Am I Too Evil? [MHA Isekai]

Continuous rain assaults the face of the red-streak-haired girl on the ground. Pattering her face, the sky's tears blend with the droplets of sweat on her stained face. Dirt has built up around her face and underneath her nails after a long period of rigorous training. 

Rimi finds it difficult to accept her body's condition. Endlessly she has been barraged with mental and physical attacks for several days. Pinnley, her savior and captor, was a cruel tactician who could predict her every move. 

Pinnley easily stampeded over all of the plans she managed to formulate during their skirmishes, as if he could read her mind and saw the best course of action afterward. No tactic was too great for him to see through—this frustrated her. Whereas she easily lost her composure and attacked wildly, Pinnley's predictions and actions were taken with trained finesse.

He believed the best way to push Rimi to grow was to beat an understanding of their difference into her mind. Throughout the first few days of captivity, he fed her and allowed her to rest when he believed her actions were sufficient. It wasn't like he was trying to kill her, but rather put her through a military-esque training regime. Rigorous could not begin to describe the harshness of the training directed at a 7-year-old girl.

Izumi was the worst part of it all, however. No matter how much Rimi tried, deciphering Izumi's quirk was impossible. One moment, she'd be in the middle of a sentence, and the next she'd appear behind Rimi and take hold of her. The most uncomfortable thing about the ability is that Rimi was essentially immobilized whenever Izumi took hold of her. Every cell in her body felt inert.

At the end of each training session, Rimi's anger swelled to a dangerous extent. Incomparable to the immediate outbursts she'd felt in the past, build-up proved to be one of the worst consequences of their training. Pinnley had to work quickly to stop Rimi from destroying their mansion with the flick of her wrist during one of her fits of anger.

Anger proved to have benefits and negatives, equally. Blinded by her fury, Rimi lost concentration on the disheartening experiences she'd gone through recently. Her conscience focused only on the training and her survival through it. 

"You're only a bit faster than you were when you first arrived. With the blood flowing through your veins, I'd expected you to become faster than Gran Torino." Pinnley's berating voice reaches Rimi's ear from what she already knows is a far location. "I'm only kidding, there are only a handful of men who I can think of that've become that light on their toes." Lifting her hand off of the ground, a wild crescent uproots the land in its path. After reaching the location that Pinnley should've been in, the crescent only impacted with a tree. 

Shattering, chips of wood fly into the air and rain down. Peppering the ground, a cloud of soil is all that is left from her drained attack.

Pinnley is swift in making his survival known. "Now you're just being lazy, Ms. Yonamine." The old-timer almost sounded amused while he chided her for her fruitless attack. She hadn't landed a single hit on the man since their training began, and she knew that it'd only become more challenging when he added Izumi back into the equation.

The forest around the estate has had its terrain thoroughly warped by the continuous fighting. 

Once containing oak-colored posts of life and bushes of green, wildlife once dominated the wilderness of the estate. 

Their battle pushed away the wildlife out of fear for their lives. When powerful animals brawl, the weak will always flee for their survival. Being caught in the crossfire of such a deadly conflict is unwise, even for the largest creatures.

"Why...?" Through her drained voice, the child convokes a question. "Why are we doing this?" Throughout their training, Rimi easily concluded that her deduction of Pinnley being a 'kind-hearted butler' was far from the truth.

In one instance, he jabbed his cane only a few centimeters away from her eye, making her flinch and lose her equilibrium. This instance resulted in several trees being uprooted and a few dozen bird carcasses lying scattered across the ruined landscape.

For all she knew, this training did nothing to help her with 'self-control' as Pinnley proposed on the first day that Izumi assisted with their practice. To her, Pinnley appeared as an old man who enjoyed beating up a child, leisurely lecturing her for mistakes that it was only fair for her to make. 'How is this going to teach a 7-year-old girl self-control?!' 

Each outburst of frustration she had left more damage than the last, but never enough to compare to her first outburst in this life. When she'd blown a hole through a building—presumably killing hundreds of people—because of her awakening.

Closing the gap between himself and Rimi, Pinnley appears crouched at her side, and then he speaks. "I see myself in you, Ms. Yonamine. I see every faulty aspect of my younger self that I wish I could go back and chip away..."

"You're easily angered, more than other children your age. Outbursts are normal for youth, yet when I see your eyes burning with fury..." Pinnley pauses, taking a moment to delve deep into Rimi's eyes. To her, it looked like the old-timer was trying to peak into her existence. "When I see your eyes burning with fury, I can see the dangerous future they carry with them."

Gathering the child into his arms, Pinnley rises to his tall height. Studying the land around him, the scrunch of his lips says all it needs to. There was not much land left for them to continue sparring near the estate. While short compared to what he initially wished for, Pinnley knew that their time training together would likely come to a closing soon enough. "That's enough training for today. I'll carry you home so you can bathe."

"You... can hardly call that... training..." Coughing throughout her sentence, the child collects her breath while the butler carries her back to the estate they'd been residing at.

