#kamino japan

[oh-bother-stickers]

[brownie-pics]

秋めいてきた光と一緒に撮り歩きました･･

’24.10.12 春日大社、若宮神社、上の禰宜道にて

[kacchanbiased]

This is old news but 49800 yen is a frankly insane figure… I have no idea how Kirishima even swung that, and no idea where exactly Bakugou himself got that money if it didn’t come from his parents.

I always assumed the implication was that Kirishima used his own allowance in order to afford the goggles, which is interesting characterization-wise. Maybe he’s frugal, and doesn’t spend most of his allowance, which is how he managed to have roughly $300 lying around? But this isn’t pocket change.

I think not enough thought is devoted to talking about how indebted Bakugou felt after being kidnapped, specifically on why he would even come around to feeling that way in the first place.

[whirlybirbs]

Do you think when All Might officially "retires" that the media needs something else to chew on? Like? "Will the world's former No. 1 Hero finally settle down now that he's got much more time on his hands?" And maybe people start taking another look at the rumors about Derecho and the big man...

nothing public.

it was a rule established early on.

the two of you agreed it was best this way — those honeyed, tender, lovesick exchanges were best kept close to the heart and in private spaces. somedays it felt nearly impossible, but it worked. it let everyone chew on the what if and kept you both safe from scathing attempts at leveling each other as weaknesses.

nothing public.

until the kamino incident.

until you're there, tearing through the line of pros, stumbling through the debris, screaming his name — and the whole world watches you catch the stumbling, victorious form of all might in your arms. he nearly crushes you, and your hands grapple with his chest. he's broken, bloodied and exhausted, but he's alive. his fist is still raised high. he's alive, and you don't care if japan's number one news network watches from above.

you don't care.

you scramble in the dirt to reach up, to hold his face, to hear him draw a ragged breath. he hunches over you, barely clinging on to that empowered form. his grasp on it slips, and toshinori staggers into your arms again smaller now. his blue eyes hold the weight of the world, and you see the fear bleed into his expression.

all might is no more.

nothing public.

until you kiss him, then and there, in the aftermath.

the spotlight from the helicopter overhead illuminates the crescendo of emotion.

sweat and blood and relief mingle in a hazy exchange that burns with desperation — his broken hands are wrung deep into the back of your jacket. he's alive, and you're here. you're safe. he's done it. you cradle toshinori's jaw, your lips pressed tightly to his as he draws you closer.

christ, he loves you. he loves you more than he can stomach. he needs you more than anything, more than air. he needs you, derecho. his partner, his love, his north star. he thought, for a long moment, that this night might be the end of him. that he might not see this through to the end.

all might is no more.

you break from the kiss only to draw a panicked breath — only to search his face as you shake your head and ignore the drag of tears down your cheeks. "i thought—"

"it's over," he rasps, dragging his hands into your hair as he clings to you like a ship lost in a storm.

"i know," relief drowns the syllables in your mouth as you press your forehead tightly to his, clinging to the tattered remnants of his costume. they're like a death shroud. all might has been laid to rest.

that moment, caught on camera for the world to see, changes a lot.

more than anything, though, it changes from nothing public to going public.

— a reference to this fic here ;

[haiisx]

Decisions, decisions...

So, here comes the lore dump:

Upon moving to Japan and becoming a Pro Hero there, Adam ended up bumping into All Might quite frequently (through either being rescued by him or by showing up to fight crime alongside him), which resulted in them eventually cutting out the middleman and deciding to meet up for patrols during the night. This happens in the ~8 months (if I remember the timeline correctly) that All Might spends training Izuku for the UA entrance exam, so Adam spends a lot of time getting to know All Might as a hero and All Might getting to know Adam as both a hero and a person.

it's during these eight months that their slow burn arc starts, interspersed with Hero work in a sort of slice of life-y feel. Adam is a little hesitant, given that All Might won't even share his real name with him, but Adam has Attachment Issues so that's not even enough to dissuade him from All Might.

During one of their patrols, Adam mentions being in search of a second job because Hero work in Japan doesn't cover the cost of living like he was used to in America. At this point, All Might calls in a favor from Nezu, pulls some strings with the "I'm All Might" card (not really, but it is a funny image), and secures Adam as the physics/chemistry teacher at UA. Adam has no idea that All Might does any of this until he receives a call from Nezu on the subject.

He meets Toshinori Yagi once he starts working at UA, and unlike in canon, Toshinori requests that only a select few of the teachers know about his True Form, those teachers being the ones working closest with the hero course. Toshinori makes this request because of his feelings for Adam and his fear that Adam would lose all interest in All Might if he knew about his True Form, so Toshinori keeps up the Secretary Yagi act around Adam.

This, of course, leads to some secret identity miscommunication, where Adam ends up falling for both All Might and Toshinori separately. However, because of Toshinori's insecurities, he avoids pursuing Adam while in his True Form and ends up remaining entirely oblivious to Adam's advances on him.

The slow burn continues with the rest of the staff getting increasingly frustrated with Adam and Toshinori's idiocy while also knowing it's not any of their places to mettle. They continue to meet during patrols, which keep getting cut short due to either All Might running out of time or Adam's Quirk side effects causing him to take a quick leave.

All Might is eventually the one to make the first move while Adam wars with the idea of being in love with both All Might and Toshinori Yagi. When All Might confesses, Adam realizes that Toshinori is the one he really loves (and the one he could actually see himself settling down with, because he is a romantic at heart), and so he rejects All Might.

But because this is my favorite trope, the miscommunication doesn't stop there. Adam phrases it as being "in love with another man" and All Might takes this as a rejection to Toshinori as well, because there is no possible way that the "other man" is Toshinori, what with his True Form looking the way it does. In response, Toshinori ends up pulling away from Adam, leaving Adam rather confused and more than a little hurt at the sudden wall of formality between them.

To add onto this, All Might continues to lose more available time in his Buff form, so he ends up seeing Adam during patrols less and less. Adam takes this as All Might ghosting him after Adam rejected him.

The tension builds until either (i haven't decided yet): a) The Kamino Ward battle, where Adam finds out that Toshinori is All Might and then almost watches him die on live television, or b) Toshinori breaks and reveals that he is All Might to Adam, where Adam realizes that they're both morons.

And that is the short summary of their romantic plotline! Either way, they get together sometime around the Kamino battle.

[scary-grace]

for the what will ur character do asks, 7 with tomura but reader’s the ex pls :)

Thank you for the prompt! This is for #7 from this list: A character getting kissed by their ex. I also decided to roll in my @pixelcafe-network Challenge Friday dialogue prompt! 2.1k, canon, post-MVA, no warnings. A little suggestive towards the end.

fallen

You were a double-agent, but you failed your mission, and you're expecting to pay for your betrayal with your life. Shigaraki doesn't see it the way you do.

You knew this day would come. Told yourself you were ready for it, even – but as the ground shudders beneath your feet and the walls of the shack in the woods you’ve been hiding out in begin to crumble around you, you realize all at once that you’re not ready at all. You sold your soul a long time ago, when the HPSC publicly excommunicated you for the purpose of creating a credible spy, someone no villain or villain organization would expect to still side with the heroes. When they sent you to infiltrate the League of Villains, mere days after the Hero Killer was arrested, you fulfilled your purpose at last.

Or part of your purpose. You were supposed to infiltrate the League, and if they ever rose from the ashes of Kamino Ward, you were meant to make an example of them that would be impossible to ignore. That was the euphemism. The president of the HPSC didn’t mince words: Kill Shigaraki Tomura, and do it in plain sight. You agreed. Why wouldn’t you? You’d already sold your soul. There was nothing left of you to give away – except your heart.

You were supposed to kill him, but you fell for Shigaraki instead, and when the moment came to act, you ran, even though you knew it would expose what you really were. You ran and hid, but you know it’s not possible to hide forever. Not from the brand-new Paranormal Liberation Front, with members all across Japan, with their fingers on the pulse of the support sector, the political establishment, the news networks and surveillance software. They’d find you eventually; Tomura would find you. And when he did, you’d pay.

Misery and rage and guilt well up in the back of your throat, and you swallow them as dust rains down around you. You sold your soul a long time ago. It’s time to pay the price.

When the house has vanished into nothingness, you look for an escape route on autopilot, but the PLF has the house surrounded. You know without identifying even a single soldier that they’re all equipped with deadly quirks, quirks that can kill as quickly and efficiently as yours. But of all the dangerous quirks you’re encircled by, the worst is the one that destroyed your house, the one that belongs to Shigaraki Tomura. Shigaraki Tomura, who’s standing in front of you, arms crossed over his chest, clearly waiting for you to speak first.

You thought he’d be enraged, that he’d kill you on sight or order someone else to do it, but he’s just standing there, looking at you, as calm as you aren’t. You last just under three minutes before the suspense drives you over the edge. “Just do it already.”

“Kill you?” Shigaraki tilts his head, studying you. “That’s not why I’m here.”

“Since when do you lie?” You know it’s beyond hypocritical to accuse Shigaraki of lying when you’re the one who spent the entire time you were with the League lying by omission, but you’re trying to goad him. You want him to snap. “I betrayed you. I’m already dead. Hurry up and kill me.”

“If you were trying to betray me, you’re shit at it,” Shigaraki says. He’s dressed in a suit, a red cape lined with fur around his shoulders, every inch the supervillain you were supposed to stop him from turning into. “You weren’t the one leaking information to the heroes. We know who did that.”

Did it, not doing it. There was someone else. Who? What happened to them? A hollow feeling settles inside you, devouring everything else. “Everything you’ve done has helped us,” Shigaraki continues, “and when you were supposed to kill me, you didn’t. You didn’t betray me. So I can let it go.”

No. You thought he came here to kill you. You want him to kill you, need him to kill you, so you don’t have to live with this anymore. “I’m your enemy,” you snarl. “I was working for them the entire time. I joined the League so I could stop you, and that’s the only reason. There’s nothing else!”

“If that was it, why’d you run?” Shigaraki takes a few steps closer. He’s still limping a little bit. His wounds from the fight in Deika City have been slow to heal, and you have to fight the urge to go to his side, to help him stand straight. “All the shit the heroes did to turn you into the perfect spy. They took away your whole life when you were in high school, just so they could use you against people like us. You’re more like us than you are like them. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t have run.”

A few steps closer. You back away, wishing for a wall to put your back against, something to help you stand firm in the face of this, of him. “You can come back now,” Shigaraki says. His voice grows softer. “You’re supposed to be with me.”

“How many times do I have to tell you that it wasn’t real?” Your eyes are starting to sting, from the dust or from unshed tears or both. “Everything I did, I did so I could betray you more efficiently. I never loved you. I was faking it so you’d let your guard down. It was all a lie.”

You see a flash of hurt on Shigaraki’s scarred face, but it’s gone in moments. “If that’s true, why didn’t you kill me?” he asks. “I don’t believe you.”

You avert your eyes. “You should.”

“Then make me,” Shigaraki says. “Look at me and tell me that you don’t feel anything. make me believe it, and I’ll go.”

“You’ll kill me,” you correct. “You’re shit at this supervillain thing.”

Shigaraki’s mouth pulls up at one corner, in the ghost of a smile or a mockery of affection. “Are you going to do it or not?”

You wish this wasn’t happening in front of an audience. You wish this wasn’t happening at all, that you’d turned down the assignment when you got it, that you’d pushed back when the HPSC blew up your life in your second year of high school. You wish you didn’t have to feel so sick and guilty that you can barely stand. You wanted Shigaraki to be furious with you, so furious that he’d kill you without a second thought. You don’t think you can survive his forgiveness.

And you don’t have to. You can still kill him. He’ll let you close enough, and as if you’ve made the decision already, your feet uproot themselves from the ground and you take step after step closer to him, closing the distance he’s already halved. You see the PLF soldiers stirring restlessly in your peripheral vision. “Grand Commander –”

“Shut up,” Shigaraki says.

“He’s right.” That’s Spinner’s voice. Of course the League is here. Even if Shigaraki really is ready to let this go, the League never will. You know how much they value loyalty, how much the thought that you were planning to turn on them hurts. “You might like her, but she can’t be trusted. She’s going to kill you.”

Spinner’s got your number. Shigaraki must know that, but he lets you come in closer. Lets you set one hand on his chest, knowing that your fingers could morph into razor-sharp claws at any moment and tear out his heart. “Do it,” he says, almost a dare. “If it was all a lie, then it doesn’t matter what you do to me.”

You want to prove him wrong more than you’ve ever wanted anything in your life. Or at least that’s what you tell yourself as you raise your hand to his shoulder, curl your fingers so that the activation of your quirk will sever his jugular vein and carotid artery in an instant. You can kill him. It’ll be the work of seconds, and so what if the PLF tears you to shreds afterward? You’ll have done what needs to be done, just like a hero should.

But you’re aren’t a hero. The HPSC made sure of that. You look up from your fingers prepared to lay him open and find him looking down at you, and from there, all it takes to kiss him is to lean ever so slightly forward.

Shigaraki should be nothing to you. You ended it with him when you ran, and he never should have been anything to you at all. You hid from the truth for so long, even as the two of you grew closer, even once it became clear that you still had something left to lose. The HPSC has owned your soul since you were sixteen, but Shigaraki has your heart. The League has your loyalty. You didn’t run because of what they’d do to you. You ran because you couldn’t face what you did to them.

And so you find your fingers uncurling to grip his shoulder instead, your hand leaving his heart to cradle the side of his face. You kiss Shigaraki Tomura like the two of you are alone, like you’re coming back from a long time away, and even as you realize he might have just been luring you closer to kill you, you tell yourself it’s all right. You’re ready to die. This time it might even be the truth.

Shigaraki kisses you back, like you knew he would, and doesn’t let you pull away until you’re both out of air. “I’m not convinced,” he says, and you manage a miserable laugh. When he speaks again, he pitches his voice to carry. “We’re done here. Let’s go.”

