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dabiapologist · 6 years

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[My Hero Academia Fanfiction]: come find me in the dark

Sequel to Warmth

Rating: T

Word Count: 4.9k

Pairing: Shigadabi, Shigaraki Tomura/Dabi

Tags: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, but also comedy, shigaraki really fucking hates the cold, Dabi isn't gonna let him live it down, 0-60 angst, Dabi has a song stuck in his head, reference to the “Dabi is a Todoroki” Theory, brief implications and mentions of child abuse

Summary: It’s astounding how a person’s sense of self-preservation can make them seem like someone totally different in the moment.

The last thing Dabi expected to hear was an audible sigh of relief, and he swears he heard a tiny ‘thank you’ creep out from between those chapped, scarred lips. He catches himself before he comments on it, though. It must've taken a lot for the mophead to swallow his pride and come down here again after all the mocking, so he lets it slide for now.

It’s ammunition he’ll store for another day.

Read on || AO3

Read Warmth on || AO3

Tomura stirs at the smell of smoke drifting into his nose and the low rumble of humming from beneath him. The TV is on in the background, but the volume is too low for him to make out what is being said. His eyes flutter open for a moment before pinching shut at the light that immediately hits his eyes.

“...Ugh…” He groans as he rolls over onto his stomach, trying to get comfortable again. He doesn’t remember it ever being this warm in his room.But this is nice, he thinks as he settles onto his stomach and buries his face back into the dark fabric of his bedspread.

...Wait.

His bedspread isn’t dark. And it sure as fuck isn’t this solid, either.

Tomura lies there for a moment, fingers prodding the unknown surface beneath him, mind riddled with sleepy confusion and trying to understand how the hell his sheets went from off-white to a dingy black, and, more importantly, from medium plush to rock hard.

That is, until a new, albeit tired sounding voice floats into his ear from right next to him.

“Mornin’, sunshine.” Dabi drawls through a cloud of cigarette smoke, “D’ya have a nice sleep?”

While it was previously noted that Tomura is not always rational when his personal comfort is at stake, let it also be noted that it takes Tomura a good five minutes or so before really coming online when he wakes up.

And for those five minutes, Shigaraki Tomura is a stone-cold disaster.

He lifts his head slowly, still trying to register in his sleep-fogged mind just what the hell this ashy black and purple blob that is talking to him is, and why he’s lying on it instead of his bed. But once he blinks said blob into focus, it only takes about a fraction of a second for the chain-reaction to begin.

The bar is suddenly alive with noise; specifically death threats and several strings of impressively strung together insults and curse words, all courtesy of their resident leader in villainy and gamer enthusiast.

“What the actual fucking fuck- ”

“I’m gonna take all these hands, and shove them so far up your fucking ass-”

“I’m gonna slit open all those fucking staples and wear you like a mothershitting jacket-”

Luckily for Tomura, there isn’t currently anyone in the bar to witness his rather undignified fall from grace.

Except for Dabi, of course.

Throughout it all, Dabi just sits, calmly smoking his cigarette and half-listening as Tomura runs his insult well dry and right into a drought. It’s more funny than anything, mostly because through all of it, Tomura hasn’t actually moved from where he is curled up against Dabi’s side, and his yelling tantrum sort of spiraled into him sleepily muttering his strings of expletives as he buries his face back into Dabi’s chest.

When he does finally go silent, a good ten minutes later, Dabi finally sees his chance to speak. “Oi, mophead, as precious as watching you drool on me for twelve hours straight has been, I really need to fuckin’ pee.”

It takes a minute for his words to process, but once he starts jabbing his finger into Tomura’s ribs, the smaller man finally shifts. Like a switch flicking on, Tomura jolts and flings himself to the other side of the small couch, wild-eyed and limbs akimbo. Dabi stares back, exhaling the last of his cigarette.

“...What the fuck.” Is Tomura’s first truly coherent sentence of the morning.

“Yeah, I was wondering that for the first four hours, too.” Dabi replies.

“Okay, but actually, what the f-”

“Pause,” Dabi holds his hand up to silence him as he stands up from the couch, smacking his leg to wake it up, “I’ve had to pee the whole fucking night. You can have your meltdown after I do that.”

Without another word, Dabi leaves the room, dragging his still sleeping leg and complaining, and without another word, Tomura stares at his retreating back, still trying to comprehend what the hell is going in this bar.

