Chapter Text
They ditched the car days ago. Not soon after they found the trench. Surprisingly enough, it wasn’t because they ran out of gas. The small Suzuki Swift had a full tank, enough to get them to Tokyo, no matter how much that went against everything ‘realistic’ zombie movies taught Bruce about the apocalypse. Well, this wasn’t the apocalypse anyone imagined and shockingly those movies weren’t all too realistic.
The car needed to go because there was no more road to go on.
“Okay, but for real,” Bruce climbed a near person-sized chunk of asphalt and helped Suzuki over it. “Admit you chose the car on purpose.”
The woman groaned, in a vexed but almost fond way. Bruce chose to believe they were growing on her. At least he was. Kudo liked to pretend he was dark and brooding and befriending their fellow comrades in misery just didn’t fit his image. He did watch carefully behind them so if any of them slips, he can catch them. Not that Bruce would give him the satisfaction.
“No Takao, I was not thinking about name puns when I was hotwiring a car in the middle of an altercation where people were actively shooting at me…Thanks,” she added when Bruce pulled her the rest of the way up.
What they were climbing was once a smaller highway leading into Tokyo. Now it was mere chunks of asphalt, pieces of an overpass and decimated vehicles littered between them. Sometimes you could see flashes of white peeking out from under the debris but they all learned to pointedly ignore it by now.
“Oh, come on. It’s too perfect of a coincidence.”
“Really? This is where you draw the line? A car brand coincidence?” Suzuki scoffed, sliding down the other side of the slab. Bruce shrugged. Yes, he had to draw the line somewhere.
There was no telling what blew up this particular road into the city. Could be plain old artillery, homemade napalm bombs, landmines placed to prevent escape or the most disconcerting possibility out of all of them, a meta ability. None of them was keen on speculating.
“That Kurosawa’s like some shadow black ops ninja and you have barehanded murder as a quirk—“
“Fa jin,” Bruce corrected quiet.
Sometimes he still felt the Red. It buzzed under his skin ever since the basement but by now he learned— well, not manage it, but ignore it well enough. After they were out of the city and a day on the road, Kudo made Suzuki stop the car by a small creek. He led Bruce to it, never releasing his hand. He gently held them under the water. They watched the crystal clear stream colour a bright, almost joyful red. Kudo’s calloused yet lithe fingers rubbed between the folds, dislodging the larger dry flakes. None of them said anything and that was that.
“Okay, ‘fa jin’,” Suzuki repeated, less mirthful.
Back by the rivulet, she went off to give them some privacy. Bruce appreciated it at the time. Now he wished they just drove right on.
“So how do we find ‘the something for after the M’ or whatever cryptic bullshit tale they fed you?” Kudo spoke up. His gun was hidden in the shadows of his chunky black coat but he had the safety unlocked.
Suzuki shrugged. “We ask nicely?”
Kudo didn’t deign that with an answer and Bruce was too nervous to take up on the banter as they reached the outskirts. It wasn’t entirely abandoned but wasn’t how he remembered it either. It’s been a while since he visited Tokyo but he doubted abandoned police barricades were a natural part of the suburban décor. Neither were boarded up windows, ruined family homes, and flashes of bloodshot eyes from behind closed curtains. There were people on the street but they kept ample distance and moved with the hasty pace of someone just wanting to get from point A to point B without an incident.
As the suburban houses rose into complexes, so did their anxiety. They saw a flash of Red and immediately ducked into an alley, hurried but not suspiciously so. Well, it was impossible not to be suspicious. Everyone was suspicious. Everyone was looking and getting looked at.
Bruce saw litter and graffiti everywhere, either anti-meta propaganda or indecipherable gibberish, sometimes broken up by ‘freedom for all’ and ‘metas are humans too’ and crossed out ‘M’s and ‘W’s. The symbol painted onto the kevlar of the Officers. An upturned M, a mockery. The double ‘V’ for victory.
