Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Who knew Tokyo had slums? I had always pictured either quaint traditional wooden buildings or ultra-modern skyscrapers. Neither of these were common in Mosuaizuri-cho, the westernmost district of the city, and the area closest to Musutafu City and U.A. High.

This was an area that had no station on the Keio line – despite the prominent commuter trains running through the heart of the district. Instead, you had to transfer to a special trunk line which was mostly for cargo coming directly from the port. It ran a very limited schedule and did not seem to get any regular maintenance. The expressway also bypassed the neighborhood, having no nearby exits. If you wanted to come to Mosuaizuri, you had to make a special trip on surface roads. It was an area almost forgotten by the rest of the world.

The people in the area were there because they couldn't find a way to be anywhere else. The only honest jobs were in the service industry or in the few failing factories and businesses. On the other hand, it had a thriving black market and was home – or at least a satellite office – to many villain groups and criminal organizations. Smuggling was a prime business, transshipping illegal goods from the port to trucks via the train. The government was corrupt and frightened of the criminals. They reported lies to the central government to avoid notice or trouble.

It reminded me so much of Brockton Bay I almost cried.

Luckily, a bus ran from near my dinky apartment almost directly into Musutafu City Center. From there it was an easy walk to U.A. High. That was why the Yanagis had rented the place for their daughter. It was the closest residence to U.A. High they could afford. Even in the slums, living in Tokyo is expensive.

Not that I knew any of this before I was exiled here almost two weeks before Reiko was scheduled to move.

It turned out that I was not as clever as I thought with the confrontation in Kesuru. Inoue Kisho had descended on Haitsuki-ji Temple just in time to ruin dinner that evening.

"What do you mean by this, Yanagi?" He demanded after storming uninvited into the family quarters. He was a large, powerful looking man. Expensive traditional clothes presented a body strong from hard labor, with rough, scarred skin and close-cropped black hair. He looked like he had worked in his own mines without the use of a power or automated tools.

"I have not the pleasure of understanding to what you are referring, Inoue-bugyo." Reiko's father replied, bowing formally from his knees. He did not bother to stand.

They have hated each other since they were in school together as boys. But the magnate is the local power, so the humble priest must respond to his rudeness with civility. I had never felt such negative emotion in Emily's thoughts. This man was one of her pressure points.

"This!" the magistrate casually tossed a tablet to slide across the table, upsetting bowls of soup and glasses of water. Mr. Yanagi slapped his hand down to stop it, while Mrs. Yanagi rushed to contain the mess before it could spread further. I used my quirk to lift all the remaining dishes six inches, keeping them clean and preventing further spillage. As my phone was on the table, I instructed my spirits to start recording when they lifted it and keep it pointed towards whoever was speaking. More evidence for later.

"Your daughter used her quirk in public to humiliate my son!" Inoue barked.

Mr. Yanagi watched the cued video. I could see from my vantage that it was not my recording. Someone else must have been using their camera and posted it online.

Finally, Reiko's father looked at the intruder. "Your son injured my daughter, almost hospitalizing her. And he caused over 50,000-yen in damage to my car. I think this proves we are the injured party."

Inoue pulled a wad of notes from his sleeve. He tossed it to the table. I caused the fish dish he had targeted to dodge out of the way. He sneered at me. "This should cover your … damages. I expect her to offer a public apology to my son tomorrow at school. The principal has a special assembly planned."

Translate – Apologize for what? It was your son that instigated the incident …

No. I cannot. You must say nothing. If you speak, he may perceive there is something amiss. Ultimately, his conflict is with father. You and I are either weapons or collateral damage. We do not matter in this. It is best to stay silent.

"My daughter will not be at school this week. First, she must stay under her mother's care to recover from her grievous injury. Then she will be preparing to begin her attendance at U.A. High School's Hero Course. You may have heard of her achievement."

Inoue's face contorted.

Is that what 'dyspeptic' looks like? I asked.

I think it may be more 'revolted', with a heavy dose of 'scandalized'.

Ok. I can see that.

"This is not over, Yanagi." The magnate stormed out of the house.

Was that a win? I asked.

The expression on Mr. Yanagi's face seemed to say it was not.

"You should not have interfered," he snarled at me. "You are a stranger here and have no idea what you just cost this family."

"I …"

"You will have to leave, go to Tokyo." He tossed the roll of cash onto the table. "This will help defray the extra costs. But you will go tomorrow, even if you must stay in a hostel until the apartment opens."

