#it's hard to see it as anything other than villainy

[glitchy-npc]

Jumpscare

Series: Fallen Hero Pairing:@dogueteeth-fhr Cerrisa "Beck" Becerra(they/them)/Tegan Wells (he/him) Tegan's POV. Warnings: none Word count: 1339

Los Diablos is almost pretty at night. It’s mostly the lights, the glow softening all the dirty, ugly aspects of the city that can’t hide in broad daylight. Not that the nights are innocent, far from it, but the distracting lights and the deeper shadows they create make it easier for the kind of work I do.  It’s messy, violent work but it's the only skill set I have, villainy isn’t that different from vigilantism at all. Or worse, what I did before. At least now I get to pick my targets.

I shift my weight to the other foot and flex my hands, the armored plates of my gauntlets gliding smoothly with the motion. The armor has practically become a second skin. How did I ever survive all those years ago, running around in a fucking skinsuit and jacket? 

Oh right, I didn’t.

Sidestep had to die so Retribution could be born, or some poetic shit like that. My mind always wanders when I’m stuck waiting.   

I’m waiting for Beck, or rather Heartbreak since we’re on a job. It's not that they’re late, I’m just early. I can chalk it up to post mission nerves, but really I just want to see them. 

I shift back to the other foot and cross my arms, trying to go over mission details but it’s hard to focus. I don’t even know what their armor looks like, this is the first time we’ve met for work. Every other time it had been hangouts that turned into drinks that turned into…ok I’m really distracted. Focus, idiot. 

I don’t have to wait much longer before I feel the growingly familiar brush of Beck's mind as they approach. 

“Good timing, I almost left without you.” I say without turning around. Their chuckle, muffled by their helmet, confirms what my telepathy already told me. It’s handy like that, always knowing who is behind you.

There are some blind spots though.

I turn to face them, we need to go over the plan one more time.

“So, we need to - JESUS FUCKING CHRIST.” The swear is torn from my throat almost before I have time to think it but my heart is racing somewhere around my eardrums.

Heartbreak spins around reflexively, their mind lighting up as they search for the potential threat. “What, what is it!?” 

“No, no, it's nothing, I just…” I try to return my heartbeat to normal and to think of anything that isn’t the truth.

Heartbreak’s armor is terrifying. 

They turn back towards me and staring at that helmet isn’t any better than the first time. They place a hand on their hip and tilt their head to the side, the gesture a twisted combination of sass and nightmare fuel.

“Something wrong?” Their question is light but the vocal distorters are not doing me any favors. 

“No just…nice design choice.” It's anything but nice but what do I know? 

“Don’t tell me you got scared?” Their tone is teasing.

“No.” I lie. “But you could have warned me.” I should be getting used to it by now but it's still so disconnected with how I usually see Beck – warm brown skin and scar tissue and the smiles they try to hide from me while I pretend I’m not looking. It still feels like Beck, mentally, but how can I be sure? Maybe it's someone else, someone with super telepathy, making me feel like it's them when they’re not.

“I don’t have super telepathy.” They laugh, derailing my train of thought. Right, they still have the normal kind and I’m an idiot. “You know it's me Tegan.

“Do I?” I ask, closing the gap between us. “Maybe you should take off the helmet and show me?” And maybe I can regain a sliver of my dignity if I pretend to be smooth.

“Hm. You first.” Of course their response is a challenge but it's an easy one.

It takes only a second to find the connection panel of my armor's face plate and remove it. I've spent so much time tinkering with this armor I know every bit by heart and muscle memory. I blink a few times to adjust my vision.

“Ok, now do me.”

I can’t help the cough I try to pass off as a laugh, there’s no way they didn’t phrase it like that on purpose. Little shit. 

“You want me to take your helmet off?” 

“I mean, unless you don’t think you can figure it out…” Their voice trails off, another challenge and a harder one this time but there's no way I could back down from something like that.

“Oh I can figure it out, just give me a minute.” 

It's getting easier to look at the helmet this close, though the design is meant to intimidate and inspire fear it's still just plasteel, paint and carbon fiber. Those I can deal with. I try to keep my face straight as I glide my armored fingers over the jaw portion of the skull, despite the teeth it seems to be one solid piece, no seams that I can see but then again Dr. Mortums work is flawless. 

Heatbreak stands stock still as my fingers work their way over the hands and I swear they’re the worst fucking part, I don’t want to know why Beck chose them as part of the design. I could guess, but I don’t like that line of thought either. I tuck the faceplate of my own armor under my arm and with both my hands on either side of their helmet it feels intimate in a way that's hard to process, I just hope it doesn’t show on my face. Though I can’t see their eyes I know they must be looking at me. There's a vulnerability to it, my face bare, while theirs remains concealed. But its a small price to pay, not like the blow to my pride that will be if I can’t figure this fucking – oh. There's a small panel, tucked behind the hands and concealed by the hood. I press it, rewarded by the familiar hiss of depressurised oxygen. The top and jaw portion come away in my hands.

Beck's handsome face smirks back at me, cheeks flushed and green eyes glinting even in the semi darkness. 

“Told you I could figure it out, now what do I wi-”

Beck kisses me before I can finish. It's not the first time, not by a long shot but it’s still exciting. If I had my faceplate on the interface would show my elevated heart rate for the second time tonight. How many years did I spend thinking I could never have something like this? That anyone would want to kiss me, or enjoy it? And from Beck's little hum against my lips, I can tell they enjoy it. 

If my hands weren’t holding pieces of armor they’d be around them in a second but it's their weight that reminds me we're here for a reason.

“We…” I start, breaking the kiss and hating myself for it. “We do have a job to do.”

“True.” They sigh as I hand their helmet back to them. “Doesn't mean we can’t think about what to do when the job’s done.” They reaffix their helmet and suddenly it's not half as terrifying as I thought it was. 

“I have a few ideas.” The distorters drop my voice a few octaves as I reaffix the faceplate to my own helmet.

“Then let's get this done and you can tell me all about it.” They saunter past me and I’m forced to turn and follow them.  

“Count on it.” I never could let anyone else get the last word in. A bad habit, I know. As bad as daydreaming about “after” when I should focus on the mission. And I will, once the adrenaline kicks in I can focus on the fight and nothing else. But until then I just keep coming up with ideas that make me grateful my helmet hides my blush.

[icharchivist]

Lamorak's motivation is actually really interesting, I feel like you don't get to see that often. When does selfless lead you on the path to villainy, indeed

FOR REAL he fascinates me!!!

Like we joke and joke about how he's the "i can fix him" type of guy, but also like, how rare it is to have an antagonist being set up fully on the fact that he just wants to help the main antagonist getting better, even if it means playing along with the villainy yaknow?

And i just think it's fascinating, especially with the thematic going on with the Wales Brothers and all.

Aglovale dealt with his grief seeing everyone as the enemy, he became uncaring, unloving, seeing the worst in people even when they did nothing wrong to him.

Lamorak dealt with his grief the complete opposite way. He started to care too much, to love too much, to see why everyone walked with a broken heart just like he did, seeing constantly what good was inside a person no matter the amount of villainy in their action.

Percival is the one who balanced it out. He's kind and caring but if someone is acting vile, no matter their reason to act this way, he will not let it stand. He still has problems and everything, but ultimately he came out of it with a pretty healthy outlook on how to connect with people in a way neither of his brothers did, because Aglovale gave too little, and Lamorak gave too much.

And i also just adore how Lamorak's whole thing, the whole reason he's like this, is because he failed to heal his mother, and he failed to be able to develop healing magic, so he's going to "heal" people the only way he has left. He doesn't want failing healing people anymore, and since he can't heal them physically, he will heal them mentally, emotionally, as much as he can.

and this is because he has this healer motivation that he's currently an antagonist. He's villain because, at heart, he's a healer. How rare is that as well?

And of course his motivations on the long term is still to sabotage Merlin, to not have Merlin cause the destruction he seeks, but in order to save Merlin from his own grief, Lamorak still has to play along with his plans. He will bear the price of being a villain if it means staying at Merlin's side so that eventually down the line he could help him get better.

Lamorak is such a fascinating character and i'm obsessed with him.

[chickren]

Do you think Jaime has any idea of Brienne's affection for him during AFFC/ADWD? Or does he still believe Brienne's in love with Renly?

lol

i mean, i joke a lot about her negging him into falling in love with her, but i honestly think she kind of accidentally did?

so, no, i don’t think he knows she’s in love with him. i don’t think he has a fucking clue. to be fair, she didn’t know either the last time they saw each other before pennytree.

you have to remember how their last two interactions in storm went down. first, jaime has her arrested after loras accuses her of renly’s murder. jaime does this to protect her, but brienne doesn’t understand that and she looks at him with eyes full of hurt, thinking he betrayed her. and jaime is borderline apoplectic that she would believe that of him.

then they both carry those emotions into their final asos scene in the white sword tower. jaime’s still smarting from her low opinion of him and is determined to prove to her just how wrong she is about him. his little plan backfires spectacularly. he finds out she still thinks he’s absolute scum, that her opinion of him is perhaps worse now than ever.

as for brienne, she is genuinely confused about what’s happening when she goes into the white sword tower scene. she understands jaime is trying to get loras to drop his accusations, but she has no idea why he’s doing anything he’s doing for her, and she has a hard time trusting people even in simple circumstances. and then jaime makes things worse by being so caustic because she hurt his feelings thinking he betrayed her. the funny thing is, brienne does walk out of the white sword tower scene with jaime vindicated in her mind. from that point on, she talks herself into trusting him, even when she has doubts, until the end of feast where she believes in his sincerity and his good intentions enough to full-throatedly defend him against accusations of villainy.

but jaime is privy to none of that. the last message he got from her was that she thought he would try to bribe her to kill sansa. she tries to backtrack from that accusation in the moment but he’s emotionally checked out of the conversation at that point, melted into a puddle of toxic jaime goo.

so by the time they meet again in dance, they’re in this weird position where i’d argue brienne is probably more ready to accept that jaime could have feelings for her than he is to accept that she has feelings for him. just the fact that someone with brienne’s life experience can bring herself to wonder what jaime would do if she cried on his shoulder tells me she has a slight clue he feels something.

but jaime really doesn’t have anything to hang onto that would indicate brienne has feelings for him. lol, i mean anything nice or good she’s done for him are things he could write off as basically being her job.

the only caveat to jaime’s knowledge of brienne’s feelings for him is that he does know she is physically attracted to him.

after loras leaves them in the round room, brienne is awkward and hesitant when jaime compliments her, and then she flounders trying to compliment him back. compare it to the bathhouse scene where we know from brienne’s pov that she was very attracted to him but jaime didn’t really clock it. here, he notices. she’s “flustered.” she wants “to flee.” even if he doesn’t explicitly diagnose the cause of her slightly bumbling reaction to seeing him in the white cloak inside his own head, i think he knows. mostly because he’s still just arrogant, smooth-talking jaime at that point, as opposed to later when she emotionally disembowels him in slow and painful stages and he turns into a wounded animal.

to me, the way he notices brienne’s physical attraction to him is not dissimilar to the way he describes amerei frey’s interactions with him. he never explicitly thinks that ami’s hitting on him, but it’s obvious that she is, and it’s obvious that he knows she is.

also important to note for the white sword tower scene is that jaime deliberately gets dolled up in his full kingsguard kit for brienne, and then sits there like a clown for fucking hours waiting for her to show up. so, of course, he’s paying extreme attention to her reaction to his efforts.

but everyone thinks jaime is hot, so it’s also understandable that he wouldn’t take that to mean that she actually likes him.

(he did want to make sure she knew he was hot, though.

he wanted. to make sure. she knew.)

now. if jaime finds out brienne was ready to die for him? well. he’s not an idiot. this whole thing could turn around real fast. so—

tl;dr - do i think jaime has any idea of brienne's affection for him during feast/dance?

his angst about her physical attraction to him is 0%

his angst about her emotional attraction to him is 100%

[as jaime has amply demonstrated, he is constitutionally incapable of taking her feelings for renly seriously and i doubt he’d start now]

[youlikegoodstuff]

2 years later…

All Might x arch nemesis! Reader

Gender is neutral.

Summary: it has been 2 years since you have retired your villainy due to undisclosed circumstances. Yagi goes to visit you in prison only to be surprised.

Tw: slight suggestive moments (not even that crazy, just some words that gets taken out of context lol). Swear words.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It has been 2 years, 4 months, and 6 days. 2 years, 4 months, and 6 days since Toshinori had last fought you. 2 years, 4 months, and 6 days since you were taken into Tartarus.

Yagi never kept track of last seeing someone unless they were important to him… and he had to admit to himself: You are important to him.

He made sure to visit his long time arch nemesis of 15 years every week.

Today would’ve been 17th year of being his arch nemesis… had you not been forced to retire days after your 15th anniversary due to an unfortunate event he never wants to think of…

But enough of that, he had issues in the present he was dealing with… like finding a successor… and visiting you again.

Sigh.

He had been really busy the past few months, what with preparing for his retirement and searching for a successor.

And yet, that wasn’t the only thing weighing on his mind…

He had to admit to himself: he missed you. The streets of Musutafu has been too quiet without you, too still.

He missed your presence, your voice, your… your everything.

Yagi sighed to himself as he pushed through the busy streets of the city. Today was the day he would finally go to see you. It had been too long, and for once, he was going to the prison to see you, not as a formality and not as an obligation.

He was going to see you because he wanted to see you.

He was so caught up in his thoughts that he didn’t even see who he bumped into on the street…

Yagi came to a momentary halt as he was brought out of his musings by accidentally bumping into someone on the street.

He quickly regained his thoughts and looked at the person he had collided with.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, I wasn’t looking where I was-“ as All Might’s eyes focused more and more on the person who he had bumped into, all of his breath left him.

There in front of him, on the street, was you…

Toshinori stood there, completely in shock, mouth agape and eyes wide. He was not hiding his shock that well…

He could tell, however, that you didn’t recognize him. No wonder, because he never showed his deflated form to anybody.

He still stood there just staring at you, while you were staring back, looking like you were trying to place him.

“…you alright, sir?” You asked while tilting your head.

He was in fact not alright.

He was just standing there, staring at you while his heart was thudding so loudly and so hard that he could hear it in his ears.

He finally found some words to say, but they still came out as a whisper.

“Y-yeah… I’m… I’m fine.”

Yagi could not believe his eyes. He had just visited you in Tartarus only a month ago, and now you were just… here.

He looked you over, dumbfounded, and could not take his eyes off of you. You looked so… so… so different to how you normally looked.

He had never seen you in anything other than your villain costume and the prisoner outfit. To see you wearing casual everyday clothes… it was such a huge shock.

“You sure, sir? You look like you seen a ghost.” You said casually.

Yagi quickly shook his head and snapped himself out of his reverie.

