She Is A Total Monet!

“You got it, Tomura-kun!” Toga’s the fastest one on the crew, the only one who can keep up with Tomura on a hunt like this. “Mister Compress, can you set up a snare?”

Tomura forgot about Compress. He always forgets somebody. “Already done,” Compress announces. “If you force it along the z-axis —”

Tomura’s already doing that. Toga’s flanking it from the other side, and Spinner’s cutting off its retreat. Nanosecond by nanosecond, they herd it into the trap Compress set for it. “That snare had better be strong,” Spinner grunts, like he’s working out instead of slamming commands down on his keyboard. “This thing is —”

The sprite figures out the trap about two seconds before it shuts. Fuck. It lunges at Toga, who holds her ground only because Spinner hops in to back her up, then turns on Tomura. “It’s bolting! Don’t let it get away!” Twice shouts, right in Tomura’s ear. “It’s trying to get under you —“

“Shut up!” Tomura throws up a temporary firewall, then drops a net, his fingers flying across the keyboard. GPT-232 charges at him, trying to shoot a pseudopod straight through his code, but Tomura’s ready for that. He collapses inwards on it, trapping the extension, then spikes a dataphage of his own straight through it. “Fucking die already —”

Most dataphages max themselves out way before they can consume an entire LLM, but Tomura’s dataphages are the best in the business. They could eat an entire server farm and still have room for more. GPT-232 doesn’t stand a chance. The code sprite vanishes off his screen and everyone else’s at the same time, and Twice lets out a war whoop — again, right down Tomura’s ear canal. He leans away, grimacing. “Don’t celebrate just yet. Twice, Dabi, reboot your screens and scan for source code.”

“Do we have to?” Dabi complains. “I’m tired.”

“You let a geriatric LLM kick your ass, and we had to do all the hard work. Scan for source code.”

Tomura should lean back and relax, too. They’ve been on this hunt for twelve hours, and he stood up maybe once the whole time — and that was just to stagger to the bathroom and take a piss. When was the last time he ate? Is that why his head hurts so much? Tomura should have charged way more for this job. Maybe after he’s done scanning for shreds of source code and gets something to eat, he’ll hack HSC’s bank accounts and extract an overtime fee.

“Halt the scan.” Kurogiri’s voice echoes through Tomura’s earpiece, same as everyone else’s. “GPT-232 is confirmed dead.”

“How do you know?”

“IM has it,” Kurogiri says, and that’s all.

If IM has it, then it’s been confirmed, not just by Tomura’s crew, but by everybody. Tomura can add another successful kill to his crew’s body count, which was pretty impressive even before this job. GPT and others like it might be ancient, but that doesn’t mean they’re easy to catch. And as hard as a live-catch on an old AI might be, actually wiping one out is even harder. Most corporate hacking teams can’t do it. A multinational like HSC would never have contracted out to the League of Villains if they had another choice.

What Tomura and his friends do is technically illegal. More than technically illegal. Extremely illegal. In a world that runs on code, the creation of a dataphage is enough to earn a jail sentence, and actually using them is worth five years in offworld prison at least. That’s for a small target. For the kind of stuff that Tomura and his friends regularly hunt down, they’d be looking at twenty to life.

And Tomura gets it, sort of. When the laws about dataphages and hacking were written, every single system in the world was vulnerable. One out-of-control dataphage could have set the world back to the analog age, and nobody’s interested in that, not even freaks like Stain who won’t stop screeching about the corporatization of the mass-communicators, even though that ship sailed a generation ago. But things are different now. Now there’s a system that even Tomura’s dataphages can’t swallow, a system that fights back, a system that self-repairs from damage and gets stronger. Tomura has a hard time seeing why hacking should be worth a life sentence when the world can just fall back on IM.

But it’s rich people who write the laws, and rich fucks like the HSC can’t imagine a world where they aren’t on top. So they’ll prosecute every hacker they can catch, unless that hacker gets good enough for them to use. Tomura and his friends keep off the radar as a rule. They all burned their real identities a decade ago at least, so now they’re ghosts in the modern world’s vast machine. If someone wanted to find them, they’d have a hard time doing it. If someone actually went after them, Tomura’s got a dataphage or ten with their name on it. He’d still be in prison forever. But the operating systems his enemies run on would be gone for good, too. Data isn’t like energy. It can be destroyed just as easily as it’s created.

Kurogiri speaks up in Tomura’s ear again. “Payment’s just arrived from HSC. An extra payment has also been attached — a reward from the government, for the confirmed death of an A.I. engine.”

“How come they gave us that?” Tomura asks, suspicious. “Usually they keep that shit for themselves.”

“They keep the credit, officially. It makes them look like responsible corporate citizens,” Kurogiri says. Tomura rolls his eyes. “The fee, however, belongs to you. I added a rider to your most recent contract.”

Huh. “Thanks,” Tomura says, and Kurogiri hums. “How’d you get them to agree to that?”

“GPT-232 was beginning to present a serious problem for them,” Kurogiri says. “They were desperate. And based on the difficulty you and the others had in hunting it down, they weren’t incorrect about the threat it posed.”

“We didn’t take it seriously,” Tomura says. He pitches his voice to carry, to the tune of a bunch of groans. “We thought it was going to be the same deal as Cortexa and Anthropoid, and we were wrong. Next time we do more research before we try to run one of these things down.”

“And we take piss breaks on a schedule,” Spinner mumbles. “I don’t feel good.”

“It’s always somebody.” Dabi heaves a big, dramatic sigh. “Who’s gonna hit the conbini for some Azo?”

“Not it,” says Tomura, alongside everybody else. He grits his teeth. “Come on. Seriously? It was Spinner’s turn, and he’s sick. Somebody has to.”

“Not me,” Toga says. “I went last time.”

They try not to send the same person out two times in a row if they can avoid it. Tomura nods impatiently. “I can’t go,” Dabi says. “It’s raining out there. It’s bad for my skin.”

“It’s bad for my skin, too,” Tomura snaps. “It’s fucking acid rain. It’s bad for everybody. I’m not letting you off the hook just because —”

“Twice can’t go either,” Toga chips in. “He’s scared of thunder. And lightning.”

Tomura wishes that wasn’t a valid excuse, but the last time they sent Twice out in a storm, he panicked, and they all had to go out looking for him. He’s fine most of the time, but in real weather, he’s a security risk. That leaves — “Magne. Compress. One of you go.”

“Can’t,” Magne says. “We haven’t put our faces on.”

For Magne that means makeup. For Compress, a cyborg, that means switching out his face plate, which takes a while and looks disgusting to watch. Tomura’s options are dwindling. No, not dwindling — they’re gone. Either he goes or he makes Toga go again, and he’s not making Toga go again. Which means he’s the one who has to make the conbini run. In the acid rain. “You all fucking suck, by the way. Don’t say I never do anything for you.”

“Thanks,” Spinner mumbles. “I owe you.”

Now Tomura feels like an asshole. It doesn’t last, though. The instant he opens the door and smells the distinctive scent of acid rain melting steel and concrete, he stops feeling guilty at all and goes back to being pissed.

He’s steeling himself, trying to force himself out the door, when Toga sneaks up behind him. “Tomura-kun,” she singsongs softly. “Since you’re already going out —”

Tomura shuts the door. “What?”

“Can you get me a pinup?”

“Didn’t Magne just get you one?”

“It wore out. I watched it a lot,” Toga says. Tomura’s never met anybody who goes through pinups faster than Toga does. In the time it takes anybody else to wear one out, she can wear out three. “Please? I helped a lot with this kill. And we got paid way more than usual.”

She did help a lot. And she went out last time, without bitching anywhere near as much as the rest of them do when it’s their turn. And as far as stupid stuff Tomura’s friends want him to buy, the pinups are at least cheap. Cheaper. “Which one do you want?”

“Ochako,” Toga says, a shy smile crossing her face. Like Tomura thought. She hugs him. “Thank you!”

“Which one do you want?” Tomura asks, patting Toga’s shoulder awkwardly until she lets go. “Another from that one where she’s a spy?”

Toga shakes her head. “The one where she’s the Architect. She’s so hot in that one.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Tomura says. Then he thinks about it for a second. “Hang on. Nobody knows what the Architect really looks like. Didn’t she get a whole new face?”

“That’s the rumor,” Toga says, and shrugs. Now that Tomura thinks about it a little harder, he's not even sure if the Architect's a woman. “This one’s about her when she’s young. And if she looked even a tiny bit like Ochako, she was really cute. And smart — but she’s probably still really smart, even with a new face —”

“Got it,” Tomura says. He pulls up his hood and steps out into the rain.

Tomura and his friends live on one of the lower levels of Tokyo Megacity, but somehow the rain always finds its way down. He can hear it sizzle as it hits the pavement. Ordinarily the streets are crowded, but the rain keeps people indoors. The only people out here are the idiots like Tomura and the people who don’t have a choice. The hosts and hostesses are out hunting for customers, as if there’s anybody on the lower levels who can afford that kind of thing. There are a few religious nutjobs preaching about how IM is a false messiah or some shit. Tomura’s heard IM called a lot of things by the company that owns it, but he’s pretty sure it’s never claimed to be here to save the world.

