Darkest Before Dawn - 105

Chapter 105

“Not bad, right?”

“Not bad, he says,” Cow Lady – or Katelyn Koch – replied dryly to his question. Which was kind of rude, but what else could he expect from a friend of Hina’s… He was allowed to hope they wouldn’t be so blunt though, right? “Have you taken anything lower than third place in these games so far?”

“... They’re probably not set up to be challenged by several individuals,” he mumbled, scratching the back of his head. He wasn’t even lying though. The games he’d participated in so far were very obviously not tailored to be faced by someone like him. It was laughably easy to beat some of the records when he could be in entirely too many places at once. Nevermind the versatility of his Grimm.

He was actually kind of interested to see if there was something that’d be the opposite for him. Something that a normal person would find easy but that would be hard for him. There had to be something like that somewhere, right? It couldn’t all be easy games.

Right?

“There’s that,” Hina agreed, thankfully. “But you’re still amazing and you should be proud of what you can do, Kazuki. Just because you have an advantage doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. Everyone’s different, everyone’s good at one thing or the other. Like me, I’m unfairly attractive, but I’m still allowed to be proud of that.”

“Maybe not too proud,” Katelyn chimed in, drawing a narrow eyed look from Hina that she returned with an innocent one of her own. She was fooling no one. “Listen to her though. You’re doing great. Be proud of that,” she said, much more bluntly. Maybe she was the original sledgehammer and she’d rubbed off on Hina? He’d believe that.

“I guess,” he replied with an awkward smile. Neither of them seemed amused by this though, sharing a look before rolling their eyes. “So, where to next?”

“Well, I feel like stopping for a snack and something to drink, what about you? I bet you’re tired after showing off that much,” Hina asked, apparently highly amused as she added that last part. He just gave her a flat look. Taking a break sounded good though.

“That works,” he answered before looking over his shoulder at the game he’d just participated in.

“Something the matter?” Katelyn was the one to say that, surprisingly.

“I’m just wondering how effective that was, is all,” he replied. He’d felt several negative spikes when he was participating in the games. It could be from anything, from someone recognizing him to someone finding his Grimm scary or anything in between. His mind was catching up on all the negative thoughts he hadn’t had lately though, apparently, because it was jumping to all the worst case scenarios.

‘So much for a break…’ he thought. Maybe he could convince Hina to let him not show off more for a bit? Or ever, for that matter. He really wanted to try and have a good time. Then again, the school trip was supposed to be right after he went back, so maybe that could be the time for him to unwind? There was an idea, at least.

“It was effective, Kazuki. Don’t you worry,” Hina told him, getting his mind back on track. “I’ve given my card to so many people while you’re on stage. I’m sure at least some of them will call to talk about you.”

“Talk about me?” he asked, unsure. He knew he was trying to show off, get some recognition from a public that didn’t know him and such. Maybe even those that did know him. I-Expo let him show what he could do in a lot more scenarios than the Sports Festival did, so there was that. Maybe he could pile up achievements like those to get a better reputation. And besides, I-Expo might not be the Sports Festival, but it wasn’t small and it was international.

“Of course. Did you think I got all my acting and modeling work because I’m a pretty face?” Hina asked him, eyebrow raised. “Being a hero gets you attention, Kazuki. You might not be an official one yet, but people will look all the same, especially if you’re good, which you are. People will want Beacon in ads and movies and wearing their clothes, not just Kazuki Endo,” she explained and he had a difficult time wrapping his head around that. It wasn’t until he thought about his friends and such instead of him that he started understanding. “Besides, this is I-Island, the land of scientists, engineers and generally people in the support equipment and hero business.”

“Nerds, for the most part,” Katelyn chimed in with a smile, but otherwise the woman seemed content to let Hina speak. For a second, Kazuki felt bad about ignoring her entirely for the conversation with Hina but… Well, it was very informative. He kind of wished he could have his notebook in hand.

“People might want to offer you equipment deals or something like that.” Mei probably wouldn’t take too kindly to that, Kazuki imagined. “Granted, most of them will wait and see where the chips fall. Especially with you, I won’t lie. They’ll want to make sure you’re worth possibly getting burned.”