“No, no, I’m fine, really…” he said.

When and how were you out of Tartarus?

He wasn’t going to ask that as he knew it would blow his cover… so he changed the subject.

“I’m… very sorry about bumping into you, by the way,” he said with a sheepish smile.

“It’s fine, it’s fine. I wasn’t really watching where I was going either.” You chuckled out before moving to walk past him.

“Enjoy the rest of your day, sir.” You said casually.

You were oddly so calm despite once being the super villain, Highland Havoc…

Yagi continued to stare at you as you started to walk away.

It was so bizarre, seeing you be so calm and so casual. The villain he knew was cunning, conniving and manipulative. The you he was so familiar with was always scheming and acting like a mischievous mastermind.

This you was so much different…

“H-hey!” Yagi called out before he knew what he was doing, his curiosity getting the better of him.

You paused for a moment before turning to look at him

“…is there a problem, lad?” You asked while looking at him questioningly.

Yagi froze for a moment when you paused and turned to look at him.

What the hell was he thinking?! He couldn’t very well ask you why and how you were out of Tartarus! You would immediately grow suspicious of him and his identity if he asked that!

“No problem, I…”

He wracked his brain on what to ask you instead and finally came up with something somewhat simple.

“Where are you off to?”

Smooth.

“…Cheba Hut.” You responded casually.

Yagi’s eyebrow raised. Cheba Hut was a sandwich restaurant, that he knew.

But why were you going there of all places so… casually?

“Oh? Having lunch?” he inquired.

“Aye. Nothing else to do at a restaurant but eat, lad.” You said with an amused smile.

Yagi chuckled at your obvious statement. He was still really surprised by how casual you were acting. It was throwing him for a real loop.

“Well yeah, obviously… but by yourself?” He asked.

“…Am I required to walk with someone to a sandwich shop?” You asked with an even more amused smile.

Yagi internally facepalmed at himself for asking that.

He was really terrible at this. His head was so full of questions and worry, but instead of asking the right ones, he was asking the really obvious ones.

“Err… no, no. You certainly are not…” he said, awkwardly fiddling with a strand of his shaggy hair.

The silence was awkward as shit… made even more so when Yagi’s stomach growled out.

Yagi internally screamed as his stomach made its loud declaration of hunger.

Why did that have to happen just as the silence was becoming uncomfortable enough? His stomach always growled at the most inopportune times!

He looked up at you with a somewhat sheepish look and chuckled awkwardly.

“Sorry, I haven’t had lunch yet.”

You simply snorted before giving him that amused look again.

“No worries, I’m not exactly fueled up on food either.” You said, patting your own stomach.

Yagi’s face reddened at the sound of you snorting at his predicament. He knew you were laughing at him.

“Well… uh,” he began, looking in the direction of Cheba Hut and contemplating what to say next.

He suddenly had an idea, and immediately wanted to smack himself again.

“Do you… err… mind if I tag along?” he asked.

“It’s a public space, you don’t gotta ask.” You said with a smirk before nodding your head over to the direction of the sandwich shop.

Damn, he was really was off his game this afternoon. He had to get himself together.

“Right…” he chuckled awkwardly, still fiddling with that strand of hair.

He started to walk beside you in the direction of Cheba Hut, looking down at you with an interested but confused look. He still couldn’t make sense of your odd change in demeanor.

The two of you walked in silence for a few minutes, which All Might found awkward and uncomfortable.

He had so many things he wanted to ask you, so many questions swimming in his head, but he didn’t dare ask any of them for fear of blowing his cover.

He looked at you from the corner of his eye, and finally decided to break the silence with an unrelated question.

“Do you… come to this sandwich shop often?”

A few people walked by, giving him odd looks. They were definitely scrutinizing his deflated form with disturbed or creeped out looks…

“Oh yeah. Almost 5 days a week.” You answered his question, still staring forward without a care with your hands in your pockets.

All Might had to suppress a snort at the stares he was getting. He knew he was getting looks of disgust and revulsion. They certainly weren’t used to seeing a gaunt, old, emaciated man walking besides a somewhat normal looking citizen.

He chuckled and was surprised that you admitted to visiting so often.

“Why so often? The sandos that good?”

You chuckled at this, covering your mouth before letting out a huff.

“…you call them sandos? Thats actually cute, lad.”

Yagi almost tripped and fell over at your response. He didn’t expect you to comment on his habit of saying “sando”.

He looked down at you in stunned surprise before a sheepish chuckle escaped his mouth.

“I’ve… uhh… gotten into the habit of calling them that… yeah,” he said with a slight flush to his cheeks.

“No no, don’t be embarrassed, I was just caught off guard. I don’t hear a lot of men like yourself giving food cute little nicknames.” You said with a laugh, instinctively patting his shoulder.

Yagi was surprised again. He was not expecting you to reach out and pat his boney shoulder without fear or repulsion, or even a hint of hesitation. In fact, your reach was so casual that it seemed almost instinctual….

He did not expect the warm feeling he got from your touch either. Your simple hand on his shoulder felt like the first warm ray of sunlight after a long winter.

He couldn’t tell you how much he had craved your company and your touch during the month that he didn’t see you…

Yagi’s thoughts were interrupted by a group of teenagers walking past them.

He heard hushed whispers between them as they passed, and one of them had the audacity to look at him and whisper a little louder “Why’re they hanging out with that old man?”

Yagi’s face fell for a second, and his fists balled up.

He hated it. He hated being looked at like an old, feeble man. He hated being the one looked down on and pitied at whenever he was out in public.

It hurt being seen as some old wreck due to something he couldn’t control…

“Well that’s cuz I’m 54, wee ones.”

You flashed a toothy grin, showing off your sharpened teeth to the now bewildered group of teens.

All Might’s eyes widened and he froze mid-walk as you called out to the teens.

He hadn’t been expecting such a brazen and casual response.

He had never really thought about your age before, but he definitely didn’t expect you to be 54…

He watched the teens jump at your words and immediately speed up.

Once the teenagers were out of earshot, All Might stared at you with wide eyes, stunned that you had said that to them.

“You…. you’re 54?” he asked, still not quite believing the information he had just been given.

“Yessir.” You said with a casual smile, not at all bothered by your older age.

He could hardly believe it. He always assumed he was a lot older than you, but it turns out you had a few years on him!

What baffled him more was the fact that you didn’t care that you were in your fifties. You should be in your midlife crisis state of mind, yet you were so nonchalant about it. It befuddled him.

The only proof you had of your older age was that small patch of silver hair that stuck out from your (h/c) hair like a (h/t) silver ribbon…

Yagi almost slapped himself again.

How had he missed that!?

He thought back to the past years that he had visited you, and he realized that you had always had that patch with that bullet proof glass between you two! How on earth did he never notice it??

“You like it? I know I do.” You said jokingly as you reached up tugged at the piece of silver hair that seemed to reflect light like metal or the scales of a gold fish.

Yagi snapped out of his self-deprecating thoughts, startled again by you.

He chuckled awkwardly.

“H-huh?” was all he managed to get out of his mouth. His brain was still in a loop, confused by everything that had just happened.

“You were looking at my silver souvenir for a hot minute there.” You said in a teasing manner, though not at all bothered.

The early November air and environment made the less populated area of Musutafu look so… what is the word? Yagi couldn’t think of a good word to describe it, but your silver hair reminded him of it.

Yagi’s eyes widened when he realized he was staring. He didn’t even know he’d been gawking at you for that long! He had been so stuck in his thoughts that he forgot his social cues.

He looked away, taking one more glance as the sunlight caught your hair and sparkled against the silver strands.

It was like you took a piece of a winter day and placed it in your hair…

“S-sorry, I just… I didn’t notice that before…” he said, still red in the face.

“I’m not offended.” You said with a chuckle before noticing Cheba Hut just up ahead.

“Brace yourself for some good shit, lad! I’ll buy.” You said while gently slapping him on the arm like you two were friends…

…Well, you could be considered friends, since he always visited you in prison. And even though you were arch enemies in the past, you being the #1 villain and him the #1 hero, the both of you were always friendly, acting more so like two best friends who rough house than actual enemies…

Yagi was slightly startled and confused by the “friendly” slap on the shoulder, but that familiar sense of comfort and warmth came over him again and calmed him down.

He was also surprised by you suddenly suggesting that you pay.

“Y-you don’t have to do that,” he muttered, still awkwardly fumbling with a strand of his shaggy hair.

“Why not? It is the 17th anniversary since I’ve been your arch nemesis, yeah?” You said with a smirk.

All Might’s eyes widened as you smirked at him and said his words from his last visit with you. He felt a chill run down his spine.

You knew.

You knew who he was.

And now he was terrified of how you were going to react.

He tried to calm his racing heart, but instead it just beat faster and faster in his chest. His face fell as he stopped walking in front of the sandwich place.

Instead of that look of pity, disappointment, or disgust that usually came with those finding out about his true form, you did not look bothered one bit.

If anything, you looked at him with a mischievous look, playful even.

“You didn’t actually think I wouldn’t recognize you, aye big man?” You said as you opened the door.

Yagi could not believe how calm and nonchalant you were about the whole thing. He had been expecting any other reaction other than the smug look on your face.

Did it not bother you? The fact that he was no longer the muscular, buff “Symbol Of Peace” that he had been since he inherited One For All. Was the fact that he might never be that buff again not an issue for you?

He followed you into the sandwich place slowly, still flabbergasted.

The moment the scent of food hit his nose, his stomach once again growled out loud. He nearly forgot you found out about a secret he kept from you and everyone else…

Fortunately, his brain turned back on and went back to the important topic at hand.

How the hell did you find out? did you know before hand or was he just that obvious.

He found a table for two and sat down, eyeing you carefully, almost warily, as you headed to the counter.

“What do ya want, Lad?” You asked.

You still didn’t know his real name thankfully, he managed to keep that secret locked for over 17 years of knowing you…

Yagi was still dumbfounded that you weren’t putting any pressure onto him despite knowing what he looked like now. You acted like this was a normal outing between friends instead of a possible disaster.

He sat at the table, watching you at the counter, before he heard you ask him what he wanted.

“O-oh, um… a chicken and cheddar, I guess…” he called out to you.

You chuckled and shook your head before giving him an amused look.

“You gotta read the menu, you dork. They’re not simple sandwiches like Subway.” You said while nodding towards the large menu.

Sure enough, the sandwiches were not simple at all, having lots of ingredients as well as funny names to go with them.

Even the sizes were labeled… nugget, pinner… and Blunt.

Yagi looked over the menu with befuddlement at all the different sandos and ingredients he could pick from.

Yeah. This was nothing like Subway.

He looked over the sizes and found “pinners” and blunts, and a thought came to his mind about the “blunt” option.

He smirked, imagining taking a single bite out of an enormous sandwich and having half its filling fall right out onto his lap.

“D-do… do people actually ask for the blunts?” he asked.

“It’s the biggest size for a sandwich here.” You said while still smirking.

“And trust me on this. You’ll want the blunt.”

His mind went somewhere else when you mentioned he’d want the blunt. Your voice sounded flirty for a second, and it made his cheeks warm a bit.

He quickly cleared his throat and chuckled awkwardly, trying to hide his pink cheeks behind a hand as you pulled out your card.

“H-haha! I guess I’ll give the… uhh… blunt a shot.”

“Alright. You said you wanted something with chicken and cheddar, right?” You asked.

“Why not try the Midwest Best? Thats the closest thing you’ll get to a regular chicken and cheddar… not that you’ll want it to be when you take a bite~”

You winked at him while saying that.

Either you were hinting at something, or you were hinting at him falling for the Midwest Best sando…

his eyes widened at your words. The words “Midwest Best” and you winking at him, sounded very suggestive to him, but he didn’t know if you meant it to be that way, or if he just had a perverted mind.

He cleared his throat again to try hiding his flustered state.

“I’ll… I’ll try the Midwest Best… y-yeah” he managed to say.

“Alright! Prepare your ass, Goldie locks, this is going to be the best damn sandwich you’ll ever have the pleasure of biting into!” You exclaimed while the cashier typed in his order.

His face went an even deeper shade of red as his thoughts ran wild again.

Do you even know what you’re saying? How can you be making this sound so suggestive??

“Y-yeah, I’m getting… excited in anticipation for the Midwest Best…” he said in a wobbly voice.

Get it together, man!!!!

All Might mentally beat himself up in his mind, trying to ignore that dirty train of thought.

He just had to be so perverted.