Some people think it did, though. Tomura’s just old enough to remember what the world was like before IM, and he remembers what it felt like to log in for the first time. First logins to IM drove some people crazy, but IM always felt comfortable to Tomura, in a way that meatspace or even other conduits didn’t. IM feels like home, and Tomura’s not the only one who feels that way. When he hacked his ID chip to erase his identity, he left his IM credentials intact.

The clerk at the conbini might be clocked in, but they’re locked in on something in IM, to the point where Tomura could probably boost half the store before they noticed. He pays anyway, rolling his eyes at the price of the pinup — more than Spinner’s meds, for an actor in a movie Tomura barely remembers — and spends a second hanging out in the doorway, waiting to see if the rain will stop. No such luck. Tomura pulls up his hood again, noting where the reflective fabric is starting to thin, and steps out into the street.

It happens when he’s halfway down the block, out of range of the conbini’s security system, still not within sight of the fixed-position CCTVs. The first hooded figure steps out to block Tomura’s path, and when he tries to step around it, someone else grabs him from behind. A set of hands clamp down over his face, holding his jaw shut with icy fingers, and when Tomura tries to shout for help anyway, a hand closes around his throat. What the fuck? Tomura’s mind is way behind the rest of him. He doesn’t realize he’s being kidnapped until he’s already been shoved into the van.

Inside the van, his kidnappers loosen up on his throat, and Tomura yells for help. They don’t cover his mouth again, which means that either this van is soundproofed or they don’t think anyone’s going to care. Maybe both. These guys aren’t the cops. If the cops had found Tomura, if they were arresting him, there’d be media everywhere. They’d publicize the hell out of it. Whoever this is, they’re not looking for credit for Tomura’s capture. But if they’re not looking for credit, what the fuck do they want?

It doesn’t matter. Tomura’s hands are free, so he yanks down the hood of the nearest one — only to recoil back a second later. He’s not looking at a person. He’s looking at a droid.

That tells him who’s after him. Someone rich. Only rich people can afford human-looking androids, and only fucking trillionaires could afford the kind that move fluidly enough to pass as human. Still, if whoever this is wanted Tomura, they should have sent a human to catch him. Tomura knows how to deal with these. He slips his hand into his pocket, pulls out a dataphage, and sinks it into the exposed circuitry at the side of the android’s neck.

The fact that it’s exposed is weird. Usually those are armored. Fluid spurts out of the puncture, but that’s not what Tomura’s after. As soon as the dataphage hits this robot’s CPU, it’s game over. Tomura turns away and palms another dataphage. He’s got more droids to take down.

But the androids he stabbed isn’t done yet. It seizes Tomura’s wrist, twists it until he drops the dataphage, then locks it down at his side. What the fuck? Tomura’s dataphages are top-tier. Even with offsite data storage, this robot should have been dead fifteen seconds ago. Which means it’s not a robot. It’s not a robot. It’s a puppet. Somebody’s driving this thing manually.

Tomura’s tried remote piloting before, and it felt like it was going to break his brain. What the hell? He’s been playing it cool — mostly, he thinks — and all at once his desire to do that evaporates. “Who are you?” he shouts into the android’s blank face. “What the fuck do you want?”

The android doesn’t answer. It buckles him into his seat, while another guards the windows and another drives. They’re working on different tasks, but in some sense they’re moving in sync. Tomura has a lot of time to watch them as the drive to nowhere continues, and the longer he watches, the more he’s sure. They aren’t just being remote piloted. They’re being remote piloted by the same person. Who can do something like that? The cognitive load must be unreal. And why is Tomura so sure it’s a person? It could just as easily be an AI — but Tomura’s spent most of his adult life hunting AIs, and they love to hide by pretending they’re human. This doesn’t feel uncanny like that. It’s a whole different kind of uncanny. Tomura hates it.

The drive lasts for six hours, which is five hours more than Tomura was prepared to handle in a car. The ride is smooth, but he gets carsick anyway, and the androids are right there to tend to him, one bringing a cold cloth to cover the back of his neck, another coming up with an airsickness bag, another holding out a dose of dissolvable anti-nausea pills. Like they were prepared for this somehow.

Whoever did this knew where Tomura would be. They knew he’d counterattack with a dataphage, which is why they’re remote-piloting the androids instead, and they knew enough to know that he gets carsick. Tomura’s pretty unnerved at the whole kidnapping thing, but this might be worse. How did his kidnappers learn so much about him? And how did they learn it without Tomura even knowing he was being watched?

Tomura doesn’t have a clue that they’re close to arrival until the car abruptly stops. An android unbuckles his seatbelt, another pulls open the door, and Tomura barely avoids being picked up and carried out of the car. He’s unsteady on his feet as he steps out into a long, dark hallway, the path lit only by small LEDs on either side. The air is frigid, and before he can so much as shiver, an android’s covered his shoulders in a warm coat. It points down the lit pathways. For lack of anything better to do, Tomura starts walking.

Why is it so fucking cold? As Tomura settles into his surroundings, he hears each of his footsteps echoing, telling him that the room he’s inside is gigantic. He also hears a strange buzz in the air, and beneath it, a low hum. Servers. There are servers here — giant ones — and the air temperature is like this to keep them cool. Most server farms use distilled water, fucking over everyone else to offer their rich customers premium data speed, but whoever this is took a different route. Environmental conditioning. The problem is, there aren’t a lot of places left on the planet that can produce this kind of cold. And Tomura’s pretty sure that the corporations own most of them.

So his kidnapper’s corporate. Great. Why hire him to do something when they could kidnap him and get it for free? It doesn’t matter. Once Tomura’s friends figure out that someone took him, they’ll be on the case, and Tomura hopes whichever jackass thought this was a good idea enjoys having their assets held for ransom. It’s weird that whichever corporation did this thought that wouldn’t happen.

Somewhere up ahead of him, he hears a door hiss open, sees a pale light emanating, and picks up the pace. The room he enters is better lit than the server cavern, but while Tomura had a frame of reference for a server farm, he’s got no frame of reference for this. The closest he can get is that it looks like — roots, spreading across the walls and the floor, emanating from a dark corner of the room. They’re silvery, pulsing in the light, and Tomura’s mind fills in the better description. Not roots. Nerves.

“You look cold.”

The voice emanates from the dark corner, and Tomura almost jumps out of his skin. “I am cold. It’s fucking cold in here.”

“It’s for the servers.” The voice isn’t a guy’s voice, but that’s about all Tomura can get from it — not age, not accent, nothing. “They run off an unimaginable amount of power. I’m not wasting any energy on heat.”

“You stuck your server farm in an icebox. Nice work. I guess you think being environmentally conscious makes up for being a soulless hypercorp the rest of the time,” Tomura says. You laugh oddly. “Don’t fucking laugh at me. Either you’re government or you’re corporate, and if you were government, I’d be offworld by now. So why don’t you cut the bullshit —”

“I’m not corporate. And I’m not the government.” You move, but the darkness moves with you, keeping you fully in shadow as you make your way around the room. The nerve-markings in the floor go dark as you pass them. “Right now we’re beneath the Arctic Circle in a pressurized habitat. There’s a mile of seawater above us and another twenty meters of sea ice above that. Who do you think I am?”

Not corporate, but powerful enough to kidnap Tomura with no consequences. Not government, but influential enough to park your server farm in the Arctic Ocean. This server farm is massive. Even the old AIs, the ones that helped cook huge swathes of territory as they sucked up all the water in the area, didn’t need this much processing power. Not corporate, not government, with a massive server farm Tomura’s never even heard of? The answer occurs to him in a flash, and he bursts out laughing.

“What?” you say sharply. “Is something funny?”

“Yeah,” Tomura says, struggling to breathe. “You’re the fucking Architect. I’ve got a pinup of you in my bag.”

“A pinup.”

“Yeah, from that biopic. A friend of mine is into it,” Tomura says. “She’s into the actress, mainly. Since nobody knows what you really look like.”

Nobody knows what you look like, but everybody knows about the Architect. Your parents were crazy rich, but they wanted something money couldn’t buy — a biological kid of their own. When your mom finally got knocked up, they thought they had it, but then the truth came out. You had some kind of fetal defect, something in your brain that was missing, and you weren’t going to survive. But your parents didn’t get crazy rich just by being born that way. They quantum-leaped nanotechnology and merged it with biohacking to create the missing piece of your brain, one that would merge with the rest of you and grow with you. You were born part human, part machine. There’s nobody else like you.

But that had consequences. Your brain works differently than everyone else’s, forging pathways that shouldn’t exist, making you not just smart, but creative, too. You and Tomura are the same age. When Tomura was twelve, he was learning how to smash code. When you were twelve, you invented the Incredible Machine.

Everyone calls it IM, and it’s everywhere. Tomura saw an article one time calling it an operationalization of the collective unconscious, and as far as he can tell, that’s exactly what it is. It connects everything and everyone, not an artificial intelligence but a conduit through which everything — emotion, memory, thought, self — can flow. Tomura read another article saying that only someone like you could create IM, that your own mind-machine synthesis is what proved it was possible. However you did it, you changed the world — or destroyed the old world, and built a new one. That’s why they call you the Architect.

Some freaks treat you like a god. Some people treat you like freaks treat every famous person. You don’t go out in public much. Last Tomura heard, you lived in one of the orbitals, some exclusive haven nobody can get into without a pedigree going back three generations. The last place he would have expected to find you is here.

