sirspazingtonthefourth

[sirspazingtonthefourth]

People Call Me Dingo: Chapter 23

CW: Discrimination A/N: During the texting sequence, the portions that are underlined are Dingo speaking

Three months. Three months since Dingo had broken out, and Hawks still hadn’t seen any sign of her. Every hero in the country had their eyes peeled for her, and there had been nothing. He was starting to hope that anyone, aligned with the Commission or not, would find her. At least then he’d know she was alive.

He knew she hated him, but he couldn’t help but want to know she was safe. He knew she wasn’t his responsibility, no more than any other citizen of Japan was his responsibility, but that didn’t stop the feeling that if anything happened to her he could never forgive himself.

He pushed the thoughts to the back of his mind. After all, it was New Year’s Eve. He just needed to finish his patrol, and then he could go get some yakitori and enjoy the rest of his day. With the current trend, Dingo would still be MIA tomorrow. He could worry about her more then.

Dingo could see why Bat liked Dabi so much. Sure, maybe it was because she didn’t have anyone else to be friends with, she didn’t count her regulars, but he was nice enough. Even if he was irresponsible enough to insist on bringing her along on a walk through the bar district on New Years Eve.

It was admittedly nice. She never left the apartment except to go to work or buy necessities, and even then she kept to remote corner stores in unsurveilled areas.

It was nice, to blend into a crowd again.

A few voices she didn’t recognize called to Dabi. He seemed relaxed enough when he turned to face them that she figured they were friends. She slipped away, wandering around and enjoying the lights. If anyone found it strange that she was wandering around, they didn’t say anything.

She supposed some of it was due to the alcohol and the late hour. It was past midnight after all, who could be bothered to care about a random teen walking around the bar district.

She supposed it helped that she was texting Bat on the phone she’d bought. She was taking pictures to show them the lights. They were pretty, with all the signs flashing different colors and shapes around.

Are those bars?

Why are you hanging around bars?

Because Dabi doesn’t go anywhere without alcohol

Thought you would have known that, being his friend and all

Besides, I work at a bar. Gotta see what the competition’s bringing so I can up my game.

Yeah, suuuuure

That’s totally the reason

You just want to get your hands on some vodka and party

What? No. I would never

Don’t tell mom where I’m at, though?

Never. She’s too scary, and I am not going to take one of her rants to relay it to you

Don’t get too drunk tonight

Once again, I would never

Bat didn’t deem her rebuttal worthy of a written response. Instead, they sent an image of Lord Farquad pointing, the word “Alcoholic” written underneath in bold white letters. She snorted in response. There was no recovery from that. Instead she deflected, sending a quick “Happy New Year” text before pocketing her phone and taking in the street around her.

Oddly enough, she didn’t see a bunch of heroes around. She was grateful, but it was still odd. Especially on a night like tonight, she’d expect them to be out in full force. This many people on the street tended to increase the likelihood of things going wrong. Fights, drunk driving, firework accidents. She’d seen them all. She worked as a CNA in the ICU, and she’d done training in the ER during the winter holidays.

She hoped the ER nurses were having a standard evening. She knew how stressful holidays like this could get, at least back home. They deserved a break, unlike the heroes that seemed to have decided the streets were too well traveled tonight to be unsafe.

She should calm down. It was New Years Eve. If she saw anything, she would do what she could to help. She could worry about heroes once she got back home.

Screams broke her train of thought.

A group of people were running towards her, large enough that she might end up trampled if she didn’t move. She took a few steps to the side, grabbing someone from the back of the group as they ran past.

“What’s going on?”

“Villain! There’s a villain! We were just walking and then there was this wall of thorns and-” Dingo let the person go as they rambled, looking the direction they came from. Sure enough, a wall was up between the buildings. It was wooden, made of branches that undulated like snakes crawling over top of each other. She couldn’t see the thorns, but she did see leaves and… flowers?

More screams echoed from around the block, and people began to rush towards the street, fleeing the wooden vines. She had nothing on her that would help. Sure, she had a pocket knife, which might have been enough to cut through a few tough stems, but the vines were far too thick for it to do any good. And their screams would be muffled by the leaves and flowers, roses, she thought, that grew from the walls.

She caught sight of the villain, vines growing from him as he stalked the streets. He sent a few after random civilians, and Dingo was quick to grab someone out of the way, pulling them behind a parked car and out of sight. She saw another person, a woman with a large bag and wearing party clothes, duck behind a dumpster on the other side of the street.

Not everyone was that lucky.

A man went down, vine wrapping around his ankle and dragging him towards the villain. The vines were close enough now that she could see the small thorns dotted along the vines. She moved to go and help. Maybe she could step out into the street, distract the villain long enough for that guy to get the vines off and run.

A figure in green dropped to the ground before she could, moving for the man and pulling out a knife. In seconds, this new figure cut through the vines and sent the man running in one direction or another.

He glanced around, and Dingo caught the flash of goggles over his face as he did. She got a quick look at his face and build, too. He was short and lean, the kind of build that made Dingo think of someone on a track team. His gear was pretty clearly cobbled together, made up of the utility knife still in his hand, some metal pipes, and an honest to God can of soup held in a modified tool belt.

Not a hero then, but not a civilian. Maybe a vigilante?

He seemed to find what he was looking for, taking off down the street. The villain continued wreaking havoc, sending vines after whoever he wanted, ripping down streetlights and throwing cars with his vines. He seemed to just be reveling in the destruction he was causing, until he turned and started stalking in the same direction the maybe-vigilante had went.

Dingo took her chance, darting out into the street, dodging some still flailing vines. She skidded to a stop next to the dumpster she’d seen that woman hide behind. Sure enough, she was still there, giant purse and all.

“Excuse me, ma’am, but do you have any hairspray?”

“W-what?”

“Hairspray. Do you have any hairspray in your bag?”

“We’re getting attacked by a villain and you’re worried about-”

“Please, just answer the question.”

“Yes, I have hairspray, but why do you need to know?”

“Escape plan reasons. Can I have it?”

She didn’t wait for an answer, snatching the bag and rifling through until she found the can. With a grin Dingo set off, calling out for a lighter. Fortunately, when people saw her already carrying hairspray, they were quick to give her one.

She heard a faint crash from down the street and some more screams, people flooding in through a door not covered in vines. She ran the opposite direction. There needed to be more than one way out.

She found a spot between two buildings, praying that the vines were thin enough that she could burn through with her improvised flame thrower. It took her a minute, by the time she’d managed she could hear heroes beginning to arrive on scene.

She ran back to the center of the commotion. There was the beginning of another hole being burned into the wall of thorns, but it would be a minute before it was big, or safe, enough for people to get through. She grabbed a few people who looked relatively uninjured, shoving the can of hairspray back to the woman she’d borrowed it from, and dragged them towards her exit without a word.

Others followed.

By the time the heroes had burned their own entrance through the thorns, Dingo had managed to lead a small stream of people out of the area and back around to the front. Ambulances were parked outside, paramedics waiting for it to be safe enough for them to get on scene and start helping the injured.

Dingo didn’t stop to look at the heroes, intending to make herself scarce as quickly as possible so no one could see and recognize her, when the woman who’d lent her the hairspray caught her arm.

“Hey, thanks for that back there. I don’t know what we’d have done if you hadn’t used your quirk to get us out of there.”

“What?” There hadn’t been a quirk involved at all. Dingo was still wearing the quirk cancelling cuffs on her ankles, she couldn’t have used a quirk if she wanted to.

“You’re quirk? Isn’t it something to do with speed or intelligence, and that’s how you got everyone out?”

“I don’t have a quirk,” she said shortly. The woman’s face went from shocked to confused to vaguely disgusted.

“Oh. Makes sense why you chose to run away, at least,” the other woman said, failing to hide the way her lip began to curl. Dingo wondered if she would wash the hairspray can. Maybe she’d just throw it away.

“Better to run than to hide.”

“The heroes were almost in anyway. There really wasn’t a point to you doing that. You just wasted perfectly good hairspray.”

“Sure.” Dingo turned to walk away. “Have fun being out of the line of fire before anyone else.”

“What was that, yowaime?” She spun on her heel, hands in her pockets as she walked backwards towards an alley.

“No one else is out yet. The paramedics can’t even get in, and the heroes only just breached the wall wide enough for people to enter. But sure, my actions were a waste.” She turned back around, giving a one-finger salute as she walked into the shadows. “Have a nice year.”

Dabi’s apartment was dark once she made it back. She’d called so he knew she was alive. They both pretended not to notice how relieved he sounded, and he gave her the go ahead to “break in” so she wouldn’t be out in the hall for anyone to see.

The door swung shut behind her, leaving her in the dark of the small room that could barely be called a living room. All it had was a couch, which she’d taken over, a box with her clothes, and a tv sitting on a different old box. The far wall had two doors, one to a small bathroom and the other to Dabi’s room. The left side of the room had a fridge, microwave, sink, and a hotplate, all the essentials.

She collapsed onto the couch, head in her hands. She was used to this. She’d dealt with it all her life. One random stranger should not have pissed her off so badly, should not have set her so close to crying.

It was just late. She’d been stressed about getting home. She was still getting nightmares of the place The Doctor had held her and of her time at the Commission. She missed having her friends around her, her teammates and trainees.

And part of her wondered if she couldn’t have somehow done more. And part of her knew she couldn’t. And part of her wondered if the woman was right.

She took a breath, standing and snatching her sweatpants from where she’d shoved them into the box and walking to the bathroom. She needed a shower and a good night’s sleep. She’d be able to think more objectively about the events of the night tomorrow morning, and if she couldn’t then she could bring it up next week at the support group meeting.

Masterlist

[sirspazingtonthefourth]

People Call Me Dingo: Chapter 22

CW: Cursing

“Are you sure this is really necessary?” Bat asked through the burner phone as Dingo looked up at the building. She needed to get three floors up, second balcony from the left corner. That was her priority right now.

“Positive.”

She jumped up, snatching the bottom of the fire escape and pulling herself and her pillowcase onto it. She started climbing up, running the dates. It had been a month and a half since she’d escaped. Ito had to be getting desperate for any kind of a lead, which meant he wouldn’t think twice at something as juicy as this.

She had a few hours, more than enough time really, to get this operation done.

These sorts of deals, even more than her blackmail runs, were her specialty. Find some dirt, plant it somewhere it couldn’t not be noticed, and watch someone’s life burn down around them. Sure, usually the dirt was something whoever it was had actually done, but a frame job couldn’t be too much different.

She made it to the window, checking carefully for any sign of alarms on the inside of the window. She’d been casing this place for a week, she knew there were no cameras inside or out. For all Fudouyama’s training, he didn’t seem nearly as paranoid as he should be.

She unlocked the window, slipping silently inside the apartment. It was nice, tasteful even, in an almost militant way. Fudouyama didn’t live here. He just existed in this space when he wasn’t existing elsewhere.

She made her way over to the computer. It wasn’t hard, following Bat’s instructions, to hack her way in and access her warden’s emails. She sent a quick email to one of Bat’s burner accounts, deleting it once Bat sent her one back.

From there, Dingo saw messages popping up in the email inbox. Messages that dated back to a few days after she’d broken out. Messages talking about prices for the files, which ones were being requested, all from three separate burner accounts that Bat had cooked up in the past couple of days.

Leaving the computer, Dingo began to search the apartment. It had hardwood floors, which meant it wouldn’t be unreasonable to suspect that at least one board would be creaky.

She found it, just a soft squeak underfoot. She carefully kneeled down, using one of the knives she’d stolen to pry the floorboard up. Sure enough, there wasn’t as much support under this piece of wood, leaving a small empty space beneath it.

Just enough space to fit a small USB.

She pulled it out of her makeshift bag and slipped it in. The board was laid down on top, fitting back in place almost perfectly. When she tested it, the creak was only mildly more noticeable. Perfect. Now she just had to wait for Bat to finish building the digital trail.

“It’s done. Go ahead a look over it, make sure everything lines up.” Dingo walked back over to the computer, looking over the emails and various websites Bat had pulled up.

It was a pretty efficient trail. Two or three fake buyers, each with conversations about one or two files. A wire transfer showed one of the buyers had recently bought file three, which covered some of the less legal ways the HPSC had put pressure on government officials to maintain their place as a legislative body some twenty years ago.

“4.7 million yen? Damn, he’s selling them for cheap.”

“Well, that was all we could afford to poorly fake. Besides, this way it hides the paper trail. Half the money gets sent by snail mail, your warden friend prints a copy of the files out and ships them, then he gets the other half.” Dingo nodded, digging around in her pillowcase for some 2 million “yen.”

They were clearly faked. A similar material, but not the right one. The watermark wasn’t made with the right ink, and it didn’t look quite right. Dingo was rather proud of herself for getting it all together with craft store materials and a printer.

“Did you remember the correspondence about the cash?”

“Already added. That’s the latest email, he’s waiting to hear back.”

“Perfect. Who’s gonna make the call?”

“Tanaka. He’s buyer two, a civilian who lurks on the dark web to try and catch criminals. It’s a pseudonym, obviously, he’s not stupid enough to put his real name on the dark web. He’ll send the information over in the morning. You get the files stashed?”

“Yep. Helps when you’re hiding something the size of your thumb.”

“You’re damn right it does. Now get out of there, before he decides to get home way early.”

“No way he’s going to do that,” Dingo said as she made her way towards the open, unlocked window. “Mr. VP will have been busting his ass for weeks about me. Leaving early at a time like this is just going to get him in even hotter water.”

She locked the window again, slipping down the fire escape as quietly as she’d snuck up. In minutes she was walking down the street, just another person out for a late night stroll while talking with their partner.

Now that she’d planted her evidence she could burn the actual files. She probably shouldn’t involve Dabi in that, plausible deniability and all.

“By the way, your mom was hoping to call after this. Which line do you want?”

“Go ahead and use the one in Australia, we’ve used the Italy route a few times in a row now. Best to give it a break.”

Once she’d managed to get a phone, she’d been able to contact her partner through one of the dozen or so secure numbers they maintained. They ran through bunches of servers, pinged off way too many towers, and were all registered as belonging to people who didn’t exist in countries no Japanese cop would have jurisdiction in.

But it was only her partner that she dared to contact.

Bat had the tech side of the Network’s operations on lock, and had been working on picking a few people to run that side once they got out. They understood how machines and data flowed, learning everything they could in order to help Nobody and, by extension, the Network at large.

Dingo, on the other hand, had none of that knowledge or skill. Sure, she knew enough about tech to tamper with it, to physically take it apart and add or remove a piece here or there. But she had no idea how to tell if her call was being recorded by a third party, and she had no clue if phones were being monitored to see if they directly called numbers related to her family members, at least in this country.

It might not have been possible to do something like that. Then again, where there were quirks anything could happen.

So for now she relied on Bat for communication with friends and family back home.

There was a quick dinging sound from the other end of the line. She was on hold while Bat arranged for her mom to connect to this burner number. She’d walked nearly two blocks before the line clicked and she heard a cacophony of voices.

“Hi, Liv!” It was so far beyond good to hear everyone, tinny as their voices were through the phone.

“Hey. Ember said you wanted to chat? How’ve things been?”

She kept talking with them until she reached her apartment building, taking in every piece of information she could. The Twins, Violet and Michael, her youngest siblings at five, had both graded from grey to yellow belts at their gym. Anya, her nine year old sister, had made it into her school’s band.

Her brother, Jaden, 11, four years her junior, had a Name.

“They’ve been calling me Boxcar, since I walked in with The Boxcar Children. A- Bat tried to get something else, but it stuck.”

“Yeah, Names are like that. But hey, better than Nosey. Or Nepo, for that matter.” Better than Dingo, too. “Don’t worry too much. It’s only your first, give it a year and you’ll get your second one, okay? Just make sure it doesn’t have to do with ciphers, that’s my gig.”

“Not anymore,” Jaden, Boxcar, snarked.

“Oh, put a sock in it. I outrank you, so you answer to me, recruit. How’s training been?” Her brother groaned at that.

“It sucks. Why do I have to know so much about what the governor’s doing? I thought we were here to stop heroes from being such ass- such huge jerks.” She held in a snicker, imagining the way her mother was glaring at her brother for nearly cursing in front of the little ones.

“We are. But, in order to do that permanently, we need to get laws on our side.”

“And that means politics?”

“And that means politics.” She could see her building coming into view. Once she got there she’d have to hang up. No point in getting cursed out by the neighbors again because she was on the phone at ungodly hours.

“Hey, I’m getting close to the apartment. You mind handing me off to Mom and Dad?”

“Yeah. Stay safe.”

“You too.” There was a moment of shuffling on the phone as it got passed back to her parents hands, a moment she took to think.

At least he was actually of age, she mused. She’d joined the Network at eight, thanks to Nobody. The youngest kids didn’t get in until they were ten. Most were closer to 12 or 13, and then it took a year of training for them to be considered field ready.

Her brother had known all that. Had known about the Network since he was seven. Since the Rapids incident.

She hadn’t wanted him to join. Dingo had never forbade him from it, but what she did, the things she got caught up in… she didn’t want that for her brother, for any of her siblings. She wanted them to get to walk around without being afraid of the quirked, of cops, of heroes.

But whether any of them joined the Network or not, they would be afraid. She got why he joined. She’d just hoped he wouldn’t feel like he had to.

“Hey, sweetheart. How’d your outing go?” Right. Fudouyama. The evidence. Bat had probably told her family the basics, but now that it was over she could share a few more details about it with them.

It was two days before the news broke. “HPSC Employee Arrested for Theft of Sensitive Materials and Villain’s Release!” Fudouyama’s face was displayed next to the title, as emotionless in his mugshot as he was in real life. She just wished she’d been there to see when they brought him in.

She hoped he liked tasting his own medicine. He’d be doing it a lot from now on.

Masterlist

[sirspazingtonthefourth]

People Call Me Dingo: Chapter 21

CW: Cursing, violence A/N: I hope you didn't think Dingo was a good person

The security gig went well. A few hours standing outside a door with a few other people, chit-chatting every so often with them, and then getting paid. Just like Ginpatsu, she counted her payment right in front of Oyabun, then went on her merry way.

A couple days later, the bar got a call from someone looking for her. Someone at the meeting had taken an interest in her and asked Oyabun about it. Apparently, he’d put in a good word.

With the semi-regular jobs, she was able to get a phone with what she saved up, and she started handing her number out to the people she worked for as a quick way to get in touch. She made certain they knew to keep her number away from any police or heroes, but she was building a good reputation for herself.

Well, as good as one could get working odd security and transportation jobs for small time gangs.

“Oi, Dingo,” someone called as she finished moving what she was pretty sure was drugs of some variety or another into a truck. “Got someone here who wants to talk to you.”

She looked up to see Shinmi, bag clutched in her hand and a shaky smile on her face.

“Hi again, Dingo.”

“Shinmi!” She jogged over to the woman, grinning wide. “It’s so good to see you! You staying safe?”

“As safe as any of us can be,” she said, fidgeting with her bag a little. “That’s, um… that’s actually why I’m here.”

“Is everything alright?”

“Well… For me, yes. But I have some friends, other quirkless people, and they’ve been trying to organize a small support group for us. But they keep getting threats. My brother said you worked security for him a few times, and that you were good at your job, so I thought I might ask if you could sit in on the meeting and make sure everyone stayed safe?”

Dingo was floored with nostalgia. One of her first tasks at the Community Center had been setting up a group fairly similar to what Shinmi was talking about. Hell, she’d attended it for a while. And now she was being asked to make sure people going to a support meeting like this would be safe to do so?

“I would be honored.” Shinmi seemed to deflate, relief passing over her face before she reached for her bag.

“Thank you so much. Here, I have your-” Dingo placed a hand over Shinmi’s, catching her attention.

“For now, just let me know where I need to be and when. I won’t accept payment until after a job.”

It was true. And a diversion. She had no intention of asking for payment on this kind of job. This was the kind of thing she wanted to do when she joined the Network.

Or maybe it was the kind of thing she wanted to never need to happen, and working with the Network was a means to that end.

They met at a park near Shinmi’s apartment building. About a dozen different people showed up, most of them young adults but one or two were in their thirties. Dingo was the only one still of school age, and standing against a tree a few feet away, which got a few looks.

She got even more when Shinmi explained she was here as security.

The meeting was nice. Everyone introduced themselves, spoke about themselves, the things they’d had to face. The older ones offered coping strategies. Always have a weapon, keep a panic button on you, yell fire not help, etc.

And then it moved on to what they were looking forward to. One of them had a book club they’d managed to join where talking about quirks, outside of the context of the books, was prohibited. Another had started trying to make sourdough, and the starter was going well. A couple others were up for promotions, years late but better than nothing.

