An Abbreviated Display of Hyperfocus

Perfect

You realize instantly what the spot is. It's a nerve center, an erogenous zone. The jolt that runs through you at the touch of his lips feels almost exactly the same as a brush across your clit. He kisses again, and the seam splits apart, lavender-gray shrinking back to reveal pale lilac flesh. He kisses and licks the nerve spot with single-minded intensity as the end of your tail swells and hardens, the very tip broadening, exposing a tiny slit that beads up with clear fluid. He doesn't stop until the gray has fully retracted and your unmistakable erection is complete.

Then he pulls back to stare at it in awe. "Master?"

"Yes, Tomura?" you breathe.

"Order me. Please…"

"Open your mouth."

He obeys. You reward him by brushing the leaking tip against his lower lip, making both of you shudder, then your cock is in his mouth, pressing down on his tongue, and he wraps both hands around your tail as he starts to suck.

Oh, you think. That's what that feels like.

He's good. He practiced. The diary he left in your phone talks about how he used a dildo — one he bought — to follow along with videos. He's a little clumsy with his tongue, but you're sensitive enough that it hardly matters, and he figures it out as quickly as he does everything else. Then he tilts his head back and swallows and you can see his throat bulging from the intrusion just before your vision goes white from the orgasm tearing through you. He swallows again and again, then chokes and gags as you reflexively shove a little deeper, but when you withdraw, he holds tight to keep you until the last drop spurts onto his tongue. He lets you see the mess in his mouth before swallowing it proudly. One more kiss to your tip and he lets go, staring hopefully at you.

"Speak to me," you say, stroking his throat.

"Master?" His voice is hoarse, but intact.

"Good boy," you whisper. You glance at your tail. You're still hard, still aching and eager. You wonder how much of the stamina he always had was a rabbit hybrid trait and how much was natural, and if you can match it now. You move over to the desk and sit on the edge with your knees wide, pulling him along behind you with a tendril around his wrist. "Clothes off."

His genesuit shifts back to the default from his favorite hoodie and sweatpants, then it splits open and falls to the floor. There's cum smeared on his cock.

"You came just from sucking me off?" He nods, and you tug him in to stand between your thighs. "You know what comes next."

"Fingers?"

"Hm… No. Let's try without, this time. Go slow."

You moan in tandem with his whines as his cock finds your entrance and wedges its way inside. The stretch is intense, but it's like your body is tailored to match his, a rapid adjustment and a perfect fit. (You wouldn't be terribly surprised if it was, although you're sure he'd insist that it's the other way around.) As soon as he's fully sheathed in you, he stops and looks at you for permission.

You don't give it. "Pussy open," you instruct.

He shifts his legs apart, just a little. "Present, Master," he gasps.

You run you tendril down his spine, then tease around his dripping hole with it. It feels a lot like fingering him, when you slip it inside, but there's a difference. The tendril is much, much longer. It slithers into him, exploring, coiling around to test his nerves, probing deep to learn his shape. He's deeper than you would have assumed, with internal folds and a tiny spot at the end that feels like an opening but which causes him to flinch and tense when you nudge it. You retreat from it with a soothing kiss and go back to your exploration. You relish in the wet heat, in the way he clenches. Then you unwind your other upper secondary and add it to the first, and he whimpers.

***

Tomura doesn't know what he was expecting when he saw your secondary tendrils. Maybe he thought you'd wrap them around his neck. He has wondered about that, after seeing it in the videos… He's also wondered about tentacles, after seeing those. He wondered if a tail would be like that, and hoped you'd have one. But now you're using your tendrils like the thinner tentacles in those videos, and he can feel every twitch, and it was uncomfortable when you pushed on his oviduct but you noticed and stopped and now you're prying his pussy open the way you usually do his ass, the way you usually make him do to your pussy, and it only just occurred to him that your tail, your real cock, is bigger than the strap-on, it's as big as his cock. He's never had that much inside him before. He didn't dare try a toy that big when he didn't know if you'd have something to match it.

Then your tendrils slip out of him, and before he can form a coherent thought to protest, your cock is stretching him open, and the only thought in his head is that maybe you should have used three tendrils first.

He tries to brace against your shoulders, but it's more like collapsing on you, the way he has to cling to stay upright, and your lower secondaries wrap around his legs to support him, because his knees have never been this weak. He's never been opened this wide before. He didn't know he could be opened this wide. He doesn't know how it's not splitting him in half, when you're barely past the opening and he already feels fuller than the toy he loved so much has ever made him.

And he did love that toy, past tense, because you're still pushing into him, and he already knows that no chunk of synthetic material will ever be able to satisfy him after this. The dildo will never be more than a tool for edging him on Punishment Days again. It can't fill him like you do, and it will never be warm like you. He's ruined for anything but your flesh, the exact shape of you and the heat of blood rushing just under your skin.

Then the pressure holding his muscles open eases ever so slightly and you stop moving deeper, and his lungs start working overtime as the strain of being continuously given more fades. Now he can adjust, properly process how much of you he's taken. He reaches back and runs trembling fingertips along your tail to the point that it disappears into him, and finds only velvety skin over flexible muscle.

All of you. Your entire cock and then some is stuffed into his pussy. He raises his head to stare at you, eyes wide. "K-keshan?"

"My sweet, perfect boy," you whisper, voice just a little ragged. "You take me so well, Tomura. You're so good for me. Look."

"Uh…?" Your upper secondaries wrap around his chest and shoulders to prop him up, and you drag a finger down his sternum. He follows the trail you draw on his skin down to just above his navel. There's an unfamiliar contour there, a distension in his stomach. "Wha… what is that?"

In answer, you flex your tail, withdrawing your cock partway, and his abdomen flattens back to normal. Then you thrust back in, making him yelp, and the bulge forms again. "It's me, sweet boy."

That—

That's your cock. That's you stuffing him so full that there isn't enough flesh on his torso to hide it.

He comes on the spot, his own cock spurting into you while he chokes on a sob.

"Good boy." He sobs again and you brush his hair back behind his ears, out of his face. "Now just watch yourself keep taking it."

He obeys. His knees give out entirely after only a few thrusts, and only your tendrils around his legs and shoulders keep him upright. He watches your cock pounding into him, he feels every centimeter of length, every ridge and vein dragging against his walls, he feels the pulsing pressure of the tail end of your cock pushing past his entrance almost like a necked toy. He feels it even more when he comes again, and his whole pussy constricts around you.

He can see the exact moment that you tip over the edge. He feels it too, the liquid of raw gene samples pouring into him, and it's not quite he was expecting, like the pre-warmed lube he experimented with while you were out, it's hotter and thicker and it tingles. But seeing it is the real shock. He watches in amazement as his stomach distends even further, going round and tight under the inflation, and he remembers his first Punishment Day when he did the same to you. He remembers how long it took it all to drip out of you, and wonders how long this will take him. He's sure you've given him more than he did you.

"A long, long time," you whisper in his ear.

Huh? Did he say that out loud? "Keshan?"

"I'm going to pull out in a minute," you tell him. "But I'm not done with you yet. I'm going to do your ass next. So the instant I stop plugging you up, you're going to switch your muscles, and you're going to seal your pretty little pussy up tight. You'll keep every last bit of what I just gave you for as long as you can, understand? And if you manage to not spill a single drop, I'll give you something special."

He doesn't bother to ask what the something special is. You always pick the best rewards. "Yes, Keshan."

"Good bunny. Get ready…" Your tail shifts, slipping slowly out of him. He clenches around it, eyes closed in concentration, determined to earn the Something Special. "Three… two… one… Now."

He switches his muscles over so fast it actually stings a little. Then he looks down to see that his stomach is still a little round. Less so, but it's still too full of your gift to be flat.

You examine him with a finger, then nod in satisfaction, and he puffs up with pride. Then you shift your hold on him. He still can't stand steadily, so your lower tendrils switch to support him from the knees up, and your upper ones unwind to cross around his lower ribs. Once you've determined that you can reach with all four, you grab the jar of lube capsules from behind you.

"Show me how you use these."

He takes one obediently and keys up the medi-warp program. As always, it feels weird. Having lube squirt up into his guts from the plastic syringe is one thing. Having a thumb-sized lump of gel just appear, only to cling to his walls and spread all over as it melts like gallium? That's different, and only familiarity keeps it from being outright uncomfortable. He counts carefully, and right on the thirty second mark, he feels the oil start to seep out.

"It's melted, Keshan."

One of your tendrils strokes across his rim and he shudders. "Will it be enough?"

"I don't know. I can add another if…" He swallows. As thoroughly as you stuffed his pussy, he's as apprehensive as he is eager for the next part. "Keshan? Can I have all four tendrils first?"

"Of course, bunny."

Between the slick oil and the three months of keeping in practice for you, your first tendril slips in easily. So do the second. He feels the small points of pressure as you feel around inside and whines softly. He wonders if you'll see how deep you can go this way, he saw videos about that too, but right now he doesn't want to try depth play. He just wants to feel full again.

"We'll do that another time if you want, sweet boy."

Oh, he said that out loud again. His brain must be mush from how perfectly you're treating him after missing you for so long.

Then you fit a third tendril into him and start working him open properly and he has to focus on breathing. He's been doing those exercises humans invented for this. It's easy for him to take the usual dildo. As soon as the bathroom was tiled he stuck it to the wall and rode it until he collapsed. So you barely have to tug to get him that ready. It's when you go past that point that he has to put effort into relaxing, that you have to ease his muscles into opening further.

With all four tendrils inside him, you give him the lube bottle and present your tail, and he diligently coats your cock in oil, plus a full hand-width past just in case. "Think you're ready?"

"Yes, Keshan."

"Remember the rules?"

"Yes, Keshan. Tell you immediately if it hurts."

"Good bunny. Deep breath…"

He inhales. Then it all rushes out in a squeak as his ass is invaded. You're gentle, you're kind, but the level of stretch is foreign, even with all the work your tendrils already did, and it feels like the first time all over again. He strains to take you, he's desperate to know how it will feel to have his ass stuffed as full as his pussy was earlier.

Something inside him squishes, an unfamiliar pressure on his insides. He looks down at his stomach eagerly, and a moan escapes him when he sees the swelling increase. The pressure peaks, and he begs you to start moving. You oblige, and one thrust is all it takes for him to come.

"D-don't sto-op," he whimpers. "No m-matter what, don't, no-ot until you're done, puh… please?"

"You sure?" Your voice is steadier than his, but not by much.

"Keshan, please!"

"Hold on tight then."

He obeys, and stops thinking. Tears stream down his cheeks. Drool slicks his chin. Nothing in the world matters but you pounding into his ass, his sealed pussy churning, and you clenching on his cock while he spills load after load into your own slowly ballooning belly. Just like the first time you did his ass, he's driven to overstimulation well before either of you is actually done, but he doesn't say a word this time, and sobs his way through being wrung dry, through wringing you dry.

This time, when you're done, you're the one to carry him into the bathroom, your tail still blocking him even as it goes soft in his guts. You hold him up so he doesn't have to sit or kneel, and he watches his genes trickle down your legs even as he feels yours pour out to splatter on the tile. Only from his ass, though. You ordered him to keep the samples you put in his pussy, and he will.

Idly, he wonders how long it will take his stomach to go flat again. He doesn't really want it to, for now. He likes the way he looks this way.

"So do I, bunny," you whisper. "You're so pretty all full of me."

You turn the water on and test the pressure, then start washing his hair for him. You even shampoo the tuft of his tail. Then you soap up the rest of him, paying special attention to the smears of oil on his inner thighs. Once he's clean, you pull the lid off the tub and settle him into the water, then unbraid your hair and let him watch while you scrub three months of tank and an hour-plus of sex away. Once you're soap-free, you climb into the tub with him, shifting him gently onto your lap.

"Keshan?" he whispers.

"Yes, Tomura?"

"You said I'd get a reward for sealing my pussy fast enough."

"I did."

"What is it?"

"A free ticket to try something new, your choice, like at Christmas. Do you know what you want?"

"Too many choices…" he admits. "You suggest something?"

"All right, I'll pick two, and you pick one of those. First option, cockwarming. You know what that is?"

He nods. "Who for who though?"

"You think I'd offer that and it wouldn't be for you to sit on my tail? Silly bunny." You kiss his throat. "You'd be warming me, and I'd get to watch you try to focus on a game with me inside you."

He shivers. He's exhausted and he's probably going to be sleeping on his stomach tonight, but he does want to try that. Eventually. "What's the other thing?"

