Grimoire Ultra 2 (Patreon)

I opened the book I’d been given and started reading as words formed on the page in front of me. It was how The Bureau’s magic branch worked, when I reached an acceptable milestone, the grimoire that they provided me with would show me something new. In this case, it looked like it was branching out. Both abilities it has shown me thus far were of the Transformation category, this one was…

“Divination?” I mused, feeling a little nervous. I was hoping it was the more broad ‘gather information’ rather than ‘see the future’ type of divination, but I was not that lucky.

Sure enough, it ended up being basic ‘see the future’ divination. I let out a sigh and started reading anyway. I wouldn’t be able to progress to anything new until I’d used this to a satisfactory level. The grimoires were…not alive, sentient, or anything like that, but they were… aware, for want of a better way of putting it.

At the moment, it would only let me peer a week into the future or past, with no guarantee for accuracy. The more detailed thing I was after, the more likely it would show me an accurate vision of the future, but from what the grimoire was saying, any number of things could change the future.

From what I was reading, it seemed that this would be more useful to look into the past. The precise mechanic I used wasn’t the important part of it, though I decided I’d use cards. The standard would be standard tarot cards, but I decided to do something a little different. I was a nerd despite the jock physique The Bureau had given me as part of my hiring package, so I pulled a little something from my nerd collection.

Shuffling the Harrow deck, I considered the question I’d be asking. After a moment, I asked, “What is Bakugo like as a person?”

Drawing the requisite nine cards, I placed them in a three by three grid and flipped the top left one. It was upside down, meaning it applied to him instead of around him, showing a plume of white racing down the side of a mountain. The Avalanche, the lawful evil card of dexterity. It represented disaster, unthinking panic and destruction. I vaguely recalled hearing something about an incident with a Slime Villain, and the leftmost column did represent the past, so it fit.

The next card, middle left, showed a corpulent figure trying to shove a sword up his nose. The Idiot, the neutral evil card of intelligence. I was surprised at first, since Bakugo was many things but not stupid. But then I remembered, in addition to the things one would assume of the word idiot, it also represented hubris. That certainly was true of the blonde bomber.

The last of the cards representing the past, bottom left, depicted a tiger-like humanoid with backward facing hands. The Rakshasa, the lawful evil card of intelligence. Multiple meanings, most of which didn’t seem to fit, but the connotations of domination certainly made sense.

“So someone who was full of hubris and felt a need to dominate everything around him, but had a personal disaster happen to him. Seems to be lining up so far,” I muttered.

I thought about how the three cards fit on the good-evil axis. His hubris was in the neutral position, something that could either drag him down or drive him to refuse the offers of evil. His need to dominate was what had fueled his worse impulses, feeding his hubris to become a thug and a bully. But the avalanche was a potential wake up call, a disaster that potentially served as a much needed wake up call.

The middle column represented the present, neither set in stone nor full of endless possibility. Flipping over the first card, I was greeted by the visage of a split theater mask. The Joke, the chaotic good card of intelligence. It represented both the monster that could only be defeated indirectly and the value of using humor to bypass difficult to deal with people. From everything I’d heard, the card was quite accurate if one interpreted it to deal with him instead of representing him.

Middle card showed a stylized nocturnal raptor holding a sewing needle. The Owl, the neutral card of wisdom. The owl itself representing harsh wisdom, the needle one that can either bind lives together or pick them apart. Appropo, given how despite having the personality of a chihuahua who just had a pineapple shoved up its ass, he seemed to have a mind bogglingly large social circle.

Final card for the present showed an armored knight, holding shield and a shining sword. The paladin, the lawful good card of strength. It represented the ability to stand resolute without backing down. But its location in an evil position suggested that it was less personal resolve and more an unrelenting stubbornness.

“Again, not looking that great,” I mused, my gaze turning to the final column, representing the future.

This time, I started in the middle, not wanting to see his possible heights or lowest depths. The middle card showed a rabbit dressed like a medieval noble, holding a broken sword. The Rabbit Prince, the chaotic neutral card of dexterity. It represented the fast paced chaos of melee, and the fact that defeat could come to anyone. At a guess, I thought it was saying that he’d have one hell of a wakeup call at some point soon.

Taking a deep breath, I flipped over the top card. A crowd surrounding a building, arms raised. The Uprising, the chaotic neutral card of strength. Overwhelming strength that catches one up in something more powerful. I honestly wasn’t sure what it was saying, was Bakugo the strength, would he be one part of a group, something else?

Setting it aside, my gaze turned to the final card. The one in the chaotic evil position. The one representing the absolute worst that Bakugo could become. With a sigh, I flipped it over. A whirlwind, with arms and red glowing eyes. The Cyclone, the chaotic evil card of strength. An unstoppable force of destruction unleashed by the machinations of those more intelligent. The meaning was pretty straightforward to interpret.

“At his worst, he becomes a blunt force instrument of someone else, while at his best he becomes I don’t know what. Real helpful,” I drawled as I gathered the cards and returned them to the deck.

Well, no use for it, I’d just prepare as best I could to deal with the blonde bomber. In the meantime, I had a quirk date to get to.

