#babylon au

[chimaerakirin]

Restraint

Kinktober prompts: Omegaverse | Possessive Sex

Kinktober Index

MDNI MDNI MDNI

Tomura doesn't realize what's going on at first. Truthfully, his sense of smell is a little shot. Which is entirely intentional, don't get him wrong, there are few things he hates more than his own Alpha BO (All Might and games-as-a-service come to mind), even with scent blockers slathered on like clown makeup.

So it takes him a good few hours to recognize that the sweet scent he's picking up isn't one of his candles. And when he does notice, he feels like a giant fucking idiot for several reasons. The least of which is the fact that he ran out of apple cinnamon a month ago, and there's too much warmth in the cocktail to be vanilla.

Oh yeah. And he doesn't usually set candles in the bar anyway.

More important is the way the rest of his League is reacting. Everyone's crowding you. Not all at once, and Dabi's keeping away in the corner, but Magne and Toga are hovering, rubbing your back and scenting your wrists, Twice keeps fluttering in and drawing back anxiously, Spinner keeps awkwardly asking if you need anything and Mr Compress is asking about enclosed spaces vs open ones and laundry detergents, and Kurogiri keeps shoving snacks and drinks at you the way he does when—

No, he doesn't want to think about that.

Anyway, they're being solicitous, that's the word.

He hates it. Why you he's always alone why

Then the sweetness in the air flares, and you shudder and curl up on your bar stool, but he barely notices, he notices everything, because the pheromones hit him like the fucking shinkansen, and he nearly gags at the answering flood of awful, biting fire that practically melts through his blockers and burns his nose.

No no no no no impossible, he can't be, the last one was just before Hosu, he should have at least another two whole months before he has to deal with this shit again! Maybe three or four!

"Hypercompatibility?" he hears someone say through the haze.

"—no way they've—"

"—like that?"

"—a guess or two—"

He wants to howl. His fangs dig into his bottom lip like they haven't in years, blood dripping down his chin and the tang of iron is too fucking weak to help, he hates this, nothing but drowning could possibly fix it—

Something like apple cinnamon and just a hint of gingerbread cuts through his own eye-watering stench and he whimpers.

Someone says your name, he thinks Magne, "careful, hon," and yeah, that's Magne.

He's vaguely acutely aware of you moving closer, and Ome-Giri Kurogiri says something about him being unlikely to hurt you he'd rather tear himself to ribbons.

He whimpers again, and a soft hum cuts through the haze slightly, more sweetness to break up the burn.

"Wait," Kurogiri says, emitting soothing raspberry-peach. "Shigaraki Tomura, hands out."

He obeys his Ome blindly, half hyperventilating, and lets Kurogiri put the two-fingered gloves on him. After each glove is strapped into place, a misty thumb brushes firmly across the inside of his wrist below the band, and he withdraws the hand and flexes the fingers to settle the fit on autopilot. He decayed more than one important thing the first few times this happened, hence the ritual.

The humming continues the whole time. Once the gloves are on, something soft and warm and perfect-smelling presses against his nose, and he can't stop himself from rumbling quietly. He hates how he sounds when he rumbles, but it's ever so slightly less important right now. He's too busy burning up from the inside, and normally that would be a problem too, but for the first time the all-encompassing need is layered with want, and he finally turns to look at you.

Your eyes are hazy, your face flushed, your stance awkward. One elbow is propped on the bar for support, your knees are pressed tightly together. Your other arm is outstretched, your wrist near his nose.

"I see you," you whisper.

The words echo in his head, I see you I see you I seeyouIseeyouIseeyou, and he wants to crawl into you for more than one reason. "I hate this," he chokes out, barely audible, barely able to open his mouth. His voice is already failing.

"I know. Help each other?"

…Maybe he won't have to keep a dozen candles burning the whole week this time. He gives a tiny nod, and nearly falls on you.

You catch him by the shoulders. "Where do you go?"

He tries to answer, but his throat won't work, so he snaps his fingers twice at Kurogiri.

Kurogiri opens a warp gate without question, and reminds him to check the snack bin for drinks and to not ignore the thermos please.

