บท 4: Chapter 4 - Gwen Stacy

(Gwen POV)

Holding Nero's hand, I couldn't help but be surprised.

Nero is a boy who looks the same age as me; he is tall and has short black hair, with some locks that fall over his beautiful golden eyes. On his well-shaped body, he wore a black shirt and light blue pants.

But what surprised me was not his handsome appearance, but his surname.

Even a foreigner like me knows that this boy's family is quite influential in Japan.

The Fujiwara family is one of the most influential and powerful families in the Land of the Rising Sun.

And from the way he uses his quirk and the way he fights, he is definitely not just a third-generation young master.

Furthermore, it was possible to feel some calluses on his hands, making it clear that he was not just a simple heir.

As I held his hand, I felt a deadly gaze on me, almost causing my [Spider-Sense] to activate.

The owner of this deadly gaze was a girl who also looked to be the same age as me.

She looked at my hand and then at my face, making her intention very clear.

I could have sworn I could hear her growl at me.

What are you, a dog?

With that thought, I gently pulled my hand out of the grip, leaving the boy a little confused.

It's not my fault; it's the fault of this possessive girl who is next to you.

Nero gives a smile without really understanding what is happening, and his eyes turn to the bandit, who is unconscious on the ground.

His honey-golden eyes looked at the bandit with great curiosity, almost as if he wanted to know what this guy's quirk was.

"He had a quirk that isolated sound from a place, and apparently his quirk also seemed to camouflage the place," I said, shrugging my shoulders.

"Oh! A very functional quirk, especially considering your career." He said with a smile, bending down to the unconscious man on the floor.

"A very short career," I said, finding his action a little strange.

Suddenly, he moved his hand, grabbing a piece of web that I had thrown to tie the bandit up.

My face, for some reason, got a little red.

"Webs!? Are they organic webs?! You do that inside your body?" He lifts his head toward me curiously, asking a series of questions as he plays with the sticky solution on his fingers.

"Nooo!!!" I almost screamed, even feeling a little offended by the questions, but the shame was even greater, spreading across my face, which became even redder.

I lifted the sleeve of my blazer, revealing a device that was attached to my wrist, to try to resolve this embarrassment.

The fact that he thought I had organic webs inside my body was very embarrassing.

Nero quickly stood up and looked at the device on my arm. His hand ran down my left arm, making my already red face almost boil with embarrassment.

Honestly, shouldn't Japanese people be shy around the opposite sex?

This is false advertising.

"Oh! That gauntlet must be made of a metal alloy, trying to guess, I think it's stainless steel?! Hmm! Interesting. It's probably that button in the palm of your hand that makes the web shoot." Nero touched my arm, completely at ease.

"Cough! Cough!" The girl next to him coughed, grabbing Nero by the collar and pulling him back.

"Nice to meet you; I'm Ochaco Uraraka," Uraraka said, shooting a death glare at Nero, who didn't understand why, but his eyes quickly returned to the gauntlet in my hand.

"It's a..." I think it's better to call her by her last name; after all, if you are in Rome, do as the Romans do. "It's a pleasure, Uraraka-san," I said with a polite smile, starting to feel a little uncomfortable with the fact that Nero was more interested in the gauntlet on my wrist than me.

Uraraka-san just smiled, still holding Nero by his collar.

"You can speak Japanese very well," Uraraka-san exclaimed curiously.

"When my father wanted to move to Japan, I thought it would be better to learn Japanese. Well, I already knew a little Japanese, so it wasn't that difficult."

"Usually, people say the Japanese language is boring because we have three alphabets," Nero said, shrugging his shoulders.

"Yes, that was the hardest part." I still didn't know why there were three different alphabets, namely: hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Of these three, the most difficult to learn was the kanji, while the other two were easier.

"By the way, how exactly does this gauntlet work?" He asked, pointing to the gauntlet on my wrist.

So we return to this device. I thought with a slight smile.

"Inside the gauntlet are cartridges of web fluid, and when I press the button on my palm, web fluid comes out of the metal nozzle on the wrist." I turned my wrist, showing the gauntlet, as I explained.

"Oh! Did you invent this device?" Nero exclaimed curiously.

"Yes, and this gauntlet's name is Web Shooter," I said proudly, and before we could continue the conversation, the police officers walked through the store door.

"Hehehe! They take their time." Nero said, standing up as Uraraka shrugged, letting him go.

The police officers quickly separated, collecting their weapons, when a large, bald man approached us.

"Hello, Mr. Officer," Nero said, raising his hand.

"I think we need to talk about inappropriate use of quirks." The police officer didn't seem to mind Nero's greeting at all.

His eyes went to the unconscious woman on the floor and the bandit tied up in my webs.

Honestly, I was fine. After all, what I used was just the web-shooter, and he wouldn't be able to prove that I used my quirk.

