I do not get tired of being disappointed in MLA.

When this organization was first introduced, I had high hopes for them.
Like, here we have heroes.
And here we have antiheroes - villains.
And I was hoping that MLA would be some kind of anti-anti-heroes.
That is, they would be friends with everyone against everyone. With whom is more profitable at the moment - with those them cooperate.
A company that makes equipment for heroes, while clearly adhering to villainous methods and goals. And plus they act like sectarians. Such a tasty combination ~

After the MVA arc, my hopes on them almost died already.
But I look at the latest events in the manga and I feel all my hopes dying in agony right now.

Although I still have hope for the emergence of such anti-anti-heroes.
Underworld is huge place >D

MLA May AUs (Parts 1+2/hopefully 31)

Intro Post

5/1: from the mothership

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5/2:  anything can happen in the next half hour

—–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–

from the mothership

“Did you get your name figured out?”

“I almost didn’t!” She rolled over in her bed, kicking her legs up behind her.  “Midnight-sensei tried to nix it.”

“Nix it?”  Her mother’s volume ticked up a notch.  “Why?”

“She wouldn’t even say! She just tsked at me!”

“Typical hero—no offense, dear.  So?  What did you do?”

“Sat back down, thought about it, and then got back up and showed everyone the exact same name.  You shoulda heard them jeering.”

“Good girl.  Why?”

“A quiz, Mom?” she laughed. Of course there was.  There always was, when someone from the Army decided they wanted to go Hero.  Home base always had to make sure none of those ideas about how only heroes were fit to use quirks stuck.  “I kept the same name because there’s a bunch of dude heroes out there with reference names or scary names.  Why should Death Arms be okay as a name but not Alien Queen?”

Mina grinned at the sound of her mother’s hum of approval and did not say the rest, which was, Also I really wanted to see the look on our base commander’s face when he realizes that’s what he’s gotta call me from now on.  If school was teaching her anything (other than being a huge badass who was definitely going to be a base commander herself one day), it was that there were right things and wrong things you could say to every crowd, and sometimes stands were important, but sometimes so was saying what the people wanted to hear.

For now, anyway.

—–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–

anything can happen in the next half hour

<They just hit the 11th Crossing.  Twenty minutes and he’ll be on your front steps.>

Mera Yokumiru reads the message on his cell, looks away long enough to guzzle the rest of his coffee, then stares with red-ringed eyes at the time.  Twenty minutes until Yotsubashi Rikiya, second-in-command of the Paranormal Liberation Front—and in all the ways that count, still the Grand Commander of the Meta Liberation Army—will be walking through the Commission’s doors under the pretext of negotiating a government contract for Detnerat’s new Support Goods division.  Twenty minutes, which is cutting it very close.

In the next half hour, the raid will start.  The Commission has spent the last three months frantically researching, wiretapping, coordinating schedules, debating personnel assignments, and squabbling over tactics. They’ve lowered the ages of work studies, expedited license paperwork, and fudged exam scores to broaden the net of warm bodies they’re hoping to use to catch the Liberation Front before it even gets out the gates.

In the next half hour, police will move to arrest Yotsubashi, Endeavor’s team on the hospital, and Edgeshot’s on the Villa.  Hawks will bolt for Bubaigawara Jin, to arrest him if possible, but with a primary objective of ensuring Double doesn’t turn back the tide.  (And oh, the sleepless laughs and sighs of relief that went around the planning table when someone pointed out that at least Hawks wouldn’t have to choose between Double and Warp Gate.)  

All across the country, trusted heroes and police will move on PLF bases, heroes who’ve been living double lives for years, and what Hawks reported were called “Liberated districts.” Shoki-san over at the Public Security Examination office is probably sitting at her desk just like Yokumiru is at his, sucking down her canned tea and waiting for the pre-determined moment to submit the paperwork to initiate the dissolution of the Hearts & Minds Party.

If absolutely everything goes according to plan, then this is still going to cost lives and be a PR disaster on a scale never before seen in Yokumiru’s lifetime.  There are just too many people involved, too many enemies ready to fight to the death, too many allies going in unprepared for the magnitude of what they’re about to face.  Things aren’t going to go according to plan.

The warriors of Liberation are going to find out firsthand that there’s a difference between the kind of training that they spent years doing in secret and the training heroes do with full government support.  The heroes, in turn, are going to find the Army waiting for them, and only whatever Noumu Garaki Kyudai felt like leaving behind to make his point—no one bothered to communicate those specifics to Yokumiru, because once he slipped Skeptic-sama an e-mail about Hawks, the paranoia on what Yokumiru was allowed to know ratcheted way up.

They might have had a bit more faith in me, he reflects gloomily, aware but past caring about the jittery bounce in his knee.  I saw this coming from the start.

Okay, he didn’t predict Shigaraki beating Re-Destro—no one did; no one could—but the second both his day job and his real bosses set their eyes on the League of Villains, Yokumiru knew it was time to start scrubbing paperwork.  Hawks was good at his job, and the Commission’s paper-pushers were even better at theirs.  With Hawks and the MLA both on a collision course with the League, there was no way around it: the Commission was going to find out that Destro’s cause was still living. And once they did, the civilian privacy statutes—whittled down into a shadow of what they were pre-Advent—were going to pose no barrier at all to the emergency investigation that followed.

Yokumiru isn’t the only paper-pusher with outside loyalties, thankfully, and he had his branch of the family tree neatly pruned from the family registry four generations back almost a month before Hawks started passing around his highlighted copies of Destro’s memoir. Having to hide that connection is distasteful at best, but it’s not the worst thing a man could be asked to sacrifice for the cause.

I wonder if Re-Destro will recognize me…  Yokumiru’s tired scowl pulls itself deeper at the thought.  He’d flash the (prior) Grand Commander a salute if he could, but there are cameras all over the building, and given what he expects to happen when the handcuffs come out, that camera footage is going to wind up in a federal investigation sooner rather than later, definitely if the PLF doesn’t pull this off, and possibly even if it does.  He can’t intentionally blow his cover.

Anything can happen in the next half hour, but no matter what does, if Yokumiru’s sure of anything, it’s that it’s going to be a shitshow all around.  His eyes—tired or not—need to stay right where they are.

—–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–

Notes for Mina:

• it’s pretty damn silly that Bakugou gets to call himself Great Explosion Murder God Dynamite and a lot of characters laugh at it, but he still gets to keep it; meanwhile, Mina gets disapproved into calling herself something cutesy like Pinkyinstead of just letting her stick to her guns on the self-evidently superior Alien Queen.
• I suspect that MLA-aligned heroes have to do a fairly distressing amount of double-think to get by, hence Mina’s learned compartmentalization of who she tells what. Though their relationship is warm on the surface, being in a cult means you never really know who’s safe to confide in and who isn’t. Parent/child relationships are no exception.
• That’s what he’s gotta call me from now on. I approach MLA code names as being chosen when members officially join the Army’s ranks; they’re highly prized, hard-won designations. Hero school is its own gauntlet, however, so both to recognize that effort and to minimize the danger of using the wrong name in the wrong company, most MLA heroes just go by their hero names, rather than having separate code names.

(Lots More) Notes for Mera:

• I’ve long thought it totally ridiculous that the HPSC could carry off the kind of investigation they’d need to unearth all parties in the HPSC, not only in merely three months, but without tipping off a single member who catches wind of said investigation before the investigation catches wind of them. So this includes a bit of supposition on how that looked from the inside.
• Shoki-san…Her name kanji are, in keeping with BNHA’s pun names, something innocuous that are read as shoki,which means ‘secretary’ or 'clerk.’
• …at Public Security. The Public Security Examination Commission is a department in the Ministry of Justice that, among other things, gives the ultimate 'yay’ or 'nay’ on whether an organization meets the criteria for advocation of terrorism that allow the government to step in and curtail the members’ constitutional rights. They’re also the ones who decide how or if to implement the desired solutions of the department that carried out the initial investigations, the Public Security Intelligence Agency. My guess is that the HPSC is under that same Ministry of Justice umbrella; while Caleb Cook went with a different translation than the one used for the real-life Japanese departments, Horikoshi uses the same kanji for “Public Safety” that the IRL “Public Security” departments do: it’s 公安, kouan,in all cases.
• The family registry. Thekoseki,about which I have written before as follows: “The kosekiis a family registry–one is entered into one’s parents’ registry at birth, with all information about the family’s births, deaths, marriages, divorces and adoptions being kept in the same place.  The koseki (…) will also have references to one another, allowing a diligent person to track a family line and its major events back for generations by simply following the paperwork.” I suspect these documents played a major role in the HPSC’s tracking of MLA families, hence Mera getting ahead of the game by having his ancestors’ altered.
• it’s not the worst thing a man could be asked to sacrifice for the cause. There’s one’s life, obviously, but I was particularly thinking here of whichever poor warriors gave their lives to the cause, only to get posthumously offered up to the police as the wicked villains who attacked Deika because the MLA suddenly needed to cover up the League’s involvement.

I’ve opted to start something of a project for myself for the month of May, to try and get back into the habit of more frequent fic writing after a long period of doing mostly meta.

Periodically throughout the month, I’ll be posting installments of short scenes and snippets of AUs in which various characters in HeroAca–students, pros, other villains, civilians, etc–are imagined as being in the MLA.  I’ve always wanted to see more of them (as per this post, which I’ll be using a lot of ideas from), so I’ve decided to try my hand at some.

I’m a bit behind at the moment–with these and with my ask backlog–thanks to IRL stuff compounding from a single problem into a farcical parade of issues.  If these are the April showers, the May flowers had better be glorious, let’s just say.  I expect a lot of these are going to be relatively short, however, and none of them particularlylong, so I’m hoping to catch up.  I may go to daily posting if I manage to get ahead, but we’ll see.  Appearances from actual MLA cast to vary by installment; I’m also hoping to use these ficlets to explore some of the MLA’s different aspects, faces, factions, projects, etc.

