Here's your jacket [Darren]

It was a winded Darren who was heading towards the bleachers. What with all the jumping around and kicking around and punching around, he had been using his quirk quite liberally. As an extension of his body, it’s usage was physically tiring, but the instantaneous momentum he generated in his body had the disadvantage of exposing his body to a lot of G-forces.

When mankind invented the monoplane fighter, and later on the jet engine during the second world war, they gained a much better understanding of the effects of acceleration in the human body. Simply put, the human body is a bag of flesh and fluids, and these fluids need to run around everywhere from the feet to the brain. If you ever shook a transparent bottle of water, you know how liquids jiggle around when you shake their container. When a plane made a tight turn, the centrifugal force exposed the pilot to artificial gravities up to ten times that of the earth, forcing the blood to the feet and the pilot to black out.

This is essentially what happened to Darren. While the use of his quirk exposed him to G-forces in all directions, reducing the chances of a blackout, the flow of blood to his brain was still erratic and he often felt dizzy for a moment while his circulation adjusted. He was tough enough that he could ignore it for the most part in combat, but he had his limits just like everyone.

As he got to the bench, he noticed the redhead sitting here. She hadn’t even bothered to close her jacket. Right now, Darren was thankful for his messed up blood circulation. She was smiling, or maybe smirking.

"Nice work in there. Was hard to keep track of time in there, but I think you beat me."

He flashed his own smirk. Forgotten was the embarrassing situation she got him in -- that you got yourself into, Darren -- no shut up -- as there was no better way to make the blonde delinquent happy than stroking his ego. He gladly popped his butt down next to the girl.

And then, she caught him completely off-guard. If he’d like to rest her head on her lap? Fuck yeah, he would, but for all his bluster and flirtatious behavior, Darren had one problem.

He had very little idea how to girl at all.

He looked nice enough, sure, but he usually carried the reputation of a violent delinquent, the kind of which the average Japanese schoolgirl tended to stay away from, and as such he was cruelly lacking in experience with the fairer sex. His mentality made him comfortable enough around people, and his constant joking around made flirting easy, but he had little to no idea how to react when a girl flirted back, and even less when he was being flirted with out of the blue.

This time he lost the mental battle against the red tide and his cheeks flushed for a second. His gaze darted away, but he righted himself quickly. He was a delinquent, god damn it, and he wasn’t about to lose a staring contest to a girl, damn it. You already did, his brain told him. Shut the fuck up, he told his brain. He was gonna say yes, wasn’t he? This was too good to pass up, right? And then he remembered the torn shorts and open jacket and the personalities and his brain short-circuited for a second, leaving the much more incompetent Darren in the driver’s seat.

“I… I’m fine! I just needed to be jolted awake and uh... I mean...“ His brain came back online, scolded him for being an idiot and kicked him out of the driver’s seat. “I guess a girl throwing her jacket at you will wake you up alright”, he said with a renewed smirk. "What's your name?"

See, that’s how you fucking do it, his brain told him. He didn’t have a snarky retort this time. Maybe he ought to let his brain in charge more often.

Never before had Darren met a girl with such a concept of personal space, or rather such an absence of the concept. She was nice enough not to mock his blabbering, but then, oblivious to the fact the boy was not used to it at all, she edged a little closer, almost leaning against him. She crossed her legs, in a way that he couldn’t tell anymore if she was being flirty or just crossing her legs like a normal person.

She gave him her name and offered her hand. “I’m Darren”, he answered, grabbing her hand. His expectations of a soft, girly handshake were quickly dashed when she pulled him even closer with one of them bro handshakes, confusing the boy. They were really close now. Darren paused for a second, thanking whoever might be up above or down below for the absence of cleavage in sports bras as he tried his hardest to maintain eye contact. The girl was a little shorter than he was, meaning he could still see the underwear her open jacked revealed in the corner of his eye. “Daimon Darren”, he added, like he was James Bond, but sounding a lot less cool than the British secret agent.

She then asked about his quirk, and he welcomed the distraction. He slapped himself mentally, his brain telling him that he would be in a world of shit if he’d turn into this shambling mess every time a hot girl got close to him. He managed to regain a fair amount of confidence in his voice as he spoke about his quirk. “I can create instantaneous momentum in my body and fling myself around, it’s pretty fun. Think of it like a slingshot and I’m the rock.”. He showed her by jabbing at the air in front of him a few times, driving his left hand back and forth with small activations of his quirk. "I can also do that", he added with a smile that wanted to be confident. It was close enough. Punching, even at nothing, seemed to do wonders to his confidence.

He didn’t want an awkward silence again, so he quickly thought of something to pursue the conversation. “Soooo… Do you usually fight topless?” Darren’s brain facepalmed as much as a brain was physically able to. He meant to say ‘shirtless’, but with his blood flow coming back to normal, he wasn’t thinking entirely with his brain anymore. Own it, he thought, adding a big dumb smile. It was the kind of dumb joke he usually made, after all. Slowly but surely, he was getting used to this red-haired chick with no sense of personal space and her personality(ies).

Despite her relative, er, promiscuity, this girl was pretty easy to talk to. Darren could relax a little and be a lot more like himself again. Long forgotten was that silly thought of letting his brain take charge more often.

“You can call me by my first name,” he answered to her musings on the supposed toughness of men whose name began with D, surprised that such a girl would be so polite when it came to names. “Guess I’m extra tough since I got that double D,” he said. Like you. He laughed internally at his dumb joke. Dare we, brain? Fuck it, let’s go. “Like you.” He added with the same dumb smile, hoping to elicit the same reaction of laughter. Hell, if she was comfortable with it. He almost dared to pastiche her wink too.

