Heroes of Tomorrow 3 [Darren]

Emi Ryoko Tachibana. That was a nice sounding name, now that he thought of it. It had punch, it had rhythm, it had character; in a word, it was the perfect name for the girl who bore it.

Darren never really met her, but, well, Emi wasn’t a person you really needed to meet in person to form an image of her, for better or worse. She had a whole uTube channel of vlogs and other videos, after all, and she had been doing this long before UA. As she often talked about the school recently, he occasionally tuned in, of course hoping to hear his name maybe mentioned. Whether it was to be praised or trash-talked he didn’t care. No such thing as bad publicity, right?

And, well, of course, that “UA are normal kids” video, or whichever the one that was brought up in the school chat a few weeks ago was called. It had been something about wanting to show the UA students were normal kids, so inevitably, the ego-filled delinquent felt the need to declare that he wasn’t normal. That he didn’t want to have to appear normal, to force himself into a mold that didn’t fit him. That he was proud of his difference.

Others often portrayed him as nothing more than a battle-crazed delinquent, but just like every single human being, Darren only wanted to belong. And ever since coming to UA, he had been given countless opportunities to show that even though he was a battle-crazed delinquent, that didn’t mean he couldn’t be of use. That didn’t mean he couldn’t save people. He could never change his nature, but he would show the world that, egoistic, egocentric and abrasive as he was, he would become a damn good hero. Because he wasn’t normal. He would force the world to accept him, one look of gratitude in an old man's eyes at a time.

He had gone a little vehemently about it, perhaps even behaved insulting to Emi's craft, so, defending her keep, the girl had invited him to come talk on her show if he was so passionate about it. Defend his opinions, alone in front of the world like she did.

So when he chanced upon the videos essentially annoucing that Emi was taking interviews playing around the festival grounds, he only had to watch once before he turned on his heels and headed for the report club’s tent. His eyes, accustomed to his speed, had managed to read the zooming disclaimers. They only made him smirk. He wasn't backing down from the challenge, so he decided to trust her with whatever she meant by “creative liberties”. Was it a good idea?

Well, he was about to find out, as in the outline of the tent’s entrance appeared his spiky hair and the delinquent to whom it belong to underneath, spying Emi tinkering on a camera, too focused to look up. The inside of the tent looked like a professional studio, with the green screen and the lighting and the mics, or at least it did to the complete amateur that was Darren. He deemed it appropriate to announce his presence by whistling impressedly. “Phew, that’s a bloody impressive setup you got there, Tachibana,” he said. Once he’d grabbed her attention, he waved at her and smirked. “Yo. Daimon Darren. The not-normal guy, remember?"

“I get that a lot,” he answered with a casual smile. It was not hard to believe, with his angular features and bushy eyebrows. His demeanor however was unmistakeably that of a juvenile delinquent, looking at things around the room with a half-interested look and both hands firmly lodged in the pockets of his uniform pants. He had the shirt on and since it was winter, the jacket, but his tie was nowhere to be seen as usual. “Of course I put my money where my mouth is,” he answered while inspecting a camera he knew absolutely nothing about with an expert look. “The metaphorical kind, though, because I don’t have a yen on me.”

He paused for a second to grin dumbly and continued. “Yeah, but I don’t think it’s really the kind you show indoors. It lets me move around, very quick, very fast, very dangerous for all this shit, I think. I don’t even use it on my bass… Yet.” A lightbulb turned on in his brain. “You say you want my costume?” A second one. “Well, it's in the lockers. I can get there in a sec with my Quirk. I know, you can film that! It’s better footage, probably, I think. But yeah, let’s do the talking bits first. I’m very good at it,” he said with a smile that did not inspire confidence, trust or positive emotions in general as he sat down in the chair.

He didn’t use to be so unfazed by fame and the public eye; no one was born like that, after all. But the truth was that a few months at UA was all an attention-seeking apprentice hero with a delinquent streak needed to get a few news articles written about him. He’d been in Semper Fi, and in the circus before that. He had saved a few people already and it had been discussed by pundits on television, though they were referring to the UA students in general rather than him specifically. It still counts, he would tell you.

