God of Heroics: Comicman!

Manga's phone buzzed at 8:47 AM.

He was mid-push-up. A zusshiri hovering over him, triple gravity pressing down on his body like an invisible hand, and he was on rep forty-three of a set that had started at thirty and kept going because he wasn't tired yet.

The phone buzzed again.

A sweatdrop emoji appeared in his bubble. He held the push-up position with one arm and reached for the phone with the other. The screen lit up.

Setsuna: wake up

Setsuna: we're going out today

Setsuna: i already planned everything

Setsuna: be ready in an hour

Setsuna: wear something cute

A rapid-fire string of emojis cycled through his bubble. Surprise, excitement, a blushing face, a running figure, and finally a thumbs-up.

He typed back: uhhh okay! where are we going?

Setsuna: everywhere

Setsuna: 9:45. train station. don't be late or i will find you and drag you there by your bubble

He believed her.

"MOM! I'M GOING OUT!"

"WITH WHO?!" His mother's voice came from the kitchen, sharp and fast.

"My girlfriend!"

A pause. Then the sound of footsteps moving very quickly toward his room. The door opened. Fukidashi Hana stood in the doorway with a spatula in one hand and an expression that contained approximately sixteen different emotions, most of them in conflict with each other.

"Oh, the scary girl from the Sports Festival?"

"My girlfriend. Tokage Setsuna. She confessed to me on live television during the Sports Festival. You watched it."

"I thought that little minx was just using that to get in your head and win against you! I didn't realize you were actually dating!"

"We became official that day."

"YESTERDAY?! And she's already making plans?! What kind of harlot moves this fast?!"

"Mom, don’t call my girlfriend a harlot. She was brave enough to confess on national TV to me. I think she really likes me."

His mother exhaled, then she pointed the spatula at him.

"Bring her over for dinner soon. I need to find out more about this girl."

"Yes ma'am."

He showered, dressed, and ate breakfast in forty minutes. His mother watched him from the kitchen with the expression of a woman who was deeply suspicious of any girl forward enough to ask a boy out after one day of having his number. Did she like him just because he won the sports festival? Was she planning on using her son?!

Manga arrived at the train station at 9:43. Two minutes early.

Setsuna was already there.

She was leaning against a pillar with her arms crossed and one foot propped against the base, wearing a green cropped jacket over a black top, dark jeans, and white sneakers. Her dark green hair was loose and wavy at the ends. Her dusky green eyes locked onto him the moment he appeared, and her sharp-toothed grin spread across her face like she'd been waiting for exactly this.

"You're early," she said.

"You're earlier."

"Obviously. I planned this date. I have to be here first to establish the pace."

"Establish what now?"

She grabbed his arm. Both of hers wrapping around it, pressing herself against his side in a way that was possessive and comfortable and very, very public.

"Let's go."

A blushing emoji bloomed across his bubble.

"You could at least let me say hi first."

"Hi. Let's go."

They took the train into the city center. Setsuna had an itinerary. She hadn't written it down because she memorized it. Setsuna had memorized the entire day's schedule including walking times between locations and backup options in case of rain.

First stop: the park.

It was a large public green space near the commercial district, the kind of park with winding paths and old trees and a pond with ducks that had learned to beg for food from anyone who sat on the benches. The morning light filtered through the leaves and turned everything soft and warm.

They walked. Setsuna talked. She talked about her quirk training over the past two weeks, about the fights she'd watched from the stands.

Manga listened, laughed, and interjected with his own commentary. His bubble cycled through expressions as fast as the conversation moved. Grinning emojis, shocked faces, laughing kanji, the occasional exaggerated crying face when she described something particularly funny.

He was loud. Expressive. His hands moved when he talked, which was hard to do with Setsuna attached to one arm, so he ended up gesturing with the free one while she hung onto the other like she'd welded herself there.

"You know what the best part of the whole festival was?" she said.

"When I suplexed Todoroki?"

"When I confessed to you, idiot."

"Oh. Yeah. That was pretty good too."

She pinched his arm. Hard.

"OW! Okay, okay! It was the best part! Undisputed! Ten out of ten! Standing ovation!"

"That's what I thought."

They passed a family with two small children on the path. One of the kids, a boy of about six with a quirk that made his hair glow faintly blue, stopped dead and pointed.