They came by helicopter. The sound of the blades was what warned you they were coming, and the noise is unbelievable even through the headphones you and the League put on when you climb in. Twice and Toga are pointedly avoiding your gaze, while Spinner’s glaring at you. It’s hard to tell what Compress is doing behind the mask. Dabi’s the only one who makes eye contact with you, the only one who flips his microphone into position and speaks. “You know you were a decoy, right?”

What? You shake your head, and Dabi scoffs. “You were a decoy,” he says. “They wanted us to get so distracted blowing up at you that we’d totally miss Hawks selling us out.”

Hawks. You knew Hawks was part of the PLF, but you never would have guessed that his belief in it wasn’t genuine. You know very little about how the HPSC trains their prize heroes, but you know enough to understand that Hawks might have his reasons. “It was him?”

“Don’t worry. We’re sending him back to the HPSC one feather at a time,” Compress says. You can’t tell anything from his voice. No idea if he hates you or if he’s just glad that the matter of you is officially settled. “He was their true operative. It’s likely that they always expected you to fail.”

You never mattered to them. That shouldn’t come as a surprise, and it shouldn’t sting. “That’s the only reason you’re still alive,” Spinner tells you. “You’ve got a lot of work to do before we ever trust you again.”

“If we ever trust you again,” Toga says. You think that’s a pretty big if. It’s quiet for a moment, with nothing but the dull roar of the helicopter blades to fill the silence. “But Tomura-kun is glad you’re back. So I am, too.”

Tomura is glad you’re back. When he’s unhappy, he draws inwards, shrinks away from contact, but when he’s happy, he’s touchy, almost clingy – just like he is now. You didn’t think it was in his nature to forgive anyone. When you broke it off with him, when you said too much in the course of the fight that followed, when you ran, you could barely stand how much you hurt him. You don’t know if you can forgive yourself. But if the way you’re crushed against his side is anything to go by, he’s well on his way to forgiving you.

The two of you don’t speak until you’re back at headquarters, alone in Tomura’s rooms. He kissed you again as soon as the door shut, pushed you back across the room to his bed, and crawled on top of you without pulling away. It’s a while before he pulls back. “You were lying about us, before,” he says, looking down at you, his white hair falling in a curtain around your faces. “Tell me the truth.”

Shouldn’t it be obvious? The fact that you’re here should speak for itself. “I didn’t fake us,” you say anyway. “Any of us. I love you.”

“Good,” Tomura says, and he rolls the two of you over so you’re straddling him awkwardly. Pieces of your clothing are crumbling away, baring your legs and your shoulders for his hands to explore. He shifts beneath you, getting comfortable, then looks up at you with a smile that holds the faintest shade of cruelty. “Now prove it.”

taglist: @shigarakislaughter @cryptidfuckerofficial @lvtuss @issaortiz @stardustdreamersisi @deadhands69 @xeveryxstarfallx @lacrimae-lotos @evilcookie5 @minniessskii @aslutforfictionalmen @f3r4lfr0gg3r

[delawaredetroit]

Re the league not having an ideology: i think what's frustrating is that they were perfectly capable of synthesizing an ideology if horikoshi had like 1 let them and 2 treated their ideologies like they were something beyond just a personal worldview.

USJ Tomura gets a lot of flack in universe for not having an ideology beyond wanting to do violence but he's not really wrong in his talking points either. Hero Society condemns violence but some violence is a celebrated spectacle (ie the State (hero society) via Heroes committing violence on who the State/ Hero Society labels a Villain or Criminal) Tomura's ideas at that point weren't the most sophisticated but he was onto something. Historicallly States used language to justify violence all the time. For example: Texas Rangers in the 1910s often accused Mexicans in border communities of being bandits or bandit sympathizers to justify seizing their land or extrajudicial violence. More modern examples like the concept of the "super predator" the way politicians use the term "illegal alien" to both criminalize and dehumanize the undocumented, there are plenty of examples that sort of prove Tomura's early ideas had merit and could have become a fleshed out ideology if given the chance.

But the narrative sort of treats them as stupid or empty justifications and then stain gets involved and I feel like stains ideology sort of collapses without All Might, it isn't the most sound foundation to build a movement off of and centers all might too much. horikoshi wasn't unaware of the flaws in his system and the villians are pretty aware themselves it really feels like he just didn't want to give them an ideology or he was too afraid to make them too right in my opinion.

See, here's the thing. I don't think Horikoshi declined to give the League an ideology to discredit them.

If BNHA is any indication of Horikoshi's politics, he strikes me as a guy who thinks of himself as non-political/non-ideological. For someone with a worldview like that, believing in the status quo or in just "common sense" reform isn't ideological. Deeply held ideology would be alien and unsympathetic to someone like that, but personal grievances with the system due to personal tragedy could be humanizing.

There have also been other folks here that have suggested that the League is modeled after terrorist groups in Japan like the Japanese Red Army and Aum Shinrikyo, which also have rather inscrutable ideologies, cult-like tendencies, and a history of organized violence.

The problem with USJ Shigaraki was that he was completely disingenuous in that critique. Shigaraki had no prior negative interaction with the state itself at that point; he spent most of the previous fifteen years in All for One's basement. He just wanted to destroy things for his own enjoyment that early in the manga. Everything else was a rhetorical exercise he probably picked up from All for One. The manga treated these arguments as stupid and empty justifications because in the context of Shigaraki that's exactly what they were.

It's not that it wasn't an interesting argument about the use of violence by the state in hero society, but Horikoshi didn't introduce any characters who could make that position sincerely. Horikoshi would have had to introduce a different faction of villains or vigilantes to honestly address these ideas.

You're not wrong that Stain's ideology falls apart without All Might. However, Act One Shigaraki's modus operandi also falls apart without All Might. In Act One, Shigaraki was under the impression that hero society would fall if just killed the Symbol of Peace. He clearly had a tough time getting his footing again after Kamino partially because he was proven wrong in that assumption until the plot came looking for him.

[starrylothcat]

Hey so I love your writing and I hope this is okay <3

Can you write a Hunter x f reader where the reader is thinking dirty thoughts whilst they're all on a mission or otherwise engaged on the Marauder and uses that to tease Hunter since he can sense it (smell, heartbeat etc) but can't act on it with others around? And he's getting more frustrated bc he knows you're doing it on purpose to tease him.

Love your work! <3

Tease

Pairing: Hunter x Fem!Reader

Summary: Basically the ask. You tease Hunter on your way back to Kamino with dirty thoughts. 😉

WC: ~2500

Warnings: NSFW, 18+. PiV sex, established relationship, some female masturbation. Feral Hunter. All the good stuff.

A/N: I’ve been traveling around Japan the last week, so that’s why I’ve been a littl MIA. I had this in my drafts before the trip and finally had some downtime to finish it! Feral Hunter and his senses is such a delicious meal, thank you anon for the request. I hope you like it and thanks for reading and your kind words! 💕

It has been a brutal couple of weeks, back-to-back missions without respite. You never thought you’d miss Kamino, but as you lay on your bunk on The Marauder, exhausted and mentally taxed, the sterile white hallways and pounding rain sounded like paradise.

It didn’t help that you and Hunter haven’t had a chance to be alone, either. You both understood the war came first, along with your duties, but you couldn’t deny you missed feeling his body on yours, his touch, his intense passion. You knew he longed for you, too.

Once you were back on Kamino, you would have that time, as you were promised a few days’ leave before being shipped off again. The buildup was driving you both crazy, but patience was a virtue.

Too bad you weren’t that patient of a person, though.

You knew your scent drove Hunter wild. You tried your best to not accidentally tease him as best you could, especially when you were trapped on The Marauder for long periods.

Your body often betrayed you, though.

Hunter easily picked up on your longing, your arousal, your absolute bone-deep need for him. It was especially bad now since you haven’t partaken in carnal pleasures with one another in a few weeks. Your body was calling out to him, begging for him to take you for hours on end, pleasuring you beyond belief, taking you as his and only his.

You decided to tease him, only a little, to enhance the buildup for when you could finally be alone. You knew an animal lay within him, something he kept back even in your most intensely passionate moments. You wanted him to finally let it all out, not hold back.

You could take it, and you wanted it more than anything.

You set up in your bunk, powering on your datapad. You pretended to be invested in whatever was on the screen but instead watched as Hunter carefully took apart his blaster, inspecting each piece for wear or weakened points. He did it religiously after every mission.

Hunter’s fingers were dextrous, careful. Your mind wandered, knowing it wouldn't be long until he noticed. You thought of those thick, calloused fingers running down the sides of your body, mapping every curve, trailing down to where you needed them most.

You shifted your legs, squeezing them together for a little friction. You could feel your arousal growing, your eyes on Hunter. You imagined those fingers tracing over your panties, rubbing your folds, hearing his husky praises in your ear as you dampened for him. Finally, he would slip a finger under, gathering the slick and teasing your entrance, biting at your neck as you whined in pleasure.

Hunter’s eyes snapped to yours, knowing he must have picked up on your scent. You smiled coyly, still pretending to look at your datapad. Your fantasy continued, his thick digit now fully in your sopping cunt, his name leaving your lips as he pumped in and out of you, his other hand playing with your breasts.

You saw Hunter fidget, his nostrils flaring. He shot you a dangerous look, almost pleading.

Hunter couldn’t wait to get his hands on you, take you apart, and piece you together again, but what you were doing now just wasn’t fair.

You still had at least an entire day before landing on Kamino. If you kept this up, he might not make it that long.

You smirked a little, feeling how your panties moistened at the thought. You left it at that, going back to your datapad.

Hunter was relieved when Tech asked him to help make upgrades on the navigation system, hoping it would distract him, though your scent filled the ship to an almost dizzying degree.

A few hours passed, and you decided Hunter needed another reminder of how much you wanted him.

You stepped into the refresher, needing a shower anyway. While the water sprayed down on you, you let your fingers wander, sliding down your stomach, imagining Hunter’s touch, slipping fingers between your folds.

You rubbed yourself, biting your lip, stopping yourself from making any noise. You wanted nothing more than Hunter to be in there with you, plunging his cock so deep inside your pussy that you wouldn’t be able to walk for a week.

Once you worked yourself up, you stopped. You didn’t want to come, not yet. You wanted Hunter to have the satisfaction of doing so. It only added to the anticipation. You were careful not to wipe any of your slick off your fingers as you dried yourself off and dressed.

When you emerged from the refresher, Hunter was engrossed in sharpening his knife. You sauntered up to him, placing your hand on his shoulder, the same hand that was playing with your pussy just minutes before.

“Hunter, could you help me find my communicator? I lost it somewhere on the ship.” Hunter bristled, his body going stiff.

You glanced behind you, making sure no one was watching. Wrecker, Tech, Echo, and Crosshair were focusing on other tasks, not paying attention to either of you at the moment.

You traced your finger down his jawline, rough with stubble. A pleasant jolt shot down your spine, wanting to feel it on your inner thighs as he buried his face in your pussy.

You passed your thumb over his lips, knowing you were asking for it.

“Mesh’la…” Hunter’s voice was hoarse, barely audible.

He shuddered, his tongue quickly flicking out to your thumb, tasting you.

He let out a low, agonized groan, gripping his knife so tightly that you thought he might snap the handle. Hunter’s pupils widened, something carnal and animalistic making itself known in his darkening expression. He looked almost dangerous, his eyes flashing with an absolute feral desire.

Hunter’s hand was around your wrist so quickly, you didn’t even see him move. His knife dropped to the floor, his hand circling your wrist, holding tight.

“Don’t…” he rasped, quickly glancing back, his brothers not bothered by the sound of his knife clattering to the ship’s floor. “Unless you want me to fuck you right here. Right now.”

You sucked in a breath at the intensity radiating off him.

Your knees buckled, and you knew Hunter could hear your pounding heart.

“You’d like that wouldn’t you, filthy girl?” His usual smoky baritone was somehow deeper, infused with a ravenousness that sent molten desire to your core.

His eyes bore into you, his tattoo seemingly darker in the shadows of the ship. “You’re going to pay for this later.”

You licked your dry lips, knowing he’d keep his promise.

It took all his strength to release your wrist and not fuck you on the floor like an animal in front of his brothers.

You reluctantly pulled away from him, seeing how his body trembled, his neck muscles bulging, trying to dampen the raging fire that threatened to consume him. You couldn’t help the coquettish grin on your face, seeing the effect you had on him.

“Oh, I know.”

��� ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩

The second you were excused from the mission debrief back on Kamino, you headed back to your quarters.

As your door whooshed shut behind you, Hunter’s lips vehemently consumed yours, his hands tearing your clothing off your body.

Literally.

You couldn’t finish the thought of how he even got to your room first, since you left the mission debrief at the same time.

You didn’t even make it to the bedroom. Soon enough, Hunter had you bent over your couch armrest, fucking you with such ferocious intensity you thought you might tear apart at the seams.

Your face was buried into the fabric of the couch, his hands a vice on your plush hips, driving himself into you without pause.

“Fuck…mesh’la…” Hunter all but growled as he leaned forward, pressing his broad, sweaty chest to your back.

“So good like this…taking me so well…this is what you wanted, hm?” He changed the angle, your hands desperately grasping at the fabric of your couch, tears pricking at the sides of your eyes. Your wanton moans garbled with sobs as he hit that devastating spot deep inside you.

Every atom in your body was thrumming with white-hot ecstasy, completely consumed by everything that was Hunter.

“Tell me…” He panted in your ear, “You need me, you need this cock.”

“Hunter…” you managed to string one coherent thought together, the ecstatic pressure building in your lower abdomen, the slick from your arousal dripping down your thighs.

“Want to hear you say it, sweetheart.”

You could hear the smugness in his voice, his hands holding you tight.

“Hunter, I need you! I need your cock. Please…want to cum so bad!” You were so close to exploding, but missing that final push only he could give you. “Been thinking about it for weeks, I need you so badly…please…”

Hunter let out a satisfied grunt, giving your ass a hearty squeeze as he leaned back slightly.

