Street Life: Be Better

(POV Raiden)

Watching Venom, no, my best friend Jinko's failed attempt at haggling while clearly showing off exactly how much money we brought for the deal, I wonder how it is we got in this mess.

Look at us. Two orphans turned heroes, no matter how recent, in some crummy abandoned warehouse buying illegal drugs from the Yakuza. If anyone found out, the end of our careers would be the least of our problems. Especially if they found out what we planned to do or worse, what we already did with the stuff.

We were supposed to be better than this. The whole reason we became heroes was to gain a voice. To be heard, so we could make a difference in the world. So we could personally start cleaning the place up and do what other heroes and the police turned a blind eye to. To look out for everyone, no matter what their background was.

At least that's what I thought we were trying to do. I wonder at what point did "being better" become two different things for us? Maybe it was never the same from the start?

Jinko had always been…bitter now that I thought about it. Not that I could blame him really. As stupid as it sounds, even people with strong quirks face heavy quirk discrimination in this society.

Jinko's quirk is Poison. He can create a variety of different kinds of poisons or toxins in his body to breathe out in a mist around him or even condense it into a more concentrated liquid he can secrete through touch with enough time. The only downside being he isn't exactly immune to his poisons, though he is heavily resistant. Overuse of his quirk could leave him sick or paralyzed and if he somehow managed to push past even that, dead.

It's truly an amazing quirk if you ask me. At least I think it's more useful than my own Shadow control. Unfortunately for us both, others didn't feel the same. The other kids in the orphanage feared the mere suggestion that his quirk could easily harm them. While I on the other hand was constantly praised for my "cool and strong" quirk.

Rather than reveling in the attention, it just felt stifling to me. All their hopes and expectations being loaded on my shoulders was a pain. At some point I grew quiet. Afraid even speaking would mess up the illusion of perfection they placed on me. That in turn made others start avoiding me as well, either because they thought I was better than them or just figured that was how I felt.

Jinko was the only one to not only not care about my quirk, but actively looked down on me as well. He'd always wanted to prove he was better than me. Better than what they made him out to be. We obviously didn't start out as friends, but we somehow ended up connecting as two people ostracized by society even if in different ways. Over time the bond we shared turned into something like a brotherhood.

In a way, we both covered the weakness of the other. With me, the prospective hero around him, others feared Jinko less. And with Jinko around me, everyone started to realize I was just a normal person too.

Jinko wasn't happy with just that however. Years of isolation had taken its toll on both of us. His drive to prove himself never waned and perhaps even grew over the years. While my social skills took a bit of a hit, always letting him do all the talking.

Even with our slightly better situation, it was still pretty much us against the world. That is, until we fell in with the Yakuza.

See, our town has always been pretty poor in several ways. I wouldn't go as far to call it in the slums but let's just say heroes don't actively patrol around all that often. At least not ones with good intentions.

The Yakuza on the other hand laid claim to the area and actively took part in keeping it clean from the worst type of scum. Ironically doing the heroes job better than they did. They may have been criminals in the eyes of society, but at least they had honor.

It was after one of their members rescued us from a villain attack that we joined up with them. Well, at least we tried to. They refused to let us in. Telling us the age of the Yakuza was over and that they were probably going to be the last generation. Society had already branded them "Villains" practically ruining their operations.

Despite the refusal to join officially though, they did still agree to help us train so we could protect ourselves. Jinko practically idolized them as people who overcame what society claimed them to be by choosing their own path. I on the other hand admired the group who looked after everyone equally no matter what their quirks or origins were. I guess you could even say they adopted us somewhere along the way.

Which made it all the more tragic when we found them all dead and butchered in their office one morning.

Worst of all, the police and other heroes in the area refused to cover the case more extensively. It was just assumed they were murdered by a rival faction or maybe some vigilante with a grudge. There was no justice for the supposed scum of society. For the people that took us in and gave us a place to call home.

We couldn't stand it so we decided to take matters into our own hands, to become heroes. True heroes, better than all the rest, that sought justice for everyone. Then eventually using our popularity and connections we'd be able to figure out what happened to our deceased family and bring the murderer to justice.

