Odasaku's School for Gifted Children - Mincejalf - 文豪ストレイドッグス (2024)

Chapter 1: it starts like this

Chapter Text

“Yokohama may not be ready for this,” Chuuya spoke with a soft, cautious lilt to his voice. His eyes held a serious gravity as he made eye contact with Dazai, and Dazai could practically read the thoughts racing through his former partner’s head. The yearning, the fear, the hesitant belief, the resigned tiredness. Dazai had felt all of those himself, too. It was a crazy, stupid idea, one he had been sitting on for months. Every time he tried to stamp it down, it kept rearing its head, like a co*ckroach.

“When has Yokohama been ready for anything that has been thrown at us?” Dazai said, his mouth twisted in a pantomime of humor. Chuuya did not laugh. Dazai didn’t think he would. Laughter was not condoned by the Port Mafia. Joy wasn't essential to a good weapon, so they were discouraged from feeling it.

Dazai waited silently for Chuuya to speak again, sitting casually on the kitchen table of Chuuya’s penthouse apartment. With Chuuya sitting on one of the cushioned chairs, and the two plates of food and silverware between them, the scene could almost be seen as domestic.

(If you ignored the faint remnants of blood on the wall, the gun on the kitchen counter that was just as at home as the cutting board and stovetop, the crumpled suit blazer on the floor by the doorway.)

For a few seconds, Chuuya stared at his plate, distractedly moving the cut up pieces of crab he had cooked with his fork. Dazai's plate was over half full, even though crab was his favorite food. Chuuya was just grateful he had eaten anything. While Chuuya sat and contemplated Dazai's proposal, Dazai stared at Chuuya, his calculating brown eyes tracking the foreign and petite features of Chuuya's face. What they had together was not normal by any means, but neither were they.

These dinners they had did not always turn out so serious, with Dazai really and truly showing his hand of cards to Chuuya. They weren't partners anymore. That honor had been taken by Kunikida of the detective agency. Even the act of sitting together contentedly and quietly was a secret, had to be a secret. Maybe if they were both still in the Port Mafia, maybe if they were still partners, then they wouldn’t have to be so secretive.

After what Dazai had done to Chuuya… their relationship, their partnership, had been burned down to nothing. But now, they were something, a careful something that they had both built slowly after Dazai's betrayal and abandonment.

To call them boyfriends would be childish. To call them lovers would be naive. To call them halves of a whole would just be insulting to the specific achievements of the both of them. But soulmates... Yes, that word fit well on them. Maybe the excuse of them being soulmates could explain what Chuuya was about to agree to.

“Dazai… If you think you can do this? I’ll do it with you. I’ll trust you… I’ll build a new life with you. But only if you truly think we can do this.” Chuuya did not say these words lightly. It was not a casual thing, for a mafioso to make a promise like this. But this wasn’t just any promise. This was a promise to Dazai . It was a promise to the child Chuuya used to be, to the hundreds of children who might become like him. It was a promise to Yokohama.

“I know you can’t see this future like I can… One where the Ability Statutes are abolished, where our people are at peace, where children don’t have to fight. I can see this clearer than I’ve ever seen anything. Yokohama isn’t ready, but that’s a good thing. Let’s not give the city a chance to brace itself, before we break everything and let them heal back better. I don’t just think I can do this. I know I can,” Dazai said, his face holding the kind of solemnity Chuuya had only seen on him back in his mafia days.

Chuuya did not smile, because that wasn’t something he did, and Dazai knew that. He smirked, bared his teeth, and sometimes smugly grinned. Chuuya did not smile. But he did lean forward towards Dazai, reaching out to hold his cold hand. It was a silent metaphor. Chuuya would subject himself to Dazai’s ability, let himself be vulnerable in more ways than one. And Dazai would let Chuuya touch him, would feel the warmth of another human , to acknowledge and admit to the presence of humanity in the both of them.

Staring at Dazai’s dinner, which looked like it had been nibbled at by a rabbit, and remembering the consistent, symmetric scar lines along Dazai’s limbs like the picture of it had been burned into his eyelids, Chuuya said to his soulmate, “You want to give the next generation a better life. You can’t do that while denying yourself the same thing.”

“Why, Nakahara Chuuya, aren’t you a hypocrite! I’m not the only one who has to remold the clay I was baked from if we want this pipe dream to succeed,” Dazai grinned, and while sometimes his smile was a carefully crafted charade, right here, right now, in front of Chuuya, it was possibly the most honest Dazai was capable of being.

Chuuya did not smile, because that wasn’t something he did, but the rest of his face and body language said all his mouth did not, and Dazai knew that. The two of them sat like that, hands clasped together and showing each other the true faces they usually had to cover up, and if they were not happy then they were at peace with what they had. Later that night, after Dazai had been cajoled into finishing his plate of dinner, they slipped into Chuuya’s bed together.

They didn’t talk. That could wait till the morning. Instead, they curled up together, all the words that couldn’t quite describe them humming in the air between them.

Yokohama wasn’t ready. Neither were they. But the point wasn’t that they were strong enough to withstand this, but rather that they were brave enough, and tired enough, to attempt to.

(And it starts like this, or, at least, it starts like this in the textbook of a Yokohaman student.)

The first ability user in the world was born in China, a glowing baby that defied the predestined rules of everything . The first ability user in Yokohama was born in Yokohama Municipal Citizen’s Hospital, and the little girl, who was never given a name, had killed over a hundred people. Her ability, which had been given a name even when she hadn’t, was called Wires Twist in the Basem*nts of Men. It made all technology within a mile of her fritz out, with technology closer to her being more affected.

What could a little girl like that do to a building of people on life support? According to the government, mass murder. And what could a little girl like that mean for the future of Yokohama City? According to the government, the end of everything.

The baby didn’t live past the night. The government agent who killed her did not feel guilt. The nurses and doctors who stood outside the room did not feel shame. And the mother and father, sitting in darkness and with the weight of so many deaths held in the tiny body of their only daughter, only felt disgust. The little girl's ability was not a gift, and she didn't live long enough for it to become a curse. It was simply a death sentence.

In the years after that, when more abilities showed up among babies, much the same procedure was followed. The babies were never named, only the abilities, and their disposals were quick and without mercy. But some slipped through the cracks. Those with non obvious abilities. Those with unobservant doctors. Those with the rare parents whose first thought upon the sight of an ability was not hatred or fear, but love.

All around the world, the number of ability users was growing. Countries and cities with higher percentages of ability users were in chaos, their police and militaries unable to fight back against the supernatural powers many people found themselves afflicted with. Yokohama refused to be one of those cities. Yokohama saw the destruction and death plaguing the rest of the world, and made the decision that the power of abilities weren't worth the risk of trying to contain them. Having ability users working for them wasn't worth inevitably having ability users working against them.

The first attempt at a solution to abilities was the Early Purge. The military swept through schools, sniffing out ability users like bloodhounds, interrogating any child a teacher even slightly suspected of having an ability. These elite members of the Military Police made up a team whose whole job was to find and deal with ability users, and they earned the nickname of 'The Hunting Dogs'. They killed hundreds and left a trail of fear and blood in their path. In modern times, the Hunting Dogs were a much smaller unit, made of ability users who had sold their bodies and abilities to the government, even despite their history of killing their own people.

The Early Purge certainly culled the number of ability users in the beginning, but eventually ability users got smarter, and the military’s methods became less and less effective. It simply wasn't feasible to kill every single ability user born, and they had tried for long and hard to do just that. There was need for a new, different solution to the problem of ability users.

The Second Purge was not a mass slaughter, like the Early Purge was. Instead, it was a mass exile. Thousands of people were cast out of the city. And it wasn’t just people who were found guilty. People who were found likely to be guilty, or even just possibly guilty. Suspected children and suspected adults. Even pregnant mothers, suspected to be carrying the child of an ability user, were exiled. No one was spared.

At the same time as the Second Purge, Yokohama City declared its independence from Japan. There was increasing backlash from the rest of Japan about the shoot first, ask questions never motto of Yokohama when it came to abilities, and the Yokohaman government was sick of it. If Japan wouldn't support Yokohama in protecting its people, Yokohama would just have to support itself.

Walls were built and vigilantly patrolled, and the exile of suspected ability users seemed that much more permanent when even a non-ability user of Japan couldn’t pass through the walls of Yokohama. It became tradition for every Prime Minister of the country of Yokohama to make their own addition to the walls and the defense of the walls. The Walls of Yokohama became an iconic feature of the tiny country, and a tourist attraction to be viewed from the Japanese side of it.

The Final Purge occurred almost directly on the heels of the Second, and it was not defined by the killing or banishing of ability users, but rather the prevention of them. The Final Purge was a set of laws for ability users called the Ability Statute, which dictated the course of every ability user’s life. The Final Purge sought the end of chaos through the creation of strict control over ability users, and the Ability Statute was pretty much the definition of the word strict.

Abilities must be documented; abilities must be disclosed to schools; abilities must be disclosed to job interviewers; an ability user can not have a job involving or related to the creation of laws in government; an ability user can not be the legal guardian of a child; an ability user cannot have a biological child; these laws, and so many more, became the reality for all ability users in Yokohama.

Yokohama realized that it couldn’t kill its problems, nor could it send them away and pretend they didn’t exist. That was fine, though, as long as they were one step ahead in stopping them from ever being born. An ability user couldn't cause problems if they were documented and watched all their life.

The only ability users in Yokohama were first generation, and so Yokohama remained with a majority of normal humans while the rest of Japan and the rest of the world gradually shifted to a majority of ability users. Yokohama remained the last bastion of ordinary humans, with a lawmaking government completely clean of abilities.

(But it also starts like this, in the minds of the rest of the world.)

Yokohama killed off all of its heroic-minded ability users, and was sadly taken over by ability using villains.

(That's too simple, though, don't you think? Let's try a different explanation.)

Somewhere between the Final Purge and the present day, Yokohama and Japan fought a war. Yokohama called it their Revolution. Japan called it the Yokohaman Rebellion. Two different titles for the same bloody, tragic battles. The war did not start on exactly one day. Neither side ever officially declared war, but the war started nonetheless.

Japan fought with heroes. Yokohama fought with its army. Yokohama shouldn't have won, logically, but nothing about abilities was logical, and Yokohama only thought in logistics. Thousands died. The Walls built during the Second Purge nearly fell completely, and some of the Walls did fall, though they were quickly built up again. Yokohaman farmers and civilians, those who lived on the outskirts of the city, were caught in the crossfire. In retaliation, Yokohama sent suicide bombers to Japan. They refused to let Japanese civilians remain unaffected while their people died en masse.

It was a horrible, petty war, with arrogant governments sending innocents to die and to kill. Neither Japan nor Yokohama were completely in the right, though Japan would certainly insist otherwise. Yokohama had actually admitted to its crimes, though their apologies were halfhearted, and they weren't to ability users, but rather the rest of Japan. It was almost a slap to the face for the government to build memorials for the people who fought on the opposite side of the battlefield and to ignore the murders of Yokohaman ability users.

The war began because both sides couldn't compromise their beliefs on abilities, and it ended because Japan's heroes had underestimated the military prowess of those without abilities, and Yokohama's soldiers had hated ability users so much they were willing to kill when Japan wouldn't. The war ended because Japan refused to kill, and Yokohama was much too willing to.

Japan refused to admit that they had been defeated by a city full of people without abilities. They claimed that the government had been taken over by villains with abilities, that the heroes hadn't lost against normal people without quirks but against powerful, quirked evildoers. According to Japan, Yokohama was a lawless city, filled with the cowering ordinary people who had once upon a time murdered and exiled thousands of ability users.

Yokohama's government told its people that the Outside was a terrible place, one where ability users and non-ability users stood together on equal footing, where everyone turned a blind eye to the dangers of quirks. Japan's government told its people that Yokohama was a warlike place even decades after the end of the Rebellion, where villains reigned supreme and everyone else suffered unimaginable horrors. Neither government was right, obviously, but how could two completely isolated peoples know that?

The fact of the matter was that both countries understood nothing about the other, and had stubborn governments that refused to learn more about their neighbor.

Dazai and Chuuya sat on the floor together in Chuuya's sophisticated penthouse, a sea of newspaper clippings and printed out articles surrounding them. A common trend could be seen among all of them- they were all about schools in the Outside which accepted ability users, and specifically trained their abilities. One school that showed up often was Japan's top school, UA High School. The information might not have been the most reliable, seeing as they had all been written by Yokohaman journalists, but they were something. Taped to the walls with masking tape was pages upon pages of the Ability Statutes. Certain lines were underlined, and notes were written along the sides of the papers.

"This UA... This is what Yokohama needs. A school that can teach ability users to be intelligent, capable, and compassionate. Heh, to be heroes. Their school mascot is kind of on the nose, but I get what they mean when they say they want their kids to be heroes. That's what we want too, a generation of good samaritans and upstanding citizens, ability or no," Chuuya said, sitting with his legs crossed, pulling his long hair back with a hair tie. He was dressed in simple black leggings with a matching crop top, and while he was plenty comfortable in them, he wouldn't be caught dead wearing them with anyone other than Dazai.

"I know. If we can make something like this UA of theirs, combined with a certain Yokohaman charm, I think we could actually change lives. A safe space for ability users to learn and be free from persecution." Dazai's smile wasn't of the kind you would normally see on him, loud and manic, instead it was a soft and almost hopeful face that greeted Chuuya when he looked up from the papers at Dazai. Chuuya reached forward to adjust a loose bandage on Dazai's arm, and that was as much a reciprocation of Dazai's smile as he could get. Chuuya was the only other person Dazai let touch his bandages, and though Chuuya helped him with his bandages often enough, he always felt a small flutter in the bottom of his stomach. Something about Chuuya made Dazai feel like a child again, and he resisted the urge to blush. This was the man he wanted to save Yokohama once more with.

"We could have a building here in the city, maybe near your ADA. Your detectives could all help teach, and I could get some of my kinder subordinates to teach too, and maybe Kouyou could give etiquette lessons," Chuuya rambled, his mind alight with all of the possibilities. It had been years since Dazai last saw Chuuya this excited about something, and he did his best to savor the pride and love he felt pouring through him. “I could teach the kids martial arts, and you and that really, really smart detective could teach deductive reasoning, and-”

Chuuya cut himself off with a small blush. Dazai had never seen anything cuter, and wasn’t hesitant to say that to Chuuya’s face.

“Why you- Bastard!” Chuuya spluttered. Dazai burst out laughing, clutching his stomach as he fell forward dramatically. Chuuya, while still sitting criss cross, shoved him away with an embarrassed look.

“Stupid bandage-wasting fish,” he grumbled, crossing his thin arms along his chest. “Distracting the both of us.” Dazai sobered up quickly.

“You have good ideas about the school, ones I think we can definitely implement. But you’re skipping ahead a few steps. We need permission from the Prime Minister; we need to gather students; and we need to properly learn how to run a school for ability users, preferably from the source. We need to go to UA and actually see how they run things,” Dazai began listing out a few of their early objectives.

“Should we divide and conquer? You’ll obviously handle the government better, and we both know that I’m better with kids,” Chuuya suggested hesitantly. It wasn’t a slight to either of them, just the acknowledgement that they both were better or worse at certain things, and it would be better to play to their strengths. Dazai nodded without having to think about it, having been thinking of a similar idea.

“I have some favors I can utilize to get me up the food chain to the Prime Minister. I’ll get permission for the school, and permission for us to travel into Japan to learn from their schools. You can find some prospective students and get them to sign some early papers to show interest in the school. And… do you still have those foreign contacts? We might be needing them to get in contact with the principal,” Dazai said, his eyes alight with a certain determination.

“I do have those contacts, and I think I can get ahold of the principal. But the kids… most of the ones I’m familiar with are in the mafia or on the streets. We’re talking orphans and runaways. They’re not going to have parental consent for the school. Can you deal with that in your meeting with the Prime Minister?” Chuuya asked. He stood up, his bare feet trampling all of the papers on the floor.

Dazai stood too, saying, “Of course I can. ‘Guardian’s consent not required but accepted’. A kid with consent or with no guardian is fine. If a kids guardian specifically doesn’t give consent, the kid can’t go.”

“Sounds good to me,” Chuuya said. For a few seconds, there was silence between them. “I love you, you idiot. Come back to me next weekend?”

Dazai grinned, and Chuuya felt the kind of awe one could only feel when in the presence of a Sun.

“I love you too, Chuuya. Can we have crab again?” Dazai asked, tenderly as he began speaking and joking as he ended.

“Lay off it with the crab, bastard!! I can’t cook it every night you come over!!” Chuuya yelled angrily at Dazai, the familiar rage that only Dazai could produce in him rising up his throat. Despite how it sounded, Chuuya couldn’t be more content with his life at that moment.

Atsushi methodically made himself a late dinner, his small agency-funded apartment feeling entirely too constricting for his tastes. He felt almost guilty, that he felt so nervous. When Dazai had come up to him and asked for him to help with his radical plan for a school, Atsushi wasn't completely sure on whether he should help or not. He had asked for time to think it over, though giving himself more time to stress out over his choice was clearly the wrong decision to make.

No one would hate him for wanting to stay out of the school's creation. They all would understand and sympathize, and maybe that was why Atsushi wanted so badly to accept Dazai's offer. To go against the tide, to fight everyone's opinions of him, to aid in the birth of possibly the best or worst thing to ever happen to Yokohama since the Purges. Atsushi wanted to do all of that and more, he wanted to do so much more.

He couldn't help but imagine what his life could have been like if he had always known about the tiger, had been able to train and accept his ability. How much better could he have been?

(How many more people could he have saved? Who would still be alive if he had been raised kindly and not cruelly? And was it cruel to himself to keep thinking in what-ifs and if-onlys?)

Dazai wanted him to teach. He wanted Atsushi to care for children, to give them the upbringing that every child deserved but some had taken away from them by an unwanted ability. Atsushi didn't know if he could do that without seeing himself in the students. Himself, and the tiger.

He couldn't help the tiny portion of his brain that was programmed to fear abilities, to loathe abilities. The rest of the ADA had always known about their abilities- had grown up with all of the rules memorized, with their hindbrains set to obey and to ignore the devils inside of them. Atsushi hadn't been raised like that, but maybe it would have been easier in the end if he had.

Atsushi sighed and carried his plate of food over to his two-seating kitchen table. He smiled automatically upon seeing the tablecloth. It had little jungle animals patterned on it, and Kyouka had bought it for him as a birthday gift. She said the little cartoon tigers reminded her of him. It was a childish thing for him to have in his apartment, but he unironically loved it. There was a part of him that was unused to receiving gifts that preened at the 'honor' of having someone give him a present.

Scrolling through the news on his phone as he slowly ate, Atsushi decided to hold off on considering Dazai's school until he had finished eating. That might have been a mistake, as he stumbled upon an opinion piece titled: 'Why We Still Need the Ability Statutes'. Atsushi couldn't help but open the article, and felt sick at what he read. Within a few paragraphs he clicked off.

It hurt to know that Yokohamans still believed that the Purges were a good part of Yokohama's history. The government had atoned for their cruelty during the Revolution but not for their crimes during the Purges, and Yokohama couldn't learn the truth until its government actually admitted to it. It couldn't be safe to build a school for ability users while many people still had their heads stuck in the mindset of the Purges, Atsushi fretted. They would be targets. The children would be targets, bigger targets than ability users normally were.

He stood up, placing his plate on the counter. There was still food on it. Atsushi felt too nauseous to keep eating. Slowly, he began pacing around the small kitchen, his ears and tail materializing on his body. With his ears pinned back and his tail swishing back and forth aggressively, he walked a circuit around the room, his anxious mind also running in repetitive circles.

God, he couldn't stay in this tiny room, it was all too claustrophobic. He glanced at the custom military police vest hanging by the door, and decided that it was a good time to go out and get a breath of fresh air. The police vest wasn't meant for a human. Rather, it was specifically meant for him to wear as a tiger. After a few too many panicked sightings of a loose tiger in the city, the government had fitted him with the vest. It was a bright, vibrant blue and it was obnoxious and it was a little too similar to a dog's vest, but it was nowhere near as embarrassing as having someone call your own coworkers on you.

'Licensed Military Police Ability User', it said on both sides, with a phone number written below to call if he was seen doing something he shouldn't be. The phone number was definitely an insult directed at him, but it wasn't like he could complain. This vest was what he wore the most, usually around the city in chases or just following around other agency members. It was for his smaller tiger form, which was about the size of a large dog. He had no vest for when he was in his larger tiger form, but usually when he was in that form all civilians had been cleared from the area.

Going through the complex motions of putting on the vest while partially in tiger form and partially in human form, he finally got the vest on correctly and silently leapt out the open window. Almost immediately, he felt so much lighter, like he had shed the skin of his real life and now all he had to worry about was the wind around him and the ground beneath him.

With great running leaps, Atsushi ran out of the alleyway he had landed in and along the empty street. Other than the empty cars of people sleeping in the buildings he passed and a few stray cats, there was no one to see him. The wind filtered through his fur like a hand carding through hair, and while the hard pavement hurt his paw pads, the pain of it also brought a great thrill to him. Running as a tiger was different than as a human. As a tiger, there was nothing truer to him than to sprint. It was second nature to him. It just wasn't the same when he ran as a human.

Atsushi practically flew through the streets, and the free movements of his tiger body brought a certain rebellious freedom to his mind. He always felt a little invincible like this, faster than any man and with claws and teeth that could rip someone apart in seconds. He knew, distantly, that when he became human once more these wild thoughts would bring him a terrible kind of shame, but for now they brought him animalistic glee.

He turned sharply around a corner into an alleyway and was jarred to a stop at the sight of two humans standing there. One was a man, who carried a stench of booze and sleaziness, the other a woman, who smelled bitter, in a way that Atsushi recognized as the sharp tang of fear. The man had the woman pushed into a wall, a co*cky grin etched into his face like it had been carved their permanently with a knife. Atsushi couldn't see a gun on him, but he smelt the gunpowder and knew that he was armed. He knew what he had to do.

Before either of the humans fully processed the sight of the dog-sized tiger before them, he tackled the man down, resisting the urge to sink his teeth into the man and to lap up his blood like it was water. When he was sure that the man was unconscious, Atsushi turned around to face the woman he had saved and was struck with the horrifying realization that her fear smell had only grown stronger upon seeing him. Guiltily, he lied down next to the disgusting man, making sure the words on his vest could be seen by the woman. Making sure that the phone number on his vest could be seen, in case she wanted to report him.

(It had happened before, that he saved someone only for them to call the police on him. The vest lessened the calls to the ADA reporting him, but did not stop them.)

After reading what it said, though, her features relaxed, and she smiled gratefully at him. One of his ears flicked in a quick jolt of surprise.

"Thank you! Thank you so much, I didn't know what to do, he wouldn't stop even after I said no-" She started crying and slid to the ground, the shock and panic of earlier catching up to her. Atsushi gave a panicked mewl and slowly rose from the ground, walking with his tail between his legs and putting a paw on the woman's leg to comfort her. As he got closer, Atsushi realized that the 'woman' was young, clearly still a girl. His disgust at the drunk bastard behind him only grew.

"Thank you," she said chokingly, her sniffles loud and erratic. "Can I...?" The girl lifted a hand as if to pet him, and he nodded. She reached out to pet his head, and giggled when he leaned into it. Slowly, through the course of a few minutes, her crying slowed and then ended, and she stopped looking as if she would collapse the moment she stood up.

"I'm Minako, what's your name?" she asked, still gently petting his head. Atsushi carefully guided her hands to the front of his vest, where his name was embroidered in silver. He could have changed back into a human, but he felt like Minako needed him more in his tiger form than his human one. And wasn't that a crazy thought, that he could be loved for his ability and not hated for it. That his ability wasn't a curse but rather something that could help people in ways other than fighting.

"Atsushi, huh? And it says you work for a detective agency?" Atsushi nodded, feeling the start of a happy purr forming. "Then you must save a lot of people like me. I work at an insurance firm, we don't see much action."

For another minute, Atsushi purred while Minako rambled, at least until the drunk man seemed to stir in his sleep. Minako tensed up and Atsushi softly growled, not as a threat to Minako but as a threat to the man. He nudged Minako's hand with his nose, and when she started petting him again, he brought her hand to his vest, implying that he wanted her to call the phone number on it.

When she took out her phone and typed out the number, and Atsushi heard the voice of the agency's receptionist, he stood and began getting ready to leave.

"Atsushi?" Minako called. Atsushi stopped padding away, waiting to see if Minako still needed him. "Thank you. Thank you for everything. Goodbye."

He leapt away, slower and with more trepidation, his tail swishing slowly behind him. He was hit by the sudden thought that tonight, saving that girl, he had been treated just as human as a tiger than he had as a human. And just as suddenly, he knew that he would never forgive himself if he didn’t help Dazai make his crazy dream of a school. Every ability user should have the chance to feel as accepted and proud as he had just then.

Abilities could do good. They could turn rotten, but they could turn into something pure just as quickly. Atsushi was so sure of this idea, that abilities were neither inherently good nor bad, he wanted to share it with all of Yokohama. He wanted to change Yokohama’s collective minds about abilities, and he wanted to start with Dazai’s school.

He climbed into the same window in his apartment that he left out of and changed back into his human form. Pulling out his phone, he began dialing a number he had memorized years ago.

"Dazai? I'm in." A slight pause as he listened to what Dazai was saying. "Odasaku's School for Gifted Children... Yes, it's a wonderful name, and I take it that meeting with the Prime Minister went well? That's good."

Another pause.

"Wait, you want me to do what?!"

Tecchou sat awkwardly in the main room of the Armed Detective Agency, the few detectives that were already there looking at him suspiciously. Their receptionist likewise seemed uncomfortable. Just months ago he and the other Hunting Dogs had been attempting to bring them in for terrorism, and now he was sitting in their building peacefully without trying to arrest them. It was more than a little awkward. Truthfully, he was only there to talk to the nullifier, Dazai, Tecchou believed his name was.

Tecchou crossed his legs, his black government-issued boots gleaming brightly in the light. Almost immediately he uncrossed his legs and placed his boot back on the ground. God, this was horrible. He wished Jouno was there. Actually, he'd probably accept any other Hunting Dog. Hunting Dogs were supposed to always have backup... Except now f*ckuchi was dead, their whole group was suspect, and he was being sent on a solo mission outside of Yokohama. This wasn't what he meant when he said he wanted justice, not if he had to leave behind everyone he loved, short a list it may be.

"Um, Tecchou-san?'' The weretiger boy called his name. His body was split between human and beast, and he bore twin tiger ears and a nervously twitching tail. Both of the men tried their hardest to ignore the fact that Tecchou's worn hands instantly flinched to grab his sword. Tecchou knew that the weretiger didn't hold it against him, but still felt guilty when his body posture straightened and his spine tensed, all while maintaining eye contact with Tecchou.

"Yes?" Tecchou responded with a questioning tone, folding both of his gloved hands in his lap in a show of peace. He noticed how the rest of the agency members were tracking his movements out of the corners of their eyes, pretending to be typing on computers or filling out paperwork but all ready to protect one of their own. Tecchou felt a small longing to be back at base with his team, the four of them that were left together in their own little world. He felt like a foreigner when forced to disrupt the agency's own ecosystem, and shuddered to think of how his team might react if someone did the same to them.

"Well, it's just, Dazai-san is a little unpredictable sometimes-" The weretiger was interrupted by Dazai arriving at the agency, loudly, accompanied by Nakahara Chuuya, the ginger Mafia executive that Dazai used to be partnered with. Both of Double Black were here, and even though they were currently infighting, Tecchou still felt an involuntary wave of fear rack his body. His hands clenched in his lap as if tightened by an invisible force. When Dazai's eyes fell upon Tecchou, he smirked, and Tecchou knew that he was facing the Demon Prodigy, the brains of Soukoku, and not the detective.

"Would you look at this, Chuu-Chuu, a Hunting Dog!" Dazai, like a flip had switched and he was back to normal, announced with a provocative smile at Chuuya, and before Chuuya could angrily yell a retort, Dazai stage whispered, "Do you think he's here for me?!"

Tecchou stood from the hard wooden bench they had sat him on, conscious but dismissive of the other Agency members staring at their interaction, offering a shallow bow to Dazai. Now that he was at eye level with him, Tecchou could recognize a conniving gleam in his dark brown eyes. Glancing to Dazai's right, he saw the threatening gleam in Chuuya's blue eyes, the promise that if Tecchou so much as got a little too close to Dazai, Hell would rain down.

"I am here to discuss your pending travel request to go to Musutafu, Japan," he said. Tecchou noticed the way Dazai's eyes held a quick flash of surprise, before he bounced back and gained control of the conversation once more. So Dazai had thought he was going to talk to them about something else. Possibly something about the prospective school? Maybe Dazai hadn't yet realized that the government truly thought that the school was a hopeless endeavor, something to be used to temporarily pacify the ability users of the Agency and the Mafia and little else.

"Ah, about that! The chibi, of course, is still going, but our little Atsushi here will be going in place of me! Can't exactly procure sponsors if I'm out of the country!" Dazai told him, his phrasing almost challenging Tecchou to try and deny him. Tecchou, naturally, ignored it.

"Okay. Since the both of them are here, I may still give them my orders from the government." Tecchou took a deep breath in, trying to prepare himself for the arguing he foresaw at his news. "I am to join you on your journey into Japan, both as a bodyguard from Outside threats... and to ensure you don't try and turn traitor." He looked almost pained to have to say that. Everyone in the room knew that it was because they were ability users that he had to say that.

To his surprise, both Chuuya and Atsushi nodded in understanding. Tecchou considered that for a moment, but concluded that it was because they were ability users that they were able to accept that fact easily. If he had said that to any other Yokohaman, they would have gotten offended, they would have gotten angry. But ability users were taught from a young age to roll over and not fight back, so maybe he shouldn't have been surprised at all.

Tecchou turned slightly to face the rest of the agency, his eyes raking over each of them and assessing them. None of them seemed overtly caught off guard. It made the small side of him that cared for all ability users, ex-terrorist or not, happy to see such a close and well-adjusted family. He nodded slightly to himself. It was time to get back to his family, to say goodbye for a long, long while.

Chuuya walked away from Dazai, who had begun poking fun at Kunikida, to stand near Tecchou, close enough for them to have a semi-private conversation.

"You just got married, right? To the other Hunting Dog?" Chuuya asked softly, his body not betraying what seemed to be a sensitive, close to home question for him.

"Yes," Tecchou answered simply. He and Jouno had gotten married fairly soon after f*ckuchi's death, after they had realized just how stupid it was to continue hiding their relationship. They had been together for a while, but had kept it secret, mostly because of Tecchou's fear that they could be kicked out of the Hunting Dogs. But after nearly losing Jouno to the Decay of Angels' vampire epidemic, he had decided that his love for Jouno was stronger even than his love for justice, and that he would be with Jouno even if he could no longer be with the Hunting Dogs. To Tecchou's delight, the government had sighed and dragged its feet but eventually agreed to let the both of them stay on the team.

"You're very lucky," Chuuya said seriously, his eyes focused on Dazai and not Tecchou. The longing he felt for the bandaged detective was clear, and saddening. Here in Yokohama there were generations of ability users who felt they weren't allowed to be happy, to have a family. Tecchou hoped one day Soukoku might prove everyone wrong like he and Jouno did with their wedding.

"I know." Tecchou fully took in the mood of the room and the tempo of all of the people in it, a small smile flitting across his face. Maybe this group wouldn't do so bad in raising the next generation of ability users.

(If they ever even got to that point. If they weren't blackmailed or extorted into giving up the school. If the government didn't put its foot down on the whole thing. If the Yokohaman people didn't riot to the point of it being too dangerous.)

Chuuya sat stiffly in the government-assigned car, elbow resting on the door and holding up his head. There would probably be a red mark on his cheek when he moved, but oh well. Tecchou sat, equally as uncomfortable, by the other window. Atsushi lay on the floor of the car between their legs, wearing the blue military police vest he hated but had to wear if he wanted to so much as exist in his tiger form.

The driver of the car, an ability user with a low level job as a grunt in the Special Division for Unusual Powers, was an older man who kept on coughing into his handkerchief. Chuuya wondered if he was the best choice to drive a car that was escorting three extremely powerful and well-trained ability users, but then was struck by the realization that he was only guarding against two ability users, and really it would be a two on two fight. Tecchou was with the Hunting Dogs, not them, even if he was an ability user that cared for both Yokohama and its ability users. If forced to choose between the government and Chuuya and Atsushi, it was clear what his choice would be.

"Coming up to the Yokohama checkpoint." The divider in the middle of the car lowered, and the driver rasped out the sentence, his throat scratchy and his voice practically painful to listen to. Chuuya didn't respond, and continued staring at his reflection in the tinted window. He couldn't see out the window, and he had to wonder what the point was at all, or if it was just to keep up outside appearances. The car slowed to a stop, the driver rolling down his non-tinted window to show identification to the border guard.

The guard glanced curiously into the back of the car, and was confused to see a uniformed Hunting Dog, a white tiger, and a redhead sitting silently. Well, the guard reasoned, he had seen weirder. Rich people were seriously weird sometimes. This was probably just a businessman, his (illegal?) pet tiger, and his bodyguard traveling the border. He had to wonder why it was a Hunting Dog escorting the ginger, but wondering wasn't what he was getting paid for, so he just allowed the car through. At least he'd have a story to tell to the other bored border guards.

They drove slowly as they approached the actual Wall. The checkpoints on either side of the Wall didn't offer much protection, but the Wall and its highly trained military units provided the ultimate defense, and offense, if needed. The minute they entered the Wall, the faint light they had been receiving from the driver's windows completely disappeared, and it was dark except for the yellow glowing lights on the walls inside the Wall. Shadowed figures, all wearing tactical gear and carrying guns, walked along the side of the one-lane road, their faces masked by the limited light. Around ten or so of the soldiers followed the sides of the car, their feet silent against the pavement and their legs moving in perfect synchronicity.

This one-way road was one of two that exited Yokohama. There were two other roads that entered Yokohama, the locations of which were highly classified to Outsiders. The roads exiting Yokohama were actually fairly common knowledge to the people living in the city, but that didn't mean much considering everyone knew that getting too close without the right paperwork and permission would likely end in your death, especially if you were an ability user.

As they made it out of the dark inner Wall, their guards didn't follow them out of the Wall. Chuuya felt a strange fear at the fact that they were now in Japan. The land didn't feel different, and nothing had really changed, but he couldn't help that he had an ingrained terror at the thought of the Outside. He was also slightly scared of the fact that the three of them could be walking precedents, traditions of how Yokohama's ability users would be treated Outside for decades to come.

(How many Yokohamans had ever exited the Wall like he was doing now? How many ability users had ever exited the Wall, since the Second Purge? Had any?)

The car reached the Japanese checkpoint, and Chuuya was beyond glad that the driver hadn't bothered to lift up the divider between them. He was about to see his first ever Outsider. He had never been so full of dread nor excitement before.

The driver opened his window again, and Chuuya had his first sight of a Japanese Outsider. It looked horrifying. He felt guilty for thinking of a human being like that, but the thing's mutant quirk made it something inhuman-looking. It had a scaled body, which held an iridescent green gleam. It's head was that of a lizard.

"Tecchou, can you see that checkpoint guard?" Chuuya hissed quietly across the seat. The Outsider didn't hear him, but the driver seemed to. Tecchou shook his head.

Chuuya waited for them to drive away before telling Tecchou, "You know those commercials in the old bootleg American DVDs, the ones with the insurance company and the lizard?"

"You just asked a government worker if he watched illegal black market films." Tecchou let it sink in. "But, yes. Did they... Look like a lizard?"

"Yep," Chuuya said, grimacing. Tecchou lightly gagged.

From below them, Atsushi gave a big yawn and sat up. The driver glanced back in the rear-view mirror and then quickly moved his eyes back to the road. Then Atsushi climbed onto the middle seat, and began grooming himself. The driver seemed to be close to pissing himself from fear.

They drove for the next half hour, mostly in silence, until the car stopped and the driver fully got out to open their doors for them.

Chuuya was the first out, and he blinked aggressively at the bright sunlight. Looking ahead, he saw his first Japanese city, and gasped audibly at the sight.

(And it starts like this- in the eyes of a criminal, in the heart of a tiger, in the prayers of a soldier.)

Chapter 2: do what you want as long as you stay here

Chapter Text

Nezu stared at the assembled teachers, his eyes, which some may call beady, seemed to land on all of them at once. Personally, he was extremely proud of that trick. Observing the way Aizawa slumped tiredly in his chair, he decided he was extremely proud of that trick, too. Once he learned of Aizawa's weak spot towards children, getting him to work at UA was nearly an open and shut case, though it still required a certain finesse on Nezu's part.

"Why'd you call us here, Principal?" Yamada groaned tiredly. It was late at night, long past the end of the school day. Everyone in the room, except for Nezu, were dead on their feet after a long day of dealing with children and patrolling against villains. Hm. Maybe he should invest in more employees?

"I have important news for the school!" He said cheerfully, taking a small sip of his tea. Nezu noted how Aizawa rolled his eyes and his grin behind his tea cup.

"Cut the crap, Nezu. You wouldn't tell us sh*t if you didn't have to. What is it?" Aizawa scowled, trying to massage his migraine away. He didn't open his eyes to look at Nezu, just kept trying to fall into an impossible sleep. A few of the other UA teachers exchanged looks. Undoubtedly, if any of them tried to say the same, they would have been fired.

(Everyone knew Aizawa was Nezu’s favorite. The only one out of the loop was Aizawa himself.)

“Our lovely neighbors in Yokohama. There have been certain- mm, requests, made of me. I took the liberty of accepting one of said requests.” Nezu said cryptically. Aizawa glowered at the smug principal.

“Would these requests happen to involve my kids?” Aizawa spoke in a low, almost growly tone. Yamada frowned disappointedly at Nezu, and Midnight similarly looked upset. Those kids had gone through enough, and even now they had the stress of the sports festival coming up on them.

“Not directly,” Nezu reassured in a cold voice. It was less about comforting his employee and more about raising a verbal eyebrow at Aizawa’s blatant distrust. “They want to come here and learn from the top hero school in the country.”

Aizawa scoffed at the ludicrous idea, did the rat think he was stupid? Yokohama had a notorious hatred for both heroes and Japan, and the government was infamously known to be run by villains.

“They have quirks, and they want to start a hero school within Yokohama. They have bigger problems than a couple school teachers not believing them,” Nezu said mildly, very aware of the outrage he had caused within his staff.

“Yokohama’s quirk users are all villains!”

“They can’t be trusted!”

“They’re just trying to infiltrate the school!”

Those, and similar shouts, arose among the group of teachers. It had been centuries since the Yokohama Rebellion, and for just as long, quirk users from the city had been stereotyped as evil, cruel, greedy, but mostly? Powerful. They supposedly ruled the tiny port city.

“I believe I may have some,” A cough. “Insight, when it comes to Yokohama.” It was All Might, or rather, Toshinori Yagi. Everyone immediately went silent out of both respect and curiosity.

“I myself have never seen the inside of the city, but my teacher told me stories of the other generations who did see it. The truth is, quirks do not rule the city. If it is villains in charge, then they are of a different kind than any of us have ever seen. My mentor said that they had laws, hundreds of laws, when it came to quirks,” Toshinori paused to collect his thoughts, to plan what he was going to say next.

“Their laws prevent a quirk user from running for office. It may be true that they are ruled by villains, but they are not ruled by quirks.” Toshinori explained. Nezu seemed unsurprised at the information, but the rest of the heroes were shocked. A ban on quirk users in office? That was just… cruel. Even if it meant the city wasn’t ruled by villains, they weren’t sure if the path to get there was even right.

“The laws against quirk users are called the Ability Statutes. They are constrictive, prejudiced, and inhumane. The school these men want to make is a school that could forever change their city. If we help their school succeed, we may contribute to abolishing the Statutes. Helping them would mean being their hero, maybe the first they’ve ever seen,” Nezu said dramatically, his words carefully measured and emphasized to get the reaction he wanted from the pros in his office.

Already, various teachers were pledging their intentions to help and teach the Yokohaman quirk users how to be good, like them. They all clearly held assumptions about the morality and personalities of the Yokohamans, and they didn’t even know their names yet. Pro heroes really did change their minds about evil so quickly, Nezu mused. Aizawa was silent, staring at the grinning principal. There was something the rat wasn’t telling them, but, well, there was always something Nezu wasn’t telling them. That was just how he worked.

“The school’s name will be Odasaku’s School for Gifted Children,” Nezu said once the loud, even if tired, heroes had quieted down. “I was contacted by Nakahara Chuuya, who spoke in place of his partner, Dazai Osamu, about visiting our school. After making final arrangements, I was given the names of the people coming to us. Nakahara, Nakajima Atsushi, and their bodyguard, Tecchou Suehiro.”

There was silence as they all waited to see if Nezu would continue talking, but when he didn’t, they turned to their neighbors and began talking. Aizawa turned to Yamada and Nemuri, though he kept the Principal in the corner of his eye.

“There’s only two of them,” Aizawa spoke first. He was tired and antisocial, sure, but he wouldn’t let that affect his critical thinking skills, not when his kids would be affected. The other two stayed silent to let him explain his thought process.

“There’s only two of them. Schools take tens of hundreds of adults to run well, and only two supposed founders of this place are coming. For some reason, they can’t afford to send more of their men. Or maybe they aren’t allowed to send more of their men? Point is, someone doesn’t want this school to happen. And a bodyguard? Maybe they feel threatened by the Outside, sure. Or maybe someone from Yokohama is the threat, and they want protection near them no matter where they go,” Aizawa ranted, telling his closest friends all of his theories.

(Maybe not all of them. There was a tiny inkling in the back of his head, one that said that maybe the bodyguard wasn’t there for their benefit at all.)

“Shota. Maybe they just didn’t want to waste resources. Maybe they were all busy. Maybe they couldn’t afford to send that many people. Not all actions have suspicious explanations,” Yamada said, his eyes sympathetic but not quite understanding.

Aizawa didn’t respond, his eyes once more dragged to Nezu. It was some kind of ironic that the only person who really understood him was also the biggest bastard he knew. It was some kind of ironic that his only friends, who he had known for years, couldn’t ever understand him. He felt a familiar self-pity rise in him as he kept his mouth closed shut, knowing that they didn’t deserve to suffer with everything he knew.

(If they had lived all that he had lived, seen all he had seen, would they be paranoid like him? What kind of monster was he to almost wish they were paranoid like him?)

“Hun, when was the last time you took your meds?” Nemuri asked him gently. It was supposed to be comforting, but goddamnit, all he felt was judged.

“I’m fine. And, alright, maybe I’m just crazy, but it’s always good to observe all the possibilities.” Aizawa should know. It was one of the first things Nezu had taught him in their private lessons, long ago when he was just a student at UA. Those lessons, though hours long and the cause of many nightmares, probably contributed the most to who he was in the present, for better or worse. Nezu was a strict teacher, but a good one.

Yamada and Nemuri shared a look and he knew they weren’t convinced. He felt Nezu’s beady black eyes on his back, and he knew the rat was sipping tea happily. The bastard.

When the meeting had ended, the three of them walked together back to their apartments. Aizawa’s apartment was the first stop, and while there Nemuri made sure Aizawa swallowed his pills. When the other two left, he spent half an hour on his knees before the toilet, throwing up the pill and the one meal he had eaten that day. He couldn’t bring himself to eat dinner, so he went to sleep starving.

The next morning, he did not eat breakfast, nor take his meds. There was nothing wrong with him, because this was how he was meant to be. Nezu trained him to fight villains and uncover crimes, not to be nervous all the time and struggle to hold down food. He sat on his bed with a hunched over frame, then looked over at one of the corners in his bedroom. A small red light blinked.

Aizawa looked away from the camera. He knew from experience that if he tried to remove it, Nezu would have one back up within the hour, god knows how. That was just how his life worked.

Hawks was nervous, though he didn’t dare do anything but smile. His handlers calling him in for a briefing never ended well. What was worse was that he had no earthly idea of what this particular briefing could be about, not a single clue.

Sitting down uncomfortably in a cheap metal chair, two of his handlers stood before him. His briefings were always like this, with a handler or two standing and him sitting. They liked to feel like they were above him, Hawks had found.

The room was overly sophisticated, Hawks thought. It had a western feel, with a large rug below him and a roaring fireplace in front of him. The full effect of the no doubt expensive room was slightly ruined by the stainless steel chair Hawks was seated on.

“A new threat is currently traveling into Japan.” The first handler held a blank face. His handlers were just as impeccably trained as him. “You are to assess the threats, and establish yourself among them. They are from Yokohama.”

“If you are able to manage a trip to the city, take it. The HPSC would like to see the two halves of Japan united once more,” the second handler spoke up. To Hawks, it was a stupid thing to say, although he did not tell the handlers that. Yokohama had been independent for centuries. Their hatred for Japan had festered over decades, and they were not at all eager to do anything with Japan. Besides, how could you reconcile a land of quirks with a land of quirkless?

The room fell into silence as the first handler handed him a folder full of papers. They were profiles, he realized, of both the threats coming to Japan and their associates back in the city. Hawks sat there and studied each paper till he had memorized them. With each page he memorized, he tossed it into the fire, letting the flames hastily eat away at the paper.

His handlers just stood there, the fire lighting up their backs and casting their shadows onto the wall. Their hulking shadowy forms seemed just as cold and impersonal as they themselves did. Hawks’ wings curled closer to him without his permission and he resisted the urge to wince. This room, with its homey fireplace and cozy rug, shouldn’t be so cold.

Hawks wouldn’t put it past the HPSC to be pulling some kind of strings outside the room, making him feel uneasy, writing down his reactions with a clinical sort of cruelty. Sometimes he just wanted to put a bullet in his head, just to see how they would react. But, with all the quirks they had at their disposal, they’d probably bring him back, make things worse for him than before.

“They’ll come for you in a few hours to check your retention,” the second handler said mildly. The first handler turned to the fire, and put it out with a flick of their wrist. Ah. Hawks remembered that quirk. Could put out fires, but too many and they got dehydrated. They once put out Endeavor’s flames. He knew it was no accident that it was this specific handler and this specific room that were chosen for him.

The two handlers left the room, leaving Hawks alone. He heard the door click behind them, and though he couldn’t see them, he knew there were cameras. There were always cameras.

He sat perfectly still, his eyes blankly staring at the faint embers in the fireplace. It was already getting colder in the room, but he would at least try to play the Commission's game and stay silent and still.

(Silent and still was their favorite part of him. Silent and still was a painful thing for him to be. They always did love to see him bleed.)

