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makeste · 3 years

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

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

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

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

OMG FLASHBACK??

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

oh dear

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

EXCUSE ME RAT PRINCIPAL WHAT’S WITH THESE MIXED MESSAGES

???

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

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

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

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

OH!!!! HELLO, WHAT’S THIS!!!

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

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

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

LMAO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LSDKFJLSDKJFLK

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

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

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

and Rat Principal is all “lol idk”

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

dsfaelkjldkjgl

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

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

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

anyway so back to the unruly mob

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

oh wow the parents are out here too

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

MONOMA

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

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

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

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

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

OH MY GOD

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

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

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

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

(ETA:

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

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

narrator: they did not listen to reason

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

hmm

this entire chapter is truly and utterly nonsensical to me lol

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

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

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

lol uh

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

SDLFKJSL

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

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

OMG IT’S THE GIGANTIC FOX LADY

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

-- KACCHAN SIGHTING!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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villainsandvictimsalliance · 3 years

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U got any shigaraki and deku acting like siblings hcs ? 😁

A. BUNCH. AND THEY ARE ALL YOURS :

*Note: I have a little sister myself, so I know how the sibling culture goes 🙄😈. And oh, we even trained Tae Kwon Do together, so you can included the real fights in the list.

First of all, we're not talking about two calm and collected, perfectly behaved boys.

Let's imagine they keep all for one and one for all, but instead of being like gods, they stay with only two quirks and their power is reduced, and also they can't pass the quirk to another person or steal other quirks any more. They're stuck.

Deku has his superpower and black wip. Tomura has his decaying quirk (under control now) and he can float, just like Nana.

And because they are two stubborn little pricks, they argue all. the. time.

Don't get me wrong, they normally won't react like that with other people. Tomura would let you slap him and he won't even blink. Same with Deku. But as it often happens, no one can push our buttons like our siblings.

That's exactly why, at least once a week, someone needs to interfere in their fights.

I mean the "they're up in the sky fistfighting, kick hitting, swearing like sailors" type.

I'm not promoting violence on here. THIS IS HOW MANY SIBLINGS WORK, I DON'T KNOW HOW TO EXPLAIN IT.

Tomura feels the sudden urge to kick Deku while he's walking down the hall. Deku wants to save his game over Tomura's session because "oops". They like different foods. They argue about if a certain pro-hero is cool or totally useless. Tomura thinks Deku's hair looks like moss and Deku tells him he's like a failed Monster High.

And they fight.

Now, this is a typical case of "no one can insult my brother except me".

No one defends Tomura as much as Deku does. I'm talking about Deku telling to All Might's face he's being a dick and Deku telling Bakugo to shut the fuck up.

And then you have Tomura, former symbol of fear. After redeeming himself, you can bet his favorite new hobby is picking assholes apart via analyzing them and telling them what's wrong with their childhoods and traumas.

That's absolutely not nice of him. But come on, let's talk real. None of them are saints and none of them are where they are because they're nice all the time.

They are what everyone fears compacted in two weirdly buff geniuses. They are nerds and they are awkward and fight over who's asking for the pizza this time, and at the same time they obey no authority but themselves.

Deku is like “if you don't like Tomura, keep that to yourself. It's embarrassing.”

Tomura is like "If can't stand Deku, then kneel before him.”

One is a former villian, the other is an almost villians and the best they can do it's meet in the middle: gray moral characters that, in lack of a better option, created their own side.

Let's change subject to what really matters:

They are annoying.

You can't possibly watch a movie with them. They talk too much, criticize too much, have an entire combo of figuring out the ending in the middle of the movie and they ruin it because they are too smart. They are officially banned from movie nights.

I've say this before, but the amount of inner jokes and references? Heavens save us all.

They can be referring to something nerdish, like a fact you wouldn't know if you weren't well versed on Victorian authors, and the next minute they would be talking in tiktoks and YouTube recommendations at 3am.

Kings of bullshit. They don't have a single clue what they're doing. They're figuring out while it goes. Plan? What plan? They're baffling. If you listen to them for too long, you're gonna lose your mind.

They're also banned from playing scrabble. Tomura always make up words that somehow exists and Deku is a walking dictionary.

When they're alone, they're nice to play with. Deku is a wonderful team mate and friend. Tomura is actually pretty chill and funny.

What the fuck happens when they get together, no one knows. They are like sure of themselves and all that self-confidence turns into chaotic energy. They can just be chilling around or not even talking, but the tension is there, not between them, but to the rest of the room. They could begin their activity at any minute.

Their direct rivals are Aizawa and Bakugo.

It's the only way you can balance the situation. And I'm not talking about fights, I'm talking about the game nights still.

You have the decaying-bunny duo vs the eraser-dynamite duo. This is, and I'm not gonna lie, actually a pretty intense and funny rivaly situation. Everyone needs to pick a side and then they go.

There's another duo that can face the decaying-bunny team, and that's the Todosiblings. The problem is that Shoto and Dabi are half of the time supporting Deku and Tomura on their chaos, and half of the time fighting them.

You have the Voice of Reason team (Spinner and Iida), the Bloody Gravity team (Uraraka and Toga) and the Dadteam (Kurogiri and All Might).

Imagine how intense are Tomura and Deku as siblings that they forced other people into creating teams to fight them. Not because they wanted to, but because people found it necessary.

Oh but boy, you can bet they are also maximum crushes of half the world.

They are the type of celebrities you call assholes when they appear on the news after saving a bunch of people from a natural disaster. They are talking with the reporters and??? They look fresh and smiley, gentle and charming, almost naive, but you're getting distracted because how can they be so handsome???

Misters "I don't know how popular I am" because they're clueless, they don't know how often they break the internet with their online activities.

Their merch is everywhere. They make the money they need just by accepting appearing on ads and commercials or doing cameos on TV shows, music videos, etc.

AND THEY ARE ASSHOLES ONCE MORE??? BECAUSE THEY PLAY WITH THEIR AUDIENCE IN THE CUTEST AND MOST FRUSTRATING WAY POSSIBLE.

“Are you dating someone”, “Oh, am I?”

All I'm saying is that they have an amazing connection. They are best friends and rivals and worst enemies and each other's fans #1.

I love the headcanons of them being cute, a little distanced siblings, but I prefer the cheer chaos of them being really close.

Mostly because I know they could have the type of bond that gets you through the worst times. The type where you don't need to use your words, you can talk with your eyes, just by looking at your brother and you already know what they're thinking.

And this has so many implications. From stupid things like Tomura sitting on a shopping card while Deku buys the things they need for the week, to them both fighting side by side against the worst enemies they could think of.

But those implications are things that I need to study further in future posts. 😉 So don't be afraid to ask for more headcanons about the decaying-bunny duo.

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korpuskat · 4 years

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Cinnamon Burn [Dabi/Reader]

[Ao3 Mirror]

Rating: Mature Word Count: 5,296 Summary: An incredibly drunk Dabi hits on you and things get a little out of hand- emotionally and physically. Contains: angst, self-depreciation, whiskey dick, drunken shenanigans,

Gender and Sex-neutral Reader Insert

Mild Dubcon warning (both parties are inebriated), mild emeto warning

=====

“Don’t let him overdo it, you don’t know what he gets like.” Himiko warns you- or perhaps she meant to direct it to Kurogiri, the only person actually making drinks. Her cheeks are flushed bright red, her mouth hanging open. You’re almost certain she’s only had one shot- something a deep scarlet that made her squeal in appreciation- but she leans hard on the bar’s counter and gestures vaguely with a knife, “He gets all waaa, waa, I’m Dabi,” She breaks off laughing and you can’t help but grin, even if her impression was terrible.

“The brat’s already wasted.” Dabi complains. You think it’s meant to be scathing, but it comes across as playful- like he’s too amused at Himiko’s frankly pathetic tolerance to really be annoyed at her equally pathetic impersonation. “Should get her home before she’s passed out here.”

“Whaaaat?” She squeals, stumbles forward until she’s hanging off your shoulders, one hand raised towards Dabi. “We’ve slept here before, what’s the big deal?”

“Cause Shigaraki’s drinking too for once, not going off to play with his games.” Dabi tips his glass towards your leader. Across the bar Shigaraki stiffens immediately, his sneer plainly visible with Father moved up a few inches so he can join you in drinking, already expecting the insult that’s coming. “Best leave before he remembers he’s never touched a-”

You smack Dabi’s arm, hiss out a shocked but not unamused, “Dabi!”

He turns towards you, pretends to rub at where the back of your hand has so obviously bruised him. “You’re drunker than you look, maybe you should be the one going home.”

“Thought you all wanted to celebrate a good mission, but here I am stuck with this.” Shigaraki spits, his free hand already raising towards his neck. “Everyone else is already gone, she’s drunk,” His head tips towards Himiko, who giggles too loud, “He’s an asshole,”

Dabi grins into his drink. “Nothing to do with the alcohol on that one.”

“And you,” Shigaraki turns towards you, his nails scraping across pale skin. “You’re not even drinking.”

“I’ve had a drink!” You protest, show off your long empty cup. Even you can admit it’s a shitty attempt to get them off your back.

“Nah, I agree with Crusty on this one.” Dabi says, taking your glass with too much dexterity for someone who’s at least three shots into the night.

“Fuck off.” Shigaraki turns on his heel and marches through the curtain, “Get the fuck out of my bar.”

Dabi sniggers, flaunts your empty glass again, urging Kurogiri to fill it again with whatever sweet concoction he’d made before. “C’mon Giri, give ‘em another drink.”

Foggy hands don’t move, his head still half-turned towards the curtain where Shigaraki had left. His voice rumbles out, “I don’t think that’s-”

“I’m fine, really, Kurogiri. Don’t mind him.” You wave your hand at Dabi’s scowl, choosing to ignore it and nodding towards Himiko- who was already falling asleep, halfway drooling on your shirt. “You mind sending this one home? Don’t think anyone’s at the safehouse in Kashikuu.”

Kurogiri hesitates, eyes up Dabi with a golden, measuring glance before audibly sighing. He crosses from behind the bar, gently taking her off your shoulder- you’re still not quite sure how his misty hands support weight, but he guides her into a dark, swirling portal. Himiko mumbles something as she goes and you wave at her, wish her a good night.

And just like that, you’re alone with him.

Dabi wastes no time. As soon as Kurogiri has stepped through, his knee comes up on the stool, boosting himself up and over the bar. He reaches with one arm, stretches as far as he can to grab some hidden bottle from behind the counter. “You’re no fun.” He complains, already pouring whatever he’s snatched into his cup- and then into your empty glass as well. “One more drink, then you can go be fucking boring somewhere else.”

You snort, “Wow, really persuasive.” He sets the drink before you- and before you can even pick it up, Dabi’s throwing his head back, the amber liquid disappearing behind scarred lips. “Slow down. What even is this?” You give the glass a sniff- cinnamon washes over your senses, makes you recoil and blink.

“Fireball.” He says, his voice gone low and rough from the alcohol. He doesn’t even hesitate, already pouring himself another shot. “And you’re too slow.”

You should’ve guessed with how many cartons of cigarettes he’d blow through on a mission what he was like with alcohol. “Fucking hell, Dabi.” You swallow down half the glass, throat burning- but you can’t tell if it’s the cinnamon or the alcohol.

“Just ‘cause you can’t handle a good time doesn’t mean I’m going to stop.” He lifts the shot glass, before looking over your shoulder. All you hear in turn is a heavy, echoing sigh. Dabi’s gaze turns to you, not bothering to watch Kurogiri return to his place behind the counter. He throws the drink back, not breaking eye contact as he rasps out, “Come on.”

He’s out of his seat before you realize what he’s doing. Right up next to you, he takes your glass and presses it to your lips. “Live a little.”

You shouldn’t. He’s clearly drunk and determined to seek trouble- and with everyone else gone, he’s got no options left but to make it himself. But he’s also right. The mission was pulled off perfectly, not a single hitch- you deserved a little fun. How often did you really get to enjoy Dabi’s company?

So you lay your fingers over Dabi’s on the glass and open your mouth. His mouth parts in a smirk so haughty that pulls at his staples. “Yeah, just like that…” You swallow, pinch your eyes and huff through the burn- bask in his quiet, rumbling praise. Dabi takes the glass, sets it too hard on the counter behind you, and grabs at your hands. “Get up.”

“What, why?” You cough.

“I want to see you dance.” He tugs again, and you’re sure he could force you out of the seat if he actually wanted to. But he wants you to want to.

You sputter, “No way, you’re way too drunk. Besides, I can’t dance.”