“And you?” Shinmi asked. “What’re you doing this week, Dingo?”

“Are you sure? I’m not really… I mean, I am, kind of, but it’s not what I’m here for.” One of the older two, Hitonatsu, smiled and gestured for her to sit with everyone else.

“You’re one of us. Sure, you’re on the younger side, but you should get to be a part of it too. Even if you are here as ‘security.’” That earned a few chuckles and calls to sit from others, and Dingo reluctantly gave in.

“Well… I mean, I’ve been really liking my job. I’m a bartender. It’s a seedy part of town, which is the only reason I’m able to work there at all, but it’s nice. It doesn’t matter that I don’t have a quirk of my own so long as I can make a half decent margarita, y’know?”

“Those are always good jobs,” Hitonatsu said. “I had a couple of really bad ones when I first started out. Constantly overloaded me with tasks then berated me because I couldn’t keep up with my quirked coworkers. It didn’t seem to matter that I was getting double the tasks everyone else did. My current job’s at a bookstore, and having a quirk isn’t a big deal as long as I can order books and work a register.”

“I bet some customers get really pissy about it, though, once they realize” one of the others spoke up.

“Yeah, but they’ll do that everywhere,” Shinmi said. “I had a friend a while back work as a line cook. A customer got food poisoning once and immediately blamed it on having a yowaime cook the food. They weren’t even on shift at the time, which was probably the only thing that saved them from getting fired. Well, that time.”

The group kept talking for another hour or so, just chatting about whatever came up. She hadn’t realized she’d missed talking like this so much. She listened, mostly, letting the adults speak and chiming in when she thought she could. She felt lighter by the time the group wrapped up, agreeing to meet at a different park next time.

“Here, for working security,” Shinmi said, handing Dingo an envelope. She counted out the cash, finding the agreed upon amount in there. The woman chuckled a little.

“Oyabun warned me you did that. I get why, it’s just a little odd to see it.”

“Yeah. Bet he didn’t tell you to expect this, though.” Dingo closed the envelope and handed it back. Shinmi’s eyes widened and she held her hands up.

“I can’t accept this.”

“Well, neither can I, not in good conscience anyway. I know you wanted to hire me as security, but I can’t ask you to pay me for that. We’re all quirkless, and the world’s already against us enough as it is. We gotta stick together. So, I’ll consider payment to be letting me keep attending.”

Shinmi, slowly, reached out and grabbed the envelope.

“Alright. That seems… It doesn’t seem fair. But if you’re half as stubborn as I’ve heard you won’t let me pay you. But at least let me take you to lunch? It’s the least I could do.” Dingo smiled, wide and, for the first time in four months, completely genuine.

“Lunch would be great.”

They met every week on Saturdays, moving locations so that it would be harder to pinpoint the group. After all, they were still receiving threats. Hitonatsu, one of the organizers, had set up a rotating schedule, and was in charge of vetting people who wanted to join. They were pretty thorough, which was why there wasn’t an incident until the fourth week of meetings.

“What’s a group of yowaimes doing, showing your pitiful faces in public?”

The man was tall, built like some of the other gig-workers Dingo met on her security jobs. His hand was gripping something in his pocket, waiting to pull it out. She stood as he walked a little closer, sneering down at the group.

“We’re just hanging out. No harm in that, right?” She kept her hands out, a friendly-looking smile on her face as she strolled up to him. The rest of the group was starting to whisper amongst themselves, huddling closer together as they sensed the threat whoever this was posed.

“You mean to tell me that disgusting people like you just hang out?” Dingo just kept smiling, coming to a stop a few feet in front of him. She held her hands just above her stomach, feet wide, one foot an inch or two ahead of the other. Whatever he pulled out of that pocket, she needed to be ready to block it.

“Yowaimes are too fucking pitiful for that. Look at you,” he said, directing his attention to the group that was quickly packing up behind her. “Already running scared because someone showed up. If you were smart, you’d stay away from everyone else you-”

“Sir, disrespectfully, shut your mouth.” She was still smiling, but she levelled her gaze at the man, meeting his eyes and trying to pick him apart. He was reaching for a weapon, so probably a transformative type. Otherwise, he likely had a weak emitter type he had never learned to be crafty with.

“The hell did you say to me you little brat?” His hand changed positions, going for something in his waistband. Dingo got her hands up in time to see him pull the gun out and level it at her face.

“You wanna try repeating that?”

It was a simple handgun. Probably a 9mm. It had a matte finish, and the safety was on. Despite this, the thug had his finger on the trigger, probably to try and hide the fact that he wasn’t actually willing to shoot someone.

That was his mistake.

She knocked the gun to the side, twisting his arm behind him until he fell. She knelt, one knee digging into the man’s spine in between his shoulder blades. She grabbed the gun, flipped the safety off, and pressed the muzzle into his left shoulder as he struggled. She was still smiling.

“I’ll do you one better. You keep squirming and this bullet’s going to go right through your shoulder. Better hope it doesn’t nick an artery when it does, friend~.” He stopped moving, and Dingo reached out for his right arm, keeping her eyes on the man until she felt his hand in hers.

“Why not the head?”

“Because a dead man learns no lessons, but an injured man will. Now, how many of you are there?”

“Just me.” Dingo hummed, drumming her fingers on the back of his hand. Then she intertwined their fingers, before tracing a couple spirals on the back of the hand.

Then she grabbed his index finger and snapped it backwards.

The man screamed, trying to jerk his hand away but he had no leverage to do so. Dingo dug the gun in a little harder to his shoulder as he thrashed.

“Now, you’re going to listen to me very, very closely,” she said, all hint of a smile gone from her face. “For every lie you tell, I will dislocate a joint. For every extra person you didn’t tell me that shows up to attack these fine people, I will dislocate a joint. Now, how many of you are there?”

“G-go… to hell!” he managed to hiss out. She grabbed his middle finger and dislocated the furthest joint with the same cold precision as a surgeon. At least the Commission’s training was good for something. He screamed again.

“How many of you are there?”

“I don’t know. I swear, I don’t-” She reached for the next joint. “W-wait, wait! There’s seven! There were seven of us!” She smiled again.

“Good. And who hired you?”

“We were hired by some guy, wore a mask, never saw his face. He said he was a middleman. He wouldn’t tell us his name, or who hired him. I swear, that’s all I know!” She hummed again, flipping the safety on for the gun. She smacked the back of his head with it, making certain he was out cold before rifling through his pockets.

She found the pocket knife he was initially carrying, it had a very nice wooden handle, alongside a wallet and a burner phone. She pocketed them all, took the gun apart, and wiped the pieces down so she left no trace.

“We should get going,” she said to the group, ignoring the horrified looks they shot her. “Don’t want anyone getting any more ideas about trying to jump us.”

Her shoulders were tense as the latest meeting got out. She kept a closer eye on her surroundings than before, scanning every shadowy alley as if it would come alive and attack her. A few of the crime bosses she’d worked with before noticed her uneasiness, but it was only Oyabun and Ginpatsu, the one who’d hired her for tonight, who stopped to chat.

“You seem on edge tonight. Were there any incidents while we were having our little chat?”

“No, ma’am. Something happened a few days ago, it’s left me a little shaken up.”

“Oh? And what could possibly leave ‘Count the Cash’ Dingo shaken up?” Ginpatsu said, leaning against the wall next to her with a smirk.

“That group I’m going to, the one I run security for on Saturdays?”

“With my sister in it?” Oyabun asked.

“That one. Someone tried to attack. There were supposed to be seven people, but I only caught sight of one before I got everyone out of there. I’m just worried for the rest of them now, y’know? What if one of the others who got hired tracks them down?”

Ginpatsu got very, very still, sending a worried glance at Oyabun whose smile had softened and whose eyes had sharpened.

“Do you happen to have the name of the person who attacked you?” Dingo dug into a pocket, pulling out the now cashless wallet of the man who’d tried to attack the group.

“He also had this on him,” she said, handing him the man’s burner phone. “I don’t know if it’s got anything on it or not, but-”

“No need to worry,” Oyabun said cheerily. “I can promise that everyone in that group will be safe, don’t you worry. It won’t do for my dearest sister to have to live in fear because someone can’t mind their own business.”

There was a hard edge to his words, and if she hadn’t known they weren’t directed towards her Dingo would have had to swallow a lump in her throat.

“Now, head home. I’m sure your roommate will be expecting you shortly.” Dingo looked to Ginpatsu, who shot one more suspicious glance at Oyabun before handing her an envelope and walking off with the other crime boss.

Dingo pocketed the envelope and walked back towards the apartment, tension easing from her shoulders. Bat was going to lose their mind. They’d tracked the middleman down from the calls made on the burner phone, and a quick search through his contacts showed who the actual target was.

And here Dingo was, convincing a crime boss to go look into it. She’d even made him think it was all his idea. She might end up with a Fourth Name when she made it back home, if she kept building connections like this. Probably not, but she could hope. Dingo was not a name she’d ever wanted to keep.

She was at the bar two weeks later when she got the news. The target had been found dead in the park the group had been attacked in, strung up in a tree. He’d had the word “quirkest” carved into him over and over on every available patch of skin, according to one of Dabi’s informant friends.

She pretended not to hear the conversation, chatting away with one of her regulars about movements of the Hero Killer. She wanted to gather her own information, make her own deals, build her own reputation. She’d need the connections when it was time to get out of dodge.

Masterlist

[sirspazingtonthefourth]

People Call Me Dingo: Chapter 20

CW: Cursing A/N: Dingo gets to start getting some contacts. And, y'know, paid.

Hauling boxes was a lot more difficult than she’d thought it would be. She wasn’t weak, by any means, but most of her fieldwork had been stealth based. Not to mention she preferred to run than fight.

As she set another heavy box down in the warehouse she wiped the sweat off her forehead. She hadn’t been prepared to work this hard in the humidity. At least she was working on her arm strength, she thought as she turned back to the guarded truck outside. Maybe, if she got strong enough, she could drag people out of the bar if they got too rowdy or handsy.

The thought brought a smile to her face, before she had to struggle to pick up another box.

“You did good work, kid,” her employer said after all the boxes had been moved from truck. “Gotta admit, didn’t think you’d manage.”

“Thanks, I think,” she said, before holding out her hand. Her employer just stared down at her hand. “My payment, if you don’t mind,” she explained, putting on her best, “I’m just a happy-go-lucky teen,” face.

With a snort, the older woman dug an envelope out of her vest and handed it over to Dingo.

“Yeah, sure brat.” Dingo checked the contents, making sure she hadn’t been shorted. “You’ve got some guts, kid. You work in a gray space, actively seek out shady ass jobs, and then count your earnings right in front of me.”

“I don’t know you, and you don’t know me. Wouldn’t be the first time someone tried to short me.” Satisfied that she’d been properly paid, she tucked the envelope into her own shirt and smiled again at her employer.

“Thanks for the opportunity. If you ever need an extra set of hands, you know where to find me.” She turned around with a wave, walking back towards the bar. Her shift would be starting soon, and she wouldn’t have the time to shower. She’d asked Dabi to bring her spare set of clothes with him so she’d have something to change into, and the idea of clean clothes made her walk a little faster.

Her employer, Ginpatsu, came back a few days later with a similar job. Hauling boxes, not asking questions, scatter if the cops showed. This time it was after her shift, which meant she had to convince Dabi not to lock the door when he got back to the apartment. It took her promising that he’d get half her pay, but she figured it was worth not having to sleep in the hallway.

The boxes were a little lighter this time around, and there was another group at the warehouse moving boxes. Dingo was able to see Ginpatsu chatting idly with a young man as they watched everyone walk back and forth. Curiosity started to itch at the back of her mind, but she looked away before it could start eating at her. If she hadn’t been told, she didn’t need to know.

A second truck was scheduled to arrive about ten minutes after the first left, which meant that she had some down time. She didn’t have anything much to do, so she just sat on the edge of the loading dock to rest. Her arms ached and she was sweating up a storm and she was hungry but she didn’t have food or a shower or ibuprofen. At least when she was moving, she wasn’t thinking about-

“Oi, new kid.” She looked up to see one of the other people who’d been directing people where to place boxes in the warehouse. She thought his name was Jian.

“Yes, sir?”

“You’re under Ginpatsu, right?” She nodded. “What’s your name?”

“People call me Dingo.” Jian nodded, still staring down at her. He was on the older side, or maybe just the overworked side. He looked to be in his late thirties, with worn but comfy looking clothes.

“You’re a little young to be joining this kind of life. Don’t you have school tomorrow?”

“Nope.” That caught him off guard, if the way his eyes widened was any indication. She shot him a smile before looking forward again. “Besides, I’m not full time. I’m basically just a gig worker.”

Jian stared down at her for a quiet minute, willing her to turn and look at him, she just knew. He gave up after a moment and sat next to her with a huff.

“You know, you don’t have to be out here. I’m sure school can’t be that bad. And besides that, there’s better places to work than a gray space.”

“Not really. No one’s going to hire a kid my age, not without a note from school, which I can’t even go to. And I need the money so I can get out of here.”

“And why do that? You’re what, 14? Working in places like this, working jobs like this, they don’t exactly make for a good life. You’re young enough that you still have other options. Don’t pick this one.”

Ah. He was a Concerned Adult.

“Not here I don’t.”

“Like hell. You can apply to a different school, get a decent job to make the money. Even if you don’t have a safe home, there’s places you can go for that. And you could always use your quirk to-”

“Let me stop you there,” she cut him off, turning to look him in the eyes, all pretense of friendliness dropped.

“I don’t belong here. Long story short, I can’t get money together any other way. Believe me, I know it would be easier. So, I’m doing what I can to actually get back to my life.”

Jian sat there in silence, eyes flicking over her. Her hand started creeping towards the pocketknife in her waistband. Then he huffed out a breath and stood.

“Fine then. Follow me.”

Reluctantly, Dingo stood and followed. Jian walked into the warehouse, where some of the others were lounging as they waited, up a set of stairs and onto the catwalk where Ginpatsu was standing with the other, younger man.

“Hey, Boss. I got that kid you wanted to meet.” The younger man, maybe mid-twenties, turned to look at him.

“Ah, thank you Jian. Who might you be?”

“People call her Dingo,” Jian said, gesturing for her to step forward.

“Lovely to meet you, Dingo. My name is Oyabun. If you don’t mind me asking, have we met before?”

“She’d one of my new people,” Ginpatsu spoke up. “Takes on gigs. Doesn’t ask questions. She’ll ask for the money to your face, and count it in front of you, too.”

“Like I said, I don’t know you well enough to trust you. And besides, better to be direct so no one gets confused.” She probably shouldn’t have been running her mouth. Scratch that, she definitely shouldn’t have been running her mouth. She needed to get her annoyance in check.

“Oh, that’s not what I mean. I recognize the name from somewhere.” He stared at her a little longer, a smile on his lips and calculations running behind his eyes.

“Ah, I remember! My older sister mentioned you last week! You saved her from being mugged, yes?”

“I did save someone. What was her name?”

“Shinmi.” She gave a quick nod. “Oh, this is wonderful. You know, she mentioned how well you fought those two off. I could use some security for an event that’s coming up tomorrow. A meeting of sorts between-”

“With all due respect, I’d rather not know who’s going to be in the meeting,” she said, holding up a hand.

“Oh? And why not?”

“Plausible deniability. If, heaven forbid, something were to happen, I can’t say anything.” Oyabun’s eyes narrowed like a cat who’d spied an unguarded nest. “Plus it keeps my options open. I won’t knowingly get involved in something illegal. But, if down the line I find out I was moving drugs, it’ll be far too late for any of my information to be valid.”

“And if you find out halfway through a job that something less than legal is occurring?”

“Then I walk, with full pay to keep my mouth shut.”

“Thought you didn’t want the cops to know you got mixed up in shady shit?” Ginpatsu asked. Dingo kept her eyes on the man in front of her, watching the numbers he was running in his head.

“I don’t want the cops to know me period. If the cops get to me then they’re going to ask questions like what I’ve been doing, and I really am a horrible liar.” She kept her voice even, gaze straight ahead.

“Hm. I think these are acceptable terms. Ginpatsu, I hope you don’t mind me poaching your newest member.”

“It’s fine,” the older woman said, turning to look at the flash of a truck’s approaching lights. “Like I said, she’s just a temp worker. I don’t mind sharing.”

Masterlist

[sirspazingtonthefourth]

People Call Me Dingo: Chapter 19

CW: Cursing, some violence

It wasn’t nearly as hard to find work as Dingo had feared. All types came into the bar: Villains, civilians, even some of the underground heroes, looking for information or people or work. It was relatively easy to overhear people chatting, mentioning being short a couple hands here and there. Within a week, she’d landed a small gig.

“Don’t ask questions or you aren’t getting paid,” the grizzled young woman hissed at her. Dingo just sent her a small smile and continued mixing a drink for someone further down the bar.

“As long as someone doesn’t spill a box full of kidneys in front of me, I won’t.”

“And if they do?”

“I might not stick around, but I sure as hell don’t want the cops to know I was helping.” The woman gave her one more once over as she poured the drink into a glass and handed it to the waiting patron. She let out a scoff before slamming down enough cash to cover her tab and pushing away from the bar.

“Tomorrow at 2 in the warehouse district. Look for the trucks.” She walked out the door while Dingo busied herself picking up the cash, placing the extra into the secure tip bag beneath the bar.

“Remember the deal, brat,” Dabi said as he came out of the back carrying a fresh bottle of cheap whiskey, moving to fill another glass at the bar.

“Yeah, yeah. Don’t get your panties in a twist.” Judging by the amused looks she got from a couple people at various tables, she couldn’t rely on English to keep her secrets. “I’m not going to forget. Doubt you’d let me, anyway.”

“You got that right,” Dabi scoffed. “And if you try to short me, I’ll turn you to ash.”

“I got it, jeez! You keep threatening me and I’m going to be too worried about you to do the job right, and then neither of us will get anything.” That, at least, got him to leave her alone for the rest of the shift.

She couldn’t get into the apartment on her own after her shift, not yet. She needed to get the money together for a second key herself, since Dabi didn’t have a spare and she wasn’t about to ask him to give her one for free. She could just pick the lock, but she doubted her new roommate/landlord would appreciate that.

And since her boss didn’t want her there any longer than necessary in case inspectors decided to pay a surprise visit, she wandered. Knowing your way around was always the first step to being able to run, and while she didn’t plan on needing to do that very much she’d rather not be caught unaware.

It was 8 when she got off, which meant she had to be careful. Heroes would be starting their nighttime patrols, and the last thing she needed was to run into one of them. She wasn’t familiar enough with the streets to avoid getting lost, not to mention she didn’t have a weapon yet in case she did.

Thankfully, they didn’t seem to come into the bad parts of town as much. It wasn’t surprising, no one wanted to patrol the “problem areas” back home either. Some said it was because the areas were too dangerous, others said there was too much for one hero or cop to manage alone, but it wasn’t hard to hear the reason behind that.

They didn’t care if places like that were left to rot, and if the people rotted with them then so much the better.

Dingo shook her head, clearing away the old thoughts. She had to turn around soon, get back to the bar so she could get to Dabi’s apartment. Lord knew if he got off shift and she wasn’t there he’d just leave her behind.

A couple of cans hit the ground a few streets ahead of her and she froze, hair standing on end. She should turn around. She should turn around and find her way back to the bar and pretend she never heard anything. It was probably a cat anyway, no point in going to check it out. Even if it wasn’t, there were cameras at the entrance to every alley. Whatever was happening was going to be caught on film.

She was crouched around the corner from where she heard the noise before she knew it, listening to the sound of muffled pleas and clear, sadistic snickers. Three people, two hostiles and one victim. She peeked one eye around the corner.

A woman no more than a few years older than Dingo was pressed back first against the wall, a hand covering her mouth and a knife to her throat. The man holding the knife was a mutant type, with soft, feline paws instead of hands, twitching ears and spotted tail. She could spot wicked fangs in the dim light, and she had no doubt he could see her in the low light just fine.

The other was a woman, her hands morphed into two long blades that Dingo knew she didn’t want to see the business end of. As she watched, the woman changed one of her blades into a hand to scratch at her teeth in boredom.

“You know, I’m getting really tired of waiting. Cough up the money, or I let Kuro here eat you,” the woman said, not even looking at the way her victim’s eyes widened and glanced to her compatriot. Kuro, for his part, just seemed to smile all the wider, tail swishing behind him.

“Well, that doesn’t seem all too polite now, does it?”

