2.8
Legionary
One of Many
2.8
Kromia gave a pleasant hum as she studied armor on the internet.
The young cat girl was in her now favorite spot in Hachiko, the second floor window cubby. The course short rug was barely providing any cushion as ever, however the fact the sun shone directly through the window most of the day made up for it. Normally Kromia found school utterly boring and just turned her brain off for the time she was there. Apparently her teachers noticed this fact and it drove some of them up the wall because she was also somehow getting above average grades despite it. However a history class assignment had startled her back into waking and she found herself setting to work on it as soon as she got back to the home. The assignment given to everyone was to study the history of a thing, an idea, a person or a place and write a report on it. Ostensibly she thought the task was meant to give them some experience in doing personal research on a topic. More importantly however she saw a chance to do a project on a topic she enjoyed.
Fighting.
Course she also had the feeling the topic was probably a bit too widely encompassing and drew it back a bit to focus on one aspect of fighting. Tentatively titling her future report to be, "Armor over the Ages" the young neko began a long binge into histories of armor developments and making mental notes for reference points to specific sources. She had just begun skimming over developments of the 21st century when she heard a cracking noise and a pained curse.
Kromia looked away from her phone and spied Cho lying on the floor beside the stairs, she looked like she had tripped on the top step and was now cradling an arm to her chest. In a blur of movement Kromia leapt up from her favorite spot and a second later was sliding into place next to Cho on her knees. The little neko leaned in close, hands reaching out to Cho's apparently injured arm when the older girl jerked away from her.
"Hands off, CAT!" She bit out with a glare.
The cat mutant pouted at Cho feeling rather put out. She thought they had been getting along rather well recently considering the older girl had helped her in a fight. Kromia guessed the older girl might be embarrassed by her lack of fighting ability considering she hadn't managed to stay in the fight for long. Granted she might have been feeling left out since she hadn't taken part in any other fights recently. Well if that was the case it wasn't Kromia's fault! She was fairly certain Cho had plenty of opportunity to join up in the kind of work Kentaro had been finding but refused.
"Just… don't touch it alright…" Cho's scowl softened after a moment and she sighed as she stared down at her broken skin.
The near mirror-like shine of Cho's porcelain skin was marred with an ugly looking crack. There was a clinking noise as she wrapped the injured forearm with her other hand and squeezed. Blood oozed up through the length of the crack but stopped shortly and this seemed to be a relief to Cho as she sighed at this.
"Whenever I crack my skin it goes down to the muscle." Cho said as she shifted position and sat back against the second floor railings. "The edge of my own broken skin can cut me badly and give me a deep infection. I have to be so careful whenever I hurt myself, just ALL THE TIME I have to try really hard to avoid accidents. My skin is firmly attached but it's not as flexible as regular skin, it's semi rigid and it's led to a few situations where I had whole chunks get ripped out because of a bad fall. Maybe if it were tough for all it's rigidness it wouldn't be so bad but…"
Cho continued to stare down at her injured arm for a long moment before her features twisted in a furious snarl. She raised a fist up and seemed about to hammer down to the floor when she caught herself. Her raised fist came to a shaking halt midway to the floor and Cho's breath increased to a frustrated tempo as she wrung her wrists with her hands.
"It's not fair…" She muttered too quietly to be heard with normal ears. "Quirklessness would have been better than this. An actual knife would be better than broken porcelain shards. Just regular human skin would be more protective. Why did I have to inherit a mixed quirk…"
Kromia grimaced at the self loathing Cho held for her quirk, she hated the pity she felt when the older girl was upset. She reached out again but this time clutched at the porcelain girl's shoulder.
"Then make it better!" The catgirl declared.
"'Make it better' she says!" Cho copied mockingly before shrugging off Kromia's hands. "Not every quirk can be trained, I already told you that you know-nothing-genius! I don't have some amazing quirk like generating fire or even some generic toughness quirk like being made of rock. I'm a girl literally made of glass and that's all I'll ever be. Some people get quirks that three hundred years ago would have just been called a rare hair disorder, you can't just say 'Train it better!' to someone whose fucking superpower is being super FUCKING HAIRY!"
"Not about them." Kromia shook her head with a determined stare. "This is about your power, you can do more things than just having porcelain skin."
"Stupid cat, you aren't listening!" Cho groaned in frustration. "Glass is glass, you can't train it to be stronger!"
"Says who! Have you tried?" Kromia demanded and pressed her advantage when Cho sputtered. "Then let's try! I will help you try!"
