Save the Cheerleader, Save the World (3)

NOTE: In case you didn't notice in the previous chapter, I leave here the image of the attractive appearance of Toga's mutant form; just click on the small image that appears below this paragraph.

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Act I: Origins

Mission 01: Save the Cheerleader, Save the World (3)

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P-o-V

The conversation about the blonde-haired woman's past and the characteristics of the primitive version of {Kepesh-Yakshi} he had built ended when the coin he tossed into the air decided that he would be the one to initiate the first move when it landed on one of the corners of the old wooden table, revealing the side of the coin he had chosen.

It was not very difficult for Izuku to analyze the irritated emotional state of the woman with the mutant quirk; those expressions full of discomfort and anger that she had made on multiple occasions (undoubtedly caused by the excess of personal and tactless questions he had asked her), told him that it was time to change the strategy he had devised to know the background behind the behavior of his peculiar prisoner.

Not only had he built this game of chess with the intention of selling his patent to the market but he wanted to earn a good sum of money to help his mother pay the high debt of medical expenses that she had acquired by taking care of him while he remained in coma, but he had also built this game because he thought it would give him a great help to socialize and understand the girl in front of him. *2

Out there there are a lot of people who have strange tastes. Tastes that may include enjoying pain or causing pain (as he believed was the case with Toga) and/or tastes that include enjoying the adrenaline rush (as is the case with him) when playing a recreational activity where your physical or mental integrity may be in acceptable danger.

And also, thanks to the teachings he had received in the classes of general psychology and criminal psychology in his training as N7 (and thanks to the 'teachings' that Liara would have given him after defeating him countless times in the original version of this game), he was now well aware that chess was a tool that could be used to bring to light the hidden truths of a person. Someone with a mind capable of a decent level of analysis and with enough experience may become able to know and/or read certain traits of a person's personality by analyzing the micro-expressions they use in a conversation but an analyst can also analyze other traits of a person's personality in a game of chess. By integrating what has been previously learned about a person with the strategies they use on the battlefield, the behavior analyst can discover more of someone's character or personality traits, even if the person being evaluated isn't entirely honest with themselves or the evaluator.

Therefore, Izuku had done everything possible to make his prisoner agree to play a game of chess with him, even if he had to build a version of this game somewhat extreme for the social standards of today's Japan...

At the end of that thought, when he manually moved the first of his pawns, Midoriya couldn't help but sigh slightly as he was filled with a decent level of guilt after remembering that 11 days ago, he had kidnapped a woman.

Yes, maybe she was a person who had bloodily taken the life of a high school senior; 5 homeless people; two heroin addicts; And a crack addict...

...Yes, this girl was definitely a murderer with moderately serious mental problems (from his perspective), to say the least.

But!... To the caring side that still dwells in the core of Midoriya's soul; whether as Izuku or as Shepard, to him, she was still just a girl after all. A girl who was in her late teens just turned 17 years old 4 months ago.

And this young woman, he had taken away her freedom 11 days ago. Locking her up and keeping her as his prisoner in a psychiatric room worthy of the worst of the third-world motels; a room in a stinking and dilapidated abandoned building located in the vicinity of one of the worst districts that exist in Japan...

...What the hell was he thinking?!...

...The first time that question crossed his mind, was when he stole all those globular packages from that clinic. And in the following days, that question didn't let him sleep peacefully on more than one occasion. These days, he had been filled with feelings of guilt and ideas full of doubts, which were still leaving him a bit uneasy when he thought about it. In reality, although one can give the impression that he had finally found a way to completely address all the problems involving the name [Himiko-Toga]...

...In the first few days after he kidnapped her, he was never quite sure what he would do with Toga if he discovered that she hadn't salvation. And to make matters worse, in the early days, he was never quite sure how he would find out whether or not she had salvation in the first place.

"Ah! Damm it!...YOU!...You'd better take that happy face off! That's only the second piece I've lost, you're still a long way from winning broccoli-chan!"

"Hehehehe". Izuku chuckled after watching and listening to Toga's tenderly annoyed pout, which was born after he pressed a button that would grant her the second electric shock of the day.

Then, he waited for the blonde's next move as he looked at his own left arm. Again those guilty thoughts crossed the surface of his mind as he recalled that there had been several occasions when he had thought of killing this (strange and wild but at the same time beautiful and extroverted) woman with the blade of his omni-tool. In the first days after meeting her, he thought on more than one occasion that the best destiny that Toga could have would be the destiny in which he would be the one to end her life. He thought this when he wished to spare her the suffering of a painful death that would come when she was put in a federal prison.

