Zero Hero || MHA ||

19. Rising Rampage

Drifting my eyes towards the voice, I saw a familiar vigilante standing behind a stall. He wore a tengai and hakama bottoms per usual but interestingly, he wasn't wearing his usual vigilante outfit; he wore a white tank top instead. Well, it wasn't really white anymore; it was covered in sweat and mud stains. His boots were nowhere to be seen and replacing them were flimsy flip flops. In his hands was a long fishing wire.

"Masterbaiter!" Strawberry Shades exclaimed with glee.

"Oh. It's just Strawshitty Shades, and the little squirt," he remarked. He loosened up his stance. The string that was wrapped around his comrade's wrist untangled on its own, zipping back to Masterbaiter's fingertips where it shortened to the length of a shoelace.

"Did you really have to set out a tripwire?" I asked, getting up from the ground.

"I gotta watch out for those damn Crimson villains," Masterbaiter defended.

"Crimson villains? What do you mean by that?" Fuyumi asked.

Masterbaiter let out a sigh. "That's what I thought. The public knows nothing about them. I don't get why the media doesn't say anything about it. I'm telling you, you can't trust the government. I bet they're hiding the true origins of where Quirks came from!"

Masterbaiter began to go on a tangent about government conspiracies. The rest of us stood there awkwardly. Seeing that he wasn't going to explain who Crimson Eclipse was anytime soon, I took the liberty to do so.

"Oh my gosh... That's horrible..." Fuyumi gasped. "So, those people want to get rid of people with weak Quirks?"

"Exactly!" a female voice exclaimed. Turning around, I saw a group of Crimson grunts. There were five of them. Standing in the middle was a tall woman. Her outfit was nearly the same as the others except that she had a band with a crescent moon on her arm. Sensing their presence, the two heroes immediately went on guard. Pushing the rest of us behind them, they stood in front.

The woman's eyes peered over, giving me a smile. Despite the friendliness of it, Akira's eyes said a different story. "What a coincidence. It's you," she remarked, her voice reeking of venom.

Seeing my lack of reaction, the smile faltered from her lips. Nervously, Midoriya asked me if I knew her. Masterbaiter scoffed in response, the wire in his hand increasing.

"It doesn't matter if she knows her or not. This lady is just some butthurt villain who can't get over that a middle-schooler told her a little white lie!"

Akira's face contorted into a rage. Holding her hand out, she order her lackeys to attack. All the villains rushed in at once. Immediately, Masterbaiter told us to run. He and Strawberry Shades charged toward them. Meanwhile, Midoriya, Fuyumi, and I sprinted away.

"What are you doing?! Get them too!" I heard Akira scream.

I heard footsteps follow quickly after. Hearing that, Fuyumi sped up. Since she sped up, Midoriya panicked and went faster too. I tried to to do the same, but my yukata was restricting my movement so I couldn't run as fast either. Not to mention, my feet were beginning to grow even sorer than before. Especially since we were back on the main road, there was a lot of junk people dropped. I stepped on corndog sticks, straws, toothpicks, and random condiment concoctions. I ended up trailing behind.

"I gotcha!" I heard a villain behind me sneer. Glancing behind, I saw a villain with the face of a lion lunge toward me. Thinking fast, I ducked to the side. The villain lunged toward the ground and tumbled down.

"Onishi!" Midoriya exclaimed. He scrambled to grab my arms and pulled me up. As he did, I felt the villain's bushy hands wrap around my ankles.

"Where do you think you're going, girlie?!" he roared. His sharp nails dug into my bare skin, making me wince.