#Two Heads are Better Than One

[genjyoandgojyoandhakkai]

Sharing a lil something from my current WIP because I laughed SO HARD coming up with this. My hubs and I brainstormed on what Viago might call some poisons to curtail Illario's troublemaking when he finally gets out of babysitting. The ideas were so funny I went with four instead of my planned one or two.

Lucanis-

I've been working on a few mixtures with Illario in mind. Nothing too serious, just enough to incapacitate him long enough to prevent an escape or foil a plot. Here are the most promising ones.

The green and the red are meant to be used in coffee. They are oil-based and can be added to beans prior to grinding. Green is for your morning coffee, and red is the antidote which must be given within twenty-four hours. If the antidote is not administered, the subject will begin to experience increasing weakness, blurred vision, and lack of coordination lasting at least a day, depending on the dose. This should be sufficient to prevent your cousin from doing anything too rash, and will make it easy for you to drink the same brew to defuse any suspicion.

The green vial was labeled He's Bean Misbehaving, and the red vial had De-coffin-ated written on its tag. 

Lucanis snorted. “He is lucky I am in his debt. I would kill him for this.” 

He continued reading:

To make sure you have time to catch Illario in any mischief, the contents of the yellow vial are absorbed through the skin and can be used for treating any surfaces you wish to remain untampered. It holds its strength up to a week on metal. For wood, no more than two days. The mixture affects the joints of the hand (or wherever it comes in contact), causing pain and an inability to bend: this should prove handy. It could also be applied to the face if you prefer to stop speech. Its antidote is in the blue vial, and should be administered as soon as possible. Avoid foods in the nightshade family (including tomatoes) after applying the antidote. If that's not possible, have some buckets of sand handy. Actual vomit is still preferable to word vomit, for our purposes.

Lucanis glanced at the tags on the yellow and blue vials. The yellow vial was called Flying the Coup, and its blue antidote was labeled Not Talon-ted Enough. 

With an annoyed groan, Lucanis set the poisons aside. He would lock them up and figure out uses for them when Illario was closer to release. He continued reading.

I'll update you when I can correct the unintentional side effects of the yellow/blue combination. 

Viago

I like Viago, Spite said with a vicious chuckle. 

Lucanis smiled grimly. “You are all conspiring against me with these jokes.” After a moment’s reflection, he added, “Rook would appreciate these poisons, too."

[spacenoirdetective]

Darrell K. Sweet, 1994

[chocoblep]

#30: That Stag, Doe

Prompt: Two Heads are Better Than One

Shev hadn’t been on a job like this one in a while. For starters, they’d been asked to trap an animal. In the Shroud. It seemed like it would have gone against whatever the Seedseers and the Wood Wailers alike wanted, but they had been called in by the latter for this job–or, rather, Kismet had been called in, and Shev had been dragged along as a measure of protection while Kismet hunted. The Lavender-haired viera after he had made an offhanded comment about his time as a Wood Warder when he’d been drinking with one of the captains, and somehow it had translated to him being asked to assist in trapping a massive stag that had some sort of necrotizing disease while the Wailers pursued a band of poachers in the woods to the north. Well, Shev had no complaints spending time with Kismet, even if they were silent most of the time due to the nature of the task.

They’d set a few traps already with the sort of bait that the deer native to this area would be drawn to. They’d also split up for a while to cover more ground, but now they circled the territory, checking the traps periodically to see if they’d been visited and searching for signs of this particular beast.

Shev was about to spook off the single deer that had taken the bait at one of their traps when Kismet’s hand came to rest on his arm. He looked at him, and the silent conversation that ensued didn’t need words. Kismet slowly moved his hand off to their right, and Shev leaned back slowly, peeking around the tree trunk. It was there that he saw, standing in one of the many shafts of sunlight permeating through the canopy, a hulking stag. He squinted, trying to see any of its distinguishing features, and when he realized the dark spots on its hide were patches of dead, wasted skin and open wounds, he slowly drew in a breath. Then Kismet caught his attention and motioned to the deer that had approached their trap. It was a young doe, and as she twisted her neck to look behind her at the approaching stag, he saw the other side of her head.

There were dark spots there, too, one of the wounds on her neck weeping slightly.

Whatever was happening to the stag was spreading throughout the population.

Shev flared his nostrils in concern, and Kismet looked at him, his eyes imploring his silence and stillness. He complied, waiting as he watched the doe resume her feeding. The stag moved closer still, but soon enough the doe stepped into the trap, and Kismet twisted a ring on his finger. The doe’s head came up again, her ears perked, and she looked around. She was on alert, which was expected if the trap had sprung, even if Shev and Kismet couldn’t see it. After a moment, she turned to bound off into the bushes, only to run head-first into an invisible wall. The sound and her surprised grunt caused the stag to stop and tense, and as Kismet readied a length of rope, the stag bolted.