He laughs, loose and easy, “Now I really want you.” He steps closer, eases you off the cushioned seat. You don’t fight him. As he pulls away he grabs the still open bottle from the counter with his left hand, holding it by the plastic stem. Upright you watch as his steps waver, a little unsure of his balance.

“No, no, Dabi, come on…” You resist him weakly, embarrassment making your cheeks heat, but still let him drag you over towards the open space in front of the door. “There’s no music!” You complain, “I’m not nearly wasted enough to dance without music playing.”

He lifts his chin, pulls you close. “I’ll give you that. Hey, Kurogiri, you got any music?” You can only sigh, press your free hand against his chest.

“No, we had no reason to install speakers.” Glass squeaks as Kurogiri cleans it and you look over your shoulder to shoot him an apologetic look. You can’t read his amorphous face- his only response is the tightening of his drifting golden eyes.

“Guess we’ll have to rain check our dance.” You’re almost sad, if you’re entirely honest- you’ve never seen Dabi this relaxed, but it feels wrong, somehow. This feeling has been building up too long to finally acknowledge whatever does exist between you while he’s inebriated.

“Mmm, I don’t think so.” Dabi practically purrs, “What about this…” He trails off- and begins to hum. You can’t even place the tune, doubt it’s even a real song, the alcohol too heavy in his mind for him to think of anything other than the same few notes over and over again, winding in a up-beat melody. And with him holding your hand, he begins to dance.

You can’t help but laugh, the pink hue over his cheeks, his off-key humming in place of music, the off-balance way he moves, feet falling heavy where he means to be smooth. Maybe it’s the Fireball talking, but when he spins you, you let him, twirling at the end of his arm- and before you can really think, you’re joining him. Bobbing along with the made-up song that’s getting more and more erratic, unable to keep up with his own melody.

He shifts his weight back and forth, pulling you along with him as he circles the open space, wrapping your arm up into another spin- and catching you halfway through to pull your back flush to his chest. His warmth seeps through his shirt, but if it’s from his quirk or the alcohol you can’t tell- but it’s definitely the alcohol that strips off his inhibitions, lets him shamelessly grind up against your ass.

All at once you’re breathless, heat winding through your body- and you can’t help but push back against him. He sighs, half chuckling as his other arm crosses over your hips, still holding the bottle of Fireball. It pokes at your stomach, but the pressure gives you more friction so you can’t bring yourself to complain. He turns you both, spinning away from the bar as he backs off, lets you turn again to face him. He sways to his own tune, raises the bottle up. You watch, completely enraptured, as his lips wrap around the plastic rim and he drinks. Beads of amber escape between the edge of his mouth and the first staple, run down his chin, wavering side to side as they jump over the thick scars there. His throat bobs as he swallows- and lowers the jug again.

Your throat compulsively swallows with him, mouth suddenly dry. “You’re so drunk…” You laugh, airy and soft.

And something dark sparks in his eyes. He smiles without teeth, lips pressed tight- and he guides you to walk back and back- until he’s dropping your hand, coming to grab your chin and meet your mouth in a hasty, messy kiss. You gasp- and let yourself close your eyes, melt into his warm touch. It’s been so long coming and yet you never expected it all to finally boil over now.

Nor do you expect as soon as you let his tongue- unbearably hot and pierced twice- into your mouth is the sudden rush of liquid that follows. Cinnamon. Fireball.

You sputter, but Dabi only laughs, presses his hips against you again as you struggle to swallow down the drink he’s kissed to you. Your throat burns, but you let him lick into your mouth again, tasting nothing but his drink of choice. His piercings click against your teeth, but you can’t seem to mind with how his tongue rubs against yours. His hips roll against you again, his thigh pressed between your legs- and the meager pressure has you shuddering against his chest.

“You must be the drunk one,” He says, pulling away and fuck, with each word his mouth is practically steaming, puffs of air slipping between the staples in his cheeks. Something shifts in his voice. “If you’re finally letting me kiss you.”

Your face tightens, tries to decipher the change- but settle on pressing one palm against his chest. “You’re way too drunk for this.” You hesitate, then add “So am I.”

“Cause you’d give me a second look sober?” Bitterness. He steps away, his warm grasp gone from your skin, the room going cold.

You swallow thickly, try to fight the pleasant buzz in your head to follow his thoughts. You don’t have to try for long; Dabi steps back again, but the Fireball has shot his balance. He wobbles, foot not quite where he expected it to be. His arms fly out to balance himself, whiskey sloshing in its bottle and you don’t even have to think before you’re closing the distance, slotting yourself up against his side and taking his weight. “Careful,” You say, ignoring the growl from Dabi’s chest. “You should get some sleep.”

“Yeah? You gonna take me to bed, tuck me in?” He hisses, “Or are you too drunk for that, too?”

Exasperated, completely lost by the sudden shift in his mood, you spit back, “Gladly.” You nod towards Kurogiri- and fuck, Kurogiri’s been standing there through all of this, dutifully cleaning the glasses left over by the League’s short night of celebration and ignoring your inebriated nonsense. “Do you mind? I don’t… know where everyone else ended up, what safehouses are left.”

“Got my own place,” Dabi huffs. You blink, look up to him. You misheard him right? You knew Twice and Spinner had their own places to lay low, but as far as you knew- “Just open the portal.”

Gold eyes linger on you, even as the black fog slips over the edge of the counter, spreading wide. Off to the side you can still make out Kurogiri’s featureless face. “Are you quite sure?”

His worry is touching, but with Dabi so wasted he’s having trouble standing, surely you can handle yourself if he does get rowdy. “Yeah,” You say, wobble towards the opening. “You can close it after us, I’m sure it’ll be a while before he’s out.”

Dabi raises his free arm, waving the bottle he’s still holding. Fireball sloshes as he speaks, “I’m taking this.”

You can’t help the sigh that escapes your lips. Not bothering to wait for a reply, you step through into the darkness. On the other side, you’re in some apartment. You blink, look around- because damn, it’s actually in pretty good shape for a squatter’s hole. The furniture is pretty retro, but aside from some light dust on some untouched shelving, it’s practically pristine. You have to rely on Dabi’s lead as he stumbles- veering off to the right as you struggle to keep him walking straight. The arm that wraps around you holds tighter as he sways, unsteady.

He leads you through a doorway tight enough that you can’t stay beside him- letting him walk through first then lean on the doorframe as you follow. Dabi takes the moment to take another big swallow of the whiskey to which you side-eye him, but at this point you’re not sure how much more damage it can really do.

“Holy shit.” You laugh as you realize he’s made it to the bedroom. "Holding out on us." The room has a nice, big bed with rumpled sheets and soft-looking pillows. The pillowcases don’t match the blanket and you wonder if he’s swiped them from somewhere else. You ease him onto the mattress, which groans and dips with his weight. You open your mouth to ask if he needs water or something, if you could leave him painkillers for tomorrow-

Plastic thuds against the floor, ringing as the bottle spins upright-

And Dabi’s hands grab your thighs. He pulls you forward, traps you between his legs- angles your mouth down. He bites at your lips with abandon, keeps you pressed close even as his hands waver, get lost over your body. You can’t help yourself, the alcohol has made you too loose, too pleased with his touch. You kiss back, lean into his touch.

His lips leave yours, nipping at your jawline- and your head tips back of its own volition, giving him permission to continue down your neck. “Come on,” He pleads between wet, sloppy kisses. “Just once, it’ll be worth it.” A groan slips from your throat as he meets your collarbones, teeth clamping over the thin skin there. So quiet you almost don’t hear him: “Don’t even have to look at me.”

What? You push at his chest, careful of his staples, trying to make any room between your bodies, any room to think- “Dabi?”

He doesn’t let you. One hand- warm, much too warm- presses at the back of your head, pulls you down to meet his mouth again. The hand still at your ass squeezes, makes you gasp- and Dabi’s tongue once more slides into your mouth. Hot and cinnamon-flavored, you can’t help but melt into his touch again, let one hand run over the length of his neck, feel over the rippling texture of his scars. He stiffens as you touch him, leaning back, away from you- but settles for pulling you along with him by the hands on your neck and butt.

The motion makes your head spin even with the meager amount you’d had- frankly you’re not sure how Dabi’s still functioning enough to keep his mouth moving against yours, even if his kisses are messy and not quite centered on your lips. You should really stop, stop rubbing your tongue against his, stop sliding the tip between the two hard edges of his barbells- but the hand on your ass slides up to your hip and rocks you down against him. Friction between your legs makes you sigh, closing your eyes and surrendering as his mouth again travels to your neck. His breath is hot, makes your skin erupt into sweat as he guides your hips to keep on working against him. You’re painfully needy- the warmth inside you has been building for too long, the minuscule pressure from Dabi’s strong thigh shouldn’t have you mewling and pliant, but you’re relaxing even more into his too-warm touch.

It’s not fair, you shouldn’t be coming undone with hardly any alcohol in your head while he’s practically unwavering. It’s hard to coordinate your hand worming between your bodies, even harder to remember how to undo his belt while his teeth scrape along your pulse. The click of metal is all you need to hear before you’re ripping at his jeans, ignoring the throaty laugh and the taunting “Can’t wait?” that rolls off his lips with far too much ease. You want to shut him up. Make him moan just like you, come undone with your touch--

and as your fingers slide under the elastic, your mind halts. Dabi keeps on nipping at your throat, sucking a dark mark while his hands try to keep your body sliding on his thigh- completely unaware. “Dabi?” You start, unsure what to say.

“Yeah, doll?” He hums against your skin, keeps you struggling to think straight. You bite your lip, squeeze softly between his legs- and Dabi goes completely still. His panting quiets, keeps his face hidden as the silence stretches on. A single huff of a laugh, exasperated, tired- “Fuck.” and another one follows. His dark hair waves at the corner of your eye as he shakes his head. He falls back flat onto the bed, arms limp at his sides. The heat and bravado in his voice has drained away, leaving something strange and foreign. Hollow. “Pathetic.”

He doesn’t even give you a chance to respond, raising one hand up to rub at his face, the skin stretching, pulling at his staples as he laughs emptily. “It’s fucking pathetic isn’t it? God damn fucking whiskey dick.” He laughs and it makes your chest ache. “Fucking finally get your attention and I can’t even get it up.”

“It happens, it’s okay,” You say, withdrawing your hand to rub soothing strokes over a patch of unscarred skin on his chest. “Just gotta sleep it off.”

“Bullshit.” He stops, stares up at the ceiling. In the darkness you watch as his brow knits, cerulean eyes dancing back and forth as he thinks. And then they settle down against the edge of his scars, staring at you. You blink once, can’t quite read what he’s thinking- before he’s grabbing you around your waist and flipping you over.

If falling forward made your world spin, this leaves you clutching desperately to Dabi’s coat as your vision swims- and his mouth is burning as his lips wrap around your earlobe. You shudder under him and he’s rumbling low in your ear, “Come on… I’ve waited so long,” his hand slots between your legs, “I want to watch you cum.”

It’s a fight to keep your legs from spreading, to stop your hands from shaking as they press weakly against his shoulders. “Dabi, stop…” He huffs against your ear, stilling as you speak. “You’re way too drunk, we can try again another time…”

Dabi raises himself up- and for the first time in what feels like hours there’s finally any space between you. And you wish there wasn’t; cerulean has turned ice-cold, withdrawn as he rolls himself onto his back. “Sure. Another time.” He repeats, twisting your words until they sound sinister. “If you’re so disgusted by me then just get out.”

disgusted.

The word rings in your head, the gears turning despite the heady liquor urging your mind to just stop. Ever so slowly you turn your head, peering at Dabi. Perhaps he’d look disinterested if you didn’t know him, if you didn’t see the tightness in his jaw, how his scarred throat ripples as he swallows compulsively. How his last batch of face-grabbing has torn at his scars. Your chest aches- the patch of scar tissue below his eye has curled back, strains against the staples. Blood runs along the edge, beading around each metal bar before running in one long streak down just in front of his ear where it meets up with the next line of his scars.

Alcohol still fuzzes your decision making- and with one wavering hand you reach for him. His blood is warm and sticky, smearing over your fingers as you touch his cheek. His head tips, but you can’t read his expression in the shadows. Your mouth feels numb from his hot kisses, “You’re bleeding.” You say, already kicking yourself.

