#mlaweek2020

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ORGANIZATION

Grand Commander: Destro and Destro’s line of descendants.

The First Families: Those who fought at Destro’s side and escaped to continue the fight, and their descendants.  Veritably all high-ranked within the MLA, their tie to the original incarnation of the Army marks them as elites, whether or not their quirks would do so otherwise. The elders of the First Families do a certain amount of collective decision-making when and if the Grand Commander is unable to do so and has left orders otherwise.

Sanctum: “Sanctum” is a special position in the Army.  The name denotes the person who’s tasked with remembering the MLA’s history, practices and lore—the position is considered contiguous, so even when someone is new to the name, they’re still considered “the longest-serving member of the Liberation Army.”.  When they’re getting on in years, they select an appropriate protégé, to whom the name will pass upon their death/capture.  The name must always go to a member of the First Families (though in truth, they’re only on their third one, so it’s more of a pattern so far than a hard rule).

Commanders & Lieutenants: People in charge of major operations, liberated districts, etc. Frequently, though not always, members of the First Families.  Have discretion over their own assignments, but may not have much influence in the Army’s operations on the whole, depending on who they’re connected to otherwise.

Advisors: This title denotes those who are specifically tapped to give advice and aid to the MLA leadership.  Levels of authority vary depending on who they’re advising.  Advisors of lieutenants, if any, are a step above the rank and file, advisors of commanders are about on par with lieutenants, and advisors to the Grand Commander are considered commanders in their own right, regardless of any other rank they may hold.

Rank and File: Pretty much everyone else.

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KNOWN MEMBERS [1]

The original MLA—

Destro: Yotsubashi Chikara.  Established the Meta Liberation Army in his mid-30s in response to the development of what he felt were overly restrictive laws on the usage of meta-abilities. Having observed evidence that meta-abilities grew stronger generationally, he was particularly concerned that no oppressive laws could be enforced by the generation that established them because the next generation would always be more powerful.  Thus, he believed that establishing the use of meta-abilities as a fundamental right was the only way for society to avoid indefinite intergenerational strife.  He was particularly incensed by the government co-opting the message that got his mother murdered to put a pretty, self-congratulatory sheen on laws that did the exact opposite of what she wished for.  Allegedly committed suicide after some months in prison.  The MLA is highly suspicious of this claim—they’re correct to be, but not for the reasons they think.              His quirk, which his entire line would inherit, turns a key emotion into enhanced strength and resilience in the form of a characteristic ink-blot marking.  While it would develop over time, the basic nature of the quirk remained the same. Chikara’s driving emotion was resolve.

Fathom: Destro’s lover, she dedicated a decade of her life after his capture to building up the survivors he’d left behind.  It’s said her son got his drive from Destro, but his anger from Fathom.  Had a large hand in raising her son to be the sort of man he was, particularly in her decision to commit what many considered to be suicide-by-hero when he was in his teens.  A large part of that choice was wrapped up in her never-fully-assuaged grief over Destro’s loss (and, she believed to the end, his murder), but there was also a cold calculation to it—her making a big show of it would lead the police to believe that her attack was the last gasp of the Liberation Army, ending their investigations into MLA activities.  It would also stoke the fires of her son’s rage, honing him into a stronger weapon against their enemies.  Her judgement in both cases proved broadly on-point, though her death did serve to make her son more cautious than she might have hoped.              Meta-Ability: Antennae.  A pair of insectile feelers emerging from her forehead that give her a passel of sensory boosts, particularly in the taste and smell categories, and which also make her able to detect shifts in the air from quite some distance.)

Cascade: A man whose meta-ability lets him turn body parts into loosely controllable masses of water.  Can’t transform fully.  A quick-thinking type able to make hard calls.

Sweeper: A woman with a radio-scanning quirk.  Caught by police in the same fight as Destro.

Sanctum I: The first bearer of the codename.  Had a protective ability of some sort.

Sanctum II’s father: The same quirk as his daughter; see below.  Known for getting some eight people safely out of a police raid by carrying them all out at once despite not actually having superhuman strength of any kind.  (Probably tore several muscles in the process, but adrenaline is a hell of a thing.)

The Second Generation—

Destro’s son: Raised to deeply resent heroes and the government that put them in place, but he was also very cautious of them.  He was profoundly aware that his death would mean the end of the dream that his father had begun and his mother had cultivated, so he was very meticulous in spreading the MLA’s influence underground, rebuilding their numbers before he even began to consider starting to make attacks again.  Destro’s army had been a guerilla force; his son’s would be something much more dangerous.  His driving emotion was anger, and he had two children before being killed by a cerebral aneurysm at 43.  Was able to use his power to make his body larger.

Sanctum II: A woman with an unusual fondness for the traditional Japanese arts, particularly tea ceremony.  Meta-ability: Stride.  Teleport to any location she can directly see by taking a single step forward.   Can take whoever she can carry under her own power. (First Families lineage)

Anchor: An advisor to Destro’s son.  Prominent bull horns.  Meta-ability: Immobilize.  Similar to Lock Rock’s Lockdown quirk, except it only works on his own body.  Very good at wrestling holds (and holding his breath), he tends to fight with backup that can deliver finishing blows to opponents once he has them pinned down.  (First Families lineage)

The Third Generation—

Yotsubashi Kyouyuki: The elder child of Destro’s son.  Deemed an unsuitable Grand Commander for his driving emotion of joy.  Always presented a façade of being cheerful and upbeat, but the ever-present rhetoric that the MLA pushes about the ongoing suppression of quirks and the misery and injustice it leads to left Kyou always struggling with guilt.  In college, it finally got so bad that he resolved to run away, enlisting the help of a friend with a swap-based teleport quirk to get him out of a party undetected. His fate thereafter is a secret that’s been taken to the grave by the MLA members involved in it, but given the typical reactions of illegal underground cults to members wanting to leave, it’s unlikely that he’s living somewhere in happy anonymity.  (Name means Unyielding Happiness, following in his grandfather and nephew's patterns of having characters in their names meaning power/strength.)

Yotsubashi Yukie: The younger child of Destro’s son, and Rikiya’s mother.  With a driving emotion of sorrow, and having been steadily losing family her entire life, Yukie wrestled with depression for most of her life. The presumptive heir to the title of Re-Destro, she spent considerably more time in training than her older brother, but she never much had the temperament for it.  When her father died only a few scant years after Kyouyuki’s disappearance, she expressed her fears that she was incapable of being the leader the Army needed.  This led to her becoming a mother at a relatively young age, continuing the bloodline rather than picking up the banner.  For all her struggles with her grief, Yukie was very determined to at least be there for the son on whom the weight of leadership would fall.  The world of My Hero Academia is a dangerous one, however, particularly before All Might established himself as Japan’s pillar, and Yukie was a casualty of the chaos of a villain attack when Rikiya was ten.  (Name means Glittering Conqueror, ditto the note above about the family pattern for name kanji.)

Rampart: Guardian and general caretaker for Rikiya in his younger years.  Hand-picked for the role by Yukie, who had considered him a close friend since their school days.  Meta-Ability: An earth manipulation power akin to Pixie-Bob’s, though less powerful.  (First Families lineage)

Shinseigi: Trumpet’s uncle, unspecified code name.  Also in politics, though of a more local variety.  Meta-ability: His speaking voice makes listeners suggestible.  (The phonetic pronunciation of his name sounds like “New Justice,” but the kanji are “Sleeping Voice Technique.”)

The Fourth Generation—

Yotsubashi Rikiya: The current Re-Destro (42); CEO and President of Detnerat.  He took up the former title when he was only 6 years old. With the succession of losses that were his uncle, grandfather and mother, the MLA has been fairly careful with him, grooming him with care and rarely leaving him without some form of supervision, be it Rampart when he was young or Trumpet in college.  An extremely dutiful child grown into an urbane man whose good humor disguises a morose—and occasionally volatile—inner character.  Always under a lot of stress (his MRIs are clear so far, though, haha!), but there’s only so much effort dedicated to mitigating that, since stress is his key emotion.  The first in the family line to be able to separate his power from his own body, in the form of his Stress Bomb attack.

Trumpet: Hanabata Koku (44).  One of Rikiya’s advisors and party leader of the Hearts & Minds Party (see below); has known Rikiya since their preteen years.  The Hanabatas were a political family of old, but largely saw those fortunes crash and burn when they started manifesting quirks a few generations into the Advent.  They’ve been clawing their way back into politics ever since and were an early target for the MLA’s project to infiltrate and/or start their own political party.  It was decided very early on that Koku’s quirk and his family connections made him a good choice to groom for leadership of the HMP, so he and Rikiya bonded over their similar positions.  They would go on to attend the same university, during which time they became romantically involved.  In truth, Koku’s university was functionally chosen for him on the basis of which one Rikiya would be attending; the First Families were not about to lose another Yotsubashi to college life.  Koku is more aware of this particular fact than Rikiya.  Still a little wistful about their college days, his opinions regarding Re-Destro’s big starstruck crush on Shigaraki are borderline unprintable.