What with his avian features and all, Hawks hated the cold. His bird brethren always migrated south when the sky got too cold for them. He had no such freedom. To try and distract himself from the bitter cold biting at the edges of his feathers, he began reciting the information he had just read in his mind. Nakahara Chuuya, twenty two, Port Mafia affiliations, For the Tainted Sorrow, half of Soukoku, huge threat risk-

He cut himself off, noticing the way his breath had begun to fog the air. That’s nice, he thought, his empty facade still staring at the ashes in the fireplace. They wouldn’t really leave him in here for hours, would they? The fact that he didn’t actually know said a lot.

Hawks longed to get up and walk around, to wrap his scarlet wings around himself, but if he did, he would be punished, he was sure of that. Maybe they were just waiting for him to break before walking in. Would letting himself crack make the cold go away easier?

He stopped reciting mission details, as he had already fully memorized them and thinking about them wouldn’t make this torture any easier. Instead, his thoughts drifted naturally to the events of the past few weeks. There had been this new, upstart antihero, going by Dabi. He hadn’t been told to find him, but… Sue him, he was curious, and his patrol was boring, and he might as well use his HPSC training for something he was actually interested in for once.

He had met the antihero, and god, talking to the man was the happiest he had ever felt. Hawks was a romantic stuck in an action story, and he wanted out. Dabi was the only person who had ever made him feel so happy and fulfilled, and just the thought of him made his body fill with warmth again.

Hawks wasn’t sure for how long he sat there, his body slowly freezing as he imagined himself eating dinner with Dabi, cracking jokes with Dabi, watching movies with Dabi. Dabi was there only in his head but he felt Dabi’s warmth seep through his bones nonetheless.

What was definitely hours later, the handlers came back in, surprise etched on their features. They didn’t think he would last as long as he did. Ha. He could bear anything, just thinking about Dabi. Maybe if the Commission had ever shown him any kind of love they would know that, but that was their own folly.

“You were here for nearly four hours,” one of the handlers said. Both the handlers just entered, and they were shivering. Hawks sat completely still and stared at them. He knew that his more hawk-like eyes unnerved others, especially when he didn’t blink.

One of the handlers scurried over to the fire to start it up again, and the other began grilling him on his comprehension of the earlier files. Hawks got every question right, there was no surprise there.

“Hawks. Your mission begins as soon as we leave. We trust that you will complete it to the point of death or serious injury,” the first handler said. Hawks didn’t answer. This was one of those rhetorical not-questions, one where any answer at all was a bad response. They liked it when he said nothing.

Hawks said nothing, and wished he was with Dabi, or really anywhere but here. Truthfully, he wished he was anybody but him. Maybe if reincarnation was a thing, that bullet to the brain idea wouldn’t be so- but, he caught himself, he had someone worth staying alive for now.

Hawks didn’t want to die before he could do all the things he was never allowed to do, with Dabi. He wanted to see the world, but mostly, he just wanted to see Dabi again. The handlers left the room, and Hawks sank in on himself, knowing that the cameras had likely stopped filming too. He knew how the Commission worked, and that knowledge gave him small reprieves from his constant acting.

Groaning tiredly, he pulled out his nondescript, non-Commission authorized flip phone, and typed in Dabi’s number. He left a cheery voice mail to the grumpy antihero about meeting up for dinner and a movie, and then happily left the dim room, his wings giving a happy jitter both at the thought of leaving the cold room and talking to Dabi.

Aizawa sipped his cold, mediocre coffee, wishing he could just go to sleep. Sleep was the only time he got an escape from everything, from his work and his paranoia and his empty stomach and the empty pill bottles and that empty yet suffocating feeling in his chest, god, why did it all hurt so much?

He took a quick step outside the station, dipping into a nearby alleyway so he could slump against the dirty brick wall. He focused on taking deep breaths, the one his therapist used to recommend for him. He didn’t have a therapist any more. There was no time, and no money. He worked two jobs, but could barely pay for his sh*thole of an apartment.

(He was lucky, he knew. Before Nezu had hired him at UA, he could barely afford food. The part of him that acted like a reflection of his past therapist told him that that had been the beginning of his aversion to eating. Like he didn’t know that already.)

Besides, he had a small suspicion that Nezu disapproved of his therapist. A hero, especially an underground one like him, had too many secrets to be spending every week talking to a shrink. The bastard never said anything about it, but. Well. Nezu could say a lot without saying anything.

Aizawa sighed and closed his eyes. His whole life was such a mess. And Nezu wanted to add to that, with the Yokohaman quirk users coming to the school? f*ck, he missed when everything was simple and happy, and he had done things because he wanted something new and not because that was what he had to do. Ever since Oboro’s death…

Sometimes he thought he should take up smoking, since that would certainly fit in with his whole tired, dead inside underground hero vibe. Actually, he was fairly sure that some of his coworkers, and even some of his students, thought he smoked already. He had held back thus far because he thought adding one more f*cked up thing to the sh*t pile that he was wasn’t worth it, and also because Nezu wouldn’t like it.

So much of his life was dictated by the ironclad control of that rat, even his thoughts were controlled by him. Maybe it would be worth it to start smoking, just to spite Nezu. Aizawa decided he’d sit on that idea, see how he thought about it the next time he went to the gas station.

Aizawa walked back into the station, sending off his strongest don’t-talk-to-me aura, and sat back down at his desk to fill out more paperwork. He had his own desk at the station since he filled out paperwork there so often, but since he wasn’t an actual officer, his desk was not much more than an afterthought, shoved into a corner in the main room of the station.

During the day, it was hellishly loud, but at night, when Aizawa patrolled the most, it was blissfully quiet. There were only a couple other officers in the large room, and they both had headphones on, filling out sheets of their own. A group of officers were gathered in a meeting room, but they weren’t the loud sort, and couldn’t be heard outside of their room. The station held a certain tranquility to it, one that was almost calming to Aizawa. This place could be a second home, he thought semi-jokingly, he spent as much time at the station as he did at home. The station certainly had better heating than his apartment.

Slowly writing his report out in pen, blinking a few times every minute to focus eyes, he thought about Yokohama. There was no other way to say it: he didn’t trust the Yokohamans. What hero did? Thousands of Japanese people, hero and civilian alike, died at the hands of Yokohaman soldiers and suicide bombers.

But unlike other Japanese citizens, he could reason to himself that they had done the same to the tiny city. Thousands of soldiers and border villagers, killed in a senseless battle much bigger than any of them. Heroes turned murderers for the sake of such a stupid dispute as quirks and independence.

He wasn’t sure how he pictured the Yokohamans coming. Would they be weak, small things, stuck in a life of submission to their government and its insane, inhumane laws? Would they be violent, aggressive things, taking up as much space as they could, trying to carve a place for themself in a city that would rather shoot them than see them? Would they hurt his kids, would they hurt him, were they hurting, themselves? What wounds had their city inflicted on them, what wounds had they inflicted on others?

While his coworkers imagined the Yokohamans like they were aliens, he thought of them like they were enemies. He couldn’t help it. He couldn’t stop it.

(This is exactly how Nezu wanted him to be, the perfectly prepared gun to shoot at anyone who could be a threat. Aizawa was just where Nezu wanted him to be.)

Aizawa signed off on his last page, and sat up to stretch his arms and legs. He knew that back at the school, he had yet another stack of papers waiting for him, though he didn’t dread these ones quite as much. He couldn’t help the slight pride or amusem*nt or just joy he felt as he thought of his class. Some years, the kids Nezu gave him were useless, formless lumps of clay already hardened.

And some years, Nezu gave him a class that was ready to mold, happy to be molded. This year, though, Nezu gave him kids whose natural shape was exactly what he always sought for, and any molding he did happened quite easily.

The class Nezu had given him this year was, to be frank, one of the best classes he had had in a while.

Tokoyami sat reading silently, happy to just exist in the ambience of the common room in their dorm. It wasn’t peaceful by any means, but it was happy. Dark Shadow sat with him, napping with his body leaning against Tokoyami’s legs. Sometimes he acted so much like a housecat it was uncanny.

Doing last minute homework beside Tokyami and Dark Shadow was Shoji, who was filling out multiple questions at the same time with his multiple hands. Shoji was also quiet, happy to sit with his partner. They weren’t quite comfortable with dating yet, but partner was a good, innocent word, that didn’t imply anything except familiarity.

In the kitchen, a few of their classmates were cooking, while loudly singing and dancing along to various pop songs. It wasn’t the most distracting thing to have ever happened in the dorms. Truthfully, this was a rather uneventful night for them.

Tokoyami turned a page, half of his attention on the book and the other half on the people around him. These were some of the kindest people he had ever met- well, mostly. He could name a few exceptions. But, that wasn’t the point. It kind of felt like each of his classmates had been hand selected, specifically so they could all fit together as a team and face the trials ahead of them.

He knew that wasn’t the case. They were there because of their test scores. But he couldn’t help but feel that they had all come together so perfectly. Not a single one of them judged his body or Dark Shadow, which was more than he could say for every other class he’s ever been in.

Dark Shadow grumbled a little, scooting around to get comfortable, now almost completely on top of Tokoyami. He looked away from his novel to smile at the sentient shadow. It wasn’t a smile that many could recognize, as it took some time for people to get used to his head and how he showed normal expressions. It was, however, a smile that all of 1A could see.

“Yo, Tokoyami!” Kaminari said happily, walking into the common room with his running shoes held in one of his hands and a water bottle in the other. Kaminari was one of those rare kinds of people who could exercise for hours and somehow not want to keel over and die once they finished. A few of their other classmates stumbled past Kaminari, probably off to get food or take a nap.

Tokoyami closed his book and fully greeted Kaminari, “Hello, was your run pleasant?” Kaminari laughed and practically leaped into the hold of a cushy armchair across from Tokoyami and Shoji.

“It was okay, pretty okay. You ‘n Shoji should come with us sometime,” Kaminari offered before taking a large gulp from his water bottle. Tokoyama rolled his eyes.

“I thank you greatly for your offer, but, to speak plainly… Absolutely not.” Tokoyami saw Shoji smile behind his mask as he continued writing his homework out. Dark Shadow gave a small purr of laughter before gracefully jumping out of Tokoyami’s lap and floating over to greet Kaminari, part of his shadowy form still connected to his host. Dark Shadow was fully capable of speech, but on simple nights like these, he was content to just make purrs and chirps.

“Ey, no worries, it’s good, it’s good.”Kaminari leaned forward in his seat. “So. I heard something pretty cool on my run! We were jogging, you know, like you do when you’re on a run.” He gave a small laugh at his own joke.

“And I stopped to tie my running shoes- which, speaking of, I knew I should have gotten velcro, they kept coming undone- anyway, I stopped, and Mic-sensei, Aizawa-sensei and Midnight-sensei happened to be talking nearby.” Kaminari grinned, knowing he had gotten the attention of a few other classmates.

“I guess they didn’t notice me, so they kept talking about this teachers’ meeting they were just at. And you know what else they were talking about? Yokohama! They were talking about Yokohama, and I think they must have been discussing it in the staff meeting?” His eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

“I don’t know, but they started mentioning these names, and I know this is wild, but I think they might have been Yokohamans they were talking about?” Tokoyami blinked in surprise. This certainly wasn’t something he expected when Kaminari said he had news.

“Well, I wasn’t sure, so my first thought was to go to you, since your ancestors were Yokohaman before they were exiled, and you always seemed really, you know, connected to your past and your culture,” Kaminari finished rambling, and most of the room had stopped what they were doing to listen in. Of course, the people cooking in the kitchen kept cooking, but Shoji had stopped doing his homework to look curiously at Kaminari.

“I suppose… If it were possible for you to dispense said names to me, my family still retains allies in Yokohama. We may not be able to visit them, but we keep in contact. I could see if they recognize the names,” Tokoyami said. Dark Shadow floated back over to him, settling between Tokoyami and Shoji. “Or we could wait to see if Aizawa-sensei makes an announcement. If it was discussed within a gathering of teachers, it most probably involves the school, and therefore us as well.”

“Yeah, you’re prolly right. Let’s just wait for Aizawa then!” Kaminari said cheerfully. He got up from the chair. “I’m off to the shower. See ya later at dinner!” He turned away from them towards the door and gave a two finger salute with his right hand, holding his shoes by the laces.

Kaminari wasn’t wrong in saying that Tokoyami was very well connected to his ancestral home city. His family had been in Yokohama since before the port city was even a city, when Yokohama was just a small fishing village. The Purges had changed everything, and had had the children of generations of Yokohamans cast out. He felt guilty, sometimes, being both the descendant of proud Yokohamans and having a quirk. They weren’t mutually exclusive, though many wished they were.

It helped that according to his older relatives, his ancestors had both loved their city and loved their quirks. If they could love both, so could he. He was Japanese, but he was also Yokohaman, just like his family before him. He was quirked, but he was also Yokohaman, and they didn’t cancel each other out, nor did they conflict with each other. Instead, they both added up to make him who he was.

He was Yokohaman, he was Japanese, and he had a quirk. Keeping these facts close to him was how he truly felt connected to his ancestors, though the family heirlooms, stories, and traditions certainly helped.

(At night he repeated it to himself. He was Japanese-Yokohaman, even if he only had Japanese citizenship. His family hadn’t forgotten their roots, and neither would he.)

Aizawa stood with a slouch in front of the class, the comforting weight of his capture weapon hanging loosely around his neck. He ignored the sick feeling in his stomach in favor of staring down his kids. They were silent, thankfully, he did not want to deal with rowdy children this early in the day. Or, really, any time of the day.

“UA doesn’t accept just any guest teachers,” Aizawa prefaced his announcement with this. It would be good to get this out of the way early, the fact that the Yokohamans weren’t anywhere near normal. Of course, this was UA. The same could be said for everyone there.

“These guests from Yokohama that Nezu invited are…” Aizawa tried to fish for a phrase that could encapsulate just how much the guests were not to be f*cked with, or even, ideally, acknowledged. “Not to be bothered. Not in any way, shape, or form. We don’t know what they’re capable of, we don’t know what social customs they retain. For all UA knows, they could respond to insults with fights to the death. We don’t know, and that makes this situation dangerous.”

Immediately he began cataloging the reactions of his students, trying to see who he’d have to keep a closer eye on in the presence of the Yokohamans. There were those like Bakugo and Kirishima, who seemed to sit up straighter, raring for a fight. There were those like Midoriya and Uraraka, whose kindness and curiosity would likely try and guide them towards informational interactions with the Yokohamans. Both of these kinds of students needed to be watched, and prevented from making any bad moves with the guests.

“They want to start a hero school in Yokohama. If they ask you any questions, answer them, and get out of their way. You can help them but don’t risk getting in their way,” Aizawa said. Nakahara, Nakajima, and Tecchou weren’t just dangerous, they were unknown, which was worse in so many ways. If they attacked anyone, then goddamnit, it would not be one of his kids.

“I know I sound harsh,” Aizawa said in a gentler tone. His kids thought they knew everything about Yokohama, due to their parents’ political connections or their ancestors’ heritage. He was glad he didn’t have to deal with the same prejudices he saw in the other staff members, but he also wished his kids weren’t so at ease at the sound of the word Yokohama. “I apologize, Tokoyami, if I sound like I’m judging your family. I’m not. I’m just saying, Yokohama is closed but to a select few. We don’t even know these people’s quirks.”

Tokoyami nodded in understanding, though his quirk seemed agitated at such cold talk of their ancestral city. A few other students glanced back at Tokoyami, empathy etched into the features of their faces. Aizawa’s face was blank and, even after trying to stoke the sympathetic fires of his heart, he didn’t feel much. He wasn’t the best at empathy, or even just sympathy. Nezu taught him better than that.

He started that morning’s lesson, one on ethics. Everyone could tell that his talk of morality and how it relates to quirk usage was targeted at the Yokohaman government, and the accusations of quirk prejudice and cruelty that had seeped out of cracks in the Walls into Japan. Yokohama may not be an evil city, but it also wasn’t a forgiving one. One little girl had killed a hundred people, and killing thousands just couldn’t compare in the Yokohaman people’s eyes. He had never known anyone to hold stronger grudges than a Yokohaman.

Aizawa had known a true Yokohaman once. Not one like Tokoyami, still clinging onto the city that had exiled them even generations later. A born and raised Yokohaman, quirkless and content with it. She was young, and didn’t speak much. When she could, she covered her face with a mask, but underneath, she had delicate features, much like a porcelain doll.

They had met on a patrol, and had taken down a small crime ring together. He had never asked why she was outside of her country, if she was even there legally. She didn’t ask why he didn’t turn her in for vigilantism or illegal immigration.

(He didn’t ask why she was taking down a crime ring. They were known to have tendrils within Yokohama, they were known to be taking business away from the largest gang in the small country, the Port Mafia. He didn’t ask because he was fairly sure he knew who she worked for.)

Teaching his lesson on ethics, he couldn’t help but think of her. She was younger than his students, and had a hell of a talent with a knife. She said her older brother was ‘gifted’. He couldn’t help but wonder if it was her brother who had led her down such a dark and violent path.

Aizawa had offered to help her. To hide her away. He knew ways to make people disappear. He didn’t doubt she knew how to do that, too, in her own way. But she had left behind so much in her country, had left her beating heart behind in the hands of all the people she regretted loving but still loved. If she wanted to leave she didn’t show it. She disposed of the bodies of the criminals, and she didn’t smile at him, but she also didn’t frown. She knew she was in Hell but she was surrounded by loving demons, and that was where she wanted to be.

The Yokohaman girl, still hanging onto the last of her baby fat even if the rest of her youth had been torn away from her, was all he knew. Yokohama was a city that ate whole families and threw up traumatized children, and he knew that because he had seen what that country could do. Aizawa prayed that that kind of monstrous emptiness wouldn’t touch his children. He wasn’t afraid of Yokohama because of what it could do to his kids, but for what it had already done to its own children.

(Let's have a lesson on fear, students. How about we start slow?)

It was a tiny land. The farmers lived along the walls, their farms feeding all of the city. The fisherman traveled in their fishing boats, and brought their goods back to the city’s markets to sell. The artists and the factory workers and the businessmen all worked the same as their counterparts in any other city.

Sometimes, it was almost like Yokohama had never left. But then you looked up. The few planes in the sky were all government or military owned- Yokohama had no commercial planes. If you had to leave, it was by boat or car. They were easier to police and keep track of. The five large skyscrapers in the middle of the city, domineering and dark, was another sign that the city wasn’t just a city.

What city’s government lays complicit to the mafia in the ranks of their citizens? None. But ask the same of a country’s government, and suddenly the greater good is greater than the good, dead children and civilians.

That is not to say that Japan did not also suffer similar problems. Their heroes were, on average, ignorant or corrupt. Their government fed money consistently to a broken system, and their military was nonexistent.

But the difference was, Japan was the same as many other countries. No military, heroes taking most of the normal police’s jobs, a government so blinded by a comic book fantasy that they ignored the bodies surrounding them, drenching them in blood. Yokohama was weird in that its police were overworked, their quirk users abused, and its government would do anything to have more power. Maybe that last part wasn’t so weird, though.

Many towns had tried to emulate Yokohama. They had cast out or killed their quirked population, had tried to pen local laws to restrict quirk usage and turn them into something lower than a human being. In all of these cases, their nation’s government had stepped in, had sent heroes to stop them. No other town was successful in fending off their government like Yokohama.

In truth, there was something about Yokohama, something bitter and frigid, that had brought them independence. The government was cold and the people wore imaginary coats, shielding themselves from the cruelty of their own leaders. The ability users were well versed in hiding their talents, hiding their personalities, all to escape the government.

Rare was it that a country could torture their quirk users, handle them like puppets, and not be overtaken in a coup or uprising. Maybe it was the Walls, or the Purges, or the Ability Statutes. Anything unique about Yokohama, any of it could be the reason the country could do what it did. No other people in the world could subjugate such powerful men and women and face no opposition.

Yokohama was a city of fear. The government was scared of its people, its people were scared of its government. The very ground the city was built was imbued with such intrinsic fear, even the skyscrapers and the cars were terrified of the country they lived in. Everyone lived every day with fear bleeding through them like an internal injury.

But it would be unfair to say that the Outside wasn’t scared, too. Constantly, consistently, villains attacked. No Yokohaman understood the fear of walking down a street and being caught in a fight.

(Every Yokohaman knew their government would only kill you in the twilight.)

It would be no exaggeration to say that both the Outside and Yokohama ran on fear, had turned terror into a profit. When babies cried in the night, their parents ran to them, hoping they would find the nursery empty but for their child. Sometimes they didn’t. This was true for both Japan and Yokohama. The two countries would loath knowing they had something in common.

This is not to say the world was only made of fear. It’s mostly fear, yes, but not all of it. Any manipulator knows that if your chosen victim only received fear from you, they would never stay. They would run from you, fight you, hate you. A healthy balance of fear and love is needed to control your victim. So though the people of Yokohama dreaded the day when the ax would fall upon their necks, they also gladly reached their necks out for the sake of their loved ones.

It was a truly twisted people that were so accustomed to daily torture that they decided accepting it and living their lives instead of fighting it was easier.

The people of Japan hadn’t quite reached this truth, but they were on their way. On their way to an existence where love and terror lived inside you hand in hand. Where your fear didn’t lead to a fight but complete acceptance. A trip like that was a one way ticket- once your country got to that point, it seemed like the only way to fix it was to scrap everything, because, well, no one had ever fixed the problem of fear before.

How did one go about fixing fear?

Tokoyami tossed a potato chip to Dark Shadow, who happily swallowed it up into his shadowy body. He didn’t technically need to eat, but boy did he like to. Tokoyami wasn’t quite sure where the food went.

“My relatives in Yokohama sent me a letter,” Tokoyami said. After Aizawa had given the bare minimum to his class about the Yokohaman guests, Tokoyami had sought out his own information.

“That’s good. Anything relevant, or just all about coming back to the city?” Shoji asked. He was lounging on Tokoyami’s bed, while Tokoyami himself sat on his desk chair. Their positions spoke of a quiet, loving comfort.

Tokoyami’s Yokohaman relatives were always asking for them to move back to the tiny country. According to them, since the Purges were over, all they’d have to deal with would be the Statutes. His parents weren’t sure how to tell their quirkless cousins that the Statutes would make them more claustrophobic than a jail cell. But, they hadn’t talked about moving to the city, not in this letter.

“No. It’s… It’s some f*cked up sh*t. Auntie Haru- she knows about the school. Everyone in Yokohama knows about the school, apparently,” Tokoyami said. He didn’t curse often, but the situation demanded it, he felt. “This organization called the Armed Detective Agency is spearheading the movement… along with the Port Mafia.”

“The f*cking Mafia.” Shoji’s eyes narrowed. Why would the Mafia be interested in a school?

“Nakahara Chuuya was one of the names Kaminari told me, you remember? And you’d never guess what organization he’s a part of.” Tokoyami spoke sarcastically, as it was pretty obvious who Nakahara worked for.

“A mafioso is coming to the school? f*cking sh*t. Does Aizawa know?” Shoji asked, then answered his own question. “Of course he does. Nezu and him are too smart to not know.”

“But it gets worse,” Tokoyami said. “According to Auntie Haru, Nakahara joined the mafia at fifteen. It’s common knowledge there that Dazai Osamu, who joined up even younger, gaslighted and isolated him till he had no choice but to join. According to Yokohaman gossip, the Mafia was f*cking horrible to Chuuya. Not long after joining, he’d start to show his face on the street and he’d have horrible wounds all over his face and body. They would be bright red and clearly painful. They’d be healed after a few days, but the rumor mill says either Dazai Osamu or the Boss must have done it to him.”

“What the f*ck,” Shoji whispered, resisting the urge to close his eyes and just never open them again. Something was clearly wrong with Yokohama. This was a city that could have hundreds of witnesses and still have no trial.

“And guess who Nakajima’s mentor is? Dazai f*cking Osamu. The protege of an abusive ex-mafioso coming here with one of the men abused by his mentor, who’s to say who's pulling the strings with this trip,” Tokoyami said. His face was even more serious and morose than usual. In his eyes, this whole thing was heavily suspicious, and exactly the kind of thing a hero should investigate.

“Do they even want to build a school? Is this all a cover up for something?” Shoji asked, knowing that Tokoyami didn’t have the answers but wishing someone did.

“We can’t trust them. We need to go tell the others!” Tokoyami said. His eyes were wide and full of worry. His first instinct was to go and warn his classmates, to tell them to be on guard with the Yokohamans, especially Nakajima.

“Wait.” Shoji held out one of his hands to stop Tokoyami from getting up. He looked at his partner with a loving concern, and he made either the stupidest or smartest decision of his life.

“We can’t let Nakajima know that we know. The more people we tell…” Shoji let Tokoyami finish his sentence for him.

“The more likely it is he finds out. Right. Nakahara could get hurt if Nakajima feels his control is threatened,” Tokoyami concluded sadly. It felt unheroic, to not tell his fellow students something as important as this, but it was necessary. They needed more proof than rumors to get Nakajima down, to eventually get to Dazai Osamu.

Dark Shadow chittered uneasily, sensing the angry and upset atmosphere of the dorm room. He dove into a corner in the closet, his body shivering slightly. Tokoyami quickly moved to comfort his quirk, making soft cooing noises. Shoji stood up to join Tokoyami, crouching down and whispering sweet nothings to the anxious shadow.

“Shouldn’t tell such scary stories so near bedtime,” Dark Shadow said, his voice crackly and almost inconsistent, similar to how a ghost might sound on an EMF. He sounded very scared, but also scolding.

“Of course, Dark Shadow. Uh- Shoji, it is kind of late,” Tokoyami said, guilty to be sending Shoji away after such a serious discussion. Shoji just smiled, in a way that would probably suit him well when he became a hero. He stood up, and pretended to blow a kiss to Tokoyami through his mask. Tokoyami glanced away, abashed, and Shoji chuckled.

“Good night,” Shoji said quietly, unbothered by the fact that Tokoyami remained sitting on the ground, comforting Dark Shadow. He gave a small wave with one of his arms and silently left the room, shutting the door behind him.

Tokoyami repositioned his body so he could lean against the door frame, sighing.

“God, I am fortunate,” he muttered. All this talk of abuse and violence made him so upset, so guilty, like it was his fault he couldn’t protect absolutely everyone. But he had Shoji by his side, the first love of his life he had ever met, and things didn’t seem so bad.

Unknown to him, in another dorm, Shoji sat against his wall, smiling despite the stress and vengefulness he felt, saying to himself, “I’m so f*cking lucky.”

In two different rooms, two teenage boys sat against their walls, knowing they were luckier than anyone else in the world, hoping that together, they could save everyone not as lucky as them. They were so young, and yes, they didn’t truly know all the horrors of the world, no matter how much they thought they did. But that urge to help, to be a hero, didn’t care that they were young, or ignorant. And the people that they helped wouldn’t care either.

Chuuya sat stiffly in his seat. They had switched out drivers not long after reaching Tokyo, and he felt significantly less comfortable with an Outsider driving the car than he did with a Yokohaman, even if the Yokohaman driver had been working for the government. Even worse, the Outsider kept trying to talk to them.

“Do you get outside channels on your TVs?” The cheerful woman asked. She didn’t have any physical signs of a quirk like the lizard border guard had, but Chuuya had, at multiple points, been hit with shock at the thought that this woman was more likely to have a quirk than not.

“Nope, but we can always pirate online or get smuggled DVDs, so it’s really not that bad,” Atsushi said, equally as cheerful. He had turned back into a mostly human form, his ears and tail still happily reflecting his emotions. He sat shotgun, next to the driver. Chuuya and Tecchou were just glad he was social enough for all three of them.

“Huh. I mean, to be fair, people here pirate stuff, too, even though they could access the channels.” Atsushi chuckled politely.

“You know, there’s something I’ve always wondered about the Outside,” Atsushi began, looking at the kindly younger woman.

“Shoot.” She grinned. Chuuya had never seen anyone so happy to give other people information- well, except for the Atsushi, and Kenji. Something about the ADA fostered kindness, he thought.

“Well, in the history books we have in Yokohama about the Revolution,” The woman gave a small twitch at it being called a revolution. “They always call your soldiers heroes, and, well, our government certainly wouldn’t be the ones to give them that title. So, do Outsiders really call all of their soldiers heroes?”

“Uh, Nakajima-san-”

“Just Atsushi,” Atsushi corrected with a smile, not quite noticing the woman’s unease. The two men in the back of the car tensed slightly, Tecchou’s hands moving to his sword and Chuuya’s to his hidden gun.

“Right, Atsushi, we don’t have an army. Those were just Pro Heroes,” she said, her eyes focused on the road so she could avoid making eye contact with the young detective. Atsushi frowned in confusion.

“You don’t have an army? And- what do you mean Pro Heroes?” Atsushi asked, a slight nervous tilt to his voice.

“Atsushi, I thought you were here to start a hero school. What do you mean you don’t know what a Pro Hero is?” She asked, just as confused as him. Somewhere along the line a huge misunderstanding had occurred.

“We were under the impression that a superhero was just a mascot for UA. Y’know, a metaphor, that their students were helpful and kind. We, umm… we weren’t aware that they meant actual superheroes!” Atsushi said. His fluffy tiger ears were pulled slightly back, not in an aggressive or threatening way, but in a slightly distressed way.

“Pro Heroes are trained and licensed through hero schools. I think the Japanese side of things believed you wanted to visit to learn about battle and rescue training for heroes,” she said. The woman was slightly calmer, now that she knew Atsushi wasn’t angry but rather just extremely confused and suffering from unclear information.

“Oh. Oh! No, we’re trying to learn more about how a school would handle abilities , not, um, hero training,” Atsushi explained awkwardly, his face now more embarrassed at the misunderstanding than worried.

“Huh? Do your schools not allow abilities or something?” The driver asked. Her insatiable curiosity seemed to have returned to her, and Atsushi slightly smiled at the way the tension between them was easing away. It would suck to lose their only source of Outside information.

“More like they don’t allow ability users. Yokohaman schools have the right to accept or decline ability users, even the public ones. It’s pretty much impossible for an ability user to get into a school unless their parents have money, and rich parents typically prefer homeschooling.” Atsushi sighed heavily. “Yet another way our government separates us from so-called ‘normal’ people.”

“Wow,” the driver said sympathetically. “That sounds pretty terrible.”

“Ah, you learn not to complain,” Atsushi laughed and waved a hand dismissively, like the thought of being refused education on the basis of an ability was nothing to him. It had used to bother him, of course, like it had insulted and negatively affected centuries worth of ability users. But he was right. You got used to it, and you gave up complaining about it. Most ability users had bigger worries than school, anyways, like where the next meal was coming from, which direction they’d be attacked from next, things like that.

They had moved away from the topic of Pro Heroes fast, both of them sensing it would be a stressful topic to talk about. They had only just met, and it wasn’t quite an appropriate time to begin debating about their countries’ severe differences.

For the next few hours, they talked about anything and everything under the sun, as Chuuya and Tecchou sat stoically behind them. The both of them were clearly the easy going, extroverted type, even if Atsushi was also quick to get anxious or embarrassed.

By the time they had arrived at the gates of UA, they had each given the other their phone number and addresses. Atsushi would be able to call the woman, who preferred to be called Yuki, on his cell phone for as long as he was in Japan. Once he left for Yokohama once more, they would have to send each other letters, if they did keep in contact. They had seemingly become the closest of friends in a matter of hours. Chuuya was, quite honestly, impressed.

The car slowed to a stop, and Chuuya steeled his nerves. This was the moment of truth, the first impression on the people who would be teaching them about running a school for ability users. The three of them exited the car, immediately gravitating to each other's side. It felt right, to face the unknown with Atsushi to his right and Tecchou to his left.

They weren't from the same organizations but they stood together seamlessly, and wasn’t that just the trademark of their country? There was no people more adept at throwing away differences for a greater good than Yokohamans.

Chapter 3: i'm singing songs you've never heard, about a place you'll never go

Chapter Text

Atsushi was unused to being unknown. Shaking hands and sharing names with the Outsiders, he realized how normal it had become for his name to be introduced for him, before him. He realized how normal it had become for a name to be given in place of him: the Armed Detective Agency. He wasn’t Nakajima Atsushi, he was the Agency’s White Tiger, he was one of f*ckuzawa’s detectives. It didn’t feel right for his name to hold more importance alone than along with others’.

As he slowly greeted his way through the small crowd of Outside teachers, he did his best to resist the urge to gag with every mutant hand he shook. The Outside was so . Weird . No one cared that a living cement block was just standing there. If anything, they seemed more confused by the normalcy of him and his fellow Yokohamans. They had average faces, normal body sizes, natural hair color. Something told Atsushi that he might even fit in more if he had his tiger features, not less.

There were no students outside greeting them, but Atsushi felt the warning growls from the tiger and deduced that they were certainly watching, probably through windows in the school building. It was just as plausible, though, that the tiger was cautioning him about the reporters with their large cameras and pointed microphones. Atsushi didn't think they had that many reporters in the whole of Yokohama- it was such a small city that most news got around quickly, without the need for articles and video footage. The rumor mill was, in some cases, more legitimate than any actual news reports.

Once he had finished greeting all of the Outsiders, he and his fellow Yokohamans moved a step back, creating two clear halves among the large collection of people. Yokohama and Japan. Heroes and soldiers. Atsushi thought they might have been completing their mission better if they were actually mingling with the Outsiders, but the terrified, honest half of his brain forced him to stand silently, his hands clenching around their fingerless gloves.

Tecchou’s hands rested by his sides with an unnatural sort of stillness, the military in his stance and his uniform shining through. His Hunting Dog sword rested untouched in its sheath. Atsushi noted with an unbidden pride that Tecchou’s severe and nearly cold lines reflected a strong, refined air upon their country and organizations. Tecchou, when taking things seriously, was an imposing and respectable representative for the Yokohama Hunting Dogs.

Chuuya stood confidently and aggressively. Unlike Tecchou, who seemed to go as immovable as a prey animal when in an unfamiliar situation, Chuuya almost seemed to go on the offensive, like a predator. His co*cky smirk held the promise of immeasurable pain if anyone dared threaten him or his allies. Chuuya’s stance was wide and relaxed, almost like he was daring the Outsiders to come at him, to just try and fight him.

For a supposedly peaceful interaction, Atsushi certainly felt cornered. All of the UA staff carried themselves in an unthreatened manner. They had both a numbers advantage and a terrain familiarity advantage- if the Outsiders wanted, they could certainly overpower the Yokohamans.

(Atsushi thought of the twisting scars hidden under skillfully applied makeup, thought of the monster disguised as a god disguised as a clone disguised as a man. He thought of the genius brunet, whose scars were less curved and instead rigidly straight, whose feet stood flat on Yokohaman soil. Dazai Osamu could not save them now.)

This wasn’t a face off, of course. Quickly after the greetings were concluded and before the tension could rise to a dangerous, exploding point, they all were shuffled off into a meeting hall by the principal. Some of the teachers left to corral their students and teach classes, and the room became less intense as the Yokohamans slowly felt less at risk.

As they all settled into their chairs, with Tecchou standing imposingly behind them, their conversation began.

They spoke in circles, with the Outsiders seemingly always returning to the same one topic: Yokohama. Their minds were preoccupied with false fantasies of life within the city, with thoughts of saving everyone and imprisoning their government leaders. Quite frankly, it made Atsushi very uncomfortable, and he kept glancing back at Tecchou, waiting for the deciding moment where he would decide to drag them all back to their country.

And all of the talk about how terrible Yokohama was, by people who had never so much as seen the city, sort of felt demeaning. Dehumanizing. Like there was something wrong with Yokohama, but they could fix it, they could save all of the Yokohamans who were too brainwashed to know that they had horrible lives.

In front of Outsiders, or maybe just in front of heroes, Atsushi felt like a number, a faceless name, a nameless face. They wanted to take him away from his home country, they wanted to take away Yokohama’s independence and said that subjugation by Japan would free Yokohama. They kept on talking and talking about how happy the people would be once Japan regained control. The heroes were so obsessed with the idea of removing Yokohaman independence they seemed to have forgotten the real reason Atsushi and Chuuya were there.

“If you f*ckers mention entering Yokohama one more f*cking time-” Chuuya cut himself off and took a deep breath, his nostrils flaring and his face marred by a scowl. He had picked himself up from his chair, slamming his hands down on the table. Tecchou looked mildly surprised. Despite Chuuya’s pissed appearance, Atsushi felt a strange relief that someone was standing up for their country.

“Yokohama doesn’t f*cking want you. You think our whole country is f*cking dreaming about the day you’ll come and save us.” Atsushi nearly giggled at the way some of the heroes nodded as if that was exactly what they were thinking. “News flash: No Yokohaman gives a flying sh*t about your little goodie-two-shoes wet dreams. We don’t need heroes, and we don’t need Japan.” Chuuya bared his teeth, a sliver of red seeming to linger along the rim of his crystal-blue eyes. He took another second to calm himself down, and the faint trace of scarlet left his eyes.

“We’re here to learn, not to plot a coup. So f*cking shut up about Yokohama and talk about this school.” Chuuya sat back down, his angry and wound up posture deterring any of the Outsiders from saying anything else. He sighed, rubbing tiredly at his eyelids. “Thank you.”

Nezu sipped his scalding tea, silently observing his two guests. Similarly, Nakahara (call-me-Chuuya) and Tecchou were silently observing him. Nakajima, the young man who had transformed into an exotic white tiger before stalking off to likely survey the territory of the campus, hadn’t joined them in the room, at Nezu’s request. He had wanted to see which man Tecchou would follow, or if he would insist they stayed together. Tecchou had stayed steadfastly by Nakahara’s side. In Tecchou’s eyes, Nakahara must be more valuable, more of a threat. Or maybe he thought Nezu himself was the biggest threat? Nezu resisted the urge to smirk and thought that it was very likely both.

Aizawa, Nezu’s most loyal, and most useful, teacher stood next to Nezu’s chair with his hands crossed behind his back. He was Nezu’s own insurance, a man who could stop any quirked attack and wouldn’t dare breath a word of their meeting outside of the room.Why hire a paid grunt when you could have a multipurpose protege, teacher, hero, bodyguard, informant, assassin, criminal contact, and so many more things?

(Why risk a leak when your most loyal tool had more uses than a three-in-one hair care and bodywash? There was no man Nezu would want near him more than Aizawa, in the same way a paranoid man always carries a swiss army knife in his coat pocket.)

“I am sure you understand the implications of so many heroes wanting access to your country,” Nezu said. Nakahara’s eyes grew a shade darker at the reminder of how many of Nezu’s employees had talked of taking over Yokohama. They had been separate countries for centuries, but Japan still seemed to be stuck in the 21st century. For so many pro heroes to have ideas like that, many others must think that, as well. It was a dangerous thought, more so with how widespread it seemed to be.

“Personally? It is much more useful for me to keep Yokohama and Japan separate,” Nezu told them. The best part was, he didn’t even have to lie. It was genuinely better to keep Yokohama independent, on his end. The city was a valuable disposal site, a place where a quirked person could enter and disappear before they even fully crossed the border. And the Yokohaman children… He had spent years on Aizawa, breaking him and building him and bringing him to the man he was meant to become. But there was a place that could do all he had done, to hundreds of children at the same time and in the same way.

He didn’t control the students at his school, not fully. They had homes and families and egos that had been fed since the day they turned four. Occasionally, a student like Aizawa would come to him, a street rat with a quirk that could only ever take, and he would take his place in their heads and manipulate them like a sword or a pen, or anything that could take down his enemies. Yokohama did what he did on such a large scale, the place practically invented child soldiers.

“I appreciate it, Principal,” Nakahara said, his muscles uncoiling slightly. For all that he pretended to be a lion, Nezu mused, he could see the tamed house cat sitting inside of him, waiting to be used and controlled. From what he knew of Nakahara’s exploits in Yokohama, he had a feeling that Nakahara was under Mori Ougai, that he was a slave of the Port Mafia. That didn’t mean Nezu couldn’t try and take control of Nakahara, if he proved to be powerful.

Tecchou, though, tensed up. He seemed loyal, but not in the stubborn, spit in your face way Nakahara was. He didn’t trust Nezu, that much was clear. Unlike Nakahara, he was fully aware of the glass cages he and his quirked brethren were kept in back in Yokohama.

(Tecchou was almost like Aizawa, Nezu mused. Knowing you were being used but unable to fight against it, to escape. Knowing you would die only ever living for someone else yet conversely knowing you would die if you ever tried to live for yourself.)

“If any of my staff give you trouble, feel free to come see me. I’m always open to talk, and I can get them to stop for you,” Nezu said with his fake, saccharine sympathy. Nakahara relaxed even more. Ah. Nezu had found the best way to get Nakahara’s trust, to attain his passiveness. Pretty words and pretty smiles were what found you a place in Nakahara’s loyalty. Nezu looked at the standing figure of Tecchou, and wondered what, exactly, could lead him to his loyalty.

“You’re very generous, sir, letting us stay here for free and offering us help like this. All of us are really very grateful,” Nakahara said, his face speaking of a slight abashedness. Nezu wondered absently who in the Mafia must have instilled such manners with the boy, and if he had responded more to gentle guidance or heavy-handed control. With what he could see of Nakahara and Tecchou, he could make assumptions of the both of them.

“Oh, it’s truly no problem! I know you are not building a hero school yourself, but here at UA we are pro heroes. Really, I’m just doing my job.” Nezu gave a small squeaky laugh, and Nakahara politely chuckled back.

“Well, we really must stop bothering you. I’m sure Nakajima’s very bored in our apartment,” Nakahara said. Nezu giggled in his head at the way Nakahara was still trying to keep things from his genius intellect. It was obvious that Nakajima would have gone off to scout out the school, even if Nakahara wouldn’t admit that directly to Nezu’s face.

“Of course, of course! Here, I’ll have Aizawa lead you to your apartment.” Nezu gestured for Aizawa to move and lead them away. He didn’t miss the short moment of eye contact shared between Aizawa and Tecchou. Nakahara did.

(Here’s a fun question. How can two men, who have never even met each other, be this similar?)

Aizawa Shouta and Tecchou Suehiro had never talked and knew very little about each other. One was Japanese, the other Yokohaman. One a hero and the other a Hunting Dog. One from a society that revered quirks, another from one that loathed them. It would be easy to list such significant differences.

But Aizawa Shouta walked in a room, and he cataloged exits and profiled people, and Tecchou Suehiro did the same. When Tecchou Suehiro stood, he stood behind others, an invisible leash firmly tied to their back pockets. Need one even say that Aizawa Shouta was the same?

In all the little ways that shouldn’t mean anything but still did, Aizawa Shouta and Tecchou Suehiro were the same. And this made sense. A sword would look similar to a sword no matter who forged it. A blade is a blade no matter who uses it, no matter who gets hurt.

One was Japanese and one was Yokohaman but their people had used them in the same ways, their superiors had abused them with the same tactics. In Japan and Yokohama, there were hundreds of victims like the two of them, thousands of people whose stories matched scarily well with theirs. People hurt people no matter the country, it seemed.

Aizawa Shouta was just a child. He walked into UA a hopeful teenager, and left it a child frozen in time, hands bloody like a doctor’s after surgery but for much more violent reasons. Aizawa Shouta began with stars in his eyes and slowly faded, and now all he had left was to hope that one day he would explode and bring about a whole new galaxy. He was a child, even if no adult ever thought of him as one. He was always old and very mature for his age, at least, that’s what the principal told him. And along the scarred body of Tecchou Suehiro, the same story was told in perfect symmetry.

The two of them were a painting reflected upon itself, gruesome and violent but still matching. There were twin tales of manipulation and cruelty, of children living in adult bodies, unable to grow up or move on from the abuse they had been silently suffering through for years.

Aizawa Shouta and Tecchou Suehiro were ghosts. Haunted eyes and sickly pale skin, they had died endlessly at the hands of the adults who were supposed to care for them. It was different people but the same insults and slaps. It was Nezu and it was the Yokohaman government, it was their parents and it was their teachers, and the names didn’t matter but the way Aizawa Shouta and Tecchou Suehiro flinched at the thought of them did.

Nakahara Chuuya would not understand. He was a man colorblind to the gold of the prison that held him, and they were men who had been struck by the cursed knowledge of all the ways they had been ruined. They had all suffered the same abuse. Nakahara Chuuya, though, had always loved the hand that fed him, even if it was identical to the hand that hit him. Neither Aizawa Shouta nor Tecchou Suehiro had ever convinced themselves to do the same.

And Nakajima Atsushi- he was abused. But he had to deal with the concept that he was hurt senselessly, with no purpose. He was abused as a child. Most other Yokohaman ability users were abused as weapons. It was one word for two different acts, and it was impossible to explain what made it all different but it was also all wrong. Somehow, some way, it wasn’t the same to hit someone you saw as a child and to hit someone you saw as a weapon.

Although, looking closer at Aizawa Shouta and Tecchou Suehiro, one could see the subtle differences of a man praised as a good man, and a man spit on for the government sanctioned crimes committed against his own people.

Here, there was a man who had the safety net of living a life that he knew was for the good of his kids, for the good of his people, for the good of his country. There, there lived a man walking on the tightrope of self loathing with nothing but the ground beneath him, only still playing the game of life for the sake of his military unit and his husband, knowing that he was a murderer held tight in the chains of his government.

They were the same hurt children living the lives of separate men, and maybe it would be safe to say they were symmetric after all, as if their conflicting lives still gave way to agreeing pasts.

Yokohama murdered its children en masse, as it always had, ever since the Purges. And Japan was selective, nitpicking out the few lives among millions that would never go back, that would be torn limb from limb to form a sick sort of modern art. That didn’t mean either was kinder than the other, or one crueler than the other one. It just meant that when you looked at the bruises on a Yokohaman child, they matched the bruises on a Japanese one, no matter who hit them.

Aizawa Shouta and Tecchou Suehiro were hurt for opposite reasons, but they were both hurt, when they were both so, so young. They were both used, like a gun or maybe like a bitch, collared and beat and the property of the lands that had birthed them from dirt and mud and the lifeless form of what might have been a mother.

Maybe it was their abilities, their brains, their personalities. Maybe there was no reason at all, except for cruelty. Their pasts had made them identical and their futures now made them opposites

Aizawa Shouta and Tecchou Suehiro were symmetric children and they were asymmetric adults, and there were a thousand things the same between them and another thousand different. So, really, maybe we could posit another question. How could two men so different be so similar?

(And maybe that’s the answer. They were never similar. The men who used them were.)

Atsushi was almost glad to be able to leave the school building. His skin was beginning to feel itchy and ill-fighting, a surefire symptom of him needing to change into the tiger for a little bit. And while he was in tiger form, he decided to wander around for a bit, to get used to the campus. Atsushi wasn’t sure if it was him or the tiger that wanted to memorize this new territory as quickly as possible.