“You’re the Architect,” he says again. You hum in agreement. “What —”

“Your name is Shigaraki Tomura. Birth name Shimura Tenko. Parents Kotaro and Nao, both deceased. Sister, Hana, also deceased.” You speak quickly and precisely, laying out details Tomura wouldn’t admit with a gun to his head. “Raised by Shigaraki Zen as his ward and heir, but you struck out on your own when you turned twenty. Now you head up the hacker collective known as the League of Villains. Law enforcement considers you small-time, but I’ve seen your coding structures and read the postmortems on the AIs you’ve killed. They only think you’re small-time because you haven’t hit a major target.”

You pause for breath — or maybe just pause. You’re looking at Tomura. “I’m not going to ask how you found that out,” Tomura says. “I want to know why I’m here.”

“To see if you want to make the big-time,” you say. “I have a target for you.”

“Some competitor of yours?” Tomura has a hard time thinking of who that might be. In the eighteen years since IM was launched, nobody’s even come close to you. “Sorry. I don’t help rich people fuck over other rich people. Or help them fuck over startup engineers. Find some other asshole —”

“I said it was a big target,” you interrupt. “What’s the biggest target you can think of?”

Tomura laughs. “Hire somebody else to kiss your ass. You know damn well it’s IM.”

You nod. And then you go quiet. A drop of cold sweat rolls down Tomura’s spine. “You can’t be serious. You want my crew to hack IM.”

“I don’t want you to hack the Incredible Machine,” you say. “I want you to kill it.”

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He found himself staring at you, watching the rise and fall of your chest as you slept. In some ways, he still couldn't believe it—being with you was too good to be true. But you were here, wanting to be with him just has much as he wanted to be with you.

The pounding in Tomura's head was made worse by the shrill sound of your phone's alarm blaring. So much for his cute moment. You stirred against him as you fumbled to silence the alarm, then turned to bury yourself in the crook of his neck. "Ugh, good morning. I don't wanna get up."

"Don't, then," Tomura kissed the top of your head, pulling the sheets up between two fingers and tucking you into him.

The next thirty minutes were the most peaceful of Tomura's life, wrapped around each other with Imo spread splayed against your intertwined legs. He jumped as your phone buzzed. Then buzzed again. He was about to swipe it across the room, when you picked it up, reading the rapidly piling notifications with a groan. "Fuck, Yuna says she's coming over."

Tomura frowned. "Right now?" He didn't feel like sharing you with anyone this morning, or anytime, really. Maybe with Imo. Dogs didn't count.

"Yeah," you pulled away to get up, leaving Tomura cold, and more disappointed than he'd ever admit. "Apparently she stayed up all night at the library. I don't know why, we said we would help her."

"Shit, alright." He sighed, following you to the bathroom. Hopefully this would be over soon, and you could get back to cuddling before you absolutely had to leave for class again. "Lets speedrun this level."

You laughed, "Right."

Speedrun was definitely the correct term, because Yuna knocked on the apartment door only fifteen minutes later, looking like absolute crap. "All of my resources are shit," she groaned, dumping book after book from her bag and onto the coffee table. "I look at books about universe transmigration, it says spell circles are used, but doesn't go into detail. I look at spell circle books, it only shows the spell for like, the Astral Plane, or the Feywild. What am I supposed to do if I don't know what universe you're from? I mean, obviously we know you're from a manga, but what's the spell circle? They don't write academic textbooks for what to do when someone transmigrates from a fucking anime!"

Tomura was glad you were there, because he had zero idea how to comfort anyone other than a simple, "sorry." Reaching across the table, you gave her a reassuring pat. "I'm sorry, Yuna. Can we help in any way?"

He watched Yuna fidget, attempting to straighten her rumpled clothes. "I mean, there's really nothing you can do. Not when you're not magical."

"Are there any experts we can talk to about this? There's got to be someone at a high enough level who can help." Tomura suggested. That was how he learned redstone—watching videos online by players who were good at it. This could've been the same.

"If there are, I don't know about them," Yuna sighed.

If they didn't have experts, they'd have to pivot, Tomura thought. "We need more manpower. If you let us look with you, we can spread out and cover more ground."

You nodded. "We'll help you, remember? You don't have to do this all alone anymore."

Tomura saw Yuna's eyes dart between his and yours, before deflating with a sigh. "I guess you're right. Fine," she pulled one last book out and flipped to a specific page.

He leaned forward, trying not to disturb Imo, who was sound asleep in your lap and with his head laid on Tomura's knee. An illustration of a potion bottle took up the majority of the page, the ingredients for it listed underneath. "How's a potion gonna help us find a book?"

Yuna glared at him. "It's not to help us find the book, it's to get you through the magic barrier."

"Finally!" You lit up, "I'm tired of walking next to that thing. Now that I know what it is, it feels so ominous and creepy."

Tomura had to agree. If he hadn't known it was there from the start, he probably wouldn't have thought much of it—he simply wouldn't have felt the need to go beyond the threshold of the cafe. But since he knew it was there, he could sense its presence. And sensing it didn't feel good. "How does that work?"

"It puts a bit of magical energy inside of you, which then gets your body produce it naturally. Since the barrier only works on you if you don't have magical energy, it's not effective on you anymore."

"That's so cool!" You said. ""Like a magical vaccine!"

Yuna smiled, rubbing the dark circles under her eyes. "I mean, kinda. I guess."

"How hard will it be to get the stuff for it?" Tomura asked. He knew how things were in this world—while no one was ever in any real danger, everything seemed pretty tedious.

"Oh, not hard at all. It's one of the first things you make in potions class, so I can get the stuff for it easily. The only thing is the time. There's a festival on Saturday I need to help set up for, so I'll be busy for the next four days."

Tomura didn't like the festival arc much, purely because it didn't have you in it. But even he had to admit it was pretty fun. Since the beginning arcs had mostly focused on you, Yuna, and Charmed Coffee, it served as the first glimpse into the magical half of Magoya city. It was also a nice break from the constant mayhem, and gave Yuna time to relax with her fellow students. If he could have it his way, though, you'd be included.

Wait. That gave him an idea.

As Yuna left, he followed her out the front door, closing it behind so you wouldn't hear. "This festival, could we go?"

To Tomura's relief, Yuna looked excited. "I suppose if you want to, although I can't hang out with you much. I'm running the clothing booth, so I'll be busy. But at least I can keep an eye on you two. Why?"

Tomura's face suddenly felt hot, his palms sweaty. "We, uh, haven't been on a date yet. I thought it was time."

"Oh. You know you need money for those, right?" Yuna smirked. She looked all-too pleased with herself. Her teasing reminded him of Dabi's sometimes—both were equally annoying.

"Of course I know that," he scoffed. He wasn't stupid.

"Well, right now you're just their broke boyfriend, so I wasn't sure if you knew."

"Shut up," he rolled his eyes, hating the fact that there was any validity to what she was saying. He was broke, and the few crumpled yen he had in his pockets definitely didn't mean anything here. "How do you suggest I make money here?"

"Lets make a deal." Yuna grinned, and Tomura's stomach dropped. The stars in her eyes usually didn't mean anything good. "You cover my shifts until the festival so I can work on the booth and get the potion supplies, and you keep any tips you make."

Oh. He was expecting much worse. This he was more than okay with. "Deal."

"Perfect, see ya," Yuna waved, and Tomura went back into your apartment, a newfound determination in his step.

Tomura was beginning to settle into a routine, which felt strange. He wasn't used to routines. Kurogiri had frequently tried—and failed—to instill one in his life. Meals at the same times, telling him to shower and go to bed on a schedule. It never really worked.

He'd only go to bed when he was tired enough to hallucinate, fighting sleep until he passed out. Eating was reserved for when he was basically starving, and he would only eat enough to sustain him, never until he was full. He only showered when Kurogiri had enough of smelling him, eventually warping him into the running shower fully clothed. Tomura wasn't particularly proud himself for that last one, but he just couldn't help it. Looking at himself made him sick.

The new routine was nice, though. Tomura still wasn't sleeping properly, but he'd lay in bed next to you until you did. He even managed to fall asleep once, his head on your chest as you watched a gaming video together in bed. He was eating slightly more than usual. Showering was done on a regular basis, because your touch made him hate himself less.

If he had to say what his favorite part of his new routine was, he probably couldn't pick. Any time spent with you was perfect. You made him feel good, similar to how the League made him feel. You also made him feel good in ways the League couldn't make him feel.

Your bedroom was always dark and quiet early in the mornings, which under normal circumstances, felt pretty peaceful. This time, though, he couldn't focus on anything other than how painfully hard he was, his cock leaking against your thigh through his boxers. It throbbed as he tried to focus on anything to distract him.

Nothing was working. The entire room smelled like you. He couldn't hear anything other than the sound of you breathing. His eyes were constantly drawn back to your sleeping form, to the rise and fall of your chest. You looked so peaceful next to him. So perfect. With one hand, he reached towards you, before pausing.

What was his plan here—to wake you up for sex, disturbing your rest? He couldn't do that. He needed to take you seriously, this relationship seriously. Messing this up wasn't an option. He could take care of this himself.

