Chapter 33: The Long Way to the Mountain.

The trouble with a bubble for a head was that you couldn't take it anywhere, and Manga had four blocks to the meetup spot.

He'd left early on purpose. Six in the morning, the streets mostly empty, and he had a bag on his back and an adopted raptor named Gary zipped into the top of it with the head poking out, because Tokage would check and Tokage would know. He had the hood up.

A kid clocked him outside the shuttered convenience store.

"COMICMAN!"

That was the starting gun. It was always the starting gun. One shout was a flare, and the street, which a second ago had held one child being walked to an early morning somewhere by a yawning parent, produced two more from a doorway, then a third off a bike that got abandoned mid-roll.

He had a bus to catch. He crouched anyway, because a hero couldn’t ignore a fan, and his bubble threw up a sun.

"You're really him…" breathed the bike kid.

"I'm really him."

"DO THE THING."

He did the thing. A row of celebratory emojis scrolled across the bubble and the small crowd lost its collective mind, and somewhere a parent mouthed please at him over their kid's head, the universal parental signal for we have somewhere to be too. He got it. He had somewhere to be too. He was about to wrap it, one more wave, back on his feet, when the smallest one planted herself in front of him with the look of a child about to show something off.

"I know all of them!" she declared.

"Yeah? All of what, young lady?"

"Watch." She set her feet. "DON!" A stomp. "BAN!" A clap. "ZUDON!" A point. "PIKA-PIKA!" Jazz hands, which, fair. She was rolling now, the others gone quiet and reverent, and she hit the top of her lungs and reached for the big one, the finisher, the one everybody knew, and what came out of her was:

"GADOOM!"

Silence.

That wasn’t Dokkaan. Gadoom. She'd reached for the biggest word a hero had and her mouth had built a brand-new one on the launch pad.

He felt the other kids' faces start to turn, that fast little cruelty that lives in six-year-olds, the inhale before somebody says that's not a real one, and he watched her face begin to fall, the realization arriving behind her eyes a half second before the laughter would.

Half a beat. That was all he had. Half a beat was plenty for someone who'd built a whole self out of timing.

Dokkaan was a dangerous word that he only chose to use in the most drastic of situations. 

This kid had improved it.

"Gadoom…” Manga repeated slowly, like he was tasting something rare. His bubble lit, a burst of stars, then a tiny drawn blast, then, on purpose, a small crown over the top. "Hang on. Where'd you get that one?"

She blinked. "...I made it up?"

"You made it up." He stood, which tilted the whole crowd's heads back to follow the bubble into the air. "Listen to me. Everybody's got Dokkaan. Dokkaan's a classic, I use Dokkaan, it's great. But nobody's got Gadoom." His bubble drew an arrow pointing down at her, for theater. "I've been doing this a while. I have never heard Gadoom. That one's yours, young lady."

The fall reversed. You could watch it climb back up her face like mercury, brighter on the way up than it had been before.

"It's bigger than Dokkaan…" she tested.

"It's way bigger. Dokkaan's a building. Gadoom is, what, a whole block?"

"A WHOLE CITY!" she corrected, with the absolute authority of the inventor.

"See, you'd know. You made it." He crouched one more time, lower, conspiratorial, and the whole knot leaned in with him. "Learn all of them. The whole list. But the word nobody taught you?" He tapped her once in the center of the chest, over the engine running at full output. "That one's actually yours. Hang onto it."

She looked knighted.

"GADOOM!" she informed the street, the sky, the future, and stomped hard enough to nearly take herself off her feet, and the others caught it instantly, and then there were five of them detonating a word that hadn't existed ninety seconds ago, a brand-new sound loose in the world and never going back in.

“NO THAT’S MY WORD!” She immediately yelled.

And that was Manga’s cue to bounce. He’d leave it up to her parents to try and teach her the importance of sharing. Manga walked the rest of the way with the hood down, no longer bothering to try and hide.

Made some kids smile. That's the whole job. He thought with his chest feeling light.

…

He got to the meetup four minutes late, which was enough to cause a scandal.

“What took ya so long, dude?” Tetsutetsu asked.

"I got mobbed by six-year-olds."

