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Darkest Before Dawn - 65
🕑 Added 2024-06-20 17:52:43 +0000 UTCChapter 65
“I’ve missed you so much!” Uwabami exclaimed, pulling the first girl to reach her up in her arms and hugging her, rubbing her cheek against the child’s. “Did you miss me?” she asked then, pulling the girl away so that she could look at her.
“Lots!” was the answer their mentor got.
“And I missed you lots too,” Uwabami repeated, pulling the child into a hug once more. A moment later though, she moved back to stand with Kendo and Kazuki himself. That was something that made him feel terribly awkward, especially when he felt spikes of fear and general apprehension from the children all around. “Children! These are Battle Fist and Beacon,” she introduced, holding the girl in one of her arms while she used the other to gesture towards them. “They’ve come with me to have fun with you all too, so don't be shy!”
And shy they were not.
Instantly, Kazuki saw the majority of the girls in the room move towards Kendo while some others moved towards Uwabami. The boys were even more of an uneven split. He guessed a name like Battle Fist sounded too cool not to go and meet.
Unsurprisingly, none of them moved towards Kazuki. That was about what he expected, really, and it’d been something that he’d pointed out to Uwabami when they’d “trained” how to deal with children. His mentor had had some things to teach him in regards to that to help him along.
One of them was not to try too hard, since that was more likely to backfire on him than anything else. Following that advice, he moved towards an empty bed and took a seat on it, sideways and leaving one of his legs hanging to the floor. From there, he just watched Kendo and Maeda do their thing, the former doing her best but clearly being pretty nervous, something that was noticeable even without Kazuki’s sense.
The second piece of advice was to try to get their attention without making it obvious that he wanted to do so. For that, Kazuki and Maeda had come up with an idea. With that in mind, he was about to get started on that but something unexpected happened that stopped him from doing so.
“You’re scary,” a boy commented, his voice low, barely above a whisper. He had moved towards him at one point. Kazuki could only pause for a second and blink. He had certainly not expected any of them to approach him of their own volition. At least not without doing something about it himself.
“I am,” he admitted, because denying that would have been dumb. Children might be immature and not know that much, but they weren’t stupid.
“I’m scary too,” he heard him mumble, shuffling on his feet and looking down. He was feeling a little nervous, but Kazuki had assumed it was because he was scary, not because of anything in regards to him. Now, with a few more emotions and such…
He moved off the bed and knelt down beside the boy.
“How so?” Kazuki asked softly, a slight smile on his face. He’d practiced a little with Maeda back in his lessons, a smile that didn’t make him creepy or something equally as bad. It’d been difficult, but they’d reached something. Now, Uwabami’s name for it, the Heartbreaker, was a lot less appreciated, but he hadn’t had it in him to argue too much after he finally was successful. “You don’t look scary to me,” he added.
Because the boy really didn’t look scary. He just… looked like a normal boy. The rarest part of him were probably his slitted, reptilian eyes and some scales on his skin here and there. Which was basically nothing really, when compared to him at least.
“My mouth,” the boy mumbled and with that clew, Kazuki noticed something. There was, indeed, something odd going on with his mouth, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. “It’s scary,” the boy added, speaking more normally and things became much more evident as he did.
His mouth was much wider than normal. If he grinned, Kazuki imagined the line of his smile would almost touch his ears. Furthermore, his jaws carried a jagged line of teeth that looked… ‘Like a crocodile’s,’ he realized, the eyes and the scales making that click into place.
“Well, we can be scary together then,” he told the boy, keeping his smile. Because he made much more frightening things than the boy on a daily basis. It was odd and maybe a little unnerving, but he’d be damned if he let that get to him.
How many times had he been shunned because of how he looked?
How many times had he wished someone would approach him, scared or not?
“So, I’m Beacon. What’s your name?” he asked with his best friendly voice. He could tell that he caught the boy off guard, but that only made him smile a little wider, which fortunately didn’t scare him.
