You went to Iran?"
"Beside the point. Get on my back."
"Wait, what—"
Itsuki had already picked him up. His wings spread and they were on the rooftop in a few seconds flat.
Shinso stood there for a moment looking at the ground below, then at Itsuki, then back at the ground.
"You could've warned me."
"I did," Itsuki said, already watching the three figures below. "I said get on my back."
***
"Let's think about this rationally, what happens if you do find someone who is on the lookout, what happens if their quirks are extremely strong and we are overpowered Shinso?" Itsuki asked as he started applying cursed energy to his hand for strength.
'Let's hope I still got it, my marksmanship has been rusty for a few years now.'
Shinso looked puzzled. He didn't know.
"You sure do like to overthink stuff, what happens if they are all really weak," Shinso said, "But to reply to your question, I honestly don't know… maybe run or something?"
"You see, that's the type of thinking that will get heroes killed on the spot, the hero isn't always the one who rushes and screams 'PLUS ULTRA!' it's the one who is able to do their job and save those who need help." Itsuki said, shaking his head in disapprovement.
"Alright then what do you improvise?" Shinso asked.
"I dunno." Itsuki flatly replied, no emotion, no nothing.
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN!?" Shinso screeched.
"It's fine anyway, no one can beat me, there isn't a single quirk on this planet than can overpower me," Itsuki said as he channeled more of his cursed energy into his hand.
"You call me rash," he muttered.
"You're going to walk into a situation with no plan on purpose and just absorb hits until your body figures it out."
"When you say it like that it sounds bad."
"It is bad."
"Nah," Itsuki said simply. "I'd adapt."
He plucked out one of his wings and with one steady wind up he launched it.
*BOOM*
A clear sonic wave was present as it pierced one of the bodies of the thugs right in their abdomen, closer to his stomach.
"Damn, I was aiming for his torso, but he moved at the last second," Itsuki muttered.
***
Below, the man folded in half and hit the ground with a sound that echoed off the alley walls. The other two spun around instantly, the broad one stepping back from the girl.
Itsuki noticed that someone's head had snapped up right at him. The lookout.
Itsuki knew that they had been found and had to move quickly.
'Alright. Two standing, one down. The broad one has a hardening type — I can see the skin shifting from here. The lookout is the unknown. He went straight to scanning the high ground which means he's trained enough to think about angles, that makes him the more dangerous one to leave alone.'
"Shinso," Itsuki said, already moving toward the edge of the rooftop. "Stay up here."
"Watch the street entrances on both sides of the alley. If anyone else shows up that we haven't accounted for, freeze them before they get close. Don't come down unless I call you."
"And if you—"
"I won't," Itsuki said, and dropped off the edge.
He angled the fall with his wings, not flying so much as steering the descent, closing the distance fast and landing between the two standing criminals and the girl.
With a crash he landed.
*CRASH*
His legs skidded for a second before stopping.
He looked up at them, but they hadn't moved a muscle, they looked as still as statues, clearly still shook from what had happened.
Then the broad one's skin finished shifting. The surface of it had gone from flesh to something closer to dense stone.
He looked at Itsuki with a snarl, he knew that he was responsible and was about to make him pay with a punch.
Itsuki took the punch like a champ, the full weight of the hardened first and the force behind it, completely unfazed, although his head had snapped sideways and he had felt it a tiny bit in his teeth he was fine.
Above his head, the luminous, white halo-like wheel appeared from nowhere.
CLICK.
It spun once.
Itsuki grinned at the stone-faced idiot, a taunt that didn't go well with him. He was used to hitting people, he did it all the time but usually they didn't have it in them to stand up let alone smile.
From the side, the lookout made his move, his quirk activated with a sound like air being compressed, he then released a beam from his palm, it flew swiftly towards Itsuki in a straight line, it caught Itsuki in his left shoulder, forcing him to take two steps back.
CLICK.
The wheel spun again.
Itsuki straightened up. And then dusted off his shoulder like he hadn't just been hit.
"Okay," he said, to no one in particular.
He went for the stone one first, wings snapping behind him for the burst of speed, covering the gap before the man had time to reset his footing and brace properly.
He drove his shoulder low, cursed energy concentrated into the point of impact, intending to disrupt his center of gravity, as they say 'the bigger they are, the bigger they fall'.
His feet left the ground and he hit the alley wall sideways with enough force to crack the brickwork behind him.
The lookout fired again immediately.
It hit his shoulder but this time it felt more like a push, he felt it but it was nowhere as painful as the first time.
CLICK.
The wheel spun a third time. This time it moved quickly, almost impatiently.
The lookout fired a third time, at the same spot, clearly hoping repetition would accomplish something.
Itsuki didn't move at all, he wanted to feel the pain.
"Oh please."
He turned and looked at the lookout uncaringly letting him know that his little stunt hadn't known anything.
The lookout stopped firing, he knew his quirk had no effect.
'Good. Now he's scared, which means he's about to do something stupid.'
