"You're definitely getting better at the drums." said Kyoka to Tobias as they were walking home from school. Thanks to Tobias being ranked 1 in his year, the principal had let him use the instruments in the school to practice after he asked them.
"Thanks, but it's been a year since I started and I'm not where I want to be yet. Maybe I should try to create enchanted drumsticks. Drumsticks that will move my hands to play the music without me having to know the songs. That's not a bad idea actually." he said before he started to mumble to himself about the logistics of creating a card like that.
"Ah, there you go again." she said.
"What do you mean?" he asked, snapping out of his trance with a confused look.
"You don't notice it but sometimes when you think about creating a card you go into like a trance where you mumble to yourself. It's kinda creepy." she said with a smirk on her face.
"Do I? I've never noticed it before. Wait, why haven't you told me about this? We've been friends for years now."
"It's kinda funny too. Especially when you do it around new people. They get a face like they never want to be friends with you. Hahaha." she said while laughing.
"Hey, that's kinda hurtful. Even if it is kind of creepy, there's no way it's creepy enough to drive people away. It's just because they're frightened by my rugged good looks, once-in-a-lifetime genius, and versatile quirk." he said before looking up to the sky with an aura of despair ala Kaneki.
Kyoka seeing him do that stared at him with a blank face before she continued walking, ignoring him.
"Hey, wait up." said Tobias quickly catching up to her, "You want to go eat somewhere? I'm starving."
"Sure. Where do you want to go eat?"
"There's a ramen place not far from here. I've been there once with my family. It was pretty good." replied Tobias.
"I ate ramen two days ago. How about a family restaurant? I think there's a Benny's not far from here." she said.
"Okay. Lead the way, my lady." Tobias said at which Kyoka rolled her eyes with a small smile.
"Actually wait a second." said Tobias as Kyoka was walking off.
"What?"
"I want to try something out." he said before pulling out a deck of cards.
"A new card? Again? Don't tell me you're going to create a dragon or something?" she said joking before she looked up to see Tobias staring at her.
"Stop. I was joking. Don't tell me you're actually about to summon a dragon?" she said a little nervous.
"Not anymore." he said before slotting a card back and pulling out another one.
"Can you actually summon a dragon?" she said a little flabbergasted.
"Haha. Maybe." he said with a mysterious smile, "But I guess I can try out this other one I've been working on. The only problem is it has a time limit, so we might crash mid-way but I think we'll be okay."
"Then no. I'm too young to be disfigured." she said shaking her head adamantly.
"It'll be fine. Look." said Tobias before throwing the card down on the sidewalk before it shone and a hoverboard appeared. The hoverboard was shaped like a skateboard except there were no wheels.
"What is that? A skateboard? Where are the wheels?" asked Kyoka walking around the hoverboard and taking a closer look at it.
"It's a hoverboard. It needs no wheels." said Tobias before going up to it before it started hovering.
"What the? How does it do that?" she asked.
"I don't know, magic I guess. But we can talk about it at the restaurant, it has a time limit so let's go." he said before it dropped back down so he could get on it.
With his feet firmly planted on the board, he looked back at Kyoka.
"Come on. Hop on."
"I don't want to. Let's just walk."
"Oh come on. It's perfectly safe. Besides we won't fall off because our feet will be locked onto the board. Unless we crash then we will be ejected. But safely." he said.
"Are you sure you want me to get on? Or do you want me to have a heart attack?"
"I promise it's safe. I've tested it out before."
"You said earlier you wanted to try it out earlier. You're lying."
"I meant to try it out for real and not just around my house." he said before holding out his hand.
"F-fine. But don't go too fast." she said grabbing his hand before getting on the board right behind Tobias.
"Okay, make sure you're comfortable because your feet will be locked in place. And put your arms around my waist so you won't fall." he said before grabbing her arms and placing them around his waist.
"That good?" he asked.
"Hmm." she said thankful that Tobias couldn't see her blushing.