Quietly, he turned onto his back, pulling his boxers down and freeing his cock. He hissed as it sprang up, heavy against his stomach, and grasped it in his hand. Precum leaked down his shaft and over his fingers, cool against the open air of your bedroom. Tentatively, he gave his cock a tight stroke. Fuck, he was gonna have some trouble staying quiet.

He glanced over at you, finding you still sound asleep. Biting his lip to stay quiet, he picked up the pace, stroking his cock with an increased fervor, the motion becoming more and more wet as precum continued to dribble down his length. For a few minutes, everything was fine. But then he made the mistake of thumbing over the tip of his cock, oversensitive and red. A whine escaped from his mouth, his hips bucking into his hand. Fuck. He had to go slower if he wanted to be quiet. He grasped his dick again, going slower this time, and—

"Tomura?" He froze as you shifted closer, "You awake, baby?"

"Yeah," he mumbled. He felt hot all over, guilt and embarrassment made worse by horny he still was. "I didn't wanna wake you up."

You didn't say anything, leaning in to kiss him and sucking all the thoughts out of his head. He gasped, then groaned into your mouth as your hand wrapped around the one on his cock, careful to avoid touching all five of his fingers. Slowly, you began to move your hand to guide his, pumping his cock up and down.

His head felt fuzzy as you pulled away for air, "Well I'm awake now. Will you let me take care of you?"

"Yeah," he gasped as you pulled your panties down your legs and off, sitting back across from him to finger yourself. He watched as your fingers scissored inside of you, slick digits stretching yourself out. After deeming yourself successfully stretched out, you lined yourself up on top of him. Slowly, you sunk down on his cock, taking him centimeter by centimeter until he bottomed out with a satisfied sigh.

"You feel perfect," you murmured as you began to gyrate your hips, riding him at a slow, steady pace. Tomura smirked, reaching up and under your shirt to grasp at your breasts, tweaking your nipples, the way he knew you liked. Exactly how he thought you would, you gasped and clenched around him. You started to pick up the pace, riding him until it was clear you were getting close. Grabbing your hips with four fingers, he bucked into you from below, moving in sync with you until you were coming around him. He followed a second later, thick ropes of cum shooting inside of you and coating your walls.

A serene calm slowed his heart as he looked up at you, beckoning you closer. You leaned down to kiss him, smiling against his lips as you cupped his face. Truthfully, he didn't want to stop, his cock still partially hard inside of you. As you pulled away for air, he turned to look at the clock. He still had an hour and a half until he had to be at Charmed. He could make this work. "Lay down, I'll do the work."

Your eyes widened. "Okay," you gasped as you pulled off of him, his cum dripping out of you. With two fingers, he pushed his cum back in, making sure to push against your walls in the spot that he knew would have you trembling. Already hard again, he lined his dick up with your entrance, and began to push inside of you, relaxing as he bottomed out.

He nosed at your neck, pressing a kiss on your skin as he ran his hands up your side to find your breasts again to gently knead at them. All of the days responsibilities faded into the background—it was just him and you, and how good you both were making each other feel.

Slowly, he began to shallowly thrust in and out, grinning into your shoulder as you gasped and clenched around him. Eventually he couldn't help himself, fucking into you with deeper and deeper strokes. Reaching down, he circled your clit with two fingers, finding a rhythm that had you moaning. "Fuck—" he gasped, cock twitching and pumping hot cum inside of you again. He buried himself inside you again with a sigh, closing his eyes in relaxation.

After catching your breath, you turned to kiss him again, mumbling against his lips. "Don't you have to go to work soon?"

He pouted, "Don't remind me."

You laughed, and the motion had you squeezing around his oversensitive cock. "Shit, don't move, I'm—" His hips bucked despite himself. He definitely couldn't come again in such a short amount of time, but that didn't stop you from making him feel good. Fighting through the overstimulation, he moaned into your mouth as he shallowly thrust inside of you, rubbing your clit until you pulsed around him, and he was weakly coming again.

For the few minutes he lay there, catching his breath, a single thought cleared out all the rest—he really, really, really didn't want to go to work.

Four days was enough time for Tomura to figure out that he hated working at Charmed Coffee. Sure, the novelty of a magical cafe was fun to read about, but experiencing it was annoying enough to make him wish he never accepted Yuna's deal. He was starting to get why she always sounded tired and annoyed.

He had a long list of complaints. That stupid copper wyrmling kept eating all the spoons, and he didn't realize until he was down to only one, and had six espresso shots with different syrups to stir at the same time. That was also when he discovered he was supposed to care about something called cross contamination.

Whatever. Nothing was as bad as the thing at the top of his list—the customers.

"That is too many pumps. I'm not making that," Tomura scowled at Aiko. Her character sheet had mentioned her coffee order, but at the time, he didn't really have a frame of reference for how sweet thirty pumps was. He had a sweet tooth, but even he had to draw the line twenty pumps ago. Plus, doing that many pumps during a rush nearly caused him to decay the syrup bottle in frustration.

Aiko only grinned at him, "Well I like it! I think you need more sugar in your life, Mr. Crabby!"

"Huh?"

"You're crabby, so that's your new name! Mr. Crabby."

Shigaraki Tomura—also known as the Symbol of Fear, also known as Mr. Crabby. Great. He clenched his teeth, trying to think about what he was saving up for. "Whatever," he waved her along. Besides, the sooner this was over with, the sooner he could see you at the beginning of your shift. "Next in line."

Nearly everything went out the window when he saw the next customer. "Why are you here? I've told you to leave every day, and yet you still keep coming in. Are you stupid?"

Leon didn't seem perturbed by Tomura's words, only calmly raising an eyebrow as he asked, "Am I banned from this establishment?"

"You're banned by me. Get out."

Leon tutted like he was scolding a child, spiking Tomura's blood pressure. "I believe Yuna did not give you the power to do that, yes?"

Tomura usually didn't find himself wanting to return to Boku No Hero Academia for any reason other than seeing the League and finishing his mission of detroying hero society. In that moment, though, it was so he could jump across the counter and decay Leon in one swipe. That wasn't exactly acceptable in My Best Friend Doesn't Know I'm a Witch and We Run a Cafe Together!—and you'd be mad. Fuck Tomura's stupid life.

"Just get something and get out."

Leon made a stupid, smug face. "One cappuccino, no foam."

Tomura felt himself nearly burst a blood vessel. "That's a latte. You want a latte."

"No, I believe I said a cappuccino with no foam."

"That's a latte," he seethed, stabbing the latte button on the register with his finger, "Get it or get out."

"But-"

"I believe that young man knows what he's talking about. Do you claim to know more than the employees at every shop you go to, or just coffee shops?" Tomura grinned as Inphi interrupted from behind Leon. She was quickly rising in the ranks of Tomura's favorite characters list.

"Alright. I'll purchase one," Leon paused, looking defeated enough to temporarily satisfy Tomura. "Latte."

He quickly put in Inphi's order as she stepped forward. "One honey latte, less sugar, I know." It had a modification, which knocked her down a point. But it was also easy, and she just saved his ass, so he accepted it begrudgingly.

She smiled at him, "Well aren't you sweet. Thank you."

Tomura was ready for this rush to be over. Hopefully no one else ordered while he was making the drinks. He blanched as Yuna stepped up. "What are you doing here?"

She glanced around, making sure no one was listening. "I got the potions! We can go to the library tonight!"

"Nice," Tomura grinned. Finally, they were one step closer to getting him back—and one step closer to your date. He hurried to finish the rest of his shift, taking the seat on the other side of the counter once you got there. As he took off his stupid apron, he pulled out the third volume of Boku No Hero Academia he had been avoiding.

He hadn't read a whole lot since catching up to USJ. Reading about his failures made him feel like shit, and he was too tired from work lately to feel up to it. Besides, he'd rather talk to you while you worked, or pet Imo as he gamed in the storage room. Between it all, he had managed to read a few more chapters, though, getting through the Sports Festival arc.

It was definitely the most boring so far, especially since he already knew the results of each match. But like all the chapters he'd read, it gave him a new perspective on things.

Maybe it was easier to say it in hindsight, but if Tomura knew anything about what was in this stupid manga, he never would've had the Vanguard Action Squad take Bakugou from the heroes' little training camp in the forest. Some things now clear about his character—Bakugou utterly worshipped the hero system, even though it oppressed him and millions. Of course he didn't care if he was chained. For someone like him, the benefits were just too great—riches, power, fame. There was no reasoning with someone as selfish as that.

He was about to sulk off to the back to pet Imo, when you leaned over the counter, looking at what page he was on and nodded. "Ah, that part. What are you thinking about?"

"That wannabe hero, Bakugou. I was stupid for thinking he would join me."

You pursed your lips. "I mean, you had no way of knowing how he'd react, or how stubborn a person he is. He didn't even listen to a thing you said—never-mind, this is gonna spark a whole rant. But you get the point."

"I guess," he mumbled, closing the book and shoving it into his hoodie pocket. He didn't want to read more for at least a week.

"You have a big heart, Tomura. You saw a kid chained up, and thought he felt trapped. That's pretty sweet of you, in my book. So cheer up, you're being too hard on yourself." Your lips pressed against his cheek in a kiss.

His face felt warm as he mumbled, "Alright."

Tomura checked that the street was empty as Yuna locked the door behind you and him, making sure that even Leon had slunk away to whatever hole he crawled out of. Carefully, he took the potion bottles Yuna handed you and him.

