BronzDeck
patreon
Gambler Chapter 11: Sweet Reward
🕑 Added 2025-08-06 16:02:35 +0000 UTCThe Gambler's Guide to Heroism Chapter 11: Sweet Reward ~Yagi Toshinori(All Might) - Examiners Room~ Yagi let out a nervous breath as he wat
The Gambler's Guide to Heroism
Chapter 11: Sweet Reward
~Yagi Toshinori(All Might) - Examiners Room~
Yagi let out a nervous breath as he watched his successor flounder about around the exam grounds, trying to figure out how to score any points while being surrounded by some of the most promising examinees.
"Cam 15 looks promising." "That girl on 7 is pretty creative, isn't she?"
He was in the middle of the darkened examiner's room in front of a wall filled with screens that connected to drones watching the exam and relaying live feed while surrounded by his peers. His former teacher and principal sat next to him and patted his arm.
"Don't worry, All Might. I'm sure he will pull through."
Of course, the Principal said the words in a vague way that the onlooker would have no idea what topic he was talking about due to the sensitivity of the topic at hand. He nodded to the principal, although it did not make him feel much better, he did appreciate the sentiment.
"Wow, that boy on camera 11 is like a machine. He doesn't even look winded."
That did attract some of the attention of the Examiners, who turned to that cam to see a young man sprinting and jumping around like an animal while a large tentacle-like appendage behind his back crushed robots around like they were empty tin cans.
"Pretty good, excellent awareness, and he doesn't stop moving to make sure the robots cannot pin him down. And despite the size of his quirk, he seems to be making sure he does not accidentally hurt his fellow examinees."
Snipe said with an approving nod while his friend, Aizawa, otherwise known as Eraser Head, seemed more sceptical.
"I wouldn't say that. He is moving too much without thinking or planning. Just recklessly jumping around will tire him out very quickly.-"
But his words were rebutted by Midnight, who had an expression on her face that made him uncomfortable.
"I wouldn't say that, Aizawa-kun. Look at him, he isn't even short of breath, he seems to have more stamina than some Pro's do. And that youthful, vigorous spirit. I like him~"
"Don't say that about our future students."
Gradually, their attention moved away from the camera, following the student before the Zero Pointer was unleashed. Seeing his successor start scrambling away without knowing what to do, he berated himself for not training him better before someone else pointed to camera 11 again.
"Look! He is charging the 0-pointer!"
And as his fellow hero had said, the blond boy used his appendage to boost himself to the top of a building before sprinting up the 0 pointers arm with an impressive display of acrobatics.
"But why would he do that?" "Maybe he wants to buy time for others?"
Then, as he landed on the 0-pointer's shoulder, something that stopped his heart for a moment happened. The tail-like appendage disappeared. And was instead replaced by glowing ghost-like arms that looked like those of a demon that appeared on top of his regular arms.
"Two quirks?" "I thought his quirk was tail?" "Wait, isn't it the quirk of that boy that was on the news a few weeks back?"
All Might bit his finger as he watched the boy use something that eerily resembled a second quirk to tear apart the 0 pointer. His gaze drifted down to see the principal holding a tablet with an inscrutable expression.
"Hmm, how interesting. His quirk is listed as 'Demon Claws' which was just recently updated due to a report from the Police Department. Apparently, he was a late bloomer who awakened his quirk a few weeks ago. Curiously, it says nothing about a tail at all."
That made All Might's heart skip a beat. A quirkless person coming back suddenly with multiple quirks? That was All for One's method of operation, alright, but he was dead. He was sure of it.
"Sensei, what do we do about this?"
Nezu chuckled and shrugged his shoulders.
"What do we do indeed, All Might. Well, we do nothing!"
Yagi turned his head to the principal in shock.
"What do you mean?"
The principal gave him a meaningful look while stashing the tablet behind himself.
"We shouldn't fall into wild speculation. The boy is still aiming to be a hero after all. And he is definitely going to pass too. We can ask him about his quirk at school. Until we have a real reason to doubt him other than the eccentricity of his quirk, he is still a student of ours. So we must give them the benefit of the doubt."
His heart still did not feel right hearing that, but he decided to trust the judgment of his teacher.
"Everyone, look at camera 6!"
Yagi's attention was suddenly taken by the man who pointed to the camera showing his successor demolishing a 0-pointer to save a girl. Making his frown turn to a smile and his heart swell with pride and relief.
'That's my boy!'
