『Hakari Kotaro』
Feat Achieved! Survive Mirko's Test and Impress Her
+1x Gold Item Gacha Ticket
I feel like the Gacha was using the word "Survive" very liberally here.
I certainly did not feel like I survived. Hell, I was doubtful if I was even alive at this very second.
"Mirko-sensei, what do you mean by 'start the internship for real'?"
Despite my body being repaired, I could still feel phantom pains, and my energy reserves were not doing great. It was only my inhuman stamina that allowed me to stand at this moment.
She turned to me and smirked while quickly changing out of her ruined uniform(she apparently had an entire wardrobe of her uniforms).
"What do you think? We're going on patrol in an hour. I'll give you a moment to rest and eat since I went so hard on you. What do you want to order? You eat pizza?"
I was about to voice my complaints about her treating me like a workhorse before thinking better of it.
What was I? A bitch? When I am faced with a trial, I thug it out, I don't complain.
She can throw whatever she wants at me, I'll take it on the chin, even that ass. I was the one who chose this internship.
"A pizza sounds like heaven right now, can you get me 6 Meat Lovers?"
Mirko barked out a laugh and smacked my shoulder, forming a new bruise over my already tender flesh.
"Hah! You've got an appetite on you. Fine, they deliver my orders fast here."
Mirko tossed her steel toes away and tossed herself onto the couch while pulling out her phone and starting to order. In the meantime, I leaned back and mentally rolled my new ticket.
Rolling Gold Item Gacha with advantage...
[Beach Key]
|Elite Item|
An ornate key that, when turned in a sufficiently large space, creates a portal leading into a pocket dimension that is 10 km x 10 km x 10 km in size that contains a beach that leads into a sea filled with sea life. Perfect for fishing or taking a relaxing vacation. The gate that leads outside the dimension is always open and leads to where the entrance was last opened.
or
[Box of Scraps]
|Rare Item|
"If Tony Stark could make do with it, so can you" It's a box containing an unlimited amount of scrapped electronics that are stealthily stolen from Earth. Any broken electronic that the average Joe may have thrown away is in here. You have to physically reach in and grab it, though. No turning the box upside down.
Hmm, do I want my own fucking pocket dimension with a Beach inside. Or do I want a goddamn box of scraps?
No offense to Tony Stark, but I think I'll take my own beach.
The moment I confirmed my choice, a rather artistic looking gold and blue key dropped into my hands, making Mirko perk up and look up at me.
"Where'd that come from? Is that your quirk?"
I threw the key into my bag and nodded. Testing could come when I wasn't starving and tired.
"Yeah, it's a part of it. Just a new item I got, don't worry about it."
"Ah, ok!"
With that, we both went silent for a while, mostly because I was too tired to even move, let alone hold a conversation. I slapped my Hypnos' Sleeping mask on my face and conked out until Mirko woke me up to tell me to eat the pizzas that were delivered.
And this woman had an appetite that matched my own with her ordering 7 pizzas with plenty of vegetables and tearing into them with gusto you'd expect from a starving wolf.
Once food was done, Mirko picked me right back up as if I weighed nothing.
"Alright! Time to go on patrol! Go on and change and meet me out front in 2 minutes or else you can kiss your chance to see these puppies again anytime soon goodbye!"
"Fine."
As she let me down(which was an awkward affair considering I stood a head over her) I retrieved a new case of my hero uniform and changed with gusto before going out front to see her waiting for me. Upon seeing me step out, she nodded her head.
"Good, you're quick. Now, you might be wondering why we have to go on patrol instead of getting to train some more."
Not really? I think the heroes need to do patrol was rather obvious to me. That was kinda their entire job. But she did not seem to think so.
"Listen up! I had to learn this so you do too! Us heroes go on patrol, it isn't usually the most important thing since heroes like me can move extremely fast, so our distance from a reported crime doesn't matter much, but do you know what it does matter for? Morale."
She pointed a thumb at her chest.
"What does it matter if you are the biggest baddest coolest Hero around if people never get to see you? So doing regular patrols allows folks to catch sight of you, and feel reassured knowing you are there instead of wonderin' where you are! It's the job of a hero to keep people safe n' all! And that extends to making them feel safe too!"
For a full moment, I was taken aback by her explanation. Not having expected such a reasonable explanation from the woman who would have killed me an hour ago if I were not so durable.
Was Mirko smart and not just a meathead?
"I didn't expect to learn that today. That sounds unexpectedly wise."
She punched my arm lightly.
"Well now ya did! People gotta know you are out there to feel safe, especially now with the recent rise of Villain activity. Just because I don't buddy up and have my own agency doesn't mean I'm half assing this, and neither are you."
Listening to her, I agreed, and couldn't help but feel some respect for her. Beyond my respect for her sexy ass muscles of course.
We started walking out of the gate and into the Sagi prefecture of Japan where Mirko worked. The buildings here were taller and more tightly packed than those over on Musutafu, and it was a lot more metropolitan for the lack of a better word.
As we walked down the street, people took photos, gasped and pointed, and otherwise couldn't take their eyes off of us, and I did not like it. Especially when they approached us for photos but Mirko casually deflected it with practiced ease.
I could hear people shout about whether I was her sidekick, her intern, or her boyfriend or whatever until Mirko nudged my shoulder with her elbow.
"Hey, Hakari, want to make this Patrol more interesting and get some training in at the same time?"
I raised an eyebrow. I didn't think this was an actual question that she would respect the answer of but I humored her.
"Sure, I'm listening."
She grinned and pointed to the rooftops.