These will all use prompts taken from the 31-days Dreamwidth community, a prompt-based writing community from a bygone era of the internet that’s still trucking along posting monthly lists of prompts some 15+ years since its founding.  I wanted to use the May prompts, but the flower language didn’t suit my purposes; these are from their March post instead.  Attributions can be found at the preceding link.

Finally, please see the posts’ tags for which characters each installment concerns; I want to leave myself some room for scenes with multiple characters where the MLA character may or may not be immediately apparent, so I won’t be listing them in the post titles.  …Unless I change my mind on the formatting, which I may.  Regardless, I’ll try to get a masterpost up at the end that includes them all, and that post will include which character each day is about.

First one coming soon!  Enjoy!

MLA May AUs (Parts 13+14+15/31)

Intro Post

5/13: where are the constellations that guide me

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5/14: never let go of the microscope

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5/15: we’re torn apart

(Three today, just to get nicely to the halfway point. With thanks in advance to leftof and Nal for the brainstorming that led to the first and second of these fills respectively.)

—–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–

where are the constellations that guide me

Shigaraki.  The attack on the hospital was aiming for Shigaraki. Which meant the heroes—or just Endeavor?  The HPSC?  But that’s just details: someoneknew about Shigaraki, and that means there’s a good chance that…

Tensei isn’t picking up.  Think, Tenya, think: where was he supposed to be today?  Physical therapy?  That big meeting?  Something with IDATEN’s business side?  Should I try Mother?  Grandfather?

The city around me moans.  What’s the word—disconsolate?  That’s too poetic, but it fits; the city is heavy with emptiness, aching with it, no sounds but shifting dust and distant  shouting, voices carrying much farther, audible over much greater a distance, than should ever be the case in an urban environment like this one.

Mother isn’t picking up.  Where arethey?

Could the HPSC have found the League without discovering everyone now connected to them?  That can’t be possible.  If they found the League, they found us. But if they found us, then why hasn’t anyone found me? Would it have been too much a tip-off to pull me?  Were they just waiting to get me on my own—?!

…Still just empty streets.  And Grandfather isn’t picking up either.  My eyes burn, but I don’t dare stop moving to peel off helmet and glasses both to scrub at them.  Do I dare stop moving at all?  Can I ever stop moving again?

Slow down, slow down.  Stop panicking.  Where do I need to be?  If the Meta Liberation Army—if the Paranormal Liberation Front has been compromised, if IDATEN has been compromised, what’s the next step?

…What do you do when the entire firmament of your life has been ripped down without anyone saying a word?

I know I shouldn’t be relying on you still, Older Brother, I know I’m meant to be training to take the position that was supposed to be yours—but please, please pick up the—

The line connects.

“If this is anyone other than my little brother, I promise on my pipes that I’m gonna—”

“Older Brother!”  The words burst out of me on a humiliating hiccough of relief, the tears overflowing.  They cut him off before he can finish the uncharacteristic threat—he must be in trouble, if he’s talking like that.  “Older Brother, I’m sorry!  I’m sorry!  I didn’t know!  They didn’t tell us what the mission was going to be today or I’d have reported it, I swear!  I—”

“Woah, woah, Tenya, calm down!”  I can hear the relief in Tensei’s voice as well, just a hint of it beneath obvious strain.  “Where are you?  Do you need backup, or are you in a position to provide backup?”

The routine is a lifeline; I cling to it with both hands.  There’s a mountain of questions and answers still ahead, but it starts—just like everything—with the things that are right in front of me.

“I’m in Jakku.  They’re evacuating the whole city.  Shiga—the Grand Commander is awake and fighting.  I don’t know his current status beyond that.”  And now that I’m saying the words aloud, I already know what the order will be.

“Provide whatever support you safely can.  You know what his power can do now—what it could do even three months ago.  This was a huge coordinated action.  However we can do it,  we’ve got to throw that coordination off.  I’ve gotta go.  Don’t go back to UA.  We’re heading to the safehouse in—”

The line cuts out, and the anguish and fear nearly choke me into tripping mid-stride.  But I turn towards the north and keep running.  There’s nothing to do but keep running, and figure the rest out as I go.

—–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–

never let go of the microscope

“A few years ago,” the girl says into the microphone, black hair shining under every intermittent camera flash, “a friend of mine was visiting my home and happened to make a comment about how lucky I was, to have my own space to practice in.  She said that when she practiced at home, the neighbors complained.  It got me thinking.  She was right—I waslucky.  To have a space of my own, to have all the resources I could ever dream of.  Even to have a quirk like mine, that doesn’t create a disturbance just by me practicing it.  So, so many other kids—other students who dream of being heroes—aren’t as lucky as I was.  They have quirks that need more education than they have access to, more space to practice with than they have available—sometimes even more food than their families can spare.”

Her face takes on an urgent, compassionate cast.  Koku watches with a critical eye, but what flaws he can find are at worst superficial—she’s talking slightly too quickly; her makeup is just a touch glossy under the key lights.  Still in middle-school, but she really is a natural.  Perhaps it’s in her blood.

“What would I have done, I wondered, if I wanted to be a hero and failed a test I could have passed if I’d had more opportunities?” she goes on.  “And isn’t that unfair, both to the heroes we could have and the people those heroes could save?  That was the idea behind Heroes Tomorrow.”

The photographers sense the moment, and lights strobe around Yaoyorozu Momo’s perfect smile.

Afterward, she and her father usher a small group of journalists and sponsors around the building—the spacious gym, the outdoor court, the library, the cafeteria, the medical office.  As they walk, they trade off talking points about their goals for the future, the benefits of funding the place, the experts they’ve consulted, the specialists they’re planning on hiring.  Koku knows several of the names, having put the Yaoyorozus in contact with most of them.

It really is an extremely clever idea, one that could, in time, become an excellent source for warriors for the cause.  It is, however, an idea that requires a certain amount of money and social cachet to push through, and that benefits from only being supported by the Hearts & Minds Party, not proposed by them.  Charity and activism may overlap, but if one is going to challenge the murky borders of what the law regards as “private property” for the purposes of the bans on meta-ability use, the beaming face of well-intentioned and somewhat ignorant wealth will run into less resistance than the well-informed but confrontational rhetoric of the determined reformer.

After the tour, Koku shakes father and daughter’s hands alike, gives them his most polished smile, and wishes them and their endeavor all the best, please don’t hesitate to call my office if you run into any trouble, and so on.  The father is magnanimous and noncommittal—he’s spent all his life in this world and knows its rhythms and rhymes.  But he’s a man thoroughly charmed by his daughter’s zeal, and she lacks his experience.  She all but sparkles at Koku’s expressions of support.

In a few years, if Koku and his people perform up to task, he doesn’t doubt Miss Yaoyorozu will be an excellent warrior herself.

—–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–

(Content Warning: MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH.)

we’re torn apart

“…And that’s the size of it,” Hawks finishes, some lengthy time after he opened the topic by drawing a feather sword on Best Jeanist.  He’s sitting down now, perched at the edge of Jeanist’s couch, barely having touched the cup of tea he periodically turns in his hands.  He looks up and gives Jeanist a rueful half-smile, his eyes knowing and much too sad for a man so young.   “I promise I wouldn’t ask something like this for anything smaller.”

“That’s quite a grave situation.”  On the other couch, his hands knitted together on folded knees, Jeanist dips his head in thought.  “Do you have any guarantee you’ll be able to keep my ‘body’?  Suspended animation wouldn’t save me from an impromptu cremation.  And there are worse things they do to bodies.  I don’t want to end up as one of those tattered Noumu.”

“No guarantees, sorry to say.  Though if it helps, we think they’re having trouble sourcing more Noumu right now.  Since Hosu and Kamino, they’ve gotten a lot stingier with using them.”

“I suppose that is true.  Then, assuming you can keep hold of me, how long do you expect to keep me under?  I said before that I was to be returning to duty soon—it won’t go unnoticed if I vanish.”

“And it’s that much time you won’t be there to help people who need it, yeah.”  Hawks nods understanding.  “I didn’t like that part either, trust me.  I’m hoping it won’t be long, but it depends on how long it takes to track down the creator of the Noumu.  I need to keep in their good graces at least until then.  Ideally, we’d be able to keep you as an ace up our sleeve, if we turn out to need that kind of surprise play.”

 “Are you expecting to need one?”  Jeanist arcs an eyebrow. 

“We’re not taking any chances with the League anymore.”  Hawks’ eyes harden.  “Once we find the Noumu guy, we’ll use whatever methods we have to to sew this whole thing up.”

“Hmm.”  Though the set of his mouth remains unreadable behind his high turtleneck collar, Jeanist sounds faintly amused.  “Well, I do appreciate your choice in metaphors.”  Gaze flicking towards the floor, he falls momentarily silent.

“I can only try to keep up with your fabric puns, Jeanist-sensei,” Hawks teases, though his lowered brows still show his tension.  Then he waits.

Eyes still fixed on some point past his floorboards, Jeanist at last pulls out a comb and runs it over the top of his head, following the curve of his hair.  His other hand lifts and echoes the gesture, drawing his hair towards a familiar forward point. 

There’s a rustle of fabric and the air between them explodes with dozens, scores of red feathers, large and small, lancing towards where Jeanist sits straight-backed and unmoving on the couch.

Thecracksound echoes loudly through the apartment, rebounding off of its polished floors and the clean, flat expanses of its walls and windows.

Still caught in the momentum, the feathers don’t drop out of the air instantaneously, but the contours of them go soft; the deadly precision of their lines of attack swerve and divert, suddenly as aerodynamic as any feather blown free from a bird to drift freely towards the ground.  Several of them scatter across Jeanist’s lap as, on the other couch, Hawks slumps forward.

