To be honest, Samuel was a little stunned.
The unexpected and, given the circumstances, absurd attack by heroes on the underground base had thrown a wrench in his plans.
Now he wasn’t sure what to do.
“Hmm… So we’re ‘enemies’ again?” Samuel asked the villain uncertainly.
Leo flinched at these words.
That’s all he needed.
This little monster was like a barrel of gasoline thrown onto an already burning fire.
“Let’s not…”
The half-beast didn’t get to finish.
A piercing sound of rushing air echoed through the underground corridor.
An instant later, the nervously shifting Gaster, who had been standing next to the villain, crashed into the wall with a crash and clatter and went limp.
‘Precision work,’ Samuel noted with mild surprise mixed with envy, looking at the unconscious but still clearly alive body of the stocky man.
He didn’t get much time to examine him, though.
In some imperceptible moment, everything started moving too fast.
Guided by his animal instincts, Leo, at the moment of Gaster’s “beating,” had managed to bristle his fur and jump aside from the suddenly appearing threat.
As it happened, he jumped right toward Samuel.
But that wasn’t even what bothered the guy now.
“It’s all right!” a man who had burst into the corridor at breakneck speed puffed out his immensely muscular chest.
“Why? Because I am here!”
Samuel blinked in confusion.
Well, well.
The symbol of peace and justice had arrived.
The guy hadn’t expected to run into the number one hero within the first hour after his “isekai.” The hero looked just like in the anime, adjusted for the graphics.
A tall man, over two meters, wrapped in voluminous, steel-like muscles, flashing a truly Hollywood smile.
With his cartoonishly angular face and extremely strange hairstyle resembling two white horns, plus the uneven lighting of the dungeon, most of his face was covered in shadows.
It made his image significantly more brutal.
“Step away from the child, villain!” the hero said in a truly “manly” bass voice.
Leo, at that moment, looked really bad.
Trapped between two monsters, each hitting his instincts like a steel battering ram against a flimsy gate, he felt an unprecedented pressure.
Though the man wasn’t inferior to All Might in height or external physique, next to him, he looked like a deflated balloon next to an airship.
And, apparently, under this pressure, the poor guy had lost a significant amount of his sanity.
Because there was no other way to explain his decision to attack Samuel.
Although, if you looked for it, the logic was there.
After all, unlike All Might, the little kid didn’t seem intimidating.
Plus, Leo had a complete lack of information about the kid’s abilities.
So from his perspective, the chance of doing something to Samuel was significantly higher than fighting the number one hero.
“Stop!” All Might shouted and rushed to intercept.
The villain, because of his recent lunge, was almost right next to Samuel.
All he had to do was swing his arm and turn his body slightly to land a blow.
But he clearly wasn’t going to make it in time.
Samuel noted with some surprise that he could keep up with the insane speeds of the two giants present.
It was a little unclear, though.
His kinetic vision wasn’t much better than the average human’s.
It was only slightly more effective than in his previous body.
The hard boost to his central nervous system caused by the sharp improvement in his brain’s computational power couldn’t have gone unnoticed in all his other functions.
But it clearly wasn’t enough to keep up with high-speed opponents with enhancement Quirks.
And that’s where his ability came in.
He perceived all surrounding phenomena, despite their speed, as a collection of moving vector systems.
Before this, he hadn’t really gotten to experience his new way of perception, which was radically different from everything he had grown accustomed to in his life.
But now, when all his other senses couldn’t keep up, his paranormal sensitivity to vectors showed itself in full force.
Leo wasn’t going to make it.
It was paradoxical, and in some ways even impossible, but the beast’s speed and agility were significantly inferior to All Might’s cheating enhancements.
His defeat was only a matter of moments.
And that was only because the number one hero was deliberately holding back, so as not to tear the villain apart in a single bound right next to the child.
And then, an idea came to Samuel.
Barely formed, not at all thought out, it resembled a kick of intuition multiplied by his newfound computational abilities, which he hadn’t gotten used to at all in just an hour.
