Shouta after the Hospital War arc, getting used to his eyepatch and prosthetic. New injuries, new scars, new ways to deal with them.
Then there's Eri.
Eri who watches him in his peripheral as he's putting his eyepatch on as he's getting out of bed, as he straps his prosthetic on and then makes sure his pants cover it up. Who sees him always, always careful of the scars, keeping the eye covered and the stump in a special sock.
He wonders why at first, thinking perhaps she's worried about him, or that maybe she thinks he looks too different.
Then one day the straps to his eye patch break, and she panics.
PANICS.
"Eri, it's fine," Shouta says, even as she frantically starts looking for anything to try to fix the straps.
"It isn't!" she says, tears forming and her tiny hands shaking. "You're just saying that!"
"I'm really not," he says. "My eye will be okay until I get home."
"But everyone will see your scars!" she wails.
Shouta frowns. "What?"
"Y-your scars, A-a-aizawa-san!" she repeats, starting to hiccup as she sobs. "You - you're covering them up, and now everyone will see them, and - and I'm s-sorry I can't h-help!"
As Eri cries, loud and wailing with crocodile tears rolling down her cheeks and her hands messily and uselessly trying to wipe them away, Shouta sees her clothes.
Her long sleeves. Her turtleneck. Her thick tights under the floofy skirt.
His heart aches as everything clicks.
"Eri," he calls. "Hey, come here."
He pulls her into a hug, rubbing her back and calming her down, and waits until she can breathe properly again before attempting to explain to her.
He doesn't wear the eyepatch to hide his scars - he wears it to protect what's left.
"It's the same with my leg, too," he says, patting just above his knee, and Eri looks down. "I can't risk dirt or germs getting in, or I might get an infection. If that happened, I couldn't go back to fighting villains."
Eri sniffs, thinking for a moment. "...Really?"
Shouta cracks a small smile. "Really."
"You..." She wrings her small hands, voice quiet. "You're not...ashamed...?"
"No," he tells her, squeezing her shoulder gently. "I got these scars because I was..." He thinks for a moment. "Fighting bad guys.
There's nothing for me to be ashamed of."
Eri bites her lip, and she looks at her own arms. "Oh."
"Hey." Shouta tips her chin up so that she's looking up at him again. "You don't have anything to be ashamed of, either, alright?"
"But..."
Shouta takes a deep breath - this is still a sensitive topic with Eri, but perhaps it's time to broach the subject for this conversation. "The one who hurt you. You'd say he was a bad guy, right?"
"Y-yeah..."
"Maybe even one of the worst of them all."
Eri gives a small nod.
"Well, I know it might be hard for you to understand right now, but you'd been fighting him for a long time. It was because of you that Midoriya and Togata were there to fight him, you know."
Eri's lip trembles.
"So, if anyone ever asks..." Shouta continues gently.
"You got your scars by fighting bad guys, too."
Eri sniffs once, twice, and then throws her arms around him as she cries.
After that day, she doesn't watch him put on his eyepatch or prosthetic anymore. Instead, she starts wearing short-sleeve shirts and shorts with a smile.
(Destiny OC insert; takes place during Season of Plunder)
(Warning(s): cursing, kidnapping, sustenance deprivation, abuse, graphic description of injury, blood, death, mention of torture)
I watched my Drekhs drag the Eliksni child to a chair in the center of the room and I couldn’t stop glaring at her and her clear eyes. At how her head was held high with confidence. At how she thrashed and those dangerous fists fatally crushed the ribs and carapace of the Drekhs binding her to the chair with thick chains. It has been two weeks since my crew had kidnapped the shithead—a child who towered over even my tallest Vandals and had unnaturally powerful fists that destroyed everything beneath them—and she still hasn’t cracked. I have limited her food and water to the bare minimum and have completely deprived her of Ether, and yet she was alert and active and so disgustingly spiteful. And there was absolutely no evidence of the torture I had inflicted upon her… not even the barest hint of bruising on that face that has come to irritate me so. For two weeks, I have been relentlessly trying to claw out information from her and I still haven't broken her or her fire.
I. Am. Sick of it.
I stood in front of her as the Drehks ran off to go die in a secluded corner and she scowled up at me for a moment before her expression shifted to a sardonic grin, her teeth bared and her eyes narrowed spitefully. I backhanded her cheek. “Stop smiling, brat. I’m tired of your games. You’re going to answer my questions now—one way or another.”
