Chapter 7: At Home

After the Quirk Apprehension test, I met up with Pony. Of course, the first thing she asked was why I hadn’t been at the orientation the rest of first-year classes went to. So, I told her.

“Waaaa,” Pony shook her head as we walked to her house, eyes wide. “That sounds so crazy! I thought my teacher was weird, but yours sounds crazy.”

“You have Vlad King, don’t you?” I asked her. “I thought that guy was pretty cool.”

“He is! But he started growling when he saw Class 1-A didn’t show up,” Pony said. “I don’t think he likes your teacher… Oh, but I made friends with one boy! He seemed excited when I told him I had a friend in 1-A! He taught me a Japanese phrase to share with you!”

“Oh really? What was it?”

She pumped her fists excitedly. “I’m going to destroy your idiot ass!”

“...What was this young man’s name?”

Pony frowned, touching a finger to her lips. “Neito Monoma. Why?”

“Oh… I’m just… Excited to make a new friend.”

“Bowser-kun… your smile isn’t very happy.”

“Oh believe me. I’m ecstatic.”

------

“Aizawa,” Tauren sighed, shaking her head. “Well, I can’t fault him. I do think he’s way too harsh, but I’ve seen a few heroes get beat up because they never learned the big lessons early. At least no one got expelled.”

“Apparently when he does expel students, he just brings them back in after. Better they ‘die’ by being expelled instead of actually dying. His way of nailing them with the seriousness of all this I guess,” I said slowly.

Granted, it was likely others would still have issues with it, but that was fair. In the end, we were all okay. I'd rather just move on with life rather than talk about it any longer.

We were all in the kitchen of the Tsunotori household, eating a big meal for the night. I’d pitched in the allowance I got from the government to add to the meal. Tauren tried to get me to hold off, since she made plenty of money from the government, but I always felt bad if I didn’t at least make an effort to help out.

We were just finishing up our meal when someone knocked on the door.

“Now who could that be?” Tauren asked herself, walking over to the front door. I could hear her open it, talk briefly, then walking back to us, another person’s footsteps following. She came in. And a familiar face followed.

“Ranma-san?” I was surprised at the sight of my social worker, who was carrying a box in his hands. He smiled at me, eyes crinkling. “What are you doing here?”

“I went to your apartment, but you never seem to be there when I visit nowadays,” he joked lightly. “And you are terrible at answering your messages.”

I winced. Yeah, that was pretty consistent with my human life. “I’m sorry, I-”

“Do not worry about it,” he said in very good English. He’d been practicing it for as long as I’d been pushing myself to learn Japanese, and had gotten a real mastery for it. He lifted up the box. “For now I would like to celebrate. I brought cake. Had them make it special for you.”

Ranma opened the box. I looked inside. Pony giggled. “It looks just like your shell!”

It did indeed. It had green frosting separated by varying lines, with spikes poking upwards.

I shook my head, smiling. “How much did this cost?”

“It was really not a big deal,” he said humbly. “So, may we eat it together?”

Tauren chuckled. “Sure thing, sugah. Have a seat.”

We gathered around and cut up the cake. Felt a bit weird, cutting into a cake that looked like my shell, but the taste of frosting helped me get over it real quick.

“So, UA,” Ranma said, not noticing the bit of green frosting on his dignified nose. “How does it feel? Entering the best hero school in the nation?”

Pony touched a finger to her cheek thoughtfully. “It doesn’t feel real. I’m very excited though! I can’t wait to start classes! I hope we can get a lot of training on our powers. Bowser-kun has helped me think of some fun techniques, but it’s not as useful as a teacher helping.”

“I still say you’re going to be able to make giant constructs made of horns one day,” I said. “You already can make a small storm of the things. Once you start being able to control enough of them, you’ll be a horn Green Lantern.”

“You make very outdated references for such a young man,” Tauren said with a shake of her head.

“And I can only control three of them so far,” Pony pointed out. “Still… that could be so cool,” she had a cute look on her face as she tried to imagine it. “I could make a big hand and grab bad guys to throw them away!”

“All jokes aside, you don’t even need to do the whole construct thing if it takes a lot of focus to bring the individual pieces together to make a complete image.”

Pony took in that comment thoughtfully.

“Maybe you could practice art that deals with that?”