The world froze and turned gray.
Leo froze, twisting in an unreal pose just to reach the little monster with his elongated claws.
Even All Might froze, who, even during his lunge, didn’t lose his brutality or remove the seemingly frozen grin from his face.
Now, he planned to conduct a small experiment.
The AIM field is, for the most part, strictly limited in its area of influence.
Consequently, the vector shield is also limited.
But there’s a small nuance.
The shield’s film, in its normal state, is about fifty to sixty centimeters from the body, measured from the chest.
But when the user extends their arm forward, despite its greater length, it doesn’t leave the area of protection.
I don’t need to explain why, do I?
The AIM field is plastic, and its area of influence, though it can’t change its maximum area, can certainly “move” it.
Usually, such manipulations of the field are performed by the brain subconsciously, with the main imperative: “Always fully cover the user’s body.” But conscious control is also possible.
Earlier, Samuel had already subconsciously shrunk the shield’s area so that Chameleon wouldn’t suspect an ambush.
But now, he intended to consciously “push” the area of effect forward, straight toward the half-beast’s strike, while simultaneously reducing the shield’s range behind his back.
Theoretically, the shield, set to reflect the vector while conserving kinetic energy, would simply break the villain’s arm.
Why all this, considering that All Might could easily stop Leo and Samuel wasn’t in any danger?
Simple.
The guy was planning to show everyone that he didn’t need saving.
Was it a fit of consciousness, slightly warped by his new abilities, or something else?
Samuel didn’t even think about standing by and watching himself get saved.
However, this move wasn’t as useless as it seemed at first glance.
People would inevitably take him more seriously, despite his young age.
Especially considering the bodies of the unsuccessful villains lying around.
No one would believe a child was responsible for them, not even the villains’ own statements.
But with a direct witness that the six-year-old kid was no victim, and a witness not easily dismissed, it would be different.
In the moment frozen by his Personal Reality, the boundaries of his AIM field moved.
They moved frustratingly slowly.
But even so, compared to all other frozen phenomena, it was simply monstrous speed, worthy of being called “instantaneous.”
When the boundary of the vector shield was just a couple of millimeters from the villain’s claws, Samuel returned to objective reality.
A fraction of a moment, a crunch of bones, a prolonged crack of tearing flesh.
The recoil threw Leo back, right onto the hero rushing toward him.
Have you ever punched a stone wall with all your might?
An ordinary person wouldn’t do that so easily.
But under the influence of anger or other emotions, they might be capable of such stupidity.
Such a punch can result in a couple of dislocations, cracked bones, and seriously damaged knuckles.
But what if the wall punches your fist back?
With the same force you used?
The villain’s arm, disfigured by an open fracture, trailed a trail of blood as it swung limply behind him as he flew backward.
All Might, to his credit, reacted to the change in the situation in time.
He stopped almost instantly, brazenly breaking a couple of physical laws from the field of mechanics, specifically kinetics.
With a fluid motion, he sidestepped the living (well, at least this time) projectile and caught the villain by his healthy arm.
Silence.
Despite the unchanging expression on the number one hero’s face, he seemed somewhat stunned by what had happened.
That wasn’t surprising.
All Might was a very experienced hero.
He had encountered all sorts of situations.
There had been times when the “victim” didn’t actually need a rescuer because they already had a powerful Quirk.
But this was the first time it had happened with a child.
Because even the strongest Quirks in childhood are extremely weakened and limited.
Using them for self-defense is almost impossible.
Of course, there are exceptions, but they usually involve very specific Quirks like innate invisibility, intangibility, or something similar.
They only confirm the rule.
The hero looked at the scene of carnage around him with new eyes.
He continued to hold the unconscious villain (again, this time) in the air.
The scene took on completely different colors.
If, in the first moments of his arrival, All Might had assumed the beast-like man was responsible for the many bodies, now, after a more careful assessment of the damage, an unpleasant and even somewhat frightening realization dawned on him.