As he walked along the sidewalk between buildings, he saw multiple students pass by him. For the most part, they kept their distance, but he noticed that the majority of them didn’t smell particularly strongly of fear. A few students walked closer to him as they passed, giving him a smile or a small coo.

Unlike how it would have been in Yokohama, no one ran from him screaming, no one tried to kick or spit on him, no one demanded he turn back into human form. They saw his vest, and accepted him as human even though his current form said otherwise. There were people in Yokohama who wouldn’t accept him as a human being even when he was in human form.

Atsushi eventually happened upon a small paved patio, with a large group of children all gathered and eating dinner, scattered across a few metal tables. Atsushi moved closer, smelling warm food and feeling his stomach murmur quietly. They hadn’t eaten since they had arrived in Japan, and he hadn’t exactly stocked up on backup food.

(If he had tried to pack food, it likely would have been confiscated by the Wall guards. They claimed that food was a nonessential- that you could easily get it once you made it to the Outside, and they wanted to limit items leaving the country. Maybe that was true. Or maybe he didn’t mistake the sly smirks of the Wall guards as they threw out his water bottle, his knit gloves, his spare shoes.)

They had all come to Japan with the barest essentials, mostly sets of clothing and their paperwork. None of them even brought toiletries. Things like toothbrushes, razors and combs likely would have been thrown out, and they didn’t want to waste the few bucks they would have lost on the items.

“Hey, big guy! You’re new here, right?” A brown-haired girl with rosy cheeks and a joyful smile leaned down at his level. “I’m Uraraka Ochako!”

Atsushi sat on his haunches and let the schoolgirl read the silver name on his vest. He could transform into a human and talk with them, sure, but it was certainly easier to say nothing and remain a tiger. Whenever he transformed, there was always that voice in the back of his head that whispered to him to never change back.

“Wait, Nakajima? You’re one of the Yokohamans.” Uraraka stood up and took a step back, her face more closed off now. The rest of the kids all seemed more on guard at the sound of his name, and Atsushi hunched down a little, his ears flatter on his head. No one liked being treated like a threat. No one liked being treated like a monster.

A few of the other students got up and moved closer. His ears pulled back even more and he tensed up. They were getting very close, the tiger told him, much too close. They quickly backed away, recognizing that at the moment, he was more tiger than human.

“This is such a cool quirk! Or, you call them abilities, right?” A green haired boy sat down cross legged in front of Atsushi. His arms bore a very unique scarring pattern, one Atsushi couldn’t diagnose on sight. They weren’t focused along the joints, like Atsushi, who had had his limbs ripped off on multiple occasions only to be regenerated. They weren’t curved and spiraled like Chuuya’s corruption scars. And they weren’t like Tecchou’s surgery scars, or Dazai’s self harm scars, or Kunikida’s bomb and burn scars.

“Can you control being a tiger? Do you have tiger mannerisms as a human? How long can you be a tiger? Do you have a preference for being a tiger or a human? If Aizawa-sensei canceled your ability, would you turn back into a human or be stuck as a tiger?” the boy rambled, even as his friends tried to discreetly get him away from Atsushi. “Ack! Sorry, my name’s Midoriya Izuku, I ramble a bit sometimes.”

Aizawa chortled, the closest sound to a laugh he could make in tiger form. Midoriya blushed and tried to say something incoherent but his mouth couldn’t produce any real words. Atsushi stood, noting with a slight disappointment that Midoriya flinched away from him.

He walked forward, through the small crowd the students had formed. They spread apart from him like he was diseased, like his sheathed claws and hidden fangs were as dangerous as a gun to the throat. He circled the crowd from a distance, trying to decide which of them had the weakest fear smell.

Atsushi landed on a tall, black-haired girl, who had remained sitting, calmly eating her lunch. He walked slowly and non threateningly to sit beside her, gracefully leaping up onto the metal bench and, embarrassingly, almost falling off. The girl hid her smile behind her hand and Atsushi yelped and shuffled around on the bench.

“Yaoyorozu Momo.” She reached a hand out to him. Atsushi, feeling the very feline urge to want to be pet, nudged her outstretched hand with his muzzle. God, he would blush like a tomato when he remembered this as a human, but for now his mind was onetrack and only wanted to be pet.

She gently stroked the fur around his fluffy ears, and as she got more comfortable with him, he leaned forward, eyes on her bowl of quickly-made chazuke. Yaoyorozu laughed and fed him a piece of salmon. He rumbled out a small, grateful sound, leaning into the comforting feeling of her hand on his head.

Atsushi felt the eyes of the class on his fur, but he didn’t care as much as he might have. He was being pet and given free food. Really, he could deal with people watching him as long as this continued. The girl began talking in quiet tones to him, telling him about her favorite sights to see in the city and the best restaurants. When she asked a yes or no question, he would nod or shake his head, but most of his time was spent just listening to her.

While they talked, and the searing eyes of the class slowly drifted away from them, she fed him a couple more pieces of salmon. Eventually, she had to leave for her dorm before curfew, and he followed her for a few yards, winding his body around her legs like a cat. Then, he stopped walking. When she turned back at him, he nudged her forward with an amused purr, turning in a different direction. He was fairly sure his apartment was on the opposite side of campus.

He walked with little interruption for a while, most of the students and staff in their dorms or off campus. Atsushi made it to their apartment- apparently, it had been made just a few days ago, which was mildly crazy to Atsushi.

He laid down on the small porch that had been built for them, resting his head on his paws and observing the whole campus with his sharp eyes. He could get used to this.

Aizawa sat with a slump on his cheap, secondhand couch. The television was on, playing the news, though it didn’t seem to be anything Aizawa would be interested in. A new phone was released, a new hero had debuted, a new school was built. Nothing particularly relevant.

His brain drifted to thoughts of the Yokohamans. Chuuya, as he specifically wished to be called, was the main spokesperson among them. He controlled the whole conversation, forcing the heroes to get back on the topic of Odasaku’s School. He clearly had experience leading, or helping lead, professional meetings such as the two he had just got out of. It was too bad none of Aizawa’s colleagues had any such experience, or their meeting could have gone a lot quicker. Aizawa didn’t miss the most likely loaded gun in a holster on his waist.

Atsushi was a quiet presence except for when he felt he had a relevant comment, willing to give input but not exactly a huge talker. Aizawa suspected it was less about Atsushi being shy and more about his intrinsic uncomfortableness with Japanese heroes. He couldn’t blame the boy.

And Tecchou, the uniformed bodyguard who carried a sword on his side, was a silent reminder of all the things they had to fear about Yokohama. He was a soldier, a Hunting Dog. He was more experienced when it came to tracking and subduing people with quirks than perhaps some pro heroes were. Tecchou was employed by the same government that would have killed him without second thought only decades ago, and he didn’t seem to even resent his job.

Additionally, there was the matter of the three’s unknown quirks. Unlike with Japanese quirks, where people’s bodies often reflected what their quirks might be, the Yokohaman’s bodies spoke nothing of their quirks.

First generation quirks rarely had strong mutant elements- those showed up after generations of quirks being combined into physical changes in children. All of Yokohama’s quirk users were first generation, due to the laws surrounding them having children, so even partially mutant quirks were quite rare among them.

It wasn’t surprising, their biological normalcy, but it was jarring. And it struck Aizawa, that this was what their whole nation was like. Walking down the street, all of the civilians one encountered were probably quirkless, all of their bodies were identical in the most essential ways. Was it easier? A doctor could receive a patient and know for sure that their organs were in the same places, that their bodies functioned the same way.

With the addition of quirks, every single person needed to be studied by a doctor before they could be treated, hundreds of quirk specialist doctors might need to be consulted for one single patient. But in Yokohama, where their majority was quirkless and their medical professionals catered to the average, how simple must it be to go and get a checkup, to receive medication.

Aizawa leaned back into the depths of the couch, pulling his thin blanket up to his chest along with his knees. It felt childish, to sit with his head on his knees and to watch tv. But the wound in his side was aching, the tv was talking about the family murdered after a villain break in, and the weight of the hero license in his wallet felt as heavy as the world must have felt on Atlas’s shoulders, and maybe he was a bit too much of an adult.

Maybe he should take up Nezu’s offer of living in the teacher’s dorm. It would be cheaper, for sure, and he could catch up on even just a few more minutes of sleep. He could protect his class even more, and keep an eye on the Yokohamans in their apartment at the school campus.

But he had fought hard for this home. Even with the cameras in the corners and the microphones in the walls, it was still Aizawa’s only space separate from Nezu, the closest thing to privacy he would ever get. It was a sh*thole but it was his sh*thole, and Aizawa didn’t think he could bear to leave it, no matter how much his bank account and eye bags would thank him. There were some things a man couldn’t give up once he had them, and one of Aizawa’s was autonomy, or some semblance of it.

Aizawa couldn’t tell if his city apartment made him happy or not, and he’d like to keep it that way. This was the one thing he refused to let Nezu take from him. The rat could have his childhood, his mind, his body, his life, but never, not f*cking ever, would the rat take his home from him.

A broken man will always cling to the one thing that makes him feel whole, and for Aizawa, that was his apartment. He could pretend Nezu had never so much as talked to him if he could have his apartment, could sit on the couch he owned, hold the blanket he owned, and eat the food he had made.

Aizawa picked up the remote and turned off the tv, the room going dark, with the only light coming from the open window. Aizawa closed his eyes, feeling a soft breeze floating into his room. Bits and pieces of conversations were carried up to his ears by the gentle evening wind, but for the most part he ignored them.

He was alive, Aizawa reminded himself. He had friends who loved him no matter what stupid sh*t he did to himself, he had students who looked up to him no matter how much of a horrible role model he was. He had a life that woke him up at dawn and saw him fall asleep at midnight, but it was a life he loved, despite it all.

And maybe it was Nezu’s influence, or just how Aizawa was, but he didn’t hate being a hero or being a teacher. He thought of the Yokohamans, he thought of their dream of a school and children running through halls laughing and a city of grateful civilians, and wondered how lucky he was to already have all of that for himself.

Aizawa threw an arm over his face and laughed, an open, free thing, uncaring of whoever might be watching. He had a sh*t hand at life. Dead parents, a villain’s quirk, a manipulative principal. But because of all of that, despite all of that, he had grown into an adult, and he was even kind of happy with his life. As a little kid, he never thought he would have all that he had now.

Aizawa got up, setting his blanket back on the couch with a kind of care he wouldn’t normally give it. He moved into the kitchen area, and tied his hair back with a black hair tie. Taking out his beat up phone, he began playing music.

That night was a good night. He remembered to take his pills, and he ate a full dinner that he had made from scratch. He had sung and danced to his favorite songs, pretending like his still healing bruises and cuts didn’t groan in protest. He had smiled like he hadn’t for weeks.

Maybe it had something to do with the arrival of the Yokohamans. Maybe it had nothing to do with it. But even so, he mentally sent a small thanks to the three of them, who were seeking everything he had had for years but had always taken for granted. He thanked them for reminding him of everything the world was determined to have him forget, for reminding him of all the tiny pieces of his life he loved.

That night was a good night. To other people, it may have seemed boring, or normal. But to Aizawa, it was a good night. He ate dinner. He listened to music he enjoyed. He went to sleep dreamless.

Even Aizawa could admit he didn’t live the best of lives. But, he told himself, he didn’t have to live the best life to make it the happiest life. Who cared if what made him smile that day was a million dollars or a well cooked meal? It had made him smile, and he lived a life ridden with suffering and perpetual work, but he had smiled, and it was worth it.

He hadn’t chosen the cards he’d been dealt, but what he could choose was how he wanted to play them. And at that very moment in his life, he wouldn’t have chosen to change anything. If someone had asked, he would have smiled, shaken his head, and gone back to singing terribly and dancing messily in his tiny kitchen.

Chuuya moved around their new apartment’s kitchen with the ease of someone who cooked his own meals every day. Tecchou sat at the kitchen table, his Hunting Dog jacket laid evenly on his chair, cleaning one of Chuuya’s many guns. In exchange for Tecchou cleaning Chuuya’s weapons and Atsushi doing the dishes afterwards, Chuuya was making the three of them dinner. He claimed it wouldn’t be an everyday thing, but Atsushi felt that the three of them were already falling into an easy companionship.

“I met Aizawa’s class today,” Atsushi said casually, leaning on a wall and holding a cup of coffee in one of his hands.

“Oh?” Chuuya hummed, not looking up from the stove. Tecchou didn’t say anything, but Atsushi could tell he was listening.

“Yep. I was in tiger form. It was kinda weird, actually, they were all nice and stuff to me, till they learned my name. Once they realized I was from Yokohama, they got super awkward.” Atsushi slurped the last of his coffee loudly, momentarily mourning the loss of his drink.

“It almost sounds like a bad joke. A Yokohaman walks into a room full of Outsider school children,” Chuuya said. He wasn’t extremely surprised that the kids had reacted badly to the idea of Yokohama, or the thought of ability users from Yokohama. They knew very little about their country, and knowing nothing about someone can only lead to hostility between people. Of course, he had hoped that the people at the school would react better, but beggars can’t be choosers, Chuuya reasoned.

“I guess. Just so you know, there was this one girl, Yaoyorozu Momo, who was really nice,” Atsushi told them. He blushed at the memory of him asking her for pets and food. He already felt uncomfortable at the prospect of shadowing the class and talking to the girl in his human form.

“Let me guess, she pet you?” Chuuya asked with humor in his voice. When Atsushi didn’t answer, he laughed lightly. It was well known in most circles of ability users that Nakajima Atsushi, when in tiger form or partial tiger form, would never refuse pets.

“Be careful, Atsushi,” Tecchou spoke up, lifting his eyes away from Chuuya’s firearms to make eye contact with Atsushi. “I know they’re just kids, but every single one of them has an ability. Every single person here has an ability. We just can’t trust them, not when we have no idea what they could do.”

Atsushi smiled sadly, his eyes bearing the kind of understanding a Yokohaman would only ever see in an ability user. He said softly, “I know. This isn’t Yokohama, and we can’t assume we’ll be able to overpower anyone we come across. But… they haven’t done anything wrong yet, other than distrust a stranger like me. I don’t blame them, not at all.”

“And that’s your choice,” Chuuya said, hinting at the fact that he personally agreed more with Tecchou’s stance of caution than Atsushi’s of good faith. Atsushi nodded.

“Are you almost done cooking? I mean, I worked very hard today gathering information.” Atsushi changed the subject skillfully. Tecchou chuckled, and finished off the last gun on the table. Atsushi moved across the room to place the empty coffee cup in the trash can, walking behind Chuuya and quickly glancing at the sizzling pan.

“Almost, you f*cking hellions,” Chuuya grumbled. His tone didn’t carry any malice towards them, and Atsushi giggled.

For another few minutes, they conversed quietly, tired from the long day. When Tecchou’s phone rang, all three of them turned to him in surprise. They had been in Japan barely a day, who could possibly be calling him already? Tecchou stood up with a stony face and walked out of the kitchen to talk on the phone.

“Hope it’s nothing bad,” Atsushi said, staring at the doorway that Tecchou had left from, a frown growing on his face. The call couldn’t have been from anyone in Japan, because they hadn’t really met any Japanese people yet. Atsushi had Yuki’s number, but he hadn’t given his number out to any other Outsiders, and neither had Tecchou. The call could only have come from Yokohama, and it had to have been an emergency if the caller had gotten permission from the government to call a number outside of the country.

“Yeah. Let’s hope,” Chuuya said, his mind seemingly distant. Atsushi wished he could know what was going on in Chuuya’s head whenever he got detached like this. Sometimes, he just went quiet, his body seemingly in another place. It always happened at the most random times. Chuuya would go from amused and joking to unfeeling and unresponsive. Atsushi didn’t know if it had something to do with his part in the Port Mafia, or maybe his childhood, but it always unsettled him to see the normally loud man go so quiet.

Atsushi silently began setting the table for the three of them, trying not to shock Chuuya. This wasn’t a horrible episode, as Chuuya was still able to move and finish cooking, but he didn’t seem very mentally ready to be holding conversation. His cooking, which had been being done joyfully and with energy, was now being done in an automatic fashion, with Chuuya’s thoughts clearly on other topics.

Atsushi sat down, staring at Chuuya’s back in a concerned fashion. Chuuya seemed almost hunched over, which wasn’t something you normally saw when it came to the confident and often aggressive mafia executive. He seemed to be trying to make himself smaller, which was a position more commonly seen on someone like Atsushi, not Chuuya. In summary, he was acting very differently from his normal self.

Atsushi looked down at the freshly cleaned guns on the table, their surfaces shining and clean. He looked back out the doorway that Tecchou had left from. He picked up one of the guns gently and looked at his face distorted on the surface. He wondered if Chuuya had ever killed someone with this gun.

(He knew Chuuya had.)

(Chuuya fell apart, sometimes. He did it in silence, all inside his own head, his brain a maze of memories. Sometimes, Chuuya fell apart, and no one but him even noticed.)

When Dazai first asked him to join the Mafia, he had scoffed. He wasn’t an idiot. Chuuya had seen Dazai, after all, had rubbed his back as he puked his guts out over gas station toilet seats. Who would want to live like that? He didn’t have to know Dazai for long to know he never wanted to be like him.

Besides, he had told himself, he had the Sheep. He had a family, everything he ever wanted. Chuuya wouldn’t leave them, couldn’t leave them. That day at the arcade, when Shirase pulled his switchblade out on Dazai, he had seen the malevolent darkness that lurked behind the bandages on Dazai’s skin, the violent hatred that marred his very body. Dazai had spoken, then, and it was like Chuuya’s old family splintered apart from Dazai’s words.

Boss’s orders, he said. Chuuya still hated him a little bit for it, no matter how much he loved the man. He had been surprised, at the time, that Dazai would do that to him. He shouldn’t have been. f*ck the boss’s orders, Chuuya wished he had said to Dazai back then. If he could have escaped his current hell, one where his only option was to use Corruption at least every week, and deal with the way his boss’s lecherous gazes dragged grossly through his veins, he would have. He should have.

(But he hadn’t. He had gone with Dazai in the end. This was all his own fault.)

Chuuya wore makeup. It wasn’t a secret, and he wasn’t embarrassed about it. He was, though, ashamed. Ashamed of the forever crimson scars on his face and his arms. Every morning he woke up and lathered a layer of foundation and concealer on all the visible skin on his body, and he convinced himself this was better than the alternative.

He didn’t always wear makeup. Chuuya had used to be okay with the scars, used to understand that they were a necessary part of him. The scars were proof that he had used Corruption, and lived. He had used to like the way they reminded him of Dazai.

But then he heard the rumors. They thought he was being abused. Depending on who you asked, it was Mori, or Dazai, or Ane-san. Yokohama thought he was being abused. And god, did that hurt, the way they talked about Dazai or Ane-san as if they would ever hurt him. He was surprised that they could even think they would do something like that to him. He shouldn’t have been.

So he wore makeup. Chuuya hid away his Corruption scars, let Yokohama believe the deep red cuts had healed over and not simply been covered up. He had hated the way Mori had smiled his way, as if he had started using makeup for him and not for Dazai and Ane-san. But it was fine. Chuuya was fine.

(Ane-san had pursed her lips at the way he covered his scars, but said nothing. And Dazai? Dazai had hugged him, forgiven him for what he had to do.)

The first time he used Corruption under Mori’s orders, he remembered waking up in a private ward, separate from the normal mafia-run clinics. He shouldn’t have been surprised, at that point, that it was Mori and Elise who had nursed him back to health. He shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was. He was surprised, and disgusted, and ashamed. Chuuya didn’t have to know what Mori did to him while he was unconscious because he could guess, and, looking in Dazai’s eyes, he could also tell his guesses weren’t that far off.

That night, after taking a long, cold shower, and clawing at his skin like he could clean himself of Mori’s touch, Dazai had showed up at his apartment.

There were some days that Chuuya doubted Dazai’s love for him, that he doubted that anyone was even capable of loving him. But then he remembered the way Dazai had held him as he cried on the bathroom floor, had comforted him in silence with his all too knowing gaze.

It hadn’t been the worst thing Mori would do to him, but the shock of it all, the uncertainty of it all, was a form of torture in and of it self. He still did not know exactly what Mori had done to him. Chuuya was fairly sure Mori had since done worse.

(Mori Ougai was a monster, Chuuya was sure, and not in the same way Chuuya was. Chuuya was a man-made monster. Mori was a monster who had long pretended to be a man.)

It has been well established, by multiple sources, that Dazai did not tell Chuuya that he was leaving. It seemed, to Chuuya, that all of Yokohama must know the way Dazai had abandoned him without so much as a goodbye.

He had been having tea with Ane-san. Chuuya had been content, or, as content as he could be. One of her girls had come in, phone in hand, and Ane-san had frowned primly and left the room to answer the call. Chuuya had stared at the door, waiting impatiently for Ane-san to get back. He should have known better. Nothing good ever stayed when it came to him.

She was sympathetic, when she told him, with a healthy dose of ‘I told you see’ in her expression. Chuuya had left for his apartment immediately, to drink away his sorrow. He was surprised when Dazai blew up his car. He shouldn’t have been.

(Chuuya fell apart. Sometimes it was with a bottle in his hand, red tears in his eyes. And sometimes, it was in a Japanese apartment, with two men from opposing organizations, and when he came back mentally, they all pretended he had never left.)

“What happened?” Tecchou asked immediately upon answering the phone.

“What, no hello?” Jouno’s slightly mocking voice answered. If Tecchou wasn’t so worried, he would have been glad to hear his husband’s voice after what felt like so long.

“Did something happen?” Tecchou asked. Jouno probably wouldn’t be so calm if something bad had happened, but he could also be fairly misconstrued when it came to what was important and what wasn’t, so sometimes it was hard to tell.

“I mean, other than me caching in a favor to talk to my adoring husband on the phone? Nope,” Jouno said. Tecchou sagged in relief. Nothing had happened. Jouno had just bypassed the government blocking, somehow, to call him.

“Okay. Alright. Don’t scare me like that, you sad*stic bastard!” Tecchou grumbled at the other man behind the phone. Jouno chuckled in amusem*nt. If they had been together, and not just on call, Tecchou would have stabbed him in the foot for laughing at his fear.

“Not even an ‘I miss you’,” Jouno complained as if Tecchou hadn’t even said anything. “Gone for a whole day, and he isn’t even apologetic. How can one know if his husband even loves him back?”

“Of course I miss you, idiot,” Tecchou said while rolling his eyes fondly. And he did miss Jouno, along with all of the Hunting Dogs, and just the country in general. Japan was lovely, but nothing could compare, in Tecchou’s eyes, to Yokohama. Japan was lovely, but nothing could compare to being with Jouno.

“Thanks!” Jouno said happily. Tecchou leaned against the hallway wall, feeling himself slip into the content conversation he and his husband always shared.

“How are Tachihara and Teruko?” Tecchou asked. When he had left his three fellow Hunting Dogs, Techihara and Teruko had both been on a mission together to investigate a tunnel being dug through one of the Walls.

“Doesn’t even ask about you.” Jouno sighed dramatically. “Yeah, they’re back, and very upset they didn’t get to say goodbye. But we’re good. Everything’s going good back here at the homestead.”

Tecchou closed his eyes and did his best to pretend that Jouno was with him, was holding him. He did his best to pretend they were at the Hunting Dogs headquarters, Tachihara and Teruko causing chaos throughout the building. He did his best to pretend he was still in Yokohama.

“They pranked Ango, you know, the Special Division guy? Water balloons. A classic,” Jouno informed him happily.

“Of course they did. They're always messing with someone.” Tecchou smiled. He had no doubt that when he got back to the country, there would be an untold amount of pranks awaiting him. He almost looked forward to it. “And how have you been, love? And not the city, not the Hunting Dogs, but you.”

“Well. With what happened with f*ckuchi and all, I think everyone’s as good as they can be.” A beat of silence passed. “But… My commander was a terrorist. My husband is in Japan, of all nations. My fellow Hunting Dogs are all under suspect. But sometimes it feels like none more than me. I’m a risk, more than any of the others. I could escape out of any jail cell, if I really wanted.”

“I’m sorry. I should be there with you, not here in Japan. And I’m sorry I can’t comfort you, because you are a threat, we all are. But what I can say is that if the government was really planning on getting rid of us, they would have done it months ago. As long as they’re sending us on missions, we know we’re safe.” Tecchou didn’t know if the government would kill them, banish them, or imprison them. But what he did know was that if they still had a use, they would always be used. Stay useful, stay alive.

“You know, that shouldn’t be so comforting,” Jouno said lightly. He was right, of course. To have to live a life of servitude and to pray one would always be needed was a depressing, cruel thing. Jouno loved Tecchou, though, more than the world itself, and if this life was one that Tecchou wanted? Then it was also the life Jouno wanted.

Their topics of conversation drifted away from seriousness. They didn’t want to spend the only phone call they could be having for the next few months talking about dark, even if important, things. All they wanted was to talk about movies to go see together, parks to walk through hand in hand. They wanted the world to shrink itself down to fit in the gaps between them, to revolve around their love for each other.

(Didn’t all lovers imagine that the world rotated on the axis of their relationship? Tecchou and Jouno were both logical beings, but logical beings were still loving ones, prone to dreaming of easier to process days.)

“Anyways, I have your address there. I’ll be sending a letter soon, but I’d expect it to take a little while before it can make it through the Walls. I’ll await your response eagerly,” Jouno said, his tone growing slightly more morose. He would miss hearing Tecchou’s voice, for however long he was gone.

“Okay. Obviously, be careful, and mind for seagulls,” Tecchou said softly. No one quite knew who had first uttered the phrase- if it was born from ability users, or just Yokohaman citizens, or maybe Port Mafia members. But nowadays, Yokohamans from all walks of life knew the simple phrase.

‘Mind for seagulls’. Watch the skies. Take care of what birds lingered above. The government ruled the skies, just as the Port Mafia ruled the underground. ‘Mind for seagulls’. Forget the walls, the very clouds above you carried ears.

“I love you like the Sun loves the Moon. Till I fold in upon my own light.” The words felt as right then as they did the first time Jouno had whispered them, under the cover of night and in the basem*nt of one of the Hunting Dogs’ old hideouts. They had nearly died that night, an ability user gang surrounding them with no one for backup. They had nearly died and the only thing Jouno wanted known before he fell was that he loved Tecchou Suehiro.

And like he had that night, Tecchou responded, "I love you like the Moon loves the Sun. Till I die in your hands."

“It was just Jouno.” Tecchou’s lips quirked in a small, pleased smile. “Used a favor to talk to me, apparently.”

“Everything good, then?” Atsushi asked, glancing to where Chuuya still seemed a little out of it, though not as much as before. He wanted to ask about what had set him off, but didn’t want to shock him back into dissociation.

They ate Chuuya’s home made dinner and talked in companionable small talk. The rest of the night was spent trying to get used to each other’s presences. It wasn’t easy, considering their differences in alliances, demeanors, and background, but it felt necessary for all of them to know their temporary brothers in arms.

Learning each other was less about the important things, like Chuuya’s past or Tecchou’s work with the government, and more about the little things. It was about how Atsushi liked to wear multiple layers of clothing to sleep, how Chuuya always carried a little flask with whiskey in his pocket, how Tecchou liked to do small stretches while standing and talking to someone.

Learning each other was about learning their scars. Because as they all slowly prepared to sleep, Chuuya began wiping off his makeup. Atsushi had seen Chuuya without his makeup before, in pictures on Dazai’s phone, but it was different seeing the scars in person. They were a bloody scarlet, except Atsushi could tell they weren’t actually open wounds, and they didn’t look like they were hurting him. Atsushi wondered how they had bled, how they had stung painfully, back when they were first formed. He didn’t ask him.

Tecchou’s surgery scars also unnerved Atsushi, but for different reasons. Tecchou was the type to walk around shirtless, and his chest and back showed the horrifying signs of the Hunting Dogs’ surgery. Atsushi averted his eyes from the unique scars on his back that looked reminiscent of whip marks. He wished he himself didn’t have the experience to be able to recognize them.

And as Atsushi saw Chuuya and Tecchou’s scars, he hid his own under piles of sweaters and blankets. There was a certain vulnerability associated with someone seeing your scars, witnessing the hundreds of things that could have killed you but hadn’t. Atsushi didn’t know how it felt for Chuuya and Tecchou, but for him, sharing such weakness with others would feel dishonest.

Atsushi would feel like a liar without telling them the full story. The headmaster didn’t mean to scar him like this, he would say to their disbelieving eyes. This enemy or that enemy wouldn’t have taken his arm, his leg, his organs, if they had known, if they hadn’t known, if they had known but still did it anyways, he thought of telling them. A thousand excuses lined up inside his head, yet he couldn't bring himself to say anything, just looked away from their scars and covered up his own.

(A hundred pretty lies that looked more attractive than the ugly truth. A lie is a lie whether you say it with good intentions or not.)

The silence of Chuuya and Tecchou held a brutal honesty, and the silence of Atsushi felt like a noose around his neck. Here they were with their violent pasts and blemished skin, and here he was, cowering away as his scars itched in shame.

Still silently, Atsushi took off his hoodie, setting it in his lap rigidly, robotically. He started taking off his long sleeve shirt, but as he hooked the bottom of the shirt in his fingers, a hand reached out and stopped him. It was Chuuya, the red patterns along his face dancing beautifully in the light. Atsushi blinked in surprise and suddenly Chuuya’s scars sat still along his face again.

“Kid, the both of us have had years to process and feel comfortable with our scars. You don’t have to show us yours ‘cause you think it’s some kind of bonding or something.” Chuuya didn’t smile, because that just wasn’t something he did, but his posture showcased his kindly concern, so not mafia like that Atsushi almost wanted to laugh.

“My partner first showed me all of his scars months after we started seeing each other. He saw all of mine within days. Don’t feel pressured, everyone is okay with varying levels of showcasing at varying times.” Tecchou was both caring and uncaring, full of care for Atsushi and uncaring of what he got in return. At the words of both of them, Atsushi teared up, before quickly wiping the salty droplets away on his sleeve.

“Yeah. Thanks. I guess I just felt…” Atsushi paused. Their words filtered back to him. Neither of them would be bothered if he told them everything or nothing, if he lied or told the truth. “Like I’m not yet comfortable with this. And… that’s fine.”

People weren’t owed your vulnerability, Atsushi realized. And weakness wasn’t a poker chip, to be gambled in a game of trust and turned in to receive alliances. Weakness was a delicate, beautiful thing, but could quickly turn sickly when you gave it to someone at the wrong time, for you or them.

He didn’t owe anyone his scars, even if they showed him theirs. Atsushi smiled and pulled his hoodie back over his arms, finding solace in the way the hoodie hugged tight to his skin.

Like a mantra, he repeated this to himself over and over. He didn’t owe anyone anything. He didn’t owe anyone anything. He didn’t owe anyone anything.

The three of them settled down in the small common room, their talk drifting to the topic of favorite parks to visit, an innocent thing to discuss without any sensitive undertones. When they all began leaving for their own rooms, Chuuya nodded to him, the acceptance and even pride of his expression clear. Atsushi grinned. Maybe he could understand how this was the man Dazai loved.

Chapter 4: you've stuck all your conscience inside of your brain

Chapter Text

Chuuya sat staring at the wooden chess board, his expression annoyed but not surprised. He was a good strategist, sure, but not when it came to games. He could only be serious about strategy when the stakes were serious, too. Nezu sat across the table from him, equally as unsurprised. He had never met another human who could beat him, so of course facing Chuuya had little challenge.

"Don't feel bad. My quirk is intelligence." Nezu offered a smile to the young man, who leaned into the crossback of his chair and shrugged. Dazai had beaten him in many different games many times. He was used to losing against a person, or in this case, an animal, smarter than him. And… he worked for Mori. He was used to being with people smarter than him, more experienced than him. Chuuya had to be used to it if he wanted to survive under Mori’s reign.

“Another game?” Chuuya asked, though he wasn’t entirely eager. In his experience, with Mori, Dazai, even Ranpo Edogawa from the Agency, geniuses loved to have their egos stroked. But Nezu shook his head.

“Ah, I assume you’ll want to get back to your friends,” Nezu commented lightly. Chuuya had been going on a short walk after lunch when Nezu had crossed his path and invited him to his office for a game of chess and some tea. Chuuya hadn’t felt the need to inform the other two of where he was going, assuming it wouldn’t take that long and the others wouldn’t wonder where he had gone anyways.

“Alright.” Chuuya stood up, refusing to wince as his left foot stung with that painful pins and needles feeling. He scooped his coat up from his chair, slipping it onto his body gently, and gripped his pair of gloves in his hand without putting them back on.

“Nakahara, you three are aware of the welcoming celebration this evening, yes?” Nezu mentioned offhandedly, fairly sure that the Yokohamans did not, in fact, know of it. Chuuya groaned, trying to keep his pissed off and murderous inclinations to himself, or at least saving them for the party full of politicians he’d have to deal with. And there was another difference between Nezu and the other geniuses Chuuya knew. Even when he told Nezu it was fine to call him Chuuya, the principal still called him by his last name. He wasn’t sure if he was upset that Nezu didn’t listen to him or flattered that he thought Chuuya was important enough to still be called by his last name.

“No, we weren’t made aware until now. Would it be imperative for us to go? We're literally just making a school. I doubt we need this kind of media attention.” Chuuya slumped back into his seat, a tired feeling already sinking into his gut. This would be a long night, he just knew it.

“Well. The first quirked Yokohamans crossing the Walls since, as everyone knows, the Walls were first built. It’s bound to be a big deal. And… It wouldn’t be such a bad idea to have some allies on this side of the border, don’t you think?” Nezu said with a calculating glint. Chuuya rolled his eyes.

“You’re making this a much bigger deal than it has to be, but okay. Dazai did predict something like this might be hosted here, so all of us brought formalwear. Just not very happy to spend tonight dealing with politicians and reporters,” Chuuya said grumpily. “At least there’ll be alcohol.”

“Nakahara. This is a school. There will be underaged children there.” Nezu let the horrified realization fill Chuuya’s eyes and said, “No alcohol.”

Chuuya covered his face with his hands, feeling like he had aged five years within the span of one conversation. Sleazy politicians, annoying newsmen, and no f*cking alcohol to deal with it all. He was liking this trip outside of Yokohama less and less. Back home, no one gave a sh*t if ability users drank or did anything underage, because ability users couldn’t do anything underage.

(‘The presence of an ability in a citizen of Yokohama negates the application of a.) laws regarding the labor of children, b.) laws regarding the lesser criminal sentencing of children, c.) laws regarding the inherent protections and defenses of children, d.) laws regarding the restrictions of children, and e.) laws regarding the restrictions of adults towards children.' In shorter legal prose, the Ability Statutes made gifted children into non-children, non-adult messes.)

“I hate this. So. Much,” Chuuya said through gritted teeth, his unpainted nails holding a tinge of red. Nezu looked curiously at the almost glowing red that was growing on the young man’s skin. Nezu knew that when Chuuya used his ability, Upon the Tainted Sorrow, that a reddish glow surrounded his body. But now, it almost seemed like his very body shined faintly red. As if Chuuya sensed Nezu’s eyes on him, he lowered his hands from his face and into his lap. He quickly gloved his hands in slight shame, then stood.

“You’re right, and I’ll be going to meet up with Atsushi and Tecchou. The sooner they know the better.” Chuuya seemed colder to Nezu now, and he resisted the urge to frown. One step forward and two steps back, he thought with disappointment. He might have just lost all of that little meeting’s progress with the boy.

“Of course! I won’t be holding you here any longer. The event starts at five, just head to the gates and you’ll find the set up. And, Nakahara…” Nezu pretended to hesitate as Chuuya gave him a slightly confused look. “Maybe don’t tell the other two about this? I don’t want you to get in trouble for anything on my account.”

(What a beautiful lie, Nezu thought with narcissistic pride. Maybe he should go into politics. But, he reminded himself with a chuckle, running UA was basically running the country already.)

Chuuya opened the door to their campus apartment slowly, an uncomfortable trepidation growing in his chest. If he had pulled this with Mori and the Mafia, disappeared for an hour and lied about what he was doing, it wouldn’t have ended well for him. Scenes of being tortured, being interrogated, being starved, all filtered through his head.

When he entered the house, he immediately saw that both Atsushi and Tecchou were in the main room, with the tv on mute and playing a Japanese game show behind them. Atsushi was taking notes on a book about psychology peacefully on the couch. Tecchou was doing pushups on the floor. As soon as he stepped over the threshold into the apartment, Atsushi’s head snapped over to Chuuya.

“How was your walk?” Atsushi asked happily, not a hint of suspicion in his tone. Chuuya swallowed down the wad of dishonesty that was caught in his throat, and closed the door behind him.

“It was fine. I ran into Nezu, though, and that formal event that Dazai predicted might happen? Yeah, that’s tonight.” Chuuya took his shoes off and walked over to Atsushi, taking a place cross legged on the couch’s armrest. “Five o'clock today. We have two hours.”

“Damn,” Atsushi said without much inflection. He closed his textbook and notebook and placed them both on the low set table. Tecchou sat up, characteristically shirtless. “Here two days, and Principal Nezu’s already throwing the vultures and serpents in the pit with us.”

“I’m sure it was the government that wanted this, not Nezu,” Chuuya commented. He picked up an apple from the fruit bowl on the table and took a bite, breathing an air of nonchalance. All three of them seemed remarkably relaxed from an outside point of view, but it was mostly just exhaustion from their long drive and meeting-filled first day, and the insomnia that came from sleeping alone in unfamiliar rooms.

“I’ll be off to the shower, then,” Tecchou said suddenly. Chuuya nodded and got up from the couch’s armrest.

“I need to get started on my makeup. I’ll need a whole different look from this everyday sh*t to go with my suit.” Chuuya gestured to the simple makeup he was wearing at the moment. He already had to wear foundation and concealer to cover up his Corruption scars- why not go all the way? Besides, it would be a shame to waste the skills Ane-san had taught him.

“Could you do makeup on me?” Atsushi asked cautiously, remembering the way Chuuya could transform into a whole other creature if he had access to makeup. Atsushi wasn’t looking for anything crazy, but he was curious.

“Sure. I have some spare foundation that didn’t quite fit for me, and obviously extra sponges. And if you don’t like it, there’s always makeup wipes.” Chuuya glanced at where Tecchou still lingered by the door. “You want makeup done, Tecchou?”

“Eh. Not really my thing. Thanks for the offer,” Tecchou said, then left towards the shower. Chuuya shrugged, and took to considering the features of Atsushi’s face. After a few seconds, he waved for Atsushi to follow him to his room, since Tecchou was using the only bathroom in their apartment.

Chuuya’s room was still very plain, with his two suitcases mostly unpacked on the ground. The desk that had come in all of their rooms held a moderately-sized mirror, which Chuuya sat Atsushi down in front of on a cushioned stool. The small collection of makeup Chuuya had brought with him already sat on the desk.

Atsushi sat silent and still in front of the mirror, his eyes closed, most of his focus going towards not flinching at Chuuya’s surprisingly gentle touch. While Chuuya worked, he gave Atsushi a slight commentary on what he was doing, his voice soothing, as if he was afraid of scaring Atsushi away, even though he was the one who asked for the makeup to be done.

After a little less than ten minutes, Chuuya told Atsushi to open his eyes, and Atsushi leaned back in the stool to stare in shock at the makeup. He felt like a completely different person, yet also like an amplified version of himself.

“Wow. I, uh… It looks crazy. But, I don’t mean that in a bad way! It’s kind of cool.” Atsushi tilted his head to the side to get a different perspective and smiled. It was crazy, that his face could look so different, but he kind of liked the look of it.

“I kind of went a little simple on yours, and definitely a lot more masculine. My masculine makeup is kind of touch and go, since I was taught by Ane-san and her girls, but I think I didn’t do too rough a job on you.” Chuuya seemed softer now in Atsushi’s eyes. Something about letting someone do your makeup felt innocent, peaceful. “If you need any touch ups, I carry my stuff in my bag.”

“Thank you, Chuuya. Some day, if you aren’t too busy, I mean, do you think you could teach me?” Atsushi asked quietly, blinking his lashes to catch glances of the nude eyeshadow on his eyelids.

“Your doctor knows. And the illusion boy’s sister certainly does too.” Chuuya’s eyes narrowed in distrust. “Any specific reason you’d want to learn from me?”

“Dazai. He’s my mentor, and… like a dad to me. You’re one of the most important people to ever have happened to him. And I think even without that, you’d be a guy worth getting to know.” Atsushi told him. Chuuya looked a bit choked up, but quickly put himself back together.

“I mean, I wouldn’t mind, you know, showing you around a bit. It’s all really not that hard.” Chuuya was both honored and terrified that he’d lose this new friend. Atsushi grinned, tiger fangs glinting in the artificial light. “And stop making me teary, if you make me cry while I do my eyeliner I’m going to kill you, Dazai’s protege or not.”

Atsushi giggled and hopped off the stool, taking out his phone to check the clock. They still had an hour and a half before the party. He left for his own room to get dressed in a suit.

Chuuya took Atsushi’s place on the stool, and began wiping down his original makeup that day. It was slightly annoying to have to also redo his foundation and concealer, which took longer than a normal person’s because of him having to deal with the slight glow of his scars. Once he finished redoing his foundation and contouring, he started on his eyeliner, done in black opposed to Atsushi’s light brown and much more noticeable.

‘Make your eyeliner sharp enough to seduce a man and your knives sharp enough to kill him,’ Ane-san always told him. He finished up with his lips and used his waterproof setting spray, even though he didn’t foresee his face getting wet, never hurt to be prepared. Ane-san had another saying about making your makeup waterproof: ‘You think skipping out on waterproofing once is just fine and dandy until a random spring rain transforms you into the Wicked Witch of the West.’

With about another hour left, Chuuya got up to retrieve his suit from his bags. He’d have to iron out some folds, as he couldn’t travel with anything outside his suitcases, but he was relatively sure he’d have enough time. Atsushi had already ironed and hung up all of his clothes, so he didn’t need to use the iron, and Tecchou wore his uniform during the drive and hadn’t gotten it wrinkled since.

Chuuya sorted through his neatly folded and stacked clothes, looking for his suit. He stopped moving in a panic.

Sitting in his suitcase, innocently, next to his suit pants, was a dress. He turned away, hands held in front of his gaping mouth, feeling sick. Mori. That f*cking bastard had gone through his luggage, had placed one of his stupid dresses with Chuuya’s things.

(Despite wearing more feminine-styled makeup and spending his teenage years surrounded by women, Chuuya didn’t like wearing dresses. After meeting Mori, Chuuya hated wearing dresses.)

Chuuya grabbed the pieces of his suit and hurriedly covered the dress up with other clothing. He’d dispose of it later. He brought the iron from the hallway linen closet into his room to iron out the wrinkles quickly.

After putting on his newly-ironed suit, Chuuya went to their shared living room to join Atsushi and Tecchou, who were both already there. Tecchou wore his full Hunting Dog uniform, his facial tattoo somehow adding to his intimidating yet respectable aura. Atsushi wore a nice yet simple suit- Chuuya was fairly sure that f*ckuzawa sponsored formalwear for the detectives that couldn’t afford it, which was likely where Atsushi’s suit came from.

“Everyone ready?” Tecchou asked in his deeper voice, eyes flickering between the two of them. Atsushi smiled kindly at him and Chuuya gave a short nod.

“Let’s go show ‘em what Yokohama really looks like,” Atsushi said. His pupils were slit, and told of the tiger’s lingering hunger. Chuuya wondered if he maybe should have given Atsushi sharper eyeliner to match his pupils.

“I can’t believe we get to go to a party!” Uraraka squealed. The other girls of the class were gathered along with her, their beautiful and eye-catching dresses shining in the sunset. They were all waiting outside for the last of their classmates to funnel out of the dorms.

All of the hero classes had been invited to the welcoming party for the Yokohamans, as it would be good training for when as heroes they’d be going to parties and events regularly. Of course, the class of 1A was mostly looking forward to getting to go to a party full of pro heroes and other influential people.

“I’m curious to see the Yokohamans, as well,” Midoriya said. All of them had met, if you could have called it that, Nakajima Atsushi, who had a very obvious tiger transformation quirk. They had yet to meet Nakahara Chuuya or the bodyguard that had crossed the Walls with them, and Midoriya especially was eager to learn about their quirks.

Tokoyami and Shoji shared a knowing look, their knowledge of Nakahara’s scars forcing them to take these oaths of secrecy. A few other classmates gave the two confused glances, but no one said anything about it.

“I’m just wondering if Nakahara or the bodyguard are girls,” Mina said, winking in the general direction of the other girls. “We could use some more estrogen at this school.” Luckily for all of them, Mineta wasn’t outside yet to join in the conversation about gender.

“Although, I am a bit confused about their professions,” Momo said. Most of the class turned their attention to her, knowing she always brought up intelligent and clearly considered points. “I was reading up on Yokohaman law, and apparently, it’s illegal for quirked people to be hired as teachers or professors, only tutors. Clearly, the law is in the process of being changed there, but Nakahara and Nakajima really have zero experience.”

“Huh. So… what were their previous jobs?” Kaminari asked. He turned to Tokoyami inquisitively, knowing that the avian boy had messaged his city relatives about them. Tokoyami shuffled on his feet.

“Well, obviously Nakajima’s vest said he was from a detective agency. But, from what my family heard, Nakahara worked with the Port Mafia,” Tokoyami told them. It wasn’t spilling the secret of Dazai Osamu and Nakahara, but it was spilling a lot that Nakahara would probably not appreciate him saying.

“Damn.” Kirishima’s face was slightly pale, but he quickly collected himself. “He… Nakahara must have gotten out. There’s no way he’d be going on a peaceful, educational trip to a school if he was still a villain. He has to be reformed!”

“I agree with Kirishima! No way Nezu’d let a criminal into UA,” Midoriya said decisively.

“My parents have actually worked with them before, the Port Mafia isn’t really a normal mafia,” Yaoyorozou said reassuringly. “They have legal employees, and they actually kind of work like peacekeepers and mediators among criminals, protecting the common people of Yokohama.” She didn’t truly know if Nakahara was one of said legal employees, but he had to be, right? A true mafioso wouldn’t be making a school, right?

“Huh,” Uraraka said. “I mean, if he worked as some kind of peacekeeper among villains, I suppose he’d actually be a pretty good fit to make a hero school. And a detective is similar to a hero.”

