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cyb-by-lang · 6 years

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Shell Game (10/?)

Kei’s week ends on a couple of high notes.

Saturday’s four class periods were entirely mundane after the ridiculous first week, because Kei didn’t get pulled out and wasn’t being shouted at by anyone but Isobu, who knew multiplication better than she did. He was also picking up Modern Literature coursework faster, which Kei figured said more about her than him. Even a week into the term, she was not the best student. Senioritus set in early and didn’t let go.

Honestly, if not for the utter havoc of the first three days, Kei probably would have said it was a nice way to end the week. As things stood now, though, she was a little antsy and rather eager to get out of UA. Everything going wrong seemed tied to the school. Lying to Midoriya and saying she’d had a run-in with a mugger didn’t make it less true.

It seemed like it was going well until she was about to walk out the front door of UA, at which point a voice more accustomed to booming tried to whisper, “Young Gekkō, if I could have a word?”

Kei turned on her heel and stared down the…emaciated dude in an oversized yellow pinstripe suit. Kei blinked twice, surprised. While she’d seen the guy around, in the same vague way as she knew the school had other class years and people who weren’t involved in almost dying a lot, she couldn’t put a name to the face. If she had to make a comparison, especially with the way his baritone didn’t seem to suit his body, she’d call him Skinny Steve.

“Fine,” Kei said, and followed back into the thrice-damned school building. “I’m assuming you’re a teacher here?”

“You’d be right,” he said. “Heroics only, however.”

Huh. “Makes sense. I don’t recognize you.”

This could be a trap.

At this point in the week, I’m about ready to push somebody out a window for that kind of crap. Let me have this.

Once again, Kei made her way to the all-too-familiar staff room. Ambling along after the unidentified teacher, she spotted Mummy-Aizawa snoozing under a desk. Or maybe his yellow sleeping bag had just developed sapience and its owner’s personality. It was hard to tell.

Nonetheless, the pair of them settled on the couch (skinny dude) and the opposite chair (Kei). There was tea already there, but it’d long gone cold.

“Did you need to speak to me about something…?” Kei trailed off, unsure what to call him. She didn’t have the civilian names of most of the teachers memorized anyway, and it was at least plausible that this guy had been a hero in the past.

“I wanted to apologize,” the guy said, drawing a blank look from Kei.

“Okay…?” Kei paused. This was already awkward enough. “Look, what do I call you?”

There was a pause on his end, too. Then, much akin to Tsunade’s youthful facade stitching together after she used her regeneration a little too much, the bony guy filled out right in front of Kei’s eyes. It went fast enough that the air actually popped, and the guy’s hair shot upright like gel was some universal law unto All Might.

…Is All Might secretly a muscly balloon animal? Kei mentally whacked Isobu’s shell. Did you see that?!

I am using your eyes to see. I certainly saw that.

“Uh,” said Kei, once Isobu whacked her in retaliation. “That’s a…neat trick?”

The conservation of mass is a lie.

It may just be on vacation.

As though Kei hadn’t said anything or made a deer-in-headlights face at him, All Might bowed about as far as he could while sitting. “Young Gekkō, I most humbly apologize for the strike I dealt you during the USJ incident! Had I taken thorough stock of the situation, I would not have made such a heinous miscalculation! My apologies!”

The sapient sleeping bag grumbled a general affirmative. Sounded like Aizawa-sensei had probably said more when he had more energy. That was about as close to approval Kei had ever gotten from him.

“I mean,” Kei said after a second, “if I hadn’t known I wasn’t going to hurt anyone besides the villains, I would’ve probably punched me too.”

“You should never make excuses for the poor actions of pro heroes, Young Gekkō!” All Might insisted, while Kei tried to subtly reel back from the volume he was using. “As a symbol of my trust, I have revealed my true form. It is a poor apology for my actions at the USJ, but I hope it is one step toward forgiveness, Young Gekkō!”

