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makeste · 3 years

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BnHA 323: “I Don’t Know How to Explain to You That You Should Care About Other People”

Previously on BnHA: Kacchan was all, “Izuku, I’m sorry.” Bakugou Stans were all, “[sobs for a week straight and tearfully awards him the Nobel Prize for character development].” Deku was all, “[faints in Kacchan’s arms].” Iida was all, “[trying to decide if Ochako genuinely tried to kill him a few minutes ago].” Horikoshi was all, “NO TIME FOR HUGS WE MUST GET BACK TO UA.” The civilians holed up at U.A. were all, “WE TOOK A VOTE AND DECIDED THAT WE’RE ALL GOING TO BE JERKS ABOUT THIS AND MAKE A BIG FUSS ABOUT YOU LETTING DEKU BACK INTO THE SCHOOL.” Deku was all “[stands there looking like he expected nothing less and breaking my heart more and more with each passing moment].” Ochako was all, “that does it, looks like I’m gonna have to do something about this... next chapter, that is.”

Today on BnHA: Flashback!Rat Principal is all “I just want you all to know that I spent nine million dollars turning U.A. into a giant Battleship-style grid that can burrow underground and zoom around in a giant subway maze because Horikoshi lacks a grounded understanding of both civil engineering and economics.” Back in the present day, Jeanist is all, “EVERYONE TAKE HEED, MY COMRADES AND I HAVE DEEMED IT EXPEDIENT TO CONVEY THIS AUSPICIOUS YOUTH BACK TO THIS STRONGHOLD. WE ANTICIPATE THAT WE MAY DEPEND UPON YOUR GOODWILL AND ACQUIESCENCE TO THESE TERMS.” The civilians were all, “NO.” Ochako was all, “EMPATHY, MOTHERFUCKERS, DO YOU SPEAK IT?!” The civilians were all, “oh shit.” Anyway so Ochako is a giant badass, but I’m a little worried that she’s going to get struck by lightning. Please come down from there.

so before we start this chapter, I would just like to apologize for having not posted the ch 321 recap yet, and would like to reassure everyone, and especially Iida who is staring at me with Sad Wobbly Guilt Trip Eyes, that I will get to that as soon as I can

OMG FLASHBACK??

yes please Horikoshi please show us more of class 1-A and their Deku intervention strategy jam sessions

oh dear

Iida you are too pure and good for this cruel world. [sprays the U.A. civilians with a water bottle] NO. BAD CIVILIANS! NO OSTRACIZING SCARED AND EXHAUSTED CHILDREN IN THE HOUSE

EXCUSE ME RAT PRINCIPAL WHAT’S WITH THESE MIXED MESSAGES

???

RAT PRINCIPAL: he’s free to return to us at any time!!

ALSO RAT PRINCIPAL: but it’s too risky for him to return to us

?? ??????? ?????????????????????

so now he’s going on about how strong the U.A. Barrier is, and how it’s comparable to the defensive capabilities of Tartarus. this would have sounded a lot more impressive before chapter 297 lol

OH!!!! HELLO, WHAT’S THIS!!!

A TIMELY CALLBACK TO A CERTAIN MYSTERIOUS EVENT WHICH HASN’T BEEN REFERENCED SINCE USJ? [U.A. TRAITOR MUSIC INTENSIFIES]

so now Rat Principal says he upgraded U.A.’s security systems with his own “modifications”, whatever the fuck that means. I mean look, I’ve been saying for a long time now that U.A. is the best place for everyone to hole up, don’t get me wrong. but that was mostly on account of there not being any other practical alternatives. but you’re making it sound like you figured out a way to actually make it Decay-proof or some wild shit like that

-- hold up, DID YOU ADD A FORCE FIELD. DID YOU TRICK THIS SCHOOL OUT WAKANDA-STYLE YOU CRAZY MARSUPIAL. HOLY SHIT. because that would actually be perfect

LMAO

WHAT KIND OF GALAXY BRAIN BULLSHIT. “NAH THERE’S NO NEED FOR A FORCE FIELD, LET’S JUST PUT WHEELS ON IT”

oh okay so the whole campus is basically capable of burrowing itself underground. that’s insane lol I wonder how they pulled that off. probably got poor Cementoss working overtime

blah blah blah so basically the entire campus is split into a grid and each section of the grid is capable of its own independent movement. lol this is just the Merone Base from KHR. you thought no one would notice this casual plagiarism ten years after the fact, but YOU UNDERESTIMATED YOUR AUDIENCE, HORIKOSHI

“joke’s on you imma just lampshade it” WELL ALL RIGHT THEN

“look at me I’m so fucking self-aware” fucking swear to god. I can’t believe this man is my favorite mangaka of all time smdh

“excuse me, I wasn’t finished describing all the rest of this bullshit yet,” Rat Principal breaks in impatiently. “we also added a steel wall all around the underground of the campus that’s 3000 steel plates thick. that’s fifteen fucking meters of solid fucking steel just fyi. and if anyone fucks around with any part of it the defense system will activate immediately! and also all of the plates are independently motorized, whatever the fuck that means!! in conclusion you’re gonna need a fucking tower crane to suspend all of your disbelief by the time I’m through with this paragraph”

“also Shiketsu is almost as reinforced as U.A. but not quite because we still had to make sure we were better.” but of course. and apparently the two schools are connected via a secret tunnel as Hagakure mentioned earlier

LSDKFJLSDKJFLK

“WAIT WHAT” LMAO YOU HEARD HIM, NOW INASA CAN VISIT YOU BOTH IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT AND TELL YOU ALL ABOUT THE WEIRD DREAM HE HAD. GOD BLESS YOU HORIKOSHI

(ETA: moment of appreciation for Shouto and Katsuki having the same thought at the same time and making Knowing Eye Contact and saying the exact same thing out loud in perfect unison like the best friends they are. what a blessed day.)

so Tokoyami is all “but wait if you engineered all this shit all the way back during the Band arc how did you even know that Tomura’s quirk awakening would become a thing, Horikoshi -- uh, I mean, Principal Nezu”

and Rat Principal is all “lol idk”

“basically I just woke up one morning and was all ‘say, you know what this school really needs? a fifteen-meter-thick underground steel wall, and the ability to break up into little pieces that individually zoom around wherever the fuck they want.’ jesus christ. lol if money and common sense were apparently no obstacle why didn’t you just teleport U.A. to the fucking moon or something. maybe I should shut up before I given him any ideas

dsfaelkjldkjgl

you heard it here first, folks, all of this cost a grand total of nine million U.S. dollars. well technically it cost “more than” nine million dollars. never has that distinction been more important lmao. are we sure this barrier was really made of steel and not cardboard? who the hell sold it to them, Ea-Nasir??

this is my favorite manga series of all time. yes I am ashamed

“in conclusion please do your best to reach Deku-kun” SO WHAT WAS ALL THAT NONSENSE ABOUT IT BEING TOO RISKY THEN. anyway thank you for this super informative and edifying flashback, Horikoshi. I will cherish it always. I don’t even want to read another translation of this absurdity lmao, there’s something special about it just the way it is. pretty sure Horikoshi just had a cracked out fever dream one night and transferred it to the pages of the manga verbatim

anyway so back to the unruly mob

not their finest moment. please excuse me while I cover poor Deku’s ears and give him a good shoosh pap

oh wow the parents are out here too

is Mitsuki trying to hold Inko back?? that’s the last thing this fandom needs right now is more Mitsuki discourse fffwlkjs. and even Jiroudad, scientifically proven to be the best dad in all of BnHA, is just standing there silently looking vaguely unhappy. way to rise to the moment you guys

MONOMA

so this settles it for me that Aizawa is not at UA. I know a lot of people have been wondering about his whereabouts, and if I had to wager a guess it would be that something happened with Shirakumo/Kurogiri. I can’t think of anything else -- even the loss of an eye and a limb -- that would keep him from his kids at a time like this

anyway but this is excellent Monoma content right here though. I love that he apparently adopted Eri after a single interaction with her. also WHERE IS SHINSOU DAMMIT. THE PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW

and Kouta’s there too looking like he wants to run over to Deku but Ragdoll won’t let him :/

it’s gotta be pretty upsetting for him to see his hero like this and not having anyone stand up for him. [taps megaphone] IS THIS THING ON. OKAY YEAH IT SEEMS TO BE WORKING. AHEM. PAGING URARAKA OCHAKO. GONNA NEED YOU TO GET OVER HERE ALREADY AND MAKE THAT BIG DRAMATIC SPEECH WHICH YOU ARE CLEARLY DYING TO MAKE. IF YOU DON’T DO IT SOON I’M GONNA HAVE TO STEP IN, AND YOU REALLY DON’T WANT ME TO DO THAT SINCE MY SPEECH WILL NOT BE VERY GOOD OR INSPIRING, AND WILL PROBABLY JUST CONSIST OF “HELLO, YOU ARE ALL STUPID, PLEASE SHUT UP AND GO AWAY”

so now Mic is telling them to calm down. at least someone’s speaking up here, geez

OH MY GOD

MY MAN JEANIST OUT HERE DOING WHAT HE DOES BEST: MAKING EVERYONE FEEL GUILTY AND JUDGED

OH MY GOD HE IS GIVING SUCH A LONG AND BORING SPEECH LMAO IS YOUR STRATEGY TO PUT THEM ALL TO SLEEP OR WHAT

truly in awe of this man’s ability to take messages which could easily be conveyed in ELI5-speak, and stubbornly convert them into incomprehensible language the likes of which you need a graduate degree in order to understand

“hey guys, so originally our plan was to use Deku as bait for the villains, but that didn’t really work and also we realized it was kinda dumb and was probably gonna get him killed, so we brought him back here instead.” was that really so hard, Jeanist. also are we all really just gonna sit back here and watch Jeanist take full credit for Bakugou’s plan just like that lmao

(ETA:

WHERE DID ENDEAVOR GO AND WHO IS THIS DIABOLICAL MASTER OF DISGUISE. lol I genuinely didn’t notice this because I was too busy digging through thesauruses trying to rewrite Jeanist’s speech; many thanks to @class1akids for pointing it out and making my day immeasurably better. take it easy there Dick Tracy.)

“anyway so please stop being dicks and let him fucking rest so he can save all your ungrateful asses” what an impassioned and inspiring plea. time to see if the masses will listen to reason

narrator: they did not listen to reason

oh my god finally Ochako is doing something. YEAH OCHAKO WOOOO SHOW THEM HOW IT’S DONE

hmm

this entire chapter is truly and utterly nonsensical to me lol

(ETA: on my second readthrough I’m fucking dying at how she stole the megaphone right out of Mic’s hand lmao. and how Kacchan is all “fuck yeah nothing I appreciate more than some quality fucking larceny.”)

oh I see she was jumping on top of the main building so as to scream down at them all more impressively

“ANYWAY DEKU IS PRETTY COOL ACTUALLY, YOU GUYS ARE JUST MEAN” couldn’t have said it better myself Ochako

lol uh

gotta say I did not have “Ochako reveals the secret of OFA to the entire U.A. Citizen Clown Parade” on my bingo card for this week. it’s a bold strategy cotton let’s see if it pays off

SDLFKJSL

“NO, SERIOUSLY, HAVE YOU LOOKED AT HIM YOU GUYS. YOU THINK HE LIKES RUNNING AROUND DRESSED LIKE A RUSTED OIL DRUM?? HE DID THAT FOR YOU YOU UNGRATEFUL SLOBS”

so she is basically explaining the entire Deku Angst arc to them and explaining what a good and selfless protagonist Deku is, YES, PREACH

OMG IT’S THE GIGANTIC FOX LADY

not to insinuate anything, but what exactly were you doing standing out here with the hysterical mob, Gigantic Fox Lady? you’re better than that

-- KACCHAN SIGHTING!!

sdlkfjl. thanks for weighing in with that helpful and important observation. where have you been for the last five minutes. were you asleep. was it Jeanist’s speech

never mind, now he’s yelling at the civilians so I instantly forgive him

THE FUTURE NUMBER ONE HERO, EVERYONE. THANK YOU, THANK YOU. HE’LL BE HERE ALL WEEK

“anyway so I’m just going to end the chapter here” lmao seventeen pages truly do go by so fast. at least he didn’t try to force in a cliffhanger at the end this time. dare I say, growth

so I guess the civilians are either gonna have a Kamino and/or Fukuoka-esque moment where they remember how to be decent people and apologize to this poor young man, or else they’ll remain unpersuaded, and so Kacchan will have to knock a few of their heads around until they become more inclined to be reasonable. either option is fine by me lol

#bnha 323 #uraraka ochako #rat principal #class 1-a #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha

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actual-fucking-clown · 3 years

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Take your time then.

Aizawa x gender neutral reader

Story under the cut :)

Unedited but like edited but still not properly edited :)

Hope you enjoy!!!

a/n: it’s been a hot min since I’ve written a fic. I think the last time i was 14 and it was shit and on wattpad. Ha. I hate myself. N e way, I was recently writing some shit for an au me and my friend thought up and in the back of my mind I was like, “you should start writing fics again bc this is kinda fun”, soo lo and behold I made a post asking if anyone would be interested, shared a little too much personal shit in it but whatever, and have now decided to write this mother fucker. (3/25/21)

a/n: not sure if anyone will care about this series of a/n’s but I’m just chronicling thoughts ig. rewriting rn bc my first draft was short and ass. Also I’m thinking about opening requests after this is posted, will go into detail in a diff post maybe. (3/28/21)

a/n: deleted everything, rewriting. I just want to make something that might be decent and if I can give that feeling, y’know those chills you get when you read something utterly gorgeous, but I’m bad at writing. sadge (3/28/21, like several hours later)

a/n: ugh (4/1/21)

a/n: ugh pt 2 electric boogaloo. I can’t seem to move forward with the writing. I realized something like this might happen bc to solve a problem feelings need to be discussed and I fucking hate doing that so you can see where I’m fucking up lmaooooo (4/2/21)

a/n: I read angst to fuel my writing brain. So, read some angst, finally writing agian. This first section is probs as long as the story itself LMFAO(4/5/21)

Started: (3/25/21) Finished: (4/5/21)

Warnings: uh angst, curse words, like a lot, (i saw someone else put this as a warning, do I actually need it?), avoiding problems instead of actually facing them, mentions of shit so-so parenting, mentions of not being able to live up to high expectations, y’know, the works

Synopsis: Aizawa takes in Eri without running it by you first and expects you to be okay with it. That’s funny. He was wrong.

Can I preface this with a thought? I’m going to anyway,

all the fics I read paint him as the sweetest partner and I’m sure he is but I think they miss out on how blunt he is and his whole “Mr. Rationality” thing. So as much as I adore him I think there are situations that he’d be a bit more colder towards, a bit more straightforward about. Maybe even like a bit insensitive about but maybe bc he doesn’t have the full picture or something. so I guess this is another warning but aizawa is a little insensitive in the beginning (but like not really but kinda. it’s complicated)

Rain pattered softly against the window. The smell of some old random Bath and Bodyworks candle you’d dug out from a box you’d never bothered to unpack smothered the room. Some Netflix show idly played on a low volume on your computer, you’d lost interest in watching tv awhile ago. You needed a break. After the eventful month you’d been having you really needed this.

Now of course your whole year so far had been eventful. What with all the villain attacks on you and Shouta’s class and the kidnapping of one of your students, to just dealing with the more mundane problems with your students. No. You had no problem with that. The villains, although not easy, were something you were trained to handle. The smaller problems with your students weren’t arduous either, after all you weren’t too much older than them.

When reflecting on your situation, from and outside perspective it could be seen as the straw the broke the camels back, which sure, makes sense. After all, you’re bound to be stressed out by everything else, so why would this seemingly insignificant thing weigh heavier than a villain attack? Well if that is the situation why does this single straw feel like it weighs a ton? This is not that. This is not culmination of the events of this year draining the life from you. This is something entirely different. A panic inducing life change that completely took you by surprise mixed with your inability to actually face your problems.

You don’t blame them. You can’t. They’ve done nothing wrong. A child. A small, probably mentally scarred child is your problem. Well not her personally but the fear taking care of her instills in you. Despite working in the field that you do, you cannot for the life of you handle actual children. Sure you’re a little awkward with your class but at least they’re young adults and (vaguely) mature and independent to a certain extent. The fact that your long term boyfriend just came back one day, small child in tow and said “Hey I’ve gotta look after this one now” not verbatim obviously, for a lack of better words, fucked you up. He basically solo adopted a kid and, let’s be honest, he probably expected you to help out. But how could you? How could this man look at you and think “I want this person to help me raise an already fucked up child?” Ok sure, he doesn’t at first give off the “I’m totally father figure material” vibe but in the end he is extremely competent. You on the other hand, not so much.

You’d never been good with children. Tried your best to steer clear of them. Didn’t matter the place, didn’t matter who’s kid, you couldn’t handle them. You would just stand there, awkwardly, not entirely sure of what to do and petrified that there was the possibility of making some mistake which would upset the child and then oh wow look, your head got chopped right of your shoulders. That’s hyperbole of course but it does sum up the insurmountable fear that overcomes you whenever you have to deal with a child. So considering the fact that your long term boyfriend had suddenly decided to adopt and not at least warn you, didn’t sit right with you.

