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Hero's District, Priestella


Yuuki half-chuckled, not wanting to offend either side. "Yeah, does look like it, huh?"

Turning to Ashton after the request was made, he shrugged vaguely at the brunette's request. Paying back on an 'if' was rather sketchy, after all, and Yuuki wasn't so eager to part with his own stuff right on the fly. Though he hadn't thought to bring any valuables outside of his phone with him, he didn't think of anything in his pack as just things he could give away either. And if things were going to turn out like he expected them to...well, it wasn't all that likely that money would be more valuable than Japanese snacks to begin with.

"Uh...weren't you gonna go to Dr. Donovan after this?" he jerked his head in the general direction of that man. "Think he's got food and water covered there...and I don't have jewels on me either, so..."
Zone 2

@Stern Algorithm
The child proctor raised a brow at Mari's statement. As far as she could tell, Kaito was nowhere to be seen, and logic dictated that the person who freed and carried the dummy was the one that deserved the point in the end...but she wasn't going to simply deny a request like this either. With a slight nod of her head, she readjusted the scoring slightly, before going back to her business.

The hulk of a man, on the other hand, was certainly amused by the reverence that Mari treated him with. He smiled boyishly and said, with a slight shooing motion, "Well, you wouldn't be totally wrong in calling me 'sensei', but for now, if you could leave the bus and keep our little meeting a secret?"
Zone 2

Aritage really was making them work for it, huh? Still warm and comfortable on the heated leather seat of the bus, the child-proctor continued to multitask between examining the separate zones and marking up new dummy-saviors as they came it. There was the slightest wince when she noted that the tanned girl had sustained an injury on her foot, emboldened perhaps by the musician’s power-up, but before she came to a conclusion whether or not to call in some external help or not, the two of them worked to come up with a temporary solution for that injury. Good. She couldn’t comment on their skill at first aid, but that sort of self-reliance was what she wanted to see.

Switching over to the residential area, she pursed her lips slightly at the decision the trio of Sumi, Goro, and Taro made. Not bad, but not totally good either. There was always a line, wasn’t there, between ‘heroes’ and ‘professionals’. Still, points were points, and when the three made it into the bus, they all looked a little worse for wear. None of them had attempted any of the herculean feats that Hikari, Minami, or Houki did, but the second trio came in winded regardless. She offered them a smile, then shooed them off to carefully monitor the situation with Shun.

No one was in the area, but the Dragon could make it there fast if something went wrong, at least.

And as for the group that was growing right in front of the bus…well, guess the Mastermind would have his hands full as well.


@Stern Algorithm@Lugubrious@vFear@KoL@TheWindel@Sho Minazuki@AdmrlStalfos19
It would have been an exaggeration to say that Mari’s foot injury was crippling, but she was certainly favoring her uninjured foot by the time she scrambled over the mounds of rubble in Zone 5 with her dummy. The extra weight and the injury had made her the last to arrive at the bus, where a surprising amount of other students had gathered. Some were still catching their breaths, while others were just about to set off once more, but it was clear that they have all found success one way or the other. Only the trio that had set off to fight villains had yet to produce any concrete results, it appeared.

Karmic retribution? Perhaps.

But the sight of the goal sped up her own steps, and there was even a spring when she climbed up into the bus…just in time to see one of the adult-sized dummies twist and contort. It grew in size, its pearl-colored body shifting into flesh and fiber, and it crackled as complex joints too bothersome to replicate within an artificial body popped into existence, bone and cartilage and flesh and hair sprouting out. And, with all the magnanimity of a child, the human being that formed from the body of a dummy, yawned. Blinked. Looked out the window. Scratched his head.

“Wow, guess I picked a bad time.”

He stood at a daunting 6’5, and his body was sculpted like a Greek God, all rippling muscle and might, constrained only barely by the smart three-piece suit he work. His hair, dark as the blackest dusk, was slicked back, while his eyes shimmered with the gold of a cruel sun, and with three great steps, he closed the distance between himself and Mari. Glanced to the window again, where so many others were outside. Placed a finger against his lips.

“Shhhhhhh.”
Zone 5

@zelosse
Kaito was now alone and with no one he could benefit with his quirk, the masked youth was noticing that he may have been just a little bit too carefree. He could have come with Mari, helped her out, maybe carry the dummy for her, and then bring it up the bus and ‘accidentally’ take credit for it. He could have even come along with her just so he wasn’t so alone in the Zone, where dummies still played their audio tracks of pain and agony. But no. He didn’t. And now here he was, doing…whatever the hell he was supposed to do in a disaster zone with a quirk that actually literally did nothing to help himself work.

