#RABBIT HEART://ISHIZU HC

[quirkthieves]

👫+ monoma & kiri / kaiba & marik / ishizu

this has to be under a cut i got out of hand

ISHIZU & KAIBA

i think the moment she met him she went into older sister mode. not out of like, a need to baby him or whatever its actually the opposite he is so machiavellian and uppity and willing to escalate a situation that she was just like right yeah this is exactly how marik is. hes at that age, where boys like to blow up buildings in death matches.

for the aforementioned reason i think thats also why he gets to see a slightly more impish side to her she doesnt really share often. the banter is dry and fast she has said "skill issue" to him at least once and she absolutely does stunt on him whenever she manages to even slightly best him in anything. shes rambling about predynastic art and taking forever to get to her point on purpose. and when i think he and her are an absolute menace to joey like his va and her va did a duel once in character and she was murdering him verbally. at one point they were talking about the north american tournament and joey was like "yeah they wouldnt let me enter cuz my decks got banned cards in it" and shes like "joey if you entered even with your current deck you wouldnt win" and he was like "what? why do you say that? did your necklace tell you that?" and she said "no, I just used common sense." . i could feel her and kaiba high fiving on that one i saw it so clearly

also i really like how in battle city we see that like, especially after their duel and as the marik v yugi fight looms ever closer that she and kaiba genuinely talk strategy on the side. she and him are standing on opposite sides of the ring than yugis gang, like, given her whole thing you think shed be kicking it with them but now she and kaiba are gossiping and speculating and i think that shows that he genuinely respects her skill as a duelist even if he thought the fate stuff was bullshit. he knows her meta game was crazy real recognizes real.

theyre gonna have a really, really long talk after dsod.

MARIK & KAIBA

as above i think the two of them are very similar and i think that pisses them both off. they absolutely refuse to acknowledge it like if you said that theyd snort with derision and be like im nothing like him [insert snide remark here] but thats exactly what i mean. for that reason you cannot just leave them to their own devices together its going to get ugly, or if they have a mutual enemy, felonious. both of them designed Saw Games for yugi.

that being said i do think they should be on a podcast together to talk about like, duel monsters news and commentate on tournaments and stuff like the one-liners would be VICIOUSSSSSSSS . it would be like a frenemies situation i think.

he still feels. REALLY bad about the whole "maiming if not murdering" some of the medical staff on the battle city blimp and he has like, no idea how to broach that topic like if he should send a gift basket or apology text or what so like, hes pretty awkward around kaiba at least at first and is kinda just waiting for the day he brings it up. u said kaibas keeping that as an iou in his back pocket and i agree.

i think the ishtars sometimes hang out with (babysit) mokuba and whenever ishizu and rishid wont let him do something he goes to marik because marik 100% enables younger brother behavior . hes taken him on motorcycle rides. he probably showed him how to forge papers at some point. its really educational

MONOMA & KIRISHIMA

so like. ok hear me out. im about to grab manga panels you know this shit is about to be so for real serious. so like i talk a lot about the team up mission chapter where class a is nice to monoma and he freaks it but id like to bring up that kirishima is one of the main three actors of this plan, esp during the phase where they're trying to gather info on what monomas "secret message" is. deku asks monoma how hes feeling, and monomas like....im not fucking telling you that. so,

(condensed version for time and space). but the important part here is that while deku and Iida fail to engage Monoma in normal conversation because Monoma doesn't have normal conversations with Class A, when Kirishima is like "dude just fucking punch me" Monoma is vaguely confused but goes all in, despite the fact that fist fighting Kirishima is probably more of an immediate threat to his health and safety than talking about his feelings.

so what I'm getting at here is that like, I think Kirishima is fundamentally more capable of communicating with Monoma than maybe other members of Class A not despite the sourness between them but because of it. While Kirishima is kind enough at his core to do this because they think Monoma's in danger (and because they think figuring it out will make him...stop. the things he does.), he also has picked up on the fact that communication with Monoma, even well-meaning, has to be delivered in an antagonistic manner, because he has already done the back-and-forth bickering with Monoma that makes his world go round, unlike Iida and Midoriya.

So I think even though they dislike each other, ironically, Kirishima's better at getting a read on him than a lot of other people.

um. I'm just gonna keep going till it loosely approximates four ideas im in too deep. anyways. It's also important to remember that the remedial classes in the forest training camp were fucking LONG. They were four hours a night. That is.a LOT of acute Monoma exposure for the Class A flunkies late into the evening and we know from the light novels that during that time, he was getting up to mischief and frequently taking "restroom breaks" in which he went and cheated in games on behalf of his classmates who did not know he was doing this. but again anyway the point is that kirishima was. very early on introduced to and spent extended periods with monoma's particular brand of crazy and this would only be even more relevant if hes friends with tetsutetsu, who monoma is also fairly close with. i think thats kinda why we see a willingness for kirishima to get up in his personal space more:

which like, watch out kirishima you may be roped into the monoma handler crew. but like i think a lot about that and like, how kirishima actually tries to explain it to monoma even though as someone who has acute monoma toxicity poisoning he knows this is a very futile effort because kirishima is someone who, actively, is trying to be the manly guy he idolizes, but god, this motherfucker does make it really hard sometimes. most of the time. every time. he is trying to give him the benefit of the doubt because maybe one day it will be different but he does not have his hopes up and he does not know what is wrong with this dude.

which leads me into the next thing i think, sort of along the same lines as bakugou although not as much, monoma does both envy and admire kirishima for being one of the "strong". naturally he'd rather chew his own hands off than say it, but i also dont think he's picked up on the fact that kirishima is the way he is in a very deliberate manner, like that, he worked to be the person he is today and continues to do so. i think if he did know, monoma would respect him a lot more, because he really admires that kind of self-determination and deeply wishes he, too, could form that strong of a personal identity. again, he probably really wouldnt.... express it that well? like i think maybe monoma admiring your strong traits more is kind of a fast track to him being even more annoying because he is truly instinctively a little hater . but he doesnt actually dislike kirishima for any personal reason, like, he has no qualms with kirishima as a person-- he himself is good friends with tetsutetsu. it's solely the class a thing, and the fact that monoma cant really detangle those feelings of jealousy and admiration. he doesnt really care what kirishima thinks of him, but he does make more of an effort when he engages in his antagonism with kirishima, because hes feeling like "look, i want to stand on ground with you as an equal, i see you as strong enough to be worth putting the energy into this rivalry, youre so cool that i feel like im strong if i can keep up with you" except even he doesnt know this is what hes thinking and nobody really wants this. but i dont think he could even really bring himself to HATE hate kirishima or even match his pure dislike as an individual because monoma has no reason to. hes just an awful little man.

also monoma pesters him a lot because he really really likes his quirk. you should be honored kirishima , really. its really fun to him. naturally he does use it for mischief but even non mischief reasons he just thinks its neattttt hes probably got him some deku-style notes about it. its also probably why monoma would tag along on any training tetsutetsu invites him to do with kirishima around bc otherwise he would be like . why would i want to be sweaty and around those despicable clowns when i dont even have to be. <- knows he has no chance of winning a sparring match and is not even going to try

[quirkthieves]

tag dump: ishizu ishtar