Sanctum III: Twice’s No. 1 advisor, the dude with the big imperial handlebar moustache and what looks an awful lot like a dress uniform for the Japanese navy.  A few years older than Trumpet.  (First Families lineage)

Curious: Kizuki Chitose (36).  RD advisor and Shoowaysha Publishing Executive Vice President.[2]  From a relatively small liberated district up near Sendai; the MLA connections plus her own profound ambition got her moving very quickly up the MLA chain of command. Daughter of a wlw couple; got her blue skin from her bio mom.  One younger sibling, a sister.  Masterminded the dinners we see the group having in Chapter 218, originally to make sure Rikiya was getting at least one well-apportioned meal a week and a chance to socialize with the closest thing he has to peers, but also because it proved to be an invaluable opportunity to swap information and rumors.

Skeptic: Chikazoku Tomoyasu (31).  RD advisor and Feel Good Inc. board member.  On the bottom end of the generation age-wise, a prodigy in every sense save his broadly terrible people skills.  Recognizes Rikiya’s stress tells because he shares several of them himself, and is also the only person of Rikiya’s generation with the confidence to verbally push him around a bit.  It’s regarded as borderline scandalous by their elders, but Rikiya himself finds it bracing, and anyway, Skeptic’s ability to organize a schedule for maximum efficiency is nothing less than miraculous.  Got Rikiya onto fidget toys.

Toryu:  Toryu is the family name of Galvanize (aka Taser Face aka Kaminari’s Dad).  Mr. Compress’s No. 1, the dude who strolls out onto the lawn after Cementoss rips the hotel a new one and immediately gets his smarm repackaged and returned to sender by Kaminari and Edgeshot.  Great for morale before that, though!  In Rikiya’s age group, his mother’s side of the family (from which he gets the electricity powers) has been in the Army for at least as far back as her school days. (The name comes from the characters for leaping/rising and current/flow.)

Slidin’ Go: Tokoname Tatsuyuki (37).  He’s Slidin’ Go!  Skeptic’s No. 2, possibly because Slidin’ Go strongly resembles the puppets Skeptic is so used to barking orders at and there’s comfort in familiarity.

Aozono: Family name for another of Rikiya’s childhood peers, nothing is known but that green skin runs in the family as far back as her father.  May or may not be related to Curious’s family.

The Fifth Generation—

Geten: Real name unknown.  Family status unknown.  Age unknown, but I’d peg him in the 18-23 area.  Seems to be allowed to attend the weekly dinners without contributing anything but his incredibly terrible table manners.  Can talk an impassioned game about the Liberation Army’s goals (though he pushes the quirk supremacy line a good deal harder than anyone else in the Army is shown to; it’s not even close), but it’s fairly clear that he’s more personally dedicated to Re-Destro than he is the MLA’s cause in and of itself.  I’ll be honest; I have no idea what Geten’s deal is. My tentative headcanon is that he’s an orphan—the English meaning of his name, Apocrypha, refers to sacred writings of uncertain authorship/authenticity—who’s in some kind of Batman-and-Robin guardian-and-ward situation with Re-Destro, but I didn’t wind up writing enough about him to come up with much beyond that.

Nimble: Spinner’s No. 1, the woman with the weird paper-strip-esque hair who doesn’t seem to be in possession of a nose or mouth.  (She absorbs air through her skin like a frog, which is why no one has ever seen her with that sweater covering both of her shoulders.)  Nimble is a friendly sort, though she regards her outgoing good cheer as being a simple matter of social networking.  Ambitious, but sensible about it.                Meta-ability: Sky Write.  Allows her to project letters and pictures into the air around her, giving her a way to communicate she would have otherwise lacked.  She can create words in air she can’t see, but it takes some concentration, and the closer the better.

Scarecrow: Spinner’s No. 2, 21 years old.  Born with amelia (see link in Day Two’s author’s notes) that disfigured his face and severed his arms in the womb.  His quirk-based forelegs—a pair of spider legs emerging from his shoulders—can do a certain amount of basic object manipulation, but it tends to wig people out, so they push him to use his prosthetics like he’s “supposed” to (see Stray Notes section for more on this).  He was viciously angry about it even as a kid, and his parents were frustrated, making them easy pickings for cult indoctrination.  A family friend recommended that they look into Detnerat, where it wasn’t long before Re-Destro himself took an interest in their situation (or at least in making a good impression on them).  Scarecrow joined the Army as quickly as he was allowed to—16.              Meta-ability: Webbing.  The bug legs can project silk like a webspinner (the insect on which he’s based), allowing him to do anything you might broadly understand Spider-Man to be able to do with his webbing, though he certainly lacks Spider-Man’s strength.

Red: Named in passing in the manga, he’s the laid-back dude with the fluffy hair who serves as Skeptic’s No. 1 post-merger.  Probably invaluable in helping Skeptic maintain what bare vestiges of chill he can muster.  (First Families lineage)

The Sixth Generation—

Every child currently under the age of 10 being raised in MLA households with a picture of Destro over the mantle.  It’s not a small number, representing a group that neither the fandom nor the Hero Commission seem to have even realized exist.

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CORE TENETS & THE MATTER OF QUIRK SUPREMACY

Re-Destro is not (contrary to popular fandom belief) in favor of full-throated, might-makes-right, survival of the fittest Quirk Darwinism.[3]  Destro’s will was for people to be able to use their meta-abilities as they saw fit to the extent that that freedom did not interfere with the freedoms of others. He was against the regulation of meta-abilities, but he was not—to the best of our knowledge—against the regulation of crime.  His belief was that one murderer with a fire ability killing people did not justify barring everyone else with fire abilities from using those powers to fire clay, start campfires, engage in fire-themed performance art, use fire to char wood in artistic patterns for money, help park rangers set and direct controlled burns, coordinate explosions for the movie industry, light cigarettes in public, or any other of dozens of possible uses for a fire ability that don’t involve burning people alive.

The MLA do believe that meta-abilities have an impact on one’s personality, but they also believe that that’s okay; that it should be understood and accepted, not feared and repressed—Curious would not have wanted to turn Toga into a tragedy about the consequences of repression if she didn’t think that a spree of bloodletting murders was a tragedy.  Their belief as an organization is that people should be free to use their powers as they see fit in the same way that they would any other natural talent or cultivated skill.  They believe that people will, if free to do so, naturally gravitate to ways of improving their own lot in life via use of their meta-abilities.

Freedom from regulation and freedom from discrimination—these are the core tenets that the vast majority of the rank and file hold to.  A great many of them are laborers, blue collar types who just want to be able to better support themselves and their families.  Many others are those who suffered discrimination because of their quirks and want better for both themselves and their children.  Of course, the further back their connections go, the more likely they are to both be higher-ranked in the cult (with attendant greater resources) and to have grown up soaking in generations’ worth of resentment, groupthink, and radicalism.

Geten, a particularly virulent and single-minded MLA attack dog, has parsed the tenets to mean that people with strong, well-trained meta-abilities will naturally be able to use their powers to do more and raise their status in the MLA’s ideal society, and thus that those who can’t or don’t choose to will not be able to live lives that Geten personally thinks are worth living.  Likewise, Trumpet doesn’t fault Spinner only for his weak ability, but also for his anti-social tendencies.  Of course a politician who’s deeply invested in a narrative of people uniting to throw off their chains and better themselves would be disdainful of someone who locked himself in his bedroom for years and emerged only to violently lash out at society.  (Spinner’s right to call Trumpet a huge hypocrite on this, mind; terrorist cult members have no business lecturing other terrorists about the correct way to violently reform society.)

The MLA does have a problem with quirk supremacy, but it’s not quite the problem fandom thinks they do, and it’s certainly more nuanced than fandom thinks.[4]  Frankly, I could write a whole post dissecting this, but rather than analyzing the canon at length in a post intending to be about my fanon for a series of slice-of-life MLA fics, let me just lay out some issues I think the MLA have.  Note that these opinions may vary member to member, particularly as you work your way up the chain of command.

Many in the MLA believe that people with poor quirks are less capable of asserting their will and becoming whatever they want to be.  They are not, notably, alone in that that sentiment—we hear versions of it not only from villains like Trumpet and All for One, but from the paralleled parents of Midoriya Inko and Shimura Kotarou, the would-be hero Bakugou, and even the iconic hero paragon All Might.  While it’s not universal, My Hero Academia’s Japan is full of people who believe to some extent or another that people with weak or no quirks are inherently less capable of making their mark on the world.  The MLA is just more blatant about it than most.

The MLA are, as a group, not concerned about the fate of the quirkless.  My suspicion is that this is because they think quirklessness as a trait is on its way out—that the touted 20% of the world population that’s quirkless is hugely weighted towards the elderly, those who are from generations when quirklessness was more common.  Think about it: 20% is two out of every ten people.  Statistically speaking, that’s a huge portion!  You only have to look at Deku’s middle school classroom in Chapter 1—thirty kids, exactly one of whom is quirkless—to begin to suspect that there’s something a bit off with the 20% figure.

Further, the MLA follows Destro’s beliefs, and we know from Destro’s manifesto that he believed meta-abilities were growing stronger over time.  So to their mind, not only is quirklessness becoming a thing of the past, but so are weak quirks in general.  While their clear disdain for both is damning—and certainly discredits them as a group suited to decide how society should be structured!—please understand that, “We’re not very concerned with the rights of the quirkless because we think that there won’t be any such thing as quirkless people within a few more generations,” is not the same statement as, “We are A-OK with 20% of the world’s population being second-class citizens for the entire rest of human history,” and it is really not the same statement as, “People with no quirks, or bodies that can’t handle their quirks, need to be proactively removed from the gene pool and we are actively advocating for a systemic, organized culling.”

