The day was finally here. Another main and important event came by in the form of a school festival. Do you remember when I talked about not wanting enough attention, and the next thing I did was grab attention on me during the U.S.J. attack? Well, I'm a hypocrite, and so is every person that ever lives. Things change; your self today contradicts your self yesterday, after all.
So, new plan, and I hope this one doesn't change so quickly: I'm grabbing all the attention for me, and this is my perfect opportunity, the first spot.
Why did I change my opinion so quickly? It's obvious. Now that I can change bodies with Karma, I can easily be in two places at once. The reason I didn't want to be recognized was to vanish quickly without raising suspicion, but that's unnecessary now.
So yeah, I'm aiming at winning the tournament. A lot of variables are going to appear in my way, but what the hell, I'm the owner of this board.
The sun finally appeared on the horizon. A sweet breeze moved my hair as I walked to the train station. Karma was incapable of giving me a ride; he now had a lot of responsibilities in his office. Turns out the guy was pretty intelligent, and the company that hired him loved to assign a lot of work to him. Man, even here, companies love to exploit every drop of sweat, huh?
Speaking of which, Karma and I worked hard to change consciences while I was in the sewer. After a few tries, we moved again. He, unlike me that had to fight with three professional heroes, just waited in a park until the change was over. My mother tried to scold me for being four hours late, but... well, she was trying her best.
"Hah... I hope everything goes rig—"
My throat was suddenly cut open. The pain invaded my head as I grabbed it to regenerate easier, jumping backwards as I stumbled. I landed on my back to see a man covered in all black looking at me.
He didn't stop, trying to hit me with a... broken bone?
"Hey! What the fuck, man?!"
As his attack came by, I used his own momentum to make him fly away, lifting him in the air and whipping him onto the concrete, tearing his wrist for the weapon to drop.
His hoodie fell to reveal a pretty good-looking guy: white, blonde, and blue eyes. What? He looked... odd.
"Who the hell are you...?"
I knew every important character inside the universe of My Hero Academia, even those from side stories, and this guy didn't fit in none of them. His style, his body, and face didn't fit anything inside this history.
A click sounded in the back of my mind as he stood up, silently, looking at me with a serious face.
"You are real."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
His manners were rude; his voice dripped violence with a hint of insanity. He wasn't slim nor jacked. I could tell he was athletic, but that wasn't the point.
"He sent you, didn't he? The Wanderer?"
"You are smart, huh? Yes, I'm under the contract of that bastard, and I'm here to reclaim what is mine."
I let my guard down. He looked hurt and tired, looking at me like I was an obstacle to something he wanted to achieve.
"There are things I don't understand. Why are you here? And what do you achieve by attacking me?"
"Huh...? You didn't read the contract before entering here?"
He looked genuinely confused, and I felt so dumb. I didn't even remember a contract at all. He looked at me and sighed, before cracking his neck with one eye closed.
"As a soul, you get the chance to gain a second try if you fail to accomplish your run by killing the next contender. I was... I died thanks to a mistake I committed... and now I need to save them, so this isn't personal, okay? We have different objectives, and I'm sorry, but I have a promise to fulfill."
"A different quirk, the same world, but you and I are so different."
"Why is that?"
"Because I'm not going to fail."
My body moved on its own. He didn't have time to react as my fist struck his nose, breaking it easily. The next punch went to his stomach, and a kick to his thorax made him lose balance.
I couldn't fight in the open; people could see me, and I had a reputation to maintain. I grabbed him before he could even think, restraining him with threads as I uncovered a manhole close to us.
I threw him inside, hearing how he hit the walls to a final "bam." I jumped after, falling into the dirty water. To my surprise, he was already meters away.
From his forearms, a bone came out; it wasn't a normal bone, it acted like a mantis blade.
"So that's your quirk?"
"Exactly, so prepare yourself!"
The fight started again. We charged at each other, but I jumped, baiting him with my knee and at the last moment extending my leg to hit him in the face with the sole of my foot.
He didn't back up, sending his left blade to me. I dodged most of it, but the point of it hit my eye, leaving me temporarily blind. Before my regeneration completed, he continued, varying his attacks between punches and cuts. I blocked some of them and responded when he gave me the chance.
A kick directly to his leg made it numb. He tried to grab me, but I slid behind him. From my hand, a thread came out.
"You know, I like this. For the first time, I can be myself, not a stupid mask."
The thread rolled up around his neck. His mouth produced a disgusting sound before he tried to fight back.
"We'll see if you can escape, seeing that your tonsils vibrate with the pressure of my tension cord."
I laughed softly. His body twitched, and I guessed the combat was over, but to my surprise, the cord broke. He crawled away, splashing the water around him. As he turned to me, he revealed a collar of bones around his neck.Gross.
"You psychopath!"
"You came here to kill me; don't be surprised to confront the consequences."
From his back, a blade made of bone came out. He grabbed it with both hands before charging at me.
"!!!"
He was fast, more fast than I anticipated. I blocked with my arm, but it got cut clean. He didn't stop and went for an upper clean cut. Without time, I used my other arm to stop the sword, ending in the same result.
"It's over, arrogant bastard!"
He went for the kill, aiming at my head. The next second, his jaw got dislocated from a tentacle coming out of my lower back.
Without a doubt, I pushed, using this new organ as my main weapon while my arms regenerated.
"I didn't ask your name."
His swordsmanship was amazing, capable of blocking multiple attacks with the potency of a whip while walking backwards.
"It's Aiji Takamori!"
I laughed to myself. Aiji, a good name, so different from mine. What a joke.
"My name is Akuma Matsumoto here, Michael Bianco outside."