Dingo strode into the entrance of the alley, cursing her every step. She was unarmed, and there didn’t seem to be a lot of rubble she could use in the alley. But she couldn’t walk away from this. If that had been her with a knife to her throat, who knew if anyone would have stepped in. She had to be better than that.

“I mean, I am new to the country, so I might be missing something here, but somehow I don’t think holding a knife to someone’s throat and threatening them is good manners, no matter what country you’re in.” She was now standing solidly in the center of the entrance to the alley, blocking the way out. It invited an attack, but for now she was alright with that.

“Like you said,” Kuro snarled, “you’re new to the country. Now beat it before I show you exactly how good my manners are.”

“If I had to guess just from the way you’re holding that knife, piss poor.” Kuro’s grip tightened on the blade, but the paw over woman’s mouth was beginning to loosen.

“Do you know who you’re talking to, brat? We’re the-”

“Wait, wait! Lemme guess!” Dingo said, pretending to be deeply considering her options. “Actually, nevermind. I don’t particularly care.”

“You insolent-” The woman, oddly enough, charged her first. Dingo dodged, kicking the woman’s extended blade up and slipping beneath. A strong blow to her opponent’s knee snapped it sideways, and she went down screaming.

Dingo kept moving, coming up behind the woman and kneeing her in the side of the head. It was enough to make her stop screaming.

“Maki!” Dingo heard as Kuro leapt, only able to turn halfway so he didn’t take her back outright. She still got a nasty cut on her cheek from his claws, and the wind got knocked out of her when she hit the ground.

Kuro pulled her up by the front of her shirt and raised a clawed hand to slash at her face. She barely got her arms up to defend herself before a hard thunk sounded in the alley and Kuro shouted in pain.

Behind him stood the woman he’d been threatening, his knife in her hand. From the way she stood, Dingo could tell that she had hit Kuro with the hilt.

“I’m gonna enjoy ripping you to pieces,” he snarled out, ears pinning back on his head.

“Oi, kitty!” Kuro turned his head, getting a fist to the nose. He howled, paws releasing Dingo to hold his broken nose. She took the advantage, quickly maneuvering behind him and getting a nasty choke on him.

It took several seconds before his thrashing stopped, and several more before Dingo was certain he’d passed out. Once she was certain she released the hold, grabbed the hand of the still stunned woman, and sprinted out of the alley and back towards the bar.

Once she deemed them far enough away and slowed down and let the poor woman breath. She was still clutching the knife, even as she sunk to the ground and heaved for breath.

“That was… I just…”

“Hey, it’s alright,” Dingo said, waving a hand in the woman’s field of view. She looked up, and Dingo held her hands up in her view again. “You’re safe. We got out of there. Can you tell me your name?”

“Shi… Shinmi.”

“Wonderful. It’s nice to meet you, Shinmi. Can you tell me five things that you can see?”

Slowly, Shinmi described five objects in the alley they’d ducked into. Then four objects she felt. And three sounds she heard. Two smells. One taste.

“Alright, there you go. Are you feeling better?”

“I could have killed him,” was all she said, staring at the knife in her hand. “When I hit him. I could have stabbed him, or slit his throat, or-”

“Hey, hey. I need you to look at me.” Slowly, Shinmi locked eyes with her again, and she smiled, reaching out and carefully taking her hands.

“You’re right, you very well could have. But you didn’t, and it makes all the difference in the world. He’s still alive, all he’s got to show for this is a broken nose, a nasty bruise, and a headache. You could have done much worse, and you didn’t.”

Shinmi nodded, and when Dingo pulled her hands away she was holding the knife. Slowly, keeping the blade in view, she folded the blade back into the handle, set it on the ground, and slid it a few feet deeper into the alley.

“Now, are you hurt at all? Any scratches or bruises?” Shinmi shook her head. “That’s good. Do you have a-”

“Why did you help me?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Why did you help me? You could have gotten a hero or something. You didn’t have to put yourself in danger like that for a yowaime like me.”

“A what?” She stilled at Dingo’s question, seeming a little shocked and confused, the look shifting to shame before she looked back at her hands again.

“A yowaime. Someone who’s… Someone who doesn’t have a quirk,” she whispered, like it was shameful to even explain it.

Yowaime. So that’s what they called qullies here. She wished she could have been surprised people thought the quirkless were lesser here, too. Wished she could have been surprised that this woman didn’t expect anyone off the street to step in and help her.

“Is that what they call us over here? Back home, they call people like us quls.” Shinmi looked up at her. “Either way, I helped you because there wasn’t anyone else. I don’t know where the patrol routes are, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to risk getting a hero just to come back and find you already robbed or bleeding out. It would defeat the point.”

Shinmi just kept staring at her, unmoving on the ground. Dingo stood, offering a hand to the other and pulling her to her feet.

“Miss Shinmi, do you have a way to get home safely?” That seemed to snap her out of whatever daze she’d been in.

“Oh, uh, yes. Yes I do. I’m terribly sorry for all the trouble, Miss…?”

“Oh, people call me Dingo.”

“Miss Dingo. Thank you so much. Please, be safe tonight. I’d hate for you to get attacked like I was.”

“You as well, Miss. It’s getting late. You should head home before more unsavory folk start coming out.”

“Yes. I can’t thank you enough for your help. Be safe, and have a good night,” Shinmi said before rushing off with a small smile and a quick wave.

Dingo sighed, alone in the alley. She was almost certainly lost right now, and there was no way she would make it back to the bar by the time Dabi finished his shift. She trudged back into the alley, scooping up the knife Kuro had used.

It was a pretty standard pocket knife, nothing too fancy. It had a decent heft to it, so it wouldn’t slip out of her pockets unnoticed, and when she checked the blade it was fairly sharp.

She folded the knife back up, smiling while she tucked it into her pocket. At least she’d gotten something for her trouble.

Aizawa watched on as Viridian finished tying up another mugger. The kid was getting good, and in just a few short months. Not for the first time, he found himself wishing that he could use the kid as an example for his students.

The kid was taking to parkour like a natural too, if the way he seemed to materialize on the roof next to him was any indication. Now all he needed to do was figure out how to convince the kid to join a hero course so he could be an actual legal hero instead of a vigilante. Running around the streets at night without a license would only work for so long.

Speaking of…

“Hey, Viridian.”

“Yeah, Eraser?”

“I need to ask a favor of you.” The kid straightened up and squared his shoulders, an admirable effort to look bigger and more official than he actually was. It was enough to make him hide his smile behind his capture weapon as he pulled a file from inside his hero costume.

“There’s a kid who went missing recently. They were being kept under harsh circumstances, and the people in the HPSC that were holding her are trying to get her back.”

“What kind of circumstances?” Viridian asked, only flinching a little when Aizawa looked up from the file he’d pulled out. A little was still far too much, but it was also far better than before.

“From what we know, the next best thing to torture.” Even with the goggles, he could see Viridian’s eyes widen.

“For now, she’s been declared a dangerous villain. For this reason, we’re trying to keep the fact that we’re looking for her under the radar.” He shot a pointed look at the young teen. “So I expect you not to go talking to your new friend about it.”

“Oh, I would never! He doesn’t even know I’m a vigilante, so it would be really stupid to let this slip and-”

“Before you go too far down that rabbit hole,” he said to steer the vigilante back on track, “I need you to keep an eye out for this girl,” he said, handing Viridian a picture and a sheet detailing her description.

“We don’t know where she is, so just keep an eye out for her. Her quirk seems to allow her to copy other quirks, but we have no idea the kinds of limitations it has.” He watched Viridian take in that particular piece of information, realizing his mistake too late.

“That doesn’t mean go digging to figure it out. I know you’re a good hacker, but it’s illogical to risk getting caught trying to break through the HPSC’s firewalls. Even if you somehow managed that, all the information they had was on that sheet.”

Or rather, all the information he himself managed to find.

Viridian nodded along, scanning through the sheet again, eyes focused mainly on the bottom section of the page, where her quirk information was. He should have known better than to let the kid who’s analyses rivaled trained professionals know that a quirk’s limits weren’t yet understood.

“E-Eraser?”

“Yeah, kid?” Viridian looked up from the page, folding it around the picture and tucking it into one of the pockets of his tool belt.

“Who’s we? I mean, obviously, there’s you and me, but who else?”

“There’s myself, Principal Nezu, and another hero, and I’m not telling you who for their safety.” The kid nodded again.

“And, um… if I may, why trust me with this? Wouldn’t another hero like Amplifier be better? Not that I don’t appreciate your trust! It’s just that a hero has more resources than some random vigilante so they’d probably find her way faster and-”

“Because you aren’t some random vigilante,” Aizawa asserted, cutting off the kid before he could veer off into self-deprecation. “Yes, you only made it onto the scene a few months ago. And in that time you’ve demonstrated exactly how skilled and stubborn you are when it comes to saving people. Not to mention your tendency to find things heroes don’t.

“It’s the most logical move. We need more people keeping an eye out for her, but the more heroes that get brought into this the greater the risk that we’ll get caught. Asking a vigilante, who doesn’t need to report to the Commission and therefore runs less risk of getting this operation exposed, is by far the best option.”

He watched Viridian stand there for a moment, hands shaking by his sides before he clenched them into fists.

“O-ok. That… that does make sense. I promise, I’ll keep an eye out for her, and I’ll let you know if I see her.”

“Thank you, Viridian. Now, it’s getting late. You should head back home soon.”

“Right. See you later, Eraser!” Viridian said, turning to get a running start before jumping to the next roof. Someday, he knew, that kid was going to make a damn good hero.

Masterlist

[sirspazingtonthefourth]

People Call Me Dingo: Chapter 18

CW: Cursing A/N: Sooo... I am super late with these next six chapters. I cannot actually defend myself for this, but I hope you like them!

“The villain was being interrogated in regards to several ongoing cases at the HPSC headquarters before their escape. They are to be considered extremely dangerous. We have alerted the police and all heroes in the area to be on high alert for any sign of them. Rest assured, we are doing everything in our power to recapture this villain and ensure everyone’s safety.”

Dingo’s own picture was on screen, next to the recording of the Commission’s president standing in front of a press conference. She’d bet money her face was being projected behind the woman so the crowd before her could see it as well. She huddled a little deeper into her new jacket, ignoring the program playing on the small advertisement board next to her in line.

She’d managed to scrounge up enough coins to pay for a ticket to Musutafu, though only barely. She had a three hour commute ahead of her, and she hoped no one would recognize her. She couldn’t keep her shape changed for that long.

As it was, she was currently wearing the skin of one of the pedestrians she’d seen the night before. She’d drop it once she was out of sight of the ticket vendor. If she could’ve maintained the form much longer than that, she would have. Hell, if she could keep it up the entire train ride she wouldn’t hesitate to.

But she was worn out from the quirk, aching and sore and exhausted. It was taking everything in her to maintain it right now. She shuffled a few steps forward as the line moved.

It took a minute or two longer before she reached the vendor. She handed all her coins over, watching the man count them before looking up with a professional look that only mostly hid the pity.

“I’m sorry, sir, but you’re a few hundred yen short. Please, step out of the line.”

“What?” Dammit. All she wanted to do was get on this stupid train and pass out until she got to Musutafu.

“Excuse me, I can cover that.” An older woman with a pair of horns sprouting from her head handed a few coins to the ticket vendor, who busied himself grabbing Dingo a ticket.

“Thank you so much, ma’am,” she said once she snapped out of her stupor. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.”

“Think nothing of it, young man. We’ve all been a little short for a ticket with somewhere important to be before.”

“Still, thank you. I’m so sorry I can’t do anything in return-”

“Oh, hush. I don’t expect payment for this. You just focus on getting to your train on time, dear. I’ll be fine.”

Dingo could feel the tears welling in her eyes, making it even harder to keep the shape of the pedestrian from last night.

“Okay. Thank you so much again. Take care.” She took her ticket from the vendor and waved at the woman before dashing off towards the restrooms so she could drop her quirk in private.

Once she was on board the train, wearing her own face again plus a mask to try and obscure her identity, she couldn’t keep her eyes open. The seat on the train would have been downright uncomfortable before the last three months, but at that moment it felt like the most comfortable place she’d ever sat. She was out before the train even pulled out of the station.

The broadcast from the President of the HPSC was everywhere, displaying Dingo’s face wherever Hawks looked. He couldn’t figure out if this turn of events was good or not.

She’d managed to escape on her own. The Commission didn’t know how, and suspected she’d worked with someone to get out. Who she would have been willing to work with he didn’t know, but it didn’t really matter at this point. Still, he knew Eraserhead would ask when he picked up.

“I take it you’ve seen the announcement?” he asked once the call connected. Eraser sighed the long suffering sigh of someone constantly dealing with teenagers.

“Yes. Do you know who she was working with?”

“No. I don’t know if she worked with anyone at all.”

“It’s only logical. If it’s as high security as you said, she’d have no way to get out on her own.”

“Whoever she was working with doesn’t really matter. What matters is finding her before the Commission does. Who knows what they’d do if they find her first?” He knew. But he didn’t need Eraser to know that.

“I can let some colleagues know, but I can’t actually do anything personally. She broke out in Tokyo, and I’m, as you know, in Musutafu. There’s nothing I can really do.”

“She’ll try and get out of the city. The Commission is counting on her being stranded, but you saw the kind of training she was being given. It’ll take them a little longer to consider that she knew what she was doing because of her performance, and in that time she’ll already be gone.”

“Hm. I’ll let my contacts know and keep my eyes open in case she heads my way. But I can’t promise anything.”

“Thank you. Let me know if you find any sign of her.”

The bar was tucked into an alley in what seemed like a bad part of town. There was no awning above the door, no neon sign in the window advertising one brand of beer or another. There weren’t even any windows to advertise in.

The door opened without a sound, though, and it was cool inside, if a little dim. The chatter inside spoke of a decent crowd, for an establishment this size. She stepped in, out of the awful heat and humidity she knew Bat would have hated, feeling the weight of about a dozen sets of eyes land on her as the door swung shut.

“Get out of here, kid,” the bartender said, breaking the silence. He was on the tall side, with dark hair and poorly done skin grafts on his face and up his arms.

“Sorry, just looking for someone. He goes by Dabi. You seen him around?” Some of the patrons glanced at the bartender, trying and failing to be subtle about it. The bartender just gave her an appraising look, sizing her up. His eyes stopped at the sliver of the cuffs that stuck out from under her sweatshirt, and she tugged the sleeves down a little further.

“I recognize the name. Now, beat it.” She held up her hands in surrender, backing towards the door.

“Alright. If you see him, tell him Dingo was looking for him.” That got the bartender’s attention. He narrowed his eyes at her before she turned to open the door.

“I can tell him to meet you out back in ten minutes.” She shot a nod and an easy smile over her shoulder before stepping out the door. The heat weighed down on her, but she didn’t let it show until the door was closed.

She checked the spot she’d stashed her pillowcase, making sure everything was still there. There wasn’t much in there to steal anyway, but better safe than sorry.

She busied herself changing where she wore the cuffs. She didn’t need people seeing them and getting suspicious, but she couldn’t very well do without them. She’d walked past at least a dozen quirks that she hadn’t avoided looking at today, including that older woman with the horns. Without the cuffs, she’d have been caught on the street before she even made it to the train station.

She moved them one at a time to sit around her ankles. The weight was odd, even as she tightened them so that they wouldn’t jostle around too much. She tugged her pants down just enough to keep them hidden. The less suspicion she could attract to herself, the better.

It was another few minutes before the bartender stepped out of the bar’s back door, outlined in a haze that wasn’t caused by the ambient heat. Probably an emitter type quirk, then, one focused on heat. Maybe a fire quirk? The door swung shut with no one leaving the building behind him.

“I take it you’re Dabi?” His eyes narrowed a little.

“Depends. You said you’re Dingo?”

“That’s what people call me.” She kept a small smile on her face, forced her shoulders to relax, and slid her feet apart. She kept her gaze on Dabi’s face, leaving his posture to her peripheral vision.

“And who told you about me?”

“I’ve got a friend named Bat. They said you might be able to help me out with something.”

“That also depends. What do you need help with?”

“I need a place to stay for a while. I know something like that isn’t going to be free, but I don’t have access to funds right now. I was hoping we could work something out.”

“Let me get this straight. You’re asking me to find you a place that you can stay where you don’t have to pay rent?” Well, when he put it like that it sounded bad.

“You’ve got a couch, don’t you?” He glared at her.

“Yeah, and it’s mine. Forgive me for not being overjoyed at the prospect of giving it up to some random teen I just met. For free, by the way.” Dingo huffed in annoyance. She wasn’t going to stiff him. She just couldn’t give him anything up front.

“Look, I’m not going to be sitting around on my ass all day. I have my own things I need to get done, and I need money to do them. I probably can’t get a nine-to-five, but I’ll work odd jobs and I’m willing to give you a cut of whatever I get for the trouble.”

It was as close as she would let herself come to begging him to let her stay. Still, she hated how desperate the words felt in her mouth. She could feel how her heart was clenching as Dabi studied her, rolling over the proposition in his head.

“How much?” She felt her shoulders relax for real. This was familiar territory. This she could do.

“30.”

“Hell no. 80.”

“I’d pay 80 if you lived in a mansion, and based on your job you don’t. 40.”

“70.”

“50.” Dabi stopped for a moment, studying her again.

“You need a job, right?” Tentatively, she nodded. “I can get you a job here, on the condition that I get half of what you make from any odd jobs and what you make here.”

“That’s excessive. I’ll give you half of one and a quarter of the other. Your pick which is which.” She could hear something click in his mouth as he considered her offer. Maybe a tongue piercing?

Or maybe that was a sign that he was preparing to use his quirk.

“Half from here and a quarter from anything else. We got a deal?” he offered. Dingo smiled wider and stuck out her hand, just glad he hadn’t seemed to be gearing up to attack.

“Deal.” Dabi glanced down at her hand in confusion before shrugging and turning around.

“Get in here then. My shift ends in an hour. I’ll talk to Futokutei, then I’ll give you a crash course. After that you’re on your own.” Dingo nodded to his back, following along quietly as he took her towards an office tucked just behind the bar.

Masterlist

[sirspazingtonthefourth]

People Call Me Dingo: Chapter 17

CW: Cursing A/N: For note, everything in italics is spoken in a language other than Japanese

The payphone was quiet as she waited for the call to go through. Dingo had no idea what time it was back home, but she had to hope that Bat was awake to pick up. She was currently in the shape of a passerby she’d seen on the street a few blocks ago. She figured she could hold that shape for about 20 minutes. That would have to be enough to get this call done, get somewhere cameras couldn’t see, and recuperate.

“Hello, you’ve reached the Monarch Car Wash. How may I-”

“Dingo’s are pack animals.” She hung up and waited. The phone rang after about 30 seconds, and she snatched it up before the first ring finished.

“Liv, where the hell are you right now? Are you alright? I swear to god, if you ran off without telling anyone to try and white knight some bullshit, I will personally make sure you don’t leave your house for a goddamn month!”

“I missed you too.” She heard her partner and right-hand huff over the phone.

“You better have. But I’m serious, where are you? We’re all worried sick.” It felt nice to hear her own language again. It somehow made the homesickness she’d been ignoring all the worse.

“I may or may not have gotten kidnapped? Long story short, I’m kinda sorta somewhere in Japan?” The line was silent for a solid minute. She half wondered if Bat had needed to take another call and put her on hold when they spoke again.

“I know you got kidnapped, but I’m so fucking jealous.” Dingo couldn’t hold back the laugh that burst from her lungs. Of course they would be jealous. They’d gone through a really intense weeaboo phase a few years ago, intense enough that they’d actually learned Japanese, and even as the phase faded they still wanted to visit.

“But jealousy aside, you seriously let them get you to a secondary location? You realize Jeopardy’s never going to let you live that down.” She scoffed.

“For your information, I didn’t let them do anything. And by this point, it’s more like a quaternary location. Which brings me to the matter at hand.” Bat was quick to switch to the vocal code they’d come up with, made up of clicks, chirps, and other assorted sounds that were definitely not words.

“What do you have?”

“The Japanese HPSC is awful to the core. I just broke out of what I’m assuming is their main headquarters. I managed to get a few unredacted paper files, since I know you like those, but I need somewhere I can scan them so I can send them to you.”

“Blackmail?”

“Probably. They aren’t the ones who kidnapped me at first, but they’ve been pretty hellbent on making me some kind of hero assassin combo.”

“Without a quirk? How progressive of them.” The sarcasm dripping in their voice made her stomach feel like it was full of rocks.

“That’s… that part’s going to take a lot longer to explain than I have right now.” The line was deadly quiet for a moment. She could hear the change in Bat’s voice as they slipped into damage control mode.

“Can I expect a full report once you get to a secure location?”