That said, their disdain, if blown out to society at large, would absolutely lead to discrimination and, undoubtedly, incidents of the same sort of violence that the MLA themselves were forged from.  That they haven’t thought or don’t care about this is one of many things that make them villains.

Further, there is an ugly strain within the MLA that still recognizes quirk marriages.  Because the MLA values freedom, they’re not as ubiquitous as you might think (at least if you think the MLA is a bunch of quirk supremacists with no other goals or values)—“freedom” does nominally include the freedom to marry who you want rather than let your own meta-ability trap you in a life you hate. However, it’s equally true that in a group that believes very strongly in the value of quirks, the power of quirks in the future, and the necessity of fighting a war to bring about that future, there will obviously be members who support the practice.  There are absolutely men and women who have been bullied and guilted by their families into loveless marriages for the sole purpose of producing children with powerful, desirable quirks.  How likely this is in any given location mostly depends on the commander’s opinion on it, though it’s a very rare one indeed who would go so far as discouraging it entirely.

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THE HEARTS & MINDS PARTY

(Considerations on Japan’s political landscape.)

The current monolith of the Diet, the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan, managed to hold onto power for a full century after the Advent, but their grasp grew shakier and shakier over time.  Initial measures to bar meta-humans from voting proved increasingly unpopular as the percentage of the population with meta-abilities grew both larger and older.  People with easily-concealed powers gained office, sometimes being outed, sometimes not, but on the whole, decades of oppression and violence led to an ever-more-popular opinion that the LDP had mishandled the whole mess.  They lost their supermajority in the Diet when their longstanding alliance with the Komeito party splintered, regained it again for a few electoral cycles, lost it again when Komeito itself fractured, and so on, their once implacable numbers shrinking year by year.  Still, they managed to hold onto a coalition majority right up until Saneki Yuuichi was elected to the House of Representatives.

Saneki headed up a small party based almost entirely on the issue of meta-human basic rights.  Like many meta-humans of the period, he believed that the best way for meta-humans to attain those rights was to live like so-called “normal humans,” to show that meta-humans were just like everyone else. His party advanced the ideology that meta-humans should only use their powers to help others or better society, not to advance their own self-interest.  They pushed stringently for metas to be allowed equal recognition under the law as any Japanese citizen, but also supported measures such as requiring licenses for the use of meta-abilities and limiting those licenses to those actively engaged in assisting police.  Deeply tied to respectability politics, Saneki’s party contained virtually all emitters, a scant number of transformers, and no heteromorphs, who the party felt were an impediment to reaching their legislative goals, but whose particular needs could be brought back up at a later, more receptive time.

Saneki’s politics gained him many supporters, but also drove many into the arms of the Meta Liberation Army, who vocally loathed him and everything he stood for.  The confluence of public dissatisfaction with the spike in violence represented by the MLA, Saneki’s coalition gathering popular support among both metas and non-metas, and the rise of named, organized hate groups trying to roll back what few advances had been gained in meta-human rights finally spelled the end of the LDP’s majority.

The LDP falling apart prompted a scramble for power that would stretch on for nearly half a century. Old alliances whose only common ground had been opposing the LDP found themselves free to seek groups with more compatible goals.  Young single- or dual-issue parties leapt at the chance to address their issues with more fervor.  New parties sprung up across the country.  Not only meta-humans, but minority groups of all kinds saw new avenues to press for substantive positive changes that had been dead in the water under the LDP.  Voting numbers surged as they had not for decades.

The old, conservative elements of the Diet were not gone, of course—they remained a substantial powerhouse!—but no longer could they muster the undefeatable veto-proof numbers that they had once enjoyed.

Like everyone else, the remnants of the MLA saw opportunity in the new, ever-shifting status quo.  With the place of metas secured for the time being, there was no longer a need for metas to form coalitions in the Diet merely to get their basic needs addressed.  A single-issue party from its inception thirty years prior, Saneki Yuuichi’s party was fragmenting, unable to decide on a single direction now that their uniting issue had been resolved to their satisfaction.  In recognition of meta-humans reaching population parity, the MLA launched a project to begin seeding the ideals of Liberation at the highest levels yet—the Hearts & Minds Party.

Beginning as a local party in a prefecture in which the MLA had gained significant underground support, the HMP campaigned on a platform championing individual freedoms and a wide range of improvements to Japan’s battered and overworked social safety nets.  They made an effort to showcase diverse representation in their leadership and gave impassioned speeches promising to reach across party aisles in searching for nuanced solutions to the various difficulties facing the country.

It’s impossible to say exactly how large the Hearts & Minds Party is compared to the Meta Liberation Army, which is claimed by Re-Destro to have 116,000 action-ready warriors (the “warriors lying in wait, ready to rise to action” description presumably indicating that his count does not include uninducted children).

On the one hand, one can presume that everyone who’s a member of the MLA is voting for the HMP on every ticket they can, but not every member of the MLA—who induct combat-ready warriors as young as 16—is old enough to vote, and many probably live in districts or prefectures where the HMP has yet to establish a campaign-ready foothold. On the other hand, while the HMP certainly serves to funnel people towards the MLA, it doesn’t require membership—indeed, it’s far better for their goals for them not to do so.  Therefore, it’s also probable that the Hearts & Minds Party has many supporters who are not (yet) counted among the Liberation Army’s number.  Thus, for the purposes of ballparking estimates, I opted to simply suppose that the two areas lacking overlap (MLA members who can’t vote for the HMP and HMP supporters who aren’t members of the MLA) are relatively equal.

That established, we’re working with a party that has 116K voters/supporters/members.  The closest thing to that number that I could find numbers for is the Japanese Communist Party (JCP), which counted 300K members as of 2017.  Using their total membership compared to their representation in the Diet (as well as a willingness to viciously bastardize anything resembling reliable political math), I plugged in my estimate for the HMP’s membership and wound up with the Hearts & Minds Party holding four seats in the House of Representatives, five seats in the House of Councillors, and sixty-odd assembly members in various prefectural positions.

For some context to those numbers, the House of Representatives (more powerful, but more vulnerable to sudden electoral shifts) has 465 members, 233 of which are required for a majority, and 310 of which are required to override vetoes imposed by the House of Counsillors. The House of Counsillors (less powerful, but serving longer terms and unable to be dissolved for general elections like the House of Representatives can be) has 245 members, with 123 required for a majority.

As you can see, the HMP holding a handful of seats isn’t going to tilt the My Hero Academia world on its axis.  Still, it’s more seats than any number of real-life Japanese political parties hold, and right up until the one-two punch of Shigaraki taking over the MLA and Hawks outing Trumpet’s allegiances to the Hero Commission, the Hearts & Minds Party was well on-track to continue growing its power and influence.

———–      

TIMELINE

(For ease of calculation, most dates are rounded to the nearest five years.)

1980: A glowing baby is born in Qing Qing City, China, heralding the Advent of the Age of the Extraordinary.  For almost two decades, meta-abilities remain rare and poorly understood—incidents are widespread and show huge variance, so most people write them off as anomalies or hoaxes.  As the years go on, however, meta-abilities become more widespread, moving out of the realm of the odd headline that many people think is an elaborate hoax into an alarmed spotlight as it gradually becomes apparent that this is a thing that all humanity is undergoing.  Most major technological development pivots to trying to understand, undo, document or control this new phenomenon.

2030: The child who will become All for One is born.  By this time, society is breaking down into chaos. Across the globe, measures from outlawing all meta-ability use to internment are seen.  Eugenics laws are discussed or put in place.  Communities attempt to run out metas and, in response, groups of metas attempt to form their own communities.  Infanticide rates are rising alarmingly.

2060: Yotsubashi Chikara and Ujiko (original name unknown) are born.  Japan is in complete disarray, awash in mob violence, with organized groups of both metas and non-metas attacking victims indiscriminately.  Developing an ability can get you disowned.  Divisions among the meta minority are developing a noticeable strain of respectability politics rhetoric.

2065: AFO forces an ability on his younger brother, unintentionally creating One for All.  Chikara’s mother is murdered by an anti-meta mob for attempting to speak out in defense of the normalcy of her child’s ability.

2085-2090: Saneki Yuuichi becomes the first meta-human to attain a seat in the Diet. Despite nearly a century of violence, meta-humans are becoming a larger and larger percentage of the population, and the people of Japan are tired.  The prevailing sense is that it’s time to make peace; however, the peace that is being forged involves laws sharply restricting the use of meta-abilities for those who haven’t been formally licensed.  These restrictions see markedly mixed reactions from metas.  Chikara rallies the most vehement dissenters to create the Meta Liberation Army, calling himself Destro.              Disagreement over how to handle the MLA finally finishing the job of rattling the Diet free of the death-grip of the LDP.  Many years of fractious elections will follow as new coalitions form to try and seize majority power.

2095: Japan signs an international accord acknowledging the fundamental rights of meta-humans.  This gesture begins to splinter both internal support and public sympathy for the MLA.

2097: Destro is captured by police and their newly designated Quirk Unit.  Other surviving members of the MLA are hunted down or go into hiding.