Tomura flaps a hand at him in acknowledgement and staggers through the portal with you.

~~~

You're not sure what exactly you were expecting. Frankly, you're not exactly thinking clearly enough to have any specific expectations in the first place. But you've been getting very familiar vibes from Shigaraki Tomura since the first time Giran brought you to the bar, and his reaction just now painted a picture you haven't seen since you lost what little pack you had.

The image the pack's League's leader presents in the bar means you're not surprised by the massive computer setup, the stacks of jewel-bright video game cases on the shelves, the defaced and broken Hero action figures, the newspaper clippings tracking Hero scandals plastered to the walls like a drywall scrapbook. All of the other tiny clues mean you're also not surprised to find a filtered fan.

But you weren't expecting the rest of it. There are two filtered fans, one on the desk and one by the bed, each facing away from the user. There are candles everywhere, glass dishes of wax on every available surface, the way another man with that kind of PC would collect Monster cans. Everywhere you look there's another one, and for bonus points, there's a heating plate with a fat multi-wick pillar candle sitting on the nightstand. The bed is a tangled mess, three full-sized pillows and a bolster, several blankets, nearly a dozen plushies (four poros, a Yamper, a Cubone, and about half of the Minecraft tameable list with a bonus Creeper), and a few white button-up shirts and hoodies in the corner. Hooks in the ceiling and on the wall hold both a curtain canopy and a net of RGB strings. At the foot of the bed, there's a footlocker painted to look like an Ender Chest.

Next to you, Shigaraki buckles, his knees and spine trying to fold up, and he gives another agonized mewl. You grab him around the shoulders and he clings. Astringent pain-pleading-loathing-need cuts the black pepper and cardamom spice of rut pheromones in a dizzying cocktail of discomfort, and you haul him over to the bed. As soon as there's a support he can fall on, he starts stripping, almost throwing his shoes across the room in his haste to get everything else off.

The heat suppressants can only keep so much of your mind coherent for so long, even perfectly dosed, and they're quickly reaching the limit. A rush of fog fuzzes up your brain as he gets his boxers off, and your mouth waters at the sight of his leaking dick, hot-red and rock-hard, the knot at the base already starting to swell. You almost don't notice the rest of him, pale and flushed, too thin with scarred skin painted onto overly lean muscle strung on sharp bones, or the way he lies almost perfectly still on the blankets, trembling slightly as he stares at you with wide glassy eyes. One gloved hand twitches toward you, scent billowing confusion-longing-hurt and mouth cracked open to release a keen.

You give a soothing croon back without even thinking about it, and drop your own clothes in a heap on the floor. Your jeans and panties have to be peeled off, the tampon you grabbed this morning not enough to deal with this amount of slick anymore. The wad of sodden cotton goes into the trash can in the corner, and you crawl onto the bed with him.

As soon as you're in reach, he latches on like he's spring-loaded, wrapping around you and nuzzling almost frantically at your collarbone, just barely avoiding the edge of the scent gland but still plenty close enough to inhale a full blast of your pheromones. He rolls until you're beneath him, then rocks a little further and squirms. You hate being trapped, being pinned, but it's clear he's not doing that now. He drags you across the nest until you're against the pillows, fluffs the one under your head and shoulders, grabs your hand and drags your wrist across the nearest blanket. You obligingly use what little control of your scent you have right now to feed him a mix of comfort and want.

Then he's between your legs, pawing at the glands on your thighs, and you push his head down until he has no real option but to mark them. At the touch of his tongue higher up, the last of your lucidity fades, and you drag him up to face you. He's panting, face smeared with slick, and when you open your mouth, he slams his into it hard enough to clash your teeth together, the messiest, clumsiest kiss you've ever seen. You grab his hips and yank, and he growls and moves into place.

There's no teasing. No prep. No adjustment. He shoves into your cunt all at once, stopping just short of the knot, and starts thrusting. The stretch burns for all of three seconds before another wave of pheromones washes over you both, then the gush of slick all but forces him to go deeper, his half-swollen knot teasing your outer ring over and over, until it slips oh-so-sweetly into place. And for once, nothing in you rebels against it because he's yours he's yours he's perfect—

He's not locked in though. Not yet. Something desperate and fearful leaks into his scent, a half-panicked mewl in your ear, and that won't do at all. You pull him extra-tight against you and roll, coming up on top and nosing at his neck as you take over. The mewl turns to keening, his scent begging and his hands scrabbling at the back of your head. You bite down on on the gland hard, and instantly smell bliss. He's yours, he knows it, and he likes it.

There's nothing left but the ride, after that, and it's a short one. With the mark of your teeth on his neck, whatever was holding him back is overwhelmed, and his knot bulges, driving you wild with the pressure. The orgasm that crashes over you finishes him off too, and you lock down around his cock as an endless flood of cum froths into you.

You collapse over his chest and tilt, but when you start to roll, he sticks out his elbows with an offended look, refusing to move. You bite his other shoulder, then hook a leg around the back of his thigh and throw your weight to the opposite side. His knot is still tying you together and will be for a while, but you're not going to deadweight on him. He hisses at being forced to move, but burrows against you when you wrap an arm around him and shoves his other leg between yours.

After a few minutes, both your heads start to clear, and he starts to shiver, sorrow-shame stinging your nose. You growl a warning. "No. You didn't do anything wrong, stop that."

Surprise-confusion.

You stroke behind his ears soothingly. "You want to be pinned, right?"

He flinches, his fingers digging into your ribs.

"It's okay," you whisper. "Do you hate doing the pinning?"

He curls up tighter around you, folding nearly in half, and nods minutely against your chest.

"I hate when people try to pin me. It never works because of my Quirk, if I really wanted I could separate us right now, but I hate that people think they can. They always do because I smell like an Omega."

Confusion. He sniffs at your neck. He's still careful not to imprint his own scent on your glands though.

"You smell like an Alpha—" He flinches and mewls, and you tighten your arms around him. "But that doesn't mean you are one."

Very little of his behavior fits an Alpha's instincts. The only things that do seem more biologically driven. Every stress response you've ever seen him display reminds you of Mukagi. Every burst of rage, every subsequent retreat. You weren't there yet when Dabi and Himiko arrived, but Himiko tells the story with glee. An Alpha would have tried to throw them out of his territory unless they attacked first. Shigaraki decided they didn't belong in his space on vibes alone and tried to kill them, then fled as soon as he was restrained.

…Hope.

"Magne thinks you might be MtF," you continue softly. "You smell like envy when you look at the girls. And maybe she's right, but if she is, that's not all of it it, is it? You look at Twice that way too, more than at Himiko even. And then you hunch up and hide in your hoodie."

Slowly, he raises his head, just enough to look you in the eyes, and drags a hand around your ribs to rest on your chest.

"You wish you had breasts?"

He hesitates.

"You feel like you should have them?"

A nod. Shame.

You don't growl this time. You croon.

"What about your knot?"

He recoils. Visceral disgust.

"…But if I had one?"

His pupils instantly blow out and his mouth falls open, and his hips start rocking against yours, as if getting deep enough would let you switch places. He keens at you plaintively.

"Shhh, shhh…"

You scratch behind his ears, trying to calm him. He only gets louder, and points insistently at his nightstand. For the first time, you realize that the way he originally positioned you put the drawer in arm's reach, and you grab for it.

There are several things inside, when you manage to get it open, but it's very obvious which one he wants when your hand closes around it. "You want this?" you ask, holding up the dildo. It's an inflatable model, and not a cheap one.

He nods eagerly, and you set it down on the bed. Then you roll to put him under you and plant your hands on his shoulders. "Be patient. We'll be here for at least a day or two, and I'm not going to risk hurting you playing reverse reacharound."

He whines unhappily, pouting.

"No." You nip at the rim of his ear with your teeth, then kiss his nose. "If you want me to give you a knot I will, but later. After I'm done pinning you. Got it?"

Uncertainty.

"I'll do it before end of cycle, I promise. Will you be good for me until then?"

He shivers, nods, and twists his head to bare his neck.

Your teeth scrape the scent gland there, then your tongue soothes the sting. "Good mate," you whisper. "Good Omega."

He goes completely limp, his eyes rolling back. Euphoria.

Taglist: @addicted2tomura @thatoneawkwardfeeling

[fandomstuckportal]

((posters of the sonne system i originally made for electric boogaloo (top), but also adapted for babylon (bottom). babylon ones may change in the future if they give the other bodies different names in their lore.

once again, free to use! just keep my signature and credit would be nice))

[chimaerakirin]

Bridge To Babylon index

Your Quirk allows you to escape almost any form of restraint, but you've never been able to slip the chains of social order. You aren't what they see, and it's cost you everything. You've had enough. If you can't escape this trap, you're just fine with destroying it. Outside looking in Shigaraki Tomura can destroy almost anything. Has been told that it's his right to do so. The one thing he can't destroy with a touch is slowly destroying him, and he doesn't understand why. He can't name the sense of wrongness he's lived with for most of his life. When do the nightmares end? But you recognize it. It's not enough to save you both, but it's a start.

Rated E for Explicit.

Content Tags: Shigaraki Tomura x AFAB Reader, Reader has a name, trans characters, parental abuse, canon-typical violence, Omegaverse and all that implies, smut (PIV, anal, toys, forced switching, top Reader x bottom Tomura).

Beta'd by the awesome @thatoneawkwardfeeling.

Chapter 1: First Scent

Chapter 2: Second Pack

Chapter 3: Sugar and Spice

Chapter 4: Bitterness

Chapter 5: The Recruit

Chapter 6: Escape

Chapter 7: Settle

Chapter 8: Relief

Bonus Preview: Restraint

Masterlist

Taglist: @addicted2tomura @redr0sewrites @scary-grace @shigarakislaughter

[fandomstuckportal]

((texture comm for iris))

[fandomstuckportal]

((quick portrait of yuetu, she wasnt as hard to do as i had anticipated))

[chimaerakirin]

Bridge To Babylon

Your Quirk allows you to escape almost any form of restraint, but you've never been able to slip the chains of social order. You aren't what they see, and it's cost you everything. You've had enough. If you can't escape this trap, you're just fine with destroying it. Outside looking in Shigaraki Tomura can destroy almost anything. Has been told that it's his right to do so. The one thing he can't destroy with a touch is slowly destroying him, and he doesn't understand why. He can't name the sense of wrongness he's lived with for most of his life. When do the nightmares end? But you recognize it. It's not enough to save you both, but it's a start.

Rated E for Explicit.

Chapter CW: Discussions of dysphoria and suicide, panic attacks, All For One's A+ parenting.

Beta'd by the awesome @thatoneawkwardfeeling.

Index

<- Start - Prev - Here - Next ->

Bitterness

The haze of heat clears up for you after about three and a half days. Tomura should follow you back to lucidity in short order.

He doesn't.

After another two days, while he's passed out in a blissful puddle from his second knotting of the day — he needs it at least daily and pouts if he doesn't get it twice — you pick up your phone and text Kurogiri. The answer has you gaping. Then it has you suspicious.

You can't do much about it though. Not without snooping. And you won't do that. Not when you know for a fact he's been hurt before. You're not sure by who or when, but you do know that even he doesn't realize it. You open your email and reread a reply chain from two years ago. Then you kiss Tomura's forehead and head for the shower.

(It's a very nice shower. The entire apartment is well above the income bracket you're used to, and above the bar's property value too for that matter. It matches the credit card though, but you do have to wonder why Tomura's bedroom is in a closet. It's not like there's not enough space otherwise.)

