Keeping Up

Aurdel stood in the main room of the class dorm building, watching the others work as they continued preparing themselves for the festival. Jiro, Tokoyami, Bakugo, Kaminari and Yaoyorozu were all practicing for the song that they would be putting on, while Midoriya, Kirishima, Aoyama, Todoroki and Sero were putting some of the final touches on for the special effects that would be used. Everyone else there was watching, except for one. “Mr. Aurdel, is something wrong?”

“Yeah, actually, there is. Have any of you seen Ashido? She asked to be on one of my patrols the other day, and I told her that we could do that today. We were supposed to leave fifteen minutes ago. If I wait any longer then Mirko is going to start literally kicking in doors trying to find me.”

“Would she really do that?”

“Yes, she would. And given that I just installed a several ton metal gate I give it a fifty-fifty chance whether or not I come back to a broken door or a rabbit with a busted up leg. Can one of you go to Ashido’s room and see if she’s there?”

Mineta raised his hand, “I’LL-”

“Absolutely not you. Asui, please go check for me.”

“Sure. Ribbit.” Asui walked towards the other side of the dorm while he waited.

“Come on Mr. Aurdel, why do you have to keep a fellow man like me down?!” Mineta despaired.

“This may be a high school, but there needs to be a certain level of professionalism. Trying to get into another student’s room for nefarious and uncouth purposes is anything but professional.”

“I’ll have you know that, to me, all my goals very farious and couth.”

“Farious isn’t a word.”

“You know what I mean!”

“Yes, I do. And that’s why the dorm’s firewall is about as large and as legible as how the Voynich manuscript used to be.”

“So you were the one that blocked all those websites!”

“And it’s given me knowledge I never wanted or needed on how a certain subset of people view Heroes. Female Heroes especially. As well as the knowledge that a significant number of people don’t seem to understand basic bodily anatomy, or that proximity of association does not entail a relationship.”

Kaminari stopped playing his guitar, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“From what I’ve seen, a common thing that certain people do on the internet is pair people together because they think a relationship between them would be nice. It’s also apparently something that is done of real people too, celebrities especially. And if they’re seen together often, or at least occasionally, then it becomes even more common. For example, there seems to be a lot of art of Kamui Woods and Mt. Lady-”

“Mr. Aurdel I’m afraid this is much more information than we need!” Ida interrupted, “If there is a point to be made please make that instead!”

“All I ask is that you please give some thought to what you search, I don’t want to spend my time curating all of your internet histories. I already have enough trouble with Bakugo getting the attention of the government repeatedly searching things as ‘bombing techniques’ and ‘how to make more powerful explosions.’”

“So you’re why my computer is running so slow!” Bakugo shouted, pointing a drumstick at him.

“The buffer time is so I have the chance to keep government agencies from tracking you down, you’ve managed to fall into around ten different honeypot schemes. The last thing I need is to be the one that tells your parents that you were arrested because the government had suspicions of you being a domestic terrorist.”

“Let them try and drag me out of here!”

“Right.”

“So, wait,” Sero said, “You can see everything that we search up? Isn’t that a huge breach of privacy?”

“I try to respect your privacy as much as I can, that’s why I only check if certain keywords are met. If it gives you any comfort, I’m not doing anything that the government hasn’t already done. In fact I do far less than they do.”

“No, that’s not really comforting…”

“Sorry for being late!” Ashido said, running into the main room. “I had to change twice, I forgot that we were even going on a patrol.”

“You can explain that while we’re working, now come on!” As soon as he knew that she was ready to go, he practically bolted out of the main dorm room and out onto the campus grounds.

“Hey, wait up!” He turned his head and looked behind him. Right, he wasn’t working with Ida. He has to watch his pace. Then again, if what he thought would happen was true then he couldn’t afford to be late. In that case…

“Alright, new plan.”

“Huh?!” Ashido stumbled into him as he suddenly stopped in front of her, he then picked her up and put her on his back. “Hey wait, what are you doing?”

“I walk faster than you run, this just shortens the time it’ll take us dramatically.”

“Hold ONNN!” Her surprise turned into a shout as he broke back out into a full sprint, holding on for dear life as he ran. “Why are you running so fast?!”

“Because if I don’t make it back to my property in less than ten minutes I’m either going to fix a door or a broken leg.” By now he’d made it off the campus grounds and was sprinting over open city now, jumping up and landing on a rooftop. He kept running.