The conversation quieted down, all of them seeming to slightly separate into their own groups. When the last of their classmates had joined them outside the dorms, they all set out as a large group to the location of the welcoming party, their colorful formal clothing giving them the look of exotic birds and animals.

After arriving, they all split off, some of them searching for food, others for various heroes and police officers they recognized, and some for the dance floor they sadly realized only held slow dancing partners. For all of the young students, it promised to be an enlightening night.

Chuuya smirked like a shark, auburn hair glistening in the sunset. Atsushi and Tecchou walked a short step behind him- Chuuya wasn’t necessarily their leader, but at the moment, he was leading them forwards. They both trusted in their comrade to lead them right and lead them well.

Chuuya sat down in one of the plastic folding chairs, crossing his ankles like a lady but carrying himself aggressively like a man. Atsushi quickly scampered into his own seat, and Tecchou, with a quirk to his mouth that might have been a frown, sat down next to Atsushi. The small stage they were sitting on had an entire row of plastic seating, and about half of the chairs were filled, with the other half of the reserved occupants still drifting through the crowd.

“Chuuya,” Atsushi hissed quietly, his eyes facing the crowd but his ire turned to the man to his right. “You didn’t tell us. That there’d be speeches .”

“I wasn’t made aware, either,” Chuuya said. Out of the corner of his eye, Atsushi saw Chuuya glance at Nezu, who was sitting on the shoulder of Aizawa as they slowly made it up to the stage. “Don’t you think I would have written something up?”

“You don’t have anything written down?!” Atsushi said, turning fully to look at the paper Chuuya had printed out to see what was on it. He started reading, and it was just a passage from a book. It had nothing to do with Japanese-Yokohaman relationships, or Odasaku’s School.

“From one of Poe’s books. I panicked, alright? We’re just gonna have to wing this sh*t.” Chuuya stared at the crowd without much emotion, other than haughty indifference. Atsushi gaped before quickly closing his mouth.

“Chuuya, you sure are something,” Atsushi said, beginning to fidget in his seat. Chuuya smirked and leaned back, setting his page of fake writing down on his lap. Beside the two of them, Tecchou fingered the leather grip of his sword, golden brown eyes surveying the crowd with clinical professionalism.

The introduction speeches of various politicians then began- they were mostly all about the same things. Quirks, heroes, and Yokohaman independence. Atsushi felt both impressed with their almost hivemind-like tendencies and extremely, uncomfortably ashamed of the city he had loved since he was a child. Chuuya’s fists curled into tightly wound balls and his scowl could probably level skyscrapers.

Just before they were meant to get up to give the main speeches of the night, Chuuya leaned over to Atsushi and whispered, “Give a short introduction. Talk about the good people of Yokohama and Japan or something. Then I’ll play bad cop.”

Atsushi wasn’t completely sure of whatever Chuuya’s plan was, but since he clearly had no other ideas, he agreed to just follow Chuuya’s lead. The crowd clapped respectfully once more, and Chuuya nudged Atsushi up, with Tecchou following him. Atsushi shot a withering glance back at Chuuya, who smirked at him smugly.

“Ah, good evening, everyone,” Atsushi said once he got to the podium. “I’m sure you’ve heard this plenty of times tonight, but it truly is a pleasure to be here with everyone.” Atsushi was very anxious, of course, but it was simply unproductive to stutter his way slowly through a speech. And, as Dazai once told him, you caught more flies with honey than with vinegar.

“Now, as I’m sure many of you know, my name is Nakajima Atsushi. I am an ability user- or as you prefer to call it, a quirk user- from the independent country of Yokohama.” Atsushi smiled kindly, pretending he didn’t hear the whispers between people, the odd stares from various people in the crowd. “Now, we all know the story. Two centuries ago, Yokohama and Japan fought a war. In Yokohama, we call it our Independence War. We celebrate with parades and lanterns and good food. In Japan, I am told, it is the Yokohaman Rebellion.

“But that was centuries ago. I, a Yokohaman, stand in front of a crowd of Japanese, in the city of Musutafu, Japan, to give a speech. And, weirder for me than for all of you, I, an ability user, stand in front of a crowd of other gifted people as a representative of my country,” Atsushi said. It didn’t feel right, in his mind, for an ability user like him to be a diplomat of his country. Technically, the Ability Statutes spoke of no law against it, but it was so against the norm of Yokohama’s government that Atsushi rightfully felt uneasy.

“Of course, I hold nothing against the normal people of my homeland.” Here, the crowd shifted, as if they might just disagree with him. Atsushi willed them to stay quiet and let him finish this impromptu speech. “In fact, I have dedicated much of my life to protecting the non-ability users of Yokohama. But I think I have a special perspective when it comes to quirks and quirk politics that could just be relevant to modern day Japanese-Yokohaman relations.

“The reason Yokohama and Japan fought a war is one neither side likes to talk about. It wasn’t for independence, it wasn’t about making the city an example, and it certainly had nothing to do with saving the actual citizens of the city. The reason for the war was quirks, and the reason for the war was heroes. Because Yokohama is, and always was, a city that fought quirks. And Japan is, even if it hasn’t always been, a country that loves them. Obsesses over them.” Here, Atsushi smiled, the fangs in his teeth pointed and threatening. “Do you want to know something interesting?”

He didn’t wait for an answer, saying, “The most common question I have been asked since I arrived in Japan has been: what is your quirk? I’m not judging. I just want to make the point that, in Yokohama, those words are such a taboo you could never utter them, even in private. I do think it’s fascinating, the differences around discussions of quirks and quirk laws in Japan and Yokohama.

“I think that difference, too, is something that needs to be overcome before Yokohama and Japan can truly recover from the war.” Atsushi observed the people before him, diverse in their looks and yet so similar in their world views. “This isn’t me calling for the destruction of the Ability Statutes. Honestly? I think Yokohama isn’t at the point where it could safely dismantle them. But this is me calling for the destruction of the prejudices surrounding abilities in Yokohama, the prejudices surrounding the quirkless in Japan. And this is me calling for progress, for the building of a better generation.”

Atsushi grinned, the optimism and kindness shining bright around him. Even the Japanese crowd before him, previously bored and doubtful, now took on a hopeful air.

“What’s that saying you have here?” Atsushi paused in pretend contemplation. “Ah. Plus ultra!” Instantaneously, all of the party burst out in raucous applause and cheering. Atsushi turned to Chuuya, an eyebrow raised, as if to ask him if he played the role of ‘good cop’ well enough. Chuuya disguised his small chuckle as a cough into his fist, pride snaking its way through his figure. Atsushi figured he did well enough.

The cheering died down as Chuuya walked up to the podium. Well, walked wasn’t quite the right word. It was something more like a glide. It was clear in the way he moved that he was raised by Kouyou Ozaki and her girls, that he knew he was beautiful and would use that to full effect.

“I heard that my partner here gave a pretty good speech to you all,” Chuuya joked, his voice tainted with mirth as he looked back to where Atsushi was sitting. A few people gave some loud claps or unintelligible shouts, and Chuuya waited a few seconds for them to quiet down.

“I think I can tell who’s the favorite here.” Some of the crowd laughed. It was always good to keep your speeches lighthearted, at least in some parts. Good for audience retention. “For those of you that don’t know, we aren’t exactly here to be engineering treaties or building an alliance, even if the three of us would probably be Yokohaman heroes if we did so.

“We’re here for one reason: to learn how to build a school. And, not just any school. A school for ability users, the likes of which my country has never before seen. I can’t guarantee we’ll fix everything wrong with Yokohama in one school. But, considering this is our first attempt at it, I think we can only do a good job.” Chuuya paused, faking looking down at his print out of Poe’s work to buy time. He pursed his lips and looked up again.

“Odasaku’s School for Gifted Children will be the first quirked school in Yokohama.” Chuuya paused again, struggling to think of what to say. He looked at the distracted audience, who were gradually growing disinterested. War was an exciting topic. Human beings, no matter the nationality, loved conflict. They liked progress significantly less.

His current approach wasn’t working. Atsushi had gotten their attention by discussing the war, but he couldn’t just repeat what Atsushi had already said. Everyone would be even more bored than they were before. Chuuya frowned, and crumpled up his paper, letting the audience see him drop it on the ground. That got their attention.

“I’m sorry, but I assume the story I’m about to tell will be more interesting to you fine fellows than the logistics of a school for children.” Chuuya listened to Atsushi’s slightly panicked shuffling behind him and felt a strange sort of glee for throwing away all of his previous plans. Maybe he should do things like this more often.

“The first lesson this story teaches is this: abilities are weapons. I once met a little boy with empty, empty eyes. He was a sickly thing, both in body and in mind. His ability, you see, was a powerful thing. Many men wanted access to it. Many men wanted access to him. Weapons, you see, are meant to be used.” Chuuya saw the confusion and unease within the guests.

“The second lesson this story teaches is this: compassion changes lives. The sickly boy met a kind man, who did all he could to save the boy from his own existence. The boy didn’t want his help, but still, they became friends. This man was the boy’s first friend, and soon came his second friend, a nervous man who wore lies sewn into his very suits.

“This is around the time I first met the boy. I couldn’t tell you how different he was at that point. I’m sure all of us could guess. Their love for him was what first allowed him to seek love in others, too. It changed his life.

“The third lesson is this: compassion kills. This story had no happy ending to spare for the man. His compassion for children killed him. He died, and the boy held his corpse as the first human he had ever cared for died in his arms.” Chuuya’s sight blurred slightly. He didn’t really know where he was going with this story, why he was telling the Japanese partygoers this. But something in him told him that Dazai’s childhood mattered, that it was a story the heroes had never before seen. They didn’t understand why Yokohama needed Odasaku’s School, and this was all he could think of to explain why.

“The sickly boy grew up. His name is Dazai Osamu, and he grew into a detective, a man of good. The dead man who saved his life was named Sakunosuke Oda, and affectionately called Odasaku.” The tone of the speech shifted with the reveal of those two names, as Chuuya stopped speaking of the past and began comparing it to the future.

“I think what Japan, as a whole, doesn’t understand- can’t understand- is that Dazai was a criminal, and he wasn’t a bad person. His ability led him down a dark path, one he couldn’t escape alone. I could have told you of hundreds of children with the same fate as Dazai, except for most of them?” Chuuya swallowed down the small ball of regret in his throat. “They didn’t have an Odasaku to lead them to the light.”

Chuuya couldn’t tell if he was getting to the audience, if they sympathized with Dazai or were already decreeing him a villain in their heads. If he had told Dazai’s story to a Yokohaman citizen, even a non-ability user, they would understand, they would empathize with Dazai and admire the kindness of Oda. But he didn’t know Japan, not like he knew his own people.

“So we’re making Odasaku’s School. We’re saving the gifted children that Odasaku couldn’t, that our current society couldn’t, and we’re furthering his legacy.” Chuuya wasn’t close to Odasaku. When he and Dazai were partners, he had understood that Oda held the same role in Dazai’s life as Kouyou did his, and he left it at that. They interacted second hand the majority of the time, yet even Chuuya knew that Oda was a compassionate, just man. Even Chuuya knew that the loss of Oda was a loss to the Port Mafia, though Mori would disagree.

“We need your help,” Chuuya said, pulling on the heroic tendencies of the crowd before him. “We need your help to honor Odasaku’s memory, to save the children of Yokohama who have been banished to the streets and the slums for the crime of having an ability.”

Chuuya bowed his head slightly to the crowd, faint wisps of hair falling into his face. He managed to glance back at Atsushi, who gave him an encouraging nod. Chuuya looked back up and said, in his last attempt to garner support from the Japanese, “Yokohama’s ability users need Japan’s help, we need your teachings, your support. Yokohama doesn’t need your violence, for they have seen far, far too much of that. But compassion, kindness of the same vein of Sakunosuke Oda? We need that in spades.”

Chuuya took a step away from the podium, and suddenly clapping and cheering rang like bells in his ears. Atsushi got up to stand next to him, and all three Yokohamans formed a line. They found strength to stand tall within each other, found a reason to keep going in their shared pasts.

Tecchou, even though he was just there as a bodyguard, felt as essential to their mission as both Chuuya and Atsushi. He hadn’t been recruited to build the school, but goddamnit would he help anyway. He knew nothing of children, nor of conventional education, but he would learn. As the other two’s bodyguard, he went where they went, listened to what they listened to. If they could teach themselves how to be teachers, so could he. Tecchou just knew he wanted to be a part of this.

In the crowd filled with Japanese heroes and hero hopefuls, many others promised themselves to do the same, to give kindness and knowledge to the quirked Yokohamans they so pitied. It wasn’t sympathy, nor empathy, but pity was pretty darn close, and if that’s what Chuuya got, then he could work with it.

(Chuuya was a smart man. He could use pity, even if he didn’t like it. These heroes would be useful whether he liked them or not.)

“My name is Nakajima Atsushi. I am an ability user- or as you prefer to call it, a quirk user- from the independent country of Yokohama.” Shouji stared impassively at the young man, barely older than a third year. He had an animalistic sort of beauty, one that Shouji instinctively felt was more than just his makeup. Beside him, Tokoyami turned steely, the boy on stage a threat even if he was doing nothing at the moment.

“Now, we all know the story. Two centuries ago, Yokohama and Japan fought a war. In Yokohama, we call it our Independence War. We celebrate with parades and lanterns and good food. In Japan, I am told, it is the Yokohaman Rebellion.” Shouji felt a small burst of shame in his chest, at the reminder of the war between Japan and Yokohama. It didn’t feel good, to be reminded of the misdeeds of your ancestors, but being ashamed was better than being ignorant, Shouji told himself.

“But that was centuries ago. I, a Yokohaman, stand in front of a crowd of Japanese, in the city of Musutafu, Japan, to give a speech. And, weirder for me than for all of you, I, an ability user, stand in front of a crowd of other gifted people as a representative of my country,” Nakajima said, face bashful.

“Representative?” Shouji murmured. Dark Shadow chittered in surprise, and Tokoyami looked like he had been slapped. The both of them had assumed the Yokohamans would have little authority in Japan, that they were there to listen and that alone. But they were representatives of Yokohama? Nakajima was essentially a diplomat, with the same protections that would entail.

“Of course, I hold nothing against the normal people of my homeland.” Shouji blinked in surprise. From what he knew of the Ability Statutes and of the quirkless Yokohaman majority, those with quirks didn’t have a very happy life. And Nakajima himself was just hinting at how unusual it was for him to be at a party with hundreds of quirked people and not a single quirkless. Yet he didn’t hold it against his people? Didn’t care that they had killed and exiled thousands of quirked?

“In fact, I have dedicated much of my life to protecting the non-ability users of Yokohama,” Nakajima claimed. Shouji scoffed quietly, doubtful. If ‘protecting’ was what he called what had been done to Nakahara Chuuya, then he needed to pick up a dictionary.

“But I think I have a special perspective when it comes to quirks and quirk politics that could just be relevant to modern day Japanese-Yokohaman relations. The reason Yokohama and Japan fought a war is one neither side likes to talk about. It wasn’t for independence, it wasn’t about making the city an example, and it certainly had nothing to do with saving the actual citizens of the city. The reason for the war was quirks, and the reason for the war was heroes.”

Shouji contemplated Nakajima’s words, and decided he wasn’t wrong, per se, but certainly biased. Maybe in Yokohama, yes, the war was a matter of the Purges and the Ability Statutes. But to Shouji, the war was about the Walls. It was about the isolation of the tiny city, the complete separation the civilians had to learn to live with. In some ways, it was Shouji’s belief that the war actually helped the small country grow into itself. Nothing made a child grow up faster than death, starvation, and destruction.

“Because Yokohama is, and always was, a city that fought quirks. And Japan is, even if it hasn’t always been, a country that loves them. Obsesses over them.”Nakajima’s smile felt more threatening than comforting, the previously unnoticed fangs of his glinting. It would probably look more normal if there was blood dripping from them, but for now they were pearly white.

“Do you want to know something interesting?” Shouji fought the immature urge to say no, and Nakajima answered his own question, saying, “The most common question I have been asked since I arrived in Japan has been: what is your quirk? I’m not judging. I just want to make the point that, in Yokohama, those words are such a taboo you could never utter them, even in private.”

Shouij certainly thought it sounded like Nakajima was judging, but didn’t truly blame him. He came from a country where quirks were the equivalent of fairytale monsters. Could it be helped if Nakajima felt a reminder of that was in bad taste?

“I do think it’s fascinating, the differences around discussions of quirks and quirk laws in Japan and Yokohama. I think that difference, too, is something that needs to be overcome before Yokohama and Japan can truly recover from the war.” Shouji glared at the man, disgusted by the fact that he didn’t actually disagree. It made him sick to know that a man like Nakajima could still have correct opinions like this.

“It’s alright, Shouji,” Tokoyami said quietly, his eyes still focused on Nakajima like he was a predatory bird and Nakajima was a prey animal. “He can be a cruel man and still say kind things. Those two things don’t always contradict.”

Shouji didn’t answer verbally but the grateful glance he threw Tokoyami’s way was enough.

“This isn’t me calling for the destruction of the Ability Statutes. Honestly? I think Yokohama isn’t at the point where it could safely dismantle them.” A gasp bubbled in Shouji’s throat before he choked it down. Nakajima didn’t want to destroy the Statutes. How could he? How could he? Shouji didn’t have to be Yokohaman to be sure that the Ability Statutes were an inhumane, prejudiced idea.

(It was like Nakajima was complicit in his oppressment. Shouji could recognize that abusers could still be abused themselves, but he didn’t understand why Nakajima refused to do anything, to change things. He was a representative of his country. He could enact good, real advancements. Why was he throwing that away?)

“But this is me calling for the destruction of the prejudices surrounding abilities in Yokohama, the prejudices surrounding the quirkless in Japan. And this is me calling for progress, for the building of a better generation,” Nakajima said, his words enacting a hopeful current in the crowd of Japanese people. Shouji wanted to yell at them not to listen, that Nakajima was wrong.

Prejudice was a belief, it was in the brains of millions. It wasn’t something you could fight physically. Why distract everyone from the real problem, the physical problem, the Ability Statutes? With a sinking feeling, staring at the complete honesty in Nakajima’s expression, Shouji realized that Nakajima really believed the Statutes shouldn’t be removed.

And, Shouji realized, it wasn’t his place to decide what Yokohama needed. He was an Outsider, one who had never even been inside the country. He had never been subject to the Ability Statutes- Nakajima had, and if he thought it was too risky to try and change things, even if he was a villainous abuser, he was probably right. Nakajima had the experience here, not Shouji, so he swallowed down all the opinions he wanted to say and tried to really listen and consider what Nakajima was saying.

“What’s that saying you have here?” Nakajima was grinning now, and some of Shouji’s class had also begun to smile. “Ah. Plus ultra!”

Saying ‘plus ultra’ to a party full of heroes was like feeding a cat catnip. Everyone went wild applauding and cheering for Nakajima. Well, everyone except Shouji and Tokoyami, who half-heartedly clapped while giving each other secret looks. Nakajima clearly knew his audience, if he was saying that.

Nakahara Chuuya stood up and walked to the center of the makeshift stage. Like Nakajima, he was beautiful, but in an almost feminine way. That wasn’t a degrading thing- just an observation. His makeup, his stance, his clothing, all gave him a slightly womanly feel.

“I heard that my partner here gave a pretty good speech to you all,” Nakahara started off with a joke, and Shouji could already tell the man was a charmer. He thought coyly to himself that even if Mina didn’t get another girl to be friends with, she’d certainly enjoy Nakahara’s personality. Not in an attraction way, considering Mina was more interested in other women than men, but rather that they had very similar humor, and could be great friends, if they ever talked.

“I think I can tell who’s the favorite here. For those of you that don’t know, we aren’t exactly here to be engineering treaties or building an alliance, even if the three of us would probably be Yokohaman heroes if we did so. We’re here for one reason: to learn how to build a school. And, not just any school. A school for ability users, the likes of which my country has never before seen,” Nakahara said, efficiently explaining their plans for their time in Japan and all that they were going to accomplish. It wasn’t exactly riveting, but Shouji appreciated Nakahara’s straightforwardness.

“I can’t guarantee we’ll fix everything wrong with Yokohama in one school. But, considering this is our first attempt at it, I think we can only do a good job.” Shouji watched curiously as Nakahara looked at his notes, seeming unsure with himself.

“Odasaku’s School for Gifted Children will be the first quirked school in Yokohama.” Nakahara stopped talking with an almost frustrated expression, as if he were upset with himself for how his speech was going. Shouji didn’t think he was doing all that bad, but some of his classmates’ focus was definitely drifting.

Nakahara crumpled up the paper he had been reading from and dropped it on the ground, facing the crowd with a certain untargeted defiance. Shouji felt himself rooting for the man, hoping he’d be able to make up a new speech entirely on the spot.

“I’m sorry, but I assume the story I’m about to tell will be more interesting to you fine fellows than the logistics of a school for children.” Shouji watched, amused, as the two other Yokohamans silently panicked behind Nakahara. His classmates were certainly paying full attention now.

“The first lesson this story teaches is this: abilities are weapons. I once met a little boy with empty, empty eyes. He was a sickly thing, both in body and in mind. His ability, you see, was a powerful thing. Many men wanted access to it. Many men wanted access to him. Weapons, you see, are meant to be used.” Shouji winced at the almost crude words. He wondered who this kid was, what happened to him. He pitied the boy that Nakahara was talking about. He couldn’t relate to the way he was being used, but he still tried to put himself in the boy’s shoes, to imagine his life, even if he knew very little about him.

“The second lesson this story teaches is this: compassion changes lives. The sickly boy met a kind man, who did all he could to save the boy from his own existence. The boy didn’t want his help, but still, they became friends. This man was the boy’s first friend, and soon came his second friend, a nervous man who wore lies sewn into his very suits.”

Shouji felt an odd relief at hearing that two people cared for the kid. All he knew of the boy was what Nakahara was telling them, and yet he still cared, still wanted the kid to get help. He was happy that the boy met people who didn’t just want to use him.

“This is around the time I first met the boy. I couldn’t tell you how different he was at that point. I’m sure all of us could guess. Their love for him was what first allowed him to seek love in others, too. It changed his life,” Nakahara said. Shouji thought he could see where this was going. The boy’s life was saved by that man, and whoever that man was, that was who was founding the school. He knew that Nakahara and Nakajima were big players, but he had the suspicion that there was someone else behind the Walls helping lead all this.

“The third lesson is this: compassion kills. This story had no happy ending to spare for the man. His compassion for children killed him. ” Shouji jolted in shock. “He died, and the boy held his corpse as the first human he had ever cared for died in his arms.”

But… That wasn’t how the story was supposed to end. Stories were meant to have happy endings. The man was a hero, and heroes didn’t die. Heroes weren’t supposed to die. The boy was supposed to have been saved. But, this was real life. And Shouji didn’t have a say in what happened in real life, even if he thought the boy and the man deserved happier ends.

“The sickly boy grew up. His name is Dazai Osamu, and he grew into a detective, a man of good,” Nakahara said. Shouji clenched his fists. Dazai Osamu. The man who hurt Nakahara. To Shouji, it didn’t matter if Dazai had lived a terrible life, had been abused as a child. Abuse didn’t excuse abuse. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Dazai had hurt Nakahara, and here Nakahara was, sympathizing with the man who had hurt him.

“Nakahara still hasn’t recovered,” Tokoyami commented with a depressed air, Dark Shadow hugged tightly to his side. “Dazai abused him and he still thinks Dazai is a good man.”

“The dead man who saved his life was named Sakunosuke Oda, and affectionately called Odasaku,” Nakahara explained. He had come full circle, from talking about the school, to talking about Dazai Osamu, to talking about the school.

“I think what Japan, as a whole, doesn’t understand- can’t understand- is that Dazai was a criminal, and he wasn’t a bad person.” Shouji pursed his lips behind his mask. He’d reserve judgment on Dazai’s inner morality for when the man actually repented for his crimes in the Port Mafia.

“His ability led him down a dark path, one he couldn’t escape alone.” Shouji almost rolled his eyes. Maybe his ability led him down a dark path. Maybe he was just a horrible person, and would have ended up with the Mafia whether or not he had a quirk.

“I could have told you of hundreds of children with the same fate as Dazai, except for most of them? They didn’t have an Odasaku to lead them to the light.” Nakahara took a deep breath, loud enough that you could faintly hear it through the microphone. Shouji couldn’t help but wonder if he was counting himself as one of those children.

“So we’re making Odasaku’s School. We’re saving the gifted children that Odasaku couldn’t, that our current society couldn’t, and we’re furthering his legacy,” Nakahara said. “We need your help. We need your help to honor Odasaku’s memory, to save the children of Yokohama who have been banished to the streets and the slums for the crime of having an ability.”

And Shouji could admit that Nakahara wasn’t all that bad of a public speaker, or an on-the-spot speech writer. He involuntarily felt pity for those unnamed Yokohaman children, who he imagined in wrecked clothing with malnourished bodies, covered in dirt and hunching down in back alleys.

“Yokohama’s ability users need Japan’s help, we need your teachings, your support. Yokohama doesn’t need your violence, for they have seen far, far too much of that. But compassion, kindness of the same vein of Sakunosuke Oda? We need that in spades.”

With that, Nakahara backed away from the podium, Nakajima and the bodyguard taking their spots beside him. They looked strong, ready, and dedicated. They looked proud. Their country wasn’t perfect by any means, but they were ready to do what it took to make it better.

And Shouji felt his own sort of pride. It was his school teaching the Yokohamans, it was his teachers who were taking them in. He felt like a hero, though he had no part in the Yokohaman guests coming to the school. He smiled faintly. Change was coming. It was coming, and Shouji would be damned if he didn’t do something to help.

Hawks took a sip of his glass of ice cold water, pondering the two speeches he had just heard. Both Nakajima and Nakahara were truly very convincing in their pleas to aid their budding school. And, obviously, if asked by anyone, he would pledge his support for their cause. But as of now, he had bigger problems than a school in some foreign country.

One of said problems may or may not have been the League of Villains. Part of that problem may or may not have been his boyfriend deciding to join them. And, really, he was a hero. He should not be so attracted to a literal villain, especially one that was part of maybe the most dangerous villain group in decades.

So here he was, drowning his conflicted heart in water and wishing someone would come along and turn it into wine. If this wasn’t an important press event, he’d be at his penthouse apartment, actually drowning out his emotions in alcohol. But here he was, feeling miserable despite the fake resting smile he wore whenever he was in public.

“Looks like you’re also wishing they served real drinks here,” a voice said to him. Hawks startled out of his thoughts, and looked at the person who had spoken to him. It was Nakahara, with the other two Yokohamans talking between each other behind him. Nakahara set his own glass of water onto the standing table Hawks had been waiting around, and Nakajima set down his cup of hot chocolate gently, then turned away to talk more with the bodyguard.

“Like you can’t believe.” Hawks grinned artificially. The Commission wanted him to get close to the Yokohamans, and now a chance just landed in his lap? Seemed like the universe’s way of saying sorry.

(Hawks wasn’t in a very forgiving mood. He missed Dabi, so sue him.)

“I know this is kind of our party, but believe me, all of us would rather there be wine than not.” He sighed. “If I had known Japan had underage drinking laws for ability users, maybe I would have just stayed home. No alcohol whatsoever here on campus.”

“Ooh, that’s rough. At least I have the comfort of knowing I can get a nice drink once I go home,” Hawks said sympathetically. The two of them made eye contact and burst into small chuckles.

“Nakahara Chuuya.” He reached his hand out. Hawks grabbed his hand and shook it, his smile turning slightly flirty.

“Hawks. I’m the number three hero,” Hawks said. He didn’t really mean anything with the flirting, he had a boyfriend after all, but at this point the suggestive smiles and charming jokes were just a part of his personality. Nakahara rolled his eyes at Hawks’ behavior.

“I’ve got a man waiting for me back home,” Nakahara told him. Hawks nodded in understanding.

“Yeah, me too,” Hawks said, his eyes peeled for any news personnel with their microphones and cameras. Nakahara took another sip of water. “Nice speech, by the way.”

“I thought of it all up from god knows where. I’ve never been the best at sticking to a plan,” Nakahara said, a faint smirk gracing his face. It brought attention to his artfully applied makeup.

“Neither am I.” There was some more awkward silence, before Hawks just had to ask, “Did you do your makeup yourself? ‘Cause it’s looking pretty awesome.”

Nakahara burst out into laughter, and Hawks was totally right! Especially now, with Nakahara’s beautifully joyous expression, his makeup looked like it had been done by a professional. Hawks was used to people joking that he looked like a model, but damn, Nakahara could probably be one too. He had a boyfriend, but seriously. Hawks could recognize an attractive man when he saw one. If Dabi were there, he’d agree.

“Yep. Grew up in a house full of women, so you can bet your ass I’m talented.” Nakahara said co*ckily. Hawks giggled. He wasn’t wearing makeup at the moment, but it wasn’t uncommon for a makeup artist to work on him before interviews or photo ops.

“I tried to learn, but I figured out pretty quick I ought to leave it to my press crew,” Hawks said conspiratorially. Nakahara nodded.

“Makeup is one of those things that it takes a while to get really good at, and some people just aren’t too good with it,” Nakahara said understandingly. “I knew a few girls who kinda just gave up with it, always would have someone else do their makeup before a show.”

“A show?” Hawks asked curiously. He wouldn’t judge, no matter what Nakahara said, but he certainly wanted to know a little more about where the man had grown up.

“Ey, if men are gonna pay you to dance and be pretty, it’s the man’s fault, not the woman’s,” Nakahara said defensively. No one dissed Ane-san or her girls, not on his watch. Hawks raised his hands in mock surrender, face judgment-free.

“I get it. I do some similar sh*t. Y’know, look hot, sell the magazines, smile bright. Only difference I can think of is that sometimes I fight villains and rescue people.” Hawks shrugged. He wasn’t necessarily doing the kind of shows Nakahara was describing, but his role as a hero was pretty similar. All Might was known for his power, Endeavor for his fire, and Hawks was known for his looks. He didn’t want to say mutant discrimination, but you really didn’t see the same kind of appearance obsession with any non-mutant man.

(Hawks and Midnight had shared many a commiserating glance, a mutant and a woman both understanding they were worth less than a man.)

“Seems no matter what country you’re from, people find a way to be sh*t,” Nakahara said.

“Ugh, I know,” Hawks groaned. He lifted up his glass of water as if to toast, and Nakahara rolled his eyes, before lifting his as well to toast. “To all the sh*t men in the world.”

“To all the sh*t men,” Nakahara said, then tipped the last of his water down his throat. He looked disappointedly at the empty cup. “Still wish we had alcohol.”

“God, don’t remind me.”

Atsushi and Tecchou walked away from where Nakahara was bonding with a winged man over the party’s lack of alcohol, both of them incredibly bored and tired. It was already dark out, and various lanterns and light bulbs had been set up to give the whole party a yellowish lighting.

“You think his dependance on wine as a mood stabilizer is a signifier for larger unresolved mental problems?”Atsushi asked lightly. Tecchou said nothing but gave him a questioning side eye. Atsushi shrugged. “I was reading about alcohol dependence in my psychology textbook.”

They walked around for a few more minutes, before they ended up in a conversation with a black haired man who looked just as tired as them. The three of them stood to the edge of the party, far enough away that none of the more energetic partygoers wouldn’t bother them.

“We met at the meeting yesterday, but my name is Aizawa Shouta,” the man said. Atsushi’s eyes flashed in recognition, and also embarrassment that he had forgotten the man’s name in the first place.

“You teach the hero course, right?” Atsushi checked. Aizawa nodded.

“My kids are over there.” Aizawa gestured to where a very colorful group was playing around by a collection of folding tables. All of them wore colorful and dramatic clothing that Atsushi had already noticed was considered popular fashion here.

“Why is it that most everyone here dresses like rainforest birds?” Tecchou said without an ounce of humor. Atsushi giggled slightly behind his hand. Aizawa sunk into himself, resigned to it.

“It’s fashion, apparently. You could probably ask Kayama- that’s Midnight- about it. I think it’s related to the rise of heroes as media personalities, and their costumes affecting modern formalwear?” Aizawa said. He wasn’t exactly sure about the origins of the flashy and, honestly, garish clothing that passed as suits and dresses nowadays, but explaining it with heroes was a good guess. He himself wore only his hero costume, which was darkly colored and nondescript.

“I guess in Yokohama, our fashion has remained largely stagnant since the Purges.” Atsushi paused, deep in thought. “Honestly, might have even regressed to be more simple. With the war and limited resources, even the upper class could have struggled to gather funds for fancy and extravagant clothing like you see here.”

“It’s a fair theory, especially considering the cultural differences you see that could affect dressing. Yokohama is big on uniformity, Japan on individuality and standing out,” Tecchou considered. Atsushi nodded, agreeing that Tecchou had spoken a sound thought.

“If you think about it, the Yokohaman government having its military and its military police compared to the Japanese government’s hero agencies and support companies actually say a lot about the fashion industries of both countries,” Aizawa said.

The three of them went silent. Aizawa took a sip of his coffee.

“You two into sports?” Aizawa asked. Both of them shrugged, indifferent. Yokohama did have its own sports leagues, but they certainly weren’t big ticket. And with restrictions on streaming from Outsider networks, they couldn’t exactly watch sports games in other countries. The only international sports Yokohamans ever got to watch live legally would be the Olympics, and Yokohama didn’t have a reputation of getting very far.

“UA has that sports festival, doesn’t it?” Atsushi asked. He knew a little about it, because some underground ability fighting rings he had encountered liked to base some of their games off of UA’s.

“Yeah. It’s a stupid thing, but Nezu says it gets good ratings online, and his word rules around here.” Tecchou nodded, a little more informed than Atsushi.

“The Special Division keeps tabs on all the kids who participate,” he told the other two. It wasn’t classified information, just largely unknown. Tecchou thought it was at least fair to warn Aizawa that his classes were being monitored by the Yokohaman government. Aizawa just looked unsurprised- and unimpressed.

“Half the world keeps tabs on the kids who fight in the sports festival. It’s just another struggle they have to overcome as heroes,” Aizawa recited the mantra he used to try and comfort himself every year, but it wasn’t very soothing. Atsushi raised an eyebrow.

“Just another struggle? You broadcast their faces and abilities to the entire world, and for what? The glory, the fame, the reputation it gives this school?” Atsushi had experience with adults using young ability users to suit their own needs. He wasn’t happy to be seeing similar behavior in Japan.

“I wouldn’t have them do it, if I had any input whatsoever. But, in the end, it’s all Nezu and the Commission’s choice,” Aizawa said tiredly, wanting to rub at his drooping eyes.

“The commission?” Tecchou asked, unaware of any other organization that helped run UA. Chuuya certainly hadn’t had contact with any organization other than the UA school board.

“Hero Public Safety Commission. They have their hands in every hero school in the country. Maybe even every school in the country,” Aizawa explained. He wasn’t a fan of the Commission, but understood there was absolutely nothing he could do to stop them.

“Just their name sounds sketchy.” Atsushi sniffed disdainfully. Aizawa shrugged, unable to deny it. Tecchou shuffled uneasily. They hadn’t been informed of the Commission, and yet they sounded like an important and potentially dangerous Japanese organization. Aizawa downed more of his coffee, trying to pretend he could feel the soothing burn of alcohol and not the lukewarm temperature of his coffee.

For a few minutes, they all stood in each other’s silent company, unsure of how to continue their conversation. If it were just Tecchou and Atsushi, they would have no problem finding things to talk about. But the addition of Aizawa threw off their predetermined dynamics, and the three of them all stood awkwardly.

“So. Favorite animal?” Atsushi busted out an icebreaker, folding his hands behind his back. Tecchou cut himself off before he could chuckle at Atsushi’s awkward questioning.

“I’m partial to cats,” Aizawa said. Atsushi and Tecchou shared a knowing look, and without saying anything, Atsushi transformed into his smallest tiger form- the form that was about the size of a typical housecat.

Chuuya and Hawks stood around their table together, both in various states of disarray. Chuuya had removed his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves. He had no doubt that within a few hours, the reporters and cameramen at the party would have pictures of him spread all around the internet. Hawks had taken off his aviator jacket and was left in just his HPSC shirt.

“I mean, would I say it’s fair, on an international level, to take the results of the Yokohaman government’s experimentations during the Stock Crash of 2132 and expect them to work on larger countries? Obviously not,” Chuuya argued, his brows furrowed as he gestured loudly with his hands. “But I think each country could certainly look back on it as a reference point for how modern stock crashes should be handled.”

“See, but that doesn’t work if you consider the differences in job opportunities and average income nationally and internationally, and how that affects the stock market on a national level,” Hawks said in return. “If you really think about it, the Yokohaman Stock Crash of 2132 featured a lot of very different and not always applicable factors. Even for a culturally and geographically very similar country like Japan, the numbers just don’t pan out.”

“But I’m not saying that that’s exactly what Japan should-” Chuuya was cut off by a loud ping from the phone in his back pocket. Half a second later, Hawks’ phone pinged, too.

“What the hell…?” Chuuya muttered as he clumsily unlocked his phone, and read the title of the breaking news article that his phone had notified him of. His fingers froze in place as he stared mutely at the words on his screen.

Top 50 hero fights villain, ventures within Yokohaman Walls, 10 Yokohaman casualties reported

Chuuya’s ears went deaf as his whole focus went entirely to his phone. 10 Yokohamans dead. 10 Yokohamans killed . He knew people who lived near the border, he knew children who lived near the border, were those casualties children?

(Were those casualties his ? A twisted part of his brain wanted, needed, to know. Were they his people, were they his kids? Who had died and why was everything spinning around him like a merry-go-round?)

Chuuya bit his bottom lip, hard enough that it filled his mouth with the acidic taste of blood, and came to his senses. As an official Yokohaman representative in Japan, he needed to move, now, to contact the people in charge. He needed the names of the dead civilians, he needed a promise of punishment for the Japanese intruders, he needed to do everything because if he didn’t, it would be someone else he loved on the chopping block next.

Chuuya, Atsushi, and Tecchou found each other in the panicking crowd, and, with steely looks, rounded on the Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs, who had attended and given a speech at the event. The woman, who had also been notified of the article quickly, understood how anxious all three of them were to get a list of those dead or injured.

When Chuuya glanced inside his gloves at his nails, they were as red as the blood in his mouth. He tried to ignore how much he was reminded of Corruption, the blood in his mouth and the sickening red glow. He tried to ignore it but he couldn’t, and the relief he felt at every dead Yokohaman that he didn’t know made a distinctly human hole form in his stomach.

Chuuya latched onto that feeling of shame-relief-regret-fear and the red of his nails slowly faded. He had a job to do.

Chapter 5: if you were in my shoes, you'd walk the same damn miles I do

Chapter Text

To my dearest Suehiro,

Not to be dramatic, but it feels as though you’ve been gone for years. I miss you, and your stupidly handsome voice (and, or so I have been told, face). It has been barely days, and yet I think my list of all the things I wish I could do with you again is endless.

I assume by now you have heard of the tragedy that happened recently by the Peace’s Hands Wall. It is some sort of ironic, I think, that it was that specific Wall that was broken into by the violent Outsiders who called themselves ‘heroes’ In case you haven’t been informed of the situation over in Japan, a Japanese ‘hero’, and three others calling themselves ‘sidekicks’, destroyed the Peace’s Hands Wall and killed ten Yokohaman civilians on site, then further killing three Yokohamans by way of severe injury. Over twenty more suffer from minor injuries.

All three of us Hunting Dogs at base are working on the case now. Tachihara has been mostly on rescue. The Peace’s Hands Wall’s collapse crushed many, and sent shockwaves to many nearby Walls. None of the other Walls have completely fallen like Peace’s Hands, thank the Heavens, but there have been further injuries from the damage to the nearby walls.

Teruko has been on interrogation with the Outsiders we have in custody. The so-called ‘heroes’ were spared for questioning, but the ‘villains’, who were said to have instigated the fight, were killed on sight.

And I have been preoccupied by, and I am sure you are laughing as you read this, relief efforts. I know it is… abnormal, for a Hunting Dog, let alone someone of my demeanor, to be helping regions recover from disasters like this, but the government claimed that because the crimes were committed by gifted people, even Outsiders, it fell under our jurisdiction. I would disagree, but our sad*stic commander is overjoyed to have four whole Outsiders to play with (read: torture).

It’s all a bit of a mess over here. Peace’s Hands Wall was extremely close to a border neighborhood called Okurimono. I feel that calling the neighborhood ‘gift’ was slightly on the nose of them, but who am I to judge? Maybe they’ll change the name now that all this has happened. In case you couldn’t tell by the horribly modern and terribly boring name, it was an immigrant neighborhood, filled mostly with poor families who came to Yokohama using the Normal Civilian Asylum Act. And yes, I do find it slightly amusing that it was a neighborhood full of formerly Japanese civilians that were attacked by the Japanese intruders, but seriously. They called themselves heroes, Suehiro, Japanese heroes. It was at least kind of funny. Teruko thought it was funny, too.

Anyways, Okurimono was also home to, among other things, multiple small factories, where most of the immigrants were employed. So not only have all of them lost their homes and friends, they have also lost their only source of income. And if you’re thinking, hm, maybe there should have been a law about building too close to the Walls in case they fell, that’s what I thought, too. There was a law. Fifty years ago. But after the territory dispute where we lost a lot of our Northern territory to Japan, plus the increase of ungifted immigrants due to shifting cultural waters in many nearby countries, the law was nullified. In short, loss of territory plus increase in population equals groups of immigrants forming communities hugging the Walls. Because it’s not like Japan has ever launched attacks on our Walls, right?

So, I’m dealing with trying to find shelter, food, and supplies for all of Okurimono and its neighbors. I’m a Hunting Dog. I’m literally a trained killer, what does the government expect me to do? Kill all of them? There’ve been some monetary donations, but nowhere near enough. People hear ‘thirteen deaths’ and think this was a tiny attack. Honestly, Yokohama is not panicking anywhere near enough.

A Wall fell. The last time a Wall fell, it nearly kickstarted another war with Japan. We were lucky to only lose territory. What’s worse is that the Outsiders were unsanctioned by their own government. How can Yokohama ever be fully safe if people Outside think it’s okay to just invade us on a whim? The ‘heroes’ crossed national borders, for what, a petty thief?

I’m sorry if I seem like I’m upset with you. I could never be, and I understand that your going to the Japanese hero school wasn’t at all your choice. I’m just angry with the Japanese invaders. I’ll move to easier topics now.

The blond agency boy, the one that you fought during the f*ckuchi incident, visited the base not long after you left. I believe he was attempting to give a last minute parting gift? I wouldn’t expect it when you get back, though. It was some kind of dessert, and Teruko and Tachihara, the children that they are, ate all of it.

Other than the Peace’s Hands Wall, everything has been rather subdued here. I think the attack has sprouted a certain Yokohaman unity among the underground. I’m more worried about illegal travelers venturing Outside to attack Japan than I am of any gang wars or mass shootings in Yokohama.

I hope that the weretiger and the gravity user have not been horrible company. And I hope that, even though you’re in Japan of all the countries in the world, you aren’t completely hating your time there. I know I’m a hypocrite for saying this, but it won’t kill you to have some fun. And I know this can be a hard thing to ask, but please try to be happy. I don’t care if this means spending way too much money on fancy clothes or comfortable shoes or good food, if you are happy, everything can be worth it.

I love you more than all the universe,

Your loving husband,

Saigiku

The released video started with an opening shot facing a serious, respectable man. He wore a high quality suit and his glasses seemed to be designer. He coughed lightly into his fist before he began talking.

“I am Sakaguchi Ango, of Yokohama’s Special Division for Unusual Powers. Last night, a fight between four Japanese Pro Heroes and one Japanese villain broke out. The fight drifted within the borders of Yokohama, and destroyed one of our sacred Walls.” He sounded apathetic, despite what he was talking about.

“The Japanese intruders caused the deaths of thirteen Yokohaman citizens, and injured over twenty more. Despite requests to return the Outsiders,” Here, he spat out the word ‘Outsider’ like it was unclean. A brief flame of rage flashed in his eyes before he stamped it down. “To Japan, Yokohama has made the decision to retain custody over the intruders.”

He ran his tongue over his teeth like he wished he could bite into something. His hands, resting atop the wooden table, clenched tightly into a grip. The viewers watching the press release were probably uncomfortably aware that this man, as part of the Special Division for Unusual Powers, likely had an ‘unusual power’ himself. This man was likely involved in the capture and imprisonment of the Japanese heroes himself, if he was the one explaining the situation.

“It has long been true that Japan has taken whatever it wanted from our humble nation. They have taken our land, taken our honor, and now they have taken the lives of our people.” Ango’s glasses glinted a sharp silver in the light. So did the shiny, black gun he pulled out from his waist. Laying the handgun out onto the table, he looked grimly at the camera.

“Yokohama may have a majority of non-ability users, but it also has much, much less restrictive laws on personal protection. To my Yokohaman brethren watching this?” He held up the gun, and let the camera focus on it before speaking again. “It is not against our laws to arm yourselves.”

(He didn’t mention the fact that the reason Yokohama’s gun laws were so loose was to protect ‘normal’ people from people like him.)

“And to the Japanese terrorists who intend on invading our country.” He flicked the safety off, letting the camera see down the barrel of the gun. He smiled venomously. “We don’t all need abilities to be able to take you the f*ck down.”

He shot at the camera, and his perfect aim ended the broadcast with a bang.

So Yokohama refused to comply with Japan's demands. They refused to release the Japanese heroes from custody, and they refused to drop the charges against them. Yokohama’s government did all this knowing that three of their citizens were in Japan, knowing that an increasingly volatile political situation could very possibly kill them, or have them arrested in retaliation by the Japanese government.

This was just more proof that Yokohama cared for its people- just not the gifted ones. They’d enact justice for the Japanese immigrants killed at the risk of the quirked Yokohaman natives still alive without a second thought. It wasn’t a surprise but it sure was a painful reminder, for all of the ability users in the city.

Your lives matter for as long as you keep to the status quo; your lives matter, at least until it comes to the point where you have to be measured against a non-ability user; your lives matter, up until the moment that someone else’s matters more.

And Sakaguchi Ango was caught in the eye of the storm. An ability user who had no choice but to choose quirkless immigrants over his fellow quirked, over people he had met and even liked. He sat in darkness in his chair, shattered glass and camera bits spread out on the floor in front of him. He threw an arm over his eyes and couldn’t decide between anger and sadness.

Why should the lives of good, hard working people be put at risk for the sake of what? Vengeance? A message? Yokohama had sent a message, and it was that they could care less about what happened to their quirked delegation in Japan.

But the world still spun. Ango’s, or rather, the Yokohama government’s message to Japan was still released online. Thirteen people were still dead, and four Outsiders were still awaiting trial.

