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[The Fox and the Hare] Chapter 21 - Internship (2)
🕑 Added 2023-04-19 02:52:47 +0000 UTCAN: if you decided to support me and read this chapter in advance, thank you! I hope you enjoy it
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Chapter 21 - Internship (2)
Rumi's long rabbit ears were not just for show. The moment that the avalanche of things poured out of the room and buried Naruto underneath, she heard it and rushed out to see what happened. She arrived in the hallway just in time to see Naruto "swim" up to the surface.
"What the hell is this?!" he said, momentarily feeling dazed from the barrage of strong smells that had assaulted his sensitive nose.
Taking a better look around, he was rendered speechless. It was a mountain of clothes, food leftovers, dozens of bags filled with unsorted trash, pieces of broken furniture, old or defective electronics, and many other things.
Still bewildered by what he was seeing, Naruto was on autopilot as he grabbed a piece of clothing that was hanging from one of his fox ears. A deep red colour and very soft to the touch. His eyes widened a moment later when it finally dawned on him what he was holding in his hands - it was a high leg lace thong. It was the naughtiest piece of clothing he had ever seen, let alone touched.
Looking up, his blue eyes met Rumi's crimson-red ones.
"I think these are yours," Naruto said, his face flushed red at having been caught staring so intently at her underwear.
"No shit, Sherlock!" she yelled at him, her face burning too. "Didn't you see the sign?! It said 'DO NOT OPEN!' For god's sake! And for how long are you gonna keep on holding them?!"
At her yell, he quickly threw the pair of panties to the side and looked away in embarrassment.
The awkwardness that was instilled in the air was so thick and heavy that it was palpable.
'Ah, I want to die! Someone, please kill me!' Rumi cried out inwardly and buried her face in her palms, her long rabbit ears sagging down powerlessly.
She was mortified with shame. She wanted to just dig a hole somewhere and die.
The Rabbit Hero was infamous for not sticking to her "turf" like most Pro Heroes. In general, Pro Heroes and their agencies stuck to one city or prefecture (if they were big enough). But Mirko was like the wind, changing her area of operation every day. She rarely slept in the same place for more than three nights in a row. That said, due to not spending time at home often enough and due to always being busy with her hero work, trash and dirty laundry piled up in her apartment bit by bit.
When she found out that Naruto had chosen her agency and that he was going to come over, she did her best to make the entire apartment spotless, but she did not have enough time to take out all the trash too - all high-rise apartment buildings had a special room on every floor where people could take out the trash, but everything had to be sorted out in order to be recycled and compacted, and that would take a long time for the amount of stuff she had to go through. The cacophony of sounds and the bang made by a door being slammed that Naruto heard when he arrived were from Rumi shoving the last bit of trash into that room before shutting it. Her plan had been for the two of them to not spend more than two or three days in Hiroshima, so she had hoped that he would not go into that room before that.
One of her rabbit ears flinched up when she heard Naruto start making noises, and she looked at him through her fingers.
"What are you doing?" she asked a moment later, and she hated herself for how her voice quivered.
Having managed to recollect himself, Naruto's intention was to do something to ease the awkwardness between them. But when she asked him that question and he saw her face still boiling red, his embarrassment returned at full force too.
"Um, cleaning... we-... we should clean this out."
Taking her silence as an "okay", he said:
"I'll start out with the pieces of broken furniture. Maybe, ugh, maybe you could collect the more sensitive stuff in the meantime."
After Naruto left through the entrance door carrying a broken nightstand with him, Rumi slid against the wall and let herself fall on the floor powerlessly.
"There goes my good first impression."
Her intention had been to appear as the cool elder sister type, a strong and awesome person that her cute sidekick could admire and rely on, a role model for him. But all that went out the window. Now, all he got to see was the slob of a person and the unladylike woman that she was.
Three hours and a dozen elevator trips later, Naruto and Rumi finished sorting and carrying all the trash outside. By the end of it, the Rabbit Hero was drained both mentally and physically. Although it was only 9 pm, she retired to her bedroom and went to sleep.
But Naruto wasn't that tired because, normally, he would train himself to exhaustion before calling it a day. Therefore, still having gas in the tank, he went onto the balcony, and with a seemingly light jump, his body appeared to be weightless as he launched himself several meters in the air and landed on the rooftop.
For the next two hours, he did all sorts of difficult bodyweight exercises such as handstand push-ups and one-arm push-ups with a very high number of repetitions and very short rest time in between, working on further improving his endurance.