"Of course, the only one who used quirk here was me," Nero said, smiling, looking at the woman lying on the ground as the police handcuffed her.

"I doubt it, but let's start with you. Please come with me to give your statement of the incident."

"Yes sir." He said almost jokingly and turned to us. "Ladies, I'll be right back." True to his word, he followed the officer to a corner in a relaxed manner.

My blue eyes naturally followed this boy.

"He'll be fine?" I pointed at Nero.

"Please, he is a Fujiwara; should you ask if the officer is going to be okay?" Uraraka shrugged.

So this is the power of the Fujiwara family.

"So what's your quirk?" Uraraka asked, placing her fingers on her chin as she looked at me.

"Why don't you try to guess?" I moved my hand, placing it behind my back.

"Nah! I'm not Nero; he'd probably like this game a lot more than me." She smiled.

"Hehehe! He really seems like that kind of person."

Just from his previous glances, he seemed to be analyzing me, as if my every move said something about me to him.

It's a shame that my quirk is hard to guess, especially from the name.

My quirk's name is [Arachnid].

To see! Not a very cool name for a quirk.

[Arachnid] simply gives me powers commensurate with those of a spider, except that I can't shoot webs, which is why I invented web shooters, since I don't have organic webs.

Some things need to be clarified.

Well, my quirk gives me the ability to: have superhuman strength, superhuman speed, superhuman stamina, superhuman durability, superhuman agility, and strong regeneration.

Well, my quirk gave me the ability to crawl on walls, but beyond that, my quirk grants me perfect balance.

There is also another ability I call [Spider-Sense], which warns me of potential or immediate danger through the manifestation of a tingling sensation in the back of the skull. And it's linked to my superhuman kinesthetic, allowing me to escape almost any injury unless the blow cognitively overloads my automatic reflexes.

My quirk is a bit complex, making it impossible to guess, but I feel like that would only make things more fun for Nero.

As he thought about this, the sound of a child crying echoed through the store.

Ochaco-san and I turned our gazes to a crying child.

She is a 5-year-old girl with black hair and eyes the same color as her hair, a typical Japanese little girl.

The child's mother did everything she could to try to calm her down, but nothing helped.

"Poor thing, she must be scared," Uraraka-san said with an expression of pity and sadness.

"These events must be quite frightening for a child, plus it was the same child who had guns held to her head." I wanted to go to her, but I didn't know what to say to calm that child down.

Now that I think about it, my ex-best friend was really good with kids and terrible with any other kind of person.

His social skills were terrible, but he was a good person.

As I thought about my former best friend, a bit of sadness came to my eyes, along with guilt.

Even if it was his fault, if I had held back at least a little, he wouldn't have died...

Before I could finish my thoughts, a melodious voice echoed through the store.

"Hello, young lady."

Upon hearing this voice, I snap out of my sad thoughts and look at the child, seeing Nero crouched at his height.

The child looked at Nero but was still crying, and the mother clearly didn't know how to stop her daughter from crying.

"Do you want to see a cool trick from Onii-san?" He gave the little girl a friendly smile.

The child was still crying, but she nodded in confirmation.

With a smile, Nero raised his hand. "[Blue Lapse]". He said, making a small teddy bear that was on the floor go straight to his hand, probably thanks to an attractive force.

That alone made the girl stop crying and concentrate on Nero's movements. But why is there a stuffed bear lying on the floor in a lingerie store?

Ignoring this, I looked at the child, who had stopped crying and was focusing completely on Nero's movements.

Children are a little bipolar.

I thought with a smile, only to be surprised by his actions in the next second.

Nero picked up the teddy bear and threw it into the air. But instead of the teddy bear falling to the ground, he floated in the air, almost as if something was holding him in the air. No, actually, the teddy bear was falling extremely slowly. The teddy bear fell so slowly that it almost looked like it had stopped in space; it was as if Nero was playing with space itself.

The little girl, for some reason, found this funny and let out a laugh, while looking at Nero as if he were a stage magician.

And then, with a wave of his hand, the teddy bear quickly fell into Nero's hands.

The girl's crying expression had long since disappeared.

But apparently, Nero wasn't done with his show yet.

Suddenly, Nero closed his hand, causing the teddy bear to disappear.

The girl looked at Nero, waiting for the last maneuver, with enthusiasm and even adoration in her eyes.

With a smile, he opened his hand, and where the teddy bear should have been, there was now a flower. The flower seemed to be the only trick that actually came from a stage magician; the flower probably came from the shirt sleeve.

The little girl was smiling from ear to ear.

"A gift for the young lady." He said, handing the flower to the girl, who seemed to be at the height of happiness. "By the way, the teddy bear in your pocket belongs to you now too, young lady."

With her free hand, the girl reached into her pocket and pulled out a small teddy bear.