"Tch!" Cho turned her head away from Kromia but all the same muttered aloud. "How the hell do I even begin to try to make my quirk stronger without just breaking myself?"
"We'll figure that out, just have to keep trying until something works." Kromia replied.
"That isn't the only thing that needs figuring out." Cho said and looked back at Kromia with a concerned frown. "Using quirks without some kind of license or inside a building you own is illegal. I mean if you had some kind of psychic type quirk and used it to pick up something you dropped most cops aren't going to ticket you. But using your quirk to try to make it stronger? The cops are going to stamp that out as soon as they hear about it. Probably wouldn't care if we were rich kids looking to get into some hero school but-"
"Stop it!" Kromia gave a reproving cuff to the back of Cho's head. "Just looking for reasons to stop before you start! We'll figure it out, Misato probably knows a few quiet spots… I even know some people now and could probably ask them for help."
"Lookit you and your criminal contacts…" Cho said quietly with a shake of her head. "Misato got you stuck in the thick of it and now you want to drag me in too."
"... Who cares?" Kromia said after a moment.
"..." The older girl suddenly rolled her eyes at the young neko, like she had said something childish and Cho couldn't be bothered to refute her.
"It… it doesn't matter!" Kromia shook her head as her thoughts rushed and she began to try to give words to her feelings. "Power is power, get enough power and you get all the chances you need. But people… even now with all these quirks mix up power in office, power from money with actual strength. Get strong enough and the money will come to you, get strong enough and the politics form around you not in spite of you. A fancy title and a pile of money will not protect you from the mighty."
"No it just lets you employ the 'mighty' as your thugs." Cho retorted but couldn't help but avert her eyes from the intensity of Kromia's stare. "Uhh… that's an interesting opinion you got there… kinda. Have you been reading some forums?"
To Cho's partial relief Kromia looked confused at that. Most of the time when someone started spouting the pseudo feudalist Destro beliefs of the old Meta Liberation Army it was edgy sounding toothlessness. It got genuinely unnerving and even scary when someone with an actually potent quirk started saying those same things however. But after hearing Kromia's views she actually felt a lot more inclined to agree to receive her help for trying to strengthen her quirk. Not because Cho was convinced the little cat mutant was potentially right about her own quirk but to try to keep the younger girl level headed. The young neko already sounded like she was a step or two away from being a quirk supremacist. Being around criminals sounded like a recipe for disaster and her being pulled into some small time quirk supremacy gang.
'God knows Misato wasn't bringing that level headedness to the table.' Was the older girl's thoughts. 'It's her fault Kromia is getting involved in this shit in the first place… I guess I could have protested louder when I heard about it.'
Cho shook her head, refusing to acknowledge any feelings of guilt and looked back at Kromia.
"Nevermind that, if you just shut up about the whole power thing I'll agree to you helping me out, okay?" Cho offered.
"Nya~" Kromia smiled and immediately wrapped the older girl in a hug.
"FUCK… okay enough, personal space would ya?" Cho froze for a moment before starting to squirm and struggle against the grip.
Kromia just giggled but released Cho all the same. The young cat girl stood up and grabbed hold of Cho's hand to pull her up.
"Come on, let's talk to Misato right now." Kromia said as she energetically started to pull the older girl along.
"FUCK!" Cho cursed again as she nearly tripped over her own feet. "Slow down! Misato isn't going anywhere!"
"Fine…"
(=◕ᆽ◕ฺ=)
Misato gave a sigh of disgruntlement as she walked down the sidewalk, Kromia in tow.
With the help of the healing steroids Misato was back on her feet again. She was far from healed however, just healed enough that trying to walk didn't force her to limp and stagger as she moved. It would take a full week of solid bed rest in order for her cracked bones to heal alongside carefully timed ingestion of more steroids. Since Misato couldn't lie in bed for a whole week without explaining why she needed it she had no choice but to get up in spite of the pain. Now it would take two or three weeks instead of the one with her walking around.
'Still better than the months I'd need without steroids.' Misato thought, absently squeezing down on Kromia's held hand. 'Getting dressed today was just an utter almost literal pain in the ass though.'
Misato wasn't in school uniform or even in her second identity as the horned redheaded Naru. She wore her hair down and had on a casual outfit in the form of a pink hoodie, a white pair of skorts and a pair of white sneakers. With the money she had been earning and putting away she could have easily bought something really nice to wear but then would come the questions of where exactly she got the money to buy all that stuff. For the most part the staff just assumed everyone got odd jobs or even actual part time jobs for a little spending money and left it at that. Suspicions would immediately be roused the moment teens started bringing in expensive stuff too often. That was fine though since Misato decided she and Kromia would be needing to splurge on a more concealing work outfit.
