Grimoire Ultra 3 (Patreon)

As I’d expected, I was accepted into UA. Not only that, but I managed to beat out Bakugo as the top scorer. Barely, but throwing my metal plated crocodilian form in the way of attacks aimed at other applicants gave me enough Rescue Points to put my total score at an even eighty. I wish I had a photo of his face when he found out that a country hick gaijin beat him. I’d just have to settle for my imagination, and less than half an hour later, my phone started to ring.

I checked the Caller ID, and grinned before accepting, “Hey Izumi, you get your results ye-”

“I GOT IN!” was blasted into my ear, making me wince. I pulled the phone away from my ear and put it on speaker, digging a finger in the now ringing ear.

“Glad to hear it,” I said, doing my best not to give any indication of how much my ear hurt. “Rescue Points, I’m guessing?”

“Yes, the Zero Pointer awarded me with sixty Rescue Points, it put me in eighth place overall! How’d you do?” she asked.

“Well I got a total of forty nine Rescue Points,” I said, grin wide on my face.

“Really? That was the most I saw on the screen, other… than… my… … own… YOU GOT TOP SCORE?!”

I was so glad I’d put the phone on speaker, chuckling as I answered, “Yup, care to meet up and we can talk in person? You can show me around town at the same time.”

“Sure! There’s a small mall by the train station on 4th that has a lot of stores in it, what time?”

I took a look at the antique analog clock hanging on the wall. Seven past twelve, if it was the spot I was thinking of it’d take me the better part of an hour to reach it, “How’s two pm sound? If we end up staying out late enough, I’ll pay for dinner?”

“Two works for me! I’ll see you… wait, are you asking me out on a date?”

“Yup, see you at two.”

I hung up, chuckling under my breath. Before the amused smirk left my face. I was honestly starting to wonder if I was laying the flirting on a little too thick. Eh, I’d tell her when we met at the mini mall that if it bothered her, I’d stop. I’d be disappointed, but I’d stop all the same. Now, to pick out some good clothes for the date.

I settled on a pair of heavy canvas pants, my good boots, a denim jacket over a white t-shirt, and the whole ensemble finished with my favorite hat. Yes, I looked like the cliche modern cowboy, but dammit, I look good in wide brim hats!

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First bit of good news: she didn’t mind the flirting! Score! Second bit of good news: Izumi looked just as adorable in a dress shirt and skirt as she did in everything else. Seeing the nervous Izumi muttering up a storm, a deep green, knee length skirt around her waist, All Might pins in her hair, and her shirt the same color as her skirt… she was too freaking cute.

The first spot for our second date was a small coffee shop on the fourth floor of the mini mall, us sitting at a corner table with our drinks as conversation started, “Congratulations on getting the top score, Smith-san.”

“Thanks, congrats on your own Top Ten spot. But please, call me Jerred, there were seven Smiths in my last class that I wasn’t related to,” I told her, her face turning red.

“A-alright, Smi-I mean, Jerred-san. Y-you look good.”

“You too,” I told her, and the atomic blush returned. Smiling, I took a sip of my coffee (black as the cliche ninja’s outfit) and asked, “Have you had a chance to figure out your quirk at all?”

She perked up, “Yes, I’ve been able to determine that it is some kind of stockpiling quirk. I don’t know what it’s stockpiling yet, though.”

“Well, for the moment you should probably focus on getting a feel for your output. Something that helped my uncle was also spreading out the kinetic energy throughout his entire body, maybe that’ll help you as well?” I suggested. If I could talk her into developing Full Cowl before Mr. Sleep-Deprived singled her out, I’d be happy as a clam.

Her eyes bugged out, “That’s what happened! I had all of the force focused into my limbs, and I was using every scrap of power I had, so if I can scale it down and spread it out…”

I watched, as she started muttering a mile a minute, her notebook appearing on the table between us from somewhere (she didn’t have pockets that I could see and it was bigger than her purse, so where the heck did she keep it?) and she started writing. Watching that brain of hers at work, and knowing what kind of muscle she’d had to have gained from clearing the beach, Izumi really was a three-for-one kinda girl. She had the features of the ‘girl next door’, the brains and behavior of a geeky girl, and the physique and fitness ethic of a tomgirl. Truely, Izumi was the best girl in UA, a hill I would be more than happy to die on.

I let her write and mumble for five solid minutes, before I chuckled, breaking her from her zen. She flushed, and started to stammer an apology, before I held up a hand.

“Relax,” I told her. “I think it’s cute.”

The red in her face darkened, making her look more like a strawberry than a tomato. Still, I stood from the chair and held my hand out for her. Still blushing, she put her hand in mine as she stood up, sliding her purse over her other shoulder. She led me through the rest of the mini mall, and I may have… accidentally… killed my ‘cool American’ image worse than shooting a door mouse with a twelve gauge buckshot.

“Holy shit is that a titanium dee-twenty? How much does that translate to in dollars?!” I asked, slipping back into English as I stared at the gleaming polyhedral sitting in the store window. The musical giggling behind me snapped me back to the present, and I chuckled while rubbing the back of my head. “Well… I suppose there are worse things to see me nerding out about?”

Izumi shook her head as she finally got her giggles under control, “It’s alright. If… if it was anything like what I look like when I start talking about Quirks, I think I get why you like it.”