⚀—⚁⚂⚃—⚄—•⚅•—⚄—⚃⚂⚁—⚀
~Hakari Kotaro~
As we walked towards the entrance of the exam grounds, I decided to take the opportunity to make small talk with Jiro, partly because I was trying to ignore the pain creeping in now that my adrenaline started wearing out.
"So, how did your exam go?"
Jiro looked away from me and twirled her earlobes.
"Not as good as yours, apparently. Seriously, how mad do you have to be to charge the zero pointer like that? Didn't you listen when they said it wouldn't give any points?"
As we were nearing Recovery Girl, I decided to answer cheekily.
"Who knows? Maybe I just wanted to impress a cute girl."
Jiro furrowed her brows and looked at me like I were brain-damaged.
"...Are you being serious right now?"
I gave a light, smug smile.
"What? It got you to talk to me, didn't it?"
Jiro froze for a second, the wheels in her brain spinning before she blushed like a tomato with her earlobes pointing towards me, she looked like she had been zapped by electricity even.
"I- wha- what the hell!? What do you mean-!"
She looks pretty cute when she is flustered like that.
"Whoops, there is my ride. See ya in class, Jiro-chan."
I left the stunned tomato-faced Jiro behind and powerwalked over to where Recovery Girl was healing people. This may cause problems for me later down the line, but I couldn't not take the opportunity to tease her.
Seeing me approach the small old lady in her hero costume gave me a once-over before her eyes opened slightly in surprise and recognition.
"Oh, it's you, boy. I didn't think I'd see you again so soon. I'm glad you managed to get yourself together."
"Fate does work in mysterious ways. Sorry to bother ya, but can you heal my hands, Recovery Girl-san? I banged 'em up pretty bad."
"Alright, bring it over here, sonny."
Showing my hands to the diminutive old lady, she extended her lips in a rather grotesque fashion and kissed my booboo away, covering me in a brief green light as my natural healing kicked into super overdrive. While I took a moment to marvel at the sight of my wounds closing in real time, Recovery Girl pulled out a candy from her pocket and placed it into my open palm.
"Here you go. The healing should have tired you out, so be sure to get some rest. And take this candy."
Ooh, lemon flavour.
I hurriedly unwrapped the candy and popped it in my mouth, sucking on the lemony goodness before nodding to Recovery Girl.
"Thank you, Recovery Girl-san."
⚀—⚁⚂⚃—⚄—•⚅•—⚄—⚃⚂⚁—⚀
~Hakari Kotaro - 3 days later~
"Hmm~ You are being unusually cuddly today, Hakari-kun."
Toga commented as I relentlessly cuddled and hugged her on the bed. Due to our height difference, with me standing unusually tall for my age, I was hugging her to me like a teddy bear, not that she seemed to mind. She liked expressing her love physically a lot.
"I am fueling my reserves. I am about to use my quirk, so I need all of the luck I can possibly get."
I felt like a crackhead waiting for the past few days for my feats to resolve so that I could roll all of my tickets together. The last 3 days, Toga and I spent just relaxing after the exam and training together for UA. And yes, I still could not keep up with Toga.
People in this world get freakishly strong even without quirks. Probably humanity evolving more capable and having a higher biological capacity due to their genetics having to support Quirks. Not to mention that over time, so many quirks and genetics crossbred together that just about every human alive had some sort of quirk factor and remnants of some quirks altering their body.
So my relatively untrained body had a lot to catch up to the bodies of this world, having ridiculous potential. Toga was a prime example of that; the girl could run faster than a cheetah and could drive knives into metal. So most of the last few days were spent training.
I honestly couldn't wait to get to use the training equipment of UA instead. With my sleeping mask, I basically recovered from any training overnight, so my progress was pretty solid, even if I was restless from waiting.
But my patience was rewarded when this morning I was greeted by two notifications, meaning that UA was finally done with grading.
And let me tell you, these notifications made me so hard that the core of a neutron seemed like a pillow in comparison.
Feat Achieved! Scoring First Place in the UA Practical Exam
+1x Advantage Gold Trait Gacha Ticket
Feat Achieved! Score in the top 10 in the UA written exam
+1x Gold Skill Gacha Ticket
Now, just before I left for UA, I had a Platinum ability, an advantage gold trait and a gold skill.
"I see~, how does your quirk work? You do a bunch of stuff. I thought it was those demon hands first, but then you pulled out that tail and stuff."
Toga asked innocently, making me scramble to come up with an easily understandable explanation for my quirk. I felt no need to deceive Toga; I knew her deepest secrets, and she trusted me with them fully. So I could confide in her.
