Chapter 28
"That's a Nomu," the little man said. "Fast, strong, tough, multiple quirks. The first was built to take on All Might. This one seems weaker."
"Until it fell into a shipment of quirk enhancing steroids," I muttered. "That's Dragon Blood, an updated version of Trigger. No idea what it'll do to something like this thing. Those unpleasant gentlemen headed this way are all tweaking on it too. The dragon-looking guy is their lead – Thunderer, a mid-level brute and sonic blaster. I'm Tatari – indirect blaster/shaker."
"Whatever that means. I'm Gran Torino – someone everyone seems to have forgotten," the old man complained, a note of bitterness obvious in his gravelly voice. "I'll keep the Nomu busy. You can take out the others or go for help. If you're as young as I think you are, I'd suggest running. If you stick around, try not to kill anyone." The last comment came with a serious look and a growl.
Then the old man rocketed away from the Nomu, only to build up speed for a return run. He slammed into the creature feet first, driving it through the freight car floor and onto the ground. The flames on its head extinguished as it lay still in the dirt and concrete rubble.
"I cracked the ground. It's been a while so my controls not so great." He said, standing on the lip of the small crater. The Nomu's back rippled and pulsed, sending a shockwave out in a hemisphere, knocking everyone back.
"Absorption and release," I said. "He amplified the kinetic energy of your strike and sent it back at us. But he still took the damage first. So continue to attack and beware of counterstrikes."
"Yeah, teach your grandfather to slurp noodles, why don't you." The old man carped.
Gran Torino – why he was named after a car I had no idea – rocketed up and readied for another attack. I leaped away to the top of the next rail car and started wrapping monofilament around the oncoming dragon goons' ankles and wrists. The nearly invisible line was strong enough to take them down – at least long enough for me to spread some capsaicin around, targeting eyes and noses. These guys were drugged up rage monsters, but they still had to breathe.
Their screams told me my plan was working. I think their temporary toughness boost cut some of the effect, but they were at least temporarily incapacitated. The noise attracted the Nomu's attention. It dropped to all fours and skittered over to them.
"Stop him!" the old man said. He tried another dive bomb attack. The creature turned its head almost completely around and shot out its tongues, catching Gran Torino and slamming him into the ground. The old man mitigated some of the impact with his foot jets, but was still stunned.
It was fast. Almost faster than the eye could follow. Faster than I could react, it was among the screaming goons – disemboweling them with single blows of its talons. Was that my fault? I thought. If I hadn't tied them, would they have gotten away?
"NO!" Thunderer howled and the monster was forced back a step. Then it opened its maw and returned the sonic attack, followed by a vicious backhand that sent the mutant villain flying across the lot and into one of the surrounding industrial buildings. Part of the roof collapsed on the thunder dragon.
That left only the Nomu. It was dangerous before – strong and fast. The dragon blood had boosted it greatly. I'd heard about the Nomu at the USJ. It had gone toe-to-toe with All Might. I was concerned this one might now equal it in power. "We've got to work together to take this thing down," I shouted.
I shoved a mix of capsaicin, flash powder, and metal shards from the train wreckage down its open throat and ignited it. The explosion was contained within the creature, only a wisp of smoke emerging from its mouth. It paused for a few seconds, unmoving, looking blankly into the distance.
"Hit it," I ordered. Gathering debris and grabbing hatchets from the dead goons, I stabbed and slashed at it with several sharp slivers of steel debris. The blades had no noticeable effect, sliding off the rubbery skin. Nightwing slung razor feathers that had no more effect. Gran Torino repeated his slam attack, only to bounce off.
Then the Nomu opened its mouth and shot out a belch of fire. Its head reignited. It turned to me. When our eyes locked over the distance, it slammed its elongated arms down, launching through the air towards my perch on top of the rail car. It released an angry roar.
"Keep it in the air!" Gran Torino yelled as he slammed into the belly of the beast, knocking it further upwards, and then shooting off before it could grab him. It reached out with its monstrous tongues only for Nightwing to fly by, grabbing them and swinging the creature higher into the dark sky.
"Good!" the old man cheered. "It's strong, but it can't fly!" Again, he bounced it upwards.
I tried lifting the Nomu with my geists. As expected, it was far too heavy. I started preparing my poltergeist railgun again. Looking at the creature with my wisps' soul vision I saw the thing had only the barest fragment of a soul. It was human in origin but contained a sliver smaller than a newborn or a dog. Whatever had made this had torn apart the human spirit within. Killing it wasn't murder. It was mercy.
As Nightwing swooped towards it, the Nomu paused to slam his hands together creating a massive shockwave that blew the two fliers back a hundred yards or more. I was rocked off my feet and fell from the freight car's roof. The creature hit the ground then bounced to his hands and feet. It scurried towards me, clambering over the train. On the way, it casually crushed two more goons moaning on the ground.
