If you asked him, Nemoto Shin would say that he is a religious man. If you asked for details, he would politely decline your request and say that religion is a private matter for him. This is true. Nemoto Shin, nowadays, does not say anything that is not true.

It simply is not the whole truth.

You could not blame him, if you knew, for holding back the details of his religion. To worship what everyone else perceived as a mortal man seems like delusion, like the symptom of a cult’s predation. To go so far as to kill for that man would shock and mortify anyone. And Shin’s insistence that Chisaki Kai is more than human might have landed him in a mental asylum.

Shin knows he’s not insane, thank you.

Shin murmurs prayers and dedications under his breath every time a bullet of his meets its mark, and when he comes back from his mission he’s greeted by a knowing-yet-confused look in his young master’s (young god’s) eye and knows that he’s received the blood of the offering. Shin survives things he shouldn’t be able to, and Chisaki always arrives just a hair quicker after than any normal man would. And when he uses his Quirk just a hair too much and falls into a narcoleptic sleep, he dreams of feathered serpents and the birth of dark planets and the molecular makeup of the universe.

Even the other Precepts have started to notice it. Tengai murmurs that he’s been hired by a demon; Setsuno admits that he’s no longer sure he can die; Sakaki cries on his shoulder, terrified of the visions he sees when he drifts off to sleep. Shin comforts him the best he can, but as an oracle he’s been having these dreams and knowing these things since he was a child, so he has no reference point for how to approach this when it is all new and overwhelming.

And Kurono–well. Kurono is an angel, an angel of death, the kind that gleefully sends sinners into the clutches of the hungry god both he and Shin serve.

Kurono scares Shin.

Best not to dwell on it, though. Whatever it is he’s scared of, it’s not like he can leave now.

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.)