No, stop. Focus on something else. Focus on the food. Focus on the…

Damn, focus on anything but what they said…

(To be continued)

~~~~~~~~~~~

Yeah just some fluff.

All Might still hasn’t found his successor, but he did find a daaaaaate~

We’ll see how it all goes.

[coraniaid]

#19 for person of interest and #2 for willow rosenberg

#19 ... one behind-the-scenes trivia fact I've learned somewhere and my thoughts on it.

I honestly don't really know that much trivia about Person of Interest. One thing I think I remember reading somewhere once is that the writers originally cast Amy Acker to play [a version of] Caroline Turing and only quite late in production decided on the twist that Caroline Turing was actually an alias for Root [at which point, presumably, they renamed her character, because she probably wasn't called 'Turing' before that].

Which is kind of amazing to me, if it's true: Amy Acker as Root is such a huge part of the show that's it's strange to think it almost didn't happen [and, presumably, the show itself would have gone off in an entirely different direction in Season 2 without Root: we'd have seen a lot more of Alicia Corwin for a start].

But, well, I can't find the original claim now and even if I did it probably didn't have any particularly solid proof to back it up. So maybe it's not true at all. (I think it's obvious that the writers hadn't yet cast Amy Acker as Root in Season 1's Root Cause, but that's a much less interesting claim to me).

#2 ... ...how I would have chosen to change their story from canon

Not an original take, I suppose, but to me the big problem with Willow's arc is the way that everything the show has been building up to since (at least) Becoming gets utterly derailed by the Willow-as-a-metaphorical-drug-addict subplot in Season 6. And, yeah, I can see arguments for this subplot: magic had been used as a metaphor for drug abuse before, and it does fit with Season 6's wider theme of exposing the characters to more bleakly quotidian problems like bills and dead-end jobs and (metaphorical) battles with social workers. But it just doesn't work for Willow or her arc. Willow's descent into villainy ends up being almost something that happens to her [because of bad actors like Amy or Rack or Warren] rather than something that evolves naturally from her own flaws.

And that's frustrating, because the show's already spent a lot of time setting up Willow's character flaws and how they will surely lead to tension between her and Tara and her and Buffy. We know Willow has self-image problems ["I'm not your sidekick!" she snaps at Buffy in Fear Itself], that she's afraid that people won't like her if they see the real version of her [see her dream in Restless for example], that she compensates for this by trying to help everyone and make herself useful ["I want to help", she tells Buffy in The Harvest, "I need to"].

We know Willow is prone to being jealous when other people get attention despite (in her eyes) not working as hard for it as she's had to or when they threaten to come between her and the people she loves [see: Faith in Season 3, Anya in Season 5]. We know Willow is very often unsympathetic to other people's problems if she can't personally relate to them [see ... well, many examples, but in particular Buffy in Dead Man's Party].

We know that Willow's been getting into magic to an extent that worries all the other sympathetic magically-aware people we know. We know that Willow has a strong sense of herself as a 'good person' despite the fact she often does things that are illegal or dangerous or unwise. We know that Willow is proud of her intelligence and her accomplishments and that she often ignores advice she doesn't like or lashes out at people she thinks are talking down to her [see, for example, the way she talks to Tara in their fight in Tough Love]. We know Willow has had trouble respecting other people's wishes and that her first reaction to relationships going wrong is to try to work out how she can "make" people forgive her [how she reacts to Oz discovering her with Xander in Season 3, for example].

None of this has anything to do with Willow being tricked into being a magical drug addict by a girl who used to be her pet rat. It just doesn't.

In my ideal version of Season 6, Tara still leaves Willow (for much the same reason she does in canon: Willow not respecting her boundaries, using magic to mess with her memories to 'resolve' arguments they have) and Willow still reacts terribly (and manages to de-rattify Amy). But Rack doesn't exist and more generally Amy is not at all the person she is in canon who pushes Willow to use magic more and more because she's some sort of self-destructive hedonist.

Amy should be more or less the same person she was halfway through Season 3. She shouldn't be luring Willow into drug dens [drug dens which she shouldn't even know about!]. She shouldn't suddenly be recast as a Bad Influence. She should be more or less the person she was in Gingerbread. She should be (honestly) amazed by how much better at magic Willow's gotten since high school. She should think of Willow as her friend and try to 'stand up for her' because she (thinks she) knows that Willow lets people push her around too easily. She should (unintentioally) feed Willow's ego: tell her that she's perfectly in the right and it's everyone else who's over-reacting to her growing magical strength.

And yes, maybe eventually she should start directly encouraging Willow to misuse magic (to help her 'fix' her relationship with her Dad, for example, or to get back into college despite technically not finishing high school). But it should be a gradual process. It shouldn't be something that starts fan theories about Catherine Madison somehow posessing her again. And the narrative should [and I can't stress how much it doesn't do this] care the slightest bit about Amy herself as a person, and recognize that she has gone through something awful and traumatic.

Amy's role in the plot of Season 6 should be to encourage Willow to keep telling herself she can use magic all the time whatever anyone else says because she's a good person. She should enable Willow, sure, but not intentionally. She's been a rat since she was 17; she shouldn't know things about the world she didn't know three years ago (except rat things, I guess). She shouldn't force Willow to do magic or trick her into it, because then what happens to Willow is no longer a consequence of who Willow is as a person.

You can make Amy a catalyst for Willow's continued bad behaviour without making her deliberately evil. You just need to make Willow the more active partner in their relationship. Wilow should be the one to decide to keep using magic but just keep it hidden; the one who keeps finding excuses for why she can treat people like objects and still be a good person; the one who keeps redefining where the line is everytime she steps over it. Until eventually Willow goes too far even for Amy, and she has to reckon with what she's been doing all this time.

And that makes Season 7 Willow works better too, because she's actually got something real to feel guilty about. She's not just sorry that after Tara died she reacted by temporarily going a bit crazy and having a relapse into her former addiction [and then being persuaded by some bad magical energy she absorbed into wanting to end the world]. She should be sorry about what she deliberately did to Tara (and to Amy, and to Buffy, and to Dawn, and to everyone else), not what she almost did to the world when she wasn't in her right mind.

I mean, sure, you can keep Warren killing Tara if you want [I'm not sure I would, but...]. Play up the parallels between Warren and Willow, even. Keep Willow killing him and trying to kill Jonathan and Andrew. Keep her trying to end the world, too. But the fundamental moral agency should be Willow's.

Her arc shouldn't be a temporary drug habit she's tricked into by her Bad Friend followed by going cold turkey for a bit and then relapsing after a random horrible event. She shouldn't decide to end the world because a coven of witches we've never met use Giles as a proxy for some elaborate and almost self-defeating 11-dimensional chess game (I quite like Grave, all in all, but that particular twist is infuriatingly stupid). Willow should drive her Season 6 arc by being Willow, only worse. By being the same "callous and deeply strange" Willow we know from the high school seasons, just more so, one who ignores Buffy's advice from Ted to "use [her] powers for good".

The writers shouldn't be afraid to acknowledge that Willow Rosenberg (who, to be clear, is one of my favorite characters in fiction) actually does have the capacity to be a bad person without external factors forcing her into it.

[scary-grace]

Enough to Go By (Chapter 8) - a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

Your best friend vanished on the same night his family was murdered, and even though the world forgot about him, you never did. When a chance encounter brings you back into contact with Shimura Tenko, you'll do anything to make sure you don't lose him again. Keep his secrets? Sure. Aid the League of Villains? Of course. Sacrifice everything? You would - but as the battle between the League of Villains and hero society unfolds, it becomes clear that everything is far more than you or anyone else imagined it would be. (cross-posted to Ao3)

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9

Chapter 8

“I can’t believe this is happening,” the high school student at the front desk says for the millionth time. “He must be so scared.”

“That kid? No way. He’s probably killed half the League already.” One of the nurses scoffs. “He’ll be fine. The heroes will handle this and put an end to that mess before you know it.”

You’ve been hearing versions of this conversation for the last three days, and you were bored of them on day one. It’s an effort not to roll your eyes. “But he got kidnapped,” the high schooler says again. “He probably doesn’t even know what happened to his friends, if they’re okay –”

“The other students are okay,” you say. “I heard two of them are still unconscious, but they think they’ll be fine. Their lungs were just more sensitive to the gas than the others’ were.”

“Was it really mustard gas?” the high schooler asks, and you shake your head. “How do you know?”

“A friend of mine,” you say. You’re not talking about Tenko. “He’s helping the heroes gather intel. He says it’s more like Midnight’s sleeping gas, but with a cumulative exposure effect.”

“The news said that kid was in high school,” a passing doctor says. “What are we doing wrong that kids in high school are turning to villainy?”

“It’s a problem with the villain, not with us.”

You can’t hold in the derisive sound you make, and all three of them turn to you. “What is it?” the doctor asks. “You don’t agree?”

“I just think it’s weird for people who see what we see every day to act like every villain is just born bad,” you say. Your colleagues stare at you. “Some of our patients feel trapped. A lot more of them feel helpless, or hopeless. Most of them have had hard lives, and no one’s helped them or saved them. If they feel invisible in their suffering, it’s not hard to imagine why some of those people lash out. Not even to hurt others. Just to be seen.”

You know what it’s like to feel hopeless, to feel invisible. To feel angry and know that your anger doesn’t matter, because you don’t matter in the first place. You turned that feeling inward, but most people aim it out. “People don’t become villains because they’re happy with their lives, or who they are. The way the world works makes a lot of people unhappy.”

“Young people – present company excepted – want everything handed to them,” the doctor says. He gestures at you and the high schooler. “If we had more people like the two of you, it would be a different story. You know how to work hard.”

“I didn’t have a choice,” you say. You’re not making your point well. You try again. “The villains who currently exist are the heroes’ job. It’s our job as a society to stop new villains from arising. The only way to do that is to make things better for everybody.”

“Of course,” the nurse says tiredly. She’s probably been working at the clinic longer than you and the doctor combined, and longer than the high schooler’s been alive. “When you figure that one out, honey, let me know.”

You’d love to. Really. Lately the difference between what you feel and what you think has been growing, so fast that it’s consuming every thought in its wake. Kazuo might be right from a legal standpoint that not stopping something isn’t the same thing as aiding and abetting it, but that doesn’t change how it feels. The attack on the training camp succeeded. The psychopathic student was kidnapped. Students were hurt. Pro heroes were hurt. One hero is missing. Moonfish, Mustard, and Muscular were all captured. And you knew it was happening ahead of time.

This time, you weren’t powerless to stop Tenko’s plans. You could have contacted UA and warned them that the location of their summer training camp had been compromised, that villains were planning an attack. You could have done it without endangering Tenko – he wouldn’t have even been there, and with Kurogiri’s protocol of warping everyone to and from the hideout, none of the others could have revealed his location if they were captured. You could have stopped this. Part of you wishes you had.

And part of you can’t stop picturing the look on Tenko’s face if he found out you betrayed his trust. The hurt you’d see there in the moments before he sealed it away. He’d probably kill you, and you’d feel so guilty that you’d probably want him to – but it’s not the fear of death that keeps you quiet. It’s the fear of losing him again, by your own fault this time. So you’ll take the guilt over the attack on UA’s training camp, the kidnapped student, the missing hero. You’d rather feel sick over that than hollowed out by losing your best friend.

You’re on the night shift, but it’s slow tonight, and when the high schooler turns on the TV in the waiting room, you don’t stop her. UA is having a press conference, with the principal and the two teachers who were there at the training camp apologizing for allowing the students to be put at risk again. You shouldn’t feel guilty, but you do, and you almost ask the high schooler to turn it off – but then the hero whose student was kidnapped starts defending said student, and you get annoyed. “That’s not what he’s like?” You mimic the hero’s flat, almost-affectless voice, then revert to your own. “Bullshit. That’s exactly what he’s like.”

“Huh?” The high schooler looks at you, surprised – or maybe offended. “That’s his teacher. He knows him better than you do. You’ve never met him.”

“I’ve met dozens of him. I know what they’re like.” You think of your siblings, the twins, the triplets. You think of the people who made your life hell until you made stronger friends. “You know who knows that kid better than his teacher? Everybody that kid has ever picked on. They only show who they really are to people who can’t hit them back.”

The high schooler is staring now. “I’ve never heard you say that much about anything before.”

You step out from behind the desk and head to the lobby for a little cleaning. “I only get one outburst per month. You can tune in next time.” In general, you’re not reactive – growing up, you weren’t allowed to react to anything – but ever since you found Tenko, you’ve found it harder and harder to hold in your frustration with the way things are. Your viewpoint doesn’t align with the League of Villains or with Stain, because you don’t think that dismantling the heroic system would automatically create a better world, but lately you can’t shut up about the things that are wrong.

Employment and housing discrimination against quirkless people and heteromorphs, and the total lack of anti-discrimination laws. The constant threat of violence, triggered so often by heroes pursuing nonviolent criminals, in situations where violence shouldn’t be necessary. The disinterest most ordinary people show in helping anyone, changing anything, because they expect heroes to do it for them. Things people who have power never see or think about. Things you’ve been living with since you were a child.

Seeing the heroic system come tumbling down won’t fix any of that. All it will do is put the privileged on the same level as you are, force them to play by the same rules you’ve had to follow. And some part of you thinks that would be a nice thing to see. After all, you’ve been playing this game your whole life. For once, you’d like to have the advantage.

The UA press conference is just concluding when you feel the first vibration, a low deep hum traveling through the air. A chill goes down your spine, and you look up from cleaning the air conditioning filter in the lobby to the high schooler behind the desk, only to find her already looking at you. The TV switches to breaking news with a blast of trumpets, announcing that All Might and various heroes have teamed up to rescue Bakugou of Class 1-A, but even as they’re announcing the good news, another vibration travels through the air. A moment later, a similar vibration travels through the ground. Somewhere in the distance, you hear a crash – an enormously loud sound, coming from just far enough away to avoid rupturing your eardrums. Not far enough to avoid rupturing anything else.

“Get down!” you shout, diving for cover, and the high schooler drops behind the counter just in time for the windows to blow apart, spraying glass across the lobby.

Now you can hear explosions. Or you could, if your ears weren’t ringing. When you look out the shattered windows, you see a sky that should be cloudy and dark blue turning unearthly purple and orange. As the ringing in your ears dies down, you hear screams, sirens, the whirring of helicopter blades. Something terrible is happening.

You struggle to your knees, then your feet, doing your best to avoid the broken glass. “Are you okay?” you shout to the high schooler. You hear a whimper from behind the desk, and a split second later, the phone starts to ring. “Can you grab that?”