“Of course.”

“Good. Give me a moment, I’m going to find you a library. Do you have a USB to hand?”

“No, but I can probably snag one on the way.” The quiet clicking of a keyboard was heard over the line. It wasn’t long before they found what they were looking for.

“Are you across the street from a jewelry store? It should be called… Houseki-ten. Weird name, but whatever.” A quick look up showed precisely that store.

“Yep. And you’re right, that really is a weird name.”

“I know, right? Anyway, three blocks north and take a left. You’ll find the Tokyo Public Library. It should have a-”

“I can read the signs, I’ll be able to tell which one it is.” More silence.

“So, you think the phone’s bugged?”

“Alongside it being literally Japan and everyone would be able to understand me? Yes, yes I do.”

“Sorry, had a test today. Kinda fried.”

“Fair, sorry. Just working on a time limit so I don’t get seen on the cam-”

“You’re in the open?!”

“Yes, but they probably don’t know it’s me. But that’s only going to last so long. I need to wrap this up so I can get out of sight for a bit. Then I’ll head to the library.”

“Fine. Be safe. And Liv?”

“Yeah?”

“Love you.” She felt a smile stretching her cheeks.

“I love you too, Ember. Be safe.”

She decided against wearing Fudouyama’s skin when she purloined a couple USB’s from a convenience store. She had a specific idea in mind for how she wanted the Commission, and specifically Ito, to think of her old warden. Which meant “he” couldn’t be the one to steal two USB’s.

It took too much time for comfort to recover from that. She picked a civilian she’d spotted and wore their skin as she walked to the library. The back door wasn’t watched by cameras, which meant she could shift into Fudouyama and slip in.

She sent a quick email to one of Bat’s many burner accounts, their backdoor into the library’s system. Their quirk was insanely useful for things like this. So long as they received contact from an electronic device, be it via a text or an email, even a snap, they had access to the entire device.

Up to and including the accounts of the owner.

They’d been responsible for shutting down several city blocks worth of surveillance, or ensuring that certain footage was unable to be properly deleted. People had thought they would never be anything but a villain, which meant they fit right in with the Network.

It was five minutes before Dingo reentered the building, more than long enough for Bat to shut the surveillance footage off. She picked up the phone and dialed one of their burner numbers.

“We’re secure. Explain who that was.” This was going to be a fun conversation.

“That was me. I uh… Do you remember that person I called you about before I went missing?” Bat was quiet for a moment, before making a slow noise of understanding.

“She was working with a group. I don’t know what their endgame is, but they were doing something with altering people’s quirks. Apparently, they wanted to see if they could “gift” the quirkless with quirks, my words, not theirs. It worked.

“The quirk that… developed, isn’t exactly easy to control. Figured out it’s based on perception while the Commission had me. It’s a transformative type, sort of a ‘monkey see, monkey do’ kind of deal, but the monkey can’t really see and decide not to do. It’s a pain in the ass, but it has its uses.”

“… Okay. Do you know if there’s any way to reverse it?” God, she loved them.

“No. One of the reasons I went with the Commission initially was that they said they’d try and help get rid of it. I know, it was stupid, but my other options weren’t great.”

“Did you know what your other options were before you made the choice?”

“Did I really need to? It was between the heroes, the cops, and the Commission, nothing was going to work out.” She could practically feel Bat taking a deep breath and deciding to table the conversation for later.

“Fine. They were going to help you get rid of it?”

“They said they would, but the team working on it couldn’t find anything. Nothing against them, they were actually trying. Higher ups got excited at the news though, and decided to try and keep me in the dark.”

“Okay, so you’re stuck with this quirk. You said it’s based on perception? How were they keeping you there if you could use any quirk you saw?”

“It was just what I could perceive. The guy watching me, the one who I looked like when I sent that email, he could enhance his strength, but I can’t copy that. And aside from that, they make me wear quirk cancelling cuffs.”

“Like those could really do anything,” she heard Bat snort. “But how did you get out? You’d think they’d keep a better eye on what quirks you have access to if they’re trying to make you a hero assassin thingy.”

“They were, but I managed to keep a few details about the quirk from them. Like being able to copy them from videos and, occasionally, pictures. And they were kind enough to give me some pencils and pads of sticky notes.”

“And it worked?”

“By some miracle.” Bat was quiet for a moment before speaking quietly into the phone.

“And how are you holding up?”

Awfully. She hated this stupid quirk, hated that she couldn’t get rid of it. No matter what, even once she got home, there would be no return to normalcy for her. That had been stolen from her. It hurt to think about.

“I’m doing alright.”

She knew Bat didn’t buy it.

“I need to get these scanned, though. But can you do me a favor while I do?”

“If it’s reasonable, yeah.”

“The guy I pretended to be, he was in charge of me, more or less. He… he wasn’t exactly the nicest about it, either.”

“I could’ve guessed. He looked like a hardass.”

“Understatement of the year. Anyway, I’m going to shift so that I look like him a few times. I want you to keep any footage of me when I look like him.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I can do that. Call again before you leave. I need to make a few calls, but I might be able to get you a place.”

“Your texting pal? Really?”

“Hey, he managed to find a stable job and housing! And it has nothing to do with smuggling anymore, it’s completely legal!”

“Alright, okay. I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” But she didn’t have to like the guy.

“That’s all I ask. Besides, I still have to ask him. He’s in Musutafu, so you’ll need to find a way to take the train, but you should be able to get there sometime tomorrow. Gotta go.”

Bat hung up, doubtlessly to call or text the text pal they’d made when they were taking Japanese courses. It was for an assignment at first, to go online and find some Japanese forums or blogs and interact with them to get practice using the language. But the two had stayed friends over the years, and even though Dingo didn’t like what she’d heard about the guy she had to admit that he was a genuine friend to her partner.

She didn’t like the idea of getting help from him, but she didn’t have other options. Probably. She hadn’t quite checked yet, but she would be willing to bet there weren’t any.

Scanning the files took as long as copying them did, and every minute was nerve wracking. But as the last few pages were being scanned and loaded onto her first USB, she shifted into Fudouyama. Using a library computer to send it wouldn’t take too long.

She took a minute to be in her own body before shifting into her warden’s body again. Then she signed onto the computer, plugging just the first USB in. Copying the files onto the computer was easy enough, as was setting up a fake email account to send the information to one of Bat’s burner accounts. She deleted the copied files from the computer and then signed out of the computer.

She dropped the quirk, taking a moment to reactivate the quirk-cancelling cuffs before calling Bat again.

“Any word?”

“Good news, he’s willing to give you a hand. He won’t do it for free, so you’ll have to work it out with him in person. I told him to keep an eye out for you, just ask for Dabi. For now, focus on getting there.”

“Alright. Thank you, love. What’s the address?”

Bat gave them an address, warning her that it was in an out of the way place in the city and to watch her back getting there. Then they said their goodbyes, Dingo shifted back into Fudouyama, and she walked out the back door and onto the street.

She strolled a little ways before ducking into an empty, unsurveilled alley to drop the shape in. Changing her shape so often and into so many people without giving herself a proper recovery made her joints ache and her muscles protest her every movement. All she wanted was to lean back against the alley wall and pass out.

But she wasn’t far enough away from the Commission to get away with that. They were thorough, which meant they would certainly find her out here and drag her back if she didn’t keep moving. She spotted another pedestrian out late into the night, giving them a quick once over so she knew what they looked like. She’d take their form next, a few minutes after they’d passed.

Then she could start making her way towards a train station and figuring out how to skip the fare. She’d snag some new clothes on the way, find someone who’d appreciate having an extra set of clothes to wear. Or burn for warmth.

Masterlist

[sirspazingtonthefourth]

People Call Me Dingo: Chapter 16

CW: Shockingly, none! A/N: This plan is brought to you by Dingo being a conniving little deviant

She was lightly dozing, resting just beneath being totally conscious but well above sleep. It wouldn’t do for her to actually pass out. She needed to be alert, so a light nap was her best bet.

She heard the door open, heard Fudouyama walk closer and crouch down. She didn’t move until he grabbed her shoulder and shook firmly enough to ensure she woke up. She turned to send her best groggy glare at her warden. He didn’t react.

“What season was it when you arrived here?”

“Summer.”

“When interrogating a villain, what must you never do?”

“Allow them to leverage the information they have against you.”

“Where should you strike to land a killing blow?”

“Depends on the opponent and how worn down they are, but in general the neck or inside of the leg will cause a human with non-mutated anatomy to bleed out. Can I go back to sleep now?”

“Why are public relations important to a hero?”

“If the relations aren’t good, the people won’t trust the hero in question. This makes operations like rescues and evacuations more difficult.” Fudouyama glared at her, no doubt wanting her to say that they were important for hero rankings. That’s what her latest lessons had been focused on after all; public relations and hero rankings.

“Who is held accountable if a civilian is injured?”

“If the damage is due to a fight with a villain, the villain is held accountable unless the hero’s direct or indirect actions or negligence caused the injury.”

“Good enough.”

She turned back over, listening carefully as Fudouyama walked out of the room and closed the door. Now was her opportunity. She’d already looked at her first flipbook before the lights went out, all she had to do was disable the cuffs.

She took a deep breath, calming her heart as best she could, and placed her hand on the floor next to her. The ground crumbled slowly, and she moved her hand in a circular movement to make a hole big enough for her to slip through.

It took precious minutes, each second more stressful than the last, but it felt familiar. Like sneaking into the governor’s office to see what kind of blackmail material she could find. It was stressful, yes, but it was also exhilarating. She was doing something to help people, and in this case she counted.

The quirk wore through the floor into a darkened room. She grabbed her pillowcase and slipped in, landing quietly on the carpeted ground. The lights must have been motion activated, because they flicked on as soon as her feet hit. She froze, glancing around the many shelves for cameras.

For once, she couldn’t find any.

She checked the whole room for any surveillance, but the only pieces of technology she could find were a printer with several empty manilla envelopes next to it and a fingerprint scanner next to the door that didn’t have a camera attached. Satisfied that she wasn’t being watched, she reactivated the quirk cancelling cuffs, waiting to disable the tracking until she left this room.

She decided to check out the shelves, stuffed with lidded boxes. She opened one, only to be greeted with a manilla envelop reading “CLASSIFIED” in red letters. A quick look through the file revealed no redacted text.

This was too good an opportunity to pass up.

She could feel the grin that spread across her lips, baring her teeth to the empty room as she searched for a box holding anything labelled “TOP SECRET.”

It took her a few minutes, but she found one. A little more searching revealed two more, all stuffed as full as possible with the wonderful files that were going to be her backup if things went wrong.

She dug through them as quickly and quietly as she could, searching for her own file. Having that one was a no-brainer. She found a few more interesting files pertaining to coverups, assassinations, and espionage, and nabbed them too.

She was almost done when she found one more file. Subject 08. Wasn’t that what one of the analysts had called Hawks?

She grabbed the file. He’d stabbed her in the back, but he’d still been taken advantage of. She’d be an idiot to ignore that fact, and she hadn’t managed to earn her position as the head of her branch of the Network by being an idiot. This was one of the Commission’s most tightly guarded secrets, and one of Hawk’s. It was like a two for one deal.

It took a small eternity to copy and print all of the pages of the various files, 10 in total, but she loaded them into the waiting manila folders, emblazoned with the HPSC logo. She checked them for trackers before stuffing them into her pillowcase as well.

As she did, her second flipbook slipped out, jostled out of place by the addition of the files. She picked it up, flipping through it just to hear the sound, watching the two stick figures standing together. They looked different, but as one turned to look at the other, it changed shape until the two were identical.

She suspected that the lack of details were the reason this one failed. After all, they were stick figures. She sighed, before tossing it back into the pillowcase and tying it shut. She couldn’t afford to lose anything now, especially not something so damning.

The fingerprint scanner would be a problem, likely a security measure to ensure that whoever came in couldn’t get out unless they had clearance. They probably wouldn’t be able to get in without clearance either, but the Commission was nothing if not paranoid.

Just not paranoid enough, it seemed.

She disable the cuffs again, this time disabling the tracker as well, so she could disintegrate the door. This time, she felt something odd. Like her body was made of clay that could be molded if she tried. She decided to give it a shot, focusing on the strange elastic feeling in her gut as she grew and changed.

Once the feeling subsided she looked at her hands. She was wearing a suit that felt just slightly too tight around her shoulders. Her hands were rough and scarred, and her fingers creaked with the beginning of arthritis when she clenched them into fists.

She recognized these fists. They were the same ones that had beaten her bloody nearly every day since she’d arrived. With any luck, Fudouyama would have access to this room.

She pressed one finger to the reader, and the device beeped. The door opened without a problem, and Dingo strode out with the same gait Fudouyama did. She made it to the elevator without any issues.

She pushed the button for the ground floor, doing her best to ignore the feeling of being blown up like a balloon. It was steadily becoming more and more uncomfortable. Maybe it was some kind of limit? She hadn’t shown a limit in the flipbook, but maybe she still had one anyway? After all, the flipbook hadn’t worked when she’d been in solitary, so it clearly had limitations. She just had to figure them out.

By the time she made it to the main floor the stretching, bloated feeling was becoming near painful, every step making it worse as she tried her best to maintain the shape. There was someone at the front desk, and then there was nothing between her and the front door.

She passed by the front desk, pointedly only looking dead ahead. The secretary sitting behind it, a young man with dark hair and bright orange eyes, glanced at her as she walked by. She did her best to keep the pillowcase out of his view as she continued forward.

“Good night, Mr. Fudouyama. You know, you really should take a break every now and again. It’s almost 2:30 a.m. You still need your sleep.”

She turned to glare over her shoulder at the man, who just smiled back. She opted to roll her eyes before continuing to the front door.

The air that hit her face was warm, just barely tolerable. The air felt muggy, and a few trees nearby had begun shedding their leaves. Autumn, then. Just how long had it been since she’d gotten to breathe fresh air?

She couldn’t think about that, turning right and making her way down the street. The bloating feeling was getting worse, every step hurt. She wouldn’t be able to make it out of sight of the cameras on the Commission’s building.

So she didn’t even try.

As soon as she was out of sight of the doors she turned to the camera’s pointed at the sidewalks and streets and bared her teeth in what could loosely be called a grin, hoisting the pillowcase over her shoulder before flipping off the camera. Holding the position, she allowed herself to return to her normal shape and size, her white clothes standing out in the dark.

As soon as her change was complete she turned to continue the way she’d been going. They’d have found out she’d escaped in a few hours anyway. Considering there hadn’t been any alarms, and considering that Fudouyama did seem to leave at night according to that receptionist, no one would know she’d vanished until tomorrow morning.

That gave her some time to get some distance between her and the towering Commission building, snag some clothes from somewhere, make a call or two, and disappear.

It was what they trained her to do, after all.

Masterlist

[sirspazingtonthefourth]

People Call Me Dingo: Chapter 15

CW: Violence, Emetophobia A/N: I swear, it feels like every other chapter has an emetophobia warning. This one happens in the paragraph after the one that ends with "bloodborne pathogens." I'd recommend skipping over that entire paragraph and reading the one after.

On the fifth day, she started shoving her clothes and the flipbooks into her pillow. If anyone asked, she could excuse it as helping the pillow be more comfortable on the cool floor, as wanting the things that were hers to be close by.

Her second flipbook, completed on her last day in solitary, didn’t yield the results she wanted. That was fine, she could work with only having that disintegration quirk. It would make everything more difficult, but when had she ever let not having a quirk stop her?

There was more security around her, once she got out. More eyes on her at all times. Fudouyama had, correctly, decided her habit of sleeping under the bed was an escape risk and started double checking once a night that she was there by waking her up and making her answer questions.

It made sleep even harder to come by, with the strange schedule they seemed to be keeping her on. She never got more than four hours of uninterrupted sleep, and more often than not she would only get one or two. They seemed to do it randomly, too, just so that she couldn’t sleep.

They would wake her up for more lessons, more training, more quirk analysis. She felt dead on her feet, but any sign of weakness or exhaustion earned her a glare from her warden.

They pushed her harder, especially during her training sessions. She’d fight more opponents, with better quirks. Fudouyama had taken to making her wear a shock collar so he could “encourage” her to use her quirk as she fought. It was a little less than a standard taser, so she was managing well enough for the time being.

For a week, she endured. She’d spend her every free waking moment planning her escape. The disintegration quirk would be the most vital part to getting out without incident, but equally vital was cutting the connection between the cuffs and the Commission. They knew when the cuffs turned off, a feature that took some fiddling to remove, not to mention the built in tracking.

Aside from that, the plan was relatively simple. She would disintegrate the floor beneath her bed after Fudouyama had checked on her, then make her way to the elevator from whatever room she landed in. After that, she would be home free.

No confrontations. No injuries. No casualties.

Just the way she liked it.

She had everything planned out. She was going to wait three more days, to hopefully lower everyone’s guard. They’d been more antsy since her outburst, looking for any sign that her anger at the hero would lead her to do something rash. It was almost insulting. She had more self-control than that.

Dingo’s opponent wasn’t of the usual variety. Normally, she fought put-together people in either suits or proper sparring clothes. They never expressed anything more than neutrality toward her. They hardly made a sound, save the kiai’s they made when they tried to hit her or the short huffs of pain when she landed one of her own.

This man was nothing like that. For one, he was actively tussling with one of the men in suits over a briefcase. Her opponent was wearing ratty, torn clothes that didn’t look or smell like they’d been washed recently. He had a crazed look in his eyes, and was using some kind of contact quirk, based on how he kept trying to grab the man in a suit.

“Give me those! Please, I need them!” her opponent shouted. The suited man continued to say nothing, simply clinging tighter to the briefcase and avoiding the other’s grasp.

“That briefcase is filled with trigger, a quirk enhancing drug. This man is an addict attempting to assault a member of the Hero Public Safety Commission to gain access to the drug. Your objective is to prevent him from doing so,” she heard Fudouyama say into an earpiece he’d given her. For some reason, he was observing the match remotely this time.

“Hey!” Her shout drew the gazes of both men. “The hell’s going on here?”

“Don’t curse. It’s unbecoming a hero.”

“Stay out of this! It doesn’t concern you!” She held her hands up in surrender, keeping eye contact with the disheveled man.

“Maybe not, but I try to make it a habit to step in if someone’s getting hurt. And while no one’s been hurt yet, someone will be if things keep going the way they are. So, how about you let him go, and you and I t-”

“I said back off!” The disheveled man lunged for her, completely forgetting about the briefcase the other man held. He grabbed her wrist, and pain shot up her arm. An electric shock, but a mild one. It’d be a pain in the ass to deal with in a fight, which meant she had to end this one quickly. She ripped her hand from his grasp, skipping a few steps back.

“I know, I know. And I will, promise! I just wanna know what was in that briefcase that’s so important.” A sloppy fist swung her way, and she dodged.

“Why do you care?!”

“Well, you’re in a pretty bad place, right? You don’t get clothes that look that torn up if you have another option. I’d like to help, if I can.” She danced away from another blow.

“Like you would ever understand what I’ve had to go through!” the other man cried, spit flying from his lips as he kept trying to land a hit.

“Maybe not, but I’ll bet I can guess.” His wild swings slowed down, and she took that as a sign to keep talking.

“You didn’t have a lot to start with. Maybe you grew up in poverty or skirting the line, maybe you just made a few bad calls in the last five or ten years. Either way, these last few years have been shit. You need a break, but you know one isn’t going to just fall into your lap, so you’re trying to make yourself one. Am I close?”

As she kept talking, his swings slowed even more, until he finally was just standing there, looking at her. He was wary, keeping his fists up, but he wasn’t trying to strike her which was a decided improvement.

“I don’t have a good idea on specifics, but I take it I’m in the ballpark.” A slow nod, and she smiled at the man. She’d helped a few people like this before. They’d stumbled into the Community Center, maybe trying to steal from them, or looking for drugs. Sometimes, more often than not, they were just looking for a safe place to sleep.

“Do you wanna talk about it? I might be able to get you in contact with someone that can help, if you’d like me to.”

Slowly, the man sank down to the floor, and she did as well. She was still a few feet away from him, trying to let the man breathe. It was important for him to feel safe, or she couldn’t get him help.

“What are you doing?” Fudouyama hissed into the microphone. If the girl heard him through her earpiece, she ignored him. She was sat down, legs crossed, a meter and a half from the robot. Meanwhile, a handful of techs monitored the robot’s functioning.

It was a similar model to the one his analysts had used to impersonate Hawks, but this time it was programmed with the personality of a petty criminal arrested a few months ago. They’d downloaded his entire file into the robot, which was a much better fit since he already had an electricity quirk.