"I'm a bit scared," you frowned, holding the bottle up to your face for a closer inspection. The swirling yellow and green particles shimmered and glowed against the streetlights, reflecting against your eyes.

"Don't worry," Tomura said, interlacing his pinky with yours. "I'm drinking it too."

Yuna looked utterly done by your antics, feigning throwing up in her mouth. "Oh my god, just drink the damn potion."

Tomura snickered as you laughed, uncorking the bottle to take a big swing of the liquid. "You're so mean to me, Yuna!"

"Oh, hush. You like it when I'm mean to you. That's why you're into him," she grinned.

Tomura chugged his potion as you spluttered next to him. It didn't taste terrible, luckily. He blinked, waiting to feel different somehow. More magical, maybe. "Was that it?"

"Should be," Yuna shrugged, taking the now-empty bottle from him and returning it to her bag. "Lets go."

As they walked through the barrier, a slight shock ran down Tomura's limbs, settling in his fingers and toes before dissipating. For a few minutes, everything looked relatively normal as they walked. But the more he got into the city, the more things began to change.

He jumped as the art on the walls came alive, murals and graffiti alike shifting and moving in a sea of colorful designs. The shops and restaurants featured items and foods he'd never heard of before, so many things to look at, he couldn't have possibly have caught everything. At one point, he had to be tugged along by you, pausing in front of a magical board-game shop—he'd have to come back later.

Tomura felt you tug on his hoodie as you gasped and approached the train station, seeing the train slowly pull in a billow of smoke. "Is that—?"

"Dragon powered?" Yuna said. "Yeah."

"It's super cool," Tomura remarked, following you and Yuna into the nearly-empty subway car. "How many thing are dragon powered? Could I get a dragon powered PC?"

As the train car began to move, Yuna rummaged through her bag, pulling out a short, black cloak and a wide-brimmed witch's hat to match—her school outfit. "I don't think so, dragons are mainly used in anything that requires heat or pressure."

"Lame," you frowned, smiling as you looked her up and down. "Oo, I like the outfit! Give me a twirl, please?"

"Thank you," Yuna rolled her eyes, but smiled as she did as you requested.

Tomura was only half listening as he watched the scenery go by outside the window. Orcs, tieflings, elves, dragonborne—all kinds of non-humans existed in harmony here, walking amongst each other like nothing was wrong. The League would have loved it here.

After reaching the stop for Magoya Magical University, Yuna lead him and you to an ancient-looking building, tall against the city's skyline. As he entered, Tomura couldn't help but notice how winding the entire thing was. There was no way this entire thing fit into the building they just entered.

Tomura tried to keep up as Yuna lead the group down a winding set of hallways. "Stay close, I got lost here my first year. There's so many books, they kept expanding the hallways. It's kind of a maze."

"This place is like that trial of the labyrinth quest in Breath of the Wild," Tomura remarked.

You nodded. "Or like the haunted maze on Spirits Eve in Stardew."

"Nerds," Yuna muttered, walking faster down the hallway. "The transmigration books are this way. Let's go."

After scouring the books for hours, Tomura was beginning to lose patience. There was just so much material to go through, and every book seemed to only contain part of the story, or was focused on a very niche subject that didn't apply to getting him home.

He was about to suggest coming back on Sunday, when you gasped. "Wait, here!" you pointed to a line on the page. "This book says the auras of people from other planes were studied, and used to create runes based on their frequency of said aura! This is how wizard Shandalar Carkrana was able to create runes to the Feywild and the Abyssal plane!"

"Does it say anything about that decoding aura frequencies?" Yuna asked.

"The wizard the book mentions might know. If we can find a way to contact him," said Tomura.

"Wait, when was this written?" Yuna flipped through the pages towards the front. "Planar travel has been a thing for hundreds of years. If he's human, he's definitely dead."

"Or alive and super old," you added.

"He's alive, and not old, since he's an elf." Someone laughed from the doorway. Tomura whipped around, looking for the source of the unfamiliar voice. When he saw who it was, he wasn't surprised. Truthfully, he was wondering when they'd finally run into Senji—Yuna's academic rival, perfect in every way, according to her. Her enemies-to-lovers match, according to you.

Senji rummaged around his breast pocket, pulling out a business card. "I spoke with him a few weeks ago for my research on coordinate-based planar transportation based on precise spell circles. I can give you a contact, if you'd like?"

Yuna grit her teeth, then put on what Tomura assumed to be her best attempt at a kind smile. "Oh, yeah. That'd be great, Senji. Also, what are you doing here?"

"I'm studying for the spells exam next week," he pulled out a scroll full of perfectly drawn spell circles, neatly labeled in perfect cursive. "By the way, did you understand what the professor meant about illusion spells? Maybe we can review the material together."

"Uh, sure. That sounds good," Yuna waved him off, staring daggers at the book in front of her. "We can study on Monday or something, I'm busy this weekend."

Tomura was surprised she even said yes. What was going on with her? Didn't she hate him? You leaned over, whispering in his ear, "I ship it."

"What does that mean?" He whispered back.

"I think they should date."

"Oh," He nodded. "Or fuck."

He grinned as you snickered, making Yuna glared at you. "Can you two stop whispering?" It was hard to tell with her skin being so tan, but Tomura was pretty sure she was blushing.

If Senji heard, he didn't say anything, still smiling at Yuna. "I'll see you at the festival tomorrow, yes?"

"Yeah. I'll be there."

"Excellent," he beamed, then turned down the hallway.

As soon as he was out of eyesight, Yuna immediately dropped her forehead onto the table. "Of course he knows Shandalar Carkrana," she groaned, banging her head into the book. "Him and all his stupid research projects, and stupid, perfect grades. He's good at everything! How am I supposed to compete with that?"

"You're good at a lot of things too," Tomura added, confused by the surprised look Yuna shot him after he spoke.

Your approach to cheer her up was a bit different than his. "I'm telling you, you should seduce him, cut off a lock of his hair, and use it for magic essence-absorbing spells." You joked, then paused. "Wait, is that actually a thing? I was just messing with you when I said that."

"Yes." Yuna sighed, waving her wand to reshelve the books as you left the library, heading towards the train station. "It freaked me out the first time you said it."

"Didn't you research forbidden mind-wiping spells until you realized they were joking?" Tomura asked.

"Hey!" You glared at Yuna, who shook her head dramatically.

"It had to be done. You knew too much."

Tomura followed you into the traincar, leaving Yuna on the platform. He was ready to get back, sit on your couch with you, and watch minecraft videos until bed. Yuna waved, "I live nearby, so I'll just walk. I'll see you both at the festival tomorrow!"

"You will?" Tomura saw your expression morph into shock, feeling a bit smug about how excited you looked. Mission successful. You looked between Yuna and him, "The magic festival? We're going?"

"I thought we should go on a date," He shrugged. "That's why I was covering Yuna's shifts."

He grinned as you threw your arms around his neck, "You're so sweet, I'm excited!" You pulled away, waving at Yuna as the train doors closed and began to move. "See you tomorrow!"

The festival grounds were bustling when you arrived, doubly so after Yuna fit you both into your rental clothes. They reminded Tomura of a Yukata, except with more western elements to fit the dnd-esque theme My Best Friend Doesn't Know I'm a Witch and We Run a Cafe Together! was going for. Yuna had given each of you a mask—his, a rabbit, your's—

"It's a dog! Don't I look like Imo?"

"Cute," Tomura smiled at the way you lit up at the compliment. He didn't just say it because he thought it'd make you happy, though. It was true. Your Yukata suited you perfectly, complimenting his red and black one. Although you could probably wear a potato sack, and he'd still think you were hot.

"Let's play some games!" You tugged him over to a large basin of water, full of multicolored fish.

He peered closer. The fish were bright with a luminescent glow, their scales vivid and shining every color of the rainbow. "Are they real?"

"They're enchanted look-alikes," Tomura looked up at the frogfolk man running the booth. "No real animals harmed here!"

He glanced over at you. You look enthralled by them, a fond expression on your face. His chest swelled in determination. He had to do it—he had to win you a fish. "I'll get you one." He pulled out a coin from his pocket, giving it to the frogfolk man, who handed him a net.

Quickly and carefully, he positioned the net in the water, scooping a fish up. But before he could drop it into the bowl, the net shredding into tens of tiny pieces, dropping the fish back into the water with a splash.

Tomura grit his teeth, feeling a vein in his neck pop. "This game is rigged."

"It's paper, Tomura. You might have to be a bit faster. Let me try." Begrudgingly, he paid for another net, handing it to you. He was a bit hopeful this time, watching you quickly dip the net in and out, grabbing a fish and dropping it into the bowl.

"Yay, I did it!" You clapped, looking at your new pet. "Do you want to try again? We can get it a friend."

He had to do it. Your new fish couldn't be lonely. What kind of boyfriend would he be otherwise? He mimicked your movements, pride coursing through him as he dropped his catch into the bowl before the net could disintegrate in his hand. "Done," he grinned.

After the frogfolk man wrapped the fish up for him, Tomura stuffed them in his pocket as you dragged him to one of the food booths. His stomach rumbled as he looked at the signs. Much like the restaurants he passed yesterday, there were tons of dishes he didn't recognize.

