yuuto x Redhorn internship!!

Mia lifted her eyes as she heard the sound of a car door shutting close and spotted Yuuto further up the path, sinking her hands into her pockets, smiling as the scruffy haired kid made his way out to her. Or maybe he had gel in his hair. Whatever the case it still looked like a spiky mess to her but with her own golden mane of chaos she wasn’t exactly one to talk. She shifted her weight off one of the lampposts she’d been leaning against, knowing she didn’t really need to but raising her hand to catch his attention as he walked over.

“Ehhh think nothin’ of it. You barely had me waiting at all. Besides they legally can’t ship out without me so you’re keepin’ the boat waitin’ more than me.~” She offered a cheeky, jokey smile in the hopes of lifting any nerves he might have, crossing her arms tight over her chest but with a welcoming smile that spoke against the closed off nature of such a stance. “You find your way down here okay? Gotta say I think you’re the first of my interns to take a cab to an internship but I guess it’s a smart move in it’s own right. Gotta conserve your energy and all!”

Once Yuuto let her know how it was getting to the job site, Mia turned around to his side and patted his back to get him to walk with her down along the pier towards one of the cargo ships in the dock. “Alright then, well. Thanks to you beating my ass all that time ago, you and me are gonna be working on this cargo ship for the day. Trip’s basically gonna take us the whole night and then we’ll get a bullet train back to Tokyo. They got beds on board so don’t worry about not getting’ any sleep, and UA knows they shouldn’t expect you in class tomorrow so it gets you a day off. We ain’t expecting too much interference, but… ya know. Not all hero work is glamerous. You still on board?”

“Given your-… Oh.” It clicked and Mia slammed her forehead beside her horn with the base of her palm. She’d forgotten in her attempts to organize all this that Yuuto apparently had a run in with a big villain not so long ago… at least, relatively speaking. She groaned a little to herself for not thinking of that but… “Well er… hey, if there’s anywhere you’re not gonna have issues, it’s out here at sea yeah?” She offered with a weak smile, thinking that was a light enough way of trying to keep the mood up between them. She was even remembering he was one of those special names singled out on that stupid Ishtar list… geeze now she was even more thankful she was taking him out to sea today. Sea sickness be damned the water was probably the safest place to take this kid on an internship right now… “Either way though, you got here aye? We got a whole day ahead of us now.~”

She let out a chuckle as the two of them headed up to the piers edge and his comment about someone having to do it, and it not all being high action. “Hey ya know what? You’re treating this a lot better than some of my interns so I admire the attitude. Dunno if I’d be this chill about the boring ass internship if I was your age.” She smirked back across to him, glad to have him here to keep her company. The main steps up to the bridge were still open and not wanting to damage the pier with a super jump it was easy enough for Mia to climb her way up. A few of the burly sea crew flashed her a dirty look or 3 as she made her way on board, one of them muttering something along the lines of her being a ‘horned nightmare’. Not everyone was able to brush off her red rage incident afterall, but Mia herself didn’t hold any weight in their words, rolling her shoulders back and brushing it off so to speak, shooting Yuuto a smile back. “So, the plan is they’re gonna hoist up and ship off now. We got dinner in 2 hours and they got bed’s ready for us below deck. I’ll be on night watch so you just gotta make sure you get your head down and you’re ready for a rude awakenin’ if anything happens. Sound good?”

“Ah I’m sure ya do kid. Must be the fact I’m a teacher now making me all soft.” She joked along with a bit of a smirk. In part she did believe that though. As much as she liked going one on one with these kids she was learning a lot more about the shit they dealt with too and… well yeah, she could probably do without that sometimes. It made her sometimes go a little easier on one kid when she maybe shouldn’t is all. Everyone had to toughen up one way or another to be a hero afterall regardless of the circumstances they were facing outside of the job. She knew that better than some at this point. She felt she knew it better than prissy boy serperior or stern bitch Junko at least. She let out another laugh as he mentioned seeing whales. “Ya know what kid if I see a whale I’ll definitely wake ya up for that. Maybe you can use that summon of yours to chase it to the surface? Help us get a picture?” Scaring wildlife wasn’t exactly a good thing for a hero but what was a bit of harmless fun on the clock eh? “Don’t worry though, I bet you’ll have plenty of time to read on this trip for sure.~”

---

As expected the trip was mostly uneventful. Mia might have gotten Yuuto’s help to shift some cargo with the ship’s crew and the aid of his summon now and then but Yuuto especially would have a lot of free time to chew on, able to relax in the crew quarters, maybe enjoy some food from the on board cafeteria or just generally lay back and relax, interrupted now and then with a quick walk around the ship with Mia so he could ‘get his hours in’ so to speak.

