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New chapter announcements, snippets and excerpts, and any fanart for my stories goes here! Hope you enjoy! IMPORTANT: This is not any sort of private blog! I would not find followers annoying, I WOULD FIND THEM DELIGHTFUL!

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Wordybirb Bulletin Board!

Well, hello there! Feel free to sit by the fire while the idea engine chugs along, friend. This here post will be updated every now and then, both to catalogue my stories and keep track of their progress for those who like to read them!

Just Make Me One Promise Fandom: My Hero Academia/Boku no Hero Academia Characters: Aizawa, Principal Nezu, All Might Hurt/Comfort Angst One-shot - Rated T - Finished 14,600 Words After the triumph and tragedy of the raid on the Shie Hassaikai, Aizawa Shōta was looking forward to returning to routine. For as long as he could, anyway. For as long as the world would let him. He'd honestly expected the League of Villains to be the inevitable envoys of intense stress, but no. It was Yagi Toshinori, once the one and only All Might. No villain attack, no new crisis with Problem Child, just Toshinori asking for help to pull Principal Nezu out of his recent, rapid downward spiral. Aizawa gave Toshinori his word he'd help, but he never expected just how heavy a burden their tiny principal was carrying.

All We Might Have Been Fandom: My Hero Academia/Boku no Hero Academia Main Characters: Tomura Shigaraki, Principal Nezu, All Might, Aizawa, Villain Deku (down the line) Alternate Universe Action/Adventure Drama Multichapter Epic - Rated T - Ongoing 114,611 Words Posted ≈50,000+ Words in Drafts It begins under a bridge, on a day of gentle rain and apex pain. No monsters beneath that bridge, no; just a child who thinks himself one. In another lifetime, in another timeline, he is found and fostered by a man who wishes to be a monster, a man that smothered his humanity long ago and guides his orphaned heir to do the same. In this lifetime, in this timeline, he is found by the strongest man in the world and fostered by the smartest thing alive, a man whose humanity was supplanted by heroism and a mouse who had humanity inflicted upon him. To be a hero, to even be human; thorny paths both, tangled with bloodied brambles, but is family not who we find to walk them with us?

Foot in Your Door, Eyes on My Prize Fandom: Animal Crossing Main Characters: Jolly Redd, Tom Nook Romantic Tragicomedy Multichapter Epic - Rated M - Unposted WIP ≈82,000 Words "Never drunk dial your ex." Eternally true words of wisdom rarely heeded because nothing greases the wheels of bad ideas quite like a bottle of booze or five. Unfortunately for a certain swindler, it's even worse to drunk dial an ex he robbed and left for dead twenty years ago. Fortunately for Redd… well, whatever he said rekindled that old flame, brought Tom "rags to ridiculous riches" Nook to the doorstep of the rickety old rust bucket of a boat Redd called home with romance in mind instead of rage for a change. Eager to worm his way into Nook's treasury with a sham marriage and messy divorce, steal Tom's heart to fence it a second time, Redd finds himself facing not just the scars he left on his former lover… but also his own.

The Roads We Walked Remain Fandom: Final Fantasy Tactics Advance Main Characters: Marche Radiuju, Montblanc Kupomarov Action/Adventure Tragic Romance Multichapter Epic - Rated T - Unposted WIP ≈20,200 Words Swords and sorcery, knights and nobility, a life where every problem can be fixed with a fight or magic words... it is a common wish to trade the mundane and modern for such, especially among children. Marche had every reason to want the same - no friends, divorced parents, a chronically ill little brother he doesn't get along with, a new life at a new high school in a new town where the alternative to being ignored is being bullied - but above all he wanted his life to go back to the way it was. Finding himself in the quasi-medieval fantasy land of Ivalice was far from a dream come true. Yet as he tries to get home, escape his new new life of valor and violence, bravery and blood, he gets to know the people he's bleeding with. Before long he knows there's a question he needs to answer, even if he's too scared to ask: what is he willing to lose to find what he's looking for?

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The rain echoed eerily from two sides instead of one, sound bouncing off sound bouncing off sound as waves and waves poured and pounded… and despite himself, Hizashi just couldn’t help but laugh, head shaking as his palm struck his forehead. It was weak, weary, and worn, so terribly tired - but it was sincere. Yeah… yeah; Shirakumo was definitely laughing at them at that point.

“Not… how I pictured today going,” Hizashi admitted as he caught his breath, dragging his hand down his face until it fell limply to his side.

“We’ve been through a lot of that lately,” Shōta said. No sarcasm, no sass, just… sad, flat fact - and a clap of thunder, the lightning briefly lighting the room and shaking all in sundry.

“Yeah… yeah, guess we have.” Hizashi wasn’t sure what else to say. Hizashi wasn’t sure what to do, really. He only knew what he struggled to do: speak, and look Shōta in the eye. So his voice resigned to silence, and his gaze settled on the nearest window-wall. Was almost hypnotic, how the water warped the dull light of the shrouded sun.

The silence stayed for a while. Neither knew how long. Shōta didn’t break it so much as push it aside, pull it back like a curtain, as he looked out the window as well. “How did you picture today going?”

Hizashi paused, brow bowed and lips pursed in thought. Too late to shut his trap with the cat out of the bag, and other such mixed metaphors. “Well, about halfway home, was going to suggest… insist that we take a detour to Fuefuki and talk with you there; ask a few things.”

“Things such as?” Shōta asked with a sideward glance and confused curiosity.

Hizashi’s breath hissed through the teeth of his awkward smile as he hemmed and hawed in his head over what to say. “I’ll tell you only if you imagine that we’re in a picturesque valley of peach trees in full bloom the whole time,” was what he landed on.

A beat, Shōta’s eyes returning to the rain-slick window. “Should I be imagining that it’s raining there, too?”