“Oh, so it’s just something for the future. Setting things up. Alright,” he mused, a lot less nervous knowing that. He wasn’t sure he could deal with more plate-balancing at the moment. Then again, if it came to it, he was sure the Management Team would help him. And maybe he could redirect some attention towards Chikuchi and Neito?

“Honestly,” Hina mumbled, apparently exasperated. Was it something he said?

“I think I’ll like hanging out with you, guys,” Katelyn, for her part, commented. She found them hilarious, if her expression was anything to go by. That was… good, right? Kazuki wasn’t entirely sure, actually.

“Anyway, snacks now and lectures later. I’m hungry from all that bragging.”

Kazuki just stared at her.

“What? Everyone needs to know you’re the best and that I’m with you,” she said, putting all her acting talents into making herself sound serious.

Kazuki tried not to wish that were actually the case too much.

[}-o-{]

“It’s not violin, but yeah, I play guitar,” Katelyn commented as she brought her coffee cup to her lips.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Kazuki asked, blinking at her and forgetting that he’d been bringing the straw of his smoothie to his lips. ‘It’s not violin?’ he repeated in his mind as he frowned. He didn’t understand where that came from.

“Violin is a lot harder than guitar, is all.”

“I mean, yeah? But a lot of people can’t even play that, so why’d you feel the need to point that out?” he asked, confused. Then he was a little caught off guard by the baffled look the woman gave him and the laugh that seemed to escape Hina.

“Never let it be said that being a hypocrite is a good thing, but damn can it be funny,” his mentor commented in between giggles. Considering that for a moment… Right, he got it. He was always self-deprecating and now he was telling someone off about it.

… Oops?

“Anyway, yeah, nothing wrong with playing guitar,” he mumbled, drawing back and into himself. He decided it might be a good time to pull out of the conversation and focus on his drink. Hina and Katelyn were friends after all. They probably wanted to catch up.

“He’s adorable.”

“Isn’t he?” Hina readily agreed, beaming at the American hero.

Kazuki just drew further into himself, feeling his face burning in embarrassment. They threw a few more comments about him, but he did his best to tune them out, since they weren’t directly addressing him. When they eventually moved on to a different topic, he almost breathed a sigh of relief. He would have, actually, if he weren’t sure that’d bring attention back to him.

Instead, he took a moment to relax while the two talked. He had a sweet, fruity drink all for himself and some pretty good snacks. He had an entirely too big screen hung on the wall in front of him where he could see streams of what was going on in certain stages in I-Expo. Kazuki had all that he needed to spend some time turning his brain off and that’s exactly what he did.

Once he’d recharged batteries a little, he sent off a few messages, apologizing to his friends there again. He’d told them what he was doing and they said they were fine with it, but he wondered if they actually were. He knew sometimes his efforts to deal with the media and his reputation got in the way, after all. It had to suck to be sidelined like that, right? Between the club and everything else, sometimes he felt like he neglected the rest of his friends a bit.

“We can meet up at the party tonight, no worries!” Toru sent him, adding a gif right afterwards in very Toru fashion.

He sent an immediate agreement, of course. Sure, Hina probably had something planned for him at the party too, but Kazuki had to draw a line somewhere. He’d do some parading around if Hina wanted, but he also wanted some time to himself. Kinda like how the day had gone so far, he supposed. Sure, he’d shown off a lot, but he’d had fun and done some of the things he wanted too. He had also gotten some time to himself, which he hadn’t known he needed so badly until he had it.

He did want to spend time with his friends though.

‘Maybe we can-’

His thought was interrupted when his negativity sense picked up something new, something sharp, something strong.

Distress.

“Do you mind if I leave for a bit?” he asked, catching both women off guard.

“Sure thing. Don’t get lost, yeah?” Hina teased and he rolled his eyes. Although, he could see some curiosity there, but thankfully she didn’t press the issue.

“I’ll try my best.”

