#inkling au

[chimaerakirin]

What Color Destruction

Shigaraki Tomura is perfectly certain of his place in the world, thank you very much. He is Sensei's successor, the man who can and will destroy Hero Society. There's no need to ask questions. His online bestie changes that... And then disappears. Livid at the abandonment, he throws himself back into Sensei's goals. A year and a half later, they return and beg for the chance to explain themself. As much as he wants to stay mad at them, it's hard when he sees them face to face, and once again he starts asking questions. What will really happen if he kills All Might? Is what he wants for his League really the same as what Sensei wants for him? And how badly would this friendship be ruined if they knew exactly how hot he thinks they are?

Rated E for Explicit.

Chapter CW: Masturbation.

Beta'd by the amazing @shigarakislaughter.

Index

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Closer

Tomura spends the next few days with Katsushika (or Chromika? Is that their villain name?) practically on call. They jump immediately if he messages them, and he wonders exactly what drives their eagerness. It's getting harder to stay mad at them.

It's getting pretty hard to focus around them too.

Tentacles.

Fucking tentacles.

He asks, as casually as he can, about their Quirk's transformation ability, and they admit that they have an intermediate form between what he saw and the 'animated paintball' that dissolves in water. One that's more squid-like.

Once that call's over, he has to shut his eyes and let his imagination take over. His dick is just too hard to think about anything else. He throws himself down on his bed and shoves his pants down his hips, wrapping his hand around his shaft and stroking. He's been fucking his fist to the thought of them since he first saw them, and while it's probably not a great idea to whack off to the best friend he's supposed to be mad at, he feels more awkward about having to guess what to fantasize about and possibly getting it wrong than anything else. He is never ever going to admit he decided on picturing both options then flipped a coin to decide where to start.

Just thinking about their warm, tight hole squeezing his cock isn't quite enough this time though. He groans and rolls over to dig through his drawer, grabbing his gloves and pulling them on, then picking out something more substantial. God, he only wanted to rub one out so he could think clearly again, but now it's getting all involved. The slicked up silicone slides so easily though, and it feeds his imagination like gasoline on the fire. They could do this to him, right?

Would they do this to him?

He staggers to the bathroom to wash up when he's done, and his dreams are full of color and writhing and want.

Four days after their meeting, he's treated to a solid hour of hyper chatter like they used to give him while de-stressing after work.

"What's wrong?" he asks bluntly when they finally pause.

"I! Um." They audibly swallow. "You were at Hosu, weren't you?"

He throws out a few teddy mines and jumps up to a semi-safe perch. "Yes."

"On the news. That was you on the water tower, wasn't it?"

"Yes."

"You're Shigaraki Tomura."

"If I say yes to that too, would you be scared?"

"No? It doesn't matter what your name is, you're still the guy that guards me while I go fishing in Final Fantasy."

"I'm the leader of the League of Villains."

"Oh. Why attack Hosu?"

He almost gets ganked by a flying mob and blasts it with the Bass Cannon. "You don't think it was to help Stain?"

They snort. "I'd have doubted that before I heard you talk about All Might. Stain is a freaking yandere fanboy, you'd never put up with him. Or with a teamkiller, and that brain-bat monster thing he killed was yours, right? Those are gross by the way."

"Yeah, they don't smell great," he admits. "But I'm glad you get that at least."

"Thanks. But really, why though?"

"I was trying to steal his rep gains out from under him. He pissed me off, my Sensei told me to try to recruit him, but he fucking stabbed me just to see what I'd do, then told me he'd kill me later and demanded a ride back to Hosu." He rubs his shoulder. "Asshole. I didn't even have all the bandages off from when I got shot yet."

"That sounds… Uh… Not great? Like, trying to recruit him? How'd your Sensei get that idea?"

He scowls. "I don't even know. I don't like to disagree with Sensei, I owe him a lot, but sometimes he's… kinda off-base. Like the UA thing. The Noumu he gave me for that one was supposed to be able to solo All Might because he swore the giant idiot was weaker, but he wasn't. Noumu got yeeted out of the arena like it was nothing and all Sensei said was he was overly optimistic. Which, sure, maybe, but I almost died and then I got yelled at like it was my fault Noumu got lost."

"He yelled at you because he miscalculated?"

"What? No, Sensei never yells at me. It was the Doctor that makes the Noumu that yelled. But it's not my fault, I'm not the one that programmed the Noumu. The Doctor's the one that didn't give it an auto-return or a GPS chip."

"And UA? Why attack them?"

"Oh for— What the fuck did the news even say there?"

"Uh… Eighty something low-rank villains arrested, two Heroes in the hospital, no casualties, leaders escaped, heinous attack, All Might Saves The Day, blah blah blah? Something about increased security at the Sports Festival and not letting the horrible villains intimidate us."

"What the— Why in the fuck would we attack the Sports Festival? That's stupid, never interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake, and that whole event is handing out free intel. And a giant arena full of people, a whole section of them Heroes? The entire reason I picked the USJ for our boss fight is because it's three kilometers away from the rest of the school, in a closed map that we could take off the network, with only two Heroes other than All Might and twenty level one brats to deal with." He scratches his neck. "Or at least they were supposed to be level one. I know the recruits I got were kinda shit but they still should have been able to ten-vee-one some fifteen year olds. I guess it probably didn't help we didn't know their Quirks, and we probably fucked up a couple of rolls when we scattered them, I think that girl in the water was a frog… Whatever. No, the whole point was to kill All Might."

They're quiet for a minute. "What do you get out of that? Killing him, I mean."

He's quiet for even longer. In-game, his ultimate weapon charges and he carpetbombs the horde, then picks off the few stragglers while the wave resets. "I'm… not sure anymore. Noumu was called the Anti-Symbol of Peace, but… symbols. What happens if I kill All Might like that?"

"…You turn him into a martyr."

"Damn it… How do I not do that then?"

"He's a human, right? That's what you said. You can't kill symbols, they're ideas. So don't try to kill the idea."

He jolts, then a smile spreads across his face. "Kill the human instead… I get it… Thanks. You know, you're a pretty good Player 2. You wanna join my League?"

"What do you plan to do, other than break All Might?"

"Destroy Heroes in general. The whole stupid society that relies on them."

There's another long silence. "I don't like Heroes. They choke everything else out. They take everything we could be and make it about them. Make it for them, and only them. They choose the colors we see, they draw their own shapes and anyone who doesn't fit inside their lines is thrown out. They take up every frame in every gallery, and if someone doesn't like the style, it's treated like saying the sky isn't blue and never mind the sunset. We're all different, every human, more than we were before. We call it Individuality in Japanese. So why is everything even more conformist than it was without that? They tell us to celebrate being unique, then they tell us that we don't have the right to prove it, that only they're allowed to do that. What gives them the right? You know I looked into making a speed-paint stream? Not even graffiti, just inking the wall in my house. And I was told not to, because even if I own the property I'm painting the stream would technically be up for anyone to watch so I could get accused of public Quirk use."

"Wait, seriously?"

"Yeah. Technically that's not how the law's written, but it happens." Onscreen, their character dies, and he automatically bombs the shit out of the area before running to rez them. "Thanks. So I guess my question is, if you erase Hero Society, what would you draw in the blank space?"

He opens his mouth, then stops dead, and promptly gets oneshotted in-game. "I… don't know. Yet. Sensei never mentioned… I need to figure that out, don't I?"

"Yeah, probably."

"…Will you help me? You're better at creation than I am. I mostly just destroy things."

"Um… X because I've seen your Minecraft builds and they're way better than mine, buuut… Okay. I'll help."

Tomura hears the SSR gacha roll sound in his head. "Great! You'll have to come around to the guildhall tomorrow or something so we can talk about gearing you up!"

くコ:ミ

The guildhall, Ayato finds, is a small, slightly shabby bar with splintered wood footboards, bare brick walls, a skull on the top shelf, and a computer monitor sitting at the very end of the bartop against the wall. Behind the bar is a person in a proper bartender's uniform and a metal collar that looks like the shikoro of a kabuto helmet, their hands and head completely covered in a billowing black-violet mist with only slanted streaks of glowing yellow in place of eyes.

"This is Kurogiri," Shigaraki says. "He's the League's fast travel."

Ayato bows. "Chromika. They/them. Nice to meet you."

Kurogiri bows back. "A pleasure. Would you like a drink?"

"You probably don't have Pocari, sooo, peach Fanta or maybe Mitsuya?" They sit down on the stool that Shigaraki gestures to, right next to the middle one, and hum while they wait for their drink. A can of green tea appears in front of Shigaraki immediately, but he doesn't touch it and stares at the misty man until a pink Fanta arrives on the bar. "Mm, thank you. So what will I be doing around here?"

Tomura opens his tea and drains half of a it before answering. "Mostly helping me plan stuff, at least until we get some more members. After that… Can you fight?"

They take a sip of their peach soda and fidget for a minute. "Okay, so, my biology is… a bit different than usual. Hold out your left hand? And don't cross your arms, keep it over there."

He does, looking puzzled, and they reach over to lock three of his fingers around their wrist. Then they raise his other arm until it's supporting their forearm and tell him not to move it. "Okay, now what?"

"Pull my hand down." He hesitates, so they grab their own elbow and shove it toward the bar. Their forearm bends, then bends more when he gets it and pulls their hand downward. "I don't have bones. It's all cartilage. So I'm not very strong in practice. I don't have anything to back up my muscles. And if I transform all the way, I don't have any muscle either."

"How, exactly, does that work?" Kurogiri asks.

"Can I splash some color on that wall over there?" They point to the blank space next to the TV. "It'll vanish in twelve hours, four if you put a kettle on a hotplate under it. And uh, maybe the floor in a straight line."

"Go ahead," Shigaraki says.

They drop their jacket and shoes on the floor and go over to stand in front of the jukebox. Then they shrink down into their paint form and jet-jump across the room. They impact the wall with a splat of magenta ink, and hang there against the brick for a few drippy seconds, then they slide back down and squidge their way back across the clean section of floorboard to the paint trail, at which point they can swim back to their starting point. It's a short trip, since while they're not quite half a meter long like this, it's still a relatively small room. Then they draw themself up and look back at Shigaraki and Kurogiri.

The latter is basically expressionless, but the former looks… Confused, they think. "Did that hurt?"

They twist their mantle in an approximation of a headshake, then they squirm back into their clothes and shift back. "I'm basically nothing but ink in that form, and it's non-Newtonian. As long as I don't end up in a pond I'll sort of pull back together if I'm spread out a bit. Also, I can hit something like fifty meters in one of those jumps."

"Cool, but we're gonna have to do something about you leaving your pants behind."

"Ah, I don't always do that? Or leave everything behind?" They brush off their clothes. "I need to work on it, I guess. But yeah. No bones like this, no bones or muscles like that, and I guess I'm decently fast but only if I've got legs or an ink trail. I do have pretty decent grip strength in intermediate though."

"What's intermediate?" Shigaraki asks.

They sigh and shift again, wondering if they should be grateful they picked a skirt today. This always looks weird in pants. Then again, it looks weird no matter what, and the skirt gives a better view of the details. The way their legs split and coil into six long tentacles that coil under them in place of their feet, their arms losing shape and their hands flattening and spreading into something between webbing and fins, suckers forming on what should be their palms and fingertips. Their ears extend and thin until they're nearly translucent at the bottom edge, and color bleeds down their back so that their torso matches all of their tentacles. "This," they burble.

Shigaraki makes a weird, quiet noise and takes a quick drink of his tea. Is his face red? "How good is your grip strength like that?"

"Okay so keep in mind that basically everything is grip strength when you're dealing a hydrostat. That's the same muscle structure as your tongue, by the way. Pushing and throwing don't work that well without leverage. But I could probably crush a steel drum with one." They shift back, adjust their skirt and shirt, and don't try too hard to force their 'hair' out of their eyes where it's decided to hang over their face. It always does that when they're embarrassed.

"Okay, that's useful… How bright does your RGB get?"

They frown. "You know, I haven't really tested that… Let me just—" They hold up a hand, concentrating, and a second later, the whole room is filled with a blue-white glare that overwhelms everyone. "Yipe! That bright, apparently!"

Shigaraki swears, and when they blink away the spots in their eyes they see his hand empty and slightly damp dust on his shirt, a small smear of red on his upper lip. Oh shit did he cut his lip on the edge of the can? He doesn't seem to care at least. Maybe he's used to it, with how chapped they are, that's gotta be murder in the winter. "Okay, you're on Eraserhead Duty if we have to deal with him again. Or when, probably."

"Who and why?" they ask blankly.

"You don't know Eraserhead? He's like, the one cool Hero on the planet. He's basically a ninja, but a real one, not a Flashy Bullshit No Jutsu showoff like Edgeshot. He kinda looks like a hobo, so he doesn't get a lot of attention, and his Quirk casts Silence on active abilities as long as he's got line of sight and doesn't blink. Might not be as long now, Noumu smashed his head into the pavement a couple of times, but he still stopped me dusting one of his students, and that was only after he soloed about half my mobs. I know he's still alive though, he was the annoyed-sounding one commenting on the first-year Sports Festival."

"I didn't watch the Sports Festival, sorry…"

He scratches his neck. "Oh right. How far can you throw your ink?"

"Not very, honestly. Not precisely. I can fling a water balloon pretty well though."

"Like grenades… Oh hey! Can you shoot?"

They brighten. "Yeah, actually. My aunt used to take me down to Okinawa in the summers, there's a paintball game place down there. Apparently Japanese law used to be stupidly strict about barrel velocity and even though it relaxed a lot the last hundred years or so it never got very popular away from the American military bases. I'm a little out of practice, but I won a couple of free-for-all tournaments as a kid."

"I was only thinking about water guns," he admits. "The Petrol Pyre, you know?"

They nod at the reference to their current game and the gasoline-loaded water pistol. "I can do those too, but it'd have to be modified. My ink's a lot more viscous than water, it'd clog up a normal Super Soaker."

"Is it poisonous?"

"Nope. Not really that different from real squid ink, honestly." They put their shoes back on and sit down again. "Anyway, I've still got some of my paintball gear at home. Some of it may not fit anymore, but—"

"Don't worry about that," Shigaraki interrupts. "Just make a list of what you need and our broker will source it."

"What's the budget?" they ask.

"What's the most expensive piece of gear you want?"

"Um. Probably a compressor belt pack? That's maybe forty or fifty thousand? Sixty-five if it's the high-speed silent loader… An encapsulator I could probably rent time on as long as I make the ink before I sign up, at least as long as no one looks at my record."

"Encapsulator, that makes the paintballs?"

"Yeah, the same process as making those gel-cap allergy pills, you know?"

"I'll talk to Giran, can't be that hard to find one."

"Uh. The one at the field in Okinawa was about the size of this bar…?" They rap on the countertop with their knuckles. "It was kind of old though."

"I said I'll talk to Giran and I will. Don't worry about the budget."

"Well… okay then." They pick up their Fanta and drink the rest of it, then pause. "Um. Is this a job? Like, a job-job, with like… benefits? That needle shop still buys my designs, but there's only so much I can get for those and takoyaki costs money, so…"

"Oh, right. Kurogiri, how much were we going to pay the trash mobs at the USJ?"

"Five million yen, Shigaraki Tomura."

"And there were eighty of those useless morons," he mutters, scratching his neck. "Is five million a month good? Or should it be per week?"

Ayato nearly falls off their stool.

Shigaraki clearly misinterprets that response, because he nods decisively. "Per week. It'll have to be cash though, unless you've got a secure account. Or if you can open one. You should probably open one, I can get you an invite to VNet and you can get into one of the Clockwork Tower fronts from there."

He digs out his phone while they give Kurogiri a look of confused pleading.

"Shigaraki Tomura, I do not think—"

"Can it, Kurogiri." He doesn't even look up from his phone. A minute later, theirs buzzes in their pocket, and they extract it to look at the message. "That link will die in forty-five seconds, better click it fast."

They do without thinking, and go through the signup process for 'Villain Net' mechanically.

"Use Chromika as your account name," he instructs.

They do, and when they hit Create Account, the screen is replaced by a logo of circuit-covered gears. The gears spin for a minute, then…

[Records located. User CHROMIKA (F-RANK) verified.]

