2. Bento Bartering!

It's been 4 years since I was reincarnated into the world of My Hero Academia, with the help of a Random Omnipotent Being, Rob for short, under one condition.

I have to leave the world of MHA and return to his pocket dimension in the Void Between Worlds.

In return, he'll point me in the direction of a world that let's me travel the multiverse as I please.

With that said, I have made no significant progress in my training with the diet version of SCP-4001 that was given to me by Rob as a cheat power.

Why? The same reason I haven't shown my true intelligence these past 4 years and acted exactly as one would expect a 4 year old to act.

Because I want to be careful. I intend to be under the radar of every institution of authority in this world and more for as long as possible, until I have to come into the spotlight or I am powerful enough to fear nothing.

Now I'm sure you're wondering, why the paranoia? This is just an anime world, filled with idealistic heroes and do-gooders who'd never be a threat to anyone. And the villains wouldn't much care to stop me either, since any chaos would help them dismantle the new era of peace faster.

And to that I say, one word.

Nano Machines.

Okay two words, but you get the point.

If the backers of I-island found it even slightly suspicious that I was doing something that could threaten the world order of their shadowy cabal of bigwigs, they could very well instigate a grey goo end of the world scenario in retribution.

And I don't know about you, but I'd rather not be nanomachine chow.

This isn't evangelion after all.

Another reason why I hadn't started anything except basic physical training, was that until last week, my mother was at home for nearly half the day. The same half of the day that I was home from preschool, which meant that I couldn't do anything suspicious here either.

But those suffocating times are now over.

Three days ago, my mother emptied the family bank account, packed her bags and left to start a new life in Hokkaido with her much younger lover, leaving me alone, and my new father heartbroken.

In response, he threw himself into his work with a renewed passion, becoming the picture perfect Japanese workaholic.

This finally gave me free reign to practice with my powers.

And so began my extremely boring routine of summoning and unsummoning my three bookshelves over and over again until I passed out.

Wash, rinse and repeat.

Over the next 7 years, I spent all my time between school, absorbing puzzles and construction manuals, physical training at home and the copious amounts of time wasted hanging around busy intersections, sometimes even skipping whole school days with forged leave notices with my father's signature.

And all that hardwork had finally paid off.

At age 12, my collection of books stood at a whopping 315000, covering nearly 400 shelves, that I could summon and unsummon anywhere within my 200 meter range, in any configuration, at the speed of thought.

How did I get so many books so fast?

Well that's easy!

Just the Shibuya intersection, the busiest crosswalk in the world, sees a traffic of over a 100000 people daily.

To get new books in my library, I needed to witness somenone within my 200 meter range.

Most intersections are less than half that wide.

So all I had to do was plop my ass at a junction and wait, as the books kept popping into existence, expanding my library at astronomical speeds.

Two to three hours a week, over the course of 7 years and I had nearly a quarter the population of Tokyo cataloged.

In these seven years, a lot of things had happened.

All Might had fought "Toxic Chainsaw" in a massive battle just outside the city limits and "won".

The Tokyo Sky Egg had been bombed.

Captain Celebrity had been called back to the US of A.

And the vigilante Knucleduster had disappeared an year earlier and finally, Pop*Step had led the charity gala at the Naruhata Central Mall for two years now.

It was finally time for me to step into the line of action.

And in the first order of business was more training.

This time though, I had to be trained in martial arts.

My power, the knockoff SCP-4001, was a purely emitter quirk.

So I was less than a glass cannon.

I was a paper cannon.

And in this world of Superhumans who could blow holes into the ozone with a single punch, paper cannons get crushed.

And make no mistake, I had plans to remedy that. But before I could do that, I needed to create my own style of martial arts.

And to that end, I made my way into the depths of Naruhata, scouring the entire sector systematically, until a book popped into my library.

Soga Kugizaki, successor of Knucleduster and detective noir extraordinaire.

Bingo, baby!

I opened it and pinpointed his location to a warehouse outside the docks.

As I reached the warehouse, a man with flaming hair and another with a lizard mutation spotted me.

"Hey kid! This is no place to play! Go back home." The lizardman said.

"Yeah. This is a dangerous area, kid. Villains come around sometimes. You don't wanna get hurt do you?" The gentle giant asked.

"I'm here looking for a Soga Kugizaki?" I asked, ignoring their questions.

"Soga, huh? He's inside. But what business do you have with him?" The lizardman asked.

"I'll tell him personally. Can I?" I asked, gesturing at the door.

The lizardman looked at me amused, and thought for a moment.

"Sure. Come on in!" He said, opening the door to the warehouse-bunker, and led me into what looked like a bachelor's party home, full of empty beer cans, unwashed laundry, and half eaten week old chinese takeout.

