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2041 years after death of Himmel the Hero in Tokyo, Japan.
There was a time, Frieren mused as she entered a train platform on an extremely busy morning, when people could easily identify her as an elf.
Her long ears were the biggest giveaway, but that was assuming that people knew elves exist and that elves had long ears.
People these days didn’t think elves ever existed. They thought of elves as a kind of fairy tale, completely made up with the imagination of some humans. Dragons, demons, and magic, too, were supposedly manmade stories.
People these days also had all kinds of features uncommon in ancient humans. Ever since they started evolving and possessing this quality called Quirk a few hundred years ago, their bodies also changed. These days, you could see a crocodile on two feet walking among humans and no one would bat an eye because, obviously, that was just a human with a crocodile Quirk.
Frieren’s long ears were such an ordinary feature that most people wouldn’t even spare a second glance at it. Ironically, she looked more human-like than most humans nowadays.
The train arrived with a gust of wind and loud noise that irritated Frieren’s ears. It was a common noise of the city, but Frieren had never really gotten used to it. As the world moved forward and woods turned into metals and concretes, Frieren found that there were changes she didn’t want to become accustomed to. She had a feeling this type of city wouldn’t last longer than a few hundred years before everything reverted to hills and caves anyway.
So, she mostly avoided the city and millions of people that hurried around in it like their lives were ending tomorrow. These days, no one would undertake a 10-year-long journey. Not even for a road trip. That kind of journey needed so much money now, and more documents than Frieren could keep up with. She had been shocked to learn that she couldn’t cross from one mountain to another without something called a passport with visa. How was she supposed to get one, she had no idea, considering she had no birth certificate nor fingerprints. Eventually, she had to expend a small amount of magic to teleport herself across the border.
But such solution wasn’t possible for humans. Not even ones with Quirks because immigration control always had Quirk-cancellation device turned on for screening.
It was probably a good thing, all in all, that humans believed magic to be nothing more than a fairy tale.
She stepped onto the train, wincing as people pushed and squeezed like canned fish into the narrow tube. They all had solemn and distracted looks on their faces. Some were focused on their phones. Some on not getting stepped on. Almost everyone, young and old, had headphones or earphones on. There wasn’t a single happy person around. Just heavy pressure and taut tension that filled the air, making the already dense compartment even less breathable.
Frieren’s mood soured. It was already bad that she had to get up at eight in the morning. This atmosphere made her more awake, sure, but not in a good way.
Why does Serie have to live in the middle of Tokyo? Couldn’t she have lived in some inhabited island or at least in the suburb? Whatever it is that she wants with me after nine centuries of no communication better be good. Maybe I’ll ask her for an interesting spell to make up for all this effort, too.
As she was considering any spells that could make the situation a little bit more bearable, the whole train suddenly shook to a complete stop and went dark.
“What’s happening?!”
“Urgh! I’m gonna be late for work again!”
“Flashlights, flashlights.”
Gasps and low mutters echoed across the compartment. No one complained too loudly because this was Japan and manner on public transport was serious. But it was clear that everyone was more scared than pissed. The way the whole train shook spoke to more than a simple electrical problem. It was more like something big rammed into the train.
“Mom, are we under attack?”
“No, my dear. It’s all fine.”
“But I think a villain….”
“Shh.”
Frieren sighed. Well, it wasn’t like she ever had very good luck, considering how many mimetics she had fallen for in the course of her long life.
The train shook again, and more screams erupted. People were clearly panicking now. Some started demanding that the train door opened, although it wasn’t clear where they were expecting to run in an underground railway tunnel. Some simply tried to move, again, with no clear goal or strategy. They pushed other people, causing a domino fall throughout the compartment. Phone flashlights pointed at every direction, including into people’s eyes. This caused more people to shout and curse, much to Frieren’s exasperation.
Closing her eyes, she mumbled a spell for light. The glow started from her body and slowly spreaded throughout the compartment and then towards other compartments and the tunnel outside as well.
The noise immediately quieted.
“That’s a great Quirk you have, young miss,” a middle-aged businessman seated in front of Frieren’s comment. “A very wide range of light.”
There was no point correcting him, so Frieren simply nodded. She couldn’t see past tall humans out the windows to take in the villain situation, but she could tell at least with her magical sense that there were no demons around here, which meant the situation wasn’t so bad.
The train shook again. And again.
“They must’ve alerted a hero, right?” A schoolgirl mumbled to herself, her fingers anxiously fiddling with the hem of her uniform.
The rule of about using Quirk in public was a bit fuzzy to Frieren. Apparently, you needed some kind of license to fight villains with your Quirk. But also, ordinary people had to be able to use their Quirks for self-defence if the situations called for it. Would killing a villain to save a whole train of people be considered self-defence? Maybe knocking the villain out cold or putting them under some kind of restraints would be more legal. Anyhow, it was unclear where the line was between what the ordinary people and heroes were allowed to do with their Quirks.
If it comes down to avoiding jail time and saving people, I guess I will save people, Frieren thought, resignedly. The sentence wouldn’t be longer than 10 years or so. The law seems pretty lenient nowadays, from what she’s heard. The prison supposedly even let prisoners exercise outside and learn hobbies. What a strange world.