She spat out a glob of spit and midnight-blue blood onto the floor, and then laughed. She was chained up, starved, deprived of Ether and surrounded by armed enemies, and the little rat was laughing like this was all some big joke. “What’s so funny?” I seethed, flexing one set of claws and ignoring the itch to wring her neck until she went limp.
The hatchling threw her head back and laughed even louder, practically crying from how hard she was cackling, before she threw herself against the chains and shoved her face into mine, her expression twisted with sadistic delight. “You’re an idiot! That’s what’s so funny! You think that you can chain me up and beat me and not be in any trouble?? Well I’ve got baaaaad news for you!” Her expression abruptly shifted from maniacal laughter to something dark and sinister, and she settled back in the chair. “My Mama is gonna come here and kill you. She totally destroyed a Ketch that had taken my brother for just a few hours, and you’ve had me locked up for a week. Wait, it’s been longer than that, huh?” She grinned and sang tauntingly, “Ooooo you’re in big trouble~!”
I grabbed her by that damn red scarf around her neck and yanked her back towards me. “Don’t you dare threaten me, you little brat! Unlike a lot of the others, I don’t give two shits on whether or not you’re barely a hatchling! And I emphasize ‘barely’.”
She made a mock-surprised face at me. “Y’know, I’m usually pretty polite, but that’s because my Mama’s always on comms. But my Mama ain’t on now and Spider’s taught me some fun new words soooo… fuck you!” She went eerily calm again when I let out a low hiss as I barely withheld myself from smashing her skull into the wall. “And I ain’t threatening you: I’m warning you. There’s no escaping my Mama. Not when she’s so freaking angry that she’ll rip your head off with her bare hands. Did you know…” She leaned closer with a purr. “…that my Mama is a Guardian? Took me and my brother in when we lost our parents. She’ll do literally anything to protect us. She was ticked when she found out that your little buddy had snatched my brother up, and now she’s ticked off that Eramis ha—“
I didn’t let her continue. I didn’t even bother unchaining her. I just lifted the brat by the head and started bashing her face into the floor, only stopping when I saw a tooth amongst the blood splatter. “HOW DARE YOU DISRESPECT ERAMISKEL?!?!” I roared in outrage, digging my claws into the carapace of her head until it cracked and started oozing midnight-blue. “You will address her as a Kell and nothing less, you arrogant little shit! I barely tolerate you insulting me and my crew, but I will not stand by and allow you to disrespect my Kell!” I released her head and took a step back, leaving her facedown on the floor. The Drekhs in the shadows of the room didn’t dare to move, barely dared to breathe and they could only watch as I threw a hard kick into the hatchling’s thorax, making her whole body and the chair briefly lift off the ground and causing to her cough up a mixture of blood and spit. Might as well make an example of the damn kid. I crossed both my upper and lower arms and glared down at her limp, facedown form. “Not so funny now, huh—“ I was cut off… by her giggling. My blood boiled as the sound grew to a loud, boisterous, maniacal cackle again and I lifted her back up, slamming the chair upright and into the floor hard enough that I felt the metal legs bend a little.
She. Just. Kept. Laughing.
I slapped her so hard that if I hadn’t been holding the back of the seat, she would’ve fallen over, and that finally shut her up. But her spirit still wasn’t broken. I could see it. Hatred and defiance and confidence were glittering brightly in all four of her eyes as she turned her head to look at me again. I despised it. I wanted to tear it right out of her heart, force it down her throat and make her regret ever going against Eramiskel. My Kell!
She bared her bloodied and broken teeth in yet another grin and hissed slowly, “Y’know, you’re really ticking me off. I gotta say, I’m impressed! It takes a lot to get under my shell!”
I stood to my full height and snarled down at her, “Shut the hell up.” I was so done with her and her antics at this poi—
A loud crash shook the Ketch and my crew all stumbled to one side; I saw a couple of Drekhs actually fall over, and even I was forced to take a knee to stop myself from tumbling to the floor. But the hatchling kept smiling with that eerie look on her face even as the chair slid a little to the side. “Welp. Mama’s here, and I’m done playing this game.”