"Somnophilia. One of us fucks the other while the receiver is asleep."

"Is that like when you woke me up kissing my cock that time?" That was a surprise, but a welcome one.

"Kind of, but without the waking up part."

"Which one of us would be asleep?"

"Up to you. It's your reward." Your lips brush his.

He kisses you back, thinking. "What if I want to wake up with my pussy full of your gene samples like this…" He gestures to his torso. "But I also want you to order me to mate with you while you sleep? And if I wake you up before I give you the samples, I fail and have to be punished?"

You smile. "We can do both… And your punishment will be to warm my cock without getting distracted, no matter what I do to you, until I'm satisfied by your self control. And if I think you failed on purpose, I'll get mean."

He shivers again. 'Mean' usually means he's not allowed to come for a long time. "I like that idea, Keshan."

Adaptation

You wake slowly. There's a vague soreness to your muscles, a mild ache to places you didn't know you had, and you're not quite sure how it happened. You stretch, but something feels a little odd about it.

"Master?" Keshan. Tomura's voice. Faintly distorted by electronics, flanged by his natural form. He sounds eager, hopeful. "Can you hear me? Can you understand me?"

The second question seems silly at first, then you remember.

"Our wrist terminals operate using a neural link, formed by what you call nanites. Like everything else of importance, they're gene-locked to Imperial-specific sequences," Kurogiri explained. "Having one will allow you to use engram-based learning. Which is a headache, so you may wish to have that done before you wake up."

"Wake up from what?"

"Tomura did explain the different kinds of augmentation to you, didn't he?"

"Dormant inheritable versus active, yes."

"The latter is a full-body cellular alteration, and will include structural changes to some degree. I can't say how much yet, I haven't gone over your genome, but you don't want to be conscious for the process."

"About that… Will I have the same shapeshifting ability you all do?"

"That would be wildly against Imperial law," Kurogiri said. Then he grinned, wide and sparkling with mischief. "Which of course means it's not only possible, but that I can and will do it. You'll be able to shift back to your current base-human form at will."

"I understand, Tomura. How long has it been?" Your voice sounds the same as his now.

"Three months, Master." He's audibly pouting.

You open your eyes. Everything is hazy, like frosted glass or thick fog, and there's a wisp of dark hair floating in front of your face. The lights are brighter than the station usually gets. "That long? I thought it would only be a few weeks."

"Giri gave you some extra engrams. Technology manuals, mostly. And some physical conditioning, with muscle memory. You shouldn't have the coordination problems that normally happen. Or any… what did Magne call it? Dysphoria?" Color flickers. "Giri, Master's awake. Can I open the tank now?"

You can't quite hear the response, although you do recognize Kurogiri's voice.

"Yes, it's all clear," Tomura answers impatiently. "…Good."

There's a faint dragging sensation, and you realize you're floating in a thin fluid. Now that's draining, and the artificial gravity in the tank is slowly ramping back up from the roughly moon-like level it was at before so that your feet are on the floor. It's a PFC mix, you remember, like the LCL in Neon Genesis Evangelion or the diving stuff in that James Cameron movie. Kurogiri told you it would be there, but you were unconscious before being put in the tank, so you wouldn't panic over the feeling of your lungs flooding. You expel it the way you were instructed to, and try to wring it out of your hair as the cloudy fluid reaches your knees.

"You can rinse that off in a minute, Master," Tomura promises. "There's a water cycle."

The shower is lukewarm, but clean, and it's enough to rinse the breathing fluid off. "Did the station renovations finish yet?"

"They're still arguing over how to decorate some of the shared spaces, but our room is done."

"Bathrooms?" The station didn't actually have any real bathing facilities, just a medical rinsing station. Genesuits are apparently not only self-cleaning but also clean the wearer, in that they absorb and sterilize sweat and dead skin cells somehow. You don't care if your clothes keep you perfectly clean, you refuse to give up traditional hygiene practices.

"Just the way you asked for, Master. Tiles and water pressure and tub and everything. You want a hot bath?"

"That would be nice." You pause. Three months… "Maybe after food."

"You don't want a mirror first?"

The water shuts off, then a brief, high-pitched hum rattles your eardrums and the water clinging to your skin evaporates. The glassy wall in front of you slides away, and you see Tomura waiting eagerly on the other side.

He hasn't changed, aside from his hair being pulled back into a messy tail at the back of his neck. As soon as he catches sight of you, his tail whips up so fast it smacks the back of his shoulder and his eyes glow brighter, his mouth falling open.

"Do I look okay then?" you ask.

"I knew you were high-caste…" he breathes.

"Excuse me?"

"I-I mean, your augments are— Giri didn't say, he didn't tell me, but you got the kind of augments that only high-caste species get and those are decided by base genome and you're compatible with them! I was right! I knew you'd outrank me if you were Imperial!" He's ecstatic, trembling in place, and his gaze keeps flicking off to the side.

"I'm still not Imperial," you remind him gently. "You're not anymore either."

"Don't care, you're still my Master."

"I suppose I'll need you to explain the augments to me then?"

His cheeks flush purple. "Yes, Master," he squeaks. "Only, can we go to our room first? I can bring you some food, just…"

"All right then." You take the genesuit and bracelet that he offers you, sliding the latter onto your wrist, then hold his hand for the warp out of the gene lab. "What's on the menu?"

"Anything you want. Kurogiri is learning food from America this month, but we can order something if you don't like that."

"Hm… Pancakes with sausages and eggs sounds nice, actually."

Air twists around you, then your feet are on a familiar rug. Your bedroom has been set up quite well while you were out. The basic furniture was already there, you didn't go into the tank the day you arrived, but before it was bare dark metal and a haphazard jumble of boxes and furniture, the bed sitting alone in the inner room of the small suite Kurogiri gave you. Tomura managed to assemble your bedroom almost the same as how it was in your apartment, although the open hanger bar has been replaced with a closed wardrobe and there's a desk built into the wall by the door that leads to the living room. You can see your couch and coffee table through there, along with several new rugs. Another door, this one closed, has your bathrobe hanging next to it. All of the furniture is anchored in place with magnets.

"I'll go get your food," Tomura says. He gives you a lingering stare, then warps out.

You take the opportunity to turn on your new wrist terminal. You understand how Tomura always controlled his without touching it now. You don't quite have a HUD, but you can see the text in your mind's eye, going through the setup menus and everything. This one has already been jailbroken, going by the notes you can see from Himi, the main hacker and programmer of the family (the money that went into furnishing the station was her doing, apparently she found abandoned bank accounts and siphoned funds from them or something). Under the warp utilities, there's another note from Atsu, explaining that he's already calibrated the inbuilt transceiver for 'delicate work.' A smartphone emulator contains everything from your somewhat battered Huawei, with a message from Tomura in the note app. Several messages, actually. He wrote a whole diary in your phone over the last three months.

You pick up your hairbrush from the dresser, careful not to look in the mirror — you don't want to deprive him of his explanations — and start working it through your hair while you read. It's surprisingly clean, measurably longer than you remember, and a rich indigo color that contains enough scattered strands of navy, sky blue, plum, and lavender to make it look as natural as it now is. He writes about the renovations, and about how Spinner ran himself ragged trying to explain the details that Tomura never figured out. He writes about how his siblings are so much more annoying now that he knows they are siblings, when they were plenty annoying to start with. He writes about the games he's collected, and what Himi did when she discovered Minecraft and its modding community. He writes about Kurogiri's adventures in cooking, and Jin's mishaps with wiring the station for human appliances, and the three live (stray) cats that Atsu stole on a whim, and the way Dabi started deafening everyone as soon as he discovered loud music, and Magne's fascination with Ancient Rome. But mostly he writes about how much he misses you. He pines. He misses your presence, hearing you speak and having your body heat next to him while he sleeps. He misses you touching him, misses you telling him how to touch you or when to touch himself. He uses his hands, uses the toys — tells you about the new ones he bought — but it's not the same. He writes about the dreams he has, the porn he tried watching and the ideas it gave him to try.

You pull your hair into a loose braid once the tangles are worked out, then go to look at the things strewn across the desk. There's a large bottle of lube, the biggest that your preferred brand comes in as far as you know, half-empty, and a jar of what looks like oversized softgel capsules next to a plastic lube injector. He's been inventing.

You've just finished reading when he comes back with the tray. Four sausage links, three pancakes, and two fried eggs, with butter and maple syrup on the side. He sets it down on the table, disappears again, and returns after three seconds with tea in one hand and an English muffin in the other. Only once the tea is on the table next to the tray does he look at what has your attention and turn bright red.

"I… made… something useful?" he tries to explain.

You raise an eyebrow. "I saw that. It's safe, right?"

"Y-yes? The shell is the same, it just melts at internal body temperature… Liquids have to be contained to be warped…"

"Have you been that bored without me, sweet boy?"

"Not bored, Master. Lonely without you," he says plaintively. Then his eyes drift over your shoulder again and he swallows. There's a solid tent at the front of his pants.

"Did you test them?"

"I did! I even bought things for it! It's not the same!"

You sit down at the table and pick up your fork. "Eat your sandwich, then go get cleaned up," you order.

He barely takes the time to chew the first three bites, and you have to tell him to slow down before he chokes. Then he disappears into the bathroom. When he comes back, you point to the floor beside you and he promptly kneels at your feet, looking happier already.

You eat slowly, then wash it down with tea and take the tray into the living room — there's a tiny kitchenette in the corner, hot water dispenser, hot plate, and microwave next to a sink recessed into the wall — then you return to the bedroom where Tomura is still waiting by your chair.

"All right, sweet boy. Stand up and come tell me what's special about my new body."

He jumps to his feet and turns you toward the mirror. Your skin is a deep purplish gray, in keeping with your new hair color, with flat pads on your palms, fingertips, and you suspect your feet as well. Your eyes have turned a bright, luminous gold, although the color isn't solid — you still have discernible irises, which are the only truly glowing part, while the whites are a much paler shade, and your pupils have eyeshine like a cat. Your ears aren't much longer than they were, but they're pointed.

You're taller now, at least as tall as him, although you're not sure how much of that is from your heels not being quite on the floor and your shins being straighter. Not human-straight, but not the pseudo-digitigrade arch that most of his family has either.

The most drastic change, however, is the extra limbs. Examining your memories, you weren't using your hands to wring out your hair when the tank drained. Although 'limb' might be a stretch in most cases. Wrapped neatly around each arm like a ribbon is an appendage that your memory whispers is called a secondary tendril, growing from your back just above the shoulder blade and halfway out from your spine. They're currently mostly flat, but when you flex the end of the left one where it rests on the back of your hand, it narrows and thickens to about the size of your thumb. There's a second pair, slightly thicker, anchored to your lower back just above your hips and wrapped around your legs.

Of Tomura and his siblings, only Dabi has secondary tendrils, and then only the upper pair. Himi's three pairs of feeding tendrils are similar, but not the same.

But what keeps stealing Tomura's attention is the tail. All of the station-dwellers have one, the men's being relatively short and tipped with fur. Yours, like Himi and Magne's, is twice as long, smooth-skinned, with the bone structure tapering out in favor of purely muscular articulation partway down.

Tomura gamely forces himself to focus, explaining your new sensory range — you can hear higher pitches now, and can see better in the dark — and how the secondary tendrils are stronger than they look — they should be able to lift the weight of a grown adult, and will hit like a whip but the impact will sting if you don't curl the tips right, because there are as many nerve endings as a fingertip on one side. Only once he's done telling you how dexterous secondary tendrils are does he move on to the tail, at which point he begs permission to touch you.

As soon as you grant it, he turns into a flushing, stuttering mess. "D-do you remember, I-I mean I did tell you, ri-ight? That Eshai are, that we can— H-how we're supposed to be able to breed with a-anyone?"

You nod, winding a secondary tendril around his ponytail and tugging gently. "Yes?"

"B-but I didn't say— I didn't explain how it works f-for females?"

"No, you didn't."

"Aaand I didn't say, I mean you only asked about Eshai, but it's not just Eshai, it can't be because of how we're born, I mean how our parents work, it's actually other castes too, not everyone but some, especially the more engineered subspecies, and—"

"Tomura."

He stops. "Yes, Master."

"I understand where you're going, sweet boy. Tell me how it works. Show me."

He squirms, rubbing his knees together, and explains how the gonads are at the base of the tail, protected by vertebral protrusions like snake ribs. He points out the blood vessels running toward the tip. Then, fingertip hovering a millimeter off your skin, he points out the seam running the last several centimeters of the underside, and the thumbprint-sized spot at the upper end of the seam where the texture looks slightly different.

