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Post by Deleted on Oct 4, 2018 21:47:37 GMT -4
As his classmate charged, Alex was taking slow steps backwards to get every inch of distance between them as he could managed while maintaining the focus on his shadow constructs. Theoretically, he would even be able to jog backwards… but in practice, the risk of doing so and tripping over something or even himself while he had his full attention on the constructs made such an action undesirable. It was a gap in his ability to use his quirk, but one that didn’t seem to matter in this fight. He was now pretty confident in the assumption that Yumi simply could not for some reason use her area of effect ability. Whether it was due to the limitations of the suit, which would kind of make sense or from some sort of misgiving about using it didn’t really matter in the moment. The fact was, she wasn’t using it for whatever reason so the plan went without a hitch.
He was making sure no bolts were hitting him due to the constant fucking around with the girl’s ability to actually aim her bolts of lightning. When the attack on Yumi’s visor hit and blinded her, the delinquent dialed back the assault and began to move his shadows back a bit to coalesce together and move in for the final pin. Yumi had managed to jump over an attack just prior, but since that dodge let to the blinding the delinquent considered it a big win for him because it would be extremely hard for the girl to pull off an accurate shot blind. He took his eyes of Yumi for a second to try and predict the trajectory shift with her now slipping into that slippery ground and even stopped stepping back to fully concentrate on his next attack because it would likely end the match.
When his red eyes went back to Yumi, he noticed her gloves falling to the ground but launched his attack anyway. It was a full force pillar of shadow that was aimed to pin Yumi to the ground and end the match, but the President of the class had other plans. Whether it was reactive or not, Yumi’s quirk surged through to heights that Alex hadn’t seen before and not only destroyed the gunk on her face but also smashed the pillar in front of her just inches away from the point where it would have slammed against her at full force. The shadow construct in front of her initially prevented the originating shadows from behind her from breaking down, so the construct at the full strength of stone was shattered first.
Due to the makeup of how the delinquent had used his shadows, however, the light generated from the area of effect lightning had almost entirely wiped out his defensive shadows. The instant he saw the light coming through his attack, the American jumped backwards and brought up what little shadow he could as a barrier… but he was still in range of the attack. When the shadows cleared, he saw that Yumi was out of her suit – it was extremely likely she had some sort of button or other trigger on it for situations just like this... Clever. It was a sort of special ability that let her surprise her opponent in an instant and steal some wins with it, like she likely would with this one.
The experience of so much electricity coursing through your body was not exactly the most pleasant thing in the world. Joints locked up, which forced the delinquent into a kneeling position as he felt his muscles convulse without any ability to do anything about it except sit there and try not to fall over from those muscle convulsions. It took all of his effort to stay upright and not fall over to the side, oh and not to mention that the light or the lightning destroyed every single bit of shadow that he had ripped before. He had tried to blindly rip some for some sort of other barrier to use right before the lightning hit him… but any shadows that he was in range to rip were too far away to be of much use and he lost control of any matter he ripped anyway once the lightning actually hit him and his focus was completely rocked due to the immense pain that was part of the whole ‘being struck by lightning experience’. He had not been hit the full impact of the blast since his construct had to be chewed through first, but that absolutely did not mean that he was in any way able to ignore the portion of the attack that did get through.
Five seconds until the searing pain stopped coursing through his body and he let out that first gasp of pain after the fact, with the initial shock expelling all the air that he had in his lungs initially quite handily.
Ten seconds until he became physically aware of how hard he had clenched the ground and the soil in his hands as a result of trying desperately to stay upright on arms and legs that were still visibly shaking.
Fifteen seconds until he managed to stand up, red eyes staring out defiantly towards his classmate as he visibly ripped shadows nearby with the full intent of continuing the fight.
Twenty seconds until he fell to a kneeling position again due to the continued muscle convulsions across his body and a visible percentage of those shadows dissipated due to the immense trouble the delinquent was having in concentrating.
Twenty five seconds until the American was back on his feet, with visible shadows anchoring his feet down on the ground to prevent him from falling over again.
”Looks like you win round one.” he conceded, visibly wobbling a bit backwards with the only thing keeping him upright at the moment being the shadows tethered to his feet and ankles on the ground. ”Clever trick, you caught me by surprise. But I hope you know – a trick like that only works once.” he continued, his tone neutral but clear. Despite losing, though, the delinquent had the biggest grin plastered across his face. ”I didn’t realize you were so good, though. Maybe we really are the strongest class.”
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Post by Yumi Tasukai on Oct 6, 2018 10:38:34 GMT -4
Panting hard, her suit often helping her build up a thick layer of sweat under it’s tight fabric, she rested on her knees, the shadows around her vaporized by the looks of things, and a heavily dazed look in her eyes as she tried to catch her breath. Once again she’d had to rely on her big kamikaze option to win a fight and she felt defeated because of it. Sure, ultimately she’d won, but she didn’t feel too good about it. Valda was really right, she needed to work on her suit and her own control if she really wanted to progress and stop relying on this hail mary of an attack…
Her dazed eyes looked over to Alex, wondering how he was enduring the sensation of her electrical powers. Even one time when she had been electrocuted she understood the sensation was heavily numbed in her own body. She wasn’t immune to it, but she’d never experience the damage her own output could do on others, even if a true lightning bolt struck her. So, watching his muscles tighten and his body convulse, she couldn’t relate, and empathizing was hard, she could only hope it didn’t hurt so much that she might get another lecture for how she utilized her quirk.
Luckily it seemed that wouldn’t be the case.
She’d managed to catch her breath by the time he got back up too, pushing herself slowly to her feet and hooking the shoulders of her suit back up onto herself, the suit still hanging open and adding to the exhausted look on her, her ponytail a mess from how rapidly it had been flicking up and down behind her from the electrical surge running through it like a live wire.
“W-we’ll call it a draw…what with the kamikaze attack…” The same terms she’d told Jaz when it came to their fight. It didn’t seem fair for her to claim the win when it was so clear that, where this a real fight, she would have lost right away the moment Alex got back to his feet unless she could get her own energy back pretty soon. Sure they were both disabled by her attack, but she always felt so exhausted after a full discharge she didn’t fancy her odds. “Noted though, I’ll have to make sure I can beat you properly…heh…I still need to see Darren in a fight before I can agree though”
WC 406
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Post by Deleted on Oct 6, 2018 16:19:31 GMT -4
Just because the searing pain from the electricity stopped being active did not mean that full function had returned. There was a very good reason why he was standing completely still, and that reason was that he knew if he would try to move there was a nonzero chance that he would just fall over due to not having full control of his body yet. His quirk was holding him up, but not much else. His pre-existing rib injury was burning like hell right now, and it was pretty likely he would have to go back to the medical tent if he ended up coughing up any blood due to this. That was what they told him, come back if you cough up any blood because that meant that a lung or some other internal organ was actually punctured by the fucked up rib. Thankfully, for now at least, there didn’t appear to be any blood coming out of his mouth. He did a spit just to make sure, but didn’t notice any red.
When Yumi said they might as call it a draw, the delinquent wasted no time agreeing. ”A draw it is, then. Looks like both of us were unable to continue for a bit after, and if this happens again when the stakes are a bit higher we’ll find out who recovers first.” he commented, his tone oddly detached as he struggled to distract himself from the pain he was experiencing at the moment. The grin on his face didn’t disappear, though. He was improving, and he was doing it rapidly. At the beginning of his time at U.A., there would be no way he would have lasted ten seconds against Yumi due to the devastating power of her quirk and his own inability to use his own quirk in any capacity resembling usefulness. The wide grin faded away to more of a satisfied grin as he was lost in his own thoughts for a moment.
Now, though, he was good enough to last an incredibly long time against other students who were absolutely phenomenal. Sometimes he ended up outlasting the capacity of the other to use their quirk, like his bout with Tetsuko. She was good, better than him in every respect except for stamina, but he managed to just barely survive with only some cracked ribs until she reached the limit of her quirk. Against Yumi, her quirk was stronger than his but predictable due to its very nature. Once the boots were taken out of the equation she was very capable of being shut down and forced to unleash her indiscriminate attack – which he now knew could be done with a quick suit release and would be prepared with some sort of plan to stop it next time. Whether he would have won if the fight continued was irrelevant, because the very fact that he was able to last long enough to force her to disable both of their abilities to fight meant that he had improved to a level that could match someone with even an absurdly powerful quirk like hers.
