章 22: Blood-Haired Punk
There are 10 advanced chapters on Patreon if you are feeling like spending a bit of money to support the creation and read ahead while at it.
->patreon.com/TheSynonym<-
°°°
…
"Come on, hit that brat!!"
"How the fuck aren't you hitting him?! He is half your age!"
"Hey pipsqueak, stop dodging and fight like a man!"
"Damn it, that little shit is going to win again…"
"Hahahahaha sucks for you, I betted on him!"
On an octagonal ring, two figures could be seen exchanging blows and moving swiftly through the arena without stopping for even a second.
One of the fighters, and the biggest one of them, was a buff man of around 6.2 feet, with tattoos all over his body that depicted nuclear explosion clouds, and a buzz cut that added to the intimidating appearance that he carried.
He was a renowned fighter in underground fighting clubs known as Nuclear Fist. Someone who, with his powerful Quirk that allowed him to gather kinetic energy on his fist and then release it into an enormous shockwave, through the span of a year or so rapidly managed to climb ranks and stand among the best fighters in such illegal places.
Of course, it is not to say he didn't put any effort and his Quirk had been the one to do all the work. Nuclear Fist, or rather, Hiroshi Takamura, had trained his Quirk exhaustingly and managed to unlock many other abilities that bloomed from its initial function of storing energy and releasing it.
For example, due to his necessity of prolonging fights to store more energy, he came up with a technique that allowed him to block his opponent's attack with his fists, and create small shockwaves during such clashes that would help reduce the momentum of their punches, and as such, the damage that he would receive.
He had also developed a fighting style where he would use his fists as propellers to move swiftly through the arena and hit any blind spots the opponent might have before they could even react.
Due to these skills, and the powerful nature of his Quirk where the longer the battle lasted the more powerful his punches would become, he rapidly became one of the favorites among the professional betters.
However, surprisingly, for once in many months, Nuclear Fist was having his ass kicked.
Though, it would be a lie to say the spectators hadn't expected it to some extent.
After all, his opponent had risen even faster than him through the ranks of best fighters in underground clubs and even had the infamy of having remained undefeated ever since he debuted until this very moment.
However, that was not the most shocking fact about this fighter.
His most baffling quality was his age.
He was barely a teenager!
"...Come on, I'm barely trying here. Weren't you Nuclear Fist? Come try and nuke me"
"AAAAARGH!"
Suzaku Suzuki, otherwise known as the infamous Blood-haired punk, stood opposite Nuclear Fist, who screamed in desperation after failing again to hit the unruly brat before him.
The fight had been going for more than ten minutes by now, and not only once had he managed to land a hit on the kid.
His punches were already charged at their maximum. Only one punch was all he needed to win.
However, no matter how much he tried, the kid seemed to know his every move, as he always failed to hit him no matter how much he tried.
Normally, in such a small arena, it would be impossible to fail every single hit. After all, eventually, one would corner the other and thus gain enough room to land at least a hit. Of course, whether that hit was blocked or not, was another matter.
However, the brat in front of him was actually managing to dodge everything coming his way, and with a cocky smile on his face on top of that!
It was like he was fighting a ghost!
"Hey Suzaku brat, I didn't teach you to play around with your food. Hurry the fuck up so that we can leave!"
Suddenly, while Nuclear Fist was raining down punches on the elusive figure of Suzaku, he heard an old voice raise from inside the crowd and call out at the kid in front of him.
At first, he didn't pay much attention.
However, it was when he noticed the annoyed expression on the kid's face after he had apparently heard those words that he understood that he was fucked.
"Seriously, that old bag of bones can't just let me enjoy one thing. Sorry dude, down you go"
In the next instant, the kid's figure disappeared, and soon enough, everything went dark.
-Blam!-
…
°
°
°
|A few minutes later, outside of the underground club|
…
"Seriously, what is the need to ruin my fun, old man?" Suzaku asked as he groaned annoyedly, giving the stinky eye to Tatsuo who was walking by his side.