Smoke billowed from somewhere in the middle of the city. The sirens forever rang in the back of Bruce’s mind. A large chunk of the Minato district was completely unaccessible. A skyscraper collapsed. It wasn’t hard to guess why when you saw the thick, blackened roots spilling out from between the ruins. In the middle of the almost kilometre wide tumult, stood the charred remains of what must have been an oak tree, maybe a cedar. The width of a radio tower but its branches were barren, broken and burned down. Someone once etched a large, crooked circle into the base with a short line crossing through its bottom part but it was hard to see under the soot. There was the red ‘W’ of the Officers spray painted on top of it but it was smudged as if someone tried to scrub it off. Somethings hung on the blackened stumps, gently swaying in the wind. Bruce turned his head before he could count how many limbs they had.
He glanced down at his hands, remembering the Red washing out of them. Remembering the moment he realised it wasn’t just coming from him. That the creek was already coloured with wisps of brown.
“We won’t get anywhere like this,” Kudo muttered, black pupils flashing left and right. A group of Officers passed them on the street. Everyone steered clear. They didn’t pay them much mind. Kudo’s shoulders knotted, showing how his grip tightened on the pistol.
Bruce watched him coil up, closer and closer to a breaking point they’ll all inevitably reach. He looked around and saw the soft glow of a fire in the dim, afternoon light. The rain has stopped for now but that didn’t mean everything still wasn’t damp and miserable. He took a (supposed to be) calming breath and approached the clump of people huddled around what he guessed were the remains of a door, burning pathetically, giving very little warmth or light.
“Excuse me.” Eyes flashed towards him, distrustful, near hostile. No one excused him. “I’m looking for— for after the M …” he subdued his voice, nearly mouthing the phrase.
He was balancing on a razor’s edge. If even one of them decides to report them to the Officers, they’ll be hunted again. On the run again. No better than how they started. Not that Bruce knew what good this phrase would do them.
All he got back were the same, now openly hostile stares. He retreated before any of them gets a better look at his face. The bandana was back and his blonde hair was under a beanie but it didn’t matter. They knew and he knew and they all just pretended not to. None of them were probably metas but at this point, it mattered very little.
They kept advancing and Bruce kept asking, mixing the phrasing up so he might get some sort of a reaction while Kudo became more and more impatient. Suzuki joined in on the questioning without complaint. Not like there was much else to do.
It soon became dark and with the dark, came the cold and the need for a shelter. Everyone out on the streets after sundown was extra suspicious. Kudo signalled out a building, ruined but not too ruined and disappeared somewhere to come back out of the shadows, nodding. They followed him without question.
They made camp in one of the medium-sized rooms, grabbing some of the remaining tatami mats and dragging them into a corner. Kudo went to see if there was any water they could use to at least soften their ramen packets. Bruce and Suzuki went to see if there was a way to get a fire going, knowing very well it was risky. But the damp cold was starting to nearly peel their skin off in large, mouldy patches. By the light of a flashlight Suzuki followed Bruce through the halls closely, nearly touching his back. Bruce didn’t like it but he didn’t reprimand her for it.
“I think this was a school,” he heard her whisper behind him. Bruce only nodded, checking classrooms and trying to remember his middle school days to find the teachers’ break room faster. There was at least the slight possibility of finding a microwave although the power has been cut so he didn’t know why he was even trying.
They eventually found the teacher’s lounge and advanced between the once orderly rows of work desks. Computers stolen or smashed, chairs gutted and in some cases, soaked with what Subaru decided was more likely spilt coffee than blood. At least they found no small bodies in the closets. Or any bodies. Not like in the trench.
He felt Suzuki stopping. He did too and shone his torch where she was staring. It was a desk like any other. Stapler and pencil holders, a bunch of crumpled up notes and papers, some pinned to the divider. Schedules, grading guides and forms with a few colourful drawings at the centre. Child drawings. Bruce recognised the red and blue figure, the big, obnoxious yellow ‘S’. He slowly started to despise any and all letters of the English alphabet with a passion he spared little else. They only seemed to bring misery, especially the bunch in the middle.
There was a large, green splotch in purple shorts next to it and a black stick figure with pointy ears and a yellow crisscross on its chest. Someone was a hero fan. Is, if they were lucky. Bruce hoped they were. He really did hope.
