“God, I’m so sick of walking!”
Samuel shouted expressively.
The joke about searching for the kitchen inside the underground villain complex had stopped being funny a while ago.
His young body was demanding FOOD, loudly.
The mental strain was taking its toll too.
Sure, his evolved Level 5 esper brain was significantly more efficient than a human one.
But it still consumed energy.
Energy he was sorely lacking.
Not surprising, given the constant blood draws “for the sake of science.” And now he had to wander through these endless tunnels on short, child-sized legs with very limited child-sized endurance.
*Grrrlll~*
Samuel rubbed his loudly growling stomach.
This really wasn’t funny anymore.
But then, his ears caught a sound.
A sound that would finally become his ticket out.
Footsteps.
A lot of them, judging by the echo.
“The brat’s here! Stay alert, there might be an ambush!” a gruff voice called from around the corner.
A moment later, a motley crew of freaks led by a hulking man turned into the corridor.
The man’s appearance clearly indicated a mutation-type enhancement Quirk.
His powerful, half-human, half-lion torso was hidden under thick, heavy-looking fabric that even seemed incredibly heavy.
But the beast-like man wore it with exaggerated ease.
‘Well, well,’ Samuel thought, staring wide-eyed at this wonder.
His curiosity wasn’t surprising.
After all, it was the first time he had seen such a vivid display of superpowers.
His own didn’t count.
“Stop!” the man growled menacingly.
The group following him didn’t dare disobey.
“Where are the heroes?” The growl was now directed straight at Samuel.
“…I want to eat!” the guy answered with truly childlike spontaneity.
A vein bulged angrily on the giant’s temple.
“Are you deaf? I. Asked. You. A question.” The beast-like man enunciated each word with a growl, his fur bristling on his sideburns and wrists.
“WHERE. ARE. THE. HEROES?”
Even his allies took a step back at the last shout.
But Samuel remained just as carefree.
Well, no.
Hunger can hardly be called carefree.
“And I said. I. Want. To. Eat.” Samuel replied, perfectly mimicking the villain.
He just didn’t growl with every syllable.
“…Hasegawa, go deal with him.”
It was an amazing sight.
The “man” who, a second ago, seemed ready to tear the child in front of him apart with his bare hands, instantly calmed down.
There was no more raging fury in his eyes.
His hands, trembling from the surge of adrenaline, stopped shaking.
Even the claws on his hands seemed to retract slightly into his fingers.
The man called Hasegawa looked at his commander in surprise, then took a few steps forward.
It was a little strange that the boss decided not to go himself.
But Hasegawa wasn’t about to question the boss’s decision, even in his thoughts.
If he was sending him ahead, there was a reason. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
The villain grunt had no idea that Leo hadn’t gone himself not because he had some plan, but because the moment he saw the child, his instincts had gone wild.
He felt like a newborn puppy standing before a huge, seasoned wolfhound.
He tried to suppress the feeling with an outburst of aggression, but it didn’t help.
All of Leo’s instincts told him that this time, he wasn’t the hunter.
He was the prey.
The last time he felt like this was the day he briefly encountered All Might.
That overwhelming feeling of power had almost knocked the breath out of the half-beast.
Months had passed since that day.
Leo thought he had overcome the horror that had gripped him then.
He thought he had pushed aside his fear.
“Sigh… I just wanted to eat,” the child muttered quietly into space.
The next moment, Hasegawa, who had gotten right up to the boy, flew up to the ceiling as if gravity had been completely reversed for him.
The crack of bones crunching from excessive load echoed through the tunnel.
An instant later, gravity returned to normal for the villain, and he slammed into the floor like a limp doll.
At that moment, Leo realized he hadn’t overcome his fear at all.
***
‘Tch, overdid it again,’ Samuel winced, looking at the body crumpled at his feet.
This one was definitely a “body” now.
He probably shouldn’t have set a strictly vertical vector.
And triple the normal force was a bit too much.
A neck bent at a very unnatural angle and a couple of open fractures didn’t exactly contribute to a long and happy life.
Unless this guy had a healing Quirk like Wolverine, he wasn’t getting up.
With an expression of disgust on his face, Samuel hurried around the slowly spreading pool of blood from under the body and stood in front of the frozen villains.
‘One, two, three…
Five grunts and one, obviously, the Boss.’
“…Who are you?” Leo spat out, taking a step back behind his stunned subordinates.
“Just a hungry kid. Are you going to lead me out of this dungeon?”
“How about the kitchen instead?”