"Good, now let's go." he said before the board lifted up into the air.
"H-how are you controlling it?" asked Kyoka unconsciously tightening her grip on him.
"I made it so it's connected to my mind. But I don't have to focus fully on it. I give it a directive and then it'll do it before I have to give it another directive. Like I said, a prototype."
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
"G-go slow." she said.
"You got it toots." said Tobias before he took off like a race card.
"AHHH!"
"WHOO! This is awesome!"
Tobias was having the time of his life speeding on the hoverboard. Kyoka on the other hand, not so much. Tobias was weaving in and out of pedestrians making sure to give enough berth to not hit anyone.
'This thing is way faster than I thought it would be. I'm glad I made it, but I need to be mindful of the time limit.' he thought to himself.
As they kept going in the direction of the restaurant, Kyoka had steadied her mind enough to where she opened her eyes. The first thing she saw as she opened her eyes was them steering right into a wall.
"Tobias!" she yelled before closing her eyes.
Tobias, clearly not worried, had a smile on his face. As they were about to reach the building, the hoverboard jumped and started moving vertically along the wall.
"Hahaha! Open your eyes, Kyoka. You're missing everything." he said to her.
Kyoka, her curiosity getting the better of her instincts, opened her eyes right as they crested over the top of the building. Her eyes took in the city with the sun setting in the distance as Tobias came to a stop.
"Whoa." she said mesmerized by the view.
"I know right? It's beautiful. Every day we live our lives in this city, on this planet, and yet I am still in awe of the views."
"Shh. Did you hear that?" said Kyoka looking around.
"No. What did you hear?" he asked.
"I heard someone screaming. I think it came from over there." she said pointing down at an alley in between all the buildings.
"Can't you use your jacks to listen better? Why don't you try plugging them into the ground to see if you can hear where it came from?" he said to her.
"The ground is too hard for me to plug them in. Let's go in that direction and the closer we get the better I'll be able to hear."
"Okay, let's go by the rooftops though. Just in case there is something we can escape or if we have to take action we'll have the jump on the situation." suggested Tobias.
"Good idea. How do I get off this thing?" she said looking at the board.
"Oh right. Release." said Tobias before the board disappeared completely.
"Let's go." said Kyoka.
"Wait." said Tobias before rifling through his deck before pulling out a card and putting it in his pocket, "Okay, we're good. Lead the way."
Kyoka then started walking across the building while pointing her jacks toward the direction where she heard the noise. After walking over the rooftops of three buildings, she suddenly stopped before her face got really serious.
"What is it?" whispered Tobias to which Kyoka responded by her putting her finger to her lip, telling him to be quiet.
Tobias seeing how serious she was decided to do some reconnaissance of his own. He pulled out his deck before pulling out a card. Activating it, an eye appeared in front of him. Tobias then clutched his left eye before the floating eyeball started moving, turning invisible while on the move. Tobias had taken heavy inspiration from Gaara for this card and it would've been more cost heavy if not for adding the limitation of his left eye being unusable during the card's duration.
Tobias started moving the eye in the direction where Kyoka's jacks were pointing. As he moved, he was making sure to take in all his surroundings since the eye had no sound relay function, yet. About to pass an alley, he spotted someone waving his arms around. Going in the direction of the man, he was able to see three men surrounding a van.
Tobias wasn't able to see much, so he started getting the eye closer to get more details. As he approached the van, he could see the men were tattooed all over, which meant they were likely yakuza.
'Yakuza? I remember hearing gangs were wiped out after the rise of villains. Ahh, I wish I had watched more than the first few episodes of MHA. The only thing I remember about any antagonists is that one purple bird thing that I saw fight All Might in a clip somewhere. Not that it matters right now, since criminals are criminals.'
Snapping out of his thoughts, Tobias moved the eye to get a look at what they were doing around the van. As he was about to get a better view, he was shaken by Kyoka.
"Tobias. Why are you holding your eye?" she asked with concern.