The only real difference was that a Wall had fallen for the first time in fifty years, and this time, it wasn’t Japan that had done it. No, it was five individual people. Everyone saw what happened when a little Yokohaman girl was slaughtered for the crime of being uncontrollable, for the revenge of a hundred people who were already dead. And Yokohama’s violent history was going to repeat itself, like it had always done, and heads were going to roll, because if Yokohama’s government was involved, they always did.

They were willing to kill a quirked baby two centuries ago- Ango knew they were willing to kill quirked Outsiders now. Who cared if they started a war with Japan, who cared if they started a war with the entire f*cking Earth? Who even cared, because it certainly wasn’t the Yokohamans, who craved vengeance more than they yearned for peace.

Ango imagined the reactions of Chuuya, Atsushi, and Tecchou, isolated from their country in a land filled with people who would turn on them the second war was declared. He imagined their hurt, their betrayal, their fear. It didn’t matter. He couldn’t make it matter, because here he was in Okurimono, side by side with the ability users whose family member was being displaced in Japan on a mission, and standing next to the family members of those who had been killed in the attack, and he felt many years older yet many years younger. He felt like he was sitting in Bar Lupin again, a traitor and a friend and a man with his heart split into two indecisive pieces.

(Because he wanted to help Okurimono, and he wanted to help the Hunting Dogs, and he wanted to help the government, and the Port Mafia, and Yokohama, and Dazai, and oh god, Oda-)

Because Sakaguchi Ango wanted to help people. And all he could do was imprison four Outsiders, use his ability and his natural skills to collect all the evidence, and hope that when the four of them were killed, it would be quick, and it would be merciful.

Chuuya, Atsushi, and Tecchou gathered onto the small porch area of their flat, each holding a tall, unscented candle. Chuuya set his candle down first, a little to the left of the door. Tecchou handed him a match, and Chuuya nodded gratefully before lighting the candle.

Atsushi kneeled down close to him next, placing his candle next to Chuuya’s. Chuuya passed the match slowly to Atsushi, and the second candle was lit. Tecchou got on his knees and lit his mourning candle last, then snuffed out the match with his gloved fingers.

When the first Yokohaman suicide bombers were sent into Japanese cities, it became customary for the families of Yokohaman soldiers to set out candles in front of their doors, or in their windows. If they received news of their relative’s death in the war, the candle’s flame would be snuffed out, and the unlit candle would be left as a tribute for months, even years.

Later, the tradition morphed into lit candles being used not to represent the living, but the dead. Mourning families would place candles on their doorsteps, graveyards were lined with candles not just for holidays, but pretty much every day. Giving candles to the dead certainly wasn’t a new or unique tradition, but it was one that Yokohama made its own.

The three of them sat in front of their candles, kneeling, for a few minutes, watching the tiny flames flicker in the breeze.

“When I die,” Atsushi said softly, eyes focused on the candle more than his companions. “I pray it won’t be for the sin of wanting to live.”

Chuuya eyed Atsushi. The deaths were tragic, sure, but they seemed to be hitting Atsushi especially hard. He sighed quietly, leaning back onto the heels of his feet.

“Please don’t say that. Okurimono wouldn’t want to be remembered as a tragedy,” Chuuya said. “They were immigrants, and yes, it was their endurance and their willingness to survive that brought them to grow along the Walls, but it was those same qualities that made them strong. Thirteen of them died, Atsushi, but they were still as strong as you or me.”

He slowly removed his hat, placing it to rest in front of the candle. Standing up, he said, “Don’t remember them for what they failed to do. Remember them for who they were.”

Later that day, when Tecchou stepped outside for a quick breath of fresh air, he noticed that there were over ten other candles next to where they had placed their own three. He frowned, and asked the other two if they had gone out and bought more candles.

“I didn’t get any more candles,” Atsushi answered, and Chuuya shook his head, confused. An hour later, a letter was pushed under the crack in the door. By the time Chuuya had noticed it while walking into the kitchen to make tea, whoever had left it was gone.

Within a few hours, their porch was populated by probably near a hundred candles, and they had received ten or so letters. They had quickly realized they were all from students at the school, who had come to either pay their respects, ask for forgiveness, or, from the more unpleasant ones, threaten them about releasing the heroes in custody.

Even with the spiteful letters, screaming about the injustice and cruelty of the four heroes going on trial in Yokohama, it was still more support than Chuuya had ever thought they’d receive from UA, from Japan.

“Another letter,” Tecchou said monotonely, holding up a folded piece of notebook paper. Glancing inside, he squinted at the horrible handwriting for a few seconds, then shrugged. “I couldn’t read a lot of it, but I did think I saw at least one ‘go to hell’.”

He unceremoniously dropped the page into the trash bin.

“Tecchou.” Chuuya glared at the Hunting Dog in day clothes until Tecchou rolled his eyes and took the paper out of the trash can, and put it into the recycling bin. Atsushi, who sat at the kitchen table with a textbook and a notebook, giggled.

On the kitchen counter, four letters sat, open. They had all been of the sympathetic variety, filled with platitudes and apologies. The three of them were divided on whether they appreciated the sentiment or felt angry at the way every single letter they had gotten had tried to excuse the pro heroes’ actions. Even the kind ones, the ones wishing the best for the victims’ families, had a tendency to refer to the victims more as collateral damage than as murdered Yokohamans.

“Have you two seen Ango’s statement to the press?” Atsushi asked idly, clicking his pen as he tried to think of an answer to one of the questions in his textbook exercise. Chuuya scowled and Tecchou nodded.

“What a bastard. Couldn’t even warn us, before potentially stranding all three of us here in Japan,” Chuuya hissed angrily. Tecchou sat down in a chair across from Atsushi, placing his computer on the table.

“I mean, I doubt he had much warning, either. It can take days for private correspondence to cross the border, and he needed to get Yokohama’s message out quick.” Tecchou began typing up the government report of what had happened in their meeting with the Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs. It was undoubtedly a little later than his superiors back in the city would like, but he had wanted to gather his thoughts and put a damper on his emotions before beginning to write it. From what Tecchou understood, Chuuya had already sent his report back to Mori.

“I do understand why he did it.” Chuuya sighed. “And I guess I’m not as pissed at him as I am at our government. Seven of the deaths were from patrol guards. They knew what they were getting into. And for the other six, of course being too close to the Walls is dangerous! In the end, there were only thirteen of them. I feel terrible for them and wish them all the best, but I don’t think they’re worth risking another war for.”

“But if we don’t put a stop to this now, who's to say the next invasion won’t be worse? That they’ll kill twenty, thirty, forty people? Allowing escalation of this situation would be idiocy,” Tecchou said. Chuuya shrugged and sipped his scalding hot tea.

“The last time Japan threatened our borders was fifty years ago. If they’re escalating, they’re doing it slow enough that we’ll have centuries to prepare.” Chuuya jumped up onto the counter, moving around a bit before getting comfortable in one spot. He took another drink of his tea, and picked up a letter to read through.

Whichever kid wrote it talked a lot of bullsh*t about peace and understanding and general kindness, but at least they weren’t as malicious as some of the other letters. Tecchou’s typing began picking up speed as he got into the flow of it, and Atsushi gradually sunk lower in his seat as he got more relaxed. And Chuuya sat on the counter, on his phone, looking at all the things the Outside had online that were illegal to be accessed in Yokohama. The black market trade couldn't bring everything the Outside had to offer into the tiny country, and they couldn’t do it as fast as a google search on his new phone could.

Back in Yokohama, it could take weeks to get one bootleg cd or dvd. Here? He had centuries worth of movies and songs, all at his fingertips. Yokohama really only had content since the separation from Japan and the Independence War, but Japan had all the world and all of time at its fingertips. Chuuya hadn’t thought that they had been extremely isolated, but comparing what he had access to in Yokohama to what he had access to in Japan, he was considering the fact that they might have been.

(If the laws about contact and content from the Outside had a discernible reason other than to control the Yokohaman masses, Chuuya couldn’t think of that reason.)

That night, after agreeing that they should try and put Okurimono out of their minds for at least a few hours, the three of them went outside. Using Chuuya’s ability, they all floated onto the roof, each holding a bottle of cheap beer that Chuuya had snuck onto campus from a nearby convenience store. It wasn’t nearly enough to get them drunk, but it did loosen them up a bit. That night, the stars were outshone by the hundreds of candles in front of their apartment.

Atsushi turned into his tiger form, larger than a house cat and smaller than a full size tiger, and rested, purring, by Tecchou’s side as Chuuya pet him slowly.

“I don’t know if a courthouse wedding is exactly what I’d want with the mackerel,” Chuuya said. Tecchou nodded understandingly.

“We only had one because we were unsure if we’d be arrested or shot down. We wanted to get married as quickly as possible,” Tecchou explained. His hands carded through the fur of Atsushi’s back in a gentle fashion.

“I am worried about Mori,” Chuuya confessed. It wasn’t something he’d normally tell someone, but something about the alcohol in his system, the candles in his yard, and the natural bonding that occurred when one traveled into a foreign, threatening country together made him more comfortable with opening up to Tecchou. “I mean, I just don’t know if he’ll order a divorce, or give me a raise for it.”

“I think,” Tecchou said consideringly. “That you need to stop thinking of Mori. It’s not him you want to marry, it’s Dazai. Has one of you asked yet?”

Chuuya blushed, and turned away. He grumpily said, “Yeah. It was, uh, a few months after he left. Ane-san comes to me, says a package addressed to me was brought in. I go to open it, and there was the ring.”

He fiddled with the button of his inner pocket, and took the ring out to show them. It wasn’t of the best quality, and was slightly rusted, but there was a clear engraving inside of it. “Cinerem in cinerem, pulverem in pulverem. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. He wanted us to get married before we died, but he knew we couldn’t do it then. I… I don’t know how to ask if he still wants that now.”

“Chuuya, I know we’re from opposing organizations. I know we’d barely talked before we got in that car together. But, trust me.” Tecchou made eye contact with Chuuya, the light of the moon reflecting in his eyes. “Dazai wouldn’t take this lightly. He wants this, and clearly so do you. Just talk to him about it. You know what? Write a letter, tonight. Tell him you want to get married, don’t just hint at it.”

“Okay,” Chuuya said softly, looking down at Atsushi’s contended form. He didn’t smile, but his features were relaxed and open. “Thank you, Tecchou. I know we’re from opposing organizations, but it’s just the three of us here. If we don’t stick together, we’ll have nothing.”

Tecchou smiled slightly, and looked up at the stars. He let out a breath and it came out foggy. Laying down on his back on the flat roof of their apartment, he mentally followed the lines of the couple of constellations he knew. Chuuya laid down next to him, with Atsushi purring and serving as their heater in the space between them, and for an hour it was the three of them against the world. It was the three of them against Japan, and it was just the three of them fighting for Yokohama, so they had to at least try and do their people right by them.

The three of them went inside their little flat, and instead of separating to go into their own rooms, they all gathered in the living room, settling down on the floor with all the blankets and sheets in the apartment. The three of them curled up together in a nest of blankets, the candles from outside creating shadows on the wall through the panes of the window. When the little flames swooped and swirled, they almost looked like a kaleidoscope of falling stars.

(Now might be the right time to talk about the Yokohaman ideals of justice. Well, if you could call it that, and not senseless revenge.)

When ability user Wires Twist in the Basem*nts of Men was killed, there was uncertainty on whether it was a mercy killing, or a justice killing. Was she killed because death would be kinder than having to be alive? Or was she killed because she, herself, had killed? It was an important distinction- not because either of them were true, of course. She was killed out of fear, as all ability users understood intrinsically. But whichever lie the government claimed as their truth was a face to the world, it was their publicly admitted to stance on ability users. So did ability users deserve pity, or did they deserve hatred? And the government counted their poker chips and considered their options for all of one second before it was obvious that the government endorsed hatred.

Among some sects of ability users in Yokohama, ability user ‘Negative Zero’, as some had nicknamed the little girl, was a hero. Some considered her a martyr, an angel, a prophet, a victim. Some considered her a god. But Negative Zero wasn’t any of those. The bitter truth was that she was a baby, less than a day old, and she wasn't anything at all. She was just a negative in the population of ability users, which in Yokohama, had been zero.

(Negative Zero, in some circles, wasn’t even considered human. She was an ability user, and she was dead, and the only human part of her left was a burnt stack of bones that had been buried ten feet underground after a large bonfire. Millenia later, maybe little children would find her bones, would wonder if they were a chicken’s or a dog’s before returning to their games.)

So was it justice? Negative Zero killed a hundred people. She was a mass murderer, and at the time, and in the present still, having an ability was like having a loaded gun with no safety. She had killed and she could very well kill again. Trying to move her anywhere would kill. Keeping her where she was was killing.

And maybe the people Negative Zero killed deserved justice. More likely, though, they deserved a life, a warning, an apology. Maybe Negative Zero deserved the same. So let’s give her an apology.

Sorry that you were born a weapon. Sorry that you were born a wolf in sheep's clothing. Sorry that you killed people. Sorry that you were killed. Sorry that someone had to kill you. Sorry that you had to be killed to ever actually live. Sorry that we don’t know what comes next. Sorry that the people you killed are still dead. Sorry, sorry, sorry. The universe is so sorry.

But sorry doesn’t save Negative Zero, and sorry couldn’t save the past. Sorry couldn’t save Okurimono.

(Does Negative Zero matter to Okurimono? No. But it matters as an excuse as to why Yokohama’s government was doing what it’s doing about Okurimono. Negative Zero has always been an excuse.)

Killing the Outsiders who intruded upon Yokohaman territory wouldn’t save the thirteen dead immigrants. Obviously. Killing Negative Zero didn’t save her victims, either. But who doesn’t love a good revenge plot? Who doesn’t secretly love seeing the ones who hurt your friends, your people, hurt themselves?

Killing the Outsiders wouldn’t do anything but make five more graves be filled. But it would make the common people of Yokohama feel good, feel comforted. Killing the Outsiders would do nothing for Okurimono but everything for the rest of Yokohama. It would do nothing and would change everything.

By this point it is clear that this isn’t justice. Justice isn’t a smile on someone’s face, it’s spitting out shards of glass and wondering if you’re still whole. Justice is knowing the world is a better place but being unable to see it that way. Justice is doing the right thing but feeling like you’ve done at the wrong time, to the wrong person. Justice is love and remorse and tragic guilt. Justice is a knife in someone’s back to save someone else’s.

Killing the Outsiders wouldn’t be justice, and Yokohama’s government knew that. They knew that but they didn’t care because why would they? Kill five people to make a million feel safe. Kill five people to keep the peace. This was how it was always done, and how it would be done now.

(Trade a sheep to get the gods’ favor. Give a bride to make an alliance with a warlord. Kill the ignorant foreigners to retain some semblance of safety.)

This wasn’t all Yokohama’s fault. Their war for independence had destroyed them, fifty years ago Japan’s reacquisition of their northernmost territories had nearly choked them. One could certainly say that it was because of the loss of their northern territory that the four heroes were slated to die. If Yokohama had never lost the territory, Okurimono might have formed a safe distance away from the Walls. It would have been a scandal, but not a tragedy. Japan reaped what it sowed, but you couldn’t blame them wholly. No one could see fifty years into the future- the people behind Japan gaining the territory were all dead or retired.

But it would be more accurate to blame this not on abilities, or territory disputes, or war, but rather the many-years strong animosity shared between the two countries. Or maybe it would be better to say it was for all of those reasons, which accumulated into the hatred one could see between the peoples of Japan and Yokohama.

Was it cruel to say that this wasn’t justice, and it wasn’t even revenge, but just pure hatred? Was it mean to say that it wasn’t for Okurimono or a sense of wronging that the heroes would die, but for the loathing Yokohama felt towards Japan?

This isn’t justice. This is wrath.

Dabi rested his head on his hand, blinking back the tired fogginess in his eyes. When he had joined the League, he had assumed his life would be even more action-packed and adrenaline-filled. But, other than little recruiting missions and the occasional threatening of enemies and heroes, he had seen very little battle.

He didn’t participate much during these meetings. It was just too much of a hassle. After all, he was still doing the usual work he did as an anti-hero/vigilante, just with League stuff added to it. It was like working two full time jobs at once while also juggling a child, also known as his adorable boyfriend, Hawks.

“-and Pine Grove, that idiot , went too early! He did it during the f*cking party!” Shigaraki yelled. Well, he was always yelling, so it was probably more appropriate to just say that he said it. Wait. Pine Grove? Wasn’t that the villain who had made it past the Yokohaman Walls? He thought it had something to do with the fact that there was no extradition agreement between Japan and Yokohama, but the four heroes had ignored that and followed him in anyways. Pine Grove was intelligent enough, with a weak quirk and average fighting skills. It hadn’t been a surprise that the heroes would catch up to him, but it didn’t matter in the end because the Yokohaman Hunting Dogs had killed him quickly.

“Pine Grove went too early?” Dabi asked curiously. This was the first time he had spoken that meeting, and all of the heads of the main League members snapped to him.

“Yes,” Shigaraki hissed angrily. “If you were paying attention in these meetings, you would know that Pine Grove was one of the villains we recruited to lead the heroes into Yokohama. If Japan’s fighting a war with Yokohama, they’ll struggle to also fight a war with us at the same time.”

Dabi raised his hands in a pacifying gesture, but that didn’t mean much, considering he used his quirk through his hands. He slowly said, “Alright. I’ll pay more attention.” He lied.

So, Pine Grove crossed the border on purpose, to bait the heroes into destroying a Wall. It wasn’t a completely stupid plan, unlike the USJ incident, so Dabi doubted it was Shigaraki who came up with it. He glanced at the empty tv screen in the bar. He had a hunch the plan might have come from Shigaraki’s Sensei.

The other League members drifted back into the argument they had been having about their next target for an anonymous smear campaign, which Dabi ignored. If he really wanted to ruin a hero’s career, he’d do it on his own, without begging for permission from a group of crazy children. Unlike the others, he was a formidable and infamous anti-hero without the name of the League behind him. Unlike the others, he didn’t need safety in numbers to be safe from the authorities.

Sending Pine Grove into Yokohama was a good move for the League, but Dabi wasn’t sure if it crossed a line- one other than the Yokohaman border. He was of the opinion that Japan’s problems ought to stay in Japan, and in turn, other countries should keep their problems in their own land, too. Yokohama had stayed away from Japan, but now Japan was intruding upon Yokohama with their own fights.

It wasn’t, personally, something he would typically approve of. He was an anti-hero, not a full blown villain, and international warfare didn’t sound as appealing to him as Japan just getting its sh*t together and everyone being happy. Violence was to be used on a singular scale, not a plural one. It was one thing to kill a corrupt businessman or hero and a complete other thing to orchestrate the start of a war.

Was this something he should warn Hawks about? That the League’s mysterious sponsor wanted a war with Yokohama? The two of them had an understanding that Dabi wouldn’t talk about anti-hero stuff, and Hawks wouldn’t talk about hero stuff, unless it involved the other. Hawks, and every other at least slightly intelligent person in Japan, knew there was war on the horizon. But the ramification of an artificial war, a war with one man puppeteering both sides, almost made him uneasy.

When the meaning finally let out, Dabi skedaddled out of the bar quickly. Sometimes, he would stay a few minutes for a drink or even dinner, but he felt that the sooner he got to see Hawks, the better. This wasn’t a conversation one could have on the phone- even if there weren’t taps on Hawks’ phone, it was something that he would want to talk to Hawks in person about.

He arrived at his and Hawks’ secret apartment. It was in a good enough neighborhood, one where they didn’t have to worry about crime occurring right on their doorstep, but the neighbors were still uneasy enough about authority to not snitch to the police about a villain and a pro hero sharing an apartment.

Once inside, he began cooking a late dinner for the both of them. He sent a quick text to Hawks that he was at home and making food, and wasn’t surprised when there was no response. Hawks was probably on patrol, or doing something for the Commission.

While waiting for the oven to heat up, Dabi began looking through their tiny fridge, pulling out the expired foods and beginning to write out a grocery list. They’d both been too busy the past few days to be cooking homemade meals, and their fridge was a mess.

It was an extremely domestic and calming scene, even considering that it was Dabi, a murderous anti-hero with enough secrets floating around his head for a hundred people, let alone one, cooking and cleaning. If he could have seen himself a few years ago, he would have been shocked. But in the present, he was just content, even with the looming threat of Shigaraki’s Sensei and potential war hanging over him.

It was the human condition, Dabi decided, to have danger breathing down your neck but to only have eyes for your loved ones. He was threatened by Sensei and he adored Hawks, but when he was at home, it was Hawks he thought of, not Sensei.

(Out of everything else, this is proof that love is stronger than hate. At the end of the day, it is love that you fall asleep thinking of, and in the morning, it is love that wakes you up, whether it was romantic or platonic or anything else.)

Half an hour later, Hawks flew in through the open window to face Dabi’s fond smile. He carried news with him of the worsening situation in Yokohama, and Dabi gave to him the information he had gathered from the League. It was an unspoken admission that neither of them would tell the same things to their respective bosses. It was an unspoken admission that neither of them would say anything at all about that night, because the apartment and each other were their largest, most closely guarded secrets.

Was it the secrets they shared with each other in their hidden apartment that made them love each other all the more? Possibly. Or was it simply that sharing fear between each other resulted in even more shared love? Also probable.

(And this is proof that fear may not be stronger than love per se, but it’s certainly more of a priority.)

Hawks landed in the grassy, unmowed field as quietly as he could. Covering his hair with a basic baseball cap and hiding his wings under the darkly colored trench coat he was wearing, he began walking forward. He’d have to be quick, if he wanted to be back home in time to have dinner with Dabi.

The Commission didn’t know he was here. If he did everything right, the Yokohamans wouldn’t know, either.

He approached the ruins of what had been Peace’s Hands Wall just a day ago, the tall grass covering his admittedly smaller body. From a distance he could see the moving shapes of Yokohamans, who looked to be clearing away the rubble. Peace’s Hands Wall wasn’t like some of the earlier Walls, the ones made during the war. It was tall, and the top of it held platforms for snipers and watch guards. It was as brutish and menacing as some other Walls, but it certainly hadn’t been a small Wall.

It was a wonder more people hadn’t died- if the patrol unit who had been stationed there had been bigger, had had more people on top of the Wall, it could have been a lot worse. Only seven of the deaths were from people physically on top of the Wall, and the other six were from people who had been close to the exterior of the Wall. All three of the people who died from injuries had been on the ground.

He arrived close to the destruction site, and snuck past the tired and dirty relief workers. He curiously noted that one of the workers wore the same uniform that the bodyguard, Tecchou, had worn, but moved past him quickly. He went unnoticed.

When the Commission had taught, well, beaten into him, lessons on stealth, he didn’t think this was how they wanted him using those lessons. But he needed to see the damage, to see what his colleagues had done. After the two speeches about Yokohama, he had felt unbidden sympathy rise up in him, which was what led him to actually check on the damage of the battle in Yokohama. In other words, he was here because he felt bad, and wanted to give himself some sort of comfort. There wasn’t much comfort to be found.

The buildings, from what he could tell, had been mostly one-story, handbuilt homes. Made from scrap wood and metal, held together by mud and prayers, it would have been a sorry sight even before the fall of the Wall. But now, many houses had been crushed by falling debris. All of the closest homes had been affected by the villain fight, and Hawks could see damning evidence of how the buildings had been destroyed by the heroes’ quirks, not the villains.

Waterlogged ruins, roofs blown apart by the wind, bits and pieces of supports teleported out of their places to be used to fight with. The villain’s quirk allowed him to control pre existing plants to a certain degree- there were no flowers in the ground to grow, and all the attempts at gardens in Okurimono were scraggly and struggling, nothing that Pine Grove could use in a fight. Pine Grove had been running. The heroes had been using their quirks. Only one of those things was illegal in Yokohama, and it wasn’t running from another country’s law enforcement.

The entire neighborhood of Okurimono was destroyed. Most of the nearby neighborhoods were dangerously close to being completely wrecked, too. Hawks watched from the shadows as households curled up together, as many as five or six people sharing a singular blanket or sheet. People held all of their possessions with them in their sleep, afraid of them being stolen.

Most of the people had had to run out of their homes, carrying whatever things they could grab in their mad scramble to escape, and it showed. A woman held an empty pot. She must have been cooking in it before she had to leave, and the last chunks of food had already been licked clean. A mangy dog curled up next to an equally mangy man, their only possessions each other. A child held a leather playing ball. They had probably been playing with it outside when the Wall had fallen.

All around the ruins, Hawks saw the broken pieces of families and homes, saw the remains of ramshackle huts, some of which had crushed and killed the people inside of them. He forced himself to turn away from the group of wailing and sniffling people, each of them taking turns holding a motionless hand that had been trapped under their house. A worker was trying to dig the body out, but was struggling to make progress.

It disheartened Hawks, to see that there were so few relief workers and so many homeless people. He watched as a young man, wearing the same uniform as Tecchou and the worker by the Wall, handed packaged dinners out of a truck to his fellow workers. With every worker who grabbed one, he apologized and said that one single-person dinner was to be given to every household. When he finished passing out the packages, he tiredly sat down on the truck and began calling people and asking, nearly begging, for more supplies and more food. The attack had killed ten people immediately, three people through injury, and would now kill another hundred.

Families leaned against whatever materials they could find, some trying desperately to piece together a lean-to or some kind of covering. Some people came up to the man in the truck, asking if he had any other supplies for them. One woman, holding a child in her arms, begged for even just a towel, a washcloth, anything to warm up her children. Hawks watched as the man gave her the gloves off his hands and told her he wished he could do more.

He knew they were his colleagues, his fellow pro heroes, but Hawks hoped they faced justice. Seeing Okurimono, witnessing with his own eyes the shattered remains of an already struggling community, he promised to himself that if the Yokohaman courts didn’t give the heroes the death penalty, he himself would.

He began walking out of the ruins, staying as inconspicuous as possible. Hawks was grateful for his shoes’ thick soles as he walked over such things as shattered glass, sharp nails, and broken plastic. He felt like he was walking through a scrap yard, not a neighborhood.

Only a few steps later, a small hand came up to pull on his coat. Hawks looked down to see a kid, maybe eleven or twelve, with ragged hair and ripped clothing.

“Do you need something?” Hawks asked with furrowed brows. The kid bared his teeth, like an animal, but then seemed to mentally scold himself for his instinctive reaction and backed down.

“There ain’t no medicine here,” the child said, and Hawks looked down silently in confusion. “Brother Hikaru’s been real sick, and we’s was savin’ to buy him the medicine he needed. But now all the medicine is gone, and ain’t no truck comin’ till next morning, says the Hunting Dogs, and Brother don’t look like he gon’ last the night-”

Hawks flinched back as the kid burst into tears. He was conflicted between wanting to shush the kid before anyone realized he was there and wanting to reach out and comfort him.

“Hey, hey, shhh,” Hawks said quietly. “It’ll be okay.” He kneeled down in front of the kid, ignoring the way mud and a sharp piece of glass ruined his pants’s kneecaps.

“It won’t, it won’t,” the kid’s voice wobbled. “No one got no cars round here, and there ain’t no gas for the truck to heads back. They gotta wait for another truck with gas but ain’t no one comin’ no time soon. Everything’s gone, everyone lost everything, we’s ‘bout to lose Brother Hikaru, too!”

“Kid, I promise , it’ll be okay. I’ll- I’ll leave myself! Do you know the directions to the nearest pharmacy?” Hawks asked. The kid sniffled, then shook his head.

“It’s miles away. You’d take about as long to get back as the next truck to get here.” The child burst out into another round of sobbing. Hawks hesitated for but a few moments, before steeling himself up. This kid’s brother might die if he didn’t do anything, and the only way he could travel fast enough would be with his wings.

“Just trust me, kid. Where are the directions?” Something about Hawks’ facial expression or his confident demeanor must have convinced the kid, and they wiped some of their snot off onto their sleeve.

“Ya head north a mile or so, then northwest till you find one of the dirt roads. That’ll getcha to Kusuribako neighborhood, they ain’t been troubled by the attack. But how ya gon’ make it back in time?” The child looked up at him with eyes still wet from his tears. Hawks did his best to emulate his normal hero persona, and grinned.

“You’ll get your medicine, kid,” Hawks said. Then, he took off running, trying his best not to trip over any of the scraps and general chaos. His plan was to get far enough away from Okurimono, then take off and fly high enough to avoid notice, before landing just outside Kusuribako.

He got a few odd glances from the Yokohamans he passed, but no one called him out or tried to stop him, assuming he was from Yokohama like them. Confidence in yourself was the key to any good costume. It only stops being true when you stop pretending it isn’t.

When he reached the first pharmacy he could find in Kusuribako, he realized awkwardly that he didn’t have any of the Yokohaman currency. Genuinely, he hadn’t even considered money at all. Stealthily slipping the medicine into his coat, he was glad he had grabbed a trench coat with so many pockets. He glanced at his phone and muttered a curse word. Half an hour had passed.

He ran out of the neighborhood and took off into the sky as soon as he was sure no one could see him. When he made it back to Okurimono, he practically skidded in the muddy dirt as he frantically looked around for wherever the kid could have gone. Out of breath and sweaty was how he looked when he stumbled upon the newest situation in Okurimono.

He was part of a large crowd, was the first thing that Hawks noticed. He maneuvered himself around a few people to see what was happening. He recognized two of the people in the circle formed by the crowd- one of them was the uniformed boy who had been digging in the rubble of the Wall, and the other was the uniformed man who had been handing out food in the truck. Another uniformed person, a woman this time, stood next to them, and on the ground before the three uniformed Yokohamans was the kid.

The redheaded boy held a sword out in front of the kid threateningly. Hawks distantly recognized it as being the same kind as Tecchou’s. The woman was somehow glaring and smirking at the same time- like she was both judging the kid and happy she’d get to take her anger out on someone.

“For the crime of attempting to steal medicinal drugs from the personal luggage of a Hunting Dog employed by the Yokohaman government,” What? Hawks reeled back in shock. Why would he steal medicine if Hawks had promised to get some for him?

“You will be branded with the marks of a thief, and banished from this location until the time has come that all Hunting Dogs have vacated Okurimono,” the woman said with a cold sort of cruelty. The kid gulped against the knife in front of his throat.

“Please, it was for our big brother, my friends can’t survive without me,” the kid pleaded desperately. He looked close to tears again. Hawks fought back the urge to run and protect the kid with his wings, because this wasn’t Japan. He wasn’t a hero here, and retrieving medicine was one thing, intervening in a legal decision, even an unorthodox one like this, was totally different.

The woman chuckled without humor. She scoffed, “And you wanted to use Hunting Dog medicine? Trust me, if his sickness doesn’t kill him, those meds would. You’d be better off giving him arsenic than our medicine.”

“Teruko,” the white-haired man coughed into his fist. “I believe this… child… is a part of one of the local gangs. Their ‘brother’ is likely the gang’s leader.”

Another shock for Hawks. The tiny kid, no older than ten, was part of a local gang! And now he was conflicted, because suddenly helping the little kid was also helping a gang leader.

“Interesting,” Teruko’s eyes glistened with a strange light. “We’ll ignore that. For now. Tachihara, go warm up a brand for me.”

The redheaded boy, Tachihara, was clearly the only sane person in their uniform, because he looked slightly uncomfortable with what was happening. But in the end, Tachihara kept his mouth shut, and passed through the crowd to go and track down a branding iron.

Hawks couldn’t tell if this was normal for Yokohama or not. Obviously, they held trials, because the four pro heroes were going to court over their miniature invasion. But they also seemed to have backwater punishments like this, where a crime as tiny as stealing pills was enough to be scarred for life.

Tachihara came back, a smoldering branding iron in hand and a slightly sick look on his face, and passed the iron over to Teruko. She smirked and walked forward, closing the gap between her and the kid. Teruko held the branding iron over the kid’s bare left hand for a few agonizing seconds, before sticking the iron in the ground with a giggle.

“Ah, that felt good,” she said with a happy sigh. Tachihara held a relieved look and the other man was as impassive as ever. “We’re not that cruel, kid, we wouldn’t brand you for stealing.” Here, her eyes hardened as she stared down at the kid. “But if we ever come back to see you’re not on the straight and narrow, you’ll have more to worry about than a little brand.”

The three Hunting Dogs walked away then, and the crowd around the kid slowly dissipated. The kid let out a huge breath and sank into the ground on his knees, shoulders shaking. They had started crying again, whimpering about having no medicine or even just painkillers for their ‘brother’.

“Hey, kid,” Hawks said, squatting down in front of the kid. Their eyes went impossibly wide at the sight of him. “I promised, didn’t I?” He tossed the pill bottle down in front of the kid.

“What…” The kid quickly opened the bottle, and upon seeing the pills inside, began crying with a new vigor. “Thank you, sir, thank you so, so much. Thank you!”

“It’s what I do, but, I do have a question. If you knew I was going to get the medicine, why did you try to steal from the Hunting Dogs?” Hawks asked. The kid sniffled.

“I didn’t think you’d actually get the medicine. Why would you just do that? For a stranger?” The child said. “And I’m sorry, but I need to get back home quick.”

The kid ran off, bottle in hand, and Hawks stared at his back with an odd feeling of hurt. It had been a successful rescue, so it didn’t explain why he felt so… upset. He thought it might have something to do with the fact that, for the first time in his career, someone didn’t believe in him. He was Hawks! He was a hero, the man everyone trusted to save them or fight a villain for them. But this kid didn’t believe it. They lived in a city without a single hero, and they couldn’t believe that someone would help just because they wanted to. Hawks admitted quietly, as he watched the kid run, that he felt almost useless to have someone not believe in him.

(It was a fallacy of heroes, that they relied on people to believe in them, to trust them, before they could be able to save them. Hawks walked away from Okurimono and wondered who he even was if no one believed in him, if no one knew him.)

Dazai leaned against the grimy, tiled wall of the convenience store bathroom, closing his eyes with a sigh. He tried to ignore the way the underneath of his fingernails itched, knowing that he’d still feel the blood under his nails for days after they had actually been washed away. When he had told Mori that he could still feel blood on his skin for restless weeks after hurting someone, the man had laughed.

(His heart clenched painfully as his thoughts of Mori reminded him of Chuuya. It seemed no matter what he was doing, his brain always circled back to Chuuya.)

He tried to tell himself that he was just doing his job. Dazai was a detective, and he was investigating! But none of the other Agency members had as much red on their hands as he did. When Kyouka had confessed to the murders of thirty-five people, Dazai had wanted to laugh. He had caused the deaths of so many more.

Dazai didn’t like being the mean detective, the dirty one. With his background as a Port Mafia executive, it was obvious that the threatening, the blackmail, the torture, would all fall to him. It was an unspoken agreement that Dazai would use his already unclean hands to protect the rest of the Agency. But, god, did this hurt.

He was investigating what happened in Okurimono. From the moment he heard about what had happened, he knew something wasn’t right. In the second of eye contact he and Ranpo had shared, he saw that his fellow genius knew something was up, too. But not everything could be solved by just being smart. You needed evidence, you needed a confession, you needed information. And information? That was Dazai’s specialty. There wasn’t a single person, who, after being interrogated by Dazai, hadn’t given him all the knowledge they had. He was good at what he did, even if he hated it.

Dazai took deep breaths through his nose, slowly opening his eyes. He stared at the floor tiles to avoid seeing his reflection in the mirror in front of him, dreading what he would see. In the corner of his eye, he still saw the blood, the way it had squirted out of his victim as he slowly dug the knife in, the way the crimson liquid had splattered on the dirty alleyway wall-

In, and out. He concentrated on the way his chest rose and fell with every breath, felt his heart thump against his chest and in his ears loudly. He had to do this. For the sake of his friends, his family, inside Yokohama, he had to do it. It hadn’t been a choice, it was all for Chuuya and Atsushi. In and out. Chuuya and Atsushi.

He slowly raised his head to see his reflection in the mirror. Empty, was his first thought. Evil was his second. His back slid down the wall as he shook, staring fearfully at the mirror. Adjectives and descriptions repeated themselves in the hollowed out back of his mind.

(Cruel, violent, malicious, mean, murderer, psychopath, a thousand hateful words hurled at him by someone who could only be himself but felt so out of his control.)

Dazai’s hands shook. Years ago, when he was still in the Mafia, his panic attacks made him deadly still, like frozen prey. It was a sign of progress, then, that he shook. It was a sign of stagnation that he still had panic attacks at all.

He tried to avoid staring at his shaky form in the mirror, instead focusing on the cracks in the top left corner that looked like spiderwebs. To try and calm himself he counted the gaps between the cracks.

One, two, three. With every fourth gap in the cracks, he took a breath in and out, quickly, as if his lungs would cave in if he tried to breath any slower. He felt his ribs creak like an old house, and his organs writhed inside the inky depths of his body. He felt inhuman, and it wasn’t because of his ability. He felt less than human because he had acted less than human. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t human-like, for him to be the way he was.

When Oda was alive, he had warned Dazai of a situation just like what was happening then, like he had had a third eye and not just an ability.

“There will come a day,” he had said, holding an empty shot glass as he faintly pointed at Dazai. He was slightly drunk, but not in an obnoxious way. Dazai had thought Oda had looked endearing, like a lost little puppy dog who had wandered into a cellar. “Where you’ll fall to the ground, with the weight of all you’ve done and all that has been done to you dropping like an ax over you. On your knees, shaking like a stray dog on the streets, you’ll wish things could have been different.”

Then, he had chuckled, like a prophet predicting doomsday and grinning despairingly. Oda had looked him straight in the eyes and said, “Well, not that things could have been different. That you could have been different.”

Odasaku’s ability, Flawless, allowed him to see six precious seconds into the future. But Dazai knew him. He knew Oda well, and he knew him at his most vulnerable. And sometimes, while drunk or tired or drugged, Oda would say things. Disturbingly accurate things. Dazau had long suspected that the only thing holding Oda back from having centuries of futures at his disposal was his own urge to limit himself, to restrain himself. But when he lost those mental restraints? His ability lost its physical restraints. Him describing this very panic attack was only a single instance from a whole list of accurate predictions.

At the thought of Oda, Dazai’s shoulders sank down. He pulled his gaze away from his vile reflection in the mirror and instead began tracing the tiny floor tiles with his hand. Oda had both a calming and a guilting effect on him. His breaths no longer came in and out like knives, and his heart had returned to a more respectable pace. But he felt burning tears growing in the edges of his eyes. He had told Odasaku that he would become good, that he’d be better. Torturing people for information didn’t make him a good person, no matter how good a cause he had.

He had promised Odasaku that he’d be kind! Instead, he was using his mafia talents, just for a different boss. Was this really all there was to his life? To desire the unreachable ideal of ‘good’ so much that he was willing to be evil for it?

Sitting on the ground, the coarse lines of the bathroom flooring grounding his mind, he grimly gave himself his judgment. Torturing people was evil; but torturing for the sake of others, to retrieve valuable information that could save people’s lives was neither good nor evil. It was survival. It was the people he loved living to see another day, even if he had to sacrifice someone else’s life to do so. Dazai didn’t know if this reality was what Odasaku had begged him to turn to, didn’t know if he was totally f*cking up Oda’s last wishes. But Odasaku was dead, and Dazai wasn’t, and it’s the living who have to be alive. It’s the living who have to stay alive.

He stood, dusting off his hands. He could no longer feel the clumps of blood under his fingernails, and his reflection wasn’t evil or disgusting. It was just him. And even if he still wasn’t human, everyone he cared about was. An empty mask fell over his face. He had more information gathering to do. Understanding what, or who, had caused Okurimono was more important than him trying to cling to the few scraps of innocence he had left.

(What innocence did he have left? There was no part of him that Mori hadn’t touched, no part of him that the Port Mafia hadn’t used and abused for their own gain. He had given everything to find a reason to live only to realize that he had already had it.)

Dazai walked a couple steps to stand in front of the rusty sink, turning on the creaky faucet to wash his hands. The water came out red, and for a second he lost his breath, seeing the gruesome vision of his hands coated in blood once more, the guts and viscera of another person, another victim, covering his pale, touchable skin- And then his vision cleared, like someone had taken a cloth to clean off his glassy wet eyes, and the water was translucent once more, as if it had never been bloody.

Dazai wiped his hands off on a paper towel quickly, the image of the blood running down his hands entirely too familiar and not at all comforting. The crusty blood under his nails was itching again. He picked off the few flaky chunks that he could, scraping them down into the trash can. He resisted the crooning and dangerously convincing whispers that echoed in the abyss of his brain, telling him that he deserved even more blood on him, preferably his own. The scars along his arms ached like old lovers.

He breathed in, and out, his eyes on the door and following the patterns of the wood grain. In, and out. Inhale and exhale. If Dazai fell to the ground of the bathroom again, he might never be able to pull himself back up. So even though the gun on his waist and the guilt in his heart begged him to level a bullet in his brain, he simply took another breath and opened the door, exiting the room with a calculating look.

Dazai glanced back. The gaps between the tiny cracks of the mirror smiled at him mockingly. He looked away and pretended all he saw were lines.

Chapter 6: where complacency rules, and the kids only die

Chapter Text

“Okurimono was a tragedy, yes, but I believe your time would be better spent focusing on your school,” Nezu offered his opinions to Nakahara. Did he know that Okurimono was a lot bigger than just a hero fight gone wrong? Obviously. Did he want Nakahara to know that Okurimono was a lot bigger than a hero fight gone wrong? Not at all. Nakahara Chuuya was a lot more useful to Nezu if he was physically at UA, and focused on listening to Nezu and the other teachers. What a waste it would be, if Nakahara left after not even a week to go back to his city.

Nakahara didn’t react, just took a sip of his coffee. Then, as he traced his wrists where his gloves met his bare skin, he said, “I have associates already working relief there. In a few days, the neighborhood will be packed with people helping out. All three of us are sticking around.”

Interesting, Nezu thought. Nakahara didn’t have a single clue about the reality of Okurimono. But, if he knew people currently in the disaster zone, it wouldn’t be long until he found out. Perhaps it would be better to get on his side over the issue sooner rather than later?

“And,” Nezu said, voicing himself in a softer tone as if he were admitting a great secret. Well, it was a sort of secret. “I have reason to believe that Pine Grove could have been working with other villains here.”

Instantly, Nakahara’s eyes narrowed in suspicion, his hands clenching his coffee cup just a little bit tighter. A light of intelligence and understanding flashed in his eyes. His auburn hair almost burned in the artificial white lighting, and Nezu couldn’t tell if it was his aggressive glare or a subtle activation of his ability that made him look like a fiery pyre.

“You think Okurimono wasn’t an accident, but a planned offense.” And there was that unique loyalty, that need to protect what he saw as his, that had brought Nakahara to Nezu’s attention in the first place. It was that same protectiveness that had brought him to take in and train Aizawa. Nakahara eyed Nezu’s strategically relaxed body. “And you know who might have orchestrated it.”

“That I do.” Nezu nodded, the scar over his eye creasing as his face contorted in disgust. “The boogeyman of the Japanese underground. He has his tendrils everywhere, and this is definitely something he would, and could, do. Plus,”

Nezu reached into one of his desk drawers, pulling out a thin file folder and sliding it across to Nakahara’s waiting hands. Nakahara opened it quickly, his eyes racing across the page and absorbing the information at an absurd speed. Nezu smiled internally- he had had to give Aizawa lessons about quick and accurate reading comprehension. They had ended badly for the then young boy, most of the time, but it was clearly to his aid. It would be nice to have one less thing to train Nakahara in.

“He’s done sh*t like this before,” Nakahara said, his eyebrows raised high as he read the small pile of reports and testimonies. “He was behind the loss of the Northern territories fifty years ago?”

“Yes. If you weren’t informed, the land taken by Japan is now considered one of the most crime-ridden locations in the whole country. It is, to say the least, a villain’s playground,” Nezu explained. He wasn’t lying. The territories taken fifty years ago from Yokohama had been assimilated into Japan, but not well. There were little heroes, due to how few quirked lived in the area, and many villains, also due to the aforementioned lack of quirked citizens. And, it was also true that the boogeyman of the underground had been involved in the takeover of the territory, as in modern times it was largely accepted to be the location of one of his largest bases.

“But he wasn’t taking Okurimono this time. Just… trashing it.” Nezu was silent as the cogs of Nakahara’s brain turned, knowing that the boy would come to the same conclusion he had. “So it wasn’t about Okurimono. Why would he…”

Then, bitter realization struck Nakahara with a baseball bat, and his cerulean eyes went as wide as saucers.

“Because he wants a war. He prevented a war from happening fifty years ago because it wasn’t in his best interests, but now he finally wants one.” Nezu nodded, telling Nakahara that he had come to the same conclusion. Of course, what he didn’t tell Nakahara was that he himself was working to start a war between Yokohama and Japan. Nezu didn’t want Japan to take over Yokohama, of course, because then Yokohama would be susceptible to Japan’s laws, and he’d never see such a perfectly molded child as Nakahara ever again. But people like him, people in positions of power with no reason to ever touch a battlefield, always benefited from war.

It was simple math for Nezu. If Yokohama and Japan fought, Japan would fight with heroes. Inevitably, Japan would then lose heroes. And the loss of heroes only ever led into a large boom of new heroes, especially underage ones, and who other than the principal of a school that taught children to be heroes could that be good for? So Nezu wanted a war, though he wouldn’t tell Nakahara that. He wanted a war, a bloody one, with a large mortality rate, because that would spread his influence. The more kids who learned at UA, the faster he could churn out heroes, the more people who would be indebted to him. The more people with power of their own who’d owe him their entire lives. What could be more perfect than that?

(When Nakahara left for his apartment, the faint light of sunrise shining upon his back, Nezu let himself grin a feral grin. If he gambled his chips correctly, Nakahara would be another man with power playing as a pawn on Nezu’s chess board.)

Chuuya slipped back into their flat. In the living room, a messy sprawl of blankets and pillows lay. Atsushi, in his human form, was curled up on top of a stack of fluffy pillows. Next to him, keenly awake, even if ruffled from sleep, Tecchou sat. Chuuya froze like a deer caught in the headlights, Tecchou’s unyielding stare drilling holes in his skin. The two of them were both painfully quiet for a few moments. Then, Atsushi turned to face the open window, groaning as the barely risen sun burned his eyelids. As Atsushi began waking up, Tecchou gave him one final serious look, clearly telling Chuuya that they would be talking later.

When they arrived at the classroom they’d be spending their morning in, they found three chairs off to the side waiting for them to observe. Of course, Tecchou would be standing as their bodyguard, but it was considerate for the school to have provided them with a chair for him. Chuuya and Atsushi settled into their plastic seats, both setting their bags down.