“Taro,” the boy replied, shuffling on his feet then and Kazuki decided to try and make him feel better. With that in mind, he reached to the pool of negativity inside him and let his shadow expand.
“Well, since I’m obviously scarier than you, I guess I’ll have to give you a partner to make things even,” he commented with a grin. Immediately, the boy looked with wide eyes at the expanding darkness… before blinking as a Beowolf Puppy came out. “What do you think? Scary enough?”
“Fluffy!” a new voice cried out, making Taro and Kazuki turn towards the source. The aforementioned person was a little girl that apparently could barely walk, stumbling her way forward with her arms extended and looking at the grimm Kazuki had just made. “Fluffy!” she exclaimed once more.
Unfortunately for her, she wasn’t quite that dexterous, or maybe something else was going on. Regardless, she stumbled and fell to the ground… or she would have, if Kazuki didn’t catch her, his hands under her arms as he picked her up on his.
“Careful there,” he commented, a smile on his face still as if it’d become fixed there. Uwabami said that the younger children were, the more likely they were to become distressed if people around them were.
“Puppy!”
Well, someone had a one track mind, it seemed. Regardless, Kazuki sat on the ground and settled the girl on his lap before controlling the Puppy Beowolf to nuzzle against her. The happy giggle she let out was… very nice. It warmed something cold inside Kazuki’s chest that he hadn’t even noticed was there, if that made any sense.
“I thought that was for me,” Taro grumbled, pouting at Kazuki and the girl. To that, he could only grin and chuckle, letting his shadow expand. Immediately, a Sabyr Kitten appeared beside the boy, whose eyes seemed to shine in excitement. “Woah, those teeth,” he breathed out, kneeling beside the grimm and running his finger on the side of the adorable sabertooth’s fang.
“Look, look!” another voice cried out and Kazuki got a sense of deja vu from it. Sure enough, a girl – older than the one on his lap – was pointing at his grimm. A moment later, a few of the other kids scrambled to approach him.
With a smile on his face, he started making more Grimm from the Baby Series. They seemed to be a hit with the kids, as it turned out. One girl in particular had really taken to the Piglet Boarbatusk… or, more precisely, had taken to riding it. Kazuki had had to make a Baby Imp just to follow her along to make sure she wouldn’t fall off.
That had been, as it turned out, a mistake. Soon enough, he was in charge of a small “pony zone” where the children were riding around in his the grimm that allowed for that, Puppy Beowolves, Sabyr Kittens, Piglet Boarbatusks. There were two kids that had gone the extra step and were respectively riding on the back of a Baby Taijutu and a Baby Beringel.
“And you thought you wouldn’t be good with kids,” Uwabami commented, sitting on the bed he was on himself and looking at the children with him. Off to the side, Kendo was playing with children using her Quirk to lift them and become some sort of human jungle gym. She seemed to be having a good time.
“All thanks to you, Bami-sensei,” he commented with a grin, earning himself a push from the woman’s shoulder.
“Don’t get cheeky with me, Beacon,” she told him, but he didn’t even have to look at her to know she was amused. “They are great, aren’t they?”
“They are,” Kazuki agreed with a smile, but he didn’t miss the spike of emotions in his teacher. It made his grin turn sad. “But we are in a hospital for a reason, right?”
“The pediatric wing, that’s where we are,” Uwabami confirmed with a nod. Turning towards her, Kazuki saw the same sad smile he was sporting on her face. “Some of them will recover and not be here the next time. Some of them… will be here… or maybe not, for completely different reasons.”
“I see,” he replied, trying to keep his emotions in check. Somehow, despite suspecting all that, he couldn’t find as much joy in the kids anymore.
