Chapter Text
The kid pulled up his mask in the darkness of the night. He was crouched on the edge of a building, a nondescript red hoodie on over black cargo joggers and checkered Converse high tops. Red socks were peeking out from the pushed-up joggers, and he tilted his head as he took in the long, long drop below him. It was a risk, but… Fuck it.
He jumped.
The world rushed up on him, and at the last possible second, he activated his quirk. He spun midair, floating, without anything holding him up, and then he deactivated his quirk and dropped down to the ground in a crouch in a puddle. There was thunder on the horizon, so he couldn’t be out here for long, but he could be out here long enough. Long enough to get some stuff done, at least.
He straightened up, and lightning cracked on the horizon, lighting him up in the middle of the alleyway. He was short, slender, and there were bare strips of white hair slipping out from under the hood. He brushed them back and took off at a run, blue eyes scanning over the filthy alleyway, with a tagged building to his left, a dumpster painted in gang signs to the right. He slid out onto the street and looked up at the building next to him before he jogged around a corner and---
A scream split the night, and he headed towards it, running down the street with no one else coming to answer the call. No one cared in Shibuya, after all. It was becoming more and more common for underground pros to disappear from here. What had once been a thriving underground community had become little to nothing due to the tourism. While Japanese citizens protected underground heroes’ privacy, tourists loved to film and take photos of the underground pros in action. It had become a problem, and only the pros most skilled at avoiding photos had remained.
The trick to avoiding the cameras was to stick to the more residential areas, he had learned. There were plenty of limelight pros working the nightshift that prowled the nightlife areas, so he stuck to the alleyways between apartment buildings and suburbs.
There.
He slid to a halt at the man groping the woman in the dark alleyway as she tried to kick him off, and then he clicked on his quirk.
Both the man, woman, and him all slid as the center of gravity abruptly shifted. The three of them flew down the alleyway as the dumpster back here started to slide, too, and the boy caught a stray pipe and lashed out to grab the woman as the man screeched, high pitched and girlish as he crashed into a wall and smacked his forehead on the hard brick. The boy hauled the woman up as she trembled and clung to him, and then he deactivated his quirk. She went limp on the cement, and he rose to his feet and glared at the man as she desperately tried to fix her unbuttoned shirt.
“Not cool, dude,” he spat out, and the man swung on him. He didn’t have time to duck, and the hit rattled his brain in his skull as he went down. Abruptly, he downsized his field of influence and increased the gravity, pinning both him and the man to the ground. The woman got up and drew a knife, holding it up and shaking horribly, her knees knocking together, and the boy grinned at her.
“Don’t worry! It’s all under control, just don’t come close!” he called, and she swallowed as the man grunted and tried to rise to his feet, but to no avail.
“What the fuck are you doing, you sick freak?!” he demanded, and the boy looked down at him in disbelief.
“Oh, so now I’m the sick freak? You’re the perv! Groping women just trying to walk home!” he protested, and the man tried to climb to his feet before he collapsed again.
Well, now that they were here, what was he supposed to do? He hadn’t thought this through, and he always had to be in the center of the gravity. He was stuck, and the man was trying to wiggle along the ground to get out of it. That was fine. He wouldn’t be able to get through to the woman. He was going the wrong way. The man kept wriggling, though, and the boy focused, turning the field of influence into an oblong shape to take up the space of the alleyway to create a wall he couldn’t get through.
“Hey, you should run,” he said to the woman, and she stared at him in disbelief, her knife gleaming in the light.
“I’m not going to run, ” she said, and he blinked at her in surprise. “I’m not going to let you fight this guy alone. ”
“Oh, wow, that’s, like, super nice of you,” he said as the man managed to get out of the oval his influence had become, and he staggered to his feet, panting hard as he glared at the woman.
“You’re dead,” he hissed, and then he paused as he realized he couldn’t get around the circle.
“Well, this little Mexican standoff has been fun, but why don’t we call it a night?” the boy asked cheerfully. “I’ll go my way, y’all go yours, and we call it a draw.”
“No, that bitch is dead, ” the man swore and lunged, only to fall flat on his face and screech at the sound of a crack of his nose.
“Oof,” the boy said. “Well, you did that to yourself. You can’t blame me for it.”
“Shut up, I’ll fucking… kill you, ” the man swore, and then he activated his quirk. Glitter dumped out of the sky, all over the boy, and he closed his eyes as it hit him hard. Oh, that actually hurt, and now it was everywhere, all over the boy and the man. For a second, the boy was frozen, and then he began to laugh loudly.
“Oh, Glitter Bomb? Your quirk is Glitter Bomb and you thought you could stand up to me? What was that gonna do??” he screeched into the night, and the man struggled to push himself off, the silver glitter mixing with the blood that had poured out onto the concrete.
“It will ruin your fucking day, ” the man snarled, and the boy cackled.
“Darling, I am a homosexual. A little glitter never hurt a fag,” he said, and he let out a ‘wheeeeewww’ sound. “Honestly, what was that actually going to do? Did you even bring a knife? Anything? What if she had a more powerful quirk than you?”
“I can just change my eye color…” the woman said, and he cackled.
“Well, that’s a lot better than Glitter Bomb over here,” he wheezed, and the man struggled to get up.
“I’m not going to be mocked by some kid that thinks he’s a fag,” he swore, and the boy quieted.
“Hey,” he said quietly. “I can call myself that. You can’t.”
With that, he flipped his quirk, and the two of them slammed into the wall, hard, before he reversed it and the man went screaming down the alleyway as the boy slid with him. They went out tumbling into the middle of the street and smashed into another wall, and the boy hit the stairs of an apartment complex hard, but he was not to be deterred. He switched the quirk again, noting the man was just in a t-shirt and some shorts to beat the summer heat, and the two of them went sliding down the street, the man howling as road rash ripped up his flesh and tore him asunder. The woman rushed out into the street, her knife still in hand, gleaming dangerously in the light of the street lamps, and the boy cut his quirk and staggered to his feet. Oh, he was definitely going to be bruised at school tomorrow. Goddammit.
There was a step in the darkness, and someone hooded and cloaked in all black, combat trousers, combat boots, a zipped up jacket with a lot of pockets, hood pulled over his hair, goggles on his face and a mask over his face emerged from the darkness. Was that another vigilante, or an underground pro? Was the boy about to be in trouble?
He dusted himself off and took a half step back, but there was a weird vibrating frequency in the air that left him feeling queasy and unwell. Oh, definitely an underground pro. There was a sort of danger to him that spoke to training, and the boy turned and bolted as the man staggered to his feet, bleeding all over the place. He ran, fully confident the woman would be fine now, sprinting right past her and then falling up. The air whooshed past him as he fell up, falling, falling, falling in a weird way, and he reached the top of the building and fell to the right until he cut his quirk and landed hard on the roof. He rolled and bolted, knowing damn well he made a mess of that situation, but he couldn’t be bothered to care.
That was a real underground pro, and it looked like Touma Rikimaru, aka Grav-i, the beloved vigilante of Shibuya for the past six months, had some competition on his hands.
God
dammit.