Darkest Before Dawn - 55 (Patreon)

Chapter 55

“Well, that’s certainly a step away from cute towards sexy, I’d say. Not too much, of course, but it does highlight your body more,” Kazuki said, sitting at the clothes store and running commentary as the girls tried on different outfits. While he was at it though, he had to do a herculean effort to squash the rising embarrassment in him.

‘I knew today was a trap,’ he thought for the thousandth time. He knew he was in trouble from the moment he realized that they’d decided to hang out together and it’d only be him with the girls, Hagakure, Yaoyorozu and Jiro. Mineta was busy helping his mother with something and Todoroki was visiting his, from what he’d told Kazuki. Still, even when he learned that, he hadn’t thought it’d be quite as bad as it had turned out to be.

The girls had decided it was the perfect time to go shopping with a male opinion at hand. ‘This wouldn’t have happened if Mineta was here,’ Kazuki thought, holding back a sigh. ‘What the fuck do I even know about fashion in the first place?’

Still, even with his subpar skills in the area, Kazuki was giving it an honest try to say something about every outfit that the girls tried that was more than “it looks good”, even though that was more or less how it went in his head. Granted, it was still a struggle and he felt like an absolute idiot more often than not, but the girls didn’t seem to get too annoyed despite that and seemed to be having a good time. Well, except for the rare moment of negativity whenever there was something they picked that he didn’t quite like, even after he clarified that it might just be a “him” thing.

Ultimately, he mostly let them know what he thought of each outfit and left the rest to them.

‘This is boring, but at least it’s better than picking clothes for me, that’s for sure,’ he thought to himself. At least this way he wasn’t involved in the search or having to change in and out of clothes every five minutes. He’d gotten most of the outfit he was wearing in that outing, actually. Black jeans, a blue undershirt and a white shirt worn open over it, simple but he still kind of liked it. He wasn’t sure about the blue, but then again, he wouldn’t know what to pick to go with his hair and eyes without using monochrome and splashes of red.

He’d also gotten a gray cap to try and hide his presence from the public. None of the girls had been fans of that, especially when he explained himself, but he thought it was necessary. The last thing he wanted was to ruin their Saturday.

Speaking of ruining things, he needed to focus back in the present.

‘Your opinion is what it is and you are being honest, no need to be embarrassed,’ Kazuki told himself as Hagakure giggled and started talking with the other two girls. If only it were that simple though. There was such a thing as being too honest, after all, but he also didn’t want to sound like he didn’t think they looked good in the outfits.

The result was that he was in quite the awkward spot indeed.

“I think that’s enough shopping for now,” Jiro said, sending an amused smile his way when Kazuki let out an explosive sigh in relief.

“Thank God for that,” he breathed out.

“Oh, come on, Creepy, it wasn’t that bad. You got to see three beautiful girls in a bunch of outfits. What’s not to love?” Hagakure asked, cheerful as ever. Or trying to act like it, because he could feel some insecurity building in her, probably born from her Quirk and what it did to her general looks.

He couldn’t have that.

“You are not wrong, but I’m not built to deal with people… girls especially and least of all like this,” he said honestly with a wry smile. Even if he was embarrassing himself more in several ways, at least his friend felt better with that response, so there was that. “I don’t know anything about fashion and I don’t even think I count as a regular boy for you to get opinions from.”

“You tried and that’s what matters,” Jiro said jokingly, patting his head as if he were a dog.

“Gee, thanks.”

“We do appreciate you doing this for us, Endo,” Yaoyorozu told him. Interestingly, she’d seemed to feel about as embarrassed as he did sometimes, but she’d grown more comfortable through the day, unlike him. He imagined it was because maybe she hadn’t gotten to hang out with friends quite as much, partly because of a probably sheltered life and partly because she probably hadn’t had many friends growing up.

Granted, all that was speculation on his side, so he didn’t want to assume too much.

“I’d say no problem but that’d be a lie,” Kazuki replied with a chuckle. “At least that’s over and that’s great,” he added, standing up and stretching. It didn’t quite get rid of the lingering embarrassment he’d suffered through, but it was a start. “Where to now?”