So, the best and most obvious choice, was to avoid your problem. Avoid Shouta, avoid Eri. Avoid the mention of them and you, avoid it all. And honestly you’d done pretty well so far. You were able to have as little contact with them as possible considering the close proximity of your living quarters in the teacher’s dorms. After all they were legally supposed to give you two separate rooms but you never actually used yours, well until now. You were living it up honestly. Did you feel awful? Of course. He is your boyfriend after all and you were sure Eri doesn’t deserve your cold shoulder but this is probably for the best. What could you offer her? You weren’t sure that you were a good role model for her or anyone for that matter. What did you know about raising kids? it’s not like you had parents to set a proper example for you. Of course they might have shown you what not to do but where do you go from there? Is shit like that really avoidable? You don’t want to be like them. You strive to be better but what if you can’t be. There’s also the added bonus of the fact that raising a kid seems taxing on a relationship. Now matter how strong you were sure that the stress of a kid could break a relationship down that then festers into something toxic and unrecognizable. You didn’t want that. God you couldn’t let that happen. No. This was definitely for the better.

Of course Aizawa didn’t feel the same. He was confused on why his partner had been so blatantly avoiding him. Did he do something wrong? He doesn’t remember doing anything that might’ve upset you. So why now? Why pull away now? He had to get down to the bottom of this but catching you was the hard part. You had been taking on more work, offering more assistance to the other teachers, picking up extra patrols, doing everything and anything to stay away from Shouta. It took him a month but he finally caught up to you. You were tired, worn out he knew that. Instead of loading yourself with work you’d decided to hole yourself up in your room. It was now or never.

You were pulled out of your peace at the sound of a few gentle knocks to your door. You really didn’t want to get it. You honestly couldn’t be bothered.

“(N/n)? Are you in there?” He hadn’t gotten it wrong right? He hadn’t been too distracted earlier and missed you leaving right?

“What’s up?” You hummed from your place by the window, not bothering to actually open the door.

“Can I come in?” Shouta asked, voice soft. You could barely hear him above the patter of the rain and the low humming of your laptop.

“Uh, no, kinda busy. Got loads of work to do. Need to focus, sorry. Maybe later?” You hesitantly spoke. Not sure if you were convincing enough.

Apparently you weren’t.

He sighed. “It’s been “later” for an entire month. Please (Y/n) just let me in. Whatever this is we can talk it out.” You had predicted that eventually Shouta would start to try to crack down on whatever the issue was but you didn’t expect it so soon.

“Uh...no?” You tried, hoping that maybe he’d just give up but that wasn’t Shouta.

“No, you don’t get that option, now please, open the door.” Although it was still soft his voice had taken a more stern tone.

“Oh no I’m dead. I guess I can’t open the door. What a shame. I guess the only way to talk with me now is in the pits of hell.” You quipped, trying to lessen the tension that already ran thick.

“(Y/n).” Aizawa sighed.

“Jeez fine. Talk about pushy.” You quipped once more to no avail.

Opening the door you were met with, well exactly what you expected. He stood there, arms crossed, a stern yet gentle look in his eyes, his lips pulled into a slight frown.

“Come in.” You mumbled as you stepped further into your room.

“So tell me. What’s wrong?” The sentence stirred so much. Of course you wanted to tell him. You wanted to spill your guts to the man you loved in hopes of comfort but you just can’t. You know you’ll just scare him off. You know you’ll make things worse.

So you stay silent.

He says nothing as he grabs your hands gently and leads you over to your bed. He sits the two of you down on the edge, muting the movie on the laptop sitting behind him.

“You know you can tell me if something’s bothering you right?” Shouta sent you a warm smile.

You weren’t very comfortable with discussing your feelings sometimes, it mostly stemmed from the fact that you never really could discuss them with anyone growing up which made it harder to confide in anyone now, as at this point bottling things up was a habit. But this was also just something that you were sure that you couldn’t talk about.

Silence answered him once again.

Now he took sometime to think about his approach, think about what could’ve happened that made you pull away. What did he do that was different from his norm? He was genuinely stumped and the fact that you weren’t helping him confused him even more.

You decided to take this time to lament the situation too. What was he going to do? Should you actually tell him or play it off? If you play it off will he still insist that something is wrong? If you tell him will he leave you? If you don’t tell him will he leave you? You risked a glance at him, he was still deep in thought.

Why did you have to adopt this fucking kid without at least warning me?

“What?” Your head shot up at the sound of his shocked voice.

“What?” You asked, genuinely confused.

“Eri’s the problem...?” He spoke slowly, not entirely sure if he’d heard you right.

“Did I say that out loud?” You squeaked.

“I’m pretty sure you mumbled something along the lines of “why’d you have to adopt that fucking kid”.” Shouta said, unsure if he’d heard wrong. Wanting to have heard wrong.

“No no no no no no! It’s not like that! I mean it is like that but not like that!” You frantically waved your hands in hopes of defusing the situation.

The way he looked at you made you want to cry. You felt horrible. You felt like the biggest asshole in the world and, at this point you probably were. He looked at you with such a look of heartbreak and disappointment and confusion it made you sick to your stomach. You felt light-headed and started shaking. You were right. You were right. You were always right. God why did you have to be right! Why did you have to be like this? Scared of raising a fucking child! It was asinine and irrational and you could probably move past it but thanks to your stupid fucking brain you just sealed your fate.

You scooted away from him still waving your hands frantically as no’s tumbled endlessly from your lips. You tried sputtering an apology, anything so that he wouldn’t look at you like that but nothing stuck. Nothing was comprehensible. Nothing worked. Nothing would work. Nothing will work. You were hopeless. It was hopeless.

“If it isn’t like how it seems then tell it to me straight.” Shouta finally spoke up.

You took a second to come down from your panic. You steeled your nerves as much as possible before you spoke.

“Um well, I have nothing against her it’s just that a little heads up would’ve been nice? I’m not all that great with kids so this is just kind of weird is all.” You were purposefully being vague in hopes that he’d understand what you meant and also maybe drop it.

“Not great with kids? You’re literally a teacher.” He pointed out.

“Yeah you know but she’s like a kid kid and let’s be honest I’m not too great with the students either.” You awkward laughed. So he wasn’t getting it.

“Wha-you’re fine with the students and I’m sure you’ll be fine with Eri, there was no reason to avoid me over this.” Shouta sighed. As good as he was with dealing with people, he was equally as shit. Or maybe it was just the fact that you gave him very little to work with. It was probably a bit of both. Still his dismissiveness was not helping you right now.

“No, no, no, no. I think I’ll stay here. Uh, good luck with your parenthood escapades and sorry to leave you high and dry like this but that’s going to have to be a no from me.” You rambled. He seemed to be getting a little tired of this.

“(Y/n) stop being irrational. She’s not even our kid I’m just looking after her for now. Why are you being difficult? I told you you were fine with the students and you’ll be fine with Eri, what else do you want to hear?” Shouta grumbled.

“Well uh I don’t know, uh...” You trailed off, this seemed to be going in a direction you really didn’t want it to go. A slight hostility settling in the air.

At your lack of a proper answer he clicked his tongue. He took a moment to reassess the situation. There had to be something he was missing. After all you were getting really worked up but if you weren’t going to talk to him there was nothing he could do. He shook his head before running a frustrated hand through his hair.

“(Y/n), please, please, just be honest with me. Whatever it is that’s bothering you, you can tell me. But I won’t be able to understand if you don’t.” Aizawa sighed, deciding that getting worked up about this was not the way to go, especially when you seemed to be especially distraught.

“Uh, god the thing is I don’t know entirely what to say to put the shitshow in my head into perspective.” You mumbled, trying desperately to figure out what to say that could clear the air but nothing seemed to be coherent enough.

“Take your time.” He decided that this was the best approach to things, making sure neither party got too worked up lest this turn into a fight.

The rain continued to patter softly against the window and your candle continued to burn an slightly off floral-ish scent. A deafening silence hung in the air because even though he was being as patient as possible some of his frustration leaked through, it was bound to though so you couldn’t exactly blame him. After all, you were probably equally as frustrated with yourself too.

“I’m just not good in a position like this. I’m not good with kids, especially someone like Eri who’s already so broken. You have that nurturing nature, it comes natural to you but I’m not on that level. I don’t know the first thing about caring for a child let alone one as already traumatized as her. I’d fuck it up and only make things worse. I don’t want you to reassure me that I’ll be okay with her, I want you to understand that I’m not comfortable with this and that it might take me awhile to come around. I’m sure I sound like the biggest asshole ever but please understand that this just isn’t something I’m ready for.” You had rambled a bit, you were aware of that, but it was the only way that you could properly express your feelings without making things too complicated.

Aizawa said nothing. Trying to figure out how to go about things.

Was he upset? Yeah, you two, even after several long years of being together, hadn’t discussed moving forward in your relationship in depth. And if he’d tried you seemed content with the point you two were at so he left it be, no reason to try and move forward when what you had was already fine the way it was. But recently he’d been craving more. Some mornings, when he’d be the first to wake, he’d study your features in the soft light of the sunrise and wonder what it’d be like to properly settle down with you. Get married, start a family, all that jazz. He’d taken in Eri only because it was the most rational decision. His quirk would be good for quelling hers had it ever gotten out of hand. But it also seemed to quell his musings of something more with you. He had imagined you being a good parental figure for the little girl and it made his heart flutter and his stomach explode with butterflies. But now seeing that that wasn’t what you wanted and how you weren’t ready for it, it stung. But in the end, he loved you. He’d easily give his life for you. So, if that meant waiting he’d wait. He’d wait a million years if he had to. He could do it.

Once again he spoke,

“Take your time then. I can wait.”

Tagslist?: @captainchrisstan (I think you said you wanted to be tagged but I’m also just small brained lol If u didn’t want to and I misinterpreted things just let me know :) )

#bnha x reader #mha xreader #aizawa x reader #shouta aizawa x reader #aizawa shouta #aizawa #my first fic #mha #bnha

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flowers-of-io · 3 years

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@eri-223 you brought it upon yourself, now I won’t shut up c:

OKAY SO

I can’t really draw neat straight lines between the two, but there’s so much aesthetic similarity to me, particularly with Toland and the Hive-Ascendancy thing. Maybe it’s just me dying for the vibes (or loving POTO in general since I was 9), but it struck me today how Eris/Toland--when it’s made a Working ship--is basically everything Christine/Erik is not. There is so much to be said about Christine/Erik alone, but to me it’s an epitome of why gothic-novel-esque dynamics don’t really work in the long run when they don’t move past being just Gothic and Tragic. And hear me out. A goodhearted, elfin woman at her vulnerable point (grief over father) meets a honey-voiced stranger and has this secret thing with him, this music they share in the dead of night, and it’s intoxicating because music *is* her passion (and something she has deep emotions over in itself, the thing that is most hers in the world) and it’s secret, and a whole other world to what she’s facing in the daytime. The mystery is intriguing, and that’s intoxicating too. And there’s an uncomfortable power imbalance but it doesn’t bother you just yet, because there isn’t really any attraction between the two--not in the romantic-as-in-love sense at least, rather this romantic-as-in-romanticism pull all dark beautiful secret things have.

And here we can shout a fucking thank you at Erik for completely ruining that beauty by being an absolute creep. But Chrissie doesn’t know that yet. And so he leads her deep down into the dark, into his world of darkness and secrecy and yet twisted beauty, and she is living the mystery now, she’s in this nighttime world they would share in secret. And she’s close enough to take a peek behind the mask, something she was so violently curious about and attracted to, a glance into the dark abyss of his soul that is so intriguing. And so she does peek, and what she finds is terrifying rot.

And this, THIS is the best moment of the entire thing to me. This story could be well off without Raoul (whom I deeply love and cherish but he ruins the gothic) because he adds this romantic tension of a love triangle (which I absolutely loathe because ugh. love triangles.) to what could have been a tale of a girl torn between the world of day and night rather than two men who each love her in a different way. There’s so much of Persephone-sque struggle in Christine’s soul that has been shunned by the story imo, and would have made the whole thing better in the long run (and maybe less grossly-abusive on Erik’s part).

So let’s circle back to Toland, another pale, bony, possibly disfigured brunet in a dark coat with a living room full of skulls and candles (the vibes, huh. he probably owned a boat and a horse too). If we take Eris/Toland as starting off before the Hellmouth (I’m really starting to tentatively test my ground on this hhhng), it feels like the same story slightly to the left. Granted, Eris has more agency, but there’s still a huge power imbalance in her and Eriana coming to Toland--an exiled genius|madman with an evil black crow (Guren) perching on his shoulder--and asking him for help, laying their and their team’s lives at his feet - him, who could probably kill them in seventeen different yet equally fancy ways were he more invested! And there is so much darkness here already because how dark it must have been in Eris’ soul to agree on this revenge fantasy, what an abyss Eriana’s eyes must have been hiding; how desperate they must have been to come to him, to even consider this, to choose a possibility of painful, screaming agony in the Hellmouth over the ache they were feeling now. And so there’s vulnerability, too, in a way - because they’re desperate, because they’re hurting, because everything has been taken from them and they have nothing else to do but this ridiculous, mad plan. And oh he can abuse this void, he can make them do whatever he wants and they’d do it gladly, and I have a feeling both Eris and Eriana are aware of that.

And so they work, in secret, cracking secrets of the Hive, tasting the rot of the forbidden fruit, hiding from the daylight with their dark, heretic, nighttime folly. I think there is a threshold at wherever it is they are meeting--be it a room or a house, Eriana’s kitchen or Toland’s disturbing “lab”--in the doorway, between the bright but empty world of patrols and strikes and dead friends and this horrid, twisted, yet fascinating realm of promised vengeance. And I think Eris learns, hungry for secrets, hungry perhaps for Toland’s eyes on her because all dark beautiful secret things have a pull, and she can’t tell if she’s more drunk on the adventure, or the heresy they’re so blatantly committing, or him. And maybe he reciprocates in his own twisted way, maybe they talk or kiss over the parchment pages, and she cannot tell--she cannot tell if his eyes are truly for her or the Hive, the mystery, the thing they’re doing. I’m thinking of what you wrote, how “he wanted Ascendance as badly as she wanted him”. But despite that--or maybe because of it--she allows herself to be led deep down into the dark, into his world of darkness and secrecy and yet twisted beauty, and she is living the mystery now, she’s in this nighttime world they would share in secret. Is it the Hellmouth? Maybe, though I think it’s a process that spans between their secret studies of the Hive and the midst of their descent, when Vell is dead and maybe they’re all doomed, and Toland’s eyes twinkle in the dark and it’s such beautiful madness she cannot help staring. And the checkpoint has come, time to show cards--and she’s close enough to take a peek behind the mask, something she was so violently curious about and attracted to, a glance into the dark abyss of his soul that was so intriguing. And so she does peek, and what she finds is terrifying rot.

I think this is Ir Yut, or maybe a little bit earlier, but nevertheless the bubble bursts and Eris is left in the dark alone and betrayed. That’s of little concern, of course, when the Hive is hunting you down and all you hear is your friends’ dying screams, but it still hurts, it’s still bitter, it’s still so, so wrong. I like to think he comes to teach her then, maybe give her the journals, and it’s a whirlwind of madness and horror and fury and gore, but he’s whatever comfort she can hope for at this point. It’s twisted, it’s awful, it’s dark-gothic rotten, it’s as wrong and horrid as Erik/Christine is as a whole.

But then they’re given the chance Erik/Christine never got. They’re allowed to outgrow the rot. There’s so much dysfunctionality and disturb going on in most gothic-esque “love” stories because it’s not love, it’s attraction taken for a spin and often grossly abused. Love is growth. I like to think of what must have been going on in Eris’ head (and Toland’s too, perhaps, though I doubt he had one at that point) when they were exchanging the letters, the dearest Eris right next to did you watch me carve out each eye; now that she’s wiser, and scarred, and not so stupid anymore--but there’s still that dark pull she can’t help, now even scarier than before that she knows him for what he really is, now that she’s seen the rot. There’s so much hurt to be outgrown, so much betrayal, but she finds he’s yet again whatever comfort she can hope for (that entry *is* called A Light In The Darkness, huh). I could wax poetic about this whole process but I think you captured it so well in STM I don’t have much else to add.

I wanted to throw quotes into it but couldn’t quite fit them into this, uh, essay (which I didn’t absolutely re-read), and I guess Music of the Night would apply here but it’s ripe with uncomfortable sexual tension?? And aside from that (which is in its entirety a trip) just consider these ah

this whole moment

also this

He'll always be there singing songs in my head Is this Eris in the letters phase? maybe. I performed a vibe check and it showed positive

Wandering Child for how unhealthy-twisted and beautiful it is (ignore Raoul, I have no metaphor for him in this au)

For either way you choose, you cannot win It’s just a good quote y’all

Farewell my fallen idol and false friend / We had such hopes, and now those hopes are shattered

Angel of Music, you deceived me / I gave you my mind blindly (HOW SHE WHISPERS THAT LAST PART IN THE MOVIE OK)

Stranger than you dreamt it now you’re stranded in the Hellmouth good job

What warm, unspoken secrets will we learn / Beyond the point of no return

The bridge is crossed, so stand and watch it burn

Down that path into darkness deep as hell but Toland smiles while he sings this

And of course the classic, And in this labyrinth where night is blind / The Phantom of the Opera is here inside my mind

Wow! I didn’t even get to the Dreaming City! It’s way more vague than the whole Eris/Toland thing because of course ships take up 80% of my brainspace but idk I just find it so incredibly fitting when it comes to paralleling Savathun/Dul Incaru terrorising the Dreaming City with what Erik does to the opera. Like, everybody knows he’s There but no one can do anything about it, he sends vague threats and kills people but nobody can catch him, and the place is just a giant playground for him to have fun and achieve his personal goals in. And whatever the hell is going on in Masquerade, like

Masquerade! Seething shadows breathing lies Masquerade! You can fool any friend who ever knew you Masquerade! Leering satyrs, peering eyes Masquerade! Run and hide, but a face will still pursue you

wow that sure is subtle. Seething shadows breathing lies, huh. Run and hide, but a face will still pursue you :) And then he crashes the party in a fucking Red Death costume. If this doesn’t have huge Dul Incaru/Siren of Riven energy I don’t know what has.

