#manicvoice

¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯  Monoma Neito spent his lunch period goading 1-A into an argument that grew loud enough the entire cafeteria could hear. Shinsou’s tolerance strained under the pressure of their petty squabbles, but he endured. Aoyama Yuga admitted jokingly to failing a test in the hallway. His classmates laughed along as Shinsou strode passed, his jaw tight enough the tension pooled in his skull. He’d experienced worse.

¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ “-spotted in Roppongi-” “Shouta, you have to distance yourself from this. It’s not healthy to obsess-” “You’re telling me you haven’t had your ear to the ground?”

Shinsou kept out of sight, quiet as a churchmouse, caught between the urge to make his presence known and the need to hear as much as he could. His curiosity won out, inevitably, burned at the tips of his fingers.

“So what are you going to do? Go look for him yourself and do what, exactly? He’s a little past the point of saving.” “I need to know, Nemuri.” “Let the police handle it. Or a different Hero. It doesn’t have to be you.” Midnight was usually boisterous and loud and excitable. Shinsou found subdued to be interesting, if sad. “It shouldn’t be you.” There was silence, breath. Shinsou heard his own heart thump in his ears, almost too loud. “Dammit.. Goddammit.” And then there was nothing.

¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ Mineta Minoru murmured something beneath his breath about a girl passing on the campus green. Shinsou didn’t hear, but there was no need. The corners of her mouth pinched off whatever she wished to say in response, her eyes already resigned to letting it slide. His patience shredded and crystallized into fine, sharp pieces. Resentment coiled in its place.

¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ Two weeks Shinsou scrounged through every online forum he could find, every hidden and half-coded message board dedicated to where to go if you don’t want to be found, his searches filtered through a half-dozen different proxy services he needed whole manuals just to figure out. But he dug up a few names, a couple of addresses, places to go if he wanted to discuss things he shouldn’t discuss with people uninterested in his well-being. Villain territory.

Not that he knew anything about Present Mic. Not that there was anything more substantial than a few slippery rumors and half-truths from their teachers. But what the hell else could have come to light?  Shinsou watched Aizawa skulk through their stagnating training and felt the emptiness yawning in his every move, felt it tugging at the edges of his Quirk. Make him tell, make him tell, it could be so easy.

¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯  It was hard work and sleepless nights that pointed him to the right area, but it was sheer luck that he found his target at all. Heroes needed time off... It only made sense Villains would, as well. Roppongi hosted everything for everybody, and nestled amidst the night clubs and drag bars were four places Shinsou pinned down. 

He found Present Mic at the first. Serendipity. Or an ill omen. He couldn’t decide, but the adrenaline rush of using his Quirk on the bouncer followed by the immediate oh, shit of discovery rolled his stomach hard enough he felt it at the back of his throat.

He was there. Too late to go back. He looks smaller without his hair up. Naturally. And like a completely different person hunched over one end of the bar, folded over whatever he drank rather than waving his hands through the air in the middle of lecture on past participles.

It didn’t make him any more approachable. A dark sense of foreboding settled in Shinsou’s chest instead, but he no longer had the choice of turning back. He yanked his hood further around his face, wiped his sweating palms on the thighs of his jeans, and shoved himself to the empty seat at Present Mic’s side.

Well. This was it. Shinsou pulled a carefully-folded scrap of paper from the pocket of his jacket, slid it across the bartop, and pointedly fisted his other hand atop his knee to stop his nerves from bouncing it.

“Turning you in would be just as detrimental to me,” scrawled in his quick handwriting, picked from a thousand and one phrases he thought would best guarantee he got out of this intact. Maybe. Hopefully.