“Shite,” Shev swore, and Kismet shook his head.

“She’s got it, too. If we can take her back, we’ll at least have something. Let me get her bound up and we can take her back so they can figure out what this is. We might not have to capture him.”

“If he’s th’ worst off, don’t ya think ‘e’s th’ one they’ll want? What if th’ illness’s got some sort ‘a phases to it?”

“Then they’ll send us back out,” Kismet said.

“I think we’re gonna need ‘im,” Shev said, and then stood up. “I’m gonna find out where ‘e went. At least tha’ way we’ll ‘ave an idea where t’go if they send us back. You good alone with ‘er?”

Kismet hesitated for a moment, and then nodded, standing as well. The doe started running along the perimeter of her trap, testing the walls. “I’ll wait until she calms down a bit and then get her bound. Be careful? We don’t know what this disease does to them. Reports said he attacked a couple.”

“Aye, I’ll be careful.” Shev bent to kiss Kismet’s temple, and then set off through the woods to track the buck. He followed its trail for a while, and spotted him again when he came close to a clearing. Sinking behind a tree trunk, he let his gold eyes roam the space, looking around for anything he could use to trap him. He did his best to remain perfectly still, though he knew he might be upwind of the creature if the wind shifted slightly. Luckily, only a few scant fulms away from the deer was one of their traps. By some miracle, it was untouched, but he wondered how he could lure the big buck into it. Perhaps he could sneak around and spook it in the direction of the trap? That was unpredictable at best; there was no telling which direction the stag would run.

As he was contemplating, something rust-colored caught his eye across the clearing, streaking toward the stag. It was a fox–a massive one, if its size at a distance was any indication, and it passed the deer, heading straight for the trap. The stag, startled, started running in the same direction as the fix, and he watched as the fox bounded right into the trap. The stag bounded in just after, and Shev frantically twisted his own ring. He saw the stag crash into an invisible wall and scream. The fox, on the other hand, passed right through the barrier, stopping and turning to look directly at Shev’s hiding place.

He felt a tug in his chest, as if the animal was pulling on a string that was attached to him. He wanted to stand up and go to it and run away from it and–gods, it was large, and it had changed direction, and was now trotting right toward him. As it got closer, he squinted his eyes and noted that it didn’t seem to be entirely there; parts of it were translucent, almost as if it were made of stained glass, the world behind it blurred. Was it some sort of illusion? He looked around for a mage, or some other presence, and when he found no one else he looked back toward the fox. It was standing on the other side of the bush from him, and as he rose to his full height, it simply stood there and watched him.

I have aided you. Now, you must aid me.

He couldn’t make out whether he’d had the thought or whether it had been foisted upon his mind. He didn’t have time to contemplate that, though, because the creature gathered itself and flexed its haunches. He barely hit the dirt in time, and as it leapt over him, it disappeared into thin air, leaving behind a little shimmer of gold that blew away on the autumn breeze. A little rattled, Shev looked around for the thing, and once he was sure it was gone, looked to the stag in the trap. It was still thrashing, but secured. It would likely take both of them to get this one subdued.

As he backtracked to find Kismet, the words that had echoed in his mind felt like an itch he could not scratch; there, bothersome, but so deeply embedded in him that there was no hope of relief.

I have aided you. Now, you must aid me.

What did it mean? What was that creature? Was his mind playing tricks on him?

He found Kismet finishing up with the doe and securing her to the cart they’d brought with them. He’d sedated her somehow, and he was grateful for that. 

“I found him, he’s in a trap about a malm that way,” Shev said as he walked up.

“Oh, great! Let’s go grab him and finish this job, then,” Kismet said, and then grinned, hopping up to direct the chocobo that was hooked to the cart. Once he’d turned it in the correct direction, he nodded to Shev. “Lead the way.”

Shev turned to do just that, stopping when Kismet gasped and called for him to wait. The other viera hopped down from the cart, stepping up to him, and then round behind him, and grabbing his shirt to yank it upward.

“Shev… the fox tattoo on your back is glowing,” he said, and then dropped Shev’s shirt.

“Wha’ th’ hell?” Shev replied, turning around in a circle as if he could see it if he was fast enough. “Kismet, a giant fox scared th’ deer into th’ trap. Then it came up to me an’ I heard a voice, an’ it disappeared.”

“What did it say?” Kismet asked, moving to get back up into the driver’s seat. Shev started off in the direction of their other catch.

“Uhh, tha’ it had aided me, and now I had t’ aid it.”

Kismet was silent for a little bit, and when Shev turned his head to look at him, the violet-haired viera had a strange look on his face.

“I can’t believe my boyfriend is haunted,” he said, almost too casually, and Shev laughed.