"You saw how my sisters wear a band around their tails, right?"

You nod.

"That's because… Can I? Please?" He stares at you, wide-eyed and hopeful.

You run the pad of your tendril along the top edge of his ear. "You have permission."

He shudders. Whines softly. Then he presses the softest kiss to the textured spot.

By some miracle, you guided the army through the Forest Perilous, with no one lost but those who strayed from the path. It was neither a smooth nor an easy journey, and you spent all of it listening to the complaints from the nobles insisting there must be an easier way, the common soldiers anxious to pass through the Veil by any means necessary and swearing they saw shortcuts around every corner. You aren’t suited for leading an army. You questioned yourself on every step. But when your resolve faltered, you glanced over your shoulder and found Sir Tomura a few steps behind you. You reminded yourself that you weren’t guiding an army, just him, and in such a fashion, the two of you traveled through the Forest and reached the borderlands.

The army hasn’t left the Forest, not quite. King Izuku’s ordered the main encampment set up just past its edge, acting on some thought that Warlord Kai fears the Forest the same as he does. You could have told him otherwise, and you told Sir Tomura, but the king couldn’t be swayed. And as little protection as the Forest offers, you aren’t sorry to still be within its bounds. As long as you’re within the Forest, you and Sir Tomura have no choice but to sleep side by side. As unseemly as it is, you’re not ready to give it up.

It’s something that shouldn’t have happened, wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for the torture the Veil inflicted on him. It’s wrong of you to treasure it the way you do, wrong to fall asleep to the sound of his heartbeat, wrong to crawl into his arms each night as though you belong there. Nothing else has happened but that. You share the same bed, and that’s all — but it doesn’t feel like all. You have friends amidst the High Kingdom’s army. Over the course of the journey to the borderlands, you’ve made even more, and the thought of losing any of them fills you with dread. Only the thought of losing Tomura — Sir Tomura, although the title is getting harder to remember — fills you with terror.

But Sir Tomura is a warrior. This is what he does, what he’s better at than almost anyone in the world. It’s not what you’re good at, and no matter how successful he and the others are in fighting off the raiding party, a few are likely to slip through. He told you to stay down. You duck under a wagon, out of sight, and find yourself crouched with two other people. They’re younger than you are, dressed in servants’ clothing — cupbearers, you think, for the nobles who drink. One of them peers anxiously at you. “We hid as soon as we heard the horns. What’s happening out there?”

“A raiding party from the warlords. Stay low and stay quiet,” you instruct, and both of them shut their mouths. “The knights have gone to repel them. They’ll be back soon.”

You want to believe that, but battle distorts time as easily as the Veil does. Every second that passes, filled with the crash of metal against metal and the harsh sound of screams, seems to last for hours. The screams are familiar. You spent three years inside Warlord Kai’s fortress. You know what it sounds like when someone is in terrible pain. There will be wounded at the end of this battle; dead, too. What if Sir Tomura is hurt? What will you do if —

There’s a crash and a heavy thud, not ten feet away, and one of the cupbearers lets out a cry of terror, aborted abruptly when the other clamps their hand down over his mouth. A soldier’s fallen, just to one side of the wagon, and not just any soldier. This one’s not a knight, nor a common soldier, and a brightly colored cloak gives away their allegiance. The colors of House Togata are spilled across the ground. It’s Tamaki.

You can’t see how he’s injured, but you can see that his opponents are still advancing. He conjured up a magical shield, but it’s weak. One of the Hassaikai soldiers shatters it with a single kick, and you crouch just out of sight, paralyzed with terror. You should hep him, but what are you supposed to do? You can’t fight. You don’t have this kind of kind of magic. All you can do —

“Run,” you order the cupbearers. You take a split second to brace yourself, lunge out from beneath the wagon, and grab Tamaki under his arms so you can drag him under cover.

A soldier in full armor is heavy, but you’ve spent months helping Sir Tomura, and you’re stronger than you used to be. Tamaki’s injured, but not unconscious — as one of the raiders lunges forward, he lashes out and kicks them, shattering one kneecap and knocking them back into their fellows. That buys you enough time to pull him all the way beneath the wagon.

Tamaki peers up at you, eyes hazy. “You shouldn’t have done that. They saw —”

“What’s happening out there?” You cut him off. “Were you with the knights? What’s going on?”

“Sir Mirio and the others —” Tamaki coughs, and blood spatters your clothes, your face. You realize that his breastplate’s dented, that he’s taken a heavy blow. “They have something. Some magic. Ours is —”

He gestures with a shaky hand. “It’s there, but I can’t touch it. I don’t know why, and Sir Mirio — for me —”

Magic that disrupts others’ control of their own magic, that makes their magic slip from their grasp. That’s not magic. It’s alchemy. You remember Warlord Kai’s experiments, the few of them you understood. He wanted to steal others’ magic for himself, but whenever he failed, he settled for restricting their access to it. He said it kept them from escaping, and maybe it did, although you remember his fortress being impregnable. You thought he liked seeing the panic in their faces when they realized that something they’d come to count on had been ripped away.

Is Kai here, fighting in this raiding party? Or has his grasp on alchemy advanced such that even his soldiers have the ability to strip others of their magic? Both answers are terrible, but you know which one you like least.

Tamaki grasps your sleeve and tugs, startling you. “Ser Mirio. He’s wounded. Help him.”

“I can’t fight,” you say. Tamaki shakes his head, tugs your sleeve harder. “I can’t leave you here. You’re wounded, too!”

“He matters more.” Tamaki coughs again. “Go. Please.”

You don’t like Sir Mirio. He tells terrible jokes and he never fails to speak ill of Sir Tomura, in spite of the fact that Sir Tomura’s done more great deeds than he ever will. But Tamaki’s looking at you desperately, yanking your sleeve so hard that your shirt begins to tear at the shoulder. If Sir Tomura was hurt, you’d want someone to go help. Whoever could help, no matter what — if anything — they could do. “Stay here,” you say to Tamaki pointlessly. Then you duck out from beneath the far side of the wagon, detour around it, and head toward the woods.

One of the raiders must have cut the horses free, because dozens of them are milling around the campsite, some saddled for the day’s riding and others not. Your grey mare finds you in the chaos, and you mount up, barely getting your feet in the stirrups before nudging her into a canter. A canter is the fastest you can manage without falling off, and it’s the right pace for weaving through the trees. As the sounds of the battle get louder, your stomach twists, tightening with nerves. You didn’t even ask Tamaki where Sir Mirio is. What are you doing here?

As soon as you ask the question, the answer becomes clear. While most of the High Kingdom's knights are on their feet and fighting, you see several on the ground, moving weakly or not moving at all. Sir Mirio is one of the ones still in motion, and you swing down from your horse. You trip on a raider’s body on the way. There are far more dead raiders than injured knights. Maybe you’ll find time to be relieved about that later.

If you can get Mirio to his feet, maybe you’ve got a chance, but he’s taller and heavier than Tamaki. You can’t see an injury, and there’s no blood staining the ground or his cloak. “Come on,” you say quietly, pulling at him until he sits. “Tamaki sent me. You have to go back.”

“No.” Mirio speaks through gritted teeth. “I’m here to fight. I can’t leave.”

“You can’t fight, either,” you say. “If I get you onto my horse, can you stay on?”

He nods. Behind his helm, his face is beaded with sweat. You can smell it, along with the acrid, coiling reek of alchemy. It’s not just Mirio’s magic that’s affected. What did Warlord Kai do to him? The words crawl up from the back of your throat as you heave Mirio onto horseback. “The warlord. Is he here?”

Mirio doesn’t answer. His heels tap the grey mare’s sides and she takes off, leaving you stranded on a battlefield.

You manage to creep to the shadows before terror roots you to the spot, but once you’re even partially out of sight, fear overwhelms you. He might be here. Warlord Kai could be here, and how long before he finds out it was you who told the High Kingdom what he was doing? He made the same threat to everyone who worked inside the fortress, but you’ve never met someone else who escaped. He knows it’s you. You know what he’s going to do to you when he finds you. But Sir Tomura —

He can’t keep you safe. He told you that when he told you that you’d be accompanying him to war. He has his own battles to fight, and protecting you isn’t one of them. You helped Mirio, but there are other injured on the field. Doing something will make you feel better, won’t it? If Kai finds you, he’ll find you doing something to help your kingdom, not hiding in the shadows. You tell yourself that once, then again, and you still can’t move your feet.

The battle’s shifting closer to you. You can’t pick out Sir Tomura or Nomu amidst the chaos, or see the white flash of Decay as he wields it against his enemies. One set of combatants veers close to you, Sir Katsuki and four raiders, dueling to the death. You’ve heard tales of and seen Sir Katsuki’s skill for yourself. This should be easy.

But you can smell alchemy in the air. Whatever Warlord Kai deployed against Mirio, Sir Katsuki’s not immune. He’s slow. Slower than he should be, failing to grasp for magic when it could protect him. One raider falls, then another. Then Sir Katsuki is a moment too slow in disengaging from one raider, and the other amputates his sword hand at the wrist.

Sir Katsuki’s scream of agony shatters your eardrums, and both hand and sword go flying, skidding past the edge of the clearing to land in the undergrowth at your feet. You flinch backwards out of habit, but it’s not the first stray body part you’ve seen. Nor the first you’ve touched, either. The amputation was clean. If Sir Katsuki lives long enough, someone could reattach it. Someone. You?

He won’t live long enough. His scream was just one of many, and everyone else is fighting the same conditions, the same curse. Who can come to his aid? The answer occurs to you, tinged with dread and despair, and you find yourself sinking to your knees, prying Sir Katsuki’s still-warm fingers away from Dynamight’s hilt. You have to try. And Sir Tomura taught you how.

What was the word he spoke? He made you practice it. You lift the sword, mimic the pose Sir Tomura stood in back in the training yard a lifetime ago, moments away from killing Sir Katsuki, and speak the weapon’s true name. All weapons’ true name. “Death.”

The sword stirs in your hand, but nothing more. Perhaps you didn’t say it loud enough, your voice weak and whispery with fear. You try again, thinking of Sir Tomura, who’s out there somewhere. Who you want to live to see again. “Death,” you say again, no louder but with more conviction, and Dynamight blazes bright in your hand.

It’s heavy, vibrating, almost burning hot. The pommel sears your skin, and it takes both hands for you to hold it steady. You can’t swing it, but you can aim, maybe. The two remaining raiders are looming over Sir Katsuki, squarely in your sights. You know too little of the language of magic to give the sword a true command, but it’s alive and furious. The energy rippling down its length knows its target, and the fire and brimstone it spits blasts the Hassaikai raiders to shreds.

The effect on the battlefield isn’t what you were expecting. The raiders pause, flinch. “What the hell was that?” one of them demands, a second before Sir Ochako’s dagger skewers them through the shoulder. “He said they wouldn’t work —”

Dynamight is dragging at you, pulling you sideways, seeking another target. “Some of them do!” another raider protests. A low groan reverberates through the air, a sound that sends chills down your spine. “Let’s get out of here!”

Dynamight looses another explosion, and the raiders begin to disengage. Those on horses stop only to pick up comrades before they bolt; the injured are left where they lie, screaming for rescue. The same groan sounds as before, accompanied by a horrifying wail, and even as the raiders begin to vanish, the knights of the High Kingdom are in no position to give chase. They’re staggering, slumping from horseback, nursing wounds. Swords are sheathed, or lie discarded on the ground. And all the while, Dynamight continues to hum in your hands, desperate for another taste of blood.

You don’t know how to stop it. “Death,” you say again, and it rattles so hard that you feel your ribs jar loose. “Stop. It’s over. Death. It —”

Dynamight veers hard to the left, dragging you towards something with terrifying speed. You see a figure, a target, defenseless with their back turned — and then something strikes Dynamight aside, so hard that the blade’s knocked from your hands, skidding to a stop in the bloodstained grass. Decay hits the grass a moment later, and Sir Tomura’s gloved hands grasp yours.

He’s here. He’s here, he’s alive, and when you breathe deep, you can’t catch the scent of alchemy. Whatever happened to the others, it didn’t befall Sir Tomura, and it’s all you can do not to yank him into your arms. If your hands were free, you’d probably try it. As it is, Sir Tomura’s grip on you is iron. “What are you doing here? I told you to stay down —”

“Tamaki —” you stammer. “He came back hurt. He asked me to get Mirio — Sir Mirio — so I did, and then I — is he here? Was he here? Did you see him?”