Shuffling through a mound of rubble, he skirted past the large gap that lead to the underground system and was just about to turn the corner to try his luck with one of the bent-over cars when the youth caught a glimpse of movement past the fog. Another student to help? Naturally drawn to the shape, Kaito headed over only to encounter…

“Geh.”

As their eyes met, both Kaito and the strange woman froze. With auburn hair and storm gray eyes, she was certainly on another dimension compared to the exam-takers, simply from her dimensions of her figure and the outlandishly lavish outfit she wore. Dressed in a frilly outfit that looked like it came from the 1900s, she held a parasol in one hand and an embroidered handkerchief over her mouth, while silk gloves covered her slim hands. The coloration was a bold (but hilariously edgy) red-and-black, and her hair itself was done up fashionably with a decorated hat worn slanted to complete the faux-Victorian design. She looked at Kaito, then around him, and finally let out a sigh.

Maybe she should have stayed holed up after all. Shoulda brought a book to read. Alas, mistakes riddled her career no matter where she went…

Thrusting her hip out sideways, and bringing up a splayed hand over her eye, she ignored the reddening of her ears as she said, boldly, dramatically, “The Terrors of the Abyss Calls, and the Black Banquet Begins! Look Upon the Trumpeting of the Apocalypse and Despair, Foolish Heroes! What Stands Before You is Naught But the Obliteration of All That You Cherish and Glorify! The Half-Fallen Ruler of Hell’s Gates! The Queen of Shadow and Sin! The True Symbol of Villainy and Plunder!”

She flourished her parasol and opened it, casting red sparkles around her.

“I Am The Maiden of The Sundered Bell! Bow Before Me and Abandoned Your Unfated Ideals!”
Zone 6

@Scribe of Thoth
It was claustrophobic and tight, and as he shimmied through the small spaces that only he could enter, Shun definitely felt the shelves groan and shift. Dangerous. So dangerous. If he was pinned, would they be able to distinguish his own screams for help from the screams of the dummies? Would anyone even notice him being gone until the exam ended? And even if he could possibly pixelate himself out, what injuries would he have sustained simply by having all these hard, wooden masses fall down upon him?
Twenty minutes had passed since the exam had started, and he was doubtlessly now in the minority of students who hadn’t managed to save a single dummy. Sweat dripped from his back, and not all of it was from exertion alone.

But he pressed on, and after two of the crawlspaces ended up in disappointing dead ends, Shun finally struck metaphorical gold, his hand grasping onto the leg of a child-sized dummy that he could forcibly pull out from between the tight gaps of the oaken bookshelves. Some more effort, some more scrapes, some more of that dreadful groaning from the pile above, and he popped out.

The first dummy.

He’d done it.

It was only then did Shun notice the bloody scrapes on his knees, the burning scratches on his palms and knuckles.


Province of Ilagorn -- Adventurer's Guild a.k.a. The Delipitated Duck
12th Hour of the 2nd Day, Summer



As the guildmaster began to list off the available quests, Ier-Briar quieted as well, organizing and examining the possibilities for glory in the back of her head. A delivery, no matter what opportunities there were for beating back the hordes of bandit scum, held little to no interest for the knightly woman. It was a pedestrian duty, and couriers existed for a reason, did they not? The prospect of being sent out to exterminate kobolds or goblins was met with similar disdain, those sorts of monsters mere vermin compared to the true threats that besieged the world. Even children could kill goblins, after all, and killing kobolds who attacked mines was a short-term solution, when any half-decent mine owner would have had a long-term solution in play already.

To adventure into a forest as mysterious-sounding as the Fogmere Forest, however, that certainly sounded fun suitable for the maiden voyage of a new group of adventurers. Exploration, unknown monsters, and a treasure hunt, all rolled together into a single bundle. Perhaps it was merely a shipment of basic foods, but in times of duress, grains were worth more than gold, and a journey through a fog-ridden forest was almost certainly more enticing than literally anything else that had been offered.

…or maybe Ier-Briar just unconsciously didn’t trust her comrades to handle an extermination quest yet.

We shall take on the duty of recovering the lost shipment then,” the knight said, decisively deciding for the rest of the team. “Are there any details as to where in the forest it had been lost? Or what it contains?”

Hero's District, Priestella


Eh? Did they have like, a problem with each other or something? Somewhere along the way, others were climbing aboard the ‘guard joining’ gang as well, and Yuuki scratched his head about how awkward things suddenly went near the end there. With a half-sigh, he rummaged through is pack and came out with two pieces of strawberry Hi-Chew.