“I don’t think it was a ghost, Starlight.”

“Well, whatever it was, I’m sure you’ll see it again soon enough.”

[moonfang256]

This is gonna be me during Deltarune's Chapter 3:

❤️ <( Going back to the rabbit hole, huh? I don't know what's going to happen, but I believe we need to play our cards carefully from now on.

…

Look, I don't really want to control you, not anymore, but even if I say "no" you wouldn't allow me to do that, right? You want me to control you because you and Ralsei need me to stay so I can do some stuff for you and your friends, am I correct?

❤️ <( You see, I'm a player who play videogames and you sadly became the main character from this game world, and the only being who can hold and handle my soul well.

❤️ <( Without me or if I die you die, and if someone else grabs me, well… I don't really know what's going to happen. Whoever does it will probably end up dead, so my existence in this place, something that you, Ralsei, and a certain someone watching us not gonna like.

❤️ <( If I've to be honest: I genuinely ended loving and caring too much about your world, your friends, even you mostly, and I don't want anyone to get hurt. That's why I'm willing to help and stay until everything is done. After this, I just want to go, and I'll probably never come back here again.

I'm sorry, it must have been really awful, isn't? You had to deal with so much stuff by yourself…

I won't bother you anymore with anything, so I'll try to make things easier for you. I'll respect your agency, but I'll also keep my distance to moderate things.

❤️ <( What do you want us to do now?

❤️ <( I won't stop you, but I just hope you know what are you doing. Also Ralsei, I know you're listening from afar. No need to pretend anymore, your cute charms don't work with me. *mischievous smirk* Good acting though, but I forgive you anyways.

❤️ <( You both put yourselves into a very horrible situation, I can tell, but I won't say more.

--------

Well, I admit I ended too immersed with the story and the characters. Heck, I even shared my feelings and thoughts through my dreams, my art, and even a little music, but I think it's time for me to step back for now before I get more obsessed and that won't do me any good.

Everything has a limit.

I still have a life to live, some things I need to figure out on my own, study and work, some other games I want to play (I'm even making a fangame of something else), etc.

Man, never a game has ever touched me this personally, messed with my mind and emotions so badly, and even made me vulnerable…

The positive side is: It helped me to be more open and even improve my drawings a little, so I guess it's okay.

[therealteslathedog]

Here’s this random creature I drew a few months ago!

[avampyone]

Prompt#30: Serenity

Characters: Hemlocke, mentions of Olivia.

Synopsis: With a new adventure ahead, Hemlocke is determined to write a letter he's put off for far too long.

Setting: Tuliyollol, The For'ard Cabins.

Warning - None

Having acquired an inn room of his own upon setting foot in these new lands, Hemlocke was in awe to see the generous space granted to each of them truly too great for one person alone – but in truth, it was nice at the same time. A part of him did not mind the feel of luxury quite as much as it used to bother him.

At some point, the memory of times when such riches had felt more like shackles had begun to ease like an icy weight jarring loose from his chest. It was all too easy to get caught up in bustle of either the Ossuary, from behind a bar, or any other such venture that he sought to busy himself with – For once, he thought to embrace the prospect of a break and welcome the venture into an unknown that he could lose himself within.  

From the sweeping view beyond, Hemlocke’s crimson gaze lifted with a thoughtful gleam to take the open sight of such from the balcony of the inn room with the beginning pinpoints of blinking stars coming into sight as the gentle waves of the ocean below them grow ever darker.

Luckily for them, the full moon lifting above promised to give the aid of illumination. Although they had arrived earlier on the long journey there, his friend, Seiro and all their comrades were keen to go on an evening excursion to the beach and the restaurant there rumored to prepare some of the best local cuisines and drinks.

Leaning forward to rest his elbow against the table, Hemlocke tucked the breezy black duster a little more around him in the front, wearing his tank top underneath, shorts and sandals having been prepared when he heard there were gorgeous beaches in Tuliyollol.

Despite knowing he needed to meet the others at the hour they had agreed on, he remained there settled with his metal quill in hand and the rough feel of parchment underneath the pads of his fingertips. For the last hour, he had been mentally urging himself to write out the thoughts that had been weighting on his mind for some time now. He had believed embracing travel into these new lands might grant him new perspective and the courage to do so.

This was a letter for one who would never be able to read it – or perhaps it was for his own weary heart, but he felt compelled to write this out, nevertheless. Finally resolved, he refreshed his ink to place pen to pencil, writing in a flurry of motion:

---

Dear mum,

               Although I feel these words may never find you, wherever you may be, it has always been the greatest wish that you may one day find peace in the beyond and know the welcoming comfort of Halone’s halls. Many times, I have read the letter you left in the knowledge that Gloucent held ill intent toward you. How it has troubled me to know you took all the blame upon yourself in falling for another man and all other sorrowful events of the past.