Hizashi chuckled, a little louder and a little lighter with a little shake to his shoulders. Couldn’t help himself; his mind was so elsewhere he never saw the question coming. “Sure, if you want!”

Shōta… didn’t have a particularly active imagination. He wouldn’t hear the word “aphantasia” for many years yet, and he’d suspect from then on he had a mild case, but as far as he was concerned what mind’s eye he had worked well enough. Peach trees, green grass, flower petals dragged down to earth by rain, lightning flashing and thunder roaring in the valley - couldn’t vividly put himself in that unreality, but knowing what it’d be like was close enough, right? “Okay. Done.”

—All We Might Have Been, Chapter 10 Art by the lovely @psuedovillainz! Shoutout to all the poor Erasermic shippers who keep getting burned by fics tagged as Erasermic with barely any Erasermic content in them; this is not one of those stories!

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The walk to the gym was silent, save for a few passing students who were leaving late due to their own post-bell conversations. He still didn’t have a word for how he felt when they looked at him, looked at him differently, looked at him at all. Before, far as the rest of the school knew, Shōta was just the third-wheel of Class 2-A’s two buffoons, a hanger-on that was always a step to the left of the center of attention. That first day back, though… pity for someone who’d lost so much. Discomfort due to not knowing how to deal with someone changed by tragedy. The urge to offer him condolences that he silently scared away with his glare. He didn’t have a word for it, didn’t have a name for it, but it didn’t feel pleasant.

Nezu shuffled into the locker room mere seconds after Shōta finished putting his gym uniform back on. Lax, breathable, almost entirely blue save for two letters in white: a capital U around the neck and capital A that started at the ribs and ended at the ankle. A red stripe down each arm, too. After U.A.’s main claim to fame became the fact All Might was a graduate, the school leaned heavily into invoking his image wherever they could, even if only through colors.

Nezu didn’t change. He just scurried on by with purpose, humming tunelessly and tail swaying to no beat except maybe that of his heart. “Are you ready to begin?” he asked, head not turning and stride unbroken, the words echoing eerily in the empty locker room.

“Yes, sir,” he mumbled as he followed his teacher, the acoustics of solitude amplifying those two words two times over.

“I strongly urge you to reconsider your embargo on the basics,” Nezu called as Shōta emerged. Nezu’s bare paws flexed on the cool, smooth floor of Gym Alpha, shoes discarded and claws in full view. Felt nice to stretch his toes somewhere besides home, his mutant rodent “feet” forever uncomfortable when contained. His head was tilted, his ear flicked, a placid smile was fixed to his face, and his voice was both steady and cheery… but the words were a warning all the same. “Otherwise today’s lesson plan will start with sparring. If you do not take this chance to change your mind, I will not give you another.”

“I know,” Shōta muttered, pulling… his goggles down over his eyes. They still fit perfectly. He adjusted how they sat on his nose and braced against his brow all the same. His voice was sure and steady as well, his lack of volume by no means a sign of doubt. Why raise his voice when he knew Nezu could hear his very breathing clear as crystal?

In through the snout. Out through the mouth. Even so, Nezu couldn’t help but smile. It was small, it was sad, but it was a smile all the same. “On three, then,” he cheerily declared through closed eyes. “One-”

—All We Might Have Been, Chapter 9 Art by the lovely @psuedovillainz! Special shoutout to @nezutheprophet and their story Zugzwang, which introduced me to the concept of feral Nezu which continues to live in my head rent-free!

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The Purple Revolution Agency was quiet.

A quiet Purple Revolution Agency was never a good thing.

A quiet Purple Revolution Agency was a hero team in mourning.

Nothing but grief could douse the color and energy of that ostentatious office, a fact that His Purple Highness took pride in. Color and energy meant light and life. Color and energy meant people felt safe being themselves. Color and energy were the first lines of defense against homogenization and submission in the worst senses of both words.

Death’s shadow tended to loom and linger long, however. So… the Purple Revolution Agency was quiet. It was no stranger to that silence, and neither was its extravagant sovereign. Their early days, before the great coming of All Might, saw its fair share of casualties against the tide of crime and unrest that never seemed to ebb. Even after it finally did, even after All Might fought off the tide like Atlas holds up the sky, that silence swept in a handful of times over the decades.

The energy returned when Nemuri did. Walked right through the front door, the clack of her boots against the tile like gunshots in the stillness.

It was not happy energy. Nor was it hers.

After the receptionist tipped him off, His Purple Highness lay in ambush just outside the women’s locker room: back against the opposite wall, arms crossed, smile nowhere in sight. “Kayama-san, I’d call you into the rainbow throne room, but I don’t like doing that when someone’s off the clock – like, say, a work study student on grief leave,” he said lowly, slowly, tilting his head with accusatory curiosity.

Nemuri froze, not like a deer in headlights, but like someone who had rehearsed the conversation they were about to have yet struggled to begin when the moment came. She stared at nothing in particular as she said, voice level with counterfeit calm, “There isn’t a minimum limit to how much time I have off, far as I’m aware.” She took a deep breath that still felt woefully shallow, sighed, and brought herself to look His Purple Highness in the eye. “I feel ready to walk the beat again, so here I am.”

He swept his eyes up and down, from her head to her heels. Rigid posture. Tense muscles. Sluggish movements. Dead eyes with heavy bags under them expertly camouflaged with cosmetics, but not quite expertly enough to fool those fiercely familiar with color corrector and concealer. “Well damn, look at you: you’re on the clock now,” he said sardonically with a shrug to match as he pried himself from the wall. “My office. Pronto.”

—All We Might Have Been, Chapter 8 Art by the lovely @psuedovillainz!

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Hello!

Wanted to pop in and say I love your drawings of the principal of UA, delightfully done in a stylistic way that while different from source feels just at home with his character.

I was curious to know, beyond the fics you have written of the furry friend, do you have any to recommend? (Hey that rhymed!)