It’s hard to focus while he’s still trying to shake the sleepiness from his mind and limbs, but the only thing he is really sure of at the moment is that there is a draft in here, and it’s awful.

“I’m pretty sure I have an ulcer on my ass.” Is the first thing Dabi says when he comes back a few minutes later.

“You don’t get ulcers that quickly, idiot.” Tomura quips groggily as he turns to him from watching the news, face wrinkled in disgust. “But that wouldn’t surprise me. I’m pretty sure there’s a new form of flesh-eating bacteria festering on this shitty old couch.”

Dabi plops down in the exact same spot, chuckling. “And yet you’re still sitting on it, dickhead. For the record, it’s because you wouldn’t let me get up or even move since yesterday.”

“Yesterday ?” Tomura repeats.

“Yeah.”

“I’ve been sleeping here since fucking yesterday ?”

“Mmhmm. Well, technically,” Dabi turns to him, “We’ve been sleeping here since yesterday. Since, you know, I was also here. Hungry, and needing to pee. And not being able to.”

“Why didn’t you just wake me up?!”

“Yeah, I tried that,” Dabi grimaces. “A couple of times...” He trails off as he brings his hand to his shirt collar and tugs it down. His collarbone is littered with scratches and teeth marks. Tomura flushes. Today just keeps getting better and better.

“I did that?”

“Yeah, man. You’re even more of a savage in your sleep.” Dabi mutters as he sets his shirt right again, “What, did you just escape from the fucking woods? Sure seems like it.”

“Fuck you.”

“Tch, and to think I had spent the day sleeping so I could stay out on patrol all night. And instead I stayed up the whole night watching old ass movies on TV while you bit and slobbered all over me. They played the Mask three times in a row.”

Tomura wipes off some crusted spit on the side of his mouth disdainfully. “The fuck is that?”

“I dunno, some American movie, I guess. I didn’t really know what was going on, but I sat through it three fucking times because there was nothing else on, and now I have Cuban Pete playing in a loop in my head. So thanks.”

Tomura stands up and walks over to the bar, snatching up the morning paper from the end of the bar. “Pfft. Whatever.”

But Dabi doesn’t let him escape that easily.

The edges of the paper start to disintegrate when Tomura crushes them in his grip. Instead of staying over on his gross couch, or better yet, leaving, Dabi comes over and slides into the seat next to him, hooded eyes twinkling with amusement.

It was foolish of Tomura to hope that Dabi would let it go just like that. He really should’ve known better.

“So… are you planning on actually telling me? Or are you going to act like it didn’t happen?”

The paper rips. “Tell you what ?”

“Why you were sleeping on me?”

Tomura tries to focus on the article --the part that isn’t dust yet-- that he’s reading, but he can feel Dabi’s eyes on him, probing. He pointedly stares at his newspaper, hoping that if he stays silent long enough, Dabi will eventually give up and fuck off.

But after five minutes of uncomfortable silence and even more uncomfortable staring, Tomura starts to think this might be futile.

“I’m still waiting.”

“You’re gonna be waiting fucking forever. Now get away from me.”

Goddammit. He never would’ve pegged Dabi as someone who was persistent, let alone annoyingly so; and yet here he is, now nearly ten minutes later, still trying to read his stupid paper while Dabi stares at him with his chin resting in his palm, grinning like the cat that caught the canary. They both know that Tomura’s nerves are wearing thin.

“Did you know that you purr in your sleep sometimes?”

More of the paper turns to dust.

“I never thought I’d say this, creep, but you sure have your cute moments. You kept making these little noises when you’d move, and when I wanted to get up, you’d like, paw at me. So precious.”

That paper never stood a fucking chance. And it only gets worse when Dabi lets the topic drop in favor of something even worse.

“They call me Cuban Pete, I’m the king of the rumba beat, ” Dabi hums the rest, adding too many ‘ chic-chic-ky-boom ’s in as he shakes his fists like he’s holding maracas.

Tomura has never wished for telekinetic powers more than he has right now; he’s been glaring at a bottle of scotch on one of the shelves, willing it to fly across the bar and hit Dabi right in his stupid, smug, chic-chic-ky-boom-ing face.

“I don’t know what it means, but it’s really catchy.”

“.....”

“Chic-chic-ky-boom, chic-chic-ky-boom ,”

“Shut up! Fuck.”

“Then answer my question.”

