Chapter Text
“Rory! I don’t wanna go!” a young girl cried as her older brother continued pulling her along by the hand. The sun had set a few minutes early, and it was just starting to get dark. The older boy was leading her along towards a lonely building on the outskirts of town. It looked like an abandoned warehouse, with the only new addition to the building being a neon sign that read: FAZBEAR’S FRIGHT: The Horror Attraction.
“Come on Zoey, quit being such a baby. What, are you afraid of ghosts?” Rory teased as he reached the entrance. He’d expected to find someone at the front to buy a ticket from, but instead he was met with a paper taped to the front door with frantic scrawls in red ink. “Free admission. Enter if you dare!” Rory read and smirked to his sister. “Let’s go!”
“No!” Zoey whined as Rory opened the door and dragged her inside. The inside was dusty, with random pieces of 80’s memorabilia scattered around. It was arranged almost like a murder scene. Fake blood was splattered against the tiled floor, occasionally spelling out the message [IT’S ME].
“Rory, can we please go home?” Zoey asked as she pulled on her brother’s arm.
But Rory was busy staring at the figure on the other side of the room, it looked like a rabbit version of Chuck E Cheese, but more worn down, like it’s been rotting for decades. It was slumped over against the wall with a knife sticking out of its chest, but every so often, he could swear that it moved. Not big dramatic movements, but it was twitching, subtly, unnaturally. It didn’t feel like a robot that was programmed to move, it was something alive. “We should go,” he decided and ran with her towards the door. As they ran they crashed into what felt like an invisible wall. The two of them took a step back in confusion and the ‘wall’ rippled as a green circle expanded and formed the shape of an animatronic bear.
“Were you planning on leaving? The show just started,” a sadistic voice called from behind them. Rory turned around and saw the Rabbit Man slowly get up. Everything about the way he moved looked painful. He took the knife out of his chest and it began dripping with blood. He grabbed the back of the knife blade and wiped the blood off with his hand. Zoey screamed, activating her quirk and knocking the bear backwards from the force her scream produced. “Ah yes, they always go down screaming,” the voice said with a dark chuckle before tossing the knife at her. Rory grabbed her and pulled her out of the way.
“I should have listened to you about coming here Zoey, I’m sorry!” Rory said as he got into a fighting stance and started forming a clone of himself. The bear disappeared once more and Rory felt a punch to his gut as it silently struck him. He was winded as he skidded along the floor, landing at the feet of the Rabbit Man, the clone he was trying to form collapsed into dust, not having been completed in time. The Rabbit Man raised a foot and hovered it over Rory’s throat.
“Any last words?” the man asked coldly.
“Rory!” Zoey cried as she ran towards him.
“Zoey! Run away!” he begged.
“Don’t worry, she’ll be joining you soon,” the Rabbit Man chuckled darkly and brought his foot down.
The day after the incident with the snake, Mizu walked into the classroom which was abuzz with chatter about their patrol assignments. While a few of them were swapping stories, most of their patrols were evidently uneventful. As she approached her desk, she felt a hand clasp against her shoulder, and she whipped around to see a tall woman with dark orange hair.
“Yo Mizu, I saw you on the news yesterday. How come you two already got to fight a villain?” she asked.
“Jealous, Edith?” Mizu replied, eyeing her with a smirk.
“Just you wait, I’ll fight my first villain soon enough, and I’m not gonna need a pro hero to swoop in at the end like you did.” Edith said her eyes narrowed in determination.
“Are you two done with your daily staring contest yet?” Sukino asked monotonically. The girls whipped their heads around to look at the white haired boy. His red eyes had a bored expression as he looked at them. “Seriously you two, Heroism isn’t a contest.”
“If you two don’t sit down, I’m gonna write a fanfiction of you two getting together,” Jae threatened with a devious giggle. Both girls decided to heed her threat as they both got in their chairs.
“You’re a little scary sometimes, you know that right?” A short boy with brown hair in a bowl cut said as he looked at the Korean girl, his face was in his hand and he had a goofy grin.
“Yet you keep approaching anyway,” Jae replied with a playful grin as she pushed his head away with her sketchbook.
“Hey, you’re scary, but there's beauty underneath,” he said flirtatiously, causing her to roll her eyes.
“Not in my wildest fanfics, Shroomy,” she said before opening her sketchbook once more and working on her manhwa.
“If I wrote one, would you two stop doing this?” Sukino asked with the same monotone voice. Everyone burst out laughing at the turnaround, much to Sukino’s confusion. “What’s so funny?”
“I expect it on my desk by Friday,” Jae joked.
“Why not give a copy to Enoki too? He is the other main character,” Edith teased.
“Shroomy can read it when I’m done with it, not that Sukino is actually gonna write it,” Jae replied, sticking her tongue out at both boys.
“It’s a good thing Penny has another holiday, she’d have probably had at least three heart attacks from this conversation,” Mizu said, shaking her head a tiny bit.
“If just talking about my works is enough, imagine how she’d react to reading one?” Jae joked as the professor walked in and clapped her hands to get everyone’s attention.
“Settle down class, I have some announcements to make now that you’ve all had your first foray into heroism. First a reminder that this does not mean go looking for trouble as you are still students. Even if some of you have proven on some level that you were able to handle trouble when it finds you.” Professor White shot a knowing glance in Mizu’s direction causing the girl to grin sheepishly. “Unless you have an internship or a work study with a confirmed hero agency, please don’t go looking for trouble.”
Mizu wrote down the important bits of the announcement for Penny’s sake. However, She knew she needed to start looking for trouble if she wanted to keep the name Reginaqua in the public consciousness, so that announcement was not gonna apply to her. Besides, she had a feeling that getting an internship or work study wouldn’t be so hard after meeting that boy yesterday. The business card he gave her was still neatly tucked away in her backpack.
Koko sat in his room rereading one of his mangas, grateful for the downtime. Zenith was busy meeting with a client, so he wasn’t going to get assigned a mission anytime soon. Just as he was getting sucked into the story, he heard his phone ring. He slammed the volume against his desk in frustration and turned to look at the phone which was displaying a call from an unknown number. He sighed and picked up the phone, putting on his best customer service voice.
“Hello. You’ve reached Nadir. Who might I be speaking to?”
He was a bit surprised when he heard a young woman start speaking. “Hello. My name is Mizu Kori, you met me yesterday while my friend and I were on a patrol. I wanted to follow up and see if your agency was interested in hiring interns?”
“The girl from yesterday… you’re kidding!” Koko chuckled a bit as he remembered the latest mission he’d been assigned by Zenith, and how the solution to his biggest problem just called him. “ I wanted to get in touch with you again, but I didn’t know how. My boss read my report and wanted to hire you two. You two attend AEI, correct?”
“Yeah, I’m guessing you need to meet with our professor to sign the paperwork?”
“Something like that, it would also be easier to schedule your onboarding if we meet in person when you two are done with your classes. We can meet by the front gate. Pass the message along to Penina, she can accept or reject the offer during our meeting.”
“Great! I’ll let her know! Thanks, Nadir.”
“One more thing: Please call me Koko.”
“Alright then. Thanks Koko. You won’t regret hiring us!” the girl said excitedly as she hung up.
“Yeah… I hope you’re right,” he said quietly to himself as he made her number a contact. He put down the phone and sighed before taking out his laptop and beginning to draft internship contracts for the two of them.