"Same thing, basically," Tokage said, appearing at his elbow, a head taller than him and using every centimeter of it to look down with great satisfaction. She had her bag over one shoulder and her hair done and she'd clearly been up early too. Her eyes went straight to his backpack. "Gary better be in there."

"Gary's in here."

"Show me Gary."

"Gary is sleeping, ma’am! It’s early in the morning. Give the boy some rest."

She checked anyway, flipped the top flap, saw the little head poking out, and made a sound of deep approval. "Good daddy." She let it drop. "You're sitting with me on the bus. Don’t even think about sitting next to anyone else."

"I’m sorry to anybody who wanted to sit next to me." Manga apologized. He guessed everyone else had to suffer. His girlfriend wanted him next to her no matter what.

"What? Are you saying you don’t want to sit next to your girlfriend?" Tokage narrowed her eyes.

“Uhh. I don’t believe those words came out of my mouth. Did they, Gary?” Manga asked.

Inside his bubble, a comic-drawn Gary was saying, Daddy did not say that at all.

Tokage burst out laughing as she punched him lovingly. “If this hero gig doesn’t work out, you’ll make a killing as a comedian.”

“How’d you know my backup plan?” Manga questioned as if his deep darkest secret was found out.

Tokage laughed even harder as they made their way over to the others.

The two buses idled at the curb, one for each class. Vlad King stood by the door of theirs with a clipboard with a look that said he did not manage to drink his morning coffe.

And Class A was loading the other bus, which is where the trouble found them, because Monoma had a clear line of sight to it.

"What?!" Monoma said loudly. He'd caught some thread of conversation off the other bus, something about a couple of 1-A students doing makeup work over the break. "Some of you are getting extra lessons? Over summer?" His whole face was already gone, lit with the particular joy that only Class A's misfortune could produce in him. "Hahhhh?! That means some of you failed?! How weird is that?! How strange! I GUESS CLASS B TRULY IS THE SUPERIOR CLASS! WOW! WHO COULD HAVE EVER PREDICTED IT!? WOW!" He burst out laughing.

Kendo's hand came across in a clean arc and her palm caught him at the side of the neck, and Monoma folded up mid-cackle and knocked out cold before he hit the asphalt.

"Sorry." Kendo politely said, to the general direction of Class A, as she dragged him away.

"You're scary, Monoma." Yanagi said in a deadpan tone.

"The rest of us don't have beef with you, Class A." Tokage waved with a grin. 

And she meant it, mostly, because, why would they. Class B had taken the Sports Festival overall. She'd put most of that other bus on the ground herself and not break a sweat, given the mornings she'd spent in a gym most of them couldn't have stood up in.

"...Mm." Kodai added.

"ON THE BUS!" Vlad King tiredly ordered. "All of you."

Kendo dragged Monoma on the bus. She was responsible for knocking him out, the least she was expected to do was drag him on the bus.

…

The thing about Class 1-B on a bus was that there were twenty teenagers that had been given a confined space and a destination one hour away, and were determined to use every minute of it.

"Okay, okay, road trip rules," Awase was saying, already half-standing in the aisle with the authority of a man who had appointed himself to a position that did not exist. "Everybody picks one snack to share. One. We pool 'em. Communal snack situation. It builds class unity."

"That's the worst idea you've ever had," Kaibara said from across the aisle, not looking up. "And I’m not sharing my snacks that I bought."

"It builds CLASS UNITY, Kaibara."

"It builds a bag of everyone's worst snack. I've seen what Bondo eats."

"...I eat fine…" Bondo defended himself.

"You eat those dried sardine things, dude." Kaibara said.

"...They're nutritious." His parents told him so.

"They smell like a crime, Bondo!"

"Communal snack situation is happening." Awase declared, and started collecting, working the aisle like a flight attendant, and the remarkable thing was that it did, in fact, start happening, because that was the other thing about 1-B, a bad idea proposed loudly enough became a class activity through pure momentum.

Three rows back, Pony had her face pressed to the window and was narrating the entire prefecture in real time.

"A cow!" she announced. "Two cow. Oh my gosh, a truck of cows, where are they taking all those cows, are they okay-" She gasped. "A BIG cow."

