Back at the townhouse, with the door locked and the last of the adrenaline draining out of him, Trist sat down across from the day’s other acquisition.
The acquisition sat very straight on the sofa, hands folded in her lap, and stared at him.
He stared back.
Neither of them blinked for a while.
“Ahem.” He lost.
“Gali.
If you’re staying, there’s paperwork.
You’re a minor.
Guardianship has to be transferred properly, records filed, all of it.
Otherwise this stops looking like kindness and starts looking like a kidnapping, and I’d rather not explain the difference at a precinct.” “Mm.” She nodded, fidgeted, and was immediately distracted by the room, little face swiveling from bookshelf to window to lamp like she was pricing the place.
“I’m Tristan Moss.” He pressed on anyway.
“Do you remember where you lived before?
I’ll need something.
Records, a birth certificate, anything with your name on it.” Even as he said it, some back office of his brain filed a complaint about the whole situation.
This morning they had been strangers.
One lunch later, she lived here.
What was the mechanism, exactly?
Had he been mugged by cuteness?
Was that a thing that happened to grown men?
He was still auditing his own judgment when Gali reached around behind her back and produced a folder.
She held it out with both hands and a dopey little grin.
“Here.” Trist took it and went through the pages, and the audit gave up entirely.
It was all there.
Identification, records, everything a guardianship filing could ask for, organized and complete, riding around behind a runaway’s back like a packed parachute.
He looked at her over the top of the folder.
She carried her own adoption paperwork.
The clinginess came with a business plan.
“…Fine.” He squared the pages.
“As of today, I’m your guardian.
Which means house rules, and the first rule is you listen to me.
Understood?” “Mm!” Delivered at full solemnity, spine straight, chin up.
A little soldier accepting a commission.
He turned the TV on to fill the silence and got the day’s second reminder of his own morning.
The news was running the truck story, complete with surveillance footage: the skid, the sparks, the impossible on-the-spot pirouette of forty tons of steel.
He watched it twice.
Something about it itched at him, some seam in the sequence his eye kept snagging on without ever finding the thread, and after the third replay he gave up, left the remote with Gali, and went upstairs to the study.
Work was waiting, and work at least made sense.
One Punch Man was, strictly speaking, a mid-length series, nowhere near the marathon sprawl of the Big Three, and even the unfinished run he remembered showed you the whole shape of its world early.
Ordinary man meets a crab monster hunting a kid with a butt chin, defeats it with everything he has, then trains until his hair falls out and comes back holding absolute power, joins the Hero Association, and spends his days flattening the world’s monsters while looking for one opponent who can make him feel anything at all.
The plan was to pencil out the entire first season’s worth in one stretch, then cut it into weekly portions.
Andy would open with four chapters in the first issue of Jump and read the market’s pulse.
After that they’d talk long serials, and how many books he could run at once.
He laid down a fresh sheet and got to work on the Deep Sea King arc.
Specifically, the fight between Mumen Rider and the Deep Sea King.
No.
Fight was generous.
The steamroll between Mumen Rider and the Deep Sea King, panel after panel of a giant unmaking a small man in a bicycle helmet.
Drawing it cold like this was strange.
He’d come to this scene through the anime first, back in his old life, with a voice actor pouring his whole soul into that scream, and it had wrecked him along with everyone else.
On paper, without the performance, a twig of a man charging a leviathan skated right up to the edge of comedy.
Maybe over it.
And yet.
Drop Mumen Rider into the Marvel universe and he’d fit.
Even here there were ordinary men in the fight, the Punisher, Daredevil, people with no lightning in their veins holding street corners through pure refusal.
The Rider’s roar came from the same country as Captain Steve’s whole legend.
Every other hero in the book fought for money, or fame, or power, or fun.
One man fought because someone had to, knowing exactly what it would cost him, and that was the entire charm of him.
The pencil whispered across the paper.
To an ordinary ear, the sound didn’t carry past the desk.
Downstairs on the sofa, a pair of small ears twitched like a rabbit’s, once, twice, terminally cute and completely unwitnessed, which was Trist’s loss.
The TV had already run out of interesting things to say.
Gali slid off the cushions and padded up the stairs without a sound, slipped into the study, and posted herself behind his shoulder, eyes bright on the manuscript.
It took him a while to notice her.
She made no noise at all, but a presence is a presence, and eventually his neck reported the surveillance.
“Trist.” She was frowning at the page, at the small man picking himself up again.
“Why does he keep fighting?
Isn’t he scared of dying?” She genuinely could not assemble it.
That creature was weak.
Anyone could see that creature was weak.
Weak things ran.
“Because that’s what people are.” He didn’t explain further.
The real answer was in the comic, further down the arc, and secondhand answers never landed anyway.
Let her read it when it was done.
“People?” Gali stared at him, uncomprehending, and behind the stare her own ledger quietly turned its pages.
She was not from here.
In her father’s eyes, the things walking around this planet rated somewhere between scenery and groceries, and she had never seen a reason to argue.
But she hadn’t rushed to copy him either, because in her half a month on this world she’d watched the species contradict itself hourly.
Brutal and kind.
Heartless and warm.
They’d shove past a beggar and then dive in front of a truck for a stranger.
A walking argument with itself, this species.
She wanted to keep watching it a while longer.
That was all.
“You’re still little.” Trist chuckled and dropped a hand on her head, rumpling the purple hair.
“You’ll get it when you’re bigger.” Gali went completely still under his palm.
Little.
Her.
The sheer age of her, the things she had watched cool and harden, and a creature of this planet had just patted her on the head and called her little.
…He did feed her, though.
Excellent food, at volume, on demand.
On account of the food, he could live.
“Hmph.” She removed herself from under his hand with great ceremony, marched to the far side of the study, and sat down facing away from him, sulking at a bookshelf.
So the little lady did tsundere, too.
Trist smiled to himself and went back to his inks, entirely unaware that he’d just taken a short walking tour past death’s front gate and been waved through on a meal plan.
The afternoon went on like that, easy and unhurried.
The TV murmured to itself downstairs.
The pencil scratched.
Gali forgave him by increments, drifting back across the room one pretend errand at a time until she was at his shoulder again, watching the Deep Sea King take shape.
Then, into the comfortable quiet: a growl.
Long.
Resonant.
Familiar.
Trist turned and looked at her midsection.
“Gali.
Again?
It’s been two hours.” “Hmph.” She sat up very straight and sucked in her stomach, the picture of composure.
Her stomach continued its address to the room.
“Alright.” He set down the pencil and stood.
“Get your shoes.
We’re going out.”