How could I ever be a judge of that? How could any? You fought many unseen battles that I nor anyone else could ever know and even gave your own life to save mine. Such is the true mark of a warrior if I ever knew one that I know the Fury must smile upon.

I do my best to aspire to be worthy of your sacrifice every day. Honestly, there are times when I feel that I have fallen far from what I promised you to become – Seraphine, one of the most polite gentlemen in all Ishgard. In these new lands, they speak of a brave warrior of two souls that share one body – resolve and reason. In my own way, there are times when I feel..splintered myself – Seraphine and Hemlocke.

I thought it was in my best interest to leave that part of myself behind with all the other memories in the manor fire and move to embrace a new life. But with each new day, the recollection of painful memories behind the name lessens and I feel it may be safe show myself fully. Seraphine was the only part of me that you had ever known after all..Still, I hope that you might be proud to simply know me as the mage named Hemlocke as well.

I often wonder if I may come to be the best of myself should I ever come to let the past go completely and embrace both one day. Maybe when I am brave enough, little by little. Every day I do feel myself becoming stronger with each new experience in life – the good and bad. That is to say if you do happen to come across this letter – please know that I shall be all right and it is okay to find your well deserved rest now, mm?

Sincerely,

Your loving son.

---

Having intentionally left off any signature, Hemlocke thought he might finish such another day. Perhaps even rewrite the whole letter entirely. Still, a look of satisfaction lit up his features with a small smile, delighted in the knowledge he had been able to finally speak to her in some way. Feeling a little lighter, the elezen lowered the quill carefully to lay atop the paper to head out and meet his friends for the evening.

[honorhearted]

"you're not funny" from laura

@retrograderesemblance

Ben held a hand over his chest, feigning innocence as he blinked up at Laura's peevish scowl. With a grin, he finally relented, "I think I'm a little funny... You said so yourself that you were sick of Larry in accounting, so I obliged. Is this any way to show your gratitude?"

In Laura's hand, she held the fated jar from the fridge -- the one he'd used for what he believed to be a very clever prank -- before he turned back to his laptop with a snort. "I couldn't very well put your keys in Jell-O again. I have matured as an 'ar-teest.'"

In truth, Ben wasn't usually the type to disrupt the workplace, but Laura had been unbearable as of late -- the stress of their latest case had her constantly on edge -- and if he'd been able to deviate some of that tension? Well...he wasn't expecting a medal or anything, but a "thank you" would suffice.

"I need your surveillance findings on the Whitman case," he said, not bothering to look up. "Are you going to keep standing around holding that fake head, or will you stop horsing around and join me?"

All right. So perhaps he was baiting her just a little.

[two-sided-stories]

flips coin.. so heads or tails

Who is this, flipping a coin is my thing. And heads.

[vintageterror]

[miss-markers]

Learned how to crochet 🧶🖤✌️

Pattern by rinmeow21

[tabbyphobos]

I legit almost fell for a scam today.

If you are job hunting, and you have a Skype interview which leads to them telling you to print a check, deposit it, and use it to purchase your remote work equipment, and won't let you wait for the check to clear before telling you you have to venmo someone else the funds to get your equipment, it's a scam.

The emails weren't even from the purported company's domain. And the check wasn't from the purported company.

Unfortunately I got to the deposited check step before Husband helped when it got weird. Why wouldn't a real company want the check to clear before you use the money?

I'm gullible, unfortunately. We've called the bank and now Husband is going to handle it from here.

So here's your PSA, I guess. Job scam sends you a check for equipment.

When I told them I wanted to terminate, all they had to say was okay.

[sidewalk-cracks]

Bruce would give up the mission if Dick ever died. And not in the angry-grief way of "this is the last straw on the camel's back" aka the way he sorta kicked Dick out, but in the "hasn't set foot in the Cave in over a month because the last time he did he kept hearing Dick's laugh echoing across the stalactites" way. He literally cannot bear to put on the cowl, to be Batman, because Batman has existed longer with Robin than without. Bruce doesn't remember being Batman without Robin (without Dick) anymore. He can recall his first meetings with a few of the Rogues, but beyond that? It's been so long that those first 2-4 years are all just a haze of self destructive grief. Dick flipped his entire life in a 180 to the total opposite direction. He showed him how to hope, to love, to live. If Dick dies as an adult, Bruce would've spent half his life with his first son. No matter what age Dick dies at, Bruce will have always spent more time being Batman with Dick Grayson as a son rather than without him. Dick changed Batman, changed Bruce so irrevocably that Bruce wouldn't ever be able to wear the cowl without remembering him.

[birchf0x]

Phlotsam and Ghetsam

Art and characters by @himboodles

[ichverdurstehier]

Kennedy isn't a Democrat?