That was the plan, or at least I thought that was the plan. You know what they say, no plan survives the first encounter. Despite getting into and graduating from a decent hero school, both Jinko and I faced complications while trying to rise through the rankings. People still feared Jinko and I was still bad at communicating. I could at least scrape by with the whole silent and mysterious act but my association with Jinko led to his increasingly poor reputation rubbing off on me as well.

I was at my wits end on what to do when Jinko finally made a suggestion that I begrudgingly agreed to. It was simple really, we just…nudged people in a direction they were already going and then be the first to turn them in once they snapped. It was a win-win really. We increased our popularity and also got potential criminals off the street before they could do something really bad.

Jinko always said anyone would choose to be bad if given the power and opportunity if they hadn't had it from the start. So we got in contact with one of our old associates, Joi who survived the attack and ended up joining a different Yakuza group, even though I loathed the traitor. He managed to hook us up with their new Trigger variant, we'd scout out potential villains and people in poor situations and the rest was history.

We were slowly but surely rising through the rankings now and it'd only be a matter of time until we could finally get the support we needed to launch a proper investigation. Everything was supposed to be going well…

So why did it feel so wrong? Is what we're doing really the right thing anymore? Shouldn't a hero's job be to keep others from becoming villains in the first place? At this point, are we any better than the people who pointed and called us future villains?

I asked Jinko about it, but I didn't really know how to take his response anymore.

"Why should we care? It's their fault they let just a lil bit of power go to their heads! I live with the temptation everyday of my life and I proved I was better than that, right!? What's their excuse, huh!?"

It was one of the few serious fights we've been in between each other. In the end, I decided to back down and try to see things from his perspective. Maybe he was right? It's not like we were forcing them to do bad things. In the end the choice was their own to make, no one else's.

That was the decision I ultimately came to, while watching the deal play out. I still didn't think this was something we should keep doing forever, but if it helped us achieve Jinko's... our goals then I didn't mind bending the rules just a little bit. At least I would continue to do so until Venom was satisfied.

"Well, guess this will have to do. Pleasure doing business wit-" Just as the deal was about to conclude, I sensed something that put me on high alert. One of the benefits to my quirk was that I could generally sense the shadows in my surroundings that I could make use of. The range was pretty limited but that only made me all the more sure when something was amiss.

Sensing the general movement of the assailant, I didn't have time to warn Jinko or Joi of the impending attack before I was already leaping into action, with only enough time to shield him and myself with a quickly raised shadow hand from behind us.

Luckily I was just in time to stop what appeared to be a bullet from blowing both our brains out. Joi or Mimic now, along with his goons weren't so lucky however and all suddenly had spouts of blood coming from their heads before unceremoniously collapsing on the ground, likely already dead.

The assailant didn't stop there however and suddenly a red ribbon or bandage came from the roof and latched onto the briefcase full of cash we brought before quickly reeling it in not a moment later. Another line attempted to reach for the case of Trigger with Jinko but by that point he'd already snapped out of his shock and retreated away with the contents.

"Y-Y-You-" Just as I was going to start coordinating with Venom, I was surprised by more movement in the shadows where he was previously standing.

"YOU UNGRATEFUL BASTARDS SET ME UP!? I'LL KILL YOU!" Joi, no Mimic suddenly shot up screaming breaking free from his tiny disguise I suggested to him once, returning to his tall, muscular and spiky haired self. The only difference being his almost crimson bloodshot eyes with a look of absolute rage in them.

Feels like things just got even more complicated…

-_-_-

[A/N: Ya know, it wasn't my intention when I first came up with the characters backstory, but after reading through the whole thing and since it likely won't ever come up in the story, I'm going to say Raiden might be gay or at least bi with feelings for Jinko/Venom. It wasn't intentional at first, but I noticed their relationship is kind of, no pun intended, really toxic and showed some signs of dependency and emotional abuse. Not sure if that came through with the writing but just thought I'd share that as an example of how sometimes a story will just write itself without the author's intention. Heck this chapter wasn't even really supposed to be about their backstory except hinting they were the two the commission was talking about in the intermission.]