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codenamesazanka · 5 years

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Short Spinner Fic!

Well, more like meta/headcanon turned prose. Sorta. unbeta’d, terrible grammar prob, very on the nose, but I just had to write something that dealt with what we learned about Spinner’s past.

1,615 words. Set right after Stain got captured, with all that fun stuff about discrimination.

The night Spinner saw the news report that would change his life, he had spent ten minutes lingering outside his landlord’s door, trying to work up the nerve to knock.

From his third floor apartment to her home on the first floor - that short walk took three minutes maximum, but in that time the heat and humidity of the May evening had already made his hair damp and the collar of his shirt slightly darken with moisture. By the dim glow of the streetlight, Spinner tried to use his phone’s selfie camera to see if he looked too bad, but his nervousness at appearing sloppy only added sweat to his sorry appearance. The snickering of a couple of kids that passed by him hadn’t help.

He should be fine, Spinner had muttered to himself, tried to convince himself, shoving the phone into a pocket. He was fine. She wasn’t going to even notice.

But of course she did. When his landlord opened the door, he saw her smile fade slightly at the sight of him; then the curve of her mouth disappeared completely as her eyes swept over his messy hair and landed on his hand that was discreetly trying to stop his shirt from sticking to his skin.

It was only downhill from there.

He had stammered, had tried to keep a smile on his face until he realize he was probably looking like crazy dumbass; then he had worried too much about the appropriate distance he should be keeping (His landlord was a petite woman that barely reached maybe 5 foot, and he was a 6-foot lizard man. Standing too far away would be weird, and standing too close meant, besides the obvious, that he would have to look down at her, which he thought might seem disrespectful).

When he told her about the broken AC, she had asked if he wasn’t enjoying the warm weather, and Spinner had let the silence drag on too long as he wondered what she might have meant by that. Such an innocuous question, but it made his pulse quicken. Was she making a comment that assumed he was more comfortable with heat because he looked like a lizard (answer: no, because he wasn’t cold-blooded; so no, he didn’t like the heat; and yes, he can get heatstroke, so if the AC wasn’t going to get fixed in time for the worst heat of July...)? Did that mean she wasn’t going to do anything about it, if it didn’t seem like a serious matter?

Or was he being paranoid? Insulting, even, for this unfounded accusation?

So the talk had achieved nothing, except maybe giving his landlord an even worse impression of him. He hadn’t even told her about the suspicious grey spots that was covering more and more of his ceiling with each passing day. (Monsoon season sucked.)

Back at his apartment, Spinner opened a can of beer and sat slumped against the wall, using his phone to look up ways to remove the mold himself. He clicked the first link, found himself immediately redirected to a product page that flashed it’s 5500 yen deal at him, and promptly gave up.

That was when he opened his Tweetr feed for some mindless scrolling and saw the internet aflame with news about an attack on Hosu.

All day at work, Spinner kept checking for updates on the Hero Killer Stain, so much that his boss threaten to break his phone and fire him. But even that couldn’t clear the cloud of obsession that had developed inside his head.

At first it was simply fun to watch and rewatch the video of him rescuing a kid, how cool it was to see the man escape from the ropes that bound him, zoomed past the Heroes, leapt into the air to take down the winged beast with a single stab to the brain. Those blades and that red scarf, snaking through the air behind him. All in a matter of seconds, and all that not being his quirk. Pure normal human ability.

From there, it was reading the articles that kept coming out - that happened in Hosu, who Stain was, what he had done.

What he believed in.

There was once when Spinner wanted to be a Hero. What kid hadn’t? He dreamed of it. Being able to wear an awesome costume, beating up bad guys and bullies and saving people, getting to be on TV and making lots of money. Heroes were amazing and they could do anything. Heroes had all sorts of different quirks, the only thing that matter being how well they could use their ability. Heroes could be anyone - even mutants like him.

And as dreams do, that faded when he grew up and woke up to real life.

Watching the viral video that someone had made of the Hero Killer, though, Spinner realized Stain kept his dream. Forced it into reality, undaunted by hard work or danger or the law. He saw something wrong with the world and decided to change it. Just like that. It was badass. It was admirable.

It was Heroic.