“I was brought here for a publicity stunt when I was still making a name for myself. Everyone loves kids and everyone looks great when they are cheering up kids that are hurt or sick,” Uwabami explained to him, but there was no hiding the anger and frustration he caught through his sense. “I didn’t even think much of it back then. It was more popularity and… that’s what I wanted. Fame and a name and… just being pretty and to have everyone know that. I just wanted to be a model and being a hero was just… a bonus for that.”
That was… something. Kazuki would have been angry, or disappointed or some combination of both, normally. However, he knew Uwabami, and the woman’s own emotions told him that there was much more to the story. So, he kept his emotions in check and listened.
“After being here with them that first time… I felt like such a massive fraud and I felt so… ugly. Because what kind of pretty person sees them and just sees… a tool. That’s ugly, isn’t it? No matter how good you look on the outside, if you look so absolutely abominable on the inside, it’ll show, you know? That’s what I think,” Uwabami told him, and he turned when he saw her look at him out of the corner of his eye. “So, never let the fact that you look like you do stop you from being handsome, ok, Kazuki? Because outside you might look scary but inside? Inside you look absolutely beautiful, I know that much.”
“I’ll try my best,” he said, suddenly a little overwhelmed to have all that dropped on him out of nowhere.
“So humble,” Maeda commented, clearly amused. “I come here every so often, when I manage to make time. I moved this day a little forward, since I thought it’d be perfect for you. As ugly as it is for me to say it, they are great for one’s image, and you need people to see how great you are, Kazuki. So… reporters will know about this, we’ll probably meet a few outside, or more than a few, since you are here,” she explained to him and he grimaced. “It’s awful,” she agreed with a nod and pursed lips. “But you need to take every advantage you can get. Once your reputation is where you want it to be, then you can stop doing such… ugly things. Until then, however, you are just like them, Kazuki.”
At that, he looked at the children, catching the sight of a little girl who was entranced by the smallest Nevermore he’d ever made. It was, indeed, awful that he had to… basically use these children, who were in unfortunate situations, for his own benefit. However… He just had to not think about it like that. Ultimately, it was a matter of priorities. Right then and there, his priority was to make the children happier, not improve his image.
It was just a side effect.
He’d just have to be careful not to… become as ugly on the inside as he was on the outside.
“I’ll try my best not to be ugly,” he commented.
“I know you will.”
Somehow, hearing that cheered him up almost as much as the girl’s giggle had before.
[}-o-{]
“Visiting these children is both an honor and an honest joy, as always,” Uwabami told the reporters that had all but ambushed them outside the hospital. Some of them had sneaked into the place, but all of them had been kicked out to prevent them from ruining the kids’ time. Now, their mentor was dealing with them, but a question or two had been thrown Kendo’s and Kazuki’s way. Some of them – the most harmless – they’d answered themselves, some others – more dangerous – Uwabami had taken over. “It was my pleasure to share this experience with my interns,” she added and there was a flash from a picture being taken.
Kazuki had learned that they did that whenever Uwabami smiled a little more than usual or there was some noteworthy thing going on. It was a little nerve wracking whenever it happened, because he always wondered if he looked good or if he’d messed up. He was learning when that was likely to happen though. So, he was getting more confident that he was, at the very least, not getting photographed in a bad position or with a bad expression.
He just had to think how to start going further and getting good pictures taken.
Plus ultra and all that.
“A question for Beacon,” he heard and he tried to stop himself from reacting too strongly to the call. Instead, he took a deep breath in and plastered his best smile. It was a good thing that the flash of a photo being taken came from the side instead of right in front of him.
“Miss Kizuki,” he greeted, kind of glad to have a familiar face to talk to. Especially since her reportage of the Hosu interview had been good. He didn’t say anything more though, just in case, and nodded for her to go ahead. She seemed pleased, for whatever reason, so he hoped he hadn’t messed up. Reporter emotions could be confusing, he’d learned from Uwabami and his few encounters.
They could feel negatively about good things for you and they could feel good about bad things for you. The opposite could be true too. In conclusion, his sense was almost useless for him, at least until he learned more on the subject.