The older catgirl released another sigh as she thought over the reason why Kromia needed a new outfit.
The day after Kentaro sent Kromia on an errand the news broke with details on the ruckus of the previous day. It didn't take either Kentaro or Misato long at all to put two and two together and realize why Kromia had been letting getting back to the Home. After getting more details out of the younger neko Kentaro had been angry but ultimately just demanded that the gang get a small cut of her take when she got it and left it at that. Misato for her part had been upset as well since in the course of almost getting cornered by a hero Kromia had ended up needing to expose her identity to a potentially rival predatory gang. Misato had insisted on going with Kromia on her "date" with Souchou because not only was the girl lacking in worldly experience but she would be outnumbered as well. They would still be outnumbered there was no helping that, when she and Kentaro talked about the situation he had rather explicitly said that they were "corner fucked". Since Souchou knew who Kromia was and where she came from she could potentially give the police an anomalous tip about certain criminal activities. And if Kromia ended up getting arrested that could lead to everyone in and associated with Kentaro's gang getting arrested as well. Souchou had most of the cards and the high ground in this situation and the only recourse was to approach her smartly and as unhostile as possible. They had no choice but to make friends and try their best to form an allegiance with the girl, a situation that could leave them holding the end of a very pitifully short stick.
'I never considered the idea that a milk run could go so badly.' Misato bemoaned quietly. 'We should have known better than to let her go off on her own! She is just so battle hungry and longing for violence, of course she could get manipulated into tagging along with something that promised a fight. Could have at least had Isshin watching her and making sure she stayed on track. But then Isshin could have easily just gotten the drugs by himself too.'
As guilty as she felt Misato reminded herself that she had been lying in bed at the time pretending to be sleeping off bad period cramps. Ultimately the start of the whole situation began when Kentaro assigned the milk run to Kromia just to feel like he was bossing her around. The agitated air Kentaro had after sending Kromia out was enough to tell her that he hadn't really managed even that. It was her first time going off on her own doing errands for the gang and he really should have had her go with an escort if he was insistent on her going at all.
'No point in complaining endlessly over it,' Misato thought with an inward sigh. 'What's done is done and all that's left to do is damage control.'
"Are we there yet?"
Misato looked down at her fellow cat mutant. Kromia was wearing her black and blue plaid overall dress and a white dress shirt. Her hair was done up in a long ponytail and on her feet was a pair of shiny black shoes. She was currently flipping and twirling a letter opener expertly with her free hand, her vantablack blade shape shifted into a far less threatening form. Not that it couldn't be shifted into a killing blade in an instant.
"It's just around the corner." Misato answered.
Endore had a failing international trading port and no airport; there was very little in the way of restaurants specializing in foreign cuisine. Thus most if not all of such places were centered around its train terminal. Despite being a city somewhat in decline Endore's terminal was fairly busy, people going too and fro, waiting for their train or exiting one. The terminal's food court was lined with full on restaurants instead of open to a shared eating space.
"There it is." Misato pointed out.
The two then made their way to an Italian bistro called 'Little Italy". The inside was furnished in the western style with red and white plaid tablecloths covering every table. It was moderately busy with at least half of the tables in use. Despite the western nature of the bistro there was actually only one westerner working there. An older portly looking man working hard in the back with the cooks, everyone else working there, cooks and waiters, were native Japanese. The two catgirls had stood at the entrance of the bistro for only a moment when they noticed someone waving.
It was Souchou and her girls packed into one of the booths that lined the sides of the bistro. The girl gang boss was wearing somewhat casual clothes. She had a pair of black and white sneakers and a pair of hakama-like pants. She wore an oversized black buttoned up shirt like a coat that was kept open in the front, revealing a white sleeveless crop top, showing off a well defined midriff. Her hair hung messily and spiky and ended just past her shoulders.
"Hey! Over here!" Souchou called out. "Wasn't expecting you to bring a plus one Nekojin but I guess that's on me for assuming you were a stray."
"This is Misato." Kromia introduced as the two of them walked up to the booth.
"That's me." Misato gave a smile she was sure didn't look forced.
It felt wrong just to give her name out to someone who could be a competitor out to cripple them. But Souchou already knew Kromia's name and where she lived, everyone else's identities were merely a matter of study and some guesswork. There was no point in pretending she could stay unknown. It was better to just focus on figuring out Souchou's intentions with both Kromia and the Hachiko Gang.