I grimaced. That's not my fault, I tried to convince myself.
That is true, but it is up to you to stop it from further killing. Let it free. Emily pleaded. I could tell the effort she was putting in staying cognizant. Her helping me manage the spirit rotation was giving her something to concentrate on other than the chaos around us.
She was right. This thing was a killer, and it was coming for me. I had no more choice. I fired the railgun – accelerating a single steel bearing to my maximum speed guided straight to the targeting spirit clinging to its head.
The Nomu absorbed the shot. It stumbled back as chunks of brain and bone splattered the area. But it did not fall.
It took another step towards me.
I had a dozen bearings ready and fired another one every second. Each bearing impacted with the energy of a tank round. It took seven to pulverize the creature's head.
Finally, it stopped moving.
Gran Torino and Nightwing landed near me.
"You killed it," the old man scolded. "I told you not to kill it."
"She had no choice!" the half-dragon argued in my defense.
"There's always a choice!" Gran Torino shouted back.
I ignored them. I had made the right decision. Now I just hoped it was enough. I had seen things tougher than this Nomu, but not many – Crawler, Siberian, Alexandria, Echidna, the Endbringers. You couldn't bring them down with a tank. I wasn't sure my railgun would be enough.
I counted the seconds. At forty-seven the creature's arm jerked. Its skin started slowly bubbling and something was pouring out of its neck – pooling and expanding to form a new head.
"It's not dead," I said, my voice flat and cold. Only to be ignored by the other two as they continued to argue. I slapped them both with my scarf.
"What?" they yelled in unison, looking at me. I just pointed.
"It's not dead," I said again. There was more heat in my voice this time. "Get ready."
I prepared several more ball bearings. I considered sending in a fire spirit to try to burn it before it could fully regenerate but decided I didn't know if its absorption power would actually use the energy to help heal it. Inka, my shadow spirits, were supposed to be some sort of fire related to the dead. I wondered if I could try to use them to burn out that soul fragment. Something had to be able to stop this thing.
As we stood poised to continue the battle, the Nomu stopped bubbling. The liquid shaping into a new head stopped moving and splashed down to the ground. The body melted, forming a large pool of grey green goo in the craters created by my railgun shots. It took more than a minute to fully dissolve.
I watched the soul shard fade to nothing, and a tiny spirit drifted into the sky. I almost called it to me.
No! Emily insisted. Let it find what peace it may after such ill treatment as it has suffered. It is our duty to shepherd it towards redemption. She started chanting a prayer for the dead. I sighed and left her to it. There were a lot of souls to shepherd.
"Is it dead now?" Nightwing asked me, a hint of desperation in his voice. I was working without Emily's translation while she performed her religious duty. My Japanese had been improving rapidly as Emily and I had become more in-tuned after facing the goryo. Each conversation was now like a lesson for me. According to the online proficiency tests, I was now at the beginning of the second-year level.
"Yes," I replied flatly. I sent the spirits to assess the condition of the combatants left on the field. Five of the goons were dead, killed by the Nomu. The other villains were all alive – except Bosuku, who had been killed earlier. Volcano was in the worst shape, since I blew his arm off.
As I was examining the injured, Gran Torino was poking around the remnants of the Nomu, and Nightwing was carrying his brother – carefully gagged and bound – to lie near Greedo and the other captured and wounded.
We all looked up when a motorcycle with a bad muffler and obviously damaged engine sputtered to a halt at our feet. On it were Jin in his Zerox costume and Spinner in a samurai styled costume. Like mine, it had a short kimono over a bodysuit. His outfit had pieces of traditional-styled armor and a metal bokken tucked in the belt. A short bow and quiver of arrows lay across his back. The outfit was topped with a masked helmet, though he had the face piece pushed up to see better. A red scarf was wrapped loosely around his neck. Both men had smudges of dirt, soot, and possibly blood on them.
"Sorry we're late," Jin said. "Traffic was murder. We were flying, but you should see the mosquitos in this town. Massive I tell you. Massive." He held his hands out six feet wide.
Spinner nodded absently as he looked around in shock and awe. He turned to me and tried to speak, but nothing came out. Jin dismounted and patted the silent lizard boy on the shoulder plate. As Jin walked away, the motorcycle dissolved into smoke, which flowed into him. I wondered if the motorcycle pattern he had memorized was that damaged, or if the bike had managed to survive a really rough ride.
Jin knelt down next to Volcano and grabbed an electronic bandage of some sort out of the air. He carefully covered the big man's massive wound with it and pressed a few buttons on the control panel. The bandage shrank onto the wound.