He hadn’t been expecting her to actually talk to the robot. He’d thought they’d trained her better by now. If you see a villain, you eliminate them. This was supposed to be a test of all her training up to this point. This programmed villain was supposed to become erratic, unreasonable, and ultimately too great a threat to not kill.

But it was supposed to react the same way the person it was programmed after would. How was Ito supposed to know that the person currently locked behind bars could have been talked down so easily? Considering he had been arrested in a very similar situation, it was nearly unthinkable.

But there they were, sitting on the floor, discussing the robot’s “life story.” Dingo was trying to offer to help, talking about withdrawal symptoms and support programs. This man didn’t deserve help, not after what he’d done.

And if the girl refused to see that, he would do what he had to.

“Drop the simulation.”

“Sir?”

“Drop the simulation. Clearly, it is not working. We need her to go through with this, and she’s not going to if it keeps acting like that.” Fudouyama kept his eyes on the screen, watching the girl’s every move as the technicians hesitated.

“We don’t have another file on hand to download, let alone one we could manipulate into a situation like that.”

“Then pilot it manually. I don’t care what it is you have to do to get her to attack that thing in earnest, just do it,” he snapped, turning back to watch the screen himself.

There were cameras all over the room, watching the girl’s every move, picking up her every word. They picked up how the robot froze in the middle of its tearful sentence, jerking to a halt as its expression lost any quality that could be considered human.

“Haikei, what’s wrong?” The robot did not respond, slowly standing. The girl followed suit, once kind and caring expression shifting to one of hesitance. “Haikei?”

The robot lunged forward, and Ito watched carefully as the girl leapt back. They began quite the elaborate dance around the training room, the girl dodging as many hits as she could and parrying the rest. She was pleading the whole time, calling out the random name they’d assigned the robot’s personality.

Fudouyama was speaking advice in her ear, encouraging her to strike back, take advantage of the openings the robot left her. It was a testament to her compassion that she didn’t listen, but that would only come back to haunt her. Ito would make certain of it.

Finally the robot managed to land one solid blow. Then another. And another. Before long the girl was huddled against a wall, bruised and scraped. The robot loomed over her, blocking her from the view of the camera’s, but not from the audio recorders.

“Please, stop! What did I do? I didn’t- I don’t want to fight! Please, please, no! Don’t! I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m-”

One moment she was pleading like her life depended on it. The next it was dead calm. Her erratic breaths evened out, and any sound of her movement disappeared. It was like watching the timer on a bomb tick down to your last moment.

The girl’s movement was explosive.

There was no quirk, no enhancement of any kind. Just a guttural, inhuman shriek before she leapt on the robot.

Ito was glad they managed to make a properly fleshy robot. Fake blood painted the girl’s clothes and fingers and teeth. Artificial flesh was torn away as the robot faked a human scream of pain. He heard as metal bones were bent and snapped like their organic counterparts would have been as the girl continued in her bloodbath.

It was glorious.

“Fudouyama, head down there. I want you to congratulate her on passing her test once she’s finished with that thing. I will be following shortly,” he said, unable to help the grin splitting his face. He’d done it. In record time, he’d managed to mold someone into a killing machine. It would take more time for them to be trained how to do so subtly, but if this was the result of only a few months he had no doubt he could manage.

The robot was still twitching by the time Fudouyama entered the room. His presence immediately got the girl’s attention, and it was clear the seasoned warden expected her to be at attention. Instead, she launched herself at him.

Ito had a better look at it as she fought Fudouyama. He was pleased to see her precision, even if he could not understand what had possessed her to attack her warden. It was truly a foolish decision, she could never win against him.

She seemed to know that, too, aiming more to impair than kill. A particularly nasty scratch raked across one of his eyes, followed by a strike to one of his knees. Ito watched carefully, drinking in every second of the girl’s hidden violence.

If he’d known she was capable of such bloodshed, he’d have had her instructors push her harder in training.

The fight between Fudouyama and Dingo ended with the girl slammed into a wall, Fudouyama holding her aloft by her neck. Ito was able to get a clear shot of her face, and watched as pure, animalistic rage subsided to confusion, then understanding, then terror.

“I’m sorry! Please don’t- I can’t- I don’t- please, no!” She was back to begging. A shame, really. Even if she had made the mistake of turning against Fudouyama, her prowess was quite impressive.

He ought to go congratulate her.

She’d killed someone today. Even if Ito had shown her after that it wasn’t a real person, she’d still done it. Still thought it was human as she did it.

At least, she’d thought it was human when she’d blacked out.

The second worst part of these episodes was waking up. She was always disoriented and confused, wondering where she was and what had happened.

The worst was the realization. Sometimes she saw what she’d done. Other times, the only clue was the blood on her hands or in her mouth. It tasted metallic and almost savory, a disgusting mix that made her stomach churn even without the concern for bloodborne pathogens.

Usually, if she tasted blood, she’d vomit on reflex. If she didn’t, she’d make herself do it. It was just to be safe from pathogens, she reasoned. It wasn’t to try and erase the taste from her mouth. That would be a childish reason. Not tasting it wouldn’t change what she’d done, she knew that. It was just for her health. That’s all.

She was curled up under her bed, clutching Pneumo with hands that could still feel the sticky fake blood Ito had been so proud of her for spilling. The lights weren’t even out yet, she was just hiding.

He’d been so ecstatic about what she’d done. Talked about training her to access that part of her more. About using it to kill more people. Hawks- no. No, the hero had been right. They were trying to turn her into a weapon, using that side of her.

She didn’t even know if it was a side of her and not just her. The thoughts that ran through her head before the blackouts were always the same. That she was going to die, that she could be fighting harder, that whatever in front of her wouldn’t be an obstacle if she just stopped caring if it was alive or not.

She couldn’t tell if blacking out after that was a blessing or not.

At least she didn’t have to remember it all, right?

She didn’t have to remember when the thing pretending to be a person had stopped pretending to breath, when it had stopped pretending to have a heartbeat. Maybe she’d figured out that it wasn’t a robot at some point, and that’s why she didn’t stop this time, but she’d still woken up and thought she’d killed someone. It was an entirely new feeling, and not a welcome one.

She clutched Pneumo tighter, taking a shaky breath before tucking it into the pillowcase with her other clothes and her two flipbooks. They were going to do this again. They were going to make her kill again and again and again until she stopped caring.

She didn’t want to kill anyone, real or fake, hero or villain, for the Commission or not. Killing was what heroes did, and she was no hero.

She wasn’t going to give them the chance to make her do that. She was going to break out.

And she was doing it tonight.

Masterlist

[sirspazingtonthefourth]

People Call Me Dingo: Chapter 14

CW: Cursing maybe? (idk, man, I wanna nap so bad, I'm not going back and double checking right now) A/N: I am so tired right now, you don't even know. I am posting this chapter and the next one and then sleeping. Also! There's some mention of things going on that pertain to the fic Viridian: The Green Guide by myheadinthecloudsnotcomingdown. Cannot recommend that fic enough, please go check it out, it will alter your brain chemistry

This was not what Ito had planned. The robotic double of Hawks had done wonders in testing her quirk. Finally, they didn’t have to account for user error in her quirks. Her team of analysts had learned more in twenty minutes than they had in two months.

They now knew exactly how long she could hold onto quirks, 24 hours to the minute. They knew she had to see the quirks in person, but that an artificial quirk could be used. They even knew the biggest drawback to her quirk: She didn’t automatically adapt to whatever the quirk allowed her to do.

For a quirk like Hawk’s, it had led to severe overstimulation, both due to how sensitive his feathers were and possibly because there was no area in her brain designed to intake and interpret those signals. For a strength-based quirk, however, it might tear her muscles apart.

It made some of her trial and error make more sense, even now. She simply could not control the quirks as well as he’d initially hoped. But this could doubtlessly be ironed out with more training. After all, Hawks had suffered overstimulation like that, and Fudouyama had beaten that out of him quite nicely, over time.

No, the problem was that it had sacrificed the girl’s relationship with Hawks.

He couldn’t leverage the two against each other, now. There was one fewer way to keep Hawks in line, especially with his worry about the girl. It would only grow, now that she had demanded he leave. He’d heard the recording of that particular meeting. It was short, but enough to show how devastating a move his analysists had made.

As of now, he was on his way down to speak with her about the aftermath. The cameras had never gone back up, and he suspected from the cacophony that she had destroyed them in her fit of rage.

Such actions were not fitting for a hero, even one in training.

She was standing in front of her open door when he arrived, Fudouyama at her side. The room was cleaned, save the broken chair and the sparking wires from the cameras. The girl was sporting some new bruises on her face, and instead of her collar she was wearing unlinked cuffs around her wrists.

Despite it all, though, she didn’t even have the tact to look ashamed of her actions.

“I am very disappointed in you. Whatever your problem with Hawks was, this is not how you should have acted to resolve it.”

“Relax. The room’s clean, the chair’s cheap, and the wiring isn’t that hard to fix.”

God, this was why he hated teenagers. Their flippancy, their lack of respect for those with authority over them, it infuriated him to no end.

It was, perhaps, strange to hear it coming from the normally quiet and docile girl, but he supposed that even a worm would turn. The frustration she had with Hawks must have been building for some time before the analysis incident, if it was causing these kinds of lingering behaviors.

“That is not the problem. These types of outbursts are not fitting for a hero. Imagine what the public would think if they saw you throwing a temper tantrum like this. No hero should be acting so much like a villain.” He watched as her eyes narrowed, assessing what he had just said. Good, she was smart enough to realize that was a bad thing.

“It’s a good thing I’m not a hero, then.”

Ito’s hand was moving before he could stop it.

His hand met her cheek, the crack echoing down the empty hallway. Her head was still, facing towards the elevator he’d exited just a few minutes prior.

“Not yet, you aren’t. Now you will listen to me. If you ever want any chance of going home you will get your quirk and your temper under control, do you understand me?”

Dingo’s head hadn’t moved since he’d slapped her. She just stared off into the distance, like she was contemplating something. When she finally looked back at him her face was carefully neutral. Even her eyes, usually so expressive despite her effort to hide, were blank.

“Perfectly.” She said it so calmly, as if he hadn’t threatened the one reason she’d agreed to be here in the first place. Did she not care about making it home anymore? Or did she perhaps know it was never going to happen? He needed to know what she was thinking, needed to control her actions after this point.

“Once the cameras are fixed, put her in solitary confinement for a week. And when you get out,” he glared at the stone faced girl, “you had best behave yourself.”

He expected her eyes to widen, for her to beg and cry and plead for mercy like Hawks had done as a child. Instead, she shrugged, as if it was of no great consequence to her. This was nothing like how her predecessor had acted. Then again, he had been much more compliant by this age and hadn’t needed to be placed in isolation.

Fudouyama guided her away with a hand clenched on her shoulder. He caught her wince at the pressure before he turned and led her towards the elevator. Ito had no doubt that he would punish the girl. In the meantime he had to call someone to get the cameras fixed.

Hawks didn’t even call ahead for a meeting. Aizawa just got a call midway through his class with the first years when the hero called him, frantic and only half-intelligible due to the wind whipping past the receiver. He was able to catch the words “Six minutes out,” but not much more before he hung up.

“Sir, who was that?” one of his students asked.

“No one important. Mic will be here in a few minutes. Don’t kill each other or break anything. Please excuse me.” He stepped out of the classroom, shooting a quick text to Mic before getting a call from Nezu.

“What’s going on?” he asked. He wasn’t in the mood to beat around the bush today. He was no closer to figuring out who took Hamasaki, and his only lead was the “Symbol of Evil,” which hadn’t turned up anything.

“It seems something has gone wrong with the extraction plan. Please meet me in the normal classroom.” Great. More bad news.

By the time he got there, seven minutes after he ended his call with the winged Hero, Hawks was pacing around the empty classroom with both hands fisted in his hair. He was only slightly more intelligible than he’d been on the phone.

“I don’t know what she thinks happened! And it happened so fast, I just- I couldn’t even say anything! She wouldn’t even look at me! What should I have done, can I even do anything? God, she hates me, and I don’t even-”

“Ah, Aizawa. Thank you for joining us,” Nezu said, sat on a desk with a cup of tea in his hand. Two more were set on another desk, still steaming a little.

“Principal Nezu,” he said with a nod. “Have you been able to make sense of what he’s been saying?”

“Not in the slightest. All I’ve been able to determine is that something has complicated the rescue plan.”

Hawks had at least stopped talking, but he was still pacing, running his hands through his hair and down his face. It was the most worried he’d ever seen the Hero.

“Hawks, take a seat,” he ordered, pulling two chairs from the back of the classroom closer to Nezu’s desk. The winged hero nodded, not seeming all the way there. Once he was seated, Aizawa pushed one of the cups into his hands. The younger hero nodded in thanks, almost robotic, and took a sip.

They sat like that for a few minutes, Hawks trying to collect himself and Aizawa and Nezu waiting for him. It took several minutes for him to calm down, but eventually he met their eyes.

“I’m sorry. That outburst was… less than fitting for a Hero, especially one of my standing.”

“It is quite alright, Hawks. We all get overwhelmed at times. The important thing is that, once we are thinking clearly, we can work to fix whatever caused us to lose control of ourselves.”

He was quiet again for a moment, a look almost like shame passing over his face for the briefest of moments before he schooled himself again. He looked like the Hero Aizawa had seen on the news; confident and in control. He wondered just how much of that was a lie.

“Dingo cut contact.”

The bottom dropped out of Aizawa’s stomach. They were, at most, a few weeks from being able to get her out. Choosing to cut contact now, especially with her distrust, meant that she’d essentially decided that she was fine not getting out. Which meant that either whoever was holding her had managed to successfully brainwash her, or something had happened that made her decide that going with the Heroes would be more likely to hurt her.

“Well, that is quite the problem,” Nezu chimed after a moment. “Do you know why?” Hawks’s expression didn’t change, keeping his face neutral as if he was doing no more than briefing a superior about what happened on patrol.

“She didn’t say specifically, though she did say something about a beating. All I know for certain is she thinks I did something to betray her, and now she wants nothing to do with me.”

“So what did you do?” Aizawa regretted the question as soon as it left his lips. The few words he’d managed to make out in Hawks’s hysteria made it clear that the Hero had no idea why she was angry.

“I don’t know. I wasn’t permitted to see her for a week and a half before this. I was able to look through her files and saw there was mention of an incident during routine quirk analysis the day before, but I had an interview at that time.”

“Does this mean the operation is off?” Nezu asked calmly.

“Absolutely not,” Hawks said almost as soon as the words left Nezu’s mouth. “I am not leaving her with Ito. I don’t care what happens, I’m moving ahead with the plan. You’ve seen what they’re putting her through, and it’s only going to get worse. If you want out, fine, I’ll-”

“Ito?” he cut in. “As in Ito Gansei, Vice President of the HPSC?” Hawks was still for a minute. Then, almost ashamed, he nodded slowly.

God, he was worse than some of his students.

“Explain. Now.”

Dingo had been in worse spots.

Okay, maybe she hadn’t. The closest she had to compare this to were the few times she’d had to spend some time in police custody before getting released. But at least there had usually been other people when that happened, and she’d only been in there for a few hours before getting released.

Solitary confinement in her quarters was completely different. Sure, she had the amenities she needed to survive, and they brought her food, but she had underestimated exactly how mind numbing it was to be entirely alone.

So she talked, endlessly and incessantly. Narrating what she was doing, having imaginary conversations with some of her people, her family, Bat and Nobody. When the lights went out, she’d crawl under the bed and talk to Pneumo.

She’d mouth her silent plans into the blue cloth. Weak points she’d noted in the building as she walked around. Areas where the cameras didn’t quite cover. Biases people held. Any advantage she had, and any possible disadvantage that crossed her mind.

It only took the first night for her to disable the cuffs. She didn’t need to break out of them, just prove that she could turn them off and on again as she pleased. That would be important to her plan.

By the next day she’d taken a pencil and one of the packs of sticky notes from her desk. 100 small little pages wasn’t a lot, but she had to make it work. She worked all day, hunched over the small pad, carefully sketching out lines and trying to get the images to look at least close to what she needed. All while droning on about different drawing techniques she’d heard about from her little sister.

She tried not to think too hard about her. She needed to stay focused.

By the end of her third day, she’d managed to complete her small flip book. It was far from a masterpiece, but that wasn’t the important part. It would take two nights to test it, but she was hopeful it would yield results. Besides, it wasn’t like she was strapped for time right now.

Before going to bed, she made certain to look at each image she’d painstakingly drawn on its own. She tested the quirk once she was under the bed for the night. Nothing happened. It was expected, but for safety she wouldn’t be able to know for certain that she’d succeeded until the next night.

She started work on another flipbook on the morning of her fourth day, this time chatting to the empty air about some of her favorite books. She desperately hoped whoever was listening to her analysis of minor background details in 1984 and how they could be seen in modern day America was ripping their hair out.

Before she went to bed, she watched her first flipbook, seeing how her work translated now that it was being properly used.

Hopefully this would work. After all, still images didn’t reliably get a quirk to manifest in her, but videos usually did. And videos were just compilations of dozens of pictures played one after another, what made them so different from a flipbook?

The lights turned themselves off, and she pulled her pillow off the bed and slipped underneath it, leaving Pneumo tucked into the slit she’d scratched into the mattress. If this worked, she didn’t want to risk losing the one good thing she had.

She turned the cuffs off again, leaving any possible quirk to do as it would. Slowly, hands shaking slightly, she reached for the wall next to her bed. She was careful to place only one finger on the wall at a time. Then she tried two. Then three.

Once she had all five fingers on the wall for barely a second, she pulled her hand away. Dust coated her fingertips, and in the dark she thought she could see the smallest bit of erosion on the wall.

She’d have to double check again in the morning, but if she was right then her plan had worked. She wouldn’t be at the mercy of whatever quirks they tested on her the day she escaped. She could make her own, take them with her, use them as she needed to get out.

If she could complete the other flipbook, which would prove to be more tricky, she would be home free. If she planned it right, she might be able to get out in a little over a week.

And wasn’t that some well needed good news?

Masterlist

[sirspazingtonthefourth]

People Call Me Dingo: Chapter 13

CW: Violence A/N: This chapter: The Power of Incredible Violence

It had been a while since she’d seen Hawks. Normally that wouldn’t be an issue, he visited every two or three days, but it felt like it had been longer than normal. Dingo couldn’t quite tell, it wasn’t like they let her see a calendar down here. It was probably another way to try and isolate her, keep her under their control. Even the most time-sensitive person on the planet would be time blind by now.

But she wasn’t too worried. He was working on getting her out. Apparently he was working with a couple other heroes to try and plan how to smuggle her out. It was stupid and risky, and it involved heroes she’d never met, but it was still probably her best shot at escape and she knew it. If Ito had decided they wouldn’t get to see each other again, that was fine.

He would get her out.

He’d promised.

Besides, she had Pneumo in the meantime. For as childish as it was, he was her only friend other than Hawks. She’d talk to the thing at night, mouthing her words into the soft fabric so she didn’t accidentally say something out loud. She’d tell it about her day, what injuries she’d obtained, what espionage tactics they’d tried to drill into her, if she’d managed to eat or shower.

It wasn’t the same as a person, but she didn’t have anything else. At least this way she was able to rebel. She was sharing information, talking to something that the Commission hadn’t approved of. And they couldn’t stop her because they didn’t know about it.

It was enough to make her smile as she was led into the training area. She saw the analysts chatting among themselves, holding clipboards and pens like always. She didn’t expect to see Hawks there too, standing off to the side and looking away from the door. Her smile widened, but she didn’t call to him. Fudouyama was right there, he wouldn’t take kindly to her friendly actions.

“Ah, good, she’s here. We can begin,” one of the analysts said, pulling out a recording device and drawing everyone’s attention to her. While she was used to the analysts studying her, Hawks’ gaze just felt… wrong. Empty in a way she couldn’t quite place yet.

“Experiment 1709,” one analyst spoke into the recorder. “Subject 09 is known to be able to mimic emitter and transformative quirks, but no mutation types have been tested yet. We will be testing if Subject 09 can mimic mutation quirks and their abilities using Subject 08’s quirk.”

“If you would please remove your quirk cancelling device,” the other said before turning to Hawks. “Now, Hawks, if you would please step forwards. Miss, you as well.”

With her collar off and in Fudouyama’s hands, she stepped closer to Hawks, a wariness to her steps. They were both in a ring painted on the floor, no more than a few feet apart. Hawks seemed so… detached. Like he wasn’t really seeing her.

Or like he was angry.