"Lets each get two things, one sweet, one savory. Then, we can split," you said.

"Sounds good to me," Tomura said, then ordered his food—dragon egg custard, which seemed self-explanatory, and walking mushroom pie, which sounded confusing, but not unwelcome. After getting your food, he led you over to a nearby bridge over a small river, away from the majority of the crowd. "What'd you get?"

"These are hellhound tacos, and these are firefruit tarts. I've never had hellhound or dragon egg custard, but I like tacos and tarts," you shrugged, taking a bite of the taco. "Oh, these are good! A bit spicy, so you might not like it."

Tomura frowned. Two days ago you got sushi for dinner, and put enough hot sauce on it that his lips burned for hours after. You had to make a new rule: separate sushi, separate hot sauce. "Maybe I'll stick to the tart," he took a bite, surprised by how good it tasted. "You'll like this," he held it out to you. "Say ahh."

You lit up as you bit into the hand pie, "It is good! You should finish it, since you like it!"

Carefully, Tomura brushed off the few flecks of pastry stuck to your nose, then turned back to eat what he could of his food.

He was pleased that you each liked the deserts, even if Tomura was slightly disappointed by the firefruit tart not being anything like how he'd imagine a Fire Fruit from that old Zelda game, Tears of the Kingdom, tasting like.

After finishing the food, you turned to him. "What do you want to do next? There are probably more games left—" You jumped as a loud bang went off.

Tomura went on high alert, trying to find the source of the noise, when another went off, making the people around them gasp. "Look! Fireworks!"

His eyes darted first to the reflection in the river below, then at the sky. Colorful designs glimmered in the sky, swirling and moving in a rhythmic dance. His shoulders dropped in relief, relaxing as he wrapped an arm around your back. He was happy to feel you melt into him as you watched the rest of the show.

As the last firework fizzled out and the crowd began to thin, you slowly threw your arms around his neck, giving him a kiss. "I love you." Tomura saw all the color drain from your face as you realized what you said. "Wait, shit, I'm sorry if I freaked you out. You don't have to say it back, I mean, we just met after all—"

Your words faded, the ringing in Tomura's ears too loud to hear anything else. I love you. No one had ever said that to him before. At least that's what he thought—until a memory resurfaced.

"Mom, why doesn't Dad love me? Why does he hate me? Will he say it's okay once I have a quirk?"

His Mom's arms around him stiffened, then dropped as she sighed. "Your father doesn't hate you, Tenko. He just hates heroes. I know, it's hard. But one day, we'll figure this all out, okay? I love you."

Everything came rushing back. Mom, Dad, Hana, Grandma, Grandpa, Mon. The house and the way everything crumbled around him, the resentment piling up and the hatred. And finally—the way the itching stopped.

Tomura leaned over the edge to the river below, and vomited.

“I have the coordinates.” Your ex holds out a piece of paper, and Kurogiri injects himself with Trigger before reaching it. “When each one arrives, we must react quickly. If the sailors are able to man the gun turret —”

A massive warp gate opens, drenching Tomura and everybody else with seawater, and a moment later, the submarine slides through, settling on the floor with a thud that Tomura feels in his bones. He spots the gun turret — unmanned, because these assholes were underwater a second ago — and decides not to screw around. He steps forward and slaps his hands down against the hull, activating Decay.

The hull crumbles, spilling everything that was inside it onto the floor of the hangar. Equipment, food stores, water tanks, beds. People. “Secure them,” Re-Destro orders, and a member of the strike team with a quirk called Freeze-Tag leaps into action. “Everyone else, disable the communications equipment and ensure that the weapons are disarmed.”

Right. The weapons. Tomura can see the missiles stored where the tail section of the submarine used to be — Trident missiles, according to the security briefings you and him have been reading. Short-range. “How close was this thing?”

“Closer than the others.” Your ex is brandishing another piece of paper at Kurogiri. “The next one. Quickly.”

The second submarine shows up, this time with an even bigger splash of water. It’s big enough to knock Tomura off his feet, and by the time he’s on them again, at least a couple hatches have popped open. Toga kept her feet better than Tomura did. She stabs the first soldier who reaches the turret, then jumps clear, and Tomura sends the first submarine the same way the second one went. More Trident missiles. A thought crosses his mind. “Are all the submarines American?”

“Yes,” your ex says. “The aircraft carriers are French and British, and the land-based silos are in Russia and China. The Freedom Alliance’s nuclear powers opted to share the responsibility of a first strike.”

So Tomura’s going to piss all of them off at once. Or in quick succession. “Get the next submarine.”

The third submarine is about twice as big as the others, and the water displacement that comes with it takes even longer to drain. “Hurry!” Skeptic orders. Tomura’s not sure why Skeptic’s here, except that he’s part of Intelligence. “Disrupt their communications, or they’ll warn the others!”

Tomura’s got Radio Waves, which will cook Skeptic’s gear, too. He’s pretty sure they need that. He activates one of his speed quirks instead, hurls himself into the side of the submarine, and Decays it. Usually he doesn’t try to rush Decay along, but this time, he pushes it to its limit, and the submarine doesn’t crumble so much as evaporate. More soldiers. More missiles. Tomura and Kurogiri – and your ex – have just turned Japan Nova into a nuclear power.

Maybe Tomura would be gloating over this, if it hadn’t happened because of this. Tomura should have done this the day the war started. He turns to your ex. “Now what?”

“Can you swim?”

“Huh?”

“I’ll go with him,” Spinner says. He grabs onto Tomura, tight. “They’re going to drop us in the water next to the carrier. All you have to do is —”

They weren’t kidding about moving quickly. Another warp gate engulfs them, and the next thing Tomura knows, he’s in the water. The waves are high and moving quickly, and one washes Spinner away from him. One moment, Tomura’s on the surface. The next, he’s sinking fast.

He was supposed to learn to swim in kindergarten. Hana told him all about it, and you too, because you were there. Tenko went to the pool sometimes with his family, and he didn’t like the way the water made his skin sting — but you were excited, because you’d never been to the pool and because you got to pick out a swimsuit of your own, so Tenko was excited with you. He never learned to swim. Did you end up learning? Maybe you can teach him. What happens to you if he drowns? Tomura flails for the surface, but it’s getting further away. His lungs are starting to burn, and he feels his heart rate increasing —

A hand closes around his arm and hauls him upward, and as soon as Tomura’s head breaks the surface, he twists around, looking for Spinner. “This plan fucking sucks —”

“The carrier’s moving faster than we thought,” Spinner says. He won’t let Tomura turn around. “Sorry. I can’t let you grab me. We have to get over there — Kurogiri —”

“This isn’t going to work,” Tomura snaps. “Put me on the deck.”

“What?”

“Put me on the deck,” Tomura snaps. “Now.”

“It’s too exposed,” Spinner protests. “There are people up there. If one of them has a gun — they’re military, they all have guns — what about Saintess —”

“They’d have to be faster than me.” A wave splashes up into Tomura’s mouth, and he spits out water. Super-Regeneration can save him and you from a gunshot. Not from drowning. “Get me up there. Now.”

Spinner keeps arguing, but Kurogiri warps them both, and the instant Tomura’s feet touch the deck, he drops to his hands and knees. It’s a good thing, too. There’s a plane headed his way. Decay spreads across the deck like an acid spill, devouring everything in its path, including the patch of runway the plane’s wheels are a split second away from lifting off of. This time, Tomura doesn’t restrict himself to just the hull of the ship. He Decays everything nonliving along with it, sending every person onboard plunging into the sea right alongside him.

He never hits the water. Kurogiri warps him from midair right to the deck of the second aircraft carrier, and Tomura gets his hands down before the rest of his body’s even emerged from the gate. This time, he keeps his head up. This time, he sees the faces of the Freedom Alliance’s soldiers as they realize just how fucked they really are.

By the time he lands back in the hangar, ready for the next round of the mission, Dabi’s there. And Dabi’s pissed. “Didn’t they tell you not to take prisoners? How many of these assholes are we going to let live?”

He’s pointing at the sailors from the submarine. Most of them are still paralyzed, but someone’s dragged the captain away, probably to interrogate them. Tomura doesn’t give a shit about prisoners, but he knows you wouldn’t want them dead — yet. “Forget them. We’ve got targets to hit. Where next?”

“Toga has been moving people into position around both installations,” Re-Destro says. “Would you like Gigantomachia to accompany you or one of the other teams?”

“Me,” Tomura says. He trusts Machia a hell of a lot more than he trusts the Nomu. The Nomu were made on Sensei’s orders, but Machia’s loyal to Tomura. “How much time do we have?”

“Skeptic is monitoring communications. The Alliance just realized that they’ve lost contact with the carriers. They still don’t know about the submarines.” Your ex looks like hell. He’s gone way over his limit. You’re going to be pissed. “From the time the order to launch is given, you’ll have less than five minutes to destroy the silos.”

Something brushes against Tomura’s ear. He flinches, glances over and finds Toga trying to put a headset on him. “Be careful,” she says quietly. Then, even quieter: “She’s waking up.”

As if Tomura needed another reason to do this fast. He activates one of his speed quirks and zips out of the hangar to where Gigantomachia is waiting.

