Leon glanced at the owner of the arm.
Black, a little taller than himself, wearing a team jersey.
A football player.
A textbook Beacon-Nation jock-slash-bully.
The kind with veins popping like nine dragons hauling a coffin.
The arm’s veins twitched, and Leon found himself genuinely curious — if he threw one hand-chop right now, would it spray out more blood, or more steroids?
Probably some girlfriend had looked his way and set him off, on top of a brain already marinated and rattled loose by drugs.
Then that thick-lipped mouth of his opened up:
“Watch yourself, Ching Chong~ Next punch lands on that pretty little face of yours.
Stay away from my girl.”
There’s racism thrown into the mix too?
Isn’t this supposed to be some inclusive, diverse shonen manga world?
Now this he could get behind.
Leon gently pinched the guy’s arm — carefully, so as not to accidentally crush it to powder.
The Black kid sneered, figuring this mixed-blood punk had bitten off way more than he could chew.
But when he tried to yank his arm free, he found he couldn’t move it at all.
Once, twice — a flicker of panic crossed his eyes.
Right then, Leon leaned in and murmured:
“Alright, bro, here’s a thought — what if what she was actually looking at was…
lower down.”
His gaze dropped.
“Because judging by how you’re standing, I’d guess your balls shrunk clean up inside you?
I mean, any guy worth his salt could probably—”
“Screw you!”
The guy exploded with rage, his other fist swinging at Leon.
See, he swung first — one percent Viltrumite personality, online.
Leon caught the punch and twisted the arm around.
The guy yelped in pain, and Leon used the opening to grab him by the throat.
To the crowd of onlooking students, this nearly three-hundred-pound behemoth of a man got hoisted up like it was nothing.
Leon didn’t even change expression, no muscle bulging with the effort.
Might as well have been lifting a handful of air — he just had to be careful not to snap the guy’s neck.
His eyes reflected the sweat breaking out on the guy’s face.
That hand that had just been slamming into locker doors was now clawing weakly at his own grip, struggling.
“Buddy, you might be carrying the hopes of a single mother, or maybe your whole neighborhood, riding on you.
You’ve juiced yourself up on all kinds of stuff, wrecked your own body for it — you sure you want to throw all that away, provoking me over something that never even happened?”
Legend has it there’s an unwritten rule in football — whoever can pick you up with one hand is your daddy.
The guy folded almost immediately, begging for mercy.
It was also the first time in years any of these students had seen this particular bully choke like that.
Not that it’d be any easier for him back with the team afterward — showing weakness like that, plenty of guys would be lining up to take a bite out of him.
Once he was done, he finally turned to look at the three girls and one guy behind him.
Leaning against a locker, an orange-haired, blue-eyed girl spoke up:
“Very clever way to handle that.
I figured you’d need a hand.”
Atom Eve.
Guess her sense of justice carried over into her personal life too.
“That guy’s been like this ever since some mixed kid whooped him on the field.
Word is he even joined some kind of hate rally after.”
“You did my friend a solid there.”
“Don’t say it like that, Eve, I could’ve handled those girls myself.”
Beside her, a Eurasian-looking girl grumbled, clearly displeased.
“Sure, sure, I know.
Easy as pie for our Marcia.”
Eve brushed it off and introduced her friends to Leon.
Marcia Grayson — a genuinely beautiful girl, though the surname rang a bit of a bell.
Amber Bennett, Black, Mark’s first-ever girlfriend.
William Clockwell, Mark’s best friend.
Leon didn’t remember him as gay, but the order in which he was checking Leon out gave it away pretty clearly — the kind of look that could send a chill down a Viltrumite’s spine.
Meeting new friends was a genuinely happy thing, but right now Leon was mostly puzzled by one thing:
So Mark, all your friends are gathered right here in one place — where the hell are you?
What did I get pulled into here?
Is this even the main universe?
He’d dropped the name in front of Eve and the others, and not a single one of them showed the slightest hint of recognition.
Leon’s brow furrowed, barely noticeably.
He could feel he’d caught hold of a loose thread somewhere, but Viltrumite upbringing and genetics were putting up a fight against his own intelligence.