Once she got more control, the light from her quirk would probably cause her to be an unwinnable matchup the same way that any fight against Jasmine would be for the delinquent – but in the now he had just fought her to a draw. When Yumi had admitted she hadn’t seen Darren in a fight yet, the American looked visibly confused. The guy fought more than Alex did – maybe not in this military festival thing, but definitely in general and for a much longer time frame with and against other students. The American had not managed to win a single bout yet, but he was learning how to absorb blows quite well and improving his reaction time and speed with his quirk. Fighting against Darren so much was the entire reason he was so successful in spars against the soldiers here – because compared to Darren, everyone seemed to be moving in slow motion with their physical attacks and it was much easier for Alex to block an attack from a quirkless. Despite his outward contempt for the need for any form of close quarters combat training, he was unconsciously picking up enough to get by and help maintain the distance he so relied on for his fighting style to work.
”I’m sure if you’ll find him around he’d have no trouble sparring with you.” the boy responded, flexing both hands over and over largely unconsciously as full feeling started to return to his limbs. ”Dude is obsessed with the idea of beating Jaz, though, so he may be focused on that a bit much right now.” he paused, his grin widening once again as the detachment in his voice went away and was replaced with his usual cockiness. ”I’m not too worried about that, though, because as long as one of you can do it we’re just fine for when the classes inevitably fight each other. As long as I get to beat Rin, y’all can have the rest of 1-A entirely for as much as I care.”
”The challenge we have now, though, is bringing up the rest of the class so they can do this sort of shit too.” he continued, the grin now completely gone and his tone much more personal and serious. ”1-A has their heavy hitters. Rin, Jaz, and if we’re being a little generous Maxi. 1-B has their heavy hitters, too. Tetsuko, Lani, Nyke. Neither of them are top to bottom good, though, and to my knowledge there is no complete effort into lifting up the rest of the class from either of them. The truth of the matter is, I don’t want to just beat Rin. I want to show that I can help create a system and support my class better than she can support hers. To prove that, the least combat effective member of 1-C needs to be leagues better than the least combat effective member of 1-A, and I think we can do that if you help me.”
”We have a good spread for actually improving people. You and I are ranged emitters, and can take on people like Eli or Melody and help them refine their quirks and their own stamina to get better. Darren is a fantastic martial artist, but is also a huge jerk like I am. There are some people who won’t respond well to us or our style of teaching, so we need alternatives. You’re as good or better than me, so that works out well for ranged emitters. Risaka or Akane come to mind for hand to hand people, but Risaka is about as anti-social as they come and Akane is shy as hell and I’m not sure she’d go for teaching people. Someone like Naoru has the personality, but I still have no idea what his quirk actually does so I don’t know where he’d fit in. We have a bunch of students who could be fucking amazing if they were more complete – y’know? Like Kutsu, his quirk is amazing but he falters under pressure. If he could learn to not panic and actually be pushed to his limits, he could be in the next top ten rankings easily. His control and power are both there, he just lacks mentally what he needs. We also have people like Akio who have the guts and the mental to be a good hero, but lack the power or the control in their quirk to do it. If we came up with a way to mix people who could actually help each other out, we could all improve so instead of having like three or four heavy hitters like the rest of the classes, we have ten or fifteen.”
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Post by Yumi Tasukai on Oct 9, 2018 4:41:30 GMT -4
Glad to hear they could admit it was a draw, Yumi rested her hands on her knees, just taking a moment to catch her breath before her eyes flickered over to the soldiers who’d been recording matches between quirk users, sighing softly and straightening out her back with a groan as she gestured for Alex to follow her, the look on the soldiers faces making it clear they were thankful for how much info they recorded to work with, but needed Alex and Yumi to move on now as other quirkers could use the same area to fight eachother. Yumi made sure he was following even as he continued to talk, picking up her satchel in the locker room she’d used to get changed into her hero suit, rummaging about for a towel and idly starting to wipe the sweat off her body as he spoke. “Yeah, a draw. But we’ll see about having a rematch sometime, I doubt it’ll be long before they’re testing us like that more and more often in school, so us battling and comparing might become a bit more common than we might think.” She offered a soft smile at that, not wanting him to feel like that was a bad thing in her eyes given she’d recently dedicated herself to possibly being a hero rather than dropping out once she had control of her quirk. Though, she did still need to decide what kind of hero she wanted to be, rather than letting the nature of her quirk decide for her…
As she continued to dry the sweat off her body, she listened to him talk about how Darren wouldn’t be hard to convince to spar with her and scoffed a little. “I dunno, I mean sure he’s a hot head but our fighting styles don’t make for interesting combat. Either he gets in close and wrecks me or I take him out before he even gets close, either way its not much of an interesting fight if it’s a one sided curbstomp.” She gave a light shrug and listened to him continue about beating Jaz, her brow furrowing as she continued to listen. What was this obsession with beating the 1A members? Yumi just did not get it no matter how much she tried to understand. There was this unspoken rivalry that was getting louder and louder to the point it was weirdly getting under her skin a little, and once she was done drying her upper half she just crossed her arms and listened to him go on about how they needed basically, counters, for 1A. Not only that but Yumi felt a little tossed aside with his talk about beating Rin, a class prez, as a VP. Did she just not matter in this little equation or what? She wouldn’t make too big a fuss of it but she did feel kinda useless in this equation, and acted as little more than battle fodder in the way Alex was wording himself, leading the red head to let out a low sigh as she just listened to him go along with what he was saying till she had the chance to speak.
“Look I’m all for empowering our fellow students but I’m not on board with this weird rivalry you have going on with 1A and specifically Rin. I’ve never met the girl, and I get there’s a sort of ‘topple the queen’ vibe going about since she got labelled the top student, but I really just don’t get it. Have your goals by all means I’m just not gonna share them. I wanna make sure as much as you do that our class improves, and like you said, that everyone in it feels complete. Like, unleashes their full potential, all that stuff, but I’m not for this weird little vendetta you seem to have against 1A specifically. I mean…” She sighed and worked out of the legs of her hero suit as she idly spoke, sitting down and running her towel along her legs as she continued to speak with him.
“Look seriously if this is how you motivate yourself, fine, but wouldn’t it be better if we worked alongside 1A to all be better heroes? Isn’t that why we’re here? I mean…I guess I’m not one to talk, I never originally came here for that, but I’m here now and its why I stay here, so I don’t wanna think this is becoming some back and forth of top dogs rather than a school where we’re all learning to help people? I mean, maybe we could beat Rin or Jaz or whatever and have some better fighters, and we could keep improving, but then…we leave a whole class of students behind to become second rate heroes while we just focus on ourselves? Doesn’t seem like the nicest plan…”
She let out a soft sigh through her nose, resting her towel over her lap and offering a weak smile. “Look I…I don’t personally have bad experiences with 1A. I only know a few of them, Jaz is absolutely wonderful to me and she’s so energetic. She helped me conquer my fear of getting in the water at the beach just by being silly and spontaneous with me. Maxi can be…a little self defeating, but he’s a good guy and when he lets himself, he can be so happy and vitalizing. He just needs a push, some motivation. Heh.” She rolled her eyes, and jokingly added. “Heck if you wanted a man on the inside in 1A, just make sure he feels appreciated and you probably have one…as for Rin, I never met the girl (At the time of this thread) So I really can’t say anything at all, but she seems…nice? I havn’t had any experience of her, but I also havn’t had any negative experiences by extension, so I can’t really say if this rivalry is worth it…”
She took a slow breath and focused her thoughts into a single question.
“Bottom line I guess…I just wanna know what this weird obsession is?”
WC 1013
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Post by Deleted on Oct 9, 2018 14:19:35 GMT -4
Oh, right. The whole moving off the arena and not having a long winded conversation in a publicly used space. That was a thing, and he was glad that at least Yumi remembered because the delinquent sure as hell didn’t. Alex didn’t verbally respond to the point where sparring would likely become more common, just offering a nod in response. When the topic of Darren came up, though, the brunette did have a comment.
