It's HIMITIME! Chapter 1

Sometimes things don’t go quite the way you hoped they would.  Sometimes mistakes are made.  Sometimes plans don’t work out.  Sometimes, life comes at you fast, and hard, and unrelenting.  Sometimes a bunny girl with, quoting the Heronet, the best set of thighs in Musutafu kicks you hard enough to send you halfway across a warehouse.  After kicking you through one of its walls.

Honestly?  Today hadn’t been a good day.

That was the first thought that came to Tetsuo’s mind when his ears stopped ringing.  Because refractive energy armor or not, nobody takes a full Luna-whatever roundhouse to the side of the head without getting their bell rung.  He really didn’t know what she called it before she proceeded to turn his face into a football but really, it didn’t matter.

It still sent him flying across the dirty ground, rolling rough and messy as she came in from the side, all animal cunning and viciousness.  It wasn’t much, but it gave him a moment of breathing room to get back to his feet.  Just in time, as it were, as another cleaving axe kick slammed into a hastily formed kite shield that he could practically feel vibrate from the force of the impact.  His sloppy followup with a glowing hardlight saber cracked against the ground like a four foot baton, the dulled blade bouncing off the cement.  Mirko had danced around it like she was the wind, and for all intents and purposes she might as well have been.

Then she kicked him in the head again.  He felt the burn as his armor soaked the kinetic force, the shot almost taking him off his feet anyway as she came in hard again, a knee flying at Mirko’s face that forced the hero to duck hard, which transitioned into a falling sickle kick that the Hero tried to catch on her wrist.  It left her open, just for a moment, just enough for him to catch her leg, scoring a hit that pulled a sharp cry from her lips.  He winced at the sound, knowing just how much the combined shock and impact imparted by his hardlight weapons could hurt even without the cutting force of a full on lightsaber, but his options were vanishingly thin.

He didn’t want to hurt her, despite everything.  He knew better than anyone that his blades could cut through steel if he wanted them to, but that would be an unacceptable escalation.  He just needed to get a little breathing room, he told himself.  Just a little space to lose the persistent bunny girl in the alleys and the night.

This is not how he wanted to do things.  He wasn’t stupid enough to believe there were other options though, as he came in as soon as she disengaged, coming in to bash his shield against Mirko with just enough force to send her sliding back, a series of spinning roundhouse kicks his immediate reward for the effort.  The strikes hit hard, like a buzzsaw of pissed off, ramped up rabbit wrath that could bend steel at the right angle.  The shield held, though, the force distributed across the semisolid board of harnessed plasma.  It only stopped when his blade slid around the barrier, gone from straight sword to curved scimitar, nearly catching her in the face as the blade lashed like a whip into a naginata that he brought around into multiple full-body swings.

The three of them had been going back and forth for almost fifteen minutes, the only saving grace being the isolation of the district keeping the fight well out of the more populous areas.  Score one for the ghetto, he supposed, but he knew it was only a matter of time before someone else came running.  The two of them had to get going and Mirko was nothing if not a determined, persistent and dogged pursuer.  She’d chased them through half the city already, and he was starting to worry that the only way they were getting away was through her.

Tetsuo snorted.  Starting to worry?  That ship had long since sailed, but he was too far in now.  He had decided that course of action the first time he’d laid eyes on her.  The first time he’d really begun to believe what being a hero really meant.  What it was to save the people who needed the help the most.  Especially when they needed saving from themselves.  And if that meant fighting the current Number 21 Hero, Mirko to do it, then fight her he would.  He wouldn’t turn his back, even if he could.  Even if he wanted to, though he didn’t.

“I really wish,” He heaved, as he caught his breath, staring at the tanned figure in front of him that met his own masked stare with a cocky grin all her own, “That you would just walk away from this one, Mirko.  She isn’t who you think she is.  This is more complicated than you know.”

“She’s a murderer.  A killer.  You really think I’m going to let her go after what she’s done?”  The Rabbit Hero laughed, cracking her back before falling into a wicked ready stance.  “That I’m letting either of you go?  Please.”