At the end of day five, you get a message from the League's group chat. They're heading out to the UA summer training camp. You tell Twice to clone you if needed, and wish them luck.

It's over halfway through day six when the low fever of rut breaks and Tomura looks at you like he can actually see you. "Mmf… Sanashi?"

"Welcome back, Tomura."

"Quiet. Head hurts…"

You hand him a fruit jelly pack and a few salted caramels, then give him a can of green tea. "Can you make it to the bathroom?" He spent the last trip dragging his shoulder along the wall for support.

He doesn't answer. He eats the snacks first, drains the tea fast enough to crush the can as he goes, and stands up. Or tries to. He wobbles dangerously, and you hold out an arm in the direction he's most likely to fall. Hissing, he grabs your wrist to steady himself. When he tries to let go, he wobbles again.

"Help," he mutters.

You do. He sends you back to the bedroom to turn on the filter fans, but gets exhausted enough to call you in again while he's in the bath. You end up rinsing the nullifier shower gel — an all-in-one formula, despite his budget clearly being enough to cover specialized sets — out of his hair, then use some of your own conditioner to soften the abused strands, and finish up with your body wash, scrubbing his back for him. You don't try to rescent him, but after he's spent a few minutes staring at his marked neck in the mirror, he picks up your wrist and tries to do it himself. He only uses the back, though.

"Can I?" you ask quietly, stepping up behind him.

He nods, flushing hope-embarrassment-want, and you lower your head to lick at the glands, paying special attention to the twin shallow punctures from your fangs. When you're done with his neck, he shoves his wrists at you, and you lick those glands too. Then you step back, and he grabs a can of blockers and starts spraying.

Once he's satisfied, or as much as he's going to get if his disgruntled expression is anything to go by, he opens a sealed bag on the washing machine and pulls on the sweatpants and baggy shirt inside. Then he staggers to the kitchen and digs through the freezer until he finds some korokke, which he chucks into the microwave.

"Phone," he says, staring at the rotating plate.

"Yours or mine?"

"Don't care."

You fetch both. He stares at them both with the kind of bleary confusion usually reserved for epic hangovers — which he arguably does have — before picking up his own and unlocking it, sending a three-character text. Less than ten seconds later, his phone beeps with a reply.

"What do you want?" he asks.

"Huh?"

"Food."

"Are we ordering out? Beef curry's always good."

He grunts and sends a message, then turns to stare at the microwave. As soon as it beeps, he yanks the plate out and starts gnawing on the korokke. He gets through one and a half of three before blinking and holding the other half out to you. You take it, but refuse the other one.

He's visibly thinner than he was a week ago, and you could already just about count his ribs. A week is entirely too long for a rut to last, and Kurogiri told you it might take up to a week and a half for him to get through it. Which means that's happened before. You are not taking half of his food. Not when he suggested that there's some for you on the way. You're only taking this because he offered after getting you to scent his neck.

You stand behind him and play with the hair behind his ears while he eats the last one, still with the kind of single-minded focus that suggests he'd probably walk into the nearest wall if he tried to go anywhere. When he swallows the last bite, he doesn't bother going anywhere, and just leans back against you, starting up a quiet rumble.

"What day is it?" he finally mumbles.

You're not surprised he didn't notice the clock on his phone. "August second. Training Camp day two. The Vanguard went out last night for the scouting. We should be getting a call in a few hours."

"You stayed with me?"

You lower your head and scrape lightly at the juncture of his neck and shoulder with your fangs. "You needed me."

His head falls back limply and he rumbles a little louder, before cutting himself off abruptly and radiating discontent.

"What's wrong?"

"Sndstpd…"

"Huh?"

"I hate doing that," he whispers. "I sound stupid."

You rub his shoulders, trying to soothe some of the tension out of them. "No you don't."

"Yes I do. Too low."

…Oh. You get it now. "I need to take you to Hokkaido…" you muse.

He twists around to look at you. "What for?"

"Mm… It's not really complicated, but it's difficult to explain. Can we go back to your room?"

"Need to clean it…"

"I'll help if you want me to."

He decides to allow it, and has you clear off most of the bedding and plushies while he stands in the doorway, dumping the former in the washing machine and the latter in a steam-cleaner bin, both with nullifier detergent. Then he points to where the replacements are kept, and has you handle everything thoroughly while laying it out in a replica of the previous arrangement. The topper, replacing the Cubone, is a large frog. You eye it for a minute, then dig through your backpack and extract a worn Void Chicken, which you set in the Yamper's place.

Tomura stares at it for a minute, then looks like he might cry.

He doesn't get the chance, though, with the door intercom buzzing. He rushes — still unsteady — to answer, and comes back with a takeout bag. The bag is set down on his desk while he clears candles off of a small folding table and sets that next to the bed, then he unpacks what looks like enough food for four people. Two bowls of curry udon go on his desk, and a double dish of aigake curry are stacked on the folding table. The aigake, when you open it, contains pork curry on one side and beef hayashi on the other.

"They didn't have plain beef curry," he mumbles, picking up a clump of noodles.

"This works," you assure him.

You eat more or less silently, wanting him to finish before you say anything that might put him off. You know this isn't going to be a fun subject. When the food is gone, you invite him over to the bed and spend a few minutes smoothing your fingertips along his spine.

"How much of the last week do you remember?" you ask.

He turns red. "M-most of it… I don't, usually… Can't really sleep properly like that. You… helped. A lot."

"You needed it."

"…How did you know though?" His tone is plaintive, his scent almost desperate. "I didn't know!"

"A lot of little signs that I've seen before," you start. "For example, do you know the difference between purring and rumbling?"

"Not… really? Just that Omegas purr and Alphas rumble."

"Almost. DOABs purr and DAABs rumble. It's the same biological mechanism, but the Omega's voice box is built to do it at a higher pitch. You hate the way you sound when you rumble because you're trying to purr and only almost getting it." You brush a finger across his throat. "But that's the only sound that's universal like that. All the others are instinctive vocalizations. You don't growl, you hiss."

"You growl," he points out.

"Yup. I also croon." You demonstrate.

"I thought that was humming…"

"Almost. Same purpose, sometimes. It's soothing, that's why I do it when you're upset." You curl up around his back and croon a little more. "When Mister comes into the bar, what sound does he make?"

He thinks for a minute. "A puffy one?"

"Chuffing. That's an Alpha greeting. You make the same sound as Kurogiri when you walk in." He trills in a vaguely questioning tone, and you nod. "That. It's a trill. You also mewl in distress and keen as a demand. The thing is, no one teaches anyone to make those sounds. Betas might do any of them, but their instincts reach into both bags. Your instincts are in a bag labeled Alpha, but everything in the bag is Omega."

"What else is in this bag?"

"Hm… Caretaking and submission are common ones, if a little wobbly to define. Omegas tend to lead from the middle when they're at the head of a pack. Alphas take charge, Omegas enable. You put Dabi in charge of the Vanguard instead of doing it yourself."

"What about submission? Is that just a sex thing?"

You snort. "Nope, and you might not see it much in porn but being a sub in bed doesn't mean being passive either. Ever hear the phrase 'topping from the bottom'? Not that subbing and bottoming are the same, but the line gets blurred sometimes."

"…Wait, what's the difference then?"

"Short version? The sub receives instruction, the bottom just receives."

He blushes, clearly running that statement through his memories and trying to figure out how much applies, and you give him a minute to decide whether or not to respond.

When he doesn't, you continue. "But outside of sex… Remember the donuts? On some level you'd already decided I belonged at the bar, or you've have tried to evict or kill me the way you did with Dabi and Himiko. Which is another Omega thing by the way, you attack first and ask questions if there's anything left. Alphas are more reactive, and one would have waited for them to attack before defending. But you fumbled, and you didn't just apologize, you went to get something you knew I was interested in. You don't normally give a shit what people think, but you specifically wanted my approval, so you punished yourself by leaving your den and doing a fetch quest. That was an act of aggressive submission."

There's a minute of silence. "Do you know about this because you're like that too? Is that why you recognize it?"

"Yes and no…" You sigh and scrape a hand through your hair. "…I had a twin brother. Mukagi. Three weeks before we were born, there was a villain attack. Well, officially that's what they called it. Not that they caught the villain. Someone turned himself in and made a confession, but he was Quirkless so they called him a liar and fined him for wasting police time."

His scent does something complicated, and you can clearly see the nope-not-thinking-about-that in his eyes when bittersweet refusal wipes out the other components. "What did he say happened?"

"He said he was a Beta, which he was, but that he'd been designated Alpha at birth. He said that his Quirk let him change other people's designations, but not his own, he'd gotten desperate and tried Trigger to break that limitation. Instead it turned a touch-activated thing to area effect and started firing at random. He hit over twenty people before he knocked himself out. The Alphas and Omegas all got inverted, but for some reason the Betas got a coin flip, I don't know why."

Tomura snorts. "He couldn't even do to anyone else what he was trying to do to himself."

"Might be it. Anyway, my mother was in the area. As far as anyone could tell, she wasn't hit. The doctors assumed someone misread the sonogram when she seemed to have two Omegas. Then we hit our teens, I started developing up top and Mukagi didn't. He started getting stressed."

"Didn't you?"

"I was already stressed. I started growling at people who called me an Omega as soon as I knew what it meant." You shrug. "Most people assumed I was being a contrary little shit because designating cubs is rude. I got in trouble for it, but I technically didn't start it."

"Wait, that's rude?"

"Yeah? Violating in-group boundaries, if it's not your cub then you're not supposed to know before they present, and if you do know it's polite to pretend you don't. Anyway, we were stressed to start with. Then presentation hit both of us, and it was like the gods got our birthday presents mixed up. It instantly got so much worse."

He shudders and flops over sideways, curling up halfway in your lap. "It sucked so much ass," he complains.

"Apocalyptic amounts of ass, I know."

"What happened to Mukagi? He's dead, isn't he?"

You pull out your phone and open a picture. There's not a lot of screen, but it still shows you and your shadow, grins bright and feral, eyes strained. You zoom in on Mukagi, wearing the denim jacket that you still have over a baggy hoodie. His dark violet hair goes to his shoulders, and the bags under his gold eyes look like bruises against his milky pale skin. You hand it to Tomura for him to look at.

"You don't look that much alike," he comments.

"We did, just… as opposites. The colors made it hard to tell. I've got our aru's coloring, supposedly. He matched our mother more. Our mother… She didn't reject us, but she wasn't really supportive either. Just… confused. Ineffective. Then she got sick and her parents took over her treatment, but they didn't want her freak children. She didn't argue, because we were eighteen by then."

He twitches violently and digs his fingers into your leg. Only the fact that he's still wearing those gloves keeps you intact.

"So we got our own place. It was a shithole, but it was a place for Mukagi to build a nest. And everything was… okay, ish, for two years. Then… Mukagi's Quirk, Impassable, was the opposite of mine. I can escape anything. He could make escape impossible. And the guy next door was a drunk with a habit of getting his keys mixed up. We kept to ourselves, but he found out a few things eventually. The third time he tried to use his storage unit key to get into his apartment, he called the cops and accused Mukagi of locking him out. The instant 'Kagi hissed, they put him in handcuffs. They didn't care that Kuramoto couldn't walk three steps in a straight line, he had to be right because the one he was accusing was a 'violent deviant.'"

"Was he killed in prison?"