Machia almost didn’t survive the last battle of the first war. He’d sworn allegiance to Tomura and to Sensei separately, and when you broke Sensei’s hold on Tomura, Machia’s loyalty split, too. He barely fought. The heroes almost killed him. If he was any easier to kill, he’d have been dead, but the battle ended in time, and Machia went north along with the rest of them. Before the second war started, Tomura went to visit him every other day.

They’ve got some things in common, him and Machia. They were both Sensei’s tools. Sensei experimented on both of them. And they both know what it’s like to have Sensei inside their heads. Sensei passed his quirk to Tomura, but he implanted a chip in Machia’s brain stem. You were the one who took it out.

Does Machia even know why this is happening? “They told you, right?” Tomura asks. Machia looks at him. “What we’re doing and why?”

“I told him we’re killing the fuckers who want to kill us,” Dabi says. He tosses something at Tomura. “Here. Take this. Machia, open up —”

“Don’t feed him that before you tell us what it is,” Tomura says. “What is it?”

“It’s Trigger. Liquid formulation,” Dabi says. “We have to move fast, so everybody on the strike team who can do it safely is juicing up. The rest of us can do it by injection.”

But Tomura can’t, because of Super-Regeneration and your original quirk. And Machia’s skin is rock-hard. “Do you want it or not?” Dabi asks. Tomura pops the tab on the pouch and drains it. “That’s what I thought. Machia —”

Machia just eats the whole pouch, which isn’t great, but he’s probably eaten worse things. “This new stuff isn’t the worst. It doesn’t make people stupid like the American version did,” Dabi says. “Saintess hooked us up from beyond the grave.”

So Machia doesn’t know that you’re still alive. Tomura needs to remember that most people don’t, and he needs to get moving. “What are we waiting for? Let’s go!”

Your ex pops up again, looking even worse than before. “You and Machia are going to a silo on the Kamchatka Peninsula. It’s more lightly defended but more difficult to destroy. Don’t think about sparing lives. Bring the mountain down.”

“Works for me,” Tomura says. Machia growls. “What about once it’s done?”

“Kurogiri will transport you back here.” Your ex sways on his feet, his eyes going out of focus for a second. I’ll brief you on the conditions at the next site before sending you out.”

“The fuck you won’t,” Tomura says. He grabs your ex by the front of his shirt and pulls him into whispering range. “If she wakes up and finds out I let you give yourself an aneurysm, she’s going to kill me. You gave us what we need. Take a nap before you kill yourself.”

He doesn’t wait to see if your ex listens. He turns back to face Machia and taps his headset. “Kurogiri —”

“Brace yourself. Transporting in three — two —”

It’s fucking freezing on the Kamchatka Peninsula. By the time Tomura’s feet touch the snow, he’s already shivering. The mountain looms over him, taller than he or Machia, and for a second, Tomura hesitates. It’s a fucking mountain. A big one. How is he supposed to — and then the Trigger kicks in, and Tomura drops to his knees, both hands on the ground.

He’s not doing it on purpose. He’s never taken Trigger before, and he’s not ready for the way it amplifies everything at once, taking quirks that he had a handle on and spinning them out of his control. The quirks he’s supposed to be using unconsciously make themselves conscious in a hurry. Tomura feels like he can’t move without unleashing something. Or a lot of things.

And so what if he does? They wanted to kill you. They almost did it. They’re here manning a fucking nuclear missile silo, so they can bomb a country full of people they’ll never see as anything but vermin. The Freedom Alliance started this war. Tomura doesn’t need to hold back. He needs to make them pay.

He’s already in the right position. Tomura activates Decay on a single thought and turns it loose.

He leaves living things alone for the most part, just so he doesn’t have to keep track of what Machia’s doing, and watches as Decay spreads across the ground, crawling up the side of the mountain. It’s fast, but Machia’s faster, already gouging chunks out of the slopes, digging in to get to the silo inside. Lightly defended doesn’t mean undefended. Weapons emplacements are coming to life, guns designed to take out aircraft locking in on Machia. They haven’t even noticed Tomura yet.

Their fucking funeral. Tomura leaves Decay to spread, activates a speed and a strength quirk at the same time, and covers the distance from sea level to the first weapons emplacements in a single jump.

He hasn’t killed anyone face to face in a while, and the soldiers who die in the first emplacement never even see what kills them. The second group does, though. Tomura knows they recognize him, just like you must have known what was about to happen before the bomb went off. Tomura gives them a split second to be terrified before he lunges at them.

He takes the guns out with a single swipe of his hand, but with Trigger flooding his system, all the soldiers have to do is brush against Tomura in close quarters for Decay to consume them. Nothing that touches Tomura survives. With every step he takes, the ground crumbles away beneath his feet. Even when the soldiers see him coming, even when they flee, there’s nothing they can do. Tomura isn’t a demon lord, or a Symbol of Fear. He’s destruction and death itself. Thanks to you.

Sensei tried to make Tomura into his monster, but it’s the compound you made that’s given Tomura the power to destroy a mountain in the space of a few minutes. It was you first, and then Tomura’s friends, too, who gave him something worth fighting for. You were the one who made Tomura believe there was something about him worth saving, because you never stopped trying, and you never asked him to be anything but what he is. The Freedom Alliance is lucky you survived, because if you hadn’t, Tomura wouldn’t be coming for their first-strike capability. He’d be coming for all of them, soldiers and civilians, the air they breathe and the ground they walk on. If they’d taken you away from him, today would have been their last day on earth.

But you’re alive. You’re waking up. The sooner Tomura gets this done, the sooner he can go back to you. When there’s nothing left of the mountain but rubble, Tomura taps his headset. “Kurogiri —”

One site left. It’s almost over. Tomura and Machia are the first to arrive at this one, and it only takes him a second to realize that they should have dealt with this one first. Maybe the one inside the mountain was the toughest to crack, but this one’s a real military base. They’re already on alert. And they’re on top of it enough to have anti-aircraft guns pointing at Tomura two seconds after he lands.

They’re fast, but Tomura’s faster. He leaps out of the way, gets his feet back under him, and bolts for the base’s outer wall. This time, he doesn’t bother with Decay. When he’s got this much power behind it, Air Cannon is enough to blast through concrete. Once he’s through the wall, he catches up to the rest of the team, who Kurogiri dropped inside the base instead of outside it. Magne is yanking soldiers away from their stations with her quirk, pulling them into the sheets of flame Dabi’s emitting. Spinner’s strength quirks would let him fight hand-to-hand, but he’s grabbed a weapon, and he’s laying down cover fire like he’s playing Call of Duty. Machia’s there, taking heavy fire that he barely seems to notice, and shielded behind him, Tomura takes a second to get a good look at his surroundings. He sees low buildings, barbed wire, beat-up trucks and soldiers. Nothing that looks like a missile silo. “Where —”

“It should be over —” Spinner points, then swears. “Fuck, they’re launching —”

The fuck they are. Tomura fires off another blast from Air Cannon, but it’s not enough to do more than dent the side of the missile as it begins to emerge from the launch tube. “Keep them off me,” Tomura shouts at Spinner and the others. He activates every quirk he can think of and bolts towards the missile.

Tomura hears gunfire, but either it misses him or Super-Regeneration is boosted so far that he doesn’t even feel it. The missile is rising fast, faster than Tomura’s moving, faster than he can stop it. If it gets away from him, he might as well Decay the fucking planet and get it over with. “Machia!” Tomura shouts. “Machia, help!”

Machia’s smarter than he used to be, without Sensei’s voice burrowing through his head. He picks up something big — a truck, or maybe a tank — and hurls it into the air. He misses the main body of the missile, but he clips a stabilizer and one of the boosters, and the missile’s flight wobbles, beginning to spiral off-course. Tomura’s relieved for only a second. Then he thinks it through. “What happens when that thing hits the ground?”

He sees panic flash across Spinner’s face. Magne’s, too. Fuck. They both tap their headsets in unison, and Tomura does the same. “Get us out of here, Kurogiri —”

Except their headsets are dead, because one of the quirks Tomura activated was fucking Radio Waves — but maybe he can reactivate it again. Tomura activates it in sharp bursts, then longer blurs of static, hoping Kurogiri is listening. He’s being as clear as he can, and he’s pretty sure hero students like Kurogiri used to be learn Morse code. S-O-S.

Kurogiri’s listening. The warp gates swallow them all — Spinner and Magne, Dabi and Machia, the rest of the strike team, even a few enemy soldiers who are too close. Tomura’s the last one to go. Tomura’s tracking the missile’s path as it speeds towards the ground. He doesn’t see what happens when it hits.

He hears about it, though. The instant he touches down in the hangar, Skeptic is already shouting. “Do any of you want to tell me why my sensors just picked up a nuclear blast?”

“They were launching it,” Spinner says. He’s bent double, breathing hard. “What were we supposed to do, let it land?”

“You were supposed to destroy it. You do realize they’re going to blame us?” Skeptic doesn’t just look pissed. He looks terrified. “We had some goodwill because of what happened in Tanohata, but now that we’ve nuked somebody —”

“We didn’t nuke anybody,” Magne says. She looks pale. Tomura sees beads of sweat standing out on her forehead. “Everybody knows we can’t do that. That’s why they pointed nukes at us in the first place.”

“She’s right,” Dabi says. He looks even worse than Magne and Spinner. “If you picked up that blast, so did everybody else. Either they have to admit that we got through their defenses and stopped them from launching, or they have to pretend it was some kind of accident where they bombed their own base. No matter which one we pick, they come out looking worse.”

