“Man, what kinda chuuni-ass name is ‘love & hate’?”

“Holy hell on a shit sandwich,” exclaimed Darren as he swung his head and came to face with a horned triangle of a head, shaped like a cut from a cheese wheel -- he made very stupid comparisons. Its mouth was huge, like a shark’s, white and metallic grey with red streaks that made it look like a creature straight from hell. Sure, there was weird shit abound at Yuuei between its goatmen and its insect girls, but those were “real” things. They looked like things that existed in nature. Daisuke’s head, however, looked like a cheese wedge from hell.

It took even Darren a second to compose himself and process the answer the talking cheese wedge gave him. Did he even have eyes? Were those the beady kind that you couldn’t see? “Ah, uh, okay. It’s still a chuuni-ass name,” he finally managed to say, sheathing the blade and handing it to mister cheese wedge. “Why love and hate?”

Past the initial surprise, Darren quickly became Darren again. Unsettling and disturbing quirks were not all that uncommon, and even if that one score many uncanny valley points on the scale of creepy and otherworldly, he had seen about as bad in his time at the school, though to be entirely honest, he couldn’t think of anyone else who looked more jarring than whoever was standing in front of him.

Right, a name. Even talking cheese wedges have names. “I’m guessing you’re a newbie if I never seen your ass before. I’m Daimon Darren, nice to meet ya,” he said, standing up, holding his hand out for a handshake, immediately wondering what kind of hands did this guy have. Were they triangular too? “If them’s your toys and you’re here, I’m guessing you’re here for the martial arts club,” he continues, not sure about which point of Daisuke’s face he should focus on. Was it rude if he stared at the horn? Was it like staring at someone’s nose? Could he even see him stare? So many questions pressed themselves at the doors of Darren’s mind, each dumber than the previous one, walking over each other trying to get out and into the open.

He did his best to contain them. “Well, I’m the prez. You can train here anytime, though if you’re a sword dude, you should hit up Tetsuko. You’ll recognize her, grey hair, talking all polite and shit, walking like she has a stick stuck up her ass… But good with a sword.” Curiosity had now completely replaced his initial surprise, and he wondered how wedgehead even fought. “Though if you want to learn some punchin’ n’ kickin’, I ain’t saying no.”

There was something creepy about the way that Daisuke boy carried himself, though well, it was really no fault of his own. His blindness and the radar sense that replaced his sight made the way it “looked” at him feel odd and disturbing even to the likes of Darren. His quirk made his appearance so far removed from anything that people would consider “of this world” that it gave the impression you were speaking to an alien. An alien who spoke perfect Japanese.

Still, Darren was Darren, and even when faced with a disturbing presence he was true to his shit-talking ways. “Right. As I said, it’s chuuni as fuck,” he bluntly answered to the boy’s explanation of the names of his blades. “Why don’t you sword dudes give em’ funny names instead? Like, I don’t know, Choppy Bob?”

He wasn’t sure if he could see it, but Darren had a really stupid smile on his face. The other boy introduced himself a la James Bond, Ishino Daisuke. It took him a couple of second to find his hand, apparently. His skin felt leathery, like he was shaking a shark’s hand. It reminded him briefly of the sharkman, so for half a second Darren squeezed the hand tighter. Well, if what wedgeboi said next was true, he was probably used to crushing handshakes from other delinquents anyway.

“A fighter, eh? That’s what you do? Then you’re in the right place. You do know what martial arts are, right?” What he said in answer to his comments about Tetsuko raised his curiosity, however. “Whachu mean ‘only green’? Do you not see other colors? Actually, fuck it, imma ask, how do you even see with that, uh, head of yours? No offense.”

He really didn’t mean any offense, though he’d understand if some was taken -- but not care. Sating his curiosity was more important. Why, if he was a fighter, than surely he’d have endured shit talking worse than a question about his head, right?

Right, even that dude’s teeth were alien. Actually, maybe they weren’t, because they really reminded them of a shark. He replied by showing his own teeth, though he did it with the large grin of someone who didn’t really felt threatened by it.

To add to his explanation of how he could see with his horn and that he was ‘like the great steel beasts of the sky’, whatever the fuck those were, he deployed wings like a jet to the ooh and aahs of a curious Darren, who immediately started circling his new victim friend, examining the wings under every angle, even poking at the tip of one to see if Daisuke felt it. Right, that kind of steel beasts of the sky.

“Right, right, this is a school for fighters, yes, and you’re here in the martial arts club. The place for fighting. Wait, can you read signs with your radar thing?” He scratched his chin and continued to wonder out loud. “Do they even have the signs in braille? I never even paid attention to that shit. Uh. Well, if they aren’t, text the principal. Wait, do they even make phones for you?”

The assault of questions on poor Daisuke showed no signs of relenting.