“Subject 08 will demonstrate their quirk in front of Subject 09.” Hawks spread his wings, blocking some of the lights from her view as he continued to stare down at her. She let one foot step back. What was he doing here? They’d never had him in her analysis sessions before, so why now? What was going on?

“No apparent reaction. Subject 08 will demonstrate secondary quirk characteristics to Subject 09.”

Feathers began to fall from his wings before stopping in midair. As she watched, they began to swirl around him. She could see how some would sharpen like knives before softening again. Some passed almost in front of her face as they did so, drawing her eyes to the bright colors.

She couldn’t call that a mistake.

If it were a mistake, she would have known better.

No, the mistake was trusting a hero.

Her back felt like it was breaking. It felt like her ribs were stabbing out of her skin, her muscles detaching themselves from where they clung to bone, her skin straining to keep it all inside. She screamed, pain making her legs weak and her head spin.

She writhed on the ground. After her initial scream her throat felt like it had closed. She couldn’t make a sound, save for her gasps of breath as something sprouted from her back.

It felt so… much. It felt like she could feel every thread on her clothes with whatever was on her back. Then, when the cloth broke, she could hear it in two places. Her ears, of course, but also from the new weight she carried between her shoulder blades.

Wings, she thought absently, feeling them flapping behind her as she rolled onto her stomach just to keep them from pressing into her back. Tears filled her eyes as she stared at the ground, a strange shadow that did not fit her cast on the white cement beneath her.

“Subject 0-” she screamed again, hands jumping to her ears. God, it was loud. It was so fucking loud, why was it so loud? Why could she feel everything? There was this pressure all around her, and it felt worse in the direction of the people around her. She could hear the buzzing of the lights above her, the hearts beating out of sync on this floor and the next.

It was too much. She squeezed her eyes shut, praying for the feeling to go away. But she could still hear the analyst, talking away into his recording device about the changes she was showing, how she was taking to the mutations. She could hear the other one scribbling something on their clipboard. Hear every rustle of cloth and feel it too.

It was all too much.

And then it was more.

Every feather shot off in different directions. On top of everything else she’d been able to feel and hear, now there was the sound of air whipping past her. Hundreds of cool breezes and soft touches as feathers ran into each other midair and continued on, all registering at once. There were shouts as everyone but the hero before her ducked and ran for cover.

And then a strike. And another. It was too long before she had the wherewithal to look and see where the rain of blows was coming from, too long to realize they were hitting her actual body and not the feathers spinning around the room in a flurry of red.

When she managed to get a block in, she saw the gloved hand and tan jacket. She saw the red wings of the hero she’d trusted, how could she have trusted him, towering over her.

Then more blows. She blocked some, but everything was overwhelming. She could hardly tell up from down, let alone where a blow was coming from. Her eyes said it was from above her, but her feathers, those thrice damned feathers that felt everything, said the blows were coming from behind her, from the left or the right, from beneath her.

Eventually she just curled up, waited it out. This she was used to, from all her years back home and her punishments from Fudouyama. This she could do.

When it all finally stopped she was exhausted. Her eyes wouldn’t open, but she could feel how her feathers were flitting to the floor now, all the energy she spent to send them flying gone. She could hear as Fudouyama stepped closer to her, and how the analysts spoke with the hero as the collar clicked back around her neck.

“Thank you for your help today, Hawks. Your efforts will help us better understand her quirk so we can assist her with it.” She could feel it as the hero nodded. She could hear it as he walked out.

Ito had kept him away for a week and a half. Something like that was never a good sign, but there wasn’t much Hawks could do about it. So he waited, planning the rescue mission with Nezu and Eraserhead. He’d managed to keep Eraser from finding out they were literally stealing Dingo from the Commission itself, but Nezu was pushing him to tell the older hero.

“After all, he will be better able to help you if he knows who we’re up against.”

Hawks knew there was merit to that statement, but how was he supposed to tell another hero that? He couldn’t just walk up and say “By the way, the entity that we’re taking this child from is the same one that licenses and pays you and makes sure everybody in Japan stays safe.”

Yeah, that would go over great.

At least he was finally getting to see Dingo again. He was getting antsy. Maybe Fudouyama had gone too far and she’d had to undergo surgery or something to ensure she survived? Or what if they’d found out about her undermining her own intelligence and had placed her in solitary confinement?

The what if’s spiraled in his head as he walked toward her door. Her warden stood outside as always, hands clasped in front and staring straight ahead. Hawks knew better than to try and make small talk with him. If he was still as ruthless as when Hawks had been going through, he didn’t want to find out what the man would do in retaliation.

The door opened and he stepped into the sterile room. Dingo was in her normal spot at the head of the bed, feet grazing the floor as she looked at her hands. She looked empty. Broken.

The door closed, and he did his usual maneuver of flipping off the cameras. No response. She didn’t even glance at him, let alone check the cameras herself. He rechecked them out of anxiety when she didn’t move. Maybe it was a signal of some kind?

But the cameras were indeed off. The bugs weren’t, he could hear how they buzzed a little with his feathers. He should still be able to talk to her though.

“Hey there kid. Everything alright?”

She didn’t move. God, it was like that first day all over again, except this time she wasn’t watching him.

“Hey, what’s up? It’s been a while since you were this quiet.” He took a step closer and watched her tense, so she was aware of her surroundings at least. He crouched down a few feet away, hoping to make eye contact. Instead, he saw her squeeze her eyes shut like she’d just been looking at something too bright.

“Hey, talk to me. What’s wrong?” That got a laugh. It was short and cruel, and she turned to face him with her eyes closed.

“What’s wrong? What’s fucking wrong?” She stood from her bed, and he did the same. He watched her head twitch toward him, locking onto the sound of rustling clothes. She was still wearing her collar, she wasn’t a threat to him like this.

So why did the snarl on her face make him so afraid.

“You know, you have some fucking nerve to waltz in here and ask me what’s wrong after what you did.” What he did? He hadn’t been to the Commission in a while, but he didn’t think that’d be enough to make her turn on him like this, to make her so upset that she was refusing to look at him.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here, but-”

“Oh, don’t play that. What, you think I’m too stupid to realize who it is beating me to unconsciousness when there’s quirk cancelling tech three fucking feet behind me?!” She was advancing on him, angling him so his back was to the door.

“I- I don’t- What happened?”

“You,” she snarled out, jabbing a finger into his chest. He backed up, trying to get some space so he could understand what was going on, but she kept advancing, pushing him towards the door as she kept talking.

“You happened. And I don’t give a damn what excuse you want to try and come up with. You can take it and shove it up your ass along with every other lie you’ve ever told me, you backstabbing son of a bitch!”

By now he was back up against the door, and Dingo was leaning up into his face. Her teeth were bared and even without being able to see her eyes he could feel the utter hatred burning behind them.

��I don’t unders- what happened, what did I do?”

“You know what you did. I can’t believe I was ever stupid enough to trust you.” Her voice cracked as she said it. He could hear how hurt she was. Whatever had happened, whatever she thought he’d done, it was bad. Bad enough that she was holding back tears behind her closed eyes.

She reached for the door and knocked three times. The door opened, and she shoved him out, the momentary crack in her voice replaced with cold steel.

“Stay gone.”

And then she hit the switch on the wall and the door slammed shut in his face.

What the hell had just happened?

With the hero gone she could finally open her eyes. There was no more risk of seeing his quirk. Sure, she had the collar on, but she knew quirks stuck around, usually for around a day.

She didn’t want to go through having his wings again.

And the audacity. To walk in and act like he hadn’t done a single fucking thing wrong. She thought he was smarter than that. She’d thought he knew she was smarter than that.

Guess you thought wrong.

And he’d sounded so damn confused, like she couldn’t have possibly remembered it all. It made her furious. How dare he use her like that, earn her trust to get information and then turn on her like that? It was sickening behavior, fitting of a hero.

She’d known what he was. She had no one to blame but herself for this.

And that pissed her off more than anything.

She stormed over to the desk. Nothing in here was hers, but that wasn’t about to stop her. What did she care if the Commission had to pay to fix a few things? Knowing them, they wouldn’t. Not for a worthless, stupid qul like her.

She picked up the chair and, with a shout, smashed it to the ground. It didn’t break the first time, so she swung it again. And again. And again, until it broke.

She swiped everything off the desk, sending unused pencils and notepads to the floor. She grabbed it and lifted it just enough to pull it away from the wall. Then she flipped it over.

She pulled down the partition separating her toilet from the rest of the room. She threw her pillow to the far side of the room. She yanked the digital clock out of the wall, then ripped the wires of the other two cameras. She tore out her dresser’s drawers, then toppled it over.

She ripped her sheets from the bed, heedless to when they caught on the support bars, tearing the fabric. She pulled her mattress off her bed, and reached for the one thing the hero had given her, the thing that had blinded her to the threat he posed.

And she grabbed it.

And she stared at it.

And she wept into it.

Masterlist

[sirspazingtonthefourth]

People Calle Me Dingo: Chapter 12

CW: Cursing

There were days Aizawa really wanted to throttle Nezu. He was not only working on training a new, young, and frighteningly intelligent vigilante during his patrols, he also had to work with the Number 3 Hero, who seemed to be holding back a lot of details, to try and free a child who was essentially legally kidnapped.

Oh, and he still had to teach a class of twenty reckless teens who wanted to become heroes.

He needed another cup of coffee.

He was looking at the files Hawks had managed to get a hold of, trying to piece together what exactly he could do to help the kid. Unfortunately, large swaths of the text were redacted. He could piece together that the kid was being held while a team worked to reverse some kind of experiment, that said team had found that the experiment couldn’t be reversed, and that whoever this kid was being held by was refusing to let them go home because of it.

There were a few other bits and pieces he picked up as he looked over the documents. Harsh training regimens, a record of “disciplinary actions” that made him want to punch the hero in front of him for not just removing the kid, subtlety be damned.

He managed to find what looked almost like a class list, featuring such common topics as espionage, advanced codebreaking, interrogation tactics, and villain profiling. Covert surveillance, which should have been covered under espionage, was its own class. The only normal thing he could see was “ethics of heroism,” and he was certain whoever was teaching that subject would have a much different view than his own about what was ethical.

She seemed to do well in the classes, especially once the disciplinary actions began increasing. If Aizawa had to guess, based on the jump in her performance, she was intentionally holding herself back for the two and a half months she’d been being held.

“Tell me again why we aren’t planning a full-scale raid on wherever this place is?” he asked Hawks, seated across the desk from him.

“That would have to get approval from the HPSC, and the people holding her have enough power to keep that from happening. Not to mention a raid would probably make her uncooperative. She’s shown a pretty strong distrust for heroes.”

Aizawa could tell, without a doubt in his mind, that the other hero was hiding something. He was a lot better at hiding the way his eyes shifted around the room, how his shoulders tensed and his wings twitched, than some of the criminals Aizawa interrogated on the regular. But the winged hero was holding back something important.

Probably many somethings, now that he thought about it. Not least of which was the girl’s name.

“Fine. We can’t raid the place. How are you expecting to get her out?” Hawks shifted in his seat, and Aizawa was reminded that, despite rising so quickly through the ranks of heroes, he was still just 23, nearly a decade his junior.

“Maybe there’s a way to get a legal team involved?”

“If they’re as powerful as you say they are, nothing’s going to stick.”

��They wouldn’t risk a legal battle like this if it was public. They’re more likely to hand her over. Probably with heavy restrictions, but it would keep them from getting negative press while getting her away from them.”

“Or they could find a way to keep it quiet. Worse, they might be able to make it look like she never existed, and then it doesn’t matter how good a case you were able to build. Is it possible to break her out discreetly and then press charges?”

That made the younger hero pause. He leaned forward in his chair, elbows on his knees and hands steepling to cover his mouth.

“It would be… risky is an understatement, but it might be possible. It’d take a while to get everything planned out, and I’d have to go over it with her so she-”

“You have contact with the victim?” He was trying to keep his voice even, he really was. It wasn’t his fault that that was his “disappointed teacher” voice. “Why didn’t you mention that part sooner?”

“Like I said, the people holding her have a lot of sway. If they find out I leaked this to you… I don’t want to find out what they’d do to me. If things go wrong and they find out who was involved-”

“I’m a hero too, Hawks,” Aizawa cut in. “I think I can handle myself. Now, how long have you had contact with them?”

Hawks stared back at him, and he could practically see the gears turning in his head as he weighed his options. Eventually, the feathered hero landed on trusting him.

“Twice a week for most of the last two months. They’ve been scheduled, the people holding her are trying to use the visits as a way to make her more complacent. She’s holding out alright. She’s actually the one who provided most of that,” he said, gesturing to the files in Aizawa’s hands.

“Has it been working?” The winged hero chuckled in response.

“Not by a long shot. I’m not entirely sure when she figured it out, but she was among the first to know what happened to her wasn’t getting reversed. She wasn’t exactly happy when they decided not to tell her about it. I doubt there was anything I could have done to make her work with them given her distrust of me.”

“But you’ve managed to build up a rapport with her?” Hawks sat a little bit straighter and ran a hand through his hair.

“By some miracle. I don’t really know how, but we’re actually friendly. I thought I messed it up a couple weeks ago, but-”

“How?” The kid might be playing Hawks. If he’d screwed it up bad enough, she might be planning something. It was unlikely, considering it seemed like she wasn’t able to do much, but it wasn’t impossible. She’d proven she was good at hiding her intentions, at playing people to her advantage, at least to a degree. If Hawks had messed up, it could be bad news in the long run.

“I kinda… I might have gotten her a… look, the room they have her in is really bland and she’d been isolated except for me and a few other people, so I thought it-”

“Hawks. What, exactly, did you get her?”

“It was a plush, okay? It was this stupid looking set of lungs.” That was… not what Aizawa was expecting. A radio, maybe. A signed picture, more likely. But plushie lungs?

“Why?”

“She said she liked medicine. It was the only thing I knew about her for certain.”

“And I take it she didn’t like them.”

“Actually, she did. I thought she didn’t, since she just stared at it for a while before chucking it under the bed. But the next time I visited she seemed excited. Told me out of the blue that she’d left it under the bed so no one found it. She even named the damn thing,” Hawks said with a chuckle, looking anywhere but Aizawa.

“Compared to when we first met, she’s basically an open book. I don’t know a lot of details, but I know she’s got a family and some really close friends back home. Even has a partner, but I think she’s making up their name. She worked at a hospital as a CNA and volunteered at a community center in her town pretty regularly.”

“So you two speak openly?” The younger hero shrugged, moving his hand side to side in a so-so motion.

“She’s still cagey about a lot of things, but she’s open enough to give more than bare-bones answers when I ask for info.” He sounded proud of it, and from what Aizawa knew he should be. Especially given the girl’s seeming distrust of heroes in general.

“Okay. If we can get a plan together, do you think you could get her to follow it?”

“Probably. Scratch that, definitely. She wants out, and she was desperate enough to lend me a little trust. She’ll jump on an opportunity like this.”

“Fine. Give me a list of possible risks and I can pass it on to Nezu. We’ll all meet in a few days to start discussing how we’re going to play this.”

Ito was no stranger to playing the long game. He’d gotten his hands on the Commission’s best weapon 14 years before he’d debuted as Hawks. He had just barely become the Vice President the year prior, and he’d made a masterful play that kept him in that position far longer than his predecessors.

But this… he couldn’t afford to take the same kind of time with Dingo. Not if he wanted to be able to get her to agree to stay. He knew his time was running out, and the President was pressuring him to get a contract put together for her so she would be bound to them indefinitely.

The problem was that the girl was stubborn. She might not be the sharpest knife in the block, but she was smart for a yowaime. Smart enough to know that something was wrong, and smart enough to be cautious.

As much as Hawk’s involvement had been of great help, it was becoming a burden. She had become more compliant initially, once she had opened up to the winged hero. Now, however, she was becoming stubborn again. Removing Hawks would, hopefully, be enough that he could regain some control over the girl.

He would probably be able to leverage seeing the hero against her, a bait and switch so she’d listen better to her instructors. He might even be able to use the same move against Hawks. The hero seemed to be rather attached to her, a mistake he should have learned not to make by this point.

Once the two were severed, it should be easy enough to continue molding Dingo into another great weapon for the Commission.

He’d have to rebrand her, of course. A name like “Dingo” was almost as bad as the name “Takami.” It’d have to be short, something easy to shout if someone needed help. While names didn’t have much weight in a hero’s popularity, most top ten Pro’s had shorter names, or names that could easily be shortened.

He’d probably tie it in with her quirk, too, once they figured out its limits. He should make sure that happened sooner rather than later.

Masterlist

[sirspazingtonthefourth]

People Call Me Dingo: Chapter 11

CW: Violence, Injury

Meetings with the hero were becoming a highlight to her days. A break from poking and prodding, getting information drilled into her, hiding in a crowd of Commission henchmen, and what passed as combat training. There was very little instruction involved, they just threw her into an arena and told her to defeat an opponent. She only made it out alright because of her prior training.

The conversations were a welcome bit of socialization. She did her best to keep her guard up, only say what needed to be said, but it was more difficult to maintain when the hero was being so forthcoming.

It almost made her want to be friends.

That thought distracted her, costing her a blow to her side. She moved with it, softening the blow only slightly as she grabbed hold of her opponent’s arm. She pulled him over her shoulder, sending him to the ground before backing away again. She was already more than bruised enough for her liking.

“Stop.” Fudouyama entered the arena, glaring daggers at her. “Why aren’t you pressing the attack?”

“Because then I can’t run. Besides, he’s already down,” she explained in the quietest voice possible. They’d been pushing her to keep the fight going since she’d started the training. It was causing friction, particularly with Fudouyama.

“Heroes don’t run. They prevent villains from harming civilians, and that means finishing the fights.”

“But I’m not a hero!”

“Certainly not yet.” Fudouyama gestured, and her previous opponent walked towards the exit.

“What’re you-” She got the block up, but he had enhanced strength. It didn’t matter how good her block was, he could push through it. The punch to the face was enough to send her sprawling. It was followed quickly by a kick to her side that flipped her onto her back.

“You will learn to finish what you start. That is the only way for a hero to succeed.”

She was shoved into her quarters with little care for her still broken arm and bruised… well, everywhere. She stumbled some, but righted herself in time to keep upright.

Fudouyama was getting increasingly eager to “correct her mistakes.” Not using her quirk enough, answering slowly or incorrectly, any small infraction was grounds for a beating. The only reason she kept acting out was because she knew that they wanted her alive.

If this truly was the same program Ha- the hero had gone through, then they were trying to mold her into the perfect hero. Maybe to replace him, maybe not, it didn’t really matter. She didn’t want to, so she wasn’t going to.

At least, she hoped not. The Commission, apparently, had a pretty good track record of breaking people.

The bedframe creaked as she slowly sat down, holding her breath to keep the hiss of pain from reaching the bugs placed around the room. Never let them see you cry. Never let them see you break.

Her head hit the pillow, the bed creaking even more as she shifted to try and get as close to comfortable as possible in her state. Her eyes were heavy, and she was too exhausted to fight it as they closed. Who knew when she’d have a few minutes to sleep again.

The door slid open as soon as her eyes fell shut. It took every ounce of self control she had not to curse out whoever decided to walk in right fucking then. She decided to just keep her eyes closed. Maybe they’d go away. They wouldn’t, obviously, but a girl could hope for small mercies, right? The door slid shut, and whoever it was made no move to come towards her.

“Fuck the Commission.” Great. It was the hero. Which meant she actually had to get up and talk and-

“What did you say?” She clamped her jaw shut, and she would have covered her mouth too if it wouldn’t have hurt too much.

“I said, ‘Fuck. The. Commission.’” Slowly she opened her eyes, sending a glare towards the smug face looking at her from the door. It didn’t take long to notice him flipping off the camera in the clock, his chosen method to prove that the cameras were off even if he knew she was going to double check them anyway.

“Your turn. It’s honestly really cathartic, especially since they’d normally be able to hear it.” Oh, that was tempting. Scratch that, this was an irresistible opportunity.

“You got them to turn the bugs off?”

“Just while I’m here, yeah. I’ve managed to convince them that you don’t quite know you’re being watched, but that you can tell something’s up. It makes you skittish enough that you won’t-”

“Vice President Ito Gansei can suck a score of dicks,” she said in a deadpan. “You weren’t kidding, that’s almost unreasonably cathartic. I should think of one for the warden.”

“Speaking of, is he the one that did all that?” the hero asked as he sat in his usual spot at the desk. Dingo didn’t have it in her to sit up and maintain eye contact. Fudouyama would have had a field day with her “disrespectful behavior.”

Then again, he already had.

“Nah. Some of it was the floor, and one of the walls joined in for shits and giggles.” The hero was silent, and she could almost hear his pity. She had to tell herself it made her blood boil as much as it always did.