"How'd it know my rank?" they ask blankly.

"Clockwork Tower is all bullshit-tier hackers, the group's run by an S-rank whose Quirk is basically Ghost In The Shell, according to rumor he doesn't even have a physical body outside the network anymore. If you see anyone on the forums that doesn't have a verification mark it means they don't have any records that the Tower could find, official arrest or otherwise. Ranks are all legal designations. I'm currently A-ranked, Kurogiri is B." He shows them his phone.

They note the screenname and look it up on theirs, then send him a message. "Okay, now what?"

"If you wanna set up the bank, probably better to do it on PC. I don't know the process, but you can get an appointment at a physical bank from VNet to deposit your starting cash. Kurogiri, get that for them."

"I can't carry that much money back to my house," they squeak nervously.

"That's fine, Kurogiri can warp you near and I'll walk you the rest of the way if you want."

He… genuinely doesn't understand, does he? "Um, Shigaraki—"

"Tomura."

"To-Tomura, that's… Five million is almost a year's worth of money, there's fifty-two weeks a year, how do you even have that much to offer?"

He stops and stares at them. "Sensei said I could offer that to the USJ recruits. And that was for like… an hour's work. How's that a year's worth of money?"

"Uh… That was contract work and it pays differently? And you were going after All Might, so… It's like the difference between grinding and raiding?"

He stares for another minute, and they can see the gears grinding. "So… you only want 5 million a month?"

"That's… probably more reasonable?" they say weakly. "Though when I said benefits, I was mostly asking about medical… You did say you got shot…"

He shudders, visceral disgust flashing across his face while he rubs at his right shoulder, and shakes his head. "No. No healer. I'd rather just give you more money. An extra million if you get hurt."

They blink. "Uh. Okay?" Whatever caused that reaction, they probably don't want to know…

"Good. Kurogiri, get their first payday ready."

"Wha— At the start of the month? Not the end?"

Tomura glares at them. "Why not? You're not going to quit."

"Of course not! Rewards usually come after the quest, not before, is all…"

"I don't care how other people do it," he snaps. "Kurogiri, do it."

Without a word, Kurogiri vanishes through a portal that expands from the mist billowing off his body. Or the mist that is his body. They honestly have no idea which. Maybe if they could see his ankles and if there's mist coming out of the bottom of his pants, but it's not going through his sleeves and he's probably not wearing sneakers with an outfit like that, and no one wears ankle socks with dress shoes so that probably wouldn't help anyway, never mind. Anyway, he comes back a couple of minutes later holding a tray with a few bundles of cash wrapped in rubber bands and a manilla envelope. It looks like four stacks of a hundred 10,000-yen bills and four rolls of 5,000-yen bills, which is more money than they've ever seen in one place in their life, and it's just a little bit terrifying when the bartender shows them that the stacks are actually really honestly banknotes all the way through, and not like a real one on each end with novelty paper sandwiched in between. Then he slides the cash into the envelope neatly and seals it shut for them.

"Your first payment, Chromika-san," he says tonelessly.

Ayato stares awkwardly at it for a minute, then checks their jacket pockets to see if it will fit in one. It will, one of the inner ones, if it's crumpled up a bunch, but it's really obvious that there's something in there. "I should have brought a bag," they mumble.

"You won't need to walk it far, just give Kurogiri the coordinates or an address," Shi— Tomura assures them.

"Oh, okay. Um…" They think for a minute, then rattle off the address of a konbini not too far from their house.

Kurogiri promptly looks it up on his phone. "Are there cameras in the alley?"

"No, don't think so. Um… The building next to it is two stories and I can drop from the roof of that one if you'd rather?"

"Very well then."

"Open it up, Kurogiri. I'm gonna walk them home." Tomura slides off his stool.

As they walk into the warp, Ayato realizes something odd.

There's no cut on Tomura's bloody lip.

Taglist: @thatoneawkwardfeeling @scary-grace @userfayz

[lea2107-foxsin]

Geez, please give me some motivation to draw more often. I am kinda sick of just drawing floating heads.

Nevertheless I show you some doodles during classes again.

First one is just a try to imitate the 7ds artstyle... gonna try hard to actually make it look a like.

The second drawing happened to be Ban as an inkling. I tried Monspeet as an octoling either, but it sadly turned out like trash.

The last drawing was made without guidelines. I'm kinda proud about how it turned out. :D

That's all. :)

[themurphyzone]

In honor of all this Splatoon stuff (I mean Splatoon 2 tournament + Inkling confirmed in Smash Bros), proposing an Inkling AU for Milo Murphy’s Law. The Bureau of Time Travel catches wind of someone attempting to go back in time to save humanity from dying out. If they succeed, then the Inklings and all other intelligent sea life will cease to exist. 

And for the love of God don’t give Milo a Killer Wail. 

[chimaerakirin]

What Color Destruction

Shigaraki Tomura is perfectly certain of his place in the world, thank you very much. He is Sensei's successor, the man who can and will destroy Hero Society. There's no need to ask questions. His online bestie changes that... And then disappears. Livid at the abandonment, he throws himself back into Sensei's goals. A year and a half later, they return and beg for the chance to explain themself. As much as he wants to stay mad at them, it's hard when he sees them face to face, and once again he starts asking questions. What will really happen if he kills All Might? Is what he wants for his League really the same as what Sensei wants for him? And how badly would this friendship be ruined if they knew exactly how hot he thinks they are?

Rated E for Explicit.

Chapter CW: Feminization. A bit of smut. Mirror sex, anal, masturbation.

Beta'd by the amazing @shigarakislaughter.

Index

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It takes another hour for Kurogiri to finish his banking sidequest. He doesn't know where all of the accounts are, and a couple of the Doctor's discretionary accounts have already disappeared, which Mechanist can't or won't help recover, but the rest are accessible, and quickly distributed between Kozuki Ryouma, Utagawa Ei, and Nakamura Kalani (everyone stares at Kurogiri at that one), plus a side account labeled, for the moment, with the name Midoriya Yoichi.

Once that's done, Kurogiri gives Giran his laptop back, takes the folder of real estate options, and warps everyone to the high-rise apartment that Tomura grew up in.

They all crash out immediately, Tomura and Chromika curling up in his room while everyone else flops on the nearest piece of furniture. In the morning, Kurogiri throws together a pile of rice, miso soup, and an incongruous plate full of tsukune from the freezer, while everyone else cycles through the shower on a strict five-minute timer. Dabi goes last, since he needs an extra ten minutes to replace four staples in his cheek where Gran Torino kicked him.

After eating, Tomura requests Twice make two clones of Mr Compress, sending one in a marble with a blood-disguised Toga to collect some cardboard boxes from a nearby liquor store, then having the other clone and the original start stripping the furnishings and sealing the boxes that he already packed. Spinner is invited to help pack up what's left of Tomura's room, including a pile of limited edition game figures, while Dabi and Magne start taking the kitchen apart and Twice starts removing the living, dining, and bedroom light fixtures. When Toga and Clonepress Number One get back with the boxes, Toga is assigned to boxing up the contents of the bathroom. All the dirty laundry is shoved into the washing machine for storage, while all the food that will fit is crammed into the fridge regardless of whether it needs to be kept cold.

By the time everything is packed up, it's been five hours, everyone is starving, and there's a multi-tier bento full of marbles sorted by room of origin sitting on the kitchen counter, everyone eating konbini bento while Tomura passes around the real estate folders.

"All right, we need a new base. These three neighborhoods match the requirements I gave Giran. Low income and relatively high crime but not a complete wasteland, no gangs that the locals are fond of, and perpetually ignored by Heroes and cops both. There's at least one empty building in each that can be renovated and turned into a headquarters, and an adjacent empty lot with utility line taps for a house—"

"Why a house?" Toga asks.

Chromika reaches under their shirt and pulls out a marble set as a pendant on a plain string necklace. "Need somewhere to put mine."

"Ooooh."

Tomura waits to see if the interruption is over, then continues. "People in all three neighborhoods won't trust newcomers by default, but we can build rep. We take care of them, they'll take care of us. Giran will take us around on tour soon enough, but I want everyone to look over this now and if anyone has a problem with something they see, say so."

"Where will I get blood?" Toga asks.

"There's a small clinic in or near each neighborhood. May take a couple of sidequests to get set, but you should be covered. And Giran has a line on medical supplies, we'll buy from him if we have to."

"How will any renovations be handled?" Magne asks.

"Local tradesmen as much as possible, obviously. If anyone knows someone we can trust for stuff beyond that, we'll look into it."

No one has any further questions, so once they finish eating and Tomura has destroyed the trash, Kurogiri walks a lap of the apartment to make sure nothing was missed in the packing. Satisfied, he calls Giran and asks when they can get a tour of the prospective properties. The answer turns out to be tomorrow, and the broker is more than happy to rent them a safehouse for a night or three if they need accommodations until they've chosen. For a fair price, of course.

Since they already stripped the apartment down to the wires, they take him up on that, and the next day, he shows up on the doorstep to start the tour.

All three neighborhoods are in the Greater Tokyo Area. One is in Kawasaki's Narushada district, one in Kessheru in Tokyo itself, and finally there's Merida-dan up near Saitama. Narushada is written off fairly quickly upon inspection. The area is too close to Yokohama, so it's a bit crowded with refugees, and half the district is factories and warehouses, with the empty lot being set between a derelict fish cannery and a deservedly condemned danchi block. Kessheru and Merida-dan are more promising. In the end, they choose Kessheru. While Merida-dan has a somewhat nicer empty building, the associated empty lot is on the corner, there are already six bars on the street, and there's something vaguely off about the elementary school that they pass on their way to check out the clinic.

The property in Kessheru, on the other hand, is two buildings bordering adjacent sides of the empty lot. One is a two-story commercial building with a closed-down bar and a small living area above, while the other is a three-story mansion-type apartment building. Also on the block are a konbini, a Korean grocery, a laundromat, a seamstress shop, and a bicycle repair place, before it wraps back around into housing. Next to the empty lot in the middle is a scrubby community garden, a double row of sunflowers forming a fence between the vegetables and the bare dirt. A bar-windowed pharmacy is next to the clinic the next block over, there's an assortment of second-hand stores and repair shops, and a scattering of fast food joints and dingy izakayas. The two nicest restaurants around appear to be a yakiniku place and a Jonathan's. All in all, the neighborhood is about ten blocks, which Tomura is pretty sure the League can handle without spreading too thin.

Giran looks remarkably smug when they say they'll take this one, and Tomura stops and eyes him warily. "All right, what's the catch?"

"It's a bit more expensive than the others, on account of having some inbuilt security. Walk with me for a minute." Giran leads them into the Korean grocery and says something to the clerk in a language that Tomura just barely recognizes from some old League of Legends pro tournament videos.

The clerk, a thirty-something man, replies in the same language, and Toga giggles.

"He said Giran's accent is still bad," she whispers loudly.

"It is," the clerk says. "You speak Korean?"

She screws up her face and wobbles a hand, saying a word or three.

"Well… You don't sound entirely Japanese, at least." The clerk looks back at Giran. "Are these your customers or mine, Samchon?"

"Mine first. How's Gunhee doing today?"

"Not too bad. I think he's up for a walk and a chat. Not more than an hour though. I'll get him for you."

Gunhee turns out to be the clerk's father, at least seventy, with a thick Korean accent and flyaway hair, and he walks them over to the closed-down bar. As soon as he lays a land on the boards nailed over the door, they melt away, and the building suddenly looks much less decrepit.

"My Quirk," he says, "is called Fidelity. Once I deem something secret, only those I trust can perceive it. To anyone else, it is unremarkable. I've used it to hide things for Giran here since he was just an apprentice."

"Hey now, don't go bringing up ancient history," Giran protests mildly.

"I can keep the fact that you've moved in here hidden, for a price. Not sure how much longer I'll be around, but my son can take over once I'm gone, if he applies himself."

"Why hide the bar?" Kurogiri asks.

"I haven't got the energy to run it, these days, but the cellar storage is still needed. If you open this place back up, you'll need to take care of that."

"Did you get many customers when it was open?"

"A fair few. Nothing too fancy. Come have a look around." Gunhee unlocks the door and shows them inside.

It's not that different from the bar in Kamino as far as general aesthetics go. The biggest distinction is having twice the floor space and counter length, plus the shuttered windows. There are two bathrooms, a manager's office with an old computer, a kitchen with just enough space for a grill and a cooking pot or two plus a dishwasher, and a dusty storage room half-stocked with crates of alcohol and spare glasses, all on the first floor. Set in the storage room floor is a trap door, which Tomura can only see after it's pointed out to him.

"There's a private room upstairs," Gunhee says, pointing out a dumbwaiter behind the bar, then showing them the staircase. When he admits he's not up to climbing it right now, Kurogiri offers a warp gate, and the tour continues.

The private room is similar enough to downstairs, but with couches instead of plain chairs, and space for a game table or three. Mr Compress promptly proves that by producing his good poker table and its chairs, then making copy-and-paste gestures while commenting about billiards. When Spinner brings up arcade machines, the magician gives a shit-eating grin and pulls a vintage pinball machine out of his stash, one of the earliest reconfigurable tables.

"Kids these days," Gunhee grumbles good-naturedly when he sees it.

"My good sir, this machine is older than you are," Compress says. "And worth a luxury condo in Roppongi, to a collector."

Gunhee snorts. "I'm no collector. Back to business. Out that door there, there's stairs toward the lot, and I suppose if you're the athletic type or feel like building a bridge you can get to the balcony in the corner mansion."

"Really?" Chromika steps out the door when the old man unlocks it, and Tomura watches them take a quick jump from one railing to the other. Then they jump back. "That's pretty convenient. Couldn't see the door or the deck from outside before. Fidelity again?"

Gunhee nods. "So how does it sound?"

Tomura looks around the group. Only Twice seems unsure, and he's alternating between nodding and shaking his head. "We'll take it."

くコ:ミ

It takes two days to sort out the empty lot so that Chromika's house can be installed with proper utility access. Two weeks to find all the contractors they need to get the apartment building fixed up. A block of four units on the second floor are opened up and combined into one large living space, a kitchen installed to Kurogiri's standards first and foremost. Big chunks of wiring need to be redone, along with half the bathrooms, and several rooms need new flooring or fresh drywall. It would probably take a year to finish if it wasn't for the speed-building techniques that became common alongside Heroes and their brawls. Instead it's projected for two months, and there's enough refurbished rooms in the first week that everyone, barring Tomura and Chromika, has somewhere in the apartment block to sleep.

Tomura, meanwhile, really couldn't care less about having a room in that building. As soon as the house is planted in the empty lot and the pipes are running clean, he grabs the boxes from his old room and starts unpacking them.

Without a single question, Chromika starts rearranging the furniture. The last of their aunt's belongings are boxed up and put into storage along with their own bed, and his desk and a few of his shelves are installed in their former bedroom, his PC and drawing supplies set up in the newly empty space. His other game systems are set aside to be placed in the apartment common area along with most of his books, his old bed, and the rest of his shelving.

For the first time in three years, he can put his entire wardrobe in the same place, not needing to hide any of it. The first time he goes to the apartment kitchen in a skirt, Spinner walks into a wall, and Kurogiri nearly drops a whole tuna filet on the floor.

"How long has this been a thing?" his caretaker asks.

"A couple of years. Ayato helped me work it out."

"Ayato, huh?" Kurogiri grins. "Good job keeping it quiet before. Anything I need to know?"

"Same name and pronouns, but a zip-up hoodie means female." Tomura pauses. "I'm not getting a haircut, by the way."

"No problem. I was never any good with the scissors anyway."

Chromika pulls him into their study and opens their sketchbook for him, the one they've been keeping out of his reach ever since they started taking photos of him in every new outfit. It's full of him, drawings of him in every pose they've pushed him into, from every angle. A handful of nude sketches make his face burn, then he turns the page again and sees the night he told them the League was ditching Sensei. The drawings change then, going from hints and suggestions of a curve to the chest to having an actual bust. There are a few rough outlines redoing the older pictures, and a couple of headshots predicting longer hairstyles, but the centerpiece is the several pages of highly detailed colored pieces in very feminine poses. At first dressed only in lingerie, and fancier stuff than he ever bought, but then that disappears and the drawings are fully nude. His paper self's breasts are rendered in loving detail and full color, and while a couple of images show him completely female, with wide hips and a pussy on display, the rest are accurate to life, dick going from a resting state to a raging erection as he turns the pages. The final drawing is the most extreme, colored with extra-pink shading, near-red perfect circles dotting the skin around the neck, chest, and inner thighs, legs splayed, dick smeared and dripping, eyes half-closed and mouth gaping.