Jeanist sighs, standing up and brushing himself off.  He crooks one finger and waves his other hand; Hawks’ body drifts forward over the carpet as all of the living room’s curtains draw themselves closed.

He steps over to the floating body as its clothes turn it upright.  Only a scattering of blond hair is visible behind the hood of the shirt Hawks wore underneath his jacket, the mottled red cotton jerked up over his head and twisted firmly awry.  Jeanist gently smooths the fabric back and looks with regretful eyes at the Wing Hero’s expression of frozen desperation, at the impossibly sharp alignment of his drooping head to his shoulders.

“I’m truly sorry, Hawks,” Jeanist murmurs.  “If I could, I would have chosen a method that gave me a moment to explain, but you were just too fast for me to give you that opening.

“If it’s any comfort, by this time next week, the League of Villains will be no one’s problem anymore.”

—–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–

Notes for Iida:

I said it in my first post on this concept, but the Iida family being MLA just fits.Every part of it–Tenya’s militant attitude, his anger issues, Tensei’s chipper instinct to make sidekicks out of vigilantes, the multi-generational hero family that for some reason all have the same quirk—clicks perfectly.

I don’t have much to say on this fill in particular in terms of cultural notes or explainers, save to note that Iida being MLA is one of those places that would make a huge difference, either because of the damage it’d do to class morale for him to be discovered and taken from them, or because of the damage hecould do if, for example, he’d been buzzing around the outskirts of the Shigaraki fight in Jakku taking out heroes instead of saving them.

Expect a fill for Tensei eventually.

+

Notes for Momo:

This is one of those ideas that I think would do especially well for expanding on what the ideals of Liberation are, what’s worth salvaging from them versus what’s been lost to zealotry and radicalism over decades of isolation and groupthink. It’d be devastating for Momo to find out that her good idea was subverted away from her by an illegal cult, but at the same time, if the illegal cult was the first—maybe even the only—group to think her idea was valid and worth cultivating, what does that say about her idea? What does it say about the society she’s living in?

Furthermore, can she rescue this idea, or is it irrevocably poisoned by association? All those people Representative Hanabata introduced her and her father to—are they all suspect? How far does it go? Does she find this out herself somehow, and then has to figure out what to do with the knowledge, or does only find out after the day of the raids? Is she targeted by the arrests herself?

These questions assume that the truth comes out before she gets pulled into the MLA herself, which I think would depend on how much pushback she had to fight to get her project up and running versus how quickly the events of canon catch up to her. But seeing as she’s probably within a year to a year and a half of starting UA here, and from there it’s only one extremely preoccupied year until the raids, I think it’s a fair bet.

This is all naked supposition, of course. Maybe there are places like this in HeroAca!Japan, totally legal and on the up-and-up. A school to prepare you for hero school exams–like cram schools! It’d fit the milieu, certainly! But I feel like we’ve seen just enough characters in middle school flashbacks that we’d have heard about it if it did.

Anyway, suffice to say, I have a lot of questions about just constitutes “in public” versus “in private” where the quirk use laws are concerned; see also the Kaminari fill about all those alleged jobs you can use your quirk at that we’re told exist but never, ever see being performed by anyone who doesn’t already have a hero license.

(P.S. Trumpet means well, at least by his own warped standards, but he’d make a good villain for Momo, and an excellent villain for a conspiracy story. I wish the canon had used him as one.)

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Notes for Best Jeanist:

o There are a lot of ways things could have gone horrifically wrong for Hawks and the HPSC in their spy games if even a single MLA-aligned person found out about the investigation before the investigation found out about them. This is among the more drastic of such examples.

o Fiber Master is one of those quirks like Uraraka’s Float that would be appallingly dangerous in the hands of someone willing to commit murder with it. That goes double when it’s in the hands of someone as decisive and implacable as Jeanist; see for example Kamino, where his instincts and experience led him to attack All For One on sight, leaving the greener Mount Lady shocked that Jeanist would attack a possible civilian.

o In the manga, when Hawks visited Jeanist, they were both out of costume; Hawks was wearing a hoodie. The anime (because the anime didn’t want to spend money on the MVA arc, and model sheets for characters in non-standard outfits cost money) has both of them in their hero costumes. I think Jeanist couldkill Hawks with his hero costume; my alternate ideas for how this would go down (warning for a violent topic here) involved him sharpening and hardening the fibers of Hawks’s bodysuit top enough to either cut his throat or jab some guitar pick-shaped wedges into several points of his spinal column. Either method would have been bloodier, though, and taken precious seconds longer to kill him.

Jeanist probably considered the spinal column thing—he really didn’t want to just kill Hawks without being able to explain why—but he didn’t know Hawks’ quirk well enough to say whether damage to the nerves in his spine would inhibit his ability to control his feathers, so just went for the quick and clean method with the hoodie. Anime!Jeanist would have had to either take the gamble and divert ballistic feathers as best he could with his clothes/curtains or come up with a different tack entirely. This would have been tricky, since Hawks would not have been of a mind to let him contact anyone else or take a day to think about it.

o Jeanist probably feels really bad about this when Shigaraki and the League go on to stomp Re-Destro in the Deika attack, winning the Grand Commander’s loyalty and making themselves more of a problem for more people than ever before. He will have to get over it. He is, at least, in agreement that the Hero System is an untenably polarizing mess, which will have to do in the absence of more substantive common ground.

MLA May AUs (Parts 11+12/31)

Intro Post

5/11: warm smiles do not make you welcome here

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5/12: a small pack of thieves that distort the world

—–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–

Content Note: Gwen has Opinions on the Chapter 307 civilians; news at 11.

warm smiles do not make you welcome here

When the dust settled and the smoke cleared, the muscle villain was long gone, hauled away by the interloper in green that defeated him.  Shame.  Killing him would have set a good example—if they could have.  Seeing the scale of the destruction, Gen wasn’t sure his little group here would have been up to the task.  They’d been lucky as it was to avoid that initial sweep, and the word from on-high was clear: there’s work for the heteromorphs to do, but anyone who can, batten down, stay put, and don’t let yourself get evacuated to some shelter that will try to shut you back up in the box.

There’s an advantage right now in civil disobedience, had been the order, garbled over an uncertain phone connection.  Heroes don’t have the resources to devote to cracking down on it, and the longer we can prove it’s viable, the harder it gets to root out.  Stay the course, Pilgrim.

It’d been nice to hear his codename again.  Gen and his squad had been avoiding them as a measure for blending in—the group had picked up some stragglers in the city, people who’d left shelters or ignored evacuation orders but then been driven to look for safety in numbers.  Promising recruits, but uninducted so far, and he didn’t want to scare anyone off.

So, immediate crisis averted, the squad turned their attention to the aftermath and brought the hero kid in on a makeshift stretcher.  His girlfriend tailed them close behind, anxious eyes widening a bit with every wheezing, pained breath coming out of his chest—definitely some broken ribs there, but nothing sounded wet enough to be in his lungs, so at least there was that.

“You got some people to contact?” Gen asked the girl, wrapping one steadying hand around her elbow.  She wheeled up to look at him in a jolt of panic and he waved his hands, placating.  “Calm down, miss; that was my bad phrasing.  I didn’t mean his next-of-kin!  I meant your—supervisor, or however you kids are doing it right now.  Have you got someone on the way we need to be on the look-out for?  My people here’re pretty keyed up.”

She unwound by increments as he talked, terror fading into a nervy wariness.  At the end, her chin tipped up, and she nodded, sucking in a quick breath before answering in quick, professional tones.

“I have two classmates on the way.  Mr. Smith is bald, light teal blue skin and a heavy jaw, wearing a heavy black jacket and a gold chain.  Boomerang Man has wavy black hair down to just past his shoulders; wears all black with a red scarf and brown fingerless gloves.”  Her tone slowed as she calmed down.  “Our supervisor is Pro Hero Miss Joke—she has light green hair, and wears an orange bandana and striped green and orange shorts.  I’m—not sure who she’ll be bringing for back-up.  Sorry.”

Gen shook his head.  “That’s plenty enough, miss.”  He looked around until he spotted his second.  “Relay that, huh?  And have ‘em get started on the clean-up.  See if anything useful got shook loose, and pile the rest up for blockade.” 

When the man nodded and hustled off, Gen turned his attention back to the girl. “Right.  So.”  He rubbed his neck.  Stay the course, but don’t give the truth away.  Never thought I’d be negotiating the future with teenagers, though.  “Your boy there’ll be okay.  Maybe tell him later to tone it down with the big glossy hero act.  But in the meantime, why don’t you and me sit down and talk about what we’re gonna do when your people get here.”

—–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–

a small pack of thieves that distort the world

Content Note: This fill about the relationship between two infamous families is set in two different periods. If you want canon-current characters, check the second half; the first half features Harima Oji as well as my take on a character suggested by the canon but never shown: Destro’s lover and the mother of his child. I call her Fathom; her quirk, Antennae.

Her meta-ability tells her someone’s there before anything else does.  Movement on the next roof, a man’s shape displacing the air, loose clothes, the tang of metal and—wax paint?

Fathom continues to stare out over the city, gathering tension into her core, shifting her weight to the fronts of her feet—reading to move without yet moving.  The man doesn’t feellike a hero, and he definitely isn’t acting like one.

He moves, a light jump through the air, and lands in a crouch on the edge of her own roof, still absolutely soundless.  She turns to face him, deliberate, and as soon as she lays eyes on him, she knows who he is.