The bell above the door suddenly chimes, signalling a new arrival at the bar. Toga flounces in, grinning and tap-tap-tapping at her phone at the speed of light, singing some annoying pop song that Tomura is sure he would hate if he were actually listening to the words.

Her smile explodes when she finally looks up and notices the two of them sitting at the bar.

“Tomura-kun, you’re finally awake!” She says as she throws herself onto him in a big hug. “You were sleeping for so long! Like an evil, angry sleeping beauty!”

Dabi snorts. Tomura’s hand twitches.

“I need a fucking drink.” He mutters to himself. The fact that he hasn’t eaten anything yet makes no nevermind to him. The faster he can get drunk, the better.

He nudges the girl off of him and slides out of his stool. He grabs a bottle off the shelf, not really caring what it is as long as it’s alcohol, and brings it back with him to his designated spot.

“He really bit you?! Oh wow!” Toga suddenly chirps, catching his attention; more accurately, it makes him want to murder everyone in the bar. It feels a lot like that day the old man brought these two along and they all almost killed each other.

Right now, Tomura is regretting letting them live.

“That’s kinda kinky,” She says, giggling as she ogles at the welts and scabbed over teeth marks that trail up and down Dabi’s neck and collar.

Dabi smirks. “Yeah, crazy right? He almost ripped one of my staples out. The guy’s an animal.”

“Shut... the fuck... up.”

“Why were you sleeping with Dabi, Tomura-kun?” Toga asks. She and Dabi are wearing identical smiles; one that makes Tomura feel like he’s being cornered. Whatever. It’s their funeral. Once he finishes this bottle.

“Yeah, mophead. Answer the girl.”

“Do you two want to die today?”

Toga pouts. “But you were so cute, Tomura-kun! Like a sleepy little kitty! And Dabi was cute, too!” She says, tugging on Dabi’s shirt, “He didn’t wanna wake you up even though you were drooling on him.”

If it wasn’t holding his precious liquor, the bottle would’ve met the same fate as the newspaper.

“I fucking drooled?!”

Dabi nods. “Yeah buddy, you were running like a backwater creek. I never would’ve guessed that you had that much moisture in your body at one time.”

Tomura wishes he wasn’t immune to his quirk. Death would be better than this.

“Oh my god…” He mutters.

“Ah, Shigaraki Tomura, you’re finally awake.” Kurogiri says as he enters the bar. His shapeless countenance shifts upward at the edges, into a misty smile.

Understandably, Tomura does not return the gesture. “Great, you’re here now.” He snaps. Kurogiri looks taken aback at the outburst, but only for a second, used to Tomura’s moods swings.

“Yes, great.” Dabi parrots, eyes flashing. “Yo vapeman, maybe you can answer us. Why was mophead over here draped on top of me like fucking Cleopatra when he has a perfectly good bedroom upstairs?”

“It’s Blackmist, and because he was cold.” Kurogiri, in a poorly timed moment of not paying attention to his young master’s mood or the mood of the room, answers without thinking. He’s stocking a shelf, so he doesn’t see the acidic look Tomura throws at him.

“Kurogiri…” Tomura growls, but it doesn’t matter anyway, because his gaze quickly turns to the two next to him. Dabi and Toga are both staring at him, their mouths making little ‘o’s, though Dabi’s is quickly turning into a full-on smile.

Toga squeaks in demented delight. “Oh! I get it!~” She sing-songs, shaking Dabi’s arm roughly, “Because Dabi is always warm ‘cause he shoots fire!”

“You were cold? N’aww...” Dabi teases, a hand to his chest in mock tenderness. “Sorry, have you never heard of a little thing called a sweater? Or a blanket?”

“I’m wearing a sweater right now, you pit stain.”

But the insult goes unheard as Dabi snaps his fingers. “Oh, but wait. That pile of clothing on the floor must be yours then, huh?”

“.....”

“You were so eager to snuggle up with me-”

Tomura abruptly stands, tossing the gritty, tattered remains of his newspaper on the counter with a low growl.

“Fuck this. I’m leaving.” He grunts. They hear him stomp up the stairs; the sound fades away steadily and then all of a sudden gets louder again when Tomura comes back and, without a single word, grabs his forgotten liquor bottle off the counter and storms off again. The three of them watch him go wordlessly, until the distant slam of a door is heard.

