MHA: Lust Quirk

The futon hit me in the face at five AM.

My own futon. The one I'd been sleeping on. She kicked it out from under me and the fabric wrapped around my head and I rolled sideways on the apartment floor and my elbow cracked against the baseboard heater.

"Up. Running."

Mirko was standing over me in a sports bra and compression shorts with her ears up and her arms crossed and the hallway light behind her. The rented apartment she'd put me in was a studio, one room, futon on the floor, a bathroom with no door. She had a key. She'd used it.

"It's five."

"I said running. Not talking."

I stood up. My shoulder ached from yesterday's train and last night's sleep on a futon thinner than my mattress at home and the bite mark from Mina stung when I pulled a shirt over my head. My bag was against the wall. My shoes were by the door. Mirko was already walking down the stairs.

I followed.

Hosu City at five in the morning was gray and wet. Fog off the buildings, puddles on the sidewalks from overnight rain, the streetlights still on. The ramen shop across from the apartment was dark. A delivery truck was parked at the end of the block and a man in a jumpsuit was unloading crates of bottled water.

Mirko didn't stretch. She didn't warm up. She walked to the end of the block, stopped, looked back at me, and then she was gone.

She jumped. Her legs coiled and released and she launched from the street to the top of a two-story building in one push. No sound. One second on the sidewalk, the next on the roof, and she was running along the roofline with her white hair trailing behind her and she looked back down at me from the edge.

"Keep up."

I ran. I couldn't jump like that. My Quirk gave me strength and speed but not the rabbit-specific launch that turned her legs into catapults. I found a fire escape on the building next door and climbed it in four seconds, hauling myself up the ladder rungs, pulling onto the roof just in time to see her leap to the next building. She cleared the gap without slowing down.

I cleared it too. Barely. My foot caught the ledge on the far side and I stumbled and kept going and she was already two buildings ahead. She curved around vents and leaped over gaps and her feet barely touched before she launched again. I went in straight lines. Hard landings. Every jump a commitment I couldn't adjust mid-air.

We ran for an hour. Across the commercial district, over the low-rise apartments near the canal, along the top of a warehouse row where the roofs were corrugated metal and my footfalls boomed and hers were silent. She never looked back after the first time. If I fell behind, that was my problem.

I matched her pace. My lungs were burning and my calves were cramping and my shirt was soaked through and I matched it. By the end she was a block ahead and the gap had grown but I hadn't stopped and when she finally dropped from a rooftop into an alley and landed in a crouch that barely bent her knees, I dropped next to her and my landing cracked the asphalt.

She was breathing through her nose. Controlled. Her skin was damp but her breathing was even and her ears were relaxed.

"Slow," she said.

"I kept up."

"You were a block behind for the last twenty minutes." She picked up a water bottle she'd stashed behind a dumpster before I'd arrived. She'd planned the route. "Slow, loud, and your landings are going to break your ankles inside a year."

"I'll work on it."

"You'll work on it now." She tossed me the water bottle. I drank half of it and my hands were shaking. "Sparring. Here."

The alley was narrow. Brick walls on both sides, a dumpster at one end, a fire escape above. The ground was wet concrete with a drain grate in the middle. She stood in the center and rolled her shoulders and her ears went forward and her eyes found me.

"Hit me."

I threw a right. She stepped sideways and her knee came up and caught me in the ribs and I went into the wall. Brick dust came off the surface where my shoulder hit.

"Block."

I got up. Threw a combination. Left jab, right cross. She batted the jab aside with her forearm and her foot came up from below my line of sight and the kick landed on my hip and spun me and I caught myself on the dumpster.

"Faster."

Again. I came in low, tried to close the distance, get inside the range of her legs. She read it. Dropped her weight, pivoted on one foot, and the other foot hit my chest with a straight kick that sent me back three feet. I slid on the wet concrete and went to one knee.

Her kicks didn't telegraph. Her legs just moved and the impact arrived and by the time I registered the motion I was already hit. Everything from the legs, everything explosive, and the power she generated from a standing position was more than I could generate from a full swing.

She was faster than me. Stronger in the legs. More agile. Better at reading distance. And she was teaching me by hitting me until I learned to not get hit.