When shown to their beds he had a simple bed set up for him while Mia had two mattresses’ pushed together. The bed frames meant there was still a clear gap between them but it’d do, and as she told Yuuto she wasn’t calling it a night yet anyway so he should get some rest while he could, leaving Mia to go stay up with the night watch to make sure nothing hit.

Yuuto was probably just on the cusp of falling into the deeper parts of his sleep cycle when-

BWANG!!!

The whole ship seemed to jolt to one side and without the regular consistence that could be justified by your regular wave. The rest of the crew jumping up out of their beds around him seemed to be in ‘all hands on deck’ mode from the moment their feet touched the floor, and the earpiece or headset or whatever part of his hero costume received messages would be buzzing and borderline roaring, though it’d still be fairly quiet till Yuuto actually lifted it to his ear.

“Yuuto! We got something big up here get your scrawny ass and that shark of yours up top!”

By the time Yuuto reached the deck, nothing seemed to be amiss despite the fact the boat was being hit with some high waves and a heavy rain. Not a true storm though, and the waves weren’t big enough to justify the sound that had woken everyone up. Red Horn was holding onto the side of the ship looking off out into the sea, a harsh glare in her red eyes as she looked out into the distance, the dark clouds making it hard to see what she was looking at though.

Just as Yuuto might have been about to ask though, a sharp flash of lightning FAR in the distance gave him his answer. A giant silhouette was highlighted in the distance, what appeared to be a series of tentacles writhing in the water. One slowly crashed down, and with it’s drop, an immense wave was coming their way. Mia looked back to Yuuto, he grasp on the edge of the ship tightening on one hand, the other hand reaching to Yuuto, grabbing the back of his shoulders to keep him steady too.

“Sorry kid… don’t think this is gonna be a quiet ride…!~”

You could swear she was excited to say that.

Mia looked to Yuuto, expecting the potential chance that a kid his age might be terrified but... no, that was a look she knew all too well. God she knew she liked this kid for a reason. She gave his back a firm smack of encouragement once it was safe to let him go and rushing off towards the captain's room up the stairs along the deck. "Atta boy! We can't tell what we're dealing with yet I'm afraid! Could be a transformation quirker after our goods or that one in a million chance of a quirked squid but whatever the fuck it is it's big and it's closing in on us fast!" Even as Mia said this, a quirk glance to the water showed that the writhing tentacles had already grown so close that you could see them without a lightning flash to highlight them now, Mia cursing under her breath that something this big was found out at sea. A place where she couldn't really do her best to fight it. Another huge wave was incoming and Mia grasped onto a nearby structure, a hand on Yuuto's back again to keep him steady, grunting a little as the force passed through the boat.

"Right... right... gotta think of a plan here..." She glanced over to Yuuto himself, not about to rule him out as an asset right now even if he was technically just an intern. Dire situations and all that. "Alright kid. Time to fill me in. How far can that summon of yours go from you? Think it can do anything to hold that thing off while we batton down the hatches so to speak?~" She offered him a wild grin, hoping he'd be able to rise to the challenge today and show her what he had.

Honestly? Mia was ready to suggest the same thing only with the two of them taking the risk. While she couldn't swim this cargo ship had a few high speed life boats on either side she could ride out into the raging ocean. A big risk, but with a life jacket there wasn't too much she'd be risking if she felt she could rely on Yuuto grabbing her out of the water if her boat every overturned. Before she could make the suggestion though she saw the fire in Yuuto's eyes, his determination to go and face the beast... she took a deep breath, steeling her nerves against the risk and slamming a hand against his shoulder, grasping his shirt tight and looking back into his eyes with an equal fire in her own.

