As they rocketed down toward the street, Minoru finally caught sight of the purse snatcher that the Fly had spotted from the balcony. He was honestly unsure how he had missed them initially, because their Quirk manifested as a large cockscomb that swept back through their hair and partially down their neck.

  “They’re running for the intersection!” cried the Fly over the buzzing of his wings. “More options, see? So we diminish their choices! You can stick to stuff, yeah?”

  “Yes!” yelled Minoru over his shoulder. “Am I allowed to use my Quirk, though? Aizawa sensei said something about not being allowed to wear my costume in public, which…I guess I already am.”

  “Eh, it’ll probably be fine!” shouted the Fly back. “I shouldn’t need you to confront the villain, I just don’t want you to fall off.”

  “Fall off what?!” But Minoru didn’t get an answer back, because at that moment, the Fly tossed him lightly through the air toward the top of a street light. “Waaaugh!” shouted Minoru, desperately ripping a pair of grapeshot off his head as he whipped towards the utility pole. He just barely managed to slap them on either side of the pole and prevent himself from sliding all the way down to street level.

  Several seconds later, when he’d finally climbed a little higher and repositioned in such a way that he didn’t feel like he was at imminent risk of falling off, he looked around. Several people were pointing at him and snapping pictures; he really hoped Aizawa wasn’t that serious about not wearing costumes in public. And as for the Fly, Minoru caught a glimpse of him further up the street.

  The man could clearly move because in the time that it had taken Minoru to secure his perch at the top of the utility pole, the Fly had buzzed halfway down the block and was currently pacing just out of the villain’s reach and slightly ahead of him.

  “Mommy, look it’s the Fly!” cried a kid from the ground nearby. Figured that weirdo was popular with kids.

  “I’ve got a villain heading east along the northern edge of block 29! All units move to intercept!” cried the Fly. He’d extracted what appeared to be an oversized walkie-talkie from god-only-knew where and was shouting into it even as he paced the villain. Minoru was pretty sure the thing was just a prop, though. The Fly hadn’t been in contact with anyone other than Minoru himself, so far as he knew.

  The purse snatcher was evidently unwilling to risk it, though, and the cockscomb bobbed as they juked around and dashed across the street, cars honking and brakes squealing in their wake.

  The Fly didn’t care, of course. He simply angled his arms and was almost instantly right back in front of the thief. “You’re coming around block 23?!” he cried into his walkie-talkie. “Perfect, I’ll engage the villain here!” He zipped over, and alighted on the sidewalk between the villain and Minoru, civilians scattering and the villain coming to a screeching halt.

  “Have at you, knave!” cried the Fly.

  Minoru shook his head. What was he even doing? Although, if he thought about what the Fly had been telling him before…he surveyed their surroundings.

  Because the purse snatcher’s Quirk had not, so far, manifested in any sort of obvious threat, the normal citizens walking the streets hadn’t reacted much to the appearance of either the villain or the Fly. The Fly had said he preferred to herd villains and that depending on the villain he would potentially both push and pull. If shouting through the walkie-talkie had been a bluff, it had convinced the villain that the intersection beyond them was about to be blocked off by the police. By landing on this side and issuing his ridiculous challenge, the Fly was implying that he wanted to stop the villain from getting past him, presumably to be captured by the cops he’d claimed to be backing him up.

  But he was acting like a complete fool, which increased the odds the villain would just try to attack himinstead of fleeing into potential danger. If the Fly then retreated back down the street, he would be leading the villain directly toward the largest hero agency in town…which likely included several heroes more than capable of capturing a simple thief.

  And the crazy thing was that the Fly’s gambit was working. With a shout of frustration, the villain whirled on the Fly, and their cockscomb-like Quirk inflated and started rattling. “Out of my way, small fry!” yelled the villain, and charged the Fly.

  The Fly’s wings buzzed into sudden activity, sending him whizzing along the sidewalk and pushing aside the nearest bystanders as he dodged.

  The villain didn’t bother to engage him, however, and just barreled on down the sidewalk, straight at a civilian pushing a stroller.

  The Fly twisted and shot through the air, paralleling the storefronts as he looped ahead of the villain, grabbed mother and stroller, and hoisted them both into the air and to the side.

  The villain flinched away from the Fly’s sudden proximity, and without looking angled back across the street on a course that would take him straight past the utility pole Minoru was currently perched on.

  Well, the Fly had said that he thought Minoru could use his Quirk…

  Minoru grabbed several grapeshot, and slung them down near the base of the pole, and the would-be thief stepped directly on top of one and faceplanted, purse arcing through the air and right into the waiting hands of the Fly, who had zipped across the street without Minoru even noticing. As the purse snatcher tried to push himself up, the Fly landed on his back and his wings started buzzing with a different sound. Was he…pushing himself downward somehow?

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  That appeared to be the case, because the villain was shoved right back down, and although they flailed they couldn’t get an angle on the Fly and remained trapped and straining facedown on the pavement.

  “And that,” called the Fly up to Minoru, “is how I exploit my environment to put villains into checkmate!” The villain gave a stronger heave upward than before, causing the Fly to tip a bit before he stabilized and with an even louder buzzing of his wings forced the villain back down. His look of pride was replaced with concern. “Do you think you can get down from there yourself? Or if you have a cell phone, maybe call the police? I don’t think I should let this firecracker up, if I can help it.”

