I am Legend- Chapter 1

The first villain I ever fought after becoming a professional hero was an idiot. He’d fumbled his weapons, used his quirk stupidly and allowed the hostages to get away. In as much as it was my first time, it was also his. And unlike me, he didn’t have the benefit of years of training at hero school to remedy the lack of experience. That was what actually got me thinking about villain school in a completely ironic manner. Luckily, we didn’t have any threats of something like that coming into fruition in real life.

But that guy had been months ago, and since then the villains had generally gotten smarter. Much smarter over time. As my name spread through the internet, forums, and news, they started trying to come up with countermeasures for my quirk. Started coming up with strategies to face me in particular simply because of the fact that I’d essentially claimed Kyoto, and all the surrounding cities as my territory. It was one benefit of being placed on the fast track and having support practically tossed at me from both the government and private individuals. I had no problems setting up my agency at the center of Kyoto, and several employees of the Hero Public Safety Commission had left their old government jobs to fulfill roles in my agency. When I spoke to my old teacher about it in concern, he’d told me it was what it meant to be on the fast track. The same privileges I enjoyed, Hawks did and even more. All I got was manpower. Apparently, Hawks’ entire hero agency had been set up with a loan from the government that was paid back from his salary. Even All Might had several members of his agency that had been government officials. When I’d told the old man about my fears that we were being spied upon, he actually laughed. His reply stuck with me, ‘We’re all being spied on, Legend. At least you get something out of it. Use it to your advantage’.

Since then, I’d kept as close an eye on the government as I could and remained wary of their help, but that wasn’t the issue of concern right now. Remember when I spoke of all the villains that operated in my territory being forced to adapt to account for my presence? Well, the fucker on the TV didn’t seem to be getting the memo.

The fellow was at least 8 feet tall and grey skinned, more muscle than man and strong enough to rip apart a car with ease. He was slow, but strong, and as I watched Matchstick, a local flame hero, unleash his full firepower on him without being noticed, I added durability to the list. At least durable enough to take a missile to the face. The tech hero, Voltron, had done me the favour of confirming that particular hypothesis.

Now why was I just watching from my seat in my tower? Well, the man was looking for me. Why would I give a villain exactly what he wanted, and the local heroes were running circles around him. It was only a matter of time. But in spite of all of that, why was my fist shaking as I watched the television. Maybe because of the message that stared at me on my phone. Hiroshi, my liaison from the Hero Public Safety Commission had sent me a simple text. One word really, ‘wait’. And wait I did.

Or at least I tried my best to. The more property damage the beast caused, the more I wanted to step in. I’d already come up with a preliminary plan of attack in the first place. All I needed was the word. The man, for the first time since his appearance, dodged out of the way of an attack, stepping around Bellboy’s punch with speed that defied his size and punched the powerful strength quirk holder with so much force that it tore through the shield Mirrorgirl had made and sent Bellboy flying.

With that, it got much more difficult for me to stand aside. They were good heroes, good people, and my hesitance was doing them no favours. Besides, this wouldn’t look good for my image at all. Luckily, as I stood up, I received another text. Also one word, but this time the word was ‘go’, And go I did. The windows in my tower were all automatic and would open once I flew towards them, but this time I flew right through them in my haste. The monster had grabbed hold of mirrorgirl. When I got to Nara Prefecture, flying through the miles at my safest top speed, it was to find him still holding her aloft with one hand while the other tried to ward away Voltron, who was wielding an electrified hammer.

First things first, remove the possible collateral damage. I thought to myself as I flew right past the monster, picked Voltron up and deposited him a safe distance away.

When he tried to turn his attention back to Mirrorgirl, I focused my attention on the hand holding her and blasted it with a laser that froze it from the elbow to the wrist. I had no idea why I could basically control what my lasers did to that kind of fine extent, but I just accepted as an oddity of my quirk. My quirk had quite a few of them if I was being honest. Shocked as it was, the man could not react as a blast of kinetic energy shattered the frozen flash and separated the wrist from the rest of its body. Mirrorgirl fell to the ground, but catching her and depositing it beside her teammate was easy.

They were young, just as young as I was, but unlike me, they’d gone to Ketsubetsu, and while talented hadn’t had any business in a fight like this one. I cursed the Commission in my head while I floated forwards to go face to face with the man-monster. Closer to him, I could see that the features I’d mistaken for human through the lens of a camera that was at least a mile away were anything but. If anything, they looked reptilian. A mutant type then. Interesting.

“So you wanted me here. Now, you’ve got me. What for?” I asked him and he opened his mouth to reply.