I whipped my head up and could only watch in a mix of outrage and horror as the hatchling flexed her arms and the metal chains tying her to the chair snapped with terrifying ease. She stood up and casually massaged her wrists while all of the Drekhs slowly crawled backwards, eyes glowing with terror. They didn’t even obey my commands to subdue her and just kept backing away. I forced myself to stand back up and draw the cutlass strapped to my belt, ignoring the fearful tremor in my limbs. I lunged at the child, coiled my upper arm around her neck, grabbed her shoulder and a wrist with my lowers, and I pressed my blade to the soft part of her throat. “All right, you listen here—“
“You’re dumb,” the child said. Her voice was no longer that sadistic giggling but instead sounded like a young hatchling that had become bored of a toy. I snarled and opened my mouth to shout at her but I was stopped by the taste of blood and regurgitated Ether suddenly and rapidly filling my mouth. When I looked down at myself, I realized the mistake that made me ‘’dumb’’. From our close proximity, she had been able to slam two of her fists into my chest and in one devastating blow, everything beneath her hands broke: carapace shattered, skin tore open, bones snapped and organs ruptured.
I stumbled back and fell to my knees, dropping my sword as I suddenly found myself unable to breathe no matter how much I gasped for air. Midnight-blue blood literally poured into my palms and it overfilled my rebreather, and there was absolutely nothing I could do as the hatchling loomed over me with a dark expression. Her laughter was gone, her obnoxious grin was replaced by a scowl and her eyes showed all of the hatred she held within her heart. Hatred for me. Hatred for my Kell. Hatred for The Witness.
She clasped her upper fists together and raised them above her head, ready to bring them down onto me and end my life. But then she froze and her hands dropped as a kind of fear took her over, slowly backing away from me and shaking her head. “Nonononono…!”
My Drekhs had fled as soon as they had seen the child cave in my chest and now that I looked around, I realized that we were the only ones left in the room. She wasn’t afraid of those under my command. She wasn’t afraid of Eramiskel. She sure as hell wasn’t afraid of me. So what had her so rattled? I dazedly pondered, still bleeding out and my vision starting to flash as I slumped to the floor, until I caught her half-mumbling, half-sobbing to herself, “Silven no…! Nonono what have you done…?!”
Ah. So that’s what it was. A moral dilemma. The child realized what she had done and what she had just been about to do to me and even with all that hate inside of her, the act of killing another bothered her. Despite all of her strength, she was still just barely a hatchling. Despite her unusual powers and size, she was still just a child that had gotten caught up in a war that was too big for her. Even in my half-delirious state, I can’t lie that I actually feel some pity for her.
The doors were suddenly sent flying and an Awoken Guardian came running towards the two of us, their eyes aglow with Light and fury. They saw the situation and their Light dimmed to a soft, comforting hue as they gently touched an arm and the face of the weeping child that towered over them and cooed tender words to her with nothing but sympathy and a mother’s love in their eyes. Then they fixated their attention on me, and that tenderness was gone and all that was left was pure detest and loathing. They slowly stalked towards me and the short parts of their dark indigo hair started to stand on end as they snarled, “You’re lucky my daughter’s here. Your death will be swift. But it sure as hell won’t be painless. Not after what you’ve done to her. Not after you kidnapped her from me. For two fucking weeks.” They raised their hands and the Arc lightning that had been crackling in the air suddenly intensified and struck me down. For a long and agonizing moment, all I felt was my injuries tenfold and electricity coursing through my veins. Then there was nothing.
I wonder… will you, your brother and Machine-spawn mother truly defeat my Kell, little Guardian-Child? Will you defeat The Witness? Or will you all die regretting your decisions? Too bad I’ll have to miss it.
And here is Silven's kidnapping adventure :) I do plan on doing more info for the twins and their lore once I actually make them some refs but for now, have these little one-shots that feature them being creepy little shits to captors and their Mama coming to their rescues
(Destiny OC insert; takes place during Season of Plunder)
(Warning(s): kidnapping, brief threats of torture, implied character death if you squint)
Even Eramiskel would have shrieked in outrage if she had seen the small thing that my crew dropped at my feet, and she was far more patient than I have and ever will be. But I forced myself to hold my tongue and instead watch the creature before me struggle to get up with both pairs of its wrists bound together. It was an older hatchling: small and gowned in leather, armor and blue cloth. Its flesh and shell were of dark shades that I have never seen on an Eliksni—I could see its near-black carapace and almost-gray skin peek out from under its hood as it wriggled itself up into a sitting position. It adjusted, casually crossing its legs and placing its bound hands in its lap before it lifted its head and locked four dark blue eyes onto me. It gazed at me and I glared straight back. Straight into those undisturbed abysses that somehow seemed to stare directly into my soul. It felt like the Darkness itself was looking directly at me.
It was unnerving.