“Well, I do need underwear,” Hagakure mused out loud, drawing a squeak from Yaoyorozu while Kazuki froze. Fortunately, mercifully, she burst into giggles a second later. “The look on… On your face,” she said, trying to calm herself down.

“You are an evil, evil thing, Bubbly,” he muttered.

“Maybe we can get something to eat and then go to your store Jiro?” Yaoyorozu suggested, still red in the face.

“What would I do without you, Beauty?” he asked, relieved to have someone that was at least somewhat on his side. God knew Jiro was either useless or outright joined Hagakure to be a menace too. Kazuki felt no remorse for the small spike of annoyance that came from the invisible girl. So what if he ruined her fun a little? He’d rather keep his face creepy pale instead of tomato red.

‘Worst part is over, at least.’

[}-o-{]

It was time to do something other than spamming grimm for practice.

That was all well and good for dull training that would let him just… ignore things. It was a great way to just not think while his mind continued to try and torture him. However, it was also good for so long before he started feeling like he’d bore himself to death.

It was time to try something new again.

So, there he was, at the training facilities once more, with his friends and training buddies watching curiously. He wouldn’t be doing anything too crazy, too different from the usual. However, he thought it could be useful in a non-combat related manner, even if it could also be that way. More than anything, interestingly enough, the grimm was a thank you.

So, he reached for the pools of negativity and pulled on them. He extended his shadow forwards and then started letting the relentless darkness take form, but only how he wanted it to. He shaped it, slowly, following mental blueprints he’d researched plenty, like with all his creations. He knew what to do, he just needed to do the trial and error of seeing what clicked into place and what didn’t.

The creature took form, slowly but surely.

It rose, rather easily, but that was expected. It wasn’t too out there compared to other creatures he’d made before. It had four legs, strong, but, over everything, fast. There was some bone plating here and there on its fur, but it was almost a token effort, together with the rib-like protrusions on its chest. This wasn’t a grimm made to resist damage. No, it was one made to deliver damage. That was very evident, especially when it came time to make its mask.

The skull line construct started forming and it looked normal enough compared to the others… Until he reached the thing’s teeth. More specifically, until he reached the canines. They appeared and then just kept growing and growing, because that was more or less the key feature of this grimm… for others, at least. For him, it was something else, but he’d admit that it cut an imposing figure.

He wasn’t done just yet though, even if most of it was done. Getting overconfident could doom him in many aspects of his life. Creating new grimm was one of those, because at any moment he could get stuck on something like how it had happened with the King Taijitu. So, he needed to keep pushing and reforming it when it failed until it all clicked into place.

And sure enough, eventually… It happened.

“Well, can’t say you don’t look cool,” he commented walking up to the grimm as he had it move a little to test its body. Reaching it, Kazuki placed a hand on the side of its bone-white mask. “Sabyr,” he named it then, feeling it appropriate enough.

“Very cool indeed,” Mineta commented, approaching the creature then.

“You trying to one up me there with those teeth? Because my blades are better,” Kamakiri pointed out, making him chuckle.

“You know what this means, girls,” Hagakure said, from a little further away with Yaoyorozu, Jiro, Togeike and Yanagi. “Kitten grimm!” she squealed.

And she wasn’t wrong.

With the blueprint ready, Kazuki let his shadow extend, letting positive feelings wash over him. It was more difficult those days, but he was getting the hang of it. Sometimes he just found himself going through the process to make one of the baby grimm just so that he’d feel better. Inui wasn’t a fan, saying that it was forcing emotions and it would only work for so long, but the man did say that it was fine so long as he didn’t turn that into a crutch.

So, he created the Kitten Sabyr, with duller claws, shorter fangs and an overall much less menacing. He smiled down at the thing before laughing as he made the creature jump away from Hagakure. If he’d let her, the girl would have squeezed the thing half to death and never let it go… at least for a good half an hour.

“Creepy!”

