章 12: Turning Enemies into Allies

"U...uhm....Ah!"

Letting out a low sounding grunt as he slowly felt his consciousness returning to him, Thaumiel felt his eyelids were slightly sticky, a sign of how long he had been out.

With some effort he opened his eyes with the first thing he noticed being a blind clear white light illuminating his room from the ceiling causing him so minor visual discomfort.

He wasn't given much time to adapt however as his awakening and small groans caught the attention of the figure sitting to his right that had been casually flipping through the pages of a small handbook.

"You are awake, how do you feel?"

Asked an all too familiar clear and velvet voice, although this time the voice contained some strange gentle sounding connotations to it.

"Painful... but alive I guess."

Thaumiel responded before slowly opening his eyes, now used to the light and turning his attention to his right where he spotted the figure of his auntie sitting beside his bed wearing her usual suit.

"You were lucky, not many kids manage to survive after being shot on the shoulder like you were."

She spoke in a half disapproving half guilty tone.

Of course the reason Thaumiel could pick out such emotions were just because of socialization, as for a person not too used to Makima might not have been able to identify any difference in her tone whatsoever.

As for being surprised with the ever frigid and suspicious Makima showing 'so many' emotions?

Thaumiel wasn't in the slightest.

In fact this very change in Makima's behavior had but been something he planned out when under the state of Übermensch.

It all comes back to yesterday's situation after he and Kaminari 'incapacitated' the villain.

...

"Kids you two were the real heroes today, although I must say what you did was very dangerous it is in fact true you two guaranteed everyone's safety. Especially you Kaminari, were it not for your quirk it would have been possible to take care of the villain as you both did. Good work!"

Said Tarot king, one of the two superheroes that had come in with the police after being called over by Radiant Soldier as backup.

Patting both Kaminari and Thaumiel on the shoulder, some faint admiration and even gratitude could be seen on the eyes hidden underneath the mask while looking at both children.

Only god knows how thankfully he was. Everything turned out okay at the end, the results were for even one of those kids to die...

Even thinking of all the repercussions made Tarot King feel a huge chill climbing his spine.

Turning his eyes toward Kaminari who still had a somewhat dumb look on his face after overusing his brain, the hero could only sigh how strong the new generation's quirks were becoming.

Kaminari Denki's quirk, Electrification, had allowed the completely inexperienced and clueless kid in front of him to take down a pretty strong villain with almost zero effort and combat involved.

Surprise attacks and the fact the kid's brain temporarily short circuited after overusing the quirk aside, the new generation quirks were most of the times much stronger.

'It really makes people feel old hu...'

Nodding to the white haired one another time , Tarot king took Denki's hand guiding him toward the other hero that had come with him for support.

Which was precisely Denki's mother.

Left behind Thaumiel didn't dwell too much on the pro hero comments as his focus turned to his auntie who much like he had expected was here.

"Good work taking him down."

"It was mostly because of Kaminari-kun's quirk, the rest was just doing what the instructor taught me in Judo classes."

"Was it? I wonder about that..."

Feeling the all too familiar suspicion in Makima's eyes as she gazed down to overlook him, Thaumiel for the first time didn't panic but did dodge her gaze as he always would.

'Any second now...'

"You are always bringing one surprise after another aren't you Thaumiel... Barely a few months of classes yet you can already take down a half stunned villain."

"That's all instructors credit..."

Amid his response a commotion suddenly broke out as in the blink of an eye.

Sisifu, who had been supported by the police as they began leading him out, 'woke up' from his coma-like state.

His eyes filled with rage and humiliation as it dawned on him he had been taken down by two brats.

Having thought the villain was passed out and due to the slightly 'mangled' hands of the man the police hadn't cuffed him which in turn allowed him to briefly fight back once he did a surprise move.

With his unbroken dominant hand turning into a long Katana, he swung it around grazing the policeman's arms around him, making him open a brief distance with him.

Knowing he couldn't possibly get away under such a situation of being so closely surrounded and with almost all kids having already evacuated, Sisifu was completely mad.