“No, no, no! I’ve seen movies. Bad people like to poison other people’s food. It makes them really sick! I don’t want to eat spoiled food and get sick too!” Samuel whined in a perfectly childish manner.
Not the best disguise, given what he had been doing for the last twenty minutes.
But the villains were definitely catching some cognitive dissonance.
“…And what will you do if we don’t take you out?”
“I’ll make you fly!” the guy shouted happily.
“Too bad the ceilings are low here. You can’t build up speed,” he added in a confidential tone.
“…Get him,” the half-beast said shortly.
But his subordinates, still in shock, didn’t immediately understand the command.
“Are you deaf? GET HIM!”
Startled by the mighty shout, the men rushed toward Samuel, activating their Quirks.
One seemed to be covered in a wooden crust.
Another extended elongated, pointed fingers in his direction.
A guy bringing up the rear put his palms together, and sparks danced between them, filling the air with a faint smell of ozone.
Samuel didn’t see the abilities of the remaining two.
The fast, spear-like, pointed fingers crashed into his vector shield and reflected back in the opposite direction.
They turned the villain into a sieve and seriously wounded another.
Meanwhile, the electric no-name finally prepared his attack and shot a beam of electricity at Samuel.
It also reflected off the vector shield.
But due to the inconsistent nature of electricity, it didn’t go straight back.
It branched out.
The electric guy and the type who hadn’t had time to show his Quirk fell to the ground, twitching and cheerfully sparking.
Only the wooden guy remained, whom the electricity had simply ignored.
Judging by the frozen expression on his wood-like face, the villain was already thinking about getting the hell out of there.
But only after he got through his first personal crisis.
With the crunch of his overloaded bark armor shattering, the last “grunt” flew rapidly toward the beast-like villain.
“Hmph!”
But the man dodged the not-so-small projectile with surprising ease, displaying downright animalistic flexibility.
The projectile crashed into the wall with a chilling crunch.
“…Overdid it again?” Samuel tilted his head, looking at the body sliding down the wall, his arm still outstretched.
“When he uses his Quirk, he only gets tougher on the outside. Inside, it’s the opposite,” Leo replied, staring tensely at the boy.
“…What a useless Quirk. And seriously, what kind of freaks did you hire?” The monster in a child’s body was so surprised by the recent scuffle that he even stopped pretending to be a kid.
“Not one decent combat Quirk. And they act like…”
“Look who’s talking.”
“Sorry,” Samuel nodded.
“And anyway… since you’re talking to me so calmly now, you’re not going to fight? Am I missing something?”
“You’re right. I can’t do anything to you anyway. Your ability, is it some form of conceptual reflection?”
“…You’re observant. And smart.”
“I’ve always considered myself the most reasonable person in this complex. I’ll be much calmer if I just calmly escort you to the surface.”
“…You know your image is totally inconsistent, right?” Samuel raised his eyebrows in surprise at the half-beast’s words.
The picture from the outside must have been interesting.
A huge man over two meters tall with beast-like features standing opposite a kid about six years old.
And a bunch of small, twitching, groaning, or simply dead bodies around them.
And the two of them just talking calmly.
“I’ve been told,” Leo chuckled, noticeably calmer now.
He had accepted his defeat in advance and wasn’t going to test the outcome in practice.
As a last resort, he could always run away.
“I think I understand what you’re up to,” Samuel curved his lips into a sparse smile.
“You want to quietly lead me out, and then get the hell out of here with the rest of them, right?” The half-beast’s calmness wavered slightly at these words.
“I’m right, aren’t I? You’re not the boss here. At best, you’re head of security, or the muscle. Plus, I’m almost one hundred percent sure this whole complex was created by someone’s Quirk. And that person is probably not among them.” He waved his hand around himself, indicating the many bodies lying around.
“So if you just get me out of here, you haven’t really lost anything. Just a few useless grunts and the time to build a new hideout.”
By the end of Samuel’s speech, Leo was sweating quite a bit.
His brain was working at breakneck speed, constantly hitting the simple option of running away.
The boy hadn’t made a mistake anywhere, except for the time it would take to move to a new complex.
Gaster was too efficient and hated being idle.
So their gang had a couple of mothballed underground complexes just in case.
But they weren’t equipped.
And the equipment here was clearly expensive.
Considering its fragility, moving it would have to be done carefully.
So running away, scooping up Gaster and the local eggheads, wasn’t the best idea.
Leo had a very reasonable fear of leaving the little monster alone in a complex full of fragile equipment.
“…What do you want?” the man forced out through gritted teeth.
“There we go. Finally, something to talk about, my dear fellow.”