“I know, mesh’la. I could smell you every single day. Drove me crazy. Was close so many times bending you over and fucking you in front of my brothers…show them how lucky I am to have this beautiful pussy all to myself…”

You mewled at the thought, knowing the power you had over him, trying to press back in time with his powerful thrusts.

He grabbed a fistful of your ass a second time, leaning down again. Hunter’s breath was hot on your neck, latching on to your skin, biting down to mark you. Tears ran down your cheeks onto the couch cushion, gasping between your heady moans at the mix of pain and pleasure.

Hunter’s pace didn’t falter one bit as he gave you what you wanted, what you consciously and subconsciously begged him for on the ship.

His sounds were becoming louder, more ragged and breathless, knowing he was close to his end.

Finally, finally, Hunter pressed a digit to your swollen clit, rubbing circles as he pounded into you.

Even with his training, his endurance, and other super soldier qualities, he could only control himself for so long with you.

You just knew your smell was entrancing him, overtaking all his senses, driving him mad with lust.

All the pent-up stress, need, and longing were unraveling between the two of you, every thrust bringing you both closer to an explosive release you both so desperately needed.

His thick cock drilled you, filling you to the brim, reeling as his cock seemed to find a deeper spot every time he dragged against your walls. His finger moved in faster and tighter circles over your swollen bud, giving you just the right amount of pressure you thought you may disintegrate into the couch.

You were so close…so close…

Right as you were about to come, Hunter pulled out of you. You let out a desperate cry, cut short by Hunter easily picking you up, maneuvering himself to sit on the couch, pulling you down into his lap.

“Want to see your face and taste these gorgeous tits.”

Hunter had a wild look in his eyes, his curly locks falling from his headband, chest heaving and lips parted in short pants. You’ve never heard his voice so hoarse and husky with hunger.

You lowered yourself on his length, immediately starting the same desperate pace as his hot mouth encapsulated your pebbled nipples. You threw your head back in bliss, letting out moans that rivaled any dirty Holonet actress.

He sucked hard, relishing how your nipples felt in his mouth, his teeth tugging at your sensitive flesh.

Hunter wasn’t being gentle, and you didn’t mind. The slight pain of him nipping at your hardened nubs was washed over with pleasure as his tongue soothed his harsh sucks, his rough hands running up and down your back.

Hunter matched your pace, immediately back on the precipice of pleasure, his hips pistoning up to meet yours.

“Hunter I’m going to-I’m so close…!” You tangled your hands in his hair, your thighs burning with exertion, his hard cock rubbing your aching clit just the right way for you to come undone in his lap.

“Cum for me, mesh’la”.

You came hard, all the muscles in your body tightening as you tugged on his hair, crying out his name, your vision whiting out and everything falling away around you.

Hunter followed.

The hypnotic sounds of you unraveling, your tits in his mouth, your soft and succulent skin under his palms, and the enticing sensation of you pulling on his hair, brought his system to an overload.

Hunter let out a long moan into the crook of your neck, pressing as deep as he could inside you, feeling his warm spurts fill your cunt.

You sighed as you collapsed into him, feeling his body tense and writhe with yours as he rode out his release.

You gently stroked his head, taking a moment to come down from your highs and catch your heaving breaths.

You leaned your head to him, and Hunter opened his eyes, the feral flint gone, replaced with a soft gaze that fell when he saw the mark on your neck.

Hunter gently traced a hand over the reddening bruise, where he bit you before.

“I hurt you. I lost control, sorry-“

You shook your head. “It’s okay, it felt good.” Hunter’s lips twitched in a small smile, but you could tell he felt bad.

“I guess you’ll just have to kiss it better.”

You touched your lips to him in a chaste kiss, his hand cradling the back of your head to deepen it.

Hunter slid his tongue over your lips, and you opened to greet his tongue with yours.

You sighed, relishing the slow dance of your mouths, his softening cock still inside you.

You dragged away for a breath, and Hunter enveloped his arms around you, strong and secure.

“Wasn’t fair you know, back on the ship.” Hunter murmured, gently kissing the hickey he left on your skin.

You hummed in reply. “I know.”

He chuckled lightly, kissing up your neck to your jaw.

“I’m not done with you yet.” You felt his hands squeeze your hips, rutting up into you again. His cock was hardening, slowly fucking up into you.

You moaned, still sensitive from your orgasm, rocking your hips in time with his.

“Move to the bed?” You whispered against his lips, caressing his face with your hands. Hunter’s cock was fully hard now, slowly riding him and capturing one another’s sighs as you kissed.

Hunter smirked against you, his hand sliding over your ass.

“We’ll get there. Eventually.”

Taglist: @crosshairlovebot @sev-on-kamino @kimiheartblade @wizardofrozz @clonemedickix @sunshinesdaydream @kashasenpai @freesia-writes @multi-fan-dom-madness @coraex @aconstructofamind @dreamie411 @dystopicjumpsuit @wings-and-beskar @starqueensthings @idontgetanysleep @secretthegriffin @anxiouspineapple99 @sinfulsalutations @secondaryrealm @littlemissmanga @maybethatfanfictionwriter @pb-jellybeans @wanderer-six @king-chaos-world @the-cantina @wolffegirlsunite @dukeoftheblackstar @523rdrebel @lune-de-miel-au-paradis @sleepingsun501

[epickiya722]

I think Mentor!Miruko is a fun concept especially for Midoriya and yes, I'm saying this out of the two being my favorite characters and I have no shame.

It's just... their interactions would have been intriguing to see and I know some people will out the Team-Up Mission's first chapter and we'll come back to that.

I would have loved them to have more interactions.

And I know, I know.

"Miruko couldn't stand Midoriya."

"Miruko is too impatient to be a mentor."

Neither is really true.

Bringing up the Team-Up Mission, Miruko never said anything that indicated her annoyance to Midoriya.

The most she said to him was that he didn't do anything for the first half and that was true. Other than that, she didn't say anything else that was like "Oh, you're annoying I can't stand you".

In fact, she even said "good job" on his intro about her to Urakaka and Bakugou before then and later she does hear Midoriya out instead of telling him to move so she could kick a guy.

Which is also why I say calling her "impatient" is a misconception.

Miruko hasn't really done or said anything to show impatience or impatience that is so bad that it negatively affects others.

She is a quick mover, but she is also the type to listen. She is the one to jump into battle first, but that is because she likes a good fight and wants to get the job done. She does take being a hero seriously.

And Midoriya, the thing is he is one of the last people who would get on her nerves. Have we forgotten this is the kid who actually wants to learn?

Even if Miruko just had him tag along (as she does in TUM) she would still keep her eye on him (as she did, again, in TUM) and wouldn't have a hard time because as much as a wild card he is, Midoriya does behave himself and will listen.

In fact, he's like Miruko when she was in high school (MHA Vigilantes).

Their personalities definitely give quite a show. Especially, since Midoriya has developed over the story.

Honestly, they both give off "I'll interact with people and I can play nice, but I also like to keep to myself". If they had had more interactions Miruko would have someone who could keep up with her, pay attention, and wouldn't take a dig at her quirk or gender. Midoriya would still learn a few things like kick moves and new spots he hadn't been to in Japan.

Also, you can not tell me these two wouldn't have funny conversations.

"You know I used to break into underground fight clubs."

"Really?! How'd you do it?"

"Kick down the door with a mask on! Ever done anything you shouldn't have before?"

"Well... one time I ran off from where I was supposed to be and fought the Hero Killer Stain to save my friend, I also went to Kamino to save my other friend who was kidnapped from the League of Villains even though I just got out the hospital... what else... oh! And then I fought that same friend on campus after curfew. It's all really embarrassing!"

"I knew you were a wild child! I can see it in your eyes! Ha! So who's your favorite Pro Hero?"

"... is alright for me to say?"

"Is it All Might? Almost everyone favors him."

"... it's All Might."

"Knew it! You know your quirk, how strong it is reminds me of him."

"..."

"I met him once when I was a kid!"

"You did? What was it like?"

"Actually really funny. He came late to the party. Me and some other two guys already dealt with the villains."

[lacunammmm]

You might have answered this or this ask was a long time coming, but what do you think of Bakugo?

He's an author's pet and fandom darling who makes lots and lots of money, so any "development" he gets is entirely Sisyphean. His redemption arc could have been GREAT.

As it is, it stagnated terribly because the author liked Bakugo when he'd get angry and yell at people. Which is precisely what his supposed development should have him NOT doing. Every single lesson he supposedly learns is just a performance for that moment: he doesn't actually learn that lesson because he's just going to backslide after that. The author refuses to commit. Think about how the series ends: the guy still gets mad and yells at the press, and his hero rankings are actively getting worse. The guy claims he wants to be the best. That he wants to be the number 1 hero. But he does absolutely nothing to reach that goal besides train and improve his battle power. The same as usual. He CERTAINLY has the power to do so, given all the boosts the author gave him! Mirio can't do shit to him. In terms of power, Bakugo absolutely should be on top. The entire series hyping this dude to eventually be number 1 and then the ending portraying him as a loser who failed at his one major ambition because his time at UA and all the previous lessons we supposedly saw him learn didn't stick...is baffling. It reeks of the author's fear of fan backlash. He knew a portion of the fanbase didn't like Bakugo, so he has Tin Tin become the number 1 hero instead. Making you honestly question what was the point of all of this? Bakugo is VERY privileged. We've got characters in this series who get basically ZERO character work, have no personality traits or backstory (Sato!) and then here's Bakugo who gets loads of screentime, a whole slew of power ups, gets to come back from the dead and then laugh off his injuries. Mirko lost multiple limbs, Kyoka lost an ear, Endeavor lost an arm and apparently the use of his legs. But the narrative said maybe Bakugo might lose an arm, but he's Bakugo so of course he doesn't. The author loves Bakugo too much, which is why everything is so easy for him: -Everyone loves him despite his anti social and quite frankly utterly unacceptable behavior. His continued bad actions being tolerated looks like blatant favoritism because of his strong quirk.

-He has the easiest lay-up redemption arc ever. NO ONE knows the extent of how horrible he was in the past except for his victim, who has already forgiven him. There was zero push back for him becoming a better person. He doesn't have a "Dabi" or any real opposition. It's entirely about him learning not to self sabotage.

-Even when he got kidnapped by the villains, they treated him with kid gloves. No torture, no beatings, he didn't have his quirk taken from him. He wasn't subjected to any sort of brainwashing. They didn't have to rescue Bakugo as he was in the process of being turned into a Nomu. The villains didn't take his mom and dad hostage to force him to be a villain. The guy is able to attack them the second they set him free, and then the plot bails him out when he's about to get his ass kicked. Let's explore a "What If?" We'll make Bakugo's redemption arc pop more while also giving Shigaraki the last laugh here. Okay, so Kamino happens and Shigaraki is mega pissed. It's revealed that actually, he believes Bakugo would have been a good villain because he had AFO's "friends" go look into his history, and he got ahold of lots of social media and classroom footage of Bakugo's bullying. Bakugo escaped before Shigaraki could show him all this and further make his point about why Bakugo was 100% villain material. So, he puts all of this unedited stuff together in a truth bomb and AFO's contacts, who he has access through via Kurogiri, ensure this gets to every news station in Japan. There's years worth of material of cell phone footage and social media posts, by his classmates, of Bakugo's asshole behavior. People recorded him bullying, yelling, breaking rules, belittling people. Izuku in particular. But the killshot is the stolen classroom security footage where he told Izuku to kill himself. Instantly, Bakugo's life is significantly harder. The new friends he made at UA see him completely differently. The teachers look like clowns for defending this guy on live TV. All Might is dumbstruck that Katsuki was really that bad before and is appalled.

Bakugo then has to fight an uphill battle where it's seriously questioned if he'll get to stay at UA. Having all of his past actions thrown in his face when he thought he was in the clear makes him take a good hard look at how he acted and still acted. He has a very tough discussion with his parents, Aizawa and Nezu where Nezu points out the pattern of behavior he's personally seen from Bakugo during his time at UA. The excessive force used in the battle trials, his behavior during the sports festival, him ignoring orders to go fight at the summer camp instead of using his quirk to fly away to safety, how he failed the provisional license exam for conduct issues, and then his later fight with Midoriya(Deku vs Kacchan 2,) which they now identified is not a "rivals" relationship, but instead a bullying dynamic. Nezu entered into that conversation fully prepared to expel Bakugo and wipe his hands clean of what he saw as a liability to his school. However, Bakugo's genuine remorse for his actions and willingness to do whatever it takes to make this right causes him to change his mind. He's instead put on probation and takes anger management. If he dips a toe out of line from then on, he's done.

Bakugo has to re-earn his friendships, and deal with major negative PR from what he did in the past. Everyone looks at him differently now and he fights an uphill battle to be a hero. He went from the top all the way to the bottom.

We've accomplished multiple things here. -Shigaraki is significantly less impotent than before and he actually inflicted some lasting damage to hero society, and Bakugo in particular. -We organically furthered Bakugo's redemption arc and made him have to confront his dark past just as it seemed like he reached a turning point. -We gave Bakugo an issue to solve that he's forced to either grow from or kiss his hero dreams goodbye. This isn't something that can be defeated with violence. You could even have Midoriya continue to be Green Jesus in this scenario. He forgave Bakugo ages ago. We just have the other characters react to Bakugo not being who they thought he was. Social consequences hurt way worse than physical ones. Bakugo could laugh off a beating, but how's he react when his friends don't want him sitting next to them at lunch anymore? How's he feel when Mineta's the only guy who wants to be seen with him, since his reputation is already in the gutter?

