Tuesday morning arrived, another job, same flat tone from Sho, same phone, same nothing-is-wrong quality that Kai had started to learn meant something might go wrong.
"Two stops in Katsushika," Sho said. "Collection first, drop second. I'm coming with you."
"Problem with the receiver?"
"The area," Sho said. "There's been some movement from a crew that doesn't belong there. Probably nothing. Probably."
Kai noted the second probably and didn't say anything about it.
They met at the station at noon. Sho was already there, leaning against the wall outside the entrance with a coffee and the expression he wore when he was paying attention to everything and showing none of it.
He looked Kai over once when he arrived, the way he always did, quick and thorough, checking for something Kai had never quite identified.
"You bring anything?" Sho said.
Kai tapped his jacket pocket where the knife sat, then the other where the multi-tool was clipped to the lining.
He'd started carrying the tactical flashlight too, hooked to his belt under the jacket where it sat heavy and solid against his hip.
Sho nodded and pushed off the wall.
They took the train east in silence.
* * *
The collection went fine. A back room behind a noodle shop, a man who handed over a sealed case without making eye contact, the kind of transaction that existed entirely in the space between words.
Kai took the case and they left and that was the first stop.
It was on the walk to the drop that the crew Sho had mentioned decided to stop being probably nothing.
Three of them, stepping out from a service lane between two shuttered shops. Young, early twenties, with the loose-shouldered posture of people who'd been told they were intimidating often enough to believe it.
The one in front had a quirk running already, his forearms thickening and darkening, some kind of density enhancement. The other two flanked wide.
"That case," the one in front said. "Put it down and walk."
Sho said nothing. Kai said nothing. They looked at each other for half a second in the way they'd started doing, a quick wordless exchange that covered more ground than it had any right to.
Sho moved left. Kai moved right.
The one with the density quirk came at Kai, which made sense, Sho was clearly the older and more weathered of the two and the kid with the sealed case was the easier-looking mark.
The man's arm swung and Kai stepped inside it, got his forearm up against the inside of the elbow and redirected, and drove two fingers hard into the side of the man's neck at the pressure point just below the jaw.
The man's legs buckled. He didn't go down but he staggered and the swing lost its momentum and that was enough.
Kai activated Quick Feet.
The second one was already moving and Kai was at his flank before the man finished processing where he'd gone.
He drew the knife from his belt and brought it down across the back of the man's knee, not a full swing, just enough leverage at the right angle, leaving a shallow cut, blood splattering onto the ground, and the man dropped sideways with a sound that screamed pain.
The third one hesitated.
Kai turned and looked at him. The knife was still in his hand. He didn't raise it. He just looked, the way he'd learned to look, direct and still and holding it a beat past the point where most people looked away.
The third one took a step back.
FEAR POINTS +19
To his left, Sho put the second man down with two efficient movements that Kai only caught the end of, a wrist lock into a controlled drop, textbook and unhurried. Then it was quiet.
The whole thing had taken maybe forty seconds.
Kai clicked off Quick Feet and felt the familiar drain settle into his legs, heavier than usual because he'd moved more. He kept his breathing even.
FEAR POINTS +50
Fifty points arriving in a single pulse, not from the men on the ground but from somewhere behind him and to the right. He didn't turn around immediately. When he did, casually, like he was just checking the lane, Sho was watching him.
Not the aftermath. Him. With an expression that had closed off very quickly into something neutral, but not quickly enough.
Kai looked at him for a moment. Sho looked back. 'Does he suspect something.' He wondered, maybe he had noticed Quick Feet, but Kai had no proof that he did, which unsettled him.
"We should move," Sho said abruptly.
"Yeah," Kai replied, and they moved.
* * *
The drop went clean. They didn't talk about the lane on the walk back to the station, or on the train, or at any point in the hour it took to get back to Koto ward.
Kai didn't bring it up because there was nothing to bring up. Sho didn't bring it up because Sho had apparently decided something and was keeping it to himself.
Kai had thirty-four unexpected points and an idea about where they'd come from, and he turned that over quietly while the train moved and said nothing.
* * *
Oda was at the table when they came in, tea poured, already waiting the way he always was when he'd been told something was happening.