“If I had to guess, they’re trying to make it clear I’m a prisoner here. But, of course, I’m a dumb little qully who couldn’t find her way out of a paper bag, so they’re trying to spell it out for me. Am I close?”

More silence.

Then…

“Ito wants to start pushing you harder. He thinks the training wasn’t working because he was being too soft on you. He’s given specific orders to your warden to use as much force as he feels necessary to… educate you, were the words he used.”

“Close enough. Ten points to me.”

“You’re keeping points now?”

“If that’s what it fucking takes.”

She didn’t mean to sound so tired. But damn it all, she wanted out already. This place was trying to kill her and animate her corpse to do it’s bidding like some fucked up corporate necromancer, and it was working. Slowly, but a slow death is death all the same.

The hero was silent again, and her words hung in the air for a good minute or two. She was debating closing her eyes again when he finally spoke.

“I got you something.” That was certainly not what she had expected him to break the silence with. It was enough that she started sitting up, only to regret it as she jostled her broken arm. She couldn’t hide the hiss this time, squeezing her eyes shut from the pain as the hero used the feathers of his wings to try and offer her support as she rose.

It felt odd, not wanting to snap at him for daring to help. She was probably just tired. Yeah, that would fit with the rest of the day.

“You okay now?” he asked once she’d been sitting upright and staring at her knees for a few moments. She swallowed the lump in her throat and nodded.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m… I’m good. I think.”

“Okay. Well, like I said, I got you something.” She looked up to see the hero reaching into his jacket. “I know it isn’t much, especially considering everything you’re going through. But you said you wanted to study medicine so I figured you must enjoy it and I… just… here.”

He tossed something onto the bed next to her, and she almost got a headache from the color.

It wasn’t a bright color, or even an unpleasant one. But everything down here was shades of white or gray or black. The soft, stuffed toy, shaped almost like an overly large x-box controller with a little nub at the top, was blue.

She started searching it for bugs. More out of habit than anything else, really. The last time she’d seen blue had been on the TV screen in the hospital after escaping the Villain Factory. If something happened, if this thing was bugged or found, she needed to remember what blue looked like.

But it wasn’t bugged. At least, not that she could tell. She flipped it over and felt the bottom drop out of her stomach.

There was pink fabric sewn onto the blue plush in the shape of two very crude, very cartoony lungs. It was off centered from the nub, which on closer inspection had a ring of pink on top to represent the trachea. There was a space in the center of the pink lungs where the blue branched out, representing the bronchi and bronchial tubes.

To top it all off, there was a face sewn in too. Just two little different sized black dots for eyes, and a black wedge that could have been a smile or a grimace.

It was cartoony. It was stupid. It was childish.

It was normal.

“I didn’t have much to go on, but I figured it’s better than nothing, right?” He was being sincere, and for once she didn’t have it in her to second guess why. She just stared at the plush in her hands.

“It’s…” She shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut to stop the way they stung. “Thank you. But we have other things to discuss, now.” She tossed the lungs under the bed, holding back the part of her that felt bad looking at how Hawks deflated. But when the cameras came back on she couldn’t let them see it.

“Right, of course.”

It was a few hours after Hawks had left that Fudouyama finally took her to get healed. He kept a grip on the bicep of her broken arm the whole way there, and she had to try not to cry from the way he squeezed it to steer her.

Once she was healed he took her back to the sparring arena to face the same opponent she’d let go earlier. This time, she didn’t hesitate, pushing her advantage until her opponent was lying on the ground unconscious.

It made her stomach turn when she heard Fudouyama telling her she had “done an acceptable job.”

He took her back to her room. It was after curfew, and the lights in her quarters were already off. She went to crawl into the bed, only to stop as she reached to pull back the sheet. Instead, she grabbed the pillow, crawling under the bed and grabbing the plush.

She set the pillow down on the cold, hard ground and laid her head on it, back to the rest of the room. There in the dark, stomach still rolling at what she’d done, she looked at the plush again. She could just make out the pink in the darkness, the blue and black fading into the shadows under the bed.

It needs a name, some part of her, the young girl that still haunted her sometimes, thought. The one that named every toy she had, the one that had wanted to believe in heroes, back before she’d learned what they did when they thought they could get away with it.

The part of her that drove her to make the world better for other little quirkless girls who just wanted to hope, no matter what she had to do.

That part looked at the plush in the dark and, finally, let the tears fall. With barely any insight into who she was, Hawks had tried. He had tried to give her something so that she wouldn’t be alone, trapped in a sterile white room that offered no comfort or safety. It was more than any hero had done for her in a while, maybe even ever.

She wiped her eyes, she really was being childish about all this. She should just name the stupid thing already so she could get some sleep. The thought of getting to hold the soft pair of “lungs” almost brought her right back to tears.

“Pneumo.”

It was a cheap name, easy to come up with and not at all meaningful. It was just another word for “lung,” for goodness sake, it’s not like she was christening a child. But the name still felt heavy as she mouthed it to the lump of felt and stuffing.

Masterlist

[sirspazingtonthefourth]

People Call Me Dingo: Chapter 10

CW: Cursing (just the once)

The quirk was difficult to control, especially since it was based on her perception. Walking down the hall? Congratulations! She randomly got access to three new quirks from the people she walked past.

The analysts decided the best solution was a quirk cancelling device. She would be given the code, of course, so that when it came time to work with her quirk she could remove it herself. They wouldn’t want to restrict the autonomy they were trying to convince her she still had. After all, they weren’t controlling every moment of her day. She could still use the bathroom without them being in the stall with her.

So the hero walking into her dorm and flipping off the secret camera was certainly enough to pique her interest.

To his credit, he had the wherewithal to wait until the door closed, greeting her with a quick, “Hey, kid.” She glanced at the other two cameras, and the hero promptly flipped them off too. For whatever reason, the cameras watching her were off.

She uncurled as the hero sat in the desk chair across her quarters, sitting straight and situating herself so she could dodge if she needed to. Just because he was across the room didn’t mean she could afford to let her guard down.

“I wanted to make sure you were doing okay after last time. I didn’t mean to freak you out so bad.” She didn’t move. Stay silent, don’t give anything away. She wouldn’t repeat her mistake. It didn’t matter what the hero said, she wasn’t going to-

“Can you read lips?” he mouthed to her. She narrowed her eyes at him, debating. Was this why the cameras were off? Did he want to talk to her without anyone knowing? Or were they on, and he was banking on her not knowing how to tell otherwise?

She double checked the cameras, looking for the telltale blinking in the clock specifically.

Nothing.

She nodded to the hero. He smiled back, opening his mouth again.

“Good to know. I really am sorry. I didn’t think you’d react that strongly. If you don’t mind me asking, why were you so scared?”

“Don’t answer that.” She rolled her eyes at the hero. As if she was going to answer such a blatantly invasive question. He held up his hands in surrender. “Just making sure. I know you don’t want to give anything away.”

“Sorry. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. Anyway, how have you been? I heard you’re doing pretty well with the cryptology work they’ve been giving you.”

“Suspiciously well.” That was true, which meant he had access to whatever files they were keeping on her. And yeah, maybe she was a little too good at the codebreaking they had her working on, but she couldn’t help that the codes were weak.

“Mind your own business.” The hero’s brows rose and she kept glaring back. Much as she hated to do it, he had gotten the cameras turned off for a reason. She needed to know why.

To the hero’s credit he got himself back under control rather quickly. He went back to the relaxed look he usually wore, the kind that hid just how much he saw. She knew it well. She was wearing one of her own.

“Still shy, huh? No problem Miss Chirpy, I’ll just keep filling the silence enough for both of us.” God, that one was truly awful. He knew it from the smirk he sent her way. “Not a fan of that one, huh? Fine, I’ll think of something else.”

“Why are the cameras off?” The hero leaned forward in the seat, elbows on knees. It reminded her of how Bat and Nobody sat when they got serious in Mario Kart.

“You know, nothing’s really been happening recently. I keep getting bored on patrol cause none of the villains can keep up.”

“I needed to talk to you. You wouldn’t open up while you were being watched.”

“And why should I trust you?”

“Not that I’m really complaining. Sure, it’d be nice to have something to do, but fewer villains means people are safer, right?”

“I can get you out of here.” That caught her attention. Freedom would be… nice was too small a word. Maybe wonderful would fit better?

“What do you know?”

“It’s just that it’d be nice to do something challenging, y’know?”

“He has no intention of releasing you. He wants to make you a weapon, like he did to me.” Was that the goal? Keep her here indefinitely, train her to be… what? A perfect hero? Fat chance.

“On the bright side, there’s a couple UA kids I’ve got my eye on for internships.”

“What kind of weapon?” He grimaced, but didn’t look away.

“Assassin. Some espionage too, but I’m what they use to get rid of heroes they don’t like. You’d probably be replacing me in a few years.” She was thankful for the sheets under her palms. Without them, her nails would have cut into her palms.

“How long did they train you?”

“Those kids have been working hard to get to the top. And I might have a bias for the bird ones, but they really do have the skills to make it.”

“Since I was six. I didn’t know what the contract I was signing meant.” To say her blood went cold would be an understatement. Six? He was six when this all started for him?

Oh, she wasn’t just going to escape. She was going to burn this place to the ground and use the ashes to make a truly shitty sandcastle. It didn’t matter that this was a hero, they took advantage of a child.

“You okay? I know you’re normally quiet, but you’ve got a weird look in your eye.” She snapped back to reality, surprised at the grin that had spread across her face. She looked the hero dead in the eyes.

“You said you can get me out?” He nodded. “What do you want in exchange?”

“Answer my questions. You don’t have to do it out loud, you don’t have to let them know. But I can’t get you out if you won’t work with me.”

It was reasonable, and far less suspicious than, “You don’t owe me anything, I’m doing this from the goodness of my heart!” It was still a risk, but it was better than sitting around waiting for something to happen that she could take advantage of.

She stuck her hand out.

“I’m okay. Thanks for asking.”

The hero shook her hand, a solemn nod passing between them. She was going to get out of here. And when she did, she was going to make Ito regret ever meeting her.

Hawks was worried, going into that meeting. For one, he didn’t know if Dingo would hold a grudge for setting her off like that. For another, he wasn’t sure how the camera trick would work out. Convincing the security team to turn them off for his meeting had been easy enough, but Ito might get pissed if he checked and found no footage for the meeting.

But the ploy had worked. He’d gotten to actually talk with her, let her know his intentions. She was still suspicious, it wasn’t hard to tell. She’d seemed to shapeshift once she knew she wasn’t being watched. He’d have thought it was a quirk, if not for the blinking, quirk-cancelling collar on her neck.

Letting her know his own story, or part of it, was a gamble. The look of horror on her face had been a good sign, until it had morphed into sadistic glee. The way her lip had curled made her look almost feral, like her namesake.

Ultimately it had worked. She agreed to give him information, and he planned to use it. It wasn’t hard to pick up a burner phone, one that the Commission wouldn’t be tracking. He knew all their tricks, but they didn’t quite know all of his.

With a clean phone he punched in a number that had been on the internship requests. The current askers had already interned with him a few times, and were gunning for sidekick positions. He was fine with that, especially since it gave him an excuse to have the phone number he needed.

“Hello?”

“Principal Nezu, this is Hawks.”

“Ah, what a pleasant surprise. To what do I owe the honor?”

“I’ve got someone, a kid. They have a connection to the Villain Factory. I need some help getting them away from the Commission.”

Masterlist

[sirspazingtonthefourth]

People Call Me Dingo: Chapter 9

CW: Panic Attack, Character Death, Cursing A/N: I mean that character death warning, and it's kind of dark. Not Dead Dove territory, but still. Please don't read this if you don't think you'll be able to deal with that

It wasn’t like she lied to Ito. She just didn’t try as hard as she could have.

Every few days she sat on the bed, knees to her chest, and watched as the Number 3 Hero Hawks would waltz into her quarters, try and get a response from her, and leave. They started upping the visits, so he’d visit her twice a week, she thought. Every so often she’d move like she was going to respond, open her mouth like she had finally worked up the courage to say something, before shutting it and burying her head in her knees.

She could tell it was pissing people off, not least of which being the hero though she suspected Ito was even more frustrated. And really it was the only entertainment she had, seeing how worked up she could get the hero by simply remaining silent. It wasn’t like it was directly hurting her, so she’d keep it up until she found a way out.

She thought it had been a month of the hero visiting, trying on various nicknames, poking fun at himself and, occasionally, at her, doing whatever he could to get a reaction. Today was no different, it shouldn’t have been any different.

But she hadn’t been sleeping well because Fudouyama would wake her up in the middle of the night for quirk analysis. And she’d barely been eating because they’d stopped letting her go to meals when they were being served. And she hadn’t showered for the same reasons, so she felt gross and tired and hungry and miserable.

She thought she was handling it. She knew the hero had caught the way her stomach growled and her ratty hair. But what did she care? He was a hero. Let him flop onto the foot of her bed and keep talking to no one for all she cared. Let him judge her. She didn’t care, she refused to.

He glanced at her from where he was laying, in what had to be an extremely uncomfortable position for his back, his wings, his knees, and why did she care? He sighed and looked back at the ceiling, arms folding behind his head.

“You know, for how much we talk, I hardly know anything about you,” he said, and she caught the way he smirked at his own little joke. And besides, she was bored. Maybe she could just answer his questions in her own head.

“It can’t all be about me, here. What do you do in your spare time?” Work, mostly, though what qualified as work was pretty diverse. There was the single shift she could cover in the ER, working the welcome desk at the Community Center, organizing classes and events and relief work, organizing and assigning tasks to her ops. Wait, if she was working did it count as free time?

“What are your interests?” Self-defense, languages, and codebreaking. She’d been the one to design and implement the newest codes the Network had been using, and she was damn proud of it too. It had earned her her Second Name, after all.

“What do you want to study, and why?” Well, if she had to choose it’d be-

“Medicine. I’m already a CNA, so-” She slapped a hand over her mouth. She hadn’t meant to say that, even if it was just a whisper. Heaven and hell, why had she said that?! She knew, she knew he was a hero! And what did heroes do to people like her? God, she was an idiot.

It didn’t matter that he was still around despite her silence, he was being ordered to be there! Their interactions, the time he spent in this stupid room with her, none of it meant anything!!!

So why had she let him fool her?

Hawks knew he shouldn’t have been on cloud nine. But damn it all, she had finally responded. It was small, only a word and a word she seemed to regret at that. But it was something, right?

Dingo, on the other hand, had seized up. The smack of her hand over her mouth, the way her eyes widened as she stared at him, looked a lot less like the stoic teen who’d been sitting in this room hiding just how smart they were.

It looked a lot more like a terrified kid.

One who was waiting to get hit, or worse.

“Medicine, huh?” Her stomach growled again as she stared him down. Her heart was beating too fast, and she was doing her best to hide her tremors.

“Not a bad thing to study. Bet it comes in real handy.” Her heart sped up. He looked at the opposite wall, sitting back up and relieving his back and wings a little. Maybe it would be better if he wasn’t looking at her while he talked.

“I know some basic first aid, enough to get me through after villain fights and helping injured civilians. Kinda wish I knew more though.”

Her heartbeat wasn’t slowing down. Every word out of his mouth seemed to make it go faster. He could hear how she was hauling for breath behind her hand, feel in the air currents how she was curling in tighter, and a glance over showed her that her eyes weren’t focused on anything.

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!

“Woah, hey, kid. I need you to look at me. Can you do that?” He was standing now, moving closer. She needed something to ground her, something to remind her that she was safe. He was a Hero, after all. Whatever it was that scared her so bad he could protect her.

He rested a hand on her shoulder. Just to remind her where she was. To try and calm her down.

He didn’t expect her to lash out.

An arm swatted his own from her shoulder and a foot hit him square in the solar plexus. He’d forgotten how awful that felt. He hadn’t braced for it, either, and it knocked him a few steps back as he tried to catch his breath.

By the time he was able to look up Dingo had listed sideways. She was curled in on herself, fingers locking behind her head to cover the back of her neck, her ears covered by her forearms, and her face and stomach protected behind her knees.

All he’d done was touch her shoulder.

“Kid, I need… I need you to listen to me, okay? You’re safe. No one’s going to hurt you. It’s alright.” She wasn’t responding to him, but it was all he could really do. He just kept talking to her, staying where he was on the floor as she curled up and heaved in half breaths and choked on her tightening throat.

“I’m heading down to the docks later tonight. I’m supposed to meet Strings there, get some info on the new governor.”

What she wouldn’t give to take back those words.

It had been her fault. Her stupid loose lips that caused Strings, that caused Nathan, to die that night. Her and her big mouth and the one hero they thought they could trust.

He was almost out. He’d been accepted to a local college. He was going to use the Network to get a couple scholarships and connections and call it quits, like everyone else did.

“I’m heading down to the docks later tonight.”

She couldn’t have run. Running would have gotten her spotted. Instead she’d watched, just watched, as the hero had beaten Strings bloody. Had kept going. Demanded to know what Strings had told her while she hid behind some crates and just watched.

They’d dredged up the body a few days later, called it gang violence. Rapids, the one whose hands had beaten Strings bloody, who’d kept punching even after he stopped flinching, who’d tossed his body into the river, stood in front of the press and vowed to find the monster who’d killed the 17 year old. Said he was appalled that such a thing had happened somewhere near his patrol route.

The Network, no, she had got him. Destroyed his reputation, his livelihood, anything he had to his name. He’d been stripped of his hero license, publicly denounced, gotten dozens of marks on his once sparkling record, but not for murder. No, the courts “couldn’t prove” that particular charge.

Dingo had offered to take the stand. She was the sole witness, after all. Not that they’d believe her, not when it was her word against a hero’s. But people other than Nathan’s family deserved to know what happened to him.

“I’m heading down to the docks.”

Even if only the Network knew it was all her fault.

Gradually she came too. The repeated assurances from the hero, to her disgust, helped guide her back. At least he’d stayed a few feet away from her.

She wanted nothing more than to curl up and go to sleep. She didn’t know how long she’d been stuck panicking, but it had to have been a while. Her throat felt dry and her face felt wet and sticky with tears and snot and her arms and hands ached from holding them over her neck like she’d been taught.

“Welcome back.” She was thankful for the way her hair draped over her face, hiding her glare from the cameras. Though not from the hero, it seemed. He looked away, rubbing the back of his neck.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you so bad. I just thought-” he caught her eyes again, and she knew she hadn’t held the glare. Instead of the shameful look he’d had before, now he just looked like he was pitying her.

“I guess it doesn’t matter what I thought.”

They sat in silence for a moment, just watching each other. She refused to break the silence, not again.

Eventually he stood, joints popping as he stood and stretched.

“Get some rest kid.” Three knocks on the door and he was let out.

Dingo didn’t bother to check the time. She didn’t want to know. If she wasn’t getting dragged out right this second, she was going to try and sleep. The sheet on her bed wasn’t much, but it still covered her, kept her from being seen by the cameras or Fudouyama.

She didn’t want them to see her like this, not while she was fully conscious. She didn’t want them to know how small she really was, how small she’d always been. She didn’t want them to see how dirty she felt, how the blood that splattered on her hands and her face and stuck to her soles never washed away.

How many lives had she ruined? How many families had she torn apart in the name of her own safety? She didn’t know. She didn’t want to know. Instead she curled up under the sheet and squeezed her eyes shut, hoping that she could pretend she was back in her own bed long enough to fall asleep.

“You can’t keep sending me to talk with her.” It was a tad dangerous to disregard formalities with the Vice President, but it was a risk Hawks was going to have to take.

“Keeping quiet is hardly a good enough reason to remove you. Your presence is of benefit to the girl. She’s kept in isolation otherwise, and I’m certain you’d agree that some amount of human contact is good for her.” Ito didn’t look up from reading over some contract or another. “Besides, we need her to trust us, and that’s something we can’t trust anyone else to do properly and you know it.”

“It’s not going to happen at all if we keep meeting. Sir, she’s terrified of me.” Ito scoffed and finally looked up. His patronizing look made Hawks grind his teeth to keep his composure.

“What child would be terrified of the Number 3 Hero? Besides, the girl’s an idiot. It shouldn’t be hard to convince her that her fears are misplaced.”

“It is if she isn’t talking to me. It is if she won’t let me get close enough to touch her because she thinks I’m going to hurt her. I don’t know what you did, but she’d be better off-”

“I have done nothing. Her quirk analysis sessions are the only thing that changed between her training program and your own. Now, I suggest you find a way to connect with the girl or you will be taking an extended leave to revisit your own training.”

