no white flags

Maybe you do remember something about that. It doesn’t make any more sense the second time around. “Why?”

“Because,” Toga Himiko says, from behind a pair of heart-shaped sunglasses, “we’re having our beach episode. And we aren’t going to have fun if we’re worried about Tomura-kun.”

“Right!” Twice announces. He’s still wearing his mask, but the rest of him is decked out in swim trunks, flip-flops, and a floppy hat. “I can’t frolic in the waves with my best pals if I’m worried one of them is gonna wander off and drown, and Spinner said we can’t put Shigaraki on one of those retractable kid leashes –”

“For the record, none of this was my idea.” Spinner looks embarrassed, and not at all like the villain you’ve seen on TV – without his Stain mask, he just looks like a normal guy with a heteromorphic quirk. “I just said we shouldn’t do a beach day if not everybody can enjoy it.”

“And I said you all can do whatever the fuck you want.” Shigaraki is standing off to one side, his face hidden beneath a hand and the hood of his black coat. It’s barely nine and the temperature’s already cracked thirty degrees. He must be boiling alive. “I don’t give a shit.”

“Of course you do,” Dabi says. His sneer isn’t hero-specific, it looks like – Shigaraki gets the exact same one as you did. “None of us want to put up with your bitching and moping –”

“Or your drowning –” Twice chimes in.

“So we found you a swim instructor,” the fifth member of the group concludes. He’s tall, with brown hair and eyes, and you don’t have a clue who he is. “She can help you.”

Shigaraki glances your way briefly, then returns to staring out at the sea. “I don’t need fucking help. Go roll in the sand and leave me alone.”

Problem solved, not that it’s going to help you any. If Shigaraki doesn’t want swim lessons, then your purpose here is at an end, and they’re probably going to kill you. At the same time, though, you’re aware of your proximity to the edge of the cliff. If you can get over that edge and hit the water, you’re golden. None of them have the kind of quirks that would let them chase you down, and you can swim to the nearest guarded beach and sound the alarm. The fact that you didn’t show up for work this morning probably sounded the alarm already. This is doable. Maybe.

The League of Villains isn’t paying quite as much attention to you as they were a second ago. They’re focused on Shigaraki. “She’s an expert. She does this all the time,” Spinner is saying. “I looked her up. People pay big money for her to teach their kids to swim.”

The brown-haired man looks interested. “How much money are we talking about?”

Spinner names a figure that’s triple what you charge for private lessons, on the rare occasions when you offer them. He and Dabi both worship Stain. They’ll think you’re disgusting, and instead of escaping while their backs are partially turned, you open your mouth to defend yourself. “I don’t really do private lessons,” you say, and they look at you. “My swim classes are open to anybody. And the rest of the time I lifeguard. So, uh – if you think I make a lot of money doing this, I don’t. That’s not why I became a hero.”

Twice hoots with laughter. “Some hero. We grabbed you without breaking a sweat.”

“I’m a rescue hero,” you say, aware that it’s pointless. Instead of you using their distraction to escape, Shigaraki’s using your distraction to sidle away from the others. “My job isn’t to fight villains. It’s to help people.”

Dabi gives you an evaluative look. “A rescue hero,” he says. “I heard your type is always on duty. If you see somebody in trouble, and your quirk and training equip you better than the average person to help, you have to. Right?”

“That’s weird,” Toga says. She lowers her sunglasses for a better look at you. “Is it true? If you see someone who needs help, you have to save them?”

“Yeah.” The rules are different for rescue heroes than regular heroes. “If I can help someone in distress, I have a responsibility to do it.”

“Got it,” Dabi says. That thoughtful look on his face is fading fast into malice, and a jolt of terror shoots down your spine. “Hey, Shigaraki –”

Shigaraki takes a few steps away from Dabi without turning around, and before you can so much as call out a warning, Dabi plants his hand on Shigaraki’s back and shoves him over the edge of the cliff. “There’s someone in distress,” he says, as Shigaraki vanishes with a curse that abruptly breaks off in a scream. “Help him.”

You’re not the only one who’s horrified to see Shigaraki go over the edge, but you are the only one who can do something about it. While Twice and Toga berate Dabi, and Spinner runs to the edge of the cliff and comes damn close to giving you two people to rescue instead of one, you pause for the most crucial step in a successful rescue: Taking a second to evaluate the scene. You peer down at the water and realize instantly that Dabi couldn’t have picked a worse place to push Shigaraki off. You could jump from the same spot, but why make it harder on yourself? You move to the left instead.

The brown-haired man you don’t recognize spots you. “What are you doing? He fell in over here –”

You tune him out – and the others, too, when they remember why Dabi pushed Shigaraki off a cliff in the first place. You breathe deep, more for show than anything else, then break into a run. Ten steps puts you at the edge, and you launch yourself over, bracing for the long drop into the water. That part never gets easier.

But your jump has carried you clear of the rocks and heavy surf at the base of the cliff, and when you hit the water, there’s nothing but ocean beneath you. You jumped feet-first, and your water shoes – the only support item you carry – immediately begin to stretch, molding to the shape of your feet as your quirk fuses and elongates them into fins. Webbing spreads between your fingers, and when you open your eyes, they’re impervious to the sting of seawater. Full immersion in seawater is enough to activate your quirk in its entirety, but years of training allow you to hold the transformation where it is. You have someone to rescue.

You swim for the spot Shigaraki went in. He won’t have gone far, not with how ceaselessly the waves batter against that section of the cliff, and it doesn’t take you long to find him. He’s underwater, still moving but sluggish under the weight of his clothes, his hair drifting around his face. There’s blood in the water around him. You can taste it, and as you swim closer, you see that it’s emanating from somewhere around his head and shoulders. He hit something when he fell, and head and neck injuries are a disaster no matter who gets them or how they occur. Is he even conscious? Whether he is or not, you need to get him out of the water.

