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CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
"Well damn, O'Clock. You look like shit."
He had been expecting to find clues on his brother's whereabouts. He never expected to find O'Clock here.
The man looked weary… different. Gone was his lean frame made compact for speed. Now, he was a hulking mass of muscle. He sported a conspicuous scar over his left eye and looked worse for wear.
"I could say the same about you, kid," O'Clock muttered.
Rio, with dark circles under his eyes, shrugged. The task of searching through Japan had seemed simple at first. After all, All Might did it daily—and with a quirk built for speed, Rio thought he could cover those distances in far less time.
Unfortunately, while he might have been good at math, this was way beyond what he could handle. All Might had recorded speeds over Mach 10, and from what Rio had seen, the man was probably even faster than that.
Rio knew that once he was older, no one in the world would be able to match him in speed. But for now, he was just a nine-year-old brat who was in way over his head.
"You always did like having the last word… master," Rio added, letting the title roll off his tongue with a smirk. So much had changed in the past few months, and clearly a lot had changed for O'Clock too. Still, it was nice to see that time hadn't erased their familiarity.
"Wait… wait a minute," Popstep interjected, stepping forward with a confused look. "Who's O'Clock? And whose child is this?"
She glanced between them, eyebrows furrowed. Clearly, there was some prior history here—and as much as she wanted to be invested in the drama, she still needed to get home.
Rio finally turned his attention to the companions around O'Clock.
A quiet boy stood out first, dressed in an All Might hoodie, looking equally confused at the interaction. Rio gave him points for having solid fashion sense. Then his gaze shifted to the other figure—what appeared to be a young girl.
Probably. Given his experiences, looks could be deceiving.
Still, if she was a girl, why was a high schooler dressed in something so scandalous?
"What are you doing out this late, kid?" O'Clock asked as he pushed past the unaware Koichi, who staggered forward and gave him a reproachful look.
"You're a long way from home, and this neighborhood isn't exactly safe."
Naruhata was one of the few places in the country without a stationed hero agency. Big cities like Tokyo had them in the hundreds, and Naruhata was only a few kilometers away, so most agencies saw it as irrelevant.
Still, that meant crime was a daily reality here.
"I could say the same for you," Rio replied, unfazed. "You carrying a hooker or something?"
He pointed at Popstep, who gasped in offense, eyes widening.
"Your wif finally get tired of your ugly mug?" he teased.
O'Clock didn't rise to the bait. Instead, his face settled into a thin, unreadable line.
Rio's grin faltered.
"She's in the hospital."
Rio didn't know what to do with that information. Clearly, he could only mouth an apology—it was obviously a sensitive topic.
"It's getting pretty cold outside. Can we talk back at my place? You two seem to have a lot to say to each other, and Pop, it seems like you also want to know what's going on," Koichi stepped in as he made his offer.
Rio didn't know why this fashionably dressed stranger was insistent on him coming to his house, but he seemed to be in the same group as O'Clock. While the man was a pain in the ass, he was a surprisingly reliable adult. Since O'Clock seemed to trust them, Rio would extend that trust to them for now—unless they proved otherwise.
Rio nodded affirmatively to the request, and seeing that as a signal to continue, Koichi finished, "Let's go then. My condo is just up ahead." The girl, who seemed to be addressed as Pop, pouted but followed in his footsteps.
O'Clock settled at Rio's side as he walked with them.
Rio could see his hesitation. O'Clock's eyes kept darting to the side as he nervously tried to string together a sentence.
"Don't worry, it was nice to see you too."
At that statement, O'Clock's tensely wound shoulders visibly relaxed as he breathed a sigh of relief.
"How's your mum been doing? How's school?"
Small talk it was, then. There were so many questions Iwao Oguro wanted to ask—how had he been doing, how had the counseling been working out for him, did he work out new applications for his quirk? Those were questions that people on good terms asked each other. Their last meeting was not so pleasant as to allude to them being on good terms in any way.
Their conversation droned on meaninglessly like this—mundane questions like how was the weather, health, finances. They both knew they couldn't avoid the real questions they had been meaning to ask. That would wait until they got to Koichi's house. For now, they were both content to engage in meaningless chatter.