Ito’s glare sent a shiver down his spine. Flashes of memories danced behind his eyes. The beatings. The desensitization training. The solitary confinement.

But this wasn’t for his safety or his comfort. This was about the terrified girl in the basement who wasn’t going to get the chance to go home like she so desperately wanted. This was about making sure she was as safe as he could manage, about getting her out of this place with as few scars as possible.

That meant giving her space, not being around her so he didn’t accidentally trigger another panic attack. The awful memories of his own torment shouldn’t stop him from preventing hers, and yet…

“Yes, sir.”

… And yet he was a coward.

Masterlist

[sirspazingtonthefourth]

People Call Me Dingo: Chapter 8

CW: Emetophobia, Violence A/N: Just realized that copying this over from AO3 doesn't include the double enters I've been using to separate scenes, which is just the best. Anyway, this chapter has probably my favorite passage that I've ever written in it. Hope you enjoy

“Ah, Hawks! Thank you for coming.”

It wasn’t like he could have refused. Not when the HPSC had run his life since he’d been a child. He didn’t mention it though; they hated when he talked about the past, and he wasn’t willing to find out how they’d make his life hell for it this time.

“Of course, Mr. Vice President. To what do I owe the honor?” Ito leaned back in his chair, floor-to-ceiling windows at his back. If he looked closely he could see the bottoms of the safety doors, ready to snap down at the press of a button.

“Do you remember the girl from a few weeks ago with the uncontrolled quirk?” Hawks nodded and Ito bridged his fingers together. “We’ve been having some… difficulties with her.

“We were unable to remove her quirk,” Ito explained, and Hawks had to wonder if he meant unwilling, “and so we’re shifting our efforts to training her to use her new quirk. It is vital for her life, now, after all.

“But she has been rather obstinate about the process. She’s resistant to our methods, and her poor intelligence is of no help. If we explained the full extent of her situation she would rebel further.” Hawks didn’t bother to point out that, if she knew the full extent of her situation, she’d rebel whether she was smart or not.

“So what do you want me to do about it?”

“You’ve been through this program yourself. Granted, you were more compliant and intelligent than the girl has been, but I still believe it would benefit her to have someone who is more experienced. It may make it easier for her to adjust, and thus easier to train into being a hero.”

Ah. Ito wanted him to lie to her.

Fat chance.

“We’ve already set up a meeting time between you two. I expect you to speak with her at least once a week. The time has already been worked into your schedule,” the Vice President continued, not allowing Hawks to voice his concerns. Not that he would have anyway; opposing the Commission was a bad decision on the best of days.

“Sounds like you’ve got it all worked out then. When should I plan to be down there?”

“2 p.m. today. You will be meeting with her the same time every week until she begins to respond well to the training regimen. That is all, Hawks. You’re dismissed.”

There wasn’t a real name on the girl’s door when Hawks arrived. Just the name of some kind of wild dog in Australia. The girl’s guard confirmed that it was the only identifying information she’d given them, so he just rolled with it. After all, the only thing he’d been called since he was six was Hawks. If the kid wanted to be called Dingo, who was he to judge?

He expected a few possibilities when he opened the door. Fangirling, questions, a polite greeting.

He didn’t expect Dingo to just stare.

The doors closed behind him and he kept eye contact with her. She blinked when the door clicked shut, but otherwise didn’t move. She sat curled at the head of her bed, knees to her chest and face blank. Her hair draped in a way that looked like she was trying to hide her face in it. If he hadn’t been looking right at her, he would have had trouble making out her expression. Not that there was really one to make out in the first place.

“Hey there.”

Nothing.

“I’m Hawks. You… Actually, you might not have heard of me, being an American and all.”

Silence. He sat on the foot of the bed, trying to ignore the way her eyes tracked him. He was used to being the watcher, not the watched.

“I don’t know how much you remember, but I was there when your quirk went out of control.”

There, finally, a reaction. Just the twitch of an ear, but it was something.

“You pushed me out of the way of some falling rubble. I appreciate it,” he said, trying to lighten his tone, get her to snort or smile or something. He needed her trust so he could warn her of exactly what was to come with this “training.” Tell her she wasn’t going to get her life back. She deserved to know.

Then he could focus on trying to get her out.

But Dingo just stared. Watching him. Evaluating him. Judging him.

“You’re really not making this easy, kid,” he sighed. Her eyes flashed for the briefest of moments with spite and pride.

“Can you at least tell me your name? You’re what, fourteen?” A raised brow. “Fifteen?” Nothing. “Well, either way, I doubt you really want me to keep calling you kid the whole time. I’m supposed to be here for an hour to talk with you. And I’ll be back once a week.”

She stayed blank faced.

“I’m sure I could find more annoying names to call you. I can be pretty creative when I want to be. But I think it’d be easier for the both of us if you just told me your name.”

He almost missed her explanation: A quick glance towards the bug in the wall next to him. He knew from experience where every bug in the room was. The Commission had used his feathers to figure out the best places to put them so that no audio could be obscured.

She knew she was being listened to. It wouldn’t be much of a stretch to say she knew about the camera in the clock, too, especially since she had purposely faced it towards the door. And from the way she was staring, she knew why he was here too.

Poor intelligence his ass.

Dingo didn’t like heroes. No one in the Network did, not without good reason otherwise. Him being there when she’d initially escaped was not a good reason. So she stayed quiet, listening and watching for a sign that he would turn on her.

She had cursed herself for glancing at the bug in the wall when he’d asked why she wasn’t talking. It didn’t fit with her shy and stupid act. What was worse was that he’d caught it. She’d seen it as he realized what she was looking at, knew what understanding looked like especially when someone tried to hide it.

She’d seen it enough when she was making… negotiations for a quirkless self-defense course at the Community Center. The mayor hadn’t been as good at hiding the look, but it was still the same.

She didn’t get to dwell on the memories, though. The hero prattled on and on, trying to get another reaction out of her. It wasn’t working. No matter how stupid and annoying the nicknames got, now relentlessly he pestered, she could endure.

She busied herself in assessing the hero’s actions and mannerisms. His wings were tensed the whole time he was speaking to her. He talked a lot with his hands, gesturing here and there to convey information, gesturing to her when he wanted her to answer, running a hand through his hair when she didn’t. His shoulders were a little too relaxed, like he was focusing on keeping them loose.

If he wanted her to loosen up, he’d have to do better at actually looking relaxed. If he’d been one of her trainees, she’d tell him that he was overselling it.

Trying too hard is just as bad as not trying at all. People can tell something’s up, and by the time you realize they’ve had you made it’s too late.

“Welp,” the hero said, rising with too much ease and stretching. “It was good chatting with you, kid. Same time next week?” He was mocking her, she knew it. She just watched as he walked to the door, knocked three times and stepped out. The door shut behind him before he could turn around, and Dingo fought the urge to finally relax.

She couldn’t relax. Not here. Not when they’d amped up the “quirk training.” They’d started grabbing her at odd hours now to test it. They’d figured out it was vision based, hence why she’d gone nearly invisible a few days ago. Now they were trying to find the limits.

They were sticking to emitter and transformative quirks so far, seeing what she could replicate. Her biggest problem, it seemed, was controlling the quirk once she had it. She had to use trial and error to figure out how to activate, and more importantly deactivate, any quirks she had. Thankfully, she’d figured out a few strategies that were serving her well in that regard about 76% of the time.

The analysts’ biggest problem was that sometimes the quirks just weren’t manifesting after she saw them.

The only reason she wasn’t getting disciplined by Fudouyama when that happened was that they knew she didn’t have enough control to just decide not to use the quirks. But she knew that would only last so long. He was not a patient man, nor a gentle one.

It was how they were testing her today, in fact.

Another blow from Fudouyama met her jaw, and she was knocked to the ground. Still, she couldn’t feel the strength his quirk lent him. She spit a wad of blood onto the floor beneath her and shook her head. The analysts made a note and told her to rise again.

“Perhaps try aiming somewhere more vital? If the effects can be more easily felt, perhaps it might trigger the quirk to activate.” She knew if she blocked, the beat down would be worse. It would no longer be simply to test her quirk. So she let her arms fall to her sides, ignoring how it went against every instinct in her body, and braced herself for the gut punch.

It came a moment later, knocking the wind out of her and forcing her to cough up what was left of her lunch. Her vision went spotty, her hearing fading for a while, before she finally heard someone telling her to get up. Her limbs were shaky, but she managed. She tasted her own vomit and did her best to spit the taste from her tongue. At least it wasn’t tainted with blood.

“That’s enough for today. Go to the med bay and get patched up. Your lessons will begin in half an hour.”

It wasn’t nearly enough time for a healing quirk to properly set in, but they wouldn’t give her any more time. If she asked for it, Fudouyama would ensure she got even less.

She trudged along the halls silently, following her warden as best she could. She kept her head down, not because she thought anyone would bat an eye at the bruises but out of habit. It hid her face behind her hair, making her harder to pick out of a crowd. Meanwhile, she could still watch what was going on around her through her periphery.

It was an unpleasant surprise to see Ito in the med bay waiting for her. He smiled, and it reminded her of an abscess that needed lancing; warm and full of pus.

“Ah, Miss Dingo.” She saw the scowl around his eyes as he said her name. “I see the training is going… oh my, those are quite the injuries. Here, come inside. Ms. Yamamoto!” He gave a little clap and a middle aged woman in a set of scrubs hurried towards them.

“Please ensure she is properly taken care of.”

“Of course, Mr. Vice President,” she said, bowing before directing Dingo onto the bed and telling her to hold still.

“Now, while she gets you patched up, why don’t we talk about your meeting earlier today? How was it to meet the Number 3 Hero?” Dingo looked at her feet the way someone three years her junior might, trying not to kick her feet lest it jostle the rest of her very sore upper body.

“It was okay…”

“Okay? My dear, what happened? You sound upset.” My dear? She huffed and looked to the side, crossing her arms much to the nurse’s dismay but it was necessary to hide her reaction. If he called her that again, she would take his nose. Maybe not right then and there, Fudouyama and all the cameras were watching, after all. But she’d take it.

“I didn’t really know what to say. I got nervous and just kinda… I dunno, I just sat there while he talked at me. It felt weird. Heroes don’t… they don’t talk to people like me. Plus, I don’t even really know him, y’know? I mean, what’re you supposed to say to someone whose always out saving people when you have literally nothing in common?”

It wasn’t hard to draw up the latter half of that script. She’d heard it time and time again from kids that went to a hero meet and greet and didn’t say a word. At least their social awkwardness gave her good material to work with, if the way Ito nodded along was any indication.

“I suppose I can understand that. But Hawks is just as much a person as you are. The training you are going through while we learn how to remove your quirk is the very same that he went through, though I’m quite sure he mentioned that. It was actually the reason I asked him to speak with you.

“You’ve seemed so… so upset these past two weeks. I’d imagine spending so much time isolated from people your own age would make any young girl feel lonely. And while I can’t really grant clearance to people your age, Hawks already has clearance and something in common with you. And I’d imagine talking to a pro-Hero would be a far sight better than talking to no one at all.”

She could see the concern in his eyes, attempting to cover the frustration he held in his stiff posture. Could almost feel how the words tried to infect her with whatever had caused his mouth to spew disease and decay. She looked back to her feet, and let the nurse guide her arms so they weren’t crossed anymore.

“I guess that makes sense. Thanks for being worried.” She glanced up and met his eyes, ignoring how her neck ached from getting punched in the face one too many times and giving a shaky smile. “I’ll… I’ll try talking to him next time.”

Ito’s smile was more assured than her own, more solid, like there was something underneath that wouldn’t let it deflate. As she felt her injuries start healing from the nurse’s quirk she could almost smell the rot draining out from his warm smile.

“That is all I ask.”

Masterlist

[sirspazingtonthefourth]

People Call Me Dingo: Chapter 7

CW: None, for this chapter

She hadn’t held out hope that the first day was an outlier, and she was glad for it. She got up an hour before Fudouyama opened her door, just to make certain that she’d made the bed correctly, and she still remade it two more times before he was happy. She had fifteen minutes to eat before getting dragged out of the nearly empty dining hall.

Then came the quirk training. They poked and prodded at her, trying to get the quirk to activate without any luck. By lunch, they’d been starting to try and use pain to cause it to activate. Not much, but pinches and slaps. She’d never been so happy to spend thirty minutes away from quirk analysts in her life.

After lunch came a series of tests that she recognized. Her school district administered various standardized tests throughout the year for all grades. She’d done well on exactly one of them, and been reprimanded for cheating on it.

She’d gotten pretty good at throwing them after that.

She threw the tests the Commission gave her without even really trying. She’d gotten so used to spotting the right answers and ignoring them, and even better at spotting answers just wrong enough to look like she wasn’t entirely stupid. Just… average.

The whole time Fudouyama had been watching over her shoulder. Staring her down as she ate, while the analysts did their work, while she took the tests. She might actually have to thank him for that last one. It was almost a proven fact that being watched made you do worse.

After the slew of tests and supper she wanted nothing more than to stretch her legs and actually do something. She knew there was a gym a floor or two up; it had been part of the tour she’d gotten before getting locked in her room. But her “personal guard” blocked the way out of the dining hall.

“Where are you going?”

“To the gym?”

“No. You are to return to your quarters when finished with your meal. I will be escorting you there shortly.”

“What? Why? Why can’t you just follow me to the gym like you’ve been doing all day?” Oh, that was stupid. She knew the second she finished speaking, the second she saw the look in his eyes change from careful neutrality to annoyance.

She flinched as he reached for her, ducking her head as he grabbed the back of her shirt and lifted her off the ground. The collar dug into her throat, making it hard to breathe as she was dragged down the hall. She tried to gain her footing, but it just made her spin, twisting the shirt tighter and tighter around her neck until she finally stopped.

Fudouyama only stopped dragging her once he got to her room, tossing her through the door as soon as it opened. She landed on her hands and knees, gasping for air.

“You will remain here until you are sent for.” He didn’t ask if she understood him that time, just shut the door as she rubbed at her neck. She wondered if it would bruise.

It was still full early in the evening for sleep but there was nothing else to do. No books on the desk, no computer or phone. She was fairly certain that, even if she’d had one of those, she wouldn’t have been able to get any service down here.

It was the next day that really set the tone for what her life was going to be like down there.

The prodding continued, the analysts trying everything from electric shocks to minor burns to try and get a reaction. If she had been born with a quirk this would have been considered torture. If she’d gotten a quirk in any other way, this would have been considered torture.

It was the first time since she was eight that she wished she was born with a quirk.

She’d hardly had the appetite to eat at lunch, and she half expected Fudouyama to shove the yakisoba they had down her throat. She hadn’t even gotten that much, but she still had to fight to get more than a few bites down, her stomach still churning from the “quirk testing.”

The latter half of the day started out with education, at least, which gave her a break. There were some normal topics, things like math and science, but more were strange and a tad overly specific. History of covert operations, cryptography, basics in espionage, human and mutant anatomy.

She was pretty sure the instructor they’d brought in hated her guts, too. A couple of disdainful glances her way when she asked simple, clarifying questions was more than enough to tell her that.

It wasn’t like she really wanted to be here either, but Dingo prided herself on nothing if not her spite. It didn’t matter that she already had a good grasp on some of the subjects, if acting like an idiot in class could make her instructor even more miserable then she’d do it in a heartbeat.

Once the lessons were done came training. Grueling, unforgiving training.

She “worked” with Fudouyama for that one, though it was closer to a beatdown than anything she would ever subject her trainees to. It was almost entirely sparring, and she was expected to keep up. Even with all the fighting she’d done at school, in a gym, on the street, against heroes and civilians, she stood no chance. She didn’t even have to pretend to be worse than she was, she was just outmatched.

She hated being outmatched.

It meant she got scared, and that was dangerous.

A full week went by of the awful, draining routine. The analysts were starting to panic. Apparently, Gansei wasn’t happy that they hadn’t been able to figure out what the quirk was yet, and they’d pulled out all the stops. Running while constantly dealing with electrical shocks, breaking bones and healing them again, threatening to kill her while holding a gun to her head, nothing was working.

She was given a brief reprieve as they discussed among themselves when she figured it out.

Someone hurried past the open door in the hall. She tried to watch him, but the movements were hard to track. Her eyes seemed to slip over him and when she did focus on the man, talking hurriedly into a phone, it gave her a headache so bad she looked away on instinct. She’d caught a few words, but couldn’t remember what he’d been saying. He didn’t even remember what his voice sounded like, just that it was hard to hear.

“Well, it’s worth a try. If we haven’t done absolutely everything, Vice President Ito is going to have our heads!”

“I know, but still… don’t you think it might be a little far?”

“It’s not going to matter if we can’t get a job after this because he destroyed our reputations.” Dingo could appreciate the position they were in, even if it put her in a worse one. She’d met other people like these men before.

“Yeah, I get it, but… never mind. I’ll go get the- Oi, where’s the kid?”

That truly got her attention. Fudouyama started looking frantically around the space, and though his face didn’t change much his eyes were wider than she’d seen them before.

“I’m right over here?” she said, standing and waving to try and get their attention. But every time one of them glanced her way their eyes moved past her. She shouted once or twice, and though the sound was loud it still didn’t draw their attention.

She checked the glass on the doors to make sure she still had a reflection, that she was still visible. She was, but her eyes could barely focus on the blurry outline of her own form in the glass. When she spoke, her voice sounded staticky and faint. When she yelled it was all garbled to her ears.

Not dissimilar to the man she had watched walk past.

She needed answers. She needed to know what his quirk had done to her, if this was permanent or if he could reverse it.

She quietly opened the gym door and chased after him.

She managed to catch the same elevator as him, but he was still talking, chatting away about a “subject of interest” and how they “lacked potential,” quoting scores on tests and quizzes as his evidence.

Her test scores, if she recalled.

She followed him down the hall, waiting as he was dismissed from his phone call and walked right into the lab. Great. Now she had to wait even longer to grill him, though that probably wouldn’t be the best tactic, considering his opinion of her. She wanted to keep it low, fly under the radar.

“Please tell me you have good news,” the near invisible man said to one of the techs striding about the lab.

“For you, or for the subject?” They were talking about her. At least, if the phone call was any indication. She was still outside the lab, would the cameras catch her eaves-dropping? She slipped in, just to be sure.

“What do you think?” Dingo crept behind one of the shelves in the back corner, keeping out of sight of any cameras in the lab alongside the people working there. She could hear the tech sigh before they spoke again.

“Whatever the villain factory did to her, it’s thorough. We’ve tried everything we could think of with no luck. No suppression system has worked for more than a few days. As far as we can tell, that girl’s quirk is permanent.”

The bottom dropped out of her stomach. Permanent? No. No, that wasn’t right. There had to be a way to undo this, there had to! She didn’t want some thrice damned quirk, she was fine without one, better than fine! She had the Network and Bat and the Community Center and-

“Oh, thank god. Ito was going to have my ass if we didn’t figure out a way to keep her here long term.”

…

What?

“We can’t let her know of course. She might be an idiot, no thanks to her quirkless nature,” he said. She snuck back to the door of the lab, slipping just outside it for safety as she listened to him keep rambling. “But if she knew outright it could make training her quite difficult. Now, I must-”

“Sir?” She didn’t have to fake the way her throat tightened as she spoke, but she did have to fake the waterworks.

“Shit! Who’s there?”

“It’s Dingo, sir. I… No one can see me, or hear me, and… and I’m scared. Did you use your quirk on me?”

“I… Could you repeat that? I’m having a hard time hearing you.”

“Did you use your quirk on me?”

“No, I… My quirk is constantly active. It makes me difficult to see and hear, but I can’t use it on others. Where are you, if I may ask?”

“I’m right here!” She almost stomped her foot to sell it. Almost. She wasn’t five, after all. “I just want to go back to my room, but I don’t know the code to the door. Mr. Ito never showed me, and Mr. Fudouyama never lets me put it in either. Please, I just-”

“No need to worry, I can take you back there, it’s no problem. Follow me.”

She was quiet on the way back, cursing herself for trusting Gansei. They weren’t going to let her leave, not when they knew the quirk couldn’t be removed. She knew it was a trap, why had she walked into it? Trust and curiosity are cardinal sins, and she had committed both.

She stepped through the door, thanking the hard to see man as the door closed and he left, no doubt to inform Ito and probably Fudouyama too. It wasn’t going to end well for her, she knew. Probably worse now that she was stuck.

She sat on the bed and waited. She knew what was going to happen, or at least she had a decent idea. No point in worrying. It was almost comforting, waiting for Fudouyama. At least she was pretty sure they wanted her to stay alive.

More than she could say for some of the other people she’d taken a beating from.

Masterlist