Keep up the good work for a Nedzu enjoyer such as I :)

Oh, thank you for saying so! :D I can't take credit for the art, though - those were all drawn by a lovely buddy of mine! The writing, though, that is mine, and I am quite proud of it!

As for fics to recommend: so far the best I've read is The Problem with Anko Labs! Holds a special place in my heart, though truth be told I do need to set aside time to do more reading, I'm sure there's more out there I'd love-

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“I… what?” was all Toshinori could think to say, looking to Nezu with deer-in-headlights eyes. Hell, that was all he could think at all, besides perhaps, “Where did that come from?”

Nezu’s teeth gnashed. His tail thrashed. His hold on the nameless rat loosened, and God help him, he did it on purpose. To hell with it: it was the time! “Toshi, you could’ve visited at any time this last month,” Nezu and the nameless rat seethed in sync as he shot to his feet, standing on the seat of that bench. “Could’ve called, could’ve emailed, could’ve even sent a letter, something. You didn’t. My message that Tenko was coming home didn’t even get a simple ‘congratulations!’” Nezu jeered, complete with a sneering smile and mocking jazz hands. “And this week, even though you knew Tenko was with me, I still did not hear a single word from my best friend!”

Toshinori didn’t notice his jaw was slack until he closed it, only to open it again and fail to form a word, closing it once more to try again. He was like a floundering fish in more than just the motions, flailing and failing to get a handle on where the conversation was going or had even come from. “I… I’m sorry I didn’t call, Nezu,” he finally managed to say. “I could have done that much, I admit. A visit, though? You said it yourself: I’m the greatest pro hero the world has ever known. I’m the main reason Japan’s crime rate is less than half the global average.” He leaned away, glanced to the side, avoided Nezu’s angry eyes. He’d seen Nezu angry before, he’d seen Nezu far angrier before, but never at him. He’d had people angry at him before, he’d had people far angrier at him before, but never Nezu. It made him… there was no better word for it: squirm. “Every hour I would be at your place would be an hour I’m not where someone could need me, an hour I could be finding a clue to lead us to All for One.”

“So, what, was your offer to visit Tenko just a moment ago good for less than an hour? ‘Less than half’ that, mayhaps? Ten minutes, in and out, a cup of tea and a quick hello and off you go?” Nezu smarmed, not with charm, but with sarcasm so caustic it could eat through steel.

Toshinori shook his head, raised his hands in a gesture both pleading and placating, still too disoriented to be anything other than bewildered and defensive. “I owe it to the world to save every kid in trouble, Nezu! I need to be a hero to everyone, not just those close to me. You of all people should appreciate the sheer scale-”

“I am well aware of exactly how many millions depend on you,” Nezu found himself snarling, snapping, lashing. He just couldn’t hear another word, couldn’t control the stress, it was all just too much- “It doesn’t matter if it’s for the greater good or their own good, if it comes from ruinous paranoia or, or neurotic nobility; you are still walking the same path of neglect that she did! Laud her intentions all you want, worship the woman until the day you die, but she left him to rot!”

To call Toshinori familiar with hope would be an understatement bordering on an ugly lie. It was his heritage, after all. It was closer to him than his own heart, more familiar than his own name. It would be a mistake to say that he wasn’t familiar with other emotions, though. He knew solitude. He knew shame. He knew doubt. He knew dread. He knew fear.

Anger? Anger was a distant memory. Toshinori had not been angry, All Might had not been angry, for over a decade. Not like he was that moment. What bubbled in his emotional bottle was not righteous anger, not the raging desire to protect people that got him out of bed every day, but an ugly anger, a tainted anger, a hurt anger, viscous and vile, roiling and boiling-

“You take that back.”

—All We Might Have Been, Chapter 5 Art by the lovely @secretgaygenttomura!

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The first time Nezu got a real reaction out of Tenko was the first time he dared to ask a direct question, as he stood atop his stepladder and stirred ingredients into the broth, their smell stirring in turn into the scentscape of tea, peppermint, human fear, and swollen bruises. “Is there anything you want us to do with our summer vacation? Disneyland, perhaps?” A grin grew as he added with a tempting tone, “We can get to Tokyo by train in a few hours, and heroes and their family get discounts…~”

Tenko’s eyes were alight with thought once again as he hovered just outside the kitchenette, the haze of malaise parting to ponder… and to remember. “Father said he’d take Hana-chan to Disneyland next year, if she did well in first grade,” he said, the words mechanical yet hesitant, as if reciting what he remembered of a grocery list he forgot at home. “Then he’d take both of us the year after, if we both did well in school.”

Nezu restrained his physical reaction to just a twitch of his ear. No Disney paraphernalia had yet been found in the wreckage of the Shimura house, at least not in enough pieces to be recognizable, so he’d placed his bets that Tenko had no memories related to the place, and… lost. “He was going to leave you home?”

Tenko remembered asking the same thing. “Father said that it was going to be her reward for being a good student, so… yeah. I guess. ‘You don’t get rewards for doing nothing,’” he recited without a hint of spite. He hated his father. He hated what his father did, who his father was, who his father continued to be in his brain. But that idea, that principle, just seemed… above his father.

Nezu hummed, tilting his head one way and flicking his tail the other. “It’s true that you don’t get rewards for doing nothing,” he conceded with a nod. He leaned over the saucepan, inspected the broth through half-lidded eyes, sniffed the steam as it streamed over his muzzle, before completing the thought. “But that is because if you did nothing to earn it, it is no longer a reward: it is a gift. Gifts are given out of kindness, to be happy at someone else’s happiness, not out of gratitude or debt. That joy at another’s joy is called ‘mudita,’ a word in Sanskrit that sadly has no direct translation, and it is an emotion I am quite fond of.” Nezu closed his eyes and cast a soft smile Tenko’s way. “You will get rewards when you earn them. You will get gifts when it will make me happy to see you happy. Does that make sense?”

