Chapter 50 – Aftermath (part 2)

Raiko's POV

"I lost nineteen years today."

When I spoke that single cursed sentence, the room froze in shock, once again, and I could see guilt plastered on the face of the students.

Crap, now I felt bad for lying to them, but I tried to convince myself that it was necessary.

Though, I had to tell them something to easy their guilt…

"You know, I don't regret it, as I know the time I just lost had been used in a good way and I will still be able to live a good life, I will just age slightly faster. I'm certain you will all be great heroes, and the years I just lost today will be more than made up by you all saving others. One, day, it will be your turn to be heroes and save others. So don't feel guilt or anything like it because of what happened today, I was ready to make those sacrifices when I decided to become a teacher, because it's my job to protect you, until it's your turn to protect others," I softly said, hoping to make the feel better.

It seemed it worked, I could see them all easy a bit, I was feeling better. Until I saw Kyotaka and immediately felt bad again. She looked so distressed and confused, she was in turmoil. I had been too convincing and sounded so genuine that she thought the worse, that I had really lost nineteen years and was just distraught and sad.

Yeah, I felt bad. I would make it up for her soon, I promised that to myself.

The rest of the student had an expression of sadness mixed with determination on their faces, that was exactly was I had wanted with my earlier speech, it would make them push themselves even harder to become great heroes.

.

This beautiful moment was abruptly interrupted when Present Mic barged into the infirmary and shouted, at the top of his voice, which was very very loud.

"DAMN IT! THE VILLAINS HAVE ESCAPED!"

F*ck.

That was expected, though, and it just proved my theory that Sensei was behind all of this. This was bad.

It seems Knockout would go after another villain group soon.

"Let me guess, someone rescued them with a warp gate quirk," I said to Present Mic.

"Yeah, spot on, a kind of black goo covered them and, the next moment, they were gone. Only the leader and the one with the warp gate quirk have escaped, the small fries and the Nomu are fortunately still in our hands." Mic replied.

"Two villains with a warp gate quirk in a single group, what are the odds…" A student complained.

"Tough luck…"Present Mic replied.

Even if I had been awake, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't've changed anything, those villains would've escaped anyway, there wasn't a lot someone could do against a warp gate quirk.

Maybe I could've forced Sensei to go there in person and manually retrieve his pawns, but would it have been worth it? Probably not, my double identity would've been maybe revealed, Sensei had hundreds of quirks, there was probably one that make him deduce I am Knockout. And if I fought with Sensei, I don't know who would win. Maybe I would, but anyway, the collateral damage would've been abysmal… There would be thousands or injuries or casualties. So if I wanted to fight him, I would have to do so far from civilization.

Still, that didn't prevent Knockout from investigating them and possibly dismantling them. Maybe I could cooperate with the heroes for this one, I wouldn't refuse their help, but would they accept mine?

Putting these matters at the back of my mind for now, I asked my grandmother, Recovery Girl, multiple times to be released as I was totally fine and she reluctantly let me go, making me promise I wouldn't get injured soon and to take care of myself.

.

I finally arrived to my home, after some last-minute check-ups to confirm I wasn't injured at all. This had been a very exhausting day, and I intended to do absolutely nothing for the rest of it.

I then realized that my phone was dead, so I charged it and saw that Kyotaka had texted me a couple of times and that I had missed three calls from her. She obviously was concerned about me and wanted to know the truth.

I simply told her to go meet at our usual meeting spot in an hour, and started to prepare myself. There goes my plans of doing nothing for the rest of the day, although simply hanging out with Kyotaka wouldn't be bad either.

After preparing myself, I left to the beach, our meeting point and noticed that Kytoaka was already there, looking around, waiting for me.

When she saw me, in a rare show of physical display of emotion, she immediately hugged me, surprising me greatly.

I hesitantly hugged her back, a bit confused, but mostly feeling really bad about my earlier actions, I had to explain everything to her.

"You know Kyotaka, everything about the quirk consuming my lifespan was a lie, so don't worry. I only needed a good excuse for not using this quirk often. Sorry…"

"Yeah, I had figured it out….But still, I wasn't sure. I was worried about you, you know, why didn't you just tell me beforehand…19 years, you know, I was sad when you said that. Big Meanie." She shakily said, and got a bit angry against me toward the end, but it was understandable, it was my fault.

"I know, I should've told you…Sorry."

"But what the f*ck, really, I feel that every time I see you, you have one more absurdly powerful quirk. I think it's the fourth or fifth one you showed me, who knows how many you really have… And what was that thing you were fighting, it packed quite a punch… You know, you went through like 4 walls from a single punch once... If I didn't know you were Knockout..."

"Oh, the Nomu. It was a bioengineered weapon made to kill All Might."

"WHAT!"

"Yeah, it was fun to fight."

"Wasn't as fun to watch you, I'm still mad at you…And that doesn't answer how you got so many quirks..."

"I'm sure you can figure it out if you think about it."

"Is that a challenge? I'm in."

"Yeah, and I'm going to give you a reward if you figure it out before a week."

She smiled at me and we continued talking while we slowly walked.

Wanting to make it up to her as much as I could, I invited her to, again, to a restaurant but this time it was an African restaurant that was really unnoticeable and plain, but was also very good. The food there was obviously exotic but it was still delicious, the chef was a god inside human skin…

I had a whole spreadsheet of good restaurants or other shops I had found while observing random people's quirk and finding cooking quirks, which were surprisingly common.

.

Kyotaka and I spent the next few hours hanging-out, and I could see that this morning's event and everything that happened because of it had really stressed and tired her out, it helped her relax a lot and we had lots of fun.

Unknowingly, I was also quite tensed from this morning's villain attack and I realized that I needed the break as much as she did, maybe even more.

We went to a botanical garden that had hundreds, maybe thousands of different flowers than, as I got late, waited a little more before she had to go home.

Days passed too fast…

But the good news was that she no longer was mad at me…I think, but I'm not exactly sure. Still, she was in a better mood than before and that was what's important.

I returned home that day, feeling refreshed, and this time intending to relax for a couple of hours, only to be summoned by Nezu about the attack on the USJ that had just happened. News had gotten out and now they wanted me, and the other staff, to do a press conference, to reassure the people and the parents of U.A. students.

That would be fun...