He was right. The lookout took a step back, then another, glancing toward the alley entrance behind him.
Itsuki reached back and detached a second wing. This time there was no wind-up, no long preparation. He propelled it at amazing speeds.
It engraved the lookout's right wrist . His hand snapped back against the wall and he made a short sharp sound of anguish and stopped moving because he couldn't.
The stone-head had made it back to his feet. He was slower now, the impact with the wall having done something to his rhythm, and his second punch came in at an angle that gave Itsuki all the time he needed to duck under it and let it pass overhead.
He returned it once, cursed energy still running through his right hand, and felt the force travel through the hardened exterior the way water finds its way through stone.
The man sat down against the wall and the fight went out of his face.
From above, Shinso's voice came down calm and even. One sentence, directed at the lookout who had been edging toward the alley entrance.
The lookout stopped mid-step. Both arms dropped to his sides. His expression emptied out completely.
Shinso came down from the rooftop a moment later, less gracefully than he would've liked, landing in a slight crouch.
"That one was about to run," Shinso said.
"I said stay up there unless I called you," Itsuki replied.
"Well it's better that he didn't escape right? So I contributed somehow."
Itsuki looked at him for a second, then nodded once.
Fair enough.
✦ ✦ ✦
Itsuki crouched down in front of stone head, forearms resting on his knees, and looked at him the way you'd look at someone you were about to have a perfectly ordinary conversation with.
"I'm going to ask you some questions," he said, in the same tone you'd use to order at a restaurant. "The answers will determine how the next ten minutes go for you. I'd like it to be fairly quick because I haven't eaten since this morning and that's starting to affect my mood."
The man stared at him. Still catching his breath. Still trying to work out what had just happened with the shoulder.
"Who sent you," Itsuki said. Less a question, more a prompt.
"Y-You're… Just a kid," he grumbled out.
"Just answer my question."
He stayed silent.
"That's fine," Itsuki said, genuinely unbothered. "I'll walk through it. You three didn't pick this street at random, you came to a specific location and went straight for a specific person, which tells me someone gave you a location, a description, and probably a time window."
"That someone either paid you well enough that you didn't ask questions, or threatened you in a way that made the alternative seem worse. Based on how you're carrying yourselves and the fact that none of you made any attempt to leave before I arrived, I'm assuming paid." He tilted his head slightly.
"Which means there's someone above you. A name, an organisation, a contact point or something. I don't particularly care about you. I care about what's above you."
"So. Who sent you."
The man's eyes moved across the alley to his colleague on the ground, the feather still lodged in his stomach, then back to Itsuki. Contemplating whether it was better to remain loyal or face certain consequences.
He talked.
It took about ninety seconds. A name, a location, a description of how the job had been communicated to them and through whom.
Itsuki listened to all of it without interrupting and when the man finished he stood up.
"Thank you," he said, with complete sincerity. "Stay there."
He walked across the alley to the girl, who had remained pressed against the wall the entire time.
She hadn't made a sound since Itsuki had landed between her and the criminals.
He crouched down to her level.
"Are you hurt anywhere?" he asked.
She shook her head slowly.
"Okay. There's a police box two streets north from here, the blue building on the corner. Walk there now, don't stop, and tell them what happened and where. Can you do that for me?"
She nodded, and then looked at him curiously, but then got a hold of herself and ran to where he had told her.
Itsuki watched her go until she had left the alley entrance. Turning around he saw that Shinso was already beside him, jacket re-buttoned and his hands were in his pockets, looking at the three criminals with an expression that Itsuki could not figure out.
"We should go," Shinso said.
"Yeah."
They left from the opposite end of the alley, stepping back onto the main street, falling into the flow of the afternoon crowd/
They walked for a while without talking.
"The wheel spun three times," Shinso said eventually.
"Yeah."
"The first hit from the hardening type landed badly, I know it hurt but you tried to look cool."
"The second hit from the beam quirk was a better performance."
"The third hit was a bit embarrassing, not even sure if you felt it, I think you scared the guy," Shinso laughed.
"So every time something hits you, you adapt to it specifically."
"You can think of it like that," Itsuki replied, rubbing his eyes.
Shinso was quiet for a moment, processing that. "So in a long fight, the longer it goes the less anyone can actually do to you."
"That's the general idea."
"That's… that's kind of terrifying, We are good right!" Shinso said with a smile.
"Yeah we are," Itsuki let out a good chuckle.
He thought about adding something else and decided not to. Then after a beat: "I think you made the right decision by coming down."
Shinso side-eyed him, Itsuki wasn't looking back, already reading the street ahead, filing away whatever the criminal had told him, as he would say already "three steps ahead".
Shinso looked back at the street ahead.
"You're still buying lunch," he said.
"Obviously," Itsuki replied. "I've been thinking about it since the rooftop."
****
DAMN I'M BURNT OUT FR!!! GIVE ME STONES PEOPLE!!!
This was pretty hard to do in one day. I thought of removing all the contractions to make it easier but I'm not a scammer so here we go.
I'm out!