And of course the shitshow only starts when we kill Riven but the seeds have been planted long, long ago. If you listen closely, you can hear Petra screaming in confusion somewhere under box five.

I know most of this second part is a stretch, BUT! this is my au. And for the record, I know there are very mixed feeling about the 2004 POTO movie but to me personally it was a formative experience, first watched on a very crappy TV in music class at the age of 9 and not even in its entirety, but I was already captivated and shaken to the core, and there’s still, after all those years, something that screams at my soul when I hear the first notes.

And, as a treat for those who suffered with me until the end of this essay,

#i may or may not be singing up to three poto songs next tuesday on a concert #which may or may not have been my teenage dream #reply #eri-223 #phantom of the opera #toland the sarky #eris morning #eris/toland #destiny 2 #npc talk #what is this even #i have no idea how to tag this #headcanon #ships #ir yût #dûl incaru

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linkspooky · 4 years

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Scummy Heroes are to Blame

My Hero Academia has always been about this idea. In a literal society of heroes, there are people who do not get saed. Even though the literal job of heroes is to save people, heroes have become not much more than a militant branch of the police force in hero society under the thumb of the hero commission.

This conflict comes to a head in Dabi, Twice, and Hawks who are all three of them people who weren’t saved by heroes.

1. A Society Where Heroes Don’t Save People

Most of the heroic characters on their side of the story have a very vague idea of what a hero is, almost like that’s thematic or something. There seems to be two types, heroes who save people, and heroes who defeat villains, with the latter being the more popular one. However, there have been a couple of moments that idealize what a hero should be.

Both Mirio and Deku say that a hero should always act to save a crying little girl in front of them.

Twice says that someone who helps their friends can’t possibly be a bad guy. These are simple heroic ideals that we see Hawks a heroic character completely fail to live up to in the coming chapters.

Twice is hardly acting like a villain in this scenario. He’s acting nothing like the threat to hero society that Hawks imagined him to be with his great ability to create almost an entire army of duplicates with his quirk. He is crying, and begging for help, like a person would.

Hawks is faced with a person crying because someone they trusted, and wanted to be friends with and treated like a person betrayed them, and used them as a tool to complete their bojective all along. Hawks is faced with not a villain, but a victim.

Hawks is, slaughtering copies of the true companions that Twice does everything for. Attacking a person who is helpless and crying out in frustration. Coldly deciding to kill someone who says out loud that the only reason they want to fight is for the happiness of their friends.

In a traidtional sense Twice is the one fighting with Nakama power, and Hawks is the character who the power of Nakama has failed to reach and is instead cutting those same friends down. Despite the fact that Twice is a terrorist and a murderer, and Hawks is a hero who has wholly dedicated his life to saving others the framing of the situation has been entirely flipped. It’s Hawks who looks like the villain, and Twice who looks like the hero struggling to fight for his friends.

This is where the nuance of the series kicks in. Hero and villains are not strictly defined roles, they’re only called that because hero society dictates they are.

One of the first things that Shigaraki says in the series is that heroes using violent suppression in order to defeat villains is just something that creates more violence in the end. Something which All Might pointedly refuses to listen to, accusing Shigaraki of just being a bad person who enjoys violence. Ironically this is something Shigaraki is utterly dehumanized by and accused of over, and over, and over again.

However as we learn more of Shigaraki’s story we learn that Shigaraki was a kid with heroic ambitions, who was failed by society at every level. The reason he’s violent is because he was exposed to violence again and again as a kid, his violent impulses were literally beaten into them.

The black and white morality of hero society blames victims for falling, and then insists the reason that they fell in the first place was because they were bad people. Hero society again and again intentionally lets people fall and then villainizes them rather than sympathizing with them as victims.

If you fall its entirely on your own, and also a sign of your character. You have to get back on your feet on your own merits. If you fail to make it back into society than it’s not the fault of society, you’re just a bad person for becoming a victim in the first place.

Mirio and Deku both believe that you should always help a crying girl in pain like Eri, but at the same time if they had not saved her at that exact moment, if they had let her grow up like Shimura Tenko grew up, to develop violent tendencies, to act like anything other than the perfect crying victim then she would have been left behind the same way Shimura was, the same way Twice is at this exact moment.

In a society overflowing with heroes, there are people who are ignored and do not get saved. Shimura Tenko as a five year old, wonder if it’s his fault for killing his family that no one came to save him. Already by that time he’s internalized the idea that a bad child like him doesn’t deserve to get saved.

Twice even says the same as well. In hero society only the good and the virtuous get saved. People like twice who are broken are left behind and forgotten, because it’s more convenient for society to function that way.

I relate this idea to Albert Camus, the fall. A book that explores the idea of who is guilty for society, and comes to the conclusion that everyone is guilty.

The Fall operates on the premise that all are guilty. This is indeed a classic argument for Camus, but the narrator of this novel goes so far as to suggest that all men are murderers, even if only by accident or through negligence (like not saving others from death). Since the novel was written in the aftermath of WWII, this is a particularly poignant argument. This sort of "universal guilt" makes any attempt at judgment completely hypocritical. A guilty man condemning another man of guilt is absurd by nature.

Everyone who participates in society creates it actively. I’ll explore this idea with Hawks more in a minute, but related to who is responsible for hero society it’s important to look at the conflict of heroes and villains. The heroes themselves blame the villains for all the ills of hero society. However, it’s important to remember who holds all the power. Sure, there are outliers like Re-Destro who are corporate millionaires with a vast infleunce, but for the most part all of the ruling power in society belongs to the heroes. While the villains are for the most part, homeless people, outlaws, with little resources or influence of society as a whole. Villains are outcasted and blamed for society, despite being you know... outcasts, people outside of society.

Which is why Villains themselves will always be nothing more than a symptom. Even the League of Villains themselves is just a rebellion. They’re not rebelling for the hell of it, they were created in direct response to problems already presence in society, and they demand that society address those problems. The ones who hold the real power over a corrupt system are heroes, villains are always going to be reactionary to that corrupt system. Sure, the answer might not be ‘destroy the entirety of society to make it better’, but the League are also the only people trying to do anything. Only the outsiders and the outcasts seem to be aware that something is wrong in the first place, because they’re the most directly affected by it.

So, like Camus we are asked to consider who is really responsible for the fall of society?

2. Twice and Hawks, to be an individual or member of society.

Which is why the way Hawks acts the past two chapters is so unheroic, even in accordance of the very loose ideas of what the story set up as what a hero is. Hawks isn’t trying to save Twice. He’s trying to save himself, his own cosncience, because he thinks it’s wrong to kill a “good person” like Twice. He’s acting to save Twice with no regards of what Twice’s wants and needs are.

Rather than try to understand and sympathize with Twice, Hawks approaches him using his entire identity as a hero as a wall between them. He acts in the role of a hero, I am going to capture you the villain and put you in jail. Hawks makes this impersonal as possible and sinks into the role of being a hero, while Twice is still acting as Twice the person.

However, Hawks only cares about saving Twice. Because Twice is the one he dubs as a good person and therefore worthy of being saved. He doesn’t care enough to empathize with the rest of the league, even though Twice cares more about his friends than his life.

Which is what Twice explicitly calls out. That Hawks is not acting like a hero in this situation. He’s not acting selflessly. He’s not trying to save anyone. He’s only acting in ways that satisfy himself. Hawks is acting to reinforce his incorrect world view, that he has to be the one who makes sacrifices for the sake of a faceless majority, even if that person they’re sacrificing is crying and begging in front of them.

Twice brings up the idea that Toga despite being a killer out for blood is also a person who was incredibly kind to him in a moment of weakness. Which is something we the reader know, that all of the members of the league of villains, violent as they are are still people, who are capable of both good an bad. Most of the league members didn’t even fall becausethey were bad, but because of abusive circumstances, parental abuse for Toga, Shigaraki, failure of the social safety net in Twice’s case, victim of societal prejudgice in Spinner’s case.

What Twice suggests is that all of these people that hero society leaves behind are still capable of good, capable of selflessness. Shigaraki is again and again called one of the most violent characters in the series who only cares about destroying for its own sake, and yet he’s the one who gave Twice a home.

The league faces this accusation constant times. That the reason they do crime is because they’re bad people, that they don’t think about how other people feel at all, that’s the only explanation for why they would strike out against society.

And time and time again we’re shown the opposite is the case. Dabi thinks about the heroes he’s killed so much he feels himself slowly going insane. Shigaraki feels such intense remorse for killing his family in what was a total accident, that not only does he take all the blame on himself for years, but he also purposefully triggers himself with their dead hands so he’ll never escape from the guilt of killing them. These are all people fully aware of the bad they are committing underneath their actions, but also who believe otherwise that they have no choice but to do these bad things.

The league of villains has to rebel, because the response of hero society to all of their damage has always been the same thing. Exactly what Hawks does this chapter.

Shut up and take it. Hawks is telling Twice to lie down and stop fighting against him because 1) he doesn’t want to kill Twice and it would be easier on his conscience, and 2) this is what Hawks has always done.

Hawks always chooses to sacrifice himself. He always chooses the good of society over what he personally wants. He’ll always choose the worst option for himself if it means he can do better for others. Hawks in the face of Twice’s individualist rebellion can’t really handle it, because Hawks has never fought back against his own shackles of society.

His plan has always been if he does everything the hero commission tells him to do then... that will somehow help him achieve his society where heroes have more freedom and agency in their lives. I’ve been over Hawks’ backstory a few times, but it makes sense for Hawks to be caught in this negative feedback loop. He’s been conditioned to fight all alone and achieve everything on his own by sacrificing himself his entire life, he’s basically had the ideals of a self sacrificing hero forced onto him. His personality has been intentionally molded to heroics, the same way that Shigaraki was molded to become a villain.

Which is why when Hawks gets someone who genuinely sympathizes with him and treats him like a person, and suggests to hawks something that he has never heard in his entire life, that he can rely on other people, that he can trust other people, that he can let other people help him Hawks genuinely does not get it.

He chooses to fall back on what his abusers have taught him, rather than to trust Twice’s genuine good will. Which is once again common abuse victim behavior, a lot of abuse victims regress and fall into bad patterns because their abuse is what they know, whereas healthy relationships and boundaries are unknown to them.

Twice even says so, that Hawks actions are pitaible here. How sad is it that hero or villain, nobody in the world trusts Hawks? He doesn’t have a friend on either side now, and he’s trying to kill the one person who sympathized with him genuinely as a person because Hawks doesn’t know what to do with that sympathy, or escape the cage he’s been trapped in his entire life.

The difference between Hawks and Twice is that while they have both been wronged by society, Twice fights back with his legitimate grievance against society, whereas Hawks will never fight back. He chooses to let himself suffer if that means that the faceless majority will be spared his suffering. It seems like Hawks is making the sefless choice here, but in choosing not to fight back he’s also repeating the evils of hero society.

You can see it in his monologue to Twice. The one hero that Hawks idealizes the most, is one of the most abusive members of hero society. An abuser who did to his own children what he hero commission did to Hawks. Hawks holds up to an ideal the most toxic element of hero society, the idea that heroics is just numbers. Hawks runs his hero agency the exact same way Endeavor does, efficiency, above all else, it’s just Hawks cares more about saving people and Endeavor cares more about catching villains and resolving cases. His ideal hero is somebody impersonal like Endeavor, who puts efficiency and speed above all else. Hawks’ goal is to be the most effecitve tool possible.

In Hawks’ choice to side with hero society however, we see him passively repeating the abuse that was done to him.

Hawks encourages Endeavor of all people to train his interns hard. Because the hero commission is planning to use a bunch of fifteen year olds as their backup in case their main plan fails. Which means Hawks is actively encouraging what was done to him, (being robbed of his childhood and raised as a child soldier solely for the purpose of being a hero) to be done to the UA students as well. He doesn’t really interact well with Bakugo, someone who is also a child prodigy who has been affected all of their lives due to the fact that he had a quirk suited for being a hero.

By choosing to passively do what he’s told, Hawks ends up perpetuating Hero Society’s ills. Hawks’ offer to Twice isn’t really one that will genuinely save him (ie guaranteeing the safety of him and all of his friends if they stop violently resisting) but rather he offers Twice the chance to conform so he can fit in with society’s ideals. Just like Hawks always takes the choice to conform himself rather than try to be an individual in any way.

Which is why we finally get to Twice’s accusation. That Hawks isn’t acting heroic. He’s not trying to save the person in front of him that’s crying and begging for help.

Why does Dabi get the jump on Hawks? It’s because Hawks’ wings aren’t meant to be used as weapons like this. he always trained himself so that his feathers could hear even the faintest cries for help. Suddenly Twice is literally screaming for help in front of him, and Hawks ignores him. He’s no longer acting like a hero, and so therefore his wings that can hear anything are now deaf, just like Hawks is trying to be by repressing everything else but his mission.

3. Dabi and Hawks

Once again there’s a point of foiling here. Twice and Hawks are both loners to their respective organizations. Dabi never tells other people what his intentions are and he acts with a begrudging sense of teamwork at best.

As much as Dabi complains that he doesn’t care about Shigaraki’s backstory, that he doesn’t want to play friends with the rest of the league, he still in the end gives his absolute all in the fight against Deka City, and fights to the point where he’s literally burning himself alive on the inside because the elague asked him to.

Hawks and Dabi are by nature very two faced people. They are both made up of two individuals, the person they present to the world and everyone around them, and then their real self which they choose to keep hidden.

They are also total opposites in how they present themselves. Dabi acts like he’s callous and cold on the surface. He pretends to be someone who enjoys killing, when Snatch accuses him of being behind a string of murders he basically laughs it off.

However, we’re shown in private that he’s the opposite of his public persona. Rather than someone who can laugh off what he’s done, and enjoys being a villain he thinks about what he’s done so much, with so much remorse that he feels himself going crazy. This is the opposite of how Hawks shows himself. In public Hawks is a very likable, carefree guy, who is totally dedicated to saving other people. Whereas when he reveals what is his “true self” in front of Twice, he plays the role of ruthless villain the same way that Dabi does with snatch. He even goes so far as to taunt Twice for trusting him.

The way they both present themselves is totally reversed, Hawks plays the good guy while deep down he considers himself to be the conniving bad guy. Dabi plays the bad guy while deep down he considers himself to be a very conscience heavy person who knows what he’s doing is wrong but is trying to accomplish some kind of good.

There’s a reason that Hawks’ entire face is shown in shadow in this cene. Hawks is incredibly repressed. He represses his ruthless side, in order to play not only the hero, but the helpless tool of the hero commission. The reason he’s shown in shadow is because his repressed side is coming out. All of his cold caluclation, the fact that he doesn’t trust a single person, all of these are traits that Hawks himself is unaware of but are nonetheless part of who he is as a person.

Dabi expresses what Hawks represses. Hawks has all the bad traits under the surface to appear good, Dabi wears all of his bad traits on the surface to appear bad. They really are inversions of one another, and they’re also both fixated around the ideal of heroes.

There’s a lot of debate over whether Hawks or Dabi gave the narration line “It’s the fault of us scummy heroes” it actually doesn’t matter who said it, the reason it was drawn over both of them is because it applies to both of them. Hawks and Dabi are both people who were failed by, and even manipulated by scummy heroes in their life, Dabi by Endeavor, and Hawks by the Hero Commission. When Hawks even admits that heroes were not what he thought they were, and he feels trapped and used by them to Twice the image that appears in his mind is Endeavor’s back turning away from them.

Dabi and Hawks have been wronged by heroes, and raised and molded to be heroes as child soldiers and they both keep this idealized image of a way heroes should act in their heart. However, both of them have completely opposite responses, Dabi rebels, and Hawks submits.

They have opposite reactions to their abuse, Dabi externalizing by trying to change the world around him (persecuting scummy heroes who don’t fit his stadndards) and Hawks internalizes he tries to change the world by changing himself. Dabi punishes others for not reaching the ideal of perfect hero that he holds, whereas Hawks tries to change himself and tries to become the perfect hero that is always selfless, and always chooses to save the most people possible.

Neither of these are healthy choices, and both of them are destructive. You can’t even argue that Hawks’ choices only harm himself anymore, because we see him literally choosing to murder a person that is crying and begging in front of him, because he’s convinced himself he doesn’t have any choices in this situation. Just because you don’t make a choice for yourself doesn’t mean you’ll never harm someone, in fact your refusal to act on your own will can lead you to do something you don’t want to do and being unable to stop yourself which is clearly the case for Twice and Hawks.

