บท 28: The Calm Before The-

AN: Hi, I'm back for more chapters. I was busy this week studying. Also, check our Vesteria on Roblox, it's great! As well as my other novel, even though its just one chapter. I'll eventually get the second chapter out....

Anyways, I saw the Fall anime like Ranking of the Kings, Finest Assassin, Faraway Paladin, etc and they look great!

Back to the story!

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(Last Week)

"Netero's missing?"

Sitting in a coffee shop in downtown Tokyo were two men. The older one had untamed white hair and a black turtleneck as his round sunglasses covered his eyes. Across from the man sat the younger one, with brown unkept hair and a plain face. It was Gojo and Hachioji.

"Yup." said Gojo, leaning back in his chair, the back legs of the chair tilting slightly back. "We haven't seen the old geezer after he left on a solo mission a couple of days ago. He hasn't responded to any of our texts or messages. The techies found his last location at Togo. The brass want to send me in to check up on the good ol' Isaac."

"But," he paused, taking a sip of his coffee, "that means I'll be gone from Tokyo. Albeit, it'll probably take me a day to sort things out in Africa, things have been getting hectic around here in the upper north wards of Tokyo."

Naoto realized where his silver-haired friend was going with his conversation. "You want me to substitute for you."

"Bingo," said Gojo, snapping his fingers. "You see, among all of the S-Class, you're the closet and most competent person I can trust to do this. Tatsumaki? She's basically a child with telekinesis brother. Watch Dog? He won't leave Nagoya unless the danger is above [Dragon]."

"I'll do it." He said, nodding his head.

"Great!" said Gojo, clasping his hands together. Rising from his seat, he took his coffee cup with him as he walked towards the exit. "Ciao! Oh, before I forget, I need you to do one more thing."

"?"

----------------------

"Can't believe I'm in space again..." he muttered, admiring the vast darkness around him save for intense heat of the sun.

With only a canister of air attached to his helmet, he had been teleported to space at the courtesy of the resident sorcerer. Why was he in space? Well, there happened to be a meteor hiding towards Earth. The JDA had spotted the meteor months in advanced, speculating that it's size warranted a response from the heavy hitters, aka, the S-Class. Gojo, who lost a bet to Tatsumaki in a game of rock-paper-scissors, had to destroy the meteorite this time. Not without complaining about how the green-haired hero always pulled meteorites herself out of space in her attacks.

And now that role had abruptly passed to him. Apparently, this was expected behavior, because Taishi had already arrived the moment he agreed to take over for Gojo with his air mask.

Looking to the east of the sun, he spotted a large mass approaching towards Earth at was no doubt extinction-level speeds. He himself has been launched towards the meteorite himself at high speeds himself, and the large mass continued to get closer and closer.

'Ok,' he thought, 'just punch the rock, and press my watch to get teleported out.'

The power burst he experienced from the Tsunami accident had awoken something else inside him, and he could feel it. It was just like when he first received [One for All], where he had too much power for his body to handle. He thought that was it when he reached the 100% mark, but now, all he felt was an empty abyss of power lying dormant, waiting at his command to use.

Any second, he would make contact with the meteor. Perhaps this was the time to test out his strength?

Rearing his right hand back, the already thick strands of electricity snaking around his power grew in size exponentially, arcing farther away from his body and soon lighting up the empty vacuum around him. Some stray lightning had even reached out to the incoming meteorites, breaking pieces off the surface.

With a deep breath, he punched.

-----------------------------------

Tim Burton was an astronaut.

After graduating from Air Force Academy at the top of his class, he went and completed over three hundred combat missions logged and eventually promoted to Captain. Nasa approached him one day, asking if he wanted to go to space. Of course, he accepted. His family was ecstatic that he was going to be an astronaut.

But that was a lie.

On the cover, it may seen to be that he was just tasked to help the researchers at the U.S. newly built, independent, space station with their projects. But in reality, he and along with fellow 'researchers' and 'astronauts,' were the prototype task-force designed and created to handle future international and spatial 'threats.' He doubted that any of the countries would sit quietly if they knew the U.S. 'research' space station was fully armed with two orbital lasers, sixteen warheads, and state-of-the-art spacecraft capable of minimal combat.