“I don’t deserve either,” the mental mire in Tenko’s brain roiled, recoiled, rejected, but… no. No, irrelevant. He didn’t deserve rewards, so he wouldn’t receive rewards. Gifts… he didn’t deserve those, either, but getting them would make Nezu happy. Nezu was a nice person who deserved nice things, happiness among them, “mudita” among them. It felt like the haze had drawn back to reveal a bridge being built over the mental mire. That place of doubt and dread, of vile and viscous thoughts, was still there, but it felt less… important. Less at-the-center-of-everything.

“Yes, sir,” Tenko said simply while his thoughts whirled, while the gravity in his psyche ever-so-slightly shifted.

—All We Might Have Been, Chapter 4 Art by the lovely @secretgaygenttomura!

[draw-with-meme]

Interactions with 2 Characters

🎨  Draw and Writing-Prompts 📖

Reblog it and let your followers choose a number and two Characters/OCs or a Ship.

1. One have a Nightmare at the Night 2. Cooking together 3. Train together 4. Somebody got hurt 5. Swim together 6. In the Rain and forgot an umbrella 7. Hiding in their secret place 8. One is falling and the other help them 9. One hurts the other one 10. One stay over night at the other 11. Playing together a game 12. Taking a photot together 13. One protechting the other 14. One kissing thee other 15. One betrays the other 16. One shares a secret of his/her with the other 17. One cries and the other tries to comfort 18. One is ill/injured and the other takes care of him/her 19. One say ‘I love you’. How will the other person react? 20. Watching a Movie together

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Sounds fun, and I'd love to get the writing gears going! As a reminder, ships I sail are:

ReddNook (Animal Crossing)

Nezunori (My Hero Academia)

Marcheblanc (Final Fantasy Tactics Advance)

Maebea (Night in the Woods)

Wildehopps (Zootopia)

Bobutter (Bojack Horseman)

Badgermao (Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart)

Krazyshipping (OG Pokemon Anime, Team Rocket Meowth and Ash's Pikachu if you're not in the know)

Hamnoir (Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse)

Freelance Husbands (Sam & Max)

Roquill (Guardians of the Galaxy)

Rozfink (The Wild Robot)

But if you have other characters in those series you want to see, romantically involved or otherwise, I can give a crack at them!

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The first three days were the hardest. He’d heard that over and over in his research on kicking nicotine addiction. Waking up feeling more ill than he ever had in his life was miserable. Feeling his every thought tainted with anxiety and anger that no amount of emotional regulation could curb was agony. Knowing that he was the smartest thing alive and yet stupid enough to think he could handle kicking an addiction as if it were any other run-of-the-mill, difficult-but-doable obstacle in his life as a free rat was the wor-

No! No. No, not the worst. The worst years of his life were behind him. As much as his every cell screamed for something he would never give it again, he clung onto that perspective. No needles. No questions. No cages. A metaphorical cage, of course, but…

He’d survived worse. If he did indeed survive the final confrontation with Suspect #1, he would survive far worse in days to come.

His last packet of cigarettes called to him from his trash can, all the same. He tossed them out of his window to shut them up.

That night he dreamt about his first. Dreamt about the cage. Dreamt about the captor who had been assigned to watch him that day. Young. Impulsive. “An asshole,” Nezu had heard the others call them before, a word that he was still unclear on the meaning of at the time. When they offered him a cigarette, treated it like a chummy secret, treated it like a treat they were sneaking out of sympathy, and then laughed when Nezu started coughing… he didn’t even have any idea it was bad for him until he was hooked. He told himself he was being laughed with, not laughed at. He knew he was lying.

Nezu’s only consolation was that people who toyed with an illegal project funded by dark money in a secret lab tended to… disappear. The asshole was no exception. At the time, though… he’d been so desperate for compassion that he fully believed smoking was supposed to be something enjoyable that he just didn’t understand. When the asshole vanished, when he bit one of his handlers for taking his friend away, when it was explained that tobacco smoke was highly toxic, when Nezu finally had a good guess what “asshole” meant… he kept sneaking cigarettes from the staff anyway. He knew they’d dispose of him after they got what they wanted. He knew he wouldn’t live long enough for smoking to kill him. Them, on the other hand?

The nameless rat was still scrabbling in his skull when he woke up and threw up, wishing the asshole was still alive so it could carve their face into a Picasso with its claws, hoping every bitch and son thereof in that lab got lung cancer. In his impaired state, Nezu found those thoughts rather appealing, the phantom flavor of spiteful cigarettes and the blood of a bastard in his mouth. It tasted sweeter than he wanted to admit.

—All We Might Have Been, Chapter 3 Art by the lovely @secretgaygenttomura!

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Nezu pulled the folder closer and flipped through the file, eyes drank deep of the wealth of information before them. Testimonies. DNA tests. Death certificates. Photos from many angles of a brick-and-glass house and the yard around it cracked, crumbled, and collapsed along with dust and… chunks of gore. A single missing person’s report paperclipped to a cropped picture of a young boy. Black hair, black eyes, a familiar mole on the right side of his lower lip, named…

“Shimura Tenko,” the chief mumbled, clasping his hands in his lap and leaning back in his chair. “Age five. Pretty well-off family. Businessman father, housewife mother, two kids, and the mother’s retired parents. Even had a corgi. Pieces of all but their youngest child – a little boy – were found scattered around the scene. When the neighbors were asked if they noticed anything strange about that house, they testified that the Shimura’s son was often put in time-out in the yard, even in inclement weather. The one neighbor who’d lived there the longest further testified that when she was younger, the Shimuras did the same to their daughter.” He leaned forward with a sigh and a creak of his chair, adding, “We thought it had nothing to do with this case. We were looking for a villain, maybe one of the father’s many enemies. Barking up the wrong tree, it seems.”