No answer. You stumble through the glass, kicking piles of it aside, and find the high schooler crouched behind the desk, shaking. She doesn’t look hurt. Shell-shocked, sure, but not hurt. You aren’t seeing blood. You grab the phone. “Yokohama Free Clinic South. How can I help you?”

“This is Yokohama PD. Your building has been designated as an evacuation site. Please prepare to receive evacuees from Kamino Ward.”

“Kamino Ward?” You fumble the clinic’s disaster preparedness binder out of the desk and start flipping frantically through it. “Our windows are gone from the shockwave that just came through. Is that going to be a problem?”

“Is the building still standing?” The officer on the other end doesn’t wait for confirmation. “The first evacuees should be arriving within minutes. Once the hospitals are full, the remaining casualties will be directed to you.”

“What? We’re an urgent care, not a mass casualty –” The line goes dead and you stare at it in horror. The rest of the night shift, doctors and nurses and techs, are just emerging from the back of the clinic. You turn to look at them and try to convey the information as quickly and efficiently as possible. “Evacuees from Kamino Ward are coming here. Once the hospitals are full, the casualties will be coming here, too.”

“What’s happening in Kamino Ward?”

“Look.” The high schooler’s voice is almost as shaky as her hand as she points to the TV. You do as she says and everything gets worse in a heartbeat.

Kamino Ward is gone. It’s a smoking crater, ringed by the ruins of buildings, and in the center of it all stand a collection of small figures. Half your thoughts come to a stop on the buildings, on how many people must be trapped in the wreckage. The rest are with the group of people in the crater. Wherever the news feed is coming from, whoever’s filming zooms in until you can see their faces. All Might’s there. So is Tenko’s master. And so is Tenko, him and the rest of the League, everyone who wasn’t captured after the attack on the training camp – alongside the student they kidnapped.

LIVE: All Might fights unknown villain, the scroll at the bottom of the screen says. Kamino Ward leveled. Rescue efforts underway.

Two of your friends live in Kamino Ward. Your mind floods with emotion, the leaks in your defense mechanisms coming from a dozen different sources. Worry for your friends, panic about the evacuees who are about to descend on your clinic and the casualties that are sure to follow, terror that the fight will break from Kamino Ward and come to you. Fear for Tenko, who’s right there in the middle of it all. Shame over the fact that when you realized he was there, your fear for him drowned everything else in a split second.

But you don’t have time for worry or panic or shame or fear, because you can hear voices in the street. People are coming here, looking for shelter, and there’s glass all over the floor of the lobby. “We need to clean this up,” you call out to the others, even as you run for a broom. “We have to hurry.”

Somebody yanks the broom out of your hands and passes it to one of the CNAs. The doctor forces the disaster preparedness binder into your hands instead, only for one of the older nurses to snatch it away. “Put her on triage. We need to keep them calm and we need to move fast.”

You’re good at those two things when the lobby is full. Not when an absurd number of people are being directed your way. You pull the blinds over the glassless windows, hoping it’ll stop people from seeing them as entry points to the building, and prop open the door, stationing yourself just inside it. When you see the crowd coming down the street, led by an overwhelmed-looking police officer and two minor heroes from the area, you take a deep breath and do everything you can to clear your mind.

“Get a list of who’s here,” the nurse who took the disaster preparedness binder hisses in your ear. “Uninjured to the right and left, injured to the front.”

“Got it,” you say. Someone drops a pile of nametags and a permanent marker into your hands. That’ll work. One of the heroes has jogged ahead to meet you, and you square up. “Get everybody in a line. Keep families together. We’ll take care of the rest. How many do you have?”

“A hundred, plus or minus twenty. Some fell behind.”

And those are probably the injured ones. “Go back and pick them up,” you say. “We’ll handle this.”

The hero conveys your instructions to the others, and a line begins to form. You address the first person in line – a grey-haired man, carrying what looks like either a grandchild or a random kid. “Family name, first initial,” you say. Iwamura K, granddaughter Iwamura T. “Injuries?”

None. You peel off the stickers, apply them to each evacuee’s arm, then herd them inside. “Next?”

Your handwriting gets worse and worse with every nametag, but you’re moving fast. You screw up the system you were supposed to implement almost immediately. Uninjured evacuees go to the right side of the lobby. Injured ones go to the left, where the other nurses are waiting to triage them more effectively. All the while the air vibrates with distant blows and you vibrate with it, your mind teetering between focusing on the tasks at hand and worrying about your friends, about Tenko. You’re scared that one of your friends will come through the door on a stretcher. You’re scared that Tenko won’t come back at all.

The phone rings somewhere behind you while you’ve still got dozens of people in line, and a moment later, the high schooler shouts to you. “The teaching hospital’s full and the route to Yokohama General is cut off. They’re directing casualties here.”

Fuck. When you find out who cut off the route to the city’s biggest, most modern hospital, you’re going to break your foot off in their ass. That goes double if the guilty party is Tenko’s master. You start hustling people into the building at top speed, trying to think of which entrance will be best to direct the ambulances to. The rear entrance, probably. Somebody else will have to take care of that. You’ve still got people coming through the door.

The closer to the back of the line you get, the more damage the evacuees are working with. The last few are covered with dust, their clothes torn, their bodies already bruising. You try to ask them what happened, but your words are drowned out by a collective gasp, followed by dead silence from inside the building. The TV is still going, the words tinny and distant, but you hear the first person who speaks up loud and clear. It’s a kid. “Mama, what’s wrong with All Might?”

The noise comes back up immediately, leaving you with no idea what’s happening, no idea if All Might’s been defeated or killed, no idea whether the fight’s shifting, heading this way. You hear ambulance sirens wailing, getting louder with every passing second, and someone yanks your arm. You turn to find one of the medical assistants. “Go to the back. They want you helping with the ambulances.”

You don’t want you helping with the ambulances. You’re good under pressure, but not that kind of pressure. Not the kind where someone will die if you screw it up. You try to reason with yourself as you weave through the lobby and head down the hall, aiming for the back doors. You’re not running point on any of these cases. Your job is to assist the doctors and the nurse-practitioners. They’ll tell you what to do. You just have to do it. It’ll be fine. You think that, and keep thinking it, right up until you put on your mask and gloves and turn around to find yourself facing a patient whose legs have been crushed below the knee.

It’s awful. There’s blood and sinew and tissue everywhere, and sharp fragments of bone emanating from the exposed kneecap. Bitter saliva floods your mouth and your stomach turns, threatening to upend itself, but you grew up with siblings who could make you vomit on their command. You learned to resist them, and this – you clench your jaw and step forward. “How can I help?”

“Pinch off the femoral artery on the left side.” The doctor’s face is pale. The patient is unconscious, must be unconscious, because otherwise you can’t imagine the doctor saying what he says next. “We’re in hell.”

You’re not given to dramatic statements, but as the time wears on, you start to agree with him. You lose track of which patients you’re seeing. It’s all you can do to remember to switch gloves between patients. Your scrubs get sprayed with blood, but you can’t change them. There’s not time. The site commander for whatever’s happening in Kamino Ward sent your clinic twelve patients who should have gone to Yokohama General. You can’t save them. Your job is to keep them alive long enough to transport them to the people who can.

It’s a task you fail once, twice, three times, five times. One of the nurses, someone who worked somewhere else before coming here, tells you that the patients wouldn’t have made it anyway, but it doesn’t help. Even with the EMTs of the ambulances staying to lend a hand, there aren’t enough hands, not enough eyes to spot the signs of someone crashing and not enough mouths to call out a warning. You lose five, stabilize seven. If this goes on much longer, you might lose them all.

News of what’s happening in Kamino Ward trickles back slowly. All Might’s deflated, or decrepit. Skeletal. Disfigured. All Might’s getting an assist from the Number Two hero – Hiro will be thrilled. All Might’s winning. All Might’s won, but the League of Villains has escaped. All of them except their backer – All For One.

All For One. It’s not a villain name you’ve heard before, but you’re pretty sure that’s Tenko’s master. Whoever he is, wherever he came from, he was strong enough to hurt All Might, to nearly kill All Might. If he could do that, what the hell does he need Tenko for? What’s going to happen to Tenko with his backer gone? Where is the League going to go? You’re pretty sure they can’t go back to their hideout – it was where they were planning to take the captured student, and if they and the student wound up in Kamino Ward, something went wrong. Where’s Tenko now?

That’s not your problem right now. Your problem is your patients, and whether or not any of them will still be alive by the time the route to Yokohama General reopens. You throw yourself back into work. Back into hell.

Relief eventually arrives in the form of basically every off-duty staff member – all of them who don’t live in Kamino, that is. You stay in the mix, not wanting to be the first one to call for help. You’re not that tired, anyway. You just got on shift at six. You have a long way to go before –

“It’s seven am. Get out,” your supervisor says, and you stare blankly at her. Seven am? That can’t be right. It was midnight two seconds ago. “This patient’s stable, and the route to Yokohama General is finally open. Transfer them and go home. With all the repairs we’ll have to make, we can’t afford to pay you overtime.”

Transfer, then home. You transfer the patient, who hasn’t been conscious once since they arrived in the clinic with a skull fracture wide enough to see their brain through, to the waiting EMTs, and then you go looking for a change of clothes. There isn’t one. You’ll be wearing this home. You wade through another crowd of people to clock out, then step out onto the street. The trains probably aren’t working, but that’s fine. It’s not that far. You can walk.

The sky is still purple and orange. Clouds of smoke are billowing up from whatever happened in Kamino Ward, and you can smell it, along with gasoline and ozone and who knows how many other acrid stenches. You check your phone as you walk and find frantic messages from your friends, everyone trying to confirm that everyone else is alive. You tap out a message confirming that you were at work and you’re fine. Then you put your phone away and trudge the rest of the way home.

After the noise of the clinic, unabated for hours upon hours, your apartment building is weirdly quiet. At this time of day people should be up, getting ready for work, getting their kids ready for school, but instead it feels like time’s stopped. Maybe they left. Maybe they’re in an evacuation shelter somewhere. You don’t know. You unlock the door to your apartment and step inside – and freeze.

Your apartment should be empty. It isn’t. Your apartment is full of people, and you’ve met them all at least once before – Spinner, Dabi, Magne, Compress, Twice, Toga. Kurogiri. Tenko. No, Tomura. They’re all staring at you, just like you’re staring at them.

Toga’s the first one to speak. “So that’s what you look like,” she says, smiling. “I knew you were cute!”

“Don’t scream,” Tomura says. You shut your mouth and shake your head. He looks you up and down, frowning. “Whose blood is that?”

“At work. I was at work. We got some of the casualties from – from Kamino –” You’re stammering. You’re making approximately zero sense. There’s only one question that matters. “What are you doing here?”

Nobody answers you. Dabi’s mouth contorts into a sneer. “No wonder you wouldn’t show your face before. You’re a fucking civilian.”

“Yeah, she’s a civilian. That’s why her place is safe to stay at,” Tomura snaps at him. He turns back to you, the frown still present behind the hand. “Is all that blood somebody else’s?”

“Yeah. I’m fine.” You don’t feel fine. You feel numb, but your heart is racing so fast that you’re worried you might faint. “Did anybody see you? Or hear you?”

“Kurogiri delivered us right to your living room,” Compress says. “We’ve been quiet. Most of us.”

He’s aiming a dirty look at Magne, who glares back. “It hurts,” she snaps. “If somebody stabbed you in the chest –”

Your stomach lurches. “Stabbed?”

“I hit my face on that giant hero’s face. Do you hear me complaining?”

“You were stabbed?” You step around Tomura and cross the room to where Magne’s sprawled in one of your armchairs. “How long ago? Is it still bleeding?”

“Not with a knife,” Magne says. With what, then? “Boss’s daddy forcibly activated my quirk with his hideous little tentacles.”

There’s nothing about that sentence that you don’t hate. “The same thing happened to Kurogiri,” Spinner adds. He’s leaning against the wall. Grimacing. “A hero messed with him first, though.”

The answer to the question of why they’re here finally clicks in your overworked, exhausted brain. You’re the team medic, and they’ve all been hurt. They need you to do the same thing you’ve been doing all night, when all you want to do is peel off your bloody clothes and go to sleep. Instead, you need to triage. “Okay, who took an injury that knocked them out?”

Hands go up – Magne, Dabi, Kurogiri. Compress might have a facial fracture, based on the way his mask is askew. Spinner’s ribs hurt, but he never lost consciousness, and he’s not bleeding from anywhere. Twice, Toga, and Tomura are all beaten up but otherwise fine. You point them in the direction of the freezer so they can put together some ice packs, then turn your attention to the group who passed out.

Of the three of them, Dabi was unconscious the longest, and his injury was a head injury. He threw up when he regained consciousness, although thankfully not on your floor or your couch. He reports a splitting headache, and when you shine the penlight from your keychain in his eyes, you see that one of his pupils isn’t reacting normally to the light. That’s not a good sign. “Do you remember what happened immediately before the blow to the head?”

“Why do you want to know? So you can make your story sound better for the cops?”

“No, I’m testing your memory. It’s an indicator for the severity of the concussion. Track my finger with your eyes.” You observe his eye movements. It could go either way. “What happened before you were struck?”

“The damn kid turned us down. Who does he think he is?” Dabi scoffs. “Shigaraki told Compress to turn him loose, like a fucking moron, and then the fucking heroes broke through the wall. One of them kicked me and that’s all I remember.”

“Kicked you in the head?”

“That’s right.” Dabi groans. “Fuck off with that light in my face.”

You put the penlight away and think through your options. “I’m going to give you some medicine. Over-the-counter NSAIDs –”

“What?”

“Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs,” Tomura says. You glance at him, surprised, and find him smiling slightly from behind the hand. “Acetaminophen or ibuprofen. They’re over the counter. You can get them without a prescription.”

“I know what over the counter means,” Dabi snaps. “I didn’t ask you. I asked the medic. Do you have some?”

“Yeah. Acetaminophen’s best for this. The bottles are opened, but I’m going to go get them – Twice, will you come with me and watch me get them?” you ask. Twice looks startled. “You can watch me and tell Dabi that I’m not tampering with the pills at all.”

“I’m not that fucking paranoid,” Dabi says. But he doesn’t tell Twice not to follow you.

You’ve been wondering if Twice remembers you. So far it seems like he doesn’t, but something jogs his memory as you come back with the bottles. “I knew I’d seen you before,” he announces loudly, and you shush him alongside Compress, Toga, and Tomura. “You stitched up my mask!”

“Did the stitches hold okay?” you ask. “I know it was a little rushed.”

“Barely,” Twice says. Then: “They were great! Lasted until Giran hooked me up with a new one.”

“You’ve met her before?” Compress asks, suspicious.

“Sure thing. If she’d showed her face, I could have backed up the boss and said she was all right!” Twice sounds cheerful. He slaps you on the back and you nearly spill acetaminophen tablets all over the floor. “Nicest nurse I ever had. No screaming, no calling the cops. Just stitched my mask and gave me the good drugs and sent me on my way!”

“He got the good drugs?” Tomura says, incredulous. “Why didn’t I get those?”

“You behaved. Sort of.” You need to get into the kitchen, but Toga and Tomura are both there, holding bags of ice to their various scrapes and bruises. “Can one of you fill a glass of water? The cabinet to the right.”

Tomura does it – with warm sink water – and hands it off. You head back to Dabi, drop a double dose of acetaminophen into his hand, and order him to drink the whole glass of water with it. You’ll hit him with the same dose in six hours, if they’re still here in six hours. It won’t do anything good for his liver, but if he’s in too much pain to rest and starts trying to do things, his liver will be the least of his worries. You order him to hold still, eyes closed, and focus on Magne and Kurogiri.