“Good evening, Miss Fathom.”  Harima Oji, loved by the people on the street and ferociously loathed by the Hero Commission, straightens up into a poised stance on the railing.  With an unmatched fluidity, he raises one hand to his face, finger pressing to his jaw as he tips his head to one side.  The bells on his bracers shift and tilt, making not the faintest of chimes, only a muffled rolling noise from the pellets of metal inside them.  “I wonder if I might have a word with the lady of the late Destro?”

Fathom twitches, an angry shiver that bobs her antennae before she locks it down and levels a glare at him.  “What does the Peerless Thief want with me?”  The image flashes through her mind, her son asleep three floors below, and twists her stomach with a preemptive rage.  If that’swhy he’s here, looking for some sort of souvenir from the fallen Liberation Army, or something to buy off the price on his own head, then—

“To confirm a theory,” Harima responds, the wind ruffling his white sleeves and wild hair.  “You don’t believe Destro committed suicide in prison.”  When she takes a step towards him, he rolls his hand away from his face, palm opening downward in a dismissive flick.  Still the sound of the bells remains dampened, unringing.  “Of course you don’t.  No one with any sense believes Destro killed himself in federal custody.”

“What about it?” she grits.  Her pulse thrums in her veins, a scent of red she can taste in the air.  “Do you have some proof you came to dangle?”

“Proof would do us no good at this juncture.  If our fledgling Hero Commission is willing to commit murder behind closed doors, there’s no point in trying to fight them using the structures the law provides.”

“The people should still know.  And there is no ‘us’ with someone who won’t talk straight with me.”

He shrugs, answering, “I won’t argue the power of a good narrative, but unfortunately, I don’t have any such proof.”  His red face paint accentuates the line of his lips as they part around a grin that shows teeth, the corners of his mouth pulling wide as the long slash of a knife.  “I come rather as one hare to another, trying to stay ahead of the hounds.”

Fathom narrows her eyes, antennae bobbing as she sifts through his demeanor for clues.  He doesn’t smell of fear, but rather tingles with an edge of thrill.  Of course, her organization has a reputation of its own he surely knows.  “Are you afraid they’re about to catch up to you, then?”

“Not yet,” he says, and adds with a laugh, “Not soon.  Perhaps someday.  But I intend to make sure my cause is in good hands by then.  As, I think, is your intent as well.”  He gestures to the roof floor under their feet.

“…An alliance, then,” she realizes, and he nods, lowering himself back into a steadier crouch.  The warmth of fondnesssuffuses the air around him, a familiar nostalgic sweetness soft on the back of her tongue.  At first it sits incongruously with the sharpness in his eyes, but after a moment, the two reconcile, and she has his measure: a cause, and people to pass it forward to.  That, she understands with a painful intimacy that he’d surely taste on her just the same, were their meta-abilities reversed.

“As canny as the rumors say,” he acknowledges.

“What sort of terms are you looking for?” she presses.  “Your cause and ours aren’t the same.”

“They are not, but either’s loss would be our common enemy’s gain.  To spite that common enemy, I propose we that we should share information.  As well as talents, perhaps, when our goals do align.”

“…What did you have in mind?”

— – —

“Atsuhiro.  It’s been quite a while, hasn’t it?”  The voice on the other end of the line sounds bemused—and, when Re-Destro speaks again, faintly disapproving.  “I understand you’ve been quite busy.”

“We’re only just getting started, Rikiya.”  Sako twirls a pair of marbles in his free hand, navigating towards the back of the safehouse.  It’s one his family hasn’t used in some time, in a neighborhood they pulled out of after his great-uncle got too annoying for a local corrupt officer with yakuza ties to ignore.  Sako’s found two squatters thus far, which means this isn’t a suitable place to stay in long-term unless he wants to do something particularly wicked with the marbles, and murdering random homeless men is not a precedent he wants to set for himself when the world brims with so many other, more deserving targets.  “On which note, my boss is looking to make some new contacts.  And as it happens, I know a man who knows—well, quite a lot of men.”

“I see.”  Someone less sheltered might take offense at the phrasing, but Re-Destro, who Sako never met as a young man without at least three pairs of adult eyes in the room—doesn’t seem to notice.  “And what is he looking to do with those new contacts?”

“His initial goal was to take down All Might.  Quite impressive work, don’t you think?”

“Hardlyhiswork,” Re-Destro hedges.  “I didn’t see him do anything of note in the Kamino footage compared to”—there’s the barest fraction of hesitation before the sentence resumes smoothly—“All For One.”

“But his request,” Sako insists.  He has no idea what balance of that is true and what isn’t, but this is a business negotiation, not a tell-all interview.  “And who else would be audacious enough to even think of it?”

“He had quite a few audacious ideas,” Re-Destro says, and his tone tells Sako what’s coming clearly enough that his eyes are already mid-roll before the words start.  “Attacking and kidnapping school children.  Not exactly a hit with the public opinion.”

“The public opinion has been written in stone for over a century.”  Sako shoulders open the bedroom door and slips inside, picking his way around discarded beer bottles and other such refuse.  At least it should only be for a night or two, he tells himself, and does not sigh into an open phone line.  “In my view, it’s overdue for being broken and recast.”

“You know I don’t disagree.  But I thought your family mostly preferred whistle-blowing and investigative work these days.  Throwing your lot in with self-declared villains is—not a place I would have expected one of the Peerless Thief’s line to come to.”

“My dear Rikiya, don’t trifle with me about lineage,” Sako responds sharply, the state of his surroundings forgotten.  “Your ancestor and mine are both the stuff of fusty history lessons that bore children, when they’re talked about at all.   The here and now is Shigaraki and the League of Villains.  In fact, one of my associates has already met with another interested party.  I’m extending you and yours the invite out of deference to our families’ alliance, but I don’t justify my decisions to about my family reputation to you.”

There’s a long pause, and Re-Destro’s voice when it returns contains that particular note of tight control that Sako has long suspected means the Liberation Army’s leader is very, very annoyed indeed.  Well, the feeling is mutual.  “Nor would I wish you to, Sako.”  Another pause, shorter this time, then the man resumes speaking in his more typical cadence.  “I’ll have someone sent.  Not under the Army’s auspices yet, but to get an inside eye on things.  All I’d ask of you is to treat him as if you know him of old, and keep quiet about his allegiances for the time being.  Would that be acceptable?”

“I don’t vouch for people I don’t know, but we can arrange a date beforehand,” Sako allows.  “If he meets my standards, I’ll see about getting him past Shigaraki’s.”

—–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–

Notes for the 307 Civilians:

I place an almost certainly outsized importance on these characters as indicative of, if not the MLA’s ideal world, then at least something that looks closer to those ideals: a community of people using their quirks freely, capable of coming to each other’s defense and willing to do so in emergencies, rather than relying on heroes to turn up and save them.

I always thought a good compromise with them would be not forcing them to come back to a shelter, but rather getting them some support and letting them serve as something of an advance camp for heroes doing patrols or other civilians coming through, whether in search of a shelter or returning to their homes.

I also thought a good plot with them would be letting them help with Muscular, and then having to stop them from turning right around and murdering Muscular, because that’s the downside of vigilante justice.

Ialsoalso thought that the MLA should have had little pockets of activity all over the place that Hawks would never find out about because there just isn’t time to follow every single thread to every possible end during the investigation period he had available.

Thence, the fill kind of hits on all three points: that Gen and company are very capable of bargaining and coming to mutually beneficial arrangements, but they’re also capable of being extremely ruthless, and either way, they’re going to be a vector for the continued spread of MLA ideology, because you can’t snuff out a movement 115,000 strong in an afternoon.

+

Notes for the Harima+Yotsubashi Alliance:

I wrote about Fathom here, back during MLA Week two years ago. I try to approach the information she gets from the antenna as being somewhat synesthetic in nature: aside from her keen sense of air movement, she also gets smells and tastes from them that don’t quite match up with the regular versions of those senses. They sometimes tip her off to emotional cues not through psychic means, but rather by associating the body language of those tells with specific synesthetic feedback.

Harima, meanwhile, is–and I think this is intentional on Horikoshi’s part, though I’m not 100% clear on it–taking some cues from famous historical thief Ishikawa Goemon, and particularly the kabuki theater version of that personage. The bells are a show-off–he can wear bells and still be a successful thief!–and the make-up is a kabuki thing.

Specifically, Harima’s facial pattern most closely resembles mukimiguma, a type of makeup design “used for roles that are full of youthful sensuality and have a strong sense of justice,” per a website I dug up on the matter.

A fuller version of this fic would probably have two more all-OC sections dealing with things the families do to aid each other over the course of their generations-long alliance, but that was getting a bit sprawling for a simple daily prompt fill.

Sako Atsuhiro and the rest of his family would occupy a somewhat unique place in Rikiya’s life, as allies who know the truth about his dual identity but who are not obligated to be especially deferent about it. That can be stressful, as when Compress gets snippy about their families’ relevance in the modern day, but it probably was pretty nice for the prized heir of Destro to have other family heirs around to periodically talk to that weren’t beneath him in the ever-burdensome chains of command. (Albeit not as nice as they could have been if Rikiya’s visits with them were less supervised.)

The Sako family mostly thinks the Yotsubashi family should try to stop dying before they crack 50; it can’t possibly be good for their long-term planning to keep losing leaders at such young ages.

MLA May AUs (Parts 9+10/31)

Runningverybehind, but it’s being a real all-timer of A Month. I will get through these, though probably on a somewhat more lax timetable than initially planned so I can get to some languishing asks (and also talk about the most recent chapter, maybe).

Today’s fills are both very short; I have two longer ones finished, but first need to circle back to finish a few prompts I skipped over.

Intro Post

5/9: we can breathe in space, they just don’t want us to escape

+

5/10: destabilise, divide, or label

—–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–

we can breathe in space, they just don’t want us to escape

“Why d’you keep your face covered up all the time, kid?”

