villains and stuff

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—It’s hard to breathe. The thick wire around his torso is squeezing his chest so tight in a way Spinner never thought possible, organs he never knew he had making themselves known through pain, ribs creaking under an unbearable bend, blood pounding into a head about to burst—

All at once, it stops.

Air rushes back into his lungs. Hitting the ground is a welcomed feeling of unyieldingness compared to the softness of a flesh existence. As Spinner regains his vision, he sees dust swirling around dirty red shoes.

Shigaraki stands over him, one hand still reaching out into the air where the Watching Devil’s cable-tendrils had once amassed. There’s nothing but glittering metallic particles snowing down onto him and Spinner. Down the street, the Watching Devil lights up with electricity, currents dancing around its form.

“Ruin Devil!” The Watching Devil curls into themself, telephone lines wrapping to form a shell, antennas pushing out of it and forming spikes. “You were dead! The Earthquake Devil—“

“Gonna have to try harder to kill me,” Shigaraki says, taking a step forward. “Not that you’re getting the chance.”

Cables burst out of the ground where he’s standing, but Shigaraki’s already gone, in the air, leaping through the wreckage of the streets. He’s too fast, wires impaling only giant chunks of debris after he grazed it as a fleeting jump-off point, electricity zapping through broken rebar much too late. Spinner sees the moment where the Watching Devil pauses in their attacks, that split-second question of whether to keep fighting or run; but that’s all the time Shigaraki needs to reach them. Shigaraki grabs the devil by their face and slams their camera head onto the ground, just four fingers pinning them down.

“Tell Him He fucked up by throwing me out of Hell,” Shigaraki said. An inhumanly wide grin splits his face. “Tell Him I’m not another one of His pawns.

“Tell the All Devil I’m coming for Him and His Throne.”

The Watching Devil screeches a gratingly tinny high-pitch tone.

Shigaraki’s fifth finger drops.

And then there was only silence, no more waves in the air, no more snaps and sparks of electricity.

No more eyes on them; no one watching anymore.

Spinner sinks onto the broken ground, wishing he too had crumbled into nothingness. Everything he had been doing these past two years, every moment awake and asleep he spent chasing after his so-called dream…

Something wet spills onto his head. When Spinner looks up, Shigaraki is crouching next to him, his mangled left hand held over Spinner, dripping blood onto his face.

“Hurry up and drink,” Shigaraki says. “Then let me drink from you. We can probably recover enough with that to make it back to HQ.”

Spinner opens his mouth. Not to drink, but to speak, to tell Shigaraki to go away and leave him to his emptiness; but the blood fills his mouth anyways, coppery and thick and, as always, sour like decay.

Here’s my second contribution for the BNHA cooking zine, Heroes in the Baking by @cuizineco

Here’s my second contribution for the BNHA cooking zine, Heroes in the Baking by @cuizineco