The shaking got stronger and stronger. Whatever was causing this was getting closer to their compartment. Suddenly, there was a very loud screeching noise and the compartment behind them was pulled, disconnected from them. Frieren considered for a moment before slowly floating into the air, above people’s heads, and slowly moved towards the back of the compartment to observe the situation.
“I thought her Quirk was light?” Someone muttered behind her, but she paid them no mind.
Squinting her eyes, she finally saw the outline of the villain. They were quite difficult to see, even with her light, as they had similar colour to the tunnel and had a weird, slime-like shape which encompassed the train, pulling it into some kind of dark void. People in that compartment were tumbling over each other, although they tried to hold on to something. Someone in there might have already broke their necks and died.
Frieren considered her option. She didn’t have a magic to simply go through a solid surface. She could blast the door of the compartment open, but then the people inside her compartment would lose one layer of protection. Some stupid people might even rush out for who-knows-what-purpose.
And then, there was the question of actually fighting the villain. She had developed her magic to fight demons, so most of her battle magic, including, Zoltraak would be useless against non-magical creatures. Spells for physical attacks usually affect the whole space instead of just the target, so the narrow tunnel posed a constraint. She could consider the restraining magic, but that magic depended on her seeing the target without turning away, which was impossible in a shaking train. A different restraining magic would require her to be close to the body of the target, and she wasn’t sure if the slime-like shape was the villain’s actual body or a lifeless extension of them.
Himmel wouldn’t have thought this much.
The sudden thought made Frieren feel a little amused. Himmel the Hero wasn’t alive in this time. His choice was made based on how the world worked back then. He didn’t know Japan. He didn’t know passports or phones or trains. So, it was useless to try to think like him. But she still found herself making a lot of decisions, over two thousand years later, based on what she thought a man that humanity no longer remembered would do.
The familiar staff materialized in her hands, and she pointed it calmly towards the slime: “Doragate.”
The rocks on the tunnel walls detached and turned into bullets, plummeting towards the slime, as if to bury it. The slime quickly retracted, and the compartment it was eating was regurgitated out of the dark void like a medical capsule that a child found hard to swallow.
“Oh,” she mused, a smile in her voice, her staff pointed towards the direction, ready to blast open the compartment’s roof with her next attack: “there you are.”
It was at that moment that a blinding light shot towards the villain. Then, something explodes, the shock reverberating through the rest of the train. Another attack? Or a hero? Either way, Frieren hid away her staff to free her hands to hold onto something.
Another blast came through. The tunnel shook. And the eaten compartment came completely loose from the villain.
“It’s Dynamight!”
The delighted voice was that of a young boy in a primary school uniform. The reaction from other passengers, however, was a mix of relief and dread. Frieren didn’t keep up with heroes, so she didn’t know who Dynamight was. But she could guess that his Quirk had something to do with explosion, which made him quite a poor fit to handle this incident. A slightly ill-timed or ill-positioned explosion could collapse the tunnel, and that would create a whole other world of problems. Maybe he was just the closest hero patrolling, and having an unsuitable hero there was considered better than none.
The explosion changed at this moment, from a big blast into raining bullets. Frieren’s interest piqued a little, as the hero, whom she still couldn’t see much beyond the smoke and debris of all the explosions, displayed a refined control of his Quirk.
“I wish it was anyone but Dynamight,” someone in the train muttered, sounding bitter.
“What are you babbling about?” Someone else retorted. “You can’t do better than the Number One Hero.”
Okay, Frieren silently collected the information. So, this isn’t just any hero, but the number one hero of Japan. That’s quite impressive.
Himmel was probably named the Number One Hero in the continent, too, if that had been a thing.
“But he’s insufferable,” the first person sounded close to whining.
“Who cares if he gets me to work on time!”
“Yeah. He’s rude as fuck, but you gotta admit he always gets the job done.”
It seemed that the tension had almost completely disappeared, despite the ongoing explosion and the more compartments that were getting spitted out by the villain. Despite the mixed perception people seemed to have about this Dynamight hero, it was clear that the people felt safe now that he was here and had no doubt that he would resolve the situation.
So, Frieren floated back to where she was before and waited it out. The businessman squinted at her with a thoughtful look on his face.
“So, is your Quirk light or floating?”
“Neither,” said Frieren and refused to explain any further.
After about five more minutes, more heroes arrived. A hero with two-colored hair melted down the door to Frieren’s compartment with fire and stepped inside – this one seemed to have a much better reception than Dynamight.
“Shouto!”
“Wow, is this a bad time to say he’s more handsome in real-life than in the photos?”
“Please remain calm,” Shouto shouted. The natural timbre of his voice was quite low and soft, but he made himself heard among the commotion, nonetheless. “We’re going to evacuate you. Is there anyone too injured to move?”
There was none. Frieren would’ve healed them already if there was. Satisfied, Shouto directed people to walk out the door in a single row. Whenever someone tried to push their ways through and got ahead of others, he shot some ice out of his hand and froze the person’s feet, so that they couldn’t move until he melted it off with the fire in his other hand. He seemed very precise and casual about it, so this was probably just an everyday occurrence for him.