The one difference between Dabi and Hawks however, is the people surrounding them. Dabi is antisocial, always acts like he’s not a member of the group, and yet the people around Dabi choose to trust him anyway.

Hawks and Dabi say a lot of things about who they are, but then reveal who they are in their actions. This too, is where they are inverses of each other. Dabi constantly insults his friends, doesn’t act like he’s a part of the group, says he doesn’t trust them, but ultimately when the chips are down Dabi gives his all to fighting with the league of villains. He complains about it the whole time, but he does it. Part of the reason why Dabi ultimately sides with them is because Shigaraki does give Dabi this trust to go off and do his own thing as long as he comes back at the end of the day.

Dabi could have easily turned out to be someone just like Hawks, not interested in the goals of the League of Villains as a whole, and instead just there to use them for his own benefit. I believe his actions in the latest chapter show that he’s not. Dabi goes out of his way to save Twice, because Twice actually is a comrade to him no matter how much Dabi pretends otherwise.

Now we don’t know if Dabi ultimately invited Hawks into the league knowing that he would betray them, or what his plans are, but ultimately his actions are the opposite of Hawks. Hawks the hero chooses to kill Twice in this scene. Dabi, the villain chooses to save Twice. Dabi is in a sense fighting for his comrades in this scene, where Hawks is fighting against the idea of camraderie and trust. He even, literally kills the symbols of all of twice’s comrades when he pulls duplicates of them. Hawks and Dabi are very similiar people, but in different environments, Dabi exists in ane environment of trust, Hawks in one where no trust exists, and because of that Dabi is able to make better choices in the moment.

We see Hawks’ visor shatter in this scene just like it did in the pro hero arc, and it’s important to remember what the signfiicance of that visor shattering means. His visor is basically his mask he wears at all time. The thought he expresses when his visor shatters is what is underneath the mask, that he’s not good enough.

Hawks decision to always sacrifice comes from his own sense of inferiority. He doesn’t feel like he’s enough to save the people he wants to save. The reason he doesn’t try sincerely to save Twice is because he doesn’t think he can. His self worth is so abysmally low. The reason that Hawks doesn’t try to fight back, to try to be a person, to do what he wants which is clearly not to hurt Twice is because Hawks himself has never been in an environment that sees him as a person.

Which is why Dabi gets the upper hand on him. Hawks can make plans, he can act as ruthlessly as possible, but you can’t suppress yourself to the extent that Hawks does. Everything that’s suppressed will eventually come out. If suppression worked, Dabi wouldn’t have half of his body burned off, Twice wouldn’t be split in two, and Himiko wouldn’t have gone crazy with blood lust. What Hawks was suppressing was how much he did not want to hurt Twice in that moment. He wasn’t being true to who he really was, and what he wanted, and as Dabi calls him out for sentiment tripped him up.

What Hawks needs to do is ironically, not learn to be a better hero, but learn to be like Dabi. If he would only allow himself to be true to himself then he would have been able to save Twice in that moment. Hawks, Twice, Dabi, all three of them are good people but the current hero society doesn’t allow them to be good. They all have to learn to fight against society to be the individuals they want to be.

#dabi #hawks #takami keigo #twice #jin bubaigawara #hawks meta #league of villain meta #mha meta #my hero academia meta #lov meta

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pynkhues · 3 years

Note

C&C prompts!!!!! someone is sick?? preferably someone who is a horrific patient and it's early enough in that the whole little family unit is still trying to find their footing together and the whole thing's a mess???

Attempting this challenge has been a real reminder that I am no good at short things, haha, but look! 2k isn’t too bad for me?????

(I hope you like it 😘)

Set in The Center & Circumference Universe.

(Early in the relationship, as requested ;-))

It goes like this:

Elizabeth sneezes.

She sneezes and it ain’t some cute little ladylike nothin’ sneeze neither. It’s some loud, fucked-up-sinus, mucous-mouthed thing that echoes around the warehouse and makes everyone stop working, and shit, even Demon looks taken aback. Rio bites his tongue, gaze sliding from him back to Elizabeth, who suddenly stands up taller to meet his look, squares her shoulders, and he has the sudden, vivid memory of Jane doing this at the foot of their bed last week.

“What?”

And yeah, Jane had said that too.

Elizabeth though, she’s got this indignant edge to her voice that means she’s getting defensive, like her hair ain’t frizzing at her sweaty temples, like her skin ain’t flushed, peaked, her eyes ain’t starting to water, and he’d known it this morning before she’d left ahead of him for school run, but okay - - maybe he’d let himself believe her. Maybe he’d let her bat those baby blues at him, let her distract him by leaving the top couple of buttons undone on her ugly floral blouse so he could see the flushed curve of her breast, let her tell him - -

Rio works his jaw, huffs out a breath.

“You said you were good.”

“I am good,” she says right away, voice a little too loud, like he won’t hear the hoarseness that way and when Rio squints at her, she flails out a wobbly hand. “It’s allergies.”

He pops an eyebrow at that.

“In July?”

Behind him, Demon snorts on a laugh, and he sees Elizabeth’s focus snap to him, her own jaw rock, the flush at her cheeks deepening. She shifts her weight, side-to-side, and that ain’t good either, because she looks halfway to wobbling too far and topplin’ over, but still, she blinks.

Takes too long to blink.

Like her eyes close and she doesn’t entirely wanna reopen them.

She does though, just enough to glare.

“Not all allergies are seasonal,” she says, and her voice cracks a little at the end, and he can see it – how much she needs to sit down, and he’s of half a mind to get her arm over his shoulder and drag her over to a seat, but also is she really tryna play him like this?

It’s the latter thought that wins out, because - - whatever. He’ll catch her if she passes out.

“So it ain’t got nothin’ to do with last week?” he asks, and shit, it’s like some game of chicken, because Elizabeth firms her look, wets her lips, tilts up her chin.

“I’d tell you if it was.”

And this has pretty clearly proven she wouldn’t, but still, Rio rolls his shoulders back, and turns on his heel, starts walking again to the meeting room in the back where they’re supposed to be hearing a pitch from some new associate, because fine, if this is what they’re doing, it ain’t no skin off his nose. And okay, maybe they set up in the meeting and he spends most of the time watching her, because her skin’s less flushed now and more paper pale, and maybe she wobbles a little in her seat as she trains glazed eyes on the kid pitchin’ them the idea for smugglin’ hormone pills to Cleveland across Lake Erie, and maybe she tries to subtly swipe at her damp forehead as she curls her hair behind her ears and maybe he can hear her swallowing coughs, and maybe he should’ve taken her home before she passed out, but, y’know, he said he’d catch her, and he did, so he can’t really be faulted for that.

Last week went something like this:

Danny sneezed.

Danny sneezed then Jane sneezed then Emma, Marcus, Kenny, and Rio was vaguely reminded of sitting in front of the TV and watching A Christmas Carol as a kid himself, seeing the ghost of Christmas past, present, future in symptoms across the five of them while he and Elizabeth both wrangled tissue boxes and kiddie aspirin, cough syrup and glassy eyed tears over Frozen, Frozen 2, Wreck It Ralph, Frozen, Moana, Frozen, Zooptopia, Moana, Frozen.

(He might have thrown the bluray of that fuckin’ movie out before Annie came over with extra supplies and cooingly installed Disney+ on their TV, and shit, he’s had a lot of reasons to kill her before, but they all pale in comparison).

And okay, maybe it was a thing, because they were still pretty new to all of this and Rio didn’t need to be as good at math as he was to know that handlin’ five sick kids was gonna be worse than one, but still. He doesn’t think he’ll ever feel as close to burnin’ a house down as he did tryna handle three sobbing, snuffling kids at once, and they’d gotten well and the handover had happened and he’d maybe never been happier to give a mostly-better Marcus back to Laura and see the rest of them (also mostly-better) off to Elizabeth’s dumbass ex, and piling into bed after.

Him and Elizabeth hadn’t even fucked, they’d just collapsed back onto the mattress and looked at each other.

“If you get sick, I’m leaving you.”

He can’t remember which one of them said it.

It goes something like this:

Elizabeth sneezes.

Elizabeth sneezes and Rio throws a tissue box at her bedridden form as he works on his laptop in the reading chair in the corner, his own legs propped up on the ottoman he’s dragged up from the living room, as he works on the specs for the associate’s Cleveland pitch.

“Your bedside manner leaves a lot to be desired, you know that?” she asks him, nose so blocked at this point her voice comes out somehow both hoarse and reedy, and Rio glances up at her over the top of his laptop, biting back a grin.

Thing is, she really does look like hell. The bags beneath her eyes are so purple they almost look like bruises, her skin so pale it’s almost translucent. He’d managed to get her into her favourite, ugliest pyjamas when he’d hauled her back into the house, and she looks comfy, between them and the approximately 800 blankets she’d demanded he pull out to cover her.

She’d sweat the fever out pretty quick, and he’d made awkward but proficient work of takin’ care of her – wiping her brow, feedin’ her flu medicine, and making thin, tasteless soup he somehow hadn’t managed to completely fuck up (then again, the only ingredients had been stock, salt and slivered vegetables) – and hours had gone by and she’d slept and glowered and offered frail excuses, and now - -

Well.

“Ain’t what you said last night,” he hums, clicking through the spreadsheet, and he feels more than sees Elizabeth’s eyeroll in reply.

“I said bedside manner, not - - in-bed manner,” she sniffs, before pulling out a tissue and blowing her nose, and Rio glances up at her red cheeks and wet eyelashes and grins.

“Figured what we did counted more as bed-side.”

And maybe it was semantics, but whatever. It was fun in the moment of it, rememberin’ both their toes curled in this carpet, her body bent like an L atop their sheets, ass up towards him, and - -

“Bed-over,” Elizabeth corrects, and it surprises him enough that Rio barks on a laugh, glancing up at her again, grinning when he spots the subdued but still-a-little-playful look in her eye.

“Yeah, somethin’ like that, huh?”

The look on her face is as close to affectionate as she ever gets, and he shifts a little in his seat, feels himself warm beneath it, as she flops back into their pillows, still snuffling. He can pretty much smell the sweat on them at this point, and he wonders vaguely if he can change the sheets before he slips in tonight, because shit, they are damp, and he’s spent enough time hovering over the kids’ feverishly moist beds over the last week to like the idea of somethin’ a little crisper, when Elizabeth suddenly says:

“You stayed though. So that’s - - you know. That’s some sort of bedside manner.”

His gaze darts up, takes in her pink, mottled cheeks, her crooked nose, her dimpled chin, and her voice was high. Light and airy in that way she ain’t, and there’s a knot between his shoulders when he shrugs.

“Well, we got a mortgage now,” he drawls, eyes skirting back down to the spreadsheet on his laptop screen but not taking any of the figures in.

“A big one,” Elizabeth agrees, like they don’t both know they’ve paid it outright, and Rio hums, willing her complicity in the moment of it, because fuck, if that ain’t just - -

Easier.

And he can’t really think about what that means, not really, but maybe he doesn’t have to, because suddenly Elizabeth says:

“I bet you’re terrible when you’re sick.”

Rio jerks his head up, eyebrows raised, and Elizabeth snuffles, closing her eyes briefly, shuffling back into their pillows. The air around her is thick, her body tired, slumped, but glowing with the sheen of her fevered sweat. He wets his lips, works his jaw, meets her eye.

“You’re probably like the - - the poster child for man flu,” she adds, which is a little rich comin’ from the woman who passed out halfway through a meeting. Rio arches an eyebrow back at her, and somewhere in the pocket of his jeans, his cell buzzes. Somewhere outside of here, he can hear afternoon traffic and a neighbour yell. He can hear a lot of things, but he can’t see anything that ain’t Elizabeth, awkward and beautiful and a straight up fuckin’ mess, sprawled out in their bed.

“You talk to every man who takes care of you that way, or just me, huh?”

And her head jerks at that, neck forcing at an odd angle, shoulder shoving up to suffocate the pillow against the bedhead.

“All of them,” she decides after a moment, and Rio snorts on a laugh, closing his laptop and putting it aside. The knot between his shoulders is settling, and he ain’t exactly taking in the specs anyway (he thinks the deal’s a no-go, but he figured lookin’ it over was the least he could do for the kid, given one of his potential bosses rolled out of her fuckin’ body halfway through his pitch), so he starts towards the bed, planning on folding in directly beside her, when Elizabeth shakes her head, pushing him gently away.

“No,” she says. “I’m not - - I - - ”

She’s fumbling for the words, and Rio looks at her, taking her in all over again, seeing the uncertainty not the set of her, and so he ignores her, returning her gentle shove with one of his own and lying down in their bed, and he can’t explain it. The feeling in his chest when she casts wide eyes at him.

“What?” he grunts, and she opens her mouth once, twice, says:

“I - - Dean - - ”

Her mouth clamps shut.

She stares at him, and Rio stares back, watching her mandible clench, her lips twitch, her bambi eyes blink. After a moment, she shakes her head, wriggles down in the bed.

“You’ll only have yourself to blame if you get sick.”

Rio snorts.

“Darlin’, we both know I probably already got it.”

She rolls her eyes then, but keeps wriggling down until they’re eye level again, and Rio leans over, just enough to hook a finger beneath her chin, flick it up over the dimple there, and he watches as her tired eyes glaze over or - - maybe not. Maybe they’re just overtaken somehow. By somethin’ that just makes her look at him in a way he still ain’t used to. Naked almost, open and tired and warm.

“Probably,” she agrees quietly, and she turns into him. Rio’s fingers lift from her chin to brush over her wet lips.

“’Sides,” he tells her. “Where else would I wanna sleep?”

Like they don’t have at least five other bedrooms in this house.

Like there ain’t the promise of something warmer, cleaner, fresher, safer somewhere in this house, but he don’t want it.

This is his bed.

She’s his - -

“Fine,” she says, pointedly closing her eyes, and Rio does the same, and maybe he pretends he doesn’t notice the way she shuffles – ever so slightly – closer before they both fall asleep.

It goes something like this:

Rio sneezes.

Rio sneezes and Elizabeth fuckin’ laughs.

#beth x rio #my fic #the center and circumference #beth boland #rio #welcome to my ama #mego42

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lurkerwithcomputer · 3 years

Text

WIP Thursday

Nah, that doesn't roll of the tongue the same, does it? A day late I may be, but here's a WIP that's slowly progressing. Some teenage Kouta/Eri, with LoV !Eri.

The rain pours down, turning the dark night blurry as water runs down the window. He can kinda appreciate how the city looks, beyond his window, like one of those moody urban paintings Aunt Shino is probably tired of him putting up in his room. She's one to talk, with the traditional-style paintings of mountains and forests on every surface.

There's a knock on his window and the creak of the outside air duct. He looks over to see a very familiar face looking back. White hair glistens from the inside of her dripping hood. Her jacket might be water-resistant, but it's not a raincoat. It's not meant for what's coming down, but at least it isn't cold outside.

He hops to his feet and yanks the window open.

Fuck, I'm glad Aunt Shino's not home tonight.

"Eri? Holy shit, come in, you're soaked! Just hold on..."

He reaches out with his Quirk, to grasp the water that's dripping off her before it can get all over his floor. Controlling water is trickier than just spraying water with his Quirk, especially when he has to pull it out of fabric, but it doesn't take him that long to have a blob of water suspended between his hands. It floats in the air, jiggling like a dirty gray amoeba of rainwater and gunk. He shoves it out the window, in the same motion as he slams it shut. Free of his control, the water blob drops out of sight.

"Motherfucker!"

Eri looks up, smirking, from wiping her feet with a rag - he keeps them in his room and says it's for wiping junk food off his fingers, which isn't a lie. Technically.

The muffled, snarling yell from below, in the alley under his window, is vaguely familiar. Kouta's heard that voice somewhere before, but his recognition runs dry tonight. Eri's slightly cracked giggling tilts him over, from trying to place the voice to laughing until he can't breathe. Although, he does feel a little bad for whoever just got soaked.

"Oh shit, Dabi's gonna bitch about that for days!" she wheezes.

His laughter stops cold, along with his blood in his veins. Eri seems unconcerned by this piece of information, still giggling.

"Dabi? That Dabi? Did I just fuck up real bad?"

"Relax, Kouta, he's not gonna do anything except be saltier than usual."

He's not entirely reassured, but he'll take Eri's word for it. She shrugs out of her Quirk-dried jacket and Kouta feels a whole new wave of concern wash over him. Her forearms are viciously scabby, scratched to hell like she's shoved her arms into a blender made of fingernails. Her own fingernails, to be precise. Her permanent eyebags have gone deep enough to hide a body or two in them. He knows what she looks like when she's stressed out.

Yeah, she needs this. Those meat-grinder arms don't lie.

"What do you wanna do?"

"Watch something mindless, eat junk food... and sit really close to you. It's that kinda night and that kinda week."

After getting hot pockets, a big bowl of chips, some peach soda, and plugging his laptop into his big screen, this is honestly shaping up to be pretty relaxing. They sit on his bed with a heap of pillows behind them. The crumbs they're gonna get on his blankets are Future Kouta's problem. He leans back against her, because even though he's filled out and grown some muscle, she's grown taller instead. She wraps her arms around his ribs and rests her chin on his shoulder. He swears that a darkly metallic tang rises off her ragged forearms.

His brain chooses that moment to change his attention from the re-runs of an old knife-making show to being very aware of Eri. The way he can feel her body heat through her worn-thin T-shirt. The way she's soft against his back, despite how lean she looks. He's a teenager and he likes her. Yes, that kind of likes her. Sue him.

