Posterize || Darren + 2 others

Poum poum, poum poum. The sound of a basketball being dribbled up and down rhythmn every step of Cheng Young, the hero student from Fenghuang high, and perhaps the least motivated for the job in the entire school grounds. Even though there were civilians, if they were here, then they were probably interested in the job. Cheng wasn’t; it’s not that he disliked the idea of helping people, or even that he was bad at it, but it simply wasn’t his dream. One look at the ball he was always handling wherever he went and it was clear.

Still, as sang Mick Jagger, you can’t always get what you want. Life had dealt Cheng a bad hand; the same skills and exceptional athleticism that allowed him to survive in the Chinese quirked basketball youth league, associated with the impressive control he had with his quirk made the government take notice and make him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Cheng’s parents weren’t rich. America and the legendary courts of the NBA were a long-shot dream. This was a safe bet, a good deal. He would be able to retire his parents as soon as he started working.

But nonetheless, it was with a sigh that Cheng tossed his ball, seemingly with no direction as they were still a good fifty meters from the courts. “Ah, ah. All these Japanese are so excited about this. It’s gonna be worse than the public demonstrations in Shangai. Don’t you agree, Huang?”

The Huang in question just nodded. Next to Cheng’s 188 centimeters, he was rather small, towering at 167. He was walking with his head down into his phone. He was reading an article on the advantages of cross-plane V8 engines compared to flat-plane and doing his best to ignore the people who pointed and murmured at the four cylinders of an inline engine popping out of his back, idling with only relative quietness. It was not revving furiously at the moment, but it was still an exposed motor running at several hundred rotations per minute. That was bound to turn heads.

Meanwhile, the ball that Cheng had thrown earlier was following a rather strange trajectory, arcing very lazily through the air. It was as if it wasn’t losing momentum -- in fact, it was still spinning. It approached the court just a little ahead of the two kids.

Cheng sighed again. “Still as quiet as ever, eh?” “I’m not quiet. I make noise all the time when they put the big engine in me,” answered the kid, his eyes not leaving the screen. “I thought you wore the electric engine when you weren’t training, anyway?” “The teachers said I had to show what I was capable of. I have to wear the big engine at least half the day. In the evening they’ll put back the electric one.” Cheng scratched his head. “I guess it makes sense. Hey, look, there’s someone on the court! Maybe they play ball!”

And just like that, he ran out to meet the blonde girl. Huang lifted his head from his phone for the first time. “He’s gonna do his trick again. He does it every time,” he said to no one.

“Konnichawa!” cried Cheng as he approached the court, in a very approximate Japanese. “You play ball? I play ball! Let’s play ball!” he asked excitedly. Names? Where she came from? Why didn’t she look Japanese at all? All questions that could be asked later. A lingua franca they both spoke? No need, the language of sportsmen and women was more than enough.

And also, Cheng had a trick to pull. He had a smile from ear to ear as he pointed to the net. “Look, I brought my ball!” As soon as Jasmine would be looking at the hoop, he’d finally release his quirk to let the ball fall perfectly into the basket. From the moment he had thrown the ball, he’d been carefully applying backspin through his quirk, causing it to stay in the air for an unnaturally long amount of time. Once it was in the right spot, he only had to release it for the ball to fall down into the net. Magnus Spin, a quirk that controlled the spin of thrown objects. He liked to describe it as the power to shoot three from outside the court.

From Jasmine’s point of view, unless she spied the unnaturally high-flying ball before, it would look like this guy just came out of nowhere, asked her to play ball and made one fall down from the sky and into the net. The playful Chen loved to do this trick to people he just met; their confused faces were the best. Huang meanwhile came into the court as well, only to lean sideways on the wall to keep reading his article. He was trying to make himself as small and unnoticeable as possible -- a lost cause when you had an idling engine sticking out of your back.

Huh? Blinking almost dumbly, Jasmine quickly turned around to whoever it was calling her using some... well, based on the first word said some pretty broken Japanese. Glancing at the taller kid in front of her, Jaz had to actually lift her head a little so she could properly stare him in the eyes. He wasn't the tallest guy around, but he sure as shit wasn't a midget either. Then again who was she kidding - something like this was to have been expected considering the place Jasmine had come to.

Confused as all hell, Jasmine's brain bombarded with several more questions when she turned over her shoulder to track what the kid was pointing at. One blink. Two. Three... the fuck? Where the hell did that ball come from? Who the fuck threw it? What...? Okay, yeah, Jasmine was pretty damn confused, but her faster-than-average thought process immediately came to the one and only logical conclusion - it was some kind of quirk. What said quirk was was anyone's guess. Teleportation? Jesus she hoped not. Creating things out of thin air? Fuck that'd be useful. Massive increase of speed? Shit, that'd be obnoxious to deal with. Whichever the case was, she'd likely get the chance to figure it out soon enough. Looked like this guy was in for a game anyway, and-

Oh. Suddenly the sun was gone.

"Oh, it's only you, Lancelot," Jesus, she forgot what it was like to stand on the court where literally everyone was either the same height or taller than you. Though, very suddenly an idea crossed Jasmine's mind. This taller kid wasn't alone - he had a friend with him too, and while he was definitely the shortest of the four gathered here, he was still on the court, which meant...

"How about this? There's four of us, so let's play a pick up game of two on two. I'll be with Lance here as team Yuuei, and you guys... wait, who are you, anyway?"