No one says anything for a beat, not until Dabi pulls out his cigarettes and realizes he’s down to two sticks. Seems about right, since he spent the entirety of the night smoking to distract himself from how bad he had to go to the bathroom.

“Shit.” He curses with a sigh. “Hey, brat.”

Toga looks up at him, still clinging to his arm. “Yeah?”

Dabi pops the last cigarettes out onto the counter and hands her the empty box. “You’re better at blending in than I am. Go steal me a pack of cigarettes.”

Toga considers it for a second before shrugging. “‘Kay.”

“Get those, but the ones that say 100’s. I like those better.”

“Okie dokie~!”

“Don’t let anyone see you, Himiko!” Kurogiri calls after her as she exits.

Dabi stares at the door as it swings shut, lighting up one of the cigarettes and taking a deep inhale. “I probably should’ve told her to get us food, too.” He says as afterthought, “I’m fuckin’ starving. Eh, whatever.”

“Were you two the only ones here?” Kurogiri asks as he continues stocking the empty shelves.

“Uh-hunh.”

“Where is everyone else?”

Dabi shrugs. “No clue.”

“I see.”

They sit in silence after that, Dabi smoking and watching the news while Kurogiri goes around the bar performing his usual morning routine, including picking up the bundle of sweaters and overshirts Tomura had unceremoniously dumped on the floor the night before.

“When I play the maracas I go chic-chic-ky-boom, chic-chic-ky-boom. Yes sir, I'm Cuban Pe- ”

“...I beg your pardon, Dabi?”

“Oh, it’s nothing. Just this stupid song I have stuck in my head.” Dabi replies, waving his hand in dismissal.

“Heh, so our little mophead hates the cold, huh? I guess that’s not surprising. He’s sort of tiny under all that black. He’s so light I barely even noticed him.”

He recalls one show he saw on TV once a long time ago, some nature show about reptiles. “It’s kinda like when snakes get cold, like how they look for the warmest thing to raise their body temperature back up. Mophead’s kinda like that.”

Kurogiri chuckles, nodding in agreement. “That’s an accurate analogy, though I hope it wasn’t too much of an imposition. He doesn’t sleep well in the winter time, for obvious reasons.”

Dabi laughs. “It’s fine. I know I was teasing him a lot, but I just like ruffling his feathers. To be honest I didn’t really mind all that much. I actually... I liked seeing that side of him. Makes him seem less like a complete psycho and more like a real human.”

It is then that something from the night before comes back to him. Something that had been sitting like a thorn in the back of his mind since then. “Actually... say, blackmist… can I ask you something… kinda personal?”

Kurogiri looks up at that. “Personal?”

Dabi hesitates for a second, taking a slow, contemplative drag on his cigarette, choosing his words carefully. “Did you know that mophead… that he cries in his sleep?”

Kurogiri goes still for a moment, foggy yellow eyes widening as he looks over at Dabi. “... He does?”

Dabi nods, exhaling thoughtfully. “Yeah.” He looks up from the counter. “This morning when I tried to wake him up... I think he was having a nightmare.”

Dabi turns in the stool, facing Kurogiri. “He wasn’t sobbing or anything, but his eyes and cheeks were wet. He kept saying that he was sorry. And...” He pauses to look up the dark stairway. “He said, ‘please don’t hit me’.”

At that, Kurogiri stops. “I…” He stumbles over his words, before trailing off, at a loss. Dabi notices his discomfort, wondering if maybe he should’ve kept it to himself after all.

“I won’t pry,” He says with an indifferent shrug, “But, ya know...” He pauses for a beat, a wry smile forming on his lips. “...It kinda hit close to home.”

Kurogiri’s eyes sink, as if to furrow with the weight of that casual admittance. “...I see.”

“That’s part of the reason I left him alone. I didn’t have the heart to wake him up after hearing that. It sort of freaked me out. But also, I get the sense that if he knew I heard him say that, he might really try to kill me.”

Kurogiri chuckles, despite himself. “That would be a fair assumption.”

The two share a laugh at that as Kurogiri resumes tidying up the bar.

“I do hope you’ll keep that information to yourself, Dabi.” Kurogiri says after a long silence.

“Naturally,” Dabi says. “I have no reason to tell anyone that.”

Dabi pulls over an ashtray and taps some long forgotten ash off the end of his cigarette. By then, most of it is already on the counter-top. “People are at their most honest when they’re angry, but who you really are shows most when you’re asleep, I think. And for all that talk and all that rage, he’s just a scared kid who never really got to grow up.”