You let the current carry you close, and although you hate yourself for it, you hesitate a second before reaching for him. You know how his quirk works. All five fingers touch you, and you’re dead. Trying to help Shigaraki could be the last thing you ever do.

But ocean rescue is dangerous, even for someone with your quirk. Every rescue could be the last thing you ever do, and if you do nothing, Shigaraki will drown right before your eyes. You can’t let that happen. You dive down to him, slip your hands under his arms from behind, and haul him upward. He comes to life in your grip, thrashing while you kick for the surface. You’d be more frightened of the fact that he’s trying to turn and grab you if every other person you’ve rescued hasn’t done exactly the same thing.

The two of you break the surface, you doing your best to keep Shigaraki’s mouth above the waves so he won’t swallow any more water than he already has while he tries to breathe. Your lungs haven’t even started to burn yet. You give him a few seconds to gasp for air, then order him to keep his mouth shut and close his eyes. No time to check if he’s done it or not. The only way you’re getting through the surge to calmer water is if you go under it. The next wave crests and you dive beneath it, pulling Shigaraki after you.

Now he’s trying hard to grab you, to use you to push himself to the surface. You adjust your grip and switch to a dolphin kick, fighting your quirk and its attempts to help you. At the same time, you keep count in your head. Shigaraki will need to breathe soon. You need to be through the waves by then.

As soon as the turbulence begins to soften, you swim for the surface again. Once again, you make sure Shigaraki clears the surface first. He’s coughing and gasping for air, but his chin’s above water, which means you’re in good shape for now. “Take some deep breaths. I’ve got you. You’re safe.”

“Fuck you.” Shigaraki coughs and spits out seawater. “This is your fault. I’m not safe. You dragged me out to the middle of the ocean instead of – that had better not be a fucking shark –”

“It’s a dolphin,” you say. The dolphin swims a little closer, decides you and Shigaraki aren’t interesting enough for further investigation, and turns swiftly away. “We’re headed to the beach now. I just needed to get us clear of the surge.”

You swim back for the beach, propelling yourself mainly with your legs. You need both arms to secure Shigaraki. He’s not fighting, which is a relief – and he’s not talking, which makes you nervous. He hit his head. You need him to talk so you can assess him. “Hey, Shigaraki? How are you holding up?”

He mumbles something. “I’m going to need you to repeat that,” you say. “How are you doing?”

“Do you put everybody you rescue in a headlock?”

“It’s not a headlock,” you say. “This is how I swim with anyone I rescue. It’s what’s safest.”

“Sure. And it’s not –” Shigaraki coughs as a wave splashes into his open mouth. “It’s definitely not because you’re scared of my quirk, right?”

You don’t see a point to answering that. Shigaraki keeps talking anyway, a sharp, irritated note in his voice. “How stupid do you think I am? I still can’t swim. If I Decay you out here, I’ll drown.”

So you’ll be in more danger on the beach than in the water. Good to know. You swim the rest of the way to shore, dragging yourself and Shigaraki onto the sand. Once you’re clear of the water, you start your actual assessment. “I saw blood in the water. Did you hit your head?”

Shigaraki nods, grimacing. “When?” you ask. He shrugs. “I need to know. Did you hit it when you fell, or once you were already in the water.”

“I came up for air. The fucking waves pushed me into the – what are you doing?” Shigaraki flinches as you move some strands of wet hair out of his face. “Don’t touch me.”

“I need to see the cut.” You keep looking, with a little more urgency this time. “Did you lose consciousness?”

“No,” Shigaraki says. You find the cut – a jagged gouge from his temple to his ear, just below his hairline – and make a skeptical sound before you can stop yourself. “Stop touching it.”

“Sorry. I know it hurts.”

“I didn’t say it hurt. I’m not some primary-school brat who cries about everything.” Shigaraki responds with a lot more venom than you’d expect given what you actually said to him. “It’s not like you can do anything, so don’t bother.”

The League grabbed you on your way to work, which meant you had all your supplies with you. Your first-aid kit is still hooked onto your belt. “I have what I need,” you say. “Are you going to let me help, or do you want to keep bleeding all over the sand?”

“You can’t help me if I don’t let you.”

“That’s right,” you say patiently. Sometimes people you’ve rescued get hostile with you – out of fear, or embarrassment. Even though this is probably just Shigaraki’s personality, you know how to deal with it. “Are you going to let me?”

Shigaraki holds your gaze for a second, averting his eyes faster than you’d expect. “Do your job. Whatever that means to a so-called hero.”

He’s mean. Of course he’s mean. He’s a villain – but honestly, you’ve rescued civilians who were worse. You pry open the first-aid kit and get to work. You’ll bandage him up, make sure he’s not decompensating, and escape. No one’s faster than you in the water, and given that Shigaraki can’t swim, he’s not going to chase you if you go back in. You’ll warn someone, the League will be captured, and you can forget all about this. It’s fine. Everything is going to be –

“Hey, I found them!” Toga is hollering down from the top of the headland to your right. “The hero brought Tomura-kun to this beach instead of the other one. Tomura, are you okay?”

“It looks bad!” Twice announces. Then, to you: “Give him mouth-to-mouth. With tongue!”

“He’s conscious, breathing, and talking. He doesn’t need mouth to mouth,” you say. You hear this joke a lot, usually from guys whose friend you just saved, and it irks you. “And you don’t do mouth-to-mouth with tongue.”

“Hey! You can’t give Shigaraki substandard mouth-to-mouth just because he’s a villain!” Spinner’s arrived now, too. “What kind of hero are you?”