You recognize the scowl that warps his face, so you swallow and work your way up onto one elbow. You have no idea what you’re doing, but you reach over and cup his far cheek. In the darkness you feel his eyelashes flutter against your palm as he closes his eyes. “Dabi,” You say quietly, draw him to look to you. Only when you find the tiniest slit of blue under his dark lashes do you continue. “You’re not disgusting.” His lip is already twitching to speak, so you press your thumb over it. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to be.”

His lower lip rubs rough against the pad of your thumb. “You’re here because of the Fireball. You’ll go crawling back to the bar as soon as you sober up.”

“I doubt it.” You let a wry smile stretch over your lips, surrender to the remaining Fireball in your veins. “How about I stay here ‘till we’re both sober, and then when I still want to suck your soul out of your dick in the morning-” Dabi snorts, can’t help how the corners of his mouth rise a fraction of an inch- “we can talk about it.” You wait for a moment, give him a chance to tell you to get the fuck out again, but it doesn’t come. “That sound okay?”

“You just want my nice bed.” He says, the playful deflection back in his voice. It’s nice, familiar after the unpleasant rawness of the night.

You laugh, “Oh, absolutely.” It is true- your own crashpad’s mattress was the first thing you could find on ebay but was still only a half-step above a mattress left on a street corner. “Sit up.”

He obeys with unsteady arms, muttering a little “Not how I imagined this going.” as you push his thick jacket off his arms, careful to not pull any more staples. You leave his shirt alone, but slide off the bed to yank at the ties to his boots. With the haze of alcohol still making your fingers loose, you give up halfway through and just pull them off his feet. He smirks as you get him to lift his hips and you work his jeans down his thighs, revealing more patchwork skin before you peel them off.

Freed of all uncomfortable clothing, Dabi immediately turns around on the mattress, pushing himself back and sinking under the covers, claiming the gray pillow as his own. The apartment is so damn nice, he doesn’t even disturb a layer of dust as he pats the blanket, summoning you over. You bite your lip, look to your own pants. You’re not quite drunk enough to pretend sleeping in these would be comfortable either- you earn yourself a brow raise as you fumble with your button for a moment before dropping your pants into the pile of his clothes.

“Don’t say anything.” You warn him as you slide into the bed with him. Already the blanket is warm, cozy. He grins wider.

“I didn’t say anything, doll.”

“Shut up.”

You weren’t sure how this would work before, but now it feels easy. He raises one arm, pushes it under the dark blue pillow and lets you curl up, flush with his side. Your exposed thighs meet his- makes your skin tingle, feeling his staples, the hairless skin of his scars. Heat rises in your cheeks and you dare to look up to him- your heart pounds in your chest.

His eyes, half-lidded and soft, are focused on you. Fingertips land on your arm, running up your skin, jumping from your shoulder to the curve of your jaw. His thumb strokes over your cheek, blunt nail dragging softly. This close you watch as his mouth tightens as though he’s about to speak- but his mismatched lips part and he sighs.

The spiced scent of the whiskey washes over you- and as he leans down you meet him halfway, let the taste of cinnamon cover your tongue. It’s slow, unhurried- his mouth lingering over yours between kisses and you let yourself savor each moment of his closeness. He meets your lips again- tipping your chin until the staples below his lips press against you, the coolness of the metal in contrast to his warm breath making you shiver. Your hands ghost up his sides, sneaking under his shirt to slide along the lines of his scars, over the shapes of muscles and ribs. Dabi withdraws then, but doesn’t go far. His hand again tips your face how he wants, forcing your chin down until he can reach your forehead. The kiss he lays there makes your eyes flutter closed.

Tension eases out of him by inches, occasionally interrupted by the drift of his fingers on your skin, brushing over your cheeks, over the back of your neck, tangling into your hair. The scratch of his nails over your scalp makes you hum in contentment and Dabi’s mouth quirks up as his eyes close again. In his warmth, it’s easy to relax, to nose closer to him until your face is tucked up against him and the steady rhythm of his breathing lulls you to sleep.

A wretched taste coats your teeth and no matter how much your tongue- which is uncomfortably thick and dry- rubs across your mouth, it lingers. You swallow and force your eyes open- only to groan. Vision blurred, you blink over and over to try and force some wetness to gather again. It takes a minute to remember where the fuck you were- but with the heat radiating from your side, the memories return quickly.

In the night you’d kicked the blanket half-off, revealing your bare leg from under the black fabric. With the warmth that’s still trapped by the blanket and the dampness of sweat that gathers along your neck and back, you can probably imagine why. Yet, you’re still side by side with him. He’s pushed the blanket down around his waist while his shirt has ridden up, revealing a twisting line of scars and staples that dips near his navel before winding off under the white of his rumpled shirt.

You grin, reach over and touch him- and he’s just as warm as expected. His healthy skin is taut, covering the muscles of his abdomen and as your fingers slide over his stomach, those muscles clench, twitch-

His hand catches yours and he groans- face twisting into a grimace.

“Sorry,” Your voice comes out rough with your dry throat. “Thought you were asleep.”

“Hung over.” If your voice was rough, his is in absolute tatters, deep and gravelly and caught in his throat. His hand releases yours to come up and lay over his face- which now you can see is pale and sickly, making his scars look even more purple. His fingers touch his cheek, pick at the blood that has dried from last night, peeling and sticking around his staples.

“Need water?” You ask, already beginning to scoot away from him- figure you’ll share a glass with him no matter how he answers.

“That eager to get away from me?” His reply rumbles. Without the fog of alcohol in his veins, he actually sounds teasing. Playful. Blue eyes burn into you through his dark lashes. You think you know better now.

So you come back to him, lean over him with one arm pressed to his pillows- the hand that had been on his face graces your hips. When you lean down, his chin lifts, meets you halfway. It’s simple, not the demanding kisses from last night- hardly more than your lips sliding over his. You break away just enough to rub your nose against his, feel the cool metal of his triple studs as you speak, “I’m still here, aren’t I?”

You don’t give him a chance to reply, pressing a quick peck to his half-open mouth and scooting off the bed. You don’t, however, miss the dazed look that tracks your body as you slide off the bed, nor the pleasantly surprised huff that follows. Dabi eases himself up onto his elbows to watch you as you make your way to the doorway, looking each way down the hallway there, unsure where the kitchen is. You turn back to ask- “Where’s-?”

And watch as Dabi scrambles out of bed, nearly tripping over the pile of clothes in the middle of the room, knocks over still-open the Fireball, as he dashes towards a cracked door- “Dabi?” Alarms set off in your head as you move to follow-- until the telltale sound of Dabi being sick echoes out of the bathroom.

Of course. You turn your back to him, give him a little privacy as he heaves and grab the Fireball and your clothes before the pool of amber alcohol can reach them. The strong smell of cinnamon makes your lip curl, your stomach flipping in protest, so you leave your clothes on the bed and take the offending bottle with you as you explore the little apartment.

Once you’re back in the room you’d teleported into last night, you spot the kitchen. You leave the bottle on the counter, pushing it as far into the corner as you can, then grab a spare rag left out. In the bathroom, Dabi’s heaving has been replaced by the running of the sink- the rush of water occasionally interrupted by what you suspected was his cupped hands or mouth. You peak in as you drop the rag on the floor and are rewarded with the sight of Dabi bent over the sink, forehead pressed to the metal faucet, one hand scooping water to pour onto the back of his neck. The collar of his shirt has turned transparent, clinging to his back.

“Still glad you stayed?” The tiled bathroom makes his voice echo strangely.

You think about it, mop up the Fireball with your foot. “Yeah.” His head turns, one blue eye peeking out at you from behind dark hair. You grin. “Really glad I kissed you before that, though.”

#Dabi #dabi x reader #Dabi x gn reader #Dabi x you #dabi x y/n #boku no hero fanfic #boku no hero imagines #dabi fic #dabi fanfic #dabi imagine #gender neutral mc #gender neutral imagine #mha dabi #bnha dabi #kat talks #alcohol

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sproutsgcrden · 3 years

Text

sentinel of naruhata | chapter two

mr. nice guy

warnings: graphic descriptions of violence, one short scene implying sexual harassment (non-graphic), manga spoilers for my hero academia: vigilantes

word count: 3383

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If someone had told Koichi that he would get jumped, well, he may have believed them. That’s not too uncommon, especially around Naruhata. And it really wouldn’t be odd if it happened to him specifically. He just had that kind of luck. However, if they had also mentioned that a nine-year old would jump in and save him, he’d be a bit skeptical.

He honestly didn’t know if he quite believed what he had witnessed. One moment he was about to get hit by a guy he had managed to piss off earlier in the day, and the next some kid had shown up seemingly out of nowhere, threatening to steal his attacker’s quirk. Koichi didn’t think that was possible. Sure, there had been copying quirks, and erasure quirks were rare, but a quirk that allowed a person to take another quirk? That didn’t seem right, at least, it didn’t seem too entirely possible. A quirk is an integral, unique part of each individual- there’s no way somebody can take that, right? He could be wrong, it wasn’t like he was studying quirk theory.

As soon as the kid hightailed it out of the store with his strange assortment of items, Koichi knew he’d been in for it. He had already been late to work today because of the whole fiasco from earlier. He didn’t mean to run into Spiky Dude- it had just happened! Yeah, maybe he shouldn’t have been using his quirk in public, but he was running late! And then, of course, Spiky Dude just had to show up at the same convenience store Koichi worked at, and had to rough him up on the same day he was late. His manager was already absolutely pissed, and Koichi really didn’t want to stick around any longer than he had to in fear of a lecture, or something worse.

Luckily for him, he was nearing the end of his shift by the time Spiky Dude had entered the store, and the kid had helped him waste a lot of time due to the insane amount of items he was purchasing. All he had to do was clock out and sneak out of the door, which should be fairly easy. After punching out on the system and closing the register, Koichi grabbed his bag and began to get ready to leave.

“Haimiwari.” Koichi closed his eyes in disappointment, sighing before turning around with a fake grin.

“What can I do for you, sir?”

The angry tapping of the shoe really should have been enough warning, in hindsight.

------

The streets of Naruhata were busy for the late hour, not too unusual but it was something that Koichi didn’t want to bother with after the night he had. Of course that stunt had gotten him fired. Perfect. It wasn’t like it was his fault! He was the victim in all of this! What, did his boss really think that he wanted to get dragged into an alleyway and get beat up? Koichi grunted as he walked around a slow-placed couple. He would have to find another job and fast. Rent was coming up, and he still had payments due on his tuition. His left hand adjusted the strap of his backpack while his right passed over his face. This was too stressful to think about right now.

There was something he knew he could to help take his mind off of things for a while. Koichi’s eyes narrowed in determined concentration. Yeah, tonight was a good night for that.

------

The wind rushed through Izuku’s loose hair, tousling it beyond fixing. It felt wonderful, racing across the rooftops of an unknown city in the dead of the night. He was barely let out of his room and the training hall on good days- he could never hope to leave the confines of Kurogiri’s watchful eye. Which, unfortunately, meant that it was a rare opportunity to go outside… ever.

Izuku let out a harsh giggle, letting it echo in the air with a wide smile. He had never felt so free.

Slowing to catch his breath, Izuku pulled a wrinkled, old notebook out of his bag. Skimming through the pages, he stopped on the last entry he made. When researching Eraserhead, it wasn’t that hard to find out that the underground hero mainly patrolled in the Narahata Ward. However, it was a bit more difficult to find out specific times and locations of his daily patrols. He assumed that it changed quite frequently due to Eraserhead’s cryptid-like nature, but it was still frustrating to not know exactly where to find the hero. Especially since he wasn’t aware how much time he had before Tomura caught on to where he was.

However, Izuku did have a few locations that seemed to be promising. Most of them were hidden back alley’s, which made perfect sense. A majority of petty crimes took place during the day- they were a beacon to spotlight heroes, those who lived off the praise and popularity from civilians. But the nasty, evil villains? Oh, Izuku knew from experience that the worst of the worst were always found in the dead of night. Underground heroes always had to be on their toes, and it spoke volumes to Eraserhead’s vigilance that he’s remained pretty much untouchable and unnoticeable to those who wished ill intent.

Pulling up the map on his outdated phone, he inputted the first location he had written in his notebook. The specific alley was only about three blocks away. With a manic grin, Izuku pulled up the hood of his jacket and let Enhance swim through his veins once more.

------

The discs of air underneath Koichi’s palms lit up with a familiar burst of light, making the nineteen gleefully chuckle. The feeling of his signature All Might hoodie snugged tight over his torso provided him with an unexplainable comfort, as did the plain black mask covering the lower half of his face.