He parried my last attack, cutting the distance between us. I made a blade from my body like him. Blocking his attack, we took a moment to stare at each other.
"Don't say your real name, that's not you anymore."
We jumped in different directions. I guess it was time to use my full power.
With a jump, I was already in front of him. Using that, I hit him as hard as my body let me. He used the blade to block, but the force was so great he lost grip and backed down. I modified my arm, making it ten times bigger to grab him off guard, and it paid off.
He received the attack and flew away, hitting one of the walls. I ran at him with my sword in place to end this. He threw something at me that I couldn't see.
And the next second, I was blind.
Before I could defend myself using my threads, a spear destroyed my head, crossing it completely. I discarded it, throwing a wall of threads to him while making an eye in my chest as a countermeasure.
He struggled to find a way to dodge my quirk. Clean cuts appeared on his body as he failed to block most of them.
A new head was finally in place. I closed my hand, and the threads obeyed, trapping his left arm and right leg in a lock. He used his quirk to pull out bones outside of his body to break them.
"Your quirk is so gross."
"And yours too! Don't feel superior, you immortal bastard!"
His velocity once again surprised me, but this time I was prepared. At point-blank range, he got shot with a phantom bullet. The effect was immediate as his right arm got destroyed.
"AGH?!"
He persisted. He brought up his knee, and from it, sharp pillars came out, burying themselves in my stomach. The pain was unbearable. He broke the thing and kicked me away.
I landed on my knee as my body rejected the weapon. I threw it away, and we looked at each other. He was also capable of regenerating, but at a much slower pace than I.
"How did you die?"
I asked. His face became dark, just as I expected. He bit his lip before speaking, trying to clean his body full of blood.
"I know about your run. Your soul was reincarnated. Mine wasn't. I appeared moments away from the exam with everything already done for me. At first, it was fun, my dream come true."
A little smile came out of him, but it was quickly replaced by an expression of anger.
"The Wanderer always likes to make things difficult, yes, but in my case, he made Dabi a fucking maniac. When they arrived at the training camp... he... started to kill us, even his teammates were confused... I tried... I tried to save her..."
Silence. Tears came out of him, but he didn't look sad; he looked determined. What a bummer.
"When I died, he called me, to the white space, and told me he messed up. He told me it's normal, some runs are ruined thanks to that, and we pay the price. I'm sorry, Akuma, but I made a promise to Momo! I'm going to save my classmates, even if that means condemning yours. I am sure you are going to understand."
I used my hand, leaning on my knee to stand up, stretching my body briefly.
"No, I don't. I don't care what happened in your world. It's over. This is my history, not yours. So, with that said, I'm going to kill you."
The tentacle from my back went out again. He moved out of the way. The thing broke the wall he was just in, but his face showed no fear. With a movement, he chased after me. I jumped backwards and attacked again with my tentacle. It was difficult to get used to a new organ, but I was practicing for the festival anyways.
I made a 180 spin with my body, gaining centrifugal force for my attack. With the sound of a clash, his sword broke at the impact. I jumped at him, modifying my hand into the point of a spear. He parried it with a real knife he hid somewhere. I used my other hand to shoot at him a net of my own cord, grabbing him off guard, limiting his movements. I jumped and hit his head with a left kick, sending him flying away.
He rolled, soaking his body in the sewer water. I walked to him as he made another sword. This guy didn't learn, huh?
I made my hands bigger claws. My organ waved, expecting a moment to strike. The distance between us was minimal. He was bleeding from his forehead, and one of his eyes was closed. This fight was over.
I closed my eyes, preparing myself for the last clash. He finally got into position, and I changed my mind. My mutations retreated. He looked surprised but didn't let that distract him. From my neck, a sword came out. I used my own position, and we looked at each other.
I could read his lips: "Thank you."
I attacked from below, him from above. His blade cut my right arm off, and my sword changed directions, cutting only his cheek.
The weapon flew away, but my other arm was still complete, so I grabbed it, and we clashed again. I repaired the sword in a mere second, using tension cords to ensure it didn't break.
This time, his sword gave up, blowing into millions of pieces as I used the moment to lunge into his chest. He went for my ears, attacking them and taking me by surprise. I failed the attack but made distance with my tentacle.
My head trembled for a little before reconnecting again. A dash was enough to restart the fight, but this time, I would use the core of my quirk, not my body anymore.
With a thread coming out of my finger, his arm, which wasn't fully regenerated, was chopped off. I shot a phantom bullet to his leg, tearing it apart before hitting him directly on the chin.
He splashed on the ground, lying immobile. My body hurt; I wasted a lot of my reserve here.
I walked to him. He was staring at the ceiling as his blood splattered across the place.
"I lost... huh...?"
"You did, and I'm sorry."
"Don't be... everyone... of us... knew what was at risk... my life was a mess before all this, you know? I was in debt, a new car of course ,fresh out of college, but nobody cared... I was alone, with a good job, but it didn't feel right... and then..."
"That offer came. He grabbed you in a moment of weakness."
"I came here for the money... but I really liked the moments I shared with them...."
He looked at me. His blue eyes really made a contrast with my black ones. He was crying.
"This is what has to be. Any last words?"
"My name is Lyubim Mozorov."
I stepped on his head to end his life quickly. The bang sounded all over the place. The blood exploded , covering the walls and my body,the sound it made made my body twitch, I couldn't believe I was capable of doing something like this
The smell of the sewer suddenly attacked my nose, as well as all the other emotions flowing in my head. I sat right next to his body.
My body was wet, covered in blood and shit probably. It stunk, and my sports uniform was torn apart. The darkness was once again there. I stared at nothing, thinking about everything that had happened in a loop.
"So you were Russian, huh?"
Without knowing, a little tear rolled down my face.