“Sorry. Can’t allow that just yet,” he said, still chuckling. As he did though, he made the small, very adorable creature of darkness dash around students’ legs. Some of them followed the movement in amusement while others were annoyed. None of them mattered though.

He just focused on why he’d made the Sabyr in the first place, gratitude.

As the grimm reached its destination, Kazuki saw Midnight crouch next to it and smile down at the creature before petting it. As she did, he patted himself on the back for a job well done. She’d given him advice and support when he’d needed it, much like the other teachers. She was also the one that helped him realize what he needed the most help with, even though he'd already been thinking about it. If it weren’t for her, maybe he would have gone for a more conventional option.

Not to say that she was the only reason why he’d made the Sabyr though, even though she had given him the idea of making a feline grimm. It was a mix between that and how popular the Puppy Beowolf was as an… emotional support grimm, as it were. It was a little ironic, but he’d take a more cheerful use of the negativity that permeated his life.

Maybe between the Puppy Beowolf and the Kitten Sabyr, he’d be able to comfort some people. There was the Baby Taijutu too, he supposed, so… ‘Maybe I can focus on variety so that I can have more options to cheer up people,’ he thought, half as a joke and half seriously.

That was certainly one way to improve in his Quirk usage, he supposed.

[}-o-{]

“There are so many pretty fishes,” Hagakure mumbled with the same voice she used with anything in her Adorable Radar, as it were. The same voice Kazuki had repeatedly heard used in regards to his Baby Grimm line of creatures. “Creepy-”

“I can’t get them,” he denied before she could say it. “My tank is decent sized, and it already has enough stuff in it. I don’t want to overcrowd it.”

“But there’s space!” the invisible girl whined.

“That’s exactly it,” Mineta commented, walking beside them with his hands in his pockets. “The things need space to move around. It’s why we only picked a few things for Endo’s tank. Otherwise it’d be like if you tried to live in a bathroom your whole life. Can’t say that’d be comfortable.”

“... Great, now I feel bad,” Hagakure mumbled.

“You didn’t know and now you do. It’s fine,” Kazuki reassured with a smile, picking up the supplies he’d asked them to stop for. “And this is what I needed. We can leave now or watch the tanks for a bit longer, if you guys want,” he commented, stopping to look at one of those. The fish inside was beautiful, but it was one that grew a whole lot. He wasn’t even sure anyone had a tank that would accommodate it once it grew up. ‘Why even sell it in the first place? It’s just gonna suffer,’ he thought, pursing his lips.

Then he stiffened.

“They are very beautiful,” Yaoyorozu said, smiling at another tank herself. “I’ve been thinking-”

“The Black Rampage,” a voice cut through the conversation then and Kazuki turned his head, mechanically following the feeling of disgust that reached him. “The fuck are you doing here?” the man down the aisle hissed and Kazuki held back a sigh.

Wordlessly, he gripped the supplies he’d picked up and moved to get out of the place.

“Hey, I’m talking to you!”

“Why don’t you-?”

“Mineta, let’s just go,” Kazuki said, stopping his friend from just making the situation worse. Hell, he could even get in trouble, if he didn’t think things through. They weren’t at U.A., after all. It was better to just leave. He rather doubted the guy would follow them for very long. “This, please,” he mumbled as he reached the counter with an old man behind the counter.

With any luck, he’d just sell him the things and let them leave. Otherwise, Kazuki would just have to look for the supplies somewhere else later. It’d suck, but it would be better than getting into a pointless argument that would just make everything worse. He’d rather stay away from that negativity mess if he could help it. Nevermind that his friends were around.

“Sure thing,” the man replied calmly, casually, and Kazuki didn’t think he could be more grateful for that if he tried. “That’ll be-”

“So, you are just going to ignore me, right?” the other man asked from the side and Kazuki tensed once more. All of a sudden, he wanted nothing more than to bolt back to his apartment and do nothing but look at his aquarium. And the day had been going so well… “Just like you are ignoring what you did, isn’t it? All those people that you-”

“Dude, what the fu-?” Mineta started, clearly rearing for a fight.