One of my Drekhs crawled forward, watching the hatchling carefully from the corner of their eyes as they muttered to me, “It wears a weapon like Eramiskel…!”
“He wears a weapon like Eramiskel,” the child corrected in a tone that did not portray his situation of being bound in chains and imprisoned on an enemy Ketch with Eliksni that would gladly kill him. The Drekh flinched at his words and quickly scuttled away like the coward they were while I continued to glare him down, drawing my knife from its sheathe and toying with the blade in my lower claws as I slowly stepped closer and closer to him, and in response, he stretched out his arms with a quiet groan. I saw it. My crew couldn’t see it, but I could and I knew that he was purposely brandishing that gauntlet strapped to his left upper arm to me. Silently telling me that he wielded the same power as my Kell. Silently telling me that I was weaker than him.
Foolish hatchling. Two can play at this game. I will not be outplayed, and certainly not by a child. You show off your strength, I will show off mine. I stood before the child for a moment, completely eclipsing him in my shadow and making him have to crane his neck up to look at my face. When his eyes met mine, I struck fast, snatched the chain linked around his upper wrists, yanked him to his feet and pulled his face to mine, hissing, “Who are you?”
The hatchling didn’t flinch despite the fact that the tips of his toes were barely touching the floor and his upper arms were forced over his head. He simply stared up at me, expression unchanging and unmoved, and responded with long, almost breathless pauses between each word and even longer pauses between each sentence. “I am Nekeks. Nekeks of The Last City. Nekeks of House Light. Nekeks, son of Scribe Eido. Grandson of Misraakskel.” He leaned forward. He was so close that I could taste the Ether coming from his rebreather—it was different from my own. Sweeter. Purer. I ignored my craving for the untainted Ether as he told me, “I am Nekeks, the Guardian-Child.”
Something exploded on the lower decks of my Ketch just as he said that. I did my best to ignore it. “You won’t escape. You will be pinned down, docked, and then killed—if you are lucky. You will die on my Ketch with no one coming for you.” I tried to make a point by pressing my blade to the almost-gray flesh of his neck. But he didn’t react to the danger and only replied with a slow and unbothered, “Wrong. The Guardians will come for me. I will not die. I will be free again.” He sounded so sure.
“Why side with the Machine-spawn?” I couldn’t catch the question from escaping my mouth.
He spoke in that strange way again, with short sentences and long pauses in-between. I figured it was simply how he was. Some of my Drekhs that had come from damaged eggs spoke like that. “Because my Mama is Machine-spawn. My Mama is brave. My Mama cares for House Light. My Mama cares for Eliksni. My Mama cares for innocents.” Then his demeanor changed to something much darker and his eyes crinkled in a sinister smile. “My Mama hates you. You took me—her kin. Her hatchling. So now… my Mama will destroy your Ketch. My Mama will defeat your crew. My Mama will kill you.” Another explosion, much closer this time. They have moved up to our level. I made the mistake of letting my fear slip into my expression, and it made the hatchling chuckle dangerously. “You are scared. Good. Because Mama is coming. Coming for you.”
Something banged against the door and me and my crew jumped, eyes darting towards the noticeable dent in the thick metal. I didn’t even realize that I had let go of the hatchling’s chains and had allowed him to sink back into a sitting position on the floor. Nekeks slowly rocked himself back and forth and he grinned underneath his rebreather, singing, “She’s heeeeerreee~”
The doors were flung from their tracks in an explosion of blue lightning that made the air sing with the fury of a thousand storms and a mother’s rage.
O Guardian-child of Tomes and Light, you have outdone me. Well played.
I hope you enjoyed reading! I don't normally write in first person when I do write, but I was inspired by official Destiny lore entries and wanted to try my hand at it and so this was born! You'll probably be seeing more content with Nekeks and/or his family, and I'll be posting another one-shot tomorrow that features Nekeks's twin sister, Silven, and how she deals with her own kidnapping by one of Eramis's crews :)
So a small snippet of an Erasermic Soulmate AU in which when you can't see colors until you meet your soulmates! (This was also slightly based off an idea that @o0fyuu0ouu0o once talked about on the bird app in which Shouta was naturally colorblind.)
Hizashi goes to the library the day before going back to school and finds a book that describes color for those who've found their soulmates. He sits with it in a corner and traces over the colors and the descriptions next to them, along with the various examples of and pictures of what might be those colors in awe for hours.