Mrs. Yanagi opened her mouth, to object I assumed. When her husband cut her off. "Her continued presence will act as an irritant to Inoue. If he should see her, or hear of her in town, he will only become more enraged. She would need to be sequestered in the temple. Though that would be no guarantee that he would not seek to retaliate against her even here. It is dangerous for her and for the rest of you. For all of us, she must go."

The mother nodded sadly. The twin looked on silently, their eyes open wide in disbelief.

I swallowed the sharp feeling of rejection that threatened to overwhelm me. This was not my father. And from his point of view, he was doing what was necessary to protect his family. So, I accepted exile gracefully.

Once I was in Mosuaizuri I felt better. Language and cultural issues aside, I was experienced living independently, although that was not exactly what I was doing here. The Yanagis paid my rent and gave me an allowance for food and expenses. But it was barely enough to afford rice and a protein. Once school started, I would be expected to eat one meal a day on campus. It was part of a scholarship I had received.

I would need some sort of income.

It was legal for me to work as Reiko was fifteen. But I lived in Mosuaizuri. Honest jobs were scarce. If I had my original powers, I could make a living in pest control, though it would have been just as illegal in Brockton Bay as it seemed to be here. I needed to find out more about the quirk laws.

You might consider employment at a temple that utilizes maidens for spiritual communication. I have read that in the big cities miko are often high school and university students rather than those with a more traditional vocation.

I probably want something that doesn't require much talking. I'm sure to get better over time, but language is still a real issue. It is going to be difficult enough in school, much less adding the same stress in a job. Too bad there are no jobs where English fluency would be a marketable skill.

Oh what a wonderful idea! I am certain we could work together to translate written material. We likely could find work of that sort online – self-paced so we could accomplish our remunerative tasks without compromising our schoolwork. Or you could tutor students in English. Or subtitle videos and movies. You have a very marketable skill.

We may have. Alone, I am illiterate and unable to communicate in the local language.

Yet alone, my English is very poor. You bring the essential capability to the partnership.

Over the next two days I made an amazing discovery. You know how in ghost stories and movies spirits sometimes leave cryptic messages written on mirrors or walls? It turns out that was a real thing, portraying poltergeists at work. Floating spirits could write in whatever language the person had known in life. It was a spirit thing.

I found the spirits could take my thoughts and write them in Japanese. Emily said their style of written Japanese was somewhat archaic, but still legible.

It took a bit of practice, but I soon was able to dictate to my swarm and it would control the pen or brush. Typing on a computer or phone was both easier and more difficult. Not all poltergeists comprehended technology, but enough lived in the last two hundred years that I could build a swarm to type.

With my limited multitasking I found I could have two or three different sub-swarms working on keyboards, pens, or brushes at the same time. I could dictate different projects, one sentence or paragraph at a time, to each sub-swarm allowing me to create documents almost simultaneously.

I tried to communicate with individual spirits through writing; asking questions or ordering them to divulge information about themselves. But they either could not or would not respond. The spirits only wrote what I dictated to them. But they could write it repeatedly and indefinitely. I had a sort of spiritual xerox machine.

Emily and I started looking for freelance translation work. What we found was that computers handled most translation. What individuals and companies would pay for was editing, to make the finished product sound more human. After two trial pieces I had a couple of companies that would pay me by the word and did not care if I produced product more quickly than they expected. Moreover, it was all online.

I spent most of Thursday, my third day in town, translating. With each finished piece the companies would deposit my fee directly into the same bank account as my allowance was deposited.

After seeing my bank balance more than double, I decided to splurge on some groceries other than rice. The stroll to the store was surprisingly pleasant. It was spring. The temperature was warm rather than hot. A slight breeze brought intriguingly unfamiliar scents to my nose. It was early evening and people were everywhere.

As I left the supermarket with my two plastic bags bulging with fresh produce and meat, I exited onto the main plaza. On one side was the train station, the only one in the district. In front of the station were lanes for busses with stands for passengers along each lane. A department store was across the plaza from the station, five stories tall and only slightly seedy in the golden light. Across from the supermarket was a building covered in advertisements and business names. This was the pleasant face of Mosuaizuri.

Someone decided to punch it.

The pounding of pavement hard enough to send tremors across the plaza preceded a giant running along the road to my left. Each step shook the street, almost knocking me off my feet. Several people dropped their bags and ran screaming away from the massive monster.

He was at least twenty feet tall, with pink skin and what looked like muscles so overgrown they covered the top of his head and hid his face in shadow. I almost laughed. He looked a bit like a giant penis.