It's breathtaking. The next day, he goes to Kabukicho — Kurogiri is perfectly happy to hand him a wad of cash and wave him through a warp gate — and makes his way through the streets until he finds the shop listed on VNet. He walks out with his pockets fifty thousand yen lighter and his shirt just a bit tighter, then he goes home and wraps Chromika in a hug.

"How do you feel, Tomu?" they ask, nuzzling his neck.

"Like myself." He spent the whole trip back thinking about it.

"Comfy?" They tug at the front of his hoodie.

"I think so." He pulls it off over his head and looks down at his chest. He'd think he's wearing one of his padded bras if he couldn't clearly see the twin points stretching at his shirt.

It's obvious from the instant brilliant pink of their tentacles that Chromika sees it too. "Mirror," they suggest.

He nods and heads for the bathroom, then strips his shirt off and just sort of. Stares. At his reflection. His new, temporary(?) breasts aren't particularly large, they'll be easy to hide in a Chellsport top if he wants to, but they're still big enough bounce slightly when he drops his arms along with his shirt, then a little more when he hops up on his toes and comes back down. It's a little weird, feeling the jiggle physics in first person, and he can already recognize that he'd probably benefit from a sports bra in a fight, or at least one of the lined camisoles, but it's not uncomfortable.

They're soft to the touch, too. Squishy. And sensitive. Considering he spent the trip home very, very aware of the soft cotton of his shirt moving over his skin, actual pressure has his breath hitching and his pants tightening. "Hahh… Uh… Yato?"

"Hm?"

"Are they always supposed to be so…?"

"Be so what?" they ask distractedly.

"I swear I can feel air on them."

"Yeah, that can happen. Especially when I've just shifted."

"Oh. Yato?"

"Yeah?"

"Want you to touch them."

"Okay." They step closer and reach up to cup his breasts in their palms. They squeeze and knead gently at the swells of tissue, then flick their thumbs across his nipples. Rosy pink and perky, they're vastly different from the flat, pale brown nubs he started with, and and every touch on them sends a blaze of sensation straight to his cock. Chromika spends a few minutes working up to playing with them directly, then after a few light twisting pinches, leans in and kisses one.

At the first lick, he's overwhelmed entirely, and moans softly as his underwear is stained white. "Y-Yato… Please…"

"Please what, Tomu?"

"N-need you. Right here."

"In front of the mirror?"

"Yeah."

"You ready?"

He nods, then shivers as they move around behind him and steer him over to plant his hands on the edge of the sink. They unzip his jeans and push them down his hips with his underwear, then free their own cock and grind it against his rear. He whines as they take a moment to play with the plug that he's been wearing since the house was hooked up, then they pull it out and set it in the sink. They sink two fingers into the toy's place immediately and start scissoring him open with the familiar slickness of their ink, their free hand morphing into a tentacle and dancing across his tits. In no time at all, their cock is stretching his asshole wide open, their palm-suckers are latched onto his nipples, and he's whimpering under the triple assault on his nerves. He loves when they use their suckers like that, but it's so much more now than it was before, and he never wants them to stop.

"You see yourself, Tomu?" they whisper in his ear after a particularly deep thrust. "See the look on your face?"

Eyes wide and wild, cheeks flushed and streaked with tears, chin slicked with drool. "Uh-huh…"

They release his nipples and wrap their arms around his ribs just under his breasts. His flesh is marked with near-red circles just like the drawing they made. "See how your pretty tits bounce when I rail you?"

"Uh-huh… Mmn, put your suckers back on," he demands.

"You want me to suck on them some more?"

"Yes!"

"For how long?" The very tips of their tentacles curl around his nipples, but only just.

"Forever!"

They shift their hands back and grab his hips, then bend him over further and start pounding even harder. Their cock drives past his prostate with every thrust, winding him tighter and tighter, then the tension snaps and he lets out a choking wail as his twitching cock spills all over the front of the sink. A few thrusts later, and he sobs at the feeling of mixed cum and ink flooding into his ass.

He's still hard. So are they. But they pull out anyway, grabbing the plug from the sink and sliding it back into his dripping hole.

"Yato?" he whines in protest.

"I need to make lunch, Tomu. I want you to go lay down in the tatami room. No shirt, no bra. Play a game, take a nap, get used to having these." They tweak his nipples again.

"Fine, but I wanna fuck more after lunch."

"After dinner," they counter. "I'll stuff your ass with the vibrator and ride you while I suck your tits."

He brightens. "Deal."

He bought a one-week demo. It takes him less than two days to decide he wants to keep the changes. He's not even trying to do it, he's just playing around. Early morning, still half asleep, the friction of the sheets on his chest gets him started, so he starts to tease his nipples. Gently at first, moistening them with licked fingers and blowing air across them for the stiffening chill, then he's pinching, twisting, and tugging, getting more and more wound up, writhing on the bed, then his hips jerk and his cock spills across his stomach and he's wide awake, staring at the ceiling in shock.

"Mmf… Tomu?" Chromika blinks sleepily at him. "Whas goin' on?"

"I—" He swallows hard, throat dry. "I came just from playing with my tits."

"Yaaay," they mumble, curling into his side. Two minutes later, they sit up with a yelp. "What?!"

He gestures to his torso, his reddened nipples and the sticky stains on his abdomen. "See?"

They stare at the evidence, eyebrows raised. "I wanna try."

"Give me a bit to cool off first."

くコ:ミ

The bar opens a week after they move in. Business is slow at first, and Kurogiri has to talk to Gunhee about recipes when one 'returning' patron complains about the lack of yangnyeom-style chicken. Then he has to 'hire' Chromika to do most of the cooking, since he's not used to keeping up with a full sakana menu, even a simple one. Karaage in rice-flour batter, yangnyeom chicken, yakitori, chikuwa, boiled edamame, pickled or grilled vegetables, and the usual assortment of dried snacks. At Tomura's suggestion, there's also a weekly schedule of daily specials, including taco rice on Tuesdays and ikayaki on Fridays.

Twice and Magne work with the contractors on the mansion's renovations and remodeling. The former's ability to multiply the workforce makes him fairly popular, and the team leaders arrange a system where the clones will wear red hardhats or bandanas to identify them and ensure that the originals can't be accidentally given the riskier tasks, like voltage tests and structural integrity checks. The latter spends a few days being tested on her trade school knowledge before being assigned to the wiring team. The team makes a few jokes about how 'dainty' she is, which put her on the defensive until one of the movers comes back from sick leave — it turns out that the beefiest worker in the entire crew is a ciswoman named Suzume, over two meters tall and built like a champion weightlifter.

Mr Compress ingratiates himself to the owner of the independent second-hand furniture store when he identifies some genuine antiques that had been mislabeled as imitations. The pre-Quirk tansu chest in particular is appraised for enough that when it's sold at auction, he's given a small cut of the profits.

Toga worms her way into the clinic. After she displays her Quirk and it's realized that she can exactly match the blood type of any sample she's given, she donates a couple of pints for a local with a mutation that makes them incapable of receiving normal types. It earns her an internship, learning first aid and proper phlebotomy. She's dismayed at being told she'll have to go back to school if she wants a real apprenticeship, but Kurogiri bribes her with custom sweets — castella cake made with blood instead of egg, an Italian chocolate confection called sanguinaccio dolce, and gummy bears injected with droplets of blood — as studying snacks. He also helps her review the middle school materials that she hasn't touched in two years to help her pass the entrance exam for the online school that Spinner recommends. She admits she finds it a lot easier to focus on the material now that she's getting blood regularly.

Dabi finds the local tattoo shop and gets a part time job with a reference from his old boss at Mata Hari, but spends most of his time drawing up plans for vigilante patrols. On particularly hot days, he sits in the shade behind the bar with a Coldflame shichirin, and when the local kids realize the grill is radiating cold, he grumbles in fake annoyance and produces a box of popsicle sticks and some pitchers of fruit juice. He insists he's only bribing them to go away, but he makes no effort to chase them off, and freezes any extra flavors they bring to his table.

Spinner starts out patrolling the streets from breakfast until dinner, and he does stop a few petty thieves, but after a few days of that he rubs a couple of scales off his heel and has to take a rest from the walking. While he's letting the blister cream soak in, he gets drawn into a conversation between Chromika and a couple of old men with visible mutations — one with a scorpion tail and chitinous fingers, and another with the build, pelt, and ears of a bear — about the employment prospects for heteromorphs. Chromika explains a bit on their cousins' situation and how they ended up in it, and it turns out both of the old men racked up petty convictions in their youth for intimidation and threatening behavior. Quietly, Spinner asks if they can tell him more, and starts taking notes as they're launched into Back In My Day mode. It sends him down a rabbit hole of research, and the League ends up buying a couple more computers after he spends five hours straight looking at statistics online. When his heel is recovered and he resumes his patrols, he takes a notebook with him, and stops to talk to the people the old men mentioned, offering to help with their groceries and their gardens in exchange for their stories. When Tomura asks what he's doing, he says he's asking the same question Tomura wanted Midoriya to ask: Why?

Tomura himself focuses on learning how to fight properly. While his ability to dodge hits and analyze his opponents in action are top notch, it's pointed out to him that he was only ever taught to close in, slap someone with all five fingers, and get back out of reach until they finish crumbling. Between that and the fact that his new proportions have changed his sense of balance, he ends up spending his mornings with Kurogiri, learning to use a staff. Which leads to the somewhat awkward revelation that Kurogiri was a Hero student at UA before he became a Noumu, and the even more awkward discussion about how the one the Doctor really wanted that day was Shirakumo Oboro's best friend. Tomura spends most of the day in an existential crisis upon being told that he was this close to having Eraserhead for a caretaker as a child.

くコ:ミ

It's early August when they move into Kessheru. A month later, they're still not considered locals, but they're not outsiders either, so the clinic doctor has no problem approaching Tomura to ask where Toga is when she doesn't show up for the second day in a row.

Tomura, surprised, doesn't have an answer.

Toga comes back the next day near sunset, outright skipping with glee, and plugs one of their burner phones in to charge while asking Kurogiri what's for dinner.

"And where have you been the past couple of days?" he asks, keeping his hand on the bottle of pomegranate juice.

"I went on a secret mission!" she chirps.

"Is the mission done?"

"Yep!"

"Then you can give a full report on it."

Toga looks around the room to find the rest of the League staring at her. "Oh all right. I went to see Izukun!"

"You what?!" Tomura yelps.

"You went to UA?!" demands Dabi.

"Oh no, I went to um, where was it… Takoba Stadium!"

Kurogiri blinks, holds up a finger for pause, checks his phone, then facepalms. "Excuse me. You went… to the Provisional Hero License Exam?"

"Oh that is so much worse," Spinner groans.

"Relax! No one knows it was me! Well, Izukun does, sort of, but I had to make sure he wouldn't ignore the message!" Toga grins from ear to ear. "And you know what? He was right!"

"I'm afraid to ask," Compress mutters.

"About being a good rescue Hero! I passed the exam! Well, Camie-chan did, but I took the test for her. There was this big dodgeball game for the first round, everyone got three targets and six balls, and if all your targets got hit you'd be out, and you had to hit two people's last targets to pass, and only the first hundred people would get to part two. Then for the second part they blew up a whole fake city and filled it with—"

"The Help Us Company, ugh," Kurogiri groans. "Professional victim stand-ins. They're all experts in rescue maneuvers so they can judge a prospective hero's technique, and they're all vicious, merciless nitpickers. They docked me points for rough handling when I had to jump a cloud over a line of cars, then more for poor route planning. That building was on fire, dammit, it didn't fall into the street until after I headed that way! God, I had nightmares about that for weeks."

Everyone stares at him.

"Yeah, they're still like that," Toga says after a minute. "But I did pretty good! The points started at a hundred and if you lost half of them you'd fail but I still had seventy-two points!"

She pulls out her own phone and sends around photos of the Provisional License for Utsushimi Camie and the scoring sheet.

"Where's the actual license?" Dabi asks.

"Oh, I left it with Camie-chan! She spent the exam taking a nap in the furthest bathroom."

Kurogiri massages the bridge of his nose. "You do know she'll have to retake the license exam as soon as they realize it wasn't her in the arena, right? Even if she let you take her place, it's still cheating."

Toga blinks at him. "So? Izukun passed, so it's not like I'd get to go see him at another test."

"Well, as long as you know where your priorities are, sugar…" Magne shakes her head in amusement.

"What message did you give Midoriya, anyway?" asks Twice. "Tell him we never wanna see him again!"

"Oh, I gave him one of the burner phones!"

Dead silence.

"Why?" Chromika asks.

"So he can talk to us, silly! Don't worry, it's only got the number for that phone," she points to the one that she plugged in, "so he can message it, but if the Heroes take it away from him they can't use it to find us."

Spinner picks up the charging phone and examines its settings. "It's got the location trackers scrambled, so she's not wrong… We should probably add the VNet VPN just in case though."

"I'll do it." Tomura grabs the phone and uses his log-in to access the VNet app installer. "Toga, if you're gonna do something like that again, tell us before you run off. Dr Hotai came looking for you and got all Concerned when I couldn't say I knew where you were."

Toga opens her mouth to protest, but doesn't get a word out before the logic gets dropped on her.

"If we don't know where you are or when you'll be back, we won't know if we need to bail you out of a cell," Dabi adds.

"We won't tell you not to go, hun, just let us know that you're going."

The youngest member of the League pouts, then hangs her head. "Ohhhh-kaaaay… You do wanna talk to Izukun again though, right?"

"…Yeah, I guess I could ask him a few things," Tomura admits.

Toga grins.

Taglist: @thatoneawkwardfeeling @scary-grace @userfayz @addicted2tomura @daydreamingabout-not-you

[chimaerakirin]

What Color Destruction

Shigaraki Tomura is perfectly certain of his place in the world, thank you very much. He is Sensei's successor, the man who can and will destroy Hero Society. There's no need to ask questions. His online bestie changes that... And then disappears. Livid at the abandonment, he throws himself back into Sensei's goals. A year and a half later, they return and beg for the chance to explain themself. As much as he wants to stay mad at them, it's hard when he sees them face to face, and once again he starts asking questions. What will really happen if he kills All Might? Is what he wants for his League really the same as what Sensei wants for him? And how badly would this friendship be ruined if they knew exactly how hot he thinks they are?

Rated E for Explicit.

Chapter TW: Mentions of AFO's A+ parenting (including but not limited to transphobia)

Beta'd by the amazing @shigarakislaughter

Index

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Home

Chromika's house, Tomura finds, is an actual house, not an apartment, in a suburb where all the houses have about a meter of grass between the building and the garden wall. It's tiny, weathered and old with dark brown wooden walls, or fake wood composite anyway, instead of bright and shining and spacious. He hates houses like that, white and cold. He kind of likes it, it seems like an RPG starting location.

"Tadaima," they mutter to themself as they step into the genkan. "Come inside," they add over their shoulder.

He does. It's not a traditionally Japanese house, despite the outside, but there's a room with tatami to the right of the entrance, an old kotatsu in the corner with a handful of scattered papers and an old netbook on it. On the left, a kitchen and dining room, the fridge door covered in painted swirls while the freezer above it has bills pinned with magnets. The trash can is full of konbini bento and noodle cups, and the sink is empty but there are dishes in the draining rack. There are stairs toward the back, opposite a door that he can just see a washing machine through.

They tap something into a keypad by the door, and there's a quiet beep that makes him look at them curiously. They point to the ceiling, where there's a small black glass dome. "Security system. Motion-activated cameras. If they turn on when my phone isn't nearby, I get an alert, but I still have to use the code when I come and go. Otherwise it wastes drive space on watching me eat toast."

"So it's not recording now?"