"We're here!" Koichi shouted, more for their new guest than for anyone else present. After all, Popstep and Knuckleduster had been here hundreds of times, the two even opting to use his home as their personal storage closet.
Rio looked up at the tall, run-down building. It seemed like the perfect location for the plot of a slasher film to go down. It seemed like Koichi was the only one who lived here because the place was unsettlingly quiet.
Rio popped a brow questioningly at the boy. He just smiled sheepishly as he rested his palms on the walls of the building and scaled up, ascending the walls like it was flat ground.
Popstep flashed a mischievous smile at Rio and, with a single leap, soared toward the top of the building. Knuckleduster had gone ahead of the two as he stealthily shot a grappling hook toward the roof.
"Hmmm, I forgot to tell him to use the stairs," Koichi said to himself, only now realizing that their guest may not have had the means to climb up the building. Between him, Pop, and the old grandpa, everyone had such high mobility that heights had become a non-issue for them.
"Don't worry, I pretty much got here before you."
Koichi jumped back in surprise. There, sitting before him, was the boy. How he'd gotten behind his back so silently was unnerving.
"Heh, serves that kid right for calling me a hooker. Koichi's stairs are a pain to walk up on," Popstep laughed as she landed on the roof.
"Imagine being so out of shape that the thought of coming up the stairs terrifies you," Rio said sarcastically, still seated in his initial position on the ground.
"EEEP! IT'S A GHOST!" Popstep screamed in terror as she jumped into Koichi's arms. When she realized it was just the annoying child from earlier, she smacked Koichi on the side of the head before jumping out of his grasp.
Koichi winced and nursed his head, shooting a betrayed look at her. Knuckleduster landed on the roof soon after, and with that, their group was complete.
"Not bad. That was less than a second. You finally breached the speed of sound," Knuckleduster noted, impressed.
"Yeah, I achieved that a long while ago, but that's only with my aura active. Without it, I'm still a couple tens of meters off," Rio explained, brushing a few strands of wind-tossed hair from his eyes. He didn't count the speeds he could reach with the speed force aura as his base value—it fluctuated too much depending on his emotional state.
Sometimes it boosted him a little over three times his normal speed. Other times—like in his first fight with the Archbishop—it had launched him to speeds nearly twentyfold. It was unstable, unpredictable. So he trained without it.
Running in low-power mode was grueling, but it was worth it. Breaking through the air at subsonic speed made his body feel like it was dragging iron weights behind it. And that resistance? It was excellent training.
People underestimated how physically capable the average human had become since quirks entered the gene pool. It's why a hero like Endeavor, who didn't have a strength-enhancing quirk, could still chuck a car like it was a baseball.
"Still… you've gotten a lot better," Knuckleduster said. "I'm proud of you."
A quiet passed between them. Rio looked away, his mouth tight. It wasn't the first time someone had said those words to him—but hearing them from him made them land different. He didn't say thank you. Didn't trust himself to. He just nodded.
"So how have you been? It's only been a couple of months since we last met, now you're… this." Rio gestured vaguely at Knuckleduster's imposing form.
"Yeah, spill the beans, old man. What's up with you? And is O'Clock some kind of code name?" Popstep interjected, leaning in with curiosity burning in her eyes.
Koichi stayed silent. He was watching his mentor closely, lips slightly parted as if waiting for something to click. Until now, Knuckleduster had always been an enigma. Could he really be some kind of former secret agent? Or was he just a guy with a screw loose who got his kicks from punching lowlifes in alleyways?
And if it was the latter… what did that make Koichi, following him around like a sidekick?
The thought sent a ripple of doubt through him, but he shoved it down. There were more important questions to answer tonight.
"Well It's a long story…"
Author's note: Iwao Oguro; Knuckleduster, O'Clock whatever you want to call him is a really interesting character. He lost his quirk, his hero license, his wife got sick with an incurable disease, his only daughter ran away from home. Many men had been utterly broken for less but he still dedicated himself to getting dangerous drugs like trigger off the streets. At first i thought he was basically a batman copycat but he grew on me over time.