"We patrol around the entire city, if you manage to keep up pace with me and we finish the patrol before the hour ends, you get a reward."
The moment I heard the word reward with that inflection, I felt every single neuron in my brain activate.
"You're on, I'm pretty confident in my speed."
"We'll see about that! Don't get lost!"
Mirko crouched and her legs tensed like springs as she leaped up high and leaped again off of someone's balcony. Controlling her strength enough to launch herself but not so much as to break the balcony.
Without so much as a moment to consider, I used Hemokinesis to have blood rip through my back before launching myself to the sky after her, Free Flyer making it as natural as running for me.
"You were pretty fast back then, but can you be just as fast in the city!?"
Mirko jumped from building to building with speeds that made it hard to track if not for my Enhanced Senses, I flew after her, but there was the problem of my turns not being as sharp as hers due to my wings being limited by inertia compared to hops and parkour.
"Don't fall behind now!"
Seeing this weakness, Mirko got more unpredictable, sometimes circling buildings or intentionally going low to make sure that my flight was as hard as possible. Was I doing something wrong here? At this pace, I might actually lose her.
Wait, who says I only have to use wings or fly?
Time to Spider-Man this fucker.
"Now you're getting it!"
As Mirko did a sharp turn, I shot a tendril of blood from my hand and used it as an anchor to pivot and make a sharp turn with my wings, allowing me to keep pace with her.
We raced through the city, Mirko occasionally speeding up, forcing me to deal with it by trying out new methods of traversing the urban landscape fast. Such as using Polarity to repel myself when I got too close to buildings or using Blood Footholds. But as we made it halfway through the city, our enhanced hearing caught something that made us both change priorities.
A muffled cry for help.
Mirko stopped dead and so did I as she turned to me.
"You hear that? Seems like there is some action happening today!"
I held up a finger to stop her before slotting in Piercing Eyes next to Enhanced Senses, using my hearing I understood the vague location of the scream, and using Piercing Eyes and Enhanced Sight, I looked through tens of buildings to see a man being pinned against a wall by another person covered in spikes carapace.
"Found them."
Mirko blinked.
"For real?"
I could even see a foreign substance in the veins of the man thanks to my Biology knowledge, and the ability to see blood with Hemokinesis.
"Yeah, do I have permission to engage, Mirko-sensei?"
She gave a thumbs up and went on to say something.
"Yep-"
That was all I needed. I was going to mince this fucker for interrupting this race that I was clearly winning.
Bending my knees, I launched myself to the sky before replacing Enhanced Senses with Super Regeneration and expanding my Wings even further, making them take on a jet wing like appearance and added engine like protrusions, combining what I learned from this chase to fly forward while using the engine like portions to expel blood in the form of mist to accelerate myself further.
It didn't take long for me to break the sound barrier and wince, but considering that this wasn't happening more than a kilometer away, I reached there in record time. As I passed over the villain, I sent ropes of blood to attach itself to the ground around the villain and used them as an anchor.
Using Hemokinesis to the max, I stopped myself mid-air with great force before expelling more blood and turning my wings into a glorified blood crimson orb hamster ball around myself and accelerating myself downwards using my telekinetic control over the ball and pulling on the blood ropes.
-Right towards the spiked man.
"What the fu-"
CRASH!!!
He got to look up just in time to see a minivan sized mass of hardened blood crash into his body and ram him half a meter into the pavement. Bending his limbs in awkward angles and shattering all the spikes in one go.
With a thought, I melted the hamster ball and sent the excess blood into my bag of holding while holding my head. That crash was not very fun but it was indeed very fast. I took care of that guy in like, less than 30 seconds. And he deserved every bit of that Crimson Collision.
He made me lose time in my bet against Mirko, the bastard.
Shaking my head and intentionally stepping on the downed villain's face, I turned to the victim.
"You good? Need any medical attention?"
"U-uh, n-no I-"
"Finally! Hakari what the hell was all that!?" Just as the guy was stuttering out an answer, Mirko hopped into the alleyway shortly after me and looked between the disheveled I and the miserable wreck of a villain in the crater. "Damn, seems like I missed the action, huh?"
I gave her a thumbs up.
"We've still got time, right?"
Mirko's smile grew to an almost feral one as she nearly doubled over laughing.
"HAHAHA! Kid, you really are a special one aren't ya!? Alright, I'll call the police to handle this, the rest of the patrol is waiting after all." She turned to the victim(who looked unharmed enough thanks to my timely intervention), the poor guy was still shaking in his boots against the wall. "Hey you, call the police and tell them Mirko and Wildcard handled it."
The man nodded vigorously like a bobble head as Mirko turned to me with her hands on hips.
"Now that that's handled, let's go!"
And then turned on her heel and hopped away without waiting for me.
Feat Achieved! Defeat Instant Villain: Prickly Pete
+1x Advantage Bronze Ability Gacha Ticket
Reading the notification I couldn't help but sigh for a moment.
Damnit, who the fuck are these instant villains, and why they keep trying to get in between me and my dates(?).
Shaking my head, I flew after Mirko.
I still had a bet to win.
A/N: Mirko is not actually a terrible teacher, not a good one for sure, but not terrible. She would be absolute ass for anyone due to her short temper and willfulness, but she is precisely what Hakari needed as a teacher. If it wasn't obvious, she was in a way, teaching him to be more effective at navigating urban areas and keeps forcing him to innovate.
These Trigger Villains keep happening huh? It's almost like something is brewing beneath the surface. Something big and bad that is way worse than the House incident was initially... nah, don't worry about it. What did you guys think about this chapter? I'd love to know.