Just to be perfectly clear: I am voting for whoever is on the ballot that isn't Trump. I don't need any further information and that has been true since he announced he was running. Nothing whatsoever has changed. I'm voting for the party. I don't care who the nominee is. Just. For the record.

[wilting-fl0wer]

The only correct form of caltam, as far as i am concerned

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

pez dispenser debris for the fic ask thing? 👀

As much as this is my “kill no darlings you will get EVERY flashback” fic, there’s overarching sociopolitical backstory explaining why Izuku and the rest of class 3A exploded in the public eye that I don’t think I’ll ever fully fit in.

It’s a combination of it being more of a meta analysis than anything and also requiring information from a perspective that I know will never appear in the fic. Like, the fic still gets the different moments that make up this analysis, but there’s no explicit connecting thread to show how they all locked together to create this sort of global cult following of class 3-A. I almost put in a little fake news article opinion piece that was meant to sort of walk the reader through why society is Like This, but I decided it was too heavy handed and deleted it.

Everything that I’m going to reference has already appeared in pez dispenser debris to some degree, and none of it will ever actually materially impact the plot. They may receive a little more detail down the line if they’re mentioned in passing in the fic, so out of an abundance of caution, I’ll stick it below the cut so people can avoid this, but I don’t personally consider any of this spoilers.

Izuku and the rest of the class are famous in pez dispenser debris in a way that’s pretty much unprecedented for students. Canonically, not even all might had a name for himself until after his graduation. Pretty much everyone from class 3A are public figures, with Izuku specifically being considered a major global figure.

In my mind, there was this perfect storm right during their second year that catapulted them into fame. The class personally has varying levels of awareness of why they got so popular, but there was this perfect cross winds of societal unrest and fear that made them household names.

There was an approximately one month span in their second year where they were just hit one after another with a major firestorms of events: The UA Sports Festival, the Sidekick Strike, and the Tartarus Prison Break/Desertion of Yokohama.

The UA Sports Festival is the one that the kids attribute this most to, because so many of the news articles that followed referenced their performance in it. But it probably gave them less mileage than what the other two events did.

What the UA Sports Festival did was showcase their skills to the world in a venue designed to show them off. The public was already on edge. All Might had retired, crime rates kept going up, and people were rapidly losing confidence in existing heroes. Class 2A made such an insane showing of skill in the second Sports Festival that it made the public rave about them for weeks after. It was extremely reassuring to Japan that they had such powerful heroes in the barrel and would soon be on the streets. But that attention probably would have died down had it not been for the Sidekick Strike and Yokohama.

The Sidekick Strike actually had nothing to do with them. But it undermined the public’s faith in heroes at just the right time.

The Sidekick Strike is just one of those things that I have no POV that would even tangentially be involved in it so we’ll get a few passing references in media clips and it’ll never be discussed in depth. Which is a shame because it’s such an interesting conflict to me.

The Sidekick Strike was heavily inspired by the 1919 Boston Police Strike. Effectively, it was the height of the labor rights movement, and police officers got together and went on strike to get the police union recognized. They had tried to negotiate and negotiations failed, and so they all walked off the job. The city descended into lawlessness, the national guard was deployed, it was a whole thing. Famously, Calvin Coolidge fired the entire police force over it on the grounds that there was no striking from public safety.

I thought it would be really interesting if there was something similar that happened with the sidekicks. The thing is that the heroics structure as it stands really incentivizes abuse towards sidekicks. We have a society where there’s a decent amount of heroes who are only in it for the fame. A not insignificant amount of money must come from marketing deals. And it’s a ranked system, so they’re all in competition with each other.

Heroes wouldn’t be incentivized to showcase their sidekicks—they’d be incentivized to take advantage of them and take credit for their work.

Like, think about the work-study experiences. Momo didn’t even officially work for the hero she studied with. She wasn’t getting paid. An adult woman used her for a shampoo ad. Who wants to bet whether Momo saw a dime from it? It’s probably very predatory because the nature of the system incentivizes predation.

I thought the underlying legal issues would be interesting and complex. Who owns a sidekick’s image—the agency or the individual? Who gets the proceeds of their brand deals? This all would be governed by their employment contracts, and sidekicks just starting out have very little leverage compared to big name heroes. And those heroes would want to keep their sidekicks names small and theirs big. The rankings are competitive, after all.

It’s a situation where I do think that like. The sidekicks would have a point in unionizing. The use of their image, appropriate compensation, and proper credit for their busts would all be like, very legitimate concerns in a normal employment context.