He had a chance, he could have escaped, he could have remained free, if only it wasn't for those...

'THOSE BRATS!'

With his fury, insanity and many other thoughts corroding emotions at the peak he only wanted one thing right now.

Destroy those two brats that had ruined his good plan.

Unfortunately for him Kaminari was already out of the classroom leaving only Thaumiel and his striking white hair in his sight.

'YOU ARE OUT OF LUCK BRAT!'

With all those conflicting emotions fully redirected, his only half intact hand turned into a muzzle of a gun and aimed straight at the brat.

Although there was an 'obstacle' in front of the way, Sisifu was confident that his firepower was strong enough to make it through her and kill the brat.

"I AIN'T GOING DOWN ALONE!"

BANG

"Auntie!"

And just like that Sisifu had shot before the police jumped on him and fully restrained him this time along with the heroes.

As for Makima who would have originally taken the bullet, she was safe and sound sitting on the floor.

Except for her eyes containing a clear look of shock and some confusion as they laid on the petite figure on top of her that had a large bullet hole on his right shoulder.

"Thaumiel?"

...

Just like that he had gotten shot by the villain, and passed out before awakening in the hospital right now.

'Everything was done under the plan though.'

In fact, be it Sisifu having one hand not broken after being hit with a desk, or not having fully passed after being slammed on the floor only to wake up at that exact moment.

Everything had been done under his plan.

All for the sole sake of putting the fully desperate Villain in a situation of taking someone down with him, and that person being precisely him.

When first entering Übermensch, or as he liked to call the superman mental state.

He began to cook up a plan to solve all his problems by utilizing the situation at hand.

And the way he visualized putting his auntie in checkmate for good, was making it impossible for her to doubt him any longer.

For reasons he wasn't quite clear about yet, Makima had a strange reaction on the matter of family and was almost like a bugged computer when it came to it.

It was with this type of situation he had gotten away both times from her testing and was also the way he cooked up to solve her doubts for good.

With some mental gymnastics Thaumiel concluded it simply wasn't easy to kill her and the repercussions could even back fire in ways he wouldn't be capable of enduring considering she was a civil worker.

Thus he took another route, getting rid of her suspicions and turning the enemy into his most reliable backing.

And what better way of convincing Makima than saving her life in exchange of his?

'Though, the very reason this plan worked though is because Makima never really cared about the original Thaumiel.'

He thought, feeling a bit complicated.

From the very beginning when he began to be suspected by Makima, he originally thought the reason she would keep such persistence in going after the 'truth' and 'unmasking' him was because of the original.

The real thing though was not remotely close, but he with the mentality of a normal person couldn't possibly consider the real reason.

The very reason she was pursuing this 'mystery' was simply because it was interesting for her.

Something Thaumiel could only see when in a state all too similar to her of only being guided by your own desires and inner moral compass.

Thus the very reason this plan worked is the 'original' never gave her the warmth of family, or in a nutshell Makima didn't care if he was an impostor in her nephew's body or a double personality or whatever.

She only wanted to unveil the secret to entertain herself.

Now that he gave her something else to suffice for the desire of unveiling that secret though, why keep pursuing the mystery?'

Of course, the situation of 'sacrificing' himself to prove fraternal love was fully calculated by him from the beginning and wouldn't really kill him, even the shooting was calculated to damage him in a place that would look very bad but could be recovered later on without much problems.

For outsiders or even his auntie though, the action of pushing her out of danger at the cost of possibly being killed was not much different than a sacrifice.

With such a huge sacrifice out of nothing but family love, how would Makima who was specially dubious and 'weak' when it came to family react?

'Well the result is now clear.'

Thaumiel thought as he felt her palm on his forehead.

"Seems you don't have any fever, that's good. For now wait here, I'll bring you something to eat and call the doctor."

Was what she said before gently pushing him to lie back down onto the bed and getting up making her way out of his hospital room.

...

Left alone Thaumiel was a bit dazed as he looked at the clear white ceiling.