A few of the students had already been sitting down, and while most just kept their eyes on whatever they were working on, one boy stood up to go and talk to them. He had blue hair and rectangular glasses, and his movement seemed oddly stilted. When he bowed to the three of them, he formed a perfect ninety degree angle.

“I am Iida Tenya, the student representative of Class 1A. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to come to either me or Mr. Aizawa,” he said once he snapped back up from his bowing position.

“Nakahara Chuuya,” Chuuya said, lightly bowing his head from his seated position. “And to my left is Nakajima Atsushi, while Hunting Dog Tecchou Suehiro is standing as our bodyguard. We’ll be sure to come to you if we need anything.”

“I fear I am slightly ignorant, Mr. Nakahara, about some Yokohaman terms. What would a ‘Hunting Dog’ be again?” Iida said, still the picture of perfect respectability and class. His words, like his movements, were almost clunky. The boy was seemingly robotic. Chuuya noticed how his arms made small motions at his sides, though he looked like he was trying to keep still.

“A Hunting Dog is an elite member of the military police- they are the only ability user led and completely ability user staffed unit in our military,” Chuuya told the boy. It wasn’t classified or anything, and was something that could easily be found if looking up Yokohama. While ability users were soldiers in the lower levels of the military, they were often the only quirked people for miles. Most ability users went to the Special Division, or were forced to turn to crime. And to Chuuya and the other two, knowledge of the Hunting Dogs was a fact of life, a simple thing to have to explain to an ignorant Outsider. But somehow, such a simple concept made Iida’s eyebrows twist in confusion.

“They’re the only unit led by quirked people?” Chuuya nodded boredly. “I mean no offense, Mister, it is just an odd concept for a Japanese citizen like me.”

A new arrival, a shorter girl with pink skin that made the bottom of Chuuya’s stomach turn, practically bounced up to stand next to Iida.

“Hi!” she exclaimed excitedly. “I’m Mina Ashido! It’s so cool that our class is gonna have real quirked Yokohamans joining us.” Chuuya felt a small frown form on his face, and next to him, Atsushi shifted in his seat with an uncomfortable smile that bordered on a grimace. Teccho just stared, blankly.

“And we, too, are very eager to be learning here at UA,” Chuuya said diplomatically. The classroom was mostly full by now, yet the teacher, Aizawa, still wasn’t there. Chuuya hoped he’d be coming soon, but his watch told him he still had a few more minutes before Aizawa was late.

“So.” Mina leaned forward, her mouth still curved in an energetic grin. Atsushi gave a minute flinch as he got a closer look at her mutant scleras, and Chuuya knew he undoubtedly felt guilty for it. He, too, felt a hypocritical disgust upon seeing such an obvious mutation. “Is it really true that you’re all first generation quirked?”

Atsushi blinked in confusion. In truth, it was impossible for him to imagine not being first generation. The thought of an ability user having genetic children, the thought of someone with an affliction like his being allowed to reproduce, brought to his mind an almost wrong sort of feeling. He couldn’t see himself with biological children, and he didn’t know if that was just him or if it was because he had grown up with the Ability Statutes breathing down his neck. To Atsushi, and to most Yokohamans, abilities were like a disease. They needed to be cut out of the gene pool before they could spread.

(And who could be surprised that even ability users thought they were sick, if that was how their society treated them? When other people refuse to touch you for fear of contracting some imaginary sickness, it’s only natural to begin to think that anyone being near you would lead to the spread of that sickness.)

“Yes, all of Yokohama’s quirked population is first generation. If you have ever heard of our Ability Statutes, there is a clause inside them that makes the reproduction of ability users illegal,” Chuuya explained. Like Atsushi, the idea of children just wasn’t imaginable. He knew he could be some sort of a role model or even, god forbid, a father figure to younger ability users. He didn’t mind the thought of adoption, and clearly, he wanted to help teach and care for children. But he couldn’t bear the thought of another kid, another victim, having to have such a cruel thing as an ability. He just couldn’t do that to a child.

“That’s terrible!” Mina said, her smile falling. “Why would they do that?”

“I’m actually very grateful for it,” Atsushi said. “It’s like a safety net, yeah? Every time the population of ability users grows too large, it leads to a Purge. We’ve seen it before. If our numbers stay constant, if we never have our own children, it’s better for everyone.”

Chuuya nodded along softly. He didn’t quite agree with Atsushi, but he’d never show anything but support in front of Outsiders. There were two main schools of thought when it came to this particular law of the Ability Statutes. There were those who thought that more ability users would lead to another Purge, as Atsushi said, so really, the law against quirked children was actually for their own benefit. And there were those, like Chuuya, who believed that the law against parenthood was just another way to be subjugated, but even so, they didn’t want to bring children into a world where such a law even existed.

“What?! That’s crazy, the Yokohaman government is clearly just trying to control-”

“Mina.” Iida coughed into his fist. He himself thought that the Ability Statutes were heavy handed and ultimately unnecessary, but challenging someone else’s, especially an older and more respected someone else’s, world views on the very first meeting never went well. If they thought that they shouldn’t have children, should follow the rules of the Ability Statutes, that wasn’t the place for a bunch of foreign, inexperienced children to disagree with.

Mina grumbled, but didn’t say anything more, moving to her desk. Iida bowed as an apology for her.

“I’m very sorry, she clearly didn’t mean anything rude towards you or your city,” Iida said. Chuuya’s eyes narrowed at the word ‘city’.

“Oh, we understand where she’s coming from. And we would prefer it if you gave our homeland the proper respect it deserves. We’ve had issues recently, you see, with people considering us a city rather than a country,” Chuuya said. Iida’s ears blushed red.

“Right. Apologies.”

“It’s okay, just… we fought for our independence, and other countries ignoring that has only ever been dangerous for our people,” Atsushi said gently. It wasn’t just Okurimono. It wasn’t just the loss of their northern territory. It wasn’t just their war for independence. It was the way Japan refused to sign treaties with them until they had the threat of another war, of more suicide bombers. It was the way so many other nations had ignored Yokohama in favor of considering them a city of Japan. It was all the Outsiders, all the other people around the world, dismissing Yokohama’s autonomy and pretending they were still Japanese. They weren’t.

(Yokohama had fought a war for the right to be a country. They had won the war, and yet here they were, still just a city in the eyes of Outsiders.)

Iida sat back down at his desk, faintly embarrassed. Mina was once more distracted by her friends, and thoughts of the inhumane treatment. A few minutes late to class, like he always was, Aizawa showed up, and taught their morning lesson.

It was very obvious to everyone that the entire class was distracted, as they kept on glancing at where the three Yokohamans sat, silently writing in their notebooks. Aizawa did his best to corral the class’s attention without saying anything in front of the guests, but he eventually gave up, hoping that 1A would behave better once they got more used to having what were essentially teachers in training sitting and watching their classes.

On the Yokohamans’ part, they were well-behaved and silent listeners. They took notes on how Aizawa organized his lessons, and how the students’ interacted with each other and their teacher. They couldn’t ever get a real degree in teaching because of Yokohaman law, but learning how to mimic people who had degrees was close enough for them. It had to be close enough for them.

The classes at UA were foreign in more ways than one for all three of them. Atsushi, raised under the strict, controlling homeschooling that his orphanage gave him, was the only one out of the three of them to have any amount of schooling. Chuuya had been raised by the streets, had grown up with only other street kids to keep him company. And Tecchou had been born to a middle class family, perfectly average except for the fact that their youngest child was gifted. He had been forced to stay home all day as his older siblings went to school, and he wasn’t allowed to play with his siblings. The neighbors hadn’t even known he’d existed, till his family had died in a car crash without him and he’d had to try and steal food from the neighboring apartments.

These weren’t tragic backstories. Chuuya and Tecchou’s lack of schooling, and Atsushi only having been taught up to ten years old, didn’t make them traumatized. Like most people lacking basic education, they learned to deal with living only with what they knew. They taught themselves everything essential, everything they could, and neither of them needed a high school diploma or a college degree to be intelligent, experienced people. The Ability Statutes and society’s own prejudices had tried to prevent them from learning, from being intelligent, skilled people in their own right. But that wasn’t how it worked.

So, even though they could all survive in their jobs and homes without an education, they didn’t want that for the next generation. Centuries of ability users were denied an education, and just because they didn’t need one to survive didn’t mean that they could have been so much more if they had just had a chance.

(And, as a fact that Chuuya had to constantly remind himself of, there was more to life than just living. Yokohama’s gifted children deserved the chance to see for themselves what life could hold.)

At the end of the first class of the morning, as Chuuya and Atsushi were slipping their notebooks into their bags and getting ready to leave, they were stopped by a tall, black-haired girl. Atsushi immediately recognized her as the student who had shared her lunch with him the day they had arrived at UA.

“Yaoyorozu Momo, right?” Atsushi verified. Yaoyorozu blinked in surprise, before her gaze flitted upwards to the stark white and black of Atsushi’s hair.

“Nakajima Atsushi. Good to meet you in human form,” she said with some amount of amusem*nt. Atsushi faintly blushed, and beside him, Chuuya smirked. Tecchou, even behind his cold bodyguard mask, seemed humorous.

“I’m Nakahara Chuuya. Wonderful to meet you, Yaoyorozu. What did you wish to talk to us about?” Chuuya asked, slipping his plain black bag onto his shoulder.

“Uh- Well. There’s not an easy way to approach this, but I wanted to talk about Okurimono.” Instantly, Chuuya’s good humor and Atsushi’s happy familiarity shut down. All three of the Yokohamans looked at her with a certain sort of cautiousness mixed with anger. “Not about the politics or the court case or anything! But, I’ve seen the aftermath of villain attacks before, at the USJ. And if it was that bad at the USJ, it must be even worse in a densely populated neighborhood like I heard Okurimono was.”

Chuuya nodded slowly. Her trying to avoid discussing politics and Japanese-Yokohaman relations did seem to be a good sign. He said with some consideration, “Yes. My associates back in Yokohama have told me the region is struggling.”

“Well,” Yaoyorozu said nervously. “I just wanted to ask, would it be alright if I made, like, supply boxes for the people there?” All three of them stared at her in shock. An Outsider, an ability user, wanted to send supplies into Yokohama?

“I was reading about how to help people who got caught in villain attacks and natural disasters, and apparently supply kits are really useful? It’s fine if you don’t want me to, but my quirk lets me create nonorganic material, so I can make some medical supplies, toiletries, and other stuff,” Yaoyorozu said nervously.

“That would actually be really useful,” Chuuya said, the surprise in his tone audible. “And especially if you can make things for free. They’re struggling to rake in funds for both rebuilding and relief supplies, so if you donate some supplies, more of the money could go to rebuilding.”

Yaoyorozu smiled now that her idea had been accepted. The three Yokohamans relaxed as well, though it still confused them that a gifted Outsider, a gifted Japanese Outsider, was trying to organize supplies for Okurimono. A Japanese hero student was trying to save a neighborhood that had been destroyed by Japanese heroes.

“Do you think I could have a list of things they really need?” Yaoyorozu asked. She had a good idea of what Okurimono would need, but she didn’t know what they already had enough of. And it was always better to get information straight from the victims and not just guess what kind of things they would need.

“I can ask. I’ll get back to you in a few days?” Yaoyorozu nodded, and Chuuya made a mental note to write that in his next set of letters home. “And… thanks, kid. It’s not often an Outsider actually tries to help out in Yokohama. This’d mean a lot to Okurimono.”

“Outsider?” Yaoyorozu asked curiously, having never heard the word said with such meaning attached to it before. She could practically hear its capitalization.

“Non-Yokohamans. Though, it can also be used to describe Yokohaman ability users, but it would be more derogatory in that sense,” Atsushi explained.

“Why would having a quirk make a Yokohaman an Outsider? Sorry if I’m being invasive or anything, I swear I’m just really curious,” Yaoyorozu assured.

“Well, you know all those myths surrounding changelings replacing human babies?” Atsushi said. “Some Yokohamans believe that all ability users born in Yokohama were secretly Japanese babies, planted inside our country to try and spread abilities. It’s honestly more of a joke than anything but. You know. Still kind of offensive.”

“Interesting,” Yaoyorozu said honestly. Then, glancing at her watch, she made a small noise of alarm. “I’m sorry, but I have to get going-”

“Hey, no worries,” Chuuya said reassuringly. “I’ll get you that list of items sometime soon, and seriously. Thanks.”

Once Yaoyorozu had walked out of sight, Tecchou finally offered up his opinion, saying, “Seems genuine enough.”

“Yeah. Some of the kids are right little assholes, but I thought she seemed kind,” Chuuya said. “Speaking of, did you see those two boys who kept on glaring at Atsushi?”

Tecchou nodded with a small glare of his own, and Atsushi startled at the news that some of the students had been glaring at him and he hadn’t noticed.

“Do you know why they were upset with me?” Atsushi worried, a small frown gracing his face. Both Chuuya and Tecchou shook their heads. “And I have no earthly clue either. Well, if they have something against me, they’ll have to say it to my face.

“Probably just the normal Japanese prejudice. Don’t know why it was just you, though.” Tecchou shrugged off the thought of the two kids. He wasn’t particularly well-socialized, and he didn’t have much of a childhood, but he was fairly sure that teenagers were just like that. And Chuuya also assumed that the two boys were just glaring for no reason, or for a really stupid reason. He got angry a lot when he was a teenager, so why wouldn’t it be the same for those two?

Either way, the three of them were nonplussed about the whole situation, and left for their next class with little thought towards the glaring boys. It was probably nothing important.

“So most of the training we’ve been giving recently has all been focused on preparing for the sports festival,” Aizawa explained to Chuuya and Atsushi. “Today we’re doing one-on-ones. The first two challenges of the sports festival are a surprise, but the last challenge is always a one-on-one tournament.”

Two of the kids were already walking into the marked out circle in the center of the field. One of them was a fiery blond, who seemed almost as constantly pissed as Chuuya was at his age. The other was an emotionless boy with hair split into red and white.

“So how much training have they had so far?” Chuuya asked, trying to gauge how much he should expect from their fight.

“Bakugo- that’s the blond- has been training since the start of the school year. Todoroki has had extensive private training since a young age, as his father is a very high ranking pro hero,” Aizawa told Chuuya.

“Only since the start of the school year?” he asked with furrowed brows. In the Port Mafia, you had to train for a lot longer before you began sparring, and way longer before you even saw a glimpse of action. Well, that was how it worked for ability users. The ungifted grunts saw much less practical training, and knew very little except how to follow orders and use a gun. But an ability was a dangerous, dangerous thing, something that could never be allowed to escape its user’s control, so actually fighting with it was kept to a minimum until one was fully trained.

Aizawa silently nodded, as he focused on the battle beginning. Bakugo was the first to move. He launched himself at the other boy, violent explosions forming from his palms. Already, he was yelling, though it was mostly unintelligible from an outside perspective. Todoroki raised a spike of ice out of the ground, blocking the brunt of Bakugo’s attack. He then launched two spikes of ice from the ground, attacking Bakugo from both sides.

Bakugo launched himself backwards, then used his explosions to lift himself into the air, moving forward and landing behind Todoroki. He tried to let loose another explosion at Todoroki’s back, but Todoroki quickly spun around, a sheet of ice quickly thrown up in front of him to protect his face.

“The blond is almost like Kaji, huh?” Atsushi commented, slightly jokingly. Chuuya shrugged.

“It is a little weird that someone else could share Kaji’s love of explosives like this.” In the ring, Bakugo had begun yelling about how great, powerful, and heroic his explosions were. Todoroki didn’t say anything, just kept raising ice shield after ice shield. Chuuya squinted, and saw that Todoroki’s skin was beginning to look slightly frostbitten. “I guess Todoroki’s quirk makes him frostbitten. Sucks for him.”

After nearly ten minutes of boring back-and-forth, which consisted mainly of Bakugo firing off his explosions and Todoroki using his ice as protection, Todoroki, whose skin was more blue than could possibly be healthy, surrendered.

“What?!” Bakugo screamed angrily, spit flying out of his mouth. Atsushi grimaced in disgust. “You f*cking bastard, give me a real f*cking fight-”

His voice was cut off by Aizawa wrapping him up in his capture scarf. Todoroki left the training field to get warmed up inside the school building, and probably to get Recovery Girl to look over his frostbite and make sure it was damaging his body horribly.

“I apologize for having to see Bakugo’s behavior. He’s a good kid, just… aggressive,” Aizawa told them as the next fight started.

“Yeah, I get it. What my mentor always did whenever I got too angry was tell me to go beat up men who touched her girls when they didn’t want it. Maybe he just needs an outlet other than simple sparring like this?” Chuuya offered. Aizawa looked at him oddly from the side of his eye.

“You mean you were encouraged to take part in vigilante justice as a way to release anger?” Aizawa said dryly. It was obvious he would not be having Bakugo participate in the same activities.

“Well, all of us, you know, me and the girls and my mentor, were kind of underground. Police had too many bribes funding them to get too close to where we were. And in my books, every molester deserves to be beat up,” Chuuya said with conviction. Aizawa shrugged. All of the illegal activity Chuuya was describing had happened in Yokohama, and clearly many years ago, so he didn’t have to think like a pro hero but rather as another person.

“I suppose that’s fair. But, it’s probably a bit more illegal here than it was in the Yokohaman underground,” Aizawa said. This next match was a quick one, with one of his students being knocked out of the ring fairly quickly.

They were silent for the next few matches, with Aizawa giving advice to his students every few minutes and Chuuya and Atsushi watching how the class functioned and how the students acted.

“You know,” Chuuya said after one particularly bad match. He was mostly talking to Atsushi and Tecchou, but Aizawa was also paying attention to what he was saying. “I don’t think you could really call all this fighting.”

“What?” Aizawa asked immediately. Atsushi, who was about to nod in indifferent agreement, glanced at him quizzically. “What do you mean, not fighting?”

“I mean,” Chuuya paused to collect his thoughts. “This is kind of just… people throwing their abilities at other people. There’s more to a fight than just superpowers. Most of these kids have no form, no strategy. Just ‘use quirk’. Not even trying to dodge or deflect or anything.”

Aizawa was still extremely confused. He told Chuuya, “I wouldn’t say it like that. They’re using their quirks. Heroes learn to fight with their quirks, then once they’ve mastered that, they can start practicing incorporating other styles of fighting.”

“But that’s so stupid!” Atsushi burst out. A lot of the students who had been watching the fights turned to stare, and he blushed. “It’s just, when I was taught how to fight by the Agency, fighting using my ability was one of the last things I learned. I mean, I still used it in battle, but that was because there was no other option. You can’t fight with an ability if you can’t fight without one.”

“Quirks are what make a hero a hero,” Aizawa said. He spoke with such certainty, like he was absolutely sure of this truth. Chuuya raised an eyebrow and stared in disbelief. In Yokohama, abilities were a weapon, something separate from the human who held them. Japan’s beliefs surrounding quirks stemmed from the fact that they still believed someone gifted was a person, was still whole. In Yokohama, abilities were lower, and the people who wielded them couldn’t even count as human.

“Abilities are what make a person an animal, below human,” Atsushi vehemently disagreed. And even if it was literal in his case, the tiger writhing underneath his skin like the mythological serpent Jörmungandr, meant to bring about the end of the world, he still saw other ability users as animals, too. Because man wasn’t meant to handle the kind of gifts he had been given. But to Aizawa, and the rest of the Outside, quirks weren’t just a ‘gift’. They were a sacred right. They were essential to everything, and without them you were nothing.

“Quirks are the best thing to have happened to humanity since fire!” Midoriya proclaimed. Chuuya scowled darkly. Best thing to happen? What a stupid child, he thought to himself. Quirks had killed millions, had caused the Purges, had led to not only the Japanese-Yokohaman war and many other battles throughout the world.

“Kid, back up there. Even if we weren’t Yokohaman, we’d know that there are more important things than f*cking abilities,” Chuuya said. His eyes held an aggressive finality, pushing for the end of their debate.

“Nakahara,” Aizawa began, his lecturing voice betraying his true views of the three of them. To Aizawa, they were just students, children for him to teach the way of the world to. And maybe that was their own fault- they told the teachers of UA that they wanted to learn, and so they were being taught. But for two Yokohamans who barely understood how their own school system worked, let alone Japan’s school system, the fact that they weren’t treated as equals, as men of similar respectability, seemed quite rude. “We know you’ve been persecuted for having a quirk before. We know that Yokohama has a quirkless majority, and that your laws aren’t exactly in favor of you and other quirked. But in Japan, in the rest of the world, it’s different. Things are different here, and you either adapt to that, or you stay stuck in Yokohama’s traditionalist ways.”

Chuuya reeled back like he had been physically struck. It hadn’t necessarily occurred to him that he himself would have to change if he wanted to truly learn from Japan. But, Aizawa wasn’t wrong. Yokohama was different from the Outside. Whether it was a good or a bad difference didn’t matter, but if Chuuya actually wanted to understand UA, to learn new things from Japan, he had to get used to his new environment. It almost hurt him, the thought of leaving behind the life he had known in Yokohama to try and make sense of all of the new ideas of the Outside.

The three of them had to do this. Tecchou, Atsushi, and Chuuya himself needed to assimilate to this new and foreign world if they wanted to have any chance at eventually building a school for ability users like them. Yokohama was traditional, and it always had been. But Odasaku’s School? That was the future. And Japan, along with the rest of the world, were futurists. So if it meant abandoning their own opinions and beliefs, if that was what it took to build a school, then Atsushi and Chuuya would do it. They’d swallow their grievances, acclimate to UA and to Japan, because that was what they did. They were ability users, and they were Yokohamans, and they were survivors. It was in their blood to overcome, and to fix things. To make them better.

Chuuya choked down the arguments in his throat, shelved the rhetoric for another day and a more peaceful time. He nodded silently, letting the quirk battles between the students continue without another word, forcing himself to believe that this was necessary. There was more to life than just quirks. There was more to life than just Chuuya’s own pride.

Next to him, Atsushi had also shut his mouth, a tiny sting of betrayal echoing through his bones at the way Chuuya wouldn’t even defend their homeland, their people. How can they make things better in Yokohama while simultaneously accepting things that were worse in Japan? He was young, and while he had seen many things in his life, he hadn’t seen everything. For one, he had never been within or even heard of a universe where ability users were also human. This was the way he was raised, with self-hatred so intrinsic and so embedded into the very fiber of his being that even the idea of it being untrue, of gifted people still being people, made him feel disgusted.

The rest of the lesson, they were both quiet. Chuuya was more focused on learning, on understanding how quirked Japanese students were expected to learn and train. It was leagues different from what he had grown up with, but he was willing to see something new. And Atsushi tried, he really did, to let himself be taught and to accept the lectures Aizawa gave. He wanted to help, and he wanted to teach, but he couldn’t understand within the context of his own life and the lessons of Aizawa’s class how he could either help or teach. He felt a wave of homesickness. This whole land was so different from everything he knew. All of these people were so odd, so different, and he was just a boy trying to hold onto driftwood in the ocean, clinging to his future as the storm around him battered and bruised his body.

The office was quiet. That was the first thing that anyone who entered it would notice. It was quiet. The second thing anyone who entered would notice was that there were two empty desks, while all of the other desks were occupied by silent, serious workers. In one corner of the room, two kids pored over battle plans, their young faces gripped by the sorrows of crime and war.

This quiet, preoccupied office was the home base of Yokohama’s Armed Detective Agency. The two children, Kyoka and Kenji, were ability users, as were the other adults. And the problem that all of the detectives in the building had their minds focused on was the mystery of what caused Okurimono- because they were sure it wasn’t Pine Grove or the heroes fighting him.

This scene was what Dazai arrived to when he had finally exhausted all of the underground sources he could find. And it may have been slightly self-destructive, but when he stepped back into the danger-filled, risk-inducing office, he felt calm. He wasn’t torturing people for the sake of himself. It was for the Agency.

“I don’t have a name.” Dazai got that out of the way quickly. He had interrogated nearly ten people, and none of them could give him a name. In his professional opinion? No one actually knew the real name he needed. “But, I have a title. And I have some accomplishments.”

Dazai slid into his desk chair, his very bones relaxing at the familiarity and the homeliness that struck him as he sat down. Across from him, Kunikida gently closed the lid of his laptop, focusing on Dazai. On better days, the two would be arguing, fighting. They had to take each other seriously now.

“Boogeyman of the Japanese underground,” Dazai said. He cleared off his desk, rolling out the small map of the island of Japan he had brought with him into the office. It was fairly beat up, and had faint marks from where pencil had been drawn and then erased, and various holes from where pins had been stabbed into it and then removed. “Behind the conflict fifty years ago, along with many, many other crimes.”

He began marking out various locations in red pen. These were the only real leads his sources had given to him, the only thing he could act on now that he had finished interrogating them. They were believed to be the target’s bases, his known places of operation. With a grim glance at Kunikida, he circled the northern territories in red, as one of the largest zones of operation. He starred it in a way similar to how national maps might star a capital city or building. The northern territories, right on the border to Yokohama, were essentially the target’s crime capital.

Dazai stood up, making his way over to the bulletin board that had been recently cleared of all other papers. With carefully precise hands, he pinned up the map, the bold red lines and dots glaring at the rest of the room. Next to the map, he pinned up a single piece of copier paper, practically empty. What it did say spoke volumes.

“The boogeyman of the Japanese underground,” Dazai read aloud. His coworkers closest to him turned away from what they were doing, and Kyoka and Kenji carried chairs closer to Dazai so they could better see the bulletin board. “Birth name, unknown. Villain name, unknown. Ability, something that can affect lifespan, perhaps even immortality. Age, older than even the War for Independence. Date of birth, unknown. Affiliates, numbered in the thousands, though perhaps subordinates would be a better descriptor.”

For the next hour, Dazai rattled off facts about the target, getting increasingly specific as he was asked more and more detailed questions. He had only been investigating in Yokohama for a day, and already so many informants and so much information had popped out of the woodwork. It was almost sickening at how much crime had been just out of their sight for so long.

“Is he targeting Atsushi?”

And there was the essential question, the real reason Dazai had gone out to play with his former brethren in the underground. Was the target using Okurimono to attack Atsushi, their fellow Agency member?

Dazai sighed, conflict raging in his eyes. He told them with a guilt-stricken air, “According to my contacts? I think so.”

The office room burst out into yelling, the calm of before replaced by a raging storm. If the boogeyman was going after Atsushi, why hadn’t Dazai told them before? He should have warned the Agency the immediate moment he even thought it was a possibility, not waited for so long.

“Wait!” Dazai yelled, a tinge of panic in his voice, as a couple Agency members began getting up, reaching for the weapons that had been placed just out of reach as a sign of peace. “My contacts also said,” His eyes looked desperate, pleading. It was so out of place for a man like Dazai Osamu that the Agency members who had stood up cautiously set their guns and weapons back down. “My contact also said that he was targeting Chuuya.”

“Nakahara?” Kunikida asked, squinting at Dazai. “You mean you’re still in contact with the executive.”

And this was the truth: Dazai’s coworkers knew of his past with Chuuya. Knew that they used to be partners, friends, lovers. And they knew that he and Chuuya had recently reestablished some amount of an allyship. But that Dazai talked to Chuuya every day? That he ate meals with him, went on dates with him, lived in a second home with him? No. That was too close to the hole in his chest he liked to pretend was a heart. His life with Chuuya was too close to what might actually be his heart.

“Yes.” Dazai didn’t like admitting to lying. He deflected, he ignored, he pretended he heard nothing. Admitting to lying was like admitting to being scared, to being anxious. Admitting he still cared, despite everything. “And he’s… Chuuya and Atsushi are living on campus. I haven’t got the chance to tell you this yet, but there are rumors surrounding the USJ attack. Some believe that there’s a traitor somewhere in the school, either staff or student. Maybe even multiple.”

Dazai didn’t have to explain the rest. There were traitors, working for the boogeyman of the underground, who were at UA High School. Chuuya, Atsushi, and Tecchou were also at UA High School. And trying to relocate them, or trying to send allies to them, could alert the traitors that Yokohama was onto them. If the targets knew that, who knows what they would do to Chuuya or Atsushi. Even worse, they were at a school. Chuuya’s biggest vulnerability was children; Atsushi’s was needing to save everyone.

“We can’t, under any circ*mstances, disrupt the situation at UA. If we even try to shake the boat a little bit, the traitors will tell the target, and any other plans we might try and make would be obsolete,” Dazai told everyone else. There was still guilt in his voice, and there was also shame. He was ashamed of what he had done to get this information. He was ashamed of what he would do with this information.

Dazai loved Chuuya more than the whole world. That wasn’t hard, the world had taken too much from him for him to truly love it. But Chuuya? Chuuya, Dazai’s bleeding heart, loved other people too much to even consider not sacrificing his safety for their sake. Chuuya would never forgive him if he tipped off the target in order to get Chuuya out of the line of fire.

“As the expert on the underground here: I say, we wait. We hold onto all we know, we try to learn more, and we wait for the perfect ambush to fall into our laps. As long as we keep quiet, Chuuya and Atsushi are safe.”

(When Dazai was in the Port Mafia, he remembered telling that to Chuuya. Say nothing, he had told the redhead, tell no more than you must. Mori will take your willingness to give and turn into an acceptance to be taken. You have more at risk than being unlikable. No, Chuuya had said. If I'm unlikable, I'm dead. Somehow, both of them were right.)

Chapter 7: i'll stay if i'm what you choose

Chapter Text

Chuuya sat with his back to the side of his bed, the carpet under him scratchy and tough. There was a small pain in his back where the wood of the bed pressed into his spine, and a crick in his neck from looking down at his lap for so long. On his leg, his notebook sat, closed. On top of the notebook was a single page of loose leaf. At the top, the simple phrase ’ To my dearest ’ was written in large, neat letters. There was nothing else written.

What was he supposed to say? Chuuya had both nothing and everything to say. In just a few days, so much had happened, so much had changed. Should he ask about Okurimono? Should he tell Dazai about his first day as an observer? Should he ignore these changes, pretend they were still in Chuuya’s apartment, making small talk like nothing was wrong? He couldn’t decide. So instead, he passed on the question that had been asked of him by Yaoyorozu.

Could you collect a list of supplies needed in Okurimono? I have a student here who is organizing the creation of some supply kits, and needs to know what to pack.

Chuuya paused. Talking about Okurimono was treading on thin ice, in the more than likely event that his letter was read over by the border guards before it was passed onto Dazai. But even if he couldn’t tell Dazai about what Nezu had told him, he was fairly sure he had figured it out anyway. The man was smart, and more importantly, distrusting of seemingly the most simple occurrences.

I trust that you are handling the Okurimono situation properly, with the help of your Agency. Tecchou says the Hunting Dogs are involved down there, so please don’t go starting fights with them? And I trust that you know that if you need me back, need me for any reason at all, I’ll go. I want this school but I want you to be happy even more.

Both Chuuya and Dazai knew this wasn’t true. The school was more important than either of them. The children of future generations were more important than any temporary lifetime either of them had. But as long as Chuuya could do both, could love Dazai and create Odasaku’s school, he could pretend like nothing was wrong. He dreaded the day he would have to somehow decide between saving Dazai or the school, because he didn’t know which he could save and still not be swallowed by regret and guilt.

The Outside is even more different than we ever could have imagined. Forgive me for almost wanting to stay here. The people are all gifted, the celebrities all have visible quirks, the politicians all support pro-quirk laws. Despite it all, I miss Yokohama’s comparative simplicity. Here, they differentiate kinds of quirks- mutant, villainous, heroic, weak- and it’s all very confusing to keep track of.

I think I am learning a lot. And I wanted to ask, will we have mandatory classes on martial arts? I always knew we planned on having them, but here they’re not optional. I think I’d like for ours to be optional. Not all ability users have to fight.

When Chuuya was younger, he had thought that ability users were born to go down fighting. Why would the universe give him a gift if he wasn’t meant to use it to its bloodiest, fullest potential? No one had ever told him otherwise, that he didn’t have to fight, not if he didn’t want to. He wanted to give his students that choice. Everyone, in Chuuya’s opinion, should have the option to choose peace. Clearly, violence hadn’t always worked out too well.

One thing that interests me is that they have classes on morality and ethics. I had assumed that all heroes were naturally extremely moral and righteous beings. Well, I had assumed that being extremely moral and righteous was one of the prerequisites of joining a hero school. But apparently that’s just another thing that they can teach. Who knew?

Chuuya raked his tongue over the back of his teeth. He… he didn’t want to say it, but who did he know who could teach ethics? It would have to be an ability user, he was fairly sure no non-ability user would teach at their school, but Yokohama wasn’t well known for producing the most compassionate or well-adjusted ability users. That was why they were making this school, because no adult ability users had those traits.

Admittedly, I am just now realizing the flaw that none of us Yokohaman ability users have any idea of how to teach such an abstract concept as morality. I was struggling to comprehend the lesson I saw from just an academic perspective, neither I nor Atsushi will have the ability to reteach that.

Well- there was one Yokohaman ability user who might be able to teach ethics. Tecchou, who joined the Hunting Dogs for the sake of justice, who may not quite understand other people but certainly wanted to save them. Chuuya felt weird about asking him to do that, though. He was a Hunting Dog, a slave of the government, and most importantly, he was only there to watch. Chuuya and Atsushi were there to learn, and Tecchou was there to keep an eye on them. At the end of the day, even if he privately supported their cause, he couldn't publicly do it.

We’ll figure it out, I think. How have things been going with finding a location, and figuring out the legal logistics we were struggling with? I’m awaiting the hopefully good news.

Chuuya signed off on the letter with his neat, orderly signature, then read over what he had written so far. He chewed on his eraser as he stared at the short letter he had written. He still had so much more to say… but this had to cross the border. The less he said, the safer, if he actually wanted Dazai to read it.

Folding the piece of loose leaf and carefully slipping it into a plain white envelope, stamp and address already written, Chuuya let out a small breath. Hopefully, Dazai would be able to read all that Chuuya didn’t write in the letter. He’d always been good at that.

( I love you, I miss you, I want to see you, I want to be with you, I want you, please, Osamu, I don’t want to be alone, why did you stay behind- )

Chuuya nodded to himself and set the envelope on his desk. He had more letters to write.

Jouno sat down quickly, Teruko and Tachihara already sitting and eating next to him. He ignored the ache that reverberated through him at the sight of only three Hunting Dogs together, the intrinsic ideals of companionship between their unit ruined by one man’s schemes and another’s obligations to their government.

“We’re running low on fresh produce. The last shipment is both dwindling and going bad. Soon, I’ll have to start giving the people rotten tomatoes,” Jouno reported. On a large scale, he was the Hunting Dog in charge of the relief efforts, but at the moment, their biggest problems were mostly with food distribution. Give someone toiletries and a towel, they can use it for weeks. But food had to be supplied and passed out three times a day, to every single person in Okurimono. Or, what had once been Okurimono.

“Hand out all you have left. Then they’ll have to survive on the prepackaged rations till the next produce truck comes,” Teruko said. Her eyes were worn, and bags had been steadily growing under them since they had showed up. Now that she had collected all the information she could from the three heroes, which took so little time she almost wondered if they had been trained to combat interrogation at all, she was mostly working on rebuilding homes and workplaces. It was long and hard work, with little reward. Recent downpours, and even slight flooding, had erased copious amounts of progress. At the beginning of this assignment, the commander had thought it would be fun to get to f*ck around in the minds of Outsiders. Now, she was overworked and tired with nothing to show for it.

“Any idea when the next supply truck is coming in?” Tachihara asked. He looked just as worn out as the other two did. He was still digging through the rubble, always moving about from one pile of destroyed buildings to the next. The only difference was, they rarely found people alive anymore. The emotional toll of seeing so many dead people, people he was supposed to save, had been wearing down on the youngest Hunting Dog.

“No idea. I’d guess for not a few more days. All the farms in the area are conflicted about giving food to Japanese immigrants.” Jouno sighed. He understood why the farmers didn’t want to give out free food, really, he did. He was a smart man, and he knew that the Yokohaman farmers were worried about the immigrants turning on them, or moving deeper into the country and ‘stealing jobs’. But it made his job all that much harder when he couldn’t get a single neighboring farm to donate food to the people starving in Okurimono.

It had only been a few days, and already they were all tired and pulling all nighters. It was frustrating how little help they were receiving from the government or the nearby Yokohamans, and it was draining to have to constantly be hounded by the homeless immigrants about supplies, rebuilding, reparations. Couldn’t they tell that the three of them were trying their hardest?

“A few kids have been helping out by the Wall. Are you guys thinking extra compensation or…?” Tachihara asked. As the youngest member, even though he was sure of his own skills and fighting ability, he still asked for reassurance or guidance sometimes.

“Probably not. Don’t want people thinking they can just show up and get a job like that,” Teruko said, not without sympathy. She understood that Okurimono needed new shops and job opportunities, but sucking up to a Hunting Dog certainly wouldn’t be one of those jobs.

“Alright. I don’t mind having unpaid interns for as long as it takes them to realize neither I nor the government will be paying them,” Tachihara said with finality. Teruko giggled.

“My workers are so useless, I wonder how they’re being paid at all,” Jouno grumbled. “They spend all day on their butts! I tell them we need more supplies, they say we have to wait for them. Useless! I have to order them to go off and get supplies before we can make any progress with anything.”

“Well, better than being alone,” Teruko said with a slight grumpiness. Other than the Okurimono citizens rebuilding their shabby little homes, she was the only worker not running relief or rescue work. She was supposed to be organizing the rebuilding, and ensuring that all the homes actually followed safety codes, unlike before. But any workers that might’ve been put under her command were too busy elsewhere, and the Okurimono citizens rebuilding their own homes out of desperation to escape the storms were hardly in a listening mood.

“You can come join me digging up dead bodies,” Tachihara said in a monotone. Teruko wrinkled her nose in distaste. She didn’t mind killing people, but having to deal with already dead and gross bodies was just one step too far. Besides, as commander, she had subordinates who could deal with bodies for her.

“I’d rather die myself, thanks,” Teruko said back.

The three of them settled with ease into their usual bickering and fighting, their lunches growing cold on the table as they argued between each other. Despite the aggressive nature of their companionship, there was familiarity in the creases of Teruko’s eyes, happiness in the tilt of Jouno’s head. There was peace in the way they sat with each other, joking and disagreeing and caring for each other.

(It is a truth that some find hard to admit that a soldier loves like a war: violent and chaotic. It is yet another truth that a soldier loves like a treaty: a promise, and a faint hope.)

Tecchou’s missing place in their numbers was still as sore as a broken rib, but they were Hunting Dogs, the finest ability users of Yokohama’s military police. They could survive f*ckuchi turning on them, using them. They could survive f*ckuchi dying. In the end, they would survive being down a member until Tecchou came back to them.

Jouno looked to his right, to the spot normally occupied by his husband. Teruko and Tachihara continued arguing in front of him, and he smiled, imagining Tecchou reaching out and stabbing one of them, his no-nonsense features loosened into a sort of fondness. His hands twitched, craving the feeling of Tecchou’s hands in his, of Tecchou’s warmth next to him.

Jouno jumped back into the argument, gripping his own hands together tightly in a self soothing gesture. His right side felt oddly cold.

Tokoyami sat down at the cafeteria table already inhabited by Shouji, Dark Shadow trailing after him like a little duckling. Sliding his plastic lunch tray onto the table with slight force, Tokoyami sighed. His back was hunched over in a tired manner and, if he weren’t a mutant, there would probably be bags under his eyes.

“The whole Dazai thing stressing you out?” Shouji asked softly. He didn’t look as physically tired as Tokoyami, but Tokoyami had always taken troubles harder than Shouji.

“More like the whole Nakajima thing,” Tokoyami said. “He’s just so… good. This morning, I saw a second year run into him, and he apologized.”

“I know. But, abusers can also be good manipulators. He might be a whole other person behind the mask of a nice kid,” Shouji said logically, though it was obvious he wasn’t completely sure. Before the Yokohamans had arrived, before they had really been introduced to Nakahara and Nakajima, it was easy to call Dazai and Nakajima abusive. When they had looked at the few facts given to them by Tokoyami’s relatives, abuse was the one thing that made sense in the narrative.

But now, they could clearly see how non aggressive Nakajima was, and how strong Nakahara was. That wasn’t to say someone strong couldn’t still be abused, but… it was hard to imagine Nakajima in that light, especially in comparison to Nakahara. Neither of them wanted to say it, but it was pretty clear that Nakahara could crush Nakajima in a fight. So, Nakajima abusing Nakahara wasn’t impossible, but certainly unlikely.

“Maybe we were wrong,” Tokoyami said with some amount of trepidation. “We had evidence that Dazai Osamu was abusive, and assumed that his protege must also, therefore, be abusive. But maybe only Dazai was the abusive one?”

“I suppose that’s possible,” Shouji said thoughtfully. He, like Tokoyami, had jumped to conclusions when it came to the situation with the Yokohamans. “Your relatives never really explained Nakajima’s reputation, other than that he was a detective back in their country.”

“Is it possible there’s just not much more to it?” Tokoyami wondered. “Dazai hurt Nakahara when they were younger, and then Dazai gets to leave the Port Mafia while Nakahara had to stay. Did Dazai really, you know, turn his personality around, like Nakahara said in his speech? It sounded crazy, but I think it might just be reality.”

“I guess. I mean, it’s just as likely as any other of these ideas we’ve come up with.” Shouji looked down at the table, his hair falling slightly over his eyes as he took a bite of food. “But that would kind of suck for Nakahara, wouldn’t it?”

“What would?” Tokoyami began eating his lunch, too, Dark Shadow settling down on his lap so he could take a quick nap. Immediately upon starting to eat, he felt himself relax slightly.

“If Dazai, who hurt him, got to be rescued and get the chance to be a good guy, but he, who was being abused, had to stay in the Port Mafia,” Shouji explained. “I know I’d think that was kind of unfair.”

“Yeah,” Tokoyami agreed. “Yeah, it would be pretty unfair.”

Their conversation drifted into silence, and Shouji began contemplating on what he knew of the three Yokohamans. When he had first walked into his classroom only a few days ago, he was shocked to see the three of them at all. After the tragedy of Okurimono, Shouji, and many others, had assumed that they would be going back to their country. But they didn’t. They went to class.

And whether they were good or not, whether they were abused or abusers or something separate, he admired them for that. Shouji admired them for being brave enough to walk into a foreign school in a foreign country with a foreign teacher, even after their homeland was affected by a terrorist attack source from the same country. The three of them were as brave as any soldier.

Shouji only knew them from what he had eavesdropped on in class, and from what they had said in their speeches, but he could tell that they were brave. Under Nakajima’s shy exterior and Tecchou’s blank face, there were skins of steel, and bones built to be broken over and over and still make it out the other end.

If it was him in their position? If he had to travel into Yokohama, to learn from people who hated and feared him in equal measure, if the future of others like him rested so heavily on his back that he couldn’t risk stepping even a toe out of line? Shouji was honest enough to admit that he might crack under that kind of pressure.

It amazed and terrified him to see that none of the Yokohamans seemed to be slipping at all, and they all were as attentive and productive as normal. Like he said. It was kind of impressive.

Ango smiled quietly to himself, driving the nondescript government issue car he had been given earlier that day away from his latest target. In the passenger seat sat a manilla folder, whose contents were probably worth more than Ango himself. Ango was one of the best, most talented spies and information gatherers in not only the Special Division for Unusual Powers, but in the whole of the Yokohaman government. And when faced against a whole new city of people and criminals with no knowledge whatsoever of his surprising cunning, Ango was seemingly all powerful.

The folder’s contents spoke truthfully of Ango’s skill, for there were few people in the world who could get the current location and even name of the mastermind behind Okurimono in just a few days.

He didn’t necessarily have permission from the Japanese government to be in Japan, or to even be investigating this case, but clearly, he should have been given such an allowance. He had made more headway in the case in less than a week than the Japanese police and hero system had made in years.

A name and a place, a base and an identity. Ango really was some kind of a genius, even if he was overshadowed by the likes of Ranpo Edogawa, Dazai Osamu, and the deceased Fyodor Dostoevsky. Because his secret wasn’t that he overly relied on his ability, and his secret wasn’t that he overly assumed the capabilities of his own brain. Ango’s secret to the success after success he had had since the start of his career in the Special Division was that he was quiet. He was noticeable, and thusly, untouchable.

(Even Dazai and Oda were fooled; even Mori was fooled; Ango himself felt that maybe, just maybe, he might have fooled himself, too.)

And unlike Ranpo and Dazai, he wasn’t too caring for his own f*cking good. The two other geniuses had weaknesses, had people that they loved and would do anything to protect. But when you loved nothing, when you stood for nothing, there was nothing else you could lose. Ango truly had nothing but his place within the Special Division. What more could he lose?

So that was how he had gotten the manilla folder. He had introduced himself to a large and random collection of Japanese villains he had found at the local bar of ill repute, and had placed himself into the center of a web of gossip spanning most of the closest cities, and their neighbors. That had been part one, and had taken from afternoon to night of his first day in the Outside.

Part two took the course of over a day, and it was the easiest step. Simply put? He waited. Ango held his ears to the shaking of his newly created web, and from the tremors gathered up as much evidence and hints as he could. Of course, the exact information he needed wasn’t just handed straight to him.

That was what led to part three. Part three was to verify the rumors that had drifted up to him. Using his ability and his newfound access to multiple minor villain hideouts, Ango worked to gather real evidence towards the gossip he had heard. This was the riskiest step, even more dangerous than walking into a bar filled with murderers and thieves and presenting himself as an ally. There were multiple instances where he thought he might just be found out, but in the end, he made it out with as much knowledge as he could.

Now, he was carrying reports and records of all he had discovered while in Japan. This was the last part to his plan, and, as long as Ango had executed the previous steps perfectly, it would be one of the safest. All he had to do was bring the file folder back to Yokohama- well, even the file folder was just extra paperwork, because in the end, all he needed to bring back was his own memories.

Driving carefully back to the border gate of Yokohama he had left out of, Ango was left to contemplate if pride truly was a sin. He had just planned and acted out the most important information bust against Yokohama’s newest terrorist threat, and he had done so with not a single fight nor even the reveal of his existence to his enemies. After such a victory on Ango’s part, was a little pride really that bad? Ango didn’t think so.

He hit a small dip in the road, the tha-thump of his tires going over the dip jolting him out of his self-congratulating reverie. He shook his head and focused on the road. After only a few minutes, Ango made a small noise of relief to himself. There were the Walls, the blessed guardians of his homeland, the gateway into safety and security.