2100: The term “Hero” is formally adopted, having been casually in use for some time.  A Hero is one who is licensed to use their power to fight quirk-based crime in accordance with local and federal laws, assisting the police when requested.  The Hero Commission is established as an agency with oversight in the licensing and regulation of Heros.              Destro dies in prison.  Though the matter is questioned, no proof of foul play is ever brought forward, and the death is ruled a suicide.

2110: Ujiko presents his paper on the Paranormal [5] Singularity Theory.  The paper suggests that the power of quirks is continuing to grow with each generation and will, in time, become more powerful than the human body can control.  His evidence is inconclusive, however, and his citation of some of Destro’s observations on the phenomenon becomes a particular sticking point.  In a country that is finally beginning to get its feet back under it, no one wants to see another widespread panic.  Ujiko is stripped of his position; having been living on campus at the time, he’s left functionally homeless and is approached by All for One not long after.

2120: The population of those with quirks and those without reaches parity in Japan. Seeing an opportunity, the MLA launches the Hearts & Minds Party as a local political party, intending to grow it over time.

(2125: Yagi Toshinori is born.)

2138: Yotsubashi Rikiya is born.

(2148: Debut of All Might.)

(2165: Shimura family tragedy.)

(2174: All Might “defeats” AFO.)

2175: Hanabata Koku is elected to the House of Representatives.  He’s not the youngest party leader in the Diet, but he’s close.

2180: The events of Deku’s freshman year at UA lead the MLA to turn their attention to the League of Villains.

———–      

STRAY FACTS

Why 1980/2180?—

It’s an even number for ease of calculation, triangulated between a few considerations.

Firstly, tasers are mentioned in the One for All dream, so the events of the dream (which themselves are happening far enough into the Advent that society’s had time to slide into all-out chaos) must post-date the invention of the taser, which was in 1993.

Secondly, Spider-Man’s silhouette is seen amongst the group of characters who represent the “fantasy” that became reality.  If we assume that those media properties existed in-universe (since the narration is delivered by Midoriya) and were assumed to be fantastical at the time, they must predate the Advent—Spider-Man is the newest of them and his first appearance was in 1962, his material being translated into Japanese by the 1970s.

Lastly, technological and societal development crashed to a halt with the Advent.  The world of My Hero Academia generally reflects a modern-ish Japan, so I wanted modern technology—and modern social reforms—to still feel modern to the characters.  Thus, the point at which society stopped developing needed to predate the Digital Revolution, which really began to hit its stride in the mid-80s.  Hence, 1980.

The opening period is, admittedly, fairly generous on my part, and does assume a certain amount of modern advances were probably underway, but then were lost, sidelined or rolled back as the chaos spread.  You could probably trim off twenty years by stepping up how quickly quirks begin to appear and spread, but the very beginning is the best window to do so.  I’d still peg the Advent at 1980 based on the calculations above (again, it has to fall somewhere between the mid-70s and 1993) but, for example, maybe All for One is from that first generation, and society only takes 30 years to reach the lowest point of its collapse instead of 80.

As to the 2180, the older characters introduce several requirements for the post-Advent timeline.  Ujiko was 50 at the time that society was beginning to stabilize, while AFO dates to its days of utmost chaos.  AFO also needs to be running on at least one anti-aging quirk prior to meeting Ujiko; if the only one he were running on was Ujiko’s own, then based on his appearance and the mechanics of Ujiko’s quirk, I’d peg AFO at merely 85, and he needs to be not only over 100, but far enough over 100 that he’s described that way rather than as “a century-old evil” or something to that effect.

Meanwhile, All Might can’t really be any younger than 50, and seven generations of OFA bearer predated him, even if they did all die relatively young.  Destro’s mother was killed in those early chaotic days, while Re-Destro (himself no spring chicken) is told as a child that the MLA has been in hiding for generations.  “Generations” implies at least two; I further suppose that Rikiya needs to be at least the original Chikara’s great-grandson for him to describe himself simply as Destro’s descendant, rather than use a more specific relationship term.  All of this points to a fairly lengthy stretch of time, much more than is glossed over by Midoriya’s series-opening narration.

AFO and the MLA—

I mention in the very first story of this series that the MLA’s contacts all go “mysteriously missing” after the capture of Destro.  While the police certainly did their own measure of work in tracking down the Liberation Army’s members and allies, there was another figure with a significant hand in the MLA’s downfall.

All for One, then in his early sixties, had watched the rise of the MLA in some interest.  On a personal level, he admired Yotsubashi’s charisma and resolve, and, of course, he wholly supported the free use of quirks (well, his own free use of quirks, anyway)!  On the other hand, All for One also sought to restore order to society, albeit order as he himself envisioned it.  While he was confident that there was no one who could stand up to him no matter whose ideals won out, Saneki Yuuichi’s way promised a more stable society, and bribable and/or blackmailable bureaucrats seemed easier to manipulate than ideal-driven zealots ready to give their lives for the cause.  Thus, AFO decided to help the police a bit behind the scenes, offering a few tip-offs and hints to guide their efforts to end the threat of the Liberation Army.

Of course, as long as Destro was alive, the cause of Liberation still had its focal point. And AFO was still a bit curious to meet this man, who’d inspired so very many loyal followers.  It was an easy thing to arrange.  An interesting man, and an interesting quirk.

Destro did commit suicide in prison.  A man who had always embraced his meta-ability for motivation, and whose ability transformed that motivation into power in turn, AFO stripped him of in the same moment. Isolation from other contact, separation from his lover, his friends and allies, and his cause, a gap in his psyche like no pain he’d ever experienced--all of these piled up on one another into a fatal despair.  After AFO’s visit, there was no need for anyone to arrange a convenient death for Destro.

(And if in later years, the monstrous Noumu, who are driven entirely by pre-programmed, single-minded resolve, are flint-skinned from head-to-toe, well—who would ever even think to connect those dots?)

The Mother of Quirks—

An interesting thing I observed from Re-Destro’s confrontation with Clone!Shigaraki is that, based on their exchange, it doesn’t seem to be common knowledge that the Mother of Quirks is the mother of the Meta Liberation Army’s leader?  Re-Destro’s apology for assuming Shigaraki wouldn’t recognize the story suggests that it’s a matter of fairly basic historical education, but he then goes on to explain her connection to Destro at some length—if that connection were taught at the same time her story was, surely he’d see no need to do this? Clone-a-raki’s response backs this up—unlike the general existence of the Mother of Quirks, which was such basic knowledge that he was insulted that Re-Destro thought he wouldn’t know about it, her connection to Destro was unknown to him.

Re-Destro describes the connection as “an inconvenient truth.”  This, in turn, suggests that the connection has been actively obscured.  The MLA’s place in history is taught; the originator of the term “quirk” is taught, but the two are not connected to each other. Kids in school aren’t taught that the very child whose mother was murdered for her words hated what his country was using those words, that message, to do.  It’s naked appropriation that continues to this day, and it’s no wonder that the MLA is furious about it.

The Quirk Unit—

An early term for the group that would, in relatively short order after their formation, officially be dubbed Heroes.  Composed of both meta-humans already on the police force and vigilantes willing to remit themselves to legal oversight, they fought quirk-based crime in many forms, from the common mugger to the terrorists of the MLA, and even former allies in vigilantism.  Well-regarded by history thanks to their efforts in reining in crime and disorder, but quite a controversial group in their early years.

MLA Age of Induction—

Being raised in the MLA means being raised with the goal of eventually being assigned a codename and tasked with supporting the Great Cause in whatever fashion your superiors think you best suited.  The minimum age for this is 16, though 18, being the age at which students graduate from high school, is more common.  At no point is there really a safe way to leave once you’re involved; they are, after all, a secret army.  There’s no aging out of the MLA—it’s a lifetime tour—but disability, injury or general decrepitude can get you assigned to work that generally won’t expect you to see open combat.  The Army is composed of a great many lifetime-of-service families, after all, which means they need teachers and caretakers; another option is dedicated work for the Hearts & Minds Party, who always have room for community organizers.

Liberated Districts—

Settlements that are at least 85% MLA-inducted.  At their largest, they’re small towns; rural villages are far more common.  Without exception, they’re isolated or out of the way.  Tend to have unusually good access to city services compared to similarly-sized settlements.  Deika was one of the largest districts the Army had, chosen for the Revival Celebration due to its combination of a sizable population and a particularly closed-off location.  The MLA knew they’d need many warriors to fight the League of Villains, but they also needed a site that was not merely remote, but that had controllable points of access.

It can take well over a decade to hit the 85% saturation mark in even small villages; Deika and the MLA’s handful of other full-fledged towns are the work of generations.  They begin by moving people into an area and setting up gatherings on some useful pretext or another, enthusiastically welcoming newcomers and very, very gradually indoctrinating people further into the ideology.  Financial support, an accepting environment for difficult quirks or those with patchy legal histories, the odd homeless shelter or food kitchen, a robust presence in the foster care network—the MLA is very, very good at making themselves a warm, sincere, reliable presence in peoples’ lives, a group that encourages everyone under their banner to be their best selves. They think everyone deserves that kind of support!

They are also willing to shed quite a lot of blood to make sure that everyone can get it.