“Now, now,” he said, “Fighting’s bad and shit, and we’re all more or less in it together, so just eat something sweet and don’t say things you don’t mean.” One was offered to Chieko and another was tossed towards Flame, before Yuuki went back to sipping his hot tea, waiting for Mono and Crunch’s answers.

Turns out, it was less than favorable.

The blue-eyed youth let out a sigh, before offering a half-smile. “Yeah, figured it’d be that way. Would prefer if you didn’t toss me in a dungeon though. Cultists like dark and isolated places, right? Probably wouldn’t work too well with their designs ‘n shit.”

He paused, then chugged down the last dregs of tea.

“Alright, basically these dudes are free to go though, yeah? Only I need to stick around?”
Before the club-wielding goblin could make it all the way to Ash however, a bloodied Matteo scrambled from behind. His first attempt was brushed off. His second only tore off the dirty rag. But thieves were nothing if not tenacious, their extreme pain tolerance built up from constantly training under duress, their personal failures many times greater than the amount of successes they have gathered, and his third attempt, diving low and stretching out to pull at the goblin’s ankle, worked out. Yanked from behind, the goblin fell flat on his face, fanged face contorting into a mixture of humiliation and anger. Half-snarling, half-spitting, the dirty goblin raised his club up and brought it down with ferocious intent upon Matteo’s head.

There was a crack, and instantly, the thief went lax.

Kicking himself free, he scrambled up onto his feet, ready to assist the other goblin again, when yet another interception came, this time in the form of Muu’s fist. Her knuckles cracked against his teeth as she punched him, one fang smacked right out of his jaw as her own hand received some nasty bruising and a cut from the blow. Unprotected as her fist was, the impact ran into her very bones, even as the goblin’s own head snapped back. But pain was an afterthought when lives were on the line, and without hesitation, the monster launched himself at her, a veritable bodyslam that would send her tumbling back if she received it.

Right into the fire behind her.

Ash wasn’t having too much fun either. Without the assistance of the club-wielding goblin, the knife-user didn’t have too much success in breaking her dogged defense, but the wound on her leg only continued to bleed more, stakes of pain shaking up her body every time she was forced to take a step with it. For now, the superior range of her machete enabled her to ward off the knife-wielding goblin’s attacks, but she was running out of time, the warm, wet throbbing of her leg slowly giving way to a bone-chilling cold. And the goblin only continued attacking on and on and on, as if it could sense it too, that a mistake was imminent.

The stream ran thick with her blood, as the frenzy continued amidst clashing blades.
@HereComesTheSnowlolrip I knew I had that detail somewhere but just totally ignored it. My bad dude.

@WilliwawMorals in AC? Did I step into an alternate universe not filled to the brim with sexual deviants and edgelords? Also, Yu-Ri isn't stealing a car in that example. She'd be more like the person looking the other way as someone else steals the car...which is totes reasonable for unaffected bystanders~
Just gonna shoot off some possible connections while my hair's still too wet to sleep with.

@Crimmy If Youko's enough of a sentai nerd to show up to those live tokusatsu plays, maybe she could have met Yu-Ri there, playing the role of a weirdly combat-effecient pink? Not sure how much of a purist she is when it comes to those sorts of shows, but whether she complains about the Pink Ranger developing a boxing routine or praises the novelty of it, it'd probably be an interesting enough encounter to remember each other by.

@HereComesTheSnow Noriaki's the hot-blooded puncher dude, and his shenanigans are probably wild enough that Yu-Ri might want to help him on a whim sometimes, mostly in the form of offering him a ride out if things get too dicey...or if he can't afford to spend time in the Anti-Skill locker room. Maybe after the first big chase scene, she tossed him her contact details and told him to toss her a ping if he's doing something large scale again.

@Williwaw It'll be funny if Yu-Ri was the box office attendant that told Aya of the ban on her pirating ass...and then snuck her in anyways, cause it was her last day working at that theater anyways. Yep, that's pretty much it.

@Plank Sinatra Doubt Brennan will know who the fuck she is, but Yu-Ri would probably keep an eye and an ear out about his shenanigans with the Venus Probe Contest, especially if there's ever a conference or whatever about it that's open to the general public. Won't even have a real reason to say 'hi', all things considered.
We already have our archetypical hot blooded male hero, so it only makes sense to make as many female damsels for him to protect from this point on.
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