"And who are you two?" Gran Torino asked, his voice both quizzical and annoyed.
"They're my friends," I said. I was stretching the definition quite a bit with the young guy, but Jin was really fitting into that role well. "Zerox and Spinner. And as he hasn't introduced himself – that is Nightwing over there."
"Never heard of them, but there are a lot of new kids out these days." The short hero grumbled.
"What happened here?" A voice boomed from behind us. "I heard there was some sort of monster or villain threatening people?" It was Endeavor, the number two hero in Japan. I had seen him approach. He looked a lot like Volcano, except his hair was actually made of flames.
"We took care of it, Todoroki," Gran Torino said with a hint of pride.
"I don't know you, honored Elder," the Flaming Hero said with a critical look at each of us. "I don't know any of you." His gaze lingered on me longest.
I pulled out my UA identification card and handed it to him. "I know your son."
"Shoto?" His eyebrows went up. "Fool boy ran off saying something about a friend in danger." He paused a minute and two young heroes in flame themed costumes came running up and stopped behind him. "If you will let my sidekicks call the police, honored Elder. I would ask you and your intern to go to this address. My son asked me to send pro hero help - an alleyway at 4-2-10 Ekou Street."
"But what about …?" The old man pointed to the city center. Explosions sounded in the distance and fire could be seen as light flickering against the buildings and clouds.
The number two hero stood taller. "There should be a lot of heroes gathered there. It has been two or three minutes, yet they still have not brought the situation under control." He tsked in disgust. "I, Endeavor, will be sufficient support for those fighting there by myself.
"Very well. I'll go to the address." Gran Torino agreed.
Endeavor nodded and took off running towards the sound of the explosions. Not personable, but I couldn't doubt his bravery. Reminded me of several people back home.
"You're a student. You should stay here." Gran Torino said, then took off to prevent any arguing.
"You going after him?" Jin asked. "Never mind, of course you are. You need me to do anything around here? I would go with you, but with all the Pros around …"
"It's a bit iffy," I agreed. "I'm going because if there are classmates in danger, I may be able to help them. We just saw one person may not be enough. But a favor before I go?"
Jin looked at Spinner and Nightwing. The winged man nodded thoughtfully and moved back to stand over his brother. Spinner took a few seconds longer to give us space.
"Greedo came here to betray one client at the behest of another," I spoke softly to Jin. "He was abandoning his office so all of his files are in that van over there. See if you can find anything either there, or on the train, that ties him to Giran, the Nine Head Dragon, or both."
"Got it." Jin nodded and waved. Spinner gawked as I took off flying. The GPS on my phone was working so it was easy to find the address given. Below me, I saw the little samurai wannabe following me. He could move pretty fast, including crawling up and down walls and leaping from rooftop to rooftop. I managed my speed so he could keep up.
Minutes later I landed at an alley entrance. There were almost a dozen people standing around. I recognized Iida, Midoriya, and Todoroki from Class 1-A. I was surprised to see Native there. Iida was bowing to his classmates. They were all visibly injured, with blood covering much of their costumes.
"I thought I told you to stay there," Gran Torino tried to get in my face, but he was thirty inches too short.
"You're not my supervisor," I pointed out, reasonably I thought. "And you only suggested I should stay there.
"Why I oughta … Get down!" he shouted, pointing up.
"A villain," said a blond woman in cream and green tights.
The winged Nomu – for that was what the flying brain had to be – was already swooping down on Midoriya. The boy's injuries slowed him. I reached out and pushed him out of the way, but that put me in the perfect place for the Nomu to grab.
"Hey!" Iida shouted.
"Yanagi!" Midoriya cried.
"There's blood!" the blond hero called out. "Did he escape here after being beaten?"
With my spirits all around me, I saw the Nomu as wounded, with a bleeding hole in its brain where its right eye should be. I felt a moment of sympathy. Gran Torino was preparing to launch himself after me. The battered man in red the boys had tied up was freeing himself with a hidden blade. And the other heroes were standing around uselessly, though one was at least reporting the situation to the police on his phone. I guessed the lines had finally cleared.
The man in red shot out a long, gnarly tongue – what was with weird tongues in this world – and licked the blood off the cheek of the blond hero. Suddenly, with a roar, the Nomu carrying me froze and started plummeting to the concrete.
The man was running towards us, spouting nonsense. "This society, overgrown with fake heroes and criminals who wave their power around idly," He leapt upwards, knife raised, "Should all be purged!"
He was obviously trying to intercept us. I just had no idea who the knife was for.
I used my geists to pull a baton out of its carrier, expand it, and lever the talon grasping me open. The Nomu wasn't resisting, so it was easy. I pulled myself free and parried the blade, just before the creature hit the road.