What a funny little Quirk, Frieren thought to herself, as she made her way out of the compartment alongside everyone else. Where does the water to make his ice come from? If he can make water out of nothing, he’d be such a convenient power source of water manipulation magic.
“Oi! Half-and-half!” A rough voice suddenly called out from the radio on Shouto’s belt, jolting Frieren out of her head. “Are you supervising evacuation or taking a bubble bath? What’s taking so fucking long? I could use some help!”
“You’re saying you need my help, Bakugou?” Shouto replied, a teasing note to his voice.
“This guy is too slippery and just won’t go unconscious. Get your icy ass over here and freeze him!”
That gave Frieren a pause. She thought back to how her rock bullets affected the slimy villain and had an idea why Dynamight was struggling. But she wasn’t sure if she wanted to tell Shouto about it or not. Surely, the heroes could handle this by themselves. And if she spoke up, Shouto would likely question her about how she knew, whether her information was accurate, which would be a waste of time and didn’t help Dynamight anyway. And then they would find out that she was an illegal alien with no nationality. It would be a hassle.
But Himmel would help.
Frieren sighed. Himmel shouldn’t have worried about her forgetting him. She couldn’t even if she tried. If anything, she sometimes wished she could remember him a little less just to make her life easier.
“Mr. Shouto?” Frieren called in a prim voice. “I may know how to deal with the slime.”
Shouto blinked, then focused on her. Oh, his eyes have different colours, too. How pretty. “You know the villain?”
“She has a weird Quirk,” the same businessman commented, offhandedly. The light and floating spells had nothing to do with it, but he was vague enough that Shouto seemed to understand it in a different way.
“I told you those were not products of my Quirk,” she sighed. But seeing that she had gotten Shouto’s attention, she spoke seriously. “The slime isn’t a part of the villain’s body. It’s a bit like parasite, reacting to force and fire and danger. But it doesn’t have a consciousness. So, your hero friend’s explosion can make it throw up the train compartments but not make it unconscious because the consciousness is elsewhere.”
“Who’s that?!” Dynamight – or maybe his real name was Bakugou – grumbled through the radio. He was panting a little, but the explosion was still ongoing. The slime villain couldn’t be captured, but it obviously couldn’t get away either. “Halfie and I are not friends! Goddammit!”
Frieren started to understand the mixed reaction of the train passengers regarding Dynamight now. His Quirk had to be doing something to protect his throat, or his vocal cords had to be suffering permanent damage, if he talked like this all the time.
“We are husbands,” Shouto amended, an apologetic note in his voice.
Frieren blinked, wondering why the bi-coloured hero thought that was the most important thing to correct right now. Once again, she found it hard to synchronize her thinking to that of the current generation. “The consciousness, or the main body of the villain, is likely someone on this train,” she said, instead of responding to the relationship status of the two heroes, because she had her priority straight. “I can’t pinpoint it, but assuming that the slime has no eyes or other means of visual perception, the controller must be monitoring the situation close by.”
Shouto quickly looked around. People were trickling off the different compartments and were guided by other heroes towards the exit. “You don’t happen to know who the villain is, do you?”
Frieren scrunched her nose. “I would’ve already told you.”
“I don’t care if this slime is conscious or not. It’s still trying to eat!” Dynamight screeched again. “Shouto! I swear, if you don’t come over here and freeze this thing… Fuck!”
“Bakugou!”
The sudden swearing required no explanation. Everyone in the tunnel could feel a powerful blast that was not Bakugou’s explosion, but the slime expanding. Frieren could see Dynamight now, as he got sucked into the dark void in the middle of the slime. The orange of his uniform and his blond spiky hair were particularly eye-catching, as were his red pupils, which were blown wide with clear panic.
The first compartment was getting sucked it as well. The force of the slime slammed it against Dynamight’s body on the way into the void. Everyone gasped as Dynamight coughed up blood. He could’ve used the explosion to push that compartment away, Frieren guessed, but that would hurt the people in there who hadn’t evacuated yet.
Shouto took off flying, propelling himself into the air with fire. He shot out the ice to freeze the slime, but it was tricky to avoid his husband and the remaining passengers in the first compartment. The part of the slime close to them that wasn’t frozen kept expanding, trying to engulf Shouto, too, though the hero had a masterful control of his fire-based flight and was able to at least protect himself without much trouble.
Frieren spared a second to admire the flexible use of that two-folded Quirk before letting her staff materialized in her hands.
“Sorganeil.”
Two overlapping golden rings materialized around the slime and locked it, securely.
As though he had been waiting for this, Dynamight got himself out of the void with a forceful explosion, and then he blasted the compartment free as well. Shouto quickly shot out some more ice to held up the compartment before it hit the ground. The passengers inside were wailing, which was a good sign of life in Frieren’s opinion.
Frieren floated calmly towards the heroes while keeping her eyes on the slime. It shrunk, as though trying to escape through the gap, but the spells automatically tightened to match its size. Realizing it was stuck, the slime started writhing, but it couldn’t expand to a size bigger than the rings anymore.