As he passed me, moving across the plaza towards the station, I saw he was running from a group of five parahumans. There was a winged man flying in the lead, followed by a motorcyclist in leathers with chains and a flaming skull painted on his helmet, a tall muscular man in a short toga bounding in pursuit, a woman in a black skinsuit swinging from a line, and a young bald man dressed in blueish white following on foot.

Any idea who they are? I asked my passenger. She was more a classical scholar but had made a particular project of learning about the cape scene before her U.A. entrance exam.

I do not believe I have come across them in my studies of known heroes and villains.

They must be either new or small- time.

The giant looked behind him and cursed. He grabbed a streetlight, using it to swing onto a different trajectory. Instead it ripped from the concrete, sending both the pole and the runner rolling across the plaza. The light ended up impaling a moving bus. The Brute rolled through a bus stop shelter, injuring at least three people, and scattering the rest.

"Fuck." I snapped.

The winged man hovered above the giant, beating his wings to create a downdraft that seemed to have little effect on the large target but incidentally sent the injured people rolling across the pavement.

"Idiots." I growled. They were paying no attention to civilian casualties. I had no idea if these were so-called heroes or villains. Either way, they were a danger to everyone around them.

The rider roared up, sending his chain to wrap around the outstretched hands of the dickhead. The massive man tried to yank his hands free, only to pull the rider off his cycle. With a shout of glee and a "Don't mess with me!" the giant twirled the rider three times around and slammed him into the front of a bus desperate to get away.

Where are the heroes? They are killing people! Emily sounded frantic.

Sometimes you can't wait for the cavalry, I replied. But I'm not doing this without a mask.

Outside the store, there was a display of masks – mostly of Destro, Peerless Thief, and All for One, but a few skulls, ninjas, and dominos as well. I knew it wasn't Halloween, but it made sense that in this world masks were common toys for children.

My poltergeists snagged a blank facemask. It was like a black balaclava with no holes, but made of a lighter material. I also grabbed a black yukata from the clothes store next door. I made sure to leave money for both. Looting during a crisis was not something I wanted on my record.

As I ran around a corner, following a crowd of civilians, I saw the toga guy start pounding on the giant, while the woman was swinging in for a kick.

Around the corner, a stairway leading down offered me enough privacy to don my makeshift costume quickly.

I reached out to gather in all the nearby spirits. I had expected there to be either many more or far fewer spirits in the metropolis than the mountains. It turned out there wasn't a variance in numbers so much as in type. At the time, I did not know enough about the nature of spirits to explain that difference. They responded to my control just as well.

Within seconds, I had a full swarm.

Turning the corner, I found the situation had gotten worse.

The team of five were harrying the giant. They had him almost surrounded, but he was keeping them at bay with another streetlight, swinging it like a polearm. As I watched, the toga-clad strongman caught the other end of the pole and the two started a tug of war. The other capes closed in.

Priorities started shifting in my head. First, clear out any civilians caught in the fighters' mediate proximity or direct path. Second, clear the people out of the damaged busses. They're too close and in greater danger if the busses catch fire. Third, move any stupid spectators back further. Finally, try to contain the combatants, or at least move the civilians if the capes take the fight elsewhere.

I sent several spirits to scout the area as I skated forward. I found I could have a swarm lifting most of my weight and pushing me from behind. It allowed me to skate – in effect – across any flat surface at speeds faster than I could easily run. I could then use that same swarm for any necessary physical enhancement or close combat. Or to pull civilians out of danger.

I sent the rest of the poltergeists – less than a quarter of the total – to begin gathering debris, broken glass, and small shards of metal from the ruined busses and shelters. The fragments started swirling like a whirlwind. It reminded me of Whirlygig from the Merchants, before the Nine killed most of them. I could use the debris either as distractions or as my primary weapons. I didn't think being scoured by – or worse, force-fed – glass and metal would be healthy for any of the idiots, not even the Brutes.

It wasn't my bugs, but the strategies were similar.

My scouts felt a still body under the wreckage of a collapsed shelter. It was close enough to the fight that if they were alive, they were not likely to stay that way for long. I moved towards the pile and stopped. A foot was sticking out. The ankle artery carried a strong pulse. I sent my spirits to crawl up the person body. I wanted to check for any obvious broken bones or impalements. I couldn't see through the poltergeists. I'm not certain they had vision as I understood it. However, I could use them as fingers, conveying a light sense of touch.

The woman showed no obvious injuries. I ordered the swarm to pluck her out of the way – supporting her head and spine as much as possible – as the giant slammed the Greek guy into the ground next to us. The impact sent most of the debris flying. I crouched to keep my feet.

As the shorter Brute rolled to his knees, he saw me and barked something in Japanese.