"To think all problems could be solved in one go..."

All things considered now Thaumiel was left with a whole new impression of his quirk after having experienced the results of Übermensch.

The perk itself was not something amazingly strong, it at most brought him to a strange mental state where he became a superhuman like macchine of pure efficiency.

So everything he did under that state was something he could do out of it.

Yet he could never imagine himself making this almost godly level of planning that didn't look much different than foretelling the future.

'I originally thought that the quirk evolving to All Talents would only have the effect of allowing me to train my talents above the human limit, with [perks] being a small 'optimization' that allowed for me to keep improving. But the effects can be terrifyingly strong when done right.'

Even now when he wasn't 'flexing' the muscle corresponding to Übermensch he still felt a sort of passive effect that allowed him to always be in a semi meditate-like state to have a bit more control over his emotions.

Without the need of sitting down taking deep breaths and concentrating like he would have to previously.

'Do all talents have a related perk? What about talents that fuse? Will they give different perks or would the perks fuse? So many questions... all I know is I'm finally free!'

At the moment, the awesome prospects of his quirk aside, Thaumiel felt like a huge rock had been lifted from his shoulder making him light like never before.

'Haha ain't things looking up-'

"Oh by the way-"

Said Makima returning to the room suddenly, making him almost choke on his saliva.

Throwing a somewhat confused glance at her, he saw her smile before saying something that was completely out of his plans and expectations.

Not gonna lie, I'm kinda getting why authors love doing cliffhangers. It strangely scratches hidden sadistic urges I didn't even know I had

—

Not gonna lie, I'm kinda getting why authors love doing cliffhangers. It strangely scratches hidden sadistic urges I didn't even know I had. Promise not to abuse it though.

That aside, I wanted to write a small note to say some things about talents.I explained a lot but there is one last thing I've been finding it a bit tricky to tackle about the talent quirk.It's about the survival talent.So for a lot of talents they seem to only work actively in the way I write thing such as they only work when mc puts points in them and after it regardless of the levels they seem to be useless.

Well to be honest since this is kind of a 'system' I pulled out of my ass I'm still figuring out the whole thing. Also doesn't help I got zero experience coming up with stuff and writing thus bear with me.

For the talents I've previously written, putting a lot of points, according to how I've put it, makes you more tuned to rapidly advance in something.

I've been considering a bit more how to properly explain this feature so you can get a better picture of why I wrote some scenes and the talents didn't pop up when it seems like they should.

When putting a lot of points in a talent, it's like the mc is adding a passive buff to himself that makes him really good in the stuff that talent partake.

This buff is purely because of the amount of talent and the more you put it the stronger it would be which is why the amount of points affects how fast a talent progresses.

The reason I've used Survival as more of an active type of talent is because survival is only great when with that passive buff(which for this talent would be something kinda like a spider sense).

The talent without lots of points don't really work in the situations of surviving immediate danger like when under makima's questioning, or when you have a knife on your neck.

The talent itself is like a book guide on how to survive in a jungle or react when facing terrific weather and similar things. The passive buff would make you great at that as you become super sensitive to all forms of danger and manners of escaping from it.

it's not to say the talent is useless entirely when without points in it, but it isn't gonna be usable nearly as much.

This mechanic works a bit similarly for all talents but it doesn't show as strong because I always have mc immediately move the points when the situation calls for it.

Like with fitness, the passive boost would be immense stamina and near infinite resistance to muscle fatigue so he can keep building up his muscles(various biological problems aside thou for that explanation).

Without the points although his strength wouldn't decrease he wouldn't be able to work out nearly as much as with the points.

The thing with survival is more prominent cause I'm kinda using the talent too comprehensively when it involves danger, but I didn't explain it's only useful like that because it got a lot of points buffing.

So yeah, have that in mind from this point forward.

Some talents might really only be useful when with points, perks aside.

I know it's kinda fucky and all but that's what I came up with for this talent quirk and it is how I plan on applying it.

So rick an roll.