“I wanted to have kids you know,” Suzuki whispered, transfixed on the primary spots of harmless, childish imagination. “I wanted to have at least three with a nice, medium-sized suburban house. And a large garage. I wanted to fix old-timers in my spare time. Maybe teach my kids how to change a tire, check the pressure, clean an exhaust, refill the oil… Maybe even how to fix up your own car from scratch, if they were interested. My mother used to take me to those small robot battles and I always built them into the shape of tiny cars using hot wheels and legos to make them look like in those American movies…”
She reached out and touched the edge of the paper. Just the paper, not the drawing itself. Bruce was silent. He didn’t know what he could possibly say to that. So he stood and mourned with her silently. She looked twenty at most and yet when she talked, it sounded like she was mourning a lifetime’s worth of missed opportunities.
“I never had a boyfriend,” she added, voice cracking. “Not even a date. I was afraid they’ll—“ She swallowed, pulling her hand back as if the paper burned her. “My wings started growing a little after my third birthday. My mother never did take me to the doctors for it. We never really talked about them, just accepted them as a part of life. A part you don’t show strangers, like certain other parts, but a natural part nonetheless. I don’t know why but she probably saved my life.”
She paused, trying to swallow something before she let it escape her tongue.
“I wonder… I wonder if she had wings too.”
“Does it matter? She clearly didn’t think they were a problem to get rid of,” Bruce replied. It came out blunt but the corner of Suzuki’s mouth still twitched up. She ran his eyes over the drawings once more, nodding for them to move on. Bruce caught a sheet of English ABCs, pinned next to some pretty abysmal vocabulary tests.
He didn’t know why it clicked. Maybe it was the tree or maybe all the graffiti he dismissed but glanced at nonetheless. Maybe it was just the fact that the ‘Q’ was circled in bright green crayon but none of the other letters were.
“For after the M,” he whispered, “Four!” Suzuki jumped but Bruce couldn’t help it, the realisation filled him with something most akin to joy in weeks. “Not ‘for’ but four! Four after the ‘M’ is ‘Q’ in the English alphabet!”
Suzuki furrowed his brows. “Yes. And?”
Bruce shook his head and nudged her along. “I’ll explain when Kudo’s here.”
Their exploration yielded little result besides a few packets of ground coffee but Bruce’s mood was still high when they sat down to crunch dry ramen in the corner. Outside, a few gunshot like pops went off but they barely tensed. They were too far to be of real threat.
“The circle on the tree. It had a little tail on it, like a capital ‘Q’,” Bruce explained.
“I did see similar markings on the way,” Kudo nodded, albeit reluctantly, “But that might just be another ploy to draw out metas and…”
He didn’t finish the sentence. Bruce pushed down the image of bodies swimming in water so dark, it might as well have been only blood. They left the trench as it was. Nothing was to be done there other than moving on. But not forgetting. Or forgiving.
“But what if it’s not?” Suzuki showed that same stubborn belief again, one they, Bruce realised in horror, shared. “What if it’s them? The Albino?”
“If they exist at all,” Kudo added automatically, “We should really just flee to the countryside.”
Bruce gave him a look and after a silent moment of staring, Kudo sighed, a near motionless exhale of breath.
“You’re going to be the death of me, you know that? Fine. We allocate a day to look for these ‘secret markings’ but if they lead nowhere, we’re off.”
“Thank you,” Bruce beamed at him. Kudo pulled the collar of his coat tighter, averting his eyes. The darkness in them seemed even deeper than the night around them, yet they somehow didn’t feel menacing.
“Aww,” Suzuki elbowed him in the side, and Kudo surprisingly enough, let her. “Those are some relationship goals right there.”
“Dying together is nothing to look forwards to,” he said but it didn’t seem like he was mad about it. Honestly, Bruce wasn’t either.
“Are you kidding? It’s the pinnacle of queer romance,” she grinned, showing her age for a moment. Not that any of them were much older and not that it mattered. “But only if it’s highly dramatic and gives the hetero protagonist something to cry about.”
“Maybe the ‘Q’ stands for that,” Bruce grinned back. “We should add it to the spectrum just so we can at least take pride in being double marginalised.”
“Maybe then they’ll believe that we really were born this way,” Kudo muttered and they all snickered.