Kurogiri nods somberly at that, but the soft ‘I can relate’ that follows cuts him deep. After all is said and done, he’s glad that Tomura accepted Dabi, and Toga, and everyone, into his organization. It’d just been the two of them before, and Kurogiri is glad that his young charge finally has others around that can relate to him on his level. Even if they tease him to the point of homicide.

“And he is cute when he’s asleep. Toga hit it right on the head. He is like a little cat. Fluffy and irritable.” Dabi rubs at his collar. “...Just wish he didn’t bite the shit out of me, though. I mean, it didn't hurt or anything, but still.”

“I apologize for that.” Kurogiri says. “But try not to tease him too much.”

Dabi quickly swipes the ash off with his hand when Kurogiri’s back is turned. “I make no promises, vapeman.”

“Blackmist. ”

*******

He hadn’t intended to stay at the bar that night, but in the end, Dabi decided he didn’t really feel like going back to his rundown hovel of an apartment which was on the other, even shadier side of town, but he didn’t feel like joining Twice and Mr. Compress out on patrol, either. He liked his crappy couch here better than the glorified army cot he called a bed, anyway. Besides, he rather liked the ambiance of the bar after hours.The dim, burlesque lighting settled him down, and Kurogiri didn’t mind if he left the TV on, for which Dabi was grateful. The white noise in the background and the pale light from the screen helped him fall asleep.

He pillows his arm behind his head and shifts onto his side, curling into the worn but soft cushions of the couch. Some time passes as he stares at the inside of his eyelids, his mind slowly emptying itself of the day’s events and his ever-racing thoughts. He’s almost completely drifted off when a sudden presence makes itself known right above him.

“Oi,” grunts the familiar voice.

Dabi’s eyes flutter back open. He can just make out Tomura’s light hair and scowling face staring back down at him, but it’s not hard to see that he’s at least twice his size from all the layers he’s got on. And it certainly doesn’t take a genius to figure out why he’s here.

Dabi can’t help but grin up at him. “Cold again?”

Tomura looks ready to spit nails down at him, and for a second, Dabi is certain he’s going to get a tongue lashing for all the teasing earlier. But then Tomura’s jaw snaps shut, and with a huff, the younger man slowly nods in affirmation.

“...yeah.” He mutters, clearly ashamed of himself.

In the silence of the room, almost fading in with the soft laugh track playing from the sitcom in the background, Dabi can hear Tomura shuddering and his teeth chattering.

Well, Dabi thinks, it is snowing outside tonight. He supposes that that is something normal people, as in, people that don’t have a fire-emitting type quirk, would notice. To him, it’s just another night. But to Tomura, who he can see is trembling even under a million layers, it’s a fucking nightmare.

Dabi rolls his eyes with a sigh, but still turns over and lies flat on his back. “Come on, then.”

It’s astounding how a person’s sense of self-preservation can make them seem like someone totally different in the moment.

It’s ammunition he’ll store for another day.

It takes a few minutes and a few ‘accidents’ (“You just kneed me right in the balls.” “You deserved it.”) before they properly settle on the cramped couch, but once Tomura finds his place splayed out against Dabi’s side like before, Dabi can’t help but notice that this is way more comfortable than he’d ever be willing to admit out loud. He can feel Tomura’s shivering body gradually beginning to relax against him, milking the warmth provided by his quirk.

Creepy lunatics like Tomura shouldn’t be this cute, but here he is. Being cute as hell. It’s not fair.

“Um, ‘kay. Goodnight, I guess.” Dabi says, not taking it to heart when he doesn’t get a response. And for a few minutes, the room is quiet. Awkwardly quiet, but quiet nonetheless.

Tomura’s gone still, and his breathing has evened out a bit, so Dabi assumes he’s asleep already. His own eyes drift shut again, and he sighs the last bit of tension out of his body. Dabi is almost out when,

“I heard you, you know.”

Dabi’s eyes snap right back open. Fucking hell.

Dabi tries to look down at him, but all he gets is a face-full of light blue hair. “Heard what?”

“You talking with Kurogiri earlier. I heard you.”

The conversation replays over in Dabi’s mind, particularly the part about Tomura crying in his sleep, and Dabi goes rigid. The subject of Tomura’s past and Father, the hand affixed to his face normally, are the one taboo subject among the league of villains, the one thing that makes Tomura see red faster than anything else.