You shake your head. "He didn't get that far. Quirk-based sabotage of another person's private property is class-D villainy, and verbal threats to a police officer is an E charge, so they were talking about two minutes in the courtroom and two years in Mikuzu."

"What kind of bullshit— They couldn't prove anything!"

"Why would they need to? We live in Babylon, remember?" You scoff quietly. "…That was his favorite song. The End, by Five Finger Death Punch. Old American band. He liked the version with Babymetal, but the note he left had the original chorus written in it. Make a wish, say a prayer, hope that someone is out there. Build a bridge to Babylon and burn it to the ground. He hanged himself in the holding cell."

Tomura sits up slightly to stare at you, understanding in his eyes and scent. "That's what the world took from you…"

"Yeah… It's been two years. Magne killed Kuramoto for me, but Mukagi is still gone." You lean back against the wall and stare at the ceiling.

He sits up the rest of the way, frowning. "Wait. There's something I don't get. Why'd they think you were both Omegas until…?"

"The sonogram showed a female Alpha and a male Omega, but when they scanned me they didn't find the right organs, and they didn't see a need to scan him at all. You can't see much about the bone structure at that age, a newborn might as well be a bag of mashed potatoes as far as physique goes, but there's a mark… Male Omegas are born with all the organs an adult has, but the important one stays sealed off until first heat. It opens up then, which I'm told hurts like a bitch, but you can see where that'll happen before it does. There's a line of tissue along the perineum, looks like a scar, or one of those cyborg seams in cyberpunk art. It forms when the skin does, so well before we were hit by that Quirk, and that Quirk couldn't alter skin and kind of half-assed bone changes."

"And he had the scar," Tomura guesses.

"Exactly. It just never split open because there was nothing underneath it." You take a deep breath and let it out slowly. "You have that scar too."

He freezes. "…What," he eventually croaks.

"You have the perineal seam of a pre-presentation Omega. You also have the bone structure of one. I'd say around… age fourteen, as far as pelvic shape goes. You literally aren't supposed to have an Alpha body, and it's not a cosmic joke."

"That— That's not… How long did it take for that guy to turn himself in? The Quirkless one?"

"Three days."

"But— I'm twenty, he couldn't have hit me, he had to be lying—"

"That was the weirdest thing, he wasn't. There was a guy with his appearance and name, with the Quirk he described, in the registry. But the registry listed him as an Alpha and obviously not Quirkless. He said he sold his Quirk to a guy in exchanged for having it used on him, but Quirks can't be traded like gacha toys so they wrote him off as an attention whore taking advantage of a physical resemblance. But there's that urban legend of the boogeyman Quirk Thief…"

"It's not a legend," he whispers. Then he curls up into a ball and mewls miserably. "Sensei's the Quirk Thief. But—! He wouldn't have! It had to be a different Quirk! That guy can't have been the only one with a Quirk like that!"

You lift him onto your lap — you're not exactly weak, but you're not the strongest either, and it shouldn't be this easy to pick him up — and wrap your arms around him tightly. "He wasn't. Isn't. I looked it up. I knew Mukagi was depressed, getting worse. But they wouldn't let him call me, wouldn't let me visit. I was a security risk. I didn't have a chance to tell him. Someone is out there. I was looking, I'd been looking ever since we found out about the attack before we were born. And I found out… That guy had a family. His daughter has a variant of his Quirk, the ability to swap designations between two targets. She lives in bumfuck nowhere, Hokkaido. It's one of those Quirks that 'subverts the social order' so she's an outcast, but she won't go completely off the grid because she's the only hope some people have. She has a system, all anonymous, if you get referred you can sign up with your designation and dynamic, and she'll summon you when she has another person that she can swap you with."

"Maybe she was the one that did this to me?" He's not just hopeful, he's desperate, reaching, anything to avoid a thought he doesn't want to have, a conclusion he doesn't want to reach.

"I'll take you to her and you can ask, but I don't think it's likely. She's only ten years older than me, and her Quirk was registered on the same date as her designation. You would have been somewhere between four and six by then," you explain gently. "When's your birthday?"

"…April fourth?"

"Nearly six. Getting your organs restructured is the kind of thing you notice. She's pretty open about that, advises taking a heavy-duty Tylenol half an hour before she works."

"Sensei wouldn't," he mumbles.

"She can swap us, though," you point out. "I'm on her waiting list, I just asked to be moved to the side when Mukagi died. If Kurogiri could send us up there…"

Tomura uncurls just a little and looks up at you. "I… I think he would," he says. "Sensei might get upset, he's really… invested in me being an Alpha—"

He breaks off and crumples. "It's his fault, he did this to me, didn't he!" he sobs. "Why would he do that?!"

He starts scratching violently at his neck, and you grab his wrists to stop him. As soon as you drag his hands behind your back, you lean against the wall to trap his fingers flat and keep him from going after his arms instead. Then you pull his head against your chest and start crooning, fingers weaving through his hair and stroking. You don't bother telling him it's okay. It clearly isn't. You don't tell him not to cry. He definitely needs to. Instead you wait, and offer what comfort you can. It takes nearly ten minutes for him to cry himself out. You pick up your phone and send a single message to Magne.

Don't trust Sensei

BTB

Whywhywhywhywhywhywhy?

Tomura doesn't want to believe it. He refused to believe it, the first time you said the word 'Quirkless'. It occurred to him instantly but he shoved it away. Sensei wouldn't. It's Sensei. Sensei who saved him when no one else would look at him. Sensei who shielded him from a world that would tear him apart for what his Quirk did to his pack. Sensei who gave him Kurogiri, who he couldn't kill. Sensei who told him it was okay to destroy things, that there was nothing to blame him for. Sensei who gave him space when he needed it.

Sensei who kept his distance no matter what he needed. Sensei who called him pack but held his scent back, not as a punishment but as a default. Sensei who now smells like an invader because of it. Sensei who kept him hidden and isolated, with a caretaker that never held him, that couldn't hold him, and a pile of cold dead hands for comfort.

Sensei who treated him like an Alpha even when he was just a cub.

Tomura doesn't want to believe it. But you didn't know about Sensei's Quirk. You weren't accusing him of anything. And every single instinct that screams a million warnings at the sound of Sensei's voice on call and the scent of Sensei's approval in those stupid tiny vials goes utterly silent when you speak, when you let him breathe you in.

The endless maddening itch that's plagued him for as long as he can remember a hand held out, then retracted before he can do more than smile in relief, the itch that Sensei said would only go away when whatever caused it is destroyed, has only ever subsided under two conditions. It lessens at the scent of peach and raspberry and wood polish, warmth from a solid body that never hugs back but never pushes him away either. And it disappears when you show him that you see him.

"…Giri loves me," he rasps eventually. "I know he does, I can smell it. He's not allowed to show it though. He's my Ome and he loves me but Sensei won't let him act like it…"

You're quiet for a minute, but not long enough to let him start spiraling again. "The guards on his neck and wrists. You know those aren't real, right? If he really needed something to hold his bones together after this long, he'd have implants. Pins and plates, or mesh, on the bones themselves. Not unpadded metal loose enough to get a finger under."

Six years old, and Sensei presents a mist-faced man in butler clothes and weird armor. "This is Kurogiri, he'll be taking care of you from now on."

Kurogiri smells like powder-sweet affection within days. Within a month, he smells like love. It's impossible not to love him back.

Kurogiri never hugs him, but he never stops him either. And if Tomura climbs him like a tree, he puts an arm under Tomura's legs in support, justifying it as minimizing the risk of having his uniform decayed. It's close enough, most of the time.

When it's not, Tomura rages. He demands his Ome-giri take off those stupid bracelets so he can smell him properly. It's the only time Kurogiri ever tells him no. At ten, desperate, Tomura tries to decay one of them. The resulting lecture has him hiding in his room for a week straight.

Sensei says he's "too old to be using such childish terms, don't you think?" so he calls Kurogiri 'idiot' instead. Kurogiri comes into his room for his laundry, and a wrinkled white dress shirt falls out of the top of the basket onto his bed. His Ome pretends not to notice, then ignores the stuffed animals that wind up in his nest, and the ones that replace them after a few nights.

"…I know," he whispers. "They're for control. They keep Kurogiri chained. They keep me alone, so that all I have is to look forward to Sensei's scent."

You wisp confusion. "Chained? How?"

"I tried to get rid of them once. I managed to break the left wrist piece. Kurogiri started glitching out, and he almost stopped trying to stop me. He didn't look like he wanted to take us to Sensei, but he did anyway. Sensei sent him to the Doctor and gave me the line about weak bones. Said that Omegas are more fragile. It was the only time I was ever told I couldn't destroy something. But it was a lie."

"It's not that Omega bones are weaker, they're the same as Betas," you say. "Alphas are the ones above the baseline."

"Not just that. He said I hurt Kurogiri. But… Kurogiri didn't smell like pain. He smelled… Alert. But a little confused. Like he was waking up from one of those really unhelpful naps. You know the one where you see nine thirty on the clock and you think it's the next day even though you fell asleep on the couch and it's dark outside the window." He sits up just enough to face you. "I think… If I get rid of the braces, he might wake up for real. But I can't do it in the bar."

"Because of the TV?"

"Yeah, Sensei is… it's hard to tell when he's watching."

You shudder, disgust burning his nose, and he clutches at you for a minute before sliding off the bed and digging through his desk drawer until he finds the box he's tired of pretending is to protect the contents. (It protects him from the contents.) You follow him to the bathroom curiously, and watch as he opens it and uncaps all the scent vials, dumping them into the sink. The smell is overpowering, the satisfaction (not pride, never pride, Sensei is never proud of him) turning to smugness by sheer concentration, but that doesn't last for long. It's cut out almost immediately by him dumping a full scoop of nullifying detergent from the laundry supplies on top and turning on the faucet.

He watches the soap foam up, and keeps staring until it runs clean. You reach past him to add another pinch of detergent and rattle the vials around to be sure, then put an arm around his waist when he sways on his feet, relief making him lightheaded.

"I need to pack," he whispers.

"…Huh?"

"I need to pack," he repeats. "Sensei put us in this apartment. And in the bar. I can't, we can't stay."

His den isn't his own, it's not safe, he can't let his mate or his Ome or the rest of his pack live in someone else's territory. He forces himself out of your grip and heads to the kitchen. There aren't any boxes around that he knows of, but he can use trash bags for some of his stuff, clothes and plushies especially. And there's the vacuum storage bags for the nesting supplies… He needs Mister's Quirk, is what he needs. He can't leave Giri's stuff behind either, and he definitely can't just toss the kitchenware into a plastic bag.

He finds a single broken-down cardboard box in the recycling, from the cup noodle that Kurogiri buys in bulk in an attempt to keep him fed when he has trouble eating, and gets it unfolded and taped back into place. The candles go in, but when he tries to stack the ones in glass containers, you stop him and grab a newspaper from the living room to pad them with.

You're halfway through using the clippings pinned to the walls as extra cushioning when your phone rings. You put it on speaker.

"Hello?"

"Is he sane again yet?" Dabi asks bluntly.

Tomura hisses in annoyance. "I'm back, yes. What happened?"

"Oh great, so are we. We ran into a slight issue with the mission."

"What kind of issue?" Tomura asks.

"Who was insane, Touya-nii?" a young-sounding voice asks in the background.

"Don't call me that!" Dabi snaps, ignoring the 'but you are' in favor of turning back to the phone. "My dumbass kid brother decided to recruit himself."

"…Dabi, what the fuck."

Taglist: @addicted2tomura @redr0sewrites @scary-grace @shigarakislaughter

[chimaerakirin]

Bridge To Babylon

