Chapter 20

Once we went over to her house, Pony and I went up to her room. I sat down on a pillow and looked over at her. She was on her bed, curled up to look me in the eyes. Even with her elevated position, I was still a bit taller than her, but this made it easier for her to meet my eyes.

I sighed, rubbing my hands together, my scales rubbing against each other with a soft and soothing rasping sound. “I’m going to be upfront, Pony. I can’t tell you everything.”

“Because you don’t trust me?” Pony’s voice was soft, her eyes swimming.

I scoffed. “I trust you more than I trust myself. Pony, just because I keep some secrets doesn’t mean someone is untrustworthy. There are some things people keep close to their chest, like your crush on-”

“Ah!” a pillow smacked into my face, falling to land on my face. Pony had gone beet-red. “I-I don’t have a crush on anyone!”

“And I don’t have a poster of Mirko on my wall,” I said with a chuckle. I forced myself to become serious again. “Pony, what I’m going to tell you is everything you ever need to know about me. Things I might never tell anyone else, even my wife. Because you matter. Being honest about these things is hard for me. But like I said, I won’t tell you every last thing about me. Just know, it’s for a good reason.”

The embarrassed look on her face faded the more I talked. By the time I finished, she had calmed down as well. “I guess that makes sense.”

I sighed. “Then I’ll start with the big one. I knew the attack on USJ was coming.”

She stared at me. “You knew!? Why didn’t you-”

“No one would believe me if I told them,” I said, heading her off. “I’m a kid in high school. I came out of nowhere? How could I explain that I’d gained knowledge about an imminent attack on the school specifically set up to kill All Might?”

“How did you find out?” Pony rose up a bit, staring at me.

“On the internet,” when she scowled I realized how that sounded. “I’m not making a sarcastic joke, I’m being serious. I suspected something was going on while I was doing research into online forums in support of villains.”

“They have those?” she said, sounding more than a bit disgusted.

“For as long as evil exists, there will always be those who decide to remove their brains and decide that evil is worth following,” I said with a sigh. “And I don’t mean the folks who think evil is sexy, I mean the type that thinks serial killers are tragic figures fighting against the man.”

Pony swallowed, looking disgusted. I moved on.

“Point on that is, there are people who hate heroes for being popular. Some of them have actual grievances, like heroes that use their fame to take media jobs that others might want, or who use their fame to get away with crimes for years,” after all, being hero, in some places, was less a day to day battle and more an all-you-can-eat buffet. Half-cop, half-celebrity, with all the problems tied to both.

Pony wasn’t speaking, though she looked uncomfortable. “Yeah… mom talks about that sometimes. About heroes who don’t deserve their… their jobs.”

“Well, some people complain about that. Some people also have really stupid greviances. But where those people congregate is the internet. Forums, blogs, all that sort of thing, all on a few different websites. I ended up on those websites, and I decided to take a listen to them when they started getting into attacking USJ.”

I raised a finger. “Keep in mind. I haven’t mentioned why I started looking into things. That’s part of that larger secret I’m keeping. Just know that the instant I suspected someone was doing more than talking, I started preparing just in case. I kept it to myself.”

“You didn’t even tell me and mom,” Pony mumbled.

“Because I could have been wrong,” I chuckled. “Pony, imagine. If I’d somehow managed to get a big enough response ahead of time, then I was wrong? I would have wasted everyone’s time! Worse, what if there was an attack planned, and someone got word I knew about it? They would have backed off, or worse, come with a larger group, attacked a different day. I had to keep it to myself.”

“No, you didn’t,” Pony said sternly. “You could have told me and mom, explained why you were worried that you were wrong. We would have kept it secret if we had to, and mom could have let the teachers know about it when it happened.”

“...That did not occur to me as an option,” I admitted a little bit weakly.

“I noticed,” she said with uncharacteristic sarcasm.

“Look, I had a lot on my mind,” I sighed, rubbing my face. Damnit. That would have worked. Cow Lady could have even helped during the battle. She may not have been All Might, but she was fast, powerful, and experienced, as worthy a hero as any.

“You said you had a lot on your mind,” Pony asked. She sounded like she was coming to a realization. “I noticed you’ve been stressed a lot recently. This is why. You were planning how to stop the attack.”