Your friends got you a stethoscope as a gag gift a while back, but the stethoscope is real, and you know how to use it. You listen for any irregularities in Magne’s breathing and heartbeat, then tell her to go into the bathroom and check for bruising on her torso – at which point she whips off her shirt. “Check for yourself.”

“Agh, no!” Spinner twists the other way, but not before you see his scales flushing. “Don’t do that!”

“Or at least give some warning,” Twice says. Then he gives a thumbs-up. “Looking good!”

“Put those away. There are children here,” Compress says.

“It’s okay.” Toga is staring avidly. “I don’t mind.”

“You should. We’re the League of Villains, not the League of Perverts.” Spinner is still facing away. “Are you done yet?”

“Are you done yet?” Magne asks you. You’ve been studying her torso and the series of bruises on it. “Well?”

“Nothing that suggests internal bleeding. You’re good to go.”

She pulls her shirt back on. “I hope you all enjoyed that. I won’t be doing it again.”

“Don’t,” Spinner says. “Please.”

You commandeer one of the ice bags Toga made and hand it to Magne, then turn your attention to Kurogiri. Kurogiri’s going to present a problem, and both of you know it. “What do you have in the way of internal organs?” you ask. “Heart, lungs, digestive tract –”

“Everything, but it will not be possible to listen to. This is in the way.”

“He can take it off,” Tomura says. “Kurogiri. Go somewhere else and show her.”

You’d say the bathroom, but Kurogiri’s a lot taller than you are. There wouldn’t be room. You go to your bedroom instead, leaving the door slightly cracked so you can listen to what’s happening in the living room and intervene if it gets too wild. Kurogiri shrugs out of his waistcoat, followed by his shirt, leaving nothing but a pair of pants and a swirling cloud of mist. Then, as you watch, the mist begins to peel back, revealing a body underneath it.

It’s pretty clearly a human body. It looks like it’s been stitched together out of multiple other bodies, but all the requisite parts of a human body appear to be present. So is the metal neckpiece of Kurogiri’s costume. Above it, though, there’s a face. It’s a young face. Younger than you, younger than Tomura, and it looks back at you with enormous yellow eyes. Its mouth moves, and the strange doubled voice issues from it. “Hurry up. I can’t do this for long.”

You conduct a quick physical exam. Unlike Magne, Kurogiri has actual puncture wounds. One actual puncture wound in his ribcage, and when you listen to his breathing, there’s a whistle on that side that shouldn’t be there. “You’ve got a punctured lung,” you say. “It might repair on its own. If there’s anyone else who can –”

“The doctor will perform the necessary maintenance,” Kurogiri says. That means zip to you, except that the doctor’s apparently willing to treat everybody except Tomura. “Is Shigaraki Tomura safe in your company?”

You look up into that young face, see the shadow of human eyes within the yellow ones. “He is.”

“Tell him where I have gone, and that I will return shortly.” Kurogiri vanishes.

You go back out to the living room and deliver the message, then check in with Compress and Spinner about their injuries. Compress won’t let you look under his mask, but does a self-exam under your direction and somewhat confirms your diagnosis of a cheekbone fracture. He gets NSAIDs and an ice pack. Spinner has a rib out of place. You need to put it back in.

He’s not making it easy. “Stop tensing up,” you say. “Every time you do that while I’m trying to put your rib back, the likelihood of a muscle tear goes up. That’s a lot harder to fix than a dislocated rib.”

“It hurts. I’d like to see you try it!”

“I haven’t had the privilege.” The temper you swear you don’t have is doing its best to break out of captivity. “Okay, here’s the deal. I have some vodka in there. You’re going to drink that while I check on the others, and then we’ll handle your rib. Okay?”

“Sure,” Spinner says, surprised. “You lift the bottle down from the top of the refrigerator and hand it over. “Thanks.”

Twice has mostly bumps and bruises, as well as complaints about the fact that Spinner got alcohol but he didn’t. You shoo him off to share with Spinner, then check in with Toga. Toga’s really interested in your scrubs. “How many people’s blood is on there?” she asks eagerly. “You’re so lucky. All that blood everywhere – doesn’t it smell good?”

“It just smells like blood to me. But my sense of smell probably isn’t as good as yours.” You look Toga up and down. “Did you get hurt anywhere?”

“No.” Toga keeps studying you. “Can you get some blood for me? If everybody’s already bleeding –”

“Sorry,” you say, and she pouts. “I’d get caught. Plus, don’t you want those kids’ blood? Blood from some random patient of mine probably won’t help much.”

“No,” Toga agrees, “but it would taste good.”

“I’ll take your word for it. You’re good to go, also.” You watch as she skips off to join Spinner and Twice, then turn your attention to Tomura. You saved him for last on purpose, hoping you’d get a chance to talk to him, and now that you have one, you don’t know what to say. “Um –”

“Don’t.”

“You don’t even know what I was going to say.” The fact that you don’t know either is immaterial.

“It was probably going to be some kind of pep talk. In your evil shrink voice,” Tomura says, and your mouth twitches. He notices, and a moment later he’s mimicking you. “Tomura, this could be a lot worse. You could have gotten everybody captured instead of just Sensei. The kid you handpicked to join the League of Villains blew Father’s hand off your face, but at least you’ve got a face, right?”

The joke occurs to you, and you’re so tired and overwhelmed that it comes out of your mouth with zero edits. “That’s one more face than Sensei has.”

Tomura coughs. “What?”

“Also, you missed part of what I was going to say,” you say, seizing the momentum and running with it. “Well, what you were going to say. You were going to complain about All Might winning, and I was going to say that he didn’t really win, because he leveled Kamino Ward and I spent all night trying to keep the people in those buildings alive, and mostly failing –”

“Wait, what?”

“And then,” you say, wishing you hadn’t said a word about your job, “I was going to remind you that everybody saw All Might’s scarecrow form. So nobody’s going to want him to fuck them now.”

Tomura’s expression contorts to a degree that looks painful. “That’s – not – funny,” he grits out.

“I mean, when we talked about rendering All Might unfuckable, I thought it was just a pipe dream,” you say. Tomura’s shoulders are shaking now. You don’t know what else to do but keep going. “But this is proof. The sky’s the limit. Anything is possible. I mean, if you can set up a situation that takes All Might from fuckable to unfuckable in a split second, then you can do anything you want to do.”

Tomura is staring at you, speechless and twitching like he’s caught in an electric fence, and even though you think there’s a nonzero chance you’re going to get killed over this, you can’t resist. “How’s that for a pep talk?”

“It sucked,” Tomura says, and then he bursts out laughing.

You’re proud any time you can make him laugh, and this is no exception. At first he’s just laughing. Then his breathing starts to hitch, and you realize that the laughter’s tripped another circuit in his brain – one he probably doesn’t want the others to see. “What the hell are you two laughing about?” Dabi demands from the couch. “Let the rest of us in on it.”

“Yes,” Compress agrees, “we could use something to laugh at.”

“Inside joke. You wouldn’t understand.” You catch Tomura’s sleeve and tug him down the hallway, out of sight of the others. His laughter is sounding less and less like laughter with every passing second, and he’s clawing at his neck with one hand. You keep your voice quiet, trying above all not to drop into the conflict-resolution voice. “No. Tenko, don’t. That’s not going to make things better.”

“I really fucked up.” His voice, already raspy, cracks in a way that sounds painful. “Things were supposed to – I’m not ready. I haven’t learned. He was supposed to teach me. I can’t –”

Something tells you that right now’s not the time for a joke. You think Tenko might be crying. No, you know it, and he knows you know. “Don’t look.”

You remember that from forever ago. He never wanted you to see him cry. You turn your back, as much as it hurts you to do it, and as soon as you do, his arms come up around you. His hands are curled into fists, shielding you from his quirk, one balled up against your shoulder and the other balanced over your hipbone. Something thuds against the floor behind you and you glance to one side, a jolt running through you. There’s the hand he calls Father, discarded.

Tenko’s body shakes, strongly enough to rattle you both. He’s taller than you, but not so tall that he can’t duck down and press his face into the curve of your neck and shoulder to muffle himself. After a few seconds, it’s clear that it’s not enough. You feel his mouth meet your skin. A moment later, his teeth.

It stings, and you will yourself not to flinch. You remember the few times you actually saw Tenko cry instead as opposed to just hearing it when you were kids, remember seeing him shove his fist into his mouth to stay quiet, but both his hands are occupied holding you. You wonder if he even knows he’s biting you. Or how hard he’s biting you. His breath is hot against your skin. So are his tears, and you stand there, not flinching, letting your best friend take what he needs from you. He let you hug him the last time you saw each other, when you were upset over something as small as meeting his master. Over something this big, he can have this as long as he wants.

When you cry, your tears usually stop quickly. It’s a skill you developed on purpose. But Tenko’s take a while to trail off, and it’s a little while after that before his mouth lifts away from your skin. He doesn’t mention the bite, and neither do you. He keeps holding you close. “What were you doing tonight, again?”

“Forget about that,” you say. “It’s not important.”

“Say it again.” Tenko’s hand drifts from your hip halfway under your shirt, three fingers resting against your stomach and his index finger raised. “Please.”

You try to think. “Um, I said you had one more face than your master has –”

This time Tenko snorts. “After that.”

“I said you’d say All Might won, and I’d say he didn’t, because he leveled Kamino Ward,” you continue, “and I spent all night trying to save the people who were inside those buildings –”

“That’s it!” Tenko stiffens. One hand grabs your wrist and pulls you around to face him, and you see wild excitement in his face. “You didn’t blame me for those people getting hurt. You didn’t blame my master. You blamed All Might. My plan – turning people against heroes – what you said about making them choose wrong – it worked!”

“It worked,” you say, bewildered. “Ten, I’m not exactly the common denominator here. Everybody else –”

“The ones who worship the ground heroes walk on – they were always a lost cause,” Tenko says. You won’t argue with that. People like your parents and siblings will never listen. They won’t even try. “It’s people this system hurts who will see what I’m doing. People like you. You –”

He breaks off, looking at you, grinning with tear tracks down his face. You remember this look, too. Except when you were five years old, you never saw it in the split second before he kissed you. His mouth fits against yours, messy and enthusiastic with blood on his lips, blood that could be his – or yours, depending on whether his bite broke the skin. Tenko pushes you back against the wall and keeps kissing you, only breaking away for air when he has to. You wrap your arms around him, since he can’t touch you safely, and try to deliver a reality check. “Tenko, I’ve known you forever. If I understand you –”

“Then I don’t need anybody else to,” Tenko says. “Everyone else can get behind us or get out of my way.”

He kisses you again, but before you can really get into it, Magne calls out from the living room. “Are you two done fucking yet? Spinner’s got the hiccups.”

Tenko’s face turns bright red. He scrambles to pick up the hand, and you head down the hall ahead of him. “If we were fucking, it would take a lot longer than that,” you say, and Magne lets out a low whistle. You turn to Spinner. “Sorry about the hiccups, but we can use those. Stand up, over here. And hold your arms out like this –”

Spinner does it, grimacing. You observe the timing of the hiccups for a few more minutes, then step in and apply the necessary force, popping the rib back into place. Spinner lets out a small yelp that would be more problematic if any of your neighbors were around, then lowers his arms. “Is it done?”

“It’s back in place. Feel better?”

“Yeah,” Spinner says. Then he hiccups. “Fuck it. No.”

“We can fix that, too,” you say. “Follow me.”

Tomura comes back while you’re feeding a spoonful of sugar to Spinner, instructing him to hold it under his tongue until it dissolves. He fixates on the two of you. “What are you doing?”

“Curing the hiccups.” You direct Spinner to sit down, then focus on Tomura. “What else do you need?”

“Food,” Toga says, to general assent. “Do you have food?”

“Not enough for this many people,” you say. “But we can order in.”

Five pizzas at nine in the morning isn’t the weirdest delivery order you’ve ever placed, and it’s also not the most expensive. You have a coupon, and the members of the League of Villains are surprisingly willing to pitch in – although Twice and Compress try to give you counterfeit at first. Tomura calls them on it, and they pay up in real money, after which Compress gives you a quick and unexpected lesson in how to spot counterfeit currency.

“Obviously, none of that holds if it’s a copy of Twice’s,” he says at the conclusion of the explanation, “but it’s much easier to tell with Twice’s currency. Observe –”

He drags a nail across one of the coins Twice gave you, at which point it collapses into sludge on your kitchen table. “That’s the problem with Twice’s stuff,” Toga says. “It doesn’t hold together long.”

“It looks great while it does,” Twice protests. Then: “I’m a failure!”

Toga and Magne both console him, which is weird to watch. Weirdly supportive. You didn’t think villains were supportive of each other – but why wouldn’t they be? Villains are people, just like anybody else. They have enemies. It makes sense that they’d have friends, too.

Kurogiri’s return from the doctor is poorly timed – it happens right as the pizzas arrive, and it takes every ounce of people skills you possess to prevent the delivery driver from carrying the pizzas inside for you. Kurogiri goes immediately to check in with Tomura, while everyone else tears into the pizza like they’re starving. It’s all you can do to retrieve a piece or two for Tomura. You’ve sort of lost your appetite. The last time you remember having one was last night, before everything went to hell.

You come back to Tomura and Kurogiri in the kitchen. They’re strategizing, and Tomura takes the plate from you with one hand and pulls you into the conversation with the other. “This can’t be our base,” he says to Kurogiri. “It’s too much of a risk for all of us, her included.”

“What if it were to act as something of a way station?” Kurogiri suggests. “It will likely be some time before we can establish a base with some of the creature comforts we are used to. Perhaps if we were to come here for things like showers, or laundry –”

“I don’t want them alone with her.”

“I’m not here for most of the day,” you say. “I’m at work, or running errands, or with my friends. As long as you aren’t seen and you don’t run my water bill through the roof or eat all my food – or steal my stuff – it’s fine with me.”

“Having access to a place like this would improve morale,” Kurogiri continues. His eyes tilt towards Tomura. “It would also give you an excuse to visit that no one would question.”

“I don’t need an excuse to visit. I can do what I want,” Tomura says. It’s quiet for a second. “Fine. If you’re okay with it –”

“I’m okay with it.” Your phone buzzes and you check it, hoping it’s Sho or Hirono, but it’s neither – just work, telling you that you’re not on until tomorrow morning, instead of tonight like you were supposed to be. “How long do you think you’ll be staying this time?”

“Until dark,” Tomura says. “We have to lay low for a little while. Then we’ll move.”

“I would recommend getting some rest,” Kurogiri says. “After eating that.”

“I don’t need to rest.” Tomura picks up the pizza and takes a messy bite.

On your first date, such as it was, Tomura said that villains argue like kids do. Based on what happens after the pizza’s consumed, they fall asleep after they’ve eaten like kids do, too. They hold off sleep long enough to fight over sleeping positions, but none of them go after your bed, and when Tomura starts yawning, you take the empty plate out of his hands. “My room’s darker. It’ll be easier to sleep there.”

You feel yourself relax the instant you shut your bedroom door behind the two of you. The other villains might be friendly to you, but you only trust Tenko, and to a lesser extent, Kurogiri. Tenko, paradoxically, tenses up. “I don’t need a bed. I sleep standing up.”

“Standing up?” you repeat, baffled. “How?”

“So I don’t destroy it. Once I touch something with all five fingers, it’s gone.” Tenko looks at the bed, almost longingly. “And I don’t have gloves.”

“I’ve got some,” you say. Tenko looks at you, surprised. “I took yours with me when I left last time.”

They’re folded on your dresser. You bring them over, and Tenko pulls them on, a moment before he knocks you backwards onto the bed. You give him a few seconds, then put your forearm against his chest to push him back. “Whatever we’re doing, I’m not doing it in bloody clothes. Let me get changed.”

“Fine,” Tenko complains, and shifts slowly to one side to let you up. At least he doesn’t ask you if he can help.