"MOM! MOM! That's the comic guy from the Sports Festival! The one who won!"

His mother looked up. Her eyes went wide.

"Oh my, it is! Fukidashi-kun, right? My son watched your fights on repeat!"

Manga crouched down to the kid's level. A star emoji appeared in his bubble, bright and sparkling.

"On repeat?! That's awesome, little dude! What was your favorite part?"

"THE SUPLEX!"

"That was one of my favorite parts too!" Manga laughed. He held up his fist. The kid bumped it with tiny glowing fingers and looked like he'd just met All Might.

“I’m gonna learn wrestling too! I already had my mom sign me up for classes!”

“That’s amazing! Do your best and don’t give up even if it gets tough. You’ll get way stronger if you do.” Manga encouraged him.

The mother thanked him. The family moved on. The kid kept looking back and waving.

Setsuna watched the whole thing with a softer smile than usual.

"What?" Manga asked, catching her look.

"Nothing." The grin came back. "You're good with kids."

"A hero's job is to make people smile."

"That's so freaking lame." She said without any heat behind it.

"You mean totally awesome."

“Whatever.” She squeezed his arm tighter.

They kept walking. More people recognized them. A group of high school girls whispered and pointed, one of them pulling up the Sports Festival clip on her phone. An older man in a business suit gave Manga a polite wave and compliment. A pair of hero studies students from another school asked for a photo.

Through all of it, Setsuna was right there. Arm-in-arm. Grinning. She introduced herself to every single person who approached them.

"I'm his girlfriend. Yes, that one. The one from TV. Yes, I'm the one who confessed to him live. Thank you. He's taken, you can’t have his number."

Manga's bubble was a constant rotation of blushing emojis.

"You don't have to tell every single person we're dating…" he said after the fourth introduction.

"Yes I do."

"Why?"

"Because I want to." She was proud and happy.

He couldn't argue with that. He didn't particularly want to either.

Second stop: the movies.

Setsuna picked an action movie about a retired pro hero coming back for one last mission. It was loud, dumb, and full of fight scenes that were physically impossible even by hero standards. Manga loved it. His bubble kept reacting to the on-screen action, exclamation points during the fights, laughing emojis during the bad dialogue, a crying face during the one emotional scene that actually landed.

"Your head is like a live review." Setsuna whispered.

"I can't help it! It's involuntary!"

"It's adorable."

"It's not, it's-"

"It's adorable. Now shut up and keep watching the movie with me."

She put her head on his shoulder and he promptly forgot what he was going to say.

After the movie they got lunch at a ramen place that Setsuna had pre-selected based on online reviews and proximity to their next destination. She ordered spicy miso. He ordered tonkotsu. They argued about which was better. It wasn't really an argument so much as Setsuna declaring spicy miso superior and Manga's bubble displaying a blue cap emoji in response.

"It’s not cap!"

"It’s the truth."

She kicked him under the table. He barely felt it through the legs that had been doing push-ups in triple gravity that morning. She noticed.

"Did you even feel that?"

"It hurts so much?"

Her eyes narrowed. She kicked harder.

"That?"

"I’m about to cry from the pain?"

Her grin turned predatory. "Your legs are made of steel or something."

"I've been training."

"In what, a home gym? Do you have money like that?"

“Nah, I’m totally middle-class. Just a Zusshiri here and there.”

“You never stop working, huh?”

“Can’t surpass God by half-assing it.”

I really did choose the right man. Setsuna bit her lip.

Third stop: the arcade.

This was where the competitive streak surfaced. Setsuna was good at fighting games. Manga was good at rhythm games. They were both terrible at the claw machines. The shooting gallery ended in a tie. The racing game ended in Setsuna winning by a hair and celebrating like she'd won the Sports Festival herself, standing on the seat with both arms raised while Manga's bubble displayed a "rematch" kanji.

They were halfway through their second round of the racing game when they heard the noise outside.

A crash. Then screaming. Then the ground shaking.

They looked at each other. Then they were both moving toward the exit.

Outside, two blocks down, a man with a mutation quirk that had given him four arms and rock-hard skin was tearing up the street. He'd flipped a car, shattered a storefront window, and was currently swinging a street sign like a bat at anyone who came near him. Civilians were running. A woman was screaming. A kid was crying.