We looked over at Ranma, who was stroking his chin. “Something like pixel art? I am not familiar with heroes, but I know that artists find it easier to do complex art when they practice it consistently. If you get used to the idea of putting many small parts together to make a larger image, that might help.”

I hadn’t thought about that. Seemed like a good idea, and Pony was humming to herself in thought.

“I did want to ask,” Ranma looked over to me. “How are you adjusting? I remember in the past that some tried to dissuade you from becoming a hero.”

“What, a bunch of my fellow middle schoolers and teachers who don’t know anything about me beyond ‘spiky monster?” I asked sarcastically.

Ranma frowned. “I’m being serious,” he leaned forward. “Despite living in a world full of heteromorphic quirks, many with mutations as heavy as yours have to fight an uphill battle just becoming normal members of society. Let alone as a hero. The job may be based on saving others, but you get more money when the public loves you. And you will be fighting an uphill battle.”

“I’m okay with that,” I took my fork and sliced through my cake. “I’m actually planning to lean into it.”

“Lean into-” Ranma frowned. “Is this another American thing?”

“Tauren and Pony gave me the idea,” I smiled at them. “Acting like a heel, like Gang Orca or Endeavor. I can’t exactly be super-cuddly, but I can act like a big bad ass wrestler smashing people apart just for the fun of it! Draw in the crowd that loves a pun badass!”

I clenched my fist, grinning.

Pony giggled. “No. You are super-cuddly.”

“I am?” I blinked at her.

She nodded wisely, while Tauren chuckled. “You can never hide it when you’re happy.”

“I can’t? What do you mean?”

Ranma opened his mouth, only for Tauren to quickly get up. “I think ya’ can do it. Just work hard and learn how ta’ act. If you want to be a ‘heel’ people will like, ya need to learn to balance it, sugah. Be a hero, while acting like an asshole.”

“Momma!” Pony held a hand to her mouth, shocked at the language.

“Sorry dahling,” Tauren said, chagrined.

Ranma chuckled at the little play-by-play before focusing on me. “I’m glad you are doing well, Bowser-san.”

“Thanks, Ranma-san.”

“Though, please let me know if you won’t be home more often please,” Ranma smirked. “Or let me know if you need adoption paperwork.”

Pony blinked, looking over at me, while Tauren chuckled, and I sighed.

Ranma… why must you make things awkward?

------

When I got to my home, I opened the front door and entered. The room had changed over the past months. There was a pile of dirty clothes in the corner I had yet to clean. In the back was my shell scrubber. I’d had to save up money and order it from a company called Detnerat, a place that had gained a lot of money by creating specialized lifestyle products for people with quirks that made it so a simple comb wouldn’t do the job.

So when I ended up needing a way to scrub my shell, they were the ones who I went to. Got a good deal on it as well.

And yeah. I had to scrub my shell. Whatever species Bowser counted as, I had a series of issues I had to deal with that I had to learn about as I went.

My shell was tough as hell. I had yet to get hit by anything that could damage it. But it was still a part of my body, and soil, oil, or other materials ended in an itchy shell among other things. My shell still felt things, though they were more like muted sensations. I was fireproof but could still feel warmth through my shell for example.

And my god, my shell getting itchy was torture. I had a small brush that I used to use, but I could never reach the hard sections with that thing.

So I needed a large wall made of wire brushes to rub my back against to make sure I wouldn’t end up dealing with that shit anymore.

It wasn’t the only thing I had to deal with. I had to sharpen my claws and horns with a big metal file, clean the inner portions of my shell with a pressure nozzle when I could, and using the bathroom took a lot of getting used to.

I deliberately ignored the section of broken counter in my kitchen, a plate-sized hole in the marble, right next to a section of wall similar in size that I’d painstakingly filled in with plaster. I’m ashamed to admit it but those came from the same incident. In point of fact, there was similar damage in the bathroom, a piece of the tub I’d kicked apart.

I was more used to it now, but… When I was just getting used to my body, I lost my temper a few times. A lot of times. I’d been in a human body for so long, that even after a year, I still had to calm myself when I saw my Bowser form at times. And in the beginning, when tasks as simple as wiping my ass became an embarrassing and hard to figure out puzzle, I’d wanted to scream.