Shouji starts at the question.  Lots of people wonder—he’s caught the lingering gazes and the speculative stares—but for someone to just ask outright, is…  Well, the last person who did was Hado-senpai, who immediately pivoted away to Todoroki instead of listening to his answer.

Gang Orca is—probably not like Hado-senpai.  Gang Orca goes on staring at him, eyes narrowed nearly closed, his red irises a spot of bloody color against the white markings around his eyes.

“A long time ago, there was… A little girl.  She saw my face and it—upset her.”  The words come slow and halting, unaccustomed to the open air.

“Don’t see why that’s any fault of yours.”  Gang Orca tilts his head to one side, the line of his mouth just visible past his high collar.  “Did somebody ask you to?”

Shouji shakes his head.  “No, I just—think it would be better to not…”

“Make waves?”

“Upset children.”  Is Gang Orca, who makes appearances at aquariums around the country multiple times a month, telling him not to worry about what people think of his appearance?

…Well, he is on the villainous hero ranking.

Gang Orca makes a sharp clicking sound, his version of a snort; the vocalization accompanies a short, silent wave from his sonic burst, a passing ghost of echolocation felt in Shouji’s inner ears.

“I get not wanting to upset kids,” he says, though his tone is nothing like a concession.  “But masking up like that just teaches ‘em that covering up is a fair thing to ask people like you and me.  It’s just a face.  Lotsa different faces in the world.”  He shakes his head; the movement tugs his heavy cape in tow, shifting it over his shoulders.  “They can’t go around expecting everyone whose face they don’t like to wear some kinda modesty veil.”

The words cut deep.  Defensiveness rises, a reflexive hurt that makes Shouji want to argue the point.  His family never told him this; Ectoplasm-sensei never told him this.  He wants to be a hero people can rely on, not one who scares the people he turns up to help.

He breathes through it, aware of his hands clenching into fists.

Gang Orca—who has not looked away from him once, the whorled patterns in the whites of his eyes barely moving—grins at the sight of it, or at least moves his mouth in a way that shows his teeth.

“You can get mad about it all you want, Tentacole.  You just oughta ask yourself if you’re willing to be the example people point to when they start talking about what’s fair and what’s not.  For as long as we’ve still got heroes, that’s one of the things heroes have to be.  Examples.”

—–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–

destabilise, divide, or label

“Purpose in coming today?”

“I’m really looking forward to hearing the Grand Commander speak!  I’ve only ever seen him in pictures, so—”

“Go ahead.  Purpose in coming today?”

“It’s expected of me as a base commander.  …But of course, I also anticipate—”

“Mm-hmm.  Go ahead.  Purpose in coming today?”

“To put a bullet in that smarmy bastard Hanabata Koku’s head.”

Testament looks up from the endless list of conference attendees.  In the frozen moment of realization, the color is already visibly draining from the face of the man standing across the table from him.  Before he can do more than open his mouth to fumble for a lie—and definitely before he has time to move his hand towards wherever his gun is concealed—Aster has cleared the table in a rush of purple and black and is bearing the man to the floor.

“Thank you for your honesty,” Testament says, grinning.  “I was starting to think my meta-ability was being wasted here.”

—–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–

Notes for Shouji/Gang Orca:

Probably more than any of the others I’ll write for this project, this one is an even split on which character it’s “for” as an MLA AU.

I had the prompt marked for Shouij from the start, as it’s a shpiel I’ve been waiting to hear about him since pretty much the moment I read about his backstory. I’d initially conceived of it as coming from Shouji himself, aimed at some probably-Deku classmate, but I realized I’d need to take the plunge on describing his mouth, and I’d rather wait to get it in canon rather than get jossed in extremely short order. So then it became a matter of deciding who’d be willing to confront him about it, and Gang Orca—heteromorph, aquatic traits, scares children, extremely good at acting the part of a villain, andShouji’s work study mentor—was the obvious candidate.

Rambly Notes for Nemoto:

Cheating a bit on this one, in that it’s really just more of an AU I’ve already written, one in which Nemoto gets picked up by Curious instead of Overhaul. You can find that story here, if you like. I like Testament-version Nemoto because he’s still just as insufferable as Hassaikai-version Nemoto.

Aster is Toga’s No. 2, as pictured and briefly written about here. I picked her because I wanted an advisor who seemed physically capable of doing the violent stuff (so preferably someone from the more front-line regiments), as well as one who had an even enough temperament to handle both the boredom of a potentially uneventful posting and Nemoto’s obnoxious attitude (so some of the more overly-serious or rowdy types were also out).

Dealing with Nemoto’s attitude would be a particular demand today because stationing Nemoto with a list of attendees at the check-in point for a big conference feels very menial to him, and Nemoto hates doing menial work because he’s Important and should be with the other Important People. So he’s happy at the end of this because he proved his usefulness and now he gets to go help interrogate some unfortunate who is probably going to wind up buried in the woods within the day.

For some reason, Trumpet is the one whose life I imagine to be most frequently in danger. There’s the politician thing, of course, and one for a probably fairly radical party by the standards of the Hero Society norm, but also, he’s just kind of smarmy, and has that whole romantic entanglement with the Grand Commander that people probably had Opinions about. (Also, he’s clearly the one who would look most attractive when rumpled from Imperilment. This is probably not incidental to my repeated desire to threaten his life.)

MLA May AUs (Parts 7+8/31)

Intro Post

5/7: come join the feast

+

5/8: keep it on ice

—–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–

come join the feast

The first three days after the disastrous raid were complete chaos, perhaps even worse than the raid itself had been.  That, at least, had been a mission: one knew that there would be risks, could be unforeseen turns.  School life, however, was meant to be predictable, routine.

It was now anything but.

A print-out had come to the 1-A Heights dorm that morning bearing the announcement that, effective immediately and indefinitely, students would now be helping the UA cafeteria staff to prepare meals for both the students themselves and the refugees.  It was to boost communal morale, encourage empathy, and help with the strain on school staff and resources.  A roster had been attached, and so, that afternoon, Ojiro had dutifully reported to the cafeteria alongside Iida and Uraraka.

They met up with Kendo, Shoda and Tokage and, before they had time to do more than exchange greetings, were swept into the kitchens by the cafeteria staff, absent the one Ojiro had most been expecting.

“Where’s Lunch Rush?” Uraraka whispered when she and Ojiro wound up sharing a counter to scoop rice and slice carrots.  Ojiro shrugged and shook his head, frowning.

“I don’t know,” he whispered back.  “Do you think something happened?”

“Wouldn’t it have said so in the announcement…?”  Uraraka leveled another scoop of grains before pouring it into the bowl of the biggest rice cooker Ojiro had ever seen.

“I don’t mind helping at all,” he said, feeling petty even as he said it.  “It’s just—is our cooking really going to help morale more than his would?”

“It—”  She broke off as Shoda came over, nudging over a foot stool and stepping up to the counter as well, laden down with onions.

The three continued working in silence for another minute before before Shouda spoke, his voice quiet and level.

“He was arrested.” The knife came down against the cutting board and rocked up again.  “Lunch Rush.”

Uraraka slapped one hand over her mouth to muffle her gasp as Ojiro yelped, “Arrested?!”

Sound in the kitchen died; in the horrible silence, he could feel every gaze turn on them.  Shoda stared at the knife and doggedly continued cutting.

“Uraraka-san!” scolded one of the kitchen ladies, tone harsh against the contours of the sucking, too-attentive quiet.  “Don’t touch your mouth while cooking!  Go and wash your hands again!”

“Yes, ma’am!”  Guiltily, Uraraka dashed off toward the sinks.

Shoda waited for the clang and clatter of food preparation to resume before he spoke again.  “Yes.  In the raids. He was a sympathizer.”  His voice had gone hard now.  “Shishida overheard some of the third-years talking about it yesterday. They say he had a brother in the Liberation Front.”

Ojiro swallowed, trying to find his words.  I never thought—he always seemed so…

If food’s made with heart, it always tastes good.  The line came back to him all at once, though he couldn’t think where he’d heard it—a TV show?  A comic? One of those cooking programs his grandma watched?  And Lunch Rush’s food had always been sogood.  And…

And Ojiro had never thought about it much beyond the general sense of nebulous pride, that he went to a school that was served food by the Cook Hero.

He looked at the pot of rice left behind on the counter, looked around at the kitchen workers, throwing themselves into making bigger meals than they’d probably ever had to make before, for the people coming to UA for shelter, hundreds already and more every day.

“Watch your hands,” Shoda said more gently and, when Ojiro looked at him, gave him a crooked smile. “We need all the hands we’ve got.”

Ojiro swallowed down the sting of self-recrimination, nodded, and got back to the carrots.

  —–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–

Content Warnings: I’ll be upfront about this one: it’s Rei.  Therefore, expect talk of the Todoroki family situation, references to domestic abuse, murder, the insufficiencies of the legal system, and the early stages of cult recruitment targeting the vulnerable.

This fill features Twice’s number 3, this gal: 

keep it on ice

“He’d have hunted me to the ends of the earth if I’d taken the children, called me a kidnapper, mentally unstable.  I couldn’t go back to my parents; if I’d gone to the police, word would have gotten out. I just didn’t know what to do anymore.” Rei curled her fingers around the warm cup of honey-laden tea.

“I killed mine,” her host confided, and leaned over to pat her hand.  At Rei’s flinch and shocked look, Kairiki Kanai shrugged her sloping shoulders, smile unperturbed.  “He was threatening me and my little girl.  It was self-defense.”  A beat of silence, then, “Proactive self-defense.”

“You’re not…  There wasn’t any—legal trouble?”  Rei pulled the cup back across the table and held it near her face.  The steam and the scent of spearmint rolled over her cheeks.  The kitchen felt at once homey and too full of things that could become weapons.  She gripped the cup tighter.