If you were alone, you’d shower, but you don’t want to risk being that vulnerable with an apartment full of villains. You change into your regular pajamas, the kind you’d wear if you were sleeping by yourself instead of in the same bed as your best friend, who’s a guy, who’s into you. You’re pretty sure Tenko’s not going to try for sex tonight. Not with his level of experience. And not after the day and night he’s had.

When you step out of the bathroom, changed for bed, Tenko’s sitting cross-legged on your bed, pretty clearly lost in thought. The hand is resting on your nightstand. “Hey,” you say, and he looks up.

He looks you over slowly, color coming up in his cheeks with every second that ticks past. Your pajamas aren’t particularly revealing, so you’re not sure what he’s getting excited about – but then his eyes fasten onto something and his gaze sharpens. “What the hell is that?”

You look blankly at him. “On your neck. It’s –” Tenko realizes what it is in the same moment as you realize what he’s looking at. “Fuck. Why didn’t you say something?”

“You were trying to stay quiet. I wanted to help.” You take a step back as Tenko rises from the bed and comes closer. “It’s not a big deal. It just looks –”

Tenko’s fingers brush over it and you wince in spite of yourself. “It looks worse than it is.”

Tenko steps past you, headed for the bathroom. The light switches on, and a moment later you hear him rummaging through the cabinet above the sink. “You’re a nurse. You don’t have band-aids in here?”

“The first-aid kit’s under the sink,” you say. Then something occurs to you. “This isn’t a first-aid thing. It’s just a bruise.”

“You’re not looking at it. I am.” Tenko comes back and drops the first-aid kit on the bed next to you. When you reach for it, he shoves your hand away. You reach for it a second time with the same result. “Stop. I did it, so I’m fixing it. Hold still.”

You sit there, bemused, while Tenko fumbles through the first-aid kit, trying to figure out what to use on a bruise that isn’t bleeding. “You could always kiss it better.”

“That’s lame,” Tenko scoffs. Then he leans in and does it anyway, lightly enough that it doesn’t sting. Your face flushes, a flush that only goes down once he’s come back with what feels like half a tube of Neosporin. When he speaks up again, his voice is quieter. “Why did you let me do that?”

“I didn’t let you,” you say. “Was I supposed to punch you or something?”

“Yeah. Or say ‘hey, don’t fucking bite me’. That would work, too.” Tenko sounds more than a little sarcastic, but it fades fast. “I don’t know how to do any of this. Not that out there –”

He gestures towards the door, the hallway, the League. “Or this in here,” he says, gesturing between the two of you. “You’re going to have to show me how. At first. Then I can pick it up as I go.”

“How to do what? Put a band-aid on a bruise?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Tenko says. You figured you probably earned that one, but you’re going to make him say it anyway. “Be – with somebody. Master never – it’s not like I’d ever do what my parents did – or that happy-ending bullshit on TV – I don’t know. And I figure you do, since you’ve got condoms in there.”

You weren’t expecting that. “Are you slut-shaming me?”

“What? No.” Tenko gives you a weird look. “There were, like, two missing. And they’re basically expired.”

“You counted?” You look at Tenko, and he snaps at you to face front again, his face turning red. “Don’t do things like that. It’s weird.”

“Look at that. You already taught me something.”

You’re tempted to retort that Tenko shouldn’t need to be taught not to snoop through your bathroom cabinet, but then you remember that Tenko wasn’t raised like you or anybody else you know. Tenko was raised by villains, and proper socialization doesn’t appear to have been a priority. It hasn’t taught him much about first aid, either. He’s peeling open the biggest band-aid in the kit, touching all kinds of stuff he shouldn’t be touching, before lowering it gingerly down over the bruise. “You’re already good at this part,” you tell him.

“What part is this?”

“Aftercare.”

Tenko’s heard the term before. You can tell by the way his ears turn red. He presses down the bandage at the edges, then sits back. “Next time, tell me not to bite you.”

“See? You can teach me stuff, too.”

Getting into bed is weird. Sure, you both made jokes about sleepovers the last time you saw each other, but this time there’s a bed – and thanks to Tenko’s snooping, you’re both well aware that there’s a mostly-full box of condoms somewhere in the offing. You get under the covers, and after a moment Tenko copies you, fully dressed. He doesn’t stay there too long. “This is too warm.”

“You can sleep outside the blankets. Or take something off.”

The rustling tells you that Tenko’s opted for door number two, most likely with his shirt. “Now what?”

“We sleep,” you say. You decide to save cuddling as a concept for another time. You close your eyes and within seconds, you’re asleep.

You wake up to your phone buzzing on your nightstand, and Tenko tossing and turning in a restless sleep on the far side of the bed. When you flip your phone over you see notifications from the group chat. A whole pileup of them. Hirono and Sho must have finally checked in. You unlock your phone to respond and your heart goes still in your chest.

Kazuo: They didn’t make it.

Kazuo: Sho’s building came down. He died instantly.

Mitsuko: fuck you

Mitsuko: if you don’t quit fucking around

Kazuo: Hirono was trapped in the wreckage. Once she was extricated, she was sent to Yokohama General and died there ninety-eight minutes ago.

Mitsuru: and you’re just telling us now???? what the fuck

Kazuo: We had to notify their families first.

Yoshimi: we’re their family

Yoshimi: what are we going to do

Ryuhei: Sho’s family treated him like SHIT, why do they get to know before we do??

Ryuhei: what the fuck

This isn’t on Kazuo. Whoever else it’s on, it’s not on him, so you wade in, your vocal cords tied in a knot. It’s a good thing this isn’t happening in person. Your friends already saw you cry once this year, and they need someone to be calm. I know Kazuo let us know as soon as he could. And Ryuhei, you’re right – we love them more.

*loved.

You look at Mitsuko’s addition, feeling sick to your stomach. Love. It doesn’t go away. It never goes away. If anyone knows that, you do. We should be together right now. Kazuo, are you okay to host tonight?

Kazuo doesn’t send anything more than a thumbs-up, which is how you know that whatever feelings he has left are hurt by how everyone’s treating him. What’s he been doing all night? Using his quirk. Identifying victims. You’re overcome suddenly with the need to see him, to give him one of those hugs he always stands awkwardly in but never pulls away from. He’s your friend, too. Your friend who’s never hurt you or dragged you into the middle of his disastrous crusade against society. A crusade that just got two of your other friends killed.

Your breath hitches in your throat, and beside you, Tenko stirs, sits up. “What?” he asks, but you don’t answer. Can’t answer. You’re too busy jamming your fist in your mouth, a move you didn’t realize you learned from Tenko until right this second. “Who are you talking to?”

Notificaitons come up – your friends, setting a time to go to Kazuo’s – and you power off your phone and shove it away. You’ll get there early. You need to talk to him first, tell him that you get it as much as anyone can, that you’re sorry he was forced into this position, sorry he was the one who had to say it. Sorry because this is your fault. If you’d told UA ahead of time what was happening, then the student wouldn’t have been kidnapped. Then there would have been no fight in Kamino Ward that led to hundreds, maybe thousands of casualties. If you had just –

“What is it?” Tenko shakes your shoulder. “Hey. Take that out of your mouth and talk to me. What –”

You pry your fist from between your teeth. “I’m going to tell you something, and I need you not to say anything.” You can’t sit through his justifications, his arguments for why it’s All Might’s fault, when all you care about is your friends and what happened to them. If they knew what was happening. If they were scared. “Two of my friends died in Kamino Ward tonight. I just found out.”

“I –”

“Don’t say anything,” you say. “Just –”

You turn to face Tenko, wrapping your arms around him, burying your face in his shoulder. The two of you have been through the hugging procedure enough times now that he knows what to do in response. He hugs you back, hauls you closer. His skin smells like sweat and smoke, but yours smells like blood, and you know already that you’ll be tearing the sheets off the bed, throwing them away, getting rid of the evidence. But it doesn’t matter how much evidence you get rid of. You can’t hide the truth: This happened tonight because of what Tenko did, and what you didn’t do.

You made this bed, you and Tenko. At least you get to lie in it together.

[redphlox]

Do you think Toya ever had a chance? I feel like his descent into villainy as Dabi was inevitable, I know he has the equivalent of a Quirk disability but I feel maybe it wasn't meant to work like his father's Quirk but in a different way.

I wished Toya had the chance to go back home but Horikoshi pulled a cruel fate on us.

I didn't want Toya to be saved this way, it felt too late and he will always be seen as his family's regret and failure because he is the cruel reminder to everyone that this family was a mistake, nothing but a Quirk experiment.

He can never be seen as anything other than a mistake or regret to make up for out of guilt. I know his family is here now, but it feels more out of obligation more than anything.

I have a few thoughts about how disability is framed in BNHA but I'll reserve my thoughts until after the manga is officially over. I'm not sure if you've read my other posts, but I'm optimistic that Touya's fate isn't to die. I'm not going to entertain doom and gloom on my blog. I'm finding that spiraling is influencing others to think the worst of the worst and causing unnecessary heartache and anxiety. I'm not saying others can't spiral - just don't do it on my blog.

I don't agree with the idea that the family thinks of Touya as a mistake - where does the manga indicate the family thinks his existence was a mistake? Can you show me the panels? No, because they don't exist.

In 301-302, it's plainly stated that the family thinks Dabi was born out of Endeavor's ambition and selfishness and failure as a father. The other children were quirk experiments too, but Rei and even Endeavor NEVER state regret about starting a family - they don't regret their kids. They regret hurting their kids, but they don't regret bringing them into this world. Not once has Rei or Enji stated they regret Touya being born. Neither have the siblings.

The regret the family feels isn't that he exists, but that they feel they failed him in some way - Rei and Enji as parents, Natsuo and Fuyumi as siblings (even though it wasn't their fault at all.) It's only natural to feel responsible and guilty for your loved one's downward spiral and feel like you could have done more if you had known what would have happened (See: Spinner in 427).

The Todorokis love Touya unconditionally (although it was hard to show that during their childhood because of the abuse). That's why they united to stop him, why they united to come see him at the hospital, and that's why they want to talk to him and have SO much to discuss. Touya is literally shivering and his heart rate is speeding up from the happiness of finally feeling wanted and seen now that his family is at his bedside.

They're literally saying, "Tell me all your thoughts. I want to know. I want to be with you."

He's a hated criminal now - BUT they're not abandoning him. They're facing hell right now because of what he did but they're not forsaking him or distancing themselves to save themselves from the public's damnation. They WANT to be with Touya, even if it'll be difficult. They could have easily left him, deserted him, forsaken him, turned their backs, washed their hands clean of him - much like Hawks and his mother distanced themselves from his father.

But the Todorokis HAVEN'T spurned Touya, and WON'T. That's what they're conveying by being at his bedside and telling him they want to talk to him. Nothing he can do can make them stop wanting him. Sure, there might be some resentment and hurt feelings, but that doesn't negate unconditional love.

Horikoshi went out of his way to make each Todoroki family member state they were present in Touya's room because they wanted to be there. "We're not all here out of a sense of duty" = we're all here because we want to be. If reading 426 didn't convince you of that, you might want to step back and reread a few more times.

[izzyshandz]

I swear if i see one more mf say izzy has been 'redeemed' or needed a 'redemption arc' im literally going to scream into my pillow until i lose my voice.

redeem is such a black and white way of looking at his entire character and dismisses everything hes gone through and yall (izzy haters and others) are just so fucking snob nosed and ignorant to sit there and think hes a villain because of how he acted. theyre fucking pirates. theyre not perfect, none of them are. eds a villain, stedes a villain, if youre doing it like that. ed has killed so many people, stede literally left his wife and kids and also had a hand in killing people; it may be easier for them to change because of the perspective the show gives them and they had love but izzy did not. everyone hated him, ed, his own crew, stedes crew.

normalizing peoples reactions to things as something other than villainy and heroism is so god damn important in a show that's trying to accurately involve our perspectives in this day and age. its a tale as old as time, making someone 'completely in the wrong' because their perspective isnt the one you aligned with as much.

like the rest of the crew izzy had his own bad things hes done, he didnt need this 'redemption' everyones blabbering on about. he needed to be fucking heard, to be seen, and acknowledged-- not thrown aside and abandoned because of a whim. you all can ride up blackbeards ass because oh hes so hot, hes so pretty omg wow; but that wont ever change the fact his character is a fucked up person... youre allowed to love him anyways, why not izzy? we didnt see blackbeard before screen but how hes mentioned it shows he was a shit awful person, the only reason no one cares is because on hes fuckin gay for stede or whatever so the main characters get a free ride. ( i agree they all get a free ride, im just tired of this izzy isolation man )

why does he need to be redeemed in your eyes? just because youve seen what hes done? he was literally a product of his environment in season one he was a product of blackbeard's leadership. only with the loyalty and solidarity of the crew did he really begin to find himself, thats fucking hard to do that late in life. instead of calling it some bullshit black and white redemption arc, lets just celebrate izzy being himself and being fucking loved for once in his god damn life.

hes also way more fucking mature and put together than people give him credit for. love you izzy.

edit: thank you all for the reblogs and insights in every single one, i read them i promise i do. im just so mf heartbroken we have to tag things as discourse when its really just about people not being compassionate. (as a couple people have pointed out) i will said id reblog and comment on every single tag but this is my side </3 EVERYONE PLEASE READ THE REBLOGGED TAGS TOO / / theyre so real ! ive also opened up that ask box thingy i havent been on tumblr in yrs and have 0 clue how any of that works if anyone wants my perspective on anything izzy related. *or otherwise ofmd related

[coffeegnomee]

lifesteal spoilers

about Kab's manipulative villain/wet cat 2 sides, I 100% agree with you, it currently just feels like a bit loose with which direction she wants to go with and honestly it could go either way.

Since at the end of the day, the streams will be edited into videos, and from the knowledge of Kab's first lifesteal video (and her other videos), some of the behind the scenes knowledge(like discord messages) or deeper inner thoughts are mentioned and or revealed even though it hasn't been shown on stream (wont go into detail here, just stating the point). So there is a chance that she IS playing the manipulative villain that you imagined and internally thought to not show it at all to stream audience, just to reveal that's what she had been doing the entire time in the video. And that's why I think the narration of her video is the ultimate deciding factor of her character, whether she is the secret big villain or a wet cat that tries to be one.

Also, on the topic of wet cat, since the season started, she always have and developed even more insecurities on her skills(both pvp and non-pvp) and trusting other people. Through multiple people, she already experienced lifesteal more than some of the other new members(also bacause of play time but), and it makes sense that she would become more vulnerable and a wet cat since she felt a lot of things go out of control and often felt lost and loss. Even with that, she is in a place where she still needs to find herself a comfortable position on the server, and I just think she still needs to learn to have a proper relationship and understanding with people without having the anxiety from her already established lifesteal trauma getting in the way. From what ive seen, she tends to get more desperate when things start to turn and not everyone is fine with that(some might even see that suspicious when it's just unintentional). Seeing recent events I think she's getting closer and closer so I hope she reaches a comfortable position to do whatever direction she wants to go with this, I'm still watching anyways