The electric chair was a very cruel death penalty; prisoners worthy of it receive a strong and constant electric shock for at least 10 seconds. And 10 seconds for someone whose organs, muscles, and tissues are being burned from the inside out, is an eternity where a terrible, slow agony spreads through every fiber of their being before the tranquility of death embraces them.

On the other hand, lethal injection, the other type of death sentence applied in Japan, isn't a prisoner-friendly procedure either. The procedure consists of the following; the criminals are given valium in such high doses that they are placed in a state of sedation and then intravenously injected with a cocktail of poisonous chemicals that will essentially cause the functions of their kidneys, heart, and lungs to fail, destroying the cells involved in the processes described above. And one might think that since a prisoner is sedated, he or she feels no pain.

But that isn't quite correct: Sedation isn't equivalent to anesthesia and/or a comatose state. It's only a state of unconsciousness, in which consciousness fluctuates between light sleep and deep sleep; it's as if the brain is only partially shut down, leaving a person who appears to be asleep, tranquilized, and who apparently doesn't feel any pain but who in reality can feel pain. In the past, in the universe where he confronted the [Reapers], which he now calls [Earth-2], Izuku came to hear some accounts of survivors of such a death sentence, survivors who described their pain as if their entrails were being liquefied: The experience was described as the worst thing that could happen to someone, even worse than the electric chair because it's almost as if a surgeon opened your entrails without anesthesia while believing you have been properly anesthetized.

Thinking about the above, when he hadn't yet known Toga well enough (and since he obviously couldn't let her go free or she would endanger the lives of other innocent people), he thought at least five times, that the best thing would be to end her life in the most merciful ways that exist instead of taking her to prison. He thought of two ways to end her life; First, he thought he could apply to one of the transfusion bags he gives her to eat, a combination of sedatives and hypnotics in lethal amounts that would initially put her into a coma with subsequent respiratory failure; She would die peacefully, not knowing what had happened while having pleasant dreams (probably); Secondly, he thought of simply cutting her bulbous spine with his omniblade, stabbing her cervical spine at the level of the bulbous spine quickly and accurately, thereby giving her an instant and painless death. He had already applied this death penalty in the past to criminals he considered cruel enough to have to kill them, but not yet evil enough to throw them into the nest of a thresher maw

At the ninth move, after a few minutes into the game, Izuku sighed calmly at the thought of how relieved he currently felt after coming to the conclusion that he probably wouldn't have to do any of the above after, more or less, analyzing this girl's behavior over the past 11 days.

"Ouch"...Izuku's thoughts were partially interrupted when he felt the electric pinch that Toga unleashed by pressing that button.

After moaning again after receiving the third electric pinch of the day, she finally managed to find a way to make Inko's son suffer.

"Hehehe. Looks like the commander can actually feel pain. I guess I was wrong about you being as insensitive as a machine~ You know? I was starting to think that you were like a...Hmmm...What was the name of that thing in the movie we saw the other day?... Ah yes! I thought that underneath that skin so sex...I mean, I thought that underneath your ugly skin, was the skeleton of a T-800~"

"¿?". Izuku was struck strangely by the reddish blush on Toga's cheeks. She seemed very happy after she had managed to remove one of his pieces. Was she getting off on his pain out of some kind of sadomasochistic trait or was she just excited to be teaching her kidnapper a lesson? At the time, Izuku couldn't think of an adequate answer to that question, so he figured he would need more time to bring that truth to light.

Once he shook the electricity out of his body, he replied with an ironic tone that would soon turn into a tone full of smug airs:

"Oh please, Don't compare me to a mere T-800. I have better parts inside me; I am superior to any T-950, so please don't compare me to such an obsolete version again~"

"¿?". Toga looked confused at that statement, tilting her head for a moment to her left side. She probably still didn't know enough of the lore of the [Terminator] franchise as Izuku, who was a fan of the current and/or old sci-fi classics both those of [Earth-1] and [Earth-2]. Or maybe Toga didn't quite get that joke, because she simply didn't know that Izuku was actually a cyborg...

And how could she? It was impossible for her to know that inside him still lay in a fully functional state and in the same place where they were placed, all the synthetic organs that replaced his original organs when [Cerberus] implanted them in his body after being unable to restore with nanomachines certain specific tissues when they experimented on his corpse in an attempt to bring him back to life. In fact, for that reason, his synthetic eyeballs still puzzled his mother with their reddish glow when night came...