On the subject of his quirk and it’s potential for dynamic entries, he got up for a little demonstration after the girl’s own -- which didn’t fail to make him smile. “I guess that would work, but it’d be a little telegraphed. I like to do this.”

He squatted ever so slightly and suddenly jumped an abnormal height, with the characteristic high-pitched whoosh the displacement of air provoked when he activated his quirk at fifty percent power. At the same time, he used a smaller activation in his left knee for a rising flying knee to the chin. While suspended in mid-air from the leftover momentum that air friction hadn’t bled, he used a second activation to get down, as if he was a kite whose kid just violently pulled the string, and a third, harder-to-notice one to brake before his feet touched the ground, so he didn’t slam himself on the bleachers so hard. At high power, he could very bust his own knees if he wasn't careful with that.

With a smile, he turned around and regained his place next to the girl. “That’s pretty much what I do. Thing is, it shakes my blood around a fair bit, and no blood to the brain is kind of a no-go.” With a grin, he casually added that he could very well black himself out if mid-air if he didn’t pay attention. “I’m used to it, but you’d probably get knocked out by that,” he bragged. He nodded approvingly when she said it was a pretty cool quirk.

The conversation shifted on her quirk and its disadvantages, mainly the state of undress it tended to get her into. And there she was throwing Darren off his game again, casually ripping bits of her short, winking and jabbing at him. He couldn’t help but wonder if he was a special case or if she flirted like that with everyone, kind of like he more or less intentionally did. He shrugged it off best he could, shrugging physically. “No problem, I guess. So then… You’re gonna fight villains in your underwear?” He scratched his chin, looking away as if he was seriously considering the prospect. “Hey, I guess it’s distracting for the enemy,” he snarked.

The more comfortable he got around the girl, the farther she went. He was too much of a Darren to admit it to himself, but he realized he was experiencing what it was like talking to him, with all his wisecracks and double entendres.

Well, except he never grabbed his crotch and joked how hard it was. His double D joke was about the farthest as he went, but this girl was in a league of her own. The blonde delinquent even felt a tinge of respect. He knew what it was like carrying a reputation, and he knew what girls usually thought about the kind of girl Yumi was and the kind of rumors they likely spread.

Still, there she was joking about her boobs and him being a softie on the inside. He was anything but a softie inside right now with his circulation back to normal, and he was trying his hardest to hide it, like 16 years old boys thought they ought to do in front of a hot girl. “I.. Uh… I’m as hard as they come!”

As TOUGH as they come, dumbass, said his brain. It seemed like he couldn’t speak the words he wanted to speak anymore. Think the subconscious is behind this? asked Darren. Fuck no, I'm not talking to that weirdo, answered his brain. Oh well, guess it was one more thing for Darren to own now. He was really gonna get a reputation now, wasn’t he?

He welcomed the distraction of Yumi complimenting his quirk and talking about her own. Apparently, an insulating super-suit was in the works. He pictured the girl in a skin-tight latex suit. It did not help his ‘condition’ down below. It was right then that the girl delivered the coup-de-grâce. She casually grabbed the zipper of his jacket and pulled it down.

Darren instinctively took a step back, as if he was being attacked. There was no battle this time; the red wave peacefully occupied his face as he was trying to regain his composure. His zipper was three-quarters of the way down -- it only opened more when he recoiled --, hinting at his chest.

He didn’t know what to do. Pull it back up? Like some weak-ass bitch? What if someone walked in on them, with his jacket halfway off and Yumi two strips of fabric away from being in her underwear? He considered briefly how it might shift his reputation -- as a former delinquent he thought a lot about reputation. But the fact of the matter was, he was still a shambling mess at a loss for words in front of the redhead whom he didn't even have time to find a nickname for, as he was desperately trying to think of something, anything to say or do, but he couldn't find a cool justification to his reflex of stepping back.

His zipper was still hanging dumbly around the height of his belly button. It seemed like he was gonna have to take that L.

And now, he was the one embarrassing her, enough that she turned red like a tomato for a second or two before she joined him. Laughter was a powerful weapon.

“‘Too’? Excuse you, I’m not the one who’s just covering her underwear now,” he snarked as she pulled up the zipper on her jacket. With a (sorta) proper shirt on, she looked almost like a normal girl if one could make abstraction of the torn shorts that used to be pants. “And whose shorts’ life is literally hanging by a thread,” he added, thinking he was so slick with his dumb jokes.

He was unfazed by her winks now, figuring that was just how she was. Then, more compliments, which was music to Darren’s ears. He gave her a thumb’s up as his answer, though he wasn’t sure he could really be described as a “chill” individual. The blonde delinquent was quite aware of the image he gave off. He caught himself wondering if they’d keep getting along once she would see him fight, see his battle-crazed smile. Maybe she’d relate, the both of them having been outcasts in their previous schools -- one too violent, the other too flirty.

Well, for now they were getting along alright, and he wasn’t gonna start acting different for the sake of her beautiful ass. He had his delinquent’s pride, or perhaps it was just plain old pride, and he wouldn’t apologize for being who he was, and who he was was a shit-talking violence-loving brawler. Having reassured himself of all this while she was looking away, he gave her his attention again when she proposed they’d watch the others and go eat lunch.

“Well, I’d watch the others, but our school didn’t spring for them nice cameras. I mean, if you like staring at a house…” His eternal dumb smile adorned his lips once again. He knew what she meant, but fuck if he wasn’t taking every opportunity to say dumb shit. “Sandwiches sound cool, though.”

With that, the delinquent slouched back into his seat, watching the others pour out the building one person at a time. Soon enough, rescue class was over, and their anime-looking teacher would grade them.

In the meantime, Darren was daydreaming about this sandwich. He was getting quite hungry.