I see agencies like Idaten settling immediately with the union and having their sidekicks back on the street before the day is out. In my mind, idaten is considered the gold standard for sidekick jobs already, and their employees mostly did it out of solidarity with the people they worked alongside of. Like, Idaten was already doing most of the union’s demands and signed off very quickly on the remaining ones. If it was just about the Idaten sidekicks, none of them would have gone on strike, but they had a lot of colleagues who they depended on in the field who were in terrible situations. What were they gonna say, sorry, sucks to be you, I got a great gig though so condolences? These were the people keeping them alive. They went on strike because they knew Idaten would publicly settle before the day was out and set an example for the rest of the agencies. Hopefully it would help other agencies follow their lead.

But that didn’t happen. Some agencies, like Endeavor’s, fired everyone immediately. And I think a lot of agencies spent a long time picking over every line item in prolonged negotiations. It dragged out.

And that went over fucking terribly.

All Might just retired. Crime is up. And their sworn defenders are bickering over who gets what cut of the action figure line. Like I think the public would have fucking hated this in a post-All Might world. It would have seemed like the only real hero just medically and irreversibly retired and the rest of them are squabbling about whose turn it is in the spotlight.

I also think that the villains would have taken advantage of it.

The Tartarus Prison Break in pez isn’t the one that happened in canon. Here, the League of Villains attacked Tartarus and set everyone loose. In the process, they made a very clear stance: they are going to leave with All for One, and they are not going to attack any civilians. They won’t fight at all unless attacked first.

All of the horrible and sadistic villains they just let go have not made the same promise.

They chose to do this now because of the Sidekick Strike. All their heroes don’t give a fuck about protecting them, so they’re strapped for staffing. So they’re taking back their leader and going back to ground, and the heroes are free to immediately go after and contain all those bad bad villains who just escaped. And those guys are headed to the heavily populated mainland, so better be quick.

The whole world knew that was their explicit reasoning and promise. Because Himiko fucking lived tweeted the escape.

The Sidekick Strike took the hit for a lot of the blame, but I do see all the sidekicks breaking strike lines to go respond to the crisis. But response times were severely handicapped by the fact that most if not all of them were cut off from their agencies. It was just a complete systemic breakdown.

And then there became the question of what crisis do you respond to: All for One’s escape, or everyone else’s?

I mentioned in one of the little fake tumblr posts that the Tartarus Prison Break was seen as Endeavor’s greatest failure. And part of that is because he chose to sacrifice the nearby area, Yokohama, to contain All for One.

I am one of the biggest haters of Endeavor’s later arc, specifically because it required going back on the nature of the abuse he had subjected his family to that was already established in canon, but that’s a different rant. This is not canon endeavor. I hate what they did with canon endeavor.

That being said, I do think that the self doubt weighed on him once he became number one. And this was the moment of his career where it really crushed him.

All for One had escaped. So had every other villain from Tartarus. He should go after the most immediate threats. He knew this. It was basic triage.

But they would never have a better chance to stop All for One.

Prisoners in Tartarus aren’t exactly hitting all their macros and micros or training daily. They are not adherents to the Bakugou Katsuki Fitness Lifestyle. All for One was coming off spending the last few months drugged up to his eyeballs and strapped to a chair in a straitjacket with at least fifty guns pointed at him at all times. The man has not scratched his own nose in weeks. He’s weaker now than he’ll ever be again.

It was their best chance.

If he escaped, and he went back to ground, he’d have the time and space to get as strong as he wanted, and then he’d come back for real. And he’d be coming back for everything.

Stopping him the first time had cost them All Might.

And Endeavor simply was not All Might. And he still wouldn’t be All Might when the next fight came.

It really was the hardest decision of Endeavor’s life. He had to admit to himself that his own inadequacy was going to cost them countless lives. But he thought it was a hard decision he had to make. He was losing the battle for the barest chance at winning the war.

So he made the call that all heroes were to respond to All for One. They had to hit the league of villains now with their full force if they were to stand a chance. They could not afford to divide their already sparse forces. They’d respond to Yokohama when AfO was contained.

He was also the one who made the call to broadcast the warning message that we hear in the Twitter post. He thought it would give civilians their best chance. He didn’t want them to act with the expectation of the heroes being en route.

Of course, that meant that the entire city got fucking sirens going off and a message telling them that the heroes were not going to save them. Which, as you can expect, did not do a lot for public morale.

In my head, Tartarus is like, the equivalent to Gotham’s Arkham. It’s borderline an institute for the criminally insane. You don’t end up there unless you did something super fucked, are super dangerous, and have extreme violent tendencies. It’s exclusively for the most dangerous and indiscriminately violent criminals in the country.

The entire world was watching in real time while the tragedy unfolded. A lot of people were livestreaming after the emergency broadcast dropped, because they didn’t want the government to be able to handwave away how terrible their death was, or because they didn’t know what else to do, or because they just didn’t want to be alone. The full expectation was that it’d be a massacre.

But it wasn’t. Because Class 2-A responded instead.