“I just wanted to ask, how do you feel about this visit?” the blue skinned woman asked him and he took a deep breath in again. It was a little trick that Uwabami taught him, used to buy himself a second or two. It didn’t sound like much, but any amount of time could make a huge difference when you were in a situation where there wasn’t much and you had to think on your feet.
“I feel the same way I did back in Hosu, like I’m being a hero,” he answered, finding that the words came to him rather easily. After practicing with Uwabami and her people, after already having been interviewed and that going well for him, Kazuki was feeling a little more sure of himself. On top of that, the visit to the kids had reinforced something in his mind, part of his resolution. “And this is something that I want to do as a hero, as it turned out.”
“How so?” Kizuki asked, clearly interested.
“I said I want to be a rescue hero, and that means more than being in disaster zones or helping during villain attacks. Rescuing can happen in many situations, some of them less dramatic than others,” he explained, thinking back to that first day outside of the hole, when he’d been left alone in his apartment for the first time. “Many people need rescuing and the world doesn’t even know about it, just like these children need rescuing from their situation. Maybe I can’t heal them, I can’t take away their pain, but I can be here and help them to the best of my ability. It might not be much, but it’s what I can do.”
He’d made that promise to himself, back then and several other times.
Kazuki would be there for those that needed a hero.
Those children were no exception.
“Any particular reason-” Kizuki started. However, whatever else she was going to ask was interrupted. By what? Well, it was better to say by whom, really, because it was another voice that cut through their interview.
“Beacon!” a girl’s voice called out and Kazuki felt a tiny hand grip his pants before the owner of the voice appeared in front of him, hiding behind him as if he were a tree and peeking to look behind him. “Kou is being a meanie again,” she accused with a pout, pointing behind her.
Kazuki turned to look behind him and gave the boy an unimpressed look.
“Didn’t I tell you to be nice to Emi, Kou?” he asked, and the boy looked anywhere but at him.
“She didn’t want to get off of me. I was tired,” the boy grumbled, looking down at his feet and Kazuki took a deep breath in. Reading his emotions as best he could, he realized that Kou wasn’t lying.
“Ok, I guess you didn’t do anything bad then. Sorry about that,” Kazuki said, drawing a surprised look from the boy. However, he was already crouching to talk with the distressed girl at his feet. “Emi, your brother gets tired too. Just like you, so he can’t carry you all the time.”
“But the puppy could,” she whined and he chuckled.
“Yeah, I guess that’s true so…” he replied, extending his shadow and bringing another Beowolf Puppy to life. Before the girl could get too excited though, there was something else that needed to be done. “You have to apologize to your brother though.”
Evidently, the girl wanted to do nothing of the sort. However, seeing the perfectly still grimm, Emi realized that there was no escaping that. With great effort, the little girl turned towards her brother.
“I’m sorry, Kou,” she mumbled, and the boy nodded slightly. Before he could even finish that, the girl turned towards Kazuki with big pleading eyes.
“Sure, go. But you have to let your brother play with Wolfy too, ok?”
“Ok,” she muttered, pouting but not arguing. Kazuki smiled as she watched her climb on the Puppy Beowolf.
“Kou, help your sister, ok? And take turns, or no more Wolfy for either of you,” Kazuki said, getting a firm nod from the boy. Nodding to himself, he turned towards the reporters… and promptly felt a pit forming inside him. How could he have forgotten about them like that? He had…
He had… screwed up?
Why wasn’t Maeda feeling any negative emotion whatsoever?
“Where were we?” he asked, trying to recover from that terrible, horrible mistake.
“Do you think it’s safe to leave them alone with that… thing?” another reporter asked and Kazuki held back a grimace and plastered a smile on his face still. He needed to be confident, put his best foot forward and all that.
