Canon Fodder

CHAPTER 177 QUIRKY

“This is the best day ever,” Toru commented as the masseuse rubbed her down. There had been questions about how old we were but a quick Genjutsu took care of that. 

“I agree,” Nejire mumbled on my other side. 

“Ditto,” I said in a daze as one girl rubbed my feet and another rubbed my shoulders. Of course I had signed up for 2 people to massage me. It had been a while since I’d had the experience back in One Piece. I was hooked. 

“What’s next?” Toru asked. 

“I have you booked for spa treatments,” I said. “Nails done, mud bath, facials, waxing if you’re interested.”

“Jeez you went all out,” Nejire said in a daze. “I guess there are perks sleeping with the winner of the Sports Festival.”

“Oh my god, I thought I recognized you 3,” the masseuse at my shoulders said. I looked up to her. She was a skinny woman, simple looks except for some antennae that stuck out her head. I was sure they were part of some quirk she had. 

“A fan?” I asked. 

“Of course. You won the 1st year competition, didn’t you?” She asked. 

“I did.” I had been recognized now and then but the Sports Festival was months ago. I was surprised people still remembered. But Aizawa had said it was like the Olympics, so I wasn’t too surprised. 

“What are you all doing all the way in Okayama?” She asked. 

“Vacation,” I said, laying back down. “Anything interesting to do around here?” 

“Not too much,” she said, going back to work. “There’s the top-tier restaurant Musashi. There’s a cook with a quirk there that can bring out crazy flavors from food. I swear the chicken tastes like Kobe beef.”

“Sounds fun, any way to get a reservation?” I asked. 

“It’s impossible,” she said. 

“My boyfriend is a waiter there,” one of the other girls said. “He could probably get you in.” 

“Oh fun. Make it happen and I’ll give a nice tip to all of you,” I said.  

“Deal,” she said with a laugh. “You’ll probably have to meet him though. He’s a fan of the Sports Festival.” 

“Sounds like a plan,” I said. The massage wrapped up and she was making a call. I gave them each a big cash tip and our reservation was made for that night. Money made the world go round. 

“I’m going to want to know where you got all this money,” Toru said as we walked out in our bathrobes. 

“Even if it’s a little…illegal?” I asked, flashing a grin. 

“Did you steal it?” She asked, narrowing her eyes. 

“I’m a hero in training,” I said as if that answered the question. She continued to glare. “No I didn’t.”

“Good, then I want to know,” she said firmly. 

I had considered the lie about my mothers insurance. But after talking to the masseuse I had a better idea. “I bet I’d win the Sports Festival.”

“What?” The girls asked in unison. 

“I found a bookie and bet I’d win. Odds were pretty against me since Todoroki was in our class. It was a 20 to 1 odds. I made quite the profit.” I had looked for a bookie like I’d done in Naruto for that tournament but hadn’t found anyone. 

“That is an…acceptable amount of illegal,” Toru decided on. 

“How much you get?” Nejire asked. 

“Enough,” I said. 

“Then I don’t feel so bad spending it,” she admitted. “Give me 100,000 yen please.” 

“Why?” I asked, skeptical. 

“Because I’m sick of asking you for money,” she said cutely. I nodded. Expertly pulling the money out of my status screen I handed them each a stack of money. They put on wide smiles, gave me a kiss on each cheek, and were soon off to their spa treatments. 

I headed to our room. Dressing in my swim trunks I headed out back to the man made beach. The place was plenty busy over the summer months. But it was a very expensive hotel that didn’t have too many rooms. The beach had people but it wasn’t packed. There were a few kids here and there but not too many. 

Walking down the beach to somewhere a little more secluded. Sitting on the sand I relaxed my mind. Letting the sound of the waves become the only thing I heard. 

Breathing in and out I tried to feel my quirk again. I had been able to sense my Haki and Chakra. But I still couldn’t feel my quirk. From what I could tell there was nothing special about my body that allowed me to absorb and expel energy. 