“I was planning how to circumnavigate it,” I quickly broke down my plan with the burner phone, the VPN’s, how I’d spent as much time as possible forcing my plan to be simple so that it wasn’t doomed to fail when one cog in the machine went wrong. “So in the end, all I had was a way to broadcast the warning to everyone right as it was happening, and do my best to protect everyone until then.”

Pony hit me with a pillow. “There was so much that could have gone wrong with that plan!”

“Actually, not much,” I argued. “I knew what the possibilities were, but I made sure to cover what I could. The text messages and emails were something I tested in advance, the phone was placed in an area with both service and little to no interaction from the public or any homeless folk who might find it, during a time period where garbagemen wouldn’t find it by some random chance.”

She still looked annoyed. “Just, talk to me from now on, okay! Let me know about these things! I was so worried about you! Bowser, you almost died!”

Looking away from the tearful look on her face, I tried to hold in a bit of a wince. Thinking back on my fight with the Nomu, all I could remember was the pain. His fists had been like… god, how do you describe something like that? Unless you really had been beaten by a superhuman, it’s hard to imagine the pain of it.

“I was the only one who had a chance against that thing,” I mumbled.

“And it still almost killed you,” Pony pointed out. “You said we don’t choose the ballroom, but you did.”

“And I danced,” I said with a small smile. “I had to.”

“...Bowser, you won’t keep this kind of thing from me anymore, will you?” she asked unsteadily. Her fingers wrapped into her blanket on her bed, shifting the cloth around, her big blue eyes never leaving my face as her mouth twitched.

I scratched my chin, claws ‘skriching’ against scales. “No way. From here on, I’m letting you know anything and everything I learn. I want you in my corner, Pony,” I reached out and rubbed her head in between her horns. “Need my little sis to have my back next time I fight a giant monster, right?”

While she did blush, she also scowled and pushed my large hand away. “I’m being serious, Bowser.”

“Same here,” I lowered my hand. “This shit was hard. It was stressful. I kept picturing all the thousand ways things could go wrong. I’ll be so happy to have someone I trust to help me with the next event.”

Pony looked me over, but shook her head a bit rather than speaking. Then she seemed to realize something. “Next event?”

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“All Might is still alive.”

No need to explain further. Pony understood.

“I guess you still have an account on those sites?” she asked immediately.

“I do.”

“T-Then lets get ready!” Pony clenched a determined fist. “We can stop them next time, right? If we prepare. We can protect everyone!”

There is no explaining the relief that filled me as I saw her shine with hope, with sheer willpower.

Finally. I no longer had to lie.

—---

The next morning, I ate in the kitchen with Pony and Tauren as we watched the news, where a report on the attack was being displayed. School was closed for the day after the attack, so we were taking the time to relax and hang out together.

“72 villains were arrested, though the ringleaders managed to escape. Police are still investigating into-”

“I don’t know how I feel about this,” Tauren mumbled. “On the one hand, I was worried about you guys. On the other, Seventy-Two grown adults attacked a class of teenagers and ended up in jail with not a single kid dead.”

“Not for lack of trying,” I mumbled.

The Cowgirl Hero winced. “Well, yeah, but I’m lookin at this like a hero. I’m trying to understand what the point was of attacking with such a large group of people who had little to no ability to attack.”

Pony and I shared a glance. “What are you thinking, mom?”

She looked between us, all of us ignoring the plates of eggs in front of us. Tauren rested her elbows on the table. It was like she was readjusting her thought process, shifting from mother to hero. When she was done, she spoke.

“All Might was the target, as we all know. But I think he was only a secondary target.”

“Secondary?” I was genuinely surprised. “They brought in a superweapon guy to kill him!”

“One. They brought in one superweapon,” Tauren said slowly, her voice serious and soft. “You said that one villain, Mr. Hands? He was the ringleader. But it sounds like he was young, inexperienced, treating things more like a game. The villains weren’t coordinated or trained, making me feel like they were meant to be cannonfodder from the start.”

She leaned back, continuing to brainstorm. “The rest of the attack was really professional though. Jamming communications, portaling into the school with that one guy, checking to make sure All Might would be one of the teachers there by infiltrating while using the media as a distraction. So. Professional in making the USJ Attack happen. But the actual attack was a mess beyond that.”