“She’s not the monster you think she is-”  he started, only for Mirko to give a derisive snort.

“She’s the Musutafu fuckin’ Vampire, kid.”  She snapped off, “And I don’t know what she is to you, but it doesn’t really matter.  Give it up and maybe you won’t wind up in traction when I get done with you two.”

Tetsuo glanced to his side, his eyes meeting the slit, catlike eyes of the petite blond standing next to him, in a low, almost feral stance herself, her clothes as torn and rumpled from the brutal dance she’d had with the Rabbit Hero.  She glanced back at him, her posture reminding him of a cornered predator, coiled for a fight, her eyes unsure, unsteady.  She nodded at him, though, ready to fight.  He drew himself up, flaring his armor to its full strength, even as he felt the pangs of energy drain pull at him.

“Then… then I guess there isn’t anything left to say, is there.”  His spear hummed in his hand, his kite shield in the other.  Himiko Toga growled lightly, muscles tense, and with a crack of steel boots against the cold ground, the battle was met once again.

Tetsuo grunted, teeth grit as he pushed at the resistance machine, muscles straining hard as he worked himself through another set.  It was almost routine to him, at this point, really, but it needed to be done, no matter how much the luster of pumping iron may have left him.  It was all part of the program, he thought wryly to himself.  The ‘Enhanced Saitama Method’ he’d jokingly called it, after a now centuries-old anime that existed largely in his memories.

For all that it was a joke, the hundred push-ups, jumping jacks and squats, then ten kilo run, was a surprisingly effective way to train with the universal Charles Atlas effect that seemed to come part and parcel with everyone’s Quirk.  Made you stronger, faster, tougher, and, as a far and away forgotten fourth benefit, became more effective the harder you pushed it.  It also sped up your recovery, he’d found, increasing gains in a way that would have made the most dedicated muscleheads from the old days green with envy.

Every day, he did his workout, plus weights, plus stretching and gymnastics, plus at least three different martial arts five times a week, including European-style sword fighting.  Plus plus plus.  Plus Ultra, as a certain seven foot tall Symbol of Peace would say.  It was a crazy full schedule, combined with a driving need to excel in class.  Admittedly, that second part was less of a concern, given how much he was cheating, but like the old saying goes, if you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying.

Deep in his psyche he heard a soft chuckle as his other self rolled up from whatever home it made in his subconscious.  His older self.  His memory self.  He’d had a lot of names for the man in his mind over the years, but the only one that stuck was Finch.  It was hard to describe, really, what the other man was, be it a ghost or an echo or a little bit of crazy that came when the slow roll of nightmares and dreams started invading Tetsuo’s waking life.  At first he thought he was going insane, because what kind of weird Middle School Syndrome fantasy was it when you legitimately found out you were a reincarnation of someone else?

Apparently it was his flavor of crazy.  It wasn’t all bad though, once the two kinda… figured things out.  He spent most of his time curled up in Tetsuo’s amygdala or something doing god knows what but was always available for a consult.  Or to do his math homework, which felt a little like cheating but apparently if Finch learned things so did Tetsuo so it’s whatever.  He could even pilot Tetsuo’s body around when the boy in question was out cold and willing, which solved a lot of the logistics of Tetsuo’s jam-packed life, even going so far as to go to school for him when he really needed a nap.

All in all?  It worked out.  Finch mostly marvelled at the fact that he was still, for a given value of the term, alive and able to enjoy the, and Tetsuo quoted, “Wild Superpunk Dystopia of the Future!”  The exclamation point was important, Finch had noted.  Gave the statement impact, whatever that meant.  Dude was still a little weird, but being trapped in the mind of a teenager excused a lot of eccentricity, or so he claimed.

Tetsuo was on the fence about that, but he was polite enough not to say it out loud.  Either way the two had an accord, and he had to admit, having an older, wiser, more creative perspective made things much easier when it came to his frankly amazing Quirk.  Because, of course, he had the best fucking Quirk.

It was what motivated him to take on all the crazy hours and the years of hard exercise and the multiple martial arts that he spent a lifetime forging.  He was gonna be a hero you see.  And pity the fool who told him otherwise.  Especially that asshole Kaneda.  Fuck that guy.