Still, whatever the case — the only real way forward was to sharpen the blade by using it.
Keep thinking while he trained.
Today’s daily quest was aimed at agility — short-range extreme direction changes under high-gravity conditions.
Not sure whether Jupiter would work for that.
As for actual classes, he was probably about to disappoint a few people with certain preconceived notions.
Ask a Viltrumite a math problem — how many bundles of steel coil does Little Ming carry in one trip?
He’ll tell you Little Ming just carries all of them in one go.
Ask him how many round trips it takes Little Ming to move everything, and he’ll tell you if it’s not done in three seconds, call the order refunded.
By the end of one class period, Leon had sadly come to the realization that, yeah, he really was some kind of jock after all.
When he got back to the group chat, he found at least seven or eight @ mentions waiting for him.
The discussion about his age had, by this point, wandered off into something else entirely.
The Emperor was arguing that everyone’s life carries a different weight — some people, within the first eighteen years of being born, just end up shouldering more than plenty of grown adults ever have to.
That was simply their burden to bear.
Clark took the righteous position, firmly believing that kids shouldn’t have to carry that kind of weight so young — and if they did, it was a failure on the adults’ part.
The Emperor replied that he wished it worked out that way too, but things rarely go according to wish.
Ritsuka nodded along enthusiastically on the side.
The one and only wheelchair-bound humanity’s last hope, Chaldea’s champion stress-carrier.
Leon couldn’t imagine fate letting her off the hook for a single second, and dropped in a screenshot right after.
[Viltrum’s Top Student]: For real, look, this is my principal, my class schedule, my locker, and a would-be bully I made friends with.
[Kansas Farm Boy]: That’s genuinely rough to look at.
Wish him luck.
[Orange-Haired, Gold-Eyed Menace to Humanity]: He’s probably already dead, honestly.
[Mala Donkey Head]: Mr.
Leon, surely it wasn’t that brutal?
[Not-a-God Yellow Weasel]: Old-school drug-enhanced warriors, huh.
Brings back memories — back before they even had tubes to hook you up with.
Beside the athletic field at the Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical School.
Yuji was out there practicing right now, trying to recreate the feel of channeling cursed energy.
Leon’s teaching method actually worked.
During Principal Yaga’s entrance exam, getting mobbed by a pack of dolls, Yuji had successfully drawn on cursed energy once.
Apparently that had been Leon’s suggestion too — put some pressure on him during the entrance test, digest the lesson before he could forget it.
“Fill your heart with feeling, draw cursed energy out of that feeling, but keep the output stable the whole time…”
“This is so hard!”
He decided to give himself a break and mess around online.
“Bullying?”
Yuji stared at the words on his screen.
Sure, he’d gotten into fights with a few punks who’d been picking on other students before, and ended up with the nickname “Tiger of West Junior High” out of it.
But Leon and I are on completely different levels here — is this Black guy actually gonna get exiled to space or something?
Right then, a mouth split open across Yuji’s cheek, entirely tone-deaf to the mood:
“Heh.
Pitifully untalented brat — I can’t stand to watch this pathetic little performance of yours one second longer.
Instead of wasting your time on this useless practice, why not hand your body over to me instead.”
“Two knocks and he couldn’t even budge Leon, got hurt on the rebound, and then tried to pin the blame on me.
Guy’s absolutely losing it.”
Leon had told him: whenever Sukuna jumps you like that, just smack him right back down.
Sure enough, Yuji felt a violent surge of emotion.
“Brat, I’ve got two fingers now.
Try calling him over here, I bet I could one-shot him.”
Sukuna kept arguing back, but Yuji’s attention had already shifted to something changing on the screen.
[You have a new group announcement]
[Two or more group members have been detected completing quests.
Based on progress, a new feature is about to unlock.
Timing follows the countdown on each member’s own screen.]
At that same moment, Leon was cruising high above Jupiter’s clouds, which looked almost solid from up there.
He did the math on his own countdown:
“This timing…
lines up right after Nolan’s first training session, huh.”
To be continued…