  Minoru sighed, and glumly surveyed the utility pole. Smooth all the way to the ground. This was certainly going to be…fun. He pulled off a pair of grapeshot with an even heavier sigh and got to work.

  Once Minoru reached the ground, he was able to secure the villain’s arms to the ground with another pair of grapeshot, leaving the Fly free to finally step off them and shake his arms out. When the police arrived, the Fly was taking the children who had seemed to come out of nowhere as soon as the villain was secured on short flights into the air.

  Minoru was standing off to the side, feeling complicated feelings over the fact that the Fly used the exact same positioning for taking kids on short joy-rides as he had to fly Minoru about.

  Forty minutes later, Minoru and the Fly were getting the riot act read to them by the local police sergeant in the local police box. Apparently, not only was Minoru not supposed to use his Quirk for hero work without some sort of license, but the police were not happy about needing to clean up his grapeshot somehow once they stopped sticking. Fortunately, they were able to cut the wannabe purse snatcher free from the street in order to take them into custody, though they put up cones around the remaining portions of grapeshot that remained behind to ward civilians away.

  When at last the two made it back to the Fly’s office, however, the man had recovered his cheer. “Well, that was an adventure!” he proclaimed. “How about you shuck off that costume of yours, Minoru, and let’s reconvene around the chess board!” The Fly rubbed his hands together gleefully.

  Minoru trudged into the inner office, shut the door, and started removing his costume. Honestly, he just wanted to go home; he was exhausted.

  Several hours later, Minoru collapsed on his bed, blissfully happy to be alone at last. The Fly’s approach to chess had been a lot more engaging than he expected; after reviewing the rules and playing a single normal game, the Fly started setting up the board in contrived ways that were more about solving puzzles rather than playing standard adversarial chess. When Minoru started getting the hang of those, he introduced a chess clock and forced Minoru to solve each puzzle under strict time constraints.

  And the whole time, he never stopped talking. Whether it was pointing out mistakes in Minoru’s chess moves, relaying anecdotes about his fairly banal experiences as a hero, or pontificating further on his theories about visualizing how the environment, people’s Quirks, and social pressures constrained their movement and behavior, the man simply would not shut up.

  Minoru got the sense that he didn’t get very much social interaction despite being almost painfully extroverted.

  The crazy thing was, despite how clear it was that the Fly was barely a professional hero—several of his anecdotes involved what he called “side jobs” working mostly as a courier—his theories had ended up grabbing hold of Minoru’s imagination. Although he’d been exhausted going into the chess marathon, when the time to head home rolled around, he found himself wishing he could challenge just one more puzzle. He wasn’t sure if the Fly was making them up as he went or if these were all things he’d come up with for his own personal training, but Minoru had gotten sucked into the puzzles to an extent he’d never expected.

  Dang it, that meant he had one more obligation to discharge before he could rest. After offering his comprehensive advice on how to select an internship, Principal Nezu had asked that Minoru call him if the Fly lived up to the Principal’s expectations. Evidently something the man had said when he talked to the principal while attempting to secure Minoru’s internship had sparked Nezu’s interest.

  Minoru pulled his phone out, dialed the number Principal Nezu had given him at the end of their last meeting, and held it up to his ear.

  “Well, well, well, if it isn’t Minoru Mineta!” came the chipper voice of his Principal through the phone after it rang several times.

  Minoru jumped right into it. “You were right, Principal Nezu. The Fly has some ideas that are incredibly well-suited to me.”

  “Very good, very good! I had my suspicions when he and I talked a little over a week ago, but I admit to feeling a sight of hesitation after looking into his professional record.”

  “Yeah, what is up with that? I mean sure, the man’s Quirk isn’t particularly flexible, but he’s a lot smarter about how he uses it than most people I can think of. How has some large team not snapped him up?”

  “Interesting you should say that, Mineta. I have been investigating him more closely since you made the decision to accept his internship, and I believe you are correct: the Fly would absolutely shine as a tactician for a larger team. But, hm, how to put this…if I were to ask you for the best example of a hero, how would you respond?”

  That didn’t even require thought. “All Might.”

  “Indeed! All Might stands as a bastion of heroism, deterring villains through his sheer presence alone. But as of late, I have been wondering: is that, in fact, the goal we should seek? The top hero lists are stuffed with powerful, fiercely independent heroes, and yet when I looked deeper into the Fly’s after-action reports what I found was that while his personal record is decidedly below average, when looking at only incidents in which he acted within a team capacity, his success rate is a full standard deviation above the norm.

  “When considering purely his team-based performance, the Fly has a better success rate than many of the top heroes. I admit, I am finding myself needing recalibrate some of my long-term plans, and for more reasons than simply your future knowledge.

  “But enough about that! I thank you for the report, but will leave you to your rest! I believe you indicated that the third day of your internship is when you and your classmates will face your true challenges, but do not slack on your second!”

  “…Yeah. Good-bye, Principal.”

  “Good-bye and good luck, Minoru Mineta!”

  Minoru hung up and let his phone drop onto the bed beside him. He’d almost forgotten, with how much the Fly’s lessons had drawn him in, but he was reasonably sure that he only had one more day until the Hero Killer Stain would strike again.

  And Minoru was going to be right there in the thick of things.