The next day they spent wandering around, just like the last but now with slightly more purpose . And indeed, there they were. Hidden in plain sight. Circles with little tails everywhere. Not obnoxious or ornamental enough to be noticed beside the red ‘M’s and ‘W’s but there. Splotches of green where there should have been nothing but red and grey.
“I don’t get it,” Kudo muttered. “Do they not know how to write the letter ‘Q’?”
He pointed to one that had the tail on the complete opposite side. A few streets later, they stumbled across one where it was on the right side but still not correct. They’ve been going at it for hours, hungry and soaked to the bone. The rain started again and somewhere in the distance there were flashing red lights, sometimes followed by the brighter flashes of barrels. Something was always going down in an enormous town like Tokyo and with each hour spent aimlessly wandering the waterlogged streets, they risked getting caught up in it.
Bruce furrowed his brows, staring at the symbol painted on the side of a lamppost. “Do you suppose— the tails are pointing somewhere?”
Kudo looked at him stiltedly and then shrugged. Suzuki was already going the direction the tail ‘pointed in’. They found the next one much quicker. Then the next. Without fail, they were always where the tail pointed.
“Huh,” his partner made a face that could have been interpreted impressed if you spent as many days trying to read him as Bruce did. “Would you look at that..." He glanced at him and Bruce hid his blush.
They went on like this for a while. It was clearly intended to confuse the reader just as much as guide him. Making the impression that it was pointless in case someone who really shouldn’t have, figured it out. But Bruce was stubborn. Desperate is a better word, he guessed. They all were. Or maybe they had nothing to lose at this point. That tiny sliver of hope represented by a badly spelt letter was all they could grasp.
And then they reached a ‘Q’ that pointed down, just like the one on the tree. Kudo stepped forwards and glanced at their feet.
“A manhole. Of course.”
“Down the drain, we go,” Suzuki snickered.
Bruce opened his mouth to add some sort of witty comment about the symbolism but his eyes caught a flash of dreadful Red. At the other end of the alley, there were two Officers. Kudo noticed a second later and he could feel their collective heartbeat slipping up in near-perfect synchrony. But they weren’t looking at them, their backs with the painted ‘W’ faced the alley. Between them, there was a boy, small and hunched over but gesturing as wildly as Bruce has never seen someone dare to do so with Officers.
He swallowed and shared a glance with Kudo. He didn’t even try arguing this time, just exhaled, reached into his coat for his weapon and put his hand up for Suzuki to stay behind. She nodded and quietly started lifting the manhole cover while Bruce took position opposite Kudo. It was nearly a routine now, wordless glances and quick gestures, more than enough to know what the other was going to do before they even moved a foot. He pressed his back against the chipping brick while they slowly inched closer. Kudo took the shadowed side, becoming a bit— blurry. Not nearly as invisible as he would be at night but the deep grey shadows the bins and crates cast still seemed to lean towards him, merging with his own shadow and becoming a bit darker for a while. Bruce stopped himself from staring, fascinated as always when Kudo used his ability, and concentrated on the boy.
He had dirty greyish, perhaps white hair, yet he didn’t seem a day older than fourteen. Bruce knew what that meant. But why was he out in the open, without even a hat to hide his strangeness and— arguing with Officers?
“Kid, scurry the fuck off,” one of them grumbled, muffled through the mask. He didn’t even sound human. The irony seemed to escape all of them.
“—l-listen you have to see how wrong this all is—“ the kid seemed to be properly pissing his pants but he didn’t back off.
“Be glad we won’t take you in for testing, ” the other Officer seemed to be holding a bunch of plastic bags, probably taken from the kid. The word ‘testing’ made all three of them flinch.
“J-Just—” he seemed to swallow something down and then tried to straighten up. His stance still seemed a bit crooked. Bruce wondered if he was hurt or born this way. He decided it did not matter in the slightest. He was a kid. “J-just please give it back, it’s just food for my family, I-I paid for it fair and square, p-please—“ His vivid green eyes flashed between the bag and the man’s slightly raised gun. The safety was off and his trigger discipline was nonexistent.