Sho gave the report. Brief, accurate, no editorialising. Three men, density quirk on the lead, disrupted and cleared without damage to the package or either of them. Clean.
Oda listened. When Sho finished he was quiet for a moment, then he looked at Kai.
"All three," he said.
"Two," Kai said. "Sho took one."
"Sho can take them every time. That's expected." Oda set his cup down. "You cleared two in under a minute with a knife and no quirk, kept the package secure, and didn't escalate." He looked at Kai with something that wasn't quite surprise but had surprise's shape. "That's not what I expected when I hired a fifteen year old."
"Sixteen next month," Kai said.
The corner of Oda's mouth moved.
"Keep this up," he said, "and there's more available to you than delivery work. Better pay, more responsibility, more of the operation visible to you." He paused.
"I don't say that to everyone. Think about whether you want it."
Kai thought about it for approximately three seconds, which was long enough to look like he was considering it seriously.
"Alright I'll keep this up," Kai said.
Oda picked up his tea. That was the end of the meeting.
* * *
Sho walked him out.
At the bottom of the stairs, before the door, he stopped. Kai stopped too.
"Good work today," Sho said.
"You too," Kai said.
Sho looked at him for a moment with an expression that had several things moving underneath it and none of them on the surface.
"See you Thursday," he said, and pushed through the door.
Kai stood there for a second. Then he followed.
* * *
On the train home Sho sat two seats away and watched the city go past the window and thought about forty seconds in a service lane in Katsushika.
He'd seen fast people before. People with speed quirks, people trained from childhood, people who moved like the space between moments was shorter for them than for everyone else.
He knew what fast looked like and he knew what it felt like to be in the same space as it.
What he'd seen in that lane wasn't a quirk. Or if it was, it wasn't one that showed. No light, no visible change, no tell.
The kid had just been somewhere and then been somewhere else, and the gap between those two positions had been wrong in a way that didn't match anything Sho had a name for.
He'd felt it before he'd understood it, a spike of something cold and instinctive, the kind of thing the body did before the brain caught up. He hadn't shown it. He was fairly sure he hadn't shown it.
He thought about what Oda had said. Couldn't find medical history. Maybe he lied about being quirkless.
Maybe.
Or maybe whatever the kid was carrying wasn't something that showed up in any system that existed yet. A sort of speed enhancing drug perhaps.
Sho looked at the window and made a decision without quite deciding it. He wasn't going to say anything. Not yet. Maybe not at all.
The kid was good at the job. He was careful and he was quiet and he didn't cause problems, and whatever he had, he used it like a tool rather than a crutch, which was more than Sho could say for most people twice his age.
That was enough of a reason. It didn't need to be more than that.
He got off at his stop and walked home and didn't think about it again.
Or tried not to.
* * *
Kai got home at eight, made instant noodles, and sat on the futon with the interface open while the noodles cooled.
The points from the day sat in his balance. The three men in the lane had given him a combined forty-one.
The fifty from Sho he'd quietly set aside in his head and not looked at directly, the way you didn't look directly at something if you weren't ready to deal with what looking at it meant.
He stared at the uncommon gacha with a price of 500, without a moment's thought he opened it.
The wheel lurched through its degraded rotation, colours bleeding at the edges, the progress bar dipping and catching. He'd gotten used to the glitching now, the way you got used to a door that stuck, you just pushed harder and expected the resistance.
It landed.
DRAW: COLLAPSIBLE BATON.
Aircraft-grade aluminium. 47cm extended. Pressure-lock mechanism. Grip-textured handle.
It appeared on the futon beside him. He picked it up, turned it over. Compact in the closed position, the length of his hand.
He found the release and snapped it open and it extended with a clean solid click that filled the small room.
He held it for a moment, testing the weight and balance.
Better reach than the knife. Did damage without leaving external evidence. Something that could end a confrontation without ending the person, which was the kind of thing that mattered when the person on the other end had a name Oda knew.
Current Balance: 218
He collapsed it and set it next to the knife on the shelf above the futon, which was getting crowded in a way he found more reassuring than it probably should have.
He ate his noodles. They were cold. His eyes stared at the small safe where he kept his life's supplies.
Slowly it was growing, but not quick as he needed it to, perhaps the promotion Oda was talking about would be worth striving for.