“The kind who’s trying to do my job,” you say. They’re distracting you, and you need to focus on Shigaraki, not in the least because he could kill you instantly if you make a mistake. You need to keep assessing. “Okay, you didn’t pass out. Did you swallow water at all? Or breathe any in?”

“I didn’t breathe it.” Shigaraki coughs, then grimaces, a flash of panic crossing his face. “Shit. I’m gonna hurl –”

He rolls to one side and vomits seawater into the sand, and you hold his hair back, mainly so you can keep it out of the head wound you’ve just cleaned. “See, he’s fine,” Dabi says from the headland. “Told you.”

“Are you sure he’s fine?” Spinner sounds like he’s thinking about pushing Dabi off the cliff. “Hey. Hero. Is he going to be fine?”

“I’m still assessing,” you caution. Shigaraki coughs a few times, then flops back into the sand. “So far, I’m not too worried, but –”

“Great! We’re going to be over there!” Toga points to the beach on the other side of the headland. “That’s where Mister Compress put all the fun stuff. See you soon, Tomura-kun!”

Most of the League vanishes without another word, but Spinner hangs on a little longer, glaring down at you. “Spinner,” Shigaraki says, his voice raspy, and Spinner looks towards him. “It’s fine. See you – over there.”

Spinner nods and leaves, which is a relief for you. Usually you aren’t that intimidated by guys in purple board shorts, but you usually haven’t been kidnapped by a gang of villains who are hovering over you, shouting bad advice. And you’ve got a different problem now – Shigaraki, who’d be intimidating no matter what he’s wearing. Maybe. He’s soaking wet, his clothes plastered to him, and he’s a lot skinnier than you thought he’d be. He’s looking at you expectantly. “Are you going to fix my head?”

“Yeah. Sorry.” You pick through your kit for an appropriately-sized waterproof bandage. “Hold still.”

To your surprise, Shigaraki does it, not even flinching when you move a few more strands of his wet hair away from his face. “Why’d you bring me here instead of the other beach?”

“It was a longer swim. I wanted to get you back on land as fast as possible.” You press the bandage down carefully, running your finger over the edge to make sure it seals properly. “Okay. All done.”

Shigaraki starts trying to sit up, and on instinct, you reach out to help, only realizing your mistake when Shigaraki flinches away. He barks a question at you before you can apologize. “How do I get to the other beach? Climb that thing?”

“No,” you say. “Those headlands aren’t stable, and, uh – you probably need both hands to climb. Both hands and all your – what?”

Shigaraki ignores you. He’s fumbling in the sand, patting down the pockets of his coat, and when he doesn’t find what he’s looking for, panic descends over his features. “The hands,” he says, and your stomach lurches. “I lost them.”

“Um –” You don’t know what to say, and Shigaraki’s hands rise to claw at the sides of his neck. “If they’re a support item – I know it sucks to lose those, but you can probably get –”

“They’re my family’s hands. I can’t just get more!” Shigaraki’s starting to hyperventilate. “I need them –”

He shoves you to one side, gets unsteadily to his feet, and stumbles back towards the surf. You chase after him, thankful that your feet have mostly gone back to normal. “Hey. Where are you going?”

“I have to get them.” Shigaraki shakes you off when you catch his arm, and you grab him again. “Fuck you. Let me go!”

“You still can’t swim. If I let you go out there, you’ll drown.” You grit your teeth. You really, really don’t want to do this, but – “I can go look for them.”

Shigaraki blinks. “Huh?”

“I’ll swim you over to the other beach, and then I’ll look for them,” you repeat. “People ask me to find stuff they dropped all the time.”

You don’t mention that you usually say no, because it’s a waste of time when you’re supposed to be looking out for everyone on the beach. But it’s just Shigaraki here, and his breathing is starting to even out. “How are you supposed to find them? It’s the ocean.”

“They’re a little heavy, right? They’ll sink, and since I know how the currents work, I can figure out where they probably touched down.” You risk letting go of Shigaraki’s arm, breathing a sigh of relief when he doesn’t immediately bolt. “Come on. I’ll swim you over.”

“Are you going to put me in a headlock again?”

“Not if you promise not to grab me,” you say. He rolls his eyes. “I’m not kidding.”

“And I’m not stupid. If I kill you out there, I’ll drown.” Shigaraki lets one hand fall from his neck, then the other. “Swim me over. Now.”

You take a second to pack up your first-aid kit, then lead Shigaraki out into the water. You give the headland a wide berth, even though it means swimming more than a hundred yards out from the shore, but unlike last time, Shigaraki doesn’t question you. In fact, he doesn’t speak at all, except once. “Is that a –”

“Still a dolphin,” you say. The fin protruding from the water is rounded, and the snout that bumps against your hip is smooth and blunt. “Nothing to worry about.”

The entry to the other beach is smooth and easy. You can see why the League chose this one to hang out on – white sands, gentle waves, picturesque to the max. You hope they didn’t kill anyone to claim this beach for themselves. It looks familiar to you, but you can’t quite remember why, and you realize all at once that you don’t know where you are. Where is this place? How far away did they take you?

It doesn’t matter. You can swim to wherever you need to go, as soon as you dump Shigaraki off on the beach. And you don’t even have to take him all the way in – when they see him, Spinner and Twice come out to help. Shigaraki shrugs them off. “I’m fine.”

“Can you swim yet?” Twice asks. Shigaraki scoffs, and Twice turns on you. “You were supposed to teach him to swim!”

“I will,” you lie. “After I find the hands.”

“Ew,” Toga remarks from the beach, where she’s building a sandcastle. “You don’t need those, Tomura-kun. You feel better without them.”