One of the Officers had enough and raised the blunt end of his weapon. Bruce didn’t hesitate. Neither did Kudo. He lurched and before the man could even turn around, he slammed the heel of his palm into his nape. It was easy, too easy too practised and familiar and satisfying— You should just snap his neck, make sure he doesn’t hurt any more kids… He disregarded the voice dripping with Red and made sure the Officer is properly knocked out.
Next to him, Kudo used the grip of his pistol and caught the body before it could thump on the pavement, immediately dragging it into the shadows like a spider its prey. Bruce followed suit, glancing down at the kid. From closer up, he looked to be a bit older, maybe sixteen but still extremely malnourished.
Panic flashed in those bright green eyes. “W-what are you doing—“
“Are you okay?” Bruce asked.
“They were right, you know,” Kudo cut in, sending a sharp glare his way. No more strays, said that glare. Bruce gave a pained smile back and his partner rolled his eyes. “Scurry the fuck off kid before you get more hurt.”
He reached for the bags at nearly the same time as the kid who seemed more panicked by the minute. When his gloved hand closed around the plastic, Kudo tensed. Bruce did too, a knee jerk reaction. He pulled back his hands and the kid tried a sheepish smile. It came out as lopsided as his stance.
“I-It’s not what you—“
Kudo raised an eyebrow and pulled out the handle of a grenade just briefly enough to show Bruce before pushing it back. Bruce looked back at the kid, thin, crooked and small, standing up to two fully armed Officers.
“Are you with the— resistance?” he asked, slow, careful.
The kid paled further if such a thing was even possible.
“Do you know where we can find the Albino?” he added. “We followed the signs. Four after the M. The ‘q-lues’. ” Next to him, Kudo groaned but Bruce couldn’t help himself.
The kid glanced around and then up at them. Bruce stood his gaze but it was surprisingly sharp. There was something in it that made Bruce feel like he was the one being evaluated. Kudo raised his weapon slightly but didn’t unlock the safety. The kid stared and then he briefly nodded, stepping closer, gesturing towards the manhole cover. Suzuki was crouching beside it, as ready to bolt as the rest. The kid walked past, descending the manhole without further comment. They shared a glance.
“Death of me,” Kudo mumbled and then went in after him. Bruce gestured for Suzuki before sliding the cover back over them, sealing them in darkness. He immediately felt that weight it had when Kudo resided within. It was reassuring just as much as unsettling.
Once they reached the bottom, standing in knee-deep sewer water, the kid produced a flashlight. As he shone it on Kudo, the shadows around him coiled and writhed like disturbed worms.
“Cool,” he whispered, reaching out and trying to grab a wisp of shadow. Kudo stepped back and curbed the movements a bit but not completely. Bruce wasn’t sure he could.
“Don’t,” he said flatly and the kid retracted his hand.
“What do you call it?” he asked while turning around and leading them down the sewer.
“What do you call you?” Kudo asked back. Bruce gently nudged him. He’s just a kid.
“Oh, Shigaraki but— but you can call me Yoichi since my brother is called Shigaraki too and it gets confusing, you know? Anyway, what’s yours?” His voice died off awkwardly, waiting for a reply and getting nothing for a while.
“I’m Takao,” Bruce offered. “This is Kurosawa. Nice to meet you, Yoichi.”
“Suzuki, nice to meet ya.”
The kid’s face twitched into what Bruce supposed was a smile, then he turned back, taking a left. He limped. Heavily. Suzuki walked up ahead and Kudo was close enough that Bruce could feel something brushing up against his side every now and then. Fabric or shadow, he couldn’t tell but he let it nonetheless.
“You’re not leading us into our deaths, right Yoichi?” he asked, sending a mischievous glance Kudo’s way. “With your explosive bread and all.”
“S-sorry about that, I— I wasn’t supposed to- oh, Hisashi’s going to be so mad…” The kid muttered to himself some more and Bruce didn’t see a point in pestering him about it further. He didn’t know what kind of ability he had but was fairly confident they can take him on in close quarters and with plenty of shadows to boot.