Rage roiled in Nezu’s body once again as his digits tightened around the file, eyes narrowing and ears twitching, but he kept a firm hold on the nameless rat’s cage. "I presume that child protective services were never called,” he said sharply, damn well knowing the answer. And even if they had been… domestic violence was quite infamously easy to get away with in their country. The police rarely believed victims. Even when victims were believed, the police often didn’t do anything. The police often didn’t show up at all until either victim or victimizer lay dead at the other’s feet. Hardly unique to Japan, but all the same: Nezu’s professional disdain for cops had roots as deep as the bleakest sea.

At the same time, in a parallel process… Shimura, Shimura, where did Nezu hear that name before? Lots of different places, his infallible memory told him; it wasn’t an uncommon surname. But one instance in particular nagged at him, of a woman he never met but whose many virtues he’d heard listed once over tea that had been unexpectedly watered down with human tears. Could it be… no, no, the odds of that would be astronomically impossible. Just a coincidence. Surely.

“It’s an upper-class neighborhood full of good, respectable families with deep pocketbooks full of yen and deeper closets full of skeletons that minded their own business,” the chief replied, equal parts bitter and weary, thinking those facts were all the explanation needed. Nezu didn’t disagree. “And even if anyone called, child protective services doesn’t have the resources to go after a man with Shimura Kotaro’s wealth and reputation. Or… rather, didn’t.” A shrug, heavy with the weight of both knowing a stranger was dead and that he didn’t feel even slightly bad about it. “Moot, now.”

“Quite,” Nezu agreed with a little nod, committing every detail of Tenko’s file to memory. The boy looked… needless to say, entirely different than he had only a few days ago, and not just in the color of his eyes or hair. There was a silent desperation, a quiet suffering, to the Tenko in that photo, in the lack of life in the eyes and the tautness of his lips and the tension in his stance. He looked less like a little boy in the company of family and more like a performer standing as still as they could with an apple on their head facing down someone with a blindfold on their face, a knife in their hand, and their arm cocked back to throw it. It’d be hard to imagine that face splitting into a wicked grin that rasped words of rapturous patricide if Nezu hadn’t literally seen it himself.

“Driven to insanity at the age of five,” Nezu sighed in his mind. “The cruelties of mankind and the universe itself never cease to disappoint me.”

—All We Might Have Been, Chapter 2 Art by the lovely @secretgaygenttomura!

[gguunb]

My only contribution to the fandom, a bit old (and lazy).

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Creaks of rust on waves of stardust, going through the motions in a life upon the ocean, the moon high in the sky softly shining on a swindler so sly...

"Nice view," Redd said aloud just to hear his own voice, hear any voice at all, as he leaned just over the bow.

"One of those times I can't help but ask, 'how did I get here?'" the conscious side of his mind did not say but loudly thought.

"Why can't I be there?" something buried in his brain whispered without a sound.

He was still getting used to it, sailing his shop with a steering wheel instead of pitching it with a tent. It was still new. Less work, for the most part. Less wet when it rained, for the most part. Less stress avoiding unhappy customers...

For the most part.

"Dammit, why did my best customer have to be on that island?" Redd groaned just to hear something other than the ship, other than the waves.

"Why did Nook have to be on that island?" the conscious side of his mind loudly thought but dared not examine.

"Why did I follow him out here?" something buried in his brain hissed, but Redd did not care to hear.

"Can already tell this is gonna be boatloads of trouble," Redd mumbled, staring out to a horizon where he could not tell where sky ended and sea began.

"Not exactly anything new," the conscious side of his mind muttered, perusing his personal art gallery of dilemmas, difficulties, and dangers he'd escaped over the decades with a silver tongue, a winning smile, and poverty snapping at his heels.

"Why do I do this to myself?" something buried in his brain asked - no, begged, begged for an answer. There was none. None that made any sense, anyway. None that he could admit to himself without feeling like the biggest idiot that side of the Pacific.

"Hell, can already hear him now," he scoffed, so softly he could barely hear it over the steady sloshing of the surf, before breaking out his best Tom impression (which was good, no matter what anyone said). "'Redd, me and my massive bellbag don't want you here! Get anywhere near my kid-ployees and I'll have your tail for making me have to actually parent! I'll say I hope you turn your life around someday with my mouth even while my eyes say I hope that turn is into a brick wall and you die.'"

"Sad he has such a cute voice when he has nothing cute to say," the conscious side of his mind sighed, equal parts wistful and bitter, the thought intended as an insult but tasting like a lament.

"I miss when he had cute things to say," something buried in his brain mourned without a protective layer of venom and vitriol, the impact of the thought making cracks in the barrier between thoughts unsaid and thoughts never acknowledged.

"Nothing for it, though," he huffed dramatically with a vague wave of a clawed paw and sway of his tail. "I've got the supply, and I've created the demand. Nook could drag his hometown to the moon if he wanted; still can't save those villagers' bells from themselves."

"All that money and he's wasting it on those rubes who waste their own," the conscious side of his mind sneered with scorn quite sincere. "Must be his idea of a hobby, babysitting a bunch of boring-"

"Why save them when he never saved me?!"

The thought spilled from the depths to the daylight of Redd's head, and there it sat like vile and viscous thing laboring for air it was never meant to breathe.

So Redd did the only thing he could do.

He kicked it back overboard, back into the mire of memories forcefully forgotten, and ignored it.

"I better get in bed. It's late," he muttered without even thinking about it, without even thinking about anything at all, as he slipped back inside the Treasure Trawler for a few hours of fitful sleep.

And the next morning was yet another where he awoke with the vague feeling something upset him the night before... but he couldn't remember why, and so did not care to try.

[wordybirbfanficfactory]

There was a screech of tires on wet pavement as a taxi finally pulled up, the door flung open before the vehicle even came to a complete stop, and All Might knew the cavalry had arrived.

