The door creaked as it was pushed open.
"Sit down, Patton."
"Yes, Teacher Holloway."
A day had already passed, and this morning Teacher Holloway called me to his office in the morning.
"Is there something that you need from me, Teacher Holloway?" I asked politely.
"Yeah, take a look at this," Teacher Holloway said as he handed me a folder.
I opened the folder, and it contained several photos. I was shocked when I saw images of myself near the abandoned warehouse where I killed the murderer last night. Before I could fully comprehend what had happened, Teacher Holloway continued, "You need to be more discreet in your movement, Patton. Nowadays, there are cameras everywhere. Don't worry. I've taken the liberty to erase all the evidence you carelessly left behind that would have pointed at you. And those photos in your hands are the only copies in existence. You could burn them later if you want."
The only thing I could mutter was, "Why?"
As if ignoring my question, Teacher Holloway asked, "Was that your first time killing another person?"
"Yes," I answered softly.
"You must be a natural at killing then."
"I'm sorry?"
"You know, for the typical person, after killing someone for the first time, they will feel physically disgusted. Common symptoms include no appetite, vomiting, migraines, delirium, or a few other ones. However, none of that happened to you. You continued living as if nothing had happened. If it weren't for the evidence you left behind, proving that you killed that criminal, I would have never known. That's why you're a natural."
"Why are you telling me all of this, Teacher Holloway?"
"Because I would have done the same, except I would have left no traces behind. I also plan to teach you some time how to hide your tracks better."
"Huh?"
"First off, next time, before you kill someone, get a piece of sandpaper and rub it against all your fingers. It'll help smudge your fingerprints."
"Wait, stop."
"What is it, Patton?"
"What do you want from me? There is no such thing as free lunches in this world. You covered my tracks, and now you plan to teach me how to become a better killer. What do you expect in return?" I asked sternly.
"So, you're not as naïve as I thought," teacher Holloway said as he leaned back on his chair and pushed up his glasses.
"You are right. There is something I want from you," Teacher Holloway said to me with his head tilted back.
"What do you want?"
"I want you to join my team."
"Team?"
"A team of heroes who live in the shadows, never to see the light of day. A team that does the dirty work so that those in the sun could thrive. I want you in."
"Sounds like a lot of killing."
"Yes, there will presumably be a lot of killing."
I stayed silent for a moment before asking, "Is the Villeno Mafia Family on the naughty list?"
A glint of light flashed across Teacher Holloway's glasses. Then he leaned forward, grinned, and answered, "Yes, yes they are."
----
I was currently back in class. Today, we were going to choose our specializations as a hero. In a general sense, a hero could be categorized into four categories: Offense, Defense, Support, and Intelligence. As the name suggests, heroes that fall under the offense categories are the ones who directly engage with the enemies. Defense heroes are heroes specialized in defense. Their responsibilities primarily lay in protecting and escorting civilians to safety. Support heroes are broader in their roles as there are multiple avenues to support, whether healing, offense, defense, or intelligence. Lastly, intelligence heroes are akin to scouts who specialize in collecting information and relaying them to the rest of the heroes.
All the students will have individual talks with Teacher Holloway to discuss their specialization. Eventually, it was my turn, and I returned to Teacher Holloway's office.
"We meet again," Teacher Holloway said to me as I entered his office.
"We do, indeed."
"You planned to specialize in being a sniper, correct?"
"That is correct."
"Train well then. You will be an integral piece of my team as a capable sniper."
"I will."
"Speaking of which, what do you think of Rias Silva, Patton?"
"I think she's fine. Why ask?"
"I think she would make a perfect spotter for you."
"How come?"
"Rias' quirk allows her to mark an object and see three seconds into its future. If the marked object were a sniper round, theoretically, it would be possible always to land your shot and never miss."
"I've never thought about it that way."
"I will assign Rias as your spotter, and the two of you, going forward, will spend most of your day in the shooting range, understand?"
"Yes."
"You may leave now."
Returning to the classroom, everyone was still chatting about their specializations and how they envisioned themselves in the future. Stan then walked up towards me and asked, "Hey Patton, what are you going to specialize in?"
"Long-range support, AKA, a sniper. What about you?"
"That's so cool! I will specialize in being an offensive hero, given how my quirk works. Also, the boys and I were planning to go to the gym after school today. Do you want to come?"
"Sure. Sounds like fun."
"Great! See you then."
"Alright, see ya mate."
Nothing too interesting happened for the rest of the day and the school day quickly ended. As promised, I headed towards the gym and found Stan, Simon, Adam, and George already there.