On the Intersection of Disability and Quirk Suppression—

There are a few factors contributing to why Scarecrow can’t use his quirk to do things others would.  First, his quirk is the kind of off-putting that gets Gang Orca ranked third-most villainous-looking hero and leads Shoji to wear a mask because his face disturbs people.  So Scarecrow’s quirk is already the kind of visible that makes people look at him askance.  Compounding this, his prosthetics are obvious, visible to any old person, and people have a very ugly tendency towards bootstrap, “you can do it if you try” mentalities around people with disabilities.  These two factors mean that people who are disturbed by his creepy articulate bug legs would much prefer that he use his significantly less-creepy prosthetics, to the degree that they’re willing to suggest that he’s being lazy if he doesn’t.  They cite the quirk-use laws as a deflection tactic, but Scarecrow—whose pattern recognition functions just fine, thanks—is keenly aware of the underlying mindset.

Nimble is in much the same boat—she literally can’t talk without falling back on a visual representation of some kind (sign-language, a text-to-speech reader, etc), and why on earth shouldn’t she be able to use the fastest and most convenient one without people getting up her ass about it?

None of this is the kind of thing that would likely get either of them arrested (though Scarecrow’s creepy enough that the odds are higher for him, “villain quirk” bias being what it is), but the laws-as-written, nonetheless, are discriminatory, and that makes people justly angry.  Angry people are easier to radicalize, and the Liberation Army has been working that angle since their very inception.

Re-Destro and Trumpet’s College Days—

RD’s an Engineering major with a focus in Manufacturing; Trumpet’s in PoliSci.  They’re two grades apart, with Koku being the older.  Those two years of greater experience shift the power balance between them significantly when Rikiya arrives for his freshman year, facing a new place, a new workload, an entirely new rhythm to his life.  For the first time, Koku is not merely a friend in similar circumstances who is still—as they’re both reminded near-constantly—subordinate to Rikiya’s every word.  Rather, he’s a senpai, someone with specific experience in every aspect of this new stage of life—and someone who’s had two years to become more eloquent, more well-studied, more confident, more mature.

Removed from the immediate supervision of the First Families for the first time in his life, Rikiya allows himself to lean on Koku in ways he never would have back home. Koku, for his part, has had his responsibilities here impressed on him by the First Families at some length, and has spent his entire life being groomed to devote himself to his Grand Commander.  Having said Grand Commander looking to him with such glowing esteem in his eyes—well, there’s no denying that it’s pretty enticing.  The two of them enter a romantic relationship that will endure for several years until Rikiya gets his head back around the idea that Koku’s ability to say no to him is fundamentally compromised.

The Bindi Connection—

I had no reason to develop them any, and thus I don’t have names to assign, but it seems that Twice’s No. 3, the smiling old woman with the gingham dress and the rough-and-ready attitude to combat, and Geten’s No. 2, the short-haired woman whose face is being devoured by her out-of-control sweater neck, are related.  Note the bindi on both of them, as well as the similar hair color, particularly in the page introducing all the advisors.  Mutual connection to Dabi’s No. 3, the guy who got into a fight with a hole punch and lost, is uncertain but possible based on the confronting-the-heroes page spread in which Hole Punch dude’s hand lays familiarly on Grandma Bindi’s back while Big Sis Bindi turns partly towards him as if to whisper some sarcastic observation about how lame Cementoss’s ponytail is.

———–      

FOOTNOTES

1: Regarding codenames, the first generation of the MLA tended to have names that reflected their meta-ability in some way.  From the second generation on, at the behest of Destro’s son, the codenames have become less literal, and thus less revealing.

2: Viz renders the job tile “Executive Director,” but having checked the raw, the Japanese term, senmu, is associated with a fairly specific level of executive authority, and it’s lower than I would peg “Executive Director,” which to my ear sounds synonymous or slightly below Chief Executive Officer.  Executive Vice President is wikipedia’s translation; Google returns Senior Managing Director.  In any case, she’s near the top, but not at the top.

3: At least, he wasn’t prior to meeting Shigaraki.  Now he’s pretty much in favor of a very organized and coherent belief structure that can be summarized as, “Watch Shigaraki tear down the world ‘cause he’s beautiful and I love him,” and honestly, mood.

4: I’ll just come out and say it: fandom blew Geten’s words way out of proportion because a bunch of people got mad that he was being mean to Everyone’s Favorite Serial Killer Dabi.

———–      ———–      ———–      ———–

The morning after Deika, Trumpet ducks away from news cameras with murmured excuses about needing to meet with the people in his district.  He spends much of the day making quiet rounds, speaking in low, soothing tones to members of the Army and encouraging them one by one to take heart, for the will of Destro lives on and the Grand Commander will have words for them soon. In truth, he doesn’t even know whether they will still be the Army at the end of all this, but worry for the future fades against the memory of Re-Destro (Rikiya) on his knees, the expanse of his back bared to an ash-choked sky.

Two days after Deika, Geten walks into Re-Destro’s hospital room, finally having been cleared as a family member.  He seats himself facing the door, his hood drawn up, lantern eyes burning and hollow as he watches medical staff come and go. Police come and attempt to ask him questions; he stares at their badges, thin-lipped and silent, until they make awkward excuses for themselves and leave.  When Re-Destro cracks opens his eyes, glassy and uncomprehending, Geten holds his hand until he drifts back off, cold fingers tracing the remembered contours of an old burn.

Three days after Deika, Skeptic, his office door barricaded from the inside by a puppet sitting curled up against it, turns too fast in his chair and nearly blacks out, flailing to catch himself before he faceplants onto the floor.  He sucks in air, gasps rattling in his throat, and clenches his hands against the surface of his desk.  When the white spots flashing in his vision finally fade, he forces himself up, swaying on his feet, and staggers over to the mini-fridge to dig out another bento and energy drink.  There’s work to do, still so much work to do, to claw anything out of this mess that can make it a miscalculation rather than the most disastrous kind of failure.  

Four days after Deika, Curious’s body is identified by her mother, first from photographs, then from a viewing. The detective, muted from what is not his first and will not be his last meeting of this type today, thanks her and offers quiet condolences, after which she returns to her wife in the waiting room.  The woman takes one look at the expression on her pallid face and sweeps her into a tight embrace.  A younger daughter and a home base wait for them some fifty miles north, but they spend that night in a hotel, away from reporters and duties and everything but the heavy liminality of grief.  

Five days after Deika, Re-Destro sits in his bed and half-listens to a doctor talk about follow-up surgeries and rehabilitation and the process of being fitted for prosthetics, the whole endless litany.  He nods when it seems appropriate to do so, chipping in sensible-sounding suggestions here and there based on his own knowledge of the subject.  It isn’t the first time he’s dealt with the matter of prosthetics, after all.  It isn’t until the doctor mentions making an appointment with a specialized psychologist that Re-Destro finally gives the man his full attention, looking up with a vague smile.  

“I don’t think that will be necessary.”  

———–      

Six days after Deika, one of the survivors looks at a clock on the wall, takes a breath to steady himself, and then abruptly begins to scream and thrash.  Staff come running immediately.  Exactly sixty seconds later, a man with short, dark hair peppered with gray enters the wing, raising a curious eyebrow towards the commotion as he strolls unerringly towards Re-Destro’s room.

He knocks.  He lets himself in.  

Inside, Geten sits glaring on the chair by the bed, emanating cold fury.  Re-Destro looks up likewise, shoulders draped in a dignified charcoal black jacket pilfered by an aide from one of his suit ensembles and brought in by Trumpet the day before.

The man from the hallway pulls a marble out of nowhere; with a flick of his wrist, one marble becomes two, which in turn become a top hat and a mask.  He bows with flourish to spare, new prosthetic barely making a sound as he fits the mask to his face.

“Yotsubashi-san,” Mr. Compress greets, all malicious conviviality.  “Are you ready to go and meet your new employer?”

“He’s met him already,” Geten hisses, low-voiced, but falls silent at the distracted pat from Re-Destro.  

“I have been ready to meet that young man again,” he says, his eyes bright.  “Please.  Take me to him.”

———–      ———–      ———–      ———–

And that’s a wrap.  Thanks, @sweetiitea and @balestrasii for putting this together.  I love pretty much all these characters (even if I didn’t find space to write much about Geten) and had a blast writing them and brainstorming for their organization, perspective and history, so thanks for giving me the reason to do so.  Cheers!

———–      ———–      ———–      ———–

Rikiya has been staring at the same page in his Digital Signal Processing textbook for—Koku shoots a glance at the clock on the wall—almost twenty minutes.  Concentration knots his brows together; tension scores a thin line at the corner of his mouth.  Koku turns a page in the book he’s reading, eyes still resting on his roommate, tracking the flutter of irritation that accompanies the sound, the shadowy drift of half-materialized power over Rikiya’s temple.  

Koku closes his book and straightens up from a comfortable sprawl on the couch.  

“Having trouble with signal receiving?”

A sigh expels itself from Rikiya’s lungs and he sits back in the desk chair, which gives a faintly alarming groan.  He reaches up to knead the heels of his palms over his eyes.  The branching fingers of stress painting the side of his forehead fade back into his skin, though the spots over his left eye still look a bit enlarged.