”I dunno, it could be a little more varied than that. I haven’t won against him yet, but the spars against the soldiers here were much easier than they’d be otherwise because I got so used to reacting to someone going that fast that it’s almost like everyone else moves in slow motion now – or at least slow enough for me to react much sooner than before. You’ll get really good at that as well as aiming, I figure.” he noted, being more than willing to play up the benefits of something like that in the interest of getting Yumi as good as possible in her technique. With a quirk like hers, the only limit was really her own work ethic and that concept was really exciting.
When the subject turned to 1-A, red eyes looked at the girl in front of him for the first time in pure bafflement, as if he could not comprehend how she didn’t understand where he was coming from, almost like he was offended. ”I don’t want ‘a man inside 1A’. That’s not how I’m going to win this, that’s dishonorable bullshit that I won’t take any part in. Win or lose, I’m doing so fairly and without any weird shit that would taint my victory.” he started, first wanting to make that point clear. He had several experiences with members from 1-A, but at no point did he ever ask for dirt and spying because that was underhanded and not the way he liked to do things. He didn’t really care if the other side did the whole spying thing, that just showed how pathetic and desperate they were if they were ever caught.
”She started this war the day the rankings were released. I don’t know if you were in chat at the time, but immediately upon seeing she was number one she started the trash talk downwards about she didn’t even need to try or put in any effort to be better than everyone else. She also made a point to taunt about how there were two students of both classes before the first one of ours.” he explained, the bitterness clear in his voice. ”When I said I was gunning for her spot in response, she openly mocked me and made it pretty clear that she thought I had hit my peak. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but a lot of people say my ego is pretty big. And the best way to motivate someone like me is for someone who’s ego is even bigger to laugh at them and call them worse than you right out in public to humiliate you. When I scratch and claw my way up, she’ll look like a goddamned idiot and have no one to blame but herself.” the contempt in his voice was absolutely and utterly clear at that last bit.
”So, number one’s the goal, but if anyone beats me for it… it sure as hell won’t be Rin. If I invited 1-A to this experiment, she would climb up and do her best to take all the credit for herself. She would loudly talk about how shittily it is run, and do her best to make sure people either lose interest or I lose any control. I don’t really give a damn about Jaz, that’s the girl that Darren’s obsessed with. I don’t give a damn about Maxi or Kanna or anyone else in 1-A in this context either, I just want to make sure that Rin doesn’t get a chance to sabotage this before it gets off the ground. And you know what? Maybe I do run this badly. Maybe I can’t lead something like this and I am incapable – but it sure as hell won’t be that smug bitch that’s going to take the reins if that’s the case… ready to start a big uproar and take all the credit for something she had fucking zero part in.” There is was again. The rage that bubbled up momentarily in the last few sentences. The feeling of indignation at the humiliation that the evil Rin had inflicted upon him, an innocent party as well as the rest of the school by extension insofar as insinuating that the glorious President of 1-A working at 30% of her maximum was far and away better than the rest of the school’s worthless trash at 100%. Just the thought of that ego was enough to make his blood boil.
”Which is why I can’t let 1-A in. It’s going to be an extracurricular activity, and it looks like so far I’m doing almost all of the building and groundwork. All the sets will be made by me, all supply runs and all the construction and all of the setting up of the different scenarios. The school has thus far offered zero help, and if they end up providing none the supplies will have to be funded by the community as well. That’s a lot of convincing and that’s a lot of effort. I am not going to have someone who openly told everyone how worthless I was swoop in and claim credit and have her fucking worshippers praise her for doing something that I did. If she wants to do something about it, she can copy the idea and run it for her own class, which I’m expecting. That’s why I got the other classes involved so early, so that she can’t go around lying about she’s the one who did it first.” The rage continued for a bit, with hand gestures becoming more wild and agitated for the duration of this segment before the delinquent was able to force himself into a state of at least normal agitation rather than outright fury.
”To prove her completely and completely wrong, I need to do two things: I need to prove I’m a better fighter than her and I need to prove I’m a better class rep than her who does more for both my class and the school. If she wants to brag about how lazy she can be while still being number one, that’s fine. If and when I can get 1-C to buy into this, you will get all of the praise for the class improvement. That’s fine, I don’t care. The idea itself and the club, though, will be mine and I’m going to do everything I can to make it work. If 1-C ends up being the best class at the end, great. But the President and homeroom teacher gets credit for that, that’s not something I can claim. Since I need something I can claim, I thought of a way to go around that system and benefit most of the school. Once I do something that proves my worth and show that I can be useful, sure. 1-A can come in. At the start of the next year or whatever, once I prove my point I don’t give a shit if they come in and we can invite them alongside the next year of students at the same time. The second I beat Rin in the rankings, I’ve proven her wrong in front of the whole school and then move onto my next goal.” As he continued to talk, the anger shifted away more and more and was replaced with this dogged determination now that he had clearly stated his goals and what he needed to do once more to achieve them. What the rankings came down to, in his mind, was verifiable achievements moving forward and little stars that you could put next to your name. Right now, Alex had absolutely fucking zero of those and was keenly aware of that fact. He needed some if he was going to maintain his position, let alone retake someone who seemingly had half of the faculty in her pocket ready to sing her praises like mindless drones.
A grin started to pull at the edges of his mouth as he was dangerously close to becoming self-aware at how insane this sounded after the entire previous rant about how he must uphold his honor and prove the evil Rin wrong by doing these great achievements to prove how better than her the delinquent was. Thankfully, self-awareness was not a trait that was very active in the mind of young Alex and he went on undeterred as if his next goal was at the same tier of improbability and prestige as wishing to be Emperor of the Universe or something. It was clear from his tone that he definitely held the positions at the same tier, anyway. ”After I beat Rin, the next goal is getting good enough to be Darkshine’s sidekick by the time we graduate.” As if the gap between #1 student and someone worthy of being Darkshine’s sidekick was this unfathomably large gap that would take years of hero training to overcome… mostly because in Alex’s mind it was.
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Post by Yumi Tasukai on Oct 10, 2018 15:00:42 GMT -4
Yumi leaned back on her hands as she listened to him explain his hate for Rin and his rivalry with 1 A, but Yumi wasn’t too sure it sounded…true? Like maybe he perceived it as such, he didn’t seem like someone who’d bend the truth for personal gain, but Rin…she didn’t know what exactly it was, but as good as her intentions could seem in the brief experiences she had with her in the UA universal chat, she seemed almost…timid? Yeah that’s the kinda vibe Yumi got out of their brief experiences of one another. Rin spoke like she was timid. Maybe that was not the case but it was just the impression Yumi got, so thinking of her as this snobbish girl who looked down on everyone else…no, Yumi couldn’t possibly read such words the same way. She’d have to remember to read the backlog in the universal chat to see if she could agree with Alex’s take on it, but already she very much doubted it. Her eyes narrowed the more she listened, wondering if her world view was just that far off, or if Alex perhaps was the one who had the off world view with all this stuff…
She wasn’t bold enough to stop him with questioning however, and just grew a little nervous as she continued to listen, shifting to resting her elbows on her knees and looking up at him from the changing room bench that she was sitting on. Alex’s obsession with being number one wasn’t something that was unfamiliar, heck even Yumi felt empowered by even being on the scoring list, so it’d be nice if the next time she could show some progression by getting further up the list. She smiled a little weakly at the brief moment she could relate to it, but still, tackling the issue with such ferocity just wasn’t her style. It also just felt…unfair, to literally allow everyone else to join them except 1 A? Okay this part she was brave enough to speak on, wincing a little before summoning the bravado to speak up. “Look I can…I can get you wanna make it to the top and 1 A might get in the way of that if we let them train with us, but like…why invite 1 B and even the support classes potentially? It almost feels like we’re ganging up on 1A just because they have the top student. Why make all her classmates suffer just because Rin, and maybe even Jaz, both rank so highly? I just…aaaah I dunno…”
Yumi almost wanted to go to 1 A and secretly start working with them were Alex wouldn’t, but she knew if she went behind her VPs back like that not just Alex but the rest of her class might see her as the enemy, and her paranoia, the kind that only really settled with her when she had too much time to think about something, but letting out a slow sigh she brushed the idea aside for now, not brave enough to do something like that in secret when the rest of the class could turn on her for it…she just wanted the support everyone into being really good heroes and getting the best out of their studies here, why did she have to pick sides?