Then a blur of blue and white streaked down the street. A pro hero, someone Manga didn't recognize, a woman in a streamlined suit with a speed-type quirk, closed the distance in a blink. She ducked under the street sign, drove a knee into the villain's midsection, and followed with a fist to his jaw that rocked him sideways. He swung at her. She was already behind him. A vibrating chop to the back of the neck and he hit the concrete face-first.

Eight seconds. Start to finish.

The crowd cheered. The hero waved. Police were already arriving.

"Hmph." Setsuna had her arms crossed. "I would've done it in five."

"Five?"

"Split into pieces, blind him with my pieces in his face, trip him with a leg from behind, and pin him with body parts from every direction. Five seconds."

"You've thought about this."

"I think about it every time I see a villain on the news. It's practice."

"I think a lot of future heroes do that too."

She grinned. "What about you? How would you have handled it?"

A thinking emoji appeared in his bubble. "Guttari. One word. He drops. Done."

"Boring. As a hero, you need the flash! The pizazz!"

"Not always."

"What can I say? You are the winner of the Sports Festival. You know more than me I guess." She shrugged.

He laughed. She laughed. They went back to the arcade and Manga won the racing rematch while Setsuna accused him of cheating, which he wasn't.

She demanded a third race. Then a fourth. She won the fourth and acted like it negated all three of his wins. He didn’t mention he let her win. He felt if he didn’t, they’d be playing that game all night.

Fourth stop: shopping.

Setsuna dragged him through three clothing stores, two accessory shops, and a store that sold nothing but hero merchandise. She tried on a jacket that she didn't buy, a pair of boots that she did buy, and a hat that she put on Manga's bubble and then took a photo of before he could take it off.

"Delete that."

"Absolutely not. This is going in the group chat."

"Setsuna."

"Consider it payment for making me fall for a guy with a speech bubble for a head."

His bubble said, How was that his fault?!

The sun was going down by the time they left the shopping district. The sky was orange and pink and the streetlights were starting to flicker on. They walked toward the train station, Setsuna's bags hanging from one arm and Manga's arm claimed by the other.

"Today was fun." Manga said. His bubble displayed a warm, content emoji.

"It better had been. I stayed up all night planning this date."

"You're pretty good at planning dates."

"I'm good at planning everything."

"Humble too."

"Humility is for people who aren't this great."

He laughed. She grinned. They walked in comfortable silence for a block.

"Hey, Manga."

"Yeah?"

"I'm glad you said yes."

He looked at her. Her green eyes were softer than usual. The sharp-toothed grin had faded into something smaller.

She'd confessed on national television. She'd bet everything on a boy saying yes in front of the entire country. And he had.

"Me too," he said. "Best decision of my life."

"Don't get flirty with me, bubble-head." Her face flushed slightly.

“If I don’t get flirty with my girlfriend who the heck would I get flirty with?” Multiple confused emojis popped up in his bubble.

She elbowed him. He elbowed her back. They spent the rest of the walk to the station elbowing each other and arguing about the definition of sappy.

On the train home, Setsuna fell asleep on his shoulder.

Her green hair fanned across his arm. Her breathing was slow and even. She looked like a different beauty from the normal confident and strong beauty she usually gave. This was softer and not necessarily cuter, different, but it made him look forward to seeing all sorts of sides of Setsuna.

Manga sat very still so he wouldn't wake her up. His bubble displayed a single heart emoji, small and steady, glowing softly in the dimming light of the train car.

When they reached her stop, he woke her gently.

"Hey. We're here."

She blinked. Looked around. Realized she'd been sleeping on him.

"Your shoulder is pretty comfy. I didn’t realize how muscular you were." She began feeling up his body.

"Uhh, thanks." He blushed, letting her. “I work out.”

“Don’t stop.” She stood up. Grabbed her bags. Paused at the door.

"Same time tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow's the class hangout, remember?"

"Right. Karaoke." She grinned. "I'm going to destroy everyone at karaoke."

"You can sing?"

"You should’ve seen me in middle school with my friends. We always used to go out to places."

She stepped off the train. Waved once without looking back. The doors closed.

Manga rode home alone with an expanding beating heart emoji and the lingering warmth of her head on his shoulder.

Best date ever. Don’t mention that it was his first date ever either, okay?

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