⁂
The second day of the internship came, and with it, it seemed like the Rabbit Hero had forgotten all about the previous day's embarrassment. Naruto too decided not to bring it up and paid attention to what she was telling him instead.
Both of them dressed in their hero costumes, Naruto and Mirko were now once again at the cabin she owned in the woods outside of Hiroshima City.
"You're carrying a great deal of weapons... Are you good at using them all?" she asked when she saw the contents of his suitcase.
There were dozens of kunai, metallic wires, military-grade smoke grenades and flashbangs, and on top of them all, there was a huge blade with a retractable handle - that was a new addition to his arsenal.
"Do you even know how to wield this?" Mirko said in surprise when she took a look at the weapon Naruto was holding now in his hands. He had assembled the huge blade and the retractable handle - it was an intimidating-looking polearm, a naginata with a wide and heavy blade.
"I don't have much experience with this kind of weapon, I'm way better with a bo-staff," Naruto admitted. "But I'm pretty good at learning how to wield weapons," he said and did a few very quick slashes and stabs with the polearm to demonstrate his control and dexterity with it.
"Then why aren't you using a bo-staff instead?"
Naruto hesitated a bit before saying:
"It doesn't have enough killing power."
He had half-expected Mirko to berate him for saying such words but her reply surprised him.
"Certainly, that's important. You're thinking ahead about what would happen if you encountered an enemy as durable as Nomu in the future. It's not a bad idea but there are some problems with using this polearm against a villain: first, it takes too much time for you to assemble it. You could get a normal polearm too but that would attract too much attention and it would be difficult to carry around - which brings me to the second point: you can't use it indoors."
"Well, of course, but what are the chances I'll be fighting someone as strong as Nomu in a narrow hallway?"
"Higher than you might think. Statistically, the majority of villain encounters and arrests happen indoors. Regardless, the third and most important point is this:" Mirko said and suddenly kicked at the polearm in his hands.
Not having expected her to attack him out of the blue, Naruto's instinctively used the naginata he was holding to block her attack. In the next moment, he watched in stupefaction as her kick somehow broke the large blade of the polearm into several pieces, as if it were made of glass.
"That's why you hardly see any physical-type Quirk users wield any weapons. Our strength has evolved to the point where close-range weapons have become obsolete. Even the toughest metal in the world, tungsten, wouldn't be able to handle one of my kicks.
As she was speaking, Naruto looked dumbly at the now-bladeless polearm in his hands.
"My naginata..."
"Don't worry, I can buy you another one, haha!" Mirko snickered at his lost look and ruffled his hair. In his dumbstruck state, he forgot about his annoyance at being treated like a kid.
"Then, if weapons are no good, how am I supposed to deal with something like Nomu or Mount Lady, for example?"
"You don't."
"What?!"
"As I said, you don't. There aren't many heroes that have powerful enough quirks to deal with such overwhelming opponents - and that's one of the reasons why Hero Agencies were created for, for Heroes to band together and cover for each other's weaknesses. If you don't have the means to fight against such an opponent, someone else in your team likely will."
He understood her reasoning because it was also what he had told Izuku many times before: if you're not strong enough, don't throw your life away. If possible, avoid that fight instead of dying meaninglessly. But there was one thing he was confused about:
"If that's the case, why do you not have any teammates?"
"Because I'm not a weakling," Mirko said and laughed smugly with her hands on her waist. "The Rabbit Hero is more than strong enough to stand on her own! But enough about me. I want to show you something," she said and went into the cabin.
She came back with a rather large tablet and started playing a video. It was the recording of the villains' attack on USJ.
"Your strategy with the smoke grenade, the knives and the metallic wires was amazing. You made great use of your unpredictability, martial arts, and your fox quirk's dexterity," she praised him. "But what I want to show you is this," she said, fast-forwarding the clip to the moment where Naruto's quirk awakened a second time.
At that moment, he had gained a third fox tail, his eyes had become slit and crimson red like those of a fox and his nails had transformed into claws.
"Instead of using an inconvenient and fragile weapon, why not use your natural abilities, your quirk?" she said and pointed at the way Naruto's claws had sliced Nomu's forearm clean and then stabbed through its chest and spinal cord as if its body was made of paper. "The killing power of your claws was formidable. If you had gone for the head, you could've killed Nomu in one hit."
"I've thought about it before, but I can't control my claws at will," Naruto said as he looked at his hands. "I was desperate last time. I lost my mind, my quirk's feral nature took over and I just attacked Nomu based on my instincts. Luckily, Nomu and I were the only ones close by but if there were any innocent bystanders, I don't know what I would've done."