"To put it simply, my quirk works like a game achievement system where the more achievements I do, the more abilities, items and stuff I get. But what I get from what I do is random. The rewards are proportional to how impressive the thing I managed to do is though."
She nodded with a slightly starstruck expression.
"Wow~ and I thought you only had those big claws! That ability sounds insane! I don't think I've heard of any quirk like it before, except maybe New Order?"
Oh right, New Order. I forgot Stars and Stripes was the #1 American Hero. At least, just how batshit insane her quirk is gives my own batshit insane ability more plausibility.
If anyone told me my quirk was impossible, I was just going to point towards her.
"Yep, something like that anyway. And now I'm about to spend the charges on my quirk to get some new stuff."
Her eyes sparkled before she turned around and hugged me back with a wholesome smile.
"That's so cool~ alright. Have all of my luck, Hakari-kun. You're all the luck I need anyway."
Grah! That felt like a critical hit to the heart!
Shaking my head, I used the luck I was being given by my living lucky charm and rolled the Gold Skill ticket first. Always roll the worse tickets first to let them suck up the unluckiness.
Rolling Gold Skill Gacha...
An Uncommon Skill
[Novice Leadership]
|Rarity: Uncommon|
You know a bit about leading and motivating people, you won't be leading armies anytime soon but the team you lead will probably find you an agreeable leader and you are decent at resolving conflict among members and motivating your team.
Not a horrible roll. Not my preference, but this is decent considering how many team activities I'd be engaging in the future.
Hopefully, this uncommon sucked the bad luck out because it's gold trait time!
Rolling Gold Trait Gacha with advantage...
[Rivalry]
|Rarity: Rare|
Swordsmen, Martial Artists and competitive people seem to be drawn to you; they want to test themselves against you and grow fond of you more easily, especially if you manage to defeat them. Martial skills grow faster when engaging in combat.
or
[Empath]
|Rarity: Rare|
You really are an empath. You can easily tell what people are feeling, understand emotions better, and how to control your own far better.
After a bit of deliberation, I settled on Rivalry. I could already read people well enough, and being in the Yakuza long enough taught me how to swallow the bitter pill without changing my expression. I was stoic to a fault.
Being able to increase my combat skills faster when sparring certainly sounded useful.
Now then. Platinum Ability. Th++e best ticket I have gotten so far. This could make or break everything.
Go.
Rolling Platinum Ability Gacha...
An Elite Ability!
[Candy Paramecia]
|Rating: Elite| |Class: Emitter|
One Piece Persopero - Allows you to create and control candy at will. The candy emerges as a viscous syrup that can harden itself under your control, and you lose control of the candy after it separates from your body. With training, you can make your candy as hard as steel and even manipulate it outside of your body.
Huh, okay, I can work this. I know how strong the Candy Paramecia can be. One Piece abilities generally were. At least being able to conjure fluids and solids. Besides, being able to train it to steel durability sounds like incredible versatility.
You have acquired 5 Abilities +1 Ability Slot
Now we are cooking. This opens so many opportunities.
"So? What did you get?"
Toga looked at me with expectant eyes, and I swapped my ability slot to Candy. Knowledge on how to use and adjust it nestled itself into my mind cleanly as I held a finger towards Toga.
"Find out."
I put my finger in Toga's mouth, who tilted her head in wonder before I conjured some candy syrup from my finger, making her eyes widen as she started sucking on my finger somewhat lewdly.
Pulling my finger back with pop from her mouth, Toga's eyes had stars in them as she licked her lips.
"Whoa! You can create candy!?"
"Yep, and it's not as simple as you would think."
To make the point clearer, a tentacle of syrup extended from my arms and waved at her before turning into solid hard candy and then retracting into my body.
"That's soo cool. Can you create more types of candy?"
"I guess I'll have to find that out the old-fashioned way."
Time for some last-minute training before hero school.
A/N: Candy Paramecia was a god level pull; the Toganium stocks are at an all-time high. Also, I wanted to give some Examiner's pov on how Hakari looked during the exam. I hope it was good.
With his new rolls, Hakari is fully prepared for UA. And he is taking a single small step towards character development by being honest with Toga. It's not a lot buts its a start.
Comments
BronzDeck
It's more about two distintly different quirks(One is ghost like hands that manifest while the other is a biological tail that pops out) that he awakened right after being kidnapped.
Aaron Gurrola
Woohoo Jiro is lit!! I always liked her character
John Grechko
I would that a stretch…his power could be interpreted as one big transformation quirk but chooses only to shapeshift partly…calling it something form AFO is quite a bit of a stretch