“So you’re running as fast as a car?”

“Of course, what else would you suggest?”

“Can’t you just try calling her?!”

“Do you have your phone on you?”

“Well, no, but…”

“Then you’ve proven my point. The way your costume is designed doesn’t allow you very many places to store things, you don’t even have a belt to keep your phone or something else on. Though even if you did have one, I don’t think it would be particularly useful. Your costume isn’t capable of supporting one.”

“Wha… What point are you trying to make?”

“If your costume can’t carry anything with it, then I doubt that Mirko’s could either. After all, she wears a leotard that doesn’t have any pockets. And it’s not like she can stick a phone in her boot or between the metal plate she has around her midsection. Really the only place that she could put it that would be relatively safe is between her cleavage, since it’s covered by her outfit.”

“Are you just making excuses to not try and call her?!”

He leapt down from the buildings and onto the sidewalk, Ashido bouncing off of his helmet and he touched the ground. “Somewhat, yes. While I do use it with my armor on my, undersuit doesn’t lend well to more basic touch screens. That’s been made even worse recently because I had to install a relatively strong screen protector so I wouldn't accidentally keep scratching or shattering the screen.”

“Well, then just take the gauntlet off!”

“If I do that then I’ll have to completely recalibrate my armor’s shields, something I’d rather not have to right before getting into a fight.”

“Just call her already! I wanna keep my dinner down.”

“I pray that by the time you’re a full pro and have a partner to work with, you’re willing to act more professional.” His shields popped as he slid off the armored gauntlet, opening a hard case and temporarily stowing it away as he reached for his phone.

“Hey, actually, why don’t you just use facial recognition? That way you won’t have to push any buttons.”

“Good attempt, but I’m not gonna take off my helmet and show my face.”

She shrugged, “Had to try.”

Quickly he put in his twenty character password, swiped over to his contacts and tapped on Mirko’s name. The tone of the phone calling going through played as he waited. There was no way that she would- “Hey, where the hell are you?” She’d picked up. “I tore up the place that you told me about, but you weren’t there.”

…

“Damnit.”

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“...All I’m telling you is that you should have just built it with something stronger if you didn’t want me busting in.”

“And I’m saying that I don’t have access to an unlimited amount of resources, not here. I had enough trouble trying to source all of the steel for that gate, then you just kick it down and cause a mess.” Mirko shrugged, he sighed. “Was I at least right about where you keep your phone?”

“Well, yeah. Where else am I supposed to keep it?”

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“Let’s just say that I was taught to think flexibly, and from personal experience I can also say that that flexibility is somewhat uncomfortable. You don't want to know where I have a spare knife hidden.” Mirko shoved him and gave a laugh, amused with the idea. Ashido wasn’t nearly pleased.

“Hey, don’t say stuff that’s so gross! Aren’t we supposed to be going on patrol? I don’t want to have to listen to this.”

“We are going on patrol now,” he raised his head, “And now that we have the time since we’re on patrol, mind telling me what exactly made you late? And why you apparently needed to change your outfits twice?”

“Well, uh, you see…” She stammered out, rubbing the back of her head, “I may have just slightly… Forgotten about it.”

“You forgot about it?” He said with disbelief, “You asked desperately for me to take you out on a patrol, I agreed and gave you a specific time and date, and you forgot?”

“Come on, I’ve been really busy lately! Between most of the classes, the stuff that you’re putting us all through and the prep for the festival I’ve had almost no time to myself!”

“Yes, I do know that you have been busy. I’m your teacher, I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t know that stuff.”

“Well, because I forgot about this I decided that I was going to treat myself a little bit. I called some of my friends and bought a few movie tickets online, and we decided that we were going to see a movie together!”

“Really now. Did you get approval to leave the campus to go out like that? Because you’re supposed to go to me or Mr. Aizawa to get permission to go, and I know for sure that you didn’t ask me to go see a movie.”

“Eheh… I might have forgotten more than just one thing.”

“Evidently.”

“Ah, cut her some slack.” Mirko folded her arms, “She’s young, she should be trying to enjoy these early years like I did. You get a lot less time once you do the job full time.”

“You have no idea how much you’re preaching to the converted right now, so I’ll let that pass,” he shook his head. “I won’t fault you for trying to enjoy your time, just try to make sure that you make good on previous commitments. Especially when it’s something as important as this.”