“You could also…ya know…rely on me a bit?” Yumi was feeling even more useless as the president when Alex went on about just how much of the burden lay on him, but it didn’t have to? He’d barely come to her with ideas for this thing beyond making sure she definitely was okay with it over instant messaging. Did he not think to share all the plans in detail and see what she could handle with him? Was she really so usless that he’d just brushed past the idea of her even helping him? Maybe she was. She wanted to help her classmates but beyond helping them with their homework sometimes, or letting them copy some so they didn’t get in trouble, how much did she really do for them…? “I mean…maybe I’m not as used to all this stuff, but I’m sure I could do something to help? I mean practical experience isn’t my forteit, but I’ve been reading a lot of theoretical works and stuff on quirks…m-maybe I could manage a small extra-class on maybe working on new techniques, or getting people to think of new uses for their quirks…ah it sounds dumb when I put it like that…”
She nervously rubbed the back of her neck and lowered her head further. She’d felt so confident in herself since coming to school but this rivalry put her on the spot in such a weird way that she just felt useless and pathetic in a way she hadn’t for some time, her paranoia rattling her brain so thoroughly. She glanced to Alex as he continued to speak like he was the only one involved here, comparing himself as a VP to her as a president completely ignoring her in the process…she really was forgettable in the grand scheme of things huh?
She lightly wrapped her arms around herself, leaning her back against one of the lockers beside the bench, looking off in another direction and letting a slow breath out through her nose.
“Yeah sure, they can come in next year or…whatever…” She scratched the side of her neck and proceeded to fold her arms under her chest, eyes focusing on the floor for a moment before tracing back to Alex, her brow furrowing as she took a deep breath and decided she should speak all the same. “Look, being darkshines sidekick…admirable goal, but beating Rin, the rest of the class suffering because of how you feel about her…fuck if you were just working on 1C fine but this comes off as fucking spiteful…and…” She winced a little as she realized her choice of words, but she steeled herself, and even decided to add a little more in the hopes it’d set in.
“Its…not the personality I’d want to see in a hero…and I doubt this kind of spiteful drive would be something a hero like Darkshine would approve of.”
WC 1033
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Post by Deleted on Oct 11, 2018 2:37:02 GMT -4
The grin disappeared as soon as quickly as it came, and a flash of steel appeared in the red eyes of the American as he was openly challenged. His entire demeanor had changed once that challenge occurred, and while it wasn’t hostile, it was sure as hell a lot more guarded. He completely clammed up at that, and just listened with even his stance shifting slightly from relaxed to much more balanced as if he was anticipating a physical attack rather than a verbal one. For a couple of seconds, the redhead actually managed to get him to feel bad. He almost apologized for leaving her completely out of the loop, but he stopped himself when she continued with some barbs that visibly enraged him for a moment before he forced his emotions under control and raised that emotional guard right back up again.
”I don’t think you get it.” the delinquent said, his tone detached. ”This isn’t out of spite. And I can’t rely on you, or really anyone else at least initially.” he started, the way he spoke the words making it clear that he saw no other alternative. ”Let’s think about it this way – what will we have on our student record by the time we graduate? For you, probably three years of Class Rep. If my plan works, you get a boost from improving the class. If it doesn’t, I get blamed and you basically have no consequences. For me, let’s be real, I think both of us know that in a re-vote Naoru would have won. I lose my Class Rep spot the second he gets the confidence he’s missing for some reason, and that’ll be that. People will always respect him more than me and look to him instead of me – and you know what? That’s fine. I’ll run, sure, but at the end of the day the second Naoru decides he wants the Class Rep spot I’m third at best in terms of votes and know it.”
”So I get one semester, if you go with your plan earlier about running the elections again in the new year. That’s not a lot of time, and as soon as I lose my class rep spot the principal will stop taking me seriously because he won’t just look at my name and assume I’m at least somewhat relevant and talk to Tanaka-sensei, and, well, you know as well as I do how that would go. Let’s look at Rin for a second. Jaz won’t ever go up against Rin for that spot, so she’ll also almost definitely get three years as a Class Rep too. You two are set, you’ll always have achievements to put on that transcript and set you apart from everyone else to get people to take a chance on you. Both of you will come out of here with insanely powerful quirks and leadership experience that will make people take a chance and want to work with you over any other U.A. graduate.” he stated, his tone matter-of-fact and even bland like he was reading the ingredient list on the back of a can of beans or something.
”My quirk isn’t good enough to be a solo hero, it’s too abuseable. Which means I have to work on a team. If I’m going to be on the team, I want to either have someone so much better than me leading it that I can learn and copy what they do, or I want to lead it. But to lead a hero team, I need experience leading people and starting things myself while I’m at U.A. Nobody is going to join the hero team of a nobody who hasn’t even led a line to the ice cream truck, no. I need to build something, so I can make all the stupid mistakes now instead of when I go Pro and those mistakes could kill someone.” this was the point where his tone started to get some emotion in it, but it was still subtle at this point. There wasn’t a lot of it in there, and he was succeeding admirably at keeping his emotions separate from his voice.
”So yeah, absolutely, you could help. You could probably improve on the idea a lot and maybe even run it better than I could. You’re smarter than me by a long shot and you’re better with people than I am. That doesn’t help me learn, though, because no matter how much you help I’m not magically going to get smarter. You’re going to have three years of time to improve the idea and come up with your own ones that are better. I get one semester, and I’m going to make sure that I get to do something with that one semester. This is the one shot I have at making something I can point to and say yeah, I did that!” more emotion came out, but it was more fire than anything else. It was moderate, but his volume never raised even the slightest bit. It was merely the intensity that ratcheted up. The emotionless façade was gone, but he was still very much in control of his emotions and was still reining them in nicely.
“Yeah, there will be issues, and once it gets up and running I have no problem improving it and taking all the suggestions to make it better and as useful as possible – but I’m also not going to have a situation where my one chance to do a thing gets taken away from me. If I invite 1-A, Rin will do that at the earliest opportunity. She will come in on the setup that I would’ve spent days if not weeks setting up and just shit all over it to the best of her ability, which is pretty good. Like you, she’s a lot smarter than I am. I won’t be able to answer a whole bunch of weird questions designed to make me look like an idiot in front of everyone, and what would happen is that Rin would just take the idea I got off the ground and retool it to take my only chance to make something away from me. That’s not happening. Is it wrong to exclude all of 1-A? Maybe. We’re in here for three years, and I only got a few months to make something. I will not have all the work I’ve done pissed away because of some stupid need to be ‘nice’ to someone who would only do their best to destroy everything I’ve worked on.”
”It’s either I come up with something big and work my ass off on it, or I lose my window to do anything. I am not going to fade away into nothing and piss away my one chance to make something that could potentially be used for years after I’m gone if I pull this off right. I’ll be fucking damned if I go through all of this effort to make something I can be proud of just to have that bitch come in, slap her name on it, and have everyone fucking praise her to the end of time for it. No. That’s not happening. I’m not going to let it happen. This is my baby and I’m going to see it work, so that when Naoru finally gets over whatever the fuck is bothering him and takes my spot I can give it to him with a smile on my face and give him his turn to make a difference. But this is my turn, and at the end of the day if the idea of me having an opportunity to be worth something for once is so fucking awful to you – I don’t care.” bitterness had clearly seeped into his voice by this point, and venom was injected into it in full force as he continued onwards and finally dropped that detached façade once and for all. His control was steadily breaking down as his body posture tightened up and large amounts of negative emotion flooded through his tone.
”You always have the spotlight on you. You’re super smart, you’re super popular, you’re basically the center of attention wherever you go. Your quirk is insanely good, easily top five at the school and probably even top three out of all the students at U.A. in all three hero classes and including support studies. All of these things will make sure that you’re in the spotlight for as long as you want to be, so you will have your Class Rep spot for as long as you throw your hat in. Great, fine, I’m happy for you. That may be how your life goes, but it sure as hell isn’t how mine is. I’m none of those things, and if the idea of me actually getting one fucking accomplishment that I can be proud of gets under your skin so much – fight it. Shit talk me in front of the school. Go out and tell everyone how shitty I am and how unfair I’m being. I don’t care. If you feel the need to go over and tell Rin all about this and fuck me over, go right ahead. I’m doing this regardless of what you or anyone else thinks, and I’m going to make it work. This is going to benefit the entire fucking school, and Darkshine would recognize that.” during this part of the speech, the delinquent visually and audibly imploded. All semblance of self-control was lost during the course of this, with his volume that was so tightly controlled earlier rising to the point of shouting towards the end, and he was visibly shaking with tears in his eyes as he finished.