"I see," Mirko said, putting a hand on her chin as she hummed in thought. "Have you brought your claws out since then?"
"No. I noticed my eyes becoming red when I was getting anxious or angry, but I never let myself go any further. I didn't want to endanger the ones around me."
"So you're saying that strong emotions of fear or anger seem to be the trigger... How about we test it out then?"
"And what if the fox takes over again?" Naruto said in worry.
"We're a few kilometers away from the city, so there's no one around that you could hurt. And I'm here to stop you if anything goes wrong so stop being a worrywart. Come at me with all you've got!"
At her words, it was as if a chain was suddenly snapped and Naruto's innocent blue eyes transformed into the cruel red slits of a fox. Ever since the USJ disaster, over a month ago, Naruto had been keeping himself in check, worried about his fox quirk's feral nature. It reminded him of how Kyuubi used to cloud his mind with his hatred and rage and take over his body in his past life, so he had not allowed himself the luxury of letting loose at all after his quirk's awakening.
But now, it was different. Knowing that Mirko could stop him, knowing that he had nothing to worry about, he finally let those suppressed instincts come to the surface.
The grass beneath his feet was ripped as he suddenly kicked the ground and launched himself at Mirko with such speed that a powerful gale of wind was stirred in his wake.
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A violent kick to the face sent Naruto smashing through the fence and then through two more trees before his body finally came to a stop.
"Have you come back to your senses yet?" he heard a voice say, and when he looked up, he saw the Rabbit Hero walking towards him while holding onto a bleeding gash on her right shoulder. Her arms and legs had red claw marks all over, and her white leotard suit was also ripped in several places, exposing an indecent amount of skin around her chest area.
"Oh my god, I'm so sorry!"
"There's no need for apologies!" she immediately rebuked him. "Take a look at your hands."
Despite being filled with worry regarding what he had done, he involuntarily looked at his hands as she told him to do. It wasn't just his nails that had transformed into vicious-looking claws but his hands also took on a slightly different appearance, looking bigger, stronger, and sturdier.
"What do you feel right now?" she asked. "Do you still feel anxious or angry? Do you feel afraid?"
"...No."
"If that's the case, I think that your quirk doesn't react to your emotions themselves but to adrenaline. However, fear, anxiety, anger, desperation, and other similarly powerful emotions are the easiest ways to trigger your body to produce adrenaline, so it all makes sense now. Focus on what you're feeling at the moment and memorize it."
⁂
"You were surprisingly hard to deal with," Mirko said as they left the cabin and started walking towards the city two hours later. "Your charging speed was so high, you were leaving afterimages. And you could reach your top speed instantly, with zero acceleration time. You got me a few times."
"I'm sorry."
"Stop apologizing!" Mirko said in annoyance and tried to punch him in the shoulder, but he quickly ducked away from her swing, not wanting his arm to become numb again - it wouldn't be the first time.
"I'm telling you this as praise. Leaving afterimages means that you're faster than what a regular human eye can perceive. That kind of speed by itself would render most opponents helpless. As for your claws, they're as strong as I expected. Look, you even sliced through my special alloy rabbit shoes."
As she said that, she raised her foot to his eye level to show him the tip of her large rabbit foot-like shoe being cut cleanly. Luckily, her feet were the same size as those of regular humans, so she didn't get injured.
"Are you sure you don't have to go to the hospital?" Naruto asked in worry as he took in her appearance.
"Tis' but a flesh wound," she said, and in spite of how guilty he felt, Naruto burst into laughter. "I'm serious," she said, "My rabbit quirk gives me a slightly increased healing factor. Superficial flesh wounds like these should be healed after a good night's rest. I wouldn't mind if you carried me, though," she said with a grin.
"I thought you said you were fine?"
"I am fine, but my clothes aren't! ...Where are you looking, pervert, my eyes are up here. Want me to bash your skull in?" she said half-jokingly half-threateningly when he saw how his eyes immediately dropped to her chest where her ripped leotard suit barely covered her large breasts anymore.
He quickly looked away in embarrassment.
"I-I see."
"So you did get a good look, huh?"
"I mean that I understand!" he retorted, but the red in his cheeks betrayed his thoughts, and she snickered at his reaction.
"Well then, I'll be relying on you. In the first place, it's your fault my clothes have become like this," she said, and, before he could say no, she hopped onto his back and wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck like a monkey.
For a moment, he was stunned. He had not expected her to actually do it.
"Is this really okay?" he said hesitantly. The feeling of her chest pressing against his back and her characteristic fruity scent mixed with sweat were making a certain part of his body react in a rather inappropriate way.