My eyebrows shot up, as the familiar flush graced Izumi’s cheeks. I wasn’t expecting her to have that kind of response, but I certainly wasn’t going to complain. Especially as she walked over to the door of the gaming store and opened it. I needed no more invitation than that, heading inside and followed by the verdanette.

Time may have gotten away from us. Izumi had never played tabletop rpgs, so she kept asking me questions about them. I explained what I was familiar with, but there had been more than a few edition changes and shifts in the rpg landscape between the advent of quirks and the present day. Our next date was swiftly decided upon: she expressed a mild interest, so I would put together a short one-shot adventure and run it for her.

By the time we left the store, I was a few thousand yen poorer and several books and miniatures richer. Seriously, the last time I saw a mini for a neothilid, the damn thing would have cost me a month’s paycheck after all the bills and groceries were accounted for (I was a poor college student back then). I was also able to get my hands on a complete disk set for all seasons of the six Critical Role animated shows!

Meeting and wooing Izumi was still the best part of being in this world, but that was a close second. Followed by the powers. Then came the first thing that could be called a hiccup in the date.

“You don’t like sushi?” Izumi looked up at the grimace on my face as she pointed out a sushi stand.

“Not sushi specifically,” I told her as I forced down the instinctive sense of nausea. “But just uncooked seafood in general. When I was a kid I ended up watching a documentary on food borne parasites and the overwhelming majority of those in the documentary were from un or undercooked seafood. Ever since then, the thought of it just makes me nauseous. Plus, I grew up in the Midwest, so I didn’t have much in the way of seafood at all.”

Fortunately, Izumi was understanding once I explained, so we ended up having dinner at a noodle shop. Authentic ramen is so much better than the cheapo shit college students around the world are familiar with. Still prefer pho, but that’s just me.

After we ate, I walked the young lady home, before heading back to my apartment. My good mood came to a swift end once I got there. The place was utterly trashed, the furniture was broken, the walls scratched up, even the ceiling had gouges carved into it!

Worst of all, in the middle of the living room there was a message, painted in what I strongly suspected was not ketchup. Like something out of a horror movie, it read: THIS WORLD’S MEAT IS MINE.

I had a very bad feeling about that message, so I set my bags of nerd stuff down and slowly backed out of the apartment. Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out my phone, and dialed the emergency number. I had do idea who did this, but I definitely needed to report the break in-

Instinct screamed at me, and I ducked down, just in time to avoid the swipe of a long, taloned claw. My phone fell to the floor, and I could barely hear the sound of someone speaking on the other side as I scrambled away from my attacker. They were gangly and tall, so tall that they were hunched over as they squeezed through the door. A rack of antlers grew out the top of their head, which had lost all of its skin, resembling the skull of a deer.

I was being attacked by a would-be wendigo, lovely. I braced myself in preparation of changing to my kaprosuchus form, when it spoke, “So, The BurEau sEnt sOmeONE tO MY bufFeT. HoW GenEROus of ThEm.”

My face instantly paled. I wasn’t dealing with a random villain with a wendigo quirk, I was being targeted by an actual wendigo, one working for The Company, because they were the only ones stupid enough to hire the monsters! Even the Guild stayed the fuck away from them, and they were all psychopaths!

I immediately turned around and started running. No way was I in a state to fight a Contractor at the moment, I was still just starting out. That was without taking into account the bullshit laws Japan had on protecting oneself, especially regarding power use. I turned around a corner, immediately before the Contractor crashed into the wall behind me.

Grabbing onto the stair rail, I hopped over it, foregoing the stairs to do it again. The Contractor let out a roar, one that made the entire stairwell shake. I put a little more speed on, coming out the stairwell and running out into the main lobby. I was almost immediately followed by the Contractor, their monstrous appearance sending the other residents and building staff scattering.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, the Contractor ignored them, choosing instead to focus on me. I ran outside, ducking under a leaping pounce, and started scanning the surroundings. Fuck ton of people, didn’t have anywhere I’d be able to run to in order to lose him, didn’t have my phone on me anymore, couldn’t use my power without getting in trouble myself, and could only avoid it for so long before it got tired of playing around.

“HAVE AT THEE, VILLAIN!” a bombastic voice shouted, moments before there was a crash behind me. I risked a glance back, seeing a figure dressed like a European knight with a tabard from the Three Musketeers had apparently slammed into the Contractor, the obvious Pro Hero drawing a rapier with an over the top flourish. “Criminal, thou art hereby under arrest for destruction of public property, termagant conduct, and public indecency. Doth not intermit, or I, the hero D’Artan, shall has’t to receiveth termagant.”

Both the Contractor and I paused to stare, the Contractor voicing our confusion, “ThE fuCk?”

I took the opportunity to slip away as the hero began speechifying again in what sounded like bad Shakespearean English. I slipped back into the apartment building as more heroes started showing up along with police and grabbed my phone. My grimoire, what the Contractor had almost certainly been searching for in the apartment, was safely hidden within my soul, but there was a call I needed to make.

They picked up after the third ring, and I asked, “Hey Izumi, I know this is fast, but could I by chance sleep on your couch? A villain ruined my apartment building.”

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And that was how I ended up meeting Midoriya Inko, who was much more fit than I'd been expecting. I did my best to show as much country boy charm and politeness as I could. I’d like to think it worked, as she didn’t glare at me. The simosuchus form helped too. Pug faced purse croc is proving a lot more useful than I originally anticipated it too.