And with that, Yumi did to him what nobody else at U.A. had ever made him do. She had caused Alex to turn around and not only leave an argument, but also to be the one who retreated physically from one. He was so angry he could barely breathe and could barely stop the tears of rage from coming down his face as he turned and started to stomp away. The façade of being a functional human being was completely gone at this point and for the first time in a long time he was completely devolved to the level of a petulant child who was absolutely and utterly infuriated with something. He needed to get away, he couldn’t look at Yumi right now he was so angry. He couldn’t fucking believe she had said something like that, and needed space to think. He needed space to breathe. He needed space to exist.
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1,884 Posts
0 EP
EXP
Total
18 Years
Female
"x"
Student-Rank Quirk:
U.A Third Year
Played by:
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Post by Yumi Tasukai on Oct 11, 2018 4:18:52 GMT -4
Yumi sat and listened to Alex’s entire outburst. While she was bold enough to say what he was doing wasn’t very hero material, she wasn’t bold enough to stop him when, despite likely feeling like his emotions were under control, he was showing far more emotion than Yumi had ever seen in him, positive or negative. Her hands clutched the edge of the bench as she listened to every word, her muscles tensing and her body squirming as she so vehemently disagreed with some of the things he said, gritting her teeth and wanting so badly to say something sometimes but knowing she just physically couldn’t bring herself to either. Sometimes her mouth would briefly open only to be caught by the momentum of Alex’s word and find herself rendered pretty much useless in the face of his torrent of words.
She could see the tears in his eyes as he turned to walk away, but feeling the ones welling behind her own she couldn’t just let him go either, gritting her teeth and throwing herself up towards him. A few ideas flashed in her mind. To grab him and turn him around, to clutch onto him and just pull him back without bothering to make sure he looked her in the face as she had her say. One part of her even felt it was a good idea to punch him for seemingly no reason, but she turned all those instincts down. She was a lot weaker than anyone might assume from a close inspection so she knew if she tried to brute force him to stay he could literally toss any of those efforts aside, so she dipped past him, stretching her arms out to each side of herself as if that somehow made her efforts to block his exit any more viable.
“Look!” She began, rapidly realizing her nature made it very hard to speak her mind. A lot of her could see where Alex was coming from and she didn’t want to blindly yell at him for it even if she disagreed so fundamentally on a lot of how he viewed things here, but at the same time a lot of her refused to remain silent, especially because of the pseudo praise she’d received through his words. She was tired of everyone apparently having this weird impression that she was smart or talented or powerful because of her quirk, but she still had to bite her tongue and force herself to be…’good’, rather than angry. “I…I get what you’re saying okay? You wanna make an impression and for some reason you think you only have this one shot. FINE. Run the thing on your own and fuck if you really think its so necessary leave 1A behind but do you have to be such a jackass about it? Couldn’t you have just explained this from the start? Did you, heck, do you STILL need to make Rin out to be such a villain when if she DID steal your idea she’d probably just be trying to make her classmates, the SCHOOL better!? And…and I GET that you think for some weird reason I’d do it better or I’d steal the show, but you don’t get to sound like this is some great weight on your shoulders when you don’t even ask. Heck if you’d just explained how you feeled about all of this I wouldn’t have been so upset when it felt like I didn’t even fall into any of these equations. I don’t need to be in the spotlight, I don’t need this amazing student record, I don’t need to work with the best agencies or be the best hero, I just…I never knew I wanted this but I just need to BE a hero at this point! I already feel so useless as a president day in and day out, lying to myself, telling myself I let my class be comfortable with who they are by leading by example in that area when really I have no idea what I’m doing and have no idea how to help them beyond giving them an excuse to wear their fucking shirts untucked!”
Yumi was glaring at the floor but she may as well have been glaring at herself as she ranted off about that. “I…” She was maybe getting off the main topic but if Alex could dip and diver between his views so could she. This wasn’t exactly the time for coherent thought to be a possible option. “I am so fucking exhausted of people thinking I’m so great when I’m not. I have to fill my days with distractions and happiness and joy and just ANYTHING cause when I am alone with myself and really let myself think I realize how shitty I am. How useless I am as a class president that I didn’t even factor into these equations with the class stuff.” Yes Alex admitted that he actually specifically saw her as a sort of threat that could take over but she wasn’t clear headed right now. “My control over my quirk is so pathetic that I have to rely on an online pen pal to make my whole suit so I can even be viable as a hero rather than just a walking electric bomb that hurts everything around her! Where did you even get smart from!? I rank below you on the school ladder for gods sake what makes you think I am apparently so much better than you!? You…EVEN MY QUIRK!? You praise it but I was on the backfoot that entire fight! Your quirk constantly had me cornered, you were bombarding me from every side….I…I couldn’t keep up and I even had the advantage of my quirk producing light and…and…I don’t even know how your quirk works still! I had to use a total desperation move to even come out on top and I feel so crappy that I have had to rely on that twice now to even get close to winning against people! I can’t keep doing that if I’m a hero! I can’t risk my entire quirk to get one shot on one villain and potentially hurt my friends and civilians in the process! Do you not just GET by now how terrible I am!? I struggle to wrap my head around what my hero suit even does my friend is that much smarter than me! I was afraid to go swimming with my friends as a kid cause I was terrified of getting scared and making them all drown as I electrocuted them! I convinced myself I was so utterly worthless and pathetic that I convinced myself to take some of that QED stuff!” Though Darren had yet to tell her what she’d actually drank before her ultimate display of electrical power was actually just a normal bottle of water. “I AM PATHETIC AND EVERYONE NEEDS TO STOP THINKING I’M NOT!”
Slumping back against the door behind her, tears were streaming down her cheeks and Yumi clutched her knees to her chest. She’d lost the whole point of arguing about Alex’s little club thing and went far too heavy on herself. She sniffled pathetically as she tried to wipe her eyes with her palm, and if Alex really wasn’t wanting to stick around for this there was another exit he could easily leave through.
“I…I don’t get why you think I’m so much better than you when the rankings literally say the opposite..when…when you so easily had me cornered in our fight…when you came up with this whole idea of bettering the students when all I do is wear my uniform the wrong way….I-I don’t even deserve to be president…t-the class was so small back when I got voted in and…I cheated…d-darren passed his votes forward and went back to sleep and I wrote my name on his vote sheet…M-maybe it didn’t really make a difference but I did it just cause I was feeling silly and I wanted so bad to make an impression on the class…and here I am…doing nothing for them…I-I don’t care about my record or…b-being strong…I just want people to be content and comfortable around me…b-but I wish they’d stop seeing so much in me that isn’t there…”
She lowered her face into her knees and shrunk into as tight a ball as she could, whimpering the word ‘sorry’ in a cracking, tear filled voice. Not even sure what she was sorry about, ranging from how pathetic she was to the mere fact she’d made Alex get emotional in the first place.
WC 1433
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Post by Deleted on Oct 12, 2018 2:32:30 GMT -4
”Fucking insane.” were the first words that finally came out of the delinquent’s mouth. ”I don’t think I can understand. Is there something in the water here? Is it just this class, or is this the entire school?” he asked, his tone more questioning than confrontational. He had stayed silent and still the entire time Yumi had ranted back to him, and made absolutely no move to go and physically comfort her and instead stood there awkwardly for the moment as he considered what he was going to do. God, he was bad at shit like this. On the bright side, he felt so awkward that the tears in his own eyes quickly went away as he no longer felt the strong flood of emotion because he was so taken aback to the crazy shit that he was hearing.
”Listen, I’m fucking awful at this emotional stuff. I’m not going to get down there and hug you or whatever because it’s not my place. What I am going to do, though, is tell you that you have the same exact issue that Naoru seems to have and I actually don’t fucking understand.” he decided, going for a tact that he was comfortable and familiar with. If Yumi wanted a shoulder to cry on and be all supportive and shit, she was going to have to look somewhere else. At no point in this time did his voice come anywhere close to comforting, because he felt like to do that would be a fucking insult. Yumi wasn’t a baby that needed protecting, she was a hero that needed to actually act like it.
