Lean left. Step back, get some distance. Pivot, counterclockwise. Heel kick. Got him at the temple. Knock-out? Check. Showmanship? Double Check.

Rumi reluctantly wiped the smirk off her face. Kicking ass and handing villains a thorough beatdown had proven itself to be—and was always—a great exercise to limber up, but PR dropped the hint that grinning like a maniac while doing so may discourage future generations from picking up the mantle. Opsie.

The habit was a difficult one to get rid of though. Trashing some upstart warlord with too big of a head was plain and simple too much fun. Not to mention the thrill of testing her mettle against those villains that walked the talk. She lived for that.

A scream cut through the morning hubbub like a knife through butter and Rumi stopped dead in her tracks. Cityscape and distance took most of the raw edge; neither could mask the unmistakable cry for help beneath it all. Her ears brandished up and turned towards the noise like satellite dishes. Her heart hammered away excitedly.

She turned towards the officer that watched the prior spat and its sudden conclusion, also one of the few people gutsy enough to check on the villain. "I trust you can take care of this sob?" the man started and answered but she had already left him with the unconscious villain. Priorities.

Rumi bound from intersection to intersection, leaped onto rooftops, and disappeared farther over the heads of the milling people. A single kick let her cross throughways like she was flying. And she never forgot to cheer and wave back at anyone that tracked her through the sky. And she never forgot how good this felt!

Although the final echoes of the initial scream had faded, it was no issue to track the choking, half-swallowed, half-gasped—yeah, it sounded fucking painful—cries across the evacuated pedestrian street.

Imagine her surprise when she caught sight of a familiar, furry friend of hers. Hound Dog that... dog had beat her to the punch! She couldn't be mad at him though, he was too fluffy for that.

She passed the shaken half-ring of people and clapped the massive canine-ified man on the back.

"What's up puppy-dog?"

Hound Dog lift a fuzzy brow, his deadpan honed over decades of the same jokes. "Yeah, it's good to see you too—" but he didn't clap ba— "Snuffles."

Her grin grew massive.

"Alright, you got me. Real talk now, what we got here?"

Her colleague point his chin deeper into the alley, at some-...one crumpled to the stone and crawling towards them, and losing a lot of blood.

"Villain, Silence, fits the description from Hosu to a T. Wanted for multiple assault charges, misdemeanors, two cases of armed robbery, and a single murder charge," he listed with the same care as if this was daily news.

"Dirt, then? Wanna boot him? The good 'ol ball and chain?"

"Of course. But I'm more concerned about who did this to him. From what I can tell his tongue-", he pointed towards a fat pink worm clutched under the villain's arm. "Got ripped out of his mouth. I don't know whether I should be impressed our villain here hasn't gone into shock yet."

Rumi didn't see the point he was trying to make, and Hound Dog was always trying to make a point, he was too taciturn to not make his words count. "So what? Someone did us a favor then? Good riddance I'd say!"

Hound Dog deflated.

"Mirko, please, no Hero does stuff like that. A vigilante, maybe, a psychopath, much more likely. Neither of which bode well." Conspiratorily he tapped his boop-able nose. "And he or she is very close."

Now that sounded more like her cup of tea!

"Where?" she cupped her ears. City-life, traffic and everything else under the sun blend together in a single background static. "If he's close he's doing a dang good job of being all quiet."

"Rooftops. I'm smelling the guy from all the way down here.", Hound Dog looked back at the whimpering villain. "Don't wanna leave this one alone, though. Whoever this is might not be alone. Medics should be here any time now too. Let's wait and go for our mysterious assailant together."

She was on the cusp of retorting when he held up a placating, clawed hand.

"I know Mirko, your thing is going solo and all that, but I got a bad, bad feeling about this. This sort of wanton violence—torture, really—and not finishing the job? It's rare, it's dangerous. Honestly, it would make me feel better to do this as a duo."

CHOICES -VOTING CLOSED - 16 VOTERS

Votes

Give chase and some half-assed explanation that you just wanna keep the guy occupied. No fighting, not at all......

7/13

Wait for the medics and beat the living tar out of mister mysterious with your trusty doggie side-kick. The former might run away though.

3/3

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

She pouted and nuzzled the big fuzzball, looking up at him with half-lidded eyes.

"No, yeah, sure. I'll just, you know: looksies, no feelsies. Pwomise?"

Hound Dog shuddered in naked horror and recoiled. His hands came up and put distance between them.

"Jesus Christ, Mirko, never ever do that again... what even was that?! Fuck me, that was deplorable," he rubbed his nose as if to scrape away a nasty scent. "Forget it. Just- just go ahead and fight whoever is behind this, can't stop you anyway. I'll wait here for the medics."

Perfect. Her cutesy act got the desired response, and he got it right, he could not have stopped her even if he wanted to.

With a twist and some particularly showy parkour, she scaled the nearest house. She crested the roofs' overhangs and landed softly among the gentrified walk decks; because everything needed to look fancy these days.

Hound Dog was right. Although her sense of smell wasn't as pronounced as his, the stench of blood was thick here, soupy. It smelled rotten and warm. Unbidden she was reminded of the depictions of a 21st-century abattoir, it was said you could taste the rank fat and iron on your tongue in these places.

