Bonus Chapter since we already hit 100 PS
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The Zen'in healers had worked on him through the night.
Megumi woke in the guest quarters with most of the damage repaired. His ribs no longer screamed when he breathed. The cut along his shoulder had closed. His left eye opened without the swelling that had nearly sealed it shut after Naobito's last combination.
But soreness remained. Deep, muscular ache that came from being beaten hard enough that healing alone couldn't erase the memory of impact. Bruising still colored his jaw in shades of purple and yellow. His knuckles were raw where he'd tried to block strikes that were too fast to actually block.
Mai Zen'in had been the one treating him. He'd learned her name only because she kept showing up, night after night, her hands moving with practiced efficiency as she worked the healing over his worst injuries. She didn't talk much. Neither did he. By the third session, he'd caught her name from a brief exchange with another clan member in the hallway, and it had stuck.
'At least someone in this family knows how to do something without making it about power,' Megumi thought, rolling his shoulder experimentally. The joint moved smoothly. Mai had done good work.
He dressed in his hero costume and made his way to the main gate, where Naobito was already waiting.
Megumi stood just inside the gate, the morning sun barely cutting through the mist. He kept his posture straight despite the lingering soreness.
"Kyoto is boring as hell," Naobito said by way of greeting.
"Get that into your skull before we take a single step," Naobito continued, rolling a shoulder as he adjusted the collar of his coat. "Because it's going to ruin whatever stupid fantasy you had in your head."
"Boring isn't usually the word people use for a top ten hero's patrol," Megumi replied.
"Then people are idiots." Naobito turned and started walking down the stone path toward the street without checking to see if Megumi was following. "The Zen'in have held this city by the throat for longer than the hero rankings have existed. Between our agency and the police, violent crime gets stomped out before it breathes. Smart villains don't operate in Kyoto. Too much coordination, too many strong quirks, and zero margin for error. What that means in practice is that what I do out here looks nothing like your little tournament."
"Then what does it look like?"
"Open your eyes and find out."
They walked on foot. Naobito moved with an unhurried, heavy stride, taking them through commercial strips, residential alleys, and the crowded avenues near the station.
Within the first hour, Megumi saw what the old man meant.
A shopkeeper flagged Naobito down from across a street corner, shouting about a gray van with tinted windows that had circled the block three times since dawn. Naobito didn't run off to hunt it down. He leaned against the shop's counter, asked three short questions about the bumper and the driver's build, wrote the license plate on the back of a receipt, and radioed it into the local precinct.
Two blocks later, an elderly woman struggling with heavy bags of rice stopped to bow. Naobito snatched both bags with one hand, carried them up three narrow flights of stairs to her apartment, and spent four minutes arguing with her about the price of winter radishes before walking back down.
Near a park plaza, a swarm of grade schoolers spotted the golden crest on Naobito's coat. They mobbed him immediately with notebooks and markers. Naobito grumbled the entire time, told one boy his grip on a pencil was pathetic, but signed every single scrap of paper they shoved in his face.
Ten minutes after that, a junior officer jogged over from the edge of the fountain, pointing out a small boy in a yellow hat crying by the stone rim. Naobito crouched down until he was at eye level with the kid, asked for his mother's name and the color of her sweater, and had the boy back in his mother's arms before the panic could spread to the crowd.
'Yesterday he was trying to break my ribs,' Megumi thought, watching Naobito wave off the mother's frantic bows. 'Now he's handing tissues to a crying kid.'
"You look confused," Naobito said, glancing over his shoulder as they crossed back into the shopping district.
"You're different out here."
"I'm doing my job," Naobito snorted. "Today you're seeing what actual hero work is ninety percent of the time. Presence. Visibility. Knowing what looks out of place before someone pulls a weapon or uses their quirk. A boring patrol means nobody got hurt today. I've had exciting patrols, kid. Exciting usually means digging bodies out of concrete. Boring is better."
Megumi walked beside him, letting the words sit. 'Boring is better.' It sounded simple, but after the chaos of the USJ and the stadium, the calm streets felt strangely fragile.
The exciting patrol showed up twenty minutes after noon.
The radio click in Naobito's earpiece cut through the street noise. Naobito didn't change his stride, but his eyes narrowed, the lazy slouch in his shoulders vanishing in a fraction of a second.
"Convenience store, four blocks east," Naobito said, his voice dropping into a flat, command tone. "Robbery in progress. One armed subject, steel knife, three civilians confirmed inside. Local police have a perimeter, but they're holding back because of the hostages. This is yours."
Megumi quickened his pace to match him. "Mine?"
"Mine if you screw up and someone's about to get their throat cut," Naobito replied bluntly. "Yours until then. I'll be right behind you, but I'm not lifting a finger unless a civilian is about to die. You want real field experience? Here it is."
They covered the four blocks in under ninety seconds.
The police had already cordoned off the street with cruisers, light bars flashing red against the shop windows. The convenience store's glass front had the metal security shutters pulled halfway down. Inside, the fluorescent strips hummed over quiet aisles.
Naobito spoke briefly to the lead captain, then stepped back to where Megumi stood near the corner of the building.
"Single assailant," Naobito said. "Standard blade, no visible mutation or ranged quirk. Clerk's behind the register, two customers on the ground near the back. The idiot is yelling for a getaway car, but there's a stockroom exit into the residential alley behind the shop. If he panics and bolts through that back door, this turns into a manhunt through narrow streets with families everywhere. What's the plan?"
Megumi's mind clicked into gear, running through his options. Max Elephant would cave the walls in. Piercing Ox needed a straight charge that would crush half the shelves. Rabbit Escape was too chaotic for a tight space with frightened civilians.