(Sundays are usually days in which his family spends doing their own thing, and occasionally they'll let him have the day to himself so long as he's in his room by curfew and doesn't embarrass the family in any way. Sitting in the library is usually what Hizashi ends up doing.)
He looks in the mirror after that, taking the book with him into the library restroom (one of the librarians seeing the title with a knowing eye and letting him). He stares at the pages and then looks at his eyes, the barely there spots on his face, his tightly bound hair.
Green eyes, with darker green rings.
Light brown freckles, so light one can barely see them.
Yellow...no, blonde hair, like wheat or even sunshine.
Hizashi stares at himself for a long time. What does his soulmate think of the way he looks? Does he like the different colors of him? Is it better than the different shades of grey he was before? Hizashi didn't realize he had freckles until he could see color, so maybe... But not everyone likes freckles, so what if - what if that's why his soulmate wasn't there to talk to him after their fight in the Sports Festival?
What if he didn't like his colors?
Hizashi slams the books closed and hurries out of the restroom, leaving the book on a table before rushing out of the library.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
i've loved you for a thousand years
It's been 84 years since I've posted about this here on Tumblr, but I've done it. I've written and posted chapter seven. Just a small snippet of what the chapter has in store:
“Slow down!” he could hear Shouta call behind him. “It’s not a race!”
“Maybe to you!” Hizashi called back with a laugh. “I want to get to the castle sometime before dinner, but someone doesn’t like to follow the main road - “
A dark horse with a man in even darker armor suddenly blew past him.
Shouta tossed a smirk over his shoulder as Hizashi all but gaped, eyes glittering under his headband and his hair whipping about with the wind. “Better catch up,” he said as the distance grew between them. “Or I’ll win this one!”
For a moment Hizashi couldn’t respond, but then he laughed, whipped the reins, and chased after the love of his life.
He blinked, and he was back in the car, looking out the window.
Tags: 5 times +1, BAMF Yamada Hizashi, Secretly a BAMF Yamada Hizashi, Yet he is also a Dumbass, Light-hearted, Sappy Ending
Present Mic.
When people think of the pro hero, they think of the bright blonde one-foot tower of hair, the sunglasses, a big smile full of teeth, a punk-rock leather outfit, and a voice louder than God. They think of laughter and music, fun radio shows running late into the night. They think of hero events hosted by a familiar face and voice, of popularity votes being rattled off, of other heroes being introduced.
When people think of Present Mic, most people laugh and think, “Present Mic is a bit of a ditz.”
Or
Five times in which people are surprised to see the brain behind his smile, and one time in which someone is surprised by how dumb he is.
*tumbles straight through the ceiling and crashes onto the coffee table* G U Y S YOU DON' UNDERSTAND-
High School Aizawa Shouta, like all through high school, all through UA - he was a smol guy. Swol, but smol. He was also pretty forgetful and kept leaving his jacket behind on cold days and Hizashi, being much taller and only slightly broader than him, would let him borrow his jacket/hoodie/sweater all the time. He LIVED for the days when Shouta eould be wearing his jacket/hoodie/sweater.
aND THEN.
Graduation. They don't see each other for a bit because Hizashi takes up an internship in America and they communicate via phone calls, text, and the occassional video calls that Shouta spends most of covered in blankets. He gets back to Japan, forgetting about how cold the Fall gets, and meets up with his old friends.
....And Shouta got. Vry tall.
Not taller than him, but he definitely shot up almost 20 centimeters. And suddenly he's BUFF. He has SHOULDERS. Good Lord it's like Adonis and Hercules had a love child of muscles and swolness and decided to name it Aizawa Shouta.
So he's internally freaking out over how friggin' HOT his best friend has gotten and shivering because he's an idiot who left his jacket behind at his hotel room (just until he can find an apartment), when Shouta gives him a look, STRIPS OFF THE HOODIE HE'S WEARING (nearly causing Hizashi to faint because oh no those and oh nO-), and then shoves it over Hizashi's head.
And Hizashi is having the biggest Bi Panic of his life, even though he's had a crush on this man since they were both 15, and he's wearing his HOODIE.
Officially the AU has enough posts combined to qualify for a masterpost, so tada! I’ve now made it easier to find all the related posts without having to dig through my blog.
Premise
First Meetings
Bad Reactions
Tsuki and Shouta talk
Tsuki and Sunshine talk
And related bits and pieces:
Random info I decided to share before bed
Cat and Bird, the drabble I wrote for the Popular Fic Meme