'Urgh,' she shuddered, it was unbearable.

Whatever blood had been spilled was left behind as dark brown tracks.

A second jump catapulted her further over the housing complexes.

Her ears, more so than her eyes, picked up on the strange kid strolling across the rooftops and looking out over the city. Steel chimed from him at a constant rhythm. She was pretty sure she'd notice a pair of maracas on hand.

'Well, nothing to it,' she thought and trundled up to him.

It was certainly a kid, a boy to be more exact, and likely a foreigner. He turned his head to look at her, the motion mechanical.

He was all tense and loopy-eyed, the shower of blood he must have gotten right before adding to that impression. His face was sunken and sagging; or maybe his cheekbones just protruded too far. Every inch of skin that wasn't bloodied or covered up was the white of chalk. 'Ugly fucking bugger.'

Was he another victim of whoever brutalized the villain? A witness? Or maybe this kid was the suspect itself. She came closer; his face smiled flawlessly.

There was no good way to go about it, other than awkwardly segueing to the point.

"Heyyyy buddy-" It occurred to her how little experience in de-escalation she had, with kids no less. A dusty memory of a hero course in an equally dusty classroom surfaced. Something, something about reassurance and projecting good vibes. Not a lot to go off on. Be that as it may, she took to it like she always did, gamely and with a winning smile on her face. "Would you be open to some questions?"

The boy nodded and his unnerving smile never slipped. His body was stubbornly turned away from her.

"Wonderful!"

Rumi began retelling. The state of the villain they found, the suspicion of a violent crime, and the responsible criminal still on the loose. All the while she gauged the boy's reaction. A twitch perhaps, possibly a flitting side-eye. She got nothing from him. His unflappable expression and silence stonewalled any cold reading.

He looked the opposite of nervous but she had a few more tricks up her sleeve.

"Ah, right. 'forgot to introduce myself."

Though she hated doing it, she spun and struck a pose. Hands on her hips, chest out like a strutting peacock, and ears ramrod straight. The pose was picture perfect, beaten into her by HQ over days of training.

"I'm the Rabbit Hero: Mirko. Soon to be Japan's No. 1 Pro Hero! At your service citizen!" the silence was deafening.

No skin off her nose. Give or take one or two years and she'd be at the top, standing shoulder to shoulder with the greats, definitely.

"How 'bout you? What's your name?" she asked easily, and the boy replied, the selfsame smirk on his face: "I'm under no obligation to answer you. Piss off."

Oh.

Wooooooow.

Silence and then insults. This boy was ticking her off, big time.

Wait, no! She had to focus, no matter how brazen the boy was becoming. 'Remember Rumi this kid's probably been traumatized out the wazoo. Go easy on him. Easy.'

"Ah, ah, I see what's going on here, you ain't trusting me yet. Don't worry, Hound Dog is down the street s'well. If you are more comfortable talking with him."

Again, the same smile, par for par. "No, I don't think I'll do that."

Alright, this guy was getting lippy with her on purpose. But she knew exactly how to remedy that.

"Come on kiddo, let's not do it the hard way. Tell us what you know 'bout the lizard and whoever was about to turn him into a handbag, and we may not even contact your parents after all of this is over." Check and mate.

The chiming was back and louder than ever.

"Mhm..." the boy began in a growl. "See, I don't care about all that. I really don't. I'll leave now, and you will keep on prettily standing there, watching me leave," he said and turned away.

Before he left he threw a last: "What are you gonna do? Hit me—a child?" over his shoulder and scoffed.

See, Rumi had very early on learned the most important maxim in life: pay more attention to what people do and not to what they say. Intuition was key and the boy was dropping the keys to this mystery like they were going out of style.

This kid did all the wrong things. If he wasn't the same guy that mutilated lizard-brain down there, she'd eat her shoes, metal soles and all—straight from her feet.

Lawfully, she couldn't box him in. But she could absolutely keep him here, all day long if she wanted; until he stood his legs into his gods-damned chest and the official authorities arrived.

In a single bounce, she landed beside him and took him by the shoulder for a spin. Only that she couldn't do that without putting some effort into it. 'Damn, what do kids these days eat?! I'm going to need me some of that.'

"Alright, dude, I'll stop you right there. I can't put you behind bars, but I can badger you until you wish I cou-..." when he did turn towards her, the words died in her throat.

She thought his smile was creepy, as in: If she met this kid at night, smiling like that? Oh boy, she'd throw hands rated E for everyone. Now she was more concerned by the animated chain dangling from him.

Teeth like razorwire and tongues throughout its length crowded the links. And it looked to be eating inside the kid's chest like a giant, steel lamprey.

An image superimposed onto the kid. Of a mysterious fighter and an underground ring; of the well-off laughing and suckers bleeding. That man, Hood she called him in her head, was a different breed. He was some kind of Quirk amalgam.

Speed and power and resilience bastardized into one unstable motherfucker.

She had seen no hide nor hair from him, ever since O'clock, The Rapper and she fought him. His voice, his madness, all that stuck in her head well and good.

The image went away, the feeling did not.

Rumi realized: This kid was cut from the same cloth.