“That’s dangerous!” Dynamight turned to yell at her. “Don’t try to butt into hero’s work like that again, got it, girl? And why are you floating over here? Don’t come close!”
He was still panting hard. In her periphery, she glimpsed his pupils that were still blown wide with veins popping out. But he was still taking his hero’s job very seriously. Frieren could tell that, despite the crude words, the hero was concerned for her, thinking of her as a girl. It would be a waste of time to correct him on her age, though. No one would believe it, and she honestly couldn’t remember the exact number anymore.
“I need to keep staring at the target or the containment will disappear,” explained Frieren, calmly. “Maybe Mr. Shouto can freeze it now?”
“Oh, right,” Shouto quickly nodded and produced a big block of ice around both the rings and the slime, which was now the size of a volleyball. Frieren released the spell, and the rings disappeared. “I thought your Quirk had something to do with figuring out the nature of the villain, but it’s actually a restraining Quirk?”
Frieren held up her staff before letting it disappear. “This Staff is my Quirk,” she said, simply. “I must tell you, though, that it’s quite useless for identifying the actual villain among the passengers.”
“That’s not your job to begin with,” grumbled Dynamight as he pushed himself off the ground, then winced. “Fucking slime….”
“Bakugou…” Shouto stepped towards him, looking concerned, but the Number One Hero just shrugged him off. It seemed a little heartless, considering that that was his husband. But maybe it was because they were husbands, and Dynamight could be sure that Shouto wouldn’t take his gesture the wrong way.
“I’m fine, idiot,” Dynamight said in a softer voice. The word idiot somehow sounded like a pet name in his mouth. Frieren trailed after the two heroes as they walked towards the exit, where all the uninjured passengers were now waiting. “Let’s go and catch this fucking villain. I hate having to deal with office workers who’re about to be late to work. Ungrateful bunch, the lots of them.”
Frieren eventually arrived at Serie’s home, even though she ended up being two hours late. Serie chastised her, but Frieren knew it was nothing serious. Two hours was nothing to an elf’s lifespan. And if she hadn’t been late, Serie would find something else to chastise her about anyway.
And then, Serie got to the point.
“Magic is disappearing,” said Serie with a long sigh. “You know this as well as I do. Magic is in the nature. But nature is now polluted and demolished, so magic becomes corrupted and more difficult to harvest in its pure form, especially in a city like this. I sensed your mana earlier, so it seems you’ve already experienced this for yourself.”
Frieren did feel it. The response time for the spell to take effect wasn’t as instant as it was thousands of years ago. But it was a difference between a millisecond to half a second, which didn’t affect the outcome too much.
“It’s why I don’t live in the city,” replied Frieren. “Out in the countryside, it is quite manageable.”
“And is that how you’re going to live until the end of the world?” Serie sounded a little angry now. “Hiding away in small places that humans so mercifully refrain from touching? This planet doesn’t belong to the humans, but they’re destroying it just because they wouldn’t be alive long enough to see the ruins.”
Frieren didn’t reply because she wasn’t the type of mage to concern herself with the movement of the world, and Serie knew it. Serie and Flamme were the type to found important organizations and negotiate with kings. But Frieren thought such ideas too tiring. If one day magic disappeared, she would be fine. She would mourn it like she mourned Himmel and Fern and other people in her life. But she would be fine.
Serie, obviously, would not be fine.
“I’ve been studying this new phenomenon of humans called Quirks,” Serie continued. A few hundred years was recent enough for elves to classify it as new. “I think this is where we can get resource and nudge things in the right direction.”
“I haven’t agreed to join hands with you. Don’t use we so casually,” said Frieren, but Serie pretended to not hear it.
“People with powerful Quirks are called Heroes. And they have privilege,” said Serie. “They can influence people. The famous ones can influence even big organizations, even the laws and politics. That kind of influence can save magic.”
Frieren stared at the elf in front of her, the teacher of her teacher, who had lived for longer than humans could comprehend. She likely had been alive for longer than humans had grasped the concept of civilization. She might have been alive for longer than humans had been born through the evolution of apes. To her, even stooping to learning about the going-on’s of the current era was already annoying. Having to play their games to gain any influence at all was unimaginable. This was probably the most serious threat to her in the last few millenniums, and it wasn’t something she could simply use a spell to blast a way through.
“Tsk, this is all Flamme’s fault for allow human civilization to develop so much,” Serie hissed. “Anyway, a few centuries ago, the main influencers in human worlds are human celebrities. Those are stupid. But heroes are different. With our magic, we can….”
“I’m not doing it,” Frieren interrupted.
“What?!” Serie’s sharpened voice wasn’t as threatening as the split-second burst of her magic that slapped Frieren hard. “What did you say?”
What an annoying hag, Frieren sulked in her mind, though she maintained a collected outward appearance. “It’s too much of a hassle. I don’t want to be a hero. Even during my adventuring days, I was never the hero of my party. That’s just not me.”