“I had good lawyers, my dear.  People who want to change how toothless the laws are against domestic abuse are in this country.  They heard about my case and offered their help.”  Apparently unoffended, Kanai climbed back to her feet and returned to the stove.  “You never thought about it?”

“The laws?”

“Self-defense.”  She aimed a smile over her shoulder; it dimpled her cheeks.  Rei’s unease didn’t lessen, but a morbid fascination began to stir in her as well.

“He’s the—a hero,” she corrected herself.  While Kanai had been nothing but welcoming since Rei had arrived at her home after being secreted away from the shelter, she still didn’t know Rei’s real name—she seemed perfectly content to go on using the alias Rei had given.  But there wasn’t really anyone who wouldn’t know who the Number 2 Hero was; Enji had held the position for over two decades, after all. And it was—nice, to be someone other than Rei for now, even if the woman going by that name still wept inside her, paralyzed with guilt over the children she still didn’t know how to help.  “I could never…”

“Did he eat your food? Lie beside you at night?”  Kanai pulled the lid off the pot and peered at the simmering gyoza nabe inside; the smell of garlic and dashi washed through the room on the rising steam.  When Rei didn’t answer, she clicked her tongue and replaced the lid.  “Ah, I’m sorry; don’t mind me.  I just hate to see people thinking of themselves as so helpless.”

“Aren’t we?” Rei found herself asking, the words pulled out of her on a plaintive sigh.

“Not if we don’t want to be, my dear.  And make no mistake, anyone who tells you different is no one you should be trusting.”

 —–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–

(Excessive) Notes for Lunch Rush: 

• Helping in the cafeteria: In Japan, in basically all elementary schools and most middle schools, kids prepare and serve their own meals to their classmates in rotating lunch team assignments.  It’s less universally practiced in high schools, apparently, but definitely still a relatively common practice.  UA doesn’t do that–UA very prominently has a famous chef/hero that does all that for them.  There’s likewise never any suggestion that they clean their own classrooms, which is a near-universal thing in Japanese high schools.  This all kind of contributes to the feeling of UA as this elite school where the students don’t have to do plebe work like serving meals and cleaning.  We know they’ve been helping around the school since the war aftermath, though, so I wanted to look at a specific way that could have manifested if we ever got to see more of that material during the time Deku was away.
• First day teams: My first impulse was to include Shouto and Shishida in their respective class groups, but I thought that the first day should include both class presidents so they can get an idea of how things work and relay the information back to their classes; also that the cafeteria staff should be able to iron out how to incorporate the student help without having to also wrangle e.g. a kid who is notably bad at cooking and a kid who is covered in hair.  For the same reason, the first kids chosen besides the class presidents are all fairly mid-grade on their energy levels.  Not too high energy, not too low, just steady and reliable.  …But I do still like the comic image of Shishida covered head to toe in masks and hairnets.  He’ll just have to come later in the rotation, once the routine is set enough that the staff can start dealing with personalities/quirks that make cafeteria work more complex.
• Go and wash your hands again!:  If you’ve never done food preparation or service in a professional/commercial environment, they really are huge sticklers about this.  Which is not to say that it’s going to get properly done every time, but certainly if an appropriately exacting manager spots you touching your face in the kitchen and then not immediately moving towards a sink, you will probably get barked at.
• They say he had a brother in the Liberation Front:  Please look at these two and tell me I’m wrong.

• Also, I remain forever salty that the series never touches on how daily life is going to be impacted, not by the failure of heroes, not by the escape of a bunch of violent criminals, but by the arrest of 115,000seemingly normal, everyday people, some number of whom were in positions of influence in civilian infrastructure they can no longer fill because of being, you know, arrested.  Lunch Rush makes a good example of the kind of person In Your Neighborhood who just gets disappeared by the government one day and how that looks to the people left behind.
• If food’s made with heart, it always tastes good:  I don’t know if there’s a standardized aphorism for this, but it’s a sentiment I see around all the time in anime and elsewhere, applied to food, to music, to art.  The idea is that if something is beautiful or affecting or delicious enough, it cannot possibly have been made by a bad person; that if you put your feelings into your art, You Will Surely Be Able To Reach People.  Well, there’s no falsity in MLA!Lunch Rush’s cooking, and that’s surprising to kids who have not yet learned to recognize that their opponents have motivations beyond Evil For Evil’s Sake.

(Rambly) Notes for Rei: 

• MLA!Rei, obviously, doesn’t get into the MLA via the quirk supremacy vector like Geten.  Rather, her angle is that the laws limiting quirk use to heroes-only warps society, influencing everyday people to think of themselves as helpless, pitting heroes against each other in competition for limited resources and limited public attention, leading them to prioritize all the wrong parts of the job.  It’s a similar sentiment as Shigaraki’s manifesto at Jakku, but tracking the rot back to the quirk use laws, rather than heroes.  If everyone could use their quirks freely, if there wasn’t this dreadful ranking system, then her husband wouldn’t have been so obsessed with proving that he was number one–after all, he would have had no metric to compare himself against!  (Whether or not she’s rightabout this is largely immaterial; what’s important is getting another warrior for the cause, and one with sucha compelling story, too.)
• Kairiki Kanai, meaning something to the tune of Monstrous Strength Housewife.  While I don’t think she’s lying about her deceased husband, I do think her account is somewhat self-serving.  It was an extremely premeditated murder, I suspect.  I haven’t decided on her codename, though my sis-in-law’s suggestion of Ursadoes have some appeal.  Kanai’s daughter is the other bindi gal, the one with the out-of-control sweater neck who most recently cropped up in that panel of escaped PLF types.
• The laws about domestic abuse in Japan classify it as a civil issue, not a criminal one.  Domestic abuse being a keep-it-in-the-family thing, a man’s prerogative if his wife isn’t obeying him, or even not being an issue at all because men in Japan aren’t “violent” like Western men: all are views that activist groups have spent decades struggling against.  The first law against domestic abuse was passed only in 2001 (the US’s was in 1994, by the way, so not much better, though the US’s law also made a number of domestic abuses actual criminal offenses, rather than civil ones), and while it’s been expanded on a number of times since, there are still some pretty gaping holes in it, including the continued lack of criminal consequences for offenders–right now, it’s all still focused on fines and restraining orders and the like, not jail time.
• Horikoshi, of course, is not obligated to hew to real life law in his fantasy-future Japan setting, especially on behavior he clearly portrays as wrong!  Nor are Western fans obligated to swallow their discomfort because of a handwave of “it’s just the Japanese culture,” especially when Japanese activists are still working hard today to improve this state of affairs.  But it makes for valuable context all the same, especially when the main characters involved–Rei and Enji–are both older and have very Traditional sensibilities, exactly the sort of people that activists say are least likely to believe domestic abuse warrants a police report.
• As I’ve said before, I think the MLA sets themselves up to catch people falling through the social safety nets–ex-cons, abuse victims, orphans, the homeless.  They think of it as being there for people who the current system cannot or will not save, and they really do believe that!  But it’s predatory recruiting all the same, going on in all the places Heroes are least likely to intervene.

MLA May AUs (Part 5 + 6/31)

Intro Post

5/5: sorry, you’re not a winner

+

5/6: okay, time for plan b

—–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–

Content Notes: Language; Sports Festival violence but they’re even younger; Bakugou Mitsuki’s A+ Parenting.

sorry, you’re not a winner

“Why do I still have to fight in the baby brackets?”  The question from the backseat is a sharp, annoyed complaint.  Mitsuki rolls her eyes.

“Katsuki, you’re eleven.  You still area—”

“Now, now,” Masaru breaks in hurriedly as he eases the car into the drop-off lane for the front gate.  “I’m sure—”

“It’s stupid!” Katsuki insists.  “I’ve won them three years in a row!  Destro even wrote that kids are stronger than grown-ups.”

“That’s not quitewhat—”

“Heused to have kids fight their parents,” comes the rebellious mutter, and a kick to the back of Mitsuki’s seat.  “We should bring thatback.”

“Time for all brats to get out of the car now!” Mitsuki says with a nitroglycerine brightness as Masaru pulls up to the curb.  She all but shoves Katsuki out of the door; he goes, complaining the whole time, bursts and flares sparking around his hands.

They both sigh once the kid vanishes up the ramp towards the turnstiles, joining a flood of other children under the eyes of badged event staff.  Masaru slides the car back into the flow of traffic, heading for the reserved parking.

“…You didn’t tell him about Geten?” he asks at length.

Mitsuki flips down the passenger side vanity mirror and pats at her hair.  “Life’s full of surprises, dear.”  She tweaks a few strands back into place and smiles firmly at her reflection.  “He’s overdue for a few.”

-

Katsuki blows through the first four rounds just like he blew through his local qualifiers.  Older kids, younger kids, none of them give him a fight worth a damn.  He’s soover this.  Almost ninety years, the Liberation Army’s been around, and they still won’t bend for letting kids betterthan everyone else get where they deserve to be.  He might as well have stayed at home and watched the U.A. Sports Festival, for all the surprises the children’s tourney’s got to offer. 

At least the TVs in the breakroom are playing the adult brackets, too.  Bakugou spends his recovery time between rounds glued to the screen and comparing himself to what will, in five years, be his competition—finally, actualwarriors, people who’ve seen real fights.

He still isn’t impressed with most of them, but at least it’ll be a new crowd.

Round Five is exactly who he figured it’d be, exactly who it always is, and Katsuki sneers at the white-haired figure pacing out onto the field.

“You again.  Why can’t you lose a round early for once, you shitty yuki-onna?  Don’t you think everyone’s getting bored of watching me hand you your ass every year?”  He trash-talks because you gotta, and because even if Geten does put up a good fight before he goes down, he still doesgo down.  Goes practically feral every year, and every year, goes down.  It serves him right for being so close with the Grand Commander when he can’t even win the kiddy brackets, but still, Katsuki’s in a bad mood and ready to get this over with so they can get on to watching the realbrackets, and he can watch Dad put in the order for the sneakers he picked out as his victory prize last week.