“Mirio?” Sir Tomura repeats, almost disgusted — and then you see his expression shift. “The warlord wasn’t here. Only his servants.”

You want to be relieved. You can’t. “His servants did this?”

“What is this?” Lord Tenya demands. “What was that? My sword — my magic —”

“It’s alchemy,” Sir Tomura says shortly. “You gave the Hassaikai clan plenty of time to research. It appears they’ve discovered something.”

“So why were you unaffected? Or you?” Sir Ejiro can’t seem to decide whether he’s shouting at you or Sir Tomura. “That blast was from Katsuki’s sword. What are you doing carrying —”

Sir Katsuki. His hand. You yank your hands free of Sir Tomura’s grip and race back to your hiding spot at the edge of the woods with two knights and one lord in pursuit.

Sir Katsuki’s managed to prop himself against a tree. He’s tied a rough tourniquet at his elbow, pulling tight with the strip of fabric clenched between his teeth, but there’s blood staining the grass beneath him, and his face is ashen. Sir Ejiro curses at the sight. “Katsuki! We need a healer — where’s his hand —”

“Here.” You grab it and carry it back. “I need water. Or alcohol. To rinse it clean.”

“You aren’t a healer,” Lord Tenya says, affronted. “Whatever you think you could do will cause more harm than good! Step aside. You’ve done more than enough —”

Sir Tomura drenches Sir Katsuki’s stump in something from a small flask, and Sir Katsuki howls. Next it’s his hand’s turn. The alcohol stings your burned skin miserably, but it washes the debris from Sir Katsuki’s hand. Someone tries to take it from you, their hands shaking, the reek of alchemy clinging to them. You recoil. “I can fix it,” you say, and King Izuku shakes his head. “I can. My magic mends things.”

“It can mend a hand?”

“I’ve seen it mend fabric more easily than any stitch. If it works, he’ll be better off than if it was sewn,” Sir Tomura says. He looks to you. “He doesn’t deserve it, of course. But you may try if you wish.”

You do wish. You want to see if you can mend flesh and bone, the same as you mend fabric or glass or porcelain. “I need someone to hold his arm,” you say. “I can’t hold both at the same time.”

Sir Ejiro holds Sir Katsuki’s arm steady, but when you press his hand back against the stump, Sir Katsuki howls and thrashes so terribly that Lord Tenya and King Izuku both leap in to hold him still. You must work quickly. You align his hand and wrist as best you can, then begin to run your fingers along the seam. You can’t control what flows beneath your fingertips. Whatever it is, you hope it’s strong.

It’s scar tissue, rough and ragged, and it’s slow going. Sir Katsuki’s hand rejoins the rest of him by degrees. He thrashes and howls in agony, and then he begins to curse at you, until Sir Tomura stuffs a glove in his mouth to make him stop. You notice out of the corner of your eye that you’re drawing an audience, that Sir Ochako and Lady Tsuyu are here as well. Itsuka’s here as well. Lady Momo isn’t.

Where is she? The thought occupies you for a moment, and your fingers waver. You grit your teeth and try to focus, even as the smell of alchemy pervades your nostrils. Your magic isn’t tainted. You still have work to do.

Sir Katsuki’s fingers begin to twitch when the task is three-quarters done, and by the time you’ve laid a last inch of scar tissue, he’s curling his hand into a fist, opening and closing it before he yanks it from your grip. “How does it feel?” Sir Ejiro asks. Sir Katsuki makes a muffled sound. King Izuku yanks the gloves out of his mouth. “Does it — work?”

“It works,” Sir Katsuki growls. “Where’s my damn sword?”

“Your sword?” Sir Tomura repeats. “It’s useless without a sword hand, and your other isn’t half as good. I’ll cut them both off if you don’t thank the person who saved it for you.”

Sir Katsuki aims a venomous look your way. “Thank you,” he spits. “Where’s my sword?”

You point, and he gets to his feet, only to pitch sideways almost immediately. Sir Ejiro catches him, and the two of them set off in search of Dynamight. King Izuku gets to his feet as well. “Anyone who can ride, return to the encampment. Bring back every healer and medic we have. Sir Tomura’s squire can’t be expected to do it all.”

You thought you’d only have to do it once. “I can’t —”

“This way,” Itsuka says to you, catching hold of your sleeve. Her face is pale. “My Lady is injured, too.”

Lady Momo’s injury is to her leg, from a mace strike that broke through her magical shield — a strike the shield should have had no trouble repelling. She’s not even the most gravely injured, and you can do little more than mend the femur with something that’s certainly not bone before you’re drawn away. Knights, lords, ladies, common soldiers, squires. It seems there’s not a single person who survived the battle unhurt. At some point the healers arrive, and you’re relieved of duty for the most part — but for one thing.

“Call a smith,” you say to Lady Nejire, who’s holding out Mirio’s sword Impermanence to you. “I can’t fix that.”

“None of our smiths can fix this.”

“Have you asked them?” you protest, and Lady Nejire’s gaze goes flat. “I can’t do it. It’s magic. I don’t have —”

“You reattached Sir Katsuki’s hand —”

“She’s right. Seek a smith,” Sir Tomura interrupts. “The one named Mei fixed my armor. If anyone can reforge that sword, it’s her.”

Nejire looks as though she wants to ask you again, but she rises instead and sets off toward the encampment, taking Impermanence and its cracked blade with her. Your hands are aching. “Are there more?”

“None who rate your services. Let me see.” Sir Tomura takes your hands again, cradling them palms-up within his own. “Dynamight is as stupid and vicious as its owner. It should have known it was useless without living hands to guide it.”

“I did what you said,” you say. You don’t want to look at your hands, but you can’t meet Sir Tomura’s eyes, either. “I used its true name. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“You ended the skirmish,” Sir Tomura says. “Decay never ceased to function. The power of two swords frightened the raiders into thinking there might be more.”

“You could still use Decay,” you say. “Why?”

“I’m not overly familiar with alchemy. The Enemy disdained it. But I know that it relies on altering the source of an individual’s magic.” Sir Tomura turns your hands this way and that in his own. “Whatever the warlord unleashed, it led to a siphoning or a corruption of each person’s innate magic. The swords feed off of magic, too. Those who failed to alter their tactics paid the price.”

Like Sir Mirio. “As for me,” Sir Tomura says, “my magic is too corrupted for alchemy to contend with. I have never been so foolish as to rely only on it. And you —”

His grip on your hands tightens. “You bent Dynamight to your will with only its name. That takes a conviction few can match.”

His hands are warm. His calluses are rough against the backs of your hands, and yet it’s as it always is: You want more from him. “You came to aid Mirio, of all people. I had no idea that you and Tamaki were so close.”

“We aren’t,” you say, puzzled. “I just thought — if I asked someone, I would want them to go after you. Not to stop and ask whether they like you or not.”

“Indeed, since no one does. I doubt they’ll follow your example,” Sir Tomura says. You wish you could argue with him, but you know how few friends he has in Castle Ultra. “They should. There is much in you to admire.”

“My Lord —” You want to argue, but it irks Sir Tomura if you’re modest when he thinks you shouldn’t be. “I see much to admire in you, too.”

Sir Tomura avoids your gaze, something he does only rarely. “Your hands,” he says shortly. “Do they pain you?”

“Only a little.”

“That isn’t a good thing,” Sir Tomura snaps. You startle, and your stomach lurches when he lets your hands drop and gets to his feet, storming away with short strides. Has he ever walked away from you like that? You stare down into your burned hands, fighting back tears, failing to look up again even once Sir Tomura’s boots appear again in your field of vision. He’s not alone. “Here. Tend to her.”

“My Lord, we were ordered to triage —”

“Now,” Sir Tomura orders, and the healer reaches out for your hands. “Treat her as you would treat any knight or soldier. She fought better than most today.”

The healer instructs you to sit down, and you do, finding a patch of grass that isn’t marred by scorch marks or blood. By the time you’ve cleared your vision and looked up, Sir Tomura’s nowhere to be found.

You’re expecting to be allowed to return to the encampment once your wounds are treated, but instead you’re ordered to stay by Lord Tenya, who’s somehow managing to look both unnerved and irate. “The council will likely want to speak to you,” he says irritably. “Stay where you are.”

You stay put, but you aren’t alone for long; soon enough Mei joins you, holding a cloth-wrapped sword you can identify only by the hilt. “Is that Impermanence?”

“Of course it is. Lady Nejire said Sir Tomura recommended me himself. I told you he’d be pleased with my work.” Mei looks altogether too happy with the situation. “Were any of the other swords damaged? I’m the only smith for the job.”

“I’m not sure,” you say. “They want us to speak to the council. Maybe they’ll say more then.”

It’s late in the day by the time the council has fully assembled — the ones who made the journey, at least. King Izuku left more than a few behind to watch over the High Kingdom, and of the rest, nearly all of them are injured in some way. Sir Tomura’s unhurt, but although his expression is remote, you know he’s angry. Angry with you. You wish you knew why.

The meeting begins with a casualty report. Half a dozen soldiers dead, twenty more with serious injuries, only half of who are expected to survive. The nobility, armed with enchanted armor and magic swords, are all expected to make full recoveries. King Izuku waits for the healer to finish the report, his head bowed. When he looks up, his expression is grim. “Every life lost is a tragedy. We can’t absorb these kinds of losses again. We must find a way to counter the warlords’ alchemy, and that begins with understanding exactly what happened — and why only some of us were affected.”

“Afflicted, you mean,” Sir Katsuki growls. “It’s a damn curse.”

“No, it isn’t. If it was a curse, One For All could break it,” King Izuku says. “What was it?”

It’s quiet, a quiet that grows more awkward the longer it draws out. You’re waiting for him to answer what seems to be a rhetorical question when you realize he’s looking at you. “I’m not an alchemist.”

“You observed the warlord’s experiments. What was he doing?”

“I don’t know,” you say. You didn’t look at what he was doing. If he talked about it near you, you tried not to listen. “I was thirteen. I don’t know.”

“I do,” Mei says. She steps forward, unwrapping Impermanence. Several people gasp, and even you’re surprised to see that the blade is still cracked. “It’s fixable — of course — but it broke because Sir Mirio’s magic was corrupted, and therefore corrupted the blade. These swords aren’t full of active magic. What’s within them must be brought to life, either through magic or will.”

“Through will?” Sir Ochako asks, frowning. “It takes magic to wield a sword like ours.”

“No it doesn’t. It helps, but it’s not necessary. Anyone with the will can bring a sword to life,” Mei says. She gestures at Sir Tomura. “You think he’s channeling magic to wake Decay? No. If he can do it, so can you. And you’re going to have to. Until we can find a way to purge the corruption, every use of your magic will weaken you further.”

“But how did it happen?” Lady Momo’s voice is faint. “It was immediate. The first time we struck —”

“His soldiers don’t have magic,” you say. “He wouldn’t waste magic when he could study it. Whatever happened, it was him, not them. Are you — are you sure he wasn’t here?”

“Yes,” Sir Tomura says shortly. “If this is what his soldiers are capable of, against the best your kingdom has to offer —”

He breaks off, but he need not say more. King Izuku prompts him anyway. “You’ve ridden to war before, Sir Tomura. What is your assessment of the situation?”

“This was no simple raiding party. It was a test of the warlord’s weaponry, and it succeeded,” Sir Tomura says. His face is grim. “He knows our location, our numbers, and our inability to react decisively without magic. It’s no longer an option — if it ever was — to wait and see. To win, we must act.”

“Or retreat.” Aizawa hasn’t spoken up yet. “It’s unwise to pick a fight we can’t win.”

Sir Tomura scoffs. “Spoken like a true coward. I wouldn’t be here if you weren’t so terrified of picking a fight you could lose.”

Aizawa’s eyes narrow. “Fighting weaponless isn’t courage. It’s suicide.”

“I’m still alive,” Sir Tomura says. “You all can learn from me.”

Sir Katsuki laughs. “If you think you’ve got anything to teach me —”

“He does.” King Izuku cuts Sir Katsuki off. “His servant wielded your sword without using its magic. We all must learn to do the same if we intend to liberate the borderlands. And I do.”

You see hesitation on the council’s faces. There’s none on King Izuku’s, in spite of the fact that he’s pale with fear. “The people of the borderlands are part of our kingdom. It’s our responsibility to protect them, and we’ve shirked it for too long. I’m not leaving until we’ve broken the warlords’ power — with magic or without it.”