"So, what do you think so far of {Kepesh-Yakshi}? Am I, or am I not, a good game designer?~"

When he thought about the above for a brief moment, Izuku decided to open his mouth to distract his head from those troubling thoughts as he didn't know whether to think about whether the latter was a good or bad thing. So he decided that deep meditation on that topic, he would do it another time.

"Hmmmmm...", Toga took a moment to answer him as she reached out to take a chess piece but withdrew her hand a second later.

That act gave Izuku two clues: that she was a self-questioning person and/or that she had a lot of doubts still hanging around in her head, and therefore, was susceptible to paranoia and some people's opinions. However, the fact that she was still patiently thinking about the opinion he expressed to her, told Izuku that her judgment wasn't completely fragmented.

" It's more than obvious that it attracted your attention this game~". After making the previous guesses, Midoriya ended up enunciating with a certain tone full of pride while still waiting for her opponent's move.

"...Don't bother me brocoli-chan, I'm thinking of the best way to make you suffer...", Toga replied after a few seconds had passed, initially seeming reluctant to give her opinion; her hand was still undecided on any chess piece.

That last comment confirmed to him that she took some kind of pleasure in causing pain to another. No doubt her personality possessed a sadistic trait; but at what level?; he had to find out if this trait had become a compulsion she couldn't control or if it was just an intentional pursuit of pleasure, with judgment sufficiently preserved to be able to decide who to cause pain to and when to cause pain. And that also reminded him to find out if the association she had made with the concept of blood and love was reversible; in the last few days, there had already been several occasions in which she had come to call blood by its name instead of just calling it 'love', so he believed that this kind of ideation hadn't yet fully taken root in her mind.

"Oh come on! At this point, you can no longer say that you're not liking this game. Don't you dare lie to me~". Izuku raised his voice slightly and frowned at Toga's response. He was trying to look offended, which he hoped might make her talk some more.

"...", The next moment, she looked at him in which she raised an eyebrow, and a second later sighed with a bit of weariness in the middle. Perhaps she sensed that the green-haired man wouldn't let her rest until he got an answer, so apparently she had no choice but to speak ,"...Alright, alright. If you really want to know what I think, I'll tell you: The game is fine, okay? It's not the best game in the world, but at least I think you managed to stop chess from being a treatment for insomnia...", She moved her knight next while answering in a somewhat plaintive tone ,"...And now that you made me think about it...", Then, unexpectedly for Izuku, Toga showed a sudden and true interest when she asked the following while she moved one of his bishops: "...What the heck is {Kepe-Yaksi} supposed to mean? Does it really mean anything? Because it sounds like a male Russian trying to tell you his name while he has a piece of potato stuck in his throat~"

"...Well...First of all, you pronounced it a little wrong. The correct pronunciation is: {Kepesh-Yakshi}...", Izuku scratched his cheek when he noticed how Toga raised the chitinous eyebrow on her mutant-looking face again. That, plus the way her lips twitched in annoyance, showing one of her upper fangs in the process, told the green-haired man that Toga wasn't at all interested in taking foreign language pronunciation lessons. Well, at least she was now showing real interest and curiosity in things that had nothing to do with blood, which seemed to be a big improvement compared to the first three days after meeting her ,"...Ok, I'll forget about language classes~. Anyway, in short: {Kepesh-Yakshi}, it's actually a phrase from a dead language from...middle east...which means: blade of the night winds", Halfway through his sentence Izuku paused as he tried to find the lie that best suited the situation.

Obviously, he couldn't tell her that it was a phrase from a language of an alien species living in another dimension.

"A dead language from the middle east?...", While she had one of her hands hovering over her pieces, she raised another one of her eyebrows, not seeming too convinced by Izuku's words. However, less than 5 seconds later, she apparently played down the matter as her lips took on an ironic expression when she frivolously said the following: "...blade of the night winds?. Are you serious? Did the geek spirit you're hiding think that name would sound cool? ~...", Toga giggled as her cheeks flushed again after the last of her bishops knocked out a Midoriya knight, causing him to get another annoying electric pinch. She then licked her lips before opening her mouth again ,"...What does a night blade have to do with playing such a strange version of chess? Shepard-Chan: [Space Chess] or [Space Chess For Crazy People] are names a thousand times better than {Kepes-Whatever-be-it's-name} ~", With a sharp tongue whose intentions were obvious, she finished enunciating.

"..." But despite the blatant taunts expressed right after he received an electroshock, Izuku wasn't bothered at all. In fact, he also smiled wryly when he thought about how he had also originally thought that [Space Chess] was a more suitable name for the original {Kepesh-Yakshi} when {Liara} first taught him how to play it.