Koichi was inexplicably known for his plain nature at college (save for the rumors that said he was some creep that tried to lure girls into abandoned buildings. He really was just trying to make friends!), so it wasn’t like anyone would expect him to be the vigilante that ran around Naruhata at night.

Well, he supposed the word “vigilante” was a bit of an exaggeration. It wasn’t like he sought out and fought criminals, he just used his quirk to get around a bit faster and help out the common man. Koichi lost out on his chance of being a hero a long time ago, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t help people when he had a bit of free time. As Mr. Nice Guy, he was able to get a glimpse of what he had dreamed about being his entire life.

Koichi zoomed through the lit up streets of Naruhata, providing directions to the lost, helping find missing items, and picking up bits of random trash. Everytime he received a “thank you” his eyes lit up- it was nice to be appreciated sometimes. The chorus of grateful civilians echoed within his mind as he continued to do good deeds throughout the night. After a few hours, he found himself moseying down a side road in hopes of heading home.

“All that do-gooding sure does make a guy thirsty.” He slipped down his mask, mumbling mostly to himself as he readjusted the straps of his bag.

A water bottle was thrust in front of him, followed by a peppy voice. “Here ya go!”

Koichi took the water bottle without thanking, shouting a quick “thank you” to whoever handed him the drink. And then, once he realized what had just happened, immediately did a double-take. Wide eyes looked over to the side of the road, only to see a young girl with pink, puffy pigtails staring at him with a bemused smirk.

“Pop Step?!” Koichi straightened his posture. “What are you doing here?!”

Ignoring his question, she began to walk out in front of him, hands stuffed in the pockets of her jacket. “So… you’re the guy picking up trash around town?” Her hand went to frame her cheek in wonder. “What’s your name again? Cockroach Guy?”

Wide, admiring eyes became downtrodden in an instant, an annoyed glare taking their place. “It’s Nice Guy!”

“Whatever! You’re the one who alerted me to the fuzz during my show, right? I wanted to say thanks, somehow!”

Koichi was the one who let her know the police were coming when she was performing her illegal street show earlier in the day. He didn’t care much for her music, but that didn’t mean he wanted to see her get arrested. Either way, he wasn’t sure why that provided an excuse to essentially stalk him. “So, you’ve been tailing me all day, huh?”

“Yup! I saw you almost get pummeled by those customers while you were working at that convenience store! I probably wouldn’t have stepped in either way, but wow! You were lucky when that little kid showed up, huh? Gotta admit, Cockroach Guy, that was pretty lame!”

“I don’t do well with violence, okay!” Koichi felt his eye twitch in annoyance; it was probably time to get out of this conversation before he lost his temper.

Pop Step’s face twisted with confusion. “Isn’t that dweeby hoodie supposed to be an All Might cosplay? And yet, you suck at fighting? That totally makes sense…”

“Sure, I look up to the guy. I wanna be useful to society however I can, just like he is! It’s got nothing to do with fighting! And the hoodie isn’t dweeby! It’s cool!”

“However you can?” Pop Step giggled, using her quirk to jump ust high enough to appear a little taller than Koichi. “So you know your place, at least!”

Koichi clenched his teeth in frustration, stepping around Pop Step to try and speed around her. “Stop getting hung up on the details! Knowing your place is important! If you keep playing at being some sort of pop idol, the cops will catch you sooner than later.”

Pop’s face scrunched up with a flash of anger, and if Koichi hadn’t had the night he had, he may have even been terrified. “Hey! I’m not ‘playing’ at anything! I’m the real deal!” She sped up, stopping in front of him as she pointed a perfectly manicured finger in his face. “You’ll just have to keep an eye out for the police! Also, I’ll need you to usher in my fans, set up the venues, and sell some merchandise!”

“Are you pissed off or hiring me for a job?!”

“Don’t you need one? Wouldn’t be surprised if you got fired after what happened!” Pop didn’t even take a moment to notice Koichi’s crestfallen glance towards the wall. “Anyways! If anyone can help me, it’s you- Know Your Place Guy!”

“Ugh. It’s Nice Guy!”

“Oh whatever!” Pop Step turned away from Koichi in order to run further down the alley, sparing him a glance backwards as she made her getaway. “I went through all of this trouble to express some gratitude… I didn’t think it’d be such a big deal, asking a ‘Nice Guy’ like you to do a little work to help a girl out!”

Koichi, good mood effectively ruined once again, went to bite back with a response. That was, until a familiar group popped into his view. He flinched as he saw Pop Step run straight into the leader, none other than the Spiky Dude who threatened to pummel Koichi into the ground just hours before. He could do nothing but stare as the group cornered Pop Step up against the wall, no doubt making her uncomfortable. Probably much more so than he was when he was in her position.

Now, if Koichi were a hero, this is when he would pull out all of the stops. He would crouch low to the ground, speeding to the men terrorizing the young girl and knocking them all on their asses. He would make sure he sped Pop Step to a safe location before coming back to make sure those bozos got arrested like they deserved. But, Koichi wasn’t a hero. And he would never be one. What could he do? His quirk was essentially useless in a fight. The only thing he was good at was running away.

But didn’t he have a duty to try and help? After all, if he couldn’t find the strength to help a young girl in this kind of situation, how could he try to help anyone else? With shaky legs and a determined glint in his eyes, Koichi bent low to the ground. The familiar pulse of his quirk activating below him provided little comfort, but he knew he had to push through this fear and go.

Mask pulled up, Koichi flew against the dirty pavement, locking eyes onto one of Spiky Dude’s lackeys. Now, if he could just get by unnoticed this time, he could knock this guy off his game and get Pop out of there. But of course, things never go Koichi’s way. That’s his luck.

The man caught him, large physique towering over him. The small tuft of flame acting as his hair cast an eerie shadow against the ground. “Well, well, well… look who we have here! Hey, boss! It’s the cockroach from earlier!” Still holding onto the back of Koichi’s hoodie, the large criminal threw him against the wall.

The pain of his head hitting against the rough edges of brick didn’t compare to the spikes slashing against his cheek.

“That annoying brat ain’t here to save you this time.” Spiky Dude’s eyes seem to glow in the dark night, and Koichi couldn’t ignore the sinister feeling pooling in his gut. “You ain’t getting away with just a small beating this time. I’m going to crush you. And I’m gonna enjoy it.”

The spiky criminal stalked closer to him; Koichi’s eyes immediately latched onto the blood dripping from the thick barbs protruding from the knuckles of his enemy. Shit. Shit. What could he do?! He really was going to die. Koichi shut his eyes in gruesome anticipation, hoping that at least Pop Step was using this opportunity to get away. A rush of air flew past his nose, and he blinked slowly. Looking up, Koichi locked eyes with Spiky Dude. The skewers had vanished from his knuckles, and the same, pale look of absolute petrification the criminal wore earlier in the night was on his face once more.

“Didn’t I tell you I wasn’t going to warn you next time?” The familiar voice of the kid that had stepped in during Koichi’s earlier encounter with this group echoed through the street, venom and animosity clear as day in his tone. Even Koichi shrunk into himself in fear. His wandering eyes latched onto a figure leaning down from the rooftop above, All Might hoodie bright against the black of night.

“I was looking for Eraserhead, but maybe I can do his job for him tonight and knock you fucker’s out.” Holy shit, what was up with this kid?

Koichi had noticed earlier that the kid had bright green eyes, but they seemed almost electrified, bright green sparks lighting off in his pupils as his glare deepened. He jumped off the roof, floating just above the ground before he hit it at full speed. His hand was held out, and Koichi glanced at the numerous scars stretching against the palored skin.

While Spiky Dude was distracted, Koichi took the opportunity to get back on his hands and feet, and forced himself to crash into the lizard looking man that was still holding onto Pop Step. She used the momentum from Koichi along with her quirk to jump out of the way and out of the alley. In his happiness of the fact that Pop was able to make a getaway, he wasn’t able to stop his momentum. Koichi ended up crashing straight into the other wall, the force of it knocking out the criminal he held tight in his grip.

“There’s no need for that!” A deep, grudd voice echoed from the other side of the street, and before anyone could react, a large fist connected straight into Spiky Dude’s nose. “The name’s Knuckleduster. And it’s my job to take out the trash like you.” Koichi barely even blinked, and the next moment the other tone was conked out right beside the leader.

What the fuck was happening?!

------

Izuku sighed in relief as he felt the rubber band snap against the quirk he held in his grasp, sending it back to its original owner as some random old man knocked him out. He didn’t want to steal a quirk, but that dude really wasn’t going to give him any choice. Luckily some geezer showed up before he could make good on his threat. He watched the man with a careful stare, seeing as he checked each of the criminal’s tongues before standing back up. His red sneakers crunched against the pavement as he lowered himself back to the ground; he walked towards the cashier he met earlier and held his hand out for him to take.

The man sitting across from him scratched the back of his head in a sheepish manner, choosing to take Izuku’s hand in order to get back up. “Uh, suppose that’s twice you’ve saved me, huh kid? We really have to stop meeting like this.”

Izuku chuckled, nodding his head in agreement. A cough sounded behind the two of them, and they both turned around to find the old man staring straight into their souls. Knuckleduster’s bandana covered his entire head, including the top half of his face, only leaving holes to see out of. His black trench coat was grimy, not to mention ripped on the hemlines. Everything about this screamed “homeless old man”, even down to the gritty way the man seemed to fight.

Izuku couldn’t help but think the man seemed familiar.

“You take quirks or something, kid?” The man’s eyes narrowed, his already gruff voice deepened.

“No! I don’t take quirks! I was just playing a bluff, really!” Technically, Izuku wasn’t lying. He hadn’t ever willingly taken a quirk before. “I have an erasure quirk! That’s why I’ve been looking for Eraserhead. I’m hoping he’s willing to train me.” Now, there’s the lie.

“Hmph.” Knuckleduster’s eyes stayed on Izuku a little while longer, tense silence following before he shrugged it off. “You both show promise. Gotta admit, when I heard about Naruhata’s newest vigilante, I wasn’t expecting him to have a sidekick.”

Both Izuku and Koichi stared at him in shock, making the old man laugh. It was a hearty laugh, scratchy and sarcastic. “People are gonna make that sort of assumption when you’ve got two kids helping fight crime in the exact same hoodie.” The two boys flushed, causing Koichi to shake his head.

“We just met today.”

“So? Doesn’t mean the two of ya don’t work well together. I almost didn’t need to come down here. If it weren’t for the threat of Trigger I probably wouldn’t have. Don’t know if it’s luck or not, but these thugs didn’t have a trace of the drug on ‘em.”

“Trigger?” Izuku knew what he was talking about. His father was one of the main benefactors of the production and distribution of the drug. Or well, he was before he got forced into a coma. He had originally thought the distribution would slow after the underworld had found out about All for One’s current medical status, but it seems that wasn’t the case.

Knuckleduster waved it away. “I can explain that later. After you two accept my offer.”

Koichi paled, backing away from the crazy old man. “What offer?”

A sinister grin formed its way onto Knuckleduster’s face, making the duo in front of him back away even further. “Let me teach you kids what it takes to do hero work, and how great it feels to pound some villains!”

Koichi thought this man was absolutely insane and would only lead him to more trouble.

Izuku thought that he had enough training from the villains themselves.

They met each other’s gaze before turning back to Knuckleduster.

“We refuse your offer.”

#bnha vigilantes fanfic #bnha vigilantes #koichi haimawari #kazuho haneyama #midoriya izuku #afo is hisashi midoriya #midoriya has a quirk #midoriya has all for one #midoriya fanfic #deku fanfic #deku au #bnha au #bnha fanfic

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citrus-lady · 3 years

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Dates That You Would Go On With Dabi

Dabi isn’t really a date sort of guy so your dates are pretty informal. Not to mention he is a notorious villain so he can’t really be out and about in the public eye.

However, there are certain things he will still do with his s/o.

Dabi really likes hanging out at home with his s/o and relaxing. This dude is totally down to building a fort in the living room and having a movie marathon. Not to mention the cuddle dates you guys frequently have on the couch.

Depending on who his s/o is and whether or not they are a villain/vigilante/civilian/hero he might bring you to the bar where the league hangs out. If you aren’t comfortable there or Dabi thinks it’s too dangerous for you then he won’t take you. Instead, he’ll opt to take you to another hole in the wall/ dive bar. If you do however go to the league bar, prepared to be fawned over by Toga, Twice, Magne, and Mister Compress. Spinner and Shigaraki will leave you alone and Kurogiri will be polite as ever.