Your Quirk allows you to escape almost any form of restraint, but you've never been able to slip the chains of social order. You aren't what they see, and it's cost you everything. You've had enough. If you can't escape this trap, you're just fine with destroying it. Outside looking in Shigaraki Tomura can destroy almost anything. Has been told that it's his right to do so. The one thing he can't destroy with a touch is slowly destroying him, and he doesn't understand why. He can't name the sense of wrongness he's lived with for most of his life. When do the nightmares end? But you recognize it. It's not enough to save you both, but it's a start.

Rated E for Explicit.

Chapter CW: Misogyny and gore (Muscular and Moonfish being themselves).

Beta'd by the awesome @thatoneawkwardfeeling.

Index

<- Start - Here - Next ->

Second Pack

"So what's the League's next move?" Magne asks. "You told the cub there would be twice as many Hero students to deal with, so it must be planned out."

It's been a week since Spinner joined, the Beta immediately moving into the second room downstairs with a duffel bag, and Giran hasn't been back yet. Shigaraki is still an awkward corner-lurking gremlin for all that he always sits in the middle of the five barstools and thus the center of the room. He wears a giant black hoodie half the time, despite the growing summer heat. (Twice nearly broke down crying again at the praise for fixing the air conditioner.) The most he's interacted with anyone is to interrogate Spinner about his game library… And to interrogate you, when you mentioned a Stardew Valley mod and he realized you play. He demanded to know why you didn't tell him, and when you pointed out that you understood and expanded on his reference to the Fate series, he sputtered something about visual novels not being the same.

"UA sends its Hero Course brats off on some kind of summer camp. A week of campfire stories and hell-training or something like that. Won't know exactly where until it starts, though." Shigaraki snorts derisively. "Supposedly they changed the location after the Kiyashi Mall bullshit, but Sensei's source never said where it was even before that so I think they 'changed' it the way the Sports Festival's first two events are 'random.'"

"You mean with the spinning wheel?" Twice asks. "Stupid way of picking it, whose idea was that?"

Shigaraki shakes his head and slurps at his yuzu slushie. "The first event was a multi-kilometer obstacle course involving giant robots, a Dwarven mine of a pit trap with a zipline maze, and a minefield. The gate opened two minutes after the game was announced, there's no way in hell they set everything up that quickly, and there were too many options on the wheel for them to have pre-built all of them just in case."

"Now that you mention it…" you say slowly. "I wonder if Shiketsu knows. They're always bitching about how wasteful UA is…"

"Shiketsu?"

"I'm from Hiroshima. It's the only place in the country that thinks UA is second-best," you explain. "Other than Sendai, which won't stop kissing Ketsubutsu's ass. It's a hometown pride thing. The rest of the schools are afterthoughts, from what I hear Kyoto doesn't pay any attention to Seiai unless the girls are actually doing something flashy, and Kanazawa barely bothers to advertise that they have Seijin."

"Ugh, UA's just a black hole, isn't it… Anyway, the camps are by year or something, I'm not exactly sure, I just know all the first years will be at this one."

"And what, we're going to slaughter them?" asks Dabi.

"Eh. We can, but Sensei told me to pick one or two to recruit. I'm leaning toward Bakugou, the one that got muzzled after he won, but if the purple one, Shinso, is there…"

You try to remember the Sports Festival. You didn't see all of it, it always reduces the number of Heroes on the streets (this year even more so because of 'increased security'), so it was a good day for a few robberies, but you did catch a few highlight reels. Endeavor's son blowing up the arena with thermal shock and some chipmunk-looking girl creating a meteor shower featured prominently.

"And for those of us who were too busy to watch the show?" Magne asks.

Shigaraki pulls out his phone and pulls up a video on UA's official Herotube channel. When four people try to crowd around him, he hisses (?!) and connects the video to the TV in the corner. You, Magne, Toga, and Twice all turn toward the bigger screen and watch the Medalists' Showcase.

Third place is a boy with a black-feathered raptor's head and some kind of summoned creature for a Quirk, which plays a good defense game in the second round (and gods beyond does that cavalry battle thing look stupid), and one-shots the boy's first opponent in the one-on-one fights, but takes an inordinate amount of damage from his second opponent's attacks— "Oh, that's a literal shadow," you realize.

Shigaraki pauses the video. "What?"

"The summoned thing. It's a shadow. Nothing hurts it but this guy's attacks, and every time an explosion goes off near it, it flinches and literally shrinks. Then the winning trick is a flashbang."

"…Huh. Think it gets stronger at night?"

"Logically it would. Easy to restrain too. He doesn't seem to know how to fight without the shadow, so unless he's learned since then…"

Shigaraki pulls a notebook from somewhere. "I think he was seen with… Hawks, when they did their kiddie patrol sleepover weeks? And the stupid peacock never uses hand-to-hand. Or stays in one place long enough to say more than 'gimme yakitori please-kay-thanks-bye.' Don't think he'd teach anything useful."

Dabi snorts.

The video resumes. Second place is Endeavor's son. He puts together a reasonably strategic team for the cavalry battle, and manages to steal the instant-win token a split second before the buzzer. Then he encases his first opponent in a glacier that also walls off a fifth of the audience and nearly breaks the roof, a move that takes all of two seconds after the fight starts. His second fight lasts much longer, mostly because his opponent is a self-destructive idiot.

"Moron," Dabi apparently agrees.

"I know, he just broke all of his fingers at least twice," Magne says.

Toga giggles, blushing. "He's so cute with all that blood thought!"

"Not him. Todoroki. He's giving himself frostbite."

Or they're both being self-destructive idiots, that works too. What in the ever-living fuck is wrong with Hero Schools. The fight ends with Todoroki barely standing, and his opponent embedded in the wall with three entirely self-inflicted broken limbs. The fight against the tired-looking purple-haired boy in the next round is far more anti-climactic, and involves far less talking. He's back to high volumes of ice in the final round, but still no fire, and you can see what Dabi meant about frostbite as the fight drags on. Then he just… stops. There's the tiniest flicker of fire, then he goes still, takes a hit he could have dodged before, and ends up sprawled over chunks of his own shattered attacks.

"Something's wrong with him," you comment. "I don't know what, but that's not pride."

Dabi gives you a sharp look, then narrows his eyes at Compress when the magician nods. "He has no air of showmanship behind his attacks. Performance necessitates a degree of pride in your skill, and pride drives one to perform. He demonstrates nothing but the intent to move past obstacles, and even that fades by the end."

"So what you're saying is, that kid needs therapy," Twice translates. "Waste of time, never bother with it!"

Dabi says nothing, but his eyes stay fixed speculatively on the screen.

The first place winner, Bakugou Katsuki, is a walking stick of dynamite, in Quirk and in temper, from what you can tell. The way he blasts through the obstacle course is a demonstration of single-mindedness. The cavalry battle, while disturbing for a handful of reasons, shows even more of that focus, as well as what can break it. His first match of the tournament makes the things you noticed during the cavalry battle worse, and his second, a replay of his fight with the shadow-bird from different cameras, makes it worse. Then there's the final match, once again from different cameras than were used for Todoroki's showcase. By the end, when it shows the medal ceremony, you're frowning deeply.

"What's wrong?" Shigaraki asks. "There's no way that kid's meant to be a hero, right?"

You don't answer him right away. "Mr Compress, you can read people, right?"

"But of course, my dear. A necessary skill for a magician."

"Then tell me if I'm wrong." You stare at the final shot of the video. "Bakugou is used to having his goal in easy reach. Maybe he works hard for it anyway, maybe he doesn't have to, but he's not used to struggling. He's been catered to, probably for his Quirk, by adults who probably use the words 'bright future' a lot, to the point of bending if not rewriting the rules to keep him in the running, as seen where he left his cavalry team and they announced on the spot that it didn't count as long as he didn't touch the ground. He'll ignore anything that might distract him from his goal, until it actually sets him back, at which point he throws a tantrum and has to obliterate it before he can continue. He plays with his food, but that gets excused as taking an opponent seriously. And his sense of entitlement extends to thinking he can dictate how he wins, instead of just accepting victory as his right."

Mr Compress listens intently, nodding along with a thoughtful hum, then produces a flower from somewhere and offers it to you. "I do believe you are correct, based on the available evidence. Perhaps we lack an amount of information from our secondhand observation, as good as UA's cameras are, but I agree with your assessment in general."

"That definitely sounds like you don't think he should be a hero," Shigaraki says, somewhat impatiently.

"Oh abso-fuckin'-lutely not. And if you want him to be a villain, might not be too hard, just force the school to write him off somehow. But that doesn't mean I want to be in the same room with him."

"Then make a different suggestion," he snaps.

"I'll need to watch the rest of the festival."

"Then do that."

BTB

You do watch the festival. Kurogiri finds a projector somewhere, and gives it to you with a white sheet to hang up on the wall of the downstairs main room, so you end up having a sort of movie night, complete with snacks and drinks. Toga spends the time ranking the competitors for cuteness, both in their base states and by how much being covered in blood could improve them. Compress rates their showmanship, both by flash and substance. By the time it's over, you can't say you're particularly interested in any of the Hero students, but you do have a suggestion anyway.

"The Support one with the pink dreads?" asks Shigaraki.

"Yeah. Festival rules say a student can only use gear they make themselves, right? She's a first year and it was only a month after the start of the school year, but she made that much stuff on her own?" you point out. "And she turned her match into an infomercial, complete with company name. She's a dedicated capitalist on top of being a terrifyingly productive engineer, and you have a gold credit card. Our side never gets the good support, you could at least try seeing if she'd do an order."

He taps his fingers on the back of his game. "What would you order from her as a test?"

"Hm… A vampiric knife for Toga, maybe. Put a syringe needle in the fuller, with a vial in the handle. It'd have to use vacuum seals or pressure triggers or something, but it could automatically draw from anyone she stabbed, then still have a separate cutting edge."

"That… could world. I'll talk to Sensei, he's got some way of getting intel from them so he could probably figure out how to make an order."

"Where is your Sensei, anyway?" you inquire. "You and Kurogiri keep mentioning him, but I've never seen him."

"And if all goes will, you will not," a voice you don't recognize says.

Slowly, your head turns toward the TV, which is currently displaying the SOUND ONLY screen of a video chat program. You didn't even realize there was a camera there.

"Sensei!" Shigaraki exclaims. There's something close to outright worship in his tone, but his scent is giving off an odd mix of relief, joy, and wary defensiveness. That's… weird.

"Hello, Tomura. I see you're making good progress with your League members."

"Yeah, Giran brought me some pretty decent ones this time. Not at all like those trash mobs at the USJ. Did you hear the idea about the support engineer?"

"Indeed I did, Tomura. What was the name again?"

"Hatsume Mei," you answer when Shigaraki looks at you.

"Hm. I will see about having her informed of a potential customer. In the meantime, I have two more recruits for you to find."

"Who, Sensei?"

"Muscular and Moonfish."

You have a very bad feeling about this.

BTB

Tomura isn't quite sure what he expected. He knew Muscular has a history of killing Heroes, so that's a point in his favor. The most well-known Heroes he's killed are the Water Hose pair (stupid name), who were Rescue Heroes and not fighters, so that's half a point off. Raw brute strength, this guy could probably hold up against the USJ Noumu for at least a few hits, so that's another point.

Minus several hundred points for the stench though. This guy is filling the bar with the shittiest Alpha pheromones Tomura has ever smelled, even through the top-tier air filter hidden against Father's palm. His eyes won't stop watering. Even Stain didn't smell this bad, the blood-soaked bastard.