"Shut up! Haven't I taught you to never play with your opponent, and simply end the fight as soon as you can?" Tatsuo yelled in frustration, glaring at Suzaku in anger.
Something that the kid answered by moving to the front, and then moving left and right swiftly, as if imitating his movements from earlier in the fight.
"You most certainly did. But dodging every single hit is fun as heck, you know? In a way, it's like I'm doing a no-hit run"
"Fun until you get distracted and your bones break for underestimating your opponent" Tatsuo spat in disdain.
"True on that. But hey, I didn't get hit" Suzaku said as he shrugged.
"That's not the point"
"I think you are simply projecting your weakness onto me. Just because you would get hit doesn't mean I would" Suzaku said while he nudged Tatsuo's shoulder with a wide smile on his face.
"Annoying brat I'm going to kill you!"
"You can try, senile old man!"
After delivering those words, Suzaku began running away while Tatsuo followed from behind with a furious face.
6 years had passed since the kidnapping incident, and since then, Suzaku had grown to become a tall and strong young man.
His muscles had finally developed as he had hoped so many years ago when they had been still hidden behind his child's body, and he had grown to a height of around 5'11''. (180 cm according to Google)
He wasn't exceptionally tall, but he was at least taller than most of his peers.
...
Or at least, taller than the normal-looking ones. Needless to say, with Quirks, there were guys out there that were humongous compared to him.
Of course, he was only 14 years old right now, so there was still a ton of time for him to become even taller than a few of them.
Unless he stagnated, that is.
…
Which he hoped he wouldn't.
Either way, a lot of things happened through the years.
For a start, All Might had received his characteristic serious injury against… Uh, whoever he was supposed to receive it from.
It hadn't been announced on TV, and Suzaku was sure almost no one knew, but he had noticed that after a certain incident that involved villains, All Might disappeared from the public eye for a few months, before then reappearing but with a much shorter schedule for performing heroic acts.
This, coupled with his while vague still useful memory of the show, resulted in him eventually managing to remember and then conclude that All Might must have received the injury that caused him to choose the green-haired guy as his successor in the show.
As to who caused the injury, he didn't know… But honestly, who cared? It was probably a villain that was dead already. No one worth worrying about.
As for what else happened during the past 6 years, well, you would sum everything up in the word "Training".
For starters, Suzaku trained in using all of his Impostor abilities—Or, as he liked to call them, Sus powers—and adapted them to a fighting style that focused only on fighting as efficiently as possible and killing the opponent as swiftly as he could.
Of course, there were still a few things to adjust here and there, but it was mostly completed.
Now, he was sure that if someone were to try and kidnap him again it wouldn't end well for them.
As for what the rest of his Sus powers were… Let's not ruin the surprise, shall we?
Other than that, Suzaku also trained his "0,001% percent of my true strength" fighting style, which in summary was the fighting style he would use when not in need of using his Sus powers.
In other words, it was his fighting style as a "normal guy with just a normal Quirk".
Which was going to be what he was going to use most of the time when fighting non-lethally.
Why?
For starters, to not get linked with the killing spree he had committed a few years ago, and secondly, to avoid having people collect information about his abilities and develop countermeasures against them.
Sure, he had the power to kill anyone in an instant if he were to decide to do so. However, that wouldn't be of much help if his enemies knew that they only needed to fight him from afar, where he couldn't see them.
Not to mention the fact that, while strong and above normal humans when physically talking, he wasn't exactly an invulnerable wall capable of resisting any attack.
No, rather, even a gun would do the job of killing him if it shot through any important area.
He was a glass-canon in all its meaning.
Showing his Sus powers to grow his reputation as a hero? Are you crazy? Then his powers would be all over the internet!
Considering he would be fighting villains in the future, he would most certainly not like to have his powers and weaknesses spread all over for everyone to see them.