King Izuku is known for listening to his councilors — too much, according to Sir Tomura — but you’ve also learned from Sir Tomura that when the king makes a decision, it’s final. No one argues with him. “We rest until midnight,” he says. “Then we move out.”

Until midnight isn’t much time, but it’s enough for a few hours of sleep, and you intend for you and Sir Tomura to get it. You see to Nomu and your grey mare, Sir Tomura working silently alongside you, and return to your shared tent in silence, too. You realize you’ve forgotten to bring food and hurry out of the tent, through air that’s gone hot and still as the sun sinks. You refill your waterskins from a barrel that’s been sitting in the shade and hurry back to the tent.

Sir Tomura is sitting on the cot, staring at nothing. You haven’t seen him do that in a while. His shirt lies in a pile at one end of the cot. “My Lord,” you start, only to wince when you remember. “Tomura. I brought some food.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Some water, then.” If you can get him to drink, you can usually get him to eat. You sit down beside him and pass him one of the waterskins. “It seems you made an impression on King Izuku. When he spoke today, he sounded like you.”

“He’s come to it late.” Sir Tomura’s voice is bitter, cold. “If he and his predecessors had not failed their people so many times, many things would be different. I —”

He breaks off. You wait. “I would be different,” he says flatly. “I would not have failed you today.”

“You didn’t fail me,” you say. “I disobeyed your order. If I had listened, no harm would have come to me.”

“Yes,” Sir Tomura says. He takes a sip from the waterskin. “And still, I failed you. Just as I failed the others.”

“No,” you say at once. You hear him speak of his friends so rarely, and never like this. “Your friends followed you into battle of their own accord. You wouldn’t surround yourself with fools, which means they knew the risks. They chose you anyway. Just — just as I do.”

“You think you know the risks?” Sir Tomura’s laughter is cold enough to raise the hair on your arms. He turns to face you, arms spread open, revealing the wound on his chest. It takes all your strength not to flinch at what’s become of it. “This is the risk. Do you notice anything different?”

“It’s bigger,” you say numbly. “How —”

“My magic is corrupted. Every time I use it, the wound grows larger.” Sir Tomura lets his arms fall to his sides. “If I were to rely on magic the way the others do, there would soon be nothing left of me.”

His wound hasn’t widened or deepened, but cracks have spread outward from the gash, reaching up to his collarbones and down along his ribcage. They’re narrow, but deep. Without thinking, you reach out. “No,” Sir Tomura says sharply. “Save your magic for those who need it.”

“You need it.”

“I need other things more,” Sir Tomura says. You wait for him to explain, but he remains silent, and when he speaks again, it’s a shift in subject. “I will find little rest tonight, but you must sleep. I won’t disturb you.”

Your heart sinks. You knew this was coming. The Forest Perilous is behind you, and it’s warm in the tent; of course Sir Tomura wants to restore the distance between you. You knew it was coming, and you decided to accept it in silence. At least, you thought you did. “Forgive me, my Lord, but your absence would disturb me more.”

Sir Tomura’s shoulders stiffen. “Try again. Use my name.”

“Your absence would disturb me more — Tomura.” His name still feels unfamiliar on your tongue. You don’t say it often enough. “I would rather you stayed.”

“As you wish,” Sir Tomura says. He takes another sip of water, then reaches for the food you brought.

He leaves off his shirt when the two of you settle into bed, and pulls you into his arms in spite of the way the wound in his chest has spread. You can’t push away without putting your hands over it, either. Your hands are beginning to itch inside their bandages, a heated, crawling sensation that begins to consume your thoughts. Sir Tomura notices your attempts to surreptitiously scratch them. “Leave them alone. They need to heal.”

“They’re awful.” You hate the pained, almost whining note that creeps into your voice. “I don’t care if it takes longer. I —”

Sir Tomura peels your hands apart, and for a moment, you think he’ll hold them down. Then he raises first one, then the other to his mouth, and your face heats up in the darkness, even though he’s kissed nothing but your bandaged palms. A chill spreads from the place where his lips made contact, suffusing your palms as though you’ve held them in cold water. You can’t help but let out a sigh of relief.

Sir Tomura’s voice sounds odd when he speaks. “Better?”

You nod — and then you realize what he did. “You used magic? Tomura —”

“It’s worth it,” Sir Tomura interrupts. “I’d do it again.”

You want to argue — need to argue — but with your discomfort temporarily silenced, exhaustion takes its place. You can barely keep your eyes open, and you’ll need your wits about you to win the argument. “Thank you,” you say instead, and you both pretend you don’t notice another tiny crack spreading from his cursed wound.

<- Chapter 7

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Adaptation

You wake slowly. There's a vague soreness to your muscles, a mild ache to places you didn't know you had, and you're not quite sure how it happened. You stretch, but something feels a little odd about it.

"Master?" Keshan. Tomura's voice. Faintly distorted by electronics, flanged by his natural form. He sounds eager, hopeful. "Can you hear me? Can you understand me?"

The second question seems silly at first, then you remember.

"Our wrist terminals operate using a neural link, formed by what you call nanites. Like everything else of importance, they're gene-locked to Imperial-specific sequences," Kurogiri explained. "Having one will allow you to use engram-based learning. Which is a headache, so you may wish to have that done before you wake up."

"Wake up from what?"

"Tomura did explain the different kinds of augmentation to you, didn't he?"

"Dormant inheritable versus active, yes."

"The latter is a full-body cellular alteration, and will include structural changes to some degree. I can't say how much yet, I haven't gone over your genome, but you don't want to be conscious for the process."

"About that… Will I have the same shapeshifting ability you all do?"

"That would be wildly against Imperial law," Kurogiri said. Then he grinned, wide and sparkling with mischief. "Which of course means it's not only possible, but that I can and will do it. You'll be able to shift back to your current base-human form at will."

"I understand, Tomura. How long has it been?" Your voice sounds the same as his now.

"Three months, Master." He's audibly pouting.

You open your eyes. Everything is hazy, like frosted glass or thick fog, and there's a wisp of dark hair floating in front of your face. The lights are brighter than the station usually gets. "That long? I thought it would only be a few weeks."

"Giri gave you some extra engrams. Technology manuals, mostly. And some physical conditioning, with muscle memory. You shouldn't have the coordination problems that normally happen. Or any… what did Magne call it? Dysphoria?" Color flickers. "Giri, Master's awake. Can I open the tank now?"

You can't quite hear the response, although you do recognize Kurogiri's voice.

"Yes, it's all clear," Tomura answers impatiently. "…Good."

There's a faint dragging sensation, and you realize you're floating in a thin fluid. Now that's draining, and the artificial gravity in the tank is slowly ramping back up from the roughly moon-like level it was at before so that your feet are on the floor. It's a PFC mix, you remember, like the LCL in Neon Genesis Evangelion or the diving stuff in that James Cameron movie. Kurogiri told you it would be there, but you were unconscious before being put in the tank, so you wouldn't panic over the feeling of your lungs flooding. You expel it the way you were instructed to, and try to wring it out of your hair as the cloudy fluid reaches your knees.

"You can rinse that off in a minute, Master," Tomura promises. "There's a water cycle."

The shower is lukewarm, but clean, and it's enough to rinse the breathing fluid off. "Did the station renovations finish yet?"

"They're still arguing over how to decorate some of the shared spaces, but our room is done."

"Bathrooms?" The station didn't actually have any real bathing facilities, just a medical rinsing station. Genesuits are apparently not only self-cleaning but also clean the wearer, in that they absorb and sterilize sweat and dead skin cells somehow. You don't care if your clothes keep you perfectly clean, you refuse to give up traditional hygiene practices.

"Just the way you asked for, Master. Tiles and water pressure and tub and everything. You want a hot bath?"

"That would be nice." You pause. Three months… "Maybe after food."

"You don't want a mirror first?"

The water shuts off, then a brief, high-pitched hum rattles your eardrums and the water clinging to your skin evaporates. The glassy wall in front of you slides away, and you see Tomura waiting eagerly on the other side.

He hasn't changed, aside from his hair being pulled back into a messy tail at the back of his neck. As soon as he catches sight of you, his tail whips up so fast it smacks the back of his shoulder and his eyes glow brighter, his mouth falling open.

"Do I look okay then?" you ask.

"I knew you were high-caste…" he breathes.

"Excuse me?"

"I-I mean, your augments are— Giri didn't say, he didn't tell me, but you got the kind of augments that only high-caste species get and those are decided by base genome and you're compatible with them! I was right! I knew you'd outrank me if you were Imperial!" He's ecstatic, trembling in place, and his gaze keeps flicking off to the side.

"I'm still not Imperial," you remind him gently. "You're not anymore either."

"Don't care, you're still my Master."

"I suppose I'll need you to explain the augments to me then?"

His cheeks flush purple. "Yes, Master," he squeaks. "Only, can we go to our room first? I can bring you some food, just…"

"All right then." You take the genesuit and bracelet that he offers you, sliding the latter onto your wrist, then hold his hand for the warp out of the gene lab. "What's on the menu?"

"Anything you want. Kurogiri is learning food from America this month, but we can order something if you don't like that."

"Hm… Pancakes with sausages and eggs sounds nice, actually."

Air twists around you, then your feet are on a familiar rug. Your bedroom has been set up quite well while you were out. The basic furniture was already there, you didn't go into the tank the day you arrived, but before it was bare dark metal and a haphazard jumble of boxes and furniture, the bed sitting alone in the inner room of the small suite Kurogiri gave you. Tomura managed to assemble your bedroom almost the same as how it was in your apartment, although the open hanger bar has been replaced with a closed wardrobe and there's a desk built into the wall by the door that leads to the living room. You can see your couch and coffee table through there, along with several new rugs. Another door, this one closed, has your bathrobe hanging next to it. All of the furniture is anchored in place with magnets.

"I'll go get your food," Tomura says. He gives you a lingering stare, then warps out.

You take the opportunity to turn on your new wrist terminal. You understand how Tomura always controlled his without touching it now. You don't quite have a HUD, but you can see the text in your mind's eye, going through the setup menus and everything. This one has already been jailbroken, going by the notes you can see from Himi, the main hacker and programmer of the family (the money that went into furnishing the station was her doing, apparently she found abandoned bank accounts and siphoned funds from them or something). Under the warp utilities, there's another note from Atsu, explaining that he's already calibrated the inbuilt transceiver for 'delicate work.' A smartphone emulator contains everything from your somewhat battered Huawei, with a message from Tomura in the note app. Several messages, actually. He wrote a whole diary in your phone over the last three months.

You pick up your hairbrush from the dresser, careful not to look in the mirror — you don't want to deprive him of his explanations — and start working it through your hair while you read. It's surprisingly clean, measurably longer than you remember, and a rich indigo color that contains enough scattered strands of navy, sky blue, plum, and lavender to make it look as natural as it now is. He writes about the renovations, and about how Spinner ran himself ragged trying to explain the details that Tomura never figured out. He writes about how his siblings are so much more annoying now that he knows they are siblings, when they were plenty annoying to start with. He writes about the games he's collected, and what Himi did when she discovered Minecraft and its modding community. He writes about Kurogiri's adventures in cooking, and Jin's mishaps with wiring the station for human appliances, and the three live (stray) cats that Atsu stole on a whim, and the way Dabi started deafening everyone as soon as he discovered loud music, and Magne's fascination with Ancient Rome. But mostly he writes about how much he misses you. He pines. He misses your presence, hearing you speak and having your body heat next to him while he sleeps. He misses you touching him, misses you telling him how to touch you or when to touch himself. He uses his hands, uses the toys — tells you about the new ones he bought — but it's not the same. He writes about the dreams he has, the porn he tried watching and the ideas it gave him to try.

You pull your hair into a loose braid once the tangles are worked out, then go to look at the things strewn across the desk. There's a large bottle of lube, the biggest that your preferred brand comes in as far as you know, half-empty, and a jar of what looks like oversized softgel capsules next to a plastic lube injector. He's been inventing.

You've just finished reading when he comes back with the tray. Four sausage links, three pancakes, and two fried eggs, with butter and maple syrup on the side. He sets it down on the table, disappears again, and returns after three seconds with tea in one hand and an English muffin in the other. Only once the tea is on the table next to the tray does he look at what has your attention and turn bright red.

"I… made… something useful?" he tries to explain.

You raise an eyebrow. "I saw that. It's safe, right?"