And the smell, oh goodness!

It felt like my nostrils would burn off!

Man! This place needed cleaning.

"Hey Soga!" The lizardman called out.

"You've got a visitor!"

"WhuaaAth!?" He cried, getting up groggily.

He stumbled to his feet, still hungover, and tripped on a six pack carton, falling face first into gooey moldy chopsuey.

Ew!

I felt like retching just watching him do that.

And he actually did.

Projectile vomit, all over the place.

Soga looked up, saw me and ran off into the bathroom to clean up, before facing me.

Minutes later, a sobered up man sat opposite to me, clearly embarrassed at his display earlier.

"So, um, what brings you here? In fact, how did you even find out about this place or me, for that matter?" He asked.

"It's my quirk." I said, summoning a shelf, before pulling out his book.

"What's that? Doesn't look like any language I've ever seen." Soga asked, looking at the otherworldly symbols on the hardback cover.

"This is the book of your life. The title reads Soga Kugizaki.

I got it last week when I bumped into you on market street.

I was out searching for a dojo to learn martial arts and your book here told me that you are a master detective and martial arts expert." I said, flattering him.

After all, the easiest way to asl for a favor is to butter them up.

"So I figured, I'd ask.

Can you please mentor me?" I continued.

"Why?" Soga asked, looking me in the eyes with a classic stoic glare.

How very Knucleduster of him.

Someone has been a very dediated student!

"I want to get into UA in two years time but my quirk is good at information gathering and not much else.

If I want to get into UA, I'll need someone to help me create my own martial art to use in conjunction with my quirk." I explained.

Soga thought for a moment and asked.

"And what is your quirk exactly?"

"I can summon a library of books that catalogue the life of people I have touched." I answered, hiding the true power of my quirk.

"It's great for finding people and their secrets but it's just that. I can't get into UA just on the merit of my spying ability. So here I am."

"Hmm...that's a great quirk. You'd make a fantastic detective." Lizardman replied.

"Yeah. It's scary though. What if you leak the private details of someone or blackmail people for money?" The giant added, questioningly.

"I would never!" I protested, "Even to get you to help me, I could have threatened to expose the little arsenal you've got here. But I didn't.

I came up to you and laid out my honest case. The least you could do is not accuse me of treachery!"

The giant looked at me with remorse.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to...." he said.

"Yeah? But it sure looked like it!" I replied, crossing my arms and huffing.

"Look, do you want my help or not?" Soga interjected.

"Yes of course! That's why I came here." I replied.

"Then just forgive him and move on." Soga advised.

I looked at the man with narrowed eyes and nodded.

"Sure." I grunted gruffly.

"Jeez kid, don't hold a grudge!" The lizardman teased.

"Yeah, I know. Sorry." I said, "But you'll still help me right?" I asked, putting on my best innocent kid act, complete with the puppy eyes.

Soga looked at me with annoyance.

"Your puppy eyes don't work on me kid. Put 'em away. As for training you?

I'll think about it." He replied, looking away.

"He'll do it. He's just too tsundere to admit it!" The lizardman said, smirking at Soga.

"Rapt! Don't say that in front of the kid!" Soga whined.

"Thank you! Thankyouthankyouthankyou sooo much!" I cried, giving him a hug.

"Okay, okay, just...let go!" Soga said, prying me off.

I sat back down on the couch, as an uncomfortable silence descended upon the room.

"Sooo....when can we start?" I asked.

Soga looked around and sighed, rubbing his temples.

"Maybe in a week. We need to clean this place up." He said.

"Oh! That's fine. I can do that! I'm very good at it. I can cook too, if you guys want!" I assured.

"Just because your mom praises you, doesn't mean you're good at it." Soga mocked.

"No, no. I really can cook! My mom left when I was four, so I learned to do the household chores early on. Nowadays, I make a bento for my dad every morning. I can make some for you guys too!"

And well," I added, embarrassedly, "I.... don't have a lot of money. So maybe I can pay for your tutoring with it? You guys seem to be in need of someone to help with that."

Rapt looked at me, then at Soga and smiled opportunistically.

"What do you say, Soga?" He asked, eyeing the offer.

"Yeah, that sounds like a godsend. We should take it." The giant added.

"Really, Moyuru? You too?" Soga cried.

"Don't look a gift horse in the mouth!" The giant, Moyuru replied.

Soga looked back at me and sighed in defeat.

"Fine. You can pay with the bentos. But they better be good!" He answered.

"Oh you betcha!" I exclaimed, raising a fist in the air, "Once you taste them you won't go back to Chinese takeout anymore!"

"We'll see." He replied, before shooing me out of the warehouse as he went back to sleep.