The internet helped. I wasn’t the only person in this world with those frustrations. I had forums I could visit where people with similar issues shared their pain, and their solutions. Pony and Taurus had helped as well. While our problems weren’t all the same, they had torn some things on accident when they misjudged their horns, something I’d had to deal with my own horns on top of my spikes.

Pony once told me about a time her mom found her crying when she’d accidentally shot a horn into her stuffed panda. She’d shown me the little guy, a large stitched scar across his abdomen, a proud memoir of his survival.

I walked over to my desk and sat down on the industrial bench right in front of it, grabbing the notebook sat there. I opened it up, grabbed my oversized pen (giant novelty pens were just regular pens for some people nowadays), and thought to myself outloud while looking at the words there. Written in my scratchy hand was a bunch of timeline things, written in the form of an outline for a comic book I was writing. I’d made Pony the hero and wrote it with a bunch of random bull. Never know when someone might find the thing.

“Made it into UA. So that’s good. But now I have some… really big issues that follow,” I rubbed my chin. “First, the Battle Trial. Doesn’t really matter how that goes down. Then I have classes and such. But the big things will be…”

I tapped one sentence on the page. Infiltration of assholes happens.

“That decay guy is going to show up and turn the security doors to ash. Then he’ll sneak into the school and find out when All Might goes to USJ. Which leads to…”

A few sentences down, after describing the heroine joining Wonder Woman as her apprentice, was the words, big battle while rescuing civilians. I thought that was a good explanation for the USJ, since the whole point of it had been to train to rescue civilians.

“USJ…” I looked at my notebook for a bit. I had some ideas for that, things I’d prepared. None of them were perfect. I couldn’t just not interfere with those assholes attacking the class. If I could do something, anything, then I would. But I didn’t want to expose myself either.

Well. If worse came to worst, I could simply run into the office and scream about how I was from another universe and that the bad guys were coming.

Not exactly plan A, but it was an option.

In the meantime. There was something way more worrying me.

I turned the page. And it was an absolute mess.

First, there was a list called ‘AMVs?’ While I had seen only one season of My Hero Academia, I’d managed to watch some music videos of things that happened later. The only problem, all of that shit was near useless without context. Some clips of Deku and Shoto fighting. Another of Bakugo fighting the decay dude and some sort of Harley Quinn type. I thought I could remember something about Deku surrounded by lightning? But none of them were that useful.

In other words, once we got to the USJ incident, I was no longer psychic. I’d be just as blind as everyone else to the future. And that was worrying. Because, when I’d started watching the show, there had been three seasons. So whatever happened in season 2 and 3, I’d need to depend on my own knowledge and skills to counter it.

The big pen in my hand cracked a bit when my grip on it began to tighten on it. I tried to relax.

Well. That would suck. But people existed with that sort of uncertainty every day. I’d work with it. Namely, by building my information network another way.

In this world, I was starting young. That worked against me, but it also meant I had time. If I started working hard, learning what I could, I wouldn’t need to know the future. Knowing the present would do the job.

That was honestly just a random idea though. I didn’t know anything about building a spy network. Might be worth looking into. UA did have a division of the school-based on business. And what was business but building connections and establishing a network? That seemed like such an impossibility for the future though...

For now. I had two things to prep for. The Infiltration. And the USJ Incident.

There was also the other big thing. Izuku Midoriya. Namely, how goddamn cringe I’d been acting around the kid!

I sighed, rubbing my head. With the benefit of hindsight, I realized I’d been way in his business. I couldn’t help it though. I was always awkward around people I admired. In my own world, I’d been an absolute mess when I met Henry Cavill, Jason Momoa, or Jessica Nigri. Compared to that, I’d been cooler with Izuku than with those guys. But even so. I needed to calm it down. The kid had his own path in life. He didn’t need some random guy stalking him and trying to help.

I sighed, scratching my chin with my pen. I wish I was better. I had the powers of Bowser, sure. But I was still learning to control those powers. I had knowledge, but I wasn’t a superspy who could apply it super effectively. And I might have been more mature than my fellow students, but that didn’t mean I was able to handle every situation with perfect emotional control.

Of all the problems to deal with, right?

Tomorrow, I’d have the Battle Trial to deal with. For now… Hmm.

I opened up my laptop and hit the internet. I did a couple of searches. Building an information network among idiots who thought villains were cool. Maybe I could do that. But I needed to figure out how…

I looked up the Hero Killer. And it didn’t take long for me to find his fans.