“Right.”

“What movie were you trying to see anyways?” Mirko asked, “It’s not like there have been any new releases recently.”

“Actually, the movie released a few months ago. I just never really set aside the time to watch it with friends. It’s a sci-fi horror movie called-” Aurdel cringed at the thought, making an audible noise of disapproval. “What’s wrong? I haven’t even said the name yet, or even what it’s about.”

“With a sci-fi movie?”

“Oh, right. Sorry.” She looked down, a little ashamed at not having remembered. Then she perked up. “Say, why don’t you tell people what's wrong with sci-fi if it's so bad? That way people can try and make it better.”

“I don’t think…” He paused, “Alright, fine. One of the biggest problems with sci-fi is the way that technological advancement is depicted. For some reason directors and authors either work with only one of two assumptions, either that growth is either logarithmic or purely exponential. Individually those assumptions are wrong.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“If you chart it on a graph, it looks more similar to a cubic function. Just one that has a limited set of inputs, with the shape of that section then repeating end on end.”

“Yeah… I don’t get it.”

“Alright, let me put it this way. In the beginning technological growth is incredibly fast, with the only limiting factor being the resources of that time period. However eventually that growth will reach a peak and begin to plateau out, sometimes it even dips for a short period of time. However after new scientific discoveries are made technology begins to grow fast once more, and eventually it loops around to the beginning. Ultimately technology will always improve, but there will always be peaks and plateaus.”

“Anything else?”

“The idea that human wave attacks will somehow return is only written by hack frauds who-” He paused, picking up something on the police frequencies he tapped into with his helmet’s comm system.

“Who what?”

“Stay quiet for a moment.” He listened in, mulling over the details in his head as he heard them come through. Then he decided, answering the signal. “This is pro-Hero Spartans, en-route to the scene. ETA five minutes.” He then switched off the comm, “Looks like you’re going to see your movie after all. A group of Villains just walked into a movie theater and took the audience hostage.”

Interceding Action

“If you keep carrying me like that I think I’m going to be sick…” Ashido said with a groan.

“Still the fastest way we could have gotten here.”

“You could have just let me use my acid, that way I could have run alongside you.”

“And destroy public infrastructure before there’s even a Villain to fight? Not likely.”

“You could have let her ride on my back instead.”

“You jump too often. If she’s complaining just from what I do, then it’ll be even worse with you.”

“Touché.”

The three of them walked over to the police cordon that had already been set up around the entrance to the theater. “Officer, what’s the situation?”

The officer looked up, “Well, there’s five Villains inside the theater. Or at least that’s how many we think there are. They’ve barricaded up the front entrance and have people posted there to make sure that we don’t try and bust the front door open. Besides that we don’t know how many hostages they have or where they’re keeping them. Hell, they haven’t even tried to make any demands.”

“No demands?” That was… odd. Most of the time when criminals took hostages, it was for the purposes of extorting something from the authorities. But if these guys weren’t doing that… Well, then he wasn’t sure what they wanted.

“You don’t think they’ll just start executing hostages, do you?”

He reassured the officer, “We’ll get them all out, you can count on that. Do you have a map of the building?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah.” The officer reached into the patrol car and pulled out a laptop, a floor plan of the theater was displayed on the screen. “The front entrance is the only way in and out of the building, there’s no roof access or side entrances and exits.”

“Hold on, it says that there are fire exits here and here. What do you mean that there’s no other way in?”

“We looked in those spots sir, but there are no doors. Apparently the owners cheated the city on the fire code, and only had those fire exits set up on paper. They don’t actually exist.” He muttered upon hearing that, typical. “Sir?”

“Alright, the most likely place for them to keep the hostages is in one of the screening rooms, it’s a relatively large open area with one entrance and exit and both can easily be covered by firearms or otherwise. They’re also probably keeping a pair of guards up here by the front, and another two guarding the entrance and exit to the screening room. “

“I think I can see where this is going… There are three of you, so you’re going to hit all three positions at the same time. But how are you going to get in?”

“It’s a three dimensional space, we drop from above. The only issue is working out the timing.”

“What about getting onto the roof?”

“Don’t worry about that, just be ready to move in once we secure the Villains.”

“Yes sir!”