Admittedly, his first expression of his awesome and amazing and totally not an evil Villain quirk, Kaneda you dildo, may have caused some minor damage.  They replaced the entertainment center!  And the wall.  And… part of the neighbor's car.  Look, his Quirk had layers.  Sometimes they were explosively unstable layers that looked like soap bubbles filled with plasma.  Sometimes they deleted anything within their admittedly sizable blast radius.  But so long as he didn’t lose his grip on whatever high-speed low-drag hardlight energy construct he formed there was nothing to worry about.

Because his Quirk?  His Quirk was Mass to Energy Conversion.  And if that sounds both awesome and terrifying, then yes, you are following along with the plot here.  See, his mom’s Quirk was Hyperefficient Body.  Basically she could eat what she wanted and her body converted all of it into some kind of usable product.  Meaning he’d seen her scarf down a thirty-two ounce steak once and have room for three sides, half a bottle of wine and dessert and she didn’t gain a pound.  His dad, on the other hand, had something called Energy Shaping.  He worked at the local nuclear plant as a technician.  Which was perfect for him because any machine he touched, he could both direct and redirect the flows of heat, kinetic and about a dozen other types of raw energy into something useful.  Kind of a handy power if there was ever a meltdown.

Tetsuo’s Quirk combined the two, his body taking food and storing it after stripping out all the most useful bits as reaction mass that he then could convert into neat things likes swords and shields and armor and maybe one day if he ever figured out the explosive plasma thing, energy blasts!  Granted it did so at a commensurately rapid pace, meaning he could drop four shirt sizes running the full shebang after about an hour but everything had a cost and man, this wasn’t the worst.

That said he weighed just a bit above 181 kilos at any one given time, and how, you might ask, did he manage to maintain that with a, quite frankly ludicrous exercise routine?  Well, let's just say he’s on a first name basis with almost all the fast food, cafe, food stand and bakery shops throughout Musutafu and leave it at that.  He wasn’t fat though.  He was stocky.  Very barrel chested.  It looked okay after he shot up in gradeschool when puberty came with the rack to stretch him out.  181K looked a lot less blob-like on a 194 centimeter frame.  Finch had laughed and called him Brock Sampson when Tetsuo asked, another reference to lost, pre Chaotic Era media that the voice in his head was so fond of.

Tetsuo refused to dye his black hair blonde or grow a mullet much to the older man’s chagrin.  That said he was huge, deceptively fast and strong as an ox and you know what?  He could live with that.  It played nicely into his goal of becoming a Hero, capital H, that he’d had for as long as he could remember.

It was the one thing, the only thing, that consumed his life since he was single digits, and like Finch said, it was his life.  Dude was just along for the ride and more than happy to help him reach his goal.  Why?  Tetsuo couldn’t really say.  Like every eight year old he was inundated with the whole Hero Culture thing that consumed modern Japanese life.  He, like everyone else he knew, had the All Might posters and the Endeavor action figures and the Gang Orca plushie he slept with, but it was more than that to him.

All joking aside, he had a keen sense of justice.  Be it from Finch’s own ideals leaking through, his parents strong moral upbringing, or just his own experiences with bullying as a boy, you know, before he became taller than ninety-nine percent of his peers, he liked to think that he was a good person and capable of being a good person.  He understood that the world wasn’t black and white, that there was nuance to things.  That circumstances and perspective were important when looking at not just what people did, but why.

That was the more annoying aspect of having an adult living in his brain.  Finch didn’t let him wallow in his beliefs.  Having beliefs was easy, he said, until it wasn’t.  Tetsuo didn’t understand it then, but that didn’t stop the lectures.  Or the readings.  Or the homework, and if you thought that getting an essay from school was bad, imagine if the teacher came home with you, and nagged you constantly about it until you got it done.