Shigaraki ignores her and looks back to you. “You’ll find them.”

“Yeah.” You dive back into the water and swim for the other side of the headland. Maybe while you’re over there, you can come up with a plan.

There’s no way to get out of gathering up the hands. If you don’t, Shigaraki will go in to get them himself and drown, and you can’t call yourself a rescue hero if you’re willing to let someone die. You’ll find the hands, removing any incentive Shigaraki has to go back into the water, and then you’ll clear out. You can swim as far as you need to in order to find a populated beach, and once you do, you’ll be able to direct them back here to arrest the League. You track the current around the headland, noting that it forms a small vortex in a recessed area in the rocks. That’s where you’ll find Shigaraki’s hands. He said they were his family’s. What does that mean?

You figure out what it means, the second you find the first one. You pick it up out of the jagged rocks underwater and recoil, dropping it instantly. It’s not a model hand, like you thought when you saw him on TV. It’s a real, embalmed human hand, smaller than yours. It looks like it belonged to a little kid, and a surge of guilt travels through you, mixed in with frustration. You’re not the crazy one. Shigaraki’s the crazy one, for wearing his family’s embalmed hands all over himself all the time. It’s not weird at all for you to not want to touch a little kid’s embalmed hand.

But there’s something sad amidst the awfulness of it all, and whoever’s hand this was, it deserves better from you than just being pitched into the water because you got the ick. You retrieve it again, grimacing. Diving for embalmed hands is one thing, but the longer you stay underwater, the harder it becomes to resist your quirk’s transformation. The sooner you finish this, the better.

It takes you two trips to collect all the hands. Shigaraki wades out into the water to take them from you, but rather than putting them back on, he carries them past the high-tide line and dumps them in the sand. “You found all of them,” he says to you, and you nod. “I didn’t think you could do it.”

That’s neither a thank-you or a compliment, but you expect exactly none of that from a villain. And now’s your moment – Shigaraki’s up on the sand, the others are distracted, and nobody will be able to catch you once you cross the drop-off. “Stay out of the water,” you say, and as Shigaraki’s opening his mouth to respond, you turn and dive back in, swimming hard for the open sea.

This time, you let the transformation kick in, and it’s a relief. Each kick propels you through the water at speed, and you watch the seafloor fall away beneath you. You’ll swim a circuit of the island, figure out where you are, and take off. With luck, you’ll reach land way before the League decides to call cut on their beach episode.

In the water, with your transformation mostly complete, you can see everything, and although sound is muffled underwater, your dorsal and flank fins can pick up vibrations, giving you a heads-up for any sound or movement. But you don’t need your fins to pick up the flailing and thrashing that’s going on behind you. Someone’s in distress, and you have a bad feeling about who. You’re right. When you glance reluctantly over your shoulder, you find Shigaraki, just past the drop-off and sinking fast.

It’s not a question of what you’ll do next, no matter how frustrated you are. You breach the surface, suck down a new lungful of air, and swim back to shore.

The salt water must be stinging Shigaraki’s eyes, but he’s got them open, and when he sees you, they widen even further in shock. You know what he’s looking at, know that the natural response is to flinch back – but he doesn’t. Instead he reaches up for you. there’s nothing you can do but dodge his hands, wrap your arms around him, and pull him back to the surface for the third time today.

He’s gasping, coughing, but you don’t have the patience to wait for him to catch his breath. “Are you crazy? What was that about?” The answer occurs to you, and your frustration explodes. “Did you seriously try to drown yourself so I’d have to come back?”

“It worked,” Shigaraki says. You count to ten and remind yourself that you’re a rescue hero, just so you won’t drop him back in the water and let him sink. “You’re a rescue hero. You have to save people who need help. And I need help, so –”

“You’re going to keep drowning yourself so I can’t leave.”

“Or,” Shigaraki says, “you can teach me to swim.”

“I thought you didn’t want a swim lesson,” you say. “What changed your mind?”

“Seems like something I should know,” Shigaraki says. He shrugs. “And I’d be a dumbass to turn down swim lessons from a mermaid.”

You don’t like being called a mermaid, but at the same time, you know you’re not beating the allegations. When your quirk is fully activated, it transforms your legs into a long tail, complete with multiple sets of fins. It sprouts webbing between your fingers, lengthens your ears, changes the structure of your eyes. If you stayed under long enough, you’d probably sprout gills. You don’t look like a Disney mermaid, but mermaid is still what people see when they look at you when your quirk is on full blast. You’d never have let it get this far if you thought you might have to come back.

Shigaraki’s legs brush against one of your pectoral fins, and you clamp down on a shiver. This is why you never transform fully at work. Worse, you’re breaking protocol – you’re never supposed to hold victims face to face, and you’re definitely not supposed to let them wrap their arms around you like Shigaraki is doing right now. He’s getting weirdly familiar for somebody who’s so against being touched. “I’ll teach you to swim, and then what? You’ll let me go?”

“Maybe.” Shigaraki shrugs. “If you help me out, I won’t have a good reason to kill you.”

That might be the best you’ll get. For now. Once he knows how to float, you’re bailing out. “Fine. I’ll teach you.”

Shigaraki looks pleased. Not smug, like you’d expect – just pleased. “Okay. What do I do first?”

“Get back on land,” you say, “and find a swimsuit. I’m not teaching you in your clothes.”

Shigaraki’s suspicious at first, enough to remind you that he’ll just go over the drop-off if you try to escape again, and you react the same way he does when you remind him not to grab you. He heads up the beach, towards the surf shack Mr. Compress – the brown-haired guy you couldn’t place before – must have stolen. Meanwhile, you work on getting yourself out of the surf. Your quirk won’t start to deactivate until you’re clear of the water, and to teach a normal person to swim, it helps to be working with the same equipment as they are.