“Right, so you’re a fighter jet dude -- wait, I see what you did here, you’re a fighter, and also a fighter jet. Nice. Anyway. I don’t know if you noticed, but we have a bunch of bokkens in the rack next to the tatami, you don’t need your chuuni sword, you can leave them in your locker. Actually, you probably should, I don’t think we can carry weapons outside of class. Anyway.” He was saying ‘anyway’ a lot. He was getting side-tracked a lot. “I guess Tetsu’s the one who can really teach you stuff, but how about you show me what you can do, Mr. Great Big Steel Dick Fighter?”

On those wise words, he headed for the rack and tossed the grey-skinned chuuni a pair of bokken roughly the size of his swords, only wondering if he could even catch things tossed at him after the tossing had been done, and headed for the tatami. For a change, he had decided to grab a bo staff himself; he wasn’t a complete beginner with them by virtue of wushu, karate and a number of martial arts in the past considering the practice of the ‘grandfather of all weapons’ essential to the mastery of even unarmed combat, and he was tired of jabbing and hooking and kicking the newbies. He figured it would be a fun change to smack em instead.

“Oooooh,” Darren exclaimed when the wing retracted itself when he tried to touch it like the nosy bastard he was. He had seen his fair share of weird quirks, but this one really took the cake and ran away with it.

He already wasn’t paying attention to Daisuke’s answer to his own question and was on to the tatami and the fight stuff which was the first thing the two boys agreed on in this exchange. Cheesehead took the challenge immediately, without hesitation, with a wide grin that read like he was itching for it -- though, well, one could never be sure of any read on a face such as this. As far as he knew, maybe all of Daisuke’s smiles looked like bloodthirsty grins.

However this blindsense thing of his worked, it worked; he proved it catching the two swords out of mid-air and assuming a stance. Though he wasn’t sure if Daisuke could sense that, he was already examining it with a critical eye. It was a good stance, but it was certainly not anything advanced. The grey boy carried himself with the confidence of someone who had won fights, but the martial arts president was already half-seeing blurry lines through his guard.

Darren did a fancy twirl with his staff left and right before assuming a sideways stance, holding the staff like a lance. Sure enough, using weapons wasn’t his usual style, but he had some familiarity with them nonetheless; they were an integral part of kung-fu and karate, and bokkens and bo staves were readily available and used among delinquents. “I’d say something like ‘go first, you’re the blind guy’, but that ain’t really my style.” Immediately after pronouncing these words, he lunged forward for a swing to the side of the head followed by a sweep to the legs, using the full length of the staff to stay out of range of the swords. He didn’t swing at full strength, but enough to make his opponent feel the burn should he get hit. And for now, no quirk was involved… Yet.

The chuuni shark-plane-eva-monster-thing managed to parry both whacks of the staff with his twin swords, showing natural if raw skill with the blades, and more importantly showed more than a little speed when he activated the thrusters under his feet for a quick backstep. “That’s so fucking cool,” commented Darren with the brute honesty of a ten years old. And then, Daisuke smiled.

Waaah, this dude looks creepy as hell. I guess he wouldn’t see it, he thought. The kid’s toothy grin was more than a little disturbing indeed, twins rows of teeth reminiscent of a shark -- reminding him of the sharkman encounter, where he saw people die with his own two eyes. The clinical psychopath wasn’t one to be affected much by such sights, but his preservation instincts couldn’t help to flare at the similarities.

Still, it wasn’t really his fault, and more importantly, this smile betrayed something that Daisuke only confirmed with his words: he was a fighter, and one who fought for the hell of it, as he had been when he first joined the school. Darren answered with his own grin, remembered that his opponent probably couldn’t see it, and answered with his voice instead: “You came to the right place, then. Stick around here and you’re gonna become more of a fighter than you would have ever dreamed to be.” He readjusted his stance, swung his staff back into a guard. “Let me warn you, it comes at the price of eating a lot of shit.”

Mansharkplane answered with a terrifying laugh from beyond the grave -- it sounded so at least -- and hurled himself at him like a tornado, twin bokkens spinning like a top, easy to replace with real, steel-forged, actually cutting katanas, like the chuuniesque Love and Hate. A powerful but dangerous attack, powered by turboreaction, which could hurt both target and surrounding civilians. In a word, an attack unsuited for a hero, but tailor-made for a violent brawler. The kind of attacks Darren used to make.

As an answer, he switched to a high guard, stepped forward, slowly at first, but quickly breaking into a run, charging calmly into danger with that high guard. Suddenly, as he was still a couple step away from the range of his staff, he suddenly planted it down into the tatami. The staff bent; he jumped aided by the swing and a faint blue spark, the smallest of activations of Autokinesis. He was never fully able to restrain its use when pulling off acrobatic maneuvers; the use of one quirk’s was instinctive, as instinctive as it was for Daisuke to fire his thrusters. Leaping over the spinning top, away from the spinning bokkens where it was safe, he delivered an axe kick from above strong enough to break a wooden board, but with technique that betrayed his ability to put far more power behind the attack, taunting Daisuke with the calmness of his voice as he was executing those complicated moves with ease.

“So? What do you think of your senpais now, jet boy?”