As a second thought that popped into his head after having the previous one, Izuku thought of the following characteristics that were part of Himiko-Toga's attitudes that he had discovered so far:

Sarcasm and levity. These personality traits/attitudes or ways of being are generally used as defense mechanisms that help a person cope with a difficult life by feigning and/or hiding their true desires or feelings with their words or actions, either consciously or subconsciously. The person with these defense mechanisms will appear as if the lives of others or what happens to them don't matter much to them. This type of mechanism Izuku knew very well since even he had developed a certain level of sarcasm and frivolity after living that crappy life in his second childhood on [Earth-2].

Next, Izuku would move another of his pawns while explaining only vaguely why he named this game that way. Then, Toga would move her bishop, placing it in a space between the izuku's pawns, which told the green-haired man how much she liked danger and/or adrenaline.

"Well done. The {Krogan's} bloodlust and their fighting spirit can certainly help a general win a battle... ", Izuku congratulated her at first with a sincere tone; Her strategy was good, she was waiting for her bishop to distract him so that in the next move she would use the rook she was hiding between her two knights, with which she planned to eliminate his queen and the next move she could make, she would most likely try to enclose his king with her other rook combined with the moves of her knights. However, Izuku's experience ended up being the decisive key to this game, so the next moment he would smile smugly before saying: "...But I regret to tell you that savagery isn't enough to win a war. Now thanks to the fact that you let yourself be seduced by the blood of battle, I'm going to eliminate your King in five moves"

From the semi-confused expression Himiko made after hearing him, he thought about how she obviously didn't know what a {Krogan} was and/or why he was talking about terms like savagery or bloodlust. However, she would pay attention to his final words, since she seemed to have taken more vigilance in the game.

"You're just bluffing...", Toga said in the next instant with a somewhat disbelieving tone but with an expression more absorbed in the game. Both of her eyes narrowed as they took a serious look at each of the pieces still on the board. Perhaps she was trying to analyze whether Izuku was blogging or not.

"I've been told I do that too often, but no, on this occasion I'm totally serious...", The green-haired man smiled as he eliminated a Toga knight, at the cost of one of his bishops and would later eliminate the first Rook and the last of her bishops, at the cost of four of his pawns. However, the formation he would leave behind after making those moves would render the blonde-haired woman's strategy completely unusable ,"...I told you. The {Krogan} can win battles, but even they can be defeated by mere humans with the right strategy...or by sticking a knife in the right place"

"!". In a short time, Toga became even more serious than a few moments ago, something that surprised even Izuku. The sarcastic statements or taunts disappeared from her words, leaving only a woman with a strong competitive spirit; she probably had no intention of losing to her kidnapper at all.

It didn't take long for her to form a very tight barrier with her leftover chess pieces like an armored turtle trying to hide under its shell. Trying at the same time to make the ex-commander reduce his strength. This told Izuku, that in times of desperation, she could still become serious and drop the frivolous attitude she had built up. And, she could still manage to control her wild instincts enough to understand that sometimes one must be willing to protect others (or at least not harm them) in order to win or get ahead.

"Hmmmm, I haven't seen that form of tactic in a while...", It had been a long time since the ex-commander had encountered such a strategy, as most of his opponents, both in chess and in real life, focused on offense. With a meditative expression in the middle, he considered that Toga had created an annoying tactic to deal with ,"...I will correct what I said six minutes ago. I'll take out your king in 9 moves", But it wasn't a tactic he couldn't destroy with the right strategy after all. He only had to eliminate the armored ships in the form of collector ships, the knight-Navio-Geth, a reaper drone, and go for the king, The Harbinger.

-o-o-o-o

Less than 10 minutes later...

"..." For the first time in who knows how long, Toga was completely silent for more than a minute as one of her eyebrows twitched multiple times, almost as if she had developed a kind of nervous tick.

This happened, just after Midoriya mercilessly eliminated her king.

Izuku could understand her frustration and the other annoying feelings that were surely already welling up inside her. Her strategy had been good, she had played wonderfully and hadn't at all used the strategies of an amateur player, but still, she had lost inexorably to her kidnapper and now she was about to receive an electroshock that would cause her a much sharper pain than in the previous occasions.