”I made it higher on the rankings list than you did, sure.” he said, kneeling down so he wasn’t physically talking down to her, his red eyes focused on her intently as he did. ”You know what the difference is between you and me, and why I controlled that fight until the end? The difference between you and me is that I don’t have a choice.” his tone was dead serious, and so was his expression. He said it with the conviction and authority of someone explaining the laws of gravity to an elementary school student.
”I need to be the absolute best I can be, because I can’t afford to have the mental block that you have. Absolute worst case scenario, if you go back to a regular school, you’re still smarter than the vast majority of students and could get a job as a fucking scientist if you wanted. You’re smart enough to tutor other students in our class, and people look up to you when it comes to academics. You can, absolute worst case scenario, fall back with your parents and get a good and decent job and life. Your quirk is fantastic, but you don’t need it. Even without your quirk, you’re smart and motivated enough to do great without it.”
”If I fail out of U.A. and hero school isn’t for me, you know what happens? I go right back to the orphanage where I was before this, get the same absolute lack of education that I had before and in a year or so I get thrown out into the street with no work experience, no education, and no prospects. I would be homeless and would struggle to even get a job as a fucking janitor, quite frankly, and I know it. I’m in for a lifetime of barely scraping enough money to eat by begging or taking odd jobs if I fail. I have no fallback. I have no other option. The practical classes are the only reason I’m not one hundred percent getting dropped at the end of the year for unacceptable grades. Even with the actual heroing classes like Rescue, my grades still might not be good enough to actually come back for year two. If I fuck up one test in the classes I actually have a chance in, I’m fucked.” his volume didn’t go up, but his intensity was back in full force by this point. He made no attempt, as he did earlier, to pretend to be detached and neutral because he wasn’t.
”I don’t have a family to go back to. If I don’t succeed here, there is no second chance. I don’t get the luxury of feeling bad about myself. You’re the number ten student on the rankings, and beat both number two and number five using the same clever trick. But you’re not patting yourself on the back about it, because you didn’t shit stomp either of us. I’m sorry to break it to you, but the skill gap between us isn’t high enough for you to effortlessly blow us away. If you’re not going to be disappointed in anything other than a total stomp, you’re going to be disappointed forever.” the last bit was spoken as if the assumption itself was insulting, because quite frankly it was. If she could only be happy by stomping the hell out of literally everyone else in the school, she would never be happy. The skill gap wasn’t that big, she wasn’t Darkshine or anything.
”So you cheated to become Class Rep. Who gives a shit?” he asked, laughing a bit and shaking his head. ”Who the hell do you think would be better? The rest of the class either isn’t responsible enough, is too scared of attention, or is so fucking abrasive that parts of the class hate their guts. You’re the best out of the bunch for being a Class Rep right now, because people feel comfortable around you and look up to you. Let’s be real here, most of the class outright likes you, which is something that I’ll never get. The absolute best I can get is respect to overpower the initial wave of dislike. And even then, there will be a few that flat out hate my guts for the rest of time because of how I am.” he said, with no venom in the last parts despite the wording. The delinquent had accepted this and in fact welcomed it, because he had no desire of being buddy buddy with everyone at the school. Rivalries could push someone farther than friendship, and he welcomed the challenge from people like Rin who were simultaneously immensely capable and insufferable.
”I’m not gonna sit here and praise you for an hour to make you feel better, though. That’s not going to solve the issue, and the issue is that you choose to cut out your own knees before you even get started by acting like this. By thinking the delusional shit that you do. I’m higher ranked than you on the U.A. listing because I’m about a seven out of ten in terms of potential and am getting close to realizing that potential. You’re an eight or an eight and a half in terms of potential, but you’re nowhere close to reaching it and won’t ever get there until you get over this stupid mental block of thinking you’re special and get to skip failing. News flash, Yumi, everyone fucks up. And anyone who’s good at anything fucks up more times than most people even try before they become good.”
”You have a choice now, and that choice is yours. I can’t make it for you, and neither can anyone else. You have a quirk that’s insanely strong, strong enough to beat Jaz and me. It’s insanely strong, but you can’t control it worth a shit. If you really think that in three years you’re so incompetent that you can’t learn how to control your quirk better, I can’t help you. You have a Class Rep spot that you cheated to get. If you’re not willing to use that spot to help enable our entire class to be the heroes we both know they can be, I can’t help you. More to the point, you can’t help them for as long as you have this stupid mental block. If you can’t bring yourself to give a damn about yourself, how the fuck can you expect anyone else to give a shit about you? If you don’t think you’re worth the effort, who the fuck am I or anyone else to disagree with you? If you want to be a hero, beat the villain in the mirror first.”
That entire last bit was a challenge and was vocalized as such. She would either rise up to the occasion, or she wouldn’t. At this point, the American rose back to his feet and dusted off his the top of his pants with his hands. Either way, he was really bad at handling emotional shit like this and wasn’t about to try doing it the way he tried to handle it with someone like Aki. He wasn’t close enough and likely would never be close enough to Yumi to ever willingly make himself emotionally vulnerable around her, so doing what he did was simply easier. It was language and a method that he understood and he was comfortable with, and didn’t have him crying at the end of it because he maintained enough emotional distance to where it was in his voice but avoiding the tears streaming down his face phase.
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1,884 Posts
0 EP
EXP
Total
18 Years
Female
"x"
Student-Rank Quirk:
U.A Third Year
Played by:
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Post by Yumi Tasukai on Oct 14, 2018 8:57:49 GMT -4
Yumi’s tear filled eyes shot up to Alex as he dismissed her words with the idea that she was just fucking crazy. She was trying to speak honestly, trying to express how much it pained her when people saw this quirk that she felt was so terrible and dangerous as something greater and he just…he just tossed it aside, her eyes glaring at him over her crossed arms as she shot a glare off towards them. It was hard to really show how much his dismissive nature stung though when she was already crying. Hearing him go on about how he was terrible t the emotion stuff, and trying to just tell her to, effectively, suck it up, just stung her at her core. She felt a bit bad learning he was an orphan…but a bitter part of her told her not to pay attention to that. What did it matter? Yumi was a strong believer in the circumstances you were raised in didn’t define who you were, and while Alex probably had his reasons for bringing that up Yumi’s core was at war with itself wondering whether she should shut up or keep fighting her corner. Pushing her up slowly from the floor, back against the wall, she wiped her red eyes clean and took a deep, shaky breath before she met his eyes to speak again.
“Got one thing right…you’re fucking awful at the emotional stuff…” She rubbed her palm into her eye to get rid of the light stinging sensation that had built up from crying, but tried to focus enough to get her words out. “Maybe you don’t have a choice, but you know what? You totally fucking do. I hate. HATE. When people say they don’t have a choice. Yes, there are consequences of your choices, but there is always a choice. I can’t say whether you trying so hard is the right or wrong choice for you, but it is a choice. I work hard to try and keep up with the science behind my quirk. I try to make sure that despite the fact I hate that my quirk is so hard to control, and also makes me far more of a combat hero than a rescue hero, but that doesn’t change the fact that my choice is to try, and try hard, and yet somehow you still made it higher. Maybe its cause you made the choice to try harder or maybe you’re just BETTER, stop fucking saying my quirk is so amazing when the fact is, from natural power, or hard work, yours is just better, you are a better student, get the fuck over this SHITTY self image you seem to have! You are good, and I admire the fact you wanna be better, but stop putting yourself down by giving everyone else praise they don’t deserve!”
…She wasn’t really sure what her point was there. Was she defending her lack of talent or highlighting is own talent? Kinda hard to tell while her brain was a mess.
“And, lets be clear. I have no mental block. I try and I try endlessly to control this thing. I have gotten to the end of days technically classifying as malnourished because I have BURNED so much of my fuel trying to practice. I have been recognizing my weaknesses and working to counter them with morning exercises and even fucking learning how to swim on the weekends. As far as being smart goes, I. Am. Not. Smart. I don’t inherently know how to absorb information, and as far as being a tutor. NOPE! No one comes to me! I keep hoping someone will ask for help, and I can sit with them and study with them and help them find the information that applies to them. I know how to…what, search a book for some beneficial info to a quirk? That’s it. I struggle to retain half the information about my own quirk. Like how fucking…things are more conductive when cold, or pure water isn’t conductive, or how fucking complex it is to charge a fucking battery or get the pulses just right for a defibrillator to work. I don’t know HOW any of that works, I just know they’re all surface level facts. That’s not a smart person! That’s a trivia expert at best!”