“But magic is disappearing!” Serie bellowed. The force of her voice caused the whole building to shake. Frieren briefly wondered if heroes would be called over to monitor the situation here, too.
“Then, you can go be a hero by yourself,” Frieren shrugged. “One famous hero should be enough to encourage the humans to grow more trees or whatever it is you plan to have them do.”
But just as Frieren didn’t like the idea of being a hero, Serie didn’t like the idea of being in the spotlight.
No, Serie enjoyed pulling the strings. Few powerful people knew her true strengths and submitted as her puppets. But having common people everywhere know her was different. She couldn’t control everyone’s opinion of her, couldn’t demand unequivocal respect. And after staying the same way for thousands of years, the idea of changing yourself to accommodate the world sounded like too much work for both of them.
“It seems we’re at a stalemate, as we always do.” Despite everything, Frieren felt a corner of her mouth lifted slightly. “Maybe you’re this worked up about it because you’ve been living in the city and in your own head for too long, Serie. Why don’t you go out and touch grass sometimes? It might help.”
Frieren left Serie, as usual, with no conclusion reached. They were too stubborn in their own ways and too different. They weren’t going to start becoming buddies after three thousand years just because magic was disappearing from the world.
“It’s you again?!”
Frieren turned at the familiar voice and predictably saw Dynamight – Bakugou – in civilian clothing getting out of a car parked nearby.
“Mr. Dynamight,” Frieren nodded her head in greeting.
Bakugou paused for a moment, staring at her like he was evaluating something. Then, he sighed. “There was a report of a small earthquake around here, which could mean another villain activity. You’re not perhaps chasing after villains and trying to be a hero, are you, little girl?”
That was the furthest thing from Frieren’s mind. Also, she was not a little girl, and there were surely so many people out there who could use the Number One Hero’s help more than her. But with Serie’s plan to have her become a hero still lingering in her thought, she asked, “And if I am?”
“I’d call your parents and have them haul your ass home!” Bakugou snapped. Then, he seemed to realize that he shouldn’t act like that to civilians, so he grumbled something that sounded somewhat like an apology under his breath, before trying again. The whole transition of expressions looked so unnatural on him, just like that one time she witnessed Himmel being angry.
Some people were not born to wear certain emotions, Frieren though. And that was okay. People these days tried to be too comprehensive and didn’t leave enough room for funny, bad habits.
“Do you want to be a hero?” Bakugou asked.
Frieren shook her head. “Not really. Also, the earthquake just now wasn’t a villain, just my… acquaintance getting a bit mad at me.”
“Good to know,” Bakugou said, the word a mix of a relieved sigh and a sneer. “Stay out of trouble, girl.”
“I’m not that young,” replied Frieren, to which Bakugou made a disbelieving face. This would’ve been so much easier to explain if people these days knew what elves were. “And I can take care of myself.”
“I used to say the exact same shit when I was fifteen,” Bakugou retorted without missing a beat. “I’m saying this from a personal experience: Being cocky isn’t fucking cool if you don’t have the ability to back it up. Don’t wait until you almost die to learn about your own limits.”
There was something about the hero, Frieren observed in silence. He didn’t look noble or brave – she distinctly remembered the look on his face that morning when he was about to be eaten alive by the slime. He didn’t make people feel calm or even happy.
But she would’ve recruited him for her party.
This man may be afraid of slime, but he can slay dragons.
All she said, though, was, “I agree. I really don’t want to be a hero. I just often find myself in sticky situations.”
“Don’t I know all about that,” Bakugou snickered at that, but it wasn’t mean. He then walked back to his car and paused at the door. “Oi, girl! Do you need a lift home?”
So strange, Frieren mused, as she took the hero’s offer – she would take a chauffeur and a personal car over the public transport any day. He looks and sounds so different from what I think a great hero would be like. But he actually does everything Himmel and Stark would do.
Guess the essence that makes a great hero of humanity never really changes.
Bakugou’s car was much cleaner than Frieren expected. And his taste in music was, surprisingly, not heavy metal, just a kind of slow, emo-rock that complimented the orange sky of Tokyo’s evening well. Frieren hummed happily along, thinking about how nice it was to have heroes in the world, not to fight demons and villains, but just to help with little things in everyday life.
“Hey,” Bakugou spoke up, his voice quieter more, a little more serious, “Did you put a false name on the police record this morning?”
Frieren froze, knowing what was coming. “What?”
“Your name and face don’t exist in records,” said Bakugou. “Which means that was a fake ID.”
After having to deal with extensive documentations of humans for years, Frieren had developed a new spell – her own spell! – to transfigure a leaf into a documentation. It was a modification of another spell for transfiguring leaves into bank notes, which had become less significant nowadays that there were less leaves to be found in the city and less people accepting notes. Electronic payment was a pain for Frieren to comprehend.
Frieren sighed, resigned. “Are you driving me to a police station to put me in jail?”
“What? No!” Bakugou snapped again and then controlled himself. He did this a lot. “You helped, this morning. And it’s a pain to file a case – you have no idea how much documentation heroes have to do on an average day – just for you to pay a fine. You wouldn’t be put in a jail unless you’re involved in a large fake ID organization or some shit.”