He had no longer breathed such a sound and seen the faint outline of the closest Wall than an explosive detonated in the front of his car, the fire and the force of it tearing through the outer layer of the car and knocking the vehicle off the unmarked road by a great distance. Ango’s previously relaxed breathing was frozen in time as the explosion ripped through him along with the car, the loud boom of it reverberating in his mind and the bright light seemingly burning through his eyeballs.

Ango felt his head get slammed back into his headrest, before the car flipped upside down once in the air, and then landed on its side on the grassy ground. Ango felt many broken bones, and his mind was so shocked it didn’t have the capability to register or respond to anything happening around him.

He could feel the shattered glass of his window digging into his side, and the weight of his seatbelt chaining him down was one of the only other things grounding him to consciousness. Ango barely noticed the unresponsiveness of his legs, and the empty darkness painted like a mural over his eyes. Distantly, Ango knew that he was screaming. The aggressive wounds on his face, a mix of explosion wounds and cuts from flying debris, screamed at him in pain. He begged his body to just put him out of his misery.

Somehow, through the ringing that was still echoing through his ears, he thought he heard voices. Ango couldn’t see, and could barely think coherently, but his last thought before fully passing out was a hopeful belief that the people he thought he heard were Yokohaman border patrol. He didn’t know what he would do if they were Japanese.

Aizawa jumped the small gap from one rooftop to the next, the petty thief who had just robbed a gas station in front of him by nearly fifteen feet. The young man was panting hard with exertion- Aizawa barely felt tired at all. This was what he had been raised for, the chasing, the fighting, the adrenaline. Nezu was a sneaky bastard but, God, was Aizawa a lucky one.

Just as he was about to reach the robber, though, a voice through his earpiece broke his concentration. In an instant, Aizawa slowed down to a standstill to await whoever had patched into his earpiece to talk to him. He noticed with a sigh that the robber was making his escape, but didn’t feel it was particularly important to chase him down. For one, the man hadn’t stolen much, for another, Aizawa was mostly just chasing him as training, and a way to pass the time.

“This is Eraserhead, state your business,” he said after a few seconds, when it was clear that the other person wasn’t starting the conversation. Aizawa heard some frantic shuffling around of papers and whatnot, before a voice rang through to his ears.

“Yes, yes,” the voice on the other end said to someone on his side of the connection. “Eraser, this is Detective Tsukauchi, if you remember me from my work on the League of Villains case.”

Aizawa gave a small affirming grunt that he did remember the man. Tsukauchi had seemed respectable enough, from Aizawa’s point of view. He was a hard worker, not in it for the money or the fame, and he had been kind and understanding to his kids after the USJ. If he was a hero, he would have been one of the few good ones.

“There’s been some developments on the Okurimono incident.” Aizawa grinned to himself. Finally, they were making some progress. It had been an uphill battle, trying to figure out just why Pine Grove had gone into Yokohama and if maybe, just maybe, Pine Grove had had help.

“Firstly, it is our belief, supported by some amount of evidence, that the person behind Okurimono was the same person behind the USJ,” Tsukauchi said gravely. Aizawa’s grin faded. The same person who somehow orchestrated the tragedy of Okurimono had it in their head that they could also mess with his kids? Aizawa felt only protective, righteous anger. “And… Well, I don’t quite know how to say this. We have an illegal Yokohaman border jumper in custody. And we think he has information on the boogeyman of the underground.”

“What?!” Aizawa burst out. He had waited to speak previously out of respect for the detective, but now, his shock and pure panic overrode his sense of politeness. Yokohamans hardly ever jumped the border- for one, the majority of them had no reason too. For another reason, the border was one of the most paranoidly protected places in the entire country. The Walls were as tall as skyscrapers, the guards were allowed to use threats and even lethal force, and the first few miles on the Japanese side of the border were uninhabited and barren. “Why the hell would a Yokohaman leave?”

“Well, considering we found him on his way back to Yokohama, we don’t think he was planning to leave forever,” Tsukauchi said. Aizawa blinked in surprise. It was crazy enough to think of a Yokohaman managing to escape past their hellish Walls, but it was even crazier to try and imagine the same Yokohaman going back.

“And why do you think he had new information on the boogeyman…?” Aizawa asked, trying to slot his mind back into focus. The Yokohaman escaping and trying to reenter the city was wild, yes, but in the end, that wasn’t the most important part.

“There are a few things that have led us to that. I assume you remember the press release given by the Yokohaman government- the Yokohaman we found was the gifted agent who made the video,” Tsukauchi explained. “He was found in a car by a group of police officers by the border, and the car was discovered to have been part of a fleet of specially made cars that the Yokohaman government utilizes. And, according to some recently interrogated minor villains and lowlifes, he had been digging around in the underground for a couple of days.”

“Okay. So, a government agent, known to be gifted and clearly loyal to his country, escaped past the Walls and the patrol guards stationed there. He is found driving a modified government vehicle, and multiple sources place him as searching for information throughout various villain circles,” Aizawa summarized the situation, more for his own sake than Tsukauchi’s.

“Yes.”

“And you’re talking to me about it?” Aizawa said after a few seconds of silence. Tsukauchi sighed on the other side of the earpiece.

“Believe it or not, the HPSC put forth your name to take charge of this facet of the boogeyman’s case.” Aizawa didn’t answer, suddenly unsure of himself. “... In case that wasn’t clear enough, they want you to be in charge of the Yokohaman agent-”

“No, no. I got it,” Aizawa said, slightly snippy. “Did they even consider that I’m busy with other cases and other responsibilities?”

“Eraser, this is the HPSC we’re talking about. How much do you think they actually thought about what you wanted before signing your name up?”

Chapter 8: cause all that it takes is a little reinvention

Chapter Text

Ango woke up to a bright, glaring light. He blinked away the foggy dots in his eyes with a distinct air of confusion. His hands were held down in front of him with a pair of handcuffs and a short chain, cold table biting into his wrists underneath him. He didn’t react.

There was training one went through when you joined the Special Division. That was not to say that he had been trained for a situation like this, of course, but he was also intelligent enough to extrapolate from his memorized lists of protocol what he should do now. And Ango didn’t react.

This was what Ango was taught, this was how his trainers and handlers had made him usable. Like any strategic general, they used what Ango already had. They had turned an awkward, yet special civilian into their foremost spy and intelligence gatherer. He was calculating, he was cold, he was everything they required him to be from the get-go.

(Ango had already been just slightly off, had always been a little off. It was his genius, his mother had thought, it was his off putting personality, his father had sneered. It was the power that coursed through his very veins, Ango knew.)

After a few minutes of Ango staring blankly into the distance, a door behind him opened, and Ango heard a single set of footsteps shuffle into the room. The clack of dress shoes echoed through the empty room, and Ango’s stare morphed into a glare as the man who had just walked in sat calmly in the chair opposite to Ango.

“If you really think the Yokohaman government won’t come and burn this whole thing to the ground the moment they get my location, you’d be sorely mistaken,” Ango threatened the black-haired man. The man said nothing, but Ango got the impression that he was mentally rolling his eyes at him.

“If you really think that your government has any clue where you are, you’re crazier than we thought,” the man said, his lips quirked in a faint smirk. Ango’s fingers jittered with the urge to either curl up into fists or to give the man the middle finger, but with remarkable restraint, Ango kept still.

“Your government? I thought your accent sounded Japanese,” Ango said with a sneer. Internally, he felt his anxiety levels rise just slightly. No matter how tough he was playing things off, he knew that he wasn’t on the side of the law here. Him crossing the border illegally wasn’t just against Japan’s laws, which his diplomatic immunity could protect him from. Him crossing the border without any legal papers whatsoever was illegal under multiple Japanese-Yokohaman treaties, and as an ability user, leaving Yokohama without publicly disclosed reason was against the Ability Statutes, the highest law when it came to gifted citizens.

None of this would have been a problem if he could have just gotten in and out of Japan within a few days, but of course someone just had to blow him up! Ango felt his eye bags grow a shade darker at the thought of all of the paperwork.

“Wow!” The man gave a sarcastic clap. “Congratulations, you’ve figured it out. I’m secretly Japanese! Since you don’t seem to have figured it out yet, Outsider , we’re in f*cking Japan.”

Now Ango really did want to flip the man off. Outsider? f*cking Outsider? A Japanese man like him didn’t have the right to mock Yokohamans, just like he didn’t have the right to be turning an insult for ability users against him.

“Oh, we’re playing this game, demon?” The man’s amused features seemed to darken slightly. “Yeah, you like it when people turn your name calling against you, huh? It sure is funny to hear a fellow ability user turn his back on his own kind.”

“Spoken like a true Yokohaman.” The man tilted his head to take in Ango for a second time. “It’s always interested me, the way you Yokohaman quirked both preach about supporting each but still suck up to your sh*tty ass government. Why even work for them?”

Ah, Ango thought, the real interrogation had started. Did the Japanese man think he was subtle? Ha! He was anything but.

“Wouldn’t you like to know, Mr. No-Name Man. Like I’d ever tell anything to you,” Ango said. And there was his own counter-interrogation, his own digging for names and details and facts. The man coughed into his fist, but Ango thought it was likely him muffling a chuckle as he identified Ango’s own information seeking.

“It’s Eraserhead. Aizawa Shouta. Seeing as I’ve just given you the answer to your question, care to answer mine?” Aizawa said, telling Ango without actually telling him that he knew he was gathering information, too, and wasn’t against a little quid pro quo.

“Sure. I’m an ability user, and I’m a genius. Both parts of me know that I don’t have very many options, back home in Yokohama.” And Ango was long past being bitter about that. He was content, as he told himself constantly, because if he wasn’t, the government agents he worked with could smell his indecision and taste his resentment. If Ango dared to be so much as mildly displeased with his lot in life, he would be dead, simple as that. He was an asset, but if he ever, ever got upset, he was a threat.

(Any and all revolts among Yokohama’s gifted population were minor: all of the real troublemakers, the serious movers and shakers, anyone who could actually make a difference for their community, had already been dealt with. It goes without saying that they ‘dealt’ with Ango by placing him within the Special Division.)

“So you’re just happy to be a little lap dog?” Aizawa asked with some amount of scorn. Ango just shrugged. He was long past feeling ashamed for what he did. Ango wasn’t ashamed, because he would have killed himself long ago if he were. Aizawa, seeing that his taunt wasn’t nearly as effective as his other insults, changed his pace. “Does Yokohama have you jump the border much?”

Ango almost smiled at how seemingly casual Aizawa’s tone of voice was, when his question was anything but. He told Aizawa, “As far as you know? Nah.”

“And as far as your government knows?” Aizawa said, more serious than before. Ango, instead of immediately answering, inspected his nails with an indifferent expression. He lifted his hands up as far as they would go to really get a close up at the dirt caked under his nails.

“As far as my government admits,” Ango said, looking up to make cold eye contact with his interrogator. “This is the first time I’ve jumped the border, and the last.” He spoke with a fake tinge to his voice, as if he was talking merely as a mouthpiece for what he thought the government and the Special Division might say.

“I think we both know that’s not true.” They both knew that wasn’t true, but what could Ango do about it? If he confessed to previously crossing the border illegally, he’d be killed for treason. If he told Aizawa nothing, he’d be killed for being a Yokohaman in Japan. Either way, he was f*cked, unless he found some other way to dig himself out of this hole.

“Why is Yokohama investigating the boogeyman of the underground?” Aizawa asked. Ango didn’t say anything. He was willing to humor the man before, but he had given away far too much already. The first rule of being trapped in a hole was to stop digging, even if what you were digging for was vital information. There was no ladder, no ally to pull him out if he got too deep.

“Why were you sent to investigate Japan?” Aizawa tried to broaden his question. Ango kept his lips pressed tightly together, his eyes focused on the empty space behind Aizawa. In the edges of his eyesight, Ango saw the way Aizawa’s body tensed up in anger, the way his hands curled into threatening fists at his sides.

“Why were you in Japan?!” Suddenly, it was like the peaceable dam that had been holding strong between the two of them broke. Aizawa slammed his fists onto the metal table, looking like he didn’t feel the red marks that were left on his skin at all. Ango pulled himself back, shutting his eyes with a forced, unnaturally calm demeanor. If he was about to be hit, if he was about to be tortured, he didn’t want to see it happen. It may have been against his training to show such weakness, but he couldn’t bear to see his injured body be brutalized any more.

“Why?” Aizawa asked, the barest hint of fear in his words. Ango slowly opened his eyes to stare without emotion at the other man.

“Why?” Ango repeated. His frosty stare stabbed into Aizawa, before he slumped down in the metal chair he was chained to. He looked back down at his hands, at the dirt and faint traces of blood in the crevices of his palm. He took a shallow breath. “Because Japan was in Yokohama first.”

He looked up at Aizawa, at the fear in his eyes that were reflected in Ango’s own. Speaking honestly, Ango told Aizawa with a kind of bitterness he didn’t normally allow himself, “I’m sorry. That doesn’t mean they are.”

“A favor?” Chuuya said in disbelief. “You’ll let us go and bust a Yokohaman out of Japanese jail, and all you want in return is a favor?”

“Yep!” Nezu said, way too cheerfully in Chuuya’s opinion. Chuuya blinked, off put by how non affected the principal seemed. He had come to the rat because of Tecchou. Tecchou had received orders, all the way back from Yokohama, that he needed to deal with one of their operatives and the evidence pertaining to their activities in Japan. And, at first, Chuuya had thought that was irrelevant.

Tecchou would be gone for a few hours, and Chuuya and Atsushi would spend the day away from the classes they normally sat through to avoid the suspicion of them missing a bodyguard. Originally, that was why Chuuya had first thought to come visit Nezu- to warn him that they wouldn’t be attending class.

But Chuuya, who was still regretting his own stupidity, had asked Tecchou just who, exactly, he was disposing of. And of course, it was Ango Sakaguchi, the… Well, Chuuya was still trying to figure out who Ango really was to him, to Dazai, to the Mafia, to the rest of Yokohama. That’s the thing with traitors. You can never really know if they're on your side ever again.

Ango, though, had one trait that many other people who had betrayed Chuuya previously had not. He was a Yokohaman hero. Ango was an annoying bastard, sure, and Chuuya was fairly sure that he was owed a few good punches from many people, but he had also saved millions of Yokohaman citizens before. And, he was an ability user. He had the potential, and the government training and backing, to save millions more. Probably more relevant to Chuuya than his stance with the government as an ability user was simply his position as an ability user. Ability users, no matter the affiliation or bitchy personality, were owed a small amount of loyalty from their fellow gifted citizens.

(That was how ability users stayed safe. That was how they stayed in Yokohama. If every ability user had warned each other the second a hint of a Purge ever occurred, how many could have been saved? If ability users of the past worked with each other like ability users did know, how much larger could their community have had the opportunity to grow?)

In the end, though, Chuuya didn’t want to bust Ango out of jail because he secretly cared for the man, or as some kind of suck up to the government, or even out of some patriotic Yokohaman pride. Chuuya wanted to deal with Ango, because if he didn’t help Tecchou, the only way Ango could be ‘dealt with’ was through death. The only way the Japanese authorities who captured him could be ‘dealt with’ was death. And, maybe Chuuya was growing soft or weak, but he had come to care, just a little, for Tecchou and Atsushi. Tecchou, too, might have been growing soft, because at the thought of killing a fellow gifted Yokohaman, both of his companions could see bile rise in his throat. Tecchou didn’t want to kill anyone else if he didn’t have to, and Chuuya was trying his hardest to help him.

“I…” Chuuya said hesitantly. With his experiences on the street and in the Mafia, he was probably an expert on all the ways giving out favors could go very wrong, very quickly. But, seeing as he was about to break the law in a foreign country he was staying in on a peace mission, Chuuya thought it best to have some kind of Japanese support. “I guess I agree. If you cover up this jailbreak and our involvement in it, I owe you a favor.”

“And-” Nezu cut in. “No killing. I have connections to some of the officers and underground heroes at that holding site.”

Chuuya nodded in agreement, mostly relieved it was such a simple request and not some complicated, twisted order, like Mori might have given him in this instance. The entire situation reminded Chuuya of Mori. The asking for a favor, the agreement to wipe away Chuuya’s crimes, the silent acknowledgement of that staggered imbalance in the Chuuya’s rank and theirs.

He forced himself to stop thinking about Mori, because Nezu was different. He was kinder, for one. He never hit Chuuya, nor did Nezu ever threaten him. He never touched Chuuya without consent, never joked about all the ways he could hurt him, never forced him to use Corruption. Nezu sure wasn’t perfect, but he didn’t hurt Chuuya like Mori did. He didn’t control Chuuya like Mori did.

(Chuuya refused to so much as consider that Nezu could be like Mori. Even if everything the principal did reminded him in some way of Chuuya’s disgusting boss, the two couldn’t be anything alike. Chuuya was an unlucky man, but he wasn’t that unlucky. Right?)

“We should be able to handle the break out without blood on our hands. We are all fairly well trained,” Chuuya said. He felt like he had just made a deal with a devil. When they broke Ango free, Chuuya’s involvement would be covered up, and Odasaku’s School would be safe. But what did he just give away to get there? He didn’t know, and he was terrified.

Despite his best efforts, flashbacks of all Mori had done to him, all Mori had made him do in the name of a deal, came to his mind. He shook his hands with Nezu, and if the rat really could smell fear, he didn’t say anything about it.

Even if he walked out of Nezu’s office feeling slightly numb, Chuuya had to remember that this was all for Tecchou. He was saving his ally, saving his friend from the guilt of innocent murder. He was saving himself from the guilt of seeing another friend ruined by something they had been forced to do.

Aizawa didn't mean to seem cruel. After witnessing the way the Yokohaman border jumper, the same man who had threatened the whole of Japan with a gun on live television, flinched back and shut his eyes tight in horrifying complacency, the last thing he wanted to seem like was aggressive. But he had a job to do, just like Ango had a mission to complete, just like the HPSC had a Yokohaman trial to win. Aizawa was pretty sure that was why Ango was being held in custody- border jumpers, from either side, were a pretty open and shut problem, most of the time. But if they trumped up Ango's charges to the same level as the heroes who had destroyed Okurimono, they might be able to fight for a prisoner exchange. Of course, from what Ango had hinted at, Aizawa was also pretty sure that the Yokohaman government could give less than two sh*ts about Ango, or even Okurimono. If they wanted a court battle, they would get a court battle.

Aizawa slumped tiredly in one of the ancient armchairs that the base he was at seemed to have in spades, too exhausted to take even another sip of his scalding hot coffee. While he hadn’t reverted to physical means of interrogation just yet, the psychological manipulation he was utilizing was just as straining for Aizawa as it was for Ango.

Along with it simply being tiring to keep on thinking of ways to trip the other man up, the guilt Aizawa felt when using such underhanded tactics didn’t feel quite worth it. Ango was guilty of having crossed the border illegally, but that wasn’t his crime, not really. His crime was being a quirked Yokohaman, and his crime was working for his government. And Aizawa was guilty of all the same things as him, of knowing too much about Yokohama and secretly working to learn more.

So, Aizawa was ashamed for participating in this barely legal interrogation, but he refused to let himself regret it. He sympathized with Ango’s plight, truly, he did, but he couldn’t afford to help him. Because this case was handed to him by the HPSC itself, if he refused to interrogate Ango, he could lose his license, his job at UA, his class, his entire life. He had signed up for this, had given himself away to the Commission the day he had won the sports festival all those years ago, but that didn’t make it any easier.

He took a sip of his coffee, biting back a sound as it burnt his tongue. He shuffled around the papers and folders on the table in front of him, his eyes glancing over the tiny words without actually reading them.

(Just because he was assigned to the Ango Sakaguchi case didn’t mean he wouldn’t take his sweet time handling it.)

Aizawa stood up with a sigh, but as he started to take a step forward, a loud crash echoed from the other side of the base. Aizawa realized with a start that the only thing on that side of the base was Ango’s interrogation room. After a few seconds of frozen shock, Aizawa bolted down the hallway, unwrapping his capture weapon to hold it tightly in his arms.

Sliding around the corner, a violent slamming noise reached his ears. He reached the room Ango had been held in- well, cell was more like it- and as he did so, a gunshot and a scream came from past the closed door of the room. Bursting through the door, quirk ready to activate in an instant and capture weapon clutched like it was his life line, Aizawa was able to take in the scene in front of him. And, he was immediately put off and confused.

Because standing there, his back facing Aizawa and his body holding that strange red glow that could never belong to any other man, was Nakahara Chuuya. And at the other side of the room was Tecchou, battling a quirked underground hero with his sword skillfully, while Atsushi held a gun in his hands with some amount of fear, clearly having been the one to fire the shot just seconds before. On the ground, another underground hero lay writhing in pain, the bullet having gone clean through his lower left leg. A third hero was kneeling down beside them, forming a makeshift tourniquet out of their costume’s jacket.

“What the hell is happening here? Nakahara? Atsushi? Tecchou?” Aizawa said, still holding his capture weapon, but waiting to activate his quirk just yet. Chuuya took a step away from the door and turned to him, revealing the unconscious form of Ango draped unnaturally over the table.

“Just a routine little mission,” Chuuya said breezily. Fakely. AIzawa felt uncomfortable with just how plastic Chuuya’s expression looked. He had known the Yokohaman man for days, and yet he had never seen him act anything like this before. “Your boss sanctioned this, you know.”

“Nezu?” Aizawa asked confusedly. Why would Nezu, of all people, give a sh*t? Was it something about Ango? Likely not, if it was about Ango himself, he simply would have ordered Aizawa to do something. So… Chuuya himself must have gone to Nezu to get his blessing, so to speak, for this breakout. “I thought you would be smarter, than to go around making deals with rats.”

“I thought you would be smarter, Aizawa, then to fight and to work for such morons,” Chuuya sneered, and, wow. Aizawa had thought he and Chuuya were at least on professional terms. But something about Ango’s capture, something about that surprise at Aizawa being there himself, struck Aizawa as the root of the problem. Chuuya, for whatever reason, was upset that Aizawa had been the one interrogating Ango. And yet, Aizawa thought he might just understand.

He had agreed to teach Chuuya. He had agreed to help Chuuya. And imprisoning someone he likely knew, someone he may have even fought together with, was like a betrayal in his eyes. Aizawa’s involvement in Ango’s case was out of his control before, but now, with Chuuya and Atsushi and Tecchou, and those bitter, betrayed looks, Aizawa saw he had a way out. And god damnit was he going to take it.

“Well,” Aizawa said, slowly letting go of his capture weapon. He made eye contact with one of his fellow underground heroes, willing them to go along with what Aizawa was saying. “I guess the prisoner must have broken his own way out. We never did find out his official quirk. Those suppressing cuffs must have been defective.”

“Huh,” said the hero who had been fighting Tecchou, the light glowing around her hands fading back to normal. “You know, I think I did remember the prisoner hinting at having a pretty strong quirk. And I think I’d be able to tell if he had been lying- I was trained by the UA principal himself, after all.”

The hero who had been kneeling beside their injured comrade nodded cautiously. Aizawa didn’t recognize them as someone who Nezu had helped train, but he likely knew much about the rat from others in the underground hero network. Nezu had his grimy paws in many underground heroes in Japan.

“Yeah. The prisoner escaped all on his own, and shot at us with his gun from evidence lock up. Our quirks aren’t very strong offensively,” the kneeling hero said. He looked unsure, nowhere near as confident as the other two underground heroes, but that was okay. If he was a fast learner, like most underground heroes were, he’d pick up their cover up story quickly.

“And no, we didn’t see any other Yokohamans here at all,” Aizawa said, widening his eyes to form a look of unsuspecting innocence. It looked almost comical for a man with his personality. “Not a single other Yokohaman, no siree.”

“I got the hint, man,” Chuuya grumbled, but the small bounce in his step as he walked backwards with Ango floating beside him showed Aizawa that the man was pleased that he had agreed to help him out. “You won’t see hide nor hair of our buddy Ango again, promise.”

“Let’s hope not,” Aizawa agreed.

Ranpo smiled sharply, lowering down onto the cold floor of the Agency. Kenji and Kyoka were already sitting there, and Yosano and Kunikida were finishing up their own projects at their desks. On the wall in front of the small semicircle they had formed was a bulletin board, with Dazai taking a quick nap on the plastic chair next to it. Yosano and Kunikida dragged their chairs over to esit behind the three detectives on the floor. Ranpo noted, out of the corner of his eye, that the president had exited his office, and was standing quietly at the back of the room.

They did have a meeting room, but it was impersonal, uncaring. For sensitive topics like this one, topics involving the very livelihood of one of their own, the members of the Armed Detective Agency were more comfortable in their main office room.

Once all of them had gotten settled in front of the bulletin board, Ranpo let out a loud whistle, loudly telling Dazai, “Wake up, sleepyhead! We have work to do!”

Dazai startled awake, fumbling with the closed computer that had been resting on his lap. He blinked his eyes drowsily, looking much like a startled cat, and Kenji giggled happily.

“Right,” Dazai mumbled, then cleared his throat. “As far as I know, the situation at UA High School has remained stagnant since our last discussion of it. I still maintain that until we can locate the traitors within the school, it is too risky to send out any more people.”

“Dazai, do you think maybe it’s time to acknowledge the elephant in the room?” Kunikida said seriously. Dazai frowned, looking disappointedly at Kunikida.

“What elephant?” Dazai lied, eyes widening in fake confusion.

“The fact that the Okurimono trial is tomorrow,” Yosano said, her normally relaxed frame slightly tense with stress. “And everyone knows sh*t is gonna go down.”

“See, I don't think I agree with you there,” Dazai said. His eyes were emptier, now, and he was as still as a doll. This was his defense, one of his last walls of protection.

(You don't exist, a voice in his head that sounded a bit too much like Mori whispered. You are a vessel of someone else’s use. Be silent, be still, have a purpose: fear.)

“I don't think I agree with you,” Dazai repeated, tilting his head creepily. “I think that Yokohama is a lot more prepared than you're making it out to be, and Japan is a lot more indifferent than you say it is.”

And this was a lie, one of Dazai’s thousands. That the heroes on trial for the massacre of Okurimono would die without protest, that Japan wouldn't bring about another war the moment the death penalty was given. It was wishful thinking on Dazai's part. He had so much future to fear for, to fret about, and here was another giant problem, another huge anxiety inducer. It was terribly naive of him, to think that it could end peacefully.

The rest of the Agency recognized this fear within Dazai, and treated him with especially careful concern, and sorrow. The Agency’s office went silent, as they let Dazai stew in his own denial, all of them too empathetic of his plight to break his forced ignorance. Well, it wasn’t ignorance.

Dazai knew that the heroes would die, and that a war might even begin to start. But, just one normal night. One day without a fight, without a threat, without a war to win. That’s all Dazai wanted.

(That’s all he wanted, Dazai swore! He pleaded! He got on his knees and begged! A simple time, a gentle daybreak! Living was violent but let he himself be peaceful for once in his life.)

Chapter 9: time eats all his children in the end

Chapter Text

A Wall was a beautiful, terrible thing. It was war and it was safety and it was both a hand over your throat and a hug around your waist. Yokohama had not yet reached its three hundredth birthday, and unlike Japan and most other countries, its culture was still fledgling, only a chimera. It was a child of Japan’s culture, with the barest beginnings of its own.

The Walls were one of the few examples of Yokohaman culture. See, conceptually, the Walls weren’t special, nor unique, just… reused from other people’s ideas, like most of Yokohama was. They shouldn’t have been what they were: a symbol. The Walls didn’t just represent the government or the military of Yokohama, they represented the people.

In some ways, the Walls were the people. Each one, designed and built and unveiled by and for Yokohama. Each one graffitied, each one slowly added to or subtracted from, by the Yokohaman populace.

There was no exact count of how many Walls there were. Did you count based on which were physically connected? Which were built at the same time? Which were ordered by the same prime minister, or built by the same building crew? How could you count such an abstract thing as the Yokohaman Walls, the pride of the small country?

Each Wall held meaning, held significance, held history. And each Wall held a name, like how the Wall that had fallen over Okurimono was named the Peace’s Hands Wall.

Every Prime Minister of Yokohama gave to the small country the gift of a Wall. Sometimes, to commemorate victories or to give respect to crushing blows, members of cabinet could also commission the construction of a Wall. This added up to their being a new Wall built at least once a year.

Native Yokohamans could tell easily which Walls were built by Prime Ministers, which Walls were built as memorials, which Walls were built to serve genuine protection to the country. They followed a few easy steps to identifying which of the previous categories a Wall fell into.

Firstly: were there soldiers patrolling? Memorial Walls did not typically have soldiers, and if they did, they were few in number. If large numbers of soldiers or police officers could be seen, it was either a Prime Minister’s Wall or a Guard Wall.

The next check was the size of a wall. A Guard Wall was a sturdy, brutishly large thing. They weren’t horribly tall, but that was made up for with width and its length. A Prime Minister’s Wall was usually taller, and, to not beat around the bush, flimsier. They were symbolic more than anything. And a Memorial Wall could vary in size, but was also usually on the thinner size.

The last, most foolproof check, was also the least subjective for a citizen to determine. When Yokohaman children are little, and haven’t seen much of the Walls, this was how they first learned to determine what kind of Wall it was. Where were the guns pointing?

And that sounds silly until it’s been explained, at which point it just becomes sad. The Memorial Walls’s guards, if they had one, did not patrol with guns in hand. They were in holsters, or simply nonexistent. And the soldiers of a Guard Wall patrolled with their guns facing the Outside, always ready to protect, to kill, to give warning in the case of an invasion.

The only Walls with guns pointed towards Yokohama itself were the Walls made by Prime Ministers. This could stand repeating. The only Walls with guns pointed towards the people of Yokohama were Walls created and funded by the one person who was supposed to protect the people of Yokohama.

This wasn’t ironic. This was true to form. Because the Walls were formed for two reasons: to keep Outsiders out. To prevent ability users from crossing. During the Second Purge, when the first Wall was formed, ability users were being pushed out in droves. At that point in Yokohaman history, there were only Guard Walls. The only soldiers faced the Outside.

But not long after, after the end of the Yokohaman revolution, there was the Final Purge. The Final Purge was synonymous with the invention of the Ability Statutes. And suddenly, the Walls held a dual use, both for defending from Outsiders and as one of many methods of control used over Yokohama’s ability users.

How could a soldier, typically with average amounts of training and with no screening for inner morality, tell if a Yokohaman trying to cross the Walls into the Outside know if that jumper was an ability user or not? They couldn’t. Even if they could, they wouldn’t.

Because any Yokohaman could tell you that even if the Walls facing inwards were intended to be used against ability users, they had evolved to be a threat to everyone.

Yokohama had begun as a country that sought to eradicate ability users. When it couldn’t do that, it sought complete control over ability users. And when it got too greedy, too ambitious to settle for complete control over just ability users, it had started reaching its tendrils into the lives of everyday people.

Compared to Japan, and to the rest of most of the world, Yokohama was actually behind in the puppeteering of one’s citizens. That didn’t change the fact that two hundred years ago, decades after the revolution but before this controlling nature of the Yokohaman government had begun, ungifted Yokohama citizens were allowed to leave the country. They were allowed to go on vacations, to go on business trips, to go to foreign schools. Two hundred years after the end of the war, the common people of Yokohama were as controlled as the gifted people of Yokohama were during the Final Purge.

Tecchou stood quietly. Ango lay, unconscious, in the medical bed next to him. Atsushi was sitting in the only chair, and Chuuya was off on the other side of the room, talking about Ango’s treatment plan with the UA nurse, Recovery Girl. Though he hadn’t really shown it, Ango was suffering through multiple bruised ribs and a potential brain injury, along with surface level burns on some of his skin. Of course, Ango was also trained by the Yokohaman government, just like Tecchou, and he knew better than to show pain at such minor injuries.

(Personally, Tecchou felt a familiar guilt rise up in himself at how minor, how unimportant Ango’s injuries seemed to him. The man was blown up by an active land mine, and he was lucky to have been in a government issued car and not a commercial one, but he still could have died that day. Tecchou shouldn’t be dismissive, he should be sympathetic. But he… wasn’t.)

As Teccho stood, ruminating in his thoughts, a knock came from the closed door. A cautious head peeked its way in, before the rest of the stranger’s body followed. Once Tecchou got a good look at the student’s face, he realized that it was Yaoyorozu, with a tired look to her face.

Immediately, Recovery Girl began tending to Yaoyorozu, having the young student sit down on one of the medical cots, a few beds away from Ango’s. Once Recovery Girl had hobbled away into her office, Tecchou gave a small wave to the girl.

“Funny seeing you here,” she said weakly, sounding like she wanted to laugh but couldn’t muster up the energy.

“What are you in for, Yaoyorozu?” Chuuya asked casually, pulling a chair from a different bedside so that he could sit next to Ango on the opposite side of Atsushi, turning to face Yaoyorozu.

“Ah, Momo is fine, that’s what everyone calls me. And just quirk exhaustion,” she said while leaning back to rest on her pillow. Then, she looked back at the four Yokohamans, squinting at the limp form of Ango on the bed. “Is that the agent who released the response to Okurimono?”

“Yep. Momo, meet Ango Sakaguchi, agent of Yokohama’s very own Special Division for Unusual Powers,” Chuuya introduced. Tecchou noted with a detached sort of humor the hint of disgust lingering in Chuuya’s voice.

“Are you close, or…?” Momo asked, picking up on the distaste in Chuuya’s voice. Chuuya snorted, and shook his head. Momo smiled slightly at the man’s exaggerated hatred of Ango.

“If I could, I’d punch him in the face, repeatedly, every time I so much as saw him,” Chuuya admitted without any shame. He shrugged like that was just a fact of life. “But his face is kind of valuable to Yokohaman politics, and I do kind of sometimes appreciate him for all the work he does. Still really want to just beat him up, though.”

Momo nodded. Unlike many people in the world, she could read through Chuuya’s subtext. Ango annoyed Chuuya on a personal level, but objectively, he was a good person. Tecchou found himself slightly impressed that Momo could understand Chuuya without even really knowing him, and also amused at how easy a relative stranger could see through Chuuya’s aggressive facade. Not to say that Momo saw through all of Chuuya’s different masks- but she had gotten past the one on the very surface level, and that was further than many other people ever got.

“What kind of work does the Special Division actually do? I mean, I would assume something to do with the Ability Statutes, but as I understand it, assumptions are… dangerous, when it comes to Yokohama,” Momo asked with a curious tone. Like the last time she had talked with them, it was clear that she wasn’t fishing for information, and was simply trying to learn more about Yokohama. Tecchou thought it was almost kind of her, to not just take for granted that everything in Yokohama was the exact same as in Japan, just because they had once been one and the same.

“Honestly, you’ve nailed it in one,” Chuuya said. “These days, the Special Division is just a way for ability users to get jobs legally. But in gifted circles, it’s kind of disgraceful? Because ability users in the Special Division are essentially policing the rest of the country’s ability users. Essentially, I guess, the Special Division is ability users enforcing the Ability Statutes.”

“Cool,” Momo said. “Well, not cool, but, uh, interesting. I don’t really know much about Yokohama.”

“But you’re willing to learn,” Atsushi said, inserting himself into the conversation. His head was lowered down, staring with uncertainty and even fear at Ango’s charred body, at the bandaged wounds on his legs and arms. The weretiger had seen worse, had done worse, but this was different to him. “I bet the Outsider who placed that mine wasn’t willing to learn, wasn’t willing to just talk to us. Instead, they built an incendiary device to try and hurt anyone who came close to us.”

Momo stayed silent, her eyes, like Atsushi’s, lingering on Ango’s unconscious form. Tecchou stood quietly and stared at the plaster wall on the other side of the room, feeling an uncomfortable shame nestle within the folds of his uniform. It wasn’t just the Japanese side of the border that had trouble with landmines. He would know, better than either Atsushi or Chuuya, who had stayed within the boundaries of the main city for all of their lives. But Hunting Dogs? They took jobs everywhere.

He had seen firsthand the damage real landmines, military grade landmines, could do to a person, and it was far worse than someone’s homemade garage concoction. Tecchou had seen firsthand the damage military landmines could cause, and what he didn’t like to think about, what he didn’t like to remember, was that he had seen firsthand the planting of those bombs.

Walls did more than just protect. They contained. And a Hunting Dog, a servant of the city, did more than just hunt. They kept their city’s secrets.

Jouno sharpened his sword apprehensively. Next to him, Tachihara was also sharpening his sword, but unlike Jouno, he had already sharpened his sword at least three times. Teruko walked, well, paced, around the small waiting room, her professionally braided hair flicking back and forth with her sharp and speedy turns.

They were reaching the end of probably the most important trial of the past decade, maybe even the last century. It was the trial of the four pro heroes, one fully trained hero and three sidekicks, who had entered and destroyed Okurimono. Nearly a week ago, the Hunting Dogs had hunted down and apprehended the five Japanese invaders, and promptly killed the villain. Now, they were awaiting the verdict of the trial’s jury. If the heroes were found innocent? The Hunting Dogs would perform a ceremonial breaking of their handcuffs, their newly sharpened swords cutting through the cheap metal with ease.

And if the heroes were found guilty, they would be executed. Teruko, Tachihara, and Jouno would stand over the criminals, swords raised in cold vengeance, and they would decapitate them in sync, bloody swords held symmetrically. Undoubtedly, the leader of the four of them, the most experienced hero who had led them in their battle, would be killed last. That hero would be saved for last, would have the honor of seeing the sidekicks he had dragged into Okurimono with him killed before him. They couldn’t torture the convicted on live television, as this court case would certainly be broadcasted live, but the victims of Okurimono deserved to see their killers hurt, even if it was the only kind of pain the Hunting Dogs could offer to them.

Jouno set down his whet stone, leaning back on his chair with his eyes closed tightly. The whole executing ability users part of being in the Hunting Dogs was often a difficult part of the job. Sometimes, they had to kill people for laws they didn’t personally agree with. But killing the Japanese invaders? This was a mission that Jouno would take on without remorse, without shame, even if the thought of more blood on his hands made him feel vaguely grossed out.

Opening his eyes, Jouno found his eyes searching the room for a man who wasn’t there. For days, every time Jouno opened his eyes, he had felt the gaping wound of someone who was supposed to be there not being there. And… he did feel somewhat guilty, for wishing his beloved was here with him at the most politically charged and revenge motivated trial that Jouno’s generation of Hunting Dogs had ever performed for, but he didn’t want anything more than to have Tecchou by his side as they either killed or freed the Japanese invaders.

Barely an hour later, a nondescript woman entered the room, and gestured for them to follow before quickly leading them out. The three Hunting Dogs had shared a loaded look between each other, before following the court official out of their waiting room. They had known the deliberation of the jury would be quick, but none of them had thought it would be that quick. As soon as they entered the courtroom, they would know.

The court official led them into the courtroom, her uniform heels clicking on the marble floors with a steady, yet discomforting rhythm. A police officer, the armband around his right arm signifying him as gifted, opened the door for them to walk through. Jouno noted with displeasure the look of slight scorn the woman gave to the police officer, but said nothing. They entered the room to face a cacophony of noise, a mix of cheers and applause from the clearly Yokohaman sections of the audience, and shouts of outrage from the tiny Japanese sector.

Already kneeling on the cold marble in front of the judge’s podium were the four heroes, tear streaks down each of their faces. Jouno knew what the jury’s verdict was. As they walked forward the next few paces to the kneeling Outsiders, he felt the weight of his sword at his side with such clarity, like ice traveling down his back.

The three of them walked in perfect synchronicity, their military boots landing consistently, echoing like the steps of grim reapers. They landed in a standstill in the space behind the four heroes, the blinking lights of various news stations' cameras lighting up the audience from the back of the room. Jouno resisted the urge to scowl.

The judge stood from his seat, his old, rattling voice reverberating with finality throughout the courtroom. The heroes were guilty, not that Jouno was extremely surprised, of multiple counts of murder, as the main charge against them. With other charges of property damage, manslaughter, and disruption of the peace, in another country, they’d be looking at a life imprisonment. Or, realistically, extradition to their home country.

But this was Yokohama, where their laws were strict, and their laws against ability users were somehow even stricter. An eye for an eye, a life for a life, was practically the motto of the Yokohaman justice system. And the heroes had caused enough deaths to be killed multiple times over.

Once the judge had finished declaring the heroes’ fate, it was time for them to shine. The previously screaming room went deathly silent as Jouno and his two fellow Hunting Dogs lifted their swords, the arms flaunting perfect form.

Jouno shut his eyes as his sword landed with a sickening snap, the characteristic spewing blood of a decapitation covering his uniform pants. Some had probably also reached his uniform jacket, he thought with annoyance. He opened his eyes, wiping away the faint traces of blood around his face as he took a step away from the bodies. Teruko walked to the slumped back of the last Outsider still alive, raising her sword for a second swing.

Finally, there were four bodies limp on the ground, and three Hunting Dogs standing in bloodsoaked glory behind them. Jouno sheathed his sword at the prompting of Teruko, Tachihara doing the same, and fell into a parade rest with the others. The cameras at the back of the courtroom were going wild. Almost hidden within the crowd, the official who had led them in smiled.

Atsushi’s tail anxiously flicked back and forth. They had just received news of the Okurimono trial. Guilty. Guilty, and dead. Out of pure fear, he had turned into tiger form, and had been in that form for the past few hours. Now, he was even in class as a tiger. Atsushi just couldn’t rid himself of that haunting, threatening feeling that something was going wrong, that the consequences of Okurimono were still preparing to rear their ugly head.

Curled up at Chuuya’s feet like a common house cat, Tecchou standing like a marble statue behind them as always, Atsushi tried to will away the anxiety that felt bone deep. He tried to convince himself to turn back to human. But, his transformations didn’t work like that. They occurred under instinct, emotion, stress.

And, like a real tiger, he could smell a storm on the horizon, could see the darkening clouds of hellfire where a normal human couldn’t. Atsushi already knew that something bad would happen, was happening at that very moment. But he couldn’t say exactly what.

Chuuya was just as tense as Atsushi, as the red lining his nails and in the very edges of his pupils exemplified this, but he had much more practice at pretending everything was normal than Atsushi. And Tecchou, the poor man, was suspended in that basin of concern called uncertainty. His husband, his unit, were the executioners. Were they okay? If someone went after them for revenge, could they survive without him to fight, too?

(If they died. If they were hurt. How long would it take for him to know? Would he find out after Jouno’s sword was shipped to him, wrapped impersonally with the Yokohaman flag? Would he find out on a tv screen, the sickly artificial light reflecting his loved ones’ death upon the devastation of his face?)

Aizawa and his class could tell something was off with the three of them. They were distracted, jumpy, needlessly nervous. But the student population, and even some of the staff, were getting scared, too. Because a world where pro heroes could be decapitated, just like that? A country where doing your job was illegal, was punishable by death. How could they just accept that?

In the discontented crowds of UA, the three Yokohamans traversed carefully and quickly. And asleep, in the UA medical bay, Ango was the vulnerable, eye catching enemy. At the end of the school day, when Chuuya, Atsushi, and Tecchou hurried back to Ango’s side, they had to shoo away multiple dawdling students, who had gotten ‘sick’ or ‘injured’, just to get a glance at Ango. Atsushi wondered briefly if it was Momo who had spread the news about Ango’s arrival, but quickly dispelled the thought.

Laying down morosely on the ground next to Ango’s bed, the few students who were sitting, actually injured, in beds were clearly raring to eavesdrop. Atsushi ignored them as Chuuya took the seat next to him, and Tecchou leaned on the wall behind them all.

Somehow, Atsushi came to think of the Armed Detective Agency back home. He had to bite back the whine in the back of his throat that formed as he thought of how much he missed them. How much he was worried for them. He shouldn’t be, protecting Yokohama was their job, but the protective side of him, the purely human one, practically begged him to go back and be with his family. Tigers were solitary creatures, but even in this form, Atsushi retained that human instinct to guard, to stand by his people. It was in moments like these that Atsushi really understood the Walls, understood why they were initially built. To protect was to love and to love, of any kind, was to be human, even if Atsushi sometimes fretted that he wasn’t one.

Atsushi turned over to lay on his other side, his blue vest itching uncomfortably around the edges. He fought the urge to scratch at his body with his back paws, the embarrassment at acting so animal-like too much for him.

“Atsushi,” Chuuya murmured faintly. Atsushi glanced up at Chuuya, who looked like he hadn’t said anything at all. “We’re being watched. Possible hostile.”

At those words, Atsushi turned away from Chuuya, facing the ground so no one could see the terrified, desperate look in his eyes. Chuuya was an intelligent, observant man- he could spot out potential threats better than most anyone Atsushi knew, except for maybe Ranpo or Dazai.

“My phone’s in my bag. Give it to Tecchou,” Chuuya ordered. His mouth barely moved, only opening slightly at the edges. Atsushi silently dragged Chuuya’s bag, which had been sitting slumped against the feet of his chair, towards himself, and began rifling through the belongings with his nose. He quickly found Chuuya’s phone, and, holding it with care in his mouth, he moved to place it at Tecchou’s feet.

Tecchou, who had been watching the whole exchange, knocked over the box of gauze on Ango’s bedside table with fake clumsiness, pretending to have been covering up a sneeze. He slowly crouched on the ground, quickly swiping open Chuuya’s phone while acting like he was trying to find the box of gauze from underneath Ango’s bed.

“Go to emergency functions. We need-” Chuuya was cut off by the sound of crashing metal, as a large wall was brought down in front of the only door into the infirmary. Outside of the room, the faint sounds of an alarm screaming and people running could be heard. Out of the few students who had been in the medical bay, one of them stood up, slightly quivering. In the kid’s hands-

In the kid’s hands, there was a gun. And it wasn’t pointed at one of them, no, they would all be able to block it, or survive it. It was pointed many beds away from the four of them, at a group of two of Aizawa’s students.

“If you try and fight,” the traitor, who Atsushi was now realizing was another one of Aizawa’s kids, said with a wobbling voice. His eyes held close to bursting tears. “If you try and fight, I will shoot my classmates dead. If you so much as move, I will shoot my classmates dead.”

“A- Aoyama?” one of the students being threatened said numbly. Atsushi’s limbs twitched with the urge to run for the kids, to help them, but another look at Aoyama’s shaking hands, the loaded gun, and he was frozen in place.

“I’m so sorry, Tokoyami, Shouji,” Aoyama whispered.

Behind Atsushi, the phone in Tecchou’s hands gave a small buzz. Atsushi couldn’t see what the notification was, but Tecchou let out a strangled gasp, dropping the device. Atsushi… Atsushi couldn’t tell if that reaction was real or not, or if it was a ruse so that Chuuya and Atsushi could see what was on it. Either way, Aoyama let out an instinctive shot at the ceiling, flinching so hard that he burst into a wave of fresh tears.