"I'm using a recon card I made. The downside is I lose the use of my left eye while the card is active. That's beside the point, what did you hear?" he asked.
"I heard them talking about a shipment of people. They're traffickers." she said a little angry.
"I see. We should call the po-" he was saying before his face scrunched up.
"Shit. We don't have time to call the cops. They're about to move and I was able to see inside right before they closed the doors of the van, they have someone. We have to stop them." he said looking at the feed the eye was giving him.
"We can't do anything! We're not supposed to be using our quirks not to mention we're kids!" she said flabbergasted at Tobias' suggestion.
"I know that. I'm not dumb you know. That's why I have this." he said pulling out a card and showing it to her.
"A card? Tobias, it doesn't matter how strong you think your quirk is, they're real criminals that most likely know how to use their quirks!" she said a little angry at Tobias' arrogance.
"Read the card first and hurry, we don't have much time before we have to act." he said handing her the card.
"Fine." she said grabbing the card, "The Ancient Fear, Fiddlesticks? What is that?"
"It's a spell card that will summon that demon to fear my opponents before disappearing. That took almost my entire stamina to make you know. It'll be years before I'm able to summon it as a monster." explained Tobias.
"Why? Isn't it just a scarecrow?"
"Nope. Fiddlesticks is fear itself. It is the concept of fear. That's not important right now. I'll use the card on the villains while you call the cops and tell them what we saw. Once I use the card and make sure they're incapacitated, we'll leave."
"Okay, but be careful." said Kyoka before giving him the card back and pulling out her phone to call the police.
"Phew, never tried this card before, so here's hoping." he whispered to himself before switching his vision to the van and activating the card. Tobias had figured out that spell cards can be activated away from his body as long as he had vision of the area where the spell would be activated, within reason.
With vision on the van, Tobias saw Fiddlesticks appear out of nowhere before waving his scythe, releasing a wave of sinister-looking energy before disappearing. The energy passed through all three of the criminals before they all stopped for a second. Then, they started screaming before collapsing into unconsciousness. As he watched them collapse, he also noticed a puddle of liquid appearing under them.
'Holy shit. I need to have another one of those cards on hand for emergencies.' thought Tobias before dispelling the eye.
"I heard them screaming. What happened?" asked Kyoka.
"The spell worked. They got hit with a wave of fear before they started screaming and then they passed out." said Tobias.
"Good. The police are on their way. Let's go."
~~
After booking it from the area, they continued on their way to the restaurant all be it with less enthusiasm. Once sat down in a booth, they ordered their meals and chatted while eating. Done with their meal, Tobias and Kyoka began walking home in the same direction, since they both live near each other.
Nearing the road where they part ways, Kyoka asked Tobias something.
"Do you think I can be a hero?"
"Of course, you can. Where's this coming from?"
"It's just when I see your quirk and I see All Might, I think I'm not strong enough." she said with her head down.
"Bullshit. You can't compare yourself with All Might. He's been a hero for years. Obviously, your quirk will look weak compared to his. You just need to train, and you'll be fine. Besides, you're very smart and resourceful, those are all good qualities in a hero."
"Mm. Thanks." she said with a smile.
"Don't mention it. Alright, later." said Tobias before walking in the direction of his house.
Kyoka turned to look at him walking away and put on a face of determination before clenching her fist.
~~
"I'm home." said Tobias as he opened the door to his home.
"Where were you?" asked his mom from the kitchen as Tobias made his way to her.
"Kyoka and I went to eat at Benny's after practicing at school."
"Okay. But be careful on the way home from now on. There's a new something running around town." she said.
"New something? What does that even mean?"
"I saw it on the news. Three criminals were found unconscious after someone called the police on them because they overheard them talking about kidnapping people. Turns out they can't even open their eyes without yelling in fear. The police think it's some mind-related fear quirk, so just be careful."
"Okay." said Tobias before going to his room, "Oops."