"Well take a seat, we haven't ordered yet despite complaints the entire time." Souchou said, motioning to the spaces specifically opposite her. "There should be plenty of room if these two could budge their lards over… THAT'S YOUR CUE TO MOVE, CROCK FOR BRAINS!"
With some grumbling, two girls shuffled themselves closer to the wall, letting Misato and Kromia slide in. The booth clearly wasn't meant to seat eight people but the eight young teenage girls were able to pack themselves in comfortably enough. The two nekos settled themselves in as Souchou waved a waiter over to take orders.
'What even is half of this stuff?' Misato thought in some befuddlement as she searched over the various Italian dishes in her menu. 'Great, not only am I going to get stuck playing word games, I'm going to have to eat something I'm probably not going to like.'
"Spaghetti!" Kromia called out.
Misato raised her brows, they had only just begun to look for something and the younger neko already knew what she wanted. Looking through the menu she found a picture of it and found that it looked enough like raman noodles that it was probably a safe first pick.
"Same for me please." Misato said as she handed back the menu.
"So what shall we talk about, eh?" Souchou asked once they all made their orders, excited babbling settling over the girls of her gang.
"... Me?" Misato pointed to herself after a moment.
"You're the one making a fifth wheel of herself." Souchou retorted.
Misato only gave a side glance to the five other girls with Souchou who were growing increasingly rowdy at the prospect of foreign food.
"What, do they look like they have room in their heads for anything else right now?" Souchou gave a short bark of a laugh but Misato noticed her flashing her gang a genuine looking smile. "But I think you know why I'm just going to talk to you instead."
'You mean like the fact Kromia is inexperienced and at the time she probably looked like she was a lone thug with no one to fall back on.' Misato thought as she carefully schooled her features. Souchou had all the advantages here and could be as openly conniving as she wished. It was Misato that had to play nice no matter what was thrown her way.
"Does she often get in over her head?" Souchou asked suddenly with a glance at Kromia.
Said little catgirl now seemed focused on impatiently and eagerly awaiting her food.
'Clearly Souchou wants to know if Kromia will be in constant trouble and drag others with her into bad situations. She's only had one other encounter with her and hasn't seen her fight. As far as Souchou knows, Kromia is just quick on her feet to get away from a professional hero. A decent enough skill but not immensely valuable.'
"Well, she's a new arrival to Hachiko, Kromia has had only a little over a month to get familiar with how things work." Misato explained. "She kinda tends to let herself get dragged into things if she likes the people doing the dragging."
"Oh really? Pretty sure lots of people say that's a bad thing." Souchou smiled good naturedly at the distracted little cat mutant.
'Not you though, right?'
"She's young," Misato defended with a shrug. "She still has a lot to learn."
"Not my problem." Souchou shrugged. "So what's the deal with her quirk?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well obviously she's a cat mutant." Souchou continued. "But the other day when I had her in a headlock I was almost immediately struggling to keep her in it. If it weren't for the fact neither of us were serious she probably could have broken out whenever she wanted. Animal mutation quirks always tend to be a bit more than just animal traits in a human, but unless she's supposed to be like some caveman type ancient panther…"
"As far as the specialists are aware her mutation is supposed to be a regular ole black cat." Misato smiled, now was the time to genuinely pitch the value of her junior. "And while she does have all the expected cat traits like enhanced senses and agility she has a bunch of inexplicable stuff as well. She has the peak strength of a regular human and probably tougher bones as well, she has the ability to summon a sword unique to her whenever she wants and best of all… she has a regeneration factor."
"No shit?" Souchou's eyes widened in surprise and she looked at Kromia with new consideration. "You're not bullshitting me? She really has all that besides being a little catgirl?"
"It's all on official record, can't lie about that." Misato nodded and couldn't help but inwardly shout 'Sold!'.
"Huh… what if she's a supernatural cat?" Souchou pondered aloud, she leaned forward onto the table and really stared down at Kromia.
"Huh?" Misato blinked.
"I mean… what if she's not just a regular cat but one out of those old stories?" Souchou explained and bagan snapping her fingers as she tried to recall something. "Like a… bake-something… a nekomata! Maybe instead of a cat mutant she's a nekomata mutant?"
"Maybe, don't those have two tails though?" Misato said and looked pointedly at the sole bowtied tail swaying in the air behind Kromia.
