Zero Hero ||MHA||

19. Rising Rampage

Drifting my eyes towards the voice, I saw a familiar vigilante standing behind a stall. Interestingly, he wasn't wearing his usual vigilante outfit; he wore a tengai and hakama bottoms per usual but had a white tank top this time. Well, it wasn't really white anymore since 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."

His stance loosened. 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 Quirks!"

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 wore a band with a crescent moon on her arm. Sensing their presence, the two heroes immediately went on guard. They pushed us behind them. The woman's eyes peered at me, hardening. 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 a little white lie!"

Akira's face contorted into a rage. Holding her hand out, she ordered her lackeys to attack. All the villains rushed in at once. Masterbaiter told us to run. He and Strawberry Shades charged toward them. 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 do the same, but my yukata was restricting my movement so I couldn't run as fast. Not to mention, my feet were 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. His mouth ate the ground.

"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?!" he roared. His sharp nails dug into my bare skin, making me wince.

"Wah! Onishi!" Midoriya shrieked.

He tried to pull me away, but that only made the nails in my skin dig deeper. Letting out a grunt, I kicked the villain in the face with my other foot. He clawed my ankle and I grimaced in response. Ouch! It felt like a papercut but 5x worse. I kicked him right in the eye, and he howled. His grip loosened, and I untangled from his grasp.