It had been driving me mad for over a week now. Trying to understand my power. Back when I learned of my first quirk it kicked in when I was 4. I picked up a water balloon, throwing it at my mom. It froze instantly and I ran a fever. 

Like all other kids, quirk awakening was a random experience. You could usually tell what was going to happen because the quirks were similar to your parents. My dad could absorb energy from plant life. I was told my mother could boil things. So my quirk was similar to theirs. 

I had gone through some type of evolution. Back when I first came to MHA I had received a quest for a quirk evolution but failed the quest. With the Forge I used it on Muscular. How I understood his power was that he could make himself stronger. Much like All Might. But Muscular’s quirk had caused layers of muscle to grow on his body. 

My one clue for understanding the evolution was strength. Could I make myself stronger? But the Forge had said it would mix the quirk in with my own. Looking at my status screen I still had the Give and Take Quirk. So that meant I could still give and take energy. I was starting to question if it was kinetic energy. 

Back in the original MHA manga, the hero Fat Gum had a power like that. He could absorb energy from blows. Store it in his body. Then expel the energy out. Could I do something like that now? 

It was an idea much like the Reject Dial from One Piece. Storing energy it would then multiply it and shoot it out. It sounded like a good evolution to my quirk. The problem was figuring out how to use it. 

Opening my eyes I was ready to start training but was surprised to see someone staring at me. He was a tall man. A good 6 feet 5 inches tall. Wearing a Hawaiian themed shirt that was open it showed off his muscular chest. 

“I thought it was you,” the man said with a small smirk on his face. “Hey guys, I told you it was that kid that won the Sports Festival,” he said turning to his side. A group of 4 people were standing there. 2 women and 2 men they were all muscular and fit. 

Turning on my Observation Haki just in case they wanted to cause trouble I asked, “Can I help you?”

“Uh yeah, sorry,” the man said with a laugh. “I’m Tank. I thought I recognized you. Wanted to say hi.” I nodded standing up. 

“Weston,” I said, shaking his hand. He had a firm grip. I could tell he was strong. 

“Frostwave, right?” He asked. I nodded looking at his team as they approached. “What are you doing so far from UA?” 

“It’s summer break. Decided it was time to clear my head before the next term,” I said. 

“You guys and your UA,” one of the women said. She had short blonde hair. In a 1 piece bikini she was the palest of them all. Probably the only foreigner from the group I guessed she was English with the accent. 

“What? Gotta represent,” Tank said. He had a shaved head, which only made him look more imposing. “This is Payback,” he said pointing to the blonde girl. “Druid,” he said pointing to the other woman in the group. She had long red hair, but not the normal light red hair, it was dark like blood. “Mage,” he said pointing to one of the other guys. He had white translucent hair and 2 white horns protruding from his forehead. “And Rogue.” He pointed to the last member of their group. Buzz cut black hair he was the shortest of the group. Only about 5 feet tall he was still muscular like all of them. 

“Tank, Rogue, Mage, and Druid?” I asked. “You guys a dungeon party?” 

“Pretty much,” Tank said with a laugh. “We had a friend that went by Heals, but he quit the group back after UA. Decided to become a doctor.” 

“Oh, you guys are alumni?” 

“All but me,” Payback said. “No, I’ve been stuck with these guys for years now.” 

“What brings you here?” I asked. I was getting a military vibe from all of them. A group of old friends they were the most muscular people on the beach besides myself. 

“Vacation and work,” Tank said. “But it’s good to meet you. You did pretty dang good in the Sports Festival. I don’t think any of us ever made it past the semi-finals.” 

“Crazy to meet people that graduated from UA. Were you in the hero course?” I asked. 

“We all were,” Tank said. “But not all of us can be heroes. Aizawa still work there?” 

“He does, he’s my homeroom teacher,” I said with a laugh. 