So how ironic and slightly disappointing it was, that Stain was now called a Villain, that it turned out he was working with that group that attacked those UA kids a few months back. Spinner found the grainy zoomed-in clip of the two guys standing on top of a water tower, watching the chaos in the city below. He found all he could about the UA incident and the man the news named as Shigaraki Tomura.

He was part of this group that Stain joined, and Spinner wondered if maybe, like Stain, he wasn’t just a Villain. Like Stain, he was out to change the world.

In the origin story of Spinner, Villain, would be the cup of tea that made a crucial decision for him.

His landlord’s apartment was ten times the size of his tiny one-room apartment, and Spinner felt almost agoraphobic sitting in her living room. This was a proper home, well cared for, housing a family. The last time Spinner had even spoken to a blood relative of his was years ago. He was intruding.

But the landlord had done a surprise inspection while he was at work, and she was concerned about the mold on his ceiling. In his zeal over Stain, Spinner had completely forgotten about dealing with that. Now he got to do a redux of the talk from a few days ago, and he had a feeling this might go even worse.

He never would find out if that was true, nor would he find out what would have been done about the mold. A few words into the small talk that preceded the actual conversation, his landlord’s young son had tried to be helpful and brought tea for both his mom and Spinner. Kid was probably only in elementary school, but so polite. Too much so.

Spinner watched as his landlord shifted uncomfortably in her seat, eyes flickering back and forth from the cup of tea set in front of Spinner, and Spinner himself.

It felt unbearably hot and suffocating in the room.

(Once, a cousin told Spinner that regardless of how much DNA would prove they were human, they weren’t. Not really, not in practice, not to the people they live among. They looked like lizards, so they’d be treated like lizards. Like animals, and you wouldn’t feed your pet using a bowl you would use, right? It’ll be dirty, no matter how much you washed it. That’s why there’s food bowls specifically for your dog, cat, whatever.)

It was much too late to for her to take back the drink without seeming astonishingly rude. Maybe Spinner should help her save face and decline the tea, have the kid take it away. Maybe he can use this as leverage for the mold problem. Maybe--

--he shouldn’t have to put up with this. There were people out there right now, ready to face down Heroes and police and society, ready to create change, ready to take their lives and fate into their hands and shape it to their liking. Stain hadn’t allow himself to be trampled down.

Spinner shouldn’t either.

That was when he stood up and left without a word.

The leader was different than what Spinner expected.

In the small private bar that the broker had taken him to, Shigaraki Tomura sat on one of the stools, young and bone-thin, dressed so plainly in simple black shirt and pants. Not quite the criminal mastermind Spinner imagined. Yet all attention in the room was held by him, and he wielded that authority with ease.

“Shuichi Iguchi… Spinner.” Shigaraki spoke and Spinner anticipated each word. “Our fight is for all the right reasons, but the world is going to hate us for it. Condemn us. Try to destroy us. We’ll have to return in kind. We’ll have get our hands dirty, we’ll have to sacrifice a lot.”

Shigaraki shifted his head, and suddenly all Spinner could focus on was that one red eye looking through the fingers of the severed hand on his face, filled with all the same rage and desire and intensity that Stain had. Its gaze pierce through Spinner, making him wince as though he was physically cut.

Hatred was nothing new to him, though, and he had nothing else in this world than this newfound will. He’d do anything, all for Stain. All for his new comrades. All this, Spinner said out loud.

Shigaraki grinned at him, a smile so wide and vicious and-- happy, that Spinner felt his own face mirror that excitement.

“Welcome to the League of Villains.”

So my Spinner goes from a nervous mild-mannered guy trying to live a life, to a terrorist ready to murder kids in like three short days. I should figure out his characterization better next time lol

#nalslastworkingbraincell #nalwrites #Spinner #Shigaraki Tomura #Shuichi Iguchi #Stain - sorta #fanfiction #microaggressions and housing discrimination and dehumanization oh my #am i just set on making the bnha universe a pile of crap #perhaps #oops #we don't know if it's this bad but #i'm gonna let my imagination go wild #League of Villains #as for my other story...#it's getting beta-read!#i'll have it out by friday prob #my apologies

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