He couldn’t fault the sometimes pushy fragment of his psyche though.  Heroes did more than punch villains in the face, he found out.  They did charity work, rescue and recovery, ran support groups and worked with various government agencies as inspectors and auditors.  The good ones, at least, and while some people made a stink about the massive paychecks and merchandising and posters and all that, he’d learned that all those little incentives not only discouraged people from using their Quirks for crime, but also built up the myth of Heroism, encouraging future generations to reach for better, more productive uses for their gifts.

More than that, though, he learned that a lot of first time offenders weren’t doing it because of some sadistic thrill or blind greed or a desire to hurt people.  They did it because they were desperate.  Because things had gone wrong for them somehow and they felt like they didn’t have a choice.  That crime was the only way to save themselves from going under, somehow, because people made stupid choices and dumb mistakes when they were afraid and drowning under the riptide.

That maybe they weren’t as evil and terrible as society would paint them as.  That they deserved empathy.  Understanding.  Even when he had to punch them in the face.  Maybe that was why he did what he did.  Because he believed in that.  Made it his guiding principle.  His ideal, behind all the effort and sweat and blood and tears.  The thing that made him pick up all those books and lift all those weights and get smacked in the face with five different flavors of wooden sword four times a week.

The day was ending, when he found her.  The neighborhood wasn’t the best, by any stretch.  It was old, the buildings worn down and the trash and gunk not quite so meticulously taken care of.  The windows were yellowed and cracked, and the pavement was pitted from years of foot traffic, neglected in favor of the more public facing streets and roads.  Unlike the newer areas, where the concept of American cookie-cutter streets with their straight lines and orderly roads, this was the classic urban growth of old Japan.  A snarl of alleys and buildings and streets too narrow for anything but feet and the occasional bicycle, that all seemed to lead everywhere and nowhere.

The place was deserted, but it was an old, familiar suburb built up over the decades and centuries, where he’d played as a boy, and learned to navigate as a teen, always on the move to the next thing.  A maze that could send a poor tourist wandering for hours, and had, on occasion, required the guiding hand of a local to get them back to the main bustle of the city streets.  But that wasn’t tonight.  Tonight, not even the bugs and birds were out, despite the spring heat that seemed to seep in from the south and the slowly rising humidity that made the air almost chewy.

It didn’t bother him though, he knew these streets.  Knew this town.  They got the occasional delinquent wannabe now and then but most of the folks here were good, if a bit rough around the edges.  Which was why he was barely paying attention, munching on a WcBurger Lord quarter-kilo with cheese, when he heard it.

It was… strange.  Like a whisper on the wind, at first, enough so that he almost thought he imagined it.  But no, it was there.  The sound of someone crying, not far off from where he was.  Now, for a normal person, he knew, the smart thing was to mind his own business.  The Japanese way was to ignore the strange and disorderly.  To walk away.

Which of course was why he swallowed the rest of his burger, stuck the wrapper in a nearby trash can (because littering was the crime reserved for lazy assholes) and decided that yes, he was going to investigate.  Because that’s what heroes did.  And he was going to be a hero.  If Finch were awake he’d probably be advising caution.  Or laughing at him for the amount of trouble he was about to get into.  Maybe both.  But no, his friendly figment was a bit worn out after today and while he could wake the man up… well, a grumpy Finch was enough of a headache on its own, Tetsuo knew.  Literally, in some cases.

Still, he didn’t remember this area being so dark.  Or the lights flickering ominously under the rising moon, the sun having set already some time ago.  Just the quiet sobbing in an off-ways alley and the sticky scent of humid trash.  Well, humid trash and something else.  Something… almost coppery, but he didn’t know what.

It took a lot for him not to call up his armor, or a weapon, or something of the like.  Quirk use was illegal unless he had dispensation and he absolutely did not.  Didn’t stop him from wanting to draw though.  Things were creepy enough and while he wasn’t scared, per say, he was wary.

That was what he would tell anyone who asked.  Nope, wary, and ready for action.  Very manly and brave.  It didn’t help the coiling in his stomach though, but that was between him and god as far as he was concerned.

Didn’t make what he walked in on any better, though.  If there was ever a time to regret, Tetsuo suspected it was now.  Because what he saw, to coin a phrase, was a liberal painting of violence that his still largely innocent mind wasn’t ready for.