The Class 2-A defensive efforts were discussed in one of the silly little fake tumblr posts and in the fake twitter post. In those, we find out that 1) Class 2-A, along with Lemillion, Suneater, and Nejire responded to the scene; 2) the entire class rolled out of Mirio’s fucking mom van and tamaki and nejire’s cars like they were fucking clown cars; 3) the HPSC claimed it was a legitimate operation blessed and coordinated by them; and 4) a lot of people think this was a lie, in part because videos leaked of Aizawa bitching them all out in the street afterwards. We also see Izuku’s green lightning at the end of the twitter video, showing him responding to the scene just as the first villains hit the mainland.

This fight has a lot of names in the backstory that lives in my head. It’s called the Tartarus Prison Break for obvious reasons. It’s also been called in some circles the Desertion of Yokohama, because of the call Endeavor made.

But it’s also called the Battle of Yokohoma. And it’s ranked alongside the Battle of Kamino as one of the finest acts of modern day heroics. And that’s because of Class 2-A. If it hadn’t been for them showing up, it would have gone down in history as the Massacre of Yokohama.

Like. It kills me that I can’t include the full details of what happened, but there’s just too much to make in a flashback. It’s a fic in and of itself. But it really was the fight that made Class 2-A.

It was the first fight where they were really the only heroes that could be counted on. Granted, they’d had to fight for their lives alone, but this wasn’t just their lives. These were thousands of terrified civilians who all thought they were going to die.

It was the first true test of them as heroes in the world. And they actually rose to the occasion. They didn’t just fight the villains—they realized that they needed to get emergency services working throughout the city if everyone was going to make it. Momo and Tsuyu conducted a mildly hostile take over of the emergency call center so they could coordinate relief. They had fucking Tokoyami and Dark Shadow single-handedly holding the line on the hospital while Kaminari, Shoji, Jiro, and Sato all learned to drive for the Very First Time while commandeering the city’s fucking ambulances. They were fighting and containing villains, performing emergency aid, putting out literal fires, everything. It was the hardest fight of their lives.

There was a hot second where Class 2-A was The Moment. Like. The entire world was watching them during this fight, and they had no fucking idea until it was over. People lost their minds when the first footage made it out of Yokohama of a bunch of teenagers showing up and immediately throwing hands with S-Class villains.

It was global news. Think of the kind of media attention that was received by the search for the Titan, the Tham Luang Cave Rescue, the Suez Canal getting blocked by the Ever Given (rip queen you will always be famous to me), that kind of thing. Class 2-A was fighting for their fucking lives and then found out three days later while they were all still in the hospital that there was a prayer vigil going on in Portugal for them during the battle and CNN had 24 hours live coverage of the fight that had so many viewers it outnumbered the population of Finland. Like what do you even do with that information.

The world expected a massacre. They didn’t expect a bunch of footage of high schoolers kicking the shit out of superpowered murders and personally ferrying the injured to the hospitals they were also defending.

The other part about this fight that really made them permanently part of the public consciousness is that it was not lost on everyone that every single person who responded to that fight did so at the risk of their license.

All of them had provisional licenses, save Lemillion, Suneater, and Nejire, all of whom went AWOL from the explicit directives ordering them to respond to the fight against All for One. The operation could not have been less authorized. They had to steal their gear and jimmy the UA fence to even get out. The explicit plan was to steal one of the UA buses and have Bakugou fucking drive them to the fight (he also did not know how to drive but he seemed the most likely of them to break literally every single motor vehicle code to get them there but still be naturally talented at it enough to not kill them) but Izuku told Mirio what bullshit they were up to and Mirio, who was with Tamaki and Nejire when the news broke, immediately decided he would be on that bullshit too and pulled up in his mom van.

In my mind, there were strict rules around provisional licenses and how they could be used, and they broke pretty much all of them to respond to Yokohama. It would have been grounds to revoke their provisionals and permanently bar them from heroics. Lemillion, Suneater, and Nejire could have all lost their licenses for helping them and for going AWOL.

The HPSC fucking fell over themselves to legitimatize the entire operation. They knew they were utterly fucked if they didn’t. These kids already had murals being painted of their faces in other fucking countries. There was a little old lady in Kyoto livestreaming herself working overtime to embroider Iida’s face onto a cushion because that lovely young man saved her darling granddaughter from *checks notes* horrible and painful death directly caused by the failings of the current HPSC administration. There were multiple trending posts online agreeing to fucking riot if those kids got in trouble for this.

Every single actual hero in the immediate vicinity of this disaster had responded to fight a villain who wasn’t actually attacking anyone. And then they fucking lost. They publicly broadcast a message saying Good Luck Champs Because We’re Not Going To Save You. It was an actual PR nightmare that they had a bare chance of salvaging if they just latched onto these kids like an aggressive parasite and that is exactly what they did.

