Chapter 7 - New Place, Same Luck (1/2)

'If I strap these to my body, and swim through a river, I could get a serious cardio workout.'

Naruto's thoughts were solely on training as he looked through the mall, seeing a weighted vest, weighted anklets, and weighted wristbands on sale for a decent price. On their own, each of them were kind of worthless to somebody who had trained their body well, but combined and used in an interesting way could make for a surprisingly good training method. Naruto looked through the window selling them, the mall they were inside of contained dozens and dozens of different stores, and three floors of places to visit. After a short train ride, and 10 minutes of walking, they had arrived at the place where teenagers could be easily found.

”Nope.”

Mina grabbed Naruto by the ear and started to pull him away from the store that sold the work out equipment. She saw the look that he had been showing the gear, and since she was trying to pull him away from training, it wouldn't do to let him buy stuff that would just increase his training even more.

”Okay.” Naruto muttered as she dragged him to a different store.

Clothing store.

”I do this with my girlfriends all the time, and you're wearing the exact same outfit when we met. I think you need a update.” Mina stated to Naruto as she poked his jacket, the same style of jacket that he had been wearing when they met. Naruto looked down at his clothes, not seeing what was wrong with them. By the time that he had looked, she had already dragged him into the men's section. ”You're like super well built, so something with short sleeves or no sleeves is perfect. Also, maybe getting something a size too small would look great.” Mina grabbed a shirt that wouldn't naturally fit Naruto and held it up to him.

It was pink.

”That... is very feminine.” Naruto pointed out as she pushed the shirt into his arms. She pushed black baggy shorts into his arms with them, before she started to really have fun with it as she pulled him across the entire clothing shop. The clothes in his arms piled up higher and higher, until he couldn't even see what was being added anymore. ”Anyway, my Quirk usually destroys whatever clothes I wear, so I wear jackets because they are easy to take off, and my pants are made from materials that stretch for those with Quirks that make them bigger.” Naruto lifted up the clothes higher up so that he could look at her.

She stopped.

”Yeah, and my Quirk makes acid come from my body. Do you know how many pairs of shoes I've melted? It's a lot. Clothes don't have to be practical.” Mina gave him a pat on the head for being so simple minded about this. He, a boy, just wouldn't understand why him wearing good clothes would reflect upon her as his friend. His image was her image, and the opposite was true. ”Anyway, look... see, you're on shirts now.” Mina held up a shirt that had a stylish image of him in his 1-Tail form on the front, arms crossed in an action pose.

They made T-shirts of him?

When?

”I'm on shirts?” Naruto asked with surprise as he looked at the shirt. He whispered it mostly to himself, since he was honestly surprised. Sure, he had saved a few lives in the past few months, but he didn't think he had gained any real fame for it. He wasn't even being talked about a bunch on the news anymore, since he hadn't done anything heroic in like 5 weeks. The news had already moved on to the popular heroes who were constantly doing hero work, so why would their already be merch for him, when there shouldn't be a demand for it?

Mina nodded and put it on the growing pile.

”Yeah dude, you're like super popular with little kids, and since nobody knows what your normal face looks like, it adds to your charm... and your foxy fox form looks really cool. You're pretty muscular on your own, but your fox form is almost All Might levels of buff. A lot of my friends at school think you're super hot.” Mina had seen a ton of her friends put pictures they printed from newspapers and the internet in their lockers at school, and there were a lot of kids she passed on the road that would be playing Hero and Villain. It wasn't surprising to see children getting their parents to buy fox tails and fox masks, and parading around as Fox-Man from TV.

Naruto furrowed his brow.

”I didn't do it to become famous.”

Naruto frowned.

”I just want to use my power to help people, but I can't do that without becoming a hero. So I need to be stronger, become a hero, and become well known enough, so that when people see me... they feel safe.” Naruto changed into the first outfit she showed him, and opened the door to show her.

She gave him two thumbs up.

Looked good.

”That's like really cool. I mean, I want to help people, but for me being a hero is just something I'm just suited for. Everyone's always told me that because of my looks, my Quirk, and my personality that I was suited for it. Really dorky, right?” Mina had always thought her own reasons for wanting to be a hero were pretty lame. She felt even more lame when compared to those with selfless reasons.

She didn't see it, but Naruto shook his head.

'In this society, that reason is fine too. Honestly, reasons don't matter as long as we're helping people.' Naruto didn't speak his thoughts, but he did smile as he changed into the next outfit. ”This one has a jacket.” Naruto liked that, he really did. Jackets were sort of his style, especially orange or black jackets. They really fit his color scheme well, considering he turned into an orange fox.

Mina saw him when he opened the door.

”Yep, I'm going to try on some stuff too, anything you don't like, just put back where I got it from.”

”So, what was it like... running into a burning building to save people.” Mina liked her ice cream as they sat on a bench in the food court. She had been meaning to ask about it for awhile, since Naruto had already done heroic stuff. She had helped him stop a villain, but he had done more stuff in the past that she didn't have experience in. ”Was it scary?”

”Of course it was scary, it was a burning building, and it could collapse or explode at any moment. I was scared the entire time I was inside of there.” Naruto admitted with a grin.