“Please, I’ll ask you to calm down in my store,” the man behind the counter said, still calm but firm. To Kazuki’s surprise, he was addressing the man instead of his friend or him.

“Don’t you know who that is?”

“Kazuki Endo,” the store owner said flatly. “So, as I was saying, your total is-”

“And you are just gonna let that go? After what he did?! I knew people that lived there! I knew people that were there, injured-”

“So did I,” the store owner. “My wife was there, Aya was the most important woman in my life. So… I get that you are angry. I don’t get why you are angry at a kid that probably had less of an idea of what was happening than you did,” the man said, just the smallest amount of heat in his voice.

Kazuki, meanwhile, was frozen.

“Aya,” he mumbled, getting the man’s gray eyes to lock on him. “Aya Morino, right?” he asked, gulping and giving the man across from him a pained expression. “I’m so sorry.”

In turn, the man just looked at him for a long moment before giving him a sad smile.

“I’ve seen you come here and get your supplies for a while. I’ve heard you talk with your friends and you even asked me some questions once,” the man told him and Kazuki was struck by the fact that he never really thought about any of that. Besides checking for negativity that first day, he had just been relieved that it seemed like a safe spot for him to make purchases. “I know it wasn’t your fault, kid.”

“The fuck do you mean-?”

“I said you needed to calm down, or I’m going to have to ask you to leave, sir,” the store owner said, standing a little taller as he looked down on the other man. “Go, kid. I’ll charge you next time, yeah? I think you’d rather be anywhere but here now.”

“Thank you,” Kazuki mumbled, not knowing if to feel sad, or helpless, or angry, or frustrated. In the end, he just felt… empty, sort of, as he walked out the door. “Guys, I think I’ll call it a day now,” he said, a hand moving up to his cap and bringing it down a bit as if to hide himself. “Sorry to cut it short, but-”

“It’s fine. Dad will understand,” Jiro commented with a sad smile as she gave him a quick hug. It wasn’t much, but she wasn’t a very touchy feely person, so… It meant a lot.

“Asshole,” Mineta grumbled, looking towards the store. “You want us to accompany you home?”

“No, no, it’s fine,” he waved them off then. The last thing he wanted was to ruin their outing even more than he already had. “Have a good time for me, yeah?”

“Sure thing,” Hagakure said, but if her emotions were anything to go by, Kazuki thought she might have a hard time pulling that off. It just made him feel worse though, but he wouldn’t tell her that.

It was all his fault anyway.

[}-o-{]

“Knight, I get it, geez,” Distressed wrote to him that day. “You are going away for a bit and you won’t have time for little old me. It’s fine.”

‘When you say it like that, it reminds me of why I’m worried,’ he wrote back with a wry smile. Idly, he picked up the suitcase they gave him with his costume inside. It didn’t have any of Hatsume’s “babies” in it, since she was working on things, but it did have the addition of some gauntlets and better boots to improve his hand to hand combat. Not sure if he’d use those with Uwabami as his hero of choice, but they were giving them their whole costumes anyway.

“Oh, shut up. Don’t worry about it, man,” Distressed sent him, accompanied by an emoji rolling its eyes. “Seriously, don’t. I’m not a bad day away from doing something terrible anymore. I promise. And if nothing else, I’ll wait until you can come back and convince me I’m being an idiot.”

‘Is that a promise?’

“I promise, ok? Sheesh, man. You are not my mother, you know?” Distressed replied and Kazuki didn’t need him to send the rolling eyes to see them.

‘Could have fooled me.’

“Oh, shut up and go away already.”

‘Take care, yeah?’ he sent with a slight smile, setting the suitcase down for a bit so that he could stop struggling to write with one hand. ‘I’ll try to make time to write.’

“You take care too, Knight.”

With that conversation done, Kazuki went to another.

“I’ve been getting in contact with old… friends, if you will,” Io told him that day, which had come as a surprise. It wasn’t that they didn’t speak, they did, but that start of conversation was a little… odd. “Just to check on everyone, you know? The ones that weren’t complete assholes, at least.” Which didn’t include very many people. Juvie wasn’t what one would call a place of nice people. “Everyone loves you, man.”