“Man, that brings back memories. That guy was always so serious. Hard to think of him as a teacher,” Tank said. The others were pretty quiet as they watched us converse. But I knew something was off about them. It was rare to meet people that had graduated from UA that weren’t heroes or related to heroes in some way. 

We stood there awkwardly for a moment. I thought the conversation was done and they would move on, but Tank added, “Hey, what are you doing tonight?” 

“My friends and I were going to go check out Musashi,” I said. 

“Oh that hot restaurant,” Payback noted. “We tried to get a table. How’d you score one.”

“Bribed someone whose boyfriend works there,” I said. 

“Damn, should have known,” Payback said.

“Well after that, you got plans?” Tank asked. I shook my head. “We’ve got a pretty sweet event to check out. I think it would be up your alley.”

“Oh yeah, what event?” I asked, hesitant to go anywhere with a bunch of strangers. 

“You’ll like it. There will be a lot of fighting,” Tank said with a smile. 

“Fighting? Count me in,” I said. If I was going to figure out my quirk, then I needed to get into some fights. 

“Thought so,” Tank said, a confident look in his eyes. 

—

“What exactly are we doing?” Nejire asked. She wore normal street clothes. We had dressed up a little for the Musashi restaurant but for checking out the event I wanted us in normal attire. 

“No idea,” I said. “I’m guessing it’s some illegal fighting ring.” Tank hadn’t been very forthcoming with information when we parted ways. 

“Seriously?!” Toru asked, turning invisible once more. “Shouldn’t we be stopping this sort of thing? Not going to it?”

“No idea,” I admitted. “We don’t have to. Just thought it would be good to learn a little about the city.” 

“Ugh, I have my provisional hero license,” Nejire said. “Might not be good to be seen at something illegal.” 

“I don’t know for sure if it’s illegal. Just the vibe I got,” I said, but also didn’t want to get her in trouble. “I could change your looks a little.”

“How?” She asked. 

“Chakra,” I admitted. 

“You and this chakra. How the hell do you get such a weird skill?” I had awoken it in her the night before, but it would be a few weeks before she could do much with it. 

“Lucky I guess. Want me to change you a little?” I asked. 

“Sure,” she said. I did a quick hand seal and touched her hair. Chakra poured over her hair making it black. “That’s it?” 

“You think anyone would recognize you without your distinct hair?” I asked. 

“I doubt it,” Toru said. “You look so different.” 

“But I love my hair,” Nejire whined. 

“It’ll just be while we are here,” I said. We walked up to the outside of the large office building. I had expected a warehouse on the outskirts of town but instead we were downtown. The streets were mostly dead of foot traffic. There were plenty of cars that drove by. I walked to the back entrance I was told of. 

Finding 2 large men guarding a door we walked to them. “Love and Peace,” I said. One of the men nodded and opened the door. We walked in to find a set of stairs that went up. 

“What was that?” Toru asked nervously. 

“The password apparently,” I said. 

“Gotta admit, this is kind of exciting,” Nejire whispered as we walked up the stairs. 

“Exciting? I’m terrified,” Toru said. 

“This is the kind of thing we are trained for,” Nejire said. “I had a class for going undercover work. I actually get to use it. I’ll be…Pixie.”

“Oh fun, call me…-” 

“Ghost,” I offered. 

“That sounds badass,” Nejire said. 

“Okay yeah, Ghost,” she said quickly. A little too excited now. 

We stopped at a large double door. “I’ll be Frostwave,” I said. “You ready Ghost and Pixie?” The girls nodded, at least I assumed Toru did. She was still invisible. 

We stepped through to find about what I expected. Stands of people sitting as they watched and cheered at a fighting ring down below. The place had thousands of people inside. All yelling, cheering, drinking, eating, and general raucous behavior of a crowd. Lost for a moment I grabbed the girls hands and pulled them to stand behind the stadium seats. 

“Holy fuck,” Nejire said as she stared down at the stadium. A man with shining blue tentacles attacked another that was in a full set of armor. “This is crazy. Look at all these people.”