Tenko jumped in his skin at the sound, eyes snapping to the road to see a… large, white mouse in a trench coat, or a small man in a trench coat that looked like a white mouse, clamber backwards out of the car, having to climb out of his seat like a highchair due to his short stature. Or… maybe not a mouse. The tail was long and wiry like a mouse’s, but he’d never seen a mouse with a tail covered in fur like a cat’s.

“I came as fast as I could, All Might!” a high-pitched yet wispy voice blurted as the little mouse man popped open his far-too-large-for-him umbrella. “What’s the emergen-”

Nezu’s question died in his throat when he turned on his heel, obsidian gaze meeting with blood red.

Tenko saw warm, black eyes, round, perky ears, and the luxurious fur of a cute critter that walked and dressed like a man, shoes and slacks and all, marred only by a single, long scar over its right eye.

Nezu saw a child covered in grime on his cracked skin, huddled under a bridge for shelter, dried blood around his scarred mouth and dried tears around the scar over his right eye.

“Glad you could make it, old friend!” All Might graciously greeted, ushering him over with a waving hand. “Come, have a seat! Tenko and I were just talking about the state of the hero chart.”

Nezu’s gaze flitted to All Might, then Tenko, then back again as he stood in the rain. Outwardly, he nodded with a little smile, following his friend’s lead as he casually strolled to the bigger man’s side, pulling his umbrella closed again as he entered the bridge’s shadow. “Worried your new friend here might threaten your place at the top someday?” he quipped, flicking his tail like a whip.

Inwardly, a single thought burned in Nezu’s brain like the glare of an angry sun god, hissing like scalding steam in his skull: “Who the hell is responsible for this?!” Already its light was growing a garden of vicious little inklings in Nezu’s head, ideas of how to ruin the culprit’s life with the full force of the law fresh off the vine. Oh, how he dearly looked forward to bringing them to fruition.

—All We Might Have Been, Chapter 1 Art by @secretgaygenttomura!

[psuedovillainz]

Read one of the coolest Nezu fanfictions I've seen since For The Greater Good- :D

@thatwordybirb I had to draw something, the imagery was just so vivid!

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[wordybirbfanficfactory]

The look in Nezu’s eye turned… dangerous. Manic. The same way it got when he was in battle. “Oh, I did more than destroy their work,” he said with a growing grin. “Did Toshinori ever tell you how we met?”

Shōta’s eyebrows rose, his elbows on his knees and hands steepling as he thought. “You met when you were in court fighting to be recognized as a citizen of Japan, didn’t you? He heard of your case and endorsed it. It was fairly big news at the time.”

“To be recognized as a person,” Nezu corrected with a chiding finger and a scowl. “Two years of my life just to get the government to say that killing me would be murder and not animal cruelty.” He shook his head, his fangs back out the moment he stopped. “No, he and I met before that. He broke me out of that lab!”

Of course. More secrets of Nezu’s Yagi had been keeping. “Let me guess: it was part of a big case against a villain and couldn’t be made public?” Shōta asked.

“Right on the money,” Nezu said, smile maliciously wistful as he set down his teacup. “The investors behind that illegal lab were looking to undercut All For One’s monopoly on granting quirks to the quirkless, hence the project. The authorities didn’t shut it down right away because they knew, sooner or later, All For One and his goons would shut it down themselves to preserve that monopoly. I get my quirk, All For One finds out, the authorities find out when the attack will be, and-” He clapped his paws together with a crisp smack. “-snap goes the trap! A bunch of All For One’s thugs and some dirty researchers all arrested in a single swoop.”

“I get the feeling that getting your freedom isn’t what you’re giddy about…”

“And in the confusion, you destroyed their research?” Shōta asked, leaning forward ever so slightly to urge Nezu on.

The smile on Nezu’s face took on a smug, satisfied, sadistic slant. “Slipped my cage the second after All Might smashed through the wall. One of the lab security guards tried to stop me, but I just kept dodging so that their own blows destroyed the research database even faster. Then All Might knocked that guard out, leaving me free to…” A vicious giggle ripped through his entire body before he could bring himself to continue. “One of the researchers was quirkless, you see. Carried a taser for self-defense. Not much of a defense in this world, but it was something. It was knocked out of their hand in the chaos, it slid along the floor, and ended up right at my feet.” That vicious giggle came back louder, prouder. “I did my part. I did more than my part. Shocked the bastards that kept me in a cage since the day I was born. And it felt… good.” Nezu practically shuddered with glee. “It felt so good. First time I ever felt good in my whole life! When I found the man that stuck all those fucking needles in me, I couldn’t stop. I shocked him again, and again, and again…!”

Nezu swearing would have been enough to give Shōta pause. Even when stubbing his tiny toe on furniture larger and heavier than his entire body, he kept his exclamations of pain suitable for the ears of elementary schoolers. The way that Nezu was rocking back and forth on his perch, rictus grin frozen on his face, eyes lit up and sparkling with vengeful delight… “You electrocuted him.”

Up went a finger of objection. “It’d only be an electrocution if I killed him; most have forgotten the lethal definition of that word,” Nezu corrected. “I didn’t. I wanted to. I intended to. I was going to. I was going to kill them all if I could.” His eyes narrowed, his back hunched, his head lowered. “All Might stopped me.” He stopped his rocking, shut his eyes and shivered; his fanged grin collapsed into a grimace. “Thank goodness he did. If I really had killed him, there would be no going back. Even ignoring that inescapable moral event horizon, if I had then it’d be stupid to push for my personhood. My acknowledgement in the eyes of the law would have come with complimentary murder charges, since with personhood comes the ability to stand trial. By saving my tormentors from me…” He sighed and opened his eyes again, once again run-down and ragged, all manic energy drained. “All Might saved me, too.”