The man jumped back to put distance between us and glanced at his knife.
"I don't know who you are, but talking about purges is nonsense." I said floating to the ground. I wanted down. I still wasn't maneuverable enough in the air. This guy was fast and tricky. My scarf unwound itself and billowed out around me. I pulled my second baton.
"This is all to create a more just society!" He lunged forward. The Nomu stirred behind me. I lit a pinch of flash powder in the man's face while I wrapped my scarf around the Nomu. The small explosion forced the lunatic to jerk back. This gave me time to stab into the Nomu's open wound with one baton while parrying the man's knife with my other.
I grabbed the knife from his loosened grasp with my spirits and used it to cut off all his clothes. Pulling away the pieces with other spirits revealed three more hidden blades. My geists plucked those away, and then wrapped him in monofilament and capture tape. I didn't get the impression this guy was super strong. He had cut through plain rope earlier rather than tearing it off.
"You're all fake heroes," he continued to rant, bloody spittle leaking from his lips. "I must make things right."
The Nomu stopped struggling as I wrapped it tightly. I left the baton in place.
"Someone must be dyed in blood. I must take back what it means to be a hero!"
"Idiot," I muttered, grabbing his scarf with a few geists and shoved it in his open mouth when he started his next rant.
He struggled and offered an intimidating glare that washed over me to the heroes behind me. I could see they were all shocked into inaction by his admittedly impressive presence. I had been glared at by far better. This wounded Jack Slash-wannabe meant nothing to me.
The glare stretched on for several seconds. That's when I realized the man had passed out standing up. I shook my head and gently laid him on his side.
"Hey! Isn't anyone going to help me with these guys?" I yelled at the still gawking pros.
Stirring themselves from whatever lingering hold the lunatic had over them, they raced over. That was when I noticed Endeavor had joined the party. Midoriya reached me first and started checking me for wounds.
"What a maroon," I said to Midoriya, stealing an insult from an old cartoon I used to watch with my mother. I thought it showed more contempt than a just saying moron.
"What do you mean?" he stammered. I could see he was overwhelmed by the whole situation.
"That guy was an idiot. All it takes to be a hero is the willingness to accept pain and risk to help people," I said. I had heard lots of different definitions for 'hero'. This was mine. "He wants heroes to be perfect. Perfection's impossible. Sometimes good enough has to be good enough. Who was he?"
"The Hero Killer: Stain," Iida answered for him.
I had heard of the cape-killer. He had quite the body count. Maybe I should have treated him more carefully. "You three captured him?" I asked.
They looked at each other – something passed between them I couldn't understand. Then Todoroki nodded.
"Good job," I offered.
Once the pros had the Nomu secured, I retrieved my scarf and took to the air. I could hear Gran Torino complaining behind me, but he wasn't ready to leave his injured intern.
"I have to check on my mentor!" I called to him as I flew away. "It's my duty!"
Grumpy, but not a bad guy, I decided.
I am certain he will be pleased with your approbation, should he ever learn of it. Emily added.
"Did you find anything?" I asked Jin when I landed. He was by the van, avoiding the police that were sweeping the wreck site.
"Hey," he replied. "I'm going to have to disappear soon. But I've got these files that show the bounty hunters have been working for Giran, aka Landmark Enterprises. Nightwing found these papers in Chinese on the train that say that Greedo was working for the Triad. In fact, according to them, he was in charge of the whole smuggling operation. Thunderer backs this up. Which is bullshit because no one would never turn on his boss that quickly."
"So the Nine Head Dragon is setting Greedo up to take the fall?" I mused.
"Looks like it to me. I figure Myriad – word on the street is she's the local head dragon – hired Greedo to stop the Volcanoes, who Giran hired to rob the shipment. Giran hired the hunters as back up. I bet they were supposed to take the drugs to a transporter while the thieves got away."
"Seems needlessly complex," I argued.
"Giran likes his ploys," Jin shrugged. "Moving into the drug trade is something new for him, as far as I've heard. Maybe he was doing a favor for a friend? Whatever the big names are doing, Greedo was definitely in the middle of it all. And there's proof here the cops will eat up."
"Great. Thanks." I said.
"Now look who's back." Jin pointed with his chin. I saw Spinner running over, then stop when he realized who Zerox was talking to. "I am going to collect him and get us both back to Mosuaizuri. I don't want to talk to the police. But I think you're going to need to."
"Oh joy," I sighed. "I think you're right. I'll catch you when I get through with this mess. Where's Nightwing?"
"Flew the coop already."
"Ok. Take care. I guess it's time for me to face the music."
I turned and started walking towards the law, files in hand.