So, he had decided to make use of his Sus powers only and only in cases of extreme emergency.
…
Well, at least most of them.
There was one that was simply too good to not be used every now and then.
His killing abilities were banned though.
However, there was also one more reason as to why he had decided to not use his powers flamboyantly left and right.
And that was his concern for how having the ability to kill anyone in one hit would affect his views and morals.
He was no judge, and neither was he an omnipotent being capable of knowing whether a person deserves death or not.
If he were to start killing every criminal in sight as a certain brown-haired potato-eating youth had done once, then it was inevitable that at some point he would kill someone who didn't deserve so... Or at least, not entirely.
Information could be easily traversed, and so would the true stories of how criminals came to commit crimes.
Sure, some did it simply out of malice. However, he had no way of knowing which among hundreds of criminals had done it out of pure enjoyment rather than necessity.
So, he decided that if he were to kill somebody, it would be those who were beyond salvaging and were better off dead rather than imprisoned. Like the Joker. If that guy were in this world, he would surely twist his neck with his Sus powers the moment they were face to face.
Or, on the other hand, those that posed a threat to his life.
Can't worry about whether they are good or bad if they are trying to kill him. He had to worry about himself first.
As for cases in which a decision would be hard to make, it would be as easy as crippling them with a good beating.
It might sound a bit hypocritical of him to be thinking like that after having already killed a hundred people, but for Suzaku that had already passed.
6 Years had been enough to understand that.
The past was the past, he had done what he could to survive.
And if surviving had meant he had to take a hundred people's lives at that moment, then so be it.
What truly mattered was how he was gonna use the powers that God had given him from now on.
'Amen'
"Huff… Huff… That's more like it, brat… You better pray to your God, because when I catch you—!"
"I was asking him to give you a few more years to live since you already seem like you are on your deathbed"
"Damn brat!"
Of course, Suzaku would be happy to say that all that had been his training these past 6 years. However, things didn't end there.
A year or so ago, on a day he arrived at the dojo to train a bit more in his "0,001% percent of my true strength" style, the old man Tatsuo suddenly appeared before him and began dragging him away to the city without any explanation whatsoever.
Things got even more confusing when the old man suddenly dragged him to a dark alley once they ventured into the center of the city.
Suzaku had thought at that moment that the old man had finally revealed his true colors. However, a few minutes after that he discovered that he had been brought to an underground fighting club so that he could practice his martial arts against real Quirk users.
Basically, the old man was telling him to demonstrate all he had learned in his training.
And so he did.
During his first fight, Suzaku had been a tad nervous. After all, he was gonna fight against "professionals" who knew their way with both fights and their Quirks. They were nothing like that bull-headed student he had beaten up years ago.
Shockingly for him, though, he absolutely decimated his opponent.
And his streak didn't end there. After his first battle, Suzaku continued winning again and again.
Suzaku had even lost count after the twentieth fight or so.
Winning so much obviously causes one to lose interest in numbers pretty quickly.
Of course, not all fights were a walk in the park. In some, he truly had to put what he learned from Tatsuo to work.
Quirks like having dozens of arms hitting him constantly, super speed that even with his enhanced reflexes he couldn't react to, bodies so enormous that even with his agility he couldn't dodge their attacks, etc…
Fortunately, since it was an underground fighting club, most Quirks had been related to fighting in close quarters so he managed to hold his ground against them.
However, thanks to that, he also came to lack experience against Quirk users who could fight from afar or simply had huge AOE attacks because of their Quirks.
Like Endeavor, the second-best hero.
That guy could make him roasted-Suzaku from far away, and with how huge his attacks were, Suzaku would find it very hard to dodge any of his attacks in time if he fought him in close range.
Of course, Tatsuo's martial arts also had a way to deal with that kind of Quirk users. However, like most teachings in Tatsuo's martial arts, it wasn't all failproof.