But that didn't matter with everyone on the space station staring in fear and curiosity at the the strange phenomena in the distance. From the windows, they saw a bright green light flare in the distance. Their cameras tried to record the strange occurrence but the glare from the sun and the light source itself seemed to prevent them from doing so.

Suddenly, an even brighter orange glow emanated from the phenomena as well for a moment before the darkness of space returned.

Tim Burton had enough of sitting around.

"Sir, we need authorization of the Secretary of Defense to mobilize those Ap-wings!" said the man next time.

"Authorization? Damn that! Did you not see that huge ass explosion out there?! We need to survey the area before the other countries learn of it."

"Colonel, it's the Chairmen of the Joints Chief of Staff, General Pertinelly." said the man again.

Pausing, in his orders, he allowed the pending video call be played on the main monitor. When the face of an elderly man appeared on screen, Burton saluted.

"At ease, Colonel." said the now identified General.

"Yes sir."

"We received news of your observations."

"Then you must see the strategic importance of being-."

"And your orders are to ignore it." Confused, the Colonel Burton kept silent as he looked the the General strangely. Seeing this, the General sighed.

"We know what caused it too occur, and to the benefit of our national security and sovereigns, the President has ordered all matters related to this to be elevated to the highest clearance possible. Have your men notified immediately. That is all."

Still confused, he abided the orders from the highest ranked General. "Sir yes sir."

_________________________________

(Present)

"So, what do you think your odds are?" asked Nagatoro.

Sitting the club room, now cleaned at his behest, as Nagatoro and her friends.

"Pretty low," he admitted, thinking back to the President's work from last year. "I don't think even you, as beautiful as you are as my model, n-no offense, can handle what she'll present."

"Dang, that's a burn if I heard one," said Gamou, playing on her phone.

"Burn!" shouted Yoshi.

"Shut up!" shouted Nagatoro, her eyebrow twitching.

Tapping her chin, Sakura looked deep in thought. "Now that I think about it, didn't the Art Club get sixth place last year?"

"Yeah," he nodded, "but it was the President that single-handedly got us that spot."

Nagatoro glanced at Gamou.

"Hey Gamou, what did the karate club get last year?" she asked

"We got eleventh place."

"Dang!" shouted Yoshi, "Not even karate can beat the Art Club!"

"Man, Senpai, did your club members each paint the next Mona Lisa or something? I heard from the swim club that there was over fifty clubs last year."

He sighed. "It's better if I showed you." Walking over to a cabinet, he rummaged through several past paintings.

Curious, the girls got up and stood behind Senpai as they waited for the painting to be shown.

Finally finding the piece, he turned and showed the painting to the rest of them. "Here's the piece the President painted last year."

Seeing the painting, the younger girls mouths dropped down in shock as several of them blushed.

The painting had a dark background, with a nude self-portrait of the backside of a familiar, violet-haired girl with a serious expression adorning her face and red eyes.

"T-That's the president's...?" muttered Nagatoro in shock.

Still mesmerized by the painting, Gamou found it hard to tear her eyes away before turning to him. "The President is standing next to her own piece, right."

He nodded his head, "Yeah." Looking back, he remembered he had to kick several boys out of the Art Exhibit who wanted to see if the painting really did match the President.

"Well damn, no wonder it's so popular." remarked Gamou.

Nodding her head in agreement, Yoshi imagined how popular it was. "Sixth place for sure."

"She's going to kill some virgins." said Sakura.

"So you've been keeping this nasty piece of art, huh, Senpai?" said Nagatoro.

Turning to look at Nagatoro, he recognized the emotionlessly deadly stare she was giving him. "I-It's not n-nasty! It won several competitions at the college-level, an-and the school approved of it because it made it too the finals. It's also kept with the other member's artworks. S-So I'm not keeping just because sh-she's nude!"

Unconvinced, Nagatoro began to interrogate her boyfriend. "You sound pretty desperate, Senpai. Admit you like nasty stuff and my punishment will be swift."

"P-Punishment?! I didn't even store it here! I just remembered it was put here, that's all."

As Nagatoro continued to bury him under numerous questions, to the side, Gamou, Yoshi, and Sakura seemed to find amusement in his suffering.

"Don't they remind you of those old couples?" asked Gamou to the other two, smirking as she watched Nagatoro begin shaking his shoulders.