‘... I get the feeling that it’s not always for the right reasons,’ he replied hesitantly.

“Granted, many of them just love that you stuck it to the heroes everywhere that you were better than their lil’ students,” his friend told him, making him sigh. “But there’s some that think like you and me, man. Hell, the crowd cheered when you won the whole Sports Festival. We all half expected you to get boo’d, you know?”

‘... Thanks for the vote of confidence.’

“Just being realistic, man. You know how it is.” He did, indeed, know how it was, but that still sucked. “We are all watching you. And even if many of them are too tsundere to admit it, we all want you to succeed, Endo. Please, succeed.”

‘No pressure, huh?’ he replied to that, but even if it was true that it was quite a lot of pressure to put on him… It was still nice to hear, somehow. Because, for the longest time, nobody had any expectations of him that weren’t bad. Nobody thought he could amount to much of anything good before Nezu appeared to take him out of the hole. So, every time he heard that someone expected something of his future was… nice. ‘I’ll try not to disappoint.’

“You literally can’t. What you did at the Sports Festival was huge, man. You couldn’t disappoint us even if you tried, because everything from here on is a bonus.”

‘Thanks, Io. I have to go now though. Take care.’

“You too, man.”

And that was that on that front, he decided as he blocked his phone and put it inside his pocket. Picking up his costume once more, he caught up with his classmates. Many of them were enthusiastically talking to each other. Everyone was excited to spend time with actual heroes and learning how to do their dream job from what were basically their idols.

He couldn’t say he wasn’t the same.

Sure, Uwabami was nowhere near his favorite hero or an aspiration for him, but she was still a pro hero all the same. He’d looked her up and she did solid work as a rescue hero and even some tracking work too, with the senses of her snake hair. If nothing else – as Midoriya theorized –, Kazuki might be able to learn how to use his grimm’s senses for stuff like that. Not that it was anywhere near the reason why he’d chosen her, but still.

The point was that she was a hero all the same, even if she wasn’t a great one.

With any luck, he’d learn from her what he needed and be able to improve his situation. If not, well, at least he’d tried. As he said, he could train and study to be better in a lot of things. Somehow, he didn’t think he could quite do that in regards to PR. He just didn’t have the people skills for that to begin with, he was sure, so it was better to go with a pro that could help him… Or so he wished.

“All ready to go?” Hagakure asked beside him, skipping a little with her suitcase held with both hands in front of her. “Because I sure am.”

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” he answered, running the fingers of his free hand through his hair.

“That’s good,” Yaoyorozu said from his other side. “And if you need any help with training or-”

“I’ll send you a message, I promise,” he finished with a chuckle. She’d been saying that ever since they commented that, since it was unlikely for him to get much of any teaching in regards to his Quirk or hero work in general, he could try to get some advice through them with their own heroes. He rather doubted he would take them up on those offers – mainly because he didn’t want to ruin their own internships by annoying their mentors –, but he’d admit it was nice of them all the same. “And hey, maybe I can get you guys some advice too.”

Nobody seemed too appreciative of that, but they didn’t feel negatively about it.

He guessed they were still looking down on his choice, but that was fine. They just couldn’t really understand what it was all about. For them, being the best, strongest hero around was all there was to it. It was more complicated than that for him, however.

“Then we should get on with it, right?” Mineta asked, walking past them.

“We sure should.”

So there they went, off to learn how to be heroes.

And they’d do it from the actual heroes themselves.

[} Chapter End {]

Hey guys! How’s it going?

A bit of friendly hang outs, a bit of training, a few phone messages and then… Off to their internships they go. This next arc makes me a little nervous, I’ll admit. I have some plans, but nothing is really set in stone, as usual. That means that it can easily be much worse than I’m imagining it to be.

Either way, I hope you enjoyed the chapter.

Discord Link: discord.gg/UTDransjJZ

Random Question: What’d you prefer, a weak power with good control or a strong power with shit control? I’d prefer the former.

See you.