Meanwhile, from the corner of my eye I saw one of the cameras making a strange movement, a single camera was focused on Nero.

A little strange, but I didn't think about it since a certain little girl caught my attention.

"Thank you, Onii-san." She said with the most sincere smile I've ever seen in my life, as she held the flower and teddy bear in her hand.

"You're welcome." Nero poked her forehead and stood up, while the girl's mother smiled at him too.

This mother's smile was strange; It looked more like the smile of a woman in heat than that of a mother.

Madam! Beware the FBI.

"He is good," I said, putting my hands behind my head.

"Yes, he is." Uraraka's eyes narrowed, looking at Milf, who clearly had other intentions towards the boy in front of her.

I must admit that doing this trick is quite useful for winning over women, especially considering that Nero already has good looks.

"Excuse me," Uraraka said, walking up to Nero, and before the mature woman could say anything, she grabbed him by the collar again and pulled him to where I was.

"See you later, Onii-san." The little girl said with a smile but was a little scared of Uraraka, while the Milf who was supposed to be investigated by the FBI had a sad expression.

Nero waved his hand, not minding being pulled by Uraraka.

Hehehe! This seemed to be something normal between them.

These two seem to be right in the middle of the line of best friends and lovers. But it is evident that they are not in a romantic relationship.

A fun drama for those on the outside watching.

But for a person like me who has never been in a romantic relationship, while it's fun to see these two interacting, it still makes me feel like I'm eating vinegar.

Now that I think about it, I'm just a 14-year-old girl who never experienced her first love.

In fact, the only relationship I've had with a man was with my ex-best friend, and even then it was entirely a relationship between friends and there was nothing remotely romantic about it.

And that friendly relationship ended with him trying to kill me, and me... killing him.

With that thought, I clenched my fist tightly.

My ex-best friend was a cool kid; we practically grew up together, but when I was 13, his quirk woke up.

His quirk was not something common; his peculiarity also had to do with an animal; to be more exact, it was a reptile.

So, his quirk didn't just change his appearance, but also his mind. He got out of control, almost killing me, but unfortunately, I was stronger than him; however, I couldn't contain myself, and he ended up dying by my own hands.

My father, seeing that I didn't feel comfortable living in that place, simply decided to move to another country.

This is a pretty drastic action, considering that we could simply change cities instead of changing countries.

But honestly, I don't think it was a bad idea.

Furthermore, it wasn't that difficult for my father to get a job as a police officer in Japan.

While I was stuck in my thoughts, I suddenly heard Nero's voice.

"Are you well?" Nero asked me, snapping me out of my not-so-good thoughts.

He was now free from Uraraka's clutches.

"Of course, why wouldn't I be?" I exclaimed with a smile, dispelling this not-very-good memory.

Nero didn't seem to believe my smile, but thank God he decided not to pursue the matter further.

You are a good person.

It's been a long time since I had this much fun with someone.

It's a bit immoral to say this, but thank God those thieves broke into the store, otherwise I wouldn't have had a good day.

"So, how did your statement to the police go?" I asked, changing the subject.

"Nothing much; it seems he figured out on his own that it was all in self-defense," Nero said, pointing behind him.

Looking back, I see the police officer with a worried expression on his face.

In his eyes, you could see the regret for having spoken to Nero.

"The power of influence," I said in a playful voice.

"One of the most primordial powers in the world."

Nero's words made me smile genuinely.

Uraraka also smiled.

Looking at the boy who was doing so well for me, I took a rather hasty action.

"Can you lend me your cell phone?"

Instantly, Uraraka gave me that same deadly look.

I swear, I have no such intentions with your friend.

I thought, feeling a little shy about my immoral action.

"All right." Nero casually handed me his cell phone without the slightest concern.

Taking his cell phone, which was already unlocked, I went into his contacts.

I quickly punched in some numbers and handed his cell phone back to him.

Without thinking twice, I lowered his face, which turned red with embarrassment.

"My number, I live in this area, and anything, you can call me."

For some reason, Uraraka just let out a sigh, but it still gave me a death glare, but it contained less killing intent.

Girl! I'm already dying of shame; don't judge me.

I just think Nero is fun, and I swear I have no hidden intentions... I guess.

"Sure, it'll be great to ask you out." Saying this, he receives an elbow from Uraraka-san. "Obviously, along with my lovely Ochaco." He quickly corrects himself.

I laugh watching the interaction between the two, but I feel a strange feeling.

"I can't wait for it." Saying that I placed my hand behind my back and turned around. "Until next time, Uraraka-san and Nero," I said, refusing to use honorifics with Nero.

"See you later, Stacy-san." Uraraka raised her hand.

"See you later, Gwen," Nero exclaimed amiably.

With a slight smile, I walk out the store door.

And without realizing it, the image of Nero was engraved in my head.