144: Imminent Danger (3)

Chapter 144: Imminent Danger (3)

—

Both Neji's and Momo's parents were in a city in Kyoto, Japan.

They, along with many other influential people of Japan, have gathered here at this party held by Rikiya Yotsubashi, CEO of the Detnerat Company.

Gara and Miku were standing side by side, chatting with a smile on their faces even though their chat… wasn't so friendly.

"Hahaha, oh Miku, to think your daughter will fall for my son. Such a tragic turn of events, don't you think?" Gara giggled, wearing a blue dress that went along with her braided blue hair.

"Ahaha, I don't get what you mean by that. Are you sure my daughter fell for your son? From what I saw, he's a very loyal young man who didn't hesitate to keep holding her in his arms for minutes. It's clearly he who's drowning in love." Miku, Momo's mother, said with a laugh of her own.

"Bullshit," Gara replied with a smile. "I saw your daughter coming to our house even at late nights, just to spend some time with Neji. She's clearly the one who has lost the war of love."

"No, obviously not! I remember…"

Their conversation continued while their partners, Neji and Momo's fathers, sat a bit far from them, on a table with bottles of sake on their hands.

"What are those two even doing?" Aiko dryly stared at the two moms. 

"Heh, they're too competitive. They’ve always been like that, haven’t they?" Touma Yayorozu, Momo's dad, chuckled as he drank sake in a way that didn't suit people of his stature.

Some others seemed uncomfortable at that, but they didn't dare to project their feelings on their words. These two, after all, could destroy their businesses with a single phone call.

"Heh, I guess that's true. Let's not bother them." Aiko did the same, drinking sake from the bottle like a hooligan. "Ahh… Anyway, tell me about yourself, how is life going?" 

"Ehh, it's fine I guess. Things have been pretty smooth lately, but that's to be expected. Things almost feel too easy…" He shrugged. "Back in the young days, we had to work so hard but now? Nowadays, things just come at me. But I guess that's the same for you, huh?"

Aiko chuckled at his words but didn't say anything.

After chatting for a while, Aiko yawned. "Hey, don't you think this is getting kinda boring? Why isn't Yotsubashi here yet? He's been making us wait for a while now."

Rikiya Yotsubashi, the guy who invited them today, and also the host of today's party. He's yet to make an appearance, which was strange and to some degree, disrespectful too.

It was then, one of the guests yelled loudly. "What the hell? Why isn't there any network here? Is this some kind of prank from Mr. Yotsubashi again?"

Hearing it, almost everyone took out their phone to see and indeed there was no network.

Aiko frowned at that and guided his right hand to touch the hand-watch on his left wrist. This was a smartwatch with a huge amount of power stored within it, and upon activating his Quirk, [Energy], he absorbed 1/10th of its power inside his body.

Now, with electricity dancing within him, he tried to feel the tower connection from the room and hummed.

"Huuuh, that guy ain't wrong. Something is blocking the network, I guess Yotsubashi wants to show us something new." Aiko said, hearing which Touma shrugged.

"Still, it's kinda rude to block our phones, but eh. Doesn't matter if the new product is good."

As they were talking about it, the room started to change slowly. In the middle of the huge hall they were staying in, a small black hole appeared before it began to expand into a purple portal.

"Oh, interesting. You think this is the new tech?" Aiko asked with a raised eyebrow. "I don't remember Yotsubashi having any portal quirk user under him."

However, Touma's expression was serene as his black eyes narrowed. "That's a quirk, alright. But I feel multiple dark energy signatures behind it."

"Huh?" Aiko immediately sat straight.

Touma had the Quirk, [Aura]. It allowed him the manipulation of his personal aura, allowing him the ability to temporarily construct things out of his Aura. Besides that, he could also sense any aura as long as they were extreme enough, such as when a person is feeling extreme happiness or having extreme evil intentions.

"Interesting… What is Yotsubashi up to this time?" Touma asked as he started to construct an armour of purple aura beneath his clothes.

Aiko didn't waste time either and touched his watch, starting to absorb a large amount of power stored within it as his white hair and eyes changed into black. 

Then, people started to walk out of the portal as the guests around the room started to step backwards.

From within the portal, four people walked out, each with an exotic appearance.

The one to catch everyone's eye first was a humanoid Wolf looking guy. He had blue fur, a wolf-like head, hands and feet resembling an eagle's talons and a long reptilian tail coming out from behind him. He wore a brown trench coat over a blue dress shirt and jeans fastened with a belt and had a cigar in his mouth.

The next was a tall man with numerous red-coloured bandages wrapped around every part of his body except for his hands and eyes, looking like a mummy. 

Then there was a young woman with fair skin. Her most noticeable part was her straight, shiny red hair that seemed to reach her feet.

The last one was a white shoulder-length haired man with grey eyes and white pupils. He wore a lavender suit and pants of the same colour, but his most defining feature was the large black mask that covered him from his chest to just above his nose.

"Everyone," it was the white-haired man, Nine, who spoke as he stepped forward from his group. "You are all to keep calm and take a seat on the floor. Don't make any useless movements, as that'd cause your death."

"Hey!" A short chubby woman yelled. "Do you know who you're talking to?! Where is Mr Yotsubashi?! Call him here right now! How dare he disrespect us after gathering us all here!?"

Aiko sighed at that as he saw what was coming. As expected, Nine nodded to one of his subordinates, the wolf-head, who started to walk towards the woman who kept yelling while stepping back.