I'll end this by discussing how this series robbed Bakugo of his humanity. Anger is a secondary emotion. When you feel anger, it first begins as something else. Shame, guilt, fear, weakness, helplessness. Anger is just an easy and motivating emotion to feel that can mask what you actually experience inside. So, we get Bakugo's "apology" where he explains how he didn't like Izuku. But why? The series doesn't dig deeper into what he isn't saying. Was it because he saw a kid with no quirk who was heroic and had people who liked him, but Bakugo only felt valued because of his powerful quirk? Did he ask himself, subconsciously, if anyone would care about Katsuki if he didn't have his power, and in his heart, he said no? The guy is unable to truly accept compliments, but he's an egotist who needs attention and to be acknowledged. Why? What's eating him inside that he needs this constant validation, both internally and externally? If the underlying reasons behind why you get angry are addressed, then you stop feeling angry. If it's based on insecurities and those get fixed, you just feel better. You've learned new coping strategies. Even at the end of the series, the anger is still present. He gets mad because people want to talk to their famous hero who killed the quirk devil? Because people give him the praise he's rightfully entitled to for being objectively one of the strongest people on the planet who uses their powers to help people? So he ends the series....not the number 1 hero. He doesn't have much of a relationship with Izuku anymore. And he's dissatisfied. And his anger problem still hasn't been fixed since the issues behind it never got addressed. Well, I guess Shoto is the only real winner among the important hero kids.

[lizzy06]

Hakamada Tsunagu (Best Jeanist) x Reader Fic Recs!! (Tumblr/Ao3/Wattpad)

My Hero Academia Fic Rec Masterlist

Who Knew✨ by nek0zawakun (oneshot, friends to lovers, fluff, humor) "Whatever you decide [Y/N], just remember to let your life be as straight as your jeans." “I’d love to, but straight jeans are no longer in style.”[COMPLETED]

The Aftermath of Kamino by MothClothTales (oneshot, fluff, hurt/comfort) The physical scars would have nothing on the mental ones.[COMPLETED]

Red Threads of Fate by Curious_Feline (onshot, fluff) When pride is on the line for both halves of Japan's power couple after a childish argument, who is going to cave first and apologize before the public gets too lost in trying to fill in the pieces of their private argument.[COMPLETED]

Never too late✨✨by @therainroguefanfiction (oneshot, fluff with pinch of angst) “You answer the door when I’m trick or treating and at first you say I’m way too old to be doing this but somehow I convince you to come out and join me.”[COMPLETED]

As You Wish ✨by @seiyasabi (oneshot, yandere! best jeanist) You meeting your friend for catching up? idk man lol.[COMPLETED]

Did I Just Say That Out Loud?✨ by @myeternalsin (oneshot, humor, fluff) (Y/N) meets up with her best friend Chris as he forgets his lunch and begs Y/N to drop it off. After her third encounter with Best Jeanist, (Y/N) can’t help but admire his ass in those jeans of his~.[COMPLETED]

Best Jeanist x Reader✨ by @faulty-writes (oneshot, kinda enemies to lovers) Despite your less than friendly relationship, neither of you is willing to admit just how much you feel for the other.[COMPLETED]

Best Jeanist hcs by @burnedbyshoto (fluff) hcs for Best Jeanist with a s/o who works at his agency as a staff member.[COMPLETED]

Best Jeanist X Gender Neutral Reader by @queentheweeb (oneshot, fluff) You felt it in your bones that if Hakamada tried to do whatever ungodly hairstyle that he enjoys on you one more time it would be more than just villains he will have to worry about.[COMPLETED]

Blind date by @erasethedarkness (oneshot, fluff)Working at a news station had its perks- and one of them included being friends with a popular newswoman. When asked to take her place in a blind date, you were skeptical but wanted to help her out, accepting the request in the end.[COMPLETED]

Body Snatched by @nights-legacy (oneshot) When someone couldn't take a hint and continued making you uncomfortable after you said you weren't interested, he didn't take it lightly. Especially when that person goes way out of line.[COMPLETED]

One Last Gift by @shxtodxroki (oneshot, fluff) Despite his busy schedule and hectic lifestyle, your pro-hero boyfriend manages to give you the perfect Christmas Eve as you soak up all the love and affection you can during your time alone with him.[COMPLETED]

[class1akids]

Is there a reason why Endeavor is such a popular character within the fandom despite his arc that isn’t very convincing or well done? Or would you say as an atonement it is well done. Despite only wanting to change after achieving what he wanted?

I think it's a number of factors:

Endeavor's popularity rose with him getting flashy fights (first in the anime-only scenes in the Stain arc and then the pro hero arc). I think it's undeniable that him being "badass" in a traditionally masculine sense was a huge factor in his support increasing in the fandom. And even when he spouts really outrages things (like how he's going to keep his eyes on Touya, when in fact he doesn't), as long as he shoots lasers from his ass, some people will not notice the hypocrisy.

I feel like his atonement arc was pretty well-written between Kamino and Ch 252 - from first realizing what he did to his family, to trying to redeem himself through hero work and then getting rejected by the family and finally being able to offer nothing but distance. However, Endeavor surviving the PLF-war, his family supporting his hero job, while at the same time Endeavor put his family last and kept running away from Touya really regressed this arc. But there was already this perception in the fandom that "Endeavor is the best-written character" which meant that people shut down valid criticism of how Act 3 destroyed what was good in it in Act 2.

He was propped up by his ties to a lot of very popular characters. Hawks obviously is the most prominent example. Hawks was widely popular when he was introduced and was already being used to give us a different version of Endeavor than Shoto's version. But also Bakugou and Deku - especially him being good teacher to Deku. All Might talking to him at length in the Remedial arc and worrying about him. Burnin'. Best Jeanist. Everyone who interacts with Endeavor, all cool characters, constantly praise him and raise him up. And of course there is the ambivalent, but somewhat improving relationship with Shouto (another fan favorite) that gets distorted into the "clueless doting dad" trope in the anime, movies, spin-offs, games etc.

Endeavor's crimes are relatable to a lot of the male audience. I think we can't ignore the number of incels / men holding toxic masculine views in the anime, especially shonen anime community. These people genuinely believe that Endeavor's crimes are exaggerated, because they do believe that a wife or children are a man's property and as long as he provides for them in the physical sense, he fulfills his obligations.

Having said that - I'm not sure how popular Endeavor is truly. I feel like he's more a niche character with obviously a strong and faithful supporter basis. Popularity poll results are one thing because in Japan, this was always paid stuff and the global poll had massive scale cheating (remember how low Endeavor was in Week 1?)

And if you look at merch, Endeavor is often left out of line-ups because there is not enough demand other than some high-end merch targetted at the EndHawks shipping community and some action figures. I think Endeavor fans and EndHawks fans in the fujoshi community tend to be a bit older than the average fan age, so they would have more disposable income to buy merch, but I think their number (observing the more low-end merch sales evolution) is not massive.

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

did every hero really follow endeavor's plan during the jail break? I've never watched bnha, but I always figured there were more heros then Japan knew what do with. Was endeavor really just that worried about how the fight again AFO would go? and did AFO have the league with him? or other prison escapees? Given eraserhead was so entrenched?

As a preliminary matter--yes, it was way more than AfO. The League basically did what they did during the USJ arc and subcontracted their violent attacks. They needed a big force to first get AfO and everyone else out of Tartarus, and then they made it very clear (via loudspeaker and also fucking tweet) that they would all be very peacefully retreating while all those criminally insane and violent motherfuckers went that other direction. Ball's in your court as to how you want to tackle it.

AfO was the biggest threat, by fucking far, but it was far from isolated to him. It was the entire League of Villains + Their Very Special Friends. It was the kind of force that would be required to make the entirety of Tartarus fall for the first time in history. So the heroes had plenty to keep them busy.

And as to whether Endeavor was that scared about the next fight with AfO... Yeah.

I think bnha does a good job at establishing that All Might and AfO just exist at entirely different levels than every other person alive. Their fight leveled a decent chunk of Kamino. And I think that's kind of power and devastation is hard to conceptualize as like, people in a world where we don't have to worry about superhero fights. (as a side note--Sukuna's Big Fight in the Shibuya arc from JJK did better than any other fight in media to really capture the sheer cosmic horror of being caught as a bystander in one of those fights).

But endeavor saw it. He was there for AfO’s and All Might’s last fight. The gods were fighting. Everyone else was just an ant.

He is facing the villain that ultimately took down All Might. All Might won Kamino, sure. But he didn't get up again after. He was permanently and irreversibly taken out of play. And Endeavor has spent the last year feeling like he was struggling to be even half of what All Might was with two hours of productivity a day. He was so consistently voted to not be able to compare to All Might that he bought a wife and had four kids about it, all of whom hate him actively.

He does not think he is winning this fight. He is Japan's number one hero. The responsibility is going to fall to Midoriya Izuku to him. He is the best they have left, and the fight that would be coming was one that already nearly killed All Might, the one guy he has never ever been able to compare to. And when he really looked himself in the mirror and asked if he could stop AfO, the answer was no.

And it wouldn't just be AfO if he came back to power. It would be his followers--and he was liable to get more than just the current League of Villains roster. It would mean more Nomus. They could barely handle one Nomu--how could they possibly handle the Nomus, and the LoV, and AfO?

And the answer that he came to was that they couldn't. Not without All Might.

He thought he was sacrificing Yokohama for every single other city AfO was going to level if he had time to grow in strength again. He thought that if they threw absolutely everything they had at him while he was weak, then maybe they could contain him and the League before entire cities fell.

So. That's why he came to that decision. Why did every hero fall into line?

So what’s key to what happened here was it was this complete structural breakdown at exactly the wrong time.

Structural Flaw #1: Transportation

Was it every hero in Japan that responded to Endeavor’s order? No. But not every hero in Japan was available. Any heroes out of the immediate area were too far away to do shit.

But it's a massive crisis. Heroes would commute from all over if they could--but it's not about desire, it's about time and resources. With how imminently emergent the threat was, a lot of far-away heroes would need something like a jet to even conceivably get there in time.

Who is sending the jet?

Let's pin down what heroes could, conceivably, get there in time. Very few heroes are in walking distance. How do heroes typically get from Point A to Point B?

Hero society in bnha is an agency model. There is no communal pool of resources--you have what your agency has. You have a jet to transport you if your agency has the money for one, and I’m pretty sure only all might had that (he has since had it dismantled and the parts repurposed for the sake of the environment. He only had it to begin with so he could quickly respond to imminent threats. All Might thinks there's more than one way to save the world and saving the environment is part of it). Like. We even saw Endeavor flying fucking commercial.

But let's just assume, arguendo, that some agencies have jets. It would have to be the very top agencies to possibly afford it.

All of whom are shown in canon to mostly operate out of the same area. So they're going to have to send the jet somewhere else to get more heroes. Now any travel time is doubled. If they do send it out, how many people are they realistically getting? Are these heroes in multiple different cities? That's more travel time then. Maybe we just land the plane in Kyoto and whoever gets on in the twenty minute period while they're refueling is who is coming back. We'll hand them parachutes and kick them out the plane door over Yokohama. Okay. Good plan. Go team.

Who is sending the jet?

Like, who is physically making the call to send the jet? Who do they call? Do they just start ringing around their buddies and seeing if they have other plans? The city is on fucking fire and we need people fighting now, so the big name heroes don't have time to organize transport with other agencies. They’re not even thinking of that right now. Make it a sidekick's job.

They are all on fucking strike.

Fuck it. Fine. Make it an admin's job. There has to be some kind of office staff who can work a telephone who's available.

Who is thinking to send the jet?

Admins are not making strategic calls about where the company jets go. There would have to be some kind of protocol in place or someone with the authority to send the jet would have to think of it in the moment. And I guarantee you this would not be the case.

Because this is a society where they have canonically semi-privatized public safety and put people in direct competition with each other over it.

ASIDE: The Economic Structure of Heroics and Why It Sucks

I have an economic structure. You must listen to it. I promise it is relevant. This is why it takes me forever to do things it's because i get too deep into the weeds and have to explain the fucking economic structures underpinning the analysis for my nonsense to make sense.

How the fuck do heroes get paid?

I have no idea if canon ever tells us because to be so for real with you guys I have not watched this show in years. I haven’t cared about canon since the Shie Hassaikai arc. The fucking YouTuber arc broke me. I literally never watched it again. If they ever explain to us how heroes get paid I do not know and I do not care. I refuse to go back to canon. Everything I found out about canon after the Shie Hassaikai arc, I learned against my will. The ending to this story was so fucking stupid and I only have a scattered knowledge of the details but I’m still right. If canon ever tries to explain it then please do not tell me, I refuse to learn more things about this show.

But I still like poking around the potential economic structures based on the part of canon that doesn’t cause me psychic damage. So here’s the thought process for the economic underpinnings of hero society in the pez universe.

From canon, we know it can be an enormously lucrative profession, we know that it involves some degree of private interests (re: merch lines), and we know that there are some people who cannot have merch lines (Underground Heroes, e.g. Eraserhead), so there also must be some kind of public funding aspect to it as well. So. Who the fuck signs your paycheck?

Sources of Funding

a. Public Funding

There must be some kind of official governmental budget for heroics. Like. They are very much a public service. There would be no way to have a fully private heroics force without government funding. What else are you supposed to do, fucking Venmo heroes after they save you? Do they put your kitten back in the tree if you don’t have enough.

In my mind, there's public funds allocated to heroes as part of a city's budget. That funding is allotted based on the number of employees in a given entity balanced against the confirmed acts of heroics of that same given entity. There’s a base salary level and that can be increased based on how successful you are, but salary isn’t exclusively what this fund is for. The heroic entity (an individual hero or an Agency) is effectively receiving grant money from the government to run their agency. You put it into salaries, gear, office space, everything. The government is basically investing in heroes, and it’s investing more in heroes who are shown to have a greater positive impact on society.

It involves overly complex calculations regarding the scaled difficulty of a given bust/rescue/act and ranking of the villain (if there is one) and the overall public benefit for the service rendered. You get bonuses for having a lower average property damage, for contributing to community building projects, that kind of thing. It is Complex. There is a lot of paperwork that has to be submitted to strange and vaguely threatening government accountants. When Mirio and Izuku start their agency, they will burst into tears multiple times trying to figure it out once filing season rolls around, bundle all the paperwork in a Massive Tears And Shame Package, mail it off to the shadowy powers at be, and then get a perfunctory notice that they are getting a ludicrous amount of the city budget allotted to their dinky little agency for the upcoming fiscal year because they are Big Fucking Heroes and enormously good at what they do and it reflects in their stats. They will then lay on the ground of their haunted fucking office and stare at the ceiling for a very long period of time.