"Nope." They take off their jacket and pull the envelope of cash out of the pocket, wincing when something tears. "It's not a very good security system, it's mostly there to prove I didn't smash my own shit if someone breaks in, and if I had to make a report that wouldn't help much. I'd probably be accused of having someone else do it for me if I handed over footage."

He growls, annoyed. "Why bother then?"

"My aunt set it up before she died."

"If someone breaks in, send me the footage. I'll take care of it myself."

They blink at him, then nod. Then they blink again. "Do you… need an alcohol wipe? Or like, a wet napkin or something?"

"What for?"

"You've got some blood on your face."

Oh shit he didn't wipe that off. Act like it's nothing, act like it's nothing… "Wondered why that guy on the street was staring at me. Yeah, I guess so."

"Wait, you were being stared at? Shit, what if they recognized you, we need to—"

Fuck, he screwed that up. "It's fine, I always have my face covered when I'm on League business."

They pause. "Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure." There was no guy. He's a shit liar, he doesn't know why he bothered.

They pull a first aid kit off the top of the fridge and dig out an alcohol wipe, then hand it to him. "Well… okay. How'd that happen, anyway?"

"Never mind that," he snaps, tearing the wipe pack open and scrubbing at his lip and nostrils. He points at the laptop on the kotatsu. "Is that your only computer?"

"Eh? Oh no, that's my aunt's. Or it was. That thing can barely run Minecraft, it's got like three hamsters in little salaryman ties for a CPU. Oba-chan called it her cookbook because if she set it on a bento to watch a recipe video it would heat the rice up. It plays videos and has her household records like scanned bills and budget spreadsheets, that's it. My computer's upstairs."

He snorts at the description, then sneezes at the burst of isopropyl stench. Right, shit, finish cleaning that. Stupid fucking nosebleed, right in the bar. Not the first time, but the first in a while, and it's not winter! He's lucky Kurogiri didn't question it. "Well, we're gonna need yours to get that bank account set up."

"Right, yeah. This way then." They lead him up the stairs, past framed pictures of themself and a woman with a beak and cream-colored tentacles in a bun, pictures of themself as a child and a couple with similar features, a man who looks like the squid-woman and another woman with dreadlocks that are a different color in every image. There are two doors on the short hallway, and a sliding glass one leading out onto a balcony, a folding rack with some clothes hanging over it. One of the doors is shut tightly, while the other stands cracked open and has a paint-spattered sign hanging on it with くコ:ミ scrawled on it.

"Is that a kaomoji or a signature?" he asks.

"Yes." They flash a grin at him and step into the room.

The decor is… Well, it's not quite a riot of color, but it's definitely at least an organized protest. The walls are dark blue fading to black at the bottom, the ceiling is ultramarine fading to sky around the light, and the wooden floorboards are scattered with nearly a dozen brightly colored rugs. The furniture is white painted with splotches and swirls of near neon, the bedding and curtains black with day-glo airbrush mist patterns. The walls are plastered with different art styles. One is all ukiyo-e, mostly water features and bird-and-flower designs. Another is western cartoons, almost all pre-Quirk, he's pretty sure he recognizes Hazbin Hotel along with Phineas & Ferb, Tom & Jerry, and that one Italian magical girl series. Opposite that is anime and manga, not all pre-Quirk but none of the newer ones have anything to do with Heroes. The fourth wall is graffiti, in a mix of brightly colored tags and the sarcastic stencil work styled like that British guy from the turn of the millennium. The bookshelves hold nonfiction books on all of those, with what looks like the entire Hokusai collection next to a manga called Miss Hokusai, and something called Wall And Piece in English. There are two desks, a cheap one with a laptop, scanner, and tiny lamp, and a somewhat nicer one with a slanted top and much better lighting, set at a ninety-degree angle from each other with a shelving unit in the corner between and a single chair on a mat that runs from one to the other.

They sit down at the chair and boot up the laptop — it was probably top of the line when they bought it, he recognizes it as a high-end model, but that was before they were arrested — and after a moment of standing there awkwardly behind them, he looks at the art desk and the sketchbook sitting open on it. There's something familiar about the half-finished design on it…

"So how does this bank thing work?" they ask before he can place it, and he looks back. Their lock screen looks like that Final Fantasy raid joke they drew, and he realizes it must have been because their wallpaper is the response he drew.

"The Clockwork Tower is pretty much entirely online, but so are all the financial records, and Mechanist, GITS-san, is like the third oldest guy on the planet, so he's got enough backdoors into everywhere that if there's a bank he can't get into, it's probably the one UA uses. So there's a few banks that the Tower more or less straight up owns, basically shell companies for VNet's in-house services," he explains. "They launder money like Aozora or Shinsei do mortgages. They've got brick-and-mortar locations in a few places to handle literal cash and get cards, but you have to be on VNet to make an account."

"You've done this before?" They open their browser and start incognito mode.

"Nuh-uh. Okay, VNet's gonna try to install a browser add-on, don't block it, it's a security thing."

"If it keeps the fucking AI disservices out of my stuff… How'd you get your account set up then?"

"I didn't. I don't have a bank account."

They stop in the middle of typing out their password and turn to stare at him. "You don't?"

"Don't need one. Sensei handles it."

They frown at him. "That's kind of… You're twenty, right? What if you wanna buy something that you can't use cash for? Do you just… ask him to order whatever it is?"

He opens his mouth to say he trusts Sensei, then closes it. There are things he doesn't want to talk to Sensei about. Things he sort of mentioned in passing, just to check, and got such complete instant dismissal that it almost hurt. Things he keeps to himself because he doesn't want to deal with the lack of support he knows he'll get, because that will hurt. Sensei doesn't know he's got piercings. Sensei doesn't know about his tattoo. Sensei doesn't know about his wardrobe…

"You've got a washing machine, right?" he asks before he even finishes forming that thought.

"Uh… Yeah? Why?"

"Can I wash some stuff here? And dry it?"

"Sure, I guess. Just make sure you're not allergic to my detergent first, or bring your own."

"I'll be right back. Don't go anywhere."

He doesn't wait for a response. He just leaves, grabbing his shoes and heading down the street back to the konbini, then telling Kurogiri to send him to the apartment for five minutes. He snatches his laundry bag from under the bed, then he hits the laundry area — he knows he's allergic to about two thirds of the detergents on the market — to take one of the repurposed dashi jars he has hidden in there. With an order to Kurogiri to get the trash bags out of his room, he takes the warp back to the konbini and dashes back to Chromika's house, letting himself in.

"I'm back!" he calls up the stairs.

They come down a few second later and stare at him. "Where'd you go?"

"To get my laundry, obviously." He holds up the bag. "Show me how your machine works, will you?"

"…Right. This way then." They lead him to the bathroom and show him the controls, pointing out the spot on the side where it might need to be kicked if it starts rattling. "Why do you need to use mine?"

"Because Kurogiri will bitch if I go to a laundromat, and he does the washing at home." He starts dumping his clothes into the machine. "Haven't been able to clean this stuff since before the USJ."

"You don't want— Oh."

He picks up the fabric that just fell on the ground and puts it in with the rest, then adds the detergent from the jar and starts it up. "Yeah. I figured you'd understand."

"I do. You never mentioned before though… You wanna talk about it?"

"Let's… get your bank shit set up first."

"All right." They lead the way back up to their room and listen while he shows them where the VNet finance stuff is. They're finalizing the account information, which involves making an appointment at a physical location for deposit and card issue, before he speaks.

"You can tell by my hoodie, if I'm wearing one. I usually wear pullovers, but on those days I wear zip-ups."

"Do you wanna be called something else?" they ask.

"I don't bother. It'd be too much hassle to deal with. I can't really explain it to Kurogiri without him telling Sensei, and Sensei… wouldn't understand."

"You mean he wouldn't approve," they say, a little sharply.

He opens the little kit bag and takes out the nail clippers, starting to work on his left thumb and making sure the parings don't go flying. "Not too long after you told me about yourself, after I did the reading, I asked him. Nothing specific, just… mentioned it like it was funny trivia. He waved it off. Said it was imaginary, he'd never seen a real one, and he'd know if he had. Not that he explained what that meant, but… He told me not to bother thinking about it."

Their scalp tentacles writhe and coil, turning from the salmon-pink they were to a dark, angry red. "What is he, a pre-Quirk American psychologist? He doesn't get to tell me I'm imaginary."

"I told you he's kind of off-base sometimes," he says, switching the clippers for a file and smoothing out the thumbnail. "So yeah. I don't talk to him about it, and that means not telling Kurogiri. And he's really traditional about body art too. There's a guy called Imaginer. Trash-tier, theoretically head of a group called the House of Red, but when he's not in a cell or a puddle of blood he does tattoos, he's got a ton of them himself, and Sensei thinks he's a literal waste of skin."

"How has he not noticed yours?"

"He's blind. He got hurt when I was thirteen, fighting All Might. The Doctor put his head back together but his face is gone. And I switch everything out for retainers when I'm gonna be in public doing League stuff. Kurogiri didn't say anything after I told him I'd do that. Not sure why he didn't say anything about the ink… Anyway, I think Sensei might be able to read screens somehow, because he calls on video in the bar, but I don't think it gives him any details."

"So you want me to not say anything then."

"Yeah."

"Don't worry. You're you, not him, and a grown-ass adult too. He doesn't get to tell you who you are and he's not entitled to know."

"Good." He checks the edge of the nail for snags by brushing it against his shirt, then moves on to the next.

They finish setting the appointment, then freeze. "Wait, you've got ink?"

He pauses. "Yeah? Oh, right. It wasn't done yet when you got put away. I was thinking of getting an expansion, but assholes keep putting much bigger holes in my skin, and it was already a bitch and a half getting the dryness cleared up to the point the artist would do anything. Ended up spending way too fucking much money on some kind of Quirk-enhanced goop. I mean it worked, but damn, I could buy another Cassowary for two jars of that crap."

"A Cassowary? But those are like… a hundred and thirty grand!"

"I know!" He scoffs. "I'll probably have to order some more…"

"So… can I see?"

"See what?"

"The ink. If it's not somewhere I shouldn't, I mean, I wouldn't ask if it means you have to take off too much, that'd be rude—"

"Yeah, I'll show you. Hang on and let me finish this." He works his way through the rest of his nails, then puts the clippers and file away and pulls off his hoodie and shirt, twisting around so they can see the cloud. It's about the size of his palm, the original black outline done over with thicker lines of dark blue and filled in with a shade that isn't quite cotton candy-colored.

"A Jinx reference?" they ask, sliding off their chair.

"Yeah. I never played her much, but I do get— Her… mindset…"

The skin of their fingertips is warm on his back, tracing the swirls of ink. "You got this at Mata Hari, right?"

"Uh? Yeah, how'd you know?" It's kind of hard to focus past the touch. When they told him they couldn't get tattoos, he assume they meant they had a skin condition, or maybe a rapid regen Quirk. Then when they explained their paint form, he might have guessed it was because they'd lose any outside ink when they transformed. But now he notices an odd velvety texture, almost but not quite like silicone, and he shivers at how it glides over his skin.

"I sell my designs there. I told you where to find it, right? This looks like Dee's work."

"Dee?"

"The guy with all the hardware holding the burns together."

"Oh, the one that looks like he drunk-puked on Endeavor's shoes?"

"Yeah, that one!" They snicker hard enough that their entire hand lands flat on his back for support. There's a weird squeaking sound at the friction and they pause. "Huh? Are you okay?"

Wait, fuck, was that him? "I'm fi-ine."

"If you say so." They take their hand off his skin, and he tries not to flinch when a fingertip runs over his ribs and spine to where he's got an old training scar. A few of them, actually. "What happened here?"

"Learning to fight." The Noumu couldn't hurt him, not for real, but that didn't make them teddy bears. He wouldn't learn that way. "Nothing serious."

"If you say so…" they repeat dubiously. "Anyway, maybe you should make a bank account too. You probably want to stay until your laundry's done anyway, so you can hang it."

"Uh, yeah. Wait, like use your computer?"

"For the sake of keeping it to yourself, yeah." They gesture to their chair.

Uncertainly, he sits down and twists the seat to face the desk, pulling his gloves out of his pocket and pulling them on, then logging them out of VNet so he can log his own account in. They grab their sketchbook and a pencil from the art desk and sit down on the bed, graphite scribbling across the paper as he starts to put the required data in the fields.

"Hey I need an alias," he says.

"What?"

"To go on my bank card. I can't use my real name."

"Um…" They look around their room. After a minute, their eyes fix on the anime wall. "Kozuki for the surname. Kanji for Light and Moon. Or maybe Above Moon, like the castle ruins in Hyogo. And given name… Ryouma?"

"How would you write that one?"

"Conclusion and Polish. AKA, End Grind. Or maybe Endure and Polish."

He takes a minute to look up the castle and finds that there was a siege there back when the area was called Harima Province, and that Oda Nobunaga lost that fight. He picks those kanji, then Endure-Polish for the given name. He enjoys the grind if he's actually getting rewarded for it. "Did you pick an alias?"

"Should I have?"

He shrugs. "Up to you. Your name is mostly clean and not too exotic. Mine's more distinctive."

"No kidding. How'd you end up named Funeral, anyway?"

"Sensei gave it to me. I think it fits well enough."

"Eh, fair enough." Their pencil keeps skritching across the paper. "So what's it like for you?"

"What's what like?"

"The hoodie switching thing. It's different for everyone, what's it like for you?"

"Oh that." He fills in a few more fields while he thinks. "How'd you put it back then? I'm me? It's that, I guess. It took me a while to work it out, I don't really get dysphoria or anything. I did a lot of lurking in chat rooms and on forums before I found enough to go yeah, that's me. Already had about half those clothes by then."

He snorts after a minute. "You know those are the only socks I own?"

"The striped thigh-highs?"

"Yeah. Haven't worn anything else since I was… fourteen, maybe? When Sensei woke up after he was put back together. Kurogiri was never all that imaginative about buying my clothes, but he stopped being able to find the kind I liked, bought me something I couldn't stand instead, and just… let it go when I refused to wear those in protest."

"Why didn't you buy something you like when you got the tall ones?" they ask.

"Easier to separate things, I guess. I don't really buy much for pullover days. Like you've seen, basically. The fancy stuff is for zipper days."

"What is a zipper day, exactly?"

He doesn't answer right away. "Which bank branch did you pick and when's your appointment?" he asks instead.

"Three days from now between two and four in the afternoon," they answer. "Otomo Credit Union in Kanagawa-ku."

He picks a subsequent appointment in the same place so he can escort them to theirs. "If I bothered changing pronouns, I'd probably call it a she day. I'm not as all over the place as you, I'm either a guy or a girl, and only a little in between, mostly just… being almost one or almost the other, when it's changing?"

"Red or blue, with no purple but a little… Tyrian purple, when you're about to stop being red, and indigo when you're almost not blue?" they suggest.

"Yeah, I guess that's about it. It's not a slider, but it's not a switch either."

They nod. "I get it, I get it. Why the hoodies?"

"You're asking a lot of questions."

"From the sound of it, you don't have anyone else you can talk to about this, and it's hard to breathe inside a closet. I'm curious and also not judgy or dismissive, so I'm safe to talk to."

He supposes that's fair enough. And if he'd tell only one person in the world, it'd probably be them, since he probably never would have thought about this without them… "I like hoodies. People see you in a hoodie with the hood up, they leave you alone, especially if it's plain black. It's like headphones, I guess, but it also makes you harder to recognize. And I get cold easily, so I like the warmth."

"Not surprised," they mumble.

"What?"

"I'm not surprised you get cold easily, since you don't have any natural insulation. It's kinda scary how many of your bones I can see by the way, and I'm making omutako for dinner and please stay and eat with me."

He blinks. "What the hell is omutako? Omurice with takoyaki in?" He knows they like takoyaki.

"No, it's this thing from Okinawa. You make taco rice, that's rice and ground beef with taco spices — garlic and onion and pepper and a few other things — and chopped up lettuce and tomato and salsa and cheese, then you put that in the egg. Nothing to do with octopus."