[brightdevil801920-deactivated20]

drew a scene from one of my favs nezu fics by @thatwordybirb

THIS FIC IS SO FUCKING GOOD- LIKE THE WAY WE NEED MORE NEZU FICS THAT REALLY GO INTO DEPTH IS THE BEST. I WOULD OF NEVER THOUGHT OF LIKE ZU BEING BASICALLY TERRIFIED OF THE QUIRK ERASEING BULLETS N SHIT-

AMAZING WORK BIRB YOU SLAYED ON THAT SHIT

(100% abouta like draw out this whole god damn fic bc GOD DAMN I LOVE IT THAT MUCH)

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[wordybirbfanficfactory]

Shōta glanced back down at the enraptured rat that continued to circle around and bump against him. “It’s no problem,” he said, hesitantly, his instincts screaming at him that something wasn’t right. “I never knew you had a pet, sir.”

“Let alone so many…”

Nezu closed his eyes, took a deep breath in and out through his snout, as he stood at the top of the stairs, eye level with Shōta for one of the few times in his life, before he looked his guest dead in the eye and said, “Hayan isn’t my pet, Mister Aizawa. She’s my sister.”

Shōta had certain expectations when Toshinori first approached him. The tea, the tobacco, the strange security, the floorplan to an extent – those were all things he could associate with Nezu and think “yes, those pieces go together.”

The blank way Nezu stared him down with no hint that he was joking blindsided him like that first Nomu’s right hook.

“Your… your sister,” he repeated, blinking in disbelief.

Nezu let out a little hum before he turned away, walking towards the kitchen. “You heard me.” He glanced over his shoulder and vaguely waved an arm at the other rats in the plastic pipes. “Say hello to my family, Mister Aizawa, such as it is. They’re charmed, no doubt. Please excuse me while I refill my cup.”

The first syllables of words formed in Shōta’s throat several times, but died as soon as they hit air. His eyes darted from one rat to the next, what Nezu said struggling to sink in, before his gaze finally fell on the man himself in helpless bewilderment.

“You’re a coffee man, aren’t you Mister Aizawa?” Nezu asked, letting Shōta’s confusion twist in the wind as he poured from the pot on his Nezu-sized kitchen counter, none of the usual gremlin-like glee at toying with people present in his voice. “I’d offer you tea, but I doubt you’d like cold steeped oolong, particularly not how I make it.” Shōta was familiar with how much his boss loved his tea and how much work he put into it, saw him make it in the break room many times, so it was expected when he added honey and lemon juice.

Then Nezu reached under the counter and pulled out a bottle of amber liquid half his height, twisting off the top.

“Sir, are you seriously drinking right now?” Shōta blurted out, at last finding his voice. Apparently that scared Hayan away, the little thing scurrying out of the living foyer – or perhaps she simply lost interest.

Nezu glanced at his guest with a tired eye before he hoisted the bottle up by the bottom with one hand and carefully tilted the neck with the other. “It’s hardly worth hiding anymore, now that Inui picked up the scent. I shouldn’t have underestimated his nose. So yes: I am drinking right now.” He pulled the bottle back after the cup was full to his satisfaction, setting it down on the floor before twisting the cap back on. “A bit of scotch in my tea after hours has been helping me sleep lately,” he said with a little grunt, having to bend down to stuff the bottle back where it belonged. He popped right back up with a swish of his tail, grabbed his cup, and turned to join Shōta in the living foyer. “Don’t worry; I’ve done the math concerning my body weight, so I know exactly how much I can put in each cup and how many cups I can drink before it causes problems.”

“You didn’t do that math while already drunk, did you?”

“Forgive me if that’s hard to believe, sir,” Shōta said without an ounce of apology in his voice. “Given how absent minded and distant you’ve been at work, either you’re drinking during the day, or it isn’t helping you sleep at all.”

Nezu shook his head with a sigh as he started his descent down the stairs. “Alcohol is one of the few substances that affects all mammals roughly the same, and one such effect is the disruption of REM sleep. Given that my physiology is entirely unique and thus there are no medications designed with me in mind, this is the only chemical solution available to me when it comes to suppressing nightmares. Rest assured: I sleep much worse without it.” He sent a meaningful look Shōta’s way as he reached the bottom and added, “You of all people should understand the value of getting enough sleep.”

“Nightmares? Nightmares about wh-”

Even Shōta’s own train of thought cut off as realization dawned on him, the dots connected. His eyes subconsciously darted about to reexamine the pipes, the rats, his… family.

Nezu didn’t even look at him as he walked to the center of the living foyer. “Genetic experimentation is complex and unpredictable, Mister Aizawa. To minimize variables, it made sense to a certain research team that they conduct their experiments on lab rats as identical as feasible, so they bred their own from a single breeding pair.” He set his teacup on the coffee table before he climbed on the counter himself, tail twitching as his legs hung limp off the side, hands folded in his lap, gaze fixed on Shōta’s face. “Most failures didn’t survive the mutation process. They were just rats, anyway – a disposable, renewable resource,” he explained, voice and eyes both matter-of-fact and empty. “According to their logs, 43 of my siblings were failures before they succeeded in their quirk induction research.” Nezu opened his arms wide, the motion limp, lifeless, leaden. “Say hello to test subject 44. The first non-human in all the world with an intelligence quirk, and the first rat that left that lab as anything other than a corpse tossed out with the evening trash.”

[brightdevil801920-deactivated20]

I was wondering about how a human nezu would look in @thatwordybirb fic ‘just make me one promise’ and i drew something very close to the scene where nezu finally lets shouta in his dorm/house, its not exact obviously but like let’s pretend its right before shouta fully walks in ;)

(Ignore spelling mistakes- im too tired n lazy to fix it if theirs any.)

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[wordybirbfanficfactory]

In through his nose. Out through his mouth. Just had to humor Yagi, probably get rejected by the secretive critter outright, then leave and say he tried. Shōta held his fist out to the door, tilted his wrist back to rap his knuckles on it –

“What brings you here at this hour, Mister Aizawa?”