But this puts the heroes in competition with each other. Your public funding is chained to your stats under this model. There's only so many criminals out there--you've got to get the right numbers or it cuts into how much of a slush fund the agency is working with.

It's sort of an insane model for a public servant position, but I think it matches with what canon shows us. Imagine having firefighters pitted against each other. like, having a competitive model for public safety raises extreme concerns about how it incentivizes public servants to act.

But this isn't canon's model. It's my guess as to how canon works based on the hints i can remember and my own mental illness. So why do I think canon suggests a model like this?

It's because 1) canon does establish that heroes are in competition with one another and 2) this kind of model would likely be necessary due to the level of autonomy that heroes have.

The literal first fight we see involves heroes in competition with each other. Kamui Woods is doing a big Ultimate Move, and Mount Lady rushes in and steals the show. Like. that is crazy behavior if we are looking at this through the lens of a typical public servant. Imagine you're trying to get directions from a park ranger and a different park ranger kick flips in with a map and a desperate need for you to get your directions from them instead. You call poison control and they’re beating each other in the head over who gets to tell you you’re dying.

Still, on its own, the competition isn’t dispositive, because the private income streams (we'll get there) would incentivize competition even if public funding wasn't based on it. But the level of autonomy that hero offices exhibit also suggest some kind of competition model.

Heroics agencies are not run like a typical police force or fire station. With most entities that function as first responders, they respond to some kind of centralized force (like 911 call centers) and they have highly regulated resource distribution. Like, police forces are restricted to a specific jurisdiction. Within that jurisdiction they have multiple districts and officers typically stay in their district. They're not going to a different fucking city because they think the crime is cooler there.

But Endeavor does exactly that. He's like "hello, son who hates me. Let's go to Hosu because I want to fuck with the hero killer for street cred. won't you come along. It is non-optional" and todoroki says "i hate you father and will abandon you on our father son trip to set a serial killer on fire with my mind. it will be for mildly gay reasons."

These agencies aren't a centralized public service. They are all just off doing their own thing. They're not responding to specific areas as allotted to them by the city--they just fuck off and do whatever. Like, there's probably some coordination between agencies as to who is covering what patrol, but it likely would be more out of courtesy than formal requirement. People wouldn't step on each other's toes nearly as much if there was more of a structure to this.

Typical public agencies who receive funding in accordance with staffing and budgetary needs have more structure and formality than is exhibited in canon. Heroics Agencies act like they're all independent contractors. They probably function like grant money recipients, where they're all fighting for the same pool of funds. You have to write in and show why you deserve that money when that's the case. They're in competition with each other.

Like, is this definitively the structure in canon? No, of course not. I have no fucking idea what, if anything, canon has going on. But it definitely fits with canon.

b. Private Income Streams

We know from canon that it can't just be public funding. Izuku alone probably paid for the Mighty Agency private jet with how much fucking all might merch he bought. Canonically, heroes have merchandise lines, branding deals, commercials, everything. All Might had fucking movies made about him. Those are all extremely lucrative income streams--and likely where the richest heroes get the biggest brunt of their income.

In order to get this kind of income, you are necessarily in competition with your fellow hero.

Public attention, spending money, screen time, all of it--it's a limited resource. You have to be the person who gets to the fight first, who does the big move, who saves the day. If it's someone else? Then that's another kid buying their action figure instead of yours. Heroics is heavily commoditized in canon, and that inherently invites competition.

2. Distribution of Funds

So now that we have a theory as to where the money comes from, how does it get paid out? Based on canon, it comes down to a structure of (a) Independent/Underground Heroes and (b) Agencies.

a. Independent/Underground Heroes

I can't actually remember if the word "independent" is said in canon or if I came up with it, but I think canon implies its existence. It's basically the same thing as being an underground hero, but you're still a Spotlight hero. I also cannot remember if the underground/spotlight thing is canon or fanon or what I’m sorry I haven’t watched this show in years.

Independents are spotlight heroes without the backing of an agency. They just go out every day with the clothes on their back and a dream. They have no support staff, no back up, and no one to help them if things go sideways.

It is not a popular employment option.

Part of it is because it's that much harder to fund being an independent. Like. Say you're just out of high school and you decide to strike out on your own as independent. You're still spotlight, so you can have a merchandise line, and that'd be a nice income stream while you're just starting out.

How the fuck do you start your own t-shirt line?

How do you make contracts with the manufacturers? How do you make and copyright the design? how do you sell the stupid things? Do you try and get them in Walmart? Do you start an Etsy? Your own website? do you call your mom and cry when you have 500 ugly t-shirts with your face on them that no one wants to buy and they're taking up all the space in your studio apartment.

Agencies have preexisting structures in place to help launch these kinds of options, which is one of the reasons why they're so attractive for baby heroes just starting out. The only reason why Mirio has merchandise is because he decided that he didn't care and didn't need to make merch and Izuku came after him with feverish crack addict energy because he cared and he needed Lemillion merch like. yesterday. All Might ended up getting his agency to start a lemillion line. Mirio gets the profits with a reasonable fee to the Mighty Agency. To this day he suspects that Izuku is 70% of his sales but Izuku denies this fervently, like a liar (he actually has a small but very devoted fanbase who rabidly support him and buy all of his merch. he would cry if he knew this. Still. Izuku is his biggest fan and buys literally every single piece of new merch in triplicate.).

Underground heroes are in the same boat as independents but they don't even have the option of a merch line. They exclusively get public funding unless they're backed by an agency, which none of them are because agencies have a tendency to fuck them and their busts for the sake of the spotlight. All underground heroes are bitter and culturally opposed to agencies.

On that note:

b. Agencies.

This is where by far the most heroes would end up. But an agency is like thirty dudes with the same joint bank account. How does the money get there and get distributed out?

i. Public Funding in an Agency Context

Take the above model. How do you attribute public funds based on personal statistics if there's no single person? Does everyone get their own check? But that wouldn't make sense--this isn't just for salaries, it's for funding the actual heroics itself.

Everyone under the same agency would be counted together for the purposes of funding allotment. If Sidekick A managed 300 busts last year and Sidekick B man managed 350 busts, then congratulations, The Big Hero Hero Agency made 650 busts last year, here's a check made out to the agency, figure out what you want to do with it.

But what about incidents that involve multiple heroes from the same agency? Let's say that The Big Hero Hero Agency is involved in a big bust. It is Sidekick A's baby. They have spent months doing this. This has been blood, sweat, and tears. When the day comes, they are joined by Sidekick B, Sidekick C, and Big Hero himself. Sidekick B has been helping Sidekick A for the past three weeks on this case. Sidekick C got called in the day-of to help.

Big Hero showed up for the last twenty minutes of the fight when they were mostly done with everything.

So. You're filling out the post-arrest paperwork. For funding and for public statistics, you need to make sure to properly account for who gets credit for the bust. It has to be one person--if you had everyone individually credit themselves for the bust, then it looks like you've resolved four incidents instead of one under this financial model. it's artificially inflating your numbers for public funding. that's fraud. Who should get the credit: Sidekick A, Sidekick B, Sidekick C, or Big Hero?

Well, there's nothing stopping Big Hero from writing their own name. So let's go with Big Hero. He helped.

This was one of the big sources of the sidekick strikes: a lot of agencies had an absolute policy of attributing successes to the name hero if they touched the case at all, because there was no rule against it. It was better for the agency, after all--unrealistically high numbers on the biggest name meant the agency as a whole appeared more successful.

So there were a lot of heroes artificially inflating their stats with things that were more properly credited to their sidekicks. Which made it all the harder for sidekicks to leave because their stats were shit because their boss was taking credit for their work.

ii. Private Funding in an Agency Context

But that’s just public funding. How would agencies distribute private income streams?

Big Hero Agency is proud to announce its newest line of Big Hero Action Figures, featuring the Entire Big Hero Team, now retailing for $39.99. Get it now from a store near you.

So. An agency is selling an action figure line featuring Sidekicks A, B, and C, as well as Big Hero himself. We’ll round up to an even $40. How do we split up the cash?

You can’t give everyone each $10. You have to first pay the suppliers, the advertisers, the trucks that shipped the toys to the store, etc. Then you have to pay back into the agency to fund miscellaneous expenses—the stationary, the insurance, the coffee in the fucking break room. Everything. By the end, there’s only $4 of profit left over. Not great, but hey—they’re selling a lot of toys. So if they each get a $1, then it should add up quick.

Right. But. If you think about it, people are only really buying it for Big Hero. He’s the best hero of all of them—his name is on the agency, and just look at how much higher his stats are. So it’s only fair that he gets $3.70 a toy and the rest of them can get $.10 apiece. Don’t worry, it’ll add up quick.

Not all agencies would have been like this. But a lot of them would be. Money is a hell if an incentive to screw people.

END OF ASIDE.

With all that in mind—why would they feasibly have a structure to fly in help from other heroes far away? That’s their fucking competition. Sure, we have team ups, but they’re all either well in advance or in the heat of a moment. If they are in the heat of a moment, half the time the heroes resent it because they just stole their fight. They’re gonna what—pay the exorbitant jet fees to fly in someone who’s just going to steal their hard work in the eyes of the public?

Okay, but what about situations like this? Massive emergencies where you need more people?

Those haven’t ever happened before. They had All Might.

So. The heroes on the ground calling in help are out. What about the heroes who are close enough to make it there by ground transport? No one calls them, they just show up out of public need. How are they getting there?

Trains are out. All the trains into the area are shut the fuck down. We are not giving the freshly escaped villains a bullet train to the rest of the country. Same thing for buses. No fucking bus driver is making their regular route into a fucking battleground.

Private transportation it is. Anything more than a few hours out of the area is completely out of the question. Like, good ol’ Manuel from Hosu City and all his buddies? Not making it. The wild wild pussycats? Watched this on TV from their mountain home. Gran Torino? On FaceTime with All Might, who is watching the fight with Midoriya Inko’s hand gripped in his left and Bakugou Mitsuki’s hand gripped in his right. Gang Orca? Twelve hours away and on a fucking island so he needs a boat AND a car to get there. Or he just fucking swims.

But there has to be at least some hero that saw this happening and heroically climbed in their Mazda sedan to make the three hour car trip. Why didn’t they go to the fight in Yokohama instead of the one against AfO?

Frankly at that point those literal children were visibly doing way better than the actual heroes were faring and any heroes showing up went where they were most needed and uh. It wasn’t by the kids.

If we have the agency model as given to us by canon, then that means there is a decentralization of resources. If you want to utilize your public defense force in the case of emergencies, then you need a way to fucking get them to the emergency. Canon does not have that. This is a huge structural failing that only wasn’t a disaster sooner because most emergencies required one guy and he had his own private jet. So most heroes in the country never had to even consider if they would listen to Endeavor’s order because they were completely cut off and useless at the time.

So. Now the analysis has been narrowed from all of Japan’s heroes to just the ones in the immediate vicinity of the fight. That’s still a fuck ton of heroes. This is a heavily populated area with a bunch of heroes around. You can’t go outside without tripping over a hero.

Most of those guys were on fucking strike.

Structural Flaw #2: Over-Reliance on and Abuse of Sidekicks.

The vast majority of the workforce had to be sidekicks. Like, just from a business model perspective. Even the smallest agencies we saw had 2-3 sidekicks. Endeavor’s agency had at least double digits, and I think Idaten was at over a hundred or something. We were probably looking at, conservatively, a 1:10 ratio of heroes to sidekicks.

All those guys are on strike.

Okay. But not all of them, right? Idaten already settled and got their sidekicks back. That’s like a hundred guys.

Except the Strike was not isolated to the Tokyo/Mustufasa/Yokohama area. Idaten sent out a lot of their sidekicks to other regions to help alleviate some of the strains of the strike. (As a note, this was not the Idaten sidekicks crossing the picket line. Them picking up the slack for other sidekicks still striking would have helped minimize effects on the public. However, the agencies of the striking sidekicks would have reaped no benefit from this under the compensation structure outlined above. Idaten would have gotten the credit for everything their sidekicks did, so the other agencies would still be bleeding from this while risk to the public was slightly alleviated. Idaten’s entire function in this strike was to set an example for quick settlement and minimize public harm. There’s this entire sub-analysis on Idaten’s internal culture and how it intersects with broader heroics standards that I won’t get into now this is already way too long.)

Idaten is at 1/10 capacity. It has like, ten guys, all of whom have been working say, thirteen hour shifts (voluntarily—again, it was a decision made to try and minimize the public safety risks of the strike while still allowing their colleagues their best chance at improved conditions) daily for the past month.

All of those ten guys responded to Tartarus before Endeavor made the call.

To understand the exact nature of the breakdown, you really have to see the chaos of how exactly this unfolded.

The LoV and their merry band of criminals hit Tartarus. The heroes do not realize at this time that they intend to let everyone out, give them transportation, and point them straight towards the mainland. They think that they’re just there for AfO. That’s still a huge crisis that needs to be shut down immediately, so they call out all of their best. Endeavor responds. Hawks responds. Eraserhead responds. Mt. Lady, Kamui Woods, Miruko—everyone in the vicinity who could conceivably respond show up. For a second, it looks like it’s going to end here.

Once the LoV get AfO out of his cell, the entire tide of the battle turns against the heroes. Now everyone’s out. All of those horrible, terrible villains. Tartarus has fallen. They have to make hard decisions. The high ranking, very powerful heroes who are most likely to break the line on Endeavor’s decision? They’re already at the fight by the time he has to make it. It is chaos and something they cannot easily leave.