They totally knew. Actually, it was a joint operation coordinated by and between UA and and the HPSC. Why would the kids be in trouble?? They had responded because the HPSC told them to.

UA gave it a week of dead silence and then issued a short statement praising the bravery of their students in a recent HPSC approved mission, and then they never said another word about it. They didn’t have any choice but to go along with the HPSC’s story. If they contradicted them, all of class 2-a would find their licenses pulled by the end of the day, and lord knows they wouldn’t wait for the court of public opinion to work its magic and would just all go out and become fucking vigilantes, because why not. Aizawa has aged 100 years since he got this class. Every single day he thinks of how it was a 50/50 shot between him and Vlad.

No one in the class is fully aware of just how famous they were in the immediate aftermath, because the school bent over backwards to try and shield them from it as much as possible. Like, they have an idea, but none of them saw the full explosion firsthand because of just how hard the school worked to keep it from them. Aizawa confiscated the internet router and told them it was punishment for whatever the fuck they did to the buses (thank god Mirio was just as crazy as them because they were NOT GOOD at hotwiring cars) but really it was to try and insulate them from it a little bit. Like. Japan’s Imperial Family wanted to do an official visit. The White House offered to host them. They received interview requests from every major talk show on the planet. Buzzfeed wanted to do a puppy interview with them.

Right now, Aizawa’s terrified for Midoriya’s graduation, but in the aftermath of that, he was breathing into a paper bag about all of them. Society had sort of latched onto them like they were the last life raft on the titanic. All for One was back, and All Might wasn’t, and the heroes had publicly broadcast a message saying they were useless, but don’t fucking worry, fifteen year old Iida Tenya is on the case. Society will be upheld by Kaminari Denki, currently viral for driving a real life city ambulance one hundred miles per hour down the street while screaming “WEE WOO BITCH.” And don’t forget the pillar that will be Mina Ashido, who rushed over to him earlier that day to show him her extra sparkly pink nails. And if you have a major fight that needs to be won? Don’t fucking worry, just send out bone-breaking boy wonder Midoriya Izuku and his equally reckless brother Toogata Mirio, because their dumbasses managed to take down an S-Class villain team that only All Might could defeat the first time around. Don’t worry about the multi week hospitalization they needed after, because that’s an acceptable burden to put on children.

When Aizawa started this job, he promised himself he would never send a student out to die. Some of them would die. But it would be tragedy, not damnation. He’d have given them their best chance. Part of the reason why he made that promise was because he sort of felt like his teacher sent him out set up to die, and it’s only luck that he made it through his first couple of years.

He has gone to the funeral of every single student he has ever had who did not make it. He goes back to their graves every year.

He was fucking petrified after Yokohama that society would push these kids too far too soon. Every single one of his classes before them had gotten the benefit of being practically unknown their first few years. They didn’t have the world talking about them like they were already the top heroes. He was terrified they wouldn’t have the space to learn and grow when they started.

A lot of teachers would have tried to mine the notoriety of Yokohama to hard launch their students’ careers. Aizawa told Nedzu point blank that he would quit tomorrow if he did not help him quash this thing as much as possible, and nedzu agreed.

This world killed its real heroes. It sucked them dry and left them like All Might, and he just needed fucking time. He needed fucking time to let them be kids and maybe they’d survive.

Izuku ended up being the one who escaped the aftermath of everything the least. His Quirk was too much like All Might’s for the world to let go of him easily.

And then Stain got fucking dogpiled by idaten in the aftermath of the Tartarus prison break and implied he considered Izuku the only true hero in the absence of all might and everyone started asking super inconvenient questions like “how does stain even know you exist” and “no really he called you by your actual legal name how does he even know that” and it just. It didn’t help things. Izuku’s suffering.

So yeah. There was just this absolute collision of a total lack of faith in current heroes combined with a huge swell of public trust in class 2-a that led us to being in the landscape we are now. All of the currently licensed heroes said that they wouldn’t be there to save the public, and then Class 2-A immediately hit back that they would be there. Actually, they’ll risk everything to be there. They’ll die to protect the public and they’ll risk the entire future they had been trying to build and they will fucking be there to save them.

There’s a lot of people that never forgave the heroes for deserting Yokohama. And there’s even more people who have absolute faith in Izuku and his classmates because they didn’t. That’s why the world is watching them so aggressively. These kids are the most trusted heroes in Japan right now.

I wish I could fit in more about what happened, because I love this backstory so much, but 1) some of it absolutely requires POVs like Endeavors, which we won’t get in pez dispenser debris, 2) there’s no one POV that could tell the full story via flashback and 3) it’d just be too long of a divergence. Like. It really is a whole fic of its own. I’d love to write it one day but I probably won’t have the time