"Oh. Well, maybe… Anyway, I wear a lot of hoodies to start with. And the plain pullovers go with the stuff I already always wore. But I wear more colors on those days, so the zipper lets me hide it if I want to. I can close it up in the bar so Sensei doesn't see me wearing like… Hello Kitty or whatever on my shirt, then unzip it when I go out to the konbini or wherever."

"Hmhmhm, fair. That would mean you're still kinda limited in what you can wear out safely though."

"Yeah, kinda. It's annoying. Sometimes I kinda feel like wearing a skirt, but I can't even go buy one. Most things I can just let Kurogiri think I didn't read the labels or I'm bad at picking things out if it ends up in the regular laundry by accident. 'I thought that was a normal tank top.' 'Those shorts looked longer in the picture.' 'It said boyshorts on the packaging, how was I supposed to know they're not for boys?'"

They snicker. "Okay, that one's good."

"I tell him the socks are just to keep my legs warm and he'll come back with a thicker pair of sweatpants. But there's not really any excuse I can make for a skirt. It's annoying."

"You shouldn't have to make excuses," they burble in a way that he recognizes as equivalent to a growl. "Why can't Kurogiri mind his own business?"

"Because he's a Noumu. If Sensei asks him a question, he has to answer and he can't lie. He has to obey me, but If Sensei gives him a different order I can't change it." He scratches his neck in aggravation, then catches the ends of his hair and scowls. "Like my hair. I wanna grow it out, but Sensei doesn't like it past my shoulders so he told Kurogiri years ago to cut it whenever it gets that long. I can't override that, so every time it gets to the minimum I like I have to get it all chopped off again."

"Okay that's bullshit, it's your hair and you're a grown-ass adult. And also a villain not in an organization with a dress code so there's no way to make an accusation of unprofessional appearances. Your Sensei has literally no right to decide that for you."

He stares at them. "But. It's Sensei?"

"And that means…?"

"He basically adopted me…"

"And my aunt basically adopted me. This was my parents' house. She moved in when they died, so I wouldn't have to move out. I owe her a lot. What if she told me what color I had to be?"

He scratches his neck harder. "Did she? Because that's not her fucking business and—"

"What's the difference?" they interrupt. "Your hair, my color. Your Sensei, my aunt. What's the difference?"

He glares silently.

They frown, their colors shifting to dark blue and their mask markings going from goggles to eyeliner, and they spend a minute scribbling on their sketch pad. "If you want to, you can leave anything that's not safe to have at home here. I'll give you the security code so you can come and go if you want to stop by and change or do your laundry," they say quietly.

"…Thanks." He logs out of his account on VNet and closes the browser. "How much longer before the machine is done?"

"Ehhh I wasn't really looking at the clock, it usually runs for about forty-five minutes and I think that was the normal load size." They frown some more, but their mask melts back into goggles. "Which wow that's kind of a lot for all being yours, is that all your girl clothes? You mentioned boyshorts, have you got any bras? Do you want any?"

He blinks. "Yeah, that's pretty much everything but one shirt. There's a short-cut one that I don't wear much because of my scars, and that's worse now after I got shot, but I've worn pretty much everything else in the last month. I couldn't go out to the laundromat because I couldn't walk for a while, and then Kurogiri wouldn't let me out. And I mostly just got the boyshorts because they wouldn't show under the girl shorts. Which sounds different from what it means, but it also means that no, I don't have any bras. Don't need them. One of the tanks has one of those elastic underlayers though."

"You don't need one sure, but you could also get one with a little padding if you wanted. But hey, whatever's comfy for you. Hmhmhm… What color's the short shirt?"

"Light blue? A little brighter than my hair, basically. With Chiikawa on it. Comes to about here." He gestures to the bottom of his ribcage.

"And the sleeves?" He points to the top of his bicep and they nod. "Okay, if you wanna wear that without putting any scars on display, you can layer it over something black or dark blue. Sleeveless in the summer, long-sleeved or maybe hand-sleeves, the kind with the thumb hole, in the winter."

They frown again. "Wait, what do you mean you couldn't walk?"

"I was shot, remember? Both legs and twice in each arm." He pulls up the side of his hoodie and shirt to show the red scar where a bullet skimmed his waist. "And this one."

Their colors turn red again. "What the hell? Did they think they were playing Doom or something? Seven times, haven't they ever heard of reasonable force? What happened to 'Heroes don't kill'? And what Hero even uses a gun, I thought that went out of style when Lady Nagant blew those people away! For the love of Cthulhu, at least Manual didn't know he could kill me with his Quirk, did they just not care?!"

He stares at them. "You're not thinking about how I was trying to kill people?"

"And one shot to one leg would have stopped you running at them, one to an arm stopped you reaching! And the one on your side didn't do anything but bleed you some more, so who the fuck ever wasn't even aiming all their shots, were they? They just unloaded on you! And let me guess, they didn't go for the knees either, you said you couldn't walk for just a few days so there's no way they got the bones too badly and it's easier to hit the thigh than the shin, so they probably just barely didn't rip your femoral arteries open!"

"Pretty much, yeah."

"GAH!" They throw their arms up and nearly fling their sketchbook across the room, then get to their feet and stomps for the door. "That's it, come on. I need to stab something so it's time to make dinner."

Bemused, he follows them downstairs. He's pretty useless in the kitchen, but he still listens while they explain how everything works while they cook. And damn are they vicious while they cut up the vegetables…

Omutako is pretty good though, and he likes their grin when he says so.

Taglist: @thatoneawkwardfeeling @scary-grace @userfayz @addicted2tomura

[chimaerakirin]

What Color Destruction

Shigaraki Tomura is perfectly certain of his place in the world, thank you very much. He is Sensei's successor, the man who can and will destroy Hero Society. There's no need to ask questions. His online bestie changes that... And then disappears. Livid at the abandonment, he throws himself back into Sensei's goals. A year and a half later, they return and beg for the chance to explain themself. As much as he wants to stay mad at them, it's hard when he sees them face to face, and once again he starts asking questions. What will really happen if he kills All Might? Is what he wants for his League really the same as what Sensei wants for him? And how badly would this friendship be ruined if they knew exactly how hot he thinks they are?

Rated E for Explicit.

Chapter CW: General horniness and blunt discussion of expectations.

Beta'd by the amazing @shigarakislaughter.

Index

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Reach

The day of the bank appointment, Tomura shows up on Ayato's doorstep with another bag of stuff, wearing a purple zip hoodie and a black leather choker with an open circle ring at the throat.

"Can you help me do something with this?" he asks, holding out a variety of hair accessories, both functional and decorative. The tags are still on them, so he must have bought them on the way.

"I can try. I don't have a lot of experience with hair though." They look between his shaggy locks and the various clips and ties. "And I'll need to dig out my mom's brush, you look a little tangled. Go sit and start taking the tags off."

He goes to sit next to the kotatsu while they hurry upstairs and into the bedroom that belonged to their aunt, and their parents before that. Most of their guardians' belongings have long since been sold, leaving only a few things for memory or personal use. Their mother was the only one in the house who ever had any use for a hairbrush, so that's in a keepsake box on top of the wardrobe, along with a few things like their dad's wallet, the collection of art gallery ticket stubs from when their parents were dating, their mom's makeup kit, and the wedding rings. They take the brush back downstairs to Tomura and sit next to him.

"How do you want it styled?" they ask.

"I dunno. Away from my ears, I guess? It's too short to tie back for real." He finger-combs the locks on the side of his head, then pinches them off into sections in front and behind his ear. "But I also want it to look… I don't know, not boring."

"Hmhmhm…" They nod to themself and run the brush through his hair, noting the ragged, choppy lengths. Kurogiri is apparently not great with scissors. They separate out the longer bits and use tiny colorful rubber bands to bind them near the bottoms, angling them so they don't fall over his piercings. A pin here and a clip there holds the shorter stuff out of the way as well. Finally, another tie in his bangs on the longer side, holding that chunk of hair away from his eye, and they nod. "Try that."

He pulls out his phone and uses the front camera, turning his head back and forth, then nods and smiles faintly. "Thanks."

"No problem."

"Uh… Do you want some?"

They blink at him. "I don't have hair."

"No, I mean… Are you going to be that color all day?" He gestures to their tentacles, currently bright cyan.

"I… If I'm not surprised, sure? I can change it on purpose, but it also sort of follows how I feel. Fair warning, maybe don't stand in front of me if it's ever seaweed green or your shoes will end up smelling like my stomach."

"Ew."

"Yeah, sorry. Anyway, I wasn't planning on changing it, if that answers your question."

"More or less. All right, I'm gonna…" He picks through the tiny rubber bands, grabbing orange, yellow, and raspberry ones, then reaches out and rolls them onto a few of the tendrils hanging down in front of their right ear, scattered along the length. It's not easy, and he keeps his little fingers awkwardly pressed to his palms to keep at least one point of his Quirk's required five away from their grabby tentacles. "Should have brought my gloves," he mumbles, red-faced.

"Sorry, they do that. I can make them do a thing, but it's way harder to make them not do anything." They peel a particularly clingy long one off his wrist.

"Yeah well I'm trying not to dust you here…" He adjusts one of the bands, then sits back. "Done."

They check on their own phone camera and smile. They can in theory have multiple colors at once, but only as a fadeout or split across different tentacles. Disconnecting the color of their eyes from everything else is easiest. They definitely can't do precise patterns, so their ability to style their 'hair' has always been limited to modifying the length and thickness. They can't even really use clips or ties for the most part, because any attempt to bind multiple tendrils together with foreign objects usually results in them twitching their way out, so they typically only use their clubbed sideburn tentacles to hold a ponytail, which at least can look like a ribbon if they do it right. But the tiny rubber bands are only wrapped around singular tentacles, and not tightly, holding on through basic texture friction, so Tomura has essentially just given them stripes.

"I like it. Thanks." They stand up. "We should probably get going if we want to make our appointment."

"Will you make omutako again later?"

"I was gonna do Okinawa soba today, actually…"

He scowls. "Ugh. I hate soba."

"Do you like udon and ramen?"

"They're awesome, soba's just slimy."

"Okinawa soba is basically udon noodles in ramen soup. It's about as much soba as yakisoba," they explain. "And it's got pork belly in it."

"Oh. I'll try it then." He sweeps the unused hair accessories back into the shopping bag, then stands up. "Let's go. Got your cash?"

They go into the bathroom and pry the side panel off the washing machine where they've hidden the envelope, then they run upstairs and grab their old backpack to carry it in. "Have you got any to deposit?"

He reaches into his hoodie and pulls out… a Crown Royal bag? What? At their stare, he shrugs. "It's the only bag I've got. Don't need one with the other hoodie, that pocket's big enough for my phone, Father, and Cassowary."

"Your… father?" Did they hear that right?

He holds his hand over his face. "Mask. That's Father."

"…Literally?"

"Yes. It was Sensei's idea. So I wouldn't forget."

"Ooo-kay?" They'll shelve that for later… "We better get to the train."

He sticks the Crown Royal bag back into his hoodie — it looks like it's not in a pocket so much as hiding between the pocket and the actual front, because the pocket's a pouch type and not just another layer of fabric stitched over — and follows them out of the house.

The ride to the bank is quiet, and the appointment is fairly simple. The bank employee, who has a little gear-shaped pin on his lapel, makes their new bank card on the spot, and for a small charge, offers a second one under a different name. They pick Utagawa Ei, then put both cards in their wallet. Then the Clockwork Tower agent asks if they require any other services, and they stall for a minute before cautiously asking for a brochure. The shiny print-out they get is clearly loaded with euphemisms, so they bow in thanks and assure the employee they'll consider the matter carefully, then tuck it into their bag to ask Tomura about later. Then they step out of the office so Tomura can do his own business.

When he comes out fifteen minutes later, he's putting his new card into his pocket, and they blink. Does he not even have a wallet? They follow him out of the bank before asking.

"Nah. Never needed one. There's a cash jar at home where I can grab whatever I need, and Kurogiri refills it." He shrugs with one shoulder. "I uh… I've been emptying it the last few days, so I'd have something to put in my account."

"Did you put all of it in the account?"

"Well yeah, why else would I bring it?"

Okay, they're slightly worried about him now. "To keep in your wallet… You should get one of those, by the way."

"Where would I get one?" he asks.

They shrug. "Wherever. Donki. Second Street. The mall. It's not exactly a specialty item."

"Let's go there then."

"Uh… Okay, just let me find one…" They pull out their phone and search.

Twenty minutes later, they're at a recycle shop, and he's paying for a wallet with a chain and stuffing his card into it. Then, instead of heading for the door, he dives back into the shelves, and they follow in bemusement.

"What are you looking for?" they ask.

"You said I could keep some stuff at your place," he points out.

"Oh, you wanna buy some of that? Okay. Let me know if you need help. Actually, what shoes do you have, is that your only pair? What size do you wear?"

He lifts one foot to check. "26, according to this. Don't pick anything stupid."

"Don't worry." They scurry off to the shoe section. There's a few things that might look good on him as long as he's not wearing those too-short jeans… Why does he wear them that short, anyway, if he cut like two centimeters off the hem they'd look like regular beach-walking pants, but as it is it looks like he outgrew them which is weird because if he grew that much they should be too small around the waist too only they're not and—

Oh. Right. They could see his ribs and vertebra when he showed them his back. They'll have to make extra food when he eats over. And maybe stock up on snacks…

They pick up the two best pairs of shoes in his size, a pair of calf-high boots with a slight platform to the sole and some checkered slip-ons, and take them over to where they left him. He's not there anymore, and they wander around the store for a few minutes before they find him looking at skirts.

"How does sizing work on these?" he asks grumpily.

"It kinda doesn't, a lot of the time, there's this thing called vanity sizing and it's older than Quirks, where they put smaller numbers on bigger clothes so people can pretend they're skinnier than they are, except none of the companies ever talk to each other about what the numbers mean, and sometimes they don't even talk to themselves about it so two pairs of jeans from the same brand are different sizes even though they fit the same person. What size jeans are those?"

He lifts the hem of his shirt and fishes around his waistband for the tag, then leans toward them so they can see. "That."

"Okay, you probably wanna check this section then? You should probably get something on the looser side, especially that you can wear with a belt since your wallet is on a chain and you need something to attach it to. Also here's some shoes to try on, they won't go with those jeans very well or the boots won't anyway but the boots would do good with your socks and I think that's more important."

He doesn't answer verbally and just adds the shoes to his basket. They end up searching for shirts for him, since he asks them to find something he can wear under that Chiikawa shirt he talked about. Having seen the style of the skirts he was looking hardest at, they pick one from the men's section before going back to the women's racks and grabbing a couple more, a striped long-sleeve and a couple of tees that can be layered over it. They bring it all back to him, then follow him to the fitting rooms.

"Is this okay?" he asks a few minutes later, pulling the curtain back.

…Cthulhu save them.

The skirt isn't quite knee length, and looks like it could be part of a school uniform if it wasn't for the hanging pocket and the decorative suspenders. The skin-tight thumb-hole shirt doesn't leave any skin visible on his torso, but the cropped Sanrio shirt over it means that they can still see the cut of his hipbones, and the boots make his legs — perfectly waxed, as far as they can see — look even longer. If he was wearing the thigh-socks…

That's just not fair.

"Uh… You're pink. And dripping. Are you okay?"

They feel something hot drip down their upper lip and lick it away before it can dribble down their chin and oh fuck they inked themself. In public. "I'm fine," they squeak, raising a hand in a thumbs up. "You're fine. I mean your outfit is fine. It fits just right. Yep."

He blinks at them suspiciously, then draws the curtain shut again. When he comes back out, he's wearing the clothes he walked in with, and he heads to the register to buy it all.

"How long before dinner?" he asks as they leave the shop.

"Let's see, if we go straight home from here and I start the kakuni right away, that'll be aboooout three hours, maybe three and a half? Don't worry, there'll be plenty of it and it's really good, you can practically cut it with chopsticks by the time it's done it's so tender."

"Wait it's not cooked already when you start?"

"Nope! I mean I'll make extra, I use it for other things and it's a lot of work, but it's best to make it fresh for the soba because then I can use a little of the braising liquid for the soup. Can't do that if I buy it pre-cooked."

"All right, but it better be good…"

As soon as they get home, Ayato gets the pork out of the fridge and starts preparing it for the pan, telling Tomura to go put his new clothes into the washing machine.