“Huh,” Frieren blinked. “That’s very lenient.”
Bakugou frowned. “What were you expecting?”
“I don’t know,” Frieren shrugged. She had been out of touch with human law enforcement for many decades now. “Ten years in prison?”
“You thought I was gonna drive you to jail and lock you away for ten years, and your reaction is resigned?!” Bakugou bellowed, an incredulous look on his face.
Frieren considered this for a moment. It was such a pain to explain herself to people with no prior knowledge about elves. Actually, even with people who knew about an elf’s lifespan, it was still usually hard to explain how brief ten years was to her.
“How old do you think I am?”
Bakugou spared her a quick glance before looking back at the road. “Hard to say. You look like a girl but act like an old hag….”
“Hey! Watch your words.”
Bakugou snickered. “Only old hags care about being called old hags.”
Annoyed, Frieren called out her staff. The sudden materialization of a big object that obstructed parts of the car’s window made Bakugou exclaimed in alarm. But before he could tell Frieren to put it away, she whispered a spell.
The next second, Bakugou’s hair was gone.
“What the fuck?!”
“That’ll teach you about calling me an old hag twice,” Frieren let the staff dissolved away into the air.
“What-? My hair!”
Frieren smirked. “Shouto will still find you handsome, I’m sure. He seems like a reasonable guy.”
“You’re the one who brings up age in the first place, not me!” Bakugou was positively shrieking now. It was a miracle their car was still cruising along the street safely, a testament to Bakugou’s responsible driving. “What did you do to my hair? Make it come back now!”
“I can’t,” Frieren shrugged. “Don’t have a spell for that.”
“A what?!”
“I told you that my staff is my Quirk, didn’t I?” Frieren turned to look at the hero, now void of hair. His bald head was fiery red in anger. “Well, it’s not really a Quirk. And I’m not a human.”
“What the fuck are you babbling…?”
“I’m an elf mage,” said Frieren. “And I’ve walked this planet for almost four thousand years now.”
She expected another round of swearing, disbelieving exclaims, or a torrent of questions to follow her big revelation. But she waited, and Bakugou just remained silent. He spared quick glances at her, focusing on her ears. Then, as though fearing that his distraction would cause a traffic accident, he pulled over to the curb side and fixed his full attention on her.
Oh, yes, Frieren thought. Dragons would know to stay out of this one’s way.
Even with the car stopped, Bakugou didn’t say anything. But he was clearly thinking hard. Frieren, though, didn’t have much patience and said, “I don’t have evidence that I’m four-thousand-something years old, by the way.” It was just a precaution because she had learned that humans often made ridiculous demand for documentations.
Bakugou, unexpected, asked, “What’s your actual name?”
That was a nice question, Frieren thought with a smile. “I’m Frieren. Nice to meet you, Hero Dynamight.”
Bakugou raised his eyebrows. “You’re not Japanese, then.”
“I’m older than Japan itself, you moron,” Frieren laughed, but this, too, was not mean, just endearing. Oh, how her friends would’ve loved to meet this hero.
“And what you do is… magic?”
“Yes,” Frieren nodded and let the staff materialize in her hands again. Bakugou tensed and leaned away from her slightly, though there wasn’t much space to move, especially since he was still wearing the seatbelt like a law-abiding hero who drove responsibly. “You probably already know from the statement of other witnesses from this morning’s incident that I can make light,” she demonstrated the spell briefly. “A very useful spell before human discovered electricity. The spell for making people go bald isn’t that useful, but you never know when a spell will come in handy, right?”
“I bet,” Bakugou grunted. “So, I’m gonna have to wait until my hair grows back naturally? What the fuck?!”
“It’s not going to take that long, is it?” Frieren blinked, innocently. She reached out a hand to pat his head softly, but Bakugou violently swatted it a way with another spluttered curse. “A few months at most.”
The hero facepalmed. “A few months isn’t that long only for your old ass. Fucking figured.”
The elf narrowed her eyes in warning. “I have a spell that can do more than make you bald, young hero. Just try calling me old again.”
Stark would have been terrified by such threat. After all, he knew what an elf was and what a mage was. Bakugou, though, just bared his teeth like a provoked tiger. “Oh, my Quirk can do more than little fireworks, too. Try putting another spell on me and we’ll see.”
“I thought you were all about figuring out your own limits outside of near-death situations,” said Frieren, chuckling. But she put her staff away. “You take the news of my identity pretty well, all things considered. Most humans just claim I’m lying about my age when I try to tell them. It’s probably easier for their minds to comprehend.”
“Well, I’ve watched The Lord of the Ring,” said Bakugou, before an expression of naïve curiosity bloomed on his face. “How accurate does that movie portray your elvish kind?”
“The long ears and the long lifespan are accurate,” Frieren replied. “But I’d say we are more solitary creatures. To my knowledge, there’s never been a hierarchical society of elves. Hard enough to even find a family of elves that stay together.”
“Oh,” Bakugou paused to process the information, then he frowned. “So, you’ve been alone for four-thousand years now?”