"So you want me in on a jailbreak and a smash-and-grab against a full set of Hero brats?"

"Named targets have to stay alive, but there shouldn't be anyone off-limits otherwise," Tomura answers.

Muscular grins. "I'm in. Hey, you got Omegas around here. They gonna be up for some fun after?"

The idea of this guy getting near Magne or Twice or you makes him want to throw up even more than the smell. Then he realizes what would actually happen if the meathead propositioned any of you. Magne can polarize a single body part if she wants to, half the League will cut a bitch if Twice so much as stubs his toe, and you—

He'll decay Muscular's other eye himself—

You have that old ninja weapon. The kyuketsu-shoge if he remembers right (and he does, it's in every game he's ever played featuring ninjas). The least Muscular will lose is a few fingers.

(He should see about getting you an upgraded version from Giran. Retractable blades in the ring, maybe. A stronger cord, definitely.)

"You can try to ask," Tomura says flatly. "If they say no you'll drop it."

Muscular scoffs. "Why the fuck shouldn't I try to persuade them?"

"I was assuming you like having balls. Or lungs. Or a head. I've been wrong before though."

"Tch. Whatever. When's the jailbreak?"

"Tonight."

The rest of the afternoon is spent going over the intel on the breakout plan. Moonfish, freshly sentenced to death, is finally moving from the max-security psych hospital they've been keeping him in for his trial, and being transported by armored convoy with a multi-Hero escort to Tartarus, because for some goddamn reason they want him to sit in a cell for forty years before they actually hang him.

In the evening, once the convoy is on its way, the retrieval team — Tomura himself, Dabi, Mr Compress, Magne, Muscular, and you — finds its spot on the route and waits.

Muscular, of course, can't wait quietly. First he tries to drag Compress into a brag-a-thon about all his their respective conquests ("Hey man, Beta chicks count too! They can be so much tighter, ya know what I mean?") which was beautifully and brutally shut down when silence alone didn't give the meathead a hint.

"A gentleman does not kiss and tell, my good sir."

Tomura is honestly impressed by the way the magician manages to make 'my good sir' sound like 'you fucking philistine.'

Then Muscular starts in with his opinions on dynamic roles, primarily featuring his profound confusion about why anyone would take an Omega into a fight. You and Magne are mostly ignoring him, but the instant the convoy comes around the curve, Magne smiles way too widely not to be enjoying it when she raises her magnet's South pole and yeets him into the center of the road.

It's probably not the entrance he was planning, but none of them care at this point. It works, with him managing to twist around and pound a giant crater into the road just before the trucks can reach it. Amid the screeching of brakes, he reaches out and grabs the lead car by the bumper, then flips it overhead and smashes it top-down into the pavement.

While Muscular is ripping open his new toy, Mr Compress marbles Dabi and flings the sphere out to the rear of the convoy. As soon as the marble bursts open, a gout of blue fire races along the asphalt, melting it along with the tires. With the wheels sunk six inches into molten tar and gravel, the run-flats the armored truck is equipped with are useless, and the Heroes come out to play.

There were three, as evidenced by the scrap of crushed flesh and colorful fabric in Muscular's hand. Of the final two, one is Diamante, a C-tier scrub who can rearrange the carbon in his body, usually turning it to diamond. It makes sense that he's in the truck with their target. Diamond doesn't hold up any longer than anything else once Tomura touches it though, and frankly he doesn't even need to.

Diamond is brittle, after all. The skin of the Hero's back is shattered when Magne uses her Moonlight Flit Cannon to throw him into a boulder that Compress produces from somewhere, leaving gleaming fragments everywhere that turn to bloody shreds of skin. Insult to lethal injury, when he slides off the rock and flops face-down in the still-squishy pavement, Muscular stomps on his spine and crunches all his bones like instant noodles.

The last Hero, Streetfleet, might actually be a threat if it wasn't for Dabi. The ability to manipulate asphalt is useful, but another blast of Blueflame keeps the road soupy, and Streetfleet doesn't seem to know what to do with that. At the very least, he can't figure it out before Magne yanks him over and promptly reverses direction to fire him back at Muscular.

With the guards out of the way, Mr Compress dumps a few marbles full of water onto the pavement to cool it off, then you march across the destroyed surface to the prisoner's compartment of the truck.

The door itself swings open at the lightest touch, three deadbolts the size of Tomura's forearm sliding back with a clunk to let you pass, then you open the iron maiden itself. That takes another deadbolt, a half-circle that rotates a hundred and eighty degrees around the back of the cylinder. You gag at the stench that billows out, and a second later Tomura does too.

"Flesh," comes the gurgle from within, accompanied by a splatter of something wet on the floor.

You tug once on one of the cables that secures the bodycuff plates to the inside of the maiden, and the whole mess clatters to the floor.

"Flesh… Smell flesh!" A still thoroughly restrained shape lurches out of the iron maiden, coming right at you. Sparks fly, and Moonfish lets out an awful wailing sound as the single tooth that he managed to get through his muzzle is caught in the fork of your weapon's blade.

You wrench sideways, and the tooth shatters, giving you room to stagger back out of the truck. Your arm is dripping blood from a jagged cut, and Tomura decides instantly that he'll kill Moonfish himself before the end of the summer camp mission.

Moonfish drags himself out of the van with another wave of rotten air, and everyone steps back. Drool leaks from his damaged muzzle as he sniffs the air, and Mr Compress steps in front of you while Tomura raises a hand.

"The Master has a job for you, Moonfish," he says.

Moonfish pauses, the phrasing Sensei said to use working its way through his brain. Or what's left of it, considering his diet. "Job?" he eventually gurgles.

"Job," Tomura confirms.

Moonfish sways. "Flesh?"

"Touch any of the people standing next to me and I will bury you alive," Tomura hisses. He really doesn't give a shit that Muscular is a good five meters away, going through the truck driver's pockets, and not next to him by any reasonable definition. "They are mine, not for you to eat. You want your usual reward, follow him."

Tomura points at Muscular, and Moonfish swings around to sniff speculatively in his direction. Another tooth wedges itself into the gap in the muzzle, then metal shrieks as it's twisted further out of shape. The tooth twists jaggedly around until it finds the leather straps holding the muzzle in place, then the mangled restraint falls to the ground and several more blades burst out of Moonfish's gums. They lift him off the ground, and with a grating clatter, walk him over to one of the dead Heroes on the ground.

Everyone looks away as a few teeth dig into Diamante's leg and start cutting open the kevlar layer. Only Muscular doesn't seem particularly bothered, but what little he can smell of the rest of the group through Moonfish's aura of filth suggests that Mr Compress in particular is fighting not to hurl.

Tomura is ready to puke himself by the time Moonfish comes back over, and the rest of the League has retreated to a much greater distance.

"What job?" Moonfish asks.

"Not yet. You'll be waiting in one of the Master's warehouses until I call you."

"Take flesh?"

Ugh. "There will be a fridge there. You've got plenty lying around here, take it with you."

Moonfish gurgles something unintelligible in reply, and starts collecting the bodies into a pile. As soon as they're in one place, Tomura calls Kurogiri and has him open a gate, dropping the newest 'recruit' and his… take-out unceremoniously into the warehouse that Sensei already provided. With mention of a case of beer, Muscular is baited into following, and the gate closes.

Tomura immediately moves to clean up the scene, Decaying the vehicles and Mister's boulder, then the stained and cratered sections of road. Once those are dust, he has Dabi glass it all.

"Sugar, can we talk to you back at the bar?" Magne asks.

"Downstairs," you add.

"Give me a bit, then sure." He's about lose his fight with nausea. And he wants a shower. "Maybe half an hour or so."

BTB

When Shigaraki arrives in the common room, dressed in entirely different clothes and smelling of nullifier detergent and candied ginger, everyone is sitting around the card table that Mr Compress procured, and only Twice and Toga don't have some kind of stomach soother in front of them. Your arm has been cleaned and bandaged by Kurogiri, a long jagged cut just below the shoulder that thankfully didn't need stitches but did require butterfly strips, and is slathered in hospital-grade antiseptic and numbing cream.

"What'd you want to talk about?" asks Shigaraki, radiating wariness.

"The new guys," Dabi answers.

"They sound fucked up!" Twice says. "I dunno, they can't be that bad!"

"Grateful as we are that they have… alternate accommodations," Mister starts, "some of us can't help but wonder why they were accepted. They do not exactly match the dispositions of the rest of the League."

"You mean they're disgusting psychotic assholes," Shigaraki says bluntly.

"Well… Yes."

Shigaraki hisses quietly. You don't think you've ever heard him growl, come to think of it. "Look, I don't like it either. Sensei told me to get them though, so I did. But he didn't tell me I had to keep them. They're going on the camp raid, and only the camp raid. And they're not coming back from there, either."

"You want us to kill them out there?" drawls Dabi.

He hisses again. "I don't care whether Muscular gets killed or arrested, but Moonfish is leaving in a bag. He attacked one of my party members, he's not getting away with that."

Toga looks at the bandage on your arm, then giggles, eyes gleaming and fangs bared. "Awww, Tomu, you say that like we're pack!"

Shigaraki recoils. There's no other word for it. His face turns bright red, and a confusing and confused mix of emotions seeps past his blocker spray. "If you guys wanna be a pack, whatever. I don't care either way, I've already got Kurogiri and Sensei."

"You don't smell like anyone else though?" Spinner points out.

"That's not— Kurogiri's got bone damage, he has to wear those braces. Heroes made a building collapse on him before Sensei hired him. His spine and wrists aren't stable."

A frown passes around the table. That's not how orthopedic support works at all, and it seems like everyone but Toga knows it. But you don't say anything, and shake your head ever so slightly at the others. He's starting to hunch into his hoodie, radiating defensiveness and hissing quietly with every breath, and you know that reaction. He'll lash out if you push.

"What about your Sensei?" you ask instead.

He brightens and fishes in his pocket, coming up with a tiny vial, the kind perfume samples come in. "Sensei got hurt a few years ago and can't be here in person, but he still sends his scent. He gave me this when I told him how the mission went!"

Somehow, that feels even worse to hear than the order to recruit the two monsters, and in the corner, Dabi twitches minutely. "Gonna give us a whiff, boss? Just so we know him when we meet him."

"You'll know him," Shigaraki snaps, tension level rubber banding right back up. After a minute of awkward silence, he rolls up one sleeve and adds a single drop of the scent to his wrist gland, then sticks his arm out toward the middle of the table. "Fine. Here."

Everyone leans in and sniffs. Leather oil, slightly burnt coffee, and something oak-like, and… satisfaction, you think. Masculine, too. Then something bitter starts to cut in, and Shigaraki yanks his arm back, pulling his sleeve down.

"You happy now?" he demands, not looking at anyone. "I have to go."

Dabi watches with hooded eyes. "…Right. See ya, boss."

Shigaraki all but runs.

Once the footsteps and the scent fade, Spinner coughs awkwardly. "Is it just me, or did he seem kinda… Disturbed, at the end there?"

"Threatened," Toga says softly. "He was threatened. Somehow."

"Why though?" Twice asks. "Man I wouldn't wanna be interrogated by us like that either!"

"I would hazard a guess that there is a disconnect between what he thinks and what he feels," Mister offers. "Every reaction was an honest one, even if his precise words were meant to deflect in certain places."

"I think the best we can do right now is support him," Magne says with a firm nod. "That is, if no one objects to Toga's suggestion, however joking it may have been."

Golden eyes blink. "Wait, what suggestion?"

"About forming a pack, hon."

The Beta lights up like Christmas. "Ooooh, really? You wanna?"

"A touch early to say yes, perhaps," says Mister. "But I find myself unwilling to say no."

"I'd say yes! It's better than being alone, anyway! You guys are awesome! I'm horrible company!"