As they walked deeper, the walls -previously sound and symmetrical- started to look more like— caverns. With large, torso thick roots punching through them now and then. Bruce had an inkling as to where they were heading. They weren’t in the sewer system anymore although the smell carried nicely.
They eventually reached a door. Not a vault door or a slab of metal but a proper, wooden door, just wedged in there. Like an entrance to an ordinary room in an ordinary house ten feet underground in the sewers. Suzuki looked especially amused.
“I feel like I’m about to meet a bunch of renaissance painters,” she whispered.
For Bruce, it was more reminiscent of the hobbit burrows but he snickered nonetheless. Yoichi cast a glance backwards and produced a key to open the door with. The inside wasn’t an ordinary room of an ordinary house. It was the bastard child of a burrow and a metro station with furniture carelessly tossed in here and there. Mostly tables with heaps of weapons on them. Mould climbed the walls and water dripped from the ceiling. Someone put out a few buckets but clearly gave up (or ran out of buckets) halfway through. The smell of stale air and earth overwhelmed the residues of sewage but wasn’t any more pleasant.
As they stepped in, Bruce saw movement in one of the corners and inadvertently readied his body for an assault. Someone emerged from the shadows, a woman, judging from the clothes and the outline of her body. What skin wasn’t covered by oversized flowery overalls, was lined with short, tricolour fur. Her head was somewhere between a cat and a fox. Completely animalistic, slitted eyes flashing iridescent yellow in the torchlight. Bruce tried not to stare but it was the first time he had seen a complete animal mutation up close in person. Alive.
“Yoichi, what the fuck, you can’t just—“ Strangely, their voice held no evidence of it coming through a dense row of small, needle sharp teeth. What, did you expect them to hiss at you?
“They saved me,” the boy clarified quickly. “They know the code and they are like us.”
Bruce didn’t know why Yoichi would say that with such confidence. Only Kudo showed any visible signs of an ability. Certainly nothing like the woman.
“And what did you need saving from, exactly?” Another voice called out from the dark.
The moment the man stepped out from the shadows, Bruce knew they found who they were looking for. His white hair wasn’t dampened grey from the rain and his red eyes seemed to glint in the dim light in a way Bruce couldn’t really parse Hardly glow, just glisten, not with moisture but with the dispersed shine of a gem, if Bruce were to describe it somehow. He tensed up further and Kudo discreetly stepped half in front of them. The man’s eyes snapped to him and he seemed to gain interest.
“Are you the Albino?” his partner asked, quiet but firm, one hand obviously gripping the gun inside his coat. He wasn’t bothering to pretend he wasn’t ready to shoot the moment any of them makes a sudden move.
“Shigaraki,” the man said with a quick, polite yet sharp smile. His teeth were very white, Bruce remarked distantly. “I’m sorry for the antics of my little brother. He has a— knack for getting into trouble.”
Yoichi pulled his head between his shoulders and put the bags down on one of the tables. Bruce saw more faces emerge from the tunnels surrounding them. Black was a rare colour amongst them in hair and eyes. There was an— entity that looked entirely as if it was composed of pieces of smooth driftwood. It clattered and creaked as it moved along one of the larger roots but didn’t seem to pay them much mind. Other than that, most were just people, young people, with a few scales, purple eyes, spikes coming out of their bodies but people nonetheless. Bruce counted a few dozen. Not much but more than he expected.
“I brought food,” Yoichi said quietly. “And Mrs Mizuki gave me a few smoke grenades too…”
“Ichi we talked about this,” the man sighed, a bit theatric. Bruce wasn’t sure if he was putting on a show for them or if he was always like this. “You shouldn’t go above ground without supervision—“
“I’m the most suited to,” the boy snapped back. It seemed like they had this argument before. “No one pays mind to a cripple.”
The man -Shigaraki- just sighed again, letting the issue go. Yoichi rolled his eyes and proceeded to unpack the bags. Most of it was indeed food.
“You’re welcome to stay but we can’t offer much besides a relatively dry hole to sleep in and sometimes food,” Shigaraki said to their group.
“Dry sounds good,” Bruce replied carefully.
“That’s all you do?” Kudo added. “Hole up in here and steal food?”