Dabi doesn’t really like clubs all too much but he’ll go every once in a while. The clubs he goes to are pretty sketchy though so I wouldn’t recommend going without him. If you want he’ll take you clubbing but I wouldn’t get too cozy with others or dance with other people as Dabi can get pretty protective and jealous. Your best bet is to stay by his side all night and only dance with him. On the dance floor, Dabi has his hands on your hips and his chest to your back as you two grind to the loud music playing.

Depending on your morals, Dabi will 100% take you on a shoplifting date. I can just imagine him and his s/o walking around the mall or a bunch of shops just taking whatever they want. He won’t steal from old people or mom and pop shops though. If you aren’t cool with stealing though he will take you to thrift stores and convenience marts. This man doesn’t have a lot of money so if you expect him to pay I wouldn’t get your hopes up. It’s probably better if you pay to be honest. It should also be noted that when he is out in public like this he has to keep his hands and face covered to avoid being seen. He usually does this by wearing gloves, hoodies, or sometimes even a scarf or face mask.

Dabi doesn’t really like eating out but is down to get take out or delivery. His favorite is pizza or take-out Chinese food. Dabi also likes getting a bunch of snacks at the gas station/ convenience store. So dinner dates are pretty much always at home.

Although I don’t think Dabi can drive, I think he would be totally down for late-night driving dates or motorcycle rides. Just you and him driving down the highway faster than you should with the windows down and the music blaring from the stereo or you holding on to him as he speeds through the city on a motorcycle. I can also see him doing that cheesy movie thing where he drives to a mountain outside the city and parks to look at the view. If he’s driving a car you to will sit inside or on the hood and look at the stars while listening to music and talking. If he’s driving a motorcycle then he sets out a blanket and brings a picnic. This one does depend on if Dabi can actually drive through.

Dabi is down for self-care dates at home too. He loves taking baths/showers with you and getting spoiled with attention by you. It’s going to be a challenge to avoid other ‘activities’ if you bathe with him for too long so make sure that you make the bath as relaxing as possible. I’m talking candles, bath bombs and body wash. Dabi won’t like smelling like a lady so make sure that what you're using isn’t hyper-feminine. Dabi will also like it if you have him light all the candles in the house or bathroom. He won’t do nails or hair stuff but he’ll let you put a face mask on him and play with his hair. He’s going to die if you put your face mask on in a way to mimic him. Any products you use on Dabi are going to have to be gentle on the skin and smell fairly masculine or ambiguous. Also, this man gives a mean massage and will appreciate one in return, but be careful of wandering hands. Dabi will also partake in any drinks or snacks you make during these cute little dates. Smoothies? Teas? Fruit? You got it.

Dabi won’t really partake in any crafts or art but will be content watching you make things. He thinks it’s really cute and cool how you are able to make beautiful things. Maybe it is because you yourself are beautiful. Dabi will watch you bake/cook, paint, knit, whatever strikes your fancy.

Dabi won’t hesitate to come up behind you when your cooking or doing dishes and hold you close while you sway to the music. Surprisingly, Dabi will sing or dance once in a while and even though it’s not in public, it’s kinda like a mini-date.

#Dabi #dabi x reader #dabi headcanons #bnha #mha #my hero academia #BNHA Headcanons #mha headcanons #bnha x reader #mha x reader #dabi x y/n #dabi date

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adminbryantsaki · 3 years

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EraserCloudMic

(This is my contribution to @impalawrites Adelie collab. This is a bit of a sad story. But it will end well. In this story, Aizawa and Hizashi have already had the talk with Eri about death. I don’t own the characters, Horikoshi Kohei does. Also, if this isn’t your cup of tea, blend of spices, or brew of coffee, move on.)

TW: mention of character death, spoiler warning.

WC: 1,225.

It was a spring afternoon in the Aizawa-Yamada household. Shouta was preparing to clean out his closet after a few months of collecting junk. He put his dark hair up in a low bun and set to work pulling out boxes from his closet and sorting through them. He made a pile of things he wanted to keep and things that he wanted to give away and a pile of things that were just garbage. He was about halfway through when Hizashi joined him to help him sort through the stuff. Aizawa reached inside the back of the closet and pulled out an old wooden box and dusting it off.

“Do you know what this could be?” Aizawa asked his husband as he showed him the box.

“It looks like something from when we went to U.A., maybe we should open it and see what’s inside.” Hizashi said as he sat down next to Aizawa. He opened the box and saw a collection of painted rocks inside.

“They’re rocks? I don’t remember these.” Aizawa said as he looked to Hizashi who was tearing up.

“Remember when we had that activity with the elementary kids where we were to paint rocks and give them to a friend? These were the rocks that we had received.” Hizashi explained before telling him which rocks were from who. He paused at one that had a pale blue cloud on it. Aizawa picked up the rock and let the tears fall from his face. Soon Eri entered the room and saw Aizawa crying.

“Daddy, what’s wrong? Why are you crying?” Eri spoke. Shouta looked over at her and wiped his tears away.

“Just some old memories that are making me sad, princess.” He said and opened his arms to her. She walked over and hugged him.

“What are the memories that are making you sad?” She asked him. Aizawa looked to Hizashi and he nodded in approval.

“It’s about time we told her about him.” The blonde said.

“Tell me about who, papa?” Eri asked as she sat down between Aizawa’s legs and looked up at Hizashi. The blonde sat down across from them and showed her the rocks.

“When we were at U.A., we did an activity with some elementary kids where we painted rocks and gave them to someone special.” Hizashi explained. Eri looked into the box and pulled out a rock that had some music notes painted on them.

“Did you paint this one, papa?” Eri asked. Hizashi nodded. Eri looked in the box and pulled out a couple more rocks that she liked. One had a cat that looked like Sushi on it and another had some flowers painted on them.

“Why do the rocks make Daddy sad? They have happy pictures on them.” Eri spoke as she laid the rocks out.

“One of the rocks was painted by a friend that isn’t around anymore.” Aizawa spoke. He picked up the rock with the cloud on it and showed it to her.

“This was painted by our friend Oboro Shirakumo. He… died a long time ago, Eri. Seeing the cloud on this rock reminds me of him and that I can’t see him anymore because he’s gone.” Aizawa told her.

“I understand. How did he die?” Eri asked.

“He was crushed by a crumbling ceiling caused by a villains quirk.” He said as he held her close.

“I wanna paint rocks. I wanna make one for you, one for papa, and one for Oboro.” Eri said.

“I think we can do that after lunch. You want chicken nuggets, Eri?” Aizawa said. She nodded.

“Ok, go get them out of the freezer and we will be there soon to help you.” He spoke. Eri got up from his lap and ran out of the room excited. When she was gone, Hizashi walked over to his husband and kissed his forehead. “I think it’s wonderful she wants to do that for him. Why don’t we set these out where they can be seen.” The blonde said and Aizawa put the rocks that Eri had pulled out back into the box and carried the box out of the room.

Hizashi went into the kitchen and helped Eri make lunch while Aizawa went out on the back patio and put the rocks out where they could be seen. Eri saw him and ran out to help him put the rocks out. She found the ones she liked and held them back.

“Can I put these ones in my room?” She asked.

“Sure. They would look good on your window sill.” Aizawa told her. Eri smiled and carried the rocks in her skirt as she walked back inside with the rocks and went to her room. Aizawa finished placing the rocks and went back inside to have lunch with his family.

After they ate, Eri put her plate in the sink and then ran to the closet where they kept the art supplies and pulled out the box of paints and brushes and pulled them to the back porch. She then went around the backyard and found some rocks. She gathered them at the small table that was on the patio before going inside and asking for help to get the box of paint out to the table as it was too heavy for her. Aizawa carried the box of paint for her and Hizashi got the cups of water and a smock for Eri. The three of them sat at the table and painted rocks for the rest of the afternoon.

Somewhere in the deep dark underbelly of the city at the League of Villains current hideout, Kurogiri was alone. The other members of the League had either left the hideout for the night or had gone to sleep. He was alone to himself and his thoughts. He went to a hidden closet where he kept what little personal belongings he was allowed inside. He opened the closet and inside was a spare change of clothes and a cardboard box that had the words ‘Private’ and ‘Keep out’ written in black marker. Kurogiri looked around to make sure no one was watching then he opened the lid to the box. Inside was three rocks with painted images on them. The black fog that made up his face dissipated for a moment to reveal that of a human within. A tear rolled down the person’s face as he looked upon the rocks within the box. On the rocks were images of cats and music notes. Some of them also had flowers..

“My friends… I miss you.” The man within Kurogiri said sadly. The black fog concealed the man again and he stood up. He went back to his place where he stood over Shiguraki. Kurogiri looked out the window at the people below. The man within the black fog wondered where his friends were and if they really missed him.

The end.

#Pala's adelie collab #admin writes #bnha #bnha present mic #bnha eraserhead #bnha erasercloudmic #rocks

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dereksmcgrath · 3 years

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In order to talk about this episode, we have to talk about how manga publishing and anime production does (and does not) work.

And before we can get into this episode, and its originating storyline that comes not only from the My Hero Academia manga but also its spinoff Vigilantes, I have to talk about three things:

The challenges of adapting more than one manga series.

An imaginary Vigilantes co-production (an “Imagine If,” to steal a phrase from a writer better than I) between Studio BONES and Studio Trigger.

But first, another franchise Studio BONES adapted the same year as MHA: Bungo Stray Dogs.

(Bear with me–this is all going somewhere.)

“More of a Hero Than Anyone,” My Hero Academia Episode 107 (Season 5, Episode 19)

An adaptation of Chapters 253, 254, and 255 of the manga, by Kohei Horikoshi, inspired by My Hero Academia: Vigilantes, Chapters 59 to 65 by Hideyuki Furuhashi and Betten Court. All translated by Caleb Cook with lettering by John Hunt and available from Viz.

My Hero Academia is available to stream on Crunchyroll and Funimation.

Spoilers up to the My Hero Academia Chapter 324, Vigilantes Chapter 108, and the film World Heroes’ Mission.

There are also spoilers for Bungo Stray Dogs and Gurren Lagann.

Created by writer Kakfa Asagiri and illustrator Sango Harukawa, with additional spinoffs illustrated by Kanai Neko, Ganjii, Oyoyo, and Shiwasu Hoshikawa, Bungo Stray Dogs is about a world where characters, who happen to have the names of real-life authors of Japanese and other literature, also happen to have superpowers based on the titles of works by those same famous authors. For example, Herman Melville can summon the giant battle fortress Moby-Dick, Nikolai Gogol can transport items through his overcoat, and Motojiro Kajii has the ability “Lemonade,” which prevents him from being harmed by bombs shaped like lemons.

(…Bungo Stray Dogs is weird. The first anime doesn’t even have dogs in it.)

Studio BONES premiered an animated adaptation of Bungo Stray Dogs in 2016, the same year the studio premiered the MHA anime. What makes Bungo unique compared to some other anime is that each season adapted from not only the manga but one of the franchise’s light novels as well. While some of the light novels take place concurrent to the manga, most take place in the past–which made Season 1 awkward, re-setting some events from the Azure Messenger Arc in the present and hampering some characterization for what was supposed to be the very first meeting of the characters Osamu Dazai and Doppo Kunikida.

The next light novels adapted for the Bungo anime all take place in the past, with Season 2 giving what I think is the best of the adaptations, The Dark Age, as we learn more about Dazai’s time with the Port Mafia and his relationship with fellow mafioso Sakunosuke Oda. This arc set a high standard that I don’t think the next light novel adaptations have reached, as it not only fleshes out the characters and builds the world, but it also has two important accomplishments. First, on its own, you could watch the entire four-episode arc as its own movie. While some details will gain more significance if you watched the first season, and will become more important as you watch the rest of the series or read the manga and light novels, by itself, The Dark Age is a thrilling narrative of intrigue, deception, betrayal, and heartache. Second, thematically, The Dark Age ties in very well to the rest of Season 2. Some of it is cheap shorthand: the Lupin Bar matchstick container becomes a visual indicator for Dazai helping Atsushi Nakajima save an ally when Dazai couldn’t. But even as cheap as that may seem, it enhances the overall season, giving Dazai more to do in a story where he is otherwise on the sidelines and playing everyone like chess pieces. Plus, you kind of needed to see The Dark Age to understand who Ango Sakaguchi is in Season 2 and why Dazai hates him.