“Are you okay?” the hero asked the child in a soothing tone, carefully laying the lion-man on the ground so as not to disturb his broken arm.
“Are you hurt?”
The answer was a cold, indifferent stare.
That worried the hero.
Samuel had already chosen his behavior.
He wasn’t sure he could play a child convincingly, especially with what he had been through.
But a withdrawn, distrustful, silent wolf cub?
That he could manage.
The boy was dressed in worn, plain clothes that were clearly a couple sizes too big.
The excessive bagginess hid the boy’s thinness well, but not from the number one hero’s eyes.
His thick dark hair looked dirty and tangled.
The boy himself wasn’t exactly clean either.
“All Might, there’s a child here. Possibly a hostage,” All Might touched his finger to the earpiece on his left ear.
“…and bodies of villains. Four dead, two in critical condition, one unconscious. Medical personnel urgently needed.” After finishing his report and nodding at the barely audible response, the hero turned his gaze back to the boy.
“What’s your name?” Silence.
“…Can you walk?” Silence, plus a wary glance.
*Grrrlll~*
The sound of a growling stomach echoed through the corridor.
“…Maybe you want a snack?”
***
‘All Might clearly isn’t very good with kids,’ Samuel thought as he walked behind the hero.
The man turned to look over his shoulder every three steps to make sure the boy was still following him.
Samuel continued to stick to his chosen behavior, acting as wary as possible.
He kept a healthy distance behind the hero and shied away from the occasional heroes and police officers running past.
And there were a lot of them here.
A couple of times, their little procession stopped so All Might could quietly exchange a few words with some of the law enforcement officers.
But he never lingered, always moving on, afraid to entrust the dangerous child to someone else.
Samuel, for his part, spent most of the walk deep in thought.
One of the number one hero’s most ordinary questions had thrown him off a little.
What was his name, anyway?
The child’s memories didn’t answer that question at all.
And calling himself by his “pre-isekai” name would be stupid.
So the strategy of silence was paying off again.
It took fifteen minutes for Samuel and All Might to reach the exit to the surface.
Then the hero led the boy off to the side.
‘Oh,’ flashed through the guy’s mind, a little embarrassed, when his escort, turning to look over his shoulder again, raised his eyebrows in surprise.
Samuel’s vector shield, whose configuration had been set in the dimly lit underground passages, was partially blocking the sunlight according to its settings.
So, despite the much brighter environment, the boy’s figure seemed to be in shadow.
Samuel had to sink into his Personal Reality and quickly change the vector shield’s settings so it would let a broader spectrum of light waves pass through.
All Might, meanwhile, thoughtfully watched as the strange phenomenon that had been blocking the light falling on the boy disappeared.
He had clearly drawn his own conclusions from what he had seen.
Fortunately, the hero didn’t ask any questions (though he clearly wanted to).
He led the boy toward a police van parked nearby.
Or something like a van, with a pretense of comfort and technology.
“Naomasa,” he called out to a man standing next to the vehicle.
Despite the warm weather, the man was dressed in a coat and hat.
“Oh, All Might,” a young-looking man smiled.
“How did it go?”
“Not bad,” the hero smiled quite sincerely.
“The reason I came over… do you happen to have something to eat?” He gestured toward Samuel, who was standing a few steps behind.
“Of course,” Naomasa nodded.
“Yuriko!” he called into the car.
“Yes?” A girl’s head popped out.
“Feed our little fighter, will you?” Another nod toward the boy.
“You can take some of mine. There are donuts.”
“No problem,” the girl smiled.
The sight of her made Samuel struggle to keep his face cold.
She looked… interesting.
A slightly larger-than-average head was a little strange, but not too noticeable.
Her eyes, though.
That’s what caught your attention.
There were three of them.
And the girl still managed to look cute and even, in some way, harmonious.
‘What a crazy world.’
“Come on,” Yuriko smiled sweetly at Samuel, beckoning him with her hand.