"Especially the one's where the husband returns late at night drunk and his wife yells at him for returning late." said Sakura as she too watched Nagatoro now threatening to burn the painting in the name of purity.

"Senpai's as a drunk, hehe." giggled Yoshi, who too now watched the finale of the interrogation end with him promising Nagatoro to do whatever she wanted.

______________________________

It was Saturday. And Saturday's meant date day.

Arm in arm, he and Nagatoro strolled through the seaside park near their high school. He was wearing a t-shirt with the word "T-SHIRT" in English printed on it and a pair of shorts. Next to him, Nagatoro wore a white sun dress and a baby blue sun hat as well as a tiny backpack to hold her items.

"He got All Might's quirk, just like that?"

"Well yeah, his display of heroism inspired All Might to act heroically, resulting in the number one hero to choose him as his successor." he explained.

"Senpai, too be honest with you, that line of reasoning seems kinda sus." Nagatoro said frankly. "I know it's a shonen and all, but it seems unrealistically that the main character after meeting the number one hero for only a short moment to all of the sudden get chosen as the next big thing."

"All Might said later in the manga that he was quirklessly too, which could explain why he connected to Midoriya on a more personal level," he said, "as well a living up to his persona as an untouchable and undefeatable hero, All Might probably felt burdened by the fact that he could not continue being that hero his imagine needed, so he had to find a successor, which luckily-"

"This is what I'm taking about Senpai," interrupted Nagatoro as the path started to lead them through a forest. "Their is too many coincides going here, it sounds like lazy writing."

Seeing her boyfriend begin to get depressed, she decided to change the subject. "Senpai, have you decided which painting of me you wanted to showcase?"

Thinking, he bit on his bottom lip lightly. "Maybe the cosplay one...? I'm still deciding between the one of you sleeping and the other one of you smiling."

"I like the smiling one." said Nagatoro, giving him a smile now. "It shows how happy I am with you."

The pureness of her smile and the her comment made his heart feel as if it was being clutched. He knew that he was making that face again as he started as tears started to stream down his face like waterfalls.

"Oh my god, Senpai!" giggled Nagatoro, "You always make that ugly face as you cry! But I like it." Taking a hankerchief from her backpack, she began to wipe the tears away from his face, which was currently contorted tightly as his heart still felt touched by her comments.

"There, there, Senpai." said Nagatoro in a gentle tone. "I know you're happy that I'm your girlfriend. I would be crying too if I had myself as a girlfriend."

Still teary eyed, he raised an eyebrow at her at the blatant narcissism. Sitting down at a nearby bench, Nagatoro continued to wipe away at his eyes even though the tears had already stopped falling.

"Doesn't this remind you of when we first met in the library?" asked Nagatoro.

He remembered the similar scene of Nagatoro making him cry. It was a fond memory.

"Yeah, you made me cry." he sniffled.

"And proud of it." said Nagatoro smugly. "When I was hanging out in the library, the first thing I thought too myself when I saw you was 'what would he look like crying?'"

"..."

"So I promised myself that if somehow we managed to get alone, I would see if he was sensitive enough for my teasing. Then, I would shred away at his dignity and his pride, revealing the vulnerable soul of a cry baby that longed to see the world!"

"...no way you thought of that when we met." He said, giving Nagatoro deadpanned look.

"But I did, Senpai. I knew it from the moment we met that I was destined to dominate you!"

"..."

"Hey, Senpai! Slow down! I was just joking! Stop running! Hey!"

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After grabbing a bite to eat at Bob's Burgers with Linda that was asking questions that made both teens blush redder than a tomato. Nagatoro, who ate quite a bit, felt sleepy, so she begged him to give her a piggy-back ride. Her plea was too adorable to refuse, resulting in him easily caving into her demands.

Nuzzled into his shoulder, Nagatoro's eyes were closed in contentment as she laid against his warm jacket. By the way she smelling it, he knew that there was going to be another jacket stolen from him again.

Arriving before Nagatoro's door, the hands holding Nagatoro up by her thighs shook lightly to wake the sleeping girl up.

"Wakey, wakey, we're here." he said, continuing to lightly move the girl up and down.

"Noooo~." Nagatoro whined, holding on to his back tighter. "Just bring me up to my room."

"I need my hands and your keys to open the door." he explained.