“Naaa. Don’t care” I said and lashed out with a quick blast of kinetic energy to his face that snapped his head back but did little damage beyond that. Interesting. I tried again, upping the output by 200% and managed to send him flying but he still stood up with little visible damage. Even more interesting. That power had been enough to floor even the aces of my class, and I’d gone to the most prestigious hero school of them all. I logged everything in my head. Vulnerable to being frozen, but virtually immune to what seemed like any other form of damage.

I’d have frozen his entire body and been done with it, but in the absence of a kill order, that would be nearly impossible to justify to any tribunal. I was already flirting with excessive force allegations from how I’d ended the situation with Mirrorgirl, but I was banking on the fact that it had been a hero being threatened to justify that bit of damage, but until he killed someone, I couldn’t kill him. He coiled himself like a spring and jumped right at me with all the force of a bolt shot from a canon. Considering I could dodge actual bullets, I wondered what the point of all of that had been.

I dodged out of the way languidly and was almost caught off guard as he picked up a boulder from the ground before crushing it in one enormous fist before hurling all the pieces at me. With the heroes and curious civilians behind me, I didn’t have much of an option to dodge, so I stretched out my palm and accounted for each piece of rock before obliterating them all with a single powerful laser that branched out into enough pieces to blow each of the rocks apart and continue towards the monster. When they hit it, it roared in what I hoped was pain, but thought was anger before running right at me again.

A blast on the ground froze the area he’d been about to step on, making him slip on the slippery ice. I kept a watchful eye while I froze more and more of the ground as he continued to slip, eventually making him crash right into a car. An unoccupied car.

A blast of kinetic energy at 300% the power of the first one sent him deeper into the car’s chassis and wreckage but did no damage to him. With half his body covered by wreckage, I began to freeze the car around him. Sure, some of the blasts hit him, but considering how durable he was, he’d be fine. When I floated to the ground, admiring my handiwork, I was greeted by applause from the waiting crowd.

I waited a bit to make sure he wasn’t escaping before I turned and acknowledged them with a practiced smile and wave. I spent close to an hour there just signing autographs and greeting fans. Far too many heroes ignored this aspect of the job, but it was what I considered the most important. I wasn’t just doing a fan meet and greet like some would derisively call it on the forums, but I was getting a pulse of the city and reassuring the civilians that everything had and would be okay. Even the person whose car I’d converted into a prison had come up to me and we’d had an interesting conversation about the state of villain damage insurance. Apparently, this was the third time he was losing a car to a hero fight and he was ecstatic about it.

“Who else can say they’ve lost three cars to villains?” He’d asked me with a wide smile on his face. If Villain Damage insurance worked like any other type of insurance, then I doubted he’d be so happy about it. This insurance was given by the government, so the premiums were low, and the government never raised a fuss about having to pay up. I guess it was worth the expense to keep the public happy and not turned on their favourite means of crime prevention. When the police clean up squad finally arrived, I took it as my cue to leave and flew back to the office.

When I noted the broken remains of the window, I sighed to myself before flying into the office. My sponsors were probably going to have a million questions. Those windows were much too expensive to fix with my discretionary budget alone. I hadn’t been in the office for longer than a few minutes before Hiroshi barged into the office, ignoring the calls from my secretary to wait. I waved her off and turned to the man.

“Where have you been?” He asked with gritted teeth.

I just looked at him in confusion. He knew exactly where I’d been.

“Your phone. Where is it? Why haven’t you been picking up my calls?” I searched my body for the piece of technology before I noticed it discarded on the floor near the couch I’d been watching the villain from.

“I forgot it. What’s the problem? Calm down, man”

“No. I will not calm down. While you were off signing autographs, all the support companies in Osaka were robbed and over a dozen heroes were hospitalised with three of them being pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.”

What? How? “What kind of villain could do something like that?”

“Not one villain. A team of them. Next time when I tell you to wait, you do as I say. I smelt something rotten from the beginning.” He said.

“Wait. What? I waited. You’re the one who told me to wait.”

“No. No I didn’t.”

I scowled at him before picking up my phone and showing him the text.

“That’s impossible” He replied before taking out his own phone and opening our chat. Indeed, from his end, the last message he’d sent was the one that said, ‘wait’. And as if we were being watched, another message arrived in my phone from his number that had a clown emoji and two words, ‘my win’.

When we stared at each other, it was with matching expressions of dread and shock.

A/N; Here you go. Chapter 1. The rest of it will probably be open to only Elite Four Patrons and up for the time being.