You use the waves as much as you can, but eventually it’s just you and the wet sand, and your tail is so heavy that you’re reduced to hauling out on the beach like a seal. It looks stupid. You look stupid, and all you can do is hope that the League of Villains is looking the other way. They aren’t. Shigaraki might be off looking for a swimsuit, but the other five are all staring your way.

It doesn’t take long for you to lose patience. “What?”

They ignore you. “I knew we grabbed the right one,” Toga says, gleeful. “We got Tomura-kun a mermaid!”

Dabi is nodding, a smirk on his face. “This is perfect. She’s gonna keep him busy all day long.”

“I’d be busy forever. Look how pretty her tail is –”

You flop back in the sand, staring up at the sky. Not only are you going to have to teach Shigaraki to swim, you’re going to have to do it while being stared at like you’re an animal in a zoo – and if you try to escape, Shigaraki will try to drown himself just to make you come back. This is going to be the worst beach episode ever. At least for you.

Terzanelle, Tierce for short. You aren’t like the other characters. You’re better. Tomura likes your design — cute, but edgy and kind of frayed, and your ascended form leans more to eldritch monster than fairy princess — and more than that, he likes your attitude. He likes that you aren’t sweet and forgiving, that you’re not afraid to get violent to protect your friends. The other characters stick to killing demons. In Volume Three, you introduce yourself by killing a guy who kicks a dog. Which is exactly what Tomura would do if he saw the same thing. As soon as he read that chapter, he knew you were special. You get cooler with every chapter he reads.

There’s not much official merch of you, but there’s going to be more soon — they always make more when there’s an anime adaptation coming out. Tomura has all the official stuff, plus all the unofficial stuff that’s any good, including a stupid-cute chibi plush that sits next to his computer and a body pillow that lives under his bed whenever he’s not sleeping on it. He feels weird about hiding you. He also feels weird about how many times he’s washed the cover on the pillow. At some point he’s going to have to buy a new one.

Tomura would talk to people online about you more if any of them weren’t stupid, but most of them are. Most of them also haven’t actually read the manga, if the sheer idiocy of their takes is anything to go by. They’re fun to argue with sometimes. Tomura tells himself it’s practice for arguing with heroes and idiots who like them — they’re going to be just as overemotional, just as guilt-trippy, mostly impossible to reason with. He’s got an argument running right now, over on one of the few servers he hasn’t been banned from yet, and he just got a notification.

Tomura checks it and feels his face heat up, his blood start to boil. He left this asshole a solid response to their points. He cited his sources, for fuck’s sake. And how did they respond? bro quit caping so hard for tierce. she’s not gonna fuck you.

no shit. she’s fictional, Tomura shoots back. He rolls out of bed and heads to his computer. It’s easier to kick someone’s ass from there. is that really the best you can do? grow up.

don’t get all high and mighty. we all know you selfship with her. which is hilarious because you’re some weird dude and she’s canonically queer

according to what evidence? just because YOU’RE gay and want her to be gay too doesn’t make it canon. The thought makes Tomura feel sick. don’t come at me about canon. you’re the one who draws her with giant tits.

who are you, the fanart police? I can draw her how i want

yeah, sure, but it’s not canon. neither is her being gay.

homophobe

fuck off. i never said she couldn’t be bi. If you’re bi, Tomura still has a shot. Or he would. If you were real. Which you aren’t. This is stupid. there’s more evidence for her being bi than there is for her being gay or straight. you’d know that if you weren’t an illiterate biphobe.

woooow. The typing banner appears at the bottom of the screen, hovering for a while. the trailer just dropped. later loser.

Fuck. Tomura can finish fighting with this jackass later. He navigates to YouTube and refreshes his screen, and sure enough, there it is. ARS POETICA, Trailer #1. Tomura clicks on it and turns up the volume.

He doesn’t hate the theme song. That’s a good sign. The animation looks solid, too. Pretty fluid, which is promising, given how important the fight scenes are. You’re not in it as much as he thinks you should be, but on the forums everyone was speculating that Season 1 will only cover the first few volumes, and a lot of the stuff you do counts as a spoiler. The series is about to pick up a ton of anime-only fans. Tomura can live with that as long as some of them are decent artists and writers. He’s read almost all the fic that’s been written about you, and it’s such a wasteland that he’s this close to writing his own.

You show up in the latter half of the trailer, during a short-clips montage of the Poetesses in battle. There’s Sestina, Tanka, Villanelle, Madrigal, you. Ahead of the main character’s rival, right before Sonnet, the fucking main character. A grin breaks across Tomura’s face as he imagines half the Discord server losing their shit at you ranking above Madrigal, even though the goddamn narrative couldn’t be clearer about who the secondary protagonist is. He’s got a meme for this. He finds it, sticks it in the reactions channel, and plays back the trailer again.

You don’t have any lines, so he can’t form an opinion about your voice actor yet. He’s got the voice he imagines for you, but he could see someone going the other way with your character, making you slutty or making you shy. You aren’t either one. You’re perfect. They’ll get your voice right, hopefully, and then Tomura’s fantasies will have a ton of new material. So much new material that it’s going to be hard to fantasize about anything else, killing All Might included.

That sounds stupid — Tomura getting distracted from his single purpose in life by his crush on a fictional girl. Tomura needs to get his shit together before Sensei finds out about any of this, or about how far it’s gotten. And maybe he already has. A notification pops up on the side of Tomura’s screen, letting him know that his preorder for Volume 13 — which was supposed to get here today — has been cancelled.