“Obviously not,” Shigaraki replied, smile widening but becoming less honest in the process. “As you can see, we’re trying to make a difference.“ He gestured for the heap of weapons.
“Half of this is unusable,” Kudo said, flat. Bruce tried to give him a warning stare. It was unwise to antagonise the people half of whose weapons were usable.
“You were in the force?” Shigaraki asked, seemingly unbothered by the blunt tone. “We could use someone with military expertise.”
“For what?” Bruce asked.
“For preventing the murder of our fellows.”
“Or for spilling more blood.”
“Do you know what’s above us?” Shigaraki asked instead of an answer. Bruce could guess, so he nodded. “Is that something not worth stopping?”
Bruce couldn’t say anything to that. Shigaraki’s face was near impossible to read but there was something in the way his jaw locked after that last word, something Bruce recognised. A helpless rage reformed into a will. A sliver of that Red lodged in the soul, igniting with crimson flames. He didn’t like that he knew how it felt but he couldn’t ignore it.
“We’re planning on freeing the camps,” Yoichi added from the background. “Without hurting anyone. Showing them that we’re not a threat. Establishing a safe zone and then starting negotiations.”
Kudo visibly raised an eye at the weapons but Bruce saw he already decided. His hand was no longer in the folds of his coat. “Show me your plans,” he said.
Shigaraki only stood undecidedly for a moment before nodding and gesturing towards a table in the middle. A single, bare lightbulb illuminated it starkly. Bruce grabbed Kudo’s arm.
“Are you sure about this?” he whispered. He didn’t trust these people and he especially didn’t trust Shigaraki.
“I won’t let it happen again,” Kudo whispered back.
His eyes were but a swirling blackness. Bruce remembered how he had his hands up. He remembered the glint of the knife coming towards his face. The pain. The shame. He remembered the fear. He remembered the blood on his hands, the bodies in the trench, he remembered Suzuki’s scream, and the figures swinging on the tree above them.
He glanced at Yoichi. A kid sorting grenades with the nonchalance of someone washing the dishes. A kid who knew how the click of the safety sounded like. Bright green eyes locked with his. He gave Bruce that twitching smile, nervous and quick to fade as if he was afraid someone would reprimand him for it. For hoping.
“Death of me,” Bruce whispered softly and let go of his partner’s arm.
They followed Shigaraki to the table. Eyes followed them in turn. He knew what this really was. He knew what this will be. He glanced again at Yoichi. He felt the Red swell under his skin, threatening to seep out between the cells. Shigaraki started to introduce the others, listing their meta abilities as well as their names.
What are a few more stains? Bruce thought looking at his nails which never seemed completely clean but always were round and unchipped. Kudo divulged their abilities in turn and Bruce let him. He let him lean over the table and start sifting through the maps and documents. He let himself step closer too, peering over his shoulders. From the corner of his eye, he saw the feline woman offer Suzuki new clothes. Her neck had scars around it. So did her wrists. Chain marks. Old but not faded. He shook off whatever that heavy feeling the sight induced in him was, and concentrated.
“Woah, those are some exceptional quirks,” he heard Shigaraki say. He sounded honest and that caught Bruce off guard.
“Quirks?”
“That’s what we call meta abilities,” a white-haired woman spoke up. Bruce recognised her as the girl from an old recording. The one who could cool her hands below zero. Now she only had one to do so with.
He raised an eyebrow but didn’t complain. It didn’t really matter what they called it. The sign made sense now at least.
“And what’s his?” Kudo asked, nodding towards Yoichi.
The boy seemed to retreat from the question.
“He doesn’t have one,” Shigaraki said lightly but his eyes dared them to make a remark. Bruce got the feeling that he didn’t want to get on the bad side of this man. But the same could be said about Kudo. They seemed very similar, on the surface.
“He’s normal?” Bruce blurted before he could think better. He immediately felt awful. It felt exactly the same as if he said ‘meta’. Who were they to say what’s normal? And that being ‘normal’ is in any way, bad?
“I prefer quirkless,” Yoichi said with a twitchy but honest smile.
Bruce nodded at him, trying to mirror his smile before he turned back towards the table.
“So what’s the plan?”
“…Plan?”