Okay, going off the rails again. She took a breath and focused on the next part. “And…if I fall back into normal school…back to people who hate the person I am…ya know what. Lets say you don’t have a choice. Neither do I…I appreciate this place far more than I thought I would, and maybe you need to stay here to succeed. I need to stay here to be happy.” She was calming down a little even as the negative thought filled her mind. “I get, I do get, it’s worse for you. I never would pretend it isn’t…but by god. You don’t need to be the top student to get by here. Yeah maybe you’ll get a better side kick role, or a better chance of starting your own agency, but you don’t need to be. You really think even someone like Junko would kick you out over a failed test? Junko’s a hardass but I can tell she just wants the best for future heroes…” She snapped her fingers as an idea clicked and she stepped forward. “Ya know whats gonna get you kicked out? Not your grades, not your talent or lack there-of. Its being a fucking asshole to everyone who actually wants to help you succeed, like you were a purposeful little prick in that class with Junko. Yeah, she was a bit of a prick too for shooting down your moonshine name, but you cut at the dreams of another one of your classmates, I won’t believe ‘rebellion’ wasn’t a jab at Junko…and…and…!”
She grit her teeth, stepped forward, and shoved Alex back like she had before, but this wasn’t a frustrated, angry red head who was being misunderstood, Yumi was trying to make a fucking point and she wanted to make sure Alex was listening.
“You’re worse than you think Rin is. You criticize your friends. You belittle your classmates. You get in the face of the few people who give you this education you apparently want so much.” The rest of the information Alex had spouted fell to one side. The fact that she wanted to argue the shitness of her quirk, or how she only beat jaz through desperation. A repeated tactic with Alex. How she felt she was a 5 where, with the tactical advantages his shadows could provide, Alex was far closer to a ten than he realized, but right now with how frustrated she felt she was speaking honestly. Alex was the only person to ever make her feel anything truly negative in this school, so she spoke honestly.
“Maybe I wasn’t exactly right in what I said before, maybe what you’re doing is hero like, but Alex you don’t care. That’s your problem. You are such a self centered person, your views of the world and those around you are so tainted that you either put them up on a pedestal and refuse to see the struggles they go through, or you villainize, belittle, and disregard them…”
There was something lingering on the tip of Yumi’s tongue…and she clenched her fists tight…trying not to say it…
“You don’t deserve someone as innocent as Aki…” There it was. “You’ll…ruin a perfectly sweet…impressionable person like her…”
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Post by Deleted on Oct 14, 2018 16:43:53 GMT -4
If there was enough poking and prodding in any interaction to the point where Alex deemed it excessive, it was not uncommon for him to completely shut down emotionally. He had already distanced himself before, but Yumi’s rant laced with personal attacks quickly caused the complete shutdown that he hadn’t done before. His gaze lacked the same intensity and focus that it had before, and instead of the expression and intensity of watching your favorite sports team in a close game in the finals… it was the expression and intensity of someone watching a fish swim in a water tank. It was attention, sure, but it was attention detached from any sort of emotional attachment or meaning outside of the fact that attention was given.
To put it bluntly, he stopped wanting to help fairly early on in Yumi’s reply. He had no motivation anymore to help, and was largely just standing there listening because it was the ‘correct’ thing to do. She had made it clear that no matter what he said, she wasn’t willing to take personality responsibility for her own mental block and thus he had no purpose in really saying another word. Talking to a brick wall wasn’t on the list of things he liked doing, because a discussion had to be two way in order for any meaning to be taken from it. If Yumi wasn’t willing to actually engage in a discussion, it was pointless for Alex to then try to engage and waste his time and effort on someone who wasn’t worth either of those things. He still listened, though, largely because turning around and walking out during an emotional and personal rant seemed rude.
She deflected the entire bit about personal responsibility by flinging it back onto him by insinuating that somehow he was the one with self-esteem issues. Like she wasn’t the one literally on the ground crying and insulting herself nonstop worse than anyone else ever could. She insulted her own ability, intelligence, upbringing, personality, everything while crying on the ground in a pathetic heap – but it was Alex who had the self-esteem issues? Like, was she even mildly aware of how the situation was actually playing out? It was delusion, and there was no other way of putting it. Sadly for her, he wasn’t a mental health specialist who dealt with cases of insanity as their day job – and she would probably be unwilling to go see one that did have that specialty. ‘I have no mental block’ was just being completely out of touch with reality, and it was kind of painful to see even though the delinquent had already shut down emotionally by that point. It sounded almost like some sort of psychotic mantra that people did to avoid a complete nervous breakdown in movies or something.
It was only because of the fact that he had already emotionally shut down completely that he didn’t lose his shit when Yumi started the personal attacks against him in earnest. She got up and shoved him backwards with force, but the delinquent refused to budge and held his ground. He was done playing around with this stupid game, and he was done participating at all. To be perfectly frank, he didn’t give a shit about Yumi or her opinion at this point, so the words were not nearly as cutting as they otherwise might have been. He had no reason to respect her or her mental state currently and was perfectly willing to just chalk her up as being a basket case and avoid her as much as possible from then on.
He was not looking at her through the filter of a friend or something that he respected even a little bit reaming into him. He was looking at this entire rant through the lens of a monkey flinging shit at another monkey because that was their only means of interacting with other monkeys and then bitching and moaning about getting shit flung back at her. She lost any shred of credibility with the reality denial earlier and the continuing hypocrisy going on where she criticized Alex for being a purposeful asshole but laid into him with personal attacks and ranting that completely ignored the fact that he had at least attempted to help her just moments prior.
In her shit flinging and ranting, and perhaps even out of frustration at Alexander’s complete lack of outward reaction to such… Yumi crossed a line that nobody else in the entire school had dared to cross with him. She had brought in something that no person with any sort of respect for the other would do, because it served no purpose other than to simultaneously spark and ignite a hatred that would burn for quite some time. She brought in Aki as a component to her personal attacks against him, and that caused the first visible reaction that she had gotten since she started this rant.
His right hand flexed, and shadows almost involuntarily tore violently into the ground and kicked up some dust as the dirt was pierced by what amounted to be small metal stakes for a moment before dissipating. He needed to let loose some of his anger and hatred quickly, and he did so in a way that wouldn’t hurt anyone.
”Since we’re being open and honest here,” he started, his voice uncharacteristically completely dead. There was no emotion in it whatsoever, like somebody else had taken control of his body and didn’t know how to work his vocal cords. His gaze did not regain its former intensity, but on the contrary seemed less focused before as if he was staring at a place a thousand miles away and seeing through Yumi instead of at her. His volume was lower than before, too, as if something was preventing him from talking at even a normal volume. ”By bringing Aki into an issue you have with me, you’ve crossed a line that nobody, not even Rin crossed because it is so disgusting and dishonorable.” he continued, his voice never having any venom injected into it and still had the same completely uncharacteristic tone to it. ”You’re actual scum, and I’m done interacting with you.”
And with that, he turned around and left. As he did so, though, he ripped his own shadow for matter and if so much as a finger was laid on him again he would respect with a full force shove back with his quirk with absolutely no regards to the safety of his classmate. She had gone way too far to deserve any sort of concern, quite frankly. When Alex said he was done, he fucking meant it.
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1,884 Posts
0 EP
EXP
Total
18 Years
Female
"x"
Student-Rank Quirk:
U.A Third Year
Played by:
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Post by Yumi Tasukai on Oct 14, 2018 17:17:22 GMT -4
Yumi heard the shifting of the shadows on the floor and despite the fact it may have been a poor move with the look of fury in Alex’s eyes, her own dipped down to the floor, spotting the way the shadows were shifting at both their feet and tightening her own fists just a little, at first more as a reflexive defensive reaction…but actually getting those words out, hearing them in the air…she stood behind them more than she expected, and a bit of Jaz and Darren came out of her. Rather than shrinking back into herself, she pushed herself to stand ground and steel her resolve behind those words, her fists tightening further, and her skin rapidly coated in a blue sheen. The combination of still wearing half her suit and the electro proof sports bra helping her control her quirk a little, the small streams not making the distance to Alex, but clearly present as they pulsed and arced around her body, sometimes going directly back into her as they didn’t have the chance to travel the distance to the ground, like the arcing, rainbow like streams of fire one could see on the surface of the sun. Her eyes said something that, even now, she wouldn’t have the gall to.