She brings one hand up to play with his hair.

And her hands are nice. Even if most people's definition of "nice hands" doesn't include scars and callouses, mine does.

Her hand in his hair brings her forearm right up next to his face. Where he can see her scars in too-close detail, old ghost-pale needle marks and methodical, even cut lines. Where he can feel the roughness of her raw, fresh scabbing, and the metallic scent of her self-injuries seeps into his nose. This close he can see something else, beneath more layers of old scars than someone their age should have. Etched on her skin like a fingerprint are pearly, geometric swirls, like Damascus steel, like a pattern-weld.

He shakes off the rather disturbing concept of pattern-welded skin as her other hand joins the first in his hair.

As her touch on his scalp grows firmer he melts into her, and she in turn melts into the pile of pillows, until both of them are far enough back to be staring at the ceiling instead of the screen. He's too deep in the sensations of being close to her to register the sound of the show as anything more than background noise. Her breathing, soft and steady, and slowing as she relaxes too. Her warmth, soaking into him through worn-out fabric. The rub and scratch of her fingers on his scalp, soothing him, melting him further. Her scent, vanilla and lime shampoo, and the dried blood from her arms.

He wonders, distantly, if not being bothered by that particular scent says something about him.

There's an impulse that's been building up while her arm has been right next to his face, next to his lips. It's grown like drops feed into trickles, give rise to rivers, come spilling forth as waterfalls.

He presses a kiss to her pale, scarred and scabby skin, on the underside of her arm. It gives him warm tingles, even as it stains his lips with the taste of stale, sour salt and iron. Above and over his shoulder, there's an inquisitive hum, and her quiet, low, raspy voice. An odd voice for a teenage girl, but it's easy on his ears, like the sound of surf on sand.

"Hmmm. Hey, do that again," she says, soft but eager in a way that's hard to place.

He does, again and again, and the slow-drip buildup of salted rust in his mouth is surprisingly heady, when mixed with the slow scratch of her fingers on his scalp. It's only when he loses track of how many kisses he's left, that he realizes he's tracing the lines of her scars and scabs, rubbery and rough on his lips. Eri's breath ghosts over his neck as she hums again, deeper, from her chest.

Dry, chapped skin presses against the spot where his neck meets his shoulder. He can feel her lips curl up into a smile.

There's a sudden warm pinch.

He flinches and shivers, but not in a bad way - his face heats up and his pulse quickens.

"Um. Did you just bite me?"

"Was it bad?"

"It wasn't bad. Just... a surprise. But I think I like it," Kouta replies, and if his face didn't feel too warm before, it does now.

Eri gives that raspy giggle he's grown to like so much, the one that flows over his ears like the swish of waves. Her lips brush the back of his shoulder again, and one hand leaves his hair to pull the neck of his t-shirt aside. He can't help but lean into the sensations - the texture of her scarred, calloused fingers, the scrape of her teeth, her chapped lips, the warmth of her mouth on him.

He works his way up her arm, trailing kisses, until he has to shift position. It pulls Eri's mouth away from the back of his neck, where he's sure there will be plenty of incriminating hickeys, and a few bite marks, later.

He rolls over to face her, eye to eye. She wordlessly leans back into the side of his neck, chapped lips meeting skin, fingers tangling in his hair again. He follows suit, and her neck goes from cool and damp with residual rainwater, to warm and damp with a hint of her sweat, and probably his saliva, given the hickeys he's leaving.

"Mmmmm... this is much better than stewing," she mumbles from just below his ear.

That takes him out of things just a little, but... but it's probably good that she seems ready to spill whatever's stressing her out.

He sucks one last mark, in the middle of her throat, right above her collarbones, and then rolls off her. He looks her in the eye, briefly, and something flows between them, even if neither knows what.

"Wanna talk about it?"

"I... well. Yeah. It's really Not Okay. I'm Not Okay over it."

Eri sucks in a breath.

"Kouta, they," she swallows audibly and her eyes turn wet, "The HPSC is trying to pressure the government to turn off power and water in neighborhoods that refuse their authority."

His blood flows like ice water in his veins, even as aimless fury boils in his chest. No, not aimless - but where is he gonna point it when society itself is what he's angry at?

Too big of a target. Like I'm trying to defeat an elephant with a sharpened popsicle stick.

He knew something was up - Aunt Shino has been making some dark expressions when she thinks she's alone, and when she got drunk last week she ranted a lot about the HPSC being "disgraceful bastards" without actually saying much about what's going on.

Now that he knows what the problem is, Kouta's pretty sure his choice of words is closer to "Extremely Fucked Up".

His more immediate problem is that he's got no idea what the fuck to say to Eri right now. Comfort has never been his strong suit, for all his experience with being scared and hurt, angry and alone. What he does understand is feeling the need to immediately do something about it.

Eri answers this question for him.

"That's not the really fucked up part," she says, and even though her voice is quiet he can hear her seethe, "it's that they've already started doing it."

"I don't know what to say to that," he says, because he might as well be honest, "That it's horrible, they shouldn't be doing this, I hope it makes human rights people step up their game, that it makes me despise society even more..."

A thought that's been bubbling up slowly, the more he's gotten to know her, washes over him now.

"I guess I get where villains are coming from. The ones who look at society and want to burn it all down, I mean," he says.

Eri stares at him, her eyebags made more prominent by how her blood-red eyes widen.

#lurker writes #WIP #LoV Eri #eri #izumi kouta

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izaswritings · 4 years

Text

all that’s left in the world | chapter seven

Title: all that’s left in the world—

Synopsis: —is me.

Neku’s been shot and Shibuya is threatening to go the same way as Shinjuku, but just because the first Game is over doesn’t mean they’ve forgotten how to play.

Or: Neku deals with a nightmare city and his most annoying (and mathematical) partner yet; Shiki and Joshua commit an escalating number of illegal moves, Beat and Eri hunt down a stray Reaper, and Rhyme watches and waits for the counter-attack. Shibuya refuses to go down easy.

Fandom: The World Ends With You | TWEWY

Warnings: cursing, referenced character death via Neku’s situation/Reaper’s game, implied death/erasure via Inversion, and mentions of blood and bodily harm, though nothing graphic. If there’s anything in the chapter you feel I missed, let me know and I’ll add it on here!

AO3 Link is here!

Previous chapters are here!

part seven: pact

The sun sets.

Neku stands at the end of the street and watches, narrow-eyed, as the distant blur of light sinks below the jagged edge of the ruined city skyline. It doesn’t look quite right—because of course it doesn’t, this is a nightmare city and everything about it feels designed to be as uncanny valley as possible. He’s pretty sure it’s a sunset, though. The sky has stained a bloody red; the shadows are stretching long and thin by his feet. The cloud of dust and smog lingering in the air like a false fog has turned red too— the whole world cast in some awful, ugly light.

They’re on the edge of the city, in a residential area. The fruition of a full day of travelling through these ruined streets. It only took a couple of hours, but they’ve finally hit the end of it, the border of this twisted Game. They can’t go any further beyond this point.

There’s definitely a wall— Neku checked, and his hand still smarts from the burn—but like everything else, it’s not something he’s familiar with. The walls in the first Reaper’s Game had been clear and crystalline; this one is like blurry glass. If he squints, he can almost see through it: the suggestion of buildings, people and places alive and whole… but the way is smeared with an ashy fog. It’s as if this city has been surrounded by a great wall of mist, cutting them off from the rest of the world.

There’s no getting through that thing, Neku thinks. Not without a high level keypin, and even then, he’s not sure even that could break it. There’s something very final about this wall. Escape isn’t an option.

Argh, he can’t even figure out where they are. Those distant buildings could be Shibuya or even the other half of Tokyo, and hey! Neku wouldn’t have a damn clue. It’s not like this place has been any help. Any identifying buildings have been dusted; Neku is totally lost.

Either way, the wall isn’t coming down anytime soon. It’s useless to stay here any longer, but…

Neku grimaces, and shoves a hand back through his hair, eyeing his new partner warily. Minamimoto doesn’t seem keen on leaving; he isn’t paying any attention to Neku at all, focus entirely caught on… something.

It’s probably a tower of trash. It looks like one of his towers of trash? When they’d arrived here only twenty minutes ago, there’d been some hollow shells of cars, and weird debris littered on the ground, and the Grim Heaper had taken one look at it and grinned like a shark. Then he’d started stacking it. Neku is kind of, a little, annoyed at that. He’s also not planning on complaining. Finally, a moment to breathe.

The tower taking shape behind him, Neku watches the blood-stained air for a few minutes more, then sighs and turns away.

“We’re not blacking out,” he says, aloud. “I think we’re here for the night.” Which, go figure. The one thing that might be nice about the Game—skipping the inconveniences of shelter in an apocalyptic city—is the one thing he’s not getting. “Hey, are you listening? We should probably find somewhere to lay low.”

Minamimoto doesn’t answer. He seems intent on the tower. Neku shakes his head and moves away from the wall. Whatever. He’ll find a place himself. It’s not like they’re going to be able to go far. The sun’s setting, so… he has maybe twenty minutes before it goes totally dark.

Neku heads for one of the buildings. Sure, it’s an empty shell and looks like it might topple at a stiff breeze, but it hasn’t fallen yet all day, right? So if they’re careful, and don’t get ambushed by Noise while inside…

It’s probably fine.

It takes him a couple tries to find a room untouched. Neku gets lucky on floor number two—it used to be an apartment, probably, a small one-room place with a skeleton kitchen, whited out and hollowed and scraped clean. But there’s a bleached futon in the corner and an ashy rug on the floor and hey, it’s better than nothing, right?

He pries open the dusty window and leans out. The tower is almost completed—he’s guessing, but he’s seen enough of them to tell. “Hey,” he says.

A long pause. Minamimoto doesn’t look like he’s listening, and Neku nearly closes the window on him—let him sleep wherever then, like Neku gives a damn—but at the last moment he looks up, and his brow briefly furrows. “What, yoctogram?”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to travel when it gets dark.” Cloud cover means no moon or stars; ruined city means no streetlamps… it’d be like the A-East mission from hell. Neku isn’t dealing with that shit, thanks. “The room has a rug. You can use it if you want.” Because hell yes is Neku taking that futon.

Minamimoto snorts and turns away, back to fussing with the trash. Neku hisses through his teeth, and slams the window shut. Whatever. He threw the dang olive branch; Neku’s work here is done. He’s tired. It’s been a long day, and all he wants to do is sleep.

He misses Shibuya.

He flops down on the futon and closes his eyes, and tries not to think of Shiki, or Beat, or even Joshua. He tries not to imagine what it would be like to be playing this Game with them, instead. What they would do. What they are doing now.

Shiki, he thinks—Shiki would hate this place. So devoid of color, and life, and just… anything Shiki’s ever loved. She’d despise it. Joshua too, he supposes. The lack of individuality—the lack of Music… they’re similar, in that way. It’s a weird thought, but it settles like a true thing: Joshua and Shiki would hate this place for the same reasons.

Beat… Beat wouldn’t have an opinion. He’d accept it, he’d move on, he’d adapt. He would want to keep searching after dark, maybe. He’d throw up a fist and declare there’s nothing that can stop them, not even the night. Neku would have to convince him otherwise.

He smiles at the thought. But it aches, too, somewhere deep in his chest. Neku squeezes his eyes shut. Stupid. And here I was, saying I wasn’t going to think about it.

They’ll be okay. Beat has Rhyme, and vice versa; they’re probably fine. Shiki has Eri. Joshua… well. Joshua.

Neku will be okay too. He doesn’t want to do this alone, but he can.

He can.

There’s a creak on the staircase; Neku opens his eyes and reaches for his pins, eyeing the door warily. It feels almost surreal to see Minamimoto walk in. Taboo-ified Reaper, grinning like a ghoul, slick backed wild hair and dust on his clothes, entering an apartment. It doesn’t fit his image. He doesn’t seem like the kind of person to use a door.

Minamimoto clicks his tongue when he sees the room, but all he says is, “Not bad, for a baseless binomial,” and then head for the far wall.

“You’re welcome,” Neku replies, sarcastic, and closes his eyes again, this time against the headache pounding behind his temple.

He hears Minamimoto settle by the wall, yawning loudly. There’s a beat of silence. Neku opens his eyes. “…Did you see anything past the wall?”

A scoff. “No.”

Yeah, he’d figured not. Worth a shot though. Neku rolls to his back and tucks his hands under his neck, staring up at the ceiling. “We’re not getting out,” he mutters, resigned. “We’ll have to… figure out what we can do here, I guess.”

Another bored noise. No response.

“Any suggestions?” Neku says, pointedly.

“You are zetta talkative today,” Minamimoto suggests back.

“I like having an idea of where to go.” And he’s partners with this guy whether he wants it or not. He doesn’t like it. He’s not sure he’ll ever like it. But Neku can at least make the effort.

“Tch, garbage,” Minamimoto says, sounding vaguely amused. “There’s no guidelines to this problem, Player. Different parameters. Different rules. Adjust or get deleted.”

“What are you—”

“Some numbers seem set on certain equations,” Minamimoto says, like it’s an insult. “Just because you miss the old Game doesn’t mean we can’t configure this one. You’ve got to conform to the equation, constant! Can’t force a formula that doesn’t make sense.”

Neku stills, feeling struck. “That’s— that’s not—” He sits up fast, fingers curling. His teeth grit. That’s not true. It’s not. Neku doesn’t belong in the Game, and he’s not having trouble adjusting, and he doesn’t miss it, he’s just—

But his mind is stuck on it—that moment fighting the Noise, the power singing through him, and Neku bites hard on the inside of his cheek and glares daggers at the walls.

“I am adjusting,” he says tightly. “If you would just—” No, no, that won’t work. They’ve already been through this. Neku takes another breath, and switches tracks. “Hey.”

A loud sigh. “What?”

“That thing you mentioned earlier, with— that guy.” Neku stares at the wall. “What’s Inversion?”

“Do the math.”

Asshole. “Look, I just want to know what’s going on.”

“It’s easy addition,” Minamimoto says, sort of scornfully. “Look around, yoctogram! The proof is all around you. The frequencies have been made null; it’s all broken equations now. That’s Inversion. When the math holding everything together breaks down.”

Neku frowns, trying to piece it together. “So the UG and RG…”

“It’s all fallen to zero. Ugh! Useless radian. 2 + 2 = 4. So zetta simple.”

Neku resists the urge to roll his eyes. He got an answer, at least. That’s something, isn’t it? It’s definitely more than he got earlier, even if it still doesn’t make complete sense to him.

My standards are dropping to the negatives, Neku thinks to himself, and then is a little horrified at his own almost-math joke. Cool, erasing that from his memory forever.

Still, if he’s understanding Minamimoto right, then… what, all the planes, UG and RG both, have just— crashed down on top of each other? That’s…

Neku leans back against the wall, hushed. His fingers curl into his arm. “This doesn’t make any sense,” he says quietly, half to himself. “How did this happen? This place…”

“Shinjuku.”

“What?” He turns around. “How the hell do you know that?”

Minamimoto scoffs at him. “More easy math. Didn’t you see the Gov building?”

“Wha—everything here is destroyed,” Neku snaps back, but his mind is whirling. Shinjuku. Damn it all, that fits too. Somewhere outside of Shibuya, where Coco was trying to lead them to… “Wait a minute. Shinjuku was fine this morning!”

Minamimoto yawns, looking bored again. “That was this morning.”

So, what—it just became a wasteland today? Neku leans back, stunned. Holy shit. Even Shades’ attempt at mind-controlling Shibuya had taken at least three weeks to set in. This is… he can hardly grasp it.

“How did this happen?” he says, honestly horrified now, and this time the silence stretches long. Neku looks over. He half expects Minamimoto to be asleep, but in the very last echoes of light Neku can see his eyes, staring out the window. Minamimoto is frowning. That sharp smile is nowhere in sight. And there is a furrow between his brows that seems, for a moment, almost troubled.

Neku waits. At last, Minamimoto looks away from the window, and stares down at the floor. He doesn’t meet Neku’s eyes.

“I don’t know.”

He sure doesn’t sound happy to admit it, either. Neku looks away, and leans back against the futon, quiet once more.

“…Hey, binomial. Speaking of half-finished equations.”

Neku stares at the ceiling, and then turns his head, eyeing Minamimoto warily. “…What?”

“You keep losing track of the numbers,” Minamimoto says, and his eyes glint. “Zetta often, too.”

Neku considers him, parsing through that—realizes what he means, and stills, shoulders stiffening. The visions. The voice echoing through his head. He’d known Minamimoto had noticed, but…

“Didn’t think you gave a digit,” Neku says finally, dryly, and Minamimoto actually laughs, a sharp and bright sound that echoes a little in the empty air. It seems bizarrely genuine.

“I zetta don’t,” he says, grinning outright now. “But I despise working with incorrect formulas.” His smile widens. “Spell it out.”

Neku rolls his eyes, a second away from turning around and ignoring him outright, but just as he is opening his mouth to tell Minamimoto to shove it, common sense and memory rears its head. The echo of another partnership, weeks ago, the memories Neku didn’t have and how he kept quiet, kept it silent, all the way to the end of Day Two. How different things might have gone, if he’d just trusted Shiki sooner.