He could have told her why he was leaving, sure, but he kind of wanted to make sure that there was actually something going on and that he wasn’t overreacting. It could very well be the case, after all. Or maybe the situation was under control. There were heroes everywhere, after all, so how bad could something be in I-Island?

Still, he wanted to see for himself.

Thus, Kazuki followed his sense. It took a bit, since there was stuff in the middle, his range wasn’t that small and the person he was trying to find was moving around. Eventually though, he did find them and… Somehow, he was both surprised and not.

He looked at the child, sitting alone on a bench and he could instantly tell that they were barely holding it together and not crying. That was probably why nobody was helping them though, because so long as something wasn’t too obvious, people just walked by. In a way, that wasn’t bad, since it was minding your own business and not butting in. Sometimes getting involved was the wrong thing to do or you could make things worse.

However, Kazuki could tell that it was worse than it looked and he couldn’t in good conscience turn away from the child. He had to at least try to help. Hadn’t he promised himself that he wouldn’t ignore things like those? The whole point of him being a hero was to find those that only he could find, after all.

“Hey there,” he greeted softly once he was close enough, making the boy look up, lower lip trembling. “Everything ok? Do you need help?”

“I don’t- I-”

English, of course.

“Everything ok? Do you need help?” he asked, trying and probably failing not to butcher the language. He did his best though and he hoped it was enough, like with Katelyn and everyone else that only spoke English in I-Island. That had been a little annoying to deal with, but oh well. At least Katelyn knew some Japanese too, so they could juggle a bit.

“I’m fine,” the boy said, visibly trying to keep from breaking down.

“Alright,” Kazuki replied, a soft, sad smile on his face. He couldn’t force him to accept help, so maybe he’d have to try something else. In the meantime… “I’ll be there,” he added, pointing at an arcade that was some distance away. He didn’t really feel like playing, but he thought the boy might change his mind if he gave him a little time and stayed close by.

“Hm.” Or maybe he’d fold like a cheap suit. That worked too. “Are you a… hero?”

“Hero student,” he corrected, turning back towards the child and giving him a wider smile. “Beacon,” he added as an introduction, offering his hand.

“Eddie,” the boy – now named Eddie – replied, a shy, nervous smile on his face. “I… I lost my mom,” he admitted then, pulling the words out like they were teeth. “Can you help me?” he asked and Kazuki smiled at him his most reassuring smile.

“I can. Let’s look, alright? Your mother must be looking for you. It’ll be easy,” he told the boy as best he could, hoping he wasn’t messing up anything that would make his message come across wrong. He also hoped he wasn’t wrong about his assumption, because if Eddie’s mother was looking for him, it shouldn’t be too hard to find her through his Quirk. Unless she hadn’t realized that he got lost, but that shouldn’t take too long, right?

Otherwise, he was pretty sure the boy wouldn’t be that desperate when thinking about finding his mother. God knew Kazuki wouldn’t have been eager to get back to his parents if he’d gotten lost, so he had hopes that Eddie had a better lot than his. He really hoped that was the case, because otherwise he might need to call Hina and it’d be a mess.

“You can help find my mom?” Eddie asked him and Kazuki felt his smile turn a little more real at the hopeful tone and the way the boy’s emotions were calming down, at least in his sense. “What can you do?”

“I know when people feel bad,” he explained simply. “I knew you needed help. I’ll know where your mom is,” he added and the boy’s shy smile widened a little bit. That was great.

“Everything is fine,” the boy mumbled, taking Kazuki’s hand and squeezing it. He just stayed silent and squeezed back the smallest bit. “Because you’re here.”

“A fan of All Might?” he asked with a chuckle, happy to see that his new little friend was feeling better.

“Yeah, I saw him once, he was-” And off Eddie went. Kazuki didn’t understand all that he was saying, but he didn’t really need to. What he did understand was enough for him to keep the boy talking. So long as he was distracted, he wouldn’t be feeling worried for however much it took them to get him back to his family.

Then, finally, Kazuki picked an increasingly worried presence not too far from where they were and made a sharp turn.