Since strong Quirks put their users so far above common people, and were so variable, it was only normal that Tatsuo's martial arts only detailed the most probable way of defeating them rather than a definitive way.
The rest of the factors that would decide the victor would be determined by the Quirk user being fought, the environment, the number of enemies, Suzaku himself, and his state of mind during the fight, among other external factors…
Nevertheless, knowing such a fighting style was still a lot of help.
Had he not met the old man, Suzaku didn't know if he would be even half as strong as he was now.
Of course, his Sus powers would still be there to help him overpower any foe. However, he could not be able to use them as effectively as he could now, that's for sure.
If he had not met Tatsuo, Suzaku was not even sure he would have been able to put as much effort as he had put in during these past years.
Looking at himself now, Suzaku held great pride in what he had managed to become, with or without his impostor powers.
It was such a big… difference from what he was in his past life, that Suzaku couldn't help but feel baffled.
Of course, he attributed all that to the existence of heroes as a feasible job in this world, to his unwillingness to repeat the same path he took in his past life, and to his meeting with the old man.
Had either of these factors been lacking, he didn't know what would have become of his life by now.
But honestly, it didn't matter.
He was gonna become a hero. That was decided.
What would have been was no longer important.
And now that his training was mostly all done, he was ready to begin with that path.
In one more year, the exams to enter a hero school would begin.
And with all the power and knowledge of martial arts he had gathered, there was nothing to fear anymore.
He was prepared.
As for which school he decided on?
Heh…
He had decided to enter the best hero school in all of Japan… Or at least the one best-ranked by the internet.
UA High... or something like that.
He didn't know in which school the protagonist of the series had enrolled in the show. He didn't pay that much attention to such details when he watched the anime.
However, he didn't care.
Were he to coincidentally enroll in his same school, he had decided that he would just stay away from whatever shonen-anime stuff happened to that guy during his time at that school.
'I mean, how big of a mess can a protagonist like him get involved in? I'm sure it won't be anything too bad' Suzaku thought while nodding his head with a smile.
However, his smile vanished when he remembered that the guy was supposed to become the successor of the so-called Symbol of Peace.
A guy like that… Was bound to get involved in pretty serious stuff… Right?
At least, if he looked at it from the perspective of a typical shonen… Then, yes… That guy was most likely gonna get involved in world-ending stuff.
'Heroes and villains world, I kind of tend to forget that such tropes often come with world-ending threats…'
As Suzaku let out a sigh, feeling pressured by the uncertain future, suddenly he shook his head with a smile.
'Hahaha… What am I saying? I doubt anything grand will happen during his years in high school'
Suzaku felt the urge to laugh at his paranoia.
'I mean, would the author of the show be so dumb as to make a student fight world-ending threats while being under 18? Nah, I really doubt it. The author most likely gave him a time skip in the later parts of the show that I didn't watch, during which he was able to become a proper hero capable of facing world-ending threats'
As Suzaku was coping, suddenly he stopped running and began laughing out loud, much to the bewilderment of his master who was following behind him.
"I was worried for nothing, HAHAHA! Let those exams come then, I will beat them in no time!"
As Suzaku continued laughing victoriously, the old man caught up to him and looked at him as if he was crazy.
"Hey, what are you talking about, brat?" Tatsuo asked with bewilderment in his voice, causing Suzaku to shoot him a confused glare.
"I mean the UA hero exam of course. With all the training I've done these past years, I will sweep through that exam easily!"
Hearing him, Tatsuo sneered, before he nodded his head.
"So it's just that. Of course you will pass it easily. With all the training I've put you through, some puny hero exams won't be much of a challenge to you… Though, I can't help you with the written exam. You will have to figure out that part yourself"
…
Hearing that, Suzaku slowly turned his head to Tatsuo like a rusted robot.
"The written what…?"
…
-To be Continued-
(A/N: My man Suzaku forgetting about tests just like me)
->
週次パワーステータス
-- 推薦
ランキング 
-- 推薦
チケット