"You played very well, so cheer up! Even many professional players would fall before me in a few minutes, so I think your level of play already falls into a good category within the professional world...", When he considered that he had already made her suffer too much, the green-haired man moved his index finger to put it under the chair; his finger had been flying above the punishment button since he had won the game and had remained there, without moving since in reality, he had never intended to cause so much pain to the blonde-haired woman ,"...Don't worry, I never had any intention of pressing this button at the end of the game, so I guess I'd better put these helmets away...", But for some reason, Himiko didn't seem to agree with this decision, because when he brought it up for discussion, she slammed the table and enunciated the following with a somewhat annoyed attitude:

"No! No, No, No! Don't even! Don't even t-t-think about it. Don't...finish...that...sentence...broccoli-chan"

"?" Was Izuku hallucinating or was he observing some sort of gambler's pride welling up in Himiko's spirit? Or did she just not want to be underestimated? Or did she not want him to feel sorry for her?

But despite having those theories rattling around in his head, Izuku couldn't bring himself to answer them for the moment, as after a brief contemplative expression, Himiko's gaze would turn determined as her face would for some reason take on a bitter expression.

"S-S-Shoot!"

"...W-What?!"

"Y-You heard it. Just s-shoot!"

"Are you sure?"

"It's okay. You've won. I'm not a sore loser. So S-Shoot!"

"I-I don..."

"Y-You just do it broccoli chan!...or else I'm going to get really mad..."

The determined look and those eyebrows that slowly began to sink told Izuku that she had already made up her mind. Decision that he still wasn't sure for what reason she had been chosen, but it was her decision after all, so he doubted very much that someone as stubborn as her would be able to convince her to do otherwise in a short time. Therefore, Izuku placed his finger on the punishment button again and sighed, carrying feelings of guilt inside him; to make matters worse, now he would not only be her kidnapper but also her 'executioner'.

"I can't convince you to do otherwise, can I?"

"..." The only answer the green-haired man received was more sunken eyebrows along with a head slowly shaking from side to side.

"Geeeez...", Izuku muttered in a very low voice. Then he decided that it was time to comply with the strange wishes of Toga, who seemed angrier and angrier...Or disappointed...Or indignant...Or expectant...at the next action the man in front of her would perform ,"...Okay; I guess then I shouldn't be a bad winner either...I guess...", He sighed again and then his finger came closer and closer to the punishment button ,"...Get ready. 3. 2. 1. Fire!"

"Aaaaaaaaah!"

And the next moment, along with the sound of a moderately powerful electric shock, was heard the scream of pain from Himiko Toga, who at the same time had fallen from her chair to the floor and was now writhing a little in what was forcing her body to endure the incoming electricity through her nerves and muscles.

"Himiko!"

Hearing her and seeing her in that form, obviously, the ex-commander couldn't help but worry for her safety even if he knew that the number of volts used in this punishment was not powerful enough to harm someone considerably. But still, he stood up from his chair almost immediately and then tried to take Toga in his arms while she was on the floor. Perhaps he had overdone it too much in the amount of voltage he had placed on his device.

"¿?". However, he was unable to carry Toga, as she refused his embrace, even with her musculature still twitching moderately. But what confused the ex-commander the most at that moment was for some reason, she was smiling as her cheeks released a reddish color...

...It would take him a considerable time to realize why the above had happened...

...But for the moment, at least he had already come to the following conclusion: The woman who was just getting up from that floor, retaining some sort of pride (or pleasure?) in the process; she was definitely not a hopeless psychopath, but rather a strange lioness or snake. A savage predator with an exquisite taste for blood and with...another set of abnormal desires and tastes...

...Yes, she is a savage predator who is capable of bloodthirsty murder. But even savage predators can become elite soldiers if they receive proper guidance.

And if Toga allowed it and/or if she wished to allow it to herself, Izuku would be there to guide her, trying to grant her with it a better future; just as he had guided a bloodiest, old gray and blue-scaled friend in the past.

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To be continued.....

Next Chapter:

Act I: Origins. Mission 01: Save The Cheerleader, Save The World (4-[Final])

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WARNING: Hi Gamer, You have just read the second part of the previous chapter, which in turn is the last chapter I have completely written. As such, I don't have an updated schedule as I write this story depending on the time my personal life allows me to write. Although I may publish a chapter every 15-21 days, I generally post a chapter every month or every two months; However, if this happens, I usually release a long chapter as compensation.

The next chapter is 30% written, so it could be published in 15-21 days (if I don't have any unforeseen situations). Although it could also be the case that I could have it before these dates if a brainstorming comes to my head with a lot of strength; reading my story is like playing Russian roulette hehe) However, keep in mind that although it could take me a long time to publish a chapter, what I can assure you 100% is that I will not abandon this story; I'm too fond of the characters and the lore I plan to build, for that to happen; although it could take me about two years or a little more to finish this story.

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And don't forget to leave me a Review. Your opinions, ideas, and support, help me to create a good story. Best regards