The LoV’s picked right now because they knew that the heroes were operating at less than a tenth of their regular capacity. They picked right now because they knew the system had structural faults, and if they hit them just right, it would all come down on the heroes’ heads.

But the sidekicks broke strike lines to respond, right? Why do they all go to endeavor’s side?

For one thing, it wasn’t all of them who showed up—maybe a third of them were not even in the area any more. It wasn’t malicious, or intentional, or anything like that—they were off visiting their families for the first time in a long time or taking vacation. All of them had spent the past few years being completely overworked and abused by their jobs. They just weren’t there.

So now we’re down to 2/3rds of them who can even try to show up.

A lot of it wasn’t actually made as a reasoned choice. For many of them, they ended up where they did because of all the chaos.

So you’re a sidekick. You’re on strike. The entire world has gone to shit. How do you normally find out about the world going to shit?

This is a competition model streamed through individual entities. There’s no central command structure. Your agency calls you.

Well, your agency either fucking fired you or they cut you off completely during strike negotiations. This time, you find out through the news when the story breaks. Now what?

You frantically try to get in touch with your (ex) agency. Who is picking up the phones?

No one. That was your fucking job before you went on strike.

I used to work at a government public-service type deal, and let me tell you, they abuse the fuck out of non-unionized workers. You are doing everyone’s job. No one ask why we don’t get more support staff because they have unions. Like. I had a law degree. I was hired to be a lawyer in that office. They had us all doing the jobs of four people, and by that I mean it would be the literal entire job description of another fucking position in that office and we were all expected to just do it too.

Unions incentivize treating workers right. The absence of them opens the door to the opposite.

Why the fuck would agencies hire more people to lighten the load on the sidekicks and let them focus on actual heroics? Just make the sidekicks do everything. What are they going do, complain? They’re a dime a dozen. Hire more of those fresh faced kids with no standards just out of school.

You know when you had a job where you’re like. This fucking place is going to fall apart without me. But they treat you as disposable and easily replaceable and you’re like “okay bet” and so you leave and you find out from the people left behind that it actually fucking fell apart without you and you’re just like :o

Yeah. So that happened.

There has been a massive break down in the function of heroics offices for the past month and change because the sidekicks were not there. They were the ones who actually did most of the day to day handling of the office. They were the ones coordinating transport and figuring out the actual mechanics of who would be deployed where in a crisis. All those things that would be super helpful now? Yeah, those guys aren’t there, and they’re locked out of the fucking offices and can’t get in to un-strike for the sake of societal crisis.

But they know where the fight is. It’s on the news. Why don’t they just show up?

Where’s their gear?

Who owns it?

Heroics support gear must be an enormously expensive thing. It would have to be provided by the agency itself. Literally the only reason why Mirio has gear is because 1) all might would NEVER let his pseudo step son run around without proper support so the man would have bankrolled it himself if needs must and 2) the UA support class has a stipend each year where they can make support gear for active heroes and those heroes get it for free in exchange for free advertising for the students trying to kick start their careers, so he is decked out in THE most experimental bullshit from Hatsume Mei Industries (I have this entire side plot where the support class this class year low key became a sort of religious cult haha not really it’s just a joke it’s not really a joke and power loader is afraid every single day when he comes to work he is afraid under the iron clad rule of Hatsume Mei’s weird girl energy and they all decided Mirio was the Tabula Rasa, a figure of prophecy, and I just cannot get into that right now it’s too long it’s too long already. But it’s so fun).

All those sidekicks on strike lost valuable time trying to get back into their agencies so they weren’t showing up to an S-class villain fight in their fucking jammies. Then, when some poor admins figured out what was going on and let some of them in, everyone was frantically gearing up and getting in whatever transport van they were pointed at. Some of them didn’t know they werent reporting to Yokohama until they were already at the other fight. There’s was so much chaos and confusion that very few people had a clear idea of what was happening.

With the sidekicks, some of them never made it, some of them just got in a van and went wherever it took them, and some of them chose to obey Endeavor’s orders. Some agreed with the decision. Some disagreed but deferred to his experience. With how the Sidekick Strike had left their infrastructure, very few sidekicks were able to respond fast enough to make any real difference.

Now for the last possible demographic: the heroes that weren’t on strike and weren’t initially deployed to the Tartarus Prison Break. Why didn’t any of them go to Yokohama?

Structural Flaw #3: All Might was that one kid doing the entire group project for like forty years and some of these people are having to be heroes for the very first time and realizing that they don’t actually want to risk their lives to save people they just sort of liked the idea of this job.

It may be a bit too specific to be a structural flaw but I’m counting it anyway.

So, just to give a bit of a recap: We consider every hero alive in Japan as a candidate for Endeavor’s order. The vast majority of them are too far away to do shit, and there’s no centralized transport network to get them there faster. Toss in those who are dealing with personal medical issues or are away on vacation or just can’t come for some reason or another, and you’ve lost most of the heroes in Japan as respondents. Probably ~80% of potential heroes are culled from this alone.

So we have, generously, 20% of Japan’s heroes left as potential people to respond. ~90% of those are sidekicks on strike. They’ve got hours before they make it to any fight, because of the aforementioned structural breakdowns.

Now we’re down to 2% of Japan’s total heroes.

Some of that 2% were first responders to the initial Tartarus prison break. All the big name heroes in the area. But there can’t be that many top heroes—so let’s say 0.2% of them were at the initial fight.

Now we only have the remaining 1.8% of heroes to analyze.

There have to be a percentage of those who agreed with Endeavor’s call as a tactical decision. If they show up to any fight, they’re going to be obeying his order.

So we only have the ones who disagreed with his call left to look at.

These are small-time heroes. All of the big names are already at the fight. So they are less likely to have flashy Quirks, be especially talented, or consider themselves to have an especially large effect in the grand scheme of things. They have likely spent their entire careers living in a world with All Might.

It has never actually been down to them.

Think of Uwabami. Momo did her work study with her.

Her hero outfit is a fucking evening gown. She spent the entire work study doing commercials and meeting with her fans. She explicitly invited the young heroes that she did because she thought they were cute enough to be in commercials with her.

Now, she’s had some good if minor moments helping rescue civilians. It’s not that she’s never saved anyone.

But all of the top heroes are already committed to the fight against AfO. The current Number One Hero just ordered all her colleagues to report there. And Yokohama has a lot of S-Class villains en route.

And what the fuck is she going to do to stop them? It’s just her. Half of those villains took All Might to stop the first time. She is not fucking all might.

Is this a hero likely to go to Yokohama completely on her own to fight *checks notes* literally the entire prison population minus one guy? The worst guy, albeit. But one guy.

These are all heroes who have never had to be the actual thing standing between society and destruction. There has always been someone more powerful or capable or heroic nearby. Until recently, there has always been all might.

This isn’t to malign them. A decent percentage of them are legitimately well meaning about being a hero. They do good. But when it came to the big, blowout fights, they have always, always, always been the heroes evacuating civilians in the background or performing rescue in the aftermath. It has never been them who had to stand up and do the fight itself.

Every single one of those villains represent a big, blowout fight. And this hero trying to decide if he’s going to obey Endeavor’s order? They are one guy. And they’re not sure if they could even beat one of those villains alone, let alone all.

The reason why no one disobeyed Endeavor’s order was because, frankly, at the end of the day, they did not want to die.

Endeavor’s order signaled to everyone that there was no guarantee anyone would show up to Yokohama. It actually put good odds to the opposite. If you decided “fuck that, I’m going to Yokohama” then you’d likely be doing it alone.

What Class 2-A did was considered a death sentence. People who didn’t know them and their bullshit were shocked that they all made it out alive. These were the worst villains their society had ever faced and it was all of them at once (minus that one guy).

The heroes who were in a position to disobey endeavor didn’t actually think it’d make a difference if they did. They’d just… lose.

Most if not all of these heroes made the decision to become heroes during all mights era of peace. Everything just had lower stakes. Crime was less frequent and less serious. The big fights always had someone there who could handle them, because All Might was there. They’d fight the odd mugger or purse snatcher and help put out fires and go home at the end of the night. They’re heroes. That doesn’t mean they’ve ever truly had to grapple with a life or death fight.

If they went to Yokohoma, they thought they’d die. So they might as well respond to a fight that has a chance. Even if they feel ashamed as they do it. Even if they think Endeavor made the wrong call and wanted to go to Yokohama instead. All Might wasn’t there anymore. And they were afraid.

But there is one thing that Class 2-A had going for them that gave them an advantage over these heroes. And that was the fact that they are all medically insane.

It’s that they were together.

It’s a decentralized heroics structure. If you have a large agency, you are necessarily a top hero because no one else would be able to get that many people to agree to work under them. So you’re already at Tartarus and this isn’t a decision you had to make.

Maybe you’re independent. Maybe you have a small agency with 2-3 people. There is no preexisting centralized line that you can use to try and gather more people to go to Yokohama with you. You’re stuck with your immediate colleagues and maybe a few other heroes you’re close enough with to have their number. You really don’t have time to try and ask around to see if anyone else wants to go to Yokohama instead—you need to pick a battle and get there yesterday.

What good is 2-3 people going to do in Yokohama? You’ll just get massacred and it won’t have made a difference. At least if you go to stop AfO, you’ll have a chance at doing something that mattered.

Maybe you disagree with Endeavor but you defer to his training and experience.

Maybe you don’t go at any fight at all. Maybe you’re afraid. Maybe you became a hero in a time where you had a symbol of peace, and you realize you can’t keep doing it in a time without one.

I think there’s a small subsection of heroes that quit in the aftermath of Yokohama. Because they wanted to disobey endeavor’s order, and they thought they’d just die and it wouldn’t matter, and then dawn came and a bunch of school kids had managed what they were too big of a coward to do. I think the fact that they fell into line when their hearts told them they shouldn’t made them seriously doubt whether they were good enough to be a hero.

But they were alone when Endeavor made the call. And it felt like certain death. And—yeah, it sort of felt that way to Class 2-A when they made the decision to respond. But they weren’t alone when they did it.

They were together. And they always felt braver when they were together. Together, they could make miracles happen.

[deusvervewrites]

Divinity: At the first interview Endeavour does after Kamino, the journalist asks him how does he feel about All Might's ascension. He replies that being Number 2 to someone who literally turned himself in a god on live TV means he's actually the Number 1 of actual humans in Japan... And that he'd have preferred knowing it a few decades earlier.

World's Most Tired Man

[satancopilotsmytardis]

Blood kink maybe?

Of the things that Tomura expected to happen once they fled Kamino, he can't say that Dabi being kidnapped was anywhere even remotely on his list of possibilities. He never complained about Dabi wandering off from the rest of them. Technically, as far as the others were concerned, he was attempting to recruit more members. In reality, Tomura knows that Dabi won't ever bring anyone back to join their group. Dabi has standards for villainy that means they won't work with riff-raff, and Tomura knows that him burning anyone who doesn't live up to those standards will keep the League as a persistent threat in the background of the news cycles, growing more uneasy about what the League might do when they decide to fully come out of the shadows. Besides, letting him wander keeps him happy too, never feeling strangled and tied down. Tomura isn't sure if he's ever met another person who has such strong abandonment issues that they flash like a neon sign over him, but after the first time he'd nearly lit Tomura on fire for acting slightly too affectionate with him, he'd also found out that he doesn't take kindly to anyone trying to make him feel valued either. It's a messy contradiction, but Tomura isn't going to pretend that he didn't know just from looking at Dabi that he was messy and he's willing to take what he can get. 

He was not expecting to get a phone call from Dabi's number from some Yakuza stragglers saying that they have his firefly. 

"Hmm. Is that so?" He pulls up the app that connects the League's phones so that Kurogiri can always track them for easy extraction and finds the coordinates in a matter of seconds, gesturing for the others to gear up and gather around so they can deal with this. "How do I know you didn't just steal his phone? This can't be your first kidnapping. You must know that I need proof of life before I negotiate with you."

"You aren't in any position to make demands--"

"You're not in any position to threaten the League when we just finished tearing off your boss's arms." He replies flatly. "Proof of life, or I hang up now." 

The other villain practically growls and Tomura listens for the sound of movement, catching footsteps and the creak of a door opening. "Wake him up!" He winces slightly when there's the heavy sound of flesh against flesh and then Dabi wheezes. "Your boyfriend wants to hear your voice, patchwork." 

"Boyfriend?" Tomura can't help his pleasure soaking into his tone slightly, but Dabi immediately snaps, 

"The fuck are you talking about? Duster isn't my boyfriend!" The door slams shut again and Tomura tables the immediate disappointment that comes from that and instead sends the coordinates to Kurogiri.

"There, now you better listen up if you don't want to find him scattered all over Japan--" it takes about five seconds after the texts goes through before Kurogiri opens up the portal. Tomura hangs up his phone, dropping it back into his coat pocket, before he steps through, right in front of the dumbfuck with Dabi's still against his ear. He locks his hand around that wrist as his other comes up lightning-quick to settle five fingers against his face, the others swarming out of the portal behind him like some particularly vicious wasps to take care of the other members around the dilapidated warehouse. 

The Yakuza member crumbles into nothing, and Shigaraki takes back Dabi's phone before it can be broken with the rest of him, and then he glances around. There were only four others out here and he sees that the League is making short work of them, finds the door a short distance away from where the man was standing, and heads for it. He hears a choked gurgle on the other side of the door and immediately pushes it open, making sure that the metal blocks most of his body, but it wasn't worth the effort. There's no one inside to shoot at him anymore. 

Dabi is just there, spitting out a mouthful of flesh and blood, handcuffed to a chair, his face and white shirt streaked with crimson. He shifts to kick the slumped body of the Yakuza member off of him. The body thuds to the floor unceremoniously and Dabi looks up at him. "Toga's the one who put the heart emoji by your name." 

He doesn't say a thing in response. He's too busy staring at the blood that is dripping all over Dabi's skin and soaking into his clothes. Too busy watching his firefly turn to spit out another mouthful of saliva that has come out stringy and thick with blood. 