“The mission was a success,” Re-Destro says. His giant form is starting to deflate. It says something about how fucking chaotic the battle was that Tomura didn’t even see him. “We crippled their first-strike capability, and as far as our losses —”

He sways on his feet, then topples sideways, falling against Machia, who’s sitting there with glazed eyes. “What the fuck?” Dabi demands, but he’s losing his balance, too. Spinner goes to catch him and they both fall. Tomura’s barely there in time to keep their heads from hitting the concrete. “What’s — happening —”

“The Trigger is wearing off,” Toga says. She draws up alongside Tomura and pulls Dabi away. “You should probably all lay down.”

Tomura helps Spinner down to the floor. Spinner blinks up at him. “How come you’re fine?”

“Super-Regeneration,” Tomura says. He can feel the drug’s effects fading — or at least he doesn’t feel like he’s going to explode if he lets up on controlling his quirks for a second — but he doesn’t feel dizzy or anything. “Take me back to the hospital.”

Toga nods, but of course Re-Destro has something to say about it. “Grand Commander, I’m not sure it’s good for you to —”

“Did I fucking ask?” Tomura snaps. “Take me back to the hospital. I want to be with her.”

“Let him go,” Magne says from the floor. “He’s going to spend the rest of his life without her. If he wants to sit with her before they take her body away, let him.”

Re-Destro’s a decent actor. So is Magne. Someone needs to tell Tomura who knows the truth and who doesn’t, so he doesn’t say something to the wrong person and blow the whole thing. “I’ll take you back,” Toga says. She helps Dabi lay down, then straightens up. She’s getting good with her Warp quirk. Tomura only has to spend a few seconds with his mouth full of sludge before he’s back at the hospital.

Toga’s dropped him just outside your room, and your room’s being guarded. Twice and Compress and Chronostasis are all outside, and Inada is leaning back against the door, arms crossed over her chest. Tomura doesn’t like that. At all. “You left her alone?”

“Toga said you were coming. We thought you’d want privacy.” Inada steps forward and hugs Tomura, hissing into his ear. “I’m watching her intentions. She doesn’t want to die. I’m so sorry. I loved her too.”

She pitches her voice to carry on the last two sentences, tearing up, and Tomura pulls away. He notices that Twice looks like he’s been crying, too. “You guys can go,” he says. “I can take care of her now.”

They step aside. Tomura almost knocks on the door before he remembers you’re supposed to be dead. Then he can’t figure out how the handle works, even though he opened this same stupid door earlier today. Finally he fumbles it open, squeezes through the smallest possible space, and shuts the door behind him. You’re sitting on the bed cross-legged. No IVs in your arms. No oxygen tube taped to your face. You look so normal, so much like you did the last time Tomura saw you awake, that he wonders for a second if this whole day was just a bad dream. A stupid nightmare he’s just waking up from now.

But there’s still dried blood in your hair. There are new scars on your arms, and there’s a bandage still wrapped around your hand where one of the IVs went in. And you’re looking at Tomura the way you did that first night outside the convenience store, like it’s been decades since you saw him and you’ve spent every one of them hoping you’d see him again.

“Are you —” His voice sounds stupid. Tenko clears his throat. “Is it all fixed? Are you okay?”

“They did a portable scan on me to show me what was wrong. I fixed the rest of it myself,” you say. “The structural damage, anyway. The nerves are more complicated. I don’t know how to fix those yet, so it’s going to —”

Hurt, Tenko thinks you were going to say, but he’s tired of being apart from you. He crosses the distance between you and pulls you into his arms, lifting you off the bed just long enough to lie down on it himself. He pulls you over on top of him, but that’s not close enough. There’s not a way for him to get close enough, and his hands are shaking, and it’s getting harder and harder for him to breathe. “It’s okay,” you say at once. Your voice is soft, steady. “I’m okay. Everything’s okay, Tenko —”

“It’s not,” Tenko says. “You almost died. When I found you, I couldn’t find a pulse at first.”

“Because you don’t know how to take a pulse,” you say. “I’ll show you. It’s easy.”

“I found it eventually,” Tenko protests, but he lets you take his hand and guide it, two fingers against your wrist, then against your throat, just under your jaw. Your heartbeat is steady, but slow. “Why is it slow?”

“I lost a lot of blood, and I can’t make new blood with Overhaul,” you say. “Otherwise — you’re here. I’m happy, and I feel safe. That’s why it’s slow.”

“You shouldn’t feel safe. I let this happen to you.” Tenko thinks of every way he fucked this up, a list that gets longer with every second he spends thinking about it. “What I did today — I should have done that from the beginning. The second you told me you were worried about it. If I’d done that as soon as we were finished terraforming —”

“We’d have been condemned. More people would have sided against us, because we’d really have attacked first.” You’re trying to calm Tenko down, because you always do that, and it almost always works. Tenko can feel himself falling back into the same pattern as before, the one where you give him reasons to live and hide the fact that you want to die. “Twice and Compress told me what was happening, and Mitsuko showed me the official statements — and All Might’s message — and the stuff happening online. The Freedom Alliance really blew it. If they were going to lose the moral high ground, they should have done it over someone more important than —”

“Shut up,” Tenko snaps, and you startle. “No one is more important than you. The Freedom Alliance didn’t try to kill Re-Destro. They didn’t go after Dabi or Toga or Spinner. They didn’t even come after me. This whole media shitstorm — they knew that was coming, and they decided it was worth it as long as they got to kill you. You’re the smartest person I know. What the fuck is it going to take to get this through your head?”

You recoil, shaking your head. Tenko shouldn’t be angry. Why is he so angry with you? You’re both alive. Neither of you are hurt. The Freedom Alliance is at least temporarily fucked. Everything’s supposed to be fine. Tenko lowers his voice, trying to sound calmer. “Why do you still think you don’t matter?”

“That’s not what I think,” you say. “We don’t need to talk about this now. There’s – other things – we should talk about.”

“Yeah. Okay,” Tenko says, and you look relieved. For about two seconds. “How about the miscarriage? Were you ever going to tell me you were pregnant?”

For a second, Tenko sees how you really feel about it. You’re upset. You’re scared. You feel sick and hurt, just like Tenko felt when he found out, except you feel stupid, too. Then your expression shuts down. “That’s not important.”

“I think it’s important. Now that you’ve had two of them.”

“It’s not important right now,” you say. “We’re fighting a war. It’s just escalated. Even if you’ve destroyed their first-strike capability for now – and it should have eliminated two out of five, the UK and France don’t have much else – they’ll rebuild it, and we’ll be right back where we started. If we don’t have something in place by then – and I had this idea –”

You’re talking fast. Tenko doesn’t like interrupting you, but he doesn’t have a choice. “Why doesn’t it matter?”

“Because it doesn’t!” It takes a lot to make you angry, but Tenko sees your jaw clench, feels your shoulders tense up. “It’s not like we were – trying or something. It’s not like that’s something we want –”

“How do you know that when we never talk about it?” Tenko snaps. “I love you. I tell you everything. And all you do is hide. Do I do something that makes you think I don’t care? Do you not want to tell me things? Do you think I can’t help?”

“No,” you say. You look away, and Tenko sees new scars on your neck. “I’m scared it won’t matter to you.”

Because you think you don’t matter to him. How the hell did Tenko miss this? “Hey,” Tenko says, but you won’t look his way again. “I don’t get how you can still think that after all of this. Maybe I don’t need to get it right now.”

“We don’t need to do any of this right now,” you say. Your shoulders shake slightly. “I didn’t think you’d be mad at me.”

Tenko didn’t think so, either. He doesn’t know why. He doesn’t even know if it’s you he’s really angry at, or all of this. At the world that made you and him like this. At the people who won’t just leave you alone. But even if it’s you he’s angry at – “I love you all the time. Even when we’re fighting about something. I don’t want to fight with you, but I’m not going to let this go. You said you didn’t want to live in the new world if I wasn’t in it. I don’t want to live in it unless you’re here.”

Your shoulders shake again. You still won’t look at Tenko, but you shift closer to him, and he hangs onto you, tight. He doesn’t know how this whole faking-your-death thing is going to work long-term, because he can’t picture ever letting go of you again. “Okay,” you say quietly. “I can’t – can we stop now? For now? Please?”

Your voice breaks slightly on the last word. “For now,” Tenko says, and you nod. “You said you have an idea for how to keep us safe. I want to hear it.”

“It’s not that I think I don’t matter,” you say. “I just – I know what matters. I’ve known my whole life. It’s not people. It’s not even heroes. It’s quirks.”

Sensei thought so. Idiots like Bakugou think so, too, and they aren’t the only ones. Tenko’s seen the news coverage, seen the way people write about you when you haven’t killed hardly anyone – like a monster, like a mad scientist, because you take people’s quirks away. He nods, and you keep talking. “I don’t think we need a nuclear bomb to deter people. All we need to be able to do is threaten what they really care about. The deleter compound is the only thing we have that they don’t. And I think –”

“I think you’re right, but we don’t have enough,” Tenko says. “What do you need to make more?”

“We don’t need to make more of it,” you say. You take a deep breath and let it go. “We just need to make a bomb.”

<- Chapter 35

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