"I'm not the joining type," Dabi drawls, eyes still fixed on the door to the stairs. "But if you are, I can tell you right now, support might be a good idea. Fuck knows boss ain't getting it anywhere else."

Taglist: @addicted2tomura @redr0sewrites @scary-grace @shigarakislaughter

[chimaerakirin]

Bridge To Babylon

Your Quirk allows you to escape almost any form of restraint, but you've never been able to slip the chains of social order. You aren't what they see, and it's cost you everything. You've had enough. If you can't escape this trap, you're just fine with destroying it. Outside looking in Shigaraki Tomura can destroy almost anything. Has been told that it's his right to do so. The one thing he can't destroy with a touch is slowly destroying him, and he doesn't understand why. He can't name the sense of wrongness he's lived with for most of his life. When do the nightmares end? But you recognize it. It's not enough to save you both, but it's a start.

Rated E for Explicit.

Chapter CW: None

Beta'd by the awesome @thatoneawkwardfeeling.

Index

Start - Next ->

First Scent

Summer isn't your favorite time of year. Never was, but the last few years… And people have been getting more and more obnoxious recently. Too obvious that you're alone, you guess. You need more incense, now that you think of it…

"You okay, sugar?"

You blink, looking up from your pastry. "Huh? Sorry, got distracted. You said something about work? You didn't get booted from the konbini, did you?"

Magne adjusts her shades and takes a sip of her mocha. "Technically no, but give me another week and boots will be the only thing left. Kiyoko came in for a bento and the manager was this close to outright saying it."

You grimace. Kiyoko is sweet, but she doesn't pass. At all. "You want me to do my thing? I can put his car in the harbor."

"Maybe on the way out. I get paid in two days, I wanna hold on that long at least. Anyway, no, that wasn't what I meant by work. Giran's put out a call."

Your eyes narrow. "For?"

"The League of Villains. They're recruiting."

"And if they haven't been caught over two months after breaking into UA…" You hum thoughtfully.

"Despite Hosu, too. They say the Hero Killer was a member."

You snort. "I don't buy that. The brain monsters are League, right? But Stain pretty blatantly killed one. Media just doesn't know its ass from its elbow."

"Like always." Magne raises her cup in a toast. "But still. That should just put them higher on the radar, but there's not a word of progress from the Heroes or the cops. I think they've got some staying power."

"You wanna join?"

"I wanna check it out, at least. You could come with me, you know."

You nibble your way through the rest of your pastry, thinking. Most villain groups wouldn't turn you away, not with your Quirk. How long they'd keep you depends on bigotry, but anyone who turns you away for that would lose Magne too. She does not put up with that shit.

"Where's the meet? And when?"

"Yokohama, in five days."

"That's a pretty long way."

"I know, sugar, but what reason is there to stay around here?" She sets her cup down and gestures around.

"…Yeah. Fair enough. You wanna throw a farewell party?"

"Sounds good to me."

Two days later, Magne takes off her apron, takes her paycheck, and takes a walk around the block while you slip in through the back and open the safe in the manager's office. The money inside pays for your train tickets to Yokohama and a couple of nights at a decent hotel with takeout meals.

Giran calls the meeting at a yakiniku place in Kamino Ward, but instead of going into the restaurant, he leads the two of you across the street to a bar with shuttered windows, entering through the alley door and climbing the stairs to the top floor.

You sniff the air as you go, filtering out Magne's pear-and-cherry and Giran's poppy-and-tobacco scents automatically. You're left with several other things that take a minute to pick through. An Alpha's sandalwood and amber is the weakest, lightly layered over a mix of blood-tainted freesia, a Beta, and something like badly roasted pork cut with the faint charcoal of blockers. Then there's something peachy, an Omega, and strongest of all, an Alpha's cloves and black tea. Confusing, with the burned meat, but nothing offensive.

Giran opens the door to the bar, and you listen to his greeting with half an ear while looking around the room. The walls are bare brick, and the paneling on the bar's footboard is splintered, but the bar itself and the wood flooring are polished, only faint marks where scars have been carefully buffed out. The shelves are well-stocked and lit with soft yellow on the undersides, with a skull on the top shelf. A TV monitor sits on a wing of the counter, a defaced poster of All Might above it, and a jukebox is in the corner to your left.

There are four people present. The sandalwood Alpha sits at the end of the bar, an abstract mask and feathered top hat obscuring his face, red gloves flashing at the ends of an orange dress shirt's sleeves as he makes cards dance across the background of a black waistcoat and emerald bolo tie. He has a showman's voice.

Staring at the cards with the fascination of a cat with a feather is the freesia Beta, a girl with frayed blonde buns and slit-pupiled golden eyes, who looks just a little too old for the middle school seifuku under her beige cardigan. One of her hands flips a box cutter like a pencil.

The peach Omega stands behind the bar, a sage waistcoat and striped tie not enough to distract from the way his white button-up's collar and cuffs are covered by silvery lamellar strips of armor, although the fact that his head and hands are seemingly made of smoke and shadow certainly draws the eye. The top edge of the armor comes to just under his eyes, which glow yellow like the plastic stars you stuck to your ceiling as a cub.

In the middle of the five seats is the black tea Alpha, lanky and pale, a severed hand resting on top of his head, with strands of pale blue hair ruffled and sticking up between the fingers, as if he pushed it up from his face like a pair of sunglasses for better access to the ginger ale in front of him. There's a straw sticking out of the can so he can sip hands-free while his eyes and thumbs are fixed on a hand-held game console.

"I thought you were only bringing one this time," the black tea Alpha says when Giran finishes talking. There's a whiff of charcoal coming off him, is he the source of the blockers?

"Surprised me too, so I guess you're getting a two for one special today." Giran chuckles and steps back.

Your friend steps forward. "The name's Magne. She/her. My friends call me Big Sis."

The sandalwood Alpha tips his hat. "Mr Compress. Pleasure to meet a lady," he murmurs.

A tiny bit of the confrontation seeps out of her at the greeting.

The other Alpha's dry, raspy voice doesn't quite put it back. "Skill tree and achievements?" At your blank looks, he sighs and rolls his eyes. "What's your Quirk and record? Oh, and what do you want out of the League?"

"Magnetism. I can polarize men as south and women as north, and attract or repel them like regular magnets. Armed robbery, mostly, a few dozen body casts, but three body bags that had it coming." Magne crosses her arms defiantly. "I am who I am and I take no shit for it. Anyone who tries to give me shit better be ready to eat it. The system's never done anything for me or mine, but it thinks it can chain me down? To hell with that, I live free. I heard you do too."

The black tea Alpha nods slowly. Then he looks at you. "And you?"

"Sanashi. Got a lock on hand?" You glance at the door behind you, which doesn't have a deadbolt.

Compress pulls a small safe out of one of his marbles and sets it on the bar. "Will this do?"

"Yeah. Nee-san?" You wait until Magne tests the box's lid, which doesn't even rattle, then walk over and open it with a light touch, pulling out a small tangle of jewelry. "Unbarred makes it almost impossible to lock me in or out of anywhere. I can't be tied up or chained down, either. I've cracked a few armored trucks open."

"And your goals?"

"I want to see Babylon burn," you growl.

BTB

Tomura looks at the two women. One tall, about Compress's height, and muscular, with rich auburn hair down to her shoulders and sunglasses, a work shirt and jeans. The other, a few centimeters taller than him and slim, silvery-lavender hair shaved to a short fuzz around the back and sides with maybe half a finger length on top, gold eyes in distinctly tanned skin, and wearing a plain white tank top with cargo pants tucked into combat boots, a battered denim jacket tied around the waist.

The first one gets points for not mentioning Stain. The second… The sheer venom in your tone strikes fire down his spine, and he sits up straighter on reflex.

"Do you perhaps mean in the classical sense?" Mr Compress asks.

Wait, classical? Babylon… "Like Gilgamesh?" Tomura adds. "With the Grail and everything?"

Compress doubletakes at him, but you only blink for a moment, glancing at his Cassowary.

"Yeah. Kinda like that." You walk over to the TV — no, to the post above it — and tear a strip out of the middle. "King of Heroes, right? The world is his garden? Fuck it. Light it up. Symbol of Peace my ass. Try Symbol of Decadence and Apathy."

You slide the scrap of poster into the ashtray that Kurogiri just put out for Giran, just a split second before the broker stubs his current cigarette out. Tomura watches as the edge of a red, blue, and yellow costume blackens and smolders, and sniffs lightly at the air. Omega-apple is layered with something angry and hurt, something vindictive. You hate the world for personal reasons. He wonders what it took from you.

"All right. You're both in." He waves at the empty bar seats. "Kurogiri, get Giran's money, then get some drinks for the new party members."

He watches you out of the corner of his eye as you slide into the empty seat next to him, dropping a canvas backpack at your feet. "So is this the whole… party?" you ask.

"Dabi's not here right now!" Toga chirps. "But the rest of us, yeah!"

"Is Dabi the one that smells like shitty barbecue?"

Tomura nearly sprays ginger ale on his Cassowary screen. "Dabi looks like shitty barbecue," he coughs. "But yeah, that's him."

"I've got two or three more lined up," Giran says, riffling the money Kurogiri just handed him idly. "Just waiting on an order for one of them. I'll be back in a day or three, Shigaraki-san."

"Keep the quality coming," Tomura replies with a wave. Then he turns to you and Magne. "Why'd you say she and her?"

Magne opens her mouth, then the bitter spike of annoyance is overwritten by mild confusion and she pauses. "You… couldn't tell?"

"Tell what?" He sniffs a few times. Vaguely masculine, he guesses? But mostly the slightly tangy fruit smell of cherry ice cream and pear juice, an Omega scent.

"I'm AMAB, sugar. Transgender." He stares blankly, and she adds, "My parents thought they had a son."

"That's a thing?" he asks.

"Sure is. You don't have to introduce yourself with your own pronouns, but if someone tells you theirs and you use different ones, you're the kind of ass that gets your head magnetized into the nearest hard surface. And if someone else doesn't say and you're not sure, it's polite to ask."

He nods slowly. On his other side, Mr Compress starts telling Toga about the jewelry in the safe he let you demonstrate your Quirk on, more specifically how he stole each piece.

"So what kind of membership perks does the League come with?" you ask, thanking Kurogiri with a nod as he puts a bottle of oolong tea in front of you.

Tomura points to the bottle. "For starters, that's free. So's everything else in here. If Kurogiri decides you've had enough, you're shit outta luck though, there's no going around him."

"Literally," Toga adds helpfully. She demonstrates by trying to lunge across the bar at a champagne bottle, and is promptly blocked by a warp gate that redirects her hand back in the other direction. "Awww… Just kidding, Giri! Hey, can I get a super-red Sprite?"

Kurogiri pushes her gently back to her seat and starts mixing grenadine and soda in a Collins glass, then pulls a transfusion bag from under the bar and tops the otherwise normal blend with blood. The whole thing is topped with a straw and a little paper umbrella, and you and Magne watch with slightly morbid fascination as the younger girl sucks the drink down with gusto.

"Perfect!"

"There's a few rooms downstairs if you need somewhere to crash, too," Tomura continues. "We don't have any nest mats but there's wifi here and delivery lockers a couple of blocks west if you wanna order stuff. Just talk to Kurogiri when you go to pay, he's got the card."

Magne's eyebrows shoot up. "Budget?"

Tomura shrugs carelessly. "Gold card."

She whistles, and Kurogiri clears his throat. "Please try to remain practical, however. Any support gear the League may require is to be similarly funded. Additionally, if you wish to order out for a meal, it may not be delivered here directly. There is an address on the other side of the block if you would rather not pick it up in person."

"Is there a Takaki Bakery anywhere around?" you ask.

"A what bakery?"

"You will have to look that up online," Kurogiri says apologetically.

You pull out a phone — the tiniest smartphone Tomura has ever seen, barely the size of a credit card — and use the wifi password that Kurogiri recites.

"What kind of phone is that?" he asks.

"Yokan Pearl," you answer without looking up. "If I need a bigger screen, I need more than a phone anyway."