Last thing, I think her reputation plays quite a bit on how others treat her. Throughout the season, there are multiple occasions where when other lifestealers discuss anything about Kab, they would bring up "Kab's thing is manipulation". Multiple people from seperate teams even, said something similar and it just strikes me as most people that are aware of this reputation would already have a tendency to avoid her and those who interact with her will be wary and be on guard to not fall for her tactics(example: Mapicc does not trust her at all, even in the entirety of their alliance against Mane and this is the first reason he gave). With this reputation, she already has a hard time getting people to even try to trust her, so it renders her manipulation skill even harder to put into practice, especially in this long term server.

(lowkey don't know if my thoughts are consistent here, just sprinkling some ideas, crossing my fingers, and hope it won't be too much of a mess)

I mean, yea, the video will solidify what she was intending for her character. But it is 100% a manipulative villain, it'll just be how she spins the tale. The sopping wet cat is a classic of her videos and is used to get the one up on the other person. (which is also why i find it irksome for her to keep doing it to chat)

but as a stream-first, usually-stream-only, consumer of the story of lifesteal the fact remains that she's mashing it up all over the place without any clear lines. And that creates, imo, a very difficult character to sympathize with, and that's without the triggering argument style. With the ableism and triggering I just flat out hate her character and that hate would feel better if she balanced it with to-chat on-camera villainy.

But it is the fate of a first season new member to not know if they can trust chat, not know how to make an unscripted live character, to be faced with their literal skill tree of abilities being put to the actual test (and for kab, in an environment where everyone is a liar and manipulator) and to generally be all over the place. I am very interested to how she will be s7 because one full season usually helps a ton. But unfortunately until then she still exists in the story, she still exists in relation to Zam's story who has a lot of practice at making an unscripted live stream character, in relation to mapicc who has his own thoughts about how the server works and what merits death that she just doesn't understand, in relation to ash and clown and everyone else that has shocked her and scared her with their choices.

Realistically- no ok realistically if i'm being honest with myself and think for half a second about the shit she says on camera i only hate her character. and I hate especially how trapped she's made, specifically zam but also everyone, for like, tormented if i kill you, tormented if i don't.

But realistically she simply exists in this story exactly as she is. Which is all everyone else is on this server. No matter what they do they affect the story; being there, not being there, saying this, keeping that secret.

And honestly, her story is creating a really really fascinating, if incredibly difficult and painful, story for Zam. Which sucks and makes me feel emotions that I didn't want to be feeling. Is that good? Is that bad? idk but it is lifesteal.

[the-knight-of-destiny]

On Fantasy High, Redemption, and Agency (General Spoilers for Junior Year, sort of?) Also this post about FHJY is long as fuck, as all of mine are getting. In short it's my understanding of how Brennan Lee Mulligan sets up the teenage villains of Fantasy High.

Fair warning, this is LOOOONG below the cut.

Y'know when I said I wasn't going to talk about Ratgrinder discourse? I lied.

So Brennan as a DM has a very specific narrative language for how a villain is 'redeemable' and it primarily has to do with the level of agency a villain has in their actions. This isn't particularly hard to notice when you look at our very own (and fan favorite) reformed villain squad.

Starting with Ragh, while he was in his right mind for most of his villainy in Freshman Year, he really didn't do too much other than beat people up and be a bully? While he worked with Daybreak on some level, he wasn't anything more than muscle and not very in on most of the plans. There was also some implication of grooming and manipulation from Daybreak to Ragh.

Zayn as an example also helps build this thesis, while he also hasn't done a TON evil he's generally a bit more discerning than Ragh. However he builds the understanding of how Fantasy High looks at it's redeemed teenage villains, when Zayn is found as a ghost he explicitly calls out Daybreak as being the only reason he's still housed, were he not to go along with the Freshman Year scheme he'd have been sent back to his abusive parents, the foster system, or homeless as like, a fifteen year old boy.

But the actual silver bullet to understanding this is Aelwyn, to preface. Aelwyn fucking sucks in freshman year, way worse than Ragh or Zayn. She's also responsible for way worse than any other teenage villain in the series. She's arguably committed worse than Dayne Blayde or Penelope Everpetal, but there's an important component to her redemption in Sophmore Year, something Brennan has her stay conscious despite making death saves to explain.

In tears Aelwyn notes that Kalina was actively threatening to kill her had she not complied with the Kalvaxus plan.

So there's a running theme here, Ragh didn't seem to have much of an idea of what the wider plan even was and was just muscle, Zayn was under significant threat to his personal safety (and unbeknownst to him, also under threat of death, a threat that actually gets carried out), and Aelwyn was literally convinced she'd be murdered for not complying.

This tracks with the teen villains who DON'T get redeemed by the way, Dayne had no qualms about casually murdering his classmates with a great sword, Penelope didn't seem to mind the idea of throwing her best friend Kalvaxus for a power play. They both get killed because they don't seem to really care what happened, were fully complicit, and had no form of remorse at all.

This leaves us with our code to cracking if Brennan sees the Ratgrinders as possibly worthy of redemption (IMO, signs point to yes, but it's complicated.) We know the Ratgrinders are being manipulated heavily by Porter (I have so many more thoughts about Jace's place in this but that's for a whole other post,) however they don't have Ragh's excuse of being mostly in the dark.

Kipperlilly and Oisin for sure know exactly what's going on, and the rest (sans Buddy) probably do too. The actual question is how much does Ankarna rage affect one's reasoning, and the thing that's interesting about how the Ratgrinders have been set up is that question is sincerely ambiguous.

Signs point to the corruption needing some sort of genuine anger or frustration to latch onto, but this is my first hot take here. This isn't really that damning? Pre-Rage Kipperlilly said some concerning things, in private confidential counseling. She (at the time) understood her fixation on Riz was a problem and perhaps not fair. Oisin probably was mildly frustrated or saddened a girl he had a crush on didn't notice him, but to cast Pre-Rage Oisin as a full on Biz Glitterdew incel is, in my opinion, unlikely. Ruben was already seeking attention but wasn't anything worse than a mildly annoying teenage boy, etc.

These aren't exactly 'good' feelings but they are pretty normal for 14-15 year olds. Pre-Rage Ratgrinders really aren't that much worse than Pre-Character Development Bad Kids, let's not forget that they too definitely act out in really mean, unfair ways at around the same time as Pre-Rage Ratgrinders (Fig and Fabian, most notably.)

As for agency though, they clearly have a bit more of it than previous teenage villains, and are a bit more aware of their actions. They're not under direct threat of violence like Aelwyn or Zayn (though the way Porter and Jace act around them may make that threat implicit.) and they don't have Ragh's excuse of being seemingly largely in the dark.

The Ratgrinders I feel are an intentional test for the Bad Kids (and the Intrepid Heroes as players) because they're significantly more antagonistic than previous teenage villains. Heck, even ones that turned out totally evil. Dayne's kinda chill to the Bad Kids initially, Penelope is a bit backhanded but she isn't outright mean. If you count him, even Johnny Spells humors Riz and is relatively lax to him. Ragh's honestly way more harsh for most of the first half of Freshman Year, Zayn's initially more rude and confrontational to them too.

That said they're both being influenced by a much worse adult (Like everyone in the Reformed Villain Squad) and have a rage god clouding their judgement to an unknown degree. If we follow previously established patterns, they're salvageable by the story's own logic.

The test is for the party, it's easy to forgive Zayn when he openly cries and apologizes immediately when finally confronted about his place in the villain plot, it's easier to forgive Aelwyn when she openly puts herself in harm's way and almost dies to save Adaine.

It's going to be harder, emotionally, for both the player characters and the players themselves to forgive the Ratgrinders and recognize they're also victims in some sense when the Ratgrinders have been actively fucking with the Bad Kids for the whole season, and taking an obvious amount of satisfaction in it.

The challenge Brennan has set up for the party, I feel, is a test of their character. Fighting a possibly ascended god Porter is gonna be a lot easier without a whole other party of enemies in the fight (and even much easier if you can convince some to fight alongside you as a part of heroes.)

[maxwell-grant]

Thoughts on The Penguin trailer?

This one has a more generic mob show vibe out of the ones we've seen so far, and I'm not gonna lie a part of me is still skeptical regarding it, but the emphasis on post-flood broken Gotham besieged by a crime family fighting for the scraps of the kingdom kept me piqued, and then the words "Post-Apocalyptic Sopranos" crossed my mind in the elevator and oh Yes, Ha Ha Yes

It's one thing for a show about mob power struggles and troubled dynamics to happen in a regular society where they exert power and there are structures in place to abide to, it's another thing entirely for said mob power struggles and troubled dynamics to be happening in the wrecked ruins of a city in the process of rebuilding all of it's structures and for said mob to be simultaneously on free-fall and poised for new beginnings as the world itself is changing (if anything Tony Soprano wishes he could be living like this, with more carte blanche to cut through his stresses with a machine gun every now and then)

It's a decent shake-up on a crime show formula even on it's own, without factoring that oh yeah this is Gotham City and said destruction was caused by a nerd obsessed with riddles and all of these mobsters will have to look over their shoulders for the rest of their lives in case the freak in power armor decides to show up and suplex them into the pavement, and things are only going to get worse and weirder from here on out.

Clancy Brown once again showing up to play the Final Boss / All-Father / Divine Judge of organized villainy, we love to see it, it's what he does and he does it better than anyone. Here breathing a whole new life and power and significance into the other major throwaway Gotham gangster.

What I'm interested in regarding Sofia and the Falcones in general is that they've said several times in the past that Oz is modeled after Fredo Corleone, and this trailer goes out of it's way to paint Sofia as the Michael with direct references. For the contrast between Penguin and the actual gangsters to exist, for this to explore the divide and collapse on regular crime vs super crime that the movie kicked off, this thing needs a standard Prestige TV Crime Show protagonist to work, and that seems to be Sofia, the protagonist of a story, just not this one.

The trailer's placing a big emphasis on Oswald as a guy who's still a long way from the top, contrasting with Sofia holding what's left of the reigns of power. Sofia stares at political protestors behind windows and attends fancy dinner conversations and dwells on the scars of her past and makes threats on how she's been pushed aside too long and it's her turn now, and Oz is out there in the ruins hauling corpses and mentoring an understudy and getting into machine gun fights and doing all the grunt work himself.

She gets the dramatic close-door boss shot, and the trailer ends with her cornering Oswald and leaning in real close to tell him she was always onto him and threaten him, because again, she is entirely convinced he is just the Fredo, and that she is in her girlboss Michael Corleone era. She does that, and then it hard cuts to all the violent destructive cool shit Oz is gonna be doing instead, because she is catastrophically wrong about how this thing is gonna work.

Sequel this, Reevesverse that, Trilogy whatever, none of that is gonna cut anymore. I will no longer accept any way of referring to this that isn't The Batman Epic Crime Saga. I'd say the crimelords of Gotham are asking Oswald if he has it in him to make it epic but he's already giving his answer.

The Falcones are right, Oswald IS just a goon who'd never hack it in the old system. It's just that there isn't an old system anymore, and the future looks a lot more like him than it looks like them. She and Alberto think of themselves as troubled scarred underdogs next in line for succession poised to get what is owed to them, while Penguin opens this by walking up to the former ruler of the entire city and telling him, hey head's up, I'm calling the shots now, as he laughs and snorts and plots to burn down the empire and shank them at their weakest and machine gun battle for what he's decided is his. Even if his name wasn't in the title, it wouldn't even be up to debate who's going to win this fight.

Really what is Batman as a whole about, if not Epic Crime?

[durzarya]

I want to hear about your Hero Academia trash collection story.

Ohh boy for some context: that entire fix it au was inspired by my city's incredibly stupid new trash collection system

Meaning that the provided trash cans got incredibly small and the fees more than doubled (among other things).

Which is how this was born

Anyways

It starts the same as the show but everyone is a year younger so Izuku has some time with OFA and doesn't have to rush to UA

For some reason All Might has to leave for a time and Izuku is left alone to train after cleaning up the beach

And on one of his morning runs he stumbles upon a man who tries to leave a fridge on the now clean beach

There is no malice in his decision. But renting a truck to bring the fridge to an actual dump site is not cheap. And depositing said fridge also takes money

He doesn't have the money

So it's much easier to drag the fridge two blocks and dump it. Everyone else is doing it? What's one more piece of trash on that mountain

What actually happens is that Izuku carries the fridge to the deposit site he and All Might have gone several times and pays the deposit fee with his own pocket money

He also successfully befriends the whole neighborhood and through vigorous research and selling a lot of stuff to pawn shops he manages to make the place semi clean

This is unfortunately unsustainable

Pawning things and hard work can take you a little farther, but sometimes people are too poor to take out the trash

Enter Shigaraki Tomura

I don't know exactly how but Izuku manages to befriend him

Maybe they stumble into each other while Izuku is running shop to shop looking for some kind of deal, maybe they argue on some obscure forum about All Might, maybe Shigaraki notices that a lot of petty criminals just straight up disappear in one part of the city because some kid needs some people to help his clean up method and he is working with what he can

The point is that they are friends

It's a pretty new thing for both of them

And when Izuku sees Tomura accidentally disintegrate something his first reaction is not mindless terror

Instead he thinks: that could be useful

This is how Shigaraki Tomura, AFOs successor and Midoriya Izuku OFAs ninth user end up collecting and destroying trash without knowing anything about the other's legacy.

And Tomura gets to see Izuku, someone who wants to be a hero, going around helping people left and right. It wouldn't matter. It shouldn't matter, not to him

But

But Izuku holds out his hand to street kids full of dirt and grime. Who look more like a nightmare than human beings

He can ignore everything else but he cannot ignore that. Not when his younger face is staring back at him and practically screaming: This one is actually a hero

He is also technically a villain. No hero work for him thank you very much. Dusting trash is an illegal use of his quirk nothing else (the fact that most heroes wouldn't even consider that a work of a vigilante is conveniently ignored)

He also doesn't really want to get AFOs attention on this but screwing with the system is always great and thanks to those video games he genuinely loves exploiting anything he can

This is how Shigaraki Tomura dumps his evil plan of upsetting the status and quo lands on the table of the small community he has been terrorizing (helping) (here are some back doors in the law on how to make the government actually take care of the garbage)

Things escalate and...

There is no vigilante emerging from the pits of Mustafa

All Might’s protegee doesn’t fight crime and All for One’s doesn’t plan for a Leauge to break society

There is however a new trash collecting regulation that forces the officials to keep the trash prices affrodable for everyone

And villainy is getting lower as it is implemented

--

Anyway that's the short explanation of my trash au. There are more parts one with Bakugou accidentally tutoring a bunch of social outcasts

one with Ochako, Shinso and Iida accidentally making a support network for financially struggling villains which makes Tensei gradually shift from capture hero to rehabilitation

and one with Dabi off all people becoming a semi legal emergency foster parent and helps Hawks out of his gilded cage

-

(Also there is a scene that lives rent free in my head that after either a disaster or a big destructive fight, Stain trying to get his philosophy by preaching to the masses and someone just chunking a shovel and telling him to get to fucking work and help people)