"I don't remember the last time someone gave me a piggyback! Go! Go!" she said and giggled happily. "But are you okay? Your heart is beating as if to jump out of your chest," she said in fake worry as if she wasn't aware of what effect her posture would have on a teenage boy like him.
"Please don't tease me, Mirko-san," he said meekly.
"Your reactions are adorable," she said with a snicker, patting the top of his head.
"Stop petting me, I'm not a dog!"
"True, you're acting more like a cat," she said scratching him lightly at the base of his fox ears, knowing full well that he had no way to get away from her now.
Grabbing onto the muscular legs squeezing his waist, Naruto broke into a light job with the rabbit woman on his back.
But while he was sweating buckets from running through the heat while also carrying her piggyback, Mirko took out her smartphone and started browsing CrossChat, the biggest social media platform in Japan.
"Say cheese," she said, and the particular click made when snapping a photo came from her phone.
"Ugh, are you gonna put that pic on CrossChat? Please don't."
"Why not?" she asked while typing a caption for the photo - "Stamina training with my first pupil."
"There are enough rumours about us flying around already, no need to give them more fuel."
"Eh, who cares? You're just a kid, and I'm waaay older than you, who would even believe such a thing?" she laughed and rubbed his head roughly.
"Well, I care!" he said in annoyance. "Imagine what my mom is going to say when she sees that pic."
"Is she following my profile too?"
"Are you kidding me? She worships the ground you walk on. She has a huge collection of 'Mirko-in-Action' figurines and dozens of other types of merchandise with your brand on them."
"Hehe, if that's the case, what if I follow her profile too? Her name was Uzumaki Kushina, wasn't it?"
"My dad is going to curse you for sure," he said with a shake of his head. "I'm just glad I won't be home this week, mom will go crazy "
It was only their second day of the internship, but the two of them had already started bickering with each other as if they were good friends, in spite of the age gap. Though Naruto did wish she stopped petting his head like a dog all the time.
A few moments after she posted that pic of the two of them on social media, Mirko was forced to turn off the notifications for the CrossChat app because it was ringing and vibrating incessantly. Less than two minutes later, that pic already had several thousand likes.
It was when the city's outskirts appeared in his line of sight that Mirko's phone rang again. It wasn't a notification from CrossChat this time.
"Hey, put me down," Mirko suddenly said, her voice carrying none of the easy-going and joking tone from before, and Naruto let go of her thighs.
Looking at Mirko who was reading something on her phone with a serious look on her face, Naruto came behind her to read over her shoulder (she was shorter than him). It was an app unfamiliar to him - it was the Hero Network App.
"It's a voice message," Mirko said before tapping the screen to play it.
"The Hero Killer attacked Pro Hero Native and a UA High student. Send help please." - the voice of a young man sounded.
"Stain attacked a UA High student? Who? What's going on?" Naruto said startled.
"I need you to give me your hoodie," Mirko suddenly said out of the blue.
"What?"
"We don't have time, every second matters! Please give me your hoodie. NOW!"
Although bewildered by her strange request, her voice was so forceful that he felt compelled to just do what she said and ask questions later. He took off the black and orange hoodie of his hero costume and gave it to her.
"Oof, it's so tight," Mirko complained as she struggled to zip up the hoodie after putting it on, all for the sake of covering her nearly exposed breasts.
Fortunately, the zipper didn't give out, and she managed, after a few moments of impatient struggle, to close it up.
"I'm going after the Hero Killer. I'm hunting down this bastard once and for all. Are you coming with me?" Mirko said, her face filled with fury and determination.
Naruto replied immediately:
"Count me in!"
"Ok. Hop on my back and hold on tight. Don't let go of me no matter what. I'm going to run at my full speed so I won't spare any energy."
Any other time, he would have been very embarrassed about letting a woman carry him piggyback at his age, but now was not the moment to worry about such trivial things. Having already experienced Mirko's extreme speed once, Naruto took her warning to heart, and upon climbing on her back, he locked his arms around her neck and his legs around her waist.
"Ready?" she asked one last time.
"Ready," he said, burying his face in the back of her neck to protect himself from the whip-like winds after her running speed broke the sound barrier.
And not a second later, a sonic boom exploded and stirred up a dense cloud of dust in the air, obscuring the Rabbit Hero's silhouette. By the time the cloud of dust dispersed, Mirko and Naruto had long since gone out of sight, the Rabbit Hero having covered several dozen kilometers in the span of a few seconds.
AN: in the manga, Mirko was said to be faster than a military jet (most military jets are supersonic). Do take that with a grain of salt, though.