Dabi swallows thickly. Well, he’s lived an alright life, he supposes.

“Listen, I-”

“...was I really crying?”

Dabi tenses. But it’s not out of fear. It’s from flat out shock.

He never thought he could hear someone sound so meek, least of all someone like Shigaraki Tomura. And yet here they are, lying together on a cruddy old couch in dark bar on a random Tuesday, and Tomura sounding like he’s on the verge of tears again.

He has no idea how to handle this. Tomura is nothing if not unpredictable on his best days, and they all learned early on that this particular subject is a veritable minefield.

Shit.

“Yeah, you were.” He breathes out reluctantly after a moment. May as well be honest.

He can feel Tomura begin to tense next to him, and his hand starting to clench into a fist, bunching up Dabi’s shirt.

“Hey, hey, don’t do that!”

Dabi strokes at the now trembling hand, carefully but firmly coaxing the lethal digits out of the tightly balled fist Tomura had made. When they’re all laid out flat on his stomach again, thumb up, he breathes a sigh of relief.

“What are you gonna do if you accidentally kill your new heater?”Dabi jokes, trying to lighten the mood again. But Tomura is dead silent, and to be honest Dabi feels a little unnerved by it. It’s safe to say he has stepped on the landmine.

“Hey-”

Tomura shuffles awkwardly against him, leaning further into his neck.

“... sorry .”

And just like that, the weight of that single word, of that tiny, childlike utterance, nearly crushes the air out of his lungs. It’s the most pathetic, heartbreaking thing Dabi has ever heard in his life. For the first time ever, truly, he is at a complete loss for words.

His hand moves on its own before he can even process what’s he doing, or the very real consequences it might incur for him later. This might get him killed, but he just can’t help himself. He leans down, brushing Tomura’s messy bangs aside, and, his life expectancy be damned, he places a soft kiss on the damp skin underneath, followed by another. And another.

There is a small gasp of surprise, but for once, it’s not followed by a snappy insult or a death threat. To his surprise, Tomura’s head tilts up a bit, and Dabi takes it as silent approval of his sudden show of affection.

“You’re not the only one who had a shitty dad.” He whispers, carding through the soft curls, finding himself enjoying the feeling. Tomura is really fluffy. And this might be pushing it, but he spreads his fingers out, moving his hand in small, serene circles. He’s never had to comfort someone before, and he hopes this is how it goes. The feeling is somewhat alien to him, but it’s not really unpleasant, either.

Tomura relaxes after a beat, laughing quietly at that. Dabi feels like he should say something to fill the sudden quiet that follows, but nothing really comes to mind. So in the end, he decides to just let it be.

They fall into a semi-comfortable silence for a long while after that; so long that Dabi is sure that Tomura has finally fallen asleep. His hand drops to the bony waist, cracking his knuckles out of habit, and lets out a silent yawn.

He decides to have a quick cigarette before he falls asleep, half-watching an infomercial for some garbage product that Dabi can’t imagine anyone ever actually using.

“They call me Cuban Pete, I’m the king of the rumba beat,” He starts whisper-singing mindlessly, “when I play the maracas I go chic-chic-ky-boom, chic-chic-ky- uugff!”

“Don’t you dare start with that bullshit.” Tomura rasps, one bleary eye cracked open and glaring.

“Fucking hell,” Dabi mutters, rubbing his now sore ribs, “This is what I get for being nice.”

Tomura reaches for his hand and places it back on his head. “Keep doing what you were doing before. I like it.”

Dabi smokes the rest of his cigarette, fingers making tiny soothing circles on Tomura's scalp and occasionally curling the light locks around his fingers, wondering how it was that someone's hair could be so fucking soft. They fall asleep like that, with Dabi’s fingers tangled in Tomura’s hair, and Tomura curled against him like a lifeline.

********

“So, is this gonna be like a regular thing with these two?” Spinner whispers to Twice the next morning.

“Eh, just leave ‘em alone, man! No big deal!” Twice replies animatedly, waving it off. “But yeah, we should probably wake them up, right?”

“Well, how about that, ladies and gentlemen?” Mr. Compress quips, a quarter dancing over his knuckles idly. “Call me crazy, but I think we’re seeing a new act beginning.”