"I use the shadow along the alley wall," Megumi said. "Drop in from the blind spot, surface inside the back room, and take his weapon hand with Toad's tongue before he realizes I'm inside. Then I drop Totality between him and the hostages so he can't rush them."
Naobito stared at him for a beat, his gaze hard and critical.
"Decent idea. One problem."
"What?"
"You planned the whole damn sequence without looking at the room," Naobito said. "Go into the alley shadow. Get your eyes on the floor first. Then decide."
Megumi didn't argue. He moved into the narrow alley behind the store, found the dark shadow stretching along the brick foundation, and sank into it.
The familiar cold weight of the shadow closed over him. He moved through the floorboards, traveling beneath the store's foundation until he found an opening, surfacing silently inside a dark utility closet near the rear stockroom.
He held his breath and listened.
Through the thin wooden door, a man's voice came in ragged, breathless shouts. "Where's the damn car? Tell them five minutes or I start cutting! Five minutes!"
'He's terrified,' Megumi thought, pressing his eye to the narrow gap between the door and the frame. 'His hands are shaking. That makes him twice as dangerous.'
Megumi scanned the floor in two seconds.
The robber was pacing near the front counter, holding a six-inch chef's knife in a white-knuckle grip. The store clerk stood behind the register with her hands raised, pale and rigid. But the two customers, two teenage girls, weren't near the back shelves like the police report had said. They were huddled on the floor right beside the refrigerated drink cases, only three feet away from where the robber was pacing.
Megumi caught his breath.
If he had used his original plan and fired Toad's tongue from the closet door, the angle would have dragged the blade directly over the girls' heads. If the man panicked and twisted his wrist, the knife could have sliced right into them.
'Naobito was right. Don't guess. Look.'
Megumi shifted his hands into the shadow shape beneath the utility shelves, adjusting the angle completely.
He didn't attack from the closet.
Beneath the front register, where the overhead fluorescent lights cast a deep, boxy shadow along the floorboards, the darkness bubbled.
A thick, dark tongue shot out from under the counter, staying low to the tile. It struck with blinding precision, wrapping tight around the robber's wrist before the man even registered the sound.
With a sudden, violent jerk, Toad's tongue pulled the man's arm downward and sideways, slamming his hand against the lower edge of the counter. The knife clattered out of his numb fingers, skidding across the polished floor and stopping harmlessly ten feet away from anyone.
"What the..!" the robber yelled, spinning around in terror.
The shadow beside the drink cases rose like a wall of black water.
Totality stepped out of the darkness. The giant black wolf didn't bite or roar; it simply planted its massive frame directly between the robber and the two girls, baring its fangs with a low, bone-shaking growl.
The utility closet door clicked open.
Megumi stepped into the aisle, his hands down and open, his face calm and unreadable.
"Don't move," Megumi said, keeping his voice steady and low. "It's over. Put your hands on your head and get on the floor."
The robber stared at the massive beast towering over him, looked at his empty hand, and then looked at Megumi. The wild panic in his eyes broke all at once, replaced by sheer exhaustion. His knees buckled, and he dropped flat onto his stomach on the linoleum, interlocking his fingers over his neck.
The front glass doors banged open as three police officers flooded the store with zip-ties and sidearms, taking control of the suspect within seconds.
Megumi crossed his wrists and released the summon. Totality and Toad melted back into the shadows beneath the shelves.
The clerk behind the counter slumped against the cigarette rack, letting out a long, ragged breath. One of the girls on the floor looked up at Megumi through messy bangs and wet eyes, her lips trembling, but no words came out. Megumi gave her a small, quiet nod, then turned and walked out the front doors into the midday glare.
Outside, the street was already relaxing into the routine work of police statements and medical checks.
Naobito was leaning against the side of a patrol car, watching him approach with an unreadable expression.
"No blood," Naobito said.
"No blood," Megumi replied.
"You changed the angle."
"The hostages were sitting right along the line of fire," Megumi said, wiping a speck of dust from his sleeve. "If I used Toad from the door, the knife would've swung right past their faces."
Naobito grunted, pushing off the cruiser. "You used your eyes instead of your ego. Most brats would've kicked the door open to look cool."
They fell into step together, leaving the flashing lights behind as they headed back toward the quieter streets. The sun was warm overhead, filtering through the maple trees along the sidewalk.
"Your father never did this kind of work," Naobito said after a long silence.
Megumi glanced at him. "Rescue?"
"Anything involving restraint," Naobito said bluntly. "Everything Toji did was force. Direct, brutal, and final. If someone hired him, the target died, and whatever was in the way got smashed to pieces. He had all the physical talent in the world, but he didn't give a damn about a frightened clerk on a convenience store floor."
"He never had anyone teaching him how to care," Megumi said quietly.
"Maybe," Naobito snorted. "Or maybe he was just a violent bastard who liked breaking things. Doesn't matter now. What matters is that you did something today he never had the patience for. You held real power in one hand and knew when not to use it with the other."
Megumi kept his eyes on the road ahead. "You think I'll end up different from him?"
Naobito let out a dry, rough laugh that turned a few heads on the sidewalk.
"Don't get cocky because you took down a half-starved idiot with a kitchen knife. Today is one data point, kid. One good choice doesn't make a career. Ask me again in five years, assuming you don't get your neck snapped before then."
Megumi didn't answer.
They walked the rest of the way back to the Zen'in estate in silence. The streets around them were quiet, ordinary, and unremarkable, and for the first time since he had arrived in Kyoto, Megumi didn't mind the quiet at all.
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