Season 3 gave me high hopes for where the next light novel adaptation could go. This season focuses on a third party attempting to destroy Dazai and Atsushi’s organization, the Armed Detective Agency, along with the Port Mafia. When Agency founder Yukichi Fukuzawa is poisoned, we see the usually lighthearted and arrogant Ranpo Edogawa become momentarily silent and devastated by Fukuzawa’s hospital bed. I blame myself for reading theories online that this moment would lead the season to do a flashback arc to one of the light novels, one that shows the origins of the Agency, how Fukuzawa first met young Ranpo, and explains what that cat was doing all throughout The Dark Age and Season 3.

Instead, as soon as I started Season 3 and saw the premiere was beginning with a lengthy adaptation of a light novel centered around Dazai and his former Mafia teammate Chuuya Nakahara, my heart sank. Nothing about that story thematically tied into the overall season as well as would Ranpo and Fukuzawa’s light novel, a story that reveals how much Ranpo has lost in his life and why he clings onto Fukuzawa for approval and why the dissolution of the Agency would not only deprive him of family and friends but also the very meaning to his existence. That is a heavy story to tell, one that would make the audience better appreciate the lengths the Agency goes to for Fukuzawa. By comparison, there is next to nothing about Chuuya’s back story that accomplishes the same. If anything, all that light novel adaptation tells us is that Dazai and Chuuya’s partnership mirrors that of Atsushi and the Mafioso Ryunosuke Akutagawa–and that detail was already established well enough in Season 2, so we’re just retreading the same old material.

Adapting Chuuya’s story is like explaining Aizawa’s back story: as I’ll explain in the moment, all you really learn in either case is why Chuuya hates Dazai and why Aizawa is a lone wolf–and it’s the reasons you already see in the present day, Chuuya hates Dazai because he’s annoying, and Aizawa has always been a loner, end of discussion. The choice to give these two characters the spotlight doesn’t really do anything new for the audience. I’ll say more about Aizawa later, but for now, I’ll say, nothing against Chuuya as a character, but the decision to adapt his light novel seemed very much like a marketing strategy by manga/light novel publisher Kadokawa and Studio BONES: Dazai and Chuuya’s relationship is popular with fans, there’s a lot of back story to mine, and the light novel that gave us this anime adaptation already set up a sequel that itself could serve as a Season 4 adaptation or even a feature film.

(Honestly, that Chuuya sequel novel in Bungo is more entertaining: there’s a cyborg named Adam Frankenstein. Re-read that sentence: a cyborg named Adam Frankenstein, who treats Chuuya like a little kid, offering him candy because he read that young people like candy and the serotonin from sugar can help with dealing with times of stress. Chuuya’s babysitter is Frankenstein: it’s so absurd that it just works.)

So, why am I talking about Bungo Stray Dogs instead of the other anime Studio BONES makes, My Hero Academia? Because I’m seeing a set of mistakes and Band-Aids repeat themselves all over again.

I profess ignorance about how the anime industry works: there are better people than I who can speak to it. As far as I can gather, just by looking at the evidence in that industry, and the evidence of just about any industry, the goal is to make money. I don’t think the goal to make an anime is necessarily to get people to watch it, especially now that streaming makes the cost of entry very low or even free if you wait long enough for Crunchyroll and Funimation to put it up with commercials. I don’t think it’s to get you to buy the manga: even if you get hooked like I am to read ahead to see what happens next, why read something you just watched? Instead, I think the goal is to buy merchandise, like how musical groups have switched from record deals to selling individual songs online and getting merch sold at concerts (pre-COVID). The conundrum for the anime and manga industries are not dissimilar from those in comic book publishing in the United States: DC and Marvel can have all the crossover events in the comics that they want, but those don’t always get someone who to read a new series just because Spider-Man or Wolverine pop up in it. I have not looked at sales for Vigilantes, so I don’t know whether Aizawa, Midnight, and All Might popping up in there boosts its sales. Rather, the comics are testing grounds for what works. Marvel uses its comics to test what can work in films and streaming, where money now is, while maybe Vigilantes was testing the Oboro story to see if there was something there to put into the anime. Sure enough, the fan art out there for Oboro has increased since the episode, merchandise can’t be far behind.

But let’s move on to actually looking at the episode itself. “More of a Hero Than Anyone” centers on Aizawa and Present Mic being brought to the prison Tartarus to interrogate captured League of Villains member Kurogiri. As I have complained for most of this season, BONES has made confusing choices regarding which chapters of the MHA manga it is adapting first: this story comes from manga chapters that were the last before the big Pro Heroes vs Paranormal Liberation Front Arc, and we haven’t even gotten to the Meta Liberation Army Arc yet. True, this episode ends in a way to set all of that up, showing us Shigaraki getting his power boost, but it has been a befuddling choice of what to adapt first. Making matters more confusing is that, while this episode introduces Aizawa and Present Mic’s classmate Shirakumo, someone alluded to during Shinso’s arc this season, that story doesn’t really originate in the main manga: it started in an MHA spinoff.

The manga My Hero Academia: Vigilantes is to My Hero Academia like the Bungo Stray Dogs light novels are to its main manga: it is largely a prequel that fills in back story for major characters and some worldbuilding details while telling its own story with its own protagonist and plot. Chapters 59 to 65 are the first major departure for the series, as it shifts from the usual protagonist to a plot about Aizawa, showing his time as a UA student and setting up why he ended up returning to UA as a teacher.

The first time I read Aizawa’s arc in Vigilantes, I hated it: it is a cynical attempt at giving us an origin story to explain how Aizawa got to be the way he is–without actually showing us anything we could not have figured out ourselves. It tries to set up this idea that, if Shirakumo had not died, Aizawa would not have been the lone wolf.

That idea butts up against two details. First, we already see Aizawa keeps up the lone wolf appearance anyway in the present, so imagining an alternative timeline doesn’t make sense, especially when, in its own flashback arc, Aizawa was already a lone wolf–that was his entire dynamic with Mic, Skirakumo, even Midnight, so it’s less that Shirakumo’s death made him this way when he was always this way. Hell, this was a gag in the supplementary material of the manga that got adapted into the anime, when Mic had to come up with a Pro Hero name for Aizawa because he was that checked out–and, again, that was before Shirakumo died.

Second, we know Aizawa’s lone wolf persona is just that, a front he puts up that belies his pragmatic willingness to work with others. Just because he is annoyed by the antics of friends like mic and Skirakumo, just because he bristles at Midnight trying to rope him into teaching at UA throughout most of Vigilantes, and just because he is overly serious when dealing with his students or with newbie heroes like Vigilantes’s protagonist the Crawler, none of that ignores that, despite everything, Aizawa, maybe more than anyone else, fulfills the collaborative spirit of Pro Hero work that other characters do not.

Aizawa’s strengths as a teacher center around his understanding that people have to work together. That detail fails when remembering he is still the one who is not properly reprimanding Bakugo to stop being a bullying, violent dick to Izuku. (Seriously, this episode is yet another moment of him being awful: how many times in the anime alone has he kicked the shit out of Izuku for no reason, as if any reason would justify it?) But otherwise, Aizawa understands how to work with others, and that has set him apart for so long from other prominent Pro Heroes. All Might doesn’t really collaborate–he’s been trying to hold up the peace of the world on his own. Endeavor may run an agency with sidekicks that enhance his abilities, but as seen in the Endeavor Agency Arc he would rather rush ahead to save the day on his own, in this pathetic desire to catch up to All Might. Aizawa, though, knows his limitations and is willing to work with anyone else to help him achieve his goals, something we have seen him learn to embrace more and more, whether hanging back to be the face in front of the camera to distract the League while the other Heroes rescue Bakugo, or when he accepted Izuku joining on the Shie Hassaikai mission. And you can pick up on all of this from just reading the main manga–so why bother reading Vigilantes if all it’s going to tell you is,”Aizawa’s friend died and that’s why he’s sad”? Even little details get lost in the shuffle: while I should appreciate Aizawa bringing up the cat Oboro rescued, that’s such a big part of the Vigilantes plot that it feels like a nod to the story rather than getting fully into it. (Trivia: That cat, Sushi, is adopted by Midnight. Enjoy feeling awful that Sushi may have passed away by now or is going to be without an owner when Midnight dies.)

I had thought I could put that frustration with that Vigilantes arc behind me. Then the main manga revealed Shirakumo’s corpse was used to create Kurogiri–and I rage quitted. Okay, that’s exaggerating: I didn’t stop reading the manga, but I did take a long pause in keeping up on it, seeing as the next arc got to be so bloody and depressing that, on top of enough real-world concerns, that wasn’t the kind of escapist reading I was looking for. I needed some time to sit back and process how annoying this revelation was. That means, for all of Vigilantes, this detail, that Kurogiri was Shirakumo all along, was just waiting to be revealed. To again repeat the SpongeBob meme I used last week, this series used me for plot contrivances.

(Vigilantes also seems like one long troll. After the main manga shows the Hood Nomu used to be an underground fighter, he gets a backstory in Vigilantes. And Vigilantes give you the last bit of Midnight you’re going to get before she’s killed off–which, now that I think about it, makes her exclusion from this episode even worse: she was friends with Shirakumo, too, so bring her into this episode before we fridge her!)

It doesn’t help how ignorant I feel for not realizing this sooner: Skirakumo’s name and abilities are the white-and-black opposite of Kurogiri’s. The cover to a collected volume of Vigilantes made that all the clearer. But if that’s the case, why wasn’t this hinted at when Aizawa and Kurogiri first encountered each other way back in the USJ Arc? I know it’s a lot to expect the audience to track throughout the series, and I appreciate the story trying to explain that away by Aizawa asking the same question I have, before someone tells him that maybe Kurogiri’s reprogramming made Oboro’s personality disappear. But Horikoshi’s creation of Shirakumo seems more like a late addition rather than something always there since the earliest chapters. And that’s fine–it’s just disappointing compared to other comics creators like Oda who sets stuff up years in advance before payoff in One Piece. And it’s more disappointing it didn’t come up in the anime adaptation: I would have hoped, if Horikoshi had that idea so early, he would have told BONES so they could throw in a hint early in that fight. I don’t know, maybe Aizawa has a flashback to the last words Shirakumo told him and that motivates him to use his Quirk one last time to save Tsuyu and Izuku, or maybe Kurogiri pauses before Aizawa just long enough that you think that’s a weird choice, then upon rewatch now you realize, “Oh, shit, Kurogiri was remembering his classmate and trying to process that information!”

It doesn’t help that the Shirakumo story doesn’t feel like something Studio BONES should handle. Granted, that story is from Vigilantes, not the main manga, so I anticipated BONES would not adapt it here–even as I held out hope for an OVA or, as I hinted earlier, something akin to Bungo Stray Dogs: start the season with this three- to four-episode adaptation of Aizawa’s back story to introduce this season. I’ll say more about why placing that story at the beginning of the season in a moment, but there was another reason why I didn’t think this was a Studio BONES story: it always felt like a story suited for Trigger, the studio behind Kill La Kill, Little Witch Academia, and more, built by people from Gainax of Evangelion and Gurren Lagann fame.

The Shirakumo arc in the Vigilantes manga felt like a visual love letter by Shueisha to Trigger saying, “Please adapt this!” Betten Court’s illustrations for Vigilantes emphasize diagonals, even when adapting MHA characters originally designed by Horikoshi, as well as facial expressions with sharp lines rather than curves, all visually reminiscent of some Trigger and even Gainax anime. Characters’ facial expressions look more like Panty and Stocking than Studio BONES. Aizawa’s final fight in the arc is against a stories-tall behemoth with laser powers that, if not visually, then narratively invokes similar fights in Gurren Lagann, Gridman, and Evangelion. Speaking of Gurren Lagann, in this arc Midnight is sporting Kamina’s shades, and Skirakumo’s last words to Aizawa come through an intercom, after he supposedly died, similar to Kamina’s death. Also, Midnight is running around in a nudist beach outfit from Kill La Kill–so, yeah, the Trigger allusions are that in your face, in all senses of that phrase. Again, I’m not saying I personally would like Trigger to adapt MHA: it’d be different, they are not the first studio I would go with or one whose output I would like, given a lot I don’t like about their output, but when you look at the manga-based evidence, going in that direction makes sense.

I don’t know what plans Shueisha, Toho, and BONES had for this episode, but the style of it already feels so different and off-kilter anyway, due to Aizawa’s nostalgia, that I can’t help but think that someone at some point did have an idea to go with a different studio to animate it, or at least a different approach. I appreciate how much they changed Chapter 254’s opening, re-staging Oboro’s agency talk to be outdoors instead of a walk-and-talk scene as in the manga. Even if I can’t quite say the street walking and outdoor sitting under a bright sky is indicative of Trigger exactly–if anything, the fixation on centering the scenes Wes Anderson-style (the hallway walking in Tartarus, Aizawa and Mic and Oboro hanging out under the blue sky) looks more like something out of Shaft or BONES’s Bungo Stray Dogs–that difference tells me there was something more ambitious in mind than what we ultimately got. It’s the same when we get Kurogiri’s point of view as Aizawa and Present Mic get through to Oboro.