The first thing that caught his attention was the blood.  All the blood.  Splattered on the walls, on the trash cans, on the flickering yellow light above the alley and, of course, all over the dead man, which had pooled along the floor of the alley around him.  The body looked middle aged, maybe thirties, wearing an old, worn jacket and threadbare cargo pants.  Boots looked new, but that was, probably, a trick of the light given how shiny they were coated in their former owner’s blood.  He couldn’t tell what the colors of the rest of his clothing was, soaked in the life giving fluid as he was, all of it a wet, dark, reddish brown.  There was still a knife lodged in his chest, one of the big ones you’d get in a kitchen set.  A chef’s knife?  Maybe.  It was buried to the hilt in the left side of his ribcage, all sixteen centimeters of blade practically pinning the dead man to the concrete.

“What the fu-” He whispered out, and something moved.  Something he hadn’t seen when he first saw the dead man, half hidden in the shadows.  Staring back at him just out of the light was a pair of golden, slitted cat’s eyes, bloodshot, he could tell even from where he was, from how wide they were.  He could barely see her, in the dim light beyond the cone of yellow from the overhead, but she also seemed to be shimmering, seemed to be… wet?

Not just from tears but… the more he looked, the more he saw.  Her face was soaked, and not from the ugly crying that she'd clearly been doing, but also from… he glanced at the body, at the knife.  At the shine on her nose and lips and chin, on her hands, on her uniform, though from what school he didn’t know.  It didn’t paint a pretty picture, but he wasn’t going to judge.  For all he knew he walked into an attempted attack, and the girl had somehow managed to get the guy with his own knife?  That made sense.

“H-hey… are you okay?”  He tried, gently, holding a hand out.  The girl had frozen, even as he reached into his back pocket with his other hand.  “It’s okay, whatever happened, we can sort this out.”  Across from him, the woman in the shadows shifted, moving away from him like a scared animal.  Tetsuo took the hint, stepping back.

“Look, I'm going to call the police okay?”  He held up his phone, “Get some help out here.  It’ll be okay-”  He said, and for a moment the girl across from him froze.  He watched her, warily, as he moved to dial.  His eyes left her, for just a second, when he heard her voice, cracked and scratchy, whisper out two words.

“I’m sorry.”

He barely managed to move his head back as, in the fraction of a second that he looked to his phone, she had sprung out of the dark, her hand wrapping around the far-too-long blade in the corpse, ripping it out in the process and, in a single, fluid move, tried to bury it in his left eye.  Tetsuo stumbled back as she slashed at him again, almost taking a finger off as the knife slammed into his phone, batting it out of his grasp and leaving a good sized divot in the hard plastic case, before going in for another stab.

He reacted almost on instinct, his other hand shooting out and grabbing the wrist of the girl’s knife-hand, his massive palm engulfing her arm but she pulled free with a deceptively agile strength that surprised him.  It almost took his hand at the wrist, forcing him to let go before the blade slashed his palm, and years of martial training took over as he sent a lightning fast punch at the girl in response.

She seemed as surprised as he was, yelping as she bent almost ninety degrees at the waist to dodge the strike, and again at the followup.  He watched in some amazement as she practically backflipped from that position, forcing him to jerk back as she tried to kick him with a sloppy rising roundhouse, one that made him trip over the cooling body at his feet at the last moment.

She didn’t pause to recover, practically diving on him as his back hit the wet ground, knife scraping over a hastily formed glowing chestplate that flashed into existence right before the blade bit.  The look of surprise on the pixie-cut blonde, now that he could see her in the light, would have been comical if she didn’t immediately reverse the blade to try and stab him through the jaw, though.

The slash missed, barely, as he bucked her off his chest, his hands scrabbling to grip hers as she tried to knee him in the kidney, a decision she regretted as she let out a shriek, her boney leg impacting the armor full bore.  Tetsuo would have winced in sympathetic pain if the crazy girl hadn’t just tried to knife him, but instead he just planted a foot in her stomach and sent her flying back into the dead-end alley.