What the fuck? Tomura clicks on the notification, trying to figure out how it happened, but there’s nothing. It’s not a declined payment. It’s not a declined delivery. Just — canceled. The fuck. That’s the last thing Tomura wanted to happen today. He was going to watch the trailer, and then he was going to figure out what happens next in the story. There’s no way you’re dead. Sure, the last volume ends with you fully ascended, throwing yourself into battle against an Arbiter who looked way more invulnerable before you powered up, and sure, it hard-cuts into a completely black page — but you’re not dead. You can’t be dead, because if you are, Tomura’s going to lose his shit.

Tomura almost Decays his monitor in frustration, then orders himself to get it together. You’re not dead. It would make no sense for the story, and there’s no way they’d have killed two other less important characters right before you if they were going to kill you off. And it doesn’t matter that his order got canceled. He can just disguise himself and go buy one.

Right. That’ll help. Tomura watches the trailer for the anime one more time, then gets dressed, putting on pants and a shirt and a hoodie and a mask to cover the lower half of his face. He doesn’t tell Kurogiri he’s going out, because he doesn’t have to — Sensei will be able to see it. A trip to the bookstore. Maybe a stop at the conbini for food. It’ll be fine. Tomura will find out what happens to you next and then he’ll feel better.

He’s got his hand on the doorknob when a strange hum and pulse runs through the air. Sometimes Kurogiri’s warp gates feel like that — but before Tomura can get any further into that thought, he hears something. A jagged, staticky sound, somewhere between nails on a chalkboard and a tv on the fritz and the world’s rustiest zipper pulling open. Kurogiri’s gates don’t sound like that. They don’t make Tomura’s skin crawl.

It’s emanating from somewhere behind Tomura. He lets go of the doorknob and turns around, just in time to watch something — or someone — fall through his ceiling.

For a second he thinks he’s imagining it. Then you hit his desk, somehow missing his monitor and keyboard but taking out everything else in the process. Books, mouse, mousepad, box of tissues, figurines — it all hits the floor, and so does something else, falling from your hand and skidding across the floor towards Tomura. Tomura leaps backwards on instinct, way before he decides to risk a second look.

It’s a weapon. The faint light from Tomura’s monitor and the faint light seeping in through the cracked-open door catch and reflect off of one blade each.

A double-bladed scythe. Not the replica one Tomura has hanging on the wall across from his bed. That one’s human-sized, and this one looks exactly like it, except — “Holy fuck,” Tomura says, and across the room, you slide off his desk and crumple to the floor. “You aren’t — are you —”

Whatever you are, you’re not conscious. Your face is obscured by a white tragedy mask, spattered with blood, and your overlong limbs are swathed in ragged grey and black fabric. Your ascended form is canonically taller than your human one, and Tomura can definitely tell. You’d be way taller than him if you were on your feet, but you’re not. You’re not moving. Your chest barely rises and falls. As Tomura watches, pieces of fabric begin to disintegrate away from you. Your body begins to shrink back to a normal size, your hands untwisting from clawed talons into ordinary hands with blackened fingertips. Maybe the ceiling fell on Tomura and he died or something. Because there’s no fucking way his favorite character just dropped through a portal into his bedroom. What the hell kind of manga plotline is this?

The manga doesn’t skimp on the transformation scenes. They’re always drawn in detail, which means Tomura knows what it looks like when a Poetess sheds their ascended form, and it doesn’t look like this. You’re fraying at the edges, your ascended form peeling away until all you’re wearing is shreds of the uniform you were wearing when you went into battle. Tomura averts his eyes in a hurry. No matter how much horny fanart he’s seen — or bought — of you, looking at you in person feels different. He looks at your face instead, watching as a web of cracks spread across the blood-spattered tragedy mask until it crumbles away.

The same blood that was on the mask is on your face, too. And it is your face. Tomura’s seen people draw you in a realistic style, and they nailed it. Which is pretty unfortunate for Tomura, because you’re even hotter in real life. It’s a good thing you’re unconscious. He needs as much time as possible to get his shit together.

It’s a good thing you’re unconscious? What the fuck is wrong with Tomura? You’re in bad shape. There’s blood on your face and on what’s left of your clothes, and whether it’s yours or not, Tomura knows what happened to you in the last panels of Volume 12. He doesn’t want you to stay unconscious. He needs to wake you up. And he needs to be careful about how he does it, or you might kill him. You’ve been fighting a war against the Arbiters, and all of them are men. Tomura doesn’t want you to think he’s out to get you.

He needs to wake you up, and he needs you to stop being half-naked in his room. Tomura goes looking for a clean blanket, can’t find one, debates finding a towel, and finally just strips off his hoodie. It’s oversized. If he arranges it right, it covers everything he’s not supposed to be looking at. And then he’s not sure what to do. How is he supposed to wake you up?

Some stupid part of his brain is saying to kiss you. If he fell through the ceiling into your room and you woke him up from unconsciousness by kissing him, he’d be hyped to the point where he’d probably pass out again. Then again, you’re his favorite character, and he’s a guy. It’s probably different for a girl, and Tomura’s life isn’t a fucking fairytale. Tomura reaches for your hand instead.

There’s a lot of stupid discourse online about your hands and whether they’d be creepy and offputting in real life, but Tomura’s kind of an expert on creepy and offputting hands, and your blackened, claw-nailed fingers don’t even register. Your hand is warm. Your fingers are callused but still soft, and for a moment, when they wrap loosely around Tomura’s palm, Tomura thinks his heart might actually stop.

Then your grip tightens. Your eyes fly open. You yank your hand free of Tomura’s and scramble backwards, colliding with his desk. You try to get up, but you stagger, and Tomura’s hoodie falls down. Tomura’s face heats up in a flash. He looks away.