Shōta practically jumped out of his capture cloth at the sudden sound of Nezu’s voice in… surround sound? His head darted around to look for the source, his ears unable to pinpoint it.

Nezu’s voice made a sigh that crackled electronically. “The plants are plastic and hide a pair of speakers. The spyhole isn’t a spyhole – it’s a camera. Didn’t the height strike you as strange?”

Shōta mentally kicked himself for missing something so obvious. Of course there would be a trick behind every design decision of Nezu’s dorm.

“Answer my question please, Mister Aizawa,” Nezu said with an edge to his voice. Not impatient, but clearly getting there, which was testier than Shōta had ever heard the principal before. “Why are you here?”

Shōta huffed through his nose and resumed his casual stance, looking the camera dead in the lens before admitting point blank, “Yagi’s got his tights in a bunch that you won’t talk to him. He seems to be under the impression that I’d have better luck getting you to open up about whatever’s bothering you.”

Nezu laughed that polite, non-threatening laugh that everyone had grown so accustomed to over the years – but Shōta could tell it was strained. “Whatever makes him think something’s wrong? If that were the case, I’d tell him! Retirement has the poor man looking for problems where there aren’t any, I swear.”

There’s that denial he was warned about. Unlike Toshinori, or even Nezu… politely dancing around issues, cushioning hard truths? Wasn’t Shōta’s style. “You’ve been cooped up in your dorm far more than usual, you’ve had your meals delivered here instead of joining the rest of us in the cafeteria, what looks like sleep deprivation has left you struggling to keep up in staff meetings, and Inui has smelled booze on your breath all week,” he listed with the same passionless cadence as he did when assigning homework. “You’re not fooling anybody… sir.”

“If I’ve been so obvious, then why are you the first to speak up, Mister Aizawa?” Nezu said with strained civility, hostility simmering under the surface of his saccharine voice.

Well. An indirect confession was more than Shōta expected. Nezu must’ve been more impaired than he thought if he’d abandoned all subtlety. “I noticed before Yagi said anything. I think everyone did. I suspect that they all assumed he was helping you through whatever it is that’s bothering you, like I did. Inui didn’t tell me he could tell you were drinking; he told Yagi, because he’s the only person you’ve ever been particularly close to.” He glanced to the side, tutting under his breath. “You’ve made it very clear the rest of us are part of your professional life, not your personal one.”

A shallow scoff crackled through the speakers. “All the more reason I fail to see how this is any of yours, or Inui’s, or anyone else’s business, Mister Aizawa.”

Shōta shifted his weight on his feet and crossed his arms, snapped his gaze back to the camera. “You’re the principal, Nezu; when you’re not at the top of your game, your business becomes the school’s business. I might have let your condition get worse before I did anything, trusted you to get your act together, but then Yagi begged me to step in. Now that he has, you have two options: you let me in now and we have a chat that gets him off your back, or he enlists more of the faculty until you have a full-blown intervention on your doorstep.” He shrugged, staring down the camera with unblinking eyes. “Your move.”

Most would find the silence that followed dreadfully tense. Truth be told, Shōta began to feel the weight of that tension himself after the first few seconds. Relief washed over him when Nezu finally responded. “I’ve unlocked the door. The keyhole is fake and electrified on top of that, in case anyone tried to break in by lockpicking. Fair warning.”

Part of Shōta bristled at such extreme measures, but the rest of him knew he should’ve expected Nezu would put such ingeniously absurd security systems into his personal dorm. Crazy prepared was his thing, emphasis on crazy. Was his house boobytrapped the same way, come to think of it?

[sgt-tombstone]

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[wordybirbfanficfactory]

Got a Nezunori story going and two unposted WIPs I'm working on, one Reddnook and one Marcheblanc, all three multichapter epics - feel free to shoot this bird some words!

[brightdevil801920-deactivated20]

as everyone has expected more fanartt

for ‘just make me one promise’ by @thatwordybirb

——

i tried to do an actual background and i was going to shade it and all but then i got tired and nothing seemed right soooo i just left it as is, i’m trying to show how the characters are feeling but i’ve never done such a thing before so i’ve just been using random anime references and the chibis from honkai star rail d(￣^￣)

to my suprise it was kinda difficult to find a reference for all might in his yellow suit- like you would think there’s a bunch of art n shit of him in it especially since that’s so him? yk- but there’s barely any…i think i did okay with drawing him for the first time? and with the perspective too- it’s actually quite different from the original sketch of this, which i’ll probably post whenever i get back to school. _(┐「ε:)_

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[wordybirbfanficfactory]

Peace was precious. The older Aizawa Shōta got, the more he appreciated that fact. Getting his skull almost smashed in by a bio-engineered monstrosity the other month drove that point home pretty damn well. Apparently fate didn’t think that was good enough, because last week he was almost abducted by a bunch of Yakuza moonlighting as mad scientists during the raid on their lair. He was still recovering from that, but at that moment things were quiet. Sure, there was still the League of Villains looming on the horizon, especially after they managed to pull off a raid of their own on the prison transport, cripple the Shie Hassaikai’s ringleader, and steal their potentially history-changing product, but that was a problem for Future Shōta. Present Shōta just wanted to enjoy the peace of routine academia while it lasted. Which was why his heart sank into his shoes when Yagi Toshinori, All goddamn Might himself, was waiting for him outside the faculty dorm with an intense and nervous look on his face. “What does this idiot want now?” Shōta thought. “What do you want now, idiot?” was what Shōta said out loud. Just because the two were drinking buddies by then (of a sort; Yagi was his and Hizashi’s dedicated designated driver), just because they had reached an understanding of mutual respect, didn’t mean Shōta relinquished the right to give Toshinori a hard time. Hell, he constantly, vocally, publicly, on national television complained about being around Hizashi, who he would gladly die defending. That was just Shōta’s style.