"That's a normal cow, Pony," Shoda said gently from beside her.

"It's a BIG one though." She looked around. "Is everyone seeing the big cow?"

"I see the big cow," Honenuki confirmed dryly from somewhere that could not possibly see the cow.

Komori had her knees pulled up in her seat and a small zine open across them, something idol-related, glossy and folded soft from being read too many times, and she was showing Yanagi a page with the hushed reverence of sharing scripture. "Okay but this one. This is the concept I'd give you. If I debuted. The horror-idol thing, the whole stage goes dark and then-"

"I’m flattered but not suited to be an idol." Yanagi told her.

"You'd be amazing as a horror-idol, Yanagi, you’re so pretty!"

"I’m not idol pretty."

"You totally are!"

“I will haunt you, Komori-chan...”

Up front, Vlad King had a hand over his eyes.

"Sensei." Tetsutetsu, leaning over the back of his seat, earnest as a dog. "Sensei. Is there a vending machine at camp?"

"It's a mountain, Tetsutetsu."

"Mountains can have vending machines."

"It's a mountain in the wilderness, boy."

"...So that's a maybe?"

"...." Vlad stopped responding.

"He didn't say no!" Tetsutetsu reported back to Kamakiri, settling into his seat as a victor. "He didn't technically say no."

"It’s a freaking no, Tin Head." Kamakiri said. He had his arms crossed and his head against the window.

"He said it like a maybe, though."

Manga sat with a lizard girl that was all up in his personal space and a stuffed raptor wedged between them.

"You really can’t hide your emotions, can you?" Tokage smiled. She hugged him tighter, ignoring the stares and little comments from those around them. “I like that.” She whispered into where she thought his ear would be.

His bubble, which had been entirely red for a majority of the ride, showed his thoughts.

VERY CLOSE! I LIKE IT BUT THIS IS SUPER EMBARASSING IN FRONT OF ALL OF OUR FRIENDS!

"You don’t have to be embarrassed," She ran a finger down his bubble. "This is very normal for couples."

"EXCESSIVE PDA IS NOT NORMAL NOR IS IT ALLOWED!" Kendo whistled as she politely ordered Yanagi to split them up with her quirk. 

“Mind your own business, Pres! I was just trying to love on my man! What’s the big deal, hah?!” Tokage turned to Kendo with a delinquent glare.

“The big deal is that you’re doing it in front of everyone else excessively! You were already pushing it by sitting next to each other. But actual displays of PDA?! No way, Tokage!” 

Tokage’s sharp teeth showed as she yelled back. Yanagi’s quirk lifting her closer toward the window while Manga was pushed to the edge of his seat. Manga rubbed the back of his head embarrassed. Tokage crossed her arms and gave in for now, still glaring at Kendo.

“Fukidashi! You don’t have to play along with everything she does, you know? Stand up for yourself.” Kendo lectured him as well.

But I actually like it? Why would I stop her? His head outed his true thoughts.

“Fukidashi!!!” 

“I’m sorry! Okay! I’ll try and not let it get out of hand next time! Even if I like it!” Manga threw his hands up, surrendering.

“Good. If it happens again, I’m coming back there with the both of you and we’ll all be uncomfortable.”

“...CoMiNg BaCk ThErE…” Tokage mocked Kendo’s words in an annoying voice.

“Real mature, lizard girl.” Kendo finally stopped staring at the two as the entire bus erupted in laughter at them.

Kuroiro, who had taken the darkest available seat in the back corner spoke about what he read online.

"The mountain we travel to," he intoned, to no one, "is said to be haunted."

"Cool, Kuroiro," Awase said, passing with the snack bag.

"I only mention it."

"Real cool. Snack?"

Kuroiro took a snack.

Shiozaki had her hands folded and her eyes closed two seats up, not asleep, just praying. Rin, beside her, was enjoying something on his phone. Shishida read an actual book, hardcover, his lower canines just visible over the top of it, perfectly content, occasionally turning a page and murmuring something.