“Look at me,” you say. The voice Tomura imagined for you in his head fits almost perfectly. He’s read fics where you’re bossy, and it’s always hot, but for once in his life he and his dick can both agree that this isn’t the time to pop a boner. “Who are you? Where are we?”

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Tomura asks. He’s being careful with which part of you he looks at. He’s not into feet, but yours are cute. Your ankles, too. And your calves, and your knees —

You seize his chin and tilt his face up to meet your eyes. Tomura’s pretty sure his whole face goes up in flames. “I’m asking the questions here,” you say. “Who are you? Where are we?”

“Japan,” Tomura says, and for a moment, your expression relaxes. “Not the same Japan you’re from.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“I mean —” Tomura doesn’t really know a good way to put it. “I can answer better if you stop touching me.”

You hold on. “Who are you?”

“I’m Shigaraki. Tomura. Shigaraki Tomura.” Shigaraki Tomura, otaku dumbass. All Tomura can do is pray that the energy surge from whatever portal you fell through shorted out Sensei’s cameras. “And you’re Tierce.”

You let go of him, maybe in shock. Or maybe not — your face has gone ashen under the spray of blood, and you’re losing your balance. You fall back against Tomura’s desk, hard, then slump sideways to the ground. Tomura reaches out to you on instinct and you snarl at him. “Don’t touch me. How did I get here?”

“There was a portal. You fell through it.” Tomura points up at the ceiling. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

“How do you know my name?” you demand. “What else do you know about me?”

“Uh —” Tomura doesn’t know where to start, really. Has he fantasized about you showing up in his bedroom? Yes. Were you freaking out and maybe injured in those fantasies? Definitely not. “You know how I said this isn’t your Japan? I said that because I know you from a manga.”

You look blankly at him. Tomura knows you know what manga is. He’s seen panels of you reading it. A running joke is that you’re either reading hardcore horror manga that gives the students nightmares or the kind of shojo fluff that even they find hard to swallow. But since he knows you read manga — “I think you got isekaied.”

“Isekai?” Your expression turns from confused to sickened, despairing. “No. I can’t. I didn’t — don’t lie to me!”

“I’m not! Wait here.” Tomura backs away from you, keeping his hands in full view, and pulls Volume 12 off his shelf. He holds it out to you, but you won’t take it. Finally Tomura just starts flipping the pages. “Look. Here’s the last chapter. How much of this do you — remember —”

Now you want the book. You flip through it faster than Tomura did, your fingernails scratching against the pages without tearing them, and when you hit one page, you freeze. Tomura risks coming closer and peers over your shoulder. He has a bad feeling, and he’s right. You’re looking at the page where Triolet dies.

You love all the students, but you’re extra close to Sonnet and Triolet. Sonnet you get shipped with. Triolet is like your little sister, and you’ve already got a serious dose of sister trauma after watching your older sister die. You still remember something, even though the headmistress wiped your memory. Is that in this volume? No, it was in volume 10 — but it flashes back to it here. The splash of blood drying across your face is Triolet’s, and it’s in the same place as your older sister’s blood was when you were just a kid.

When Volume 12 came out, people were assholes about it, about you. Most of them said you had no reason to go crazy like you did, to use your ascended form and your full powers even though you can’t control them. Tomura was on your side, like he’s always on your side, but he’s starting to think that it had consequences. Your powers are canonically lethal when released, even in small doses. Unleashing all of them like you did, at one target — and then the black page — Tomura’s pretty sure you didn’t get isekaied by somebody else. You ripped a hole in your own dimension and fell headfirst into Tomura’s.

What happened afterwards? Tomura really needs to get ahold of Volume 13 and figure it out. Volume 12 falls from your hands. You draw your knees up to your chest, wrap your arms around them, and turn your head away. “Hey,” Tomura says. You don’t stir. “Tierce? Uh, Terzanelle?”

You don’t answer. When Tomura shakes your shoulder, you don’t lash out at him again, but your total lack of a response might actually be worse. Your skin is clammy and cold, and Tomura sees scrapes and bruises all over you, maybe from the battle, maybe from your fall through his ceiling. What is Tomura even supposed to do? Most of the Tierce fic he’s read has you comforting the reader. Not the other way around.

Maybe the stuff you’d find comforting is the same stuff you do for other people. You took care of the students after the school was attacked in Volume 6. Tomura doesn’t need to refer back to it to know what to do, not when he’s got the entire manga basically memorized. He leaves you alone for a second and calls for Kurogiri.

Kurogiri shows up right away. It’s hard to shock him, but he double-takes at the sight of you in the wreckage of Tomura’s desk. “Don’t ask,” Tomura says. “I need some stuff.”

“Such as?”

Tomura has your character sheet memorized, too. He rattles off your favorite food, favorite drink, favorite stim toy — he always thought it was weird that the sheet included that, but maybe it’ll help — and your favorite color. “She needs a blanket,” he continues, and Kurogiri nods. “And clothes.”

“What size?”

Shit. Tomura glances back at you, realizing that your character sheet never specified height or weight for your regular human form, even though it went out of its way to mention that your ascended form is taller than Sensei. “Just get it big. Too big is easier to fix than too small.”

“Would she not rather have clothes that fit?”

“Girls don’t like tight stuff when they feel bad,” Tomura says. Kurogiri’s giving him a really weird look, but a lot of Ars Poetica fans are girls, so he’s spent a lot of time interacting with them online. They argue just as much as guys do, just about different stuff. Tight clothes being the opposite of comforting is one thing they can mostly agree on — that, and that taking a bra off after a long day is better than sex. Are you wearing a bra? Do you need one? Tomura was trying so hard not to look at you that he didn’t check.

“Shigaraki Tomura,” Kurogiri prompts. “Was there anything else?”