“Not too surprising,” I said. “I mean, people have quirks. It would be weird if there wasn’t something like this going on.” 

“Like what?” Toru asked. 

“My guess? They’re showing off, look at those booths up there,” I said pointing to above the general admission stands. There were large rooms hidden behind one way mirrors. 

“So?” Toru asked, not understanding. 

“They’re-” I tried to say but was caught off as someone appeared next to us. I turned, having sensed him with my Haki.

“There you are,” Rogue said. He was the short guy from Tank’s group. “We saved you a spot. I assume these are your friends?”

“Yep,” I said. Rogue nodded and headed down the stairs. The girls and I shared a look then followed. Heading down the stands we walked almost all the way down. Rogue stopped at the 3rd row from the front and waved us to follow. The seats were far enough away to not be too much of an issue to walk in front of people. These seats weren’t filled up too much anyway. Everyone in them appeared quite strong. It wasn’t long until we were coming up to Tank’s group. They sat in the row and the one in front. 

Rogue moved to a spot further away and Tank waved us to sit next to he and Payback. We did some short introductions, but were then interrupted as the crowd cheered. The guy with the translucent tentacles was slamming the armored guy against the chain link wall that surrounded the arena. It wasn’t long until the fight was called. 

“Our winner! Blue Inferno!” An announcer yelled from the sidelines. 

“Blue Inferno?” Nejire asked. “He was 2 years ahead of me at UA.” 

“Not surprising,” Tank cut in. “Welcome to the Hero Rejects.” 

“Hero Rejects?” I asked looking around. I didn’t recognize any of the people, but was starting to get an idea of what was going on here. 

“Yep,” Tank said. “All us people that did something to piss off the Hero Safety Commission. We usually end up here, or at another dozen fighting rings like it.” 

“Why?” Toru asked, some fear leaking in her voice once more as the crowd’s applause died down. 

“You each have what? 20 people in your classes? Then the B classes have another 20 kids that didn’t make the cut to be a hero. One thing or another leads them here,” Tank said in a sad tone. “You train for years with your quirk. Are injured countless times, spend thousands of hours building up your body. Using your quirk is not some switch you can hit to turn off. It becomes a part of you at school. It’s hard for us to let it go.” 

“So you fight at tournaments? Is there money involved?” I asked. 

“Some, but the real prize is to show off,” Tank said pointing up to the 1 way mirrors above us. “The real reason is to try to catch the eye of the elite.”

“Elites?” Nejire asked, starting to see it now. 

“Of course. You think rich people want normal bodyguards? No, they want people that were trained to fight. Fight with quirks too,” Tank admitted. 

“Isn’t that illegal?” Nejire asked. As an upperclassmen she had much more experience with how the world should work when it came to heroes. 

“Nope,” Payback said from beside tank. “These are the people that wrote the laws. Or paid for them to be written. They can pay for private quirk licenses. Making pretty much anything they do with their quirk legal. Basically a hero pass. But these rich boys get them under their employ and send them off to do anything and everything they need.” 

“Is that what you do?” I asked.

“Not anymore,” Tank said without shame. “No, we are more of a Mercenary group. We work by the job.” 

“Ah a Muirk,” I said. It was a mix of Mercenary and Quirk. “I’ve heard of you guys.” 

“Really?” Tank asked. “That’s rare, most don’t talk about us.” Muirks were one of many things that had come up in my research about what I wanted to do in this world. Back in the day the Hero Safety Commission used to assign the less than desirable missions to heroes. One too many fought against it, forcing the commission to outsource the less than ideal jobs. 

“What’s a Muirk?” Nejire asked wide eyed. 

“I’ll tell you later,” I promised. “So why’d you invite us?” 

“Who doesn’t want to see a good fight?” Tank asked with a smile on his face. 

“Not me, I prefer to be the one fighting,” I admitted. 

“That could be arranged,” Tank said with a laugh. 

“Then sign me up,” I said, growing excited.