And of course, in 2073, who could forget the internet? Darren was as internet-literate as any teenager. His uTube recommendations were tailored by the algorithm along five things: martial arts videos, rock songs, bass tutorials, football highlights, and hero news, and at lunch or while sitting in the train, he liked to look at memes. In more than fifty years, those didn’t change much; they still parodied pop-culture at large, and these days pro heroes were becoming a big part of it. There was even a meme of him that got popular for a couple weeks, a series of pictures of him jumping away from the sharkman that attacked Tokyo Park with captions the likes of “me dodging my responsibilities" and other intelligent things of the sort. Even he knew that was completely egomaniac and extremely cringy -- hence why he didn’t tell anybody -- but, he had a secret stash of memes of himself saved on his phone too.

As one might expect, all this was doing a number on the yound delinquent, whose sanity had already been questionable before that. At least he was swimming instead of sinking. He wasn’t afraid of the cameras anymore, eager even, to get more of the sweet dopamine rush that came with seeing likes on videos about him go up. Humans were simple creatures, and Darren was certainly not an exception to that rule, abnormal as he liked to claim to be.

He still put a hand in front of his face when Emi turned on the lights. “Damn, those are bright as hell. Turn that down a little, would ya?”

The blonde snickered at the notion of him dancing. “No, no, my whole body’s fast. You sure you want me punching in there, though?” he said, nodding at the expensive looking cameras. “I mean, I trust my control. But do ya?”

She flooded his face with lights in answer, then dimmed them down. She said the camera was rolling, then assaulted him with a barrage of technical terms of which he understood about none, except for the part where she said dark dramatic lights would suit him, which he agreed to with the wise and thoughtful nod of a complete amateur. “Uh-uh, sure. You work your magic. I ain’t have no idea how this stuff works. I just know how to punch people. And kick a football. And play bass!” As was often the case with Darren, what initially sounded like a rare display of humility soon revealed itself to be more bragging.

But he soon had to get serious again, as Emi dove straight into the meaty stuff, skipping all introductions and small talk to get right into where they left it last time on UA chat. At first, the delinquent only answered with a grin. With the cameras rolling and her previous statements, he knew that everything he would say might as well be livestreamed now. A regular person might take this as an invitation to pick their words carefully, but for Darren, it was an invitation to speak his mind.

“Well, I ain’t so cocky to pretend to know what you’re tryna say,” he answered after a pause, looking at the camera instead of the girl. She was probably watching on the wee little screen anyway, so staring at the lens was as good as staring her in the eyes. He spoke as much to her, picking up their conversation where they left it as he spoke to the audience. “What I am tryna say is that we shouldn’t have to give a fuck about tryin’ to be normal. I’m guessin’ yall mean like, filming us play football, play music, regular kid stuff, show everyone we’re like them, we do teenager stuff. But I don’t like it. I don’t like havin’ to jump through hoops to show people that, surprise surprise, being fast don’t make you any less of a human fuckin’ being. Fuck posturing for people who are dumb enough to think otherwise.”

The delinquent crossed his arms. His voice and demeanor barely changed in front of the camera; Darren had never feared talking to a crowd. He liked it, sought it, even, to a lesser extent than Emi, but he was eager to show the world who Daimon Darren was. “Do we ask quirkless, regular ass people to show they’re normal? Why do I have to be careful to remind people I’m human at every turn? And that shit’s a losing battle anyway. We can do whatever the fuck we want, smile as wide as we want in the interviews n shit, people are gonna be reminded that we aren’t normal every time we jump from a building to save their asses. Normal people don’t do that.”

He uncrossed his arms to point at his chest with his right thumb. There was an ember in his eyes now. “That’s why I’m proud of not bein’ normal, and why I think that’s what we should show the world. Not bein’ normal is precisely the reason I can jump from that building in the first place. It ain’t just quirks either, it’s in the head.” He tapped the side of his skull with his index. “You gotta have a screw loose to do that hero shit. It’s dangerous as hell, and half the time we’re gonna be risking our lives for total strangers. A normal person doesn’t do that.”