Neku closes his mouth. He makes a face. He thinks of Shiki, and sighs, and sits up properly on the futon, resting his elbow on his knee. “It’s…” He doesn’t even know where to begin. It feels ridiculous, to think this all started only a day ago. “There’s this voice… this girl, I think. I can hear her sometimes.”

Minamimoto looks blank. “Well,” he says. “That’s zetta fucking useless.”

Neku scowls at him. “I don’t mean… ugh, I don’t even know what you think I mean. But it’s not that. It’s like… she’s right there with me. I’ve never met her. I don’t know her—” He thinks of that flicker of a person, Shiki’s stitched pig in her hands, and swallows. “At least, I don’t think I do? But I can hear her, sometimes. As if she’s far away, and right there with me, all at the same time.”

Minamimoto seems bored, already distracted; Neku ignores him, lost in thought now. The more he speaks of it, the stranger it seems. “I think she’s from here. Maybe. She talks about… being lonely. And emptiness.” He feels a little ill. Static crackles in his ears like a scream. “She seems… really afraid.”

Whispers echo in his head. Neku looks down at his hands, and admits, “She hates the silence most of all.”

Minamimoto stills a little, at that. He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, and in the end he looks away, his eyes dark. They sit there together in the quiet. Neku keeps his eyes on his hands. Minamimoto stares out the window again, gaze distant, as if looking at nothing at all.

At last, he says, almost muttering it: “A null set of numbers. Absolute zero.”

Neku is too tired to think it through. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Minamimoto grimaces. He tears his eyes away from the window, and tilts back his head, looking up at the ceiling, avoiding Neku’s gaze. “…It zetta sucks.”

Neku pauses. Somehow it has never occurred to him that Minamimoto might miss the music of the city too; that this unnatural silence would unnerve him, or ache in him as it does with Neku. He turns his eyes away. He feels, for once, more tired than annoyed.

“Yeah,” Neku agrees, quietly. The silence. The twisted streets. The echo, her voice still resounding in his head— please, please, help me. It’s too much. It’s too quiet.

Absolute zero.

“It really does,” Neku says, and closes his eyes.

“I can’t believe you wanted to keep exploring in the dark!”

It’s long past evening, the sun set and the red faded from the horizon, and this isn’t the first time Eri has said this. Crouched down in a corner of their little shelter, the flashlight glow casting twisting shadows over everything, Beat sighs heavily and kicks hard at his skateboard, rolling it across the floor.

It’s not a big shelter; his board hits the wall and bounces back, and he catches it under his foot, rolling it beneath his heel. Then he kicks it towards the wall again, because damn, what else is he supposed to do?

“I still think we shoulda gone,” he mutters, glum. “We’re wastin’ daylight!”

“It’s pitch dark,” Eri hisses back, sounding exasperated.

“We’ve got a light.”

“One dumb flashlight against the city of dark and doom,” Eri mutters, and sinks against the wall. “No. No. I am not going out—there—when those things are—”

She fumbles, inhaling sharply, fingers clenched to fists by her sides. Beat winces at the memory—man, the lungs on her. His ears are still ringing. Though he can’t really blame her. First time Beat saw the Noise, he just about jumped out of his skin.

“Psh,” Beat says now, and waves it off. “The Noise won’t hurt us. We have those pins, remember?”

Eri thins her lips, looking about ready to argue—then slumps. “I still don’t get how that works,” she mutters, and Beat shrugs. He’s not going to be the one to explain it. “Well, still. It’s not a good idea.”

Beat grimaces, but lays off, kicking at the skateboard again. It grates at him, but hey, it’s Eri’s choice. She’s the one really panicking here, especially with Shiki… well.

And while it gnaws at him, while sitting still and waiting a whole eight hours for sunrise itches under his skin, deep down Beat has to admit she’s right. Neku would say the same, probably. What are you doing? Come on, use your head. Beat can almost hear him. It sort of aches.

So he doesn’t say anything. It’s not all bad, either; they’ve got this neatass little shelter in some empty hollow of a café stand, which, score! But it grates, even so. Man, they’ve barely even started! It took longer than Beat would have liked to get to Shinjuku by foot—unavoidable, given no trains were going through there anymore, some freaky UG power thing—and by the time they’d arrived, they’d only had about an hour before the sun started going down and Eri panicked.

At least they didn’t leave. Eri was thinking it; man, Beat could just see those wheels in her head turning. But she hadn’t said it, and he’s grateful for it. His parents will worry— are worrying, probably—but if Beat doesn’t answer his phone its for good reason, and he’ll apologize later. He just… he doesn’t want to leave. It took them this long just to get here, and… well, spending the night in a ruin isn’t the best thing ever. But it would be worse, Beat thinks, to leave.

They’ve made it. They’re here. Now Beat just has to wait until the sun comes up, and then…

Soon, Phones. Shiki. We’re on our way.

Still. He feels jittery. His limbs are all wound tight with a phantom pain; Beat grimaces, and digs his palm into his thigh, rubbing above his knee. Aw, hell. He should have guessed this would happen. It’s been happening on and off ever since the car accident-that-never-was, and it’s been building to a bad day for a while now, too. Of course its kicking his ass the moment he stops moving.

He leans against the wall, sighing, still rubbing at his leg. It’s seized up something terrible, stabbing pain like his bones are breaking, but with luck it’ll have eased off by morning.

Well, Beat thinks. Maybe it will. This shelter isn’t all that comfortable, and they’re going to wake up with a lot of aches tomorrow. Shit, he might even feel worse. But then, that’s okay. Hell, compared to his situation in the final week, this is downright cozy. What’s he got to worry about this week, besides the phantom aches? Threat of being eaten by Noise? Psh, done that. Beat’s chilling.

No more time limit on his life; Hanekoma promised to help look after Rhyme; and Beat isn’t even facing this dark alone. Eri’s here! Which, granted, he doesn’t know her all that well (or, uh, at all), and the girl doesn’t seem too fond of their group anyhow… but that’s fine too. It’s nice just having company.

Eri doesn’t look like she’s really appreciating it though. This whole time she’s been as jittery as Beat feels, pacing and sitting down and standing soon after. She taps her foot like she’s itching under her skin. Her hands fiddle with her skirt and her hat. More recently she’s started messing with the brass knuckles sitting heavy on her hand; she slides it off, slides it on, makes a fist and then repeats. Beat’s getting tired just watching her.

He considers her, and kicks his board again; this time when it rolls back he keeps it still under his heel. Eri doesn’t even notice. Her eyes are glazed, off in her own world. She’s gnawing her lip to shreds.

“Shiki’ll be okay, yo,” Beat says, out of nowhere, taking a shot in the dark. Eri jolts and then stills. “She’s badass, you know? Whatever plan she’s got, it’s probably a good one.”

“Badass,” Eri mutters, and then sighs, shoulders falling. She sits against the wall, drawing up her legs. The flashlight casts odd shadows; a quiet circle of yellow light on the ceiling and a soft glow all around them, barely reaching into the corner of the room. When Eri bows her head, it makes it hard to see her eyes. “How do you know?”

“Huh? Well, uh…”

“I’ve been meaning to ask. The Game, the Reapers, the… everything. All of it. You and—that coffee guy, I got the gist of that, I think, but…” Her hands tighten on her knees. “How did you meet Shiki? Really meet her, I mean. Not that stupid lie she probably told me.”

Beat scratches his head. “Er, that’s… uh, Shiki’ll probably wanna—”

“Shiki’s not answering her phone,” Eri says, a little coolly. Beat winces. Her fingers are white-knuckled around her knees. “I—look, I just—I just—”

There’s something about the look on her face that makes Beat look away. He makes a face at the wall and then sighs, pushing his beanie up away from his eyes. “Sure, yo,” he says quietly. “I can tell you. But it’s not— It’s…” He sighs. “It’s real complicated, yo.”

Eri doesn’t move. Beat shrugs, and goes back to kneading at his tense leg. “I met Shiki same time I met Phones,” he says. He’s unsure of how to say it—even more unsure of how to break the news gently—so he goes all in. “First week of the Game, about… man, I dunno. Two months ago, maybe? It’s been awhile, yo, my memory isn’t that good.”

Eri swallows. “I knew it,” she mutters. “She was—she was in the Game?”

“…Yeah.”

“She didn’t tell me,” Eri murmurs, quieter now. Beat shifts, uncomfortable, and winces when his leg jars; he gets the feeling Eri’s not really talking to him at all. “That w-whole month, I remember, she was avoiding me, she never answered… why didn’t she tell me? If she called—I could have—”

“Our phones didn’t work,” Beat explains, eager to help, but then he pauses. There’s something in Eri’s words that strike him as off, but he can’t pinpoint it, and something about Eri’s expression makes him wary of pushing. It’s probably fine, anyway. “And Shiki…”

He cuts himself off. “…Never mind.” That’s not his story to tell, and… Beat is pretty sure that’s one thing Shiki never wants Eri to know. Entry fees have always sucked ass, but Shiki’s especially…

“I always thought it was weird.” Eri’s voice is quiet, a little bitter; Beat blinks at her, feeling strangely out of his depth. “You guys just came out of the blue, and all her stories of how you guys met in class, it didn’t… and Neku, especially, it was like—” She stops again. Her head lowers.

“Oh, yeah.” Beat tilts his head back. “Phones and Shiki were partners.”

Eri looks up. “Um…” Pause. “I don’t really know what that means.”

“Oh, uh… like…” Beat gestures. “Like me and Phones, or even me and Rhyme, y’know? You’ve gotta trust your partner! With the fighting, and with the talking, worries and everything. Sharing the burden and stuff. It’s like a, a…” There’s a word for it, he knows—p-something—but the details are escaping him. “A promise! Yeah, like that.”

Eri presses her lips. “A promise.”

“Exactly!”

“…I don’t really get it, but okay.” She looks away, towards the darkened window, and a strange smile pulls at her lips. “Haha. This is, like, so weird. You know? Everything about this really is…” Her lips press. She ducks her head down behind her knees.

Beat looks away too. The flashlight flicker, the quiet roll of the skateboard wheels over the ground; the silence, deafening, right outside the walls. He closes his eyes and thinks about Rhyme, where they are or how they’re doing; tries even harder not to think about Phones. Sees the blood behind his eyelids. Hears the bang like an echo, ringing in his ears like the shriek of tires against the road, the dull thud before the end.

And all he says is, “We’ll find ‘em.”

Eri lifts her head. “Yeah,” she says. Her voice is hoarse. “We will.”

Sitting at the booth of what was probably a restaurant, once, before the Inversion, Shiki looks outside the windows and exhales, her breath fogging the glass. “Wow,” she says. “It’s gotten really dark.”

The restaurant is a small, ruined place; empty booths and empty shelves and windows blank and sheer. It’s creepy in the same way the whole city is, except maybe worse, because there’s enough definition left to recognize it as a restaurant—and so much missing it’s impossible not to notice how it’s been changed. At least the booth seats are soft.

It’s like living an apocalypse novel, Shiki thinks, and scrunches her face at the table. On the one minor bright side, at least she doesn’t need to eat? Though she’s not sure how that works, either. She’s still alive, just in the Game, so…

It’s too late at night to think about that, so instead Shiki closes her eyes and rests her head back against the seat. It really is dark. The only light is this strange, ghostly kind of glowing sphere Joshua summoned and then threw up above them maybe two hours ago; it’s as dim as a nightlight, and flickers like it has bad connection. It helps, a little, but… Shiki’s never liked nighttime, and here, with no moon or stars or anything, it’s almost worse.

Joshua is seated across from her, his hand resting on his cheek and one finger drawing patterns in the dust on the windows. Where Shiki watches the light, he turns and smiles at the shadows. “Surprising, isn’t it?” he says to her, almost light. “No end to the days at all. A full twenty-four hours… this Game really is something new.”

Shiki presses her lips, ill at ease with it. She fiddles with the end of her skirt, the soft fabric woven tight and warm, the cloth soothing beneath her restless fingertips. “I don’t get it,” she admits, and smooths her skirt flat, a nervous habit. “Why the long days? This doesn’t feel like the Game at all.”

“Hm. Who knows?” Joshua tilts his head. In the reflection of the glass, his eyes seem blurry and dim. “To disorient us? To tire us? Sleeping in a ruined city really will do murder on your back.” He snickers, then, as if he’s said something funny. Shiki frowns a little. “Awful, don’t you think? For former Players especially. All that time, waiting for the next day to begin… waiting for the blackout…”

“Oh.” Shiki’s fingers curl. “So this, too…”

“No missions,” Joshua murmurs. “No Reapers. No walls. Just… waiting. Until the end.”

There is something terribly cruel about it that Shiki doesn’t know how to put into words. She shivers, and says nothing.

“Yes,” Joshua replies, as if she’s spoken. “My thoughts exactly.” He sighs and leans back against his seat. “Either way, it’s working. Even I don’t really know what to expect from all this.” His eyes narrow, a little. He drags his finger through the dust on the window, a bold and stark line across the glass. “It’s getting a bit annoying.”

Shiki bites the inside of her cheek and looks away, picking up Mr. Mew just to have something in her hands. She smooths her fingers down his stitching and wishes for better thread. She has her needle, spare strands—of course she does, she always does—but for Mr. Mew, she needs better. It’s why she’s fighting with her clothes in the first place.

Still. Her fingers itch to fix something.

Joshua giggles. Shiki looks up, startled. He’s smiling at her again, small and smirking. “Bored?”

“N-no…” Bored, in a place like this? Discouraged, more like. She can’t understand how he can sit there, laughing like nothing is wrong; it’s like the whole awful situation has barely touched him at all. “Aren’t you worried?”

He tilts his head, looking bemused. “Who, me?”

“I mean…” She stops herself, and sighs. Even if he was worried, would he tell her? She doesn’t know him, and he doesn’t know her, either, even if he acts like he does. And given that she’d snapped at him only a few hours ago… “Never mind.” She frowns down at Mr. Mew. “You aren’t the easiest person to talk to, are you?”

“You’re just full of insults, aren’t you,” Joshua replies. “Apologies if I’ve been too preoccupied to chatter with you, Shiki. You need only give the word.”

Ugh, he did that on purpose. She fumbles. “No, that’s not what I…”

He’s smiling again. Shiki bites her lip and takes a deep breath. She is not going to hit him. She refuses to let him win, damn it all. “I’m sorry. That was rude. And I’m sorry for… well, I mean, I’m not sorry for what I said this afternoon, because I meant it—”

His smile has dropped, and Shiki rushes on before he can comment. “But I don’t want to fight! And I—I really don’t think you’re a bad person. I want to work together with you.” She offers a weak smile. Oh, she’s so bad at this. “So I guess, um, truce? Allies?”

He doesn’t move. Shiki looks down at Mr. Mew. “I just… can’t you be just a little nicer? I shouldn’t have insulted you, but… you say things sometimes. We’re partners, though. And if we’re here for all seven days…”

A pause. He’s quiet, just watching her, and Shiki falters again— and then firms. Her back straightens. She holds out her hand to him. “Please,” she says, quietly. “For Neku?”

There is a long stretch of silence. Joshua’s expression is a strange one; he leans back against the booth and crosses his arms, looking vaguely bothered. He turns away, frowns at the window, and then sighs heavily, as if put upon. “Oh, all right,” he mutters, and then turns to her. “Allies, was it?” He blows a strand of hair away from his eyes, and brushes it back behind his ear irritably. Then he reaches out and takes her hand. His palm is cold and dry.

Shiki pauses, startled. She hadn’t really thought he would… but he had, and for that she offers him a smile. “Oh! Um. Good.”

She takes her hand back, and then claps. Well, that was awkward. Time for a change in subject. “So! Okay. I’ve been thinking. We need to find Shinjuku’s… ‘place,’ right? What about the Tokyo Met building?”

“Wow. You’re taking this mystery seriously, aren’t you?” Joshua leans back, resting his chin in his hand. That strange melancholy is gone as if it had never been; now he just seems amused, edging into thoughtful. “Mm, maybe. They don’t tend to be in very obvious areas, though, you realize. Otherwise, Ten-Four would be Shibuya’s.”

“Oh…” Shiki leans back, fiddling with her glasses. “Golden Gai? We are heading in that direction…”

He shrugs. She sighs. This is harder than she thought it would be. How on earth had Neku figured it out last time?

…Oh, right. Joshua.

Shiki slumps in her seat.

“Either way,” Joshua says, after a pause. “We’ll head down the main road tomorrow. I’m interested in that moment of impact, you could say… the Reaper’s Skull in the sky.” He spins a strand of hair around his finger. “Who knows what we’ll find there?”

“Hopefully not a fight,” Shiki murmurs.

“Hmm. That’s a poor attitude. I’m relying on you after all, Miss Shiki.”

She laughs, a little. Miss. She’s never met someone who can be both rude and polite all at once. It’s a bit funny. “I mean… you don’t need to, do you? Aren’t you, like, all powerful or something?”

He giggles. “Well, that’s true. I am pretty powerful. But I don’t like working up a sweat.” Joshua shrugs, hands turning up and open to the air. “Besides, even I have flaws. So do keep up.”

Shiki is well aware of his flaws. The little smile on his face says he knows that, too. But in the spirit of getting along, she humors him. “Really? Like what?”

She means it as a joke, but Joshua hums. “Mm. Well, for one, I can’t jump.”

Shiki blanks for a moment. “Seriously?”