Try me.
Luckily she didn’t have to stand behind that wordless statement as Alex once again turned around. In part Yumi felt relief…but also anger. Yumi never meant anything to be ‘personal’. She wanted people around her to be comfortable and content, but in turn she also valued honestly on a far more blunt level than most, and in thinking of that she realized why she said that. It wasn’t to hurt Alex, but just because…it was true. She re-thought her words and there was a better way to say it. Should she…? It was…what she’d said was harsh but she didn’t know if saying more would worsen or aid the rift she’d created in that moment…how worse could thinks really get though.
Not shrinking back down, she took a breath and lifted her head. Maybe he wouldn’t hear. Maybe he didn’t care, but she’d say it anyway. “I didn’t say that for you Alex. It’s wrong to have said you don’t deserve Aki, but I stand by it, cause Aki at the very least doesn’t deserve you.” She wanted to say more but the words escaped her, and a part of her knew Alex was ignoring her anyway. The words were right there, on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn’t place them…but she knew it was true all the same. She’d never be so meddlesome as to tell Aki to avoid Alex outright, but at the same time, the relationship she’d teased about earlier this same day, it was no longer something she could joke about. If someone like Aki took in a person like Alex…Yumi was afraid for her roommate in a weird way. She knew Aki was a strong girl, but to take in that self-centered sense of drive, motivation, and world view that Alex had, into someone who already could have a lot of trouble seeing the world outside of a bubble their mentality created for themselves…fuck. Yumi didn’t wanna see Aki end up like that.
When she finally heard the door close after Alex, Yumi took exactly too heavy breaths, before turning and throwing as much force as she could muster behind a fist into a locker, her quirk bursting out around her, streams of hot electrical plasma cutting through the floor, the walls, and even the ceiling, scorching a lot of the room but thankfully nothing truly catching on fire. Her bruised knuckles barely even dented the metal she now rested her forehead upon, panting harshly as she tried to take in the reality of what happened. Instantly regret burned through her system. Alex was someone she not only wanted to, but HAD to get along with, but in turn, how could she? He…he didn’t do anything that pushed her view of him the other way, and anything that did read far more as a contradiction now. He was worried about her using her quirk like she did, yet he curbstomped a kid having fun with his quirk, something the kid likely never got to do thanks to the stupid laws around them. He would praise her for this natural potential she had, but when Rin apparently showed the same he apparently hated her. He wanted everyone to work together to topple class 1 A, but god forbid anyone directly help him and actually share in his glory…no. Yumi still burned with regret. Naturally so empathetic to people she had to, but she couldn’t stop aligning Alex with one phrase. Self Centered. Anything he did was for him, lead back to him, and his goals, and his world view….it churned Yumi up inside that she had to, more than anyone in her class, co-exist with him now…fucking hell.
She pulled herself from the locker, her eyes examining the mess her quirk had made of the room…there was probably a construction type hero who could fix it these days, especially with so many people allowed to use their quirks under military supervison, so she didn’t feel horrendously guilty. With a deep breath she picked up her things and began to leave to. She would debate for the rest of the day if she should talk to Aki about…any of this.
WC 910
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Post by Deleted on Oct 14, 2018 22:22:48 GMT -4
The force that the delinquent gave the door was almost enough to knock it completely off of its hinges on the way out. Yumi threw one more parting shot as he left, but he didn’t turn around to give the girl the time of day and continued walking – the only nonverbal communication being the door slam. Once he was out of the building, he started loosening up every bit of the gear that he had on. The gloves. The chest harness, the leg holster that he still hadn’t taken off. He should have left them in the locker room, probably, but he would just go to some equipment guys instead and return them. That wasn’t exactly the pressing issue, here, anyway.
The pressing issue was the fact that for the first time since the student rankings were released, there was extreme competition for the most hated member of the school in the Alexverse. Rin was bad, sure. She was awful, even, from a personality deficiency standpoint. She was arrogant, she demeaned and humiliated others in order to make herself feel better. She blatantly sucked up to teachers in order to get favorable treatment and looked down on the other students at the school. Sure, fine. Whatever, that was bad. She was a young prodigy whose ego got too big for her pants and lashes out at people in order to prove her superiority. Insufferable, but fine. The insults and jabs were designed to piss him off, sure, but never crossed the line that most people would consider good and decent. She kept the discussion between the two of them, and any disagreements stayed as such. As much as it pained him to admit it, he respected the fact that she never deflected and never tried to pull anyone else into the rivalry.
Yumi, however, did cross that line. Bringing loved ones into a disagreement and animosity between two individuals was uncalled for and quite frankly just pathetic. It was like if he brought in her parents and made fun of their income or living situation or whatever – it wasn’t related to the subject at all and was just generally something that nobody with any shred of decency would do. He hated Rin, like absolutely despised her but would never go after her family or other loved ones as part of some sick desire to see her squirm. Yumi didn’t have a restriction like that, and it made her lose any legitimacy in his eyes the instant that it happened.
The next step wasn’t working with Yumi to make the class better anymore, it was moving on despite Yumi and making the class better. Bringing in Aki because she couldn’t deal with her own personal issues was taking an argument entirely too far, and he wasn’t going to deal with that sort of immaturity a second longer than he was absolutely forced to. He would fake a smile and do his duties as required, but that same warmth and hope that they could work together would completely be gone from this point onwards. His first instinct was to ring up Aki, to try and mitigate some of the fallout that would almost certainly happen… but something stopped him.
Maybe he didn’t think he could do what he needed to do over the phone with any effectiveness. Maybe it was because he thought that Yumi would actually woman up and apologize before word of what happened today actually reached Aki before she had to deal with that shit storm that she had no active hand in creating. It would be a sadistic choice, really, to be forced to choose between first friend and first boyfriend… and Alex wasn’t going to be the one to force that decision on her. If the Class President wanted to double down and prove that she didn’t give a shit about his girlfriend by bringing their drama to her, she was more than welcome to. It would embolden him in the future knowing that the entire thing was just a weapon that she was using in order to beat him with because she was insecure and couldn’t handle being insecure. So she lashed out at other people with those insecurities to feel better about herself. Or something, the boy wasn’t a psychologist.
What he did know, though, was that if Yumi brought the drama to Aki that was the point of no return. If she actually tried to force his girlfriend to choose between her and Alex, that was a level of pettiness that was well and truly next level and Rin could fall down to #2 most hated student at U.A. with zero issue. Rin might be insufferable, but she had never went after anyone’s loved ones in her pursuit of adulation from the students, public, and teachers. Yumi, when confronted even once, seemed to default to just grabbing at something else to cause pain when the first thing didn’t work. Alexander had not responded to personal attacks, to yelling, or to physical shoves so she kept digging until she found a weapon that would hurt, and she found it in being spiteful and nasty enough to bring an innocent girl in the crossfire so the Class President could feel like she got under Alex’s skin. To feel like she mattered and made a difference or whatever by undermining him and fucking with him mentally. By threatening someone he cared about when threatening him with taking the entire plan to Rin didn’t produce the desired effect.
Yumi was so desperate for attention that she would do anything to get it seemed to be the bottom line. It was sad, because he really thought she was better than that. He really thought that she could be a big ally and asset moving forward, but it seemed her own mental instabilities would make that impossible. How ironic is it, then, that the so called delinquents and scum of the class seemed to be the most reliable and ethical in terms of things like this? Darren, for all of his faults, would have never brought Aki into the equation no matter how angry he got. It was a bridge too far, even for him.
Oh well, it just went to show that how someone acted in public didn’t really change who they were in the dark. Who they actually were when they weren’t being recorded or in front of anyone who they thought anyone would believe – because at the end of the day who would believe Alex if he told anyone? Who would believe the class delinquent who the teacher hated more than anything over the sterling Class President?
Disgusting. Rin really was better, and that was saying a lot.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 16, 2018 11:16:10 GMT -4
EXP (Doubled for Event)
Alex: 460 exp
Yumi: 350 exp
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