"Y-yes? The shell is the same, it just melts at internal body temperature… Liquids have to be contained to be warped…"

"Have you been that bored without me, sweet boy?"

"Not bored, Master. Lonely without you," he says plaintively. Then his eyes drift over your shoulder again and he swallows. There's a solid tent at the front of his pants.

"Did you test them?"

"I did! I even bought things for it! It's not the same!"

You sit down at the table and pick up your fork. "Eat your sandwich, then go get cleaned up," you order.

He barely takes the time to chew the first three bites, and you have to tell him to slow down before he chokes. Then he disappears into the bathroom. When he comes back, you point to the floor beside you and he promptly kneels at your feet, looking happier already.

You eat slowly, then wash it down with tea and take the tray into the living room — there's a tiny kitchenette in the corner, hot water dispenser, hot plate, and microwave next to a sink recessed into the wall — then you return to the bedroom where Tomura is still waiting by your chair.

"All right, sweet boy. Stand up and come tell me what's special about my new body."

He jumps to his feet and turns you toward the mirror. Your skin is a deep purplish gray, in keeping with your new hair color, with flat pads on your palms, fingertips, and you suspect your feet as well. Your eyes have turned a bright, luminous gold, although the color isn't solid — you still have discernible irises, which are the only truly glowing part, while the whites are a much paler shade, and your pupils have eyeshine like a cat. Your ears aren't much longer than they were, but they're pointed.

You're taller now, at least as tall as him, although you're not sure how much of that is from your heels not being quite on the floor and your shins being straighter. Not human-straight, but not the pseudo-digitigrade arch that most of his family has either.

The most drastic change, however, is the extra limbs. Examining your memories, you weren't using your hands to wring out your hair when the tank drained. Although 'limb' might be a stretch in most cases. Wrapped neatly around each arm like a ribbon is an appendage that your memory whispers is called a secondary tendril, growing from your back just above the shoulder blade and halfway out from your spine. They're currently mostly flat, but when you flex the end of the left one where it rests on the back of your hand, it narrows and thickens to about the size of your thumb. There's a second pair, slightly thicker, anchored to your lower back just above your hips and wrapped around your legs.

Of Tomura and his siblings, only Dabi has secondary tendrils, and then only the upper pair. Himi's three pairs of feeding tendrils are similar, but not the same.

But what keeps stealing Tomura's attention is the tail. All of the station-dwellers have one, the men's being relatively short and tipped with fur. Yours, like Himi and Magne's, is twice as long, smooth-skinned, with the bone structure tapering out in favor of purely muscular articulation partway down.

Tomura gamely forces himself to focus, explaining your new sensory range — you can hear higher pitches now, and can see better in the dark — and how the secondary tendrils are stronger than they look — they should be able to lift the weight of a grown adult, and will hit like a whip but the impact will sting if you don't curl the tips right, because there are as many nerve endings as a fingertip on one side. Only once he's done telling you how dexterous secondary tendrils are does he move on to the tail, at which point he begs permission to touch you.

As soon as you grant it, he turns into a flushing, stuttering mess. "D-do you remember, I-I mean I did tell you, ri-ight? That Eshai are, that we can— H-how we're supposed to be able to breed with a-anyone?"

You nod, winding a secondary tendril around his ponytail and tugging gently. "Yes?"

"B-but I didn't say— I didn't explain how it works f-for females?"

"No, you didn't."

"Aaand I didn't say, I mean you only asked about Eshai, but it's not just Eshai, it can't be because of how we're born, I mean how our parents work, it's actually other castes too, not everyone but some, especially the more engineered subspecies, and—"

"Tomura."

He stops. "Yes, Master."

"I understand where you're going, sweet boy. Tell me how it works. Show me."

He squirms, rubbing his knees together, and explains how the gonads are at the base of the tail, protected by vertebral protrusions like snake ribs. He points out the blood vessels running toward the tip. Then, fingertip hovering a millimeter off your skin, he points out the seam running the last several centimeters of the underside, and the thumbprint-sized spot at the upper end of the seam where the texture looks slightly different.

"You saw how my sisters wear a band around their tails, right?"

You nod.

"That's because… Can I? Please?" He stares at you, wide-eyed and hopeful.

You run the pad of your tendril along the top edge of his ear. "You have permission."

He shudders. Whines softly. Then he presses the softest kiss to the textured spot.

“Did you put on sunscreen?” you ask, and Shigaraki grimaces. “You should. Or you’re going to burn.”

“I don’t need –” Shigaraki breaks off abruptly when Dabi pelts him in the chest with a bottle of sunscreen. “What the fuck?”

“If you burn, you’re gonna bitch about it. I don’t want to hear it and neither does anyone else.” Dabi’s already wandering off down the beach. “Make the mermaid put it on you.”

Shigaraki’s face flushes. He uncaps the sunscreen, pours some of it into the palm of his hand, and shakes it off in a hurry, splattering your rashguard. “That’s disgusting,” he snaps. “I’m not putting it all over me.”

“And I wouldn’t be doing my job if I let you get heatstroke,” you say. “Either put it on or go sit in the shade.”

“That’s fucking boring,” Shigaraki says. “I hate that stuff. It makes me itch.”

“Everything makes you itch, Tomura-kun,” Toga says. She’s back to building her sandcastle, this time with help from Compress. “Just wear it. I picked a nice kind. It’s not bad for the fish and it smells like coconut.”

“I don’t want to smell like coconut!” Shigaraki’s starting to remind you of a kid throwing a temper tantrum. “I looked for one of those. There wasn’t one.”

He’s pointing at you, and your rashguard. It’s part of your hero uniform, something you wear to make yourself easy to pick out among the crowds on busy beaches, but it’s also UV-resistant, with long sleeves and a high neck. You’ve been in the sun long enough for it to dry out a little bit, and you’d like to get to the swim lesson sooner or later. And with how skinny he is, how narrow his shoulders are – “Here. Take mine.”

“Don’t take your clothes off. What’s wrong with you?”

“I have a suit on underneath,” you say, exasperated. It’s not a cute swimsuit, either – just a standard one-piece training suit in black, leftover from your school days. You peel off your rashguard and hand it over to Shigaraki. “Wear that. Then you’ll only need to put sunscreen on your face.”

Shigaraki’s expression clears, but only slightly. “I’m still not touching that shit.”

“I’ll do it, then.” At this point you’re out of patience for everything, including the shocked expression on Shigaraki’s face. “Put that on.”

Shigaraki struggles into your rashguard, and you beckon him closer. He comes closer without protesting, and he holds still, although he startles when you grab his chin to hold his face steady. You’re not unused to putting sunscreen on people, but usually those people aren’t villains who kidnapped you. Although you guess Shigaraki’s not the one who kidnapped you. Out of all the villains on this beach, he’s the one who’s least responsible for what’s happening to you.

Except for the part where he tried to drown himself to keep you from leaving. That part is probably going to piss you off forever, just like everything else Shigaraki’s doing. “Why are you putting so much on?”

“It’s not effective if you don’t use enough. Or if you don’t rub it in.” You do everything in your power to ignore the way Shigaraki’s eyelids flutter shut as you rub the sunscreen in at his temple, then across his forehead. “Most people don’t do it right. I spend half my time on shift dealing with people who’ve burnt themselves and gotten heatstroke.”

“I bet that just burns you up. Having to deal with idiots who can’t read instructions on a bottle instead of saving people.”

“If I have to go out into open water and save someone, a lot of things have already gone wrong,” you say. You’ve been on the job since you were fifteen, and your stomach still clenches when you hear a siren go off, when you see someone bobbing out past the surf, their chin dipping below the surface. “I want to stop things before they go wrong. Sometimes that means stopping people from getting heatstroke so they don’t wander off into the water when they’re not thinking straight. It’s all part of the job.”

“That’s stupid,” Shigaraki says, although you think there’s less scorn in his voice than before. Maybe you’re only thinking that so you won’t want to rub sunscreen in his eyes on purpose. “What do you do off the job, anyway? Go drinking with your friends and brag about how many people you saved? I bet it’s like a competition and you all keep track.”

“I don’t really know what other people do,” you say. “The people I saved aren’t the ones I remember. All done. Fifteen more minutes and we can start the lesson.”

You cap the sunscreen and set it aside, and Shigaraki opens his eyes. “Hold up. You can’t just drop something that cryptic and keep rolling. You don’t remember the people you save? What’s that supposed to mean?”

You decide you don’t owe him an answer. You turn your gaze out to sea, picking out the distant shapes of islands on the horizon. If it’s a clear day and you can see them, you’re within swimming distance. That’s where you’ll go, once you get this over with. You’ll get there faster if you dive deep and let your quirk take over completely. You’re thinking about that, about how deep the channel between this island and the others might go, about how far away from the light you’ll be, when Shigaraki’s hand comes down on your shoulder and scares the hell out of you. “What are you doing?”

“You need sunscreen, too.” The palmprint Shigaraki left behind on your shoulder is wet. You can smell coconut. He put so much on that you can practically taste it when you open your mouth to insist you can do it on your own. Shigaraki cuts you off. “You helped me. So I’m helping you.”

You probably need sunscreen more than you want to admit, with the way your face is heating up. “I thought it was too gross to touch.”

“Only if I’m putting it on myself. This is – fine.” Shigaraki pats gingerly at your shoulder, index finger lifted. “Now tell me why you forget about everybody you save.”

“That’s not what I said. I just said I don’t –” You decide all at once not to get into semantics. “I’m a rescue hero. That’s not the same as –”

“Oh, so you’re not like other heroes?” Shigaraki is doing a lot of sneering for somebody who’s still trying to put sunscreen on you. “Keep telling yourself that.”

“It’s not the same,” you say. “How many rescue heroes do you see on the charts? Can you name any of the schools rescue heroes come from? We don’t go into it for money or fame. And we don’t go into it thinking it’s our job to save everyone.”

Shigaraki’s hand goes still on your shoulder, and the fact that his index finger is still up is the only thing that keeps you from bolting. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means what it sounds like. I’m one person. There are limits on what I can do. If I push past those limits and get myself killed, nobody else gets rescued. That’s why we work on teams when it comes to big disasters.” You’re blabbering, but you don’t know what else to do. “There’s only so much I can do. But somebody else might be able to do more. And someone else can do what that person can’t. If we all work together, maybe we can save everybody. But we can’t do it alone.”

Shigaraki’s quiet. His hands lift away from your skin, and you collect the bottle of sunscreen and get to work on yourself, still talking. “Heroes who don’t specialize in rescue act like they can do more. They’re okay making those promises. They’re not the ones who have to explain to someone’s family why the person they loved didn’t make it.”

“They make you do that?” Shigaraki’s voice sounds weird. “When somebody dies on your watch, you’re the one who tells their family?”

“That’s why I remember the people I lose. I see what happens to the people they leave behind.” You remember when you found out about that part of rescue work. How sick the idea made you feel, how you swore to yourself that you’d never lose anyone. How fast the world made you break that promise. “It never gets easier.”

It’s quiet for a while after that. You set the sunscreen aside and settle in to wait for it to set. You decide you’re not saying anything else. Opening your mouth right now seems like a great way to get Shigaraki to kill you. This is simple. Teach him to swim, then hit open water and don’t come up for air until you’re past the twenty-fathom line. You don’t need to try to convince him that you’re different than other heroes. It doesn’t matter what he thinks of you.

“Tell me about one,” Shigaraki says, and you glance at him. “One you lost.”

“Why do you want to know about that?”

“I’m seeing if you meant it. Tell me.” Shigaraki is studying you intently. “You admitted you can’t save everybody. Who didn’t you save?”

Of course he wants you to talk about the worst part of your job. “I’m not talking about that. It’s not funny and I don’t want to listen to you mock me.”

“I’ve never heard a hero say that before,” Shigaraki says. “That you can’t save everyone. Every other hero lies. I’m not going to mock you for telling the truth. So tell me the truth.”

Can you trust Shigaraki not to mock you? Probably not. Are you telling the truth? Yes. And this is why you remember, right? So that person’s memory exists somewhere other than their family, so their name finds a home in someone else’s voice every so often. You might not want to tell Shigaraki. But it’s also the right thing to do.

“So – her name was Naoko,” you start. “Hamada Naoko. She was fifteen. Only child, quiet, kind of kept to herself. She was scared of the water. I swam all three of her friends out, but she wouldn’t come with me. She had asthma and she couldn’t hold her breath. I found an oxygen tank and went back in, but the ship was inverting, and everything was falling – and I was too slow. She was dead when I got to her. I couldn’t even bring her body back.”