And it went like that, the whole hour, the snack bag making its slow communal rounds and getting worse with every contribution, Pony providing color commentary on everything she saw out the window and could name in Japanese, Tetsutetsu being fired up about the camp activities, Monoma waking up around the forty-minute mark with no memory of the parking lot and immediately starting socializing with the others to catch up on what he missed. Twenty kids who liked each other to varying extents, loud in a moving vehicle, going somewhere none of them had been.

Vlad King rested his eyes for most of the trip, not even telling them to be quiet once. He just sat enjoying his trip with his kids.

…

The bus stopped one hour in.

This wasn’t a rest stop. There was a guardrail, and a gravel shoulder, and a view that punched the air out of the whole bus at once, because they were up now, somewhere in the folds of the mountains, and the world fell away from the road in a green tumble down to a valley floor a very long way down, and ranged across the far side of all that empty air was a mountain.

"Time for a break," Vlad King said, standing, stretching his back. "Bathrooms, stretch your legs, ten minutes."

They filed out, blinking in the high clean light, the air cooler up here and thinner and smelling of pine and stone, the chatter coming back in scattered pieces.

“Where are we?”

“It's so high up.” 

“Tsuburaba you good? You look antsy.“

“Gotta pee.”

"Sensei," Kendo said, doing her automatic headcount, "where's Class A? Who are they?"

"They…" Vlad King said, and pointed.

Two figures stood at the guardrail a little way down, where they had clearly been waiting a while. One was a wall of muscle in a costume that left most of it bare, arms crossed, stance planted. The other was bouncing up on her toes, a smaller figure in a cat-eared headpiece practically vibrating.

“Hmm? Heroes?”

“That’s Ragdoll and Tiger!” Komori pointed out.

The bouncing one couldn't hold it any longer. She sprang up onto the guardrail itself, balanced there with both arms flung wide, and the cat ears and the tail and the whole costume suddenly made a horrible kind of sense.

"WELCOME!" she sang out, "to the WILD! WILD!"-

The big one struck the pose anyway, because some bits you commit to as a team or not at all.

-"PUSSYCATS!"

A silence.

"...There's only two of them." Awase pointed out.

"Half of us are with the other bus!" the bouncing one said, undeterred, hopping down off the rail and landing in front of them, and now they could see she was older than the costume read from a distance, late twenties at least. "I'm Ragdoll! That's Tiger! We've got the whole back half of this trip, lucky you! And before anybody asks-" she pointed at her own grinning face "-we're eighteen at heart!"

"You are visibly not." Kamikari pointed out.

"EIGHTEEN," she said, "AT HEART!" and beamed at him until he looked away.

Tiger looked them over, twenty teenagers blinking in the sun in their travel clothes.

"Your lodging's down there. The facility. Foot of that mountain, across the valley."

Everyone looked where he pointed. Everyone looked at the mountain, which was very far away, across an amount of empty air that did not contain a road.

"...That one?" Pony said, in a small voice. "The far one?"

"That one."

"That's, like-" she did some American math, lost it, started over "-that's like so far."

"On foot," Tiger said. "Three hours. If you hurry."

The bus was sitting right there. Everyone, in perfect silent unison, looked at the bus.

"Bus only comes this far," Ragdoll said, cheerful as a knife. "Road ends here! The rest is ours." She spread her arms at the whole green falling-away world, the valley, the forest furring the slopes of it dark and dense and deep. "This whole area, all of it, everything you can see, it's our private territory. So!" The grin got wider, and somewhere under the bounce was a steel that had been there the whole time. "Feel free to use your quirks however you want. You're gonna need to."

"Wait," said Tsuburaba, who was already not having a good morning. "Need to for what?"

Vlad King, behind them, had sighed.

"You've got three hours to reach the facility on foot," Tiger told them before they heard something from their sensei and Kendo's instinct fired a half second before anyone else's-

"Everyone get ready!"

"Sorry, kids," Vlad said apologetically.

A tidal wave of blood released from Vlad, sending them all down the mountain.

"Make it through," Ragdoll called, and there was nothing cute in it now, just the bright hard joy of a teacher who loved this part, "the BEAST'S FOREST!"

Class 1-B screamed as they fell down the mountain.

“Don’t embarrass me, kids!” Vlad shouted.

“TRAITOR!!!” Class B screamed.