“Well, then I can do this?” Kei waved a hand in front of her face just as All Might looked up. Between her hand cutting off his view and no longer doing so, she’d let Isobu’s chakra leak into her coils. Her eyes itched a little, as they always did when they took on Isobu’s traits. “The, uh, the thing I do? This is the most basic stage. Can’t do the other one indoors without breaking things.”

The two of them regarded each other—a man with pitch-black where white ought to be in his eyes, and a girl with utterly inhuman eyes from another being entirely.

“Just accept the apology already,” Aizawa-sensei griped from the corner. “I’m trying to sleep.”

But he had a point. “I accept your apology, All Might-sensei. Please don’t do it again.”

Just as Kei dropped the usage of Isobu’s chakra, All Might poofed back into his skinny shape. Once the smoke cleared, he scratched at the back of his now-limp head of hair. “You’re pretty easygoing…”

“Did you expect something different?” Kei asked, gently challenging.

“I did, but now I see I was wrong.” All Might settled back onto the couch, but he did bow one last time. Just a bit. “Go on, Young Gekkō. Enjoy your weekend.”

“Thanks, All Might-sensei.”

“When I look like this, please call me Yagi-sensei.”

Kei waited just long enough to make sure she wasn’t going to be scolded for using the title even for his incognito form, but nothing was forthcoming after Kei bowed to show her agreement. On her way out of the room, she leapt neatly over Aizawa-sensei and ducked out into the hall.

It was time to leave the freaking campus behind for the week.

She checked her phone once she was on the train, ignoring news updates for the moment.

GreenThumb: u get hayate for sat-sun

GreenThumb: hes been buggin me for 2 days

GreenThumb: and u need more marble things

TMNT-TNT: Hand the phone to him

GreenThumb: r u on ur way back?

TMNT-TNT: Yeah but he doesn’t have a phone

TMNT-TNT: Have him call me

Not four seconds later, Kei’s phone started ringing. “Yeah?”

“I get to stay over the weekend!” Hayate’s grin was audible. “And you have to let me see the city this time. I got the Hokage to sign off for a ‘cultural project.’”

Kei didn’t want to know how much wheedling it would’ve taken Sensei to cave to Hayate’s demands, because there was a chance it’d be used against her. “Okay, but the first thing we need to do is get you clothes to blend in better.”

“Seriously?” But before Kei could argue her point, Hayate gave in. “Fine, fine. I’ve been looking out the window and nobody dresses like Obito.”

There was a muffled “Hey!” in the background.

“These phone things are pretty cool,” Hayate managed to say, while apparently fighting Obito off one-handed. There was a thud and the sound of struggling stopped.

“They are,” Kei agreed.

“Come back soon, okay?” Hayate paused, thinking over what he’d just said and finding it a bit too heartfelt, then added in a brighter tone, “Or else we’ll both starve to death.”

Teenagers. “Got it.”

Well, it was like All Might said. Kei fully expected to enjoy her first weekend of the school year.

By the time she got back to the apartment, Obito looked like he was perfectly ready to leave for a week. Instead, though, he jokingly saluted Kei and only said he had one more delivery to go, at which point he disappeared into thin air with a message scroll.

Kei, who could recognize Sensei’s calligraphy on the outside wrapping at a glance, let him get on with it. She had a kid brother to look after instead.

“Please don’t make me wear one of those,” Hayate said, indicating Kei’s school uniform. To Hayate’s shinobi-trained sensibilities, it probably looked pretty ridiculous. Kei didn’t disagree.

“I won’t,” Kei promised, and once she had a chance to change, they were off.

Kei, who had quite the discretionary budget and little to spend it on besides food and train fare, found that her little brother’s presence had a way of punching a hole in her established bottom line. It wasn’t because he was hard to provide for, but rather that he had a list and was checking it twice. Hayate wouldn’t have minded going to tourist hotspots or trying junk food that didn’t exist in Konoha, but people back home had tacked on things like university-level medical textbooks (Rin), ludicrously specific novelty kitchen gadgets (Kushina), and omamori from every shrine they could find (Genma). As such, Kei spent most of Saturday afternoon running errands with her kid brother in tow.