She recovered roughly, slamming chest first into the hard concrete before rolling into a crouch, but it was more than enough time for him to scramble back to his feet.  Tetsuo wasn’t the best at ground fighting, and she clearly had no issue maneuvering her shockingly accurate cuts to her advantage.  The fact that he’d lost almost a kilo of weight absorbing the sheer kinetic force behind the stab was indicative enough that if he hadn’t, she would have put all sixteen centimeters clear through him.

And all the while?  The girl was sobbing.  Apologizing.  It was a low, almost nonsensical murmur as she gripped the knife in her hands like a lifeline.  Facing off against her, he finally got a good look at the slip of a girl that was seemingly hellbent on filleting him like a fish.  She was shorter than he was, barely a third his size compared to his stocky girth, arms and legs lithe, almost to the point of emaciation, making her corded muscles all the more prevalent.  Her clothing, a once white undershirt under a black blazer, with a crumpled powder-blue jacket and pleated black and white skirt, were soaked through with blood, but even that didn’t hide the stains and wrinkles.  She had a crumpled bow-tie at her throat, and her knee-high socks and loafers had seen better days.  For all that it was, it looked like she’d been living in those clothes for at least a week, if not more.

Her jaw-length hair was a tangled, matted mess.  Straw-blonde, almost platinum in the dim light, it hung around her face in thick, caked on strands, framing her panicked eyes, the same golden slits that he’d first seen in the dark, blade-narrow with focused fear as her blood-drenched mouth hung open, everything from her nose to her chin stained crimson, her teeth bared, four massive fangs predominant in the dim light.

A girl that had been on the streets for days, in other words.  She didn’t look any older than he was, really, and all these things combined?  They didn’t paint a pretty picture.

“Go away!”  She hissed, her voice cracking, her tone strained.  She tried to shift in the narrow alley, but rapidly stopped when she realized his frame almost consumed whatever extra space might have been there in the secluded dead-end.  Her eyes shot around, trying to find something, anything, that would let her get past, but there wasn’t even an awning low enough for her to try her luck with.  Just high walls and one exit.

“I can’t do that. I’m sorry.”  Tetsuo said, gently.  “Lets just talk about this, okay?  I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation, and then we can get you home.”

He knew he’d made a mistake the second he said those words.  Her eyes went wide, her teeth grit, and she shot forward, screaming “No!  I’M NEVER GOING BACK!”

In an instant he covered himself in armor, head to toe, as the blade she wielded slammed into his chest, failing to make a scratch.  The follow up slashes at his legs, arms, even his face found no purchase, his arms flowing to keep her from taking a stab at the vulnerable gaps in his plate.  She struck hard and wild, attacking with a desperation that became more and more pronounced as he kept himself between her and the exit to the alley.

It wasn’t easy.  She was fast and slippery, making up for a lack of form with a kind of controlled chaos that made her especially dangerous, even with his armor up.  He knew that anyone else, anyone just relying on skill and toughness would be a bloody mess right now, and despite his best efforts she’d nicked him a few times on the arms and one perilously close papercut to his throat.

The exchanges had taken only seconds before the two broke apart, and in the back of his mind he felt his counterpart wake up with a start, the pain enough to shake him to the forefront of Tetsuo’s mind.

‘What’s going on?’ Was all his fragment whispered, and Tetsuo knew that he was reviewing the last few moments when he said, ‘Oh.  Oh, shit.’

‘No shit, oh shit.’  Tetsuo thought back, watching the bloody girl carefully.  She was gasping unevenly, a sign of panic, he knew.  She was getting more worked up, more erratic.  She felt trapped.

‘So what’s the plan, Tetsuo?  I don’t need to tell you how bad this looks, kid.’  Finch asked tersely.  Tetsuo knew he was analyzing things in his own way, but wouldn’t direct him unless it was an absolute emergency.  Nature of being in the backseat, Finch had told him.  His choice, his call.

‘Stop, restrain, interrogate?’  He asked mentally, before feeling a sense of assent coming from the other man.  While technically illegal, he… he had a bad feeling about this.  He didn’t know enough to make up any kind of opinion, aside from the dead guy, the girl who probably killed him, and the fact that she was losing her shit in a very concerning way.