“Who’s your favorite American hero?” Kazuki asked, keeping his calm. It wouldn’t do to give the boy false hope before they confirmed that he was on the right track. Predictably, Eddie said his favorite was obviously Star and Stripe. Even Kazuki knew about her so that was no surprise, really. Especially since she was a very All Might kind of hero.

“Eddie!” they heard then, stopping the boy mid ramble.

“Mom!” the child cried out, letting go of Kazuki’s hand and running off. Just in case though, he followed after him. Last thing he needed was for him to get lost again somehow. That’d just be silly.

He needn’t have worried though, mother and son reunited with a very touching hug. Kazuki, for a single second though, found himself… wistful. He quickly shook that off, however. There was no point in entertaining those thoughts. No point at all.

Eventually, Kazuki started considering leaving, both because it was kind of awkward to stand there and because it was poking at painful parts of his mind to look at the mother and son duo.

“He helped me!” the boy exclaimed, stopping him from doing much of anything. As he did, he turned away from his mother – without letting go of her, he noticed – and pointed towards Kazuki. “He’s a hero, mom. He knows All Might!”

“I’m more interested in that first part,” the woman commented, standing up – also without letting go of Eddie – and looking at him. He felt the moment in which she either took a good look at him or got a good mindful of his uncanny presence… or both, he supposed. The spike of negativity was there, but Kazuki took some heart in the confusion of it. That usually meant that people were taking him in and “dealing” with his unnerving effect.

Most people, no matter how nice, didn’t know any better, after all. They didn’t know to not feel anything bad looking at him. That didn’t mean they were discriminating against him or anything. It sucked, but that didn’t speak badly of them. Kazuki still wished that wouldn’t happen, he’d admit.

“Thank you for helping him. I took my eyes off of him for a second and-And then I started looking and shouting and nobody-” the woman started saying before devolving into stammers that Kazuki had a hard time understanding. Once more though, he got the general gist of it though.

“Ma’am, it’s fine. That kind of thing happens even to the best parents,” he reassured, noticing that she didn’t seem to be lying. She seemed genuinely mortified. She felt guilty, but there was that shame and confusion mixed into it that made him think that she was just blaming herself for what had happened. If it’d been genuinely her fault, Kazuki knew there’d be more shame and nerves than everything else. Shame that something so big had happened because of her and nerves that she’d get caught. “Happy to help,” he added, putting his friendliest foot forward.

“Thank you,” was all that the woman could breathe out. Kazuki felt very proud of the way her emotions calmed down considerably. Sometimes there didn’t need to be grand gestures or speeches to make someone feel better. Sometimes one just needed to be there and offer a few kind words.

“Don’t mention it.”

[}-o-{]

[Futo Nagashira]

“This is… almost too easy,” he commented, not for the first time, actually.

He wasn’t even exaggerating though. Selling the Baby Series Grimm plushies was going to be a breeze. They were adorable, and the fact that their much scarier versions existed only added a very neat gap effect. Children were going to love them, any children would love them, even the most precocious of boys could see the appeal of having a miniature of something like Kazuki’s creations.

Speaking of, whenever they got to making figurines of them, those would sell a lot too, especially the regular Grimm, he imagined. Scary, they might be, but Kazuki’s Grimm were impressive, imposing and… cool, to put it in a word. They had an edge to them, but without going too far with it. Well, at least the normal ones. The Alpha series did have a tendency to push the over-the-top line a little bit, so Futo would have to consider that.

“Tell me about it,” Ronaudo commented, grinning at his laptop, grinning. Futo was sure he’d never seen his friend that expressive. “The models I’m running are encouraging, to say the least,” and that “to say the least” was doing a lot of work in that sentence, if the way he said it was anything to go by. Yeah, the club was great and it was only going to get better, he just knew it.

“Not to pull a Boss imitation here, but you guys are accounting for his negative reputation, right?” Komako asked and they rolled their eyes. “Good. I want you to work with extra pessimistic scenarios,” they added and this time Futo and Ronaudo blinked at them. “If things do go badly, worse than we anticipated, then the Boss will blame himself and his motivation might take a hit. He’s juggling a lot of things, so I’d rather not risk adding to that.”