“I can’t seem to concentrate on it,” he admits, the words muffled against his wrists.  He straightens up again, planting his elbows on the desk and rubbing at his face, blinking rapidly.  “It doesn’t seem like it should be so impenetrable, but…”  He swallows another sigh into a small, endlessly frustrated hum.  

Koku stands, setting his book down on the coffee table.  He makes his way over to his roommate (a good deal more than just his roommate, but it’s easiest to let himself believe otherwise, out in the world as they are) and props one hip up against the desk.  Rikiya continues to stare straight ahead, fingers pressing into his skin as if there’s some out-of-alignment piece of machinery located beneath his cheekbones that he might snap back into place to repair the whole unit.

“I’d offer to talk you through it”—Koku lets just the slightest thrum of power into the words, just enough steam to make Rikiya take a shallow little breath and lift his head a centimeter out of his hands—“but in my experience, that sort of feeling just means you need to think about something else for a while.  Ideally, something uncomplicated.”  

Rikiya finally looks up at him, uncertainty in his eyes, and Koku throttles back a sigh of his own. He reaches up, carding a hand through Rikiya’s hair.  

“Come sit with me.” He can’t make the words an order, even here, and making them a request is treading over dangerous lines, so he tries to modulate them into a suggestion instead.  “I learned some breathing techniques my second year that might help.”  

“I don’t think breathing techniques are going to help me during my test next week,” Rikiya responds, dry-voiced for all that he leans slightly into the touch.  

“I’m willing to bet they’ll help more than staring at a swimming page for another half hour.”  

“…I guess that’s true enough.”

He closes the textbook and tucks it under one elbow, allowing Koku to help him up and trailing him back to the couch.  He also lets Koku gently pull the book away and set it next to his own on the table, and the two of them ease into each other’s arms, careful of position, careful of where their hands fall.  

Koku shifts slightly, wedging himself into a half-sitting, half-reclining position against the corner of the couch, and lies still as Rikiya adjusts his weight between Koku’s legs and against his chest.  Once settled, he sighs, long and low.  Koku runs a hand down his back, feeling the knots of tension beneath his palm, then repeats the gesture once Rikiya’s head comes to a rest against his shoulder.  

Rikiya has been breath-matching with people for longer than Koku has known him, and the two of them might as well have grown up together.  He knows how to belly-breathe; he may very well know the exact 4-7-8 count Koku sets them to.  Still, knowing is different from practicing, so Koku lays his palm flat across Rikiya’s spine and counts—inhale, hold, exhale.  Inhale, hold, exhale.  

“Focus on the sensation of it,” he murmurs after a few repetitions.  “If a thought comes to you, hold it for a moment and let it go again.  Just keep going back to how it feels to breathe.”

They lie there in silence for several minutes.  Koku’s own thoughts take him through swerves into territory like, What is he going to do once I graduate?, and, Should I make him eat something?, and a much more insidious, This can’t last forever.  He lets the words linger long enough to taste the shape of them in his mouth, feel how they would feel in his throat, then returns to counting. 

“What have you been working on?” Rikiya asks after a while, voice low.  

“Research for a paper on pre-Advent entertainment.”  The lie slides easily off Koku’s tongue.  “The influence of the American presence on the culture of the time, and the way that worked itself into the public discourse.”

The paper will actually concern the portrayal of meta-abilities in fiction over the course of their emergence, from the early adventure serials of the mid-20th century, through the kikeiji horror movement of the early Advent, and on up to the propaganda films from the early Age of Heroes.  That, however, is far too close to being about the Great Cause, and for now, the best way to advance the cause of Liberation is to focus on getting Rikiya through his sophomore year intact.  

Not for the first time, Koku reflects on how helpful it would be if his meta-ability had an inverter function, a Lull option to complement the Incite.  Uncle Shinseigi has something like that; it makes him a complete terror at town meetings.  

But then, I suppose I’d need a different code name, if that were the case.  And I like Trumpet too well for that.  

In his arms, Rikiya has eased into a shallow sleep, his breathing even.  Koku tips his head back against the couch, and lets himself be.

———–      ———–      ———–      ———–

———–      ———–      ———–      ———–

There were certain things that his mother didn’t talk about around Rikiya when he was awake.  He had learned that as young as five years old, lying with his head in her lap and listening to her report to the elders on the phone about how she was feeling that day.  She often grappled with sadness—turning sadness into power was her quirk, like turning stress into power was his—and it was because he knew of that sadness that he didn’t ask her for answers when she first mentioned missing her brother.

Rikiya, at nine years old, had not grown up knowing he had—or did have—an uncle.  His mother had never mentioned a brother before.  Rikiya thought about the pictures in the house—the portrait of the great Destro over the door, photographs of Rikiya himself, of him with his mother, of his mother smiling peaceably from the encircling arms of her father, whose brows were always knotted with the anger that had killed him long before Rikiya was born.  Pictures taken on holidays, Rikiya’s mother’s graduation photo, her with her companions at some long bygone track and field day.  Graceful, lovely watercolor prints and solemn black and white photography—his mother had many pictures.  

Rikiya looked through all of them again, in stolen moments over the next few days, in between meals, lessons, training, socializing.  He mother had a great many pictures, but none of a strange man who looked like her.

He couldn’t ask his mother, but there was someone his teachers told him he could ask anything—the warrior whose very name meant that she served the Army by knowing its history and keeping its secrets.  

And so, the next day, when he’d bade his mother farewell at the door and climbed into the car under Rampart’s watchful eye, he turned to look up at his guardian before buckling the seatbelt.  

“Rampart, I’m sorry, but I need to skip school today.  I have a question for Sanctum.”

———–      

The Meta Liberation Army’s longest serving member lived on the other side of town, in an upscale neighborhood across the street from a large playground.  A few people were out already, walking dogs, jogging, playing with children too young for school.  He watched their faces, making note of the ones who spotted the car and stopped what they were doing; when Rampart opened the door for him, he met their eyes briefly and mirrored the sign of Liberation back to the ones who gave it before he turned away.  

Sanctum answered the door herself, an elderly woman in a gray-green kimono with thin, sharp features on which the softness of age clung like lichen on a cliff face.  She still stood as straight as a pine tree, long gray hair swept and pinned up at the back of her head.  

“Good morning, Re-Destro.”  She greeted him with a salute of her own.  “Rampart, I’ll take it from here,” she added, and he nodded respectfully, not even giving Rikiya the usual warning about calling if he had any trouble.  Still, his shadow stood vigil against the screen door.

Sanctum ushered him inside, through a Western-style living room and into a very traditional tea room after that.  He looked around in interest, taking in the sunken hearth in the center of the floor and a hanging scroll inscribed with a complex kanji he couldn’t read adorning the wall.  Most of the warriors of Liberation preferred more modern styles, furnishings that spoke of the future way, but it felt right, even encouraging, that the woman tasked with witnessing for the Army’s past kept a connection to such things.  

She already had a tray with tea supplies set out beside the hearth, so he knelt quietly on a cushion across from her, nibbling on a frog-shaped manju and watching her movements as she whisked the thin tea into a fine green froth.  She presented it to him with a bow, watching with a half-smile as he took a dutiful sip, biting the inside of his lip to stop himself from swallowing too quickly, though the heat of it burned his tongue.  

“It’s delicious as always, Miss Sanctum.”

She nodded acceptance of the compliment, rote though it was, and waited while he carefully set down his tea bowl.  His shoulders drooped slightly once the dish was safely down on the tray and out of his hands.  Her tools were very old, his mother had told him the first time he’d been brought to visit Sanctum, and handling them was always a balance of showing proper care without getting so self-conscious that he endangered them with his own worry.  

“So,” she asked, hands folded in her lap.  “What brings you to me today, my young Commander?”

“I had a question,” he responded.  He let his eyes drop down to the half-eaten sweet bun, arranging the words in his head as he’d spent the drive over conceiving them.  “What can you tell me about my uncle?”  

There was a beat of silence. He went on staring at the frog manju and its missing back leg.    

“Your honored mother’s brother?  I see,” she said when he nodded.  She took another moment to gather herself, during which he chanced another nibble at the sweet.  “His name was Kyouyuki.  He was four years her elder.  You know, of course, that all of your lineage are deeply in touch with their driving emotions thanks to your meta-ability.  You have your stress, your mother her sorrow, your grandfather his rage, and the great Destro his sense of purpose.  Your uncle was the same, but his manifestation lead your grandfather and the First Families to declare him unsuitable as heir to the position of Grand Commander.”

Rikiya swallowed.  He scanned his education for an emotion that could not be turned to the cause and came up empty.  “What was it?”

“Joy.”  She waited, letting him take in the word, before she continued.  “A beautiful thing, but there is so only so much joy to be found in this country when meta-humans still live in chains.  While he was with us, though, your uncle was much beloved.”  She paused, looking thoughtful.  “Would you like to see a picture of him?”  

“Yes, please.”  Rikiya perked up, picking up his bowl and taking another quick swallow.  Sanctum laughed.  

“You can take it slowly; the picture’s not going anywhere.”  

“So what happened to him, then?” Rikiya asked, cupping the warm ceramic mindfully in his hands.  He looked at her over the bowl’s rim as he raised it up to his mouth again, taking a slower sip.  

“He went missing one day in college,” Sanctum answered with a sigh.  “It was in December, just a few days before the end of term.  He went to some campus party and just—never came out. Not as far as we were ever able to determine, at least.”