I frowned. “Now that you mention it, sending me into a fire zone and Tsuyu into a water zone is sort of the worst idea. They just shuffled us anywhere they could.”

“So they did research into where All Might would be, but didn’t account for the students,” Tauren agreed. “Which is a mistake only rookies make. I think this whole thing was, a test, or lesson maybe? Someone was trying to find out more about something.”

“About All Might?” Pony asked.

“Or the school,” I suggested.

“Or the villains themselves,” Tauren pointed out with a raised finger. “Think about it, kids. Inexperienced leader, new experimental weapon. Makes me think that part of this was just a big test for both of them.”

“They attacked a school for a test?” Pony asked incredulously. Then she frowned, likely coming to the same conclusion as me. “It’s like something out of an anime…”

Attacking the greatest hero on Earth just as a test. I could sort of see the reasoning though. Forcing All Might to fight in order to discover just how weakened he was, seeing how viable Nomu was as a weapon, teaching that brat of a decay kid a bit of humility. If they’d killed us, that’d have been a win, but the bad guys still got most of what they wanted.

It was like the Light in Young Justice, smugly laughing about how all their losses still got them a win in some way. Smug assholes…

“In truth, I shouldn’t really be talking about this with ya,” Tauren said with a wince. “But I’d rather you guys take this as a learning experience. Villains are closer to the stuff in shows and such than I’d like. We get bank robbers and such, but a villain that manages to learn from their mistakes is something you see a couple of times. It’s why the hero course has lessons on investigative work available.”

She smacked the table, making us jump in surprise. “But enough of that! Chow down, all right?”

I shared a look with Pony, then we got to eating quickly.

—---

After breakfast, Pony created an account on a couple of the websites I used to monitor those who followed villain activities, so that she could keep an eye with me on the shit that might pop up soon.

While she was doing that and I was about to talk about more ways for us to coordinate things, Ranma, my social worker, showed up at the door. We sat down in the living room, just Ranma and I.

“Bowser-kun, you’ve made the last day the most stressful I’ve ever had,” he said with a truly pained look on his face.

I blinked slowly. “Um… sorry?”

“No, no, let me start over,” he rubbed his eyes, sighing. “When the attack happened, I had to find out from the school that you were safe. That was fine. But then some reporter found out that you were one of the kids who directly fought the Nomu thing, and suddenly I had to fight off two different reporters asking questions about you. I imagine a few of the other students have parents dealing with the same thing.”

“Sorry, again,” I said a little helplessly.

“I was mostly worried about you,” Ranma said with a sigh. “The school said you were okay, but had to go to the nurses office. I didn’t even know something could get through that shell of yours.”

The memory of a violet fist cracking across my shell, a sensation like my heart was being squeezed in a vice, filled my mind before I pushed it back.

“Well, I am a hero trainee,” I said with a small sigh. “I knew all along that someone could eventually step in and break this thing,” I smacked my shell, thankful that it was unmarred. Likely my own healing combined with Recovery Girl’s power. I assumed, at least, that Bowser was capable of healing without anything like compound fractures being a thing. Hopefully.

“Bowser, that isn’t right,” Ranma scowled. “I’ve worked as a social worker for years. I’ve never had a student get injured because a villain attacked their school! Once or twice, out on the street. But never at a school, let alone UA. Do you want me to try and talk to the school-”

I held up a hand and shook my head. Still, I couldn’t help a smile. “It’s fine, Ranma. But thank you, honestly. Having you worry about me is gratifying.”

He sighed, rubbing the back of his head. I noticed that he’d grown his hair out since he met me, all the way until he had a neat little pigtail at the base of his neck. “Changing up your style?”

At my question, Ranma blushed. “Ah. Yes. My partner and I are doing a joint cosplay soon.”

That made me grin. Guess the world around me moves on without my input, huh?

“Anyways, Bowser-kun,” Ranma lowered his hand. “My fashion aside. Please. Call me when something like this happens from now on. This may be a job, but I am truly invested in your wellbeing. I want to make sure you’re safe, okay?”

Damnit, I wanted to give the guy a hug. I held back the urge. “Okay… I’ll do my best. But I don’t think you have to worry. Can’t think of any big events coming up that will-”

—---

The next day, UA

“The sports festival!” the class said as a whole, cheering together.

I held in a groan. Goddamn it, I knew I forgot something.