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Aurdel placed the side of his helmet to the roof, keenly listening into the room below as the others waited. He wanted to make sure that the moment he popped through he could take down any Villains in the room. “Are we ready?!” Ashido called out, he nodded as he stood back up.

Three, two, one… “Go!” Aurdel jumped up, angling his feet and plummeting back down through the roof. His visor quickly adjusted as he went from sunlight to the near pitch darkness of the theater.

“What the hell?! Heroes!” A woman shouted. The hostages were all crowded into the center of the room, with two people watching them from the sides as he came through. Or at least, one was. He’d happened to land on the other. “Damnit, and I was just about to start broadcasting my message too.”

He pulled out his beretta loaded with non-lethal rounds, “I suggest you give up now, you’re not going to get any of your demands from me.”

“Like hell, I’m not giving up now!” The woman was surprisingly large and had horns like a ram. And just like the animal she charged towards him, plowing through over a dozen theater chairs as he opened fire with his beretta. Four shots, all four connected. But the woman didn’t even falter. He dove to the side as she came charging through, plowing into the nearby wall and leaving a gaping hole. “Do you even know what I want?!”

“If you’re taking hostages? Money, most likely.”

“Not even close!” He fired again as she charged back over towards him, emptying his magazine to no effect and she plowed through. Fine then, physical force. As soon as she got close he threw a punch, aiming for her head but hitting her horn instead. Her right horn cracked as she rammed into him, taking both of them straight through the wall behind him and out of the screening room. Together they came out into one of the hallways. “I’m doing this because it’s the only way to get any attention, Villains and Heroes are the only ones that get paid any heed nowadays!”

He grabbed her by the horns, spinning her around once before throwing her into the next wall. “Sounds like a pretty poor excuse to me.” Another hole in this wall too, and as the dust cleared he could see that her right horn had snapped off.

She picked it back up, ready to use the sharp end like a knife. “You know what this is about? It’s about the God damned theater!”

He was caught a little off guard, and stopped for a moment. “You’re angry at a movie theater?”

“Hell yes I am! You know how long we were campaigning against this place being built?! They evicted and bulldozed two entire apartment buildings just for this crap!” She charged him with the broken horn in hand.

Things like this… “Damnit.” He muttered under his breath as he quickly dealt a front kick, pushing her back and through the wall. “I can understand your beliefs, but taking an entire theater of moviegoers hostage isn’t the way to do it.”

She coughed as she stood back up, “What else was I supposed to do? Keep up my activism? Five years of it fell on deaf ears, and nothing happened. We lost!”

Thoughts raced through his head, then he decided on his course of action. “No, just the wrong ones.” As she tried to charge again he open-handed slapped her this time rather than punching, she fell backwards against a counter. “Fight’s over, you’re no longer being influenced by that Villain.”

She looked up, confused. “What are you…?” He raised a finger motioning for her to stay quiet.

“You were attacked by a Villain, and he injected you with some drug.” He walked over, “That drug made you stronger, as well as go crazy and on rampage. That’s why you took those civilians hostage.”

“What the hell are you-?” He covered her mouth as he leaned in.

He whispered, “You’re still young, and they’ll put you to life in prison for something like this. So don’t be stupid and just play along. The theater will burn down in a few days, the owners will get what they deserve too.” The woman looked shocked, “Our little secret, alright?” She nodded, he let go over her mouth.

“Hey, demolition man, you over here?” Mirko poked her around the corner.

“Yeah, I’m here. Only problem is that these guys aren’t the perps.”

“Really now? They looked pretty Villainous to me, trying to kill me and all.”

“They got shot up with some trigger variant before they got here, some Villain testing a new concoction.”

“Are… are my friends okay?” The woman played along.

“Well, most of them are beaten up pretty badly. But they’ll live.”

“Bring them to me,” he interjected, “I should be able to detoxify them without too much effort.”

“You sure? EMTs have ambulances outside, they could probably rush them to the hospital and-”

“Just bring them over here.”

“Whatever you say boss,” Mirko gave a mocking salute, then walked off. He waited until she was out of listening range.

“Tell your friends to play along, or else this won’t work.”

“Aren’t you a Hero…? Why are you to trying to-”

“Let’s just say that not everyone can agree where a Hero’s duties should end, and that crippling someone who was trying to do the right thing isn't a solution to anything.”