“I’ve had many friends,” Frieren looked out the window. The sky was now tinted with a shade of pink and violet. “They’re all dead now, of course, except that one elf I just met with. You have an elf older and more powerful than me living in your jurisdiction, just so you’re aware.”
“Very reassuring,” Bakugou sighed. Then, he, too, turned to look out the window and fixed his stare on the sky. “So, when you say you need a lift to Shinkansen, where are you really going?”
“I don’t know. Outside the city would be a start,” replied Frieren, casually. This aggressive-looking hero somehow made her feel quite relaxed. Her memories of the adventuring days kept resurfacing as she compared him to heroes of old. “There isn’t enough magic in the city, so it's a bit uncomfortable for me. It’s like when human goes up the mountain, and the air gets too thin to breathe properly. It wouldn’t kill me, but I don’t like being here very much.”
In her periphery, she glimpsed Bakugou wearing a thoughtful look. But then, without saying another word, he just restarted the car and rejoined the traffic.
“Will you tell me about magic?” He said, as they sped through the forest of concretes and metal.
Frieren looked at Bakugou in surprise. But she had nothing but time, and maybe one famous hero would really be enough to get people to plant more trees in Tokyo. So, she told him about magic and how it was disappearing. Then, because this was something she was passionate about, she told him about all kinds of spells she had collected throughout her long life. She also told him about the heroes she had met across the age and the adventures they went on together, which meant telling him about Serie as well. He made crass remarks and snide comments from time to time, but she could tell he was paying attention.
It was the first time in a thousand years that she shared so much story with someone, and so she wasn’t surprised that she felt some regret when Bakugou finally parked his car in front of the Shinkansen station.
“Thank you for the ride,” said Frieren, unlocking her seatbelt. And for listening to my story, she didn’t say.
“Hey, Frieren,” said Bakugou before she could open the car’s door. “Can we take a selfie together?”
Frieren’s eyes widened in surprise. She had known about photography, of course. It had been around since about eighty years after Himmel’s death. But she had never cared for it. She had good memory. And no one had ever asked her to….
“Sure,” she smiled. “We need some evidence to show your husband that I’m responsible for your bald head, right?”
“Fucking elf,” barked Bakugou, good-naturedly. He took out his phone and told Frieren to hold up two fingers. The gesture made Frieren suddenly feel inexplicably young. Bakugou smirked at the camera, looking handsome even without a single strand of the spiky blond hair on his head.
Frieren got out of the car. Before closing the door, she called out: “Mr. Dynamight?”
Bakugou looked up. “Yeah?”
Frieren smiled. Maybe the trip to see Serie was pointless, but this trip to Tokyo was meaningful, even if it only lasted one day.
Such duration was a blink of an eye for an elf, but meeting great heroes always turned time inconsequential. They had ways of unleashing a mage from their solitary story and turning ordinary events into precious memories.
If adventures still existed, I’d like to go on one with you.
Instead, she promised: “If you can make sure some magic remains in the world, I’ll tell the number one hero a thousand years from now about you.”
EPILOGUE
2096 years after the death of Himmel the Hero, a mountain range in northern part of Thailand.
Knock, knock, knock.
Frieren looked up from the grimoire she was reading in surprise. She lived in a hut that was hidden behind a cave. She sometimes went to the village nearby, but everyone knew to not bother her. People here were very superstitious and thought of her as something supernatural of the myth. They were less wrong than most humans of this age.
After putting a golden swan feather on the page as a bookmark, she got up and walked to the door.
“Heya, Frieren.”
It had been over five decades, but Frieren still remembered the cocky smirk of the number one hero of Japan and the heterochromia colouring of his partner. They were both quite old now, their bodies covered in scars and wrinkles. One of Bakugou’s leg was synthetic, and his partner was missing an ear. Behind them, another old man with green hair and a lot of freckles were staring wide-eyed in every direction and gaped when he locked eyes with Frieren.
“Wow,” Frieren blinked. “You two look ancient.”
“Yeah, not everyone could be blessed with elvish immortal gene, old hag,” Bakugou coughed, good-naturedly. “You remember my husband, Todoroki?”
“Of course. Don’t underestimate my memory,” Frieren scoffed but reached out to pat Todoroki’s hair. His white and red strands felt soft under her palm. “Hero Shouto, it’s been a minute.”
“I’m sure it’s been significantly longer than that,” replied the man in the soft and low voice that she remembered.
“And your other friend?” Frieren asked, looking at the old, green-haired man, who jolted at being on the receiving end of her attention.
“We’re not friends,” barked Bakugou, almost as a spinal reflex.
“We are friends,” Todoroki corrected, but he didn’t sound surprised nor concerned.
“This is Deku,” said Bakugou, neither accepting nor denying his husband, as he pointed at the third man. Deku quickly came forward to shake Frieren’s hand, mumbling something incoherent about how it was his honour to meet her and how he had heard so much about her. His hand was trembling so hard that it was a bit difficult for Frieren to shake. “When we met, Frieren, he was a teacher at our alma mater. But in the past forty years or so, he’s been the main liaison with the elf Serie and initiated a lot of the magic restoration projects… Stop mumbling, Deku. How can you still be so fucking embarrassing at eighty years old?”