Aiko and Touma, both were about to stand up, but before they could do so, the wolf-head guy kicked the ground in a really fast motion and swiped his claws at the woman's neck.

Aiko prepared his eyes for a gory scene, but instead, something white flashed between the victim and the attacker… just before the attacker was thrown crashing into the wall.

“Phew,” Aiko sighed and took a seat. “Sit down, Touma. We are safe.”

—★—

"H-huh? What happened?!" The short and chubby woman was surprised as she stuttered even as her eyes fell on the back of the person who saved her.

She wore a maid-dress as her white hair flowed down her back, her skin was pale white with black stripes around some parts, with two stripes imitating as whiskers on each side of her cheek. Her black-n-white tail wiggled behind her while a black cat sat on top of her shoulder. 

Both the black cat, Kurai, and the maid, Kimi, stared at the invaders. However, Kimi’s silver slitted eyes were wide as she was specifically looking at Nine.

"It's you…" she spoke, her voice carrying a surprise. "It's you, yes."

Nine had his eyes casual as ever as he grunted. "What do you mean?"

"You don't recognize me?" Kimi asked. "You killed my sidekick, leaving me alive because you thought I wasn't even worthy of dying. 13 years ago, remember?"

"..."

Nine, the man who was the originator of Kimi's fear of blood, stayed calm and silent as he waited for Kimi to continue.

Then, surprisingly, Kimi's wide eyes became calm again as a thought crossed her mind.

Shouldn't she be thanking him? Grateful, even.

‘If not for him, I wouldn't have quitted my job, and so, therefore, wouldn't have met the young master. I wouldn't even be here right now at all.' Kimi’s expression was thoughtful as she considered. '...I really am glad he killed my sidekick back in the day, but it's nothing to be thankful about. He's threatening my young master's parents and so… he needs to die.'

"Mommy, don't kill him." It was Kurai, who spoke from above her shoulders. "Papa told me about this guy a few days ago…Yeah, I am certain it’s him. I think Papa would like him alive."

"Oh?" Kimi hummed. "Okay, if you say so."

The moment Kimi said the words, she disappeared from sight. Nine's danger senses jumped up and he raised his arm in front of him and created an <Air Wall>. Exactly a moment later, Kimi's knuckles came hitting the air wall but she disappeared again.

Next time, she didn't come attacking Nine immediately, instead, she slammed a karate chop on each of Nine's subordinates' necks, causing them to fall unconscious. Their bodies couldn't even fall to the ground as Kurai simply stored them in her inventory, assuming Neji might want them alive too.

She finally went to attack Nine, but right then, Nine used his other quirk <Hydra>. 

It's a quirk that allowed the user the ability to summon gigantic sea snake-like creatures from their back that they could control at will. 

Using which, Nine summoned a huge blue snake-like creature from his back and threw it forward to shove it inside Kimi's chest. She dodged, but then Nine used his <Bullet Laser> quirk to fire 10 beams of laser from each of his fingers.

This time, though Kimi avoided it too, some of the beams hit the people on the back. That caused Kimi to frown as she flexed her muscles and decided to speed up.

She channelled electricity through her whole body, causing her hair to start floating as she simply disappeared from sight, faster than before, and reappeared with one of her fingers poking inside Nine's chest, just above his heart.

"A- what?" Nine asked with wide eyes as the blue tentacle from his back sloped down and he stepped backwards.

"Mommy! I told you not to kill him!" Kurai yelled from the shoulder, pulling Kimi's hair. "Ugh! You ruined Papa's plans! Bad mommy!"

"Hey, calm down!" Kimi yelled, pulling her finger out as she hardly slammed a karate chop on Nine's neck. "That's not a dead shot. I held back."

Nine's eyes twisted as he started to fall face first.

"Oh." Kurai seemed surprised, but she still quickly put Nine inside her inventory so that his body could get frozen in time.

Kimi was about to say something, but right then… Kurai's eyes went wide as a horrific cry left her.

"N-NOO!"

"Kurai? What happened?" Kimi quickly grabbed Kurai from her shoulders and brought her close to her face. "What happened baby?"

"P-papa…" Kurai's golden eyes trembled. "Papa's life force just… disappeared all of a sudden."

"...What?"

"P-papa's dead."

Kimi felt a twist in her heart but she gulped in worry. "Are you 100% sure?"

"Yes! I am! Our connection got cut, too! Our connection gets thinner when his life force is too low, or he's inside a dungeon, but it never gets cut! I am sure I felt his life force hit its rock bottom!"

Kimi gulped in. 'No… m-maybe this time, not only did his life force become too low, but he also entered a dungeon at the same time… Yes, that must be it.'

"Kimi!" it was Gara who called, running over. "What are you doing here?! Wait, no, that's not important!" She jumped to hug Kimi and Kurai. "Thanks, dear. Those villains looked scary."

Kimi licked her dry lips as she nodded.

She shook her head off Kurai's words and started to form plans.

'I need to bring them to safety… No, I think it's better to put them in Kurai's Personal Dimension too. I am not sure how the rest of Japan is doing.'

"I am sorry, Lady, I will bring you out soon," Kimi said to Gara, who was about to ask for an explanation before Kimi karate chopped her neck and caused her to fall unconscious.

The other three, Momo's parents and Aiko, were shocked and surprised at the sight, but they couldn't run before Kimi did the same to them.

Kurai, whimpered as she put all of them inside her inventory.

At last, Kimi turned to the crowd of rich guests and saluted off. 

"Good luck, everyone."

With that, she kicked the ground and disappeared in a flash.

**

**

**