[afreakingdork]

Happy New Year dork!!

Just want to say that your work has inspired me to write my own works!

This year has been tough for me, I’m a senior in college and I’m not to sure what I want to do with my degree, I felt like I had no purposeful hobbies or interests. So when I stumbled upon Weak Spot I was enamored!! I could not put it down!! And with Soft Spot it gave me a better reason than the weekend to get through the week! It gave me all the inspiration to start working on my hobbies again! So thank you Dork <3

You are just an amazing inspiration! Thank you so much for your hard work!!

XOXO

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

WAH!! I'M SO HONORED TO HAVE INSPIRED YOU!!

I'm sorry to hear times are tough though. I understand that liminal space of transition well. I had to put off my own graduation two semesters. One for a death in the family and having to head home to deal with it and the other because I couldn't secure a job to qualify for my internship to get my diploma. I applied for to 215 jobs before I got one (I'm haunted by the spreadsheet and the number). The one I ended up getting wasn't even in my field of study and my employer ended up lying for me because they needed a file clerk so bad. I did end up getting promoted through the ranks, but I'm rambling here. What I really want to say is:

In this day and age, it unfortunately doesn't matter.

Amongst me and my friends, only one of us is actually working in the field we got degrees in or studied for. The way the world is, getting a secure job that mostly doesn't screw you over is the top priority. After that is if you can stomach what you do. It doesn't have to necessarily be your life goal as long as it sustains your life.

I know that might sound bleak, but I think there's a beauty to that. It's part of the reason why one of the facets of Weak Spot is that villainy is treated as an occupation instead of a moral conundrum. I played with the greys of morality, for sure, but what Donnie had done didn't necessarily make him a bad person. Same with Hypno or even the heroes. You see the other turtles as bad guys even though they are patently the heroes in their stories. It's all about perspective.

My personal thoughts on work:

As for hobbies, don't let the machinations of capitalism get to you!

Hobbies

Interests

THEY ARE MEANT TO HAVE NO PURPOSE!

They are not side gigs or things that need to be monetized.

They are creative and emotional outlets!

Maybe you feel bad watching trash TV in your off time.

WHY!?

If you enjoy it, why should you beat yourself up about it?!

If it's the best way to clear your head, how can that be a bad thing!?

I'm sorry, I bet you didn't sign up for a sermon, so please disregard advice you weren't looking for, but I felt like I had to say something. We only get one go around this big blue orb and I surely think it's better to enjoy it then worry about perfecting some societal norms oppressed upon us!

ANYWAY

Tldr; THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR SHARING! I'M FLOOR TO HAVE INSPIRED YOU!!! YOU KEEP CREATING TO YOUR HEARTS CONTENT!! THAT HAS WORTH!! ANYTHING YOU DO IS IMPORTANT! I'M PROUD OF YOU!!!!

[ghostinthelibrarywrites]

My brain is simply refusing to think of a single thing to ask, so I will ask this: what is one thing that you didn't get to put in a fic this year that you *really* wanted to? Like, maybe it was time constraints or changed plot or whatever the case may be, what was one thing that kind of sucked to lose?

Thank you for the ask! And so many things, so I'll list a few:

The original opening for Came up from that lake of fire, which I wrote before I got to episode 7 and ended up changing to be more canon-compliant. Charles knocked the ferryman out of Hell out with his cricket bat and hijacked the ferry to rescue Edwin. It was very fun and full of hijinks (turns out Charles has never steered a boat in his existence so is very bad at it) so I'm hoping I find a place to use it someday.

There was also an opening of Lake of fire that I considered but never wrote where Charles finds Edwin in a sort-of-casino where demons gamble using souls as currency. Charles was going to attempt to play cards for Edwin's soul, realize he's shit at cards, and set a fire so they could escape. Anyone who's read Lake of fire will know how that was going to go!

Also in Lake of fire, there was originally going to be a chapter where Charles had a little side quest with the Cat King where another Cat King was trying to usurp his throne and he asked Charles for help dealing with it. There was already a lot going on in that fic, so I unfortunately had to cut that, as well as a couple other cases I wanted them to work on, so it wouldn't end up at 200K.

The Dead Boy Detectives having a Moriarty-like nemesis who's this cherubic-faced 8 year old named Georgie who died in the 1800s. He really isn't nearly on the level of villainy Edwin ascribes to him, and is more of a pest than anything, but no one can tell Edwin he isn't some kind of criminal mastermind. I tried to fit him in in Like the slumber that creeps to me and again in it's hard to see me (at least you tried) but he didn't really fit in either story, so he had to go. Maybe I'll find a place to put him some day, because I love the idea of Edwin having this nemesis that he makes out to be an evil genius and then Crystal meets him and is like, "This infant?"

Last but not least, Beneath the winter snow was originally imagined as the lead up to a case fic about Edwin and Charles's first case, helping the ghost of a maid on St. Hilarion's campus find out what happened to the baby she was forced to give up for adoption. I realized I didn't have time to write the case fic and write all the other fics I wanted to write for the holidays, so I had to cut the case aspect of the story and just leave playing in the snow. I was a little sad to abandon the case, but I'm hoping to write that fic someday if I'm not crushed under a pile of my other WIPs.

Director's Cut Ask Game

[itsnothingofinterest]

Since I have you, btw, I’d like to address something that I don’t see you bringing up very often in your posts: the place that civilians have in the absolute mess that is hero society.

In MHA’s society, heroes are put on a pedestal as being the answer to all of society’s problems, the ones who will always save the day. Tenko’s story is emblematic of this; he needed help, and the so-called “good citizens” paid him no heed or told him to wait for a hero, because they didn’t consider it their job to help him. Thus, he was taken in and groomed by AFO, leading to the current situation.

A lot of your posts talk about how the heroes haven’t substantially changed and how the new generation doesn’t seem to be surpassing the old one as much as they should, but… how much better can you really expect them to be? They’re basically super-powered cops or soldiers. They’ve been trained to be the blunt instruments of society, upholding public order even when that order isn’t necessarily good. And while it’s great that heroes like Izuku and Ochako are thinking beyond that, I don’t think they can or should be made to take all the responsibility on improving things. Just because they’re superhuman doesn’t make them gods. They just can’t do it all (again, especially due to the influence of their training and the corrupt government).

I don’t expect a MHA II, and even considering that possibility, I’m not really sure it would address your complaints with the heroes. Personally, what I’m hoping for is that the civilians follow up on what was said after Ochako’s speech. They should answer her call, mobilize, get the fallen heroes and villains to safety, and after the war, they should factor heavily into how society improves for everyone. That’s my take on things.

(Kind of in response to this post.)

Well I do think a change in the civilian mindset is a potential solution to the faults in hero society, or at least a part of one. (It’d need to be quite a dramatic shift to help more than just the Tenkos of the country though.)

If I may broaden the topic a bit, I'd say in general that any kind of solution I’m looking for would involve some drastic change in one or more levels of hero society to save the people current-day heroes are sweeping under the rug. Could be the heroes, could be the civilians, & government's a longshot but would that work if it happened. That said, relying on the civilians here and now, as we last saw them for that is a bit…well…

The Civilian level

Alright so; my main problem with putting all this on the civilians right now is, even when they let Deku in under Ochako’s prompting, many only ultimately agreed to take Deku in that day when promised a return of the status quo. That deal was even a significant part of Ochako's speech. So they didn’t come out of that looking ready to better the world to me (even before we factor in them triggering Danger Sense when demanding he leave.) And even then, if we took that decision in the best possible light, that’s just one step in the direction of solving just one of the many problems that led to the League destroying so much. Let's not forget their troublesome mindset towards any unseemly quirks like Shinsou's, Toga's, or any heteromorph. And just, in general the civs have a shorter track record of being helpful then...the opposite. It's just hard putting everything, all the hopes for this country pulling its head out of its arse, on one scene of the civs agreeing to house a hero in exchange for the heroes doing their job, you get me?

I mean like, I certainly can get behind the idea of the civilians changing to better help each other not fall to tragic villainy or excuse corruption; they just don’t feel there yet in the same way the kids don’t/haven’t felt ready to save their villains yet.

(To say nothing of how humanity in MHA has a shelf life of around a century at best. And no one left on any side cares to do anything about it even for selfish reasons. So it really feels like small steps towards getting their act together are not the way to go, if for no other reason than another crisis will soon make them all very busy.)

Also, and this is minor in the grand scheme, but we should remember that there are no civilians anywhere near any battleground in this war besides hospital patients and the Todorokis; the rest are all evacuated. So I’m afraid likely we can't end the war with them helping with the clean up and getting folks to safety, and thus build this idea of them carrying their weight going forward. Best we could get is an epilogue with little additional build up of having them all clean up their act. And I'd question the writing of that happening, & that being the big solution to everything that got use here.

The Hero level

Regarding the heroes; well to be honest I don't see a ton of trouble with putting this on them when saving as many as they can is what heroes are supposed to do. Yes under the current system, they’re just super cops in practice; but that’s a flaw in the system capable of being mended, not some unavoidable part of the ideal they’re trying to embody. There's plenty of room for what heroes are to grow to what they should be.

‘Plus I don’t think any Deku-types would really be opposed anyway, he wants to save everyone already, and it feels like the idea of heroes sweeping aside those they don’t save hits home for him’...that’s what I had written before the last chapter dropped while writing this and supported everything I’m saying*. For all I criticize Deku & his classmates; we all know he wants to do more, to save more. Give him the chance & a good idea how and he’ll jump at “shredding the rug with his own hands.”

Maybe it is, from a certain perspective, unfair to say they all need to be like this. But I get the distinct impression that this is what a lot of the hero characters want to be; this is part of the ideal they want to embody. After all, in the aftermath of his forced retirement, even All Might wanted to save Tomura.

(*Btw, sorry this took a bit to write.)

The Government

Ah yes, and it'd be remiss of me to ignore how much of this stems from seeming government policy and general societal reaction to quirk based topics (though there may be overlap there & civilian attitudes). But I want to post this answer sometime this week; so I won't get too into the poor handling of quirks since their inception, the correlating quirk laws, just...the hero commission in general (where would I start?), the effects all this has on hero training as you brought up, or the prison where people get sent for life with no trial or parole. (I don’t care if they’re all supposed to be monsters, especially when we know that’s where they’d have sent Toga & Dabi had things gone differently. “But Tartarus was destroyed,” Yeah but why would they not make a new one?) And probably other stuff I'm forgetting off the top of my head. But suffice to say, there’s a few messes that could be cleaned up there too.

Conclusion

So I guess one way or another, the solution I’m looking for is some dramatic shift in hero society on one or more of the civilian, hero, or government levels to address the causes of the League's fall to villainy. Any combination could hypothetically work.

But the reason I never shut up about a my hero part 2 is that none of them feel like they’re in a state to work like that now. Heroes & civilians on their respective wholes have both made small steps in the right direction and I don't want to downplay that (leadership not so much but what else is new), but both elements need more time & development to accelerate these steps and feel like we could trust them to get anything done in the next century.

[bisexualdawnsummers]

due south for the fandom ask meme

my favorite female character: Victoria Metcalf. I find her fascinating and would love to read novel length fics about her pre and post Fraser life. I love a female villain in general, and I think Victoria is an example of a well done one. I love that she’s smart and competent, complex, and most of all, uncompromising. She does love (and hate) and want Fraser, but she’s not going to ‘go good’ for him. She doesn’t soften or learn the error of her ways, and I think that’s great. At the same time, I don’t think she’s portrayed as Pure Evil or cartoonish in her villainy, she’s still human.

my favorite male character: Ray Vecchio. For me, Ray is a case of if I loved him less, I could talk about him more. Idk, I just love him. I love how he grumbles and protests doing anything, but still goes along with everything – and usually ends up going above and beyond. I love how brash he can be. I love his fashion sense. I love how loyal and caring he is to everyone he loves. I love how he feels like a real, lived in character with real flaws to go along with all his good traits. I would like to write more, but again, thinking about him makes my brain overheat with love and meltdown.

my favorite book/season/etc: Season 1. Overall s1 was the best written and had the most cohesive character/story arc.

my favorite episode (if it’s a tv show): The Deal (THE Ray Vecchio episode) A big thank you to David Marciano for fighting for this one.

my favorite cast member: I guess I’d have to say Callum Keith Rennie (my birthday buddy!) as he’s the main reason I started watching the show in the first place. I’m more familiar with his work outside of due South than any other cast member. (However, my fixation on RayV has bled through into wanting to seek out more of David Marciano’s work - and listening to a few podcast interviews - so he’s catching up. I also love DM for fighting for RayV’s character. We wouldn’t have The Deal without him.)

my favorite ship: RayV/Fraser. THESE TWO!!! This ship just perfectly scratches at a very specific part of my brain. I love the way that Ray just instantly welcomes Fraser into his life, into his home (into his heart). The way he offers Fraser friendship and acceptance on a level that he’s probably not used to. I love that they have a sort of two sides of the same coin thing going on, how they are parts of a whole, how when they’re alone they are incomplete but together better than they are separately!!!

a character I’d die defending: Ray Vecchio. I’m lucky that I wasn’t around for the Ray Wars and didn’t have to fight against the ‘Ray Vecchio is Homophobic’ or ‘Ray Vecchio is a bad friend to Fraser’(LMAO) allegations that apparently were flung at him back then. I’ve encountered a bit of it in some fics and it makes me want to scream. (To be clear, I don’t mind if RayV has some internalized homophobic issues, I think that’s fair to explore, I’m talking about Ray being violent towards Fraser or refusing to be his friend if he’s gay type of thing. The stuff that is clearly written in bad faith towards RayV.)

a character I just can’t sympathize with: Hm, idk…maybe Pa Vecchio.

a character I grew to love: Meg Thatcher. I never disliked her, but I think I grew to appreciate her more in subsequent rewatches than on my first run through.

my anti otp: Hm, I’d have to say RayK/Stella, I guess, but only in an ‘endgame’ scenario. I actually find their relationship and history interesting and like reading about it in fics occasionally. I also love the idea of them reconnecting as friends because they are a very important part of each other’s lives. I just don’t like the idea of them rekindling their romance in any sort of permanent way. I think Stella makes it very clear that she doesn’t want to reconcile with Ray, so I hate to see that happen on her behalf. I feel like she had to work hard to put up boundaries to keep them from slipping back into old patterns, because while they clearly still care about each other, they’re ultimately not meant to be married. I think that’s why she tends to act so prickly towards Ray, to keep that wall up, and Ray might take any softness as encouragement. Also, I’m not a big fan of divorced couples getting back together in general. I’ve seen a lot shows/movies where couples divorce/separate, only to reconcile (usually without really addressing the issues that led to the separation in the first place), and I’m always like “Please let that woman stay divorced!”

Thank you so much for the ask! <3