"Duster? Come the fuck on, let me out." 

He manages to move across the room then, but he does it in a haze as he reaches for the quirk-dampening cuffs keeping Dabi on the chair. 

"Fucking idiots. I don't know why people forget that they're just as capable of getting killed by something mundane and not a quirk." 

Dabi is bitching to hide that his pupils are blown wide with his adrenaline. He's standing up and the room gets a little warmer as, despite his words, he makes sure he's ready to defend himself with his quirk first and foremost. He is reaching up to wipe more of the blood from his mouth and Tomura reaches out and grabs his wrist. Blue eyes blink at him and then he's got his mouth on top of his crimson lips. The sticky smear of the blood makes the scent of copper and smoke bloom between them and he can't even care. Can't complain when he tastes that and his firefly's skin beneath. Dabi stiffens from the kiss, this temperature spiking higher for a second, but then he gives in, the way he always gives in, like being kissed, like being touched, is a relief to him. He opens his mouth for him and Tomura indulges in that overwhelming flavor as he pulls the other closer and keeps kissing him until they're both desperate for air. 

He doesn't even stop as they try to catch their breath, his tongue drags over his stained chin as well and licks up some of the blood dripping over his skin. "Should've known you were a goddamn freak." But Dabi is clutching onto his coat and pulling him closer for another kiss. 

"Toga drinks blood all the time." He mumbles, but he doesn't really care about saving face. He just wants to have more of this if he's allowed it. 

"Toga's got a quirk that makes her like it. You're just a sadist." 

"Your tears taste better. Let me have those too?" 

"Fucking freak." But Dabi pulls him back in for another hard kiss as Tomura pushes him up against the wall, stepping over the corpse of Dabi's captor as he does.

[scary-grace]

Enough to Go By (Chapter 9) - 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)

Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Chapter 9

“Mitsu, come on. Mitsu, don’t.” You tighten your grip on her arm and pull harder, even though she’s drunk in six-inch heels and could topple over if the wind blows the wrong way. “It’s not worth it –”

“You hear that, you piece of shit? It’s not worth it.” Mitsuko’s imitation of your de-escalation tone isn’t as good as Tenko’s, but it sounds pretty bad when she’s using it to jeer at a couple of sidekicks. “Just like you and your fucking friends decided that my best friend’s life wasn’t worth it –”

“Mitsu –”

“When you left her under an apartment building one of you knocked down for six fucking hours!”

“We weren’t even there,” one of the sidekicks shouts at her, and Mitsuko spits at him. “Ugh! You crazy bitch –”

You suck in a breath, and so does everybody else. This fight has drawn a crowd, and you see at least one phone out, one camera on. Someone’s just caught a hero on camera cursing out a grieving civilian. You see the hero blanch. He turns towards Mitsuko. “I didn’t mean –”

“No, you said what you meant. You’re all the same,” Mitsuko sneers. “So big and bad, except when it counts. Fuck you.”

Mitsuko has a flair for the dramatic, even when she’s so drunk she can’t see straight. She turns to you. “Come on. Get me out of here before I puke on my shoes.”

You hustle her off down the sidewalk, leaving the crowd and the heroes behind, cursing yourself for letting this happen. It was your job to keep an eye on Mitsuko tonight, to keep her out of trouble, and now she’s on camera starting shit with a hero. Now that you think about it, so are you. Nobody’s going to remember you, not when Mitsuko’s there, gorgeous even with supposedly waterproof mascara running down her face, but it’s not a good thing. There are probably a grand total of eight people who think it’s a good thing, and you’re on first name (or code-name) terms with all of them.

Mitsuko comes to a stop, doubles over – then straightens up. “I need to pee,” she says. “Let’s go to Kamino. I want to pee on that statue.”

“Kamino’s a long way away. You sure you want to hold it that long?”

“Right. I should find a place to pee now,” Mitsuko says. “Then by the time we get to Kamino, I’ll have to pee again.”

There’s no way you’re letting Mitsuko get filmed peeing on a statue of All Might, no matter how much of a kick your new friends would get out of it. You take a deep breath and pull out the big guns. “Is this really how you want to honor Hiro? You know watersports weren’t her thing.”

Mitsuko snorts, then grimaces. Stomach acid in the sinuses will do that. “There’s only one way to honor Hiro,” you continue, “and you know what it is.”

“What is it?”

“Bone Endeavor, film it, and use the tape to ruin his life.”

Mitsuko bursts out laughing. Then crying. You’ve been seeing that a lot lately, anywhere and everywhere – on friends, patients, strangers, and more often than not, on your own face in the mirror.

Japan is reeling from the Kamino incident. You’re not watching world news, but you’re pretty sure the world is doing the same – it’s not every day that a country’s Number One hero goes down on national television. The wreckage of Kamino Ward has already been resurfaced, some of the remaining buildings reinforced but the rest knocked down to create a nice big concrete square for the Kamino Memorial Park, complete with a big statue of All Might. The All Might statue takes up most of the space. The walls featuring the names of the victims are off to the sides. New names are still being added every day.

The windows still haven’t gotten fixed at your clinic, and in addition to a dust and street debris problem, you’re having an animal problem. You chased a bat out with a broom and wound up needing rabies shots, which left you well-equipped to deal with the raccoon that showed up a week later. You’re working a lot, for a lot of reasons. It keeps you out of your apartment during the day or night, leaving it safe for the League’s use. You need the money. And as long as you’re busy with work, with the extra classes in trauma treatment you’ve started taking, or trying to keep Mitsuko from self-destructing, you don’t have to think about what happened at all.

Kazuo’s been keeping busy, too, but your other friends don’t have that option. Mitsuru’s job was in Kamino, in a business that was destroyed, and he doesn’t have a new one yet. Ryuhei hasn’t worked in a while, courtesy of his record, and Yoshimi’s so sick from her treatments that she can’t work at all. In spite of that, Mitsuko’s still the one you’re most worried about. She was closest to Hirono. She’s always had a lot of anger – like you, except you bury it so deep that you sometimes forget it exists. She doesn’t forget. And right now she thinks she doesn’t have anything to lose.

You and Mitsuko were supposed to have a wild night on the town, but after throwing up in two trash cans and one alleyway, Mitsuko’s ready to go home. You’re ready to take her home, too, and you let her sling one arm around your shoulders as you shuffle along. “You know, I can’t work it out,” she mumbles in your ear. “Kazuo I understand, but you? It’s weird.”

“What’s weird?”

“How calm you are,” she says. “Like, right from the start. You love Sho and Hiro just like we do, but you’re – calm. Don’t tell me you got religion about it.”

“No,” you say. “I’ve just done this before.”

It’s not untrue. You’ve lost a friend before, but you didn’t cope well at all, and even if you had, this isn’t the same. You’re miserable about losing your friends, but mourning them visibly isn’t something you’re allowed to do. Not when you’re responsible. All you can do is try to fix it, or at least try to make sure Mitsuko makes it home in one piece, without passing out somewhere or clawing a hero’s eyes out with her acrylic nails.

As you’re helping her unlock her apartment, an idea occurs to you. “Hey, why don’t you come with me to Yoshimi’s appointment tomorrow? I have to go to work, so I can’t stay long, but it would really make her feel better if you stuck around with her at the clinic.”

Mitsuko looks lukewarm on the idea. “I don’t think she wants me there. I’m not very good at comfort.”

“How about just company?” you say, and she shrugs. It irritates you to the point where you play a card you shouldn’t. “Hiro used to.”

“Don’t guilt-trip me,” Mitsuko says. It’s quiet for a minute. “Fine. I’ll sit with her. This time. Then it’s back to you.”

“Sure,” you say. You’re pretty sure you can make it so it’s not just this time.

You say goodnight to Mitsuko, stop at a convenience store for supplies on your way home, and drag yourself into your apartment building. Before you unlock the door, you have to brace yourself. In spite of Tenko’s insistence that you aren’t left alone with the League, there have been at least a few times in the past three weeks that you’ve come home to at least one villain in your apartment.

After Tenko and the others left, after you went to Kazuo’s and stayed up all night, drunk and mourning your friends from under the weight of your guilt, the first thing you did was buy a whiteboard. You hung it on the back of your front door, and each day, you write your schedule on it, letting Kurogiri know what times you’ll be out, when it’s safe to bring villains over for a break. You can tell when they’ve been there, even if you don’t see them – things will be out of place, or food will have disappeared, or you’ll find a ton of black hair dye stains all over the shower. You don’t care that Dabi dyes his hair. You just wish he’d rinse the shower out afterwards.

Sometimes the villains leave notes for you on the whiteboard – Magne commenting on the tragic state of your makeup collection, Spinner apologizing for using the last dryer sheet, Dabi bitching about the neighbors and the noisy sex they’re constantly having in the bedroom that shares a wall with your living room. Sometimes they leave requests for you to buy stuff for them, along with at least some money to pay for it. The only person whose things you buy without asking for payment is Toga.

Everybody else takes things, or asks for them. The only person who leaves things for you is Tenko. As far as you can tell, he shows up exclusively during times when you’re supposed to be home, but for some reason or another you’re always out and about. The first time you know for sure he was here, you came back late and found a flower sticking out of an empty energy drink can on your kitchen counter. The next time it was a piece of your jewelry, with a note: Compress stole this and had Twice leave a copy, but Twice told on him. You need a jewelry box that locks. The third time it was just a note, and just three words, in Tenko’s never-got-past-kindergarten handwriting. I miss you.

You miss him, too. While you’re braced for villains every time you open the door, you’re always hoping he’ll be there.

There’s a villain in your apartment tonight, but it’s not Tenko – it’s Magne, who’s in the bathroom availing herself of your blow-dryer. She’s doing laundry, too, or she’s done it. You catch the unmistakable scent of a dryer sheet that’s gotten sucked into the lint-trap on the air. The smart thing to do would be to leave, but you’re tired, and it’s your apartment to begin with. You set down the items you bought at the League’s request on the kitchen table and sit down in a chair, your chin propped in your hand. You think about scrolling your phone to pass the time, but you don’t need to. Lately all you have to do is stare off into space, and your mind supplies enough uneasy questions to keep you busy for hours.

You come back to awareness when Magne snaps her fingers in front of your face. “Rise and shine, sweetheart. Is this for me?”

She’s holding up the three-pack of deodorant. “Yeah. It’s not the brand you asked for – I didn’t have enough money – but I smelled all the discount ones and picked the one that was closest.”

Magne uncaps one and sniffs it. “Close enough,” she decides. “What about the rest of this? Who wanted thermal socks?”

“Spinner. His note said you all are staying in a warehouse and it gets cold,” you say, and Magne nods. You glance over the rest of the things you bought. Some of them need an explanation. “The numbing gel is for Toga. She bit her cheek and there’s a sore in her mouth. Tell her not to eat anything too acidic until it heals. And these are – she knows what these are for.”

Magne nods sagely. “Oh, and these are for Compress,” you add, tapping a stack of cheap paperbacks. “He said he was bored. These should help.”

“You spoil us,” Magne remarks. She smells like your shampoo. And your body wash. “The boss is as bad as it gets. Who would have guessed that his girlfriend would be such a little saint?”

“I’m not a saint,” you say. She’s not the first member of the League to say that, but your list of sins is long enough already, and it’ll only keep getting longer. “I’m just trying to help.”

“I do wonder what the attraction is,” Magne continues, like you didn’t speak at all. “Guys like him – when they see something pretty and pure, all they want to do is ruin it. And then they don’t want it anymore. I wouldn’t get too dirty if I were you.”

“Thanks for the warning.” You see shadows flickering in your peripheral vision. Kurogiri’s here. “Take this stuff with you, okay? And tell everyone I say hi.”

“No problem.” Magne gathers up the results of the supply run. “Any other messages you want me to send? To the boss, maybe?”

“Nothing I’m telling you,” you say, and she laughs. A moment later she vanishes through the warp gate, and you’re alone. It’s past midnight. There’s really nothing for you to do except go to sleep. Or try to.

You’ve been having a hard time sleeping since Kamino. In some ways, it reminds you of how things were after you stumbled into the ruins of Tenko’s house. The images that won’t leave your head. The questions that chase each other through the darkness – did it hurt, did they know, were they scared, what happened next? There was guilt when it was Tenko’s family dead, the stupid thought that useless, quirkless, five-year-old you should have stopped it somehow – but it’s nothing like the guilt you feel now. Kamino’s death toll stands at nine hundred and eight. Magne said you were a saint, but you aren’t. No saint, no good person, lets nine hundred people, some of them her friends, die.

You’re on hour three of trying to sleep when the shadows in the far corner of your room begin to flicker. It’s another warp gate, and you watch, your heart in your throat, as someone emerges from within it. “Tenko?”

Tenko doesn’t look as surprised to see you awake as you thought he’d be. “I can’t sleep either,” he says. His face is unobscured by the hand. He gestures awkwardly at your side of the bed. “Can I –”

“Yeah,” you say at once, trying not to act like this is the best thing that’s happened to you all week. “For sure.”

Tenko’s wearing gloves already. He kicks off his shoes and strips off his shirt, then climbs into bed on the far side. You’re expecting him to stay there, but instead he reaches across the bed to pull you closer, and once he’s got you, the contented sigh that exits his mouth sets every inch of your face on fire. “That’s better.”

You manage to wiggle your arms free, folding one against your chest and wrapping the other around him. His skin is dry and warm beneath your hand, against your cheek. “Hi, Ten.”

“Hey.” Tenko hugs you closer. “This is your fault. I can’t go back to sleeping standing up after that.”

“That’s because humans aren’t supposed to sleep standing up. I have no idea how you did it for – however long you were doing it.”

“Too long, I guess.” Tenko yawns. “Why can’t you sleep?”

“The people I worked on after Kamino. I keep seeing them.” You keep seeing your friends, too, although there you’re restricted to whatever your imagination can conjure. “Other stuff, too.”

“Like what?”