"Hey, you're finally here! Stan exclaimed when he saw me enter the gym. "What was the holdup?" He followed.
"Class dragged on for another minute after the bell rang. I'm always annoyed when the teacher does that."
"I feel you, bro."
The five of us then started to work out while talking about random topics. In the middle of my workout, I happened to ask Adam how his ability worked.
"Hey, Adam?"
"Yeah?"
"Your quirk allows you to sense murderous intention, correct?"
"That's true."
"Could you explain it in more depth?"
"Year, sure," The two of us then headed towards the vending machine to get something to drink before Adam started explaining his quirk in greater detail.
"Instead of saying sensing murderous intention, I would say it's more like seeing people's murderous fantasies."
"What do you mean?"
"Ok. For example, let's say I'm walking down a street, yeh, and a person, in their mind, wants to punch me in the face. In this scenario, I would know that they want to hurt me, but not necessarily how they want to hurt me. However, in the same scenario, if that person wanted to slit my throat then butcher me into a thousand pieces and feed it to the pigs, I would not only know that they want to hurt me but also how they want to hurt me. In short, the stronger the intention to murder is, the more effective my quirk becomes. Like, in the hero v. villain scenario we did a little over a month ago, my quirk was useless because Kyle and Simon did not truly have the intention to hurt me. Do you have a better understanding now?"
"Yeah, I do. Thanks for sharing."
"No problem. How about you? I'm also curious about your quirk."
"My quirk isn't as complex as yours. As the name suggests, my quirk gives me plain old thermo-vision. Hot objects become red, and cold objects become blue. It's straightforward. Though, I've discovered that there is a second mode to my quirk."
"Oh, what is it?"
"I call if focus vision, where my eyes filter only to see one temperature and everything else turns black. However, it's extremely taxing, and the longest I've been able to maintain the vision for was around ten seconds."
"Is that useful?"
"No, not really. I believe it's an ability that is only effective in very niche situations."
"Well, hey, we all can't be winners, am I right?"
"Yep, you're right."
"Let's get back to working out then. How about that?"
"I agree."
----
I had a great time working out with the guys. After we all got a good workout in, I headed towards Teacher Holloway's office. Earlier today, I had agreed to join him in his night patrol.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
"Come in," Teacher Holloway announced.
"Oh, it's you," Teacher Holloway continued after seeing me enter.
"Didn't you tell me to come earlier because you had something to discuss?"
"You are correct, here, follow me," Teacher Holloway stood up from his seat and approached the bookshelf behind me.
Standing in front of the bookshelf, Teacher Holloway positioned himself on one side of the bookshelf and pushed it with his shoulder. The bookcase moved to reveal a secret room hidden behind."
Teacher Holloway walked into the secret room then gestured towards me to do the same. I entered the room and discovered arrays of firearms, emergency supplies, and the mapping of a building laid out on the table in the center of the room.
After moving the bookcase back in place behind us, Teacher Holloway walked towards the table with the map spread out on it and informed me, "Tonight, we will be raiding a drug den."
"Excuse me?"
"The two of us. You and I will be infiltrating and taking out a drug den."
"You can't be serious."
"Oh, I'm pretty serious."
"I'm still a high schooler. I can't even legally drink alcohol yet, and you expect me to go in gun blazing into a drug den?"
"Yep."
"No offense, Teacher Holloway, but I think you should go visit a psychiatrist soon."
"Well, I don't exactly consider a high schooler who could kill without batting an eyelid and continue as if nothing had happened a normal high schooler."
"You've got a point."
"Don't worry, all the people who will be at the drug den tonight are all guilty of one deplorable crime or another. Be it rape, human trafficking, murder, genocide. You name it, someone in there has done it. We won't be killing anyone innocent tonight. You have my word."
A didn't reply immediately. I looked towards the guns racked onto the wall then asked, "Which one will I be firing?"
Teacher Holloway smiled in return and retrieved a few pistols from the wall. As he was laying out the pistols in front of me, he revealed to me, "Originally, I was going to have you use a semi-automatic or automatic machine gun. However, you don't have experience shooting guns of that kind, do you?"
"You are correct. I only have experience shooting pistols and bolt-action rifles."
"Here, take a look at these pistols. The drug den is very cramped, so I would advise against using a rifle in there."
Placed in front of me were three different pistols. I held each in my hand and practiced aiming with them. As I was getting a feel for the pistols, I asked a question that's been burning in my mind, "How did you get so many guns? Isn't it illegal to have guns unless you have special licenses?"
