Heroes, Vigilantes, and Villains

Chapter eighteen

I looked down at the creature, putting some distance between us as the door locked shut.

"Nomu," the misted man said, watching as the creature perked up slightly like a puppy being called on by its owner, "attack."

—-

I rolled to the side, hissing lightly as my arm stung violently as the creature's claws grazed it, slicing the skin deep enough that it was going to need stitches once I got out of here.

The creature stumbled forward, struggling to regain its balance as I moved out of its reach once again during this little experiment of the villains. I used the delay time that it'd unintentionally created for me to run forward, using the creature's back as a springboard of sorts to jump and reach the bars creating the cage's ceiling.

Hanging on, I waited for the bioengineered creature to racier and stand back, using the time that it took to raise its claw to swipe at me to drop myself down onto the creature's shoulders. Raising my arms swiftly before it had time to readjust to the situation and try to shake me off, I drove my elbows down into the exposed brain, listening with a slight sense of joy as it wailed in pain while crumbling to the ground.

It didn't stand back up.

I won.

I beat a monster, possibly starting to become one in the process.

The misted man came to the cage after he was sure that the creature, the nomu, wouldn't stand back up. The villain unlocked the door, letting me out from inside of it. Once the cage door was closed back, the villain opened up a warpgate, seeming to trust me enough now to step through it on my own, even if it was only because he knew that I would much rather be anywhere where the creatures in the cages aren't. Tomura followed behind us like a grumbling child being forced to go shopping with his mother during a day off from school, but he didn't go back to his own room even when we stepped back into the bar and Kurogiri took me to the room that I'd woken up in earlier.

The bartender had me sit down on the bed as he left the room for the moment to grab a first aid kit to patch me up with, not that I really needed the other man's help with that, having done it myself too many times to count now over the past ten years.

"So, little vigilante," the blue haired villain started once the purple misted man had left, "what exactly is your quirk?"

I looked at the older man, wanting to answer him just about as much as I wanted to be here right now, which was to say not at all.

"What's yours?" I shot back, trying to keep the defensive note from my voice

I don't think that it worked all of that well.

The red eyed man tisked lightly, shaking his head no. "That's not how this works. When an NPC is asked a question, you answer, not ask your own."

"Hey!" I exclaimed, surprising both he and I with my sudden outburst, "I just defeated your final boss prototype, that should at least give me something."

My brother hummed as if he didn't agree with the sentiment, but also couldn't seem to find an appropriate comeback either that I wouldn't just automatically shoot down. But in the end he didn't have to since Kurogiri came back with the first aid kit.

The misted man cleaned up the blood on my arm before starting on a slow set of stitches with obviously inoraticesed hands. The other villain was shooed from the room as the misted man started the stitches, much too used to the childish antics of the blue haired boy to allow him to stay through something that requires as much attention from the bartender as this. Tomura shot me a look on the way out that said that this conversation was not close to being over, I only gave the other a small sarcastic wave goodbye.