"That fucker gives you trouble you come back... but we both know you got this." She gave him another firm slap on the back as he got into gear and ran off down the ship herself. What took 3 men to do she could do in less time with her strength so she made sure to do everything she could around the ship to make sure they were locked down steady and weren't about to have their cargo thrown oversea.

Out at sea the mighty beast continued to writhe through the water. There were no clear signs if this was a quirked animal or some form of beastly transformation or mutation quirk, but with the size of the creature it didn't seem to notice Yuuto on his approach until he was close enough to make that initial strike. It seemed to be mostly meat and muscle with no tough scales to protect it, the strike of those claws enough to reveal the flexible bone-like core of the tentacle it struck, the creature's maw, a mass of teeth and pincers rearing out of the water to let out a bellowing screech.

Mia glanced out to the water but she didn't let herself watch for long... the kid had this, and the sooner she was done on the ship the sooner she could help him.

Back with Yuuto himself, as the creature locked onto the boy and his shark like summon, it reared back one of it's closer tentacles as it's injured one withdrew under the water, slamming down. It's accuracy wasn't the greatest but the size of it was such that even a miss would be able to generate a wave with such concussive force it could easily seperate the rider and it's mount if they weren't careful.

Mia was rushing back and forth on the boat using her strength and speed to get things stable faster than a handful of the other crew men could do in the same given time, but always had an eye out on the horizon, watching that monsterous beast wiggle and writhe. Yuuto was basically just a spec in the waves along with his summon and Mia was growing frustrated with her ‘boat bound’ nature as the kid did all the dangerous work keeping it off their backs, but, the quickers she had things locked down the quirker she could help him.

----

The beast itself seemed to be giving Yuuto more and more of it’s undivided attention, a hissing screech from it’s beak as it brought down that tentacle against Yuuto, only to watch him seemingly dive in to be squished under the full force of the tentacle. Rather than let the confusion grab him the stray limb seemed to just come down with even more force than before. Faster, quicker, holding more weight than Yuuto initially realized.

Of course, it didn’t come down for long, whatever this creature was it seemingly wasn’t all that used to something putting up a fight, the flurry of blows impacting on dense muscle and repeatedly at that, but even with how tough the tendril felt the octopus reared back in anger, many of it’s appendages surfaces from the water with a burst of white throth as it did so, and suddenly Yuuto found himself in the air. A tentacle rose up from underneath him and blew him and his summon up into the sky above the beast, it’s angry eyes locking onto him, trying to aim it’s tooth filled maw for Yuuto to land within.

-----

“WHERE’S THE ANCHOR!?”

Mia roared out at one of the crew members as she finished her tasks on the boat, they seemed confused as to why she was even asking but one of them was easily scared enough to point in the general direction of the ship’s equipment. A lot of ships still had anchors afterall for when they were holding themselves in the dock or when they needed to rest and wait for rescue out at sea. It wasn’t hard enough to follow the iron chains to the anchor itself, slamming her elbow into one of the lings and breaking it apart. They’d think of a solution when they hit port. For now she needed something to throw!

Jumping up top the captain’s deck, anchor and a length of it’s chain in hand, Mia started to wind it up over her head, catching the beast just when it started to rear back. Aim over a distance like this was never her strong suit, but this was not the time to miss.

“You wanna eat something big guy…!?” She pulled the swirling anchor up behind her, catching it’s momentum on the back spin and hurling it over her shoulder, sending it out, anchor tip first like a soaring bullet. “EAT THIS!”

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Yuuto felt gravity about to take him from the ascent and bring him plummeting back down towards the beast, it’s eyes wide and wild ready to take in the tasty morsel that was falling towards it, when WHAM! Out of the blue a thick chunk of iron and steel slammed directly into what could only be called the beast’s forehead, forcing it off balance, collapsing into the water. There was clear life in it’s eyes, it wasn’t down yet, but what could have been a plummet to his death now left him with a lot of options, many of the tentacles wildly flailing around him to grab onto if it could help him.