Like what Tenko’s house looked like the morning after, when you ran into the wreckage. What blood and tissue felt like under your bare feet. You still don’t know if Tenko knows what happened to his family, how much he knows, how he got from his family’s house into the clutches of All For One. “Things,” you say. When you’re able to raise the arm that’s wrapped around Tenko’s shoulders, your fingers encounter the ends of his hair, and you start fiddling with them, to the tune of another contented sigh. “It’s late. Try to sleep. I will, too.”

Tenko relaxes against you, asleep within moments. It takes you another hour at least.

You expect him to be gone by the time you wake up in the morning, but instead he’s still there, shirtless, with a terrible case of bedhead that you think is way too cute. He doesn’t want you to get out of bed at all, but once you do, he trails you to the kitchen, where you start making tea and setting out something for breakfast. “It’s too early,” he complains. “Where do you have to go?”

“I’m taking Mitsuko to keep Yoshimi company during her treatment, and then I’m going to work.” You think through your day and grimace. “And after that I have class.”

“What about tomorrow?”

“It’s my day off.”

“Good,” Tenko says. “Twice is bringing a potential ally. I want you there to meet them.”

Your stomach twists, and your appetite, already fickle on its best day, goes up in smoke. “Who are they?”

“Some small-time yakuza. They want prestige and we need money.” Tenko shrugs. “I’ll come back tonight and we’ll go together in the morning.”

“Okay.” Something about this conversation strikes you as funny, but you’re not sure what it is. It takes a second for it to click, and once it does, you’re laughing.

“What?” Tenko asks suspiciously. “What’s funny?”

“We’re eating breakfast and talking about our schedules,” you say, still giggling. “We sound so normal.”

You think Tenko will laugh, too. He’ll say something snarky, something derisive, about the whole concept of normalcy and moving in with somebody and having any kind of life within the boundaries of a corrupt society. Instead his expression takes on a strange cast. “Do you think we would have been?”

You almost spill the electric teakettle out of shock. “What?”

“If nothing had happened. Do you think we’d have ended up like this?” Tenko gestures around the room, then between the two of you. “Like – us.”

If the two of you had gotten to grow up together, what would you have been? You’ve asked yourself that more than a few times. “If nothing had happened,” you repeat. If Tenko’s family hadn’t died, if he hadn’t wound up with a quirk – or even if he had, and you’d lived across the street from each other in middle school, high school. “I think so.”

“Yeah,” Tenko says after a moment. “I think so, too.”

He doesn’t say how he feels about it, and neither do you, but there’s a distant look in his eyes, like his mind’s gone somewhere else, somewhere far from here. It doesn’t fade until you set a cup of green tea down in front of him. “So,” he says, looking up at you, “how much do you know about the yakuza?”

“Not very much,” you admit. “What do I need to know?”

Tenko gives you a brief overview in between bites of food, then starts in on the details. “The group Twice made contact with is called the Shie Hassaikai. Their leader goes by Overhaul, and he’s young – not our age, a little older. Twice says he seems genuine, but I don’t want us caught off-guard.”

“Which is why you want me there,” you surmise. “If things get heated, turn the temperature down.”

Tenko nods. “It shouldn’t. He’s coming alone.”

“Right.” You force down a bite of your breakfast, then another. “And I should bring the disguise.”

“Yeah.” Black mist begins to ripple through the air near the door, and Tenko swears. “Go away, Kurogiri. I’m not done.”

“It is Dabi’s turn. And according to the schedule, she will be leaving soon.” If Kurogiri could tap his foot right now, he probably would. “With haste, Shigaraki Tomura.”

Tomura swears again, then heads back to your room for his shirt and shoes. “I’ll be back tonight,” he says as he pulls them on.

“Me, too.” You wince as Kurogiri loudly clears his throat, then hurry forward to kiss Tomura goodbye. He’s frustrated. You can tell by the tension in his mouth, the way it takes too long to soften against yours. “Hey. I’ll see you soon, all right?”

Tomura nods once. Then he disappears through the warp gate. As he vanishes, you see him removing his gloves.

You’re alone in your apartment again, and the surge of emptiness you feel threatens to knock you off your feet. You’ll see Tenko tonight, which is good, but tomorrow, you’ll be with Tomura – Tomura and the League of Villains, in disguise like you’re one of them. To the head of the Shie Hassaikai, you’ll be indistinguishable from the others.

And speaking of the Hassaikai – you weren’t lying when you told Tomura you know next to nothing about the yakuza, but you know someone who does. It’s a good thing you’re seeing Mitsuko today.

“The Hassaikai?” Mitsuko repeats, when you ask her while the two of you are waiting for Yoshimi to finish her vitals check. “Where’d you hear about them?”

“A patient.” You aren’t technically lying. Tenko was your patient. At one point. “It wasn’t a name I’d heard before, so I thought I’d ask. In case there was a chance you knew anything.”

Mitsuko’s settled down a bit now, but in middle school and high school, she was in a lot of trouble – skipping school, getting drunk and using who knows what else, hooking up with older guys, sometimes for money or gifts or just to make whatever was going on in her head go away. Some of those guys were yakuza. A lot of them were. And Mitsuko always said they liked to pillow-talk.

She thinks about it for a moment, frowning. “They’re a small group,” she starts. “They’ve got a cross-country network, but there aren’t very many of them. The old head of the family was popular, but the new one isn’t.”

Huh. “Do you know why?”

“The family thing – it’s not a joke to them,” Mitsuko says. “That’s how the former head treated it. Not the new one. One of the guys I used to see – he was from another group, but I remember he’d talked to somebody who’d left the Hassaikai when they were both in jail. That guy said the guys in his gang were just employees now. And they were expendable.”

“So the new guy’s a shitty boss.”

“Try worse. He called him a monster. Said he was empty inside.” Mitsuko looks troubled for a split second. Then she shakes her head. “They all are, though, aren’t they? Yakuza, villains – well, maybe not that Shigaraki guy. He looks like he’s so full of crazy it’s a miracle he doesn’t explode.”

You keep your mouth shut with an effort. What would you say, anyway? Nothing convincing, not without giving away more information than anyone outside the League should know. Mitsuko gives you a curious look. “Did your patient get mixed up with them somehow?”

“I guess so.”

“Hopefully they get out fast. Those guys are bad news.” Mitsuko grimaces. “I’d know.”

She looks like she wants to say more, but then Yoshimi comes out of the check-in room, and the two of you had a talk about not upsetting Yoshimi more than necessary. The two of you turn to her. “I don’t know shit about this,” Mitsuko tells Yoshimi, sounding so much like her usual self that you’d never guess she was wasted and hero-baiting last night, “but you’re with me today. Anybody who gives you shit, they have to answer to me. And I’m not nearly as nice as her.”

She points at you, and you roll your eyes. The only reason you were nice to the one nurse who was even sort of rude to Yoshimi is because you didn’t want her doing something worse when your back was turned. Yoshimi smiles gratefully at Mitsuko. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she says. “We need to catch up. Some of the nurses here are cute.”

You tell them both goodbye and sneak out while they’re talking about the cute nurses. Mitsuko could do a hell of a lot worse than a cute nurse. Maybe she needs that right now. As weird as she gets when she’s in a relationship, almost anything would be an improvement on the self-destruct sequence she’s cycling through. Not that you’re any better. If Kazuo wasn’t too busy pulling together the official incident report on Kamino to take a look at what you’re doing, he’d probably say you were doing the same thing.

You don’t look it. You hold it together at work, checking in on your younger colleagues, supporting the older ones, keeping an eye on the mood with them and the patients both. It’s not a good mood. The rest of the country is ready to venerate All Might and cheer for his victory, but Yokohama was hit too hard. Too many people lost loved one, and too many of those people live in the other Japan with you. Nobody’s gone so far as to sympathize with the League of Villains, yet, but plenty of them are angry with the heroes. And plenty of them are saying it out loud.

The organization that runs your clinic is worried about the staff. Absentee rates are high, and people come to work in bad moods and leave in worse ones. Your supervisor is offering everybody extra time off so long as you take it in shifts, and each and every one of you who was on shift during Kamino is scheduled to meet with a counselor over your lunch hour once a week. You don’t want to do it. You don’t have a lot, or any, good memories of doing therapy as a kid. And this time, there’s something you’re actually guilty of.

But it’s a requirement, and you don’t want to make waves, so you slouch into the mailroom for your counseling session as ordered. Your counselor is rich – you can tell by her clothes and her jewelry – and a whole set of unkind associations spring into your head when you look at her. You try to push them away. If your contempt is oozing from between your teeth, there’s no way you’ll get through this without raising a red flag or ten.

The counselor greets you, introduces herself as Yaoyorozu Shizuka, and something clicks in your head. “Your daughter’s at UA.”

“Yes, my dear Momo! We’re very proud,” Mrs. Yaoyorozu says, even though you didn’t’ congratulate her. “She’s been through quite an ordeal – just like you and your coworkers have been. Why don’t you start by telling me where you were on that night?”

“At first I worked triage with the evacuees,” you say. “When the casualties arrived, I went to assist the doctors and nurse-practitioners.”

“And how long did you do that for?”

“Until someone kicked me out.”

Mrs. Yaoyorozu makes a note in her notebook. Her leather-bound, monogrammed notebook. “How do you feel about the work you and your coworkers did that night?”

If you try to lie, she won’t believe you, and she’ll push the point. You need her not to push. “I feel like we failed.”

“Why do you feel like that?”

“Because that’s what we did,” you say. “Five people died in the exam rooms back there. Two more died in the hospital later. We failed our patients, just like everyone else did.”

“Just like everyone else did,” Mrs. Yaoyorozu repeats. She looks puzzled, or she’s faking puzzlement. You really don’t care which. “What do you mean?”

Of course she’d ask that question. You can’t stop the derisive sound that escapes your mouth. “Let me see. This clinic failed by not being ready to handle a mass casualty event, by not having the necessary equipment to treat major trauma or the staff who know how to do it. The site commander failed by sending those patients to us knowing we couldn’t help them. The heroes on-scene failed by prioritizing helping All Might instead of clearing the route to Yokohama General, so the people they were supposed to be rescuing when they decided it was more important to help All Might could have a chance to survive.”

Mrs. Yaoyorozu is staring at you. Your face is hot and your eyes are prickling, and you sink your nails into the palm of your hand, fighting for control. “We weren’t the only ones to fail those people. We were just the last ones. All those people –”

You cut yourself off. Mrs. Yaoyorozu scrambles to recover. “It was far from an ideal situation,” she says. “It was never going to be possible to save everyone –”

“I thought it was,” you interrupt. “Isn’t that what heroes say they’ll do?”

You need to be careful. You sound like Tomura. But Mrs. Yaoyorozu is shaking her head, smiling indulgently, ready to explain how you just don’t understand that sometimes hard choices have to be made, and you lose patience. “Look, what are you even doing here? Is it just a hobby of yours to come here and minister to the poor unfortunates who weren’t born quirked or pretty or rich? This isn’t your city and we aren’t your people. We don’t need saving. We don’t want your help.”

“Don’t speak for your colleagues,” Mrs. Yaoyorozu says mildly. “You don’t need saving. You don’t want my help. Why not?”

You look blankly at her. “You’ve been through something traumatic,” she continues. “The whole city has, and those of you who responded directly to the tragedy haven’t had time to process what you experienced. That’s what this space is supposed to be for. If it would be best for you to process by expressing your anger towards me, that’s all right.”

“So you’re going to martyr yourself.” You don’t understand where the disdain in your voice is coming from. “Sit here for an hour, then go home and tell your maids and your husband and your butler about how the nurse at the poor-people clinic was so mean to you when all you wanted to do was help.”

She’s staring at you now like you’ve slapped her, when you haven’t raised your voice or sworn or even moved an inch in your chair. You’re using your de-escalation voice, but the context is all wrong, and even as you struggle to rein in your temper, you can’t stop yourself from turning her words back on her. “If that’s what would best help you process your savior complex, that’s fine with me.”

Mrs. Yaoyorozu holds your gaze for another few seconds. Then she ducks her head, writing frantically in her notebook. “Are you crying?” you ask her. The false concern in your own voice makes your skin crawl.

Her eyes are clear when she looks up. “Blaming oneself or others for the traumatic events or for what happened afterwards,” she says. “Check. Persistent state of fear, horror, anger, guilt, or shame – check. Persistent negative cognitions, such as “I am bad”, “no one can be trusted” – check. Do you know what I’ve just listed.”

“Criterion D of the PTSD diagnosis.” Kazuo tried this trick on you already, and you were a lot more likely to listen to him. “What’s your point?”

“I can see by the dark circles under your eyes that your sleep’s disturbed,” she says. “Whether that’s by nightmares or by ruminating on what’s occurred, you’ve met Criterion B. By verbally sparring with me you’re avoiding engaging with your own feelings about what happened – Criterion C. Disturbed sleep partially covers Criterion E, and I imagine if I asked you whether you startle easily, find it difficult to concentrate, or feel unsafe in most settings, I’d get at least one yes. But I don’t need a yes to diagnose you – the first symptom under Criterion E is irritable behavior and angry outbursts. What would you call this?”

She gestures at the space between you, and you sink your nails into your palm again. “I’ve spoken to your coworkers about you. They describe you as kind, supportive, calm – the person who smooths over conflicts, not starts them. This conversation is a symptom, a sign of what you’ve been through. It’s not who you are.”

But it is. It is who you are now – a person who takes a skill you’ve used to help people and twists it into a weapon, a person who backs someone else into a corner and goes for their throat, and the worst part is, you can’t pin this on your association with the League of Villains. Tomura’s not standing here feeding you lines. This was all you. What’s happening to you?

Trauma, Mrs. Yaoyorozu would say, if you asked what she thought. You know the real answer: Guilt.

It’s quiet for a little while. When you speak up again, your voice doesn’t sound like your own. “I don’t want to talk anymore.”

“I understand,” Mrs. Yaoyorozu says. You spend the rest of your lunch hour in silence, staring at the wall.