Still sleepy, Nagatoro shook her head. "Just go through the backdoor; the slide door is always unlocked."

Carrying her on his back, he used his elbow to open the door, kicking off his shoe as well as getting Nagatoro's off her feet. He heard a muffled 'I'm home,' from Nagatoro, who was still relaxing her head on his shoulder. Climbing the stairs, he walked down the hallway and entered her room.

"Here we are," he said, dropping Nagatoro on her bed. She soon scurried under her blankets as peaceful smile graced her face. Seeing her smile, he smiled as well.

"See you tomorrow," he said, standing up.

But before he could leave the room, a hand grabbed his.

"Nope~." Nagatoro said, rapidly shaking her head. "Sleep with me, Senpai~."

"Bu-Bu-!" He stuttered, his cheeks blushing red as the implications of what Nagatoro said. Sleeping in a girl's room! That was something absurd. Something forbidden!

"No butts, unless it your's," she said, "please stay with me until I'm asleep."

Seeing the look she was giving him, he felt, once again, his resistance falter. "I-I don't kn-know."

She stayed silent, pleading with her eyes as she looked at him.

"F-Fine, but we have to shower and brush our teeth first!"

After twenty minutes, they were both under Nagatoro's duvet. Snuggling closer to him, Nagatoro clutched onto his arm like a teddy bear.

"Good night, Senpai."

"Goodnight, Hayase."

______________________________

Drip. Drip.

The small droplets of water dripping from the cracks in the ceiling continued to break the eerily silence of the sewers, echoing in throughout the tunnels.

Further below the decrepit sewers and far below the soils of Monte Negro was a large cavern. In it sat housed many grotesque nightmares and monsters that could send shivers and chills to the bravest of men. But there was one, one who dwarfed the others in sheer size and power, who sat in the middle.

He was large, ominous, and unmoving. The being had several large spikes pointing upwards above his head, cracked skin, empty eyes, and multiple sets of pointy teeth inside his mouth. His shoulders, wrists, and fingers have the appearance of monstrous snakeheads with pointy teeth, with the latter ending in large claws. His knees have the appearance of snake skulls and his clothing consisted of a large cape connected to a circular, veiny joint in the center of his chest and a piece of cloth covering his lap.

He was Orochi, Monster King.

"Your greatness! I have some news for you, your kingliness."

Far below at the feet of Orochi was a humanoid monster of diminutive stature. He had a completely black body and a pale, white face with black eyes and a tail-like protrusion on the top of his head.

He was Black Sperm.

"Envoys have been sent out to the Curses spirits, and we're pending their confirmation."

In deep, baritone voice that shook the underground cavern, Orochi spoke. "What about our current allies."

"The Demons have gone into hiding as you commanded, preparing their numbers. The bloodsuckers on the other hand... are experiencing some internal conflicts currently."

"The Ants?"

Black Sperm scoffed at the mention of them. "Those insects? They were so bold, but they've been found out already and wiped out. Now those humans will know about us! We should've just killed the Queen when she came to us for sanctuary!"

"They were an ends to a mean," rumbled the Monster King, "they have disabled the enlightened without a single blood shed on our part."

"Ah, I understand now! Your foresight and wisdom are unparalleled, your Majesty!"

Ignoring the compliment, Orochi closed his eyes. "Do not bother me until needed. Tell the other Executives to continue as planned."

"With pleasure, 'O great Orochi!" Bowing, Black Sperm, walked backwards until he was out of sight of the gargantuan monster.

As soon as he was sure he was alone, Black Sperm had a scowl on his face. "Can't believe I degraded myself, calling some big snake 'O great one!' Just wait until I achieve my final form..."

"Are those thoughts of treachery I hear from you, nya?"

Leaning against the corridor was another monster. It was humanoid in nature, taking on the appearances of a lean tabby cat if one was able to walk with a large bell hanging from his neck. His arms crossed as he smirked in the Black Sperm's frustration.

"Nyan, what is the pussy-cat doing here? I thought you had some string to play it." scowled Black Sperm.

"It gets boring playing with strings and the decapitated bodies of my would-be killers, but I do find time to come here as well. I am a executive as well, you know."

Ignoring his feline compatriot, Black Sperm continued to walk down the corridor as Nyan watched.

"Now where was Homeless Emperor...? I smell him somewhere around here, nya."