"Why?" he asks blankly.

"Because you don't know who else tried them on?"

"Makes sense I guess. I'm gonna change though."

"Okay, your clothes are in the box under the hall table."

"I remember."

They focus on the food. Searing the pork only takes a few minutes, then they have to set the meat to simmer. That will take an hour…

"So what do we do while the food cooks?" he asks behind them. "Just sit around?"

They turn the heat down on the boiling water and set a timer then turn to answer. "We can— … Um."

"What."

When he said he'd change, they didn't know what they were expecting. But apparently that meant 'into a camisole, tiny shorts, and thigh-socks.' They can see healed pink bullet scars on his arms and an angry red line on his shoulder with visible marks where stitches have been taken out in the last day or so, but that's because they can see the entire top half of his chest. That's a fucking V neckline! His arms are more muscular than they thought, his collarbones look carved out of wood, and except for the fresh scarring his skin is surprisingly smooth-looking. And those shorts are just barely long enough to cover his ass, they're slanted up toward his hips along the hemline with that rounded notch on the outseam so Ayato can see a sliver of cotton fabric underneath!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaah—

くコ:ミ

"You're dripping," Tomura says flatly. "Again."

And also whistling like a tea kettle, if very very quietly, but mostly they're neon pink and leaking a thick stream of the color from their nose. They're practically glowing. Or more accurately, they're literally glowing, their biolume pulsing brightly through the blazing blush that covers their entire face. He wonders what color their blood is that they turn that shade, if it's matched to their ink.

Then his brain screeches to a halt as he realizes what the ink on their face actually is.

"Is that a nosebleed?" he demands.

Their mouth open slightly and the kettle noise gets louder. After a few moments of continuous screeching, they sort of… collapse in a shower of ink, a puddle spreading out onto the floor around their empty clothes.

"Oh shit. Ayato? Ayato!" He drops to his knees and starts sifting through the pile of fabric in search of something solid, or at least semi-solid. He locates it inside the t-shirt, a slick texture that feels like it should be wet but isn't, and pulls the fabric out of the way. They're in their full paint form, which is… terrifyingly huggable, actually. He hasn't really cared about soft toys for as long as he can remember but he kind of wants to take a nap holding them just to see what it's like. Instead he just sort of holds them up in front of his face with both hands. "What happened? Are you okay?"

"Of course I'm not okay!" they gurgle, limbs thrashing. "This isn't fair, why'd you have to be so hot!"

Wait, what? Startled, he drops them with a muffled splat. "Hot?"

"Yes! Have you not looked in the fucking mirror lately?" They don't bother trying to prop themself up and just flail some more on the floor. "You look freaking edible by default and here you are walking around my house like that and aargh!"

They flip over, face — or eyes at least, which is the only visible part of a face they have in this shape — down on the floor and just… vibrate.

He stares at them for a minute. "Get up."

"Nooo, I wanna wallow…"

"Get up," he repeats. "And change back."

They do change back, but stay sprawled out face-down on the floor for another minute. They're on top of the pile of their clothes, but they're not naked. They've got a pair of black bike shorts and a top that might be a cropped compression tank or a binder, he can't tell from the back. When they do sit up, hunched over, he still can't quite tell. It's a zip-front top though. They won't look him in the eye.

"You're not screwing with me. You actually like my character model."

"Model is right," they mumble. "Can I get a magazine of you?"

"Do I get one of you?" he retorts. "You're not the only one that's needed a tissue lately."

They snap up to look at him at the reminder. The ink is gone from their face, but they're still blushing like crazy. "You whaaa?"

"…Fuck it." He grabs them by the back of the neck, keeping the pad of his ring finger pressed against the nail of his little finger so their grabby tentacles can't wrap the fifth he'd normally hold up for safety, and pulls them up to kiss them.

They freeze in place for exactly two seconds, even their tentacles going perfectly still, then they lunge at him hard enough to almost knock him over backward and try to shove their tongue down his throat. He doesn't mind one bit. It does take a minute for the two of them to work out how to not break each other's teeth, admittedly, but coordinating on unfamiliar mechanics isn't a new trick and soon enough their tentacles are tangling up in his hair while he examines their dental plates with his tongue. There's a pleasant saltiness to their taste, but frankly he doesn't give a damn what they taste like as long as it's not something bad enough to gag on, he's too busy enjoying the way they suck on his tongue.

Then they're crawling onto his lap and he might be about to rip a few seams in his shorts with how uncomfortably tight both layers of fabric are. "Fuuuuck… 'Yato, if you don't stop now I'm never gonna stop…"

They pull away, but only from his mouth and only a few centimeters. Their tentacles refuse to let go of his hair, and keep tugging at the bits in their grasp. "Does never mean letting the food burn?" they ask breathlessly.

"No, but—"

"Then I don't care right now." They kiss him again.

He groans and grabs their shoulders, pushing them back. "Let me fucking talk dammit, it's hard enough to focus without you trying to lick the words off my tonsils."

They let out a startled giggle but don't dive at him again immediately.

"I'm not a fucking casual, okay? Literally. I want you, and if you let me have you, I'm gonna keep you, got it? No leaving, no sharing."

"Want me how?"

He snaps his teeth to catch a tentacle that wanders too close to his mouth and sucks on it gently. They really like that, going by how their pupils blow out and the slightly rubbery flesh shivers on his tongue. "You really need to ask that now? What, you want details?"

They nod. "Tell me. No limits."

"I wanna stick my dick in your hole, I don't give a shit which ones or how many you've got, I'll fill whichever ones you let me into," he says roughly. "I want you to use mine however the hell you can, stuff me till taking it's all I can do. I wanna put my head between your legs and taste you till you wrap around me so hard you can't let go. Does that answer your question?"

They're silent for a moment. "You really don't care, really, exactly how you get to fuck me?"

"Not at fucking all. You're you. He, she, something else, whatever."

"Then you're in luck," they whisper. "I'm both."

"Wha—"

"Not at the same time, but… I can choose. Go back and forth. You can have it both ways."

His eyes widen. Both sets of his fantasies are possible? Maybe he should get in the habit of praying, because this is a fucking miracle as far as he's concerned.

"Do you want me to be—"

"No," he interrupts quickly. "I said I don't care and I mean it. Whatever you are right now is fine to start with."

They kiss him again, hard, then slip off his lap and grab his hand, pulling him over toward the tatami room. A brief foray into the closet produces a blanket, which they spread over the floor and drag him back down so they can resume their place in his lap.

They make it five minutes before he drags them over backward so they're straddling his waist, and those bike shorts must be fucking magic with how well they're fitted because this is the first time he's gotten any concrete clue about how they're built.

And concrete is the right word, they're rock-hard. Guess he's gonna see how well his toy practice translates to sucking a real cock.

He grabs their hips and shifts them back a bit, so they're grinding on each other directly, and they whine and retaliate by pulling his camisole down to expose his chest. Their hands wander over his skin, tracing his scars, then their mouth trails down his chin and neck, teeth scraping along his collarbones. They nibble at the ridgeline like they're trying to turn the entire length into a hickey. Their thumbs do something to his skin and he gasps, then gasps again when a tentacle slips into his open mouth, the tip tickling his tongue until he starts sucking on it. Then their mouth moves down further and their tongue drags over one of his nipples and he moans so loud the neighbors probably hear.

"Yato—!"

"You're a girl right now, right?" they ask. "That's why you dressed up so pretty?"

He flushes and squirms under them, nodding, and they take advantage of his spine not being pressed into the floor to pull the camisole up and off.

"Then I'm gonna treat you like a pretty girl and play with your tits," they say decisively. They lick him again, then they close their mouth around the flat point and start to suck.

He writhes. It's as much idea as feeling, he's sensitive but everything is so much more with their words echoing in his ears. "Kuh… Call me that again," he begs.

"Pretty Tomura," they mumble against his chest. "Pretty girl."

He almost comes in his shorts. He doesn't hate his body, doesn't suffer from the shape of it, even on days like this, but he does wish sometimes, and with their compliments, their understanding, their actions, he can close his eyes and imagine curves, soft and round and squishing under their mouth and fingers. He can imagine a hot, soaking cunt between his legs instead of a hard cock, imagine them peeling down his shorts and spreading his legs and shoving their thick flesh into him—

"Fuck!"

"What's wrong?" they ask, pouting.

"Need my gear to fuck like this," he complains. "It's all back in my room."

"Gear?"

"For the prep. Cleaning kit, lube, everything."

They raise their eyebrows. "You've got all that?"

"Of course I do. I know what I want and I know what getting it needs. I'm not stupid enough to rush something like that." He swears again. "And none of it's here."

"So what's that mean?"

"Rrrgh… It means we don't get to fuck properly today. But I'll bring it tomorrow and then we'll use it." He can wait one more day. He can.

"Okay… But I'm still gonna make you ruin your panties today."

They grind their hips on him and he moans.

Taglist: @thatoneawkwardfeeling @scary-grace @userfayz @addicted2tomura

[chimaerakirin]

What Color Destruction

Shigaraki Tomura is perfectly certain of his place in the world, thank you very much. He is Sensei's successor, the man who can and will destroy Hero Society. There's no need to ask questions. His online bestie changes that... And then disappears. Livid at the abandonment, he throws himself back into Sensei's goals. A year and a half later, they return and beg for the chance to explain themself. As much as he wants to stay mad at them, it's hard when he sees them face to face, and once again he starts asking questions. What will really happen if he kills All Might? Is what he wants for his League really the same as what Sensei wants for him? And how badly would this friendship be ruined if they knew exactly how hot he thinks they are?

Rated E for Explicit.

Chapter CW: None.

Beta'd by the amazing @shigarakislaughter.

Index

<- Start - Here - Next ->

Ghost

Tomura finishes replacing the retainers in his ears and lip with the real jewelry and scowls into the mirror, doing his best to ruffle his hair so the helix rings don't immediately stand out. He hates having it this short for all kinds of reasons, but the fact that it forces him to change out all the rings and posts for official League business lest someone notice it and connect the guy with the hoodie and the hardware to the villain that attacked UA and Hosu, or worse, comment on it in front of Sensei's TV.

(At least Father hides his labret, but that's not a sure thing either, since fucking All Might knocked the hand off his face at the USJ.)

But Sensei doesn't approve of his hair going past his shoulders for whatever reason, so he's stuck waiting for it to grow back out again.

And why's he doing this today? Because Sensei's doctor finally got around to taking a look at his shoulder. The one that was stabbed halfway through by Stain. Like there was any fucking point to that, the old fart didn't do anything but bitch about him getting hurt again — like it was his idea to invite the nutjob into his bar — and call him careless for losing three more Noumu — he's starting to think the damn things are worthless aside from being distractions, and that's the doctor's fault, not his — then throw some more antibiotics at him like Kurogiri hadn't already given him some.

Hosu was three days ago, dammit. He knows Sensei needs support, but the old fuck didn't even come in person, he just told Kurogiri to break out the surgical camera so he could look at the cut from wherever he hangs out. Why couldn't he have done the check before Tomura switched his piercings back in?

Fucking hell he wants to destroy something. He scratches his neck viciously and heads back to his room. The closest he's going to get to dusting anything right now is wiping a few civilizations in Stellaris. Sensei's not going to let him out to wreck a few buildings when he was on the news a few days ago.

And that's another thing, those morons in the media assuming Stain was part of his League when the asshole killed that last Noumu personally—

He sees a message flashing in Discord and stops dead.

Takobell: im back now Takobell: still alive Takobell: m srry Takobell: can we talk

He stares in disbelief.

Takobell: くコ:ミ

Rage boils. A year and a half. It's been a year and a half since they bothered to say anything. A year and a half since they left him alone with Sensei, without so much as a deadmail drop. He had a deadmail drop for them, dammit! He knows the services aren't popular, because hurr durr hero gonna sabe erryone and no one wants to admit they'd ever need one, but they exist and everyone knows it! Especially in online gaming circles where people know the people they talk to might not recognize them if they show up Tragically Dead on the news.

And they aren't dead.

They just up and fucking vanished like he dusted them in his sleep.

He throws himself into his chair hard enough to make an ominous cracking sound, then slams his hand down on the keyboard.

Dust2dust: y the FUlk;hjap;of

His keyboard disintegrates and he swears violently. Punching the wall, he goes to grab one of the spares, and ignores the blood dripping down his neck from the scratches as he plugs it in and sits back down, grabbing a pair of art gloves and pulling them on.

Dust2dust: y the FUCK shud i listen to u after u ghosted me Takobell: i swear i didn't have a choice Dust2dust: what was it a fucking coma or smth? Dust2dust: gonna claim amnesia? Takobell: i fkn wish Takobell: plz Takobell: i swear ill explain everything if ull let me Takobell: n if u never wanna talk 2 me again after that ill understand Takobell: just 1 chance Dust2dust: … Dust2dust: ill think about it Dust2dust: keep an eye on Dust2dust: if u don't answer in 12h when i mssg you abt it im done w u Takobell: thx so much Takobell: くコ:ミ

He lets them stew for two days. When he finally messages them, they respond in seconds.

Dust2dust: ill listen Takobell: o thank fuck

Discord rings with an incoming voice call and he answers on reflex.

"Can we meet in person?" they ask. As mad as he is at them, their voice still cuts through the echoes of Stain's derision and the newscasters' moronic speculation. He's not thrilled by the request though.

"Why should I?"

"It… might make some things clearer. Please? I know it's a lot to ask, but you can pick the place."

It's weird hearing them nervous. Like actually anxious instead of just squirming with anticipation.

"…Can you get to Yokohama by 3PM tomorrow?" The needle shop they recommended was there, and it didn't exactly have a high-profile website.

"Easy," they say.

"There's a net cafe in Nishi." He gives the address. "I'll wait for half an hour, but by three thirty I'll be gone."

"I'll be there, I swear. Um… Look for a black and lime jacket, a magenta FPS scarf, and… Headphones like these." They send him a picture, a pair of bulky wireless noise-canceling phones with an LED ring around the cups.

"Black hoodie, red shoes," he responds. "Tomorrow."

He hangs up.

くコ:ミ

The net cafe he chose is maybe twenty minutes away from the needle shop, and just barely on the edge of a slightly better neighborhood. He's been there before, a few times. Spent time on their wifi when he wanted to look up something without it ending up in his internet history where Sensei might notice. He's used the webstore delivery lockers they keep for stuff he doesn't trust Kurogiri not to helpfully open for him if it's sent to their usual delivery address.

He sleeps badly and wakes up late, then almost scratches his neck bloody again after lunch when he realizes he's been staring at his wardrobe for the past ten minutes. He doesn't care what they think of his outfit! The only thing he needs to choose is between the pullover and zip hoodies. After a minute, he picks the pullover because it's not a zip kind of day, shoves Father in his pocket, grabs his phone and some cash, then slips out the back of the building.

Figuring out how to use the metro on his own was a goddamn nightmare of an adventure that took weeks of getting lost and telling Kurogiri he was just exploring dammit, no he does not need a warp next time. He knows what he's doing now (the bus system is still a black box of arcane bullfuckery though), and he heads to Sakuragicho. Two stops up the line, he gets off at Yokohama Station and winds his way through the streets toward the net cafe.

The place is half-empty, it being mid-afternoon on a weekday. There's no line to get a bottle of tea, and he's got his choice of tables—

Wait.

Headphones, magenta FPS scarf, black jacket with lime shoulders and sleeves… They're already here.

He can't tell how tall they are, sitting at the table in the corner like that. Not taller than him, definitely, but he can't say how much shorter. They're built slim, and the jacket and paint-splattered shirt hide if there's a figure underneath. But that's completely irrelevant compared to just about everything else.

The hands wrapped around a steaming cup have no nails, just a blue tint creeping up the fingers from the tips. There's an odd sheen to their skin, tiny swirls that look almost like freckles but definitely aren't, and around their eyes — candy-bright blue, oversized and slanted — there's a thick ring of black that spikes at the three corners. It's not eyeliner either, as he watches the top lines thin and the inner corners stretch inward toward the bridge of their nose. Their eyebrows are short, triangular, the same blue as their irises, and the same glossy texture as their hair.