You were going to. You would have swum Naoko back to the surface, tried your best to resuscitate her, hoped and prayed that the water was cold enough to give her a chance. But the ship was all the way under by then. Under, upside down, plummeting into pitch-darkness. You could only hold your breath so long. Only survive a certain amount of pressure. Your supervisor forced you to let go of Naoko’s body, dragged you out of the ship faster than you could have swum with Naoko trailing you. And then you watched, sickened and horrified, as the ship’s hulk vanished into the deep.

Shigaraki’s still looking at you. Waiting for you to say more. “Her parents were so angry,” you say, hating the way your voice gets quiet, hating how it almost shakes. “I saved the other three in the cabin with her. Why couldn’t I have saved her? Why did I let her die? I should have swam faster. I should have brought an oxygen tank in with me from the start. I should have grabbed two of the students at a time. I could have done so many things differently, and she’d have come home.”

“Students,” Shigaraki repeats. “That ferry sinking four years ago. You were there?”

“How do you know about that?”

“I can read,” Shigaraki snaps, but it’s half-hearted compared to the venom he spoke to you with before. “You were there?”

“It was my first big rescue,” you say. “Or – not rescue, I guess. The airlifts off the deck made the big headlines – that was Hawks’s first operation, too – but there were a lot of us in the water, or under it. The way the ship was sinking, most people couldn’t make it to the deck, so we had to go get them.”

“But not all of them.”

“There was no way,” you say. You aren’t the only hero who lost someone that day. Almost everybody assigned to the water rescue did. “They briefed us on the ship’s layout on the way to the wreck site, and as soon as we saw it, we all knew – open ocean rescue isn’t like any other kind, you’re miles out, it’s just you and your team and the victims – and there were so many victims. I’m not like All Might. I can’t save a hundred people in ten minutes. It was my first one, and I wasn’t fast like I am now – if I’d trained as hard as I should have been –”

You don’t usually verbalize this thought process, and if you were going to, you picked the wrong audience. “I sound like I’m making excuses. There’s not an excuse. People have died because I couldn’t save them. More people in the future will probably die, because I won’t ever be strong enough or smart enough or fast enough to save everyone. You should find a better swim instructor.”

“Somebody else would lie,” Shigaraki says. “I don’t like liars. And I don’t like people who pretend they’ve never fucked up in their lives. That’s not you, so – I think I’ll stick with who I got. Has it been fifteen minutes?”

“Close enough.” You glance down the beach, looking for a good access point, and find a section of calmer water, protected from the surf by a rocky outcropping. “Over there. Let’s go.”

As soon as you’re back in the water, you’re fighting your quirk, but that’s something you’re used to. Shigaraki follows you willingly into chest-deep water. “Now what?”

“You’re going to learn to float,” you say. “This is probably the most important thing about swimming. Everything else is nice to know, but you have to be able to float in order to do all of that stuff.”

“It’s the top of the skill tree,” Shigaraki says. Whatever that means. You nod. “How do I do it?”

“Watch.” You tip backwards in the water, letting your feet leave the sand, and extend your arms to either side, stiffening your torso so you won’t buckle at the waist and sink. “The goal here is to keep your body as flat as possible in the water. Because if you bend at the waist or try to sit up –”

You demonstrate and promptly sink, then return to floating and get your feet back on the sand. “Try it.”

Usually adults who aren’t scared of the water are easy to teach, but Shigaraki doesn’t even want to tilt backwards. “I can’t do the thing you did. I’m going to fucking drown.”

“I’m right here. I’m not going to let you drown.” You resist the urge to drop into the voice you use when you’re teaching little kids. You have a feeling Shigaraki won’t like it. “Just try it. If anything goes wrong, I’ll help you, okay? I’m here.”

Shigaraki aims a flat, frustrated glance your way, and you cringe – but he tries it, tilting his head and shoulders back into the water, arms extended slightly at his sides. It’s not bad, but then he can’t get his legs up, and the weight of his lower half sinks him. You reach out to help before his head can go under, and Japan’s most feared supervillain grabs onto you like a kid who’s just remembered that the ocean has sharks in it. “What the fuck was that?”

“Like I said. Your body has to be parallel, or –”

“Explain like I’m one of your dumb students.”

You’re pretty sure Shigaraki doesn’t want to hear how you talk to five-year-olds. You try to think of something else, and an example comes to mind. “Okay, you know the Titanic? When it was afloat, it was in a straight line on the surface of the water. Then when it hit the iceberg and the flooding started, the bow section of the ship started getting heavier than the stern section. It sank, and it pulled the stern upright for a little bit –”

“And then it snapped,” Shigaraki says. “My legs aren’t that heavy.”

“It’s not just about that. Even if they’re lighter than the rest of you, they’re still acting like a counterweight, pulling you straight up and down. If you’re straight up and down, you’ll sink.”

“You’re not sinking,” Shigaraki points out.

“I’m treading water. That’s like – level three,” you say. “Like I said, floating’s most important. Try it again.”

“Why, so I can drink more water and look like a clown?”

“This time I’m going to help you,” you say. “Tilt back the way you did last time, and I’ll get your legs up. So then you’ll at least know it works.”

“Fine.” Shigaraki gives you a wary look and tips backwards again.

You hook your arm behind the backs of his knees and lift them slowly to the surface, hoping he’s remembered to keep his body rigid. “Straighten your legs out,” you instruct. “Don’t sit up. Just, like – starfish.”

Shigaraki keeps his arms all but glued to his sides. “This is hard.”

“You just have to get used to it,” you say. He might be floating, but you need him to loosen up a bit. “Now that you’re on the surface, you can relax if you want to. I’m not going to let you sink.”

To Shigaraki, relaxing seems to mean sitting up. He’s not comfortable in the water at all. “Let’s try this,” you say. “I’ll support you – like this, with my hands under your back – and this way you can just focus on trying to relax. Okay?”

“Fine,” Shigaraki mutters. Even though you warned him what you were going to do, he still flinches when you touch him. “So – what? I need to move my arms out?”

“Just a little bit out,” you try to compromise. “You’re safe with me.”

Shigaraki snorts. “You wouldn’t have to worry about remembering my name. Nobody would miss me if you’d let me drown.”

At first you think he’s joking, but when you look down in his face, you see that he’s serious. It’s your turn to laugh, even though you know it’s pissing him off. “Don’t laugh at me. Why are you laughing?”

“Are you telling me you didn’t see –” It occurs to you that he didn’t. “When Dabi pushed you off the cliff, your other friends were angry with him. They were worried about you. They kidnapped me for you because they wanted to come to the beach and have a good time – with you. They’d miss you. I’d remember you for them.”

His gaze drifts away from yours. Something about it makes you sad. “I’d remember you for you, too. But I won’t have to. Because I’m not going to let you drown.”

“Sure you won’t.” Shigaraki won’t look at you, but his arms begin to shifts away from his sides. Your hands are still under his back, and you feel him beginning to relax. “How am I doing?”

“Better,” you say. “I’m going to move my hands now, and –”

Shigaraki sits up and immediately sinks. You haven’t taught him how to get back to floating yet. His mouth and chin dip under before you can catch him again, but you pull him upright before his face can submerge fully, and he twists in your grip to hold onto you again. Face to face with him, you can see that he’s not panicking. Not only is he not panicking, he actually looks pleased with himself. “Just testing you,” he says. You grit your teeth. “You meant it.”

“I meant it,” you confirm – and then your annoyance breaks through. “I meant it when I jumped off a cliff after you, too.”

“You didn’t know me then.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

Shigaraki doesn’t answer. His grip on you is tight, even with his index fingers lifted. “I can float now. What do I learn next?”

“How to get from being upright in the water to floating,” you say. Shigaraki nods. “You’re going to have to let go.”

He scowls at that, but lets go. This time, he’s quicker to get from standing to floating, quicker to move his arms out to the sides and relax in the water. You don’t need to support his back this time, but you do it anyway, just to be safe. He might be an adult, but he’s not any safer in the water than a kid who’s barely able to swim. You can’t make the mistake of assuming he knows more than he actually does.

From there, you move on to a basic side stroke, one that will let him make progress without having to submerge his face. Shigaraki is a quick study when he wants to be. He picks it up fast, fast enough that you almost wonder if he was faking how much trouble he was having with floating before. He can float and he can swim – a little bit – and that means your job here is almost done. “Time for your swim test,” you say, and Shigaraki looks up, alarmed. “We’re going to go out a little bit past the waves – I’ll be right there –”

“Teach me how to do that first.” Shigaraki points at you. The tide’s come up a bit, enough that you have to tread water to keep your head up. “I learned two other skills. I’m at level three.”

“Okay. Treading water,” you say. “Then we’ll do your swim test.”

Treading water is intuitive for you, and the steady advancement of your quirk makes it easy, but you have to break it down into individual motions for Shigaraki – and then you have to explain why they work. It’s starting to strain your patience. So is treading water in a small pool, face to face with Shigaraki, close enough that your feet and hands brush against each other as you keep yourselves afloat. You’ve had a lot more physical contact with Shigaraki than with your usual students or the usual people you rescue. In some ways, it’s a relief to have the distance. In others, it makes you uneasy.

“You’re doing really well,” you tell him, and he scoffs. Either his face is turning red, or it’s time for him to put on more sunscreen. “Seriously. And if you ever run into trouble in the water, you can alternate between this and floating until someone’s able to get to you.”

“Only if it’s warm. What if it’s cold?”

“If it’s cold?” You don’t like that question. “Try not to fall in if it’s cold. If you drown in cold enough water, your chances of resuscitation are – okay. But that depends on someone getting to you fast enough. Cold water slows a rescue down.”

“Even for you?”

“Usually,” you say. “If my quirk fully activates, no.”

“You had a tail,” Shigaraki says. “That’s not fully activated?”

“No,” you say awkwardly. “If I transform all the way, there’s other stuff that happens. When it’s all the way active, I can handle most water temperatures. And more pressure than I can right now.”

“Show me.”

“No.”

“Why not?” Shigaraki asks. “I bet it’s cool.”

“It’s not cool,” you say. He gives you a skeptical look. “We’re in saltwater right now. If I stay here long enough I’m going to turn into half a tuna, and that’s not – see, you’re laughing right now. It looks dumb.”

“The way you said it is dumb. It’s actually cool,” Shigaraki says. You shake your head, and his foot brushes against yours in a way that feels less accidental than the other times you’ve bumped into each other. “So if I fell in cold water and drowned, you could still save me?”

“Don’t fall in cold water,” you say. “And don’t drown. Resuscitation doesn’t work every time, and little kids are more likely to make it back than adults.”

“How come?”

“Their hearts are stronger,” you say. “Don’t drown.”

“I don’t want to drown. I didn’t want you to leave,” Shigaraki says. This time, it’s his hand that brushes against yours, and it feels even less accidental than before. “I still don’t.”

“Why?” you ask before you can decide if it’s a good idea. “You hate heroes. I’m just some hero your friends kidnapped to teach you to swim. You should want me gone. Or maybe dead.”

You wish you hadn’t said that. Shigaraki’s expression shuts off. “You’re a hero. Maybe you want me dead. I should get out of the water before you come to your senses and drown me.”

“That’s not what I said. Where are you even getting that from?” you protest. You’re not even sure what you’re protesting – the absurd idea that you’d drown someone on purpose, the fact that he’s taking it so personally when all you’re doing is repeating what he’s said about heroes to you and everybody else, the fact that he’s splashing awkwardly out of the water. “Shigaraki, wait. I – slow down –”

You can’t catch him. Your transformation snuck up on you, and you might not be half a tuna yet, but your legs are close enough to fused that you can’t stagger more than a few steps before falling into the sand. It sticks to your arms, your swimsuit, your face, your hands. You look stupid, and no matter where you try to go next, you’ll be dragging yourself. This is awful. You shouldn’t care about this at all. It shouldn’t matter to you that you’ve somehow hurt Shigaraki’s feelings. He’s a villain. He probably is going to kill you. So where does he get off getting so mad –”

“Help!”

It’s not Shigaraki’s voice, and at least you think it’s saying ‘help’ – while there’s some shape to the syllables, it’s barely more than a wordless cry of pain. That’s not a sound you hear very often in water rescues. There are only two things that cause it. One of them is injuries from propellor blades, and you haven’t heard an engine. The other is animal attacks. Bites, if sharks are involved. Stabs, if it’s a swordfish or something. Stings.

