Assassin Among Heroes 33 Preview

“Done shopping?”

I shoot a mild glare at the burnt man’s question. “Yes. I apologize for that last-minute errand, but it couldn’t be helped.”

Dabi grunts and pushes himself from the wall he’s leaning on. “What was so important you took a detour all the way to the market?”

“New knives,” I respond, whipping one out from my left boot. “They did not have them on hand so I had to request an order. I was informed they came in just today.”

He tilts his head at me, seemingly aloof yet inquisitive. “Looks sharp. You don’t seem like the type to lose your gear though.”

“The circumstances were,” I pause for a moment, trying to find the right word. “Severe.”

“Severe?” he asks. We head down the alleys, with only the shadows and roaches for company. The human sounds of the city buzz in my ears, but they are far enough to treat as white noise.

“I’m guessing it had something to do with the whole corpse message mess, right? You didn’t bug me about it for a week and I’ve been digging all over for any scrap of intel.”

I briefly flicker to him. “Indeed,” I reply. I never thought of my scarred associate as dumb, not by any stretch of the word, but his insight’s sharper than I would’ve guessed. “I found a lead and the situation escalated beyond my foresight. I had to act fast.”

He shrugs. “No problem. As long as I get my cash.” He stares forward as we head deeper into the ward. Despite my Quirk’s assurance, I can’t help but mull over the plan. I am in no way reckless here; when I went down to the Nine Rings again after so long I feared a dozen things would go wrong. It took me two trips, but I managed to overhear a grunt whining about his boss, something about moving a ‘product’ from somewhere for delivery. When he left, thankfully on foot, I cornered and…persuaded him to unlock his phone for me. The photos I saw there made me glad I slit his throat and threw his corpse in the big garbage bin a block away. 

Wow. Looking back, that was brutal. But those photos…eugh, I deleted those straight away. 

“You sure we’re headed the right way?” he asks while looking around. The ward we were in wasn’t a graveyard like Naruhata, but a cement mixer with some demolition trucks on a street or two wouldn’t hurt. A few of the streetlights were broken and I could see garbage strewn in some of the alleys. More talking and mumblings trickled in from the upper floors of the residential buildings, all wrapped up in their evening lives.

I pull out the phone I took from the ex-yakuza and pulled up his maps app. “We should be there in a minute, to the right of that intersection over yonder.”

Dabi nods and looks both ways, his hands still in his pockets. His posture is relaxed, but I can practically feel the loaded springs in his arms. The moment he wanted to - let there be fire.

“Who was the psycho in the end?” he asks. 

“A fake priest with a penchant for mad science projects. He took over an apartment building and turned everyone there into zombies.”

“Zombies?” he turns and gives me a skeptical glance. “You’re joking.”

“If they were alive, they were better off dead,” I retort. “I don’t know what he did to them and the details are best left buried, but regardless of the how, he could command them, or at least direct their rampaging instincts.” 

He whistles lowly and I briefly frown. While my Quirk has gotten better at dealing with these sudden noises, it didn’t change the fact that they were loud.

“Sounds like B-grade horror movie shit. What did he want with you specifically?” 

“He had some delusion about the meaning of life through death, I was too busy cutting down the zombies to listen, not that it mattered,” I scoff. “He died like they did.”

“Extra crispy I take it?” he asks, a sharp grin on his features. “It’s kind of a recurrence with you.”

I don’t reply as we turn at the intersection and head down the new street. This seems quieter than the rest. It’s a little wider, enough for cars to park next to the curb and not on it. I check the phone again to confirm we’re moving in the right direction. My eyes flash to the time; almost midnight. 

A week ago Mom would’ve pestered me for my homework.

She let up on my grounding when my wounds healed enough so that I no longer needed the bandages. There was still a light pressure if she poked the area too hard, but not nearly the same level of pain as before. It took some pleading a solemn vow on my copy of The Silk Road never to do anything as moronic as rush into a possible villain site again for her to let up. Even Makoto-sensei, ever my kind-but-nosy teacher, gave a short yet firm lecture on stupidity and to not even try things like that in her classroom. At least she commended me on completing my homework.

A few of my classmates asked about what happened, and I gave them an even more abridged version of the truth. They were excited at first, eager to hear about whatever Villain rampaged in some part of the city, only to be apologetic when I told them I was knocked out. Yet I could pick up the slight traces of disappointment over the fact I had no juicy action to tell.

Why the hell are they so interested over what the Villain did instead of first asking me if I was okay? Isn’t that common sense?

I banished that sudden thought. I shouldn’t be too bothered; my classmates acted like any teenager our age would. Unless they were in the thick of it, Hero and Villain violence was essentially live TV for them.

Is that as messed up as it sounds?