Which isn't hair at all. They've got tentacles. Goddamn tentacles. Bright blue on the upside and white on the underside, massed like dreadlocks, partially tied up at the back of their head with a pair of thicker diamond-tipped tendrils and all of them twisting and curling at the ends. The ones that aren't brushing their shoulders look like they should writhe out of their tie any second, with the tie's help even.

He can see the exact moment they spot him, because they reach up and take their headphones off their perfectly triangular ears and raise a hesitant hand to wave, thin stripes and small dots of blue lighting up on their skin.

"Dust?" Their voice is the same odd warbling as always, and he guesses he knows now why he thought they'd be a good Zora. Their teeth are… fused, or maybe just a single plate each for top and bottom, with spikes where there would normally be canines on the upper ridge. Like a squid's beak.

Oh fuck. He shoves a hand into his hoodie pocket and tries to adjust it casually while he stalks over to slide into the seat across from them, then he opens his drink and uses it to soak his inexplicably dry throat. They're staring at him awkwardly, anxiously, and he fumbles for something intelligent to say.

"…You're RGB. That's cool." There. That's not too dumb, right?

The black around their eyes snaps into a spikeless shape that connects in a smooth curve across the bridge of their nose like goggles. "Uh. Thanks. I never looked at it like that before…"

"You could have mentioned."

"No, I couldn't. I like my Quirk, it's fun and it suits me, but… Other people are assholes, you know? I needed to see how you'd react for real. If I told you what to expect, you could fake it."

"Fake what?" he asks.

"Not being disgusted."

Oh he is so far from disgusted. It's incredibly fucking distracting, too. He takes another drink then sets the bottle down. "I'll decide if I'm disgusted or not after I hear why you ghosted me, and if I am, then I guarantee it won't have anything to do with how you look."

They chew their lip for a minute, their mask markings splitting back into extreme eyeliner mode. "I was in prison," they whisper.

His eyebrows shoot up. "You what?"

"It was the graffiti. My Quirk… No, before that. My job sucked. Boss was a jackass, customers were entitled idiots. Retail, right? Maybe you noticed I always sent you a new design the day after a shift at the store?"

He nods slowly. "Not every shift…"

"No, just the really bad ones. The ones where a few hours of gaming wasn't enough to unwind. The ones where I needed to scream it off." They take a sip of their drink. "I've got a complimentary emitter."

They set the cup down, and the blue on the tip of their index finger brightens until it's as intense as their tentacles, then they swipe it around the cardboard cup insulator sleeve. A trail of thick blue paint is left behind, until their favorite kaomoji is shining wet on the brown.

くコ:ミ

"Any color I want, and plenty of it." They set the cup aside.

"So your murals were all… that." Squid ink.

"Yeah. Legally, villainy. There's a little more to what I can do, but most of it doesn't matter right now. The point is, I got caught. Manual. Asshole nearly killed me without even trying. I don't do good with too much water in one place."

He almost decays his drink bottle. "How."

"When I—" They stop suddenly and look around, then pull out their phone, put it in airplane mode, and open a note app.

I can transform. In full paint mode i hv some cool mobility tricks, but if im submerged i melt n i cant reform on the spot. I hv 2 hv a gud amount of fresh ink somwer else. Manual is hydrokinetic. He trapped me in a water bubble before i cud change back. I got kicked back 2 my mural. If hed hosed it first id b ded.

He should have had a Noumu kill Manual at Hosu. "Did he hit you again?"

They shake their head. "I'm usually pretty dizzy for a while when that happens. It's disorienting, you know?"

He can imagine, for the sudden relocation if nothing else.

"So I get thrown in a tank overnight, then the judge. I get ranted at, filthy villain scum, defacing the proud city of Hosu, bla bla bla blergh how dare I, six months and paying like a few million in damages, do I have anything to say for myself." They roll their eyes.

"Did you?"

"Yeah, actually. I pointed out that one, it was a condemned building with the wrecking ball scheduled for the next week, two, it was the back wall with no windows around so it wasn't like anyone was going to see it, and three, if he bothered to read my Quirk registry he'd see that my ink dissolves in twelve hours max and is so water-soluble that high enough humidity can erase it in four. And this was August, remember. There was no defacement to fix anymore. I didn't even touch Manual, so there wasn't even a bandaid to pay for. The damages should be zero yen."

"And then what?"

"Apparently when the judge asks 'do you have anything to say for yourself' they're being rhetorical. They charged me with contempt and gave me eighteen months instead of the extra fines. I only got out two weeks ago."

His general rage at the Hero System is cut with annoyance at the last statement. "Two weeks? You only messaged me a couple of days ago!"

They look down at their cup. "I had… family business to take care of…"

"What kind," he growls.

"I never mentioned my parents, right? They died when I was in elementary school. My aunt looked after me. Except she died too, a few months ago. She was cool, she made sure the real fines got paid when I was arrested — my parents left me a little money — and she was smart enough to set a will. She owned the house, so it got sealed up, but I had to argue with the estate lawyer because he didn't want to give a villain anything. Greedy bastard, I think he just wanted her life insurance himself."

"How'd they die? Any of them."

"My parents, there was a train crash. A shit repair job on the rails after a Hero brawl. My aunt was killed when a gang fight broke out and the local spandex patrol decided breaking it up could wait until after they stopped for dango." They scowl, baring their… dental spikes? "Whose idea was it to model society on two hundred year old comic books again? American ones, even."

It's an actual effort not to grin. "Personally I blame All Might."

They stare at him, wide-eyed. "Wha?"

He looks around, then stands up. "Come on, let's go. Don't wanna talk about this here."

They keep staring for several seconds, then stumble to their feet — they're maybe ten centimeters shorter than him, it turns out — and follow him out of the cafe. There's a dive bar not too far away, one that he knows Giran talks to people at sometimes.

Once they're at a table there, he nods. "All Might's been hot shit for about thirty-five years by now. Do you know what it was like before him?"

"Chaos and war, according to history classes," they say dubiously.

He scoffs. "Like that's any different from how it is now. A jank game is a jank game. A few patches and a shiny HD graphics mod isn't gonna make it a good game when the basic mechanics are shit. There are more heroes now because every jackass with or without a halfway useful Quirk wants to be like All Might. They swarm like brightly colored rats, and that's all they do. They don't save anyone. They wait for him to do it, even if they're standing right there. And everyone thinks that's enough. At least before him everyone knew they lived in a hellhole. It's—"

He stops.

"Dust?"

"Oh…" He giggles. "It really is all his fault. I get it now. Ahhh, thanks for that."

They blinks rapidly, the blue of their tentacles, eyes, and fingertips shifting to a blazing green color. "Uh… You're welcome? What for though?"

"Eh… I had a talk with a really annoying asshole the other day, I've been thinking about it ever since but I wasn't sure… I understand now though. 'Symbol of Peace,' they call him. But what's a symbol, really? You're an artist, you know the answer, right?"

"A representation," they say slowly. "A suggestion."

"Exactly! It's just something that everyone agrees means a thing, it's not the thing itself! And that means that All Might isn't Peace! He's just another human."

They open and close their mouth a few times. "…Now that you mention it… Do you think he planned that?"

"Oh I know he did." Sensei said so.

"Well that's just stupid." They make one of those weird burbling sounds that he could never figure out, which is apparently a variant of a raspberry. "Society's gonna catch fire, freeze over, implode, and get disintegrated by the sonic vibrations of dismayed screaming, all at once, when he gets too old to work. Which is like… any day now, probably. He stopped doing 72-hour shifts years ago. Man those were stupid. 'I wanna be like All Might!' Really? You wanna work three days straight with no sleep and like fifteen minutes to shove a burger down your throat, then take twelve hours off and do it again? What happened to wanting to be a robot or a tree when you grow up? At least those were reasonable unrealistic dreams. You know, where the second grade teacher has to say 'no it doesn't work like that' because it's actually impossible instead of 'you can't do it, you're too weak' because they can't insist no one can do it when someone did. But apparently you're supposed to say you wanna be like All Might anyway because not wanting to be a Hero is weird somehow, I said I wanted to be an artist and they were like 'you mean an art hero' and I said 'no just an artist' and they looked at me like they personally saw me squirm out of a spaceship."

…He missed this. The rambling. The slightly off-key stream of thought that most people would probably call word vomit but is actually coherent if you can follow it. And being able to see them ramble is novel, their expressions. People's expressions don't always make sense to him, he hates watching live-action movies because he can't figure out what the hell the actors are supposed to be emoting, but their face is… intuitive, he guesses in the word.

And the fact that he can read the confusion and derision when they talk about how overblown Heroes are just makes them even ho—

Abort thought, abort thought. He's still mad at them.

"Doesn't surprise me that it's that bad," he says out loud. "But it is stupid. Unbelievably stupid."

"I know, right?"

"But I have a question."

"Uh-huh?"

"I get that you probably couldn't do a Discord call from jail."

They look nervous again suddenly. "Definitely not."

"But why didn't you have a deadmail drop with what you were doing?"

They stare at him blankly. "A what?"

"One of those things where you set up a message that gets sent to whoever if something happens to you, and you can set it to dox you if it's for an online friend? So they can check the news for your name even if they didn't already know it?"

"Oh those!" they half-shout, wide-eyed. "I! …Am a dumbass. I did not think about using those at all oh no that was so stuuuupiiiid…"

They groan and cover their face with their hands, tentacles curling around their fingers.

He waits for a minute. He's never actually seen them do this, but he's listened to it before. He knows they'll snap out of it soon.

…Or not? "Tako?"

They jolt. "Um! Katsushika. Katsushika Ayato."

"Katsushika like Hokusai?"

They blush. Or at least he assumes it's a blush. It looks like their cheeks were airbrushed in the same color as their tentacles, and their RGB flares up too. "Exactly like Hokusai."

Well that's… Appropriate. He pulls out his phone and sets a new contact, then sets it on the table between them. "Fill that out."

They do. Apparently Ayato is written with the kanji for Color and Soar. A boy's name, usually. No telling these days though. And they've written "Chromika くコ:ミ" in the nickname space. He sends a text to the number they've entered, then nods as their phone buzzes in their pocket.

Their green starts turning pink, the eyeliner shifting back toward goggles. "Does that mean…?"

"I'm still pissed off," he says bluntly. "You left me alone for a year and a half, and it's hard to care that you didn't mean to. But I do understand why, and I'm probably the last person in the world with any right to have a problem with it."

They go right back to being green. "What's that mean?"

"Figure out where I was five days ago and you'll understand." He stands up. "I sent you a link to a game I've been playing recently. Download it and I'll see you online at seven."

"How many gigs?" they ask.

"About seventy-two, last I checked. Why?"

"My internet speed is crap right now. The ISP has a policy about throttling the connection for 'unreliable customers' to ensure 'upstanding' ones don't risk running out of buffer on Youtube videos." The goggles turn to eyeliner again. "If my aunt hadn't bought our boxes outright I'd probably still be on a waiting list to get a router. I can play, but seventy-two gigs might not finish downloading by seven."

He scowls. All that over some paint? He really needs to destroy this stupid fucking society. "Just be online."

"I will."

He leaves, heading back for the train station.

くコ:ミ

Katsushika Ayato wanders home in a daze. As glad as they are that Dust was understanding — and what did he mean, the last person in the world with the right to have a problem with it — they are ever so slightly distracted by the fact that he said their Quirk looks cool.

They've literally never heard that before.

He also didn't try to ask about the specifics of their anatomy. Didn't look like he wanted to, even. He glanced at their hands a few times, but otherwise kept his eyes above their neck. That's… refreshing.

They've always hated people trying to figure out what's under their clothes. Or worse, assuming. Their schools were pretty relaxed, all things considered, and plenty of girls wore the uniform trousers in the winter, or in the summer if they biked to and from, but they were the only one that mixed and matched the 'boy' uniform with the 'girl' one at will. How often their classmates acted like their choosing to wear a skirt Meant Something or that they were being purposefully misleading if they paired it with the necktie instead of the ribbon…

They grab some frozen takoyaki and stick it in the microwave while their laptop boots up, then find the game Dust linked to them and set it to download.

They wonder how many piercings he's got. He never took his hood down, so they could only see the labret. It goes pretty well with his face, they think. It balances the scar on the left side of his mouth — how did that happen, they wonder — and the small mole on the right. The light blue finish matches his hair too.

They turn on some music and grab their sketchbook to draw while they wait for seven. They want to draw him…

The game still isn't ready to play by the time he messages them, but they're not about to keep him waiting. They switch their headphones to the gaming set and start the call.

"I'm here!" They set the sketchbook aside and focus on their screen. "There's still like… twenty minutes until it's done downloading, sorry, but it should install pretty fast after that. What game is this by the way?"

There's a moment of silence. "You don't know?"

They shrug. "I'll play anything once and you wouldn't tell me to get it if you didn't want to play with me. I trust you."

"It's a horde shooter with weird makeshift guns and ridiculous parkour bullshit."

"Oh wow, keep talking."

"There's shit like an RPG that shoots cans of soda and the shrapnel upgrade turns it to glass bottles, and instead of running on power lines you grind on them like you're taking a skateboard down a railing."

"Does it have exploding teddy bears? It sounds like it should have exploding teddy bears."

"Exploding rubber ducks, actually."

They grin. "Perfect."

くコ:ミ

Ayato loves the game. They wonder if he picked it just to play with them. They love playing with Dust, they love that he just lets them chatter. They missed him so much…

They can't help but wonder though, why he thought they could figure out where he was five days before they met, when he didn't give them his name. It bothers them— Wait. Five days before they met… That was Hosu, right? That was the night Hosu was attacked.

Was Dust involved in that?

Taglist: @thatoneawkwardfeeling @scary-grace @userfayz

[chimaerakirin]

What Color Destruction

Shigaraki Tomura is perfectly certain of his place in the world, thank you very much. He is Sensei's successor, the man who can and will destroy Hero Society. There's no need to ask questions. His online bestie changes that... And then disappears. Livid at the abandonment, he throws himself back into Sensei's goals. A year and a half later, they return and beg for the chance to explain themself. As much as he wants to stay mad at them, it's hard when he sees them face to face, and once again he starts asking questions. What will really happen if he kills All Might? Is what he wants for his League really the same as what Sensei wants for him? And how badly would this friendship be ruined if they knew exactly how hot he thinks they are?

Rated E for Explicit.

Chapter CW: None.

Beta'd by the amazing @shigarakislaughter.

Index

Start - Next ->

Fresh Take

Shigaraki Tomura stares at his game screen in disbelief. Who the actual fuck is this clown? Point gap means Red Team is about two thirds of the way to a mercy rule loss and this Takobell dipshit is wandering off chasing butterflies, as literally as possible in an FPS. How did this idiot even get to their play tier? Did they buy the account?

He dies. Again. A headshot from a guy who, according to the killfeed and replay cam, was behind a solid wall and not using the Anti-Tank, the only gun in this game that can both hit through cover and one-hit kill. Fucking railgunning wall-hacker—

Takobell 'avenges' him in what looks almost like an accident, tripping over the cheater and knifing them before they can switch to a pistol.

Dust2dust: Oi wud u lock tf in? Dust2dust: Wudnt hv died if u were payin attention Takobell: lol srry Takobell: ok lockin in now Takobell: くコ:ミ

And they do. They look ridiculous, their gear is the brightest colors available in the game — this is an urban shooter, there is no practical reason to have winter camo — and they've got some admittedly fairly rare skins on their mid-tier guns. But they do stop playing like a toddler and start playing like they were a toddler when they first held a mouse. In all honesty, it's almost as annoying as the clowning before, because they could have been playing like this the whole time.

They go straight from the knife kill to spraying the next Blue player with their SMG, then reach a corner and swap to their light sniper, hitting one on a rooftop and spinning almost ninety degrees to nail another just as they come into view at the far end of that street. They duck behind a cover spot for the bare minimum it takes to lag-cancel the reloads on both sniper and SMG, then take the roof shortcut — done almost exclusively by either noobs or vets — and proves they're the latter by making the pigeon-jump across the street, using the one single spot on the power line with collision. Two kills later and they've killstreaked the entire enemy team, getting another avenger bonus and a rescue bonus in the process, then they come up behind the railgunner again and knife them a second time. They get one more in before three of the Blues dogpile them, but Tomura and another Red are already there and drop them before they can scatter.