“Mm-hm.”

She considers this. “…Is it because you’re clumsy?”

Joshua blinks. Then he smiles. He turns his face away and hides it behind his hand, but she can see his shoulders shaking. “Wow.”

“What?”

“Just… no one’s ever tried to guess why before.”

Shiki’s getting the hang of this, though. “Or guessed right?” she tries.

He makes a face. But he doesn’t say she’s wrong, and for some reason that makes her laugh—for real, this time. “So that’s it,” she says, hiding her smile behind her hand. “You’re clumsy?”

“I don’t really think you’re one to talk.”

“I’m not! I just…” Her smile fades a little. She studies the table. “It’s funny. I feel like I know you a little better now.”

“Because you know I’m prone to tripping?” Joshua sounds bemused. “All right then.”

Because beyond just being Composer and all-powerful and Neku’s old partner, Joshua is becoming someone real to her. He is a boy who laughs a lot but rarely genuinely, who doesn’t give straight answers—who is snobby, and self-absorbed, and smug. Who has clever insights. Who likes mysteries. Who can’t jump.

She’s still angry at him. She still doesn’t forgive him. She never will. But Shiki leans back against the booth and thinks of Neku, week one, and finds that maybe she can do this after all. Maybe… maybe it can even be fun.

“Well, if there is a fight, I’ll do my best.” She clenches her fist. “I’ll rip them all to shreds!”

Joshua is grinning, wide and amused. Shiki frowns at him. “What?”

“So bloodthirsty. Where do you get it from?” He tugs at his hair again. He looks on the verge of laughter. “Okay. Have fun, Shiki.”

She pauses. “…You’d be helping too!”

“Well, maybe.”

“No, not maybe…!” Joshua is definitely laughing at her. Shiki crosses her arms. This is like Neku in those first few days all over again, but worse somehow. Joshua is doing this on purpose. “Ugh. Boys.”

“Not quite. But I get your point.” Joshua waves a hand through the air. “I was just joking, dear. Don’t take it so hard.”

But Shiki pauses, her thoughts derailed from the banter. Not quite? “Wait. What do you mean not… Oh!” Her eyes widen. “Are you like me?”

The moment she says it, she flushes, and wishes she could take it back. Oh, shoot, is that a good way to ask? Does he even know Shiki is trans? Wait, Composer. Wait, but maybe—

Joshua blinks at her, and then his grin gentles, something closer to a smile, almost half-way to genuine. “Mm, of sorts.”

And that answers that. “Oh,” she says.

“Yes. Well, not entirely the same experience, however. I don’t have any strong feelings about it one way or another.”

Shiki doesn’t entirely understand what he means—she has always felt strongly on who she is, from youth to now. But she nods anyway. “Ah, okay! But, um…”

She frowns a little, unsure of how to ask this. Joshua’s smile widens. “It doesn’t really matter,” he says, sounding amused. “I use the masculine pronoun because I like how it sounds, is all. It’s just words to me. I don’t connect to one gender or the other—or even neither—in any real regard.” He shrugs. “Don’t worry. You haven’t stepped on any toes.”

“I’m glad.” She draws up her knees. She still isn’t sure if she likes Joshua all that much, but that doesn’t mean she wants to hurt him, even if unintentionally. “I guess we have that in common, huh?”

“The younger Bito sibling, too. Should we make a club?” He leans back, and hides a yawn in his hand. “Anyway. Wherever Shinjuku’s Room of Reckoning might be, it’s a problem for the morning.” He holds out his hand, and that dim nightlight sphere sinks down in the air, resting just above his palm. “Anything else you want to bother me with? Because it’s getting dark, and honestly, I would like to get some sleep.”

“Oh. Oh! Right, sorry.” Shiki turns away, leaning her back against the booth, stretching out her legs. “Um… good night.”

“Wonderful.” Their light flickers and dims; Joshua cups it in his hands and then closes his fist quietly, and darkens it to a glow so soft it barely seems there at all, just enough to keep them out of the gloom.

The silence settles around them, not quite calm, not quite right. Shiki stares at the window, thinking on all that she’s learned, and everything she’s still waiting to discover. The quiet stretches. The darkness remains, eternal. She watches the glass and despite it all, can’t bring herself to close her eyes.

Is Neku out there, too? Is he sleeping in a ruin? Maybe he’s nearby, even. Maybe he’s closer than she knows.

She swallows hard. She hopes he’s doing okay. And oh god, Beat—she hopes he got home, that Rhyme is safe and sound with him. She hopes Eri found him. She hopes Eri isn’t… isn’t too upset with her.

Shiki owes her an explanation, probably. Definitely. She’s trying not to think about it. Where should Shiki even begin? She doesn’t want Eri to know she died. Or—or her entry fee, oh god, no. And everything that happened, Rhyme getting erased and the other Players, and…

It’s just easier, isn’t it? If Eri doesn’t know; if Shiki doesn’t tell her. They can be happy and laugh like nothing has changed, like nothing was ever wrong… and Shiki won’t have to think of that time from before, when she couldn’t meet Eri’s eyes, when she could hardly look at her work without hating how it never seemed to measure up. They’re happier now, aren’t they? Is it selfish to want to keep it that way?

…Probably. If Eri found Beat, then, definitely. Eri knows something is up. Eri knows something is wrong. Shiki is—Shiki is just going to have to deal with that.

Oh, she hates the dark. She always thinks too much, too loud. It’s so quiet that everything else feels like its echoing, and it makes all those little worries rise up louder and louder in the back of her head. Awful.

She takes a breath. She draws up her knees, and wraps her arms around her legs. “…Joshua?”

A pause. She hears him sigh. “Yes, Shiki?”

She keeps her eyes on the window. He sounds so calm, she thinks. So unbothered. It needles at her. “Doesn’t it bother you?”

“This again? Really?”

For some reason that hits her sideways; heat flares up in her gut. Her hands clench, fingers digging into Mr. Mew. “Yes, really,” she says, sharper. “This place, this city, the silence. N-Neku. You keep… doesn’t it bother you at all?”

“Does it matter?” he replies. “Either way—”

“It matters to me.”

Silence.

“Yes, Shiki,” Joshua says, finally, flatly. She can just barely see him, sitting up straight now, the shadow of a frown on his face. “It bothers me. Happy?”

“You don’t have to snap at me.”

“And you don’t have to go starting a conversation every three seconds, and yet. Honestly, Shiki.” He crosses his arms. “You’re awfully chatty. Most people aren’t nearly so talkative with people they dislike, you know.”

“…I wouldn’t usually be.”

“Oh?” He still isn’t smiling. “Am I just special? How flattering.”

“No, it’s not that. I…” She looks away. Her own flare of irritation has died; now she just feels drained, and a little ashamed. He’d said he was tired, and she is bothering him anyway—snapping at him for nothing, almost the same way he snapped at her earlier today. “Sorry.”

“Hm.”

“Really, I am. It’s just… it’s really quiet here.”

“So you decided to yell at me.” He sounds annoyed. “Don’t people usually ignore others when they’re upset? Can we do that?”

For some reason that almost makes her smile. Shiki keeps her eyes on the window. “Funny,” she says quietly. “Sorry. You know, I… I was going to. From the beginning, actually. I thought I would…” She had taken the pact with the thought that she would ignore him, she would avoid him, she would do what was needed and nothing more. But…

She hasn’t really been doing that, has she? Instead she’s been arguing with him, and talking with him, making plans and ideas and getting ridiculously excited over mysteries. She doesn’t even know why. It just sort of happened that way.

And in the end Shiki rests her chin against her knees and says, “It’s just sad, isn’t it?” A beat. “I just get the feeling… that maybe we could have been friends.”

Another pause. Longer, this time. When Joshua finally replies, he no longer sounds irritated; his voice is low and muted. “I don’t see why that matters.”

Maybe it doesn’t. But Shiki looks out the window, quiet and worn and exhausted all at once, and despite it all, realizes she doesn’t feel as alone anymore. That in some strange way, in all the things they share and the ways they clash, Joshua being here with her makes braving this empty city a little easier.

She keeps her eyes on the window. “Joshua?”

He makes an annoyed noise. “What now?”

“…Do you think Neku is okay?”

He hesitates.

Shiki waits, but when he doesn’t answer, she looks back to him. He doesn’t meet her eyes. His head has turned away, back to the window. He is strangely silent.

He’s not smiling anymore. In this moment, Joshua seems tired too. There’s something quiet in him. Something pinched around the eyes.

“Well,” he says, softer than she expected. He taps his finger against the glass. “That is the question, isn’t it?”

It’s not really an answer. But there is understanding in it; the same uncertainty, the fearful wondering. So Shiki nods. She turns away, and says nothing more, and together they watch the midnight streets, waiting for the hour to turn.

And as midnight falls, on the very edge of that hollow city, a girl walks against the wind.

She is alone. She is all on her own. The last one left in all the world. Her eyes are empty and her hands close tight around a memory. She barely seems to move, each step slow and laboring, taking all of her strength. She wanders on into the night. She shivers in the cold. Her lips move soundlessly, as if aching to speak. Waiting to be heard. Waiting to be found.

She keeps walking. Step by careful step. And slowly, surely, the night moves on, and the second day dawns.

#twewy #the world ends with you #neku sakuraba #joshua kiryu #shiki misaki #beat twewy #eri twewy #sho minamimoto #twewy fic #iza fanfic #fic: all that's left in the world

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uozlulu · 5 years

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Not sure how long Viz had this offer up but I’ve got until tomorrow to read all of this for free so here we go~

BnHA/MHA chapters 122 – 162 reaction and spoilers. I also eluded to some Black Clover manga spoilers but I tried to be vague about it. I also mentioned One Piece once but nothing actually spoilers I don't think

I sorted everything by chapter under the read more cut

Chapter 122

This chapter appears to pick up towards the end of season three. Present Mic being hyped to teach the kids still gives me life

If Hound Dog loves soccer does he play it like a guy or like a dog or does it like all depend on his mood?

Chapter 123

Must be awkward knowing you’ve seen your senpai naked on national TV

lol “His [Mirio’s] face is a good one. Easy to draw.”

Chapter 125

I like that Overhaul is kind of a look at what Crazy Diamond could be if it was wielded by a proper villain and not just some chaotic teenager

Chapter 126

Yagi’s got some solid reasons for not being on board with this whole let’s send the sixteen-year-olds to war idea, but it also cracks me up we’re getting peanut gallery commentary from the other teachers in the teachers’ office in the background of the panels.

lol “Three, it’d be awkward for me” but also another solid reason

”..you’ve got to make him smile” “He’s got a lot of respect for humor” something something King Kai

Tickle Hell. Why WHY are you like this, Horokoshi?

Of course Sir Nighteye’s a Capricorn. Of course he is.

Chapter 131

Let’s be perfectly honest here, with Yagi’s body the way it is, an early death is inevitable. The gruesome part though makes me curious how an upcoming event in the manga is going to pass and if maybe that will be when Sir Nighteye’s foresight will come to pass. It would also make sense since the manga feels currently (in the 240’s) like it’s about to shift and evolve as a story, like a potential half way point is looming

Also, this chapter lends insight into why Midoriya is telling us this story as a narrator. Given whatever’s about to happen it makes sense that he would want to lay everything out to the next successor of One for All. It only strengthens my theory that the end of the manga is Midoriya looking at the reader and offering us a chance to become his successor in some manner.

Chapter 132

Tamaki’s quirk is basically you are what you eat. I’m screaming. lol

Chisaki’s plan kind of reminds me how in a way Black Clover and BnHA are tackling some similar questions and themes. There’s a hierarchy that’s existed for generations and there are people who want to upend it. However a key difference is Asta is a driving force for changing the system, which he begins to understand more and more as he goes along, which is I think why we’re starting to see a shift in narrative with the story’s current arc. Meanwhile, Midoriya is trying to preserve the current hierarchy, which while being questioned by the villains, is not really questioned by the heroes (at least not yet). It’s interesting to watch the similarities and differences in Tabata and Horokoshi’s approaches to questioning and challenging concepts like tradition, system, structure, and inequality.

I already know what Eri’s power does and how she’s basically the X-Men mutation cure plot point, so that actually kind of helps here I think. Thank goodness Kirishima’s quirk is basically a defense against needles (that must have been a pain at the doctor’s office for all adults involved as a kid)

Chapter 135

I love Tamaki ngl

Chapter 136

Even though they’re being more blatant in this chapter, I do like that once it’s revealed that Sir Nighteye saw how Yagi will die, it’s part of the motivation for why he does some of what he does like being on the fence at first with Midoriya in terms of acceptance, calling Midoriya’s desire to want to do more for Eri when he met her arrogance, trying to play things as safe as possible, etc…etc… and now he’s reluctant to use his quirk and it all comes back to foreseeing his good friend/mentor/hero’s death even if it’s been six years since

I like that Aizawa is taking the track of basically he knows Midoriya is a hero of a Jump manga so they might as well work together on this because he already knows Midoriya will just run off and try to solve this problem since it’s personal for him. I also kind of hope letting Aizawa help is part of the track the narrative takes because I think actually Midoriya could learn a lot from observing Aisawa up close in a non-school setting about patience, strategy, and timing as well. It might even help Midoriya with his quirk problems.

Chapter 137

Actually enlisting Kirishima, Uraraka, Asui, and Midoriya to help retrieve Eri is probably a good idea considering what the kids were able to do when it was time to rescue Bakugou a while back. While it isn’t ideal asking sixteen-year-olds to take on responsibilities of adults, this is a task this group of kids has shown they are well suited to. Even Asui who was not a direct participant in the rescue but could size up the situation for what it was and make sure the adults knew what was about it happen. Knowing when to go for help is as important as being a helper. The group can benefit from her maturity.

I like that Nejire is using her hair as a scarf

Chapter 138

Gung Ho! Pretty Yure 10! Sure sounds like a play on Futari wa Pretty Cure

Chapter 139

I wonder if Mirio had to get in contact with someone whose quirk increased hair growth so they could get enough hair to make that fabric.

Chapter 141

I can’t wait to see Tamaki’s quirk animated. I want to see this kraken thing in all its glory

I like how in the story about why the underlings joined Hassaikai it continues the theme of how there’s so much wrong with the structure of the world. Like these guys, just like a few others from season three, found themselves sliding down the hierarchy until they were on the streets and at the bottom. Then comes Chisaki who gives them what the hero and common world won’t provide. Of course they will be loyal to him. It also illustrates why Tamaki can’t understand it. It’s not brain washing, Chisaki saved them from the streets in a society that doesn’t care once you hit rock bottom. It reminds me of that guy who could copy himself last season who didn’t realize he was damaging himself mentally in the process until he created an irreversible mental illness. The heroes would want nothing to do with that and so he had no logical place to go but villainy. The way the villains are going about fixing the situation is of course villainous, but I like that the narrative keeps showing us that the villains do have appoint, that their society is indeed broken and in need of some kind of repair. It’ll be interesting to see if the story gets to a point in which the heroes in turn begin to realize this. Or perhaps they won’t be able to realize it until the tables turn since they’re on the top of the hierarchy and don’t really analyze what’s in the shadows. It’s like I was saying a few chapters ago. While Midoriya, like Asta in Black Clover starts out as an outsider who wishes he could be on the inside, Midoriya as he becomes an insider, loses some of that outside perspective while Asta retains it. Even after meeting Endeavor and learning of his hidden villany, Midoriya doesn’t really question if other Endeavors exist in the hero world and the narrative doesn’t really go there either whereas in Black Clover there’s a constant theme of the nobility having a lot of problems and while some are starting to come around, there’s always another asshole to uncover, to challenge. One Piece does this too. There’s the Celestial Dragons and the Marines and once one problematic person gets their just deserts five more show up, but One Piece always tries to kill the evil dream rather than the bad guy for the most part and try to have them learn something if possible, and show that growth and change in society is a multi-level, multi-person effort. Anyway, it’s interesting how these manga all kind of tackle similar things in different ways and this is getting to be too big of a bullet point, but I should expand on this thought sometime properly.

Chapter 142

I think it’s interesting when we run into linguistic nuance in this series. Like for example the yakuza guys from the previous boss’ era clarifying that there are villains that have come into their yakuza group since Chisaki took over and started using the name Overhaul. Even though yakuza do bad things, there’s a distinction, at least to them, between themselves and villains.

Chapter 151

Honestly I would be the threat of STDs and STIs would put Chisaki off sex entirely come to think of it

Chapter 158

The thing is even if you destroy the quirk factor humans will still find yet another hierarchy to create. It’s what we do.

Chapter 159

Then again now that we’ve proven that Sir Nighteye’s quirk can be wrong (which honestly makes sense since the future should be fluid like time) then maybe I was wrong earlier in thinking that Yagi might just die coming up here sooner than later. Though I do know he will eventually die. Because he’s the mentor and because he’s probably like 50 years old anyway so by the time Midoriya gets to a point in which he’s passing on One for All, it’s probably unlikely that Yagi’s still living. Unless I’m wrong about that too and the manga isn’t ending on Midoriya telling his successor enough information to make an informed decision of course.

Chapter 160

Oh good. Spinner learned how to drive from video games.

Honestly surprised Chisaki didn’t consider the fact that when he talked about getting rid of all quirks he was basically threatening the League of Villains with possibly the biggest possible threat out there so of course Tomura was going to neutralize him instead of make him some kind of weirdo martyr.