[hr][/hr]

“Lovely to see you again,” I said as I walked up behind Izumi, who practically jumped out of her skin.

“Eep!” she shrieked, turning around with a hand over her heart. “Don’t do that!”

“Sorry,” I apologized with a grin as I held my hands up in surrender. “I just saw the most adorable prospective hero I’d ever met and couldn’t resist.

Despite the downcast look her face adopted, there was a blush forming, so I decided to move the topic along, “So, I can safely say that there’s more to my quirk than I’d realized when I told you about it.”

That perked her right up, her depression and embarrassment both vanishing as she pulled a notebook and pen from… somewhere and opened it up to a page. Huh, that was a pretty good rendition of metal-me, from the camera phone pics I’d been shown. She even managed to make it look like the eyes were glowing despite there being no color.

“…have you changed back to it since the Exam? Did the metal stay? Did you reform the weapons despite them having fallen off when you turned back to human? Have you discovered the ability tied to your smaller form?” she asked in rapid fire succession.

“Besides being almost as cute as you, you mean?” I asked with a cheeky grin as we started walking. Her questions stopped as she gained a nuclear blush at the reminder, making me chuckle. She was so fucking adorable. “Not that I’ve noticed. I’m really heavily armored, but from everything I’ve read the real simosuchus was more like a stubby tailed ankylosaur than a vegan crocodile.”

She began to mumble as she jotted down notes in her booklet. I couldn’t help the smile that spread across my face. Even if the checklist that The Bureau had given me for this world hadn’t included ‘Befriend Midoriya’ I really doubted I’d be able to resist.

We continued, me sharing what I knew about my “quirk” as she broke it down and analyzed it. Best I’d been able to determine in the three days since the Entrance Exam, while I didn’t get to keep all of the adaptations and augmentations I got when my kaprosuchus form ate something, there was a small amount that stayed. The bony plates on my back and my teeth in that form had a very faint gleam to them when I’d looked at myself in the mirror that morning. That was when I had an idea.

“It’s probably how the stockpile aspect manifested,” I said aloud after I finished describing the differences I’d noticed.

“S-stockpile?” Izumi asked, freezing like a deer in headlights.

I pretended not to notice as I continued, “Yeah, my dad’s side of the family mostly have stockpiling quirks. I’ve got an uncle who can stockpile kinetic energy, a brother who stockpiles heat, my dad stockpiles caloric energy.”

She relaxed, jogging lightly to catch up with me, “Interesting, how do they work?”

“In my dad’s case all it really means is that he can go a lot longer between meals and doesn’t poop as frequently as the rest of us. My brother can really only store about a candle’s worth of heat before it hurts him. My uncle though…” I let out a breath as I pretended to think back on it. “Took him forever before he stopped breaking bones. He’d passively absorb kinetic energy from just walking, it’d build up until it reached the point that he’d let it out, and the backlash would turn his bones to splinters. For a long time my grandparents thought he had brittle bone syndrome.”

“If he absorbs and stores kinetic energy, and releasing it has a backlash on his body, then he’d need to find a way to release smaller amounts of kinetic energy so they don’t hurt him,” Izumi muttered.

“Actually, now that I think about it, it sounds a lot like yours,” I said as I perked up. “Maybe not kinetic stockpiling, but if you store and release energy of some kind like he did, then the trick would be to figure out how to control your output. How do you determine how much strength to use?”

She seemed to fold in on herself, and I winced. Glancing around, I spotted a beachside and carefully turned so we started walking towards it, “Sorry, I didn’t realize it was a sensitive subject, you don’t have to…”

“The exam was the first time I used it,” she mumbled, so quietly I barely heard her. I stopped, standing next to the side rail, looking out over the beach before turning to face her.

“First time I turned into a kaprosuchus was two weeks ago,” I told her, making her bright green eyes turn up to face me, wide with shock.

“It’s not the same, and it doesn’t have the backlash that your quirk does, but I do somewhat understand. For most of my life, all I could do was turn into a pot bellied purse dog of a crocodile. Sure, it would be good for plushie marketing, but for doing actual hero work? It was basically useless. Hell, even pugs move faster than me in that form. All I can do in it is be a scaly therapy dog. Yet here I am, and even without knowing what your quirk is, you still got farther than the majority of people in Japan ever would. Even if you don’t make it in, which considering how you took on an impossible challenge to save someone I rather doubt it, that is still something to be proud of,” I told her.

Her eyes started to water, and I pulled her into a hug, gently cradling my arms around her and planting a soft kiss on top of her head as she started sobbing. I didn’t do any more, just stood there as she soaked my shirt with her tears, as a deluge of formerly restrained emotion poured out of her. My left hand rubbed circles into her back, and after a few minutes, she pulled back, rubbing at her eyes.

“I-I’m sorry,” she said between sniffles.

“For what? If the tears of a pretty girl are the worst thing that gets on this shirt, then it’ll have an easier time in the laundry than the rest of my clothes,” I told her with a smile, making her blush yet again.

I didn’t have the sex focused powers that The Guild and The Company handed out like candy, but I was glad for it. Wooing this green cinnamon bun was way too much fun to let something like mind control make it easy.