“That’s… fair,” Futo mumbled, considering that.

Normally, one wouldn’t run pessimistic numbers, because that kind of thing presented a bad front for the public to view. However, they were new, they were students and their only known factor to the bigger world was Kazuki and only him. So, Futo guessed their image wouldn’t be too hurt if they did that.

They weren’t big enough for that to be a problem, or so was the assumption.

“I’ll run the numbers again,” Ronaudo mumbled, turning to his laptop once more and starting typing. And Futo nodded and did much the same. Not that he was running numbers, since he was working on design and marketing. There wouldn’t be many adjustments on his side and he knew it, but it couldn’t hurt to check just in case.

Besides, Kazuki was the only reason the club even had a chance to be a thing, so if he could help the guy a little extra, he didn’t see the harm in doing so.

The three of them had looked through everything they could get their hands on to make sure they knew how to make the club work, after all. There were reasons why almost every attempt in the past failed and why there weren’t any hero clubs other than theirs. The hero students weren’t interested in dealing with the extra work on top of their demanding schedule. The support and management students weren’t interested in dealing with the heroes that did because they were often… pieces of work. Even when both of those planets aligned, the clubs fizzled out because they didn’t get that much done, being made of unknowns without all that much to do, or they failed at some point and the house of cards crumbled around them or…

There were a lot of reasons why a hero agency club could fail, but Kazuki’s existence took care of most of them.

He was a determined figure that was doing his absolute best on all sides. He wasn’t just focusing on his own education, but looking ahead and doing things his classmates wouldn’t be doing until they were a year from graduation, if that. He was also good and so were Chikuchi and Neito, which meant that his friends and Futo had no problem working with them. Mei was a separate factor altogether, admittedly, but still.

Kazuki was also a public figure. A bad one, to be sure, but there was no denying that people had their eyes on him and any publicity could be good publicity if you used it well. And boy was Kazuki using it well. His choice of internship couldn’t have been more spot on.

The Boss brought a lot of things to the table, basically. He was going to make the agency work a lot like a real agency instead of them just make-believing one. They would be able to actually do things, instead of coming up with hypotheticals. That added a lot of motivation for all parts involved, but especially for them, the Management Team. Heroes could train and support makers could tinker without anything going on, but it was harder for management to find things to do. If the club had nothing going for it, then what were they supposed to do? Manage the support equipment budget?

Sure, there was something to that, but there was only so much they could do if that was all. They got more to do helping out with the school administrative work, and that was a very sad fact. So, having more to do certainly helped.

“Futo,” Komako called and he looked up, Ronaudo doing so a moment later. He might not have been called, but most things that affected one of their work would bleed over into the others somehow. It paid to be well informed about everything that went on, even if you weren’t being addressed directly. “Look at this,” they said, passing him their phone.

Blinking, he hit the play button in the middle of the screen.

It started like a regular video at I-Expo. Komako had been keeping tabs on the event and told them about every mention or appearance that Kazuki had made. So far, things had been going great on that front too. However, the video was from some influencer or influencer wannabe, it seemed. Not very good, in Futo’s opinion. However, the person seemed to catch something special while they were at it. Thus, Futo was witness to the very touching reunion between a mother and a kid and then…

Kazuki, somehow being there, apparently had helped the kid when he got lost.

And Futo thought about all the hate comments and messages that the three of them had to comb through for the guy. He thought about all the bad press they’d have to deal with. Then Futo balanced that with everything else, the bits of good press, the encouragement, the trust, the friendship…

“The Boss makes it too easy,” he commented, getting a chuckle from Komako and a nod from Ronaudo.

[} Chapter End {]

Hey guys! How’s it going?

I-Island is… being an experience, that’s for sure. Things seem to be looking up for our rather exhausted boy, don’t they? We can only hope that they continue like that. Until that is… Well, I’m sure people can imagine, considering this is a movie arc and such.

Right?

Either way, I hope you enjoyed the chapter.

Discord Link: discord.gg/UTDransjJZ

Random Question: What’s the last video update in your YT subscriptions?

See you.