The person screams and keeps screaming, and someone else splashes in from the shallows. Toga, with telltale stripes across her thigh and stomach, eyes filled with tears. “There’s something out there,” she gasps, and you lurch into motion, dragging yourself across the sand towards the surf. “Spinner told me to swim back – he said he was right behind me –”

He’s not right behind her. He’s out there, and there’s a jellyfish out there with him. You drag yourself towards the surf, faster now, shouting out orders that you don’t have a clue if anyone’s going to follow. “Stay out of the water. All of you! Get back above the tide line. I’ll get him!”

“Hey! Are you crazy? If you think we’re just going to leave our friend –”

“Stay back,” you snarl at Twice, who flinches back, cowed. “I’ll get Spinner. If any of you so much as touch the water I’m going to –”

Drown you when I get back, is what you were going to say, but then a wave splashes up and over your head, and you let your quirk take over, like it’s been trying to do all day. After this much immersion time, it happens fast. By the time you’ve cleared the waves, you’re already fully transformed.

You were wondering why this beach was so empty, and now you know. You know where you are, too, not that it matters now – there’s only one island that’s closed to swimmers thanks to a jellyfish bloom. The breakers and currents have kept them clear of the shore before now, but the tide’s coming in, and now the surface is covered in them, so many that you can’t count them all. You’re amazed Toga made it out without a couple jellyfish attached to her. There’s no way you can swim Spinner out of there without both of you getting stung.

Without both of you getting stung even more, because Spinner’s stopped screaming, his mouth and chin dipping below the surface. You don’t know if it’s the pain or the paralysis getting to him, but either way, you don’t have much time. You can’t swim him out along the surface. The surface is where the jellyfish are. You’re going to have to swim down. Which means the League of Villains is going to watch you drag their friend under.

It doesn’t matter what they think. You know how to save him. There’s only one way. You brace yourself, dive deep, and come up directly beneath the bloom.

At first you try to dodge the tentacles, but there are too many. They brush against your shoulders, your hands, your sides, sending jolts of agonizing pain rippling along your skin. Your transformation gives you some resistance, but not enough for prolonged exposure. You swim upwards, flinching as a tentacle brushes over your face, over your right eye. Your vision goes dark on that side immediately, and you close the other to protect it. If you were just a person, you’d be doomed.

But you’re not. Your flank and dorsal fins can pick up movement in the water, and you know exactly where Spinner is without having to see. You reach up one-handed, grab Spinner’s ankle, and yank him down. Once he’s at your level, you get a better grip on him and dive deep.

He’s not fighting you. You wish he was fighting you, but he isn’t, and you can’t even assess him until you’re both clear of the swarm. You find a deep, cold current, submerge in it, then let it carry you back to shore, close to the headland again, away from the swarm. As soon as you can no longer sense them in the water, you swim for the surface again. You need to get some air on Spinner’s face. And you need to start transforming back. Nobody on that beach knows CPR, and you have a bad feeling that Spinner’s going to need it.

You’re right about that. Once he’s on the surface, you realize that his mouth is open, that he’s been swallowing water. And once you drag him onto the shore, you’re right about something else, too – the League is ready to kill you. “You fucking drowned him!” Dabi snarls at you, when you and Spinner are barely clear of the water. “What the fuck – Compress, Twice, grab her so she can’t get away –”

“Spinner? Hey, Spinner?” Toga pries Spinner away from you. “Guys, his eyes are open, but he’s not – Spinner? Say something –”

“Don’t just stand there,” Dabi explodes at someone – not Twice or Compress, who you’re struggling to fend off. “Are you stupid or something, Shigaraki? Fucking kill her!”

“If I kill her, he’s dead.” Shigaraki’s voice is shaky, flat. “None of us know how to save him. She does.”

“She just drowned him. You think she’s going to save –”

Twice lets go of you. A second later, Compress does the same, and he gives you a push towards Spinner, who Toga’s struggling to drag up the beach. “Save him. Now.”

The eye you were stung over isn’t opening. You do your basic assessment through one eye, with hands that are still webbed and clumsy. There isn’t much to assess. He’s not breathing. There’s probably water in his lungs. He needs CPR. You lever yourself upright, open the airway, and seal your mouth over Spinner’s for two rescue breaths. Then you straighten your arms, fold your hands on top of each other, and start chest compressions.

The feeling of someone’s ribs cracking beneath your hands never fails to make your skin crawl, and right now is no exception. You swallow down nausea and keep a steady rhythm, thirty compressions, then two more breaths, then back to compressions again. Spinner’s young. You got him out of the water as fast as you know how. You know how to do CPR. He’ll be fine, right? The League will kill you if he isn’t, but that’s not what’s making you sick. You feel this same sickness every time you attempt a resuscitation, every time you’re scared it won’t work. Every time you feel someone’s life slipping away beneath your hands.

“Hey, he blinked!” Twice grabs your shoulder, disrupting your compressions. “He’s blinking! Look!”

You look, and relief swamps you in an instant. Spinner’s blinking. His mouth opens, then closes, but his shoulders are heaving. “Roll him,” you snap, and Toga and Compress grab him, pulling while you push until Spinner’s on his side. Not a second too soon, either – one more heave of his shoulders, and seawater comes spilling out of his mouth. You speak to him over the sound of his gagging, over the League’s questions and demands. “You’re going to be okay. You had some water in your lungs, and it’s going to hurt to get it out, but you’re going to be okay.”

More coughing and gagging. “You’re doing great,” you tell him, lapsing into hero mode on autopilot. How many times have you been here, relief tightening your chest, trying to hide the way your hands shake? “Everything is going to be okay. My name is Carpathia. I’m a rescue hero and I’m here to help you.”

You’re supposed to be conducting a neurological exam, but you can’t wrap your head around things enough to speak clearly. You can only see out of one eye. The villains probably still want to kill you. You and Spinner are both covered in jellyfish stings, and Toga’s got her share. Spinner coughs a few more times, then speaks. “It hurts –”

“Your chest hurts because I broke your ribs doing CPR,” you say. “Everything else hurts because you were stung by jellyfish. A lot of jellyfish. We need to – um –”

“I know!” Twice announces loudly. “We pee on it! Everybody start drinking water! I don’t have enough pee for both of them!”

“No,” you say at once, but they aren’t listening. You actually see Dabi and Shigaraki looking around for water bottles. You raise your voice. “You don’t pee on jellyfish stings! That’s a myth.”

“Then what do you do?” Toga demands. Her eyes are teary, and you remember that she got stung, too. “It hurts –”

“Do you have tentacles on you?” you ask. Toga looks puzzled. “Somebody check. Everybody check. Spinner first –”

He has one on his wrist, one around his neck, and another wrapped around his ankle. You’re about to ask if anyone has tweezers, but before you can, Shigaraki reaches in and grabs the tentacle with all five fingers. “Don’t,” you protest, but Shigaraki holds on until the tentacle’s disintegrated, then grabs the next one, swearing under his breath the entire time. “Don’t get stung –”

“You’ve got some on you, too,” Compress points out. You glance down at yourself and get lightheaded. Some? They’re everywhere. “Shigaraki, here –”

“Don’t –” You flinch away from Shigaraki, but Toga and Twice grab you to hold you still, and rather than thrash to get away, you try to recall the next steps for treatment. “We need hot water. Not scalding hot, but as hot as we can manage –”

“You should have led with that,” Dabi snaps at you. “Compress – tell me you’ve got a bucket somewhere in there –”

You lose track of whatever’s happening there in your efforts to stop Shigaraki from getting himself stung. “I already got stung. Stop it,” you protest, but he keeps at it, grimacing and swearing. “Hey! Stop. I can do it myself.”

“I can do it! I found the first-aid kit!” Toga shoos Shigaraki away, then goes after you with a pair of tweezers. “You got stung so many times. Even more than Spinner. How could you still swim?”

“My quirk,” you say. “Are there heat packs in that first-aid kit? We can use those, too.”

Twice goes digging through the first-aid kit, looking for them, while Toga peels off tentacles and chucks them away into the sand. “Don’t lie,” Shigaraki says, and you glance at him. He’s scowling, clenching and unclenching his fingers. “Your quirk turns you into a mermaid. It doesn’t make you immune to jellyfish stings.”

“No, but those were Portuguese man o’ war. Their stings really hurt, and they can be paralyzing if you get enough of them, but when I’m transformed, I’m – half a tuna.” You want him to laugh, but his expression doesn’t change. What part of it you can see doesn’t change, at least. “Tuna are way too big for them. I’m fine.”

Shigaraki is still glaring at you, and you can’t work it out. You didn’t ask him to use his quirk to get rid of the jellyfish tentacles. You told him not to. It’s not your fault, so why is he looking at you like that? “Tomura-kun,” Toga says, tugging on his shirt, “go help Spinner. He has lots of stings. You can hold the heat pack on them for him and that way your hands will get warm too.”

Shigaraki glares at you for a few seconds more, then makes his way over to Spinner, leaving you with Toga. She smiles at you, and when you smile back, her smile broadens. “I like you,” she says. “Tomura likes you too.”

You decide you’re not going to think about it. It’s not hard. You still have Spinner to keep an eye on, and your stings really hurt.

Your transformation is slow to fade. When you force it, it always takes longer to go back than usual, and you wait to treat your stings until after you’ve got human legs again. In your human form, the stings look even worse, and your eye still won’t open. On an ordinary beach, an ordinary day, you’d already at the hospital. Somebody else would have stepped in to cover for you, and you’d have doctors looking at your eye, taking care of you, telling you it’ll be all right. But it’s not going to be okay. You’re still kidnapped by villains. They still might kill you. They –

Something comes down over your eye and you startle. “It’s me,” Shigaraki says. “Spinner said he could hold his own heat packs.”

You think about pointing out that you can hold your own heat pack, too. You stay quiet, and Shigaraki adjusts it so that it’s covering the sting completely. You close your other eye, so you won’t have to look at him, and when he speaks, his voice is softer than before. “Carpathia, huh?”

“Yes.” You brace yourself, but he’s quiet. “What?”

“You knew you were going to get stung going after Spinner. You didn’t even blink,” Shigaraki says. “Saving me wasn’t proving a point. That’s just what you’re like.”

“That’s my job,” you say. “Are you disappointed?”

“No,” Shigaraki says. He’s quiet again. “I was right about your transformation. It does look cool.”

“You have weird taste in fish.”

“I have great taste in mermaids,” Shigaraki says, and you feel your face heat up under the sunscreen. You want to blame the jellyfish stings, but if you were going to have an allergic reaction, you’d have had it already. “I’m jealous of Spinner.”

“You – huh?” You twist away from the heat pack to glare at him. “Are you stupid? He’s covered in jellyfish stings and he almost drowned! Why would you be jealous –”

“He got to kiss you,” Shigaraki says. “I didn’t.”

Your brain stops working for a second. “CPR isn’t kissing.”

“It looked like kissing,” Shigaraki says. He shrugs. “The jellyfish aren’t great, but I could always go back out there and –”

“Don’t even joke about that,” you snap. “If you want me to kiss you, just ask.”

Shigaraki blinks. “Really?”

Your face feels so hot that you’re probably seconds from bursting into flames. “Yes.”

“You want to,” Shigaraki says. You nod. “You mean it. You’re not just doing it so I won’t –”

Shigaraki’s tested your patience so many times today. You’re officially out of it. You grab the front of his rashguard with a hand that still has webbing between its fingers, yank him closer, and press your lips to his.

His lips are chapped, rough against yours. His skin tastes like salt and sunscreen, which is what yours probably tastes like, too, and it couldn’t be clearer that he’s never kissed someone before. Swimming, kissing – Shigaraki’s doing a lot of things for the first time today. You wish you were even half as good at teaching someone how to kiss as you are at teaching people to swim.

Shigaraki doesn’t look like he thinks you’re bad at it when the two of you separate. His eyes are intent on your face in a way that makes sense, given that you’re pretty sure you still have pieces of your transformation hanging around. He’s still holding the heat pack over your eye one-handed, but the other hand lands on the side of your face, index finger lifted as he cradles your cheek. “It’s not like CPR,” you say awkwardly. “Do you believe me?”

“No,” Shigaraki says. He’s figured out the key difference, at least – when he leans back in and his lips part against yours, he breathes in instead of out, stealing a few molecules of air from you in the bargain. Not enough for you to blame oxygen deprivation for the way your head spins and your heart skips beats it couldn’t afford to miss. “Show me again.”

<- part 1

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