The small interaction Reina was having with Tommy was cut short by a blast of smoke coming from the building. The girl turned her back as quickly as she could react, squeezing her eyes shut and covering her nose and mouth with a hand. The thought of using her quirk to push the smoke away entered her mind, but she immediately dismissed it--fearful cries reminded her with no uncertainty that she was surrounded by people, who would be equally affected by her quirk. Before she could think anything more, she felt herself grabbed and pulled from behind. Just as suddenly, before any real panic could set in, she was let go to find herself inside the hero agency along with her peers.
Her heart pounded from the shot of sudden adrenaline, and the girl kept her guard up as she noticed a smoking man--the cause of the sudden interruption, evidently. Her furrowed brow only let up as he spoke.
Boro. Her superior here. And someone who liked to flaunt the fact that he was kind of a dick. He seemed to have a rough way of doing things, but it was clear to Reina that there was a reason why he was Tumble's second as he claimed.
She listened intently, finally relaxing a bit; no longer was she surrounded by a crowd or being blinded and dragged around out of the blue. The girl smiled to herself at the mention of groups. Just like any regular old first day of school, they were doing some sort of exercise to help introduce themselves to each other.
Boro turned, seemingly finished speaking his piece, but stopped and glanced to the group.
"Whenever any of you feel like you're done, pick someone who you think doesn't deserve to be in this program and head over to me. We don't need any liabilities."
Reina froze and felt her heart sink. She glanced around the room, shrinking back into herself as her thoughts began to run out of her control.
That's me.
She watched the others beginning to group up, seemingly unaffected by Boro's last words. A group of four was formed.
The undeserving.
Tommy being asked by a girl to team up. Reina hadn't had any time to improve herself and her second chance would be over. It had to be obvious to everyone in the room that she was the one to nominate to Boro. Her eyes fell to the floor as she felt the anxiety start to grip her. There wasn't any way she could ever say that one of the others weren't deserving of being in the program. They had been chosen by Tumble. She didn't want to nominate any one else, anyways. So she wouldn't, unless...
The liability.
If she was told she had to, she'd name herself. Even just the thought felt like a punch to the gut, but her mind worked against her wishes to convince her that that was right. Even if she didn't have to name someone, she was beginning to think she'd still fess up to Boro. That would be the right thing to do. Like he said, she didn't think she deserved to be in the program. As she was now, she was convinced she'd be a liability. It wasn't fair to the others here that she get to stay. Despite knowing she wasn't good enough to be under Tumble's tutelage, she had accepted the hero's invitation with the goal of improving herself quickly to meet the standard of her peers. She had had some confidence she could do it, too.
But now, that seemed like a stupid thought--it wouldn't be the first she'd had. What if she didn't improve fast enough? What if in that time, something happened to her peers that she could have prevented had she not been worthless? Taking up their time as well as Tumble's was idiotic, disrespectful, and--worst of all--dangerous.
What am I doing here?...
Fenrir continued to walk up to Reina and immediately felt a pull towards her, a literal force causing him to be drawn towards her, however he seemed unphased by it. He called out, "Hey, my name is Fenrir, want to join the team I am setting up? You seem like you can handle yourself."
The girl started slightly, finally glancing up from the floor towards the voice directed at her. She stared for a moment, before looking around the room at the others with an uncertain frown.
"You..." she started, wanting to tell him he'd be better off with someone else. There was a pause as she couldn't bring herself to say it, and she bit the corner of her mouth in frustration at herself. Why did she still want to convince herself to stay? She'd only bring him and the others down.
Reina's gaze shifted back to the ground. Boro's instructions had been to group up first, then picking someone out as a weakness. If she was going to out herself, it'd be soon, but not right now. She couldn't help but give herself a mocking smile, knowing the justification was just an excuse for her to continue being selfish for a little bit longer. So she nodded to the boy who had introduced himself as Fenrir.
"Alright." She paused, realizing she had been too caught up in her self-destructive thoughts to give her name. "I'm... uh, Reina." She finally stood a little straighter. She shouldn't be here, but in whatever time she had left, she'd do everything she could to not screw anything up for anyone else.
Fenrir paused. You could clearly see a moment of hesistation before he put back on his persona of bravado. "You're nervous aren't you. I am not sure what your defect is, but be like everyone else and hide it a bit better than you are now."
Reina tensed up a bit at being caught, a faint sheepish smile appearing on her lips. Defect. Good way of putting it, she thought. "Maybe not exactly 'nervous,' but something like that," she said with another bite of her lip. "It doesn't matter."
She noticed that she had been letting her control over her quirk slip in the past few minutes. Stupid, but nothing bad had come of it. Her gravity began to weaken as she focused on steadily making it neutral.
"Oh," she said, looking to the boy and then to their peers. "Did you have a third person?"
He replied by nodding his head over to Nori, "Yeah, her name is Nori." he said, shaking his head and wondering if he made the right choice. He then took a quick look around and sighed. He turned around and walked back towards Nori without a word.
Reina followed the direction of his nod, seeing the girl with two-coloured hair. She paused, catching herself staring for a moment. Nori. The attractive girl radiated confidence even when she was doing nothing at all. Reina looked away quickly, more uncertainty suddenly piled on her.
Fenrir's sigh stung her a bit, and she watched him walk away. Her hand reached up to play with her ear. Now was not the time to mess up. She had to follow Fenrir's advice and hide her weak emotions better, and she had to not let him or Nori down.
After a deep breath, she followed the boy, taking a hand out of her pocket for a moment to give Nori a small wave as she approached.
"Hi, I... I'm Reina," she said to Nori, stumbling over her words slightly but not nearly as bad as she had been fearing. The girl stared for a moment at the other's heterochromatic eyes, finding them pretty, but quickly looked away, worried about coming off as weird as well as unreliable.
After a brief second to compose herself, she addressed both members of her group. "My quirk tends to pull people towards me--more so if I'm not careful--so I'm sorry about the annoyance." For good reason, the short explanation had been a staple of her introductions for as long as she could remember. It helped to make her a little less insufferable to be around.
@addamas
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