Shinobi weren’t above making a conveniently traveling friend buy souvenirs.

Hayate, for his part, had plenty of fun flitting from place to place like a kid at a theme park once Kei got him a replacement for his haori-style coat. There was no way to fully hide his starstruck behavior, but Kei found that his constant rubbernecking and the barrage of questions actually revealed how much she’d been learning about Tokyo. And, underneath her constant griping, her appreciation for the city and all it offered. Even with the occasional superpowered fight.

“This kind of stuff is so unnecessary,” Hayate muttered while they waited for a train. The second ride of the day, in fact.

“Mass transportation?” Kei asked, still half-listening to the station announcements. Between the various circuits they’d made and Kei’s lingering unfamiliarity with the system, it’d be easy to get lost. Again.

“Yeah. I mean, can’t we just…run?” Hayate kept his voice down, at least. “I mean, so many of us can go so fast…”

“Turning to technology means that more people can benefit, though,” Kei explained distractedly. “I mean, it’s not just about people with powers, you know?”

Though the shinobi world sure pretended it was. Half the roads even in Konoha weren’t paved. Kei probably ought to tell Sensei to rethink that policy, but it was difficult to explain without vehicles to reference.

Hayate frowned. “I guess?”

And though Kei hadn’t been a student at UA for long, or managed to be particularly good at it, she could say, “There’s also the fact that even heroes with really wild powers tend to use support items. Endeavor can’t exactly go around wearing normal clothes with his face on fire.”

Though she did kind of question why All Might couldn’t find clothes that fit both of his forms.

“So…” Hayate leaned back a little, hands loaded down by shopping bags. “Is it like fūinjutsu?”

“A bit,” Kei agreed. “But instead of spending years mastering the art alone—”

“You can have a lot of people benefit because anybody can use it,” Hayate concluded, which was a bit of a forty-five degree turn. But it was okay. Not a great analogy, but not the worst ever made.

Kei shrugged. “Sure.”

They made it through a few more stops before Hayate really started to flag. It had little to do with actual endurance, and a lot more to do with mental fatigue. Any person could only process so much in a day, and shoving Hayate into an urban environment even with a tour guide was a bit over the top.

“I’ve never seen so many buildings or people in my entire life,” Hayate said, once they were on the last train of the day. His shopping bags had ballooned a bit, making it difficult for others to find places to sit. “How can you stand it?”

“I got used to it,” Kei replied, rearranging the bags to give other people a few more spaces to sit. This was absolutely silly. “You holding up okay?”

“Mostly?” Hayate managed to keep a straight face for a while, then couldn’t hide a jaw-cracking yawn though he ducked his head. “Sorry, it’s a lot.” He scrubbed at his eyes with the heel of his free hand, like he’d been trying not to do all day. The city air didn’t agree with him. They’d already had to pick up cough medicine just in case.

“Good thing we’re headed back, then,” Kei was feeling the day drag on, too. “I’ll cook. You take a nap and we’ll have a slower day tomorrow.”

Hayate, after managing a tired, “Sounds good,” ended up dozing on a still-wrapped All Might hoodie. He wasn’t much more awake on the walk back.

While Hayate napped on the spare futon and Kei reheated stewed pumpkin, Isobu decided to check in.

What are the chances your Hokage only sent an itemized expense report for damages? Isobu didn’t sound like he cared about the answer.

It’s more likely that Sensei just bit Nezu’s head off in writing. Kei leaned against the counter and sighed. I was really more focused on how All Might, of all people, has an actual secret identity. Everyone else has their names listed and works with an agency.

Does the mutual unmasking have to mean anything? I am content to stew in resentment.

Then I won’t stop you. But the mission on our end doesn’t change much. Kei scratched the lowest corner of her scar. Today’s been all right. I don’t want to ruin it now.

Fine, Isobu huffed.

It was just a quiet night in, but it meant a lot even in this strange place.

#Shell Game #Keisuke Gekko #Hayate Gekko #Isobu #All Might #aizawa shouta #Obito Uchiha

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