Rikiya glanced back down at his lamed frog.  “…You looked for him?”  

“All of us did, for months. There were people tasked with it for years.  There’s a young man working in forensics up in Morioka that still makes it a point to check through unidentified bodies once a year, on the anniversary.”

Rikiya definitely didn’t want to finish the manju now.  He took another quiet sip of the tea, finishing it off and letting his eyes rest on the lingering foam.  

A cold sensation curved down over his cheek, around the hollow of his eye, and he hurriedly set the bowl down and closed his eyes, focusing on inhaling and exhaling, on the sensation of his hands folding together on his lap.  

Still kneeling across from him, Sanctum matched his stillness.  Not even a rustle sounded from her long, draping sleeves.  Even her breathing fell naturally into pace with his own.  Silence blanketed the room, no sound from outside making its way to his ears.  

Finally, he released a sigh and opened his eyes.  Lifting his hand, he brushed his fingers over the side of his face then drew them back down. After particularly bad spells, his fingertips sometimes came back black with residue, as if he’d smudged them over wet ink, but today they came back bare and clean.   He sighed again, shorter, more relieved, and looked up into Sanctum’s patient, sympathetic eyes.

“Can we go see his picture now?”  

“Of course.”  She smiled.  “The picture’s in the community center at the playground.”

Rikiya hesitated.  The rec center was visible from the house driveway.

“…Can we use your Stride?” he asked.

“Your wish is my command, Re-Destro,” Sanctum chuckled.  She stood, bowing as he stood in turn, and ushered him back up to the front.  

Outside, Rampart was talking with one of the men who’d been out walking his dog and stopped to salute—which he and Rampart both did again as Rikiya leaned over to offer one hand to the dog, smiling at the wet press of its nose on his palm.  He ran his other hand over the thick waves of its fur in long, even strokes, watching its tail sweep excited circles in the air.  

“We’re taking a jaunt over to the community center,” Sanctum said above him.  “I’d offer to take you, too, but my spine says ‘Only in the case of an emergency, you daft old woman.’  I’m sure you understand.”

The neighbor snorted back a laugh and Rikiya looked back up to find Rampart checking his watch.  

“Ten minutes?” he asked.

“Probably less,” Sanctum answered, and leaned down, stretching out her arms.  

Rikiya stepped gingerly up to her.  He kept his hands to himself rather than get dog on her kimono, but leaned his weight in when she scooped him off the ground and straightened back up.  She fixed her gaze on the building at the far end of the playground, narrowed her eyes, and took a single firm step forward.  

Deep shadows fell over them both.  The air felt suddenly closer, filled with the rubbery smell of sports equipment.  His head still spinning pleasantly, Rikiya obediently held still as Sanctum set him down.  

“Let your eyes adjust for a few seconds while I find the light switch,” she said and shuffled away into the gloom.  Sure enough, a moment later an overhead light flickered to life, illuminating a room that was half office, half supply closet.  Next to Rikiya, in one corner, a desk and chair sat tucked beneath a small window, a short filing cabinet standing beside it.  Plastic bins were stacked up beyond that, and past them, the door to the room. Metal shelving units lined the opposite wall, holding books at the end near the desk and an assortment of games and sports equipment all along the rest of its length.  A hefty toolbox and a first aid kit were displayed prominently across from the door.

Sanctum scanned over a row of books on the shelf, mostly titles like “Activities for Children” and “Complete Rules of Classic Baseball,” but at the far end, simply a row of blue photo albums, spines unmarked save for thin numeric inscriptions.  With a satisfied noise, she pulled one down and brought it over to the desk.  

“May I sit?” she asked, and when he nodded, swept a hand under her kimono before lowering herself into the chair.  He closed the distance between them, standing at the arm of the chair and observing as she flipped through the album.

Pages and pages of old photos passed them by, discoloring at the edges.  Rikiya frowned—his teachers told him regularly that he needed to be as familiar as possible with the members of the Army, but in those pictures, the best he could pick out was the odd sign of a particularly distinctive meta-ability—Anchor‘s curving horns here, a boy with Aozono‘s bright green skin, a girl with a lightning stripe mark in her hair just like Toryu.  

“Ah.  Here we are.”  Sanctum spread the album wide and angled toward him.  The righthand page was covered in handwritten text, words flowing together under his eyes.  Opposite it, a large photo, twice as big as the others, took up the whole left page by itself.  A boy and a girl in gym uniforms, arms wrapped each other, looked out from the picture.  The girl had to be his mother—because who else could she be?—with her dark hair and soft eyes, the mark of her meta ability a dark little blotch at the base of her throat.  She was smiling wider than in any picture at home.  The boy…  

“You have his hair, you know.  The color,” Sanctum said quietly as Rikiya started at the bright-eyed boy in the photo, caught mid-laugh, the reddish-brown of his hair vivid even on the faded paper. The dark shell of Destro’s power covered his hands and upper arms, effortlessly holding Rikiya’s mother off the ground.  “They’d just won a brother-sister relay race.  It was at a family event in the summer, back when he was still in high school. There were some quick people in his generation, but none faster than him when his spirits were high.”

“I guess—you never found out what happened to him?”  It didn’t seem likely, but then, even if the warriors had never found him, that didn’t mean they might not have…

“I’m afraid not,” Sanctum said, dashing his small hopes.  

“Do you think it was heroes? Could they have found out about us?”

“No.”  Sanctum’s voice grew more serious.  “When heroes find us, they carry out raids.  They break up our communities.  They split up families, take children from their parents, send those parents off to jail for years and years, even for the rest of their lives.” She shook her head.  “If heroes had found out about us, we would have known.”

“Were you ever in a raid, Sanctum?” Rikiya asked, resting his hands on the arm of the chair and looking up into the old warrior’s eyes.

“Once, when I was very young—even younger than you.”  

“How did you get out?”

“Well, I inherited my father’s quirk, you know.”  She closed the album and placed it on the desk, then turned to face him.  “He had brought me along to a meeting—there were few enough of us in those days that it was hard to spare anyone for child-sitting. I remember that one moment, everyone was talking in hushed voices, and then the window broke and suddenly, everyone was shouting.  There were feet pounding on the stairs, a fist punched straight through the door, and then my father was calling for me.”

She paused, then chuckled ruefully.  

“You won’t hear me ask you this often, but did you see that news clip going around last week—the one of the hero from America rescuing all those people from a fire?”  When Rikiya shook his head, she placed her elbows on the arms of the chair and knitted her fingers together, resting her chin on them.  “That’s how I remember Father looking back then. There were people holding onto his shoulders, being carried in his arms.  He had to bend over so I could get my arms around his neck, and I remember being afraid that he wouldn’t be able to stand back up.  It must have been so heavy…”

She was quiet for a moment, staring blankly over his shoulder, and Rikiya took a breath.  

“He honored Destro and Liberation with his service,” he recited, as level as he could.  

Sanctum’s eyes snapped back to the present and she smiled at him brightly, looking, for a moment, as happy as his lost uncle in the picture.  She saluted, the movement every bit as graceful and precise as her movements during tea ceremony.    

“Thank you, my young Commander.  Do you wish to keep the photo?”

He thought about it—thought about being able to look at it whenever he wanted, then thought about all the pictures his mother didn’t have of her brother, and what might happen if she found one.  

“I think—I think Mother is sad enough already,” he said.  “But I know where to find it now.”  

“That’s very wise, and very kind of you.”  She stood and placed the album back on the shelf.  “Then we should be getting back.  The same way we came?”

———–      ———–      ———–      ———–

The advent of the Age of the Extraordinary, despite the glowing name, saw unprecedented disorder and social upheaval.  Family split from family, friend from friend.  Those bearing meta-abilities, as they came to be called, were subject to widespread discrimination, first in the immediate, one-on-one way of the frightened bigot, lashing out in fear of the unknown, and later in the systemic way of the overburdened bureaucracy, panicking in the form of unjust laws and ordinances against any use of those meta-abilities.  Some countries tried expulsion or internment for any showing signs of being among the new minority; some made the use of those innate abilities a capital offense.  The world saw a return of the barbarism of infanticide; new hate groups arose which linger to this day, despite all our advances.  

A fact of governance is that the party in power will bear the brunt of criticism for any crisis, no matter how unforeseeable.  A crisis of the magnitude of the sudden evolution of documentable super-powers was unimaginable.  

Such a degree of crisis, perhaps, is what was required to break the vice grip of the dominant political party at the time when meta-abilities began to emerge, the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan.  That epitome of conservatism and corruption had held power virtually uninterrupted for one and a quarter centuries before the emergence of, on the one hand, Destro and his Army of Liberation, and, on the other hand, Saneki Yuuichi, the very first meta-human to attain representation in the Diet.  It was the tension between the demands of these two factions that finally, irreparably fragmented the LPD.  

The elections that followed were fractious, haphazard.  Coalitions whose only commonality was opposition to the LPD unraveled.  Across Japan, political parties old and new heard the song of opportunity.  Voting numbers surged as they had not done in decades.  Not only those with meta-abilities—by then called “quirks,” in recognition of one of our kind’s first and greatest martyrs—but minorities of all kinds strove to make their voices heard, cleaving together with newfound passion for each of their individual causes.  For the first time, quirk-users began to seek office in sufficient number, and with sufficient backing, to form their own coalitions, driven to secure the safety and well-being of a rapidly developing population.  