Imagine how gutsy it would be to start Season 5 with an entire Oboro flashback arc. Imagine moving forward in time to this moment of Aizawa and Present Mic interviewing Kurogiri, disorienting the audience asking why we’re skipping the Classes 1A and 1B fights, the League of Villains vs the Meta Liberation Army Arc, and the Endeavor Agency Arc, to show this moment that was supposed to come later. Imagine how gutsy it would be to start with Aizawa and Present Mic learning all of this at Tartarus, setting up the finale for this season, the Pro Heroes versus the Paranormal Liberation Front–then not actually showing that fight start until next season. Why do all of that? Because, if you’re going to delay the LOV vs MLA Arc for that long, you might as well start your season assuring the audience that, no, we have not forgotten the Villains, they will be relevant this season–because, since Aizawa and Present Mic’s high school years, they have been the Big Bads all along and were toying with these two for so long. Imagine how gutsy all of that would be.

Instead, all of that is reduced to just one episode. It’s all so cliche. Aizawa points out, towards the beginning, that this power of friendship trope won’t work–then it does work, negating the entire point of calling it cliche. (Well, it does work, for now: given often we’re told rather than shown how All For One is a chessmaster, it wouldn’t surprise me if he let Kurogiri spill the beans like this knowing it would help him break out of prison later when the Pro Heroes foolishly take on the PLF all at once with little back up plan.) If we had had the full story of Oboro, like did readers of Vigilantes, the slow revelation that Nomus are hardly puppets but, more than that, are reanimated Frankenstein’s monsters capable of agency and personalities, would make this hurt more. We would have seen Oboro, we would have been as horrified as Aizawa and Mic are to learn he was resurrected–but, instead, it is already upon our first meeting with Oboro that suddenly we learn he is also Kurogiri, and it’s just too fast.

How disappointing, but sadly realistic.

It feels like BONES has made a lot of safe choices this season, and while that helps sustain the studio during the unpredictable times of COVID and does what works already for MHA, it doesn’t feel very adventurous. It makes me wonder whether BONES should have put in that time improving Season 5 than trying to make another MHA film. I have not seen World Heroes’ Mission, and while I’ll reserve my review of it until I see it, and will limit as many spoilers as I can, based on just the plot summary I have read, I fail to see how putting in the budget on that film makes sense in terms of narratives, even as I understand how it makes sense in terms of increasing an audience and getting box office sales (in a pre-COVID model, of course).

But speaking of COVID, yeah, I do see why World Heroes’ Mission is necessary right now: it is a globe-trekking film, from what I read it includes beautiful scenery as characters travel vast distances–it is a film needed right now when many of us are still social distancing and still staying at home in the hope that our contributions limit the spread of this deadly virus. (Get vaccinated, mask up, stay at home when possible, and stop being a jerk, people.) Still, I can’t say I’m not disappointed that, with a season whose animation has depended a lot on flashbacks, even if that makes sense given how much ground to cover and how far along the story has come over more than 100 episodes, it is disappointing to not get something more stylistically out-there.

I’m also not saying it’s realistic that Trigger would ever animate this arc. I don’t even necessarily want them to: I find most of their productions to be so light on story while heavy on themes, message, and the animation that, while I appreciate people getting into how visually stunning the artwork is, I find the story so empty that I just can’t get into it. And I’m not expecting Shueisha, Toho, or Studio BONES to cut some kind of deal with Trigger to give them the rights to adapt part or all of Vigilantes: Trigger is animating Star Wars stuff next, that’s a wider market than My Hero Academia (regardless how many Star Wars references Horikoshi puts into his series).

I know I’m being very critical of the production choices behind the episode. Granted, the recap to the last episode was needless–and seems like it’s just there to remind us that we’re somehow supposed to see Aizawa, Mic, and Oboro as analogous to Izuku, Bakugo, and Todoroki–which does not work at all. And somehow BONES made the unfunny All Might part from the manga even longer and even less funny: we already got comedic relief off Iida to accent how much a contrast there is to the Aizawa stuff, and that has a more personal connection as he is Aizawa’s student, while All Might’s Dad Joke is as painful a pun as it looked to be for the students.

Otherwise, I thought the episode was good, just not meeting expectations I set that are not fair. Present Mic’s extended pause, then the long pause before Aizawa has to hold back from crying, when realizing Kurogiri’s concern for Shigaraki means he is indeed Oboro, is more powerful than it was in the manga. Aizawa letting loose the tears at the end while claiming he has dry eyes is very much Roy Mustang complaining about the rain. I do think the ambition for the storyboarding hints at something bigger they had planned, and largely the animation and tension, especially trying to reach Oboro, did work. Wrapping up this episode showing that Kurogiri was just the start of an experiment that would lead to Shigaraki’s transformation only creates a more foreboding tone.

Furthermore, the voice direction and acting in the English dub was very good. Ever since David Trosko replaced Sonny Strait as Present Mic, he has upheld all that works in the character, and while I feared that kind of loud acting would disrupt any pathos for this episode, it worked incredibly well, putting up so much bluster that shows how powerless he feels facing this madness and how this is as heartwrenching for him as it is for Aizawa. I especially appreciate, in the English dub, how much Oboro sounds like Izuku: while the series has never made Aizawa see a bit of Oboro in Izuku, that casting lends a new way of interpreting why Aizawa sticks with that masochist after everything he lost when Oboro died.

(You know that if things had worked out differently, Vic Mignogna would’ve ended up cast as Oboro, given his roles already as the dead friend of the hard-ass teacher in Naruto, and the presumed dead Sabo in One Piece, and his dynamic acting against Kurogiri’s Chuck Huber in other productions).

So that takes care of all the stuff about Aizawa: what about his students? I don’t just mean the class he failed–which, no, that detail doesn’t really work for me, that Aizawa failed a class as we were told upon his initial introduction, and now we reveal it was an empty threat since, while that is on their record, it was to reset matters with his class, not so they would take him seriously but so that they would value their lives. That’s not how that works. I don’t pretend that students, myself included, took our education so seriously that a failing grade or a career setup felt awful–but not the same kind of life-threatening that is literally dying. A poor mark on your report card does not typically result in that kind of same mortal fear, and I hate this story for trying to compare the two, especially when it positions teachers like us to have a fatal power we don’t have: we’re not the Grim Reaper, this isn’t Soul Eater, this is real freaking life. I can’t imagine any good teacher wanting that kind of power to think they are the difference between life and death. We don’t want our students to think these are mortal matters–especially right now, in this context, where I don’t think it’s at all appropriate to re-start in-person teaching and learning (without masks and without social distancing or remote learning opportunities) at a time when not enough of us are vaccinated and the threat of COVID remains too dangerous even when vaccinated. This takes me out of the story. Granted, it’s not the rest of this story is somehow like real life: this is a school where Nezu somehow has a ton of money, so applying real-world matters to a work of fiction is foolish. The only bar this story needs to clear is believability, and it’s not unbelievable that Nezu made that money and overlooked Aizawa’s behavior.

(It’s also why I wish Midnight was in this episode: she recruited Aizawa to UA as a teacher–it would be fascinating to hear her say she chose him for these reasons, that she knew the school needed a hard-ass like him.)

But like I said, I don’t just mean the class he failed: I mean his current students. Re-reading Chapter 253, I now understand why Iida doesn’t pop up in the third film: if he had his new desire to loosen up, then it would make a lot less sense seeing as he just came off a mission to save the world like Ochaco and his classmates did.

And that again leads to a paragraph of me repeating that I don’t give Ochaco enough attention. I promise, I will say more about where her character stands in this series at some point, if not when talking about Chapter 324 tomorrow. But even as this story keeps insisting she is important, it feels like it’s hanging her up like that All Might toy from Izuku. I appreciate putting in the budget to animate her dive-and-hide on Izuku’s gift, something not as obvious or visually impressive in the manga–but we couldn’t have put that budget into doing something more creative with the Aizawa story? Building her characterization around Izuku, at this point in the anime, remains frustrating–until the manga gives that a good payoff and seems to be sticking the landing on it. That’s one of the challenges of reviewing the manga as it goes on, and why reviewing the anime is in some ways easier: I can see where the pieces fit in and what is being set up. It doesn’t change that it’s annoying right now in this moment, but it fits in the overall scheme of her and Izuku’s story. But When it comes to how Toga is going to tie into this, I’m less convinced, but we’ll get to that in the next few episodes and in tomorrow’s manga review.

Oh, and Bakugo remains the worst. I’m so grateful he is tolerable in the manga right now, because the fact that he was getting away with this nonsense up to Chapter 253 is an indictment against teachers like Aizawa and All Might.

I apologize for how much this post seemed like a long college lecture (a college instructor leturing–shocking), or a Rachel Maddow monologue–only far less repetitive than Maddow’s condescending “I’m going to repeat the same point five times and treat you like you haven’t been paying attention”–and far less financially profitable. This is basically a joke I told a friend after posting last week’s review:

“Show me you’re an academic without telling me you’re an academic.”

“I wrote nine pages reviewing an episode without actually reviewing the episode."

#my hero academia #shoto aizawa #oboro shirakumo #long post

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quirklove · 4 years

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I beg of you- some soft Tomura, Compress, and Setsuno headcanons, please. I’m on my simp shit rn

aw, you don’t have to beg!! I’m constantly on simp mode for these babes

soft soft soft soft!!!!

ATSUHIRO

Is always humming something or other when he’s around his S/O. It might be an old nursery rhyme that’s stuck in his head, it might be some catchy pop tune that he keeps hearing on the radio, it might even be their favorite song. He’s nearly always an outgoing personality, but his S/O makes him so happy it puts that extra little spring in his step.

He’s a man of culture, (Name)! Somewhere he has a small stash of money from his past that he can draw on, so every once in a while, he likes to treat his friends and his S/O. (Most of the time, that cash goes to making sure they all actually have enough to eat or emergency supplies, and it’s obviously not too much money, so he doesn’t do this horribly often.) If anyone else will join him in disguise, he might be inclined to go with his S/O to a play or musical… perhaps even a ballet if the tickets are affordable enough. If no one else comes, ah, that’s alright; he’ll go with (Name) anyway, then bring back a slightly nicer dinner than normal for everyone else so that they aren’t left out. Maybe once or twice a year he does this, so everyone better enjoy it!

Noooo, he doesn’t wear the balaclava when he goes to bed, nor is it the first thing he puts on in the morning. He loves those times ― lying down to sleep and waking up. He gets to feel so vulnerable and exposed with his S/O, having them stare at him with his entire face uncovered, feeling their hands run through his hair like only ever allows in private. Plus, the fact that their gorgeous face is the first thing he sees when he opens his eyes in the morning? God. He’s gone soft. At least that softness is only for them, otherwise he might have a problem.

He likes to play cards with his friends and S/O if they’re not busy. No missions means he’s at the bar playing poker with Kurogiri, or war with Dabi, or… well, all Tomura ever plays is let me turn the cards to dust because fuck your games, Compress. What a brat!! One can practically see his face light up behind whatever mask he has on when (Name) asks him to teach them a game.

No matter what, he makes the extremely conscious effort to always give his S/O some gesture of affection before he goes off on a mission. Whether it’s tipping his mask to lovingly kiss their cheek, giving their fingers a passionate squeeze, or pulling them close for a gentle hug, he won’t leave without doing it. It’s a subtle way of saying goodbye, just in case things might go sideways. He acknowledges that the League’s affairs are incredibly dangerous and illegal; they could all die on any mission. He wants his beloved’s potential last memory of him to be something good. If he ends up dead, he doesn’t want them left with any doubt as to the fact that whatever else is true, he adores them very, very much and wants them to be happy.

TOMURA

Nightmares are a frequent thing with him, unfortunately. Sometimes it takes the form of memories, remembering the night his Quirk activated, leaving him with the image of crying in the middle of a circle made of his family’s corpses. Sometimes it’s a horrifying scenario in which Decay works on him, where he wraps his arms around himself and feels himself disintegrate piece by piece. Sometimes it’s his literal worst nightmare, a scene where he touches his friends or his S/O and they turn to dust in his fingers. Sometimes he wakes up screaming, his hands balled into fists so hard his nails are digging crescents into his palms and drawing blood, just so he can’t hurt anyone he cares about. Having his S/O take him in their arms and hold him close, kissing his face, whispering that he’s safe, reminding him that they’re here for him… he might not get back to sleep, but he finds comfort enough to stop crying within an hour.