"あなたは誰"

I waited for Emily to translate, but got nothing. He repeated himself. Still no translation.

"Sumimasen," I muttered – one of the first words I had learned. I thought it meant 'Excuse me.' Before he could respond, I scrambled away and started pushing the woman on my ghostly gurney.

I brought the whirlwind to churn between the Brute and us. I aimed for the concrete barricades that protected the train station entrance. It seemed like the safest place nearby.

Emily. Are you there? I called mentally. No response.

A high-pitched scream behind me meant there wasn't time to figure out what was wrong with my passenger. I turned and saw a toddler had started rushing towards the fight. She was babbling something and reaching for the winged man who was lying stunned on the ground.

The dickhead had grabbed the biker's cycle and was about to slam it onto the bad angel. The kid would be crushed. A woman – her mother I guess – was sprinting towards her, but wouldn't be in time.

I sent the swarm, dropping debris as it closed in to snatch the child from under the descending motorcycle and slammed her into her mother's arms. I kept pushing, using what strength I could to hold them both up and get them moving away from the crazy capes.

Once they were clear, I moved towards the closest bus. It had been pierced by a streetlight and wasn't going anywhere. Passengers had opened windows and were evacuating. There were several older riders that could not crawl out of the window. I pulled the spirits to me and started floating the retirees to the street. The women were light enough the poltergeists could lift them. I had to help with some of the men.

Again, people were talking to me, but I had no idea what they were saying. I kept quiet rather than speaking English. Too likely it would be remembered.

Moving towards the other bus, a gust of wind rocked the plaza. I glanced towards the combatants. They had all been blown to the ground by another winged man. This one looked like a cross between a large man and a lizard. Covered in black scales, with wings on his back and claws glinting from his hands. I stumbled as I immediately thought of Lung.

It was not Lung. He's not big enough and his masked face is more human. There are no flames. And his wings are feathered. It was not Lung, but there was definitely a similarity.

The dragon hybrid screamed something, his voice carrying on the wind generated by his wings. Of course I couldn't understand what he was saying. I need to study more if I can't rely on Emily.

While the idiots were occupied with the newcomer I started moving people from the second bus. It was worse than the impaled bus. There the damage had been mostly to the front end. Here the biker was swung through the passenger section, shattering windows and shearing most of the roof off. The driver was hurt badly and there were several other wounded. I kept an eye on the ongoing battle while trying to see which people were safe to move.

As a Ward, I'd been required to take advanced first aid. I had no gear but was able to craft some makeshift bandages and restraints from debris. I cleared three of the wounded out. However, two were too badly hurt for me to move safely.

Fuck.

I stepped out of the bus and sent my swarm out to gather the largest pieces of debris they could carry and started building a barricade to protect the bus as well as I could.

For almost ten minutes, the three-way battle raged. Everyone else had cleared the area. I noticed two costumed men standing on different roofs. One was a big guy in a purple and green body suit with a mask and cape. Looked like a traditional hero. The other was humanoid but with an odd shaped head or helmet, wearing tactical armor and weapons. He looked like a well-equipped Case 53. They didn't do anything, seemingly content to just watch.

Eventually the dragon hybrid seemed to convince the team and the giant to go their separate ways. Everyone was battered and bleeding, but they all cleared out. As the dragon-guy soared over me, I got the feeling I was being examined. Not sure what he was looking for, but I wished he had not noticed me.

Discretion and valor and all that, I decided to bug out as well. Like I had practiced in the forest by the temple, I bounced to the top of a building then over several roofs, until I landed in an alley where I ditched my makeshift costume. I realized my groceries were lost and stopped at a ramen shop on the way back to my apartment where I was able to order by pointing to a picture of a bowl of noodles with an egg and some vegetables on a menu.

As I sat eating it in a corner, I tried to mentally probe for my passenger. Emily? Hey, you in there?

I could feel her vaguely, but got no response. Every few minutes I tried again.

Eventually I made it back to my apartment. Entering a meditative state, I reached out to the nebulous connection.

It was almost half an hour before I felt a response. Emily? You ok?

How can you do that? How can you face not just the fear and danger, but the horrendous miasma of anger and aggression? It was everywhere. So much hate. I … I could not countenance it.

It's ok. Normal people run and hide when facing monsters. It's the safe thing to do. The smart thing. The right thing. There's nothing wrong with you doing it too. You didn't sign up to deal with this madness. You're a civilian by choice. I'm just sorry I'm likely to drag you into more such situations. It seems to be my fucking destiny. No matter which world I'm in.