After a few seconds of petrified stillness, Atsushi sneakily turned his head backwards, to see what was on the screen. Luckily, it was close enough for him to read the words on it upside down.

And suddenly Tecchou’s reaction was real, because if Atsushi weren’t a tiger, he would have done the same.

There was another attack. The Walls were under siege. And somehow, despite all of Nezu’s promises and platitudes, UA was under siege, too.

Kunikida jumped back, boots skidding through the dirt. The Outsider he was fighting gave a smug smirk, but Kunikida sprinted forwards, giving a small dive to the left as he spun around to the Outsider’s back, reaching out his taser to the back of their neck. Once they were down, he heard a gunshot ring out behind him, as a Yokohaman soldier shot the Outsider dead. Kunikida gave a nod in thanks, and the both of them scattered in opposite directions, the soldier probably looking to regroup with a unit, whichever unit they could find through the chaos. Kunikida was off to find the next battle- preferably an ability user, one who could be too risky for a nongifted soldier to take on alone.

Kunikida wasn’t a killer. He didn’t enjoy it, and it was never his first choice. But, there were ability users involved, and the Japanese side had more, and better, gifted healers than they did. He couldn’t remove someone's limbs knowing full well his enemy could return them in a few minutes. Yokohama had just one healer- Yosano. And with the requirements of her ability, it took more than a little while to heal just one person. The survival of his fellow Yokohamans was worth more than the survival of other ability users.

In the battlefield, Kunikida managed to find a Hunting Dog, the ginger one who had been with the Port Mafia. Instantly incorporating himself in the battle against four Outsiders, Tachihara yelled out a quick thanks as he continued fighting.

Kunikida managed to get up close to one of the slower Outsiders, and, knowing he had the agility advantage on them, he pulled out his taser quickly in a striking motion and hit them hard in the gut, bowling them over with both his strength and a taser. Another one of the Outsiders rounded on him, leaving Tachihara with a more manageable two attackers. Kunikida used his notebook to summon a prewritten dagger, then launched himself at the Outsider.

They began fighting, dagger against… Kunikida didn’t even know what kind of quirk that was, but he fought the weird teeth tentacles with diligence. The tentacles were like a lizard’s tail, in that they healed back whenever Kunikida got a good slash in. And when he tried to taser them, which the Outsider didn’t even dodge, that single tentacle gave a little shake before acting like nothing had happened. Kunikida quickly saw that the only way to land a real hit would be through the main body.

He dove forward as one of the tentacles reached out aggressively for his body, throwing his dagger at the heels of the two Outsiders Tachihara was fighting, managing to get a lucky shot at one of their Achilles’ tendons, before switching his taser to his dominant hand. He rolled to the side on the ground to avoid the barrage of tentacles, speedily lifting himself up to a crouch.

Lifting the taser in a tight grip, Kunikida jumped at the Outsider, at the last minute grabbing his handgun from one of the many pockets of his all black uniform. While the Outsider was focused on getting his main body out of the way of the taser, Kunikida let out two shots, one for attempted accuracy and one for luck. He hit his opponent in the upper torso, a few inches below the collarbone, with his first bullet, and then directly through the sternum with the second bullet.

Using the shock of nearby gunshots that he himself was well used to, Tachihara took down one of his attackers, the one who was nearly double Tachihara’s height. Kunikida shot at the last Outsider, and they fell to the ground as the bullet flew through their right kneecap. Tachihara finished them off with a clean slit to the throat.

“Nice tag team,” Tachihara said, clearly winded. Kunikida, too, was panting with exhaustion. Kunikida holstered his gun once more, then let the hand holding his taser slowly fall down as his body minutely relaxed.

“Should do it more often. You know, if our organizations make it out of this,” Kunikida offered breathlessly, his eyes already scanning the battlefield for his next fight. Tachihara was doing the same, having regained his breath a lot quicker than a normal human would.

“Yeah. But, you know, I’d settle for a strong drink right about now,” Tachihara said. His eyes locked onto a group of four Yokohaman soldiers struggling against two gifted Outsiders, and he gave a slightly sarcastic two-fingered salute to Kunikida, before bolting in their direction. Kunikida gave a salute to Tachihara’s running back, then turned to join the two Tanizaki siblings.

“Need a hand?” he called out. The two siblings were fighting seven Outsiders, Naomi fighting two opponents hand to hand with her handgun, which was out of bullets, and Junichiro fighting the other five tirelessly using his illusions.

“Oh, thank f*cking god!” Naomi called out with relief, chucking her empty gun with aggression at one of the Outsiders. Kunikida quickly used his notebook to create a new gun, throwing it to her fully loaded with the safety on. As soon as she got it, she flicked the safety off and shot at the slightly dazed Outsider she had hit with her other gun, then shooting the kneecaps of her other opponent.

With Kunikida’s help, Naomi took over fighting three of Junichiro’s attackers, which left him able to quickly finish them off with some jabs to pressure points. Kunikida didn’t know that Junichiro was learning where to target someone’s weak spots, but he was sure glad the kid had been learning.

Kunikida tased another Outsider, letting Naomi fire her gun at their shoulder. With the last two Outsiders, Junichiro snuck up behind one of them, as Naomi pushed the other, forcing the two to bash heads and be quickly disoriented. Kunikida then swooped in to tase both of them in the necks, knocking them out.

“You still got some bullets left?” Kunikida asked Naomi, who nodded assertively. “Good. We’re going for the kill today.”

“What?” Junichiro asked with surprise, and some amount of discomfort. “Did… did those orders come from the President?”

Kunikida sighed, and shook his head, saying, “No. Not directly. But Ranpo ran the numbers, and we only have one gifted healer, compared to their countless. Killing was why we won the Revolution, don’t forget. Mercy would end more lives than it would save."

Naomi grit her teeth, slowly raising her gun to level with the bodies of the Outsiders they had just defeated. She shot each of them with respect, with deference. In the middle of a raging battlefield, there was a pocket of shame and regretful silence. That was, until they were each dragged into other people’s battles like a tornado, and all three of them had no choice but to forget about the dead bodies, to forget about the killing part of war.

They had to forget, because each of them were going off to do it again, and again, and again.

Kunikida struggled in a battle against another ability user, both of them grappling with each other on the tough, dusty ground. He was shoved into a body on the ground, slick with blood, and as he fought to get on his knees and to shoot his attacker, Kunikida caught a glimpse of the corpse’s face.

It was the soldier that had saved him earlier. Kunikida offered up a short prayer for him. He had another fight to win.

Chapter 10: the middle, if you will

Chapter Text

The cheap clock that hung above the door to the hall, they’re only way out, ticked softly. Chuuya sat, with his feet nearly falling asleep, on the cold floor of the infirmary. At his back, Tecchou and Atsushi’s hands were tied to his, and they were all facing opposite directions. If they so much as glanced to their left or right, Aoyama would make a small warning sound, lifting the gun towards one of his classmates. Underneath the gauze tying them all together, Chuuya’s wrists tingled with a mix of sweat and adrenaline. Across the room, the sight of his fellow hostages held him frozen on the floor.

Shouji and Tokoyami were both kneeling down with their heads against the wall, fear evident in their simultaneously tense and shaking forms. Chuuya wished he could comfort them, could tell them that they’d fix this, but everytime someone coughed, or sniffled, or breathed too loudly, Aoyama was up in arms, the gun, with the safety off, pointed at the two students.

Chuuya was quick. He was experienced, he had a powerful ability, but when one is tied on the opposite side of a room, how could he reach the kids before Aoyama shot them? How could he fly faster than a bullet?

He couldn’t. He couldn’t do anything, even with the help of a member of the Armed Detective Agency and a Hunting Dog. The clock hung above the door to the hall kept ticking.

“I bet you can guess what that call was about,” Hawks said bitterly, the phone still held limply in his hands. Dabi grimaced.

“Oh, I can guess.” He paused, brows furrowed, before telling the other man, “They’re calling me to fight at the school. This is still dangerous, but at least we’re not fighting each other?”

“I… yeah. At least we’re not fighting each other,” Hawks said. He set his phone down softly on the kitchen table, a kind of subdued sadness weighing down on his shoulders. “But the last thing Yokohama and those students need are more attacks.”

“It’s not your fault, you know,” Dabi said. He didn’t say it like it meant something, just that it was something. Dabi didn’t think Hawks was guilty, and he didn’t think that said anything about either of them.

“It’s not your fault, you know,” Hawks mimicked his boyfriend with a small joking smile. Dabi offered up a small smile, too, before falling back to a more serious look.

“You weren’t there when Okurimono was destroyed, yeah?” Hawks nodded. “And you weren’t there when they were executed or on trial.” Hawks nodded again. “And the Commission is saying that you’re going to go back to Yokohama, and that this is retribution , punishment for your crimes, and that isn’t f*cking true. Repeat that,” Dabi demanded.

Hawks, with a leaden tongue and an almost fuzzy heart, repeated. “This isn’t retribution. This isn’t punishment. This is…”

Hawks’ speech dropped off. What was this? He was being sent like a drummer boy to the war blooming in Yokohama, but he didn’t know why. As much as he had previously tried to deny it, the Commission was always trying to make him suffer, to hurt him, and there was part of him that thought maybe that could be okay, if they would just tell him what he did wrong. He must have done something, to be among the heroes drafted for the battles to come in Yokohama. There had to be a reason they wanted him to kill innocents, to fight quirkless.

“This is entertainment,” Dabi said as bitterly as if he had just bit into a lemon. “When the elite can no longer rise any further, they set out to push others down. The Commission are gods among men here in Japan. The two of us? We’re just the workers, the soldiers, the people they trample on to get sh*t done.”

“I want to be more than… all of this.” Hawks gestured around their crapbox apartment, the blinds drawn over the windows and the door locked with three backup locks. “The Commission won’t be my gods anymore, not if I have a say.”

He frowned, eyes drawn to the faint outside light crawling through the cracked holes in the blinds and reflected like water on the ground. Speaking carefully, he said, “I’m not going to Yokohama. Not to fight, at least.”

Dabi blinked. A faint smirk formed on his face. “Not fighting, hm? Then I guess I have no choice but to not fight either. On a completely different topic, how would you feel about taking a vacation?"

"If we're heading to Yokohama, I think I'd rather like that. How do you feel about some charity work?" Hawks asked. He refused to fight in Yokohama, refused to fight under the Commission and their f*cking laws any longer. But Japan wasn't the only side fighting in Yokohama.

"Why, that sounds wonderful. We ought to leave right now, then, if we want to be in time for all the action," Dabi said. This was a stupid plan. He knew that. Trying to help Yokohama was more likely to end up with them in jail, in either Japan or Yokohama, than it was for them to actually help. But he and Hawks had been living smart, had been living cautiously, for so long. He was sick of walking on his tip toes.

This didn't have to be entertainment, and it didn’t have to be punishment. If Dabi and Hawks had a choice? The war in Yokohama would be their future.

Dazai laid in his cot with a terrible stiffness. The sounds of nearly twenty other groaning and sleeping soldiers was so cacophonous, he couldn't possibly be expected to rest. And, he wanted to complain, it was barely even an injury. Just a light grazing of a quirk enhanced bullet. It didn’t even do anything to him! But Yosano had insisted he get bandaged up, and that he stayed in the medical tent long enough for them to run some tests and ensure that quirks were the only thing the bullet was enhanced with.

Which. Come on. This was the Japanese they were talking about. They couldn’t make a weapon without somehow using their oh-so precious quirks if they tried. But, still. You didn’t just disobey Yosano, the famed Angel of Death.

The crickets in the fields outside the tent chirped loudly, reveling in the quiet lull that came at the end of a battle. Battles rarely went into the night- the darker it was out, the more likely it was that you could end up fighting your own ally. While some of the Yokohaman troops had night vision goggles, or were simply better sighted, the Japanese troops would tend to retreat farther into their own territory, within the boundaries of their lit up territory. The Yokohamans were loath to risk attacking the Japanese home base without all of their troops, and had yet to be able to ramp up production of special goggles or attachable flashlights quite quick enough.

They hadn’t fought anyone since the skirmishes over the northern territories, and it showed. If Dazai himself had had a hand in the training of the soldiers? They’d be much better prepared.

The battles that were fought at night were smaller- neither side wanted to risk using their full numbers in a monumental battle at night. The Night was saved for subterfuge.

Chapter 11: at the barricades of freedom + they took the only thing that mattered to me anyhow

Chapter Text

Kyoka loaded a shotgun, tossing it to Akutagawa, who caught it with his ability. She then passed another gun, with significantly less aggression, to Kenji. Elise was laying on the ground scribbling some kind of drawing in red crayon, and Ranpo was slouched in front of the entrance to the tent, lollipop in hand. The last person in the tent sat folding origami animals cheerfully. Nikolai Gogol, one of the only two surviving members of the Decay of Angels organization, ranked only among the company of Sigma, the young casino owner.

Other than Elise, all of them made sure that their unease and even distaste for Nikolai was known. If Ranpo hadn’t labeled a sixth ability user as essential to their plan, and if Nikolai hadn’t been one of the few people not consumed with other responsibilities or on the more active sides of the battlefield, they would have chosen someone else. But for Ranpo’s plan to work, they needed a sixth member, and pretty much every other friendly organization was busier than they had ever been while infighting within Yokohama.

The Armed Detective Agency were all either on the front lines, like Kunikida, Dazai, and the Tanizakis, or were working overtime in specialized roles, like Yosano in the medical tents and f*ckuzawa, who had revitalized his skills as an assassin for the first time in years. The Hunting Dogs were fighting as they normally would, flitting through the battlefield like the superhuman soldiers they were. The Port Mafia was buffing the number of ungifted Yokohaman soldiers with their many grunts, and some of the higher ups were even beginning to mobilize their gifted units to fight.

Something about the entire city being threatened by gifted Japanese heroes really made the various gifted organizations of Yokohama stand together.

(Of course it was violence that brought them together. Of course their allyship was entirely dependent on the war burgeoning with Japan.)

“Everyone sure of the plan before we move out?” Ranpo asked, taking up the role of leader, or at least more mature adult, that one of his fellow Agency members would usually take. But other than Gogol, he was the only adult on this mission, and as loath as he was to take this responsibility on his shoulders, he was kind of responsible for the safety of the others.

“Distract, divert, defend,” Kyoka said plainly. “Elise pretends to be a lost Japanese child to distract their attention, and Nikolai diverts their forces elsewhere from their camp. The three of us make it past their base, and if we’re spotted, Demon Snow blocks any attacks while we make it out.”

“Good.” Ranpo glanced out of the tent, at the barren Yokohaman military camp, one of the closest to the battlefield. The trenches were less than half a mile away. The only light was that of the moon, and the only music was that of crickets chirping. There would be no better time than now to begin their mission. “Strike team, move out. May your feet travel light and your smile look real.”

“For Atsushi,” Akutagawa said quietly. Rashom*on writhed like it was in some sort of pain around him.

“For the Agency,” Kenji said with an oddly serious face. He was smiling, but something about it spoke of more than just Kenij’s normal positivity.

“For the dead,” Nikolai said. He wasn’t usually a serious man. He was a sick man, that much he could admit to himself, but not someone who could treat a situation like this would care. He still tried. And what he didn’t say filled in the blanks of his personality: For Fyodor.

“For the living,” Kyoka said. She had lived her childhood obsessed with the people she lost, the people she killed. She was going on this mission for the people she still had.

“For Yokohama,” Ranpo said. Elise, so small and young, stopped drawing to look up.

“For a gift I was saddled with, a blessing I can’t control,” she said. Like she always was, it was a bold, loud statement, that took up more room in the tent than anyone else.

(This was the crux of the Japanese-Yokohaman wars, of their disagreements. Abilities. Quirks. Gifts .)

Aizawa tensely flicked through the security cameras of the school. Sitting at his desk, Nezu contentedly sipped his tea. Aizawa glanced at the rat out of the corner of his eye, disdain evident in his glare.

“You’re too calm for this. My kids are being attacked , and you’re just sitting there with your f*cking tea,” Aizawa hissed out quietly. His eyes weren’t red, but it was a close thing.

“There’s nothing you can do.” Nezu took another sip from his cup. “All the doors are locked down. From my office to your classroom is probably crowded with villains.”

“Should have known something was f*cking up when you called me here,” Aizawa muttered, anxious eyes focused on the gaps through the metal bars over Nezu’s window.

“Should have,” Nezu agreed. It was no secret that he only called for the man when he needed something, or wanted him to do something. In this case, Nezu wanted Aizawa to separate from his class. There would be no coddling of 1A when the villains broke through their door.

Nezu stared as Aizawa’s hands clenched and unclenched, his capture weapon wound tightly between his fingers like he would if he were about to face a villain. There was only one villain in Nezu’s office, and it was the one villain he couldn’t fight. Suddenly, there was a shift in the room, a movement of gears into place. Nezu felt his fur lift slightly as Aizawa went completely still, eyes focused on the feed from the security cameras.

“I refuse.” Aizawa hardly breathed, hardly thought of anything at all. It was just that one instinct, that one thought, running laps around his head. His kids were out there. His kids needed him. “You… have taken everything from me. I refuse to lose my class.”

Sometimes, Aizawa seemed hollow, almost doll-like. Now, with that icey look on his face and the desperation seeping through his bones, he looked wild, like an animal. Nezu likes to think he knows what an animal might be like, if only so he could distance himself from that image as much as possible. And Aizawa looked like a beast, straight from the woods and the sea and the sky.

“Don’t you think this is unreasonable? It’s only necessary,” Nezu said dispassionately. To him, the attack on UA wasn’t scary, or threatening, or even a reason to up security. He wanted this attack, just like he wanted, and orchestrated, the attack on Yokohama. Nezu had a law degree, he was one of the best Japanese sharks in the business, and he could have saved those heroes. He didn’t cause Okurimono but he would start this war, no matter the cost.

“What’s unreasonable is my kids, alone, surrounded, without any f*cking cavalry,” Aizawa snarled, body wound tight with tension, like a dam beyond ready to burst. “You told me to raise f*cking hell to help those kids, that their survival as a whole was more important than mine in itself. And now you’re f*cking suprised when I’d choose them over you?”

Aizawa paced across the room, his eyes tracing the weak points of the metal barrier over the door, the window. This wasn’t impossible. If he knew Nezu, then he knew that the rat had a way out.

“Shouta, those kids are-”

“Those kids aren’t yours! You have no loyalty, no family!” Aizawa burst out. “You can’t stand that I’m more loyal to the class you gave me than the trauma you forced on me.”

Aizawa’s eyes focused in on the corner of the room, where the vent remained open, no metal sheeting slamming down to protect it. Aizawa rushed forward, landing on his knees in front of the vent, which was large and industrial sized, as most of the school’s vents were.

“Back away from the vent,” Nezu said threateningly. Aizawa didn’t move- he knew , better than anyone else, that there was nothing the principal could do to stop him other than get in his mind. Aizawa had always been Nezu’s fists, his muscles. The damn rat was useless without someone else to use.

Aizawa began unscrewing the screws with his nails, desperately clawing at the metal as the pads of fingers grew tired and then pained. As he continued to make no progress, he realized that there was a much easier way through.

The vents were covered by thin bars, made of cheap metal. Most of the expenses had gone elsewhere in the school: for example, the metal covering all of the doors, the cameras on every wall and corner. Wrapping his capture weapon around his right fist, trusting the metal fibers within to protect his skin, Aizawa slammed into the large vent, creating a noticeable dent in the metal. He threw a second punch, and then another, and on the sixth hit, the vent grate caved in.

He pulled the bars of the grate out as much as he could, and, ignoring Nezu’s shouts and protests, he began carefully crawling in.

“Get back here!” Nezu shouted, but Aizawa had spent his whole adult life practicing how to tune others’ voices out, and he wasn’t afraid to do that now.

(That’s a lie. Defying Nezu sent rivers of terrified, if slightly giddy adrenaline racing through him. But there was nothing more terrifying to Aizawa than losing his class, even Nezu.)

Hawks glided through the air quietly, the wind caressing his feathers and hair like a mother would. On the ground, Dabi raced to follow his path on a motorcycle, the loud roaring of the bike making up for Hawks’s comparative silence.

Seeing the faint lights on the horizon brought the both of them hope, brought them comfort. Those lights were the lights of a city, and they were the lights of their destination, Yokohama. They were approaching the city through the East- the battles were raging mostly in the Northwest, where Okurimono had once been located.

They couldn’t travel through the North, as the Japanese border there was heavily populated, even if it was with criminals and quirkless. Obviously, the Western border was just a little too close to the warzone for comfort, even if they were going to end up there eventually to help. The longer they could keep their defection to Yokohama hidden, the better the surprise would be when they would eventually turn on the Japanese troops.

But they were still a long way from the city still, and in the shade of the night and the coverage of the tall crop fields, they were alone. They were alone and running and terrified. They were both trained fighters. They were both skilled fighters, at that. But they had never been soldiers, they had never been in a war, and it showed. They had never deserted their country, either. They both had run from houses that had never been homes, and they both had chased after promises that could never be reality.

(They had never been deserters. They had never run from their land and people with just the clothes on their back, hoping beyond hope that their destination would change something about them, or maybe the world.)

Hawks glanced back down at the darkly colored form of Dabi, and he smiled. This wasn’t running away, this was barely desertion: this was escape. Freedom from the cage that the Commission and hero society had placed on them. Hawks looked back up at the dancing fires and lights of the city. This was their dawn.

Chapter 12: most people get stuck here for life

Chapter Text

Lucy Montgomery iced the cutesy cupcake in front of her, her eyes tired but content. Only a few miles away, the fighting had begun once more, the brief lull of the nighttime doing nothing to dampen the animosity. The cafe that Montgomery worked at was close to the Northern border, close enough that she could faintly see some of the larger Walls just by taking a step outside the cafe. It was also close enough to the border that she could hear the fighting, could feel the ringing in her ears as the gunshots and grenades and screams echoed like morning birds through the air.

Despite it all, she kept working. There were fewer customers than usual, of course, but Yokohamans, even naturalized rather than native, were the resilient sort. If Montgomery didn’t think too hard, she could almost imagine the fighting was just another gang war, or the government taking down foreign terrorists. She could almost pretend that this was just a battle. Just a small fight, one that would be over in a few days, one that wouldn’t affect her at all. Of course, this was far from the truth.

Now that she was a Yokohaman citizen, she was in danger. If the Japanese broke past the inner Walls…

Montgomery finished icing the cupcake, setting it into a customer’s to-go box as she bid away all of the anxious, angry thoughts she was having. No matter what, her life was in someone else’s hands. She wasn’t an organization member anymore, wasn’t a licensed ability user. And, as she kept telling herself as she saw the soldiers and detectives and criminals go marching out to war, she didn’t want to be. Montgomery wanted a home, and she wanted a life, and she had that. She had that.

The bell to the cafe rang as a new pair of customers walked in. She blinked in confused surprise as she saw the wing mutation on the back of one of them, immediately clocking them as foreigners. No first generation ability user had a mutation that severe.

“Hello!” the winged man asked cheerfully, ignoring the way Montgomery stared at his wings openly. The scarred man beside him just glared. “Do you think you could point us in the direction of the Armed Detective Agency?”

“Um,” Montgomery hesitated, before deciding that the two of them looked trustworthy enough, and even if they weren’t, the Agency could deal with them on their own. “They’re just upstairs. Well, normally. I don’t know how many of them are currently out on the battlefield.”

“Ah, thank you-”

Montgomery cut him off as she realized with a flash, “Wait! Dazai is up there. He’s on bed rest for a day or two, since he got shot out there!”

“Oh!” the winged man exclaimed with relief. “Good! I know him! Well, I know some people that he knows, but close enough, really!”

“Alright. Just head on up those stairs,” Montgomery ordered lightly. “And, maybe hide that ability better? It might make the actual customers uncomfortable.”

Chapter 13: enlighten me, what's your name?

Chapter Text

Dazai finished drafting out his latest newspaper advert- that’s what they had him doing, as his shoulder healed. Yosano insisted that he let his shoulder return to full function before he rejoined the battlefield, so as he waited impatiently in the Agency, he was writing draft advertisem*nts to place in Yokohaman newspapers. It wasn’t exactly fun work, but Dazai knew it was necessary. He’d just rather not be one of the people doing it.

Inking out another conclusion, Dazai was jostled out of his work by a knock on the door. He frowned and slowly got up, his right hand cautiously moving to rest at the gun holster on his hip. Once he was a few feet away from the door, he called out for his visitors to come in. There shouldn’t be anybody knocking at the Agency’s door. Any allies would simply invite themself in, and there were no strangers scheduled to be arriving for a case or any other matter, as all of the Agency excluding Dazai were camped out in the warzone.

The door opened to two young men, both dressed in nondescript clothes. They both were so distinctly Outsider that Dazai almost instantly drew his firearm, but stopped himself so he could at least seem slightly composed inside. He wasn’t afraid, per se, just… intelligent. That’s what he was. He knew that all of his fellow detectives, and any other ability users who could help him against fellow gifted, were outside the city. His intelligence had always meant survival before. He was tired enough to hope it wouldn’t now.

“The Agency is closed for business currently,” Dazai said as politely as he could. His mouth was held in a disapproving frown, and his unusually tense body showed just how displeased he was with the two visitors.

“Right, er-” the winged youth glanced towards his companion, seeking some sort of aid. The other man just stifled a laugh. Slowly, Dazai eased into a looser stance. If they didn’t take themselves seriously, it was likely he shouldn’t, either. “Well, clearly, we’re not from, uh, around here. Actually, we’re, well, Japanese.”

“I could tell,” Dazai said. After a few seconds of silence, and after seeing the winged Outsider start looking like he might try and fill said silence, Dazai sighed, moving out of the doorway and gesturing for them to come in. As the two of them shuffled in, he shut the door gently. He openly stared as the two Japanese men took in the main room of the Agency, along with the slight mess throughout it. All of them had left in a hurry, pretty much as soon as the fighting had truly started, and Dazai hadn’t had the heart to touch his friends’ abandoned belongings. For some of them, the items within the Agency and its dorms were all they owned.

“We’re here to help,” the winged man burst out, looking like he had no other way to express his words than naivety. Dazai coughed into his fist to hide a small smirk, though the scarred man saw and shared a commiserating glance.

“Help with what, Outsider?” Dazai said. With another tongue, it could have been an insult, but Dazai simply had nothing else to refer to the winged man as.

“Oh, ah, it's Hawks?” Dazai noticed how he spoke his own name like a question, an unanswerable one, at that. With a tilt of his head, he considered his own titles, how he used to both resent and rely on them at the same time.

“Clearly, you have another name I could use, yes?” Dazai said. Many painful years ago, if he had been given the choice between Dazai Osamu and the Demon Prodigy, he would have chosen Osamu without hesitation.

“Yes. Keigo.” Hawks, now Keigo, said with a hint of surprise. Slightly jokingly, Dazai raised an eyebrow at Keigo’s evident surprise.

“And why have you come to me, Keigo?” Dazai asked with his best counseling voice. While he was never the President’s first choice to talk to clients, he did have some experience. It wasn’t like he wasn’t still listening to everything around him when he pretended to doze off, or have his headphones on.

“Because of the unjust war being fought on your territory,” the scarred, unnamed man said. Seeing the unspoken question in Dazai’s eyes, the man said, “It’s Dabi. Well- I suppose, this being another country, you could call me Touya.”

“Considering you two are Japanese, might I say that you’re on the wrong side of the battlefield right now? If you want directions, you just have to follow the sounds of children crying and innocent civilians screaming.” Which. Yes, Dazai admitted, was harsh. But considering the circ*mstances? Considering who Keigo and Touya clearly were, where they were from? It was fair.

Keigo winced, and seemed speechless and Dazai’s blatant anger.

“Keigo knows Chuuya,” Touya said. Offered, like some sort of sacrifice. Dazai saw red. Chuuya? They wanted to try and bargain with his Chuuya? His Chuuya, who was trapped within the walled boundaries of UA, being held under siege by the same Japanese who lived across the Northern border, the so-called villains of the world? How dare they try and garner his favor with the name of his beloved?

“Shut up,” Dazai spit out. He was sorely tempted to kick them out of the Agency then and there. But, even if he couldn’t talk to him, Dazai knew that Chuuya was smart about who he associated with. Dazai was also willing to bet that there were a small few Outsiders who Chuuya had seen fit to talk with, and if this Keigo was one of them, Dazai just had to trust that Chuuya placed his loyalty in the right person.

(A small part of Dazai screamed that he might not have. Before the torture, before the suffering, Chuuya had thought he could trust Mori, of all people. And yet, Mori had done more than just hurt Chuuya. He had fundamentally altered him.)

“Lay down your grievances, but do not bring up my husband as evidence,” Dazai said with venom.

“That’s fair.” Keigo nodded, before continuing to explain. “Japan isn’t the kindest, as you know, even to its own citizens. And… we’re supposed to be fighting against you. We’re both supposed to be a part of all this.” He waved his hand as if to symbolize all of the fighting, all of the dying on the Western front.

“But neither of us could stand the violence any longer. If we’re gonna fight,” Touya glanced at Keigo, holding such a specific look that Dazai could instantly tell how besotted they were with each other. His heart ached for Chuuya even more. “We’re gonna fight for what we believe in. And what we believe in is innocents above all.”

“Innocents above all. You know, maybe you came to the right building after all.”

Ranpo felt like he might be getting a cramp in his arm, for how long he had stayed hidden on the side of a shadowy Japanese tent, his hand gripping his gun where it sat in his holster. Elise hadn’t been as good of a distraction as they had assumed. It wasn’t anything any of them could have changed- she simply entered the camp and put on her act in the wrong spot, with not enough people to see. Nikolai had had to work doubly hard to pick up the slack, and it was taking precious minutes longer than the plan had called for.

Suddenly, Ranpo saw out of the corner of his eyes Kyoka giving the hand signal to move forwards. Ranpo quickly turned to give the same signal to Akutagawa from the shadowy corner he was hiding in, and Akutagawa in turn gave the signal down to Kenji. In the distance, Ranpo heard the faint sound of Nikolai’s raucous laughter.

He crouched down and began moving forward. Slipping into the next shadow quickly, pausing in the darkness before rising and running to the next stop forward, following Kyoka’s path through the barren camp and leading the other two after him.

Ranpo knew they had reached the very edge of the camp as Kyoka, many yards ahead of him, stopped to wait for the three of them to group up with them. He kneeled down in the dust next to her, offering up a small smile as they waited for the other two.

Akutagawa slinked down next, his coat seeming to dwarf him. Once he reached them, Rashom*on lowered away from his face so that he could communicate the next steps of their plan. Kenji, the last in their line of follow the leader, gave an energetic thumbs up, and moved to sit on a crate by one of the empty tents.

He would be staying behind- the war could only spare so many soldiers, and certainly not three whole Agency members. Ranpo himself would only be traveling with them to the school to ensure the plan as it was could continue, and then it would be straight back to the gifted command tents for him. Kyoka and Akutagawa were to be the only Yokohamans facing down the villains at UA. And yet, all of them had a small hope that the two of them might be enough. They were both gifted, both trained by the Port Mafia, both part of Dazai’s training lineage, for better or worse.

Ranpo, as he waited for the one final signal from Kenji to give them the go ahead to leave, thought some kind of smugness at how Akutagawa and Kyoka were considered Dazai’s descendants, not Mori’s. The vile man may hold total control over the city now, but in everyone’s mind, Dazai would be the memory that lasted.

Once the three of them, Ranpo, Akutagawa, and Kyoka, began to cautiously run past the edges of the camp, Kenji began his act. Unlike Elise and Nikolai, his act wasn’t to distract or confuse. Kenji was there to destroy. To destroy as much of the camp and their supplies as he could, and then to continue on a warpath through all the other outposts he had seen on the way there, until he made it back to the Yokohaman side of the battlefield.

The three of them ran out into the dark, abandoned fields of the Japanese side of the border. Unlike Yokohama, whose people had fought over the limited farmland for as long as the Walls had been built, Japan’s people were hesitant to build infrastructure close to the Walls- except, of course, for the villains and former Yokohamans who had been assimilated into Japan along the Northern border.Ranpo wasn’t like his allies. He wasn’t the sort of man who found joy in sprinting, he didn’t find the burning in his lungs exhilarating or fulfilling or peaceful. But, rather than the act of running, he found the act of running with others joyous. He hadn’t grown up with many friends. Being gifted, even if he had managed to get into a private school because of his parents’ influence, wasn’t exactly conducive to long lasting relationships. So this camaraderie was new, and this was exhilarating and fulfilling and peaceful, not the running. That said, the flames tearing through his lungs as they traveled farther and farther from the Walls and the war and their homeland wasn’t the most pleasant.

Chapter 14: but karma is a double edged sword

Chapter Text

Aoyama had backup. That was- That was obvious, yes, but Chuuya had had some kind of vain hope that he might be the only hostile, that once Nezu realized what was happening, it would be Chuuya with cavalry, not this poor kid. But he wasn’t nearly so lucky.

Chuuya had yet to see any of Aoyama’s fellow conspirees, but he heard them, loud and exhilarated through the metal doors and foot wide walls.

And, all of this, the gauze knotted around his hands, the gun pointed not at him, but at Shouji and Tokoyami, would be escapable if it were just Chuuya. In fact, he could still escape just as easily now. But the two first year students on the opposite side of the room? If Odasaku’s School wasn’t evidence enough, he cared for those younger than him, truly cared. And he knew deep in his gut that he was powerful, just not powerful enough to make it to them before a bullet. He could stop a bullet in the seconds before it burst through his skin, but despite all of his pleas and struggles, he couldn't do the same for others.

(Maybe if he could, if he could extend his ability's reach far beyond his own broken body and haunted fingerprints, he could be a better person than he was now. Maybe all of the people who he had seen die, who had died for him , could have survived if not for the limits of him and the limits of Arahabaki.)

In the sounds of chaos outside of the infirmary, Chuuya barely held back a shocked flinch at a familiar sound, one that he had heard constantly from the day he was born. The sound of a Yokohaman quirk activating. This wasn't to say that there was any difference in the emergence of usage of Japanese and Yokohaman abilities. In fact, Japanese abilities used to have the exact same lights and sounds, used to have quirk users surrounded in kanji like a loving embrace. It was only the allowance to evolve, to change, that had removed such a unique feature from quirks. After all, wasn't it safer to activate your ability in silence, in darkness?

Many Japanese quirks had mutated and changed enough that they had little, even no Kanji, and likewise with the hollow, achey sound that accompanied physical abilites. And while yes, since their move into Japan, Chuuya had met Japanese with quirks that included the kanji and whispers that he was so accustomed to, he knew for a certain fact that no one on the UA staff had quirks with such noise. And from the look on Aoyama's face, he knew that none of the attackers did, either.

A dark, shadowy shape burst through the metal wall covering the door, and Aoyama was frozen in such terrified shock that it gave Chuuya the opportunity to break through their gauze binding, the faint orange glow of his ability coating and then leaving the soft white of the guaze as it drifted to the ground. He rocketed toward the small form of Aoyama, his hand reaching out to steal away his gun, turning away from the boy to cradle the firearm close to his chest. Tecchou sprinted in the same direction as Chuuya, even if slightly slower, and veered off to the side to check on Tokoyami and Shouji. And Atsushi, the last of their group, returned to his tiger form as hurriedly as he had been forced to leave it, hunched tensely behind the pile of broken guaze as if that would protect him from the man who had just saved them.

There, at the door, was Akutagawa, Rashom*on curled around his body but still active, waiting for an attack. Chuuya thought, not for the first time, that Akutagawa and Tokoyami had awfully similar abilities. And he thought, for probably not the last time, that Atsushi held some sort of fear, mixed with anger, and a healthy heaping of longing, towards Akutagawa.

Now, Chuuya had never been particularly close to Akutagawa. He was Dazai's problem, after all, not Chuuya's. But through knowing Atsushi closely for all of the time they had behind them together in Japan, he knew that the tiger was scared of the Mafia, for whatever reason. He was scared of most things that he felt were a threat to his family, Chuuya had found. And the Mafia and the Agency may have a truce, but that didn't change the fact that Mori had once been Dazai, Atsushi's mentor's tormentor, and that Mori was as Mafia dark as all of his executives combined and more. And the truce didn't change the fact that Akutagawa had once been taught by Dazai, just as Dazai had been taught by Mori.

(Some stains didn't wash out, no matter how hard you scrubbed. The blood of a mafioso was one of such things. In the crumbling back walls of Chuuya's mind, he thought he might understand why Atsushi was so scared of someone like Akutagawa, someone just like Chuuya.)

“Civilians under protection,” Tecchou stated emotionlessly. Like Chuuya had come to know Atsushi, he had also come to know Tecchou. And he knew that when the Hunting Dog was stressed, he resorted to the only certainty he had ever had throughout his young life: protocol. And, despite being the only Hunting Dog currently in action in their location, he would use those protocols until the day he died.

“Confirmed.” Akutagawa repeated Tecchou’s report into the earpiece Chuuya had only just noticed.

“Who else?” And Chuuya knew that Dazai couldn’t be there. That the man was a strategist, was a godsend and a miracle on the battlefield. But he had a vain, pained hope that the man could be there, a hope that could be traced back to the lonely and tired hole in his chest.

“Kyoka, from the Detective Agency. She and Demon Snow are clearing out the school from the other half- we agreed to split up.” Akutagawa updated Chuuya. His head was bowed in deference to the executive, and behind Chuuya, Atsushi seemed to be observing their interaction, trying to determine if the situation was personal or mafia.

“Whose orders?” Chuuya asked, deciding to make things easier for Atsushi. Akutagwa’s gaze lingered on the large tiger on the other side of the room, looking like all he wanted to do was just run to Atsushi then and there.

“The operation was planned out by Ranpo. I don’t know if there were orders prior to the involvement of the others, but I came of my own free will. I… don’t believe that Mori is aware that I have left, though he certainly knew about Elise,” Akutagawa explained. He broke away from staring at Atsushi to make serious eye contact with Chuuya. “Executive, I am under your command.”

“Don’t be,” Chuuya said simply, a shake of his head enough to draw surprise from Akutagawa’s face. “You were doing just fine without my orders. Go and help some more civilians. We have these two covered.”

Akutagawa nodded, one last lingering glance landing on Atsushi before he and Rashom*on left the room, traveling through the hall looking for other survivors.

Aizawa wasn’t a crier. He didn’t know if this was related to his quirk, and the chronic dry eyes it gave him, or if he had simply learned, through his tough childhood and tough adult life, that tears were wasted on such a heartless world as the one he had been raised in.

But getting his class back, getting to see them all safe, nearly made him shed a tear. The one thing that kept him on guard and threatened was the fact that he didn’t have all of his students. Three of them, Aoyama, Tokoyami, and Shouji were missing, with his remaining kids saying that they had left for the infirmary before the alarm had rung.

Aizawa had made the decision that it was safer for him to bring his class with him wherever he went than it was to leave them alone in a classroom, especially since he knew some of them had remarkably bad common sense, and would probably leave the room without his consent even if he left them somewhere for their own safety.

It was as he was leading his class out of the broken through mess of their door that Aizawa encountered Kyoka Izumi.

“Do you require assistance?” a soft voice asked, a young looking girl seemingly appearing out of the shadows in front of Aizawa. She was younger than his kids, and Aizawa noticed her Yokohama accent the same way he noticed her dark hair, her lean and clearly trained body. He noticed how much he reminded him of the Mafia girl he had met all those years ago, the empty little thing who had helped him take down a crime ring with just her knife and the training that had been shoved upon her. He wondered with sick curiosity if the girl in front of him carried daggers hidden in the folds of her clothes, too.

"Are you here for Executive Nakahara?" Aizawa asked. The girl, whose name he hadn't been introduced to yet, was so obviously Mafia-trained that his first guess was that she there for one of her executives. But she shook her head.

"I'm here to help," she insisted. "My name is Kyoka Izumi. You've heard of my coworker, Dazai Osamu."

Aizawa blinked in surprise. So she was with the Armed Detective Agency. That didn't mean she hadn't ever been with the Port Mafia. But maybe, unlike the other haunted little girl he had once known, she had made it out.

"Alright," Aizawa accepted. "We're looking for three kids, last known location in the infirmary."

"Infirmary? Akutagawa just found a group of civilians there. That might be them," Kyoka said, but Aizawa couldn't respond, his ears flooded with the sound of not quite forgotten gunshots and things crashing to the ground. Akutagwa. It echoed through his bloodstream like a confession, like a sick admittance.

He had thought- Well, it didn't much matter what he thought. But for years, when he thought of the Yokohaman girl, he had always assumed that he had been given a fake name. No Port Mafia-trained kid would have given a hero, an Outsider, their real name. But... Akutagawa Gin must have. The girl must have trusted him enough to hand to him her real name, her birth name. He felt sick with how much that concept hurt, that Akutagawa could had had much more faith in him than he had ever known. That Akutagawa had cared for an Outsider like him more than anyone besides them two had ever known.

"Akutagawa Gin?" he asked numbly. Kyoka gave him an odd look.

"Akutagwa Ryunosuke. Her older brother."

Aizawa wasn't an angry man. He wasn't sure if it was his upbringing, or maybe just his nature, but he didn't get angry. But... all of those years past, Akutagawa Gin had told him that she had a gifted older brother. She had implied that her brother was also in the Port Mafia- that he had joined up before her, and that she had followed along like the dutiful little sister she had been raised to be.

And here he was. Akutagawa Ryunosuke, the man, or more likely, the boy who had dragged Gin with him into the darkness. Aizawa wasn't an angry man. And yet, some part of him wanted to scream, to rage at the thought that Gin wasn't gifted like him. She could have lived peacefully, her hands bloodless and her pockets empty of weapons. He had done this to her, he wanted to shout to the skies. But Aizawa was a rational man, more than he had ever been angry. And he knew that if Gin was a little girl, then Ryunosuke had been a little boy, too, when he joined the Mafia. He had been a victim, just like her, and with a sister like Gin, he had found ways to be happy in tragedy, just like her.

The least he could do was show the Akutagawas, and to show Kyoka, and to show all of the other children like them, kindness. Empathy. He took a small breath and motioned for Kyoka to join his side as they began to move towards the infirmary together with his class. This was the least he could do to the girl with heavy bags under her eyes and a kimono as red as blood wrapped around her small body like an apology.

Jouno had seen battlefields before. He was a Hunting Dog. Of course he knew them better than his own home. There was nothing worse to Jouno, though, than seeing the moment when someone else first saw the battlefield.

When the painfully young eighteen and nineteen year olds of the Yokohaman army first marched into battle, when the clearly underaged paper-fudgers first realized quite what they had lied about to see. When the eager bravado of a new recruit slowly turned into the haunted age of a teenage veteran.

He was a Hunting Dog. He was gifted, and he had received painful surgeries that he prayed no one else would ever receive, and he was stronger than over half the people in the damned war. But at the tentative end of each day, as the sun slinked below the horizon and his fellow Hunting Dogs sunk into their cots covered in still bleeding wounds and dirty uniforms, he took his precious free time and used it to visit the injured, ungifted soldiers in the crowded medical tents.

He’d sit down at their bedsides, take off his hat and sit with them, muttering sweet nothings to each unconscious soldier for a minute or two before somberly moving to the next. Sometimes he was the Agency’s healer, Yosano, there. They both pretended they didn’t see each other, for their own sakes more than anything else. They were the children of war more so than any of the actual children lying in those cots, waiting to die with shaking breaths and numb limbs.

(Yosano couldn’t save everyone. At some point, there were too many soldiers for just one person to reach in time. At some point, even soldiers stopped wanting to be saved. Jouno saw that tender hatred that Tachihara kept hidden in his ribs, that pained loss of a family member who should have been, could have been, saved. It was no one’s fault, certainly not Yosano’s or Tachihara’s, but Jouno observed it nonetheless.)

Once he had sat at the bedsides of more dying soldiers, more dying children, than he could stand to live through, he’d go and walk outside, and let the distant sounds of the city wash over him with an emotion somewhere between remorse and pride. Jouno didn’t really know what he was giving his life to, not fully, just that it lay somewhere in that bustling city.

It was an apartment nestled into the loud bustle of downtown, Jouno was tempted to think, the home built in the small space above a cozy garden store. It was the smell of the Hunting Dog base when they’ve all been without missions for a while, when the training rooms and the mess hall had begun to be accustomed to their smell and their sweat yet again. And to some extent? Jouno lived for the missions, the lives he saved, the people he helped.

Most of all, Jouno lived for his husband, for the precious days they spent together and the past and history they shared.

That night, once he had gotten his fill of the chaotic sounds of the city, and the quieter, if not by much, sounds of the night, he ended back in the Hunting Dog tent. Teruko was already sleeping in her cot, but Tachihara’s eyes glinted in the darkness of the tent, his arms lifting his head as he lay on his stomach. Seeing Jouno walk in, he gave a small salute as a greeting.

“You been up a while?” Jouno asked in a whisper.

“Yeah.” Tachihara didn’t elaborate, but Jouno understood. Tachihara was their youngest member, and the sounds of a thousand people trying to sleep off the horrors of the daytime was still slightly disconcerting for him.

“I’m sorry,” Jouno said.

“No, you’re not,” Tachihara said with a smile. Jouno shrugged, knowing that his comrade was right. Tachihara sighed, his smile falling from his face. “I miss when being a Hunting Dog meant something.”

Jouno co*cked his head in confusion.

“I mean,” Tachihara struggled to explain. “Not just before the war, now that we’ve been reduced to mere footsoldiers, but before they made Tecchou leave. Before f*ckuchi ruined everything.”

“Ah,” Jouno said. He had thought of such futures, too, futures where f*ckuchi never betrayed them, where the government never sent Tecchou away. But such dreams were useless to dwell on when their future was in that very tent, in each other. When their future still lay in the finely pressed uniform and carefully cleaned sword of their distant member, all the way in Musutafu, Japan. “I think… I think you’re wrong. Being a Hunting Dog still means something, it’s just not the same as what it used to.”

Jouno moved to sit on his cot, setting his hat down beside him as continued to talk. “We used to be above the common people. Gods. But f*ckuchi’s a dirty traitor, and Tecchou’s so far away he’s practically untouchable, and no one quite gets the struggles a Hunting Dog faces nowadays. We used to be hundreds. Now, we’re three.”

Tachihara made a sad, mournful noise in the back of his throat. Centuries before his time, the Hunting Dogs had been a huge, leveled organization, as large as even the Special Division.

“Being a Hunting Dog used to mean the respect that other people gave us. But now it’s just us, and we’re just soldiers. Being a Hunting Dog means more than it ever has before, because now, it means each other.”