“Pleasure to meet you, Hero Deku,” Frieren laughed, softly, wondering how his interactions with Serie were like and wishing she had witnessed it with her own eyes.
“No, no, no, no, the pleasure is all mine. All mine,” the green-haired man quickly shook his head. His green eyes shone brightly with fierce passion and excitement. “And the name is Midoriya Izuku. At your service, ma’am.”
Hmm, I can see now how he’s able to handle Serie.
The magic restoration projects were not named so because magic was still secret to almost the entirety of human populations. But Bakugou had got into contact with Serie and connected her to a few other important politicians and philanthropists around the world. After hearing from Serie about the specifics of how nature had to be revived, humans realized that the disappearance of magic was identical to the global warming phenomenon, and that solving one would solve the other. So, the projects were announced to the public as initiatives to save polar bears and improve the air pollution in the city. But it was all to the same end.
If we hadn’t done this, Bakugou wrote in one of the very few letters he sent her over the decades, there wouldn’t be a number one hero a thousand years from now for you to talk to because the Earth would’ve become unlivable for humans in no more than a century. Do elf’s lungs get cancer from PM2.5 pollution, too?
It seemed that the combination of a great mage and a hero had, once again, saved the world.
“Come inside,” Frieren beckoned them and led the way into the hut. There were stuffs everywhere because Frieren would not start becoming tidy now at four-thousand-something years old. Bakugou grumbled how messy she was, reminding her a little bit of Fern. Todoroki seemed quietly curious, while Midoriya seemed to be exerting all his effort into restraining himself from running around to investigate everything.
Frieren made tea and sat down with the three heroes at the dining table that had never had any guests before. Her moderate-sized hut had become way too small now with three extra men inside.
“So,” Frieren prompted, “what brought you here?”
Bakugou gave her that smirk again. The smirk that said he was had the ability to back up his cockiness. He turned to reach into his bag and pulled out a scroll. At a glance, Frieren could tell that it was older than her and hadn’t fallen apart only because there was a powerful magic holding it together.
Oh, the potential of great magical treasure such scrolls often hold.
“Serie gave this to us as a reward for our service,” Bakugou handed the scroll over to Frieren, stressing the last word like it was a joke. “Well, she technically gave it to Deku, but he wouldn’t be working with her without me, so.” The magic hummed in Frieren’s hands and warming her from head to toes. It had been a while since she had come into contact with a magic so strong. Maybe a few hundred years. “Supposedly, it’s a map to the only remaining unexplored dungeon from the age of the Unified Kingdom.”
Frieren was almost drooling now. Her eyes were probably sparkling like the Milky Way. “What do you want in exchange for this?” She asked the old heroes excitedly.
It had been so long since she last came across any clues of magic. Now that this scroll was in her hand, there was no way she was ever handing it off to anyone.
“We want to come along on your adventure,” said Bakugou.
Frieren blinked. The excitement gave way to another warm burst in her chest, a mix of surprise and confusion. “The three of you?”
“There isn’t a priest between us, but…” Bakugou shrugged, obviously trying to sound uncaring, but he suddenly looked unsure. “You told me before about your party’s adventure, and I… We… We want to experience that.”
Frieren looked at the three heroes at her table. They were so old by human standard. Their bodies that had been through countless battles could fail any day. Their bones were brittle. Their hearts and lungs were weak. They were missing limbs and probably more organs than she could see.
But to her, they were still children. And their eyes, fierce and bright, confirmed this.
“You know,” Frieren said, carefully, “my last adventure took twenty years.” She didn’t voice the implication: You may die along the way. You may never get to return from this adventure.
Midoriya grinned, brightly. “It’s the first step that counts,” he announced with so much positivity it made her heart itch just a little bit. She wished she had met his younger self. She would’ve given him so many pats on the head. So many praises.
“My parents both lived to be over one-hundred-twenty,” added Todoroki, calmly, like he had considered and made this argument before. “Which means I’ve only lived two-thirds of my life so far. Spending the next twenty years on a trip isn’t a problem.”
A trip. That was a funny way to look at it, but she guessed he wasn’t wrong.
“And your last adventure took twenty years only because you didn’t have planes and Google Maps,” said Bakugou with his signature smirk. “So, what do you say, old lady? Do you think we can be a party?”
They had come prepared with their arguments. Good, Frieren thought. I will need well-prepared and disciplined people on the trip to keep things tidy and wake me up in the morning.
Slowly, she released her magic into the scroll. Around her, the heroes gasped as the scroll lifted off her hands and blue fractals flew around it like a small tornado. Frieren relished in the taste of ancient magic as the lock came apart in her hand, and the scroll finally rolled open.
The heroes surrounded the map, stretching their necks and turning their head to try and make sense of the faint ink. It was obvious they had no idea what any of the landmarks and symbols meant, as the map was written in the ancient elvish language.
It didn’t matter. Frieren eyes twinkled as she grinned up at them, feeling her childish spirit rekindling – matching those of her party members’ – after centuries of dormancy.
“Let’s go and slay some dragons.”