Geten—three years older, and he still loses every time; Katsuki doesn’t know how he even keeps showing his face at this thing—sneers back.  “Just as overconfident as always.  You’re disgraceful.”

“Keep telling yourself that, Daddy’s Boy.”

“Hero apologist.”

The starter pistol fires, and they’re already moving.

It takes him too long to notice what’s wrong.

Just like every year, the first thing Geten’s gotta do is keep distance long enough to pull in ice from the cups of the audience and the concession stand machines.  Just like every year, he does.  His flying’s steadier than ever this year, and Katsuki’s still working on his—if this were a realfight, Geten could draw this out a lot longer by keeping more distance, but a vertical ring-out is still a ring-out, and he can’t keep farther away than Katsuki can launch himself.

Rattle his dumb ice dragons apart with blasts of hot concussive force, dodge any ice that he can’t get a hand on or burst before it reaches him, and just keep doing that until every cube is just so much water seeping into the ground.  Geten might be a better flier, but Katsuki’s getting bigger and stronger every year, so every year, he can push himself more, go longer and longer without starting to stagger from muscle burn and dehydration.

This year, the ice doesn’t stop coming.  The sculptures get blasted apart, but they don’t get any smaller when they put themselves back together.

It makes sense that Geten’s getting stronger too, but they’re in the same venue as always, the stadium in Re-Destro’s Mount Nowhere hometown.  Did the Grand Commander have more ice machines put in?  Is this favoritism?  Or is Geten’s range getting better?  Is he pulling from outside the stadium now?

The ice keeps coming.

Katsuki blasts and ducks and leaps and blasts and rolls and blasts some more.  He throws a glance at the jumbotron counter—almost ten minutes and it’s still going up; what the hell—then snaps his head back around just in time to intercept a long, serpent-shaped volley.

“You’re slowing down.”

It keeps coming.  The next one catches him from behind, and he tries to flip out of it, somersault back into standing, but his arm folds beneath him, leaving him flat on his back with an iceberg falling out of the sky aimed right at him.

He gets his hands up just in time, unleashing a full force blast to blow it away.  Ice shatters and goes everywhere, trailing melting water.  Gaze darting from one tumbling shard to the next, looking for the angle the next attack will come from, Katsuki’s eye catches on one liquid streamer.

It’s almost all water.  Geten can’t control water; that’s not what his meta-ability is and meta-abilities don’t just change.

And then a cloudy fragment of ice hits it from the side, goes solid white, and everything around it freezes.  This close to his face, Katsuki can feelthe temperature drop.

What the fuck.  What the fuck?!  Katsuki scrambles back to his feet just as the huge hand of ice snatches for him.

“What the fuck?!” he howls.  “You’re cheating!”

“No one’s cheating.  I just changed.” Above him, Geten’s got the hood up, so all Katsuki can see is those glowing eyes, but he can hearthe shit grinning as he answers, “It’s my win, Explosion.”

-

Masaru covers his face with one hand.  Even from the stands, he can hear the profanity.

“I am going to kick that kid’s ass for talking like that in front of everyone,” Mitsuki says beside him.

“Well, some frustration is understandable.”  The voice cuts in smoothly from the side, and both of them snap to attention.  “But he’s putting up an amazing fight, as always.”

Re-Destro waves aside their salutes and looks down towards the event, where Katsuki dangles in the air, arms pinned to his sides by the block of ice that at this point only barely resembles a fist.  He thrashes and yells, but the only sparks from his hands are sputtering and erratic, and the match counter stopped several seconds ago.

“You didn’t warn him about Geten’s evolution?” the Grand Commander asks lightly, and Mitsuki squares her shoulders.

“Our Katsuki was getting too proud,” she answers.  “Losing sight of the bigger picture.  He was overdue for something like this, and in the long run, it’ll be good for him.”  She pauses, a rare hesitation during which Re-Destro nods understanding, then continues.  “If I can ask, Grand Commander—what actually caused it?  The rumor mill’s been going crazy.”

“Ah.”  Re-Destro looks briefly abashed, rubbing at his nose with one knuckle.  “Well…  We had a small accident back in November.  A burn that needed attention.  There wasn’t enough ice to make a proper icepack, so Geten…  Changed the circumstances.”

“His burn, or someone else’s?”

“The latter.”

Mitsuki nodded.  “That’s why. Katsuki needs to learn who he’s fighting for.”

—–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–

Content Notes: Paranoid anti-government conspiracy theorists aren’t much fun to have as parents.

This fill features the PLF Advisor I affectionately refer to as Taser Face, this guy:

ok, time for plan b

The government tracked lightning users, that was the problem.  They were in high demand, not for being heroes, but for civil work, infrastructure stuff that looked boring as hell but paid like crazy.  Being even semi-good at grounding charges—much less being able to conduct them—meant you had pamphlets showing up in the mailbox practically the day you turned fourteen, incentive offers encouraging you to think about your future, your education, your “civic duty.”

Denki knew what his duty was, and it wasn’t to keep the gears of an oppressive society turning for a few more years before the Meta Liberation Army revolutionized it.  Not that the MLA didn’t want people in infrastructure, too, but…

“They use wiretaps,” Denki’s father used to mutter conspiratorially.  “They read your mail.  They’d chain you to the generators if they could get away with it, and seducing people with money is how they got as close as they can.”

The whole “become a lightning-themed hero instead” idea hadn’t gone over much better, obviously.  If Denki’s father had his way, the whole family would just live in the woods with no mailbox and train all day long.

His uncle—Mom’s older brother—had come to the rescue half a year later.

-

“Hey, throw it here!”

Galvanize pounded a fist into his open palm, then spread his hands out in front of him.  One of Denki’s cousins—they’d all been not-unsympathetically chucking handfuls of electricity and insults at him to recapture his attention every time it had strayed to  the town hall building—caught the lightning ball they’d been playing catch with and hurled it at his father like he was trying for a speed record.

The man caught it bare-handed then shook it out, sparks crawling down the backs of his hands and dispersing through his fingers.

“Got it,” he announced, and aimed a sharp grin at Denki that said, Like there was ever any doubt.  “If you think you’re up for it.”

Denki dropped all pretenses of caring about the game and dashed over.

“False identity,” turned out to be the answer.  “It’d mean moving in with some people we got up in Saitama.  They’ve got a space they need filled with a lightning meta; we got you.”

“I’ll do it.”  Denki didn’t hesitate; didn’t look for more than a second at his dad pushing his way out the door and stalking off towards the parking lot without a backward glance.

Cable TV.  Internet access.  Video games developed after 2145.  Trendy stores.  Modernity. How was a guy supposed to help bring liberation and the future to a backwards world when he didn’t even know what the present looked like?  The world was opening up in front of him, and no way was he gonna miss it.

“S’gonna mean not much chance to call home,” Galvanize warned.  “Your dad doesn’t want—”

“I’ll do it.”

-

Two years later, the world collapsed back into itself.  His friends were behind him.  Midnight-sensei ran alongside him.  And his uncle was striding out to the front of the crowd spilling out of the Villa, eyes locked on Denki’s, Amplivolt in hand.  He grinned—his old sharp grin, which hadn’t changed a bit, though his eyes weren’t unsympathetic.

Denki swallowed down the hard knob of fear in his throat; he blinked back stinging tears of panic and denial. He pounded a fist into his open palm, then spread his hands out in front of him.

—–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–

Notes for Bakugou:

• Destro Classic would like to stress that the mock battles he staged between parents and children featured adultchildren and he does not endorse staging live combat between grade-schoolers.
• Yuki-onna:Snow woman, among the better known Japanese youkai. Classically a killer in wintery times and high altitudes, but has a softer side in some stories, especially more modern ones.
• KatsukiwantedAll Might sneakers. He’s still an All Might fan, which is a complicated thing for him to navigate here, as you might imagine–hence Geten calling him a hero apologist. Masaru said he wasn’t allowed to pick hero merch as a reward for winning a Meta Liberation Army event, however.
• I suspect the tourneys (child and adult) have some intentional overlap with the U.A. Sports Festival. The U.A. Sports Festival has been said to have taken the place of the Olympics in HeroAca!Japan, and the MLA thinks that’s elitist garbage. They also don’t want too many of their own getting emotionally invested in hero students. For both reasons, they “counterprogram” with their own quirk-on-quirk showdowns.
• I have RD’s hometown as being somewhere up in the mountains in Nara, which is only something like 27% inhabitable land. Lots of room in that remaining 73% to build a village that the government mostly leaves alone because it seems to get on okay and it’s too much of a pain in the ass to get people up there anyway.
• Izuku is probably not in Katsuki’s life anymore in this AU. Is Geten a good replacement…? Well, they certainly push each other to br stronger, anyway! Just don’t ask about their moral development.

Notes for Kaminari:

• If Horikoshi doesn’t want to tell me about the alleged lucrative non-Hero jobs that account for there being so few lightning-powered heroes, I guess I’ll just have to make it up myself.
• Galvanize in my headcanon is a father of three and consequently resolutely unimpressed with Teenage Drama. He’s from the same hometown as Re-Destro and Trumpet.
• I also like the idea of Kaminari getting tangled with the MLA because he likes war novels with romantic elements+faddish cool things, and the wild popularity of the Destro memoir fits both of those criteria. This idea fit the prompt better, however.

MLA May AUs (Parts 3+4/31?)

Intro Post

5/3: you’re lost in the labyrinth

+

5/4: no sweat, no tears, no guilt

—–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–

Content Warning: Accidental death, harassment.

you’re lost in the labyrinth

It starts with blood on your hands, a sticky wetness you can smell but can’t see.