“Perfectly safe. I’ve gotten better at controlling them through the years, I can tell you that. Especially what I call the Baby Series, of which that one is part of. They are much calmer than my normal Grimm, as I call them. I have control of them now too, so I’m actually keeping an eye on them at the same time that I’m talking here,” he explained as best he could. He wanted to give the proper explanation when he came back to school but… Oh well, it seemed that he couldn’t really save everything for that moment.
“Would you say that you benefited from practicing with your Quirk?” Kizuki asked and there was the smallest glimmer of malice there but… Kazuki couldn’t piece together why that was. The question didn’t seem like it’d affect him in any way. Still, taking a deep breath in, he focused on her emotions and Uwabami’s, to make sure that he’d know if he messed up.
“Definitely. I’ve progressed a lot since I was a kid and especially so since I started using U.A.’s training facilities. I’ve made more progress with how much control I have on my Quirk in my time at U.A. than through the rest of my life,” he answered honestly, hoping that knowing that would reassure them. If he was at the level he was in with as little time to progress as he did, then surely he’d only get better as time passed right’
Nobody was feeling any concerning emotions, so Kazuki took that as a win.
Still, Kizuki looked positively elated by his answer.
“So, there’s no chance of another Rampage happening?” another reporter asked and Kazuki felt many spikes of negativity. All of them had different mixes of emotion, but they were there. Regardless, he turned to look at the man, calm and confident on the outside even if he felt both hurt and angry on the inside.
“As I said before, I’ll answer all questions regarding my past when my internship is over. I’ll be happy to answer any questions thrown my way then. As it is…” he trailed off then, taking another deep breath in as he allowed some of his true emotions to show. His smile turned more nervous, he looked to the side a little and he rubbed his forearm with his opposing hand. “I’m still learning how to… Well, talk with you. I’m not great at this kind of thing, but Uwabami has been a great help teaching me the ropes.”
His mentor was still not upset in any way, so even if he was barely hanging on by the skin of his teeth, Kazuki would still call it a huge victory. However, he really didn’t like the way the man’s eyes lit up. Because he was happy, but there was malice under the surface. He looked like a shark that had smelled blood.
His analysis must have been right because then he felt a spike of concern from Uwabami.
Either way, none of them got to say a word.
“A question for Battle Fist, if I could?” Kizuki cut through then, surprisingly bringing focus away from Kazuki and towards Kendo. He wasn’t very sure, but as he looked at her, he thought the woman sent a smile his way before focusing on his fellow intern.
From there, the interviews continued and Uwabami was, once more, able to divert any of the more “difficult” questions directed his way. Be them about the Rampage or any other kind of “trap” question. He wasn’t too sure about some of those, but she had covered a few and he could see them. Most of them flew over his head, which made him very grateful for her presence. He’d have to go over that kind of thing much more with the remaining time because damn, would it be nerve wracking to be by himself.
“Did you set the kids up for that?” he asked Uwabami once they moved back with the children.
“No, but that was great,” the woman answered with a giggle. “Still no though, I’d never use the children like that. The visit is already a stretch but the children? Never,” she added, much more firmly. “I didn’t need to anyway, by the looks of it.” When she said that, Uwabami was looking off to his side instead of at him, which prompted him to turn and see…
Kou and Emi, playing with his Puppy Beowolf. A little behind them was their older sister, Yuka. Catching their eyes on her, the girl waved at them with a smile, a gesture that Kazuki readily returned.
And then Yuka winked at him, making him pause.
“Well well… What a devious mind, huh?” Maeda asked, laughing.
“Indeed…” Kazuki agreed, a grateful smile on his face.
[} Chapter End {]
Hey guys! How’s it going?
Interviews and PR stuff in general continue to be the bane of my existence. I really should have thought this story through more before committing. As it is… Well, I can only hope that I’ll learn and get better.
I hope you guys enjoyed the chapter though.
Discord Link: discord.gg/UTDransjJZ
Random Question: What color are your socks? Mine are white with gray stripes.
See you.
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JACOB HEBERT
Black with Grey heel and toe