He slouched back into the chair, folding his arms again, this time with a lopsided smirk. He said pretty much all that he wanted to say. “And that’s why I’m proud that I ain’t normal. That’s why I’m proud of being both a quirked weirdo and a screw-loose weirdo. Now if you wanna film us playin’ music, eatin’ lunch, having classes, that regular high school crap, that’s fine, I get it, it paints a nice lookin’ picture, I get it. But I think you should show the other side of the coin too. Not just the quirks, all the non-normal stuff. The stuff that makes us heroes.”

He marked a pause, satisfied with himself. “Sorry, I get a bit hot-headed about this stuff. Hell, you knew from the chat stuff. That’s why you asked, didn’t ya?”

Darren judged that he had done pretty well, all things considered. It wasn’t his first time talking in front of a camera -- he gave a few statements after Semper Fi while the school desperately tried to stop him to -- but it was his first time in a proper interview. He thought it would have been some ghetto cheap camera and one lamp set-up, but one couldn’t help to be impressed by the very professional-looking set that Emi had dressed in this tent. She certainly seemed to know her stuff.

Like a professional, she listened before giving a careful answer and quickly cut the delinquent from intervening with a reminder that this was an interview, not a debate. He did not miss the hint, but, true to himself, he still wanted to talk about it, so he did. “Well, ‘guess I have less of a problem with that. I get it, shit’s confusing when people start lookin’ like goats n bears n shit. Though if I’m being honest, I don’t give a fuck if we’re actually human or something different. If that’s your justification for treatin’ us like shit, fuck you.”

He smiled a smile like a kid giddy to have said a bad word on TV. “Anyway, I guess some idiots have to be taught. Things ‘bout me, right?” He straightened in his chair, and his smile turned into a cockier one, almost mischievous. “Daimon Darren, O+, 16 years old. I came to UA because it looked like fun, and it totally fucking delivered. But now, I’m here to become a professional hero, and a damn fucking good one. I’m gonna be kickin’ villain’s asses and savin’ people all day, and it’s gonna be awesome.” he declared confidently, still staring straight into the camera, perfectly conscious of what people thought of such motivations.

“Fun facts: I play bass in a rock band with Eli, Miku and Chimmy, center-forward in the football team, and I’m the president of the martial arts club. As for my quirk...” He stood up and gave Emi a second to adjust her angle, as he scanned his reach with an extended left hand. Not enough room for straights. I’ll do hooks and uppers, it'll look better. “You’re gonna cut the boring shit anyway, right?” he asked as he moved the chair away so he could properly take a step back, allowing himself a bit of room to show off. “Ok I’m ready. Tell me when to go.”

When she signaled him, he continued. “It’s called Autokinesis. It’s got something to do with kinetic energy. the boring explanation is that I ‘generate a sudden burst of momentum in a given direction,’ but I much prefer the expression ‘yeeting myself.’ Paints a more vivid picture, dontcha think?” He grinned and put up a guard. “Witha bit of practice, I can do that. Pay up if you mess up, right?”

A couple of harmless blue sparks coursed on his arms. Their composition was unknown, as those sparks were extremely volatile, but they weren’t electricity; the unverified theory was that it was raw kinetic energy generated in excess. In a blur, his left arm swung for a left hook as if pulled by invisible strings, and with force of habit the boxer spun on his front foot. Following it was a short upper with the right hand and proper step-in. It was abruptly stopped some ten centimeters from the camera lens in another crackle of sparks.

While thrown at only 30% of his maximum speed, each blow was quick, compact and powerful, the transition between them effortlessly smooth, a display of the former delinquent’s fine control to swing well away from the equipment. Despite the wild and impulsive nature of his quirk, a year of training at UA and many more years of martial arts had given him a budding mastery of the stop-and-go motion his style naturally developed into. It was not so long ago that Darren could only fling his entire body, had to swing awkwardly and looked more like a disarticulated puppet than a master fighter. This peculiarity of his quirk only came out during his most intense matches now, and when he was just showing off like that, he could afford to pull such dangerous feats as stopping a few centimeters away from an expensive-looking ass camera with relaxed confidence.

“Kinetic Activity’s the hero name. Remember it for when I save your ass.” He spoke with the grin and the confidence of a cocky sixteen years old future athlete with a bad superiority complex declaring that he was gonna be a superstar once he turned pro.