Teacher Holloway answered, "I have my connections."
"I like this one," I said, holding a greenish-brown pistol.
"Ah, the GA-077, I had a feeling you were going to choose that one. It's a very nice pistol. There are twenty rounds in each cartridge, it doesn't have much kickback, and it has a burst function you can switch to by flipping the switch next to the trigger of the pistol."
"I'll take it then."
"Sounds good. Let us now acquaint ourselves with the layout of the drug den."
For the next two hours, Teacher Holloway and I went over the plans and precautionary plans in case something unexpected happened. Very soon, it was time to execute our plans. Teacher Holloway handed me a full-body black attire as well as a mask a robber typically wears to hide our identities. After donning our equipment, the two of us quietly made our way to where the drug den was under the veil of the night sky.
"By the way, your codename will be Viper," Teacher Holloway said to me as we were heading towards the drug den.
"Why Viper?"
"I heard that some species of vipers have some thermo-vision capabilities, so I thought it would be fitting for your codename to be Viper. As for me, just refer to me as Leader."
"Alright, Leader."
"Let's go, Viper."
----
Outside the drug den's building, I saw many people walking in and out, including multiple women dressed in revealing clothing that I assumed were prostitutes.
"Viper, could you see how many people are in the building?" Teacher Holloway, no, Leader asked from behind me.
I proceeded to turn on my thermo-vision and saw plenty of silhouettes scattered throughout the building.
"I would say there are maybe seventy people in the building."
"Remember Viper. Our primary target is to assassinate Mark Hartenstein, the local drug lord. In the wake of his death, infighting will follow, and hopefully, most of his men will die in the process. If we come across any threats, we will neutralize them. However, we will not go out of our way to kill as it would risk sabotaging our mission, understand?"
"Understand."
"Good, now attach the silencers."
"Wouldn't they still be able to hear the gunshots even though they're muffled?"
"Listen, Viper. Listen. With music playing as loud as that in the building, no one would hear a couple muffled gunshots."
"Ok."
"Let us commence the start of our mission then."
With my thermo-vision, I successfully found a path to the back of the building without being spotted. Behind the building, Leader crouched down, and I stepped onto his shoulders. After Leader stood up, I was able to reach the emergency ladder located on the second story.
After getting onto the second story platform, I unlocked the emergency ladder and quietly slid it down so that Leader could reach it. Now, with both of us on the platform, I turned on my thermo-vision and started searching for our target. According to Leader, Mark Hartenstein, our target, was a very obese person and was around 5'5 in height. Using my quirk, I was to find a silhouette that matched those parameters.
After scanning the second floor, I turned towards the Leader and shook my head, conveying that Mark Hartenstein was not on this floor. The two of us then moved up to the platform of the third floor and searched again. It was until the seventh floor, the highest floor of the building, that I found a silhouette that fit the descriptions of Mark Hartenstein. I nodded towards Leader, and then the two of us climbed up to the roof of the building.
"Where is the target?"
"The target seems to be in the second room on the right of the building. However, something feels amiss."
"What is it, Viper?"
"The people around the target didn't feel right. None of them seemed to be prostitutes, and I made out ten bodyguards who are surrounding the room."
"That is a problem."
"What do we do, Leader?"
"We resort to Plan E."
"Plan E!? Isn't that way too risky?"
"Based on your information, it appears that a special meeting is taking place tonight, and I'm pretty sure those ten people protecting that room of VIPs are professional bodyguards. This mission is now several times more difficult and dangerous than I thought… Viper, do you still remember all of the details of Plan E?"
"Yes, I do."
"Good. We'll commence Plan E. It's the only way I see us successfully assassinating our target."
"Alright, Leader. Well, I'm going to take off the silencer on my pistol if that's the case then. I'm ready whenever you are."
Leader moved to the spot where our target was just beneath and formed a first with his right hand. I turned on my thermo-vision and saw heat concentrating in Leader's fist. Leader then looked towards me and mouthed, "Are you ready?"
I nodded back and pointed my gun at the target beneath the roof. Leader then exhaled before slamming his fist into the roof of the building, causing the area of the roof Leader struck to collapse due to the ability of his quirk. I immediately followed by shooting several rounds at Mark Hartenstein through the dust caused by the destruction of the roof by using my thermo-vision. My training at the gun range did not disappoint as I successfully shot my target several times, causing fatal damage.
Very quickly afterward, Leader emerged from the dust, and the two of us disappeared into the shadows while everyone else was still panicking.