Chapter 161

I love how Rock Lock’s baby has such a Rock Lock expression their face

Chapter 162

Mirio mentions being the “final hero” and it makes me wonder since Yagi gave Midoriya his quirk instead of Mirio if perhaps that shifted things so Midoriya will be this final hero. Or perhaps Final Hero is idek Mirio’s eventually vigilante name or something. Lots of options

#liveblog #manga liveblog #bnha manga liveblog #mha manga liveblog #bnha manga spoilers #mha manga spoilers #i read a lot of chapters #boku no hero academia #my hero academia

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terresdebrumestories · 7 years

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Falling Pains

✗ TECHNICAL DETAILS

FANDOM: Teen Wolf & Supernatural SERIES: - RATING: Gen WORDCOUNT: 1 243 PAIRING(S): - CHARACTER(S): Stiles Stilinski, Derek Hale, Isaac Lahey GENRE: Changes TRIGGER WARNING(S): Vague allusions to prior violent death. SUMMARY: Angels don’t get burns, but Derek does.

NOTE(S): According to the file’s name, this was first drafted in 2012, when I was still actively into SPN and Teen Wolf...I figured being on holidays and wanting to post something were excellent reasons to clean it up and publish it :P

Well, the whole story probably starts when Sam Winchester jumps into Hell and every angel in Heaven is stuck between a) join the fratricide party of b) try and get away from it all...but the small story, their little part in this giant mess, starts when Stiles finds Derek in the kitchenette of their latest motel room, staring at his thumb like it just said something particularly offensive.

Picture this: it’s ass o’clock in the morning, and Stiles has three brand new sets of sutures, one giant bruise for a back, and the nagging impression that there is still selkie gunk on his skin, despite all evidence to the contrary. Meanwhile, Derek is looking at a perfectly ordinary part of his body like it just grew out of him at random, which was sort of understandable at the beginning, but it’s been over six months now, and Stiles has used up all the patience he had for that problem.

Which is probably why he sounds less than friendly when he asks:

“What’s the matter this time?”

“I accidentally touched the radiator,” Derek says without taking his eyes off his thumb, like it’s going to run if left unattended. “It was unpleasant.”

“Oh, that!” Stiles shrugs, relieved at how easy the whole thing turns out to be, “it’s just a burn dude. Don’t sweat it.”

It doesn’t hit him until later—when he’s back on the road with Isaac and Derek is doing whatever he does when he’s not camping out in the back of the jeep—that angels don’t get burns.

{ooo}

Isaac is understandably touchy about vampire hunts, so it takes a while before Stiles can start paying proper attention to Derek again—the fact that the angel spends most of his time away, on ‘research’ that leaves touristic brochures scattered on Stiles’ upholstery, doesn’t help either—but eventually, he sees the signs.

He catches Derek staring at a cut on his fingers after Isaac tears a sheet of paper out of his hand. He watches him sniff at his t-shirt in the rearview mirror, until Isaac tells Derek he needs to change and, well, Stiles kind of has to agree—the guy is starting to smell. There’s the time Derek gets sunburns all over his face—there’s a pale line on his temple, where his sunglasses go, it’s really ridiculous—and the one week where he keeps poking at a bruise on his right shin.

Derek is changing.

It’s not the same as Isaac, Stiles is pretty sure, though he didn’t know the guy yet. It’s definitely not like Scott, either, who went to bed with a fever and a nasty dog bite and woke up with three bullets in his chest from where Stiles shot him with his father’s gun, the Sheriff’s blood dripping from a familiar, oddly uneven smile.

This thing—whatever is happening with Derek—is slower, more gradual. It doesn’t jump at Stiles’ throat in the morning and it doesn’t get him thrown across the room when blood-thirst gets too much, which is just as well because Isaac does his best but that entire move just sucks, alright? The whole thing just creeps up on them, slow pace and lazy gait, and gives Stiles all the time he needs to work himself up into a proper freak out.

{ooo}

Derek nearly gets his arm cut off, and looks like a rabbit caught in the headlights for the next five hours. It would be hilarious if it weren’t so terrifying, and Stiles is sort of amazed he manages to hold his panics attack in until after he’s explained emotional shock.

Isaac, bless his nonexistent soul, doesn’t poke fun at him for it, either.

{ooo}

They stare at Derek for a long time, neither of them knowing quite what to say. It’s not that they don’t understand—there was Stiles’ father and there was Scott, and Isaac’s family, and a host of other loved ones besides: they know. They know.

They’ve just never had to explain it before.

“That’s...” Stiles pauses.

Swallows.

He hasn’t felt like that—hasn’t put himself in a position to feel like that—since he watched fog swallow Scott’s retreating back on the morning he found his father’s corpse in their kitchen, red, red walls staring him down like mourning bells.

Aside from Isaac, though, no one’s saved Stiles’ ass more than Derek has since that whole Leviathan debacle began, so he does kind of owe Derek, just a little.

He braces himself—allows old aches to flare into straight up pain for a moment—and doesn’t look at the way Derek crouches over the other Angel’s broken body.

“That’s sadness,” he manages around the memories lodged in his throat, “emotional pain.”

“Why do I have water in my eyes?”

Derek’s voice is steady, poised, like it’s not quite sure what to do, but it doesn’t make anything easier, and Stiles is relieved when it’s Isaac who mumbles:

“It’s tears. When you’re sad, you cry.”

He’s fiddling with the industrial chainsaw by his side, pressing on the teeth of it until a trickle of almost-black runs down the blade. He’ll have to feed soon. Before dawn, ideally.

They need to move, but Stiles doesn’t say it.

On the ground, Derek cradles Laura’s body, the familiar, human lines of pain etched on his face so deep it makes Stiles wonder if it’ll ever go away again. Did he look like that, too, when his mother died? Is that just the way people look when they discover death can touch them or those they care about?

Angels aren’t supposed to cry but here Derek is, hunched around the sister he loved best, the one who died so he wouldn’t be dragged back into a war he wants nothing to do with, cheeks shining with moisture even as he says:

“You never cry.”

“Haven’t since I turned,” Isaac says with a small shrug. “Corpses don’t cry.”

Derek’s face turns from Isaac to Stiles and he shrugs.

“Practice,” he says, resisting the urge to take his hands off the banister he’s leaning on to cross them over his chest instead. “You learn how to hide them.”

Derek doesn’t look like he gets it, which Stiles can sort of forgive him for. It’s not like it makes a lot of sense, if you take human things like pride and masculinity and stubbornness out of the equation. It still hurts though, mostly because Stiles sort of wishes he—they—didn’t have to go through this at all.

He sighs, fingers clenching around the metal, and then he follows Isaac’s lead: walks up to Derek to put a hand on his shoulder and squeeze—brief, soft, easy to dismiss if needed.

For a second, it almost looks like Derek is going to ask—like Stiles and Isaac are going to have to explain themselves, explain why they know it’s not enough, why they don’t do more.

It seems Derek managed to gain something, though, in this endless string of loss, because when he looks up there’s no question mark hovering on his face, just a quiet frown over red-rimmed eyes, and the faint hint of a smile.

It’s still not fair by any stretch of the imagination, but the life of a Hunter—whether they’re a human, a vampire, or an angel catching a bad case of humanity—is never fair, so Stiles takes what he can get, and he smiles back.

#Teen Wolf #TW Fic #Derek Hale #Isaac Lahey #Stiles Stilinski #Can be read as pre Sterek if you're motivated #Fanfiction #Done with wooden queues

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rockandrollportlandor · 7 years

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GOOD CHEER RECORDS HOLIDAY SHOWCASE

I've expressed before my affection for Good Cheer Records, a local label that emerged from the DIY all ages indie rock scene in Portland, but whose personnel have connections and influence in the mainstream of local and national indie music. Geek rockerMo Troper, also a writer for the Portland Mercury (cleverly disguised as Morgan Troper), even scored the coveted Pitchfork review, something which has eluded many of the best bands in town at the moment. Troper, the label's co-founder with Blake Hickman, has vanished to Los Angeles, replaced by Maya Stoner, a performer in several GC bands. Kyle Bates' project Drowse has seen praise from Vice's Noisey blog and SPIN Magazine, while another one of the label's star acts, Little Star, have gotten great reviews all over the place, including here on ROCK AND ROLL PORTLAND, OR. My favorite Good Cheer band, Mr. Bones, is sadly over, but the label, with so many other good acts, has hardly been damaged by these shifts--or a scandal that saw Jackson Walker, a member of Good Cheer band Naked Hour, excommunicated in the wake of his much younger ex-girlfriend's allegations of physical/emotional abuse. Good Cheer's bands are each unique, but broadly speaking they traffic in a hyper-sincere, heart-on-sleeve, guitar-based pop/rock that seems to trace its roots back to the 90's and early 00's, a time before MP3s--or at least a time when a single MP3 took a whole morning to download. It's the art-damaged cool and guitar abuse of bands like Pavement and Sonic Youth injected with the bloodletting melodicism of emo and the sweetness of twee-pop. It's a reminder of the truth in that old quote about Pavement being "the band that launched a thousand Weezers." These tendencies make the label's roster a refreshing departure, perhaps even a necessary counter-reaction, to the various fusions of psychedelic rock, dream pop, and blissed-out oddball party music so often seems to dominate Portlandian "pop". The earnestness of Good Cheer's bands, which the label proudly declares free of "mercenary ambition", makes a lot of what was represented by 2016's now-tainted "Mt. Portland" compilation seem positively decadent. On the other side of the coin, that comp's hip groups, often resented across the music scene for their perceived complacence and supposedly undeserved "fame", offer a sense of easy fun and trippy euphoria that the Good Cheer bands often lack--the label's name is pretty ironic, since good cheer is just about the last thing you'll get from most of these bands. Rather, they provide what Kurt Cobain ambivalently called "the comfort in being sad," the paradoxical sense of suffering as painful but life-affirming. At best that means a strangely joyous catharsis on the other side of the pain, at worst it might be written off as wallowing, navel gazing, and irksome preciousness. It's not for everybody, but it's way up my moody emo kid alley. These bands' music is about intimate feelings--even at its most bombastic, it's introverted almost as a rule, and perhaps that's how they create the feeling that they're Your Special Band, even when you're, as I was on this December Wednesday night, surrounded by a bunch of other people watching them. Good Cheer maintains the sense that their acts are the best band in your shitty hometown, who you see in some basement when you're 17, and finally, you've found a place where you fit in, finally, some people who speak for you. Perhaps the ideal place to see these bands is indeed someone's basement, but it was also fitting to see them in a major mid-sized venue like the Holocene--it was a sign that Good Cheer have emerged from a scrappy underground operation to become a major force in that vague genre known as "Portland pop". I didn't catch the entire show, which crammed six acts, successfully, into three hours, but the first group I caught was ALIEN BOY, one of the moodier bands on this moody label. Frontwoman Sonia Weber sings with the lovelorn yearning of Morrissey, but without the sass--unlike with the Moz, we never wonder if she's just milking it. The guitars hiss like TV static and twinkle like stars seen out a car window in the vanishing autumn, the rhythm section sprinting with teenage energy, paradoxically despondent and enthusiastic. At the Holocene, Weber's vocals seemed pretty off key a lot of the time, but it didn't really matter. The melody's largely in the guitars, and even the melody isn't that important. It's the mood the band creates with all of these elements that makes them such a powerful emotive unit. Even off-key, Weber's vocals are the definite not-so-secret weapon here, her contralto timber pitched perfectly in the dead center of the human vocal spectrum, neither male nor female, and therefore unusually universal in a social order still cleaved traumatically in two by a gender binary inherited from a religious order no one even believes in anymore. The group's latest EP, "Stay Alive", is a fantastic piece of gothic power pop, the fury of the instruments on tracks like "Burning II" contrasted to heart-rending effect with the vulnerability of Weber's vocals. These guys are one of my favorite acts Good Cheer has in its corner for 2017. Next up were a pair of musical twin bands, both involving Kyle Bates: DROWSE and FLOATING ROOM. Drowse is the more ambient of two, creating a storm of darkly psychedelic mood energy, as if Bates were some mad scientist attempting to isolate The Feels in their pure plasma form. Bates has been admirably candid about his struggle with clinical depression, even in his press releases, and some of his music is meant to be a literal translation of these horrifying experiences in musical form. As a person who's visited similar hells, I can definitely relate, and if you haven't, Drowse can give you a taste. It's the kind of music you bathe in almost more than listen to. I find it pretty hard to articulate with a vocabulary developed for pop songs--do yourself a favor and just listen. Undergirding the pure emotional whirlpool is a theoretical edge, at least according to Drowse's bio, which references Roland Barthes and Sarah Manguso alongside Mt. Erie and Unwound. I'm pretty sure those are uncommon influences for an indie music bio. Floating Room is the more conventional indie rock side of Bates' muse, but he still hangs in the background, and Maya Stoner writes lyrics and sings lead, while he continues his role as a sound-sculptor. Under this moniker he deals in his version of the Good Cheer house sound, described on the group's Bandcamp page as "the type of sadness felt at 4 in the morning, reserved for the heartbroken and the nervous." The guitar squalls of Drowse, almost more like weather patterns than music, wash over the structure of the songs like photo filters, providing a depth and texture that the more purely rock n roll acts on Good Cheer can't touch. Eschewing the crunchier "alt rock" guitar tones and punk rock enthusiasms of Alien Boy, Mr. Bones, or Cool American for a generously reverberated, fuzz-soaked, more plodding sound, Floating Room crosses definitively into shoegaze territory. It's gloriously eerie and ice-cold in temperature. It's the perfect soundtrack for walking through the woods in the snow, when all sounds are muffled by the falling flakes a the beautiful deathly calm seems to pervade the landscape--and it is a landscape, one you can seemingly gaze far into. On some tracks, the band is almost too delicate for this world, and the sounds seem made of glass, or icicles, ready to crash and fall the moment the temperature gets back above freezing. It's music for winter, for the low-hanging winter sun, gone as soon as it comes up, peering over the leafless treetops, secretly gathering power again once the solstice has passed. TURTLENECKED, the stage name of Harrison Smith, came up next, playing a very short set. Lanky and nervous, he paced the stage, singing R&B songs about being neurotic and narcissistic and romantic, all from electronic backing tracks played from his laptop. It was a very amusing break from all the intensity--even as he sang about heartbreak or unrequited love, Smith was funny, unlike anyone else who I saw perform that night. The stuff on his Bandcamp is mostly minimal indie pop, just electric guitar and drums, very dressed down and sparse, focused on Smith's deadpan vocals, both snarky and pathetic, but always charismatic. An older album, "Pure Plush Bone Cage", was fuzzier and noisier, but Smith's newer style, clean and clear, works better, matching the music's emotional exhibitionism. This presumably even newer R&B stuff is another pretty much genius leap forward. Turtlenecked captures the fine line between self-pity and self-aggrandizement, or rather signals its non-existence, refusing to apologize for anything--or else apologizing for everything--it doesn't really matter which--who ever believes an apology anyway? Good Cheer's brand can, as I said above, come off as overly precious, but Turtlenecked is an exception--one gets the wonderful sense that he barely even believes himself, but it's only the same sincerity of his labelmates doubling back on itself. Morrissey knows this trick well--it's basically his bread and butter. While most of the Good Cheer bands seem to work as band entities, Harrison Smith of one of the few who doesn't really need a band, or for whom any backing band would only be a backing band. He's just an entertaining and engaging enough figure in his own right--perhaps only Mo Troper, among his labelmates, rivals him for sheer personal charisma. Finally was the band I was most keen on seeing, COOL AMERICAN, named for a brand of Doritos. It's the project of singer-guitarist Nathan Tucker, a serious-looking dude who blew through the set with apparently great anxiety, often failing to sing directly into the microphone, seemingly wound tighter than a human can be wound. The band's tall bass player, Tim Howe, with his goofy grin and a santa hat borrowed from Maya Stoner, provided the necessary humorous counterpoint. Cool American's style is a pleasantly loose but melancholy power pop, filled with breezy riffs, mid-tempo grooves and smoothy shifting tempos and beats. But there's also a punk edge in it--at some point in every song, Tucker upshifts into a cathartic yelp, from which I felt sympathy pangs in my own vocal chords, before this explosion of his nervous energy receded, and he began to recharge again. Tucker's vocal range is limited, but the melody's in the guitars, spinning circles around each other, swirling and looping when they aren't exploding. Probably the most direct example of my Pavement-meets-emo description above, Cool American's unusual combination of mellowness and tension feels very much like West Coast life as I've come to know it, the cycle of putting up a veneer of "no worries" chillness and having it break down in the face of un-chill reality, only to put it up again, because fuck life, life should be better than it is. Better to try and fail to be chill and hopeful than live in cynical detachment. And for all their moodiness, the Good Cheer bands are never cynical. They don't just express heavy feelings, they believe in them, affirming their value and meaning in a society that usually runs scared from them. Unlike so much of the buzzy music in Portland, these bands never come off as careerist--you get the sense that any day one of them might break up because so-and-so had to move away for school or whatever. One could be cynical in response and argue that this sincerity is just another brand, but if so, I'll take it over the glassy-eyed smugness and empty glitz of so much of what passes for indie music these days. Long live Good Cheer.

#good cheer records #turtlenecked #alien boy #cool american #drowse #floating room #mo troper #portland music

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