Pinnley can't hold his faint laughter at the child's remark. Over the last few days, he didn't tell her, but the change in her behavior has been noticeable. Her outbursts are still as dangerous as ever, but the child has showcased a greater amount of tolerance. "Training is training, Ms. Yonamine."

***

Returning to the alabaster manor, surrounded by miles of thoroughly trimmed grass and perfectly positioned trees, Pinnley hands the child off to one of the maids of the estate. A raven-haired woman with vibrant purple eyes takes the exhausted child into her arms. "Ms. Akarano, please be careful not to sink your fangs into the child while she rests." The butler gives the maid a light-hearted jab as her scaled lower half rattles at the sight of the Yonamine child.

Concerned eyes look up at Pinnley, the maid's opinion being none-the-quieter. "Sir Pinnley, you've been battering this child for weeks now. The mister and missus are only allowing her to remain here because of your insistence, but soon, I can't imagine they'll take kind in the smell she returns with after every session." 

The owners of the mansion, Izumi Kiyabu's mother and father, were only informed that Pinnley would be training the child. For some reason, Pinnley insisted on keeping Rimi's quirk a secret. With the assistance of one of the other maids in the manor who were in Pinnley's favor, they successfully obscured much of the large-scale damage caused by their training sessions.

"Mrs. Kiyabu could care less about what her child's playmate is doing. Her husband is very similar in this regard. So long as he takes no interest in the child we have nothing to be concerned about. The two are hardly in this manor in the first place." Retorting against the maid's concerns, Pinnley disregards her anxieties.

The maid looks like she wants to say something but is smart enough to hold her tongue. The pressure exuding from Sir Pinnley is enough to shush a room of conference men. The topic of his employers is not something he takes joy in speaking of. 

After a courtly bow, the maid turns and enters the estate with Rimi in her arms. This leaves Pinnley outside on his lonesome, left to reflect.

'I've blundered greatly. Teaching this child is well beyond my abilities outside of continuously pushing the zenith of her fury. As time progresses, she develops faster than any person should—by virtue of her Yoshiyuki genes.' Pinnley's hand raises to his chin, stroking it unconsciously. 'If I continue training her the way I've been doing it, she'll just become too powerful for me to handle.'

Pushing the child to a new height is something that Pinnley admittedly takes pride in. Pride aside, he can see how idiotic it is to continue training the child in the way that he's been consistently doing for the past several weeks. 'Our next session will be more productive. I'll put her accelerated growth to the test.' 

His worn, experienced fingers press through the tip of his beard. Mistake after mistake, Pinnley's life has been built from them and continues to be a motivator. 'When motivated by my mistakes, how is it that I only keep making more of them?'

Tired eyes gaze into the blades of grass beneath his feet. Soft gales brush his blanching hair with them. 

His hair was not always this color. Each day, more strands grow a tinge of silver, and then grey, and finally white. 

In his reverie, the veteran doesn't notice his utterance. "One." This word—or in this instance, name—holds more weight than an iron casket. Memories triumph in the butler's sub-conscience like an undying typhoon.

***

First, there is a layer of voices that he can remember clearly. In this first layer, one couldn't possibly recognize who the voices belonged to. None but Pinnley.

One of the voices belonged to Cole Chambers, whom Pinnley used a worn dagger to cut through his threadbare articles.

Another voice belonged to a woman, easily no older than fifteen; Lily-Mae Chapman. Equipped with a Quirk that turned her fingernails into wood, there was nothing she could do to fend herself against the experienced warrior on the opposite end of the battlefield. The warrior in question, a young One, had never known defeat on the ruined battlefield that was produced by human greed.

Gale Chambers had it the worst. When collecting their dog tags, Pinnley first thought that the boy whom he'd bludgeoned beneath his boot was the relative of one of his earlier enemies. It was after finding many more Chambers and Gales did he comprehend that they all shared the same name, not blood. If he'd been able to feel something during this time, he'd no doubt have felt a weight lifted from his chest.

Going beyond the voices, he enters the layer just beneath them. The second layer was composed of faces and scenes, the very scenes that he could envision from the voices alone. The faces of allies and enemies alike, connected to a 'war' that he didn't even bother questioning, engraved themselves into his psyche. 

Innocent, evil, or good; none of those things carried a weight to him while fighting for his survival. Marye was more unforgiving than any battleground he was shoved into. Marye, a city that formerly stood in the United Kingdom, was a stain on the country's legacy. Homelessness, prostitution, crime, and further degeneracy were the staples at the time. When newspapers were spread about it, they never had anything nice to say. It's why when the children of Marye received the papers, they took turns joking about their horrible conditions.

The jokers were the ones who suffered the most in the end. The corrupt politicians and policemen wouldn't let them be happy for too long, otherwise it'd be a motivator for them. Motivated children at the age of discovering their abilities could only be a problem if not tamed. 

'Slum-runners' is what they were called. Young Pinnley didn't need a dictionary or thesaurus to know what it said about him and his fellow slum-runners. They were at the bottom of the barrel, and they'd continue to stay there.