“...if you three fuckers don’t want to be burned alive, I suggest you leave. Now.” Dabi’s quiet, albeit groggy voice suddenly cuts into the chatter like a knife. “Mophead’s a grouchy riser.”

“...You know he’s drooling on you, right?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

#shigadabi #shigaraki tomura #dabi #BNHA fic #fanfiction meme #comments/kudos on ao3 greatly appreciated! <3

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weekendshowcase · 6 years

Text

Leggo My Ecco

by Antonio Garland

This was one I rented a couple of times a while back. One night I was flipping channels and saw a preview of this. It was of a dolphin swimming around exploring and pushing rocks in a colorful environment and looked amazing. While playing it, I was caught off guard by its difficulty. I thought it would be a basic adventure, but it wasn’t. Needless to say, I didn’t get too far on my first playthrough. The game is called Ecco the Dolphin, which came out in 1992 on Sega Genesis. Many who have played it will know it as one of the scariest games of their childhood for reasons I’ll get into later.

(image source: Wikipedia)

So the game started and I immediately found myself in a large lagoon in the ocean surrounded by other dolphins. I used my sonar and found that I could talk to the other dolphins. One of them asked how high I could jump, so I swam down and charged at high speed out of the water and into the sky. The screen then flashed and I spun through the air. Everything in the water was sucked up into the sky, dolphins, fish, and even the clams. When I finally landed back in the water, I searched around and found nothing. There was a new opening on the right, which I swam through. That’s when I learned that the premise of the game was to find out what happened to my pod of dolphins.

The game is the typical “beat one level, progress to the next” kind of game. It’s not like Sonic or Mario where you have to hold right until you get to the end of the game, nor is there any time limit. In many levels, you have to do a series of puzzles to unlock mandatory sections; more on that later.

Hitting A on the Genesis controller will shoot a sonar from Ecco. This is used to talk to dolphins and other creatures. Using the sonar on a clam will cause it to open up and release healing bubbles; however, there are a few random clams that release harmful red bubbles. Holding A will cause the sonar to come back at Ecco revealing a map of the surrounding area. It’s not really helpful, but it gives you some sense of where you are. Hitting B will cause Ecco to charge through the water, his main attack. Hitting C once will make Ecco swim very slowly, once more and he swims at a steady pace. Tapping C will cause Ecco to swim at full speed. Using this with the charge will get Ecco quickly through the water.

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There are two unlockable abilities Ecco can get. Early in the game are two levels where Ecco can rescue a pod of dolphins. Rescuing one pod will turn Ecco’s sonar into a long-range attack. Rescuing the other will allow the sonar to stun certain enemies. The first one isn’t too bad, but finding the second dolphin pod is frustrating since it’s easy to fail if you don’t know what to do.

Lots of dangerous sea creatures serve as enemies. The main ones you’ll encounter are jellyfish and sharks. Jellyfish come from the deep and slowly rise to the surface. Touching them will injure Ecco but they are easy to defeat with a single charge. Sharks will home in on Ecco and bite him when he’s close. They are very durable and take several hits to defeat. During the arctic levels there are arctic sharks that resemble leopard sharks that can pass through walls. Also in the arctic are arctic spiders, which are actually large crabs that home in on Ecco. In underwater caverns and tunnels are brown pufferfish that injure upon contact, but are defeated with a charge, as are stingrays which swim horizontally through caves.

(image source: Ecco Wiki)

As mentioned before, there are a couple of puzzles that must be completed to progress. The most commonly featured is block pushing. Sometimes you need to get to deeper parts of the ocean, but there are strong currents pushing you up. To get by, you need to push a large stone down and use it as a shield against the current. Sometimes there will be crystalline prisms acting as locked doors. To get by, you must scour the level for another prism, which gives you a circular key to move the lock prism. You will also have to use a cone-shaped shell to break apart rock walls and use rock-eating starfish with your sonar to get through rocks.

Being a dolphin wouldn’t be complete without dolphin attributes. You’ll be jumping out of the water a lot across small islands to get to new areas. Some jumps are pretty basic, while others require precise trial and error. Since Ecco’s a dolphin and not a fish, he has to breathe air. At the top left corner are your air and health meters. When you stay underwater, your air meter slowly depletes until you get to the surface. In certain caverns are underwater air pockets that can also refill your air. As for your health, you take damage from enemies, such as jellyfish and sharks, but it can be refilled by charging into a school of fish, which are scattered throughout the levels. When your air meter is depleted, you take gradual damage, and when your health fully depletes you die and get reset back to the beginning of the level. While you have infinite lives, this still can be rather frustrating.