Tomura has to stop thinking about your breasts. “Only get soft stuff. But it can’t be heavy. It’s too warm in here anyway.”

Kurogiri reaches over and turns on the fan. “I will adjust the thermostat as well,” he says. “I’m aware that you said not to ask, but — that is her, yes? Your favorite character?”

“Yeah,” Tomura says. He’s still way too giddy about it given that you’re in bad shape and you probably haven’t ruled out killing him. “That’s her. I’m just going to go — uh —”

What is Tomura going to do? He’s being yanked back towards you like you’re a magnet or something, but he also doesn’t trust himself not to act like a creepy loser. Maybe he should get you a first-aid kit so you can clean up your injuries. You probably don’t want him to help you. Tomura has a lot of questions he wants to ask. He just doesn’t know where to start. Or if you even want to talk to him at all.

Kurogiri brings the blanket first, in your favorite color. Tomura brings it over to you, trying to make noise so you won’t be caught by surprise. You don’t look up or reach for it, but you’re shivering, so Tomura shakes it out and unfolds it around your shoulders. After hesitating for a second, he tucks it in a little tighter.

Nothing. You’re pretty far gone. Tomura can relate, even if he’s not sure how, and if he were you, he’d want the blood off his face as fast as possible. It’s already starting to dry. Tomura finds a clean tissue somewhere, spits on it to get it wet, and starts trying to wipe the blood off your forehead. He wants you to move, or say something, but you don’t. You sit there, still and silent, and Tomura doesn’t know what to do except keep going.

Part of him is still freaking out over you being real, you being here. Kurogiri saw you, too. Recognized you. Tomura knows it’s not a dream. But you’re not a character anymore. You’re a real person, and you’re not acting like you do in the isekai fanfiction Tomura’s read — you’re reacting like a normal person would react to waking up in somebody else’s world. Reacting like somebody that something bad just happened to. In your spot, Tomura would probably —

The thought interrupts itself. Tomura frowns, and while he’s trying to reorient himself, you speak up. “You can stop.”

Your voice is quiet, rough. It sends a chill down Tomura’s spine — or maybe that’s from the warmth of your breath against his wrist. “Huh?”

“You can stop,” you say again. “I don’t need someone to take care of me.”

You’ve said that in the manga before. Tomura can probably name every panel where you’ve said it, because people like taking screen grabs and captioning them “me when I lie.” He’s not going to lie and say he hasn’t thought about how he’d respond if he heard you say it, but none of the responses he imagined feel like the right one. Tomura can imagine saying it, too. What would he want to hear?

He defaults back to some x reader fic where you comfort a person you just rescued from a chaotic apparition. “Okay. I’m here, though. So you might as well let me.”

You don’t say anything else, but you don’t swat his hand away. Tomura goes back to wiping blood off your face, trying not to have an orgasm over the fact that you’re real, that you’re here, that you’re letting him touch you. There should be way more fics about getting to comfort you. It’s nice. Nice to know that he’s helping someone for once. Nice to feel like —

Kurogiri comes back with clothes for you, and food. Tomura’s gotten the blood off your face by then. He sends Kurogiri for a first-aid kit, then spends a while facing the wall while you change clothes. When he looks back, you’re dressed in oversized sweatpants and a big shirt — and over that, you’re putting on Tomura’s hoodie. Nope. “You should eat something,” Tomura says, standing up. Standing up was a mistake. “I have to — go.”

“Where?”

“I have to, uh — take care of something.” Right now. It’s urgent. “I’ll be right back.”

Back in five seconds or less, probably. Tomura locks the door of the bathroom down the hall and shoves his hand down his pants.

He’s always felt kind of weird about jerking off to you. Weird in a way it’s not for other characters he’s been into. Tomura’s into you about eighty times worse than he’s been into anybody else, but every time he tries to jerk off to you, it doesn’t work. It works, but it doesn’t work, because every five seconds Tomura questions himself about it. Would your voice sound like that? How would your hands really feel? Are you insecure about the stuff the fandom thinks you’d be insecure about, the stuff Tomura would make sure he paid attention to? Jerking off to you never felt satisfying, because he never had the details. And now he does — enough of them, at least, because he barely manages to get his pants pulled down in time to avoid getting cum all over them.

Tomura leans back against the door. He feels better. He also feels like an asshole. You’re having a really shitty day, and you don’t really know where you are, and he left you in his messy room so he could go jerk off to you. Tomura’s acting like an S-tier, grade-A creep. Exactly like the kind of Tierce fan he hates.

Fuck. Tomura needs to get it together. He washes his hands, makes sure his pants are zipped, and heads back to his room.

You’re not where he left you. You’re on your feet, turning Tomura’s room upside down like you’re looking for something. You aren’t looking at Tomura’s collection of Ars Poetica merch, but you’ve definitely seen it, because most of it is scattered across his bed. Figures, keychains, plushies. Doujinshi included. The only thing you haven’t found is the body pillow.

You’ll get there soon if he doesn’t stop you. “What are you doing?”

You turn to face him, and Tomura feels a jolt straight down his spine. People who don’t like you in the fandom say you’re inconsistent, that you’re normal one second and nightmarish the next, but Tomura always found it easy to believe – and he was right. But there’s something different about actually looking at it, seeing the coldness in your eyes, seeing the way your clawed hands shift at your sides. It’s spooky. Tomura’s not looking at some soft, sweet magical girl who loves everybody and wants to save the world. He’s looking at –

A monster. The instant Tomura has the thought, he hates himself for it – but he doesn’t have to have it for long. “The artifact,” you say, and you close the distance between you and Tomura in a single step, shoving him through the door and pinning him back against the opposite wall. “Where is it?”

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