The match timer for this mode is fifteen minutes. They were five minutes in. They win by mercy rule in just over eight minutes. Takobell scores second place for their team, just under him. Somehow, they managed to not die more than they killed before they got serious. He's not sure if they're trolling or what.

He ends up matched with them again two days later. He tells them to focus one minute in, because his other teammates are even more useless this time around, and they manage to win two out of three for the point capture mode. The next week, All V All is the event mode, and they roflstomp everyone, including him. Still wearing anti-camo and using mid weapons. Three matches in a row.

He can't take it anymore.

Dust2dust: How tf r u doin that? Takobell: doin wat くコ:ミ Dust2dust: Ur runnin around w a headshot hi-liter hat n winter camo coat Dust2dust: N a piss-tier smg and the pipe sniper Dust2dust: How r u not getting oneshotted across the map n gettin chain kills w that setup? U shudnt be able to sneak for shit Takobell: o that Takobell: practice? Takobell: and u cant see bc skins but i got the heavy grip on the rifle Takobell: so its got more recoil control without the spd penalty frm the other snipers Takobell: n hair trigger 4 firerate Dust2dust: UR HAT IS BRITE FKN YELLOW Takobell: its also a 3rd taller than the char models head but dsnt extend the hitbox

Tomura just… stares. The hat's a decoy? That's… He replays his memory. He can't remember if he's ever seen them get headshotted properly.

Dust2dust: Q w me Takobell: wat Dust2dust: Comp match, team q Takobell: i cant rn Takobell: srry Takobell: rl shit Takobell: tmrw? Dust2dust: 6pm Takobell: ok くコ:ミ

くコ:ミ

Tomura keeps talking to them. They're a ditz, but in a crouching moron hidden badass kind of way. They mostly ignore the meta, and their strats are either unconventional or technically mediocre but somehow functional. That goes for a lot of games, once they switch from Guerilla Blitz to SpecTacUra 3.

After a few months, they switch to the most recent Final Fantasy MMO, XXIX, where Takobell mains the Painter class for some reason. He gets to see them literally chasing butterflies now, collecting ingredients for the crafting jobs.

It turns out they're about the same age as him, going by their vague mentions of high school. He still doesn't know what their gender is. They complain about sweating their tits off in the summer sometimes, but they're just as likely to joke about having a boner. After nearly a year, when they start using voice on Discord, he can't tell by the sound. Or the pronouns, they use the informal neutral ora instead of boku, ore, or watashi.

"Ah fuck it. Are you a boy or a girl?"

They laugh, a burbling sound, and send him a screencap of the Professor from one of the original Pokemon games. "No," they answer, throwing their fishing line out again. Very few things can hold their attention without prompting like a fishing minigame.

"Wait, what?"

"Not today," they clarify. Which clarifies absolutely nothing. "Maybe tomorrow."

"Tomorrow which?"

"Yes." They laugh again.

"What the fuck? How does that work? People are either one or the other, aren't they?"

"Not always. Hey, you wanna play Pokemon Wild Battle Adventure? I wanna play Pokemon now."

The sudden topic change doesn't surprise him. It's not the first time they've gotten distracted by their own memes. "The ARPG where you play as the Pokemon? Yeah sure. But how does it work? The not being either one."

"What, you've never heard of transgender before?" They reel in their fish — or their boot, more like — and cast again.

"What, like… okamas?"

"Ehhh… That's an old word, not really used anymore. It got applied to so many different things that it stopped meaning anything useful. Didn't help that a lot of them were insulting. I wouldn't use it." They pull in another fish, then use the /sit command to paint a chair to use. A minute or so later, a couple of links drop in his Discord messages. "Those might help. Short version, there's two key words. Sex is biological and usually immediately obvious. Gender is mental, and doesn't always match, even though it's assigned at birth based on what junk you have. When the two are opposites, that's transgender. There's also non-binary, where you're not distinctly either one but still something, genderfluid where you go back and forth, and agender where you aren't either one or anything else at all."

Tomura opens the links and scans the first page — that is an absolute fuckton of colored stripes — then saves the tabs for later. "So what are you?"

"Short version again, I'm me. Technical version… Non-binary genderfluid, currently agender, sometimes both, sometimes one or the other. Just stick to they and them, it's easier that way. I'm just glad keishou is neutral. English titles are confusing bullshit." They stand up and cast their line again. "What about you?"

"I thought it was pretty obvious I'm a guy."

"If you say so," they say cheerfully. "Let me know if you change your mind."

He blinks and almost gets ganked by a respawning mob. "That happens?"

"Yep. Come on, you don't think our species is inherently enlightened or some shit like that. If we were, why would any language have a word for self-discovery? Some people know when they're kids, others don't figure it out until they're way older than us."

"When did you figure it out?"

"When I was… three or four, I guess? I don't remember." They reel in their fish, and the fishing hole indicator deactivates. "This one's spent. See another one?"

"Uh… Over there by the tree."

"Great, let's go!"

くコ:ミ

He finds out why they like the Painter class a few months later. Apparently it appeals to one of their other hobbies. They send him a picture — a photograph of a drawing — of the absolute bullshit that occurred on their last raid. The Paladin was a special kind of clown, so the Ninja did most of the tanking, both of the healers were specced more for debuff cleanse than HP restore so the Summoner had to fill in with Carbuncle instead of dealing damage, and when the boss finally died, it was to a rain of painted moogles falling from the sky, in sharp contrast with the mass nuking from his Black Mage that cleared the rest of the mobs.

The picture shows the boss halfway to falling over from a moogle that bounced off its forehead, a giant mushroom cloud in the background over a bunch of crispy-looking scribbles that resemble stick figures made of charcoal twigs.

He snorts, and the day after next, he sends back his full response: the Painter with their easel set up on the collapsed boss's chest, the Black Mage sitting on a mountain of smoking dead mobs like a throne, and the healers, Summoner, Ninja, and Dragoon slumped on the ground exhausted between the two while the Paladin stands off to the side, facing away from everyone else with his shield up and sword raised.

Takobell snickers into the microphone for ten minutes straight, then sends him a few more pictures. They seem to do mostly sketches, some with marker coloring, but others painted.

"You could probably sell some of this," he comments.

"Oh I do!" they chirp. "There's a nice tattoo parlor that buys my designs for a pretty good price."

He blinks. "A tattoo parlor?" Don't most people hate tattoos? There was a giant fucking scandal last year when some Hero or other got caught out with ink on his arm when his costume got torn, and the guy instantly dropped like eighty places in the rankings. He thought it was hilarious.

"Skin's just another canvas. If people wanna paint on their own, who gives a shit?"

"Agreed. They don't think you're too young to go in though?"

They laugh. "For starters, it's a Western-style needle shop, not an irezumi place, so they also do piercings, which aren't eighteen-plus only. Second off, I'm not asking them to ink me. Third, I picked that place because they have a good rep but don't ask questions. If I actually did want ink, all I'd have to do is not wear my school uniform."

"They don't like… ask for ID or anything?"

"Nope. Just look old enough. Damn, I kinda wish I could get a tattoo."

"Why can't you?" he asks.

"Skin problems."

"What, eczema or something?"

"Nope. That can be worked with. No way around my problem."

"Sucks, I guess."

"Yeah. At least I managed to get my ears done. Hey, you got Pokemon installed yet?"

A few days later, he asks them if they know a good needle shop in Sanken. They give him an address in a shitty neighborhood not far from Yokohama Station and links to a few websites that talk about how to identify good needle shops, and the difference between No Questions and No Standards. They just keep giving him stuff to look up.

It's kind of weird. A lot of what Sensei tells him to research is boring, no matter how necessary he knows it is, but everything Takobell gives him to read is interesting, or is at least interesting to think about even if there's the website equivalent of a bad textbook in their reference material.

くコ:ミ

A year after they started playing together, Tomura is sixteen and has two holes in each ear with an eye on getting a couple more. Takobell has started sending him pictures of street art, brightly colored murals on concrete and brick. Their sense of humor is… odd, and seems to run on ADHD and ancient memes, which comes through on their art, so he's pretty sure the murals are their work.

In return, he shares some more of his drawings. Mostly landscapes and game fanart.

They've been sharing music — a lot of pre-Quirk stuff in a dozen different genres — since the start of the Final Fantasy days. When he's seventeen, they link him to a niconico channel that posts fan remixes of that kind of music, usually over a gameplay recording or cutscene clips. When he asks, they give him the audio files.

"So you do remixes too?" he asks.

"Eheheh, yeah. I like music. I'd sing but, uh…"

"But what?"

"I sound like a frog in a barrel of water. I can rap, sort of, but I can't carry a tune in a bucket."

"Can't be that bad." He actually likes their voice.

"It is that bad."

"Prove it."

"You asked for it."

It is that bad. They picked one from that old band From Ashes To New, so it has both rapping and singing parts. As far as he can tell, they nail the former sections. The clean lyrics on the other hand… 'Frog in a barrel of water' is accurate. Not an empty barrel, not floating on the water, but actually underwater. It's honestly kind of impressive. They'd make a good voice actor for an aquatic character, like one of the Zora in Legend of Zelda, but they're not going to win a Gold Disk anytime soon.

He still listens all the way to the end of the song though. They do know all the words.

"All right," he admits when they finish. "You were right."

They make a weird burbling sound that he recognizes as embarrassment. "Why didn't you stop me?"

"Like you said, I asked for it. And you did pretty good on the rap parts."

"Ehehehe, thanks…"

"Let me know if you post any more of those. What do you wanna play today?"

"Hm… Ooh, I know! So there was this big server recovery thing over in Canada or something and they found a bunch of pre-Quirk MMOs and the copyright on those is deader than last month's takoyaki so they auctioned off the IPs and one of them's already up and running, and I think the combat is supposed to be kinda Soulsy so I think that might be good. Or else I heard that new FPS from Hermetic Waffle Studios is hilariously bad so it might be worth checking out just for the roast."

He snorts. "The first one. Send me the link, we can try the FPS in a couple of days if it hasn't vanished in shame."

"Here you go!"

くコ:ミ

He knows Takobell spends a lot of time online for a student. Then they graduate high school a month before he turns eighteen, and he knows that's something that usually gets celebrated with friends from class, but they show up online so fast he's not sure the ceremony's even over yet.

They're his best friend. They're his only friend, hiding out in the bar the way he is.

He's got a sneaking suspicion that he's their only friend.

Especially when the first words out of their mouth when they start up voice chat are, "So how are we gonna party today?"

Like this is the singular celebration they're getting.

"…You've been asking about my landscape art," he starts.

"For literal years, yeah. Seriously, where do you get your ideas? That stuff is amazing."

"If you wanna see, I'll show you."

"Oooh yes please!"

He starts up Minecraft and sends them an invite to his world.

He's never done that before. They've played Minecraft together, but never in the world where he keeps his builds. In their usual shared world, he keeps his set-ups basic and focuses on the adventuring and exploring parts of the game, mining and gathering resources. The closest he's come to building anything fancy where they can see is using a mix of TNT and Charged Creepers to invert a mountain. They thought that was hilarious, but that's not why he did it.

He just… doesn't feel like he can share creation. Not just like that. Not that easily. Creation isn't what he's for, not with his Quirk. He's a destroyer. So he keeps his drawings and his builds to himself. He's not sure why he decided to share that drawing of the FF raid back then, but having the skill, having the hobby, is easier to justify to himself. It's tactical, strategic, whatever. It's useful for leadership. It's not art, it's planning.

There's not really any way he can excuse building a castle out of cubes in a game though. So he keeps that to himself.

Or at least he did.

The fact that he's the first, if not the only, person they're willing to turn to when they want to celebrate one of the big milestones that most people have in their lives, well… That makes him want to give something back. So he's willing to share this with them.

He tries not to focus too hard on how rewarding their reactions feel. They ask if there's a tour, and when he says they can just go explore and ask if they have any questions, they're off like a shot and running through his Dark Souls-inspired trap fiesta fortress squealing over everything. The first time they die to a lava pit they squeal even harder.

"You didn't say there were traps!"

"What, like I'm gonna build something this elaborate and not try to outdo Sen's Fortress?" He snorts. The whole idea is ridiculous.

"You mean it's all like this? Sweet!" They pop out of the bed he put at the entrance for them to respawn at and run off into the obstacle course again.

"All but one of the castles, yeah. The city's not a trap field, but there's a lot of redstone tricks there." Two broken monitors worth of redstone, to be exact. Getting it all to work together took literal years. He never wants to touch those fucking circuits and switches again.

He just hopes he doesn't get another Idea for more builds, because then he'll have to.

They spend a solid two hours exploring that castle. They have to respawn several times, but their only reaction is always to giggle and talk about how cool the trap was. Then they move on to the next castle. He doesn't have to tell them which one is next, and there is a specific order to them, since he made a whole DS game's worth of areas. They just follow the layout. He's not sure whether that says more about his design skill or their intuition.

They call a fifteen minute break late in the evening for food, and he takes the opportunity to grab some instant ramen before showing them the way to the city.

They're still looking around several hours after that. It's a big city. Normally, they quit out by two AM on nights when they don't have any reason to get up the next day, but 2:30 comes and goes.

"So… what are you gonna do next?" he asks curiously. "You haven't mentioned university or anything…"

"Nah, I don't have the grades for that. Or the mindset." They laugh. "Nah, I'm gonna ramp up my art. Try to get a part time job at a paint shop or a game store or something. See what I can do from there."

"You don't wanna study… I dunno, design or something?"

"Mmmmeh, maybe online classes or something. Art schools are too structured, and most of them make everything about Heroes somehow. It's all costumes and sponsorship ad campaigns and the newest reboot of Mighty Friends or all that garbage. Like, Tokyogeidai and a bunch of others? They give bonus starting credits to people who went to UA and got a good grade in Hero Art History. Because that's a core class there or something. Blegh." They scoff. "What if I wanna study ukiyo-e, huh? Do woodblock prints? There's no spandex in Hokusai's work."

"That name sounds familiar…" he mumbles. The two of them never really talked about Heroes. He doesn't bring it up because he doesn't trust himself not to start ranting, and they just… don't seem to care. So it's nice to hear them call bullshit on Heroes getting jammed into places they don't belong.

"That's because you're a man of culture and class. Katsushika Hokusai did The Great Wave Off Kanagawa." He can hear the grin in their voice. "And The Dream Of The Fisherman's Wife."

He frowns. "Hang on, what…"

"Dude invented tentacle hentai is what I'm saying. Go look it up, there's dialogue written all over the background of the print."

He almost spits his Iyemon all over his monitor. Then he alt-tabs out of the game and goes to look up the print they're talking about. It takes a minute to work it out. Well, actually, it takes a minute to tear his eyes away from the actual drawing, because classic shunga style aside, this Hokusai dude had good taste. But once he does it's another minute to figure out the background. In the end he has to find a museum page with a transcript because the handwriting is awful, and…

"Holy shit."

"I know right?" They laugh.

"This is cheesy as hell, but also absolutely fucking classic hentai dialogue."

"Literally, even."

He snickers.

くコ:ミ

A bit over a month goes by before they stop being available to play all day every day. They mention they got a job at a small art supply store, but they don't say anything more about it after that, and they tend to be extra-chattery the first half an hour or so of each game session after they get off work. He doesn't ask.

They do spend more time on their art when they're not at work though. They go from a remix every week and a half or so to at least one a week, and two or sometimes even three street murals a week. He prints out the photos they send him and hang them around his desk, moving some of the news articles to the ceiling to make room. He sends them a drawing of his own for each one.

His life isn't what he once thought it would be, back when Sensei got hurt, and he doesn't want it any other way. He's got three piercings in his left earlobe, two piercings in his right earlobe, three rings in his right helix, and the outline of a cloud on the back of his right shoulder, things he never would have gotten if they didn't make him think about it. There's a lot of stuff he wouldn't have thought of if they hadn't mentioned it.

He's considering asking if they want to meet up in person.

Then, in mid-August after he turns eighteen, just six months after they graduated high school, they vanish into thin air.

Taglist: @thatoneawkwardfeeling @scary-grace @userfayz