We sparred for hours. She kicked me into the wall four more times. She swept my legs twice. She caught me with a spinning heel kick to the jaw that made my vision go white and when my eyes focused she was standing over me with her hands on her hips.

"Your chin was up."

"Now I know."

"You should've known before I cracked it."

By the end my ribs were bruised on the left side and my hip was swelling where the first kick had landed and my jaw was tender and I was behind the dumpster throwing up the water I'd drunk earlier. The alley smelled like garbage and old rain and I was on my hands and knees.

Mirko was sitting on the fire escape landing above me. Her legs were dangling over the edge and she was eating a protein bar. Watching me puke. Eating a protein bar.

"You're slow but you absorb punishment," she said between bites. "That's your thing. You get hit until you learn not to."

I spit. Wiped my mouth. "Inspiring coaching."

"I didn't say I was nice."

I sat against the wall. The brick was cool through my shirt. My hands were scraped from the concrete and the knuckle guards were in my bag back at the apartment because I hadn't known she'd start sparring in an alley at six in the morning.

She dropped from the fire escape. Landed next to me. Held out the other half of the protein bar. I took it. Peanut butter flavor. The wrapper was warm from her hand.

We sat in the alley for ten minutes. She didn't talk. I didn't talk. A pigeon landed on the dumpster lid and walked back and forth and its feet made clicking sounds on the metal.

She stood first. "Patrol."

Evening patrol was different. She changed into civilian clothes. Tank top, cargo pants, boots. Her ears were visible and her white hair was down and she walked through Hosu's streets like she owned them. People recognized her. A woman at a crosswalk stared. A kid on his father's shoulders pointed and said "Rabbit!" and the father bowed slightly and Mirko walked past without looking.

I walked next to her. My body ached with every step and the bruise on my ribs pulsed when I breathed too deep and she was scanning the alleys. The side streets. The gaps between buildings where the streetlights didn't reach.

"You're tracking something," I said.

She didn't look at me. "The Hero Killer was sighted in this district twice in the last month. Both times in alleys like the one we trained in." Flat. Like she was reading a grocery list. "If he's still operating here, I'll find him."

"Is that why you picked Hosu for the internship?"

"I pick Hosu because Hosu has the strongest active threat in the country right now." She looked at me. Her red eyes were steady in the streetlight. "I go where the fighting is."

We walked another block. A bar was open on the corner with music coming out of it that was too loud for the street. A cat ran across the road in front of us and Mirko's ear tracked it without her head moving.

"You've been scanning alleys since we left," I said. "Every one."

"My ears can pick up a fight from two blocks away. A blade on concrete. Blood hitting pavement." She adjusted the strap of her tank top. "Stain's good at being quiet. But nobody's that quiet."

We walked back to her temporary base. The rented apartment was spartan. A futon on the floor, a table with a single chair, a fridge that hummed. A spare pair of boots by the door.

At the entrance she turned around.

"You didn't complain once today."

"Was I supposed to?"

"Everyone complains. First-years, sidekicks, the one intern I took three years ago who lasted four hours." She paused. "That's why I don't take people."

She looked at me sideways.

"Maybe you're not as garbage as I thought."

She went inside. The door closed.

I stood on the street. My ribs ached. My hip was swelling. My jaw was tender and my hands were scraped and I'd spent twelve hours within arm's reach of a top-five pro hero and my Quirk had been noting the distance the entire time. Noting and doing nothing.

I walked to my apartment. The studio with the thin futon and the bathroom with no door. I ran cold water over my hands and my scraped knuckles stung.

My phone had three messages. Mina: day 1 how's the agency? Ochaco: Gunhead taught me a hip throw today! My legs are so sore. Tsuyu: Selkie's ship smells like fish. I love it. Ribbit.

I typed back to Mina: brutal. got kicked through a wall.

Three dots. hot

I put the phone down. Lay on the futon. The ceiling was white and featureless and it wasn't Gerald and the apartment smelled like concrete and dust and the protein bar wrapper was still in my pocket.

Tomorrow she'd wake me at five again. Tomorrow we'd run and she'd be faster and I'd be slower because everything would be stiffer and she'd kick me into another wall and tell me to block. And somewhere in this city, in an alley like the ones she'd been scanning, the Hero Killer was waiting.

I was asleep before I finished the thought.