No.  Maybe it ends there.  Backtrack, turn the corner.

It starts with a power outage, a lit bedroom plunged into black, as if you’d blinked and gone blind.

Still not quite right.  Try again.

Maybe it starts with the fact that Dark Shadow was never like other quirks.  Usually, quirks start small.  Nearly harmless, no matter what their potential may be.  A quirk is like a muscle, after all, and children’s muscles are so weak.

But then there are quirks that don’t play by the rules.  Unique quirks, mysteries assembled from odds and ends of the genetic cloth.  Quirks that draw on resources beyond just a six-year-old’s tiny body.  Quirks unchained from the normal linear path of improvement or regression.

Quirks like Dark Shadow.

It starts with Dark Shadow, perhaps, and all the ways people misjudge him.

Your parents are out that night, enjoying dinner and an avant-garde play for their wedding anniversary.  If they were home, things might have ended differently.  They would know where to find the flashlights, would know to grab the flood lantern.

They told the sitter where to find these things before they left.  But the sitter is fifteen, her mind on other things, expecting no trouble, because really, how much trouble could one little shadow, teary-eyed and hiding beneath your elbow from the foyer’s overhead light, possibly cause?

Ah, and here’s this ending again, blood in the dark.

But it’s not the ending it seems—a great deal comes afterward.  Screaming and flashing lights, a violent whirl of people in costumes trying and failing to subdue Dark Shadow, until finally comes a hero wreathed in flames bright enough to burn the night away.

Everything is exposed.

Everything except your path, which twists awry, leading you into a labyrinth of court rooms, social workers, your mother grimly sending you back inside when you ask her what she’s scrubbing off the walls of your house.

Your father, from whom you inherited the shape of your face if not the color of your plumage, goes missing.  The police suggest in a back-handed way that he left (and who could blame him); your mother will believe otherwise (monster, said the writing on your walls, and carrion crow) until her dying breath.

You can’t talk to Dark Shadow anymore: the connection is still there, but to the best efforts of court orders and back-up generators, the darkness is exiled, and all Dark Shadow’s strength with it.  You aren’t allowed outside past sunset; you sleep with the lights on, a blindfold the only concession granted by your now-eternal day.

You change schools.  It doesn’t matter.

You change neighborhoods.  It doesn’t help.

No matter what, it always seems to go back to that night—to the blood in the dark.  And what you don’t dare tell anyone is, I wish I could go back.  I miss him.  I miss him so much.

But this, too, is not the ending, just time lost squinting against the unforgiving scrutiny of the light.

The exit, when you first stumble across it, goes unnoticed.  A reporter, one whose face sticks with you because you like the black sclera of her eyes and the cool blue of her skin.  There were so many reporters at first, and maybe she was even among them, but the news cycle turns ever onward.  What makes her stand out even more than her eyes is her timing: three full years after that night, she contacts your mother with a request for an interview.

“You poor thing,” she says directly to Dark Shadow when you meet, and shock shivers down the bond.  “It’s not your fault you were afraid.  And how short-sighted, to keep your wings clipped like this.”

You don’t know it at the time, when you’re staring at the woman with wide eyes and a stuttering heartbeat (another beginning, albeit a much more embarrassing one), but this statement both instantly endears Kizuki Chitose to your mother, while also striking her to paranoia at the unaccustomed kindness.

Life goes on.  At the time, you fail to recognize her for the exit she is. Everything changes when her article goes to print.

—–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–

no sweat, no tears, no guilt

Content Warning: Gore, Creature Rejection Clan, hate crime violence (past and attempted), referenced child abandonment. This fill guest-stars this delightful fellow, who I’ve been saying for ages that I’ll eventually write something about:

Looking around in the aftermath, Sugar counted bodies: three people in black robes and skull masks, three people whose builds matched the guys who’d spotted him at the convenience store and tailed him to the pit stop.  Two of them lay frozen, dead mid-convulsion.  Their mouths hung open, filled with white spittle and Sugar’s own clumpy secretions, which had eaten right through the hoods.   A low, wet sizzling noise said the dental records were not going to be any help to anyone who happened across the bodies.

The third man was still hanging in there—literally, speared in three places to the trunk of an ancient camphor laurel by the kid’s branches and choking out whimpered breaths as he twitched and writhed.

Idiots.  As if any heteromorph would just not notice he was being followed this far out in the sticks.  Or, having noticed, would bolt for the woods instead of his big, mobile, defensible truck.

Sugar plodded over to the third man and looked over the kid’s work.  One hit through the shoulder, another just barely through the waist—a few centimeters more and it’d’ve been a clean miss—and the third through the meat of the upper thigh.  That’d be the one that’d kill the guy, and quick, too.

The air reeked of menthol from the oozing tree sap, which made a good cover for all the rest.

“Thought you’d have safety in numbers, huh?” Sugar asked him in a low croak.  “Thought the dumb toad would be too slow and stupid to stand a chance against you fancy emitter metas.  How many of us have you run down in the woods out here?  Tell me where you buried ‘em and maybe in a few months I’ll see to it the cops back in town get a tip-off about where I bury you.”

A hand, covered in blood and still smelling faintly of the ozone of lightning discharge, lifted in a shaking gesture.  One of the kid’s branches lifted in warning, ready to strike at the first sign of a stray spark. Sugar didn’t follow the pointing, didn’t look away.  Not until the man groaned and went still, slackening against the laurel.

Sugar’s tongue darted out, snaring the skull mask and the plain hood beneath it, then spitting them out to the side as he stepped close enough to check the man’s eyes—staring and blank, not gone long enough yet to be clouding over, but that was just a matter of time.

He stepped back again and looked the rest of the way up through the leaves.

Shinji laid low against the center boughs, just one arm raised, bulging and branching out into the knotty limbs that curved back, serpentine, into the spears holding one dead bigot in place.  His had a tricky face to try and read—not real human, not real animal, either—but his gaze held steady, even if his eyes looked wider than his usual.

“Not bad,” Sugar said, and watched the tension leak out of the kid’s shoulders.  “You gonna need to throw up or anything?  Lotta people do, their first time.”  Especially when they’re partnered up with me.  (Sugar had it on good authority that watching him plug up someone’s mouth with his inner elbow and choke them with bufotoxin was disgusting even by the standards of people who disposed of bodies.)

“…I’ll be good.  ”  The kid hadn’t grown up learning a spoken language, and that still showed in the time and care he put into stringing his words together.  He rolled his shoulder back, and with a snapping rush, retracted his branches back into a simple, misleadingly arm-shaped limb.  The corpse sagged to a heap on the ground.  “It isn’t—my first time.”

“Right.  Almost forgot.”  It’d been Diopside who found the kid, not Sugar, but that scene probably hadn’t looked much different from this one.  Skull-face activity in Kyushu had been bad for years, and the infant abandonment rate in Kagoshima was still one of the highest in the country.  Plus, Mother Nature herself often wasn’t as pretty as she looked in postcards.

“Will you really—tell police about them?”  The kid pushed himself out of the tree in a fluid motion; the sound he made hitting the ground barefoot was closer to a bulb planter sinking into garden sod than anything you’d peg as someone landing after a jump. He wiped his bloodied hand against the laurel trunk unselfconsciously.

“Hell no,” Sugar answered.  “Their families knew what they were doing in the evening, and if they didn’t, they shoulda been paying more attention.  They can spend the rest of their lives wondering about it, just like the families of their victims.

“Come on.  We got some holes to fill, and I wanna be back on the road soon.”

Shinji nodded, lifting the body with the barest of creaking sounds and no complaints.

—–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–   —   —–

Notes for Tokoyami:

• Tokoyami is an edgelord, so he gets second-person POV, the edgiest of all POVs.
• It occurred to me, in writing this, that maybe the reason more people don’t think Tokoyami is creepy is that ravens in Japanese mythology are less symbols of death than they are of wisdom and guidance. All the same, I think it would take very little to push the life of someone with his specific array of factors into a complete tailspin of harassment and heteromorph/villain quirk discrimination, and so it is here.
• Tokoyami’s edgy second-person narrator, please, it’s called a “sleep mask,” not a “blindfold.”
• Curious at this point would be 29, off the reporter beat and into in-depth magazine exposées.

Notes for Kamui Woods + Sugar:

• The most interesting thing about Kamui Woods to me is the over-the-top moral binarism of calling a purse-snatcher “pure evil.” If he were more “face,” I could pass that off as just being his hero persona’s “thing,” but he’s always presented as so earnest. He also apparently has a documentary-worthy backstory, which to me has “Inspiring True Story” written all over it. Thus, MLA!Shinji is picked up out of his travail-filled childhood by a group that has no interest whatsoever in tempering his moral education with nuances about how to treat their enemies. Probably always going to be a bit more comfortable around heteromorphic types than he is “normal-looking” humans.
• “Sugar” as a codename is a roundabout reference to cane toads, which were my primary referent for the character’s power set. They’re an invasive species in many of the places they’re found in the world, one of those cases of a species being introduced to cull the population of one that’s causing problems, but then growing into a problem of their own–in this case, cane toads introduced to eat cane beetles that were damaging sugar cane.
• Bufotoxin is a caustic secretion that causes red gums, drooling, loss of coordination, convulsions, hallucinations, death of cardiac arrest, and so on. It’s a considerably more serious threat to dogs, who will just go around putting anything in their mouths, but it can be a problem for humans who lick or consume toads as well. Seeing as Sugar is human-sized himself, his version is considerably more potent.
• This may have been an exercise in vigilante justice against bigots, but Sugar’s probably done this to MLA runaways, too. The uglier side of being an illegal underground cult is that, whatever your righteous ideals, you can’t risk that anyone will leave and spill your secrets.