"Do you have more than a phone?"

"Yeah." You don't elaborate. A few minutes later you do pull a laptop-tablet out of your bag and start checking local maps. "Mm, no Takaki. Damn, it's not as good from the freezer. Krispy Kreme over in Nishi Ward though."

"Do you have a special affection for pastries, perchance?" Compress asks.

"Stuffed breads in general, but I'm pickiest about the sweet ones. I kinda wanted to learn to bake when I was younger."

Toga leans around Compress to stare wide-eyed at you. "Why not anymore?"

"I had to change my priorities to survive."

"Well that's bullshit," Tomura mumbles.

"Huh?"

"I said it's bullshit." He waves his Cassowary. "I'm sitting here planning to take down All Might and the whole society he holds up, but I still have time for games. I'd go crazy if I didn't."

…Everyone is staring at him. Especially you.

"What?"

"Have you ever seen an oven in your life?" you ask. "They're a little bit bigger than a fucking game deck, just in case you're not aware, and most complete kitchens don't have them. I've been living out of my backpack the last two years, I'm lucky if whatever shithole I'm renting has a minifridge and a hotplate. Time is the least of my concerns."

Acrid disbelief and derision rolls over him along with the words, and his shoulders lock up as he tries not to visibly wince. "I didn't mean… Whatever…" He turns off his game and puts it away, then slides off his stool and stalks over to the door. "I'm going for a walk."

As the door slams shut behind him, he hears Toga giggle. "Well, he didn't try to kill anyone this time!"

BTB

The fact that Shigaraki is angry is undeniable, the smoky smell of it is a cloud around his abandoned seat and a trail out of the bar, but Kurogiri insists that it's not you he's angry at, and Toga agrees. The blonde Beta proceeds to explain how she knows that, pointing to a scar on the floor — to Kurogiri's swirling annoyance — where her stab was redirected in the almost-fight a week ago. She's entirely too gleeful for someone who almost got disintegrated.

You will admit that this is not the same type of storming off though.

"Shigaraki Tomura is not accustomed to frequent social interaction," the bartender elaborates. "He did not mean to insinuate any lack of effort or determination on your part. I believe he intended to express his appreciation for the health value of hobbies and support for the pursuit of yours, he simply… did not know how to convey that."

"Just how isolated is he?" Magne asks, eyebrow raised behind her shades.

"Sensei decided it would be safest for him to be raised in secrecy," is the delicately precise answer.

You eye the banded metal collar and the matching cuffs. The latter run from his wrist to two-thirds of the way to his elbows. You can't see a way for them to come off, although there's a thumb-width open space on the inner arm. Just enough to drag a sleeve through. "So you're his only packmate?"

"There is also Sensei."

You glance at Mr Compress and Toga, who shake their head slightly and shrug, respectively. They haven't seen or smelled anyone that could be 'Sensei.' Right. You'll reserve judgment on that one. Kurogiri doesn't deny being a packmate though.

Shigaraki comes back three hours later carrying two dozen donuts from Krispy Kreme — a box of classic glazed and a box with some of every other flavor — and sets them on the bar without a word, shoving his hands into his hoodie pocket as soon as they're empty. Toga squeals happily and snatches a chocolate-frosted donut with sprinkles. Magne and Mr Compress each take a custard-filled one, while you take a cinnamon sugar ring. Shigaraki catches your eye, radiating wariness-hope, and you nod and send out approval-appreciation.

"You gonna have one?" you ask quietly.

"Did at the shop," he mutters back. Looking a little closer shows bits of sugar glaze around his mouth and on the front of his hoodie. "They're… squishy."

"That's why I like them."

He's slow to take his seat again, and goes straight back to his game when he does. But he does sit, and slowly the room goes back to the same comfortable air that it had when you first arrived.

BTB

The next day is spent out with Magne and Toga, the latter of whom is already familiar with the neighborhood, searching for restaurants to try and home goods shops to look for nest materials at. The rooms below the bar aren't particularly large, amounting to two smallish bedrooms and a large closet, to go with a bathroom containing a shower but no tub, and a kitchenette. The latter has a small fridge, a countertop stove with two burners, a microwave, and a rice cooker and kettle, plus a few plastic plates and bowls, a jar of chopsticks and spoons, a santoku knife, and a single cooking pot.

The only food, aside from the remaining donuts, is a bag of rice, a half dozen eggs, and an eclectic assortment of cup ramen.

You find a store that sells fill-a-box nest kits and let Magne pick out the contents. Nest design has never been a matter of comfort for yourself, but Magne's been the closest you've had to pack for the last couple of years. You pay for delivery to the dropbox that Kurogiri told you about, then continue to the grocery store. Just the basics, for the most part, like miso and soy sauce, but a selection of sweet and salty snacks too, plus instant meals like frozen gyoza and pouch-curry. You text a picture of the haul to Kurogiri while hunched over the ice cream freezers, and he warps the gold card into the basket with a request for a few other things. You search the aisles and add the ginger ale, frozen shrimp, and chashu pork to the basket, then check out.

When you get back to the bar, Kurogiri takes the card back along with the receipt for the nest kit, and hands over an equivalent amount of cash for the latter. The crate itself is already in the room that you and Magne claimed, and she gets to work turning her corner into a decent nest while you put away the groceries. The chashu, shrimp, and soda are taken back upstairs to Kurogiri.

The day after that, Giran comes back with another person, an Omega who smells of citrus and cigarettes, with a black and gray bodysuit and a severe case of split personality. When Bubaigawara Jin, AKA Twice, demonstrates his Quirk by cloning Magne, he's accepted on the spot. And also hugged, because it's the first time in Magne's life that she's been able to use her Quirk on herself, even indirectly, and she's thrilled. Twice breaks down crying, and Giran turns away, but not before you catch the very edge of his smile.

Dabi drops by that evening, and you see what Shigaraki meant by him looking like shitty barbecue. He's wearing heavy-duty blockers, but there's the faint ashy tang common to fire Quirk users underneath, so you're pretty sure he burned himself somehow. You're not entirely sure why he's bothering with blockers though, the skin on his neck, shoulders, and wrists is so badly burned it would probably fall off entirely if it wasn't stapled to what little healthy skin he has. There's not a chance in hell he's got intact scent glands under that. Maybe his thigh glands are intact, but his ankles are just as scorched as everywhere else, and it's anyone's guess how high that goes. It's impossible to tell what his designation is.

He orders a whiskey highball from Kurogiri, and tolerates Toga's chattering until Mr Compress comes by with Chinese, at which point he stuffs a steamed bun in her mouth and turns away to eat his sweet and sour chicken in peace. He's deliberately aloof, a distinct contrast to Shigaraki's awkward near-silence, but he doesn't quite come across as disdainful.

Two days after that, Giran comes in with two more. One is a Beta, a man with a full-body lizard mutation dressed in the most dedicated low-budget Stain cosplay you can imagine. Shigaraki emits sour disgust at the sight, but it's overwritten by surprise from everyone when you all realize that the other person is wearing a middle school gakuran with his antique gas mask and helmet because he's still a student.

"Giran, what the fuck are you bringing me a cub for?" Shigaraki demands.

The broker looks slightly embarrassed. "He was insistent. He's also resourceful enough to find a handgun on his own, and he's got a pretty impressive Quirk."

"…How impressive."

"I can create a cloud of soporific gas a minimum of three hundred meters in diameter and maintain it for at least twenty minutes. It's toxic enough to cause lung damage if inhaled continuously, and acts as an extra sense that alerts me to movement within it," the cub says, a little pompously. "For obvious reasons, I haven't been able to test my true maximum range or duration."

Shigaraki is impressed, with the description if not the tone. He's still far from convinced though. "Uh-huh… And why exactly do you want in?"

The cub crosses his arms. "I hate UA. Its students are pampered, praised for their very existence, and their pathetically simplistic mindsets are offered no challenge. You attacked them twice. You mean to go after them a third time, don't you? I want to knock them from their high horse."

"Did you get passed over in the entrance exam or something?" Dabi asks.

"I—! I'm still in ninth grade, obviously! But my teachers have already made it abundantly clear that I don't deserve a recommendation to such a prestigious academy," the cub spits. "I'm better than anyone else in my classes, especially their moronic favorites!"

Shigaraki lifts the severed hand from his face and scrubs across the bridge of his nose in annoyance. "Your Quirk is useful, I'll give you that. But I'm not putting a cub on the field against a bunch of freakishly over-leveled hero brats. One class of those little shits plowed through over eighty career villains. Trash-tier mobs, yeah, but it was day three of school, they were running anywhere between four and ten on one, and the only one that was so much as scratched did it to himself. They've leveled up since then, and there might be twice as many of them next time."

"That's not—!"

"Can it, cub. Look, I'll give you two and a half million yen, in cash, if you'll let Twice here take your measurements. That'll let him clone you with full capabilities and all your current memories, so you can help out without being there in person. You can come back after you're more grown up and we'll talk about you joining for real, but until you've presented, a body double is as close to the action as you're gonna get."

The cub stares at him. "…Two and a half million?"

"That's what I said. Kurogiri, get it."

Kurogiri gives one of the bow-nods that his collar forces him to use, then reaches into… somewhere, and pulls out a stack of bills. After a meticulous count, he passes them over to Tomura, who holds them out to the boy. The boy recounts, then pockets the money and looks at Twice. "What kind of measurements do you need?"

Twice whips out a tape measure. In thirty seconds flat, he's got enough numbers to make any tailor jealous. "Just those measurements! Wouldn't you like to know. Check this out!"

The cloner holds out a hand, and a stream of mud-like substance pours from his palm to form into a duplicate of the cub.

"Heeeey, what do we call you anyway?" Toga asks.

"Mustard," the cub and his clone say simultaneous. Then the clone continues, "Like the gas, not the condiment."

"Make UA see how inferior they are," the original tells the copy.

"Of course."

The original nods, then leaves.

Giran gives Shigaraki a look that's almost impressed, and clears his throat. "I still get my fee though."

"Yeah yeah… Who's this one?"

The Stain cosplayer, who has been standing awkwardly at the back, steps forward and clears his throat. "I'm Igu— Uh, I am Spinner, for I am the one who will spin Stain's dreams into reality."

Shigaraki's face twists in disgust, and he puts the hand back on his face. His fingers are twitching dangerously. "What dreams?"

"Purging the fake Heroes, of course!"

You can't help it. You snort. "Fake Heroes? What makes you think there are any real ones?"

"Stain said All Might is a True Hero! The only one worthy of stopping him, in fact!"

"Right. So why didn't he?" You turn away. "Oolong, please, Kurogiri."

Clone-Mustard snickers.

Shigaraki makes a weird coughing sound and lets out a badly muffled burst of bubblegum amusement before he gets himself back under control. "Do you know how to use that sword? Or anything else useful?"

"I mean… I don't think I could duel Yoroi Musha just yet, but I'm confident I could take on any low-ranker with no trouble. As for my Quirk, I can stick to walls and I have decent night vision. Also, I can drive?"

"You don't sound very sure about the last bit," Dabi drawls.

"I learned from Grand Theft Auto," Spinner admits, cheek scales shading a reddish brown color. "I drove to the city from Niigata without getting clocked by any traffic cops though!"

You whistle. Even with vehicle reduction policies in the Quirk Era, Tokyo Metro traffic is still shit.

"Grand Theft Auto?" Shigaraki asks sharply. "What else do you play?"

"Uh… Witcher series, Fallout, Undertale… Dead Space and FNAF? A lot of things, really. I like resource management too, dungeon-builders and crafting-survival and farm life sims…"

The entire room smells like bemusement, even from Dabi, as Shigaraki nods decisively. "You can stay."

"Well then, I'll just take my fee and be on my way," Giran says, oozing smugness.

Taglist: @thatoneawkwardfeeling @redr0sewrites @scary-grace @shigarakislaughter