"I think?" Souchou replied before shaking her head and sitting back in her seat. "So how many friends does Kromia have back at the home?"
'There we go, she's convinced Kromia has value worth using. Now she's taking advantage of the opportunity I present, to see how much more extra muscle she could potentially get out of us. Which is not much at all right now, both Kentaro and I really need time to rest and recover and the only other fighter worth mentioning is Isshin.'
"Three friends and… two or three acquaintances." Misato answered. "I'm one of those friends but… well I was hurt recently and so was another, we have to take it easy for a couple weeks."
"So she just has one friend to hang out with right now?" Souchou asked. "What are they like?"
"His name is Isshin, a bit on the tall and quiet side but also reliable." Misato said. "He has this quirk that's turned his arms into this silver metal. He can make them change shape and that's always useful."
"Well I only just met little Nekojin and want to properly hang out with her but I wanna meet this guy too." Souchou said with an eager smile as the waiter returned laden with food.
"Oh, well he's always up for anything so he can tag along with Kromia whenever you wanna do that." Misato said before starting to convoy plate after plate of food along their crowded table.
Kromia and Misato just had their plates of spaghetti and garlic bread and Souchou kept her meal simple with a kind of tomato soup thick with various vegetables. The other end of the table however was filled with a dozen small plates filled with different meals, meatballs, calzones, lasagna, a pizza and more. It seemed Souchou's gang wanted to try a little bit of everything and just ordered small servings of random things from the menu. They barely waited for the last plate to settle on the table before letting out a collective 'itadakimasu!' and digging in. Misato watched them eat with gusto for a moment as they just took bites of everything in reach before shaking her head and turning to her own meal. She pondered it for a moment before somewhat clumsily having a bit of it with her fork.
"Bit bland but not bad- ack!" She commented when she was suddenly whacked on the back of her head. "What?! Who-"
"What do you think you're doing!" Kromia said in an accusatory tone, hand still reaching out to Misato's head. "You aren't supposed to eat it like that!"
"It's western food!" Misato protested and held up an equally western utensil. "You eat it with a fork, a damn baby could do it!"
"Idiota…" Kromia growled before suddenly lunging forward.
"Ahhh! Hey!"
The younger cat girl ignored her senior's protests and shoved into her personal space. She then reached out to the older neko's food and started rapidly mashing apart the meatballs in the spaghetti before adding a liberal amount of powdered cheese and very quickly mixing it all together. She only allowed Misato to push her back when she was done and fall back into her seat with crossed arms.
"There, now you can eat it." She said with an expectant tone.
"What's the deal with you and this food?" Misato grumbled as she gathered up some more spaghetti in her fork. "You haven't seen this food before and already you- oh…"
Kromia just tilted her head up at her.
"... That is much better."
The younger cat mutant gave an annoyed huff but looked smug all the same before turning to her own meal. Misato paused in her eating for a moment when she realized they must have made quite a scene. Trying to keep herself from hunching down she looked around and thought no one noticed. Souchou's gang was completely absorbed in their little gourmet's paradise and the rest of the bistro was busy enough that it drowned the noise from their table. That hope died however when she looked across from her and saw Souchou grinning at her.
"Pussywhipped, eh?" She taunted before barking out a short laugh.
Misato just groaned and hunched down in her seat.
(=◕ᆽ◕ฺ=)
Author Note: Been a while, ending up getting covid for a month then ended up getting distracted by various new video games so I only have half an excuse. Been playing Elden Ring lately like most other people with the machines that can run it. This story going off and on probably doesn't inspire a great deal of reader consistency but I don't entirely mind that, while I do enjoy it when people enjoy my work this story in particular is also something of a creative exercise for me. I want to get better at writing without major preexisting canonical plotlines I can just latch onto and build around or even fall back on altering the events of canon when I don't have something more original lined up.
Hence the admittedly kinda weird idea of placing a vtuber persona in MHA and working out the consequences from there.
The last couple snippets certainly had a lot of action so about now would be great for a couple of slower character interaction heavy snippets before another storm of battles and violence comes along. Cho has been absent for a little while but admittedly she had very little to do with what's been going on with Kromia recently but that may change in the near future. But asides from her I am looking forward to expanding on Isshin's character beyond being "Quiet gang tough who isn't afraid to kill". Going to have to touch up a bit more on the relationship between Misato and everyone's favorite boyfriend, Kentaro before the inevitable happens there too.
Lots of fairly mundane threats in the near future with the veneer of the supernatural due to the inclusion of quirks.