There is one lone, solitary, singular way (Name) can get him to wear lip balm. That would be… to apply a surplus of it to their own lips, and proceed to give him as many kisses as he’ll allow them to in one go. Sure, the chapped lips aren’t unattractive ― but they’ve gotta hurt like hell. Just let your loving S/O lessen your pain a little, Tomura, you gigantic baby!! Also, they should pick a novelty flavor when they do this. It increases the number of kisses he’ll accept when their lips taste like vanilla frosting or Dr. Pepper.

Is like… the worst at any kind of self-care. He forgets to wash/comb his hair, he definitely doesn’t shower quite enough, he’s had at least one infection from not taking care of the wounds on his neck. The only reason he isn’t dead is Kurogiri, and later gains another reason; his S/O, obviously. Whenever he’s not working on his and All For One’s plans, he’s playing video games, and trying to get him away from that is like pulling teeth. However, his S/O has turned out to be very good at doing that. They can easily entice him with a warm shower together, and he’s pretty sure he’s never felt something as amazing as their fingers massaging his scalp as they wash his hair. Even though the ointment they want to put on his neck smells like medicine, he tolerates it simply because it feels nice when they rub it on. They’re always so gentle with him, and it just about breaks the poor man.

When encouraged and left in a non-stressful environment, Tomura is actually not terrible with children. He’s awkward, sure, he’s grumpy, sure, he doesn’t suffer brats, sure, but all things being equal, he does alright. Most of the time he’s not too scary around kids, or at least doesn’t act scary. (His appearance freaking some of them out, ah… that’s another story.) Though he’d have to do a lot of preparation, he might actually put an incredible amount of effort into learning if he found out he was going to be a father. How the man can’t manage to muster up the motivation needed to wash his clothes before wearing them a second time, yet can summon the will to read a ton of different parenting books, the world will never know. The point stands ― having a child combined with his love for his S/O would be a huge catalyst for his realizing that he doesn’t hate everything and everyone, and the world isn’t all bad.

Whenever he wants to touch his S/O in a sweet, intimate way but doesn’t feel comfortable or safe using most of his hand, he’ll use one finger. He might curl his fingers in to run his thumb gingerly over their cheek, or trace his knuckle down the side of their arm, or use the tip of his index finger to draw down their spine so he can see them arch their back. Tomura has never, ever had this before. Despite knowing he has to be careful, that he wants to be careful with them, there’s something endlessly fascinating to him about seeing how they react pleasantly to his touch when all his touch has ever done before is destroy. This also works in reverse; he wants to experience every possible touch of theirs that they’re willing to afford him.

TOYA

When he sleeps with his S/O, he really, really loves to be the little spoon. (He’s pretty well convinced that anyone who says they don’t, at least from time to time, is a liar!) It makes him feel safe and secure, like everything’s okay, like his S/O cares about him and wants to protect him. If he’s not being the little spoon, and sometimes when he’s the little spoon but facing them, he tends to cling in his sleep. His arms wrap tightly around their waist, his head buried in their chest or their neck or their back. It’s a product of his depressingly possessive nature; he loves them so much, they’re the best thing in his life, and he just… doesn’t want to lose them. Even while he’s asleep, he never wants to let go.

There are times Toya thinks about letting his hair grow out a little longer, to his shoulders maybe. The biggest thing that stops him is that he doesn’t know how he’d look with long hair. He isn’t sure he’d look that great or that he has the face for it! He’s a little afraid that with his more delicate features, having hair longer than it is now would lead to him being mistaken for a woman. If he mentions it to (Name), he might be a little startled by their enthusiastic, “Oh, that would look so charming on you!” coupled with a reassurance that they love his appearance no matter what he decides to do with his look. As far as they’re concerned, even if he ends up not doing it, they’re still going to think he’s the most handsome man ever. Knowing they’d support it, though, makes him think about actually doing it.

He rambles a lot, particularly when he’s feeling anxious. He rambles a lot. That goes along with his hands fidgeting and sometimes his leg bouncing a bit if he’s sitting down. For some reason he finds it hard to sit still or be quiet. He feels the need to fill the silence with something. So he talks, about anything and everything and occasionally about nothing at all. Most of the time only his S/O (or sometimes a friend) placing a hand over his, threading their fingers together, can calm him slightly. Often a gentle kiss when he’s doing the motormouth thing will get his mind to slow down and focus… at least to the point where he kisses back, and happily drowns in them for a while.

While not ‘on the job’, Toya… is usually kind of unsure what to do with his time. He reads, he watches TV a lot, he… sleeps. God, he sleeps. He seems to spend his life in a weird state of either being asleep or seeming wired as hell. There’s not really an in-between for him, at least not for a long time. He has trouble finding balance, especially since he’s so depressed. It seems to other people that he’s got too much energy and doesn’t fit the profile of what many people think a depressed person looks like. In truth, this is probably more accurate than people would like to think ― he hides the fact that he feels numb or sad by masking it with upbeat, happy, sometimes crazed behavior. Thankfully, he can sometimes find real happiness with his S/O, and it’s because of them that he might seek any kind of treatment so that he can feel better more often. Good thing, too, because not only will he be chasing a healthy life… his smile, genuine, painless, unaltered by any kind of forced joy? His true smile is the most beautiful thing.

Okay, but the man… has a serious sweet tooth. Most of the Hassaikai have their own room, and they can fill it however they choose. Toya’s cabinets are filled with nothing but sugary snacks. Even though he does eat regular meals, or at least tries to, he has to have something with sugar nearby to eat between. Chocolate is his favorite; he’ll eat almost any kind of candy, pastry, or even fruit snacks. If his S/O is very lucky, he will share! Pro tip: playing the pocky game with him is guaranteed to end in a cute, maybe steamy makeout session. And kissing any leftover chocolate that gets stuck to his lips? Oh, he’ll blush so hard.

#depression tw #My Hero Academia #Boku no Hero Academia #Atsuhiro #Tomura #Toya #headcanons #romantic #platonic #fluff #angst #hurt/comfort #domestic #drama #fuck I love these boys so much #SO MUCH LIKE HECK #I hope I know that I would die for them

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danwhobrowses · 4 years

Text

Main Takes from My Hero Academia Season 4

So now that episode 25 had aired, Season 4 of My Hero Academia has come to an end. Which means a long wait till the next one. Personally I binged most of it (having started binge watching a few months ago and stopping at Season 3 since Season 4 was still near midway), I got my dates muddled due to Self-Isolation and thought we were on Ep 24 instead of 23, so I’ve had to wait for the last 2, but it was fine since the final 2 are more backdoor mini-arcs to the next season.

Initially when S4 ended I wanted to do a full review, but I found myself writing tldr levels of stuff while still in the first arc, so I’m just doing quick bullet takes

Sadly, some spoilers are unavoidable, and even I was unable to be spoiled from S4 and manga stuff thanks to recommendation algorithms and haphazard/not-so-cryptic comments in threads. However, I don’t wanna spread that so if you’re not caught up on Season 4 watch it, Spoilers are below.

So Season 4 was wild, and exciting and did a mighty job swelling my stone of a heart XD But the main things I took from S4 was as follows

Obviously, Protect Eri at Every Cost in Every Currency

The Fast Tracking of All Might’s time coming to a close feels intentional as if to constantly put us on edge with the fact that Deku will be without his father figure

Never let a subordinate attack the main villain

Buff Tintin Mirio and Deku are the perfect buddy system

Team Fatgum is a wholesome well-rounded unit

We should’ve seen at least some of Tokoyami’s work study if you were gonna hype up Hawks 20 episodes prior

People think Chisaki was old enough to have a 6 year old kid, though age does seem to be deceptive as Gentle and La Brava show

Ryukyu, Nejire, Uraraka, Bubble Girl and Tsu could’ve had more active screentime, and Deku’s mother should’ve gotten a smidge given how Deku was in a literal Yakuza raid

Tamaki’s Quirk is awesome but poses a lot of morally questionable hypotheses on how far it can go, also Suneater is a badass nickname

Mina can involve breakdancing into any situation

Kirishima is a strong and brave man who deserves all the praise he got

It was also great to see that not everyone has the ‘Legs moved before thinking’ moment and it doesn’t diminish a person if they don’t have it, it’s also nice to see someone look up to someone else other than All Might, being number 1 doesn’t mean you’re everyone’s favourite.

No homo but Fitgum got them features

Toga is much stronger than I gave her credit for, I mean I knew she was strong but she stabbed Aizawa without her quirk while wrapped in his scarf threads!

Mirio proves that you don’t need a quirk to be a hero, it just helps a bit, that boy didn’t give up

Chisaki’s plan was...odd actually, Eri can rewind sure but he can literally break down and reshape people, couldn’t he just mess up someone’s physiology and de-quirk them?

100% Deku is a force (though I reserve the disdain that Chisaki went for the cliché ‘big monster but my main body hangs out of it’ route)

Never sleep on the League of Villains

Uraraka and maybe Tsu were probably more traumatized than they let on, it’s not easy to get over holding a dying man in your arms

How do you hide a motherfucker as big as Gigantomachia in a forest!? He has a literal radio around his neck. Also I feel like Kurogiri could’ve escaped if he wanted to...

How did no-one think that Camie was compromised she acts completely different to Toga and she showed her quirk, wouldn’t they know what her quirk was from her file anyway?

That teacher needs therapy, and a long holiday

Seiji and Present Mic should do all the commentary

Bakugo has good leadership skills, but the license course didn’t really resolve his public abrasiveness

I do wanna see more of cross-school activities, more Inasa but also more Ms Joke and her lot

Aoyama was never gonna be the traitor, the dude is far too Cheesy

I was actually glad to see the Pussycats, and that Ragdoll is well now even if quirkless, for a while I thought she would be a vegetable or worse a Nomu

Sato’s image of Bakugo and Todoroki in a 70s Disco movie is hilarious and I will fight those who disagree

Be still my Kamijirou heart, the boy gave up a Maid Café to encourage her love for music, also her voice is beautiful

I still can’t stand Monoma...

Hatsume should just mark herself down as Deku’s official support mechanic, like his Lucius Fox because she just comes in clutch with what he needs

Deku should’ve really thought about using 20% in small bursts on his own, it’s okay he didn’t but let’s not forget that the boy has a brain on him

Gentle is the complete opposite of Chisaki; while Chisaki had the intimidation and evil plan he lacked a lot of personality outside of ‘Don’t Touch Me’ and ‘Yakuza Rights’, Gentle has more a nuisance who wants to be famous, but he has personality oozing out of every pore

Gentle is also proof that ‘legs moving without thinking’ doesn’t always work, had he saved that person his life would be much different just like how Deku’s life would’ve been different if All Might didn’t step in. But sadly he was subjected to a vicious environment where everyone rejected him. Hopefully he can get a second chance to be good, because even some of his criminal activities had good intentions in them

The school festival episode was just euphoric fun, also Bakugo’s ‘we won’ face was great

The new top 10 is interesting, but Ryukyu was robbed. She fought a monster of the Hassakai and lost placement!? I’m also surprised Nighteye wasn’t in the Top 10 given how powerful his quirk is and how he was able to bring heroes of multiple agencies together. Glad Jeanist is alive I do worry a little about Kamui though, he keeps getting mentioned for his ascent as a ‘promising young hero’, also people really thirst for the tan bunny

I cannot get a read on Hawks, his quirk is cool though

This Liberation front seems key for next season

Todoroki’s hot sister is still hot...what do you mean that’s not relevant!?

High End is pretty dangerous, but heroes should really aim for the head with these things (I do like the little touch that Nomu abilities differ by their colour)

Endeavor’s redemption arc is earned, it’s still not there yet but it’s important not to fast track it, he’s owning up to his mistreatment rather than expecting forgiveness and that is a good way to build to it, he had his United States of Smash moment and it was a gloriously animated fight

This spells bad things for the hierarchy though that the Number 1 and 2 had to work together to stop a monster sent by other villains, it diminishes the chart structure and Dabi knows that...plus he probably wanted to stick it to his old man because he’s obviously a Todoroki

Did not expect to see other One for All holders! What does it mean!? And why is Deku just a hand and half a head? Is it just a show that he’s only 20% at his power? Season 5 is gonna be crazy

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