Back to the puzzles, they’re also frustrating as there is little room for error and messing up requires you to restart entire sequences, such as getting a rock from A to B, which is much harder than it sounds. A major problem is that Ecco turns very loosely, making entire arcs in the water, but the game requires him to do precise things, like pushing blocks at certain angles. Overall, the puzzles could have been tweaked.

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As I mentioned earlier, the game scared a lot of children—the water becomes darker and eerier the deeper you go, the music is very unnerving, you encounter enemies from sharks to even a giant octopus, and the painful noises Ecco makes when injured. Many were used to the more upbeat nature of other games, such as Mario, which was colorful and cheery in tune. Ecco broke through those molds, which people weren’t expecting.

While the game doesn’t have the world systems like in later Super Mario games, there are several levels that are linked together into the same theme. You start off in the island and cavern levels where you learn that you must find the Big Blue, who may know what happened to your pod. After racing through a long level filled with nothing but sharks, you arrive at the arctic levels. The arctic levels are filled with large ice blocks that attempt to crush Ecco. In these levels, you must slide along the frozen surface to get to other sections. In the end, you encounter the Big Blue who’s a large purple whale. He’s supposed to be a blue whale, but he’s purple. He tells you to get help from an ancient being called the Asterite.

Ecco returns to the tropical paradise and meets the Asterite, a giant DNA strand who tells Ecco that his pod was actually kidnapped by aliens called the Vortex. The Vortex come to Earth every couple of centuries to mine the ocean of its resources, and Ecco’s family is their latest victims. The Asterite says it can help, but needs a missing orb, which is located in the past.

Traveling to the lost city of Atlantis, Ecco finds a time machine that sends him back to the time of the dinosaurs. He encounters ancient jellyfish and spiral-shelled enemies, along with receiving help from a Pteranodon. He finds the orb, which belongs to the past Asterite. It’s not as friendly here and attacks Ecco. Afterward, Ecco brings the orb back to the present Asterite, who bestows Ecco with more special abilities.

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Ecco time travels once more to the moment his pod was sucked up by the Vortex, only this time he comes with them with the powers and abilities he got from the Asterite. He goes through their alien ship, dealing with several members of their race until he encounters their Queen. After defeating the Queen, Ecco’s pod is freed and they return to the ocean.

My biggest complaint is the game’s difficulty, specifically the precise block pushing puzzles, precise jumping, and poor map. Due to the lack of detail in the map, it’s easy to get lost if you don’t already know the levels. A personal part I dislike is the second pod you can rescue early in the game. There’s a required part in which you must use the sonar to push the rock-eating starfish through a tight corridor between damaging spikes and then past a giant octopus. Did I mention that this is deep inside a cavern? So by the time you get there, you’ve nearly lost all of your air. This is the farthest I got when I originally rented the game.

Despite the difficulty and frustrating portions, the game is visually stunning. The underwater sections are beautiful. The soundtrack is fantastic; nearly all of the songs are amazing to listen to. I especially love the music that plays after everything gets sucked out of the ocean in the beginning.

Overall, I don’t think I could recommend this one. While the game is visually easy on the eyes and has an amazing soundtrack, the difficulty is just too much, even for veteran gamers. It’s not really a casual game. The difficulty is somewhat on par with Super Mario Bros. The Lost Levels. Ecco the Dolphin’s difficulty is only redeemed by its infinite lives system. It’s also comparable to the 2D Metroid games since you have to know in advance where to go. The game doesn’t have a save system, but a password system.

The game has since been rereleased several times for different platforms, including the Sega CD. I first owned it on the Sega Smash Pack for Gameboy Advance. Of course, it was a watered-down version of the game which played the same sound-loop over and over; however, it was the first version of the game I beat. Ecco the Dolphin did have two more games on Sega Genesis, a sequel, Ecco: The Tides of Time, and a prequel, Ecco Jr. The series was rebooted years later on the Sega Dreamcast, titled Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future.

(image source: Just Go Vintage)

Originally, there was going to be a direct sequel to The Tides of Time, though that never came. A few years ago, the creators of the original attempted to make a kickstarter to an Ecco spiritual successor called The Big Blue, but that didn’t happen either.

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