Or so, that is how it was supposed to be. The day that the monocle-wearing man arrived in front of him, his frail form—exhausted from hours of battling with opposing slum-runners—everything flipped onto its head. He was given an opportunity that'd allow him to leave the slums of Marye and explore the world, or so the vulpine man put it.

When a young Pinnley took the hand of this man, he lost everything he had. When the children of Marye followed behind him, the slum-runner they respected the most, they'd all been sentenced to his death. Yet, his fate fighting in the shadows for his country mattered not to him. When he and the rest of the children were assigned numbers, Pinnley was supposed to die first.

He'd voluntarily taken up the moniker of One so that none of the slum-runners following him would die before him. He'd taken up that role so that the only person he'd see die was Zero, a man he carried no connection with. When Zero perished, One knew he'd be the next to die. He knew nothing.

'The Reaper Skips One!' The chanting and taunts of the numbered slum-runners never failed to reach his ear. Each time he thought he'd die, in an impossible turn of events, he simply could not. One believed that it was because of his quirk, which allowed him to do anything in his power to follow the order he's been given by his recognized 'master'. If they ordered him to shoot a plane from the sky, he'd act on instinct to find the fastest way to do so—his body was on pseudo-autopilot.

In his eyes, this autopilot prevented him from facing death in the way he'd wanted to. One, who only wanted to die before the hopeful friends and acquaintances that followed him, outlived all of them in the end. In every battle, he lost more friends and tried to distance himself further. After the death of the final slum-runner, he fully understood the price of his sin.

Believing that he could take an easy route to safety, that no matter how many lives he'd steal, the ends would always justify the means—One had doomed himself for failure. He'd lied and made empty promises to everyone around him. When he found himself on the shores of Japan, alone and bloody, he could only feel regret. 

The moment his quirk stopped identifying his master, he wasted no time in removing the monocle-wearing man's head. Everyone connected to the operation followed him soon after. The people who'd exploited his companions were not to be left alive, otherwise he'd never be left alone.

All he could think about during the slaughter was his failure. If he'd commenced the slaughter from the beginning, as soon as he and the slum-runners were sailed out of Marye and into foreign land, then he could've saved all of them a blood-stained path. A single action could've changed the course of everything.

How many of his friends died with guilt and remorse on their minds, he constantly wondered.

He never found himself crying, somehow. Frustration boiled within him, but a teardrop was never spared from his glands. Unable to grieve in the way he thought was natural, One buried his feelings within himself after a fateful meeting with an old man Japanese man. One could never forget Kazuhiro Kiyabu, Izumi Kiyabu's grandfather.

***

Recovering from his daydreaming, Pinnley sees the tall blades of lush grass he'd been staring at. 'Sir Kazuhiro, how I wish I'd been graced with your wisdom only a few more times...' Through the gaps of repressed memories, Pinnley recalled every word of wisdom the late Kiyabu Head gave him while raising him like his own son.

Kazuhiro cared not for the sins that Pinnley confessed. After letting his heart loose, Pinnley was given a name fit for the land that he'd been born in. Kazuhiro 'sentenced' him to employ his services to the Kiyabus for the rest of his life. The generous old fool.

Ideas blend to life without delay. As Pinnley's thoughts finally go past all of the grim pictures of his childhood, he recalls the fond studies he'd shared with his father figure. Kazuhiro was a sweet man who many looked up to. Pinnley recalls a time when even a young Sorahiko Torino spoke a praise of Kazuhiro's kindness. It was not until after his passing had Pinnley learned that his father figure was formerly a Pro-Hero, forced to retire after having his quirk stolen from him.

At the time, Pinnley thought that someone stealing quirks from people was insane and fallacious. Yet, in all the time he'd spent with the giddy old fellow, Pinnley saw no signs of his quirk being used whatsoever.

'No... Perhaps your teachings may serve me well yet, Sir Kazuhiro.' As a delighted grin spreads, the butler turns to face the alabaster manor. Fixing his tattered clothes, his first few steps up the stairs leading to the entrance were arduous. Training with Rimi had been exposing how old he'd gotten.

Accounting for all of the information he knew about the child he'd taken into his household, Pinnley believes he might've found a way of offering mental relief in a fashion that he'd never considered. 

When the door opens, Pinnley promptly spots one of the maids, Kobayashi, dusting the windowsills of the manor. "Ah, Ms. Kobayashi!" She is first stunned by the butler's ragged appearance, but then even more stunned that he'd be rushing over to her as if he were still in the prime days of his youth. Everyone in the manor knew how old this veteran was getting.

"See if you can get in contact with Ms. Shuzenji, please. It's been some time, but I am sure that kind woman is willing to listen to another soul." 

In the days following Pinnley's confession to his crimes, Kazuhiro contacted one of the only people he knew might've been both kind and strict enough to hear the young lad vent. The retired Pro-Hero who he'd only been a few years older than; Recovery Girl.

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