Metal Bat

5:30 p.m.

Tanuki Izakaya.

It was a semi-self-service Japanese restaurant. Ingredients were arranged on Dinner Plates of various colors and carried slowly past the diners on a conveyor belt for them to take as they pleased.

A Young Man of seventeen or eighteen with slicked-back hair stood by the serving hatch, steadily adding food to the conveyor belt.

Young Man named Serizawa Masao. He was a student at Suzuran High School and worked here part-time on every holiday.

Serizawa worked to pay for his younger sister's piano lessons.

During a lull in the rush, Serizawa checked the time.

In half an hour, he had to pick up his sister Yoshiko from class.

Serizawa turned his attention back to work.

Suddenly, he frowned.

Another empty Dinner Plate had come along the conveyor belt.

At this semi-self-service restaurant, the bill was calculated by counting Dinner Plates. Customers took whatever they liked from the conveyor belt, then stacked their empty Dinner Plates when they finished eating. Different colors meant different prices, and the final bill depended on the number and type of empty Dinner Plates.

There shouldn't have been any empty Dinner Plates on the conveyor belt. One or two might have been put there by accident, but several had already appeared.

Someone was clearly trying to eat without paying.

Serizawa decided to go out and catch the Evil guy.

He followed the conveyor belt and soon found the culprit.

A slightly overweight middle-aged man with shiny, greasy hair was wolfing down his food. He finished a plate of Sushi and casually set the empty plate on the conveyor belt.

"Sir, you can't put empty plates on there." Serizawa returned the plate to the man's table.

The pudgy man looked up at Serizawa, picked up the empty plate, and put it back on the conveyor belt.

"I just told you not to do that!" Serizawa said, growing angry as he put the plate back in front of the man.

"Shouldn't empty plates be taken away when you're done with them?" the man asked.

"You need them to pay your bill," Serizawa replied patiently.

"Oh." The man nodded.

Then he picked up the empty plate and started to put it on the conveyor belt again.

Smack!

Someone slammed his outstretched hand onto the table.

Serizawa's face darkened. He leaned close to the man and said coldly, "Do that again and I really will beat you up."

The man turned to study the Young Man.

The Young Man was solidly built, though not unusually so.

But from the look on his face, the man knew he wasn't bluffing.

If he put the empty plate back, the Young Man really would hit him.

The man glanced around.

There were still plenty of customers in the restaurant.

So the middle-aged man smiled at Serizawa and let go of the plate.

Serizawa walked away, only to return a moment later.

He was carrying a stack of empty plates.

He set them on the man's table. "These should all be yours. I gathered them up for you."

"And remember, don't put any more on the belt," Serizawa added.

The middle-aged man watched Serizawa leave, his expression shifting.

5:50 p.m.

Serizawa clocked out. He had to hurry to pick up his sister.

He had to be standing in front of her at six sharp. Not a second late.

Even one second late, and Yoshiko would make him pay for it.

Serizawa was walking along when he suddenly stopped.

He thought he'd spotted something on the ground.

He turned around.

Sure enough, half a small cookie lay on the ground.

Some careless person must have dropped it, Serizawa thought.

Firm in his belief that food should never be wasted, Serizawa bent down to pick up the half cookie and eat it.

A foot shot out and crushed the cookie to crumbs.

Serizawa froze, then looked up.

It was the pudgy middle-aged man.

The man grinned. "What, so poor you can't afford a meal? You have to eat things off the ground?"

Serizawa straightened. "Better than trying to eat without paying."

The man's expression changed. He had heard the mockery in the Young Man's voice.

He looked at the Young Man and noticed the jet-black Metal Bat in his hand.

So that's why he's in such a hurry. Going to play baseball?

Afraid he won't get to play after all.

"Didn't you want to beat me up? I came all this way to let you." The man gave Serizawa a look that begged for a beating.

"Oh?" Serizawa was taken aback. "Are you sure?"

Serizawa had beaten up plenty of people, but few had ever volunteered.

The middle-aged man smiled and pointed to his head.

"Come on. Hit me right here."

A challenge. An open, brazen challenge.

"Then I'll give you what you want." Serizawa tightened his grip on the Metal Bat.

He still had to pick up his sister from class. He had no time to waste here.

He would just knock the man out.

Serizawa was reckless, but he knew how to hold back. If he struck with all his strength, he knew he would smash the man's head open.

So he adjusted the force of his swing and brought the bat down on the man's head.

Clang!

The Metal Bat struck the man's skull. The man didn't budge.

A heavy blow seemed to strike Serizawa's own head.

Serizawa stood rooted to the spot.

It was as though he had hit himself with the bat.

Because he had used only enough force to knock out an ordinary person, the blow caused him no serious injury.

Even so, Serizawa realized how serious this was.

The middle-aged man before him was an Esper.

His power was most likely some kind of physical-damage reflection.

What a pain.

The middle-aged man looked at Serizawa. Seeing the Young Man completely unharmed, he was secretly shocked too.

This Young Man is no ordinary person either.

The middle-aged man's name was Frozer. He was a member of the Villainous League, one of the major criminal groups that held extraordinary power in San Andreas.

Frozer's superpower had no offensive properties, yet it had still earned him a position as an officer in the Villainous League.

The reason was simple: most Espers could do nothing against him. In certain situations, his ability could even turn the tide of a battle.

Frozer's Psychic Powers could negate physical damage up to a certain threshold and reflect a physical attack of equal force back at his opponent.

That left only two ways to defeat Frozer.

The first was to use a different kind of power. Damage from poison, freezing, or burning could not be reflected back at its source.

The second was to hit him with a physical attack stronger than his Psychic Powers could negate.

Very few people could do either.

Frozer had yet to meet anyone who could manage the second.

So even Frozer didn't know the upper limit of what his Psychic Powers could withstand.

First, thanks to the reader [That One] for the tip.

It took fifty thousand words to get my first fan. Boxer shorts, boxer shorts!

Next, a clarification about Frozer's ability.

Frozer's ability is to [negate physical damage and return a physical attack of equal force], not to [return an equal amount of damage].

The difference is that the actual damage his opponent takes is not necessarily equal to the damage they inflicted. It depends on how much punishment they can withstand.

(End of chapter)