There were a lot of hows and whys that he didn’t have answers to.  So he took a step back, both figuratively and literally.  Changed stances, went from defensive to offensive, but didn’t summon a weapon.  He didn’t want to hurt her.  Just… stop her.  And step one was to disarm her.

He’d seen enough of her moves to peg them as instinctive.  Both the easiest and most dangerous kinds of fighters to fight were the ones who ran off their hindbrain, and she was no different.  She was fast, moderately strong, and that blade of hers was a nasty customer.  He might also have to worry about biting, given those fangs, and clawing, but those were lesser concerns.

He’d taken back momentum, had a plan in place instead of just scrambling against the crazy girl.  Even as she tensed he started plotting her moves.  Left foot forward, followed by a springing right for extra momentum.  Blade is more comfortable in her right hand, implying weakness on the left.  Used thrusting slashes for maximum damage, and preferred diagonal to horizontal or vertical cuts.  Agility high, possibly Quirk-boosted but low stamina, not able to maintain rapid pace.  Becoming sloppy.  Trip up, and redirect left, use momentum to drag right, break grip to disarm, then reverse armbar to force compliance.

So the dance went.  She came in low, again, maybe going for the femoral or a tendon in the leg.  A twist of that leg locked his plates together, closing access to any gaps while he came up with a rising knee with the other.  She dodged, but it was rough, and he used it to herd her into a falling elbow that cracked against her left shoulder.  She lost balance, for just a moment, and his hand clamped down on her right elbow, pulling it while his right snaked down to crash against her wrist.

The clatter of the knife on the concrete was deafening as she tried to kick him in the arm that held her, but a sharp twist threw her off, her arm bending painfully as he locked it against her lower back, before the other caught her flailing arm and forced it behind her back as well.

“NO!  No No NO NO NO nononono I won’t go back I won’t you can’t make me you can’t make me it’s not my fault you can’t take me back I don’t I can’t-”  The girl sobbed as she thrashed against him, her legs kicking hard enough that he had to slam her against the wall just to keep her from throwing herself out of his grip.  “Please please please you can’t send me back they’ll hurt me I can’t do it I can’t take it it’s not my fault no nononono-” The sobbing turned into whimpering as she shook against him, a kind of primal terror that Tetsuo had never seen before but Finch did.  He hummed quietly, as the girl lost momentum, the screaming and sobbing becoming less and less as she lost her breath in what was obviously a panic attack.

Tetsuo let his armor drop, piece by piece, as the fight left the slip of a girl.  She was sobbing incoherently at this point, totally lost as she half leaned against him, his grip on her arms loosening as she stopped trying to fight him.  He didn’t like feeling this way, like he’d been bullying someone at the edge of their rope, despite how dangerous she’d been only moments before.

‘She sounds like someone hurt her very much, to get her to this point.  Something at home, kid.  That’s what set her off before.  Abuse’d be my guess.’  Finch said somberly.  ‘It’s your show, Tetsuo.  You caught her.  Smart thing to do would be to call the cops, let them clean this mess up.  She attacked you, so it's self defense.  No Vigilante charges, at least not after they investigate.’

‘That is the smart thing to do, yeah.’  Tetsuo sighed internally.  ‘But is it the right thing to do?  She… she killed that guy, but there’s more to it.  This doesn’t feel right to me.’

‘But if I turn her in, you know what the system will do to her.  She’s just another Quirked-up psycho then.  Gone off the deep end and tossed into Tartarus until the sun falls out of the sky.’  Tetsuo grimaced.  The girl had gone silent, and for a moment Tetsuo was thrown from his thoughts, but she’d just passed out.

‘My show, I know.’  The boy glanced at the unconscious girl.  ‘I know you just want me aware of what I might be getting myself into.  Doesn’t matter though.  You made sure I knew what it meant to be a hero, Finch.  You said it yourself.  Having principles is easy, right up until it’s hard.’

Finch snorted.  ‘So I did, kid.  So I did.  I just hope you know what you’re doing.’

In the end, so did Tetsuo.