In 2095, over a century after the birth of the radiant child in Qing Qing, Japan signed an international accord acknowledging the fundamental rights of meta-humans.  In 2120, the country reached meta-human parity—fifty percent of the population were confirmed quirk-users.  No longer was there a need to cling in desperation to our one cause, a cause for which we would sacrifice all other concerns.  Quirk-users could begin to look to other causes, to the construction of the future.  

—The construction of the future.  That is why I stand here tonight, thanks to all of you!  [pause for applause]  My friends, I struggle to find the words.  It has been such a long, long path.  Over the last few years, I have heard, over and over again, your concerns, your values, your fears.  It will be my honor to carry them to Nagata.  Our representation in Japan’s halls of governance is yet small, but our numbers will grow.  With every passing year, the needs of this country’s citizens grow more varied and complex—simple, one-size-fits-all solutions will no longer be able to address them.  We must reach out to one another, united in our faith in the essential humanity of all quirk-users.  Together, our hearts and minds will lead us to tomorrow.  

Thank you.  

———–      

“How is it?” Koku asks when Rikiya’s lips begin to tug upwards towards the end of the last page.  “Acceptable, I hope, seeing as I’ll need to be delivering it tomorrow.”  

“You might try to punch up the history lesson a bit, but it’s very stirring,” Rikiya responds, looking up with a smile.  “And it will only be more so, with your delivery.”

“You’re a flatterer.”

“It’s hardly undeserved, Trumpet.”  

The name, though he’s worn it since he was a teenager, has never felt so earned.  Koku’s fingers brush over Rikiya’s and linger as Rikiya passes the speech back over again.  Oh, to be as free as we were back in school.

“I wish I could stay the evening,” Koku says with less vehemence than he feels, “but I have some social calls to make.  Supporters’ Association business.”

“Does it ever end?” Rikiya asks with mock-reflectiveness, still holding his gaze.

“Not as long we’re still holding weddings and funerals, I’m afraid.”  He folds up the speech and tucks into the inner pocket of his coat. “Thank you for taking the time.”  

Rikiya sighs at the lack of an address, his expression a knowing and weary smile.  He nods, and Koku takes his leave before things have a chance to get out of hand.  

———–      ———–      ———–      ———–

I’ve gotten an ask about posting my OCs/made-up names and quirks for this story, which I will absolutely compile a post on when the week is over, if only because I want to share some of the fruits of the 5-6 hours of feverish note-taking I had to do for this bit of self-indulgence.  

I don’t know what part of my brain decided to translate, “You know, I’ve been really curious about politics in HeroAca Land and Trumpet’s place in them--I’ll write something about that for the Heart prompt!” to, “I know; I’ll write an epistolary-style victory speech summarizing the entire history of the progression of quirk acceptance and Trumpet’s fictional political party!  With dates!” but it needs to check itself before I wreck myself.  

———–      ———–      ———–      ———–

“It’s a good article, it really is,” Chitose’s editor told her, “but we can’t run it as-is.  We need more proof.”

“Anonymous sources are a perfectly valid basis for an exposé!” she argued, hands on the desk.  “We can’t let something this big get away from us!”

“I can’t let this magazine get sued into bankruptcy, either, Kizuki.  This?”  He waved her first draft for emphasis.  “It’s too big.  Get me proof, or someone’ll who go on the record for it.”  

“But—”

“No buts.  Give me proof or this whole story’s going straight to the Sort With Combustibles File.”  He thrust the half-rolled papers out to her.  After glaring at them and him for a few seconds, Chitose scowled and took them.

“Fine.  Give me a week and I’ll get proof.”  She excused herself under the guise of calling up one of her contacts.  Which was true, as far as it went.  She did need to talk to a contact.  Just not anybody she’d quoted for that particular story.

“We’re doing lunch,” she announced to the phone, and raised her voice to talk over the string of complaining that immediately started up on the other end of the line.  “My treat, college boy.  I need a favor.”    

———–

She met her date at Kiyashi Bazille, an airy, stripped down café built on two floors in an old warehouse. It had good cold-cut sandwiches and wonderful milk teas, but most importantly, a divided floor plan and the kind of acoustics that bounced every sound in the place up into a muffled cacophony in the ceiling beams.  True to form, Tomoyasu had gotten there first and requested a table secluded from the rest of the floor, where he sat furiously typing away at a sleek laptop, the power cord trailing down to vanish into a satchel bag propped up against the table leg. A can of iced coffee and a piece of cheesecake with a single bite taken out of it languished next to him, ignored.

When she pulled out the chair opposite his, he pulled out an earbud speaker and favored her with a particularly filthy stare through his bangs.

“I have finals coming up, you know.”

“And I’m sure you’re going to ace them,” she said, sitting down and setting her order card at the edge of the table.  “You’re only the biggest overachiever I know.”

“Doesn’t that just mean you could be applying yourself harder?” he asked nastily.

“It’s no good for the cause to drive myself into an early grave, Yaskkun.”  She bared her teeth at him in a way that probably resembled a smile to an outsider.  His hackles raised like an offended cat at the nickname.  “The same goes for you, you know?”

“I can handle my own workload.  Which is more than you can, apparently.”  He typed out another string of keystrokes forcefully.  “I need to get back to campus soon, so spare me the beating around the bush.  What do you need me for?”

“It’s called building rapport; it’s a reporter tactic,” she informed him with mock cheerfulness, then propped her elbows up on the table.  “How much do you know about the Haneki Park case?”  

“The hero involved in it just got cleared.  What about it?”  He glanced at her, then returned his gaze to his screen.  

“I thought some of the dates involved looked a little funny, so I did some digging.  You know that True Crime: Hero SOS program?  Films heroes while they’re on the job, so the public can get an inside look at a hero’s ‘daily life’?”  Tomoyasu scoffed, which she ignored, continuing, “I went back and double-checked.  They should have been filming when the Haneki Park incident happened, but no video evidence was presented to the prosecutors.  That’s why it was never brought to trial.”

She leaned in and lowered her voice.  “Now, I have it on good authority that the producer lied to investigators.  He told them that his crew didn’t get any usable footage of the incident because he was afraid that if they turned footage over to the police, then heroes wouldn’t be willing to work with them anymore.”

“Because of the public approval ratings.”  Tomoyasu’s typing slowed; his fingers slid across his touchpad and then resumed flying across the keys, eyes flicking over his screen.  “You never know when you might get caught saying something unflattering on camera, and if that becomes a big scandal, then…”

“Then your billboard ratings go down, and your funding, and your endorsement deals—the whole ball of wax.”  Chitose nodded.  “Exactly.”

“What was the window on the filming?”  He paused as a waitress approached with Chitose’s order (a ham and cucumber sandwich and a lychee mint milk tea), going back to typing and kicking her once under the table when she apologized to the girl for his churlishness and called him shy. When the girl left again, he scowled at her and went on.  “And how does this help our memoir?  Doesn’t this kind of story usually lead to calls for more oversight?”

Don’t talk to me about how to tell the Liberation Narrative to the public, you pre-grad little computer geek.

“Not in this case,” she said, resting her chin on her hands and narrowing her eyes at him, pushing down the flare of ire.  “The whole issue here is that a hero made a snap decision based on bias.  He didn’t know those kids or their relationship; he just saw Medusa hair and glowing eyes and put a minor in her last year of high school in the hospital for it.  The people on the scene knew better, but he was too busy showing off for the camera to listen.  It was naked bias against someone with a ‘villain quirk,’ and that’s not even touching the policing from the outside-in angle.”  

He was nodding by the halfway point of the explanation, so she finished up with, “And the filming window was August twenty-fifth to September fourteenth.”

“So you need me to dig up the footage.  I don’t suppose you can dig up a network password, Miss Curious?”  

A thrill of pleasure went up her spine to hear that name uttered in right out loud in public; she laughed in delight before shaking her head.  

“The footage has been destroyed.”  Tomoyasu stopped typing to fix her with an aghast stare.  “My contact says her producer wasn’t taking any chances.”

“You need an entire fabricated episode?”  This time it was him leaning in, hissing at her in disbelief.  

“I need the truth.” She leaned forward in turn and grinned, tight and fierce.  “It happened, Skeptic.  All we need is to be able to show it to people.  Unless you don’t think your software’s up to it.”  

“Don’t try that reverse psychology bullshit on me!” he spat, turning aside to gulp at his drink for several long, furious seconds.  When he surfaced, he plonked the can down on the table and returned his attention to his screen.  “What kind of cameras do they use?”

“Industry standard’s the Harashita V-10,” she answered, settling back comfortably in her chair and taking a sip of her tea, savoring the clear, sweet zing.  “So, how’s school treating you?”

———–      ———–      ———–      ———–

———–      ———–      ———–      ———–

«I think you’ll like this one,» Nimble announces, the rainbow-colored letters of her quirk dancing in the air.  

“You thought I’d like the first two, too,” Spinner replies skeptically, looking away from the floating words to focus on his brand new number one, a woman with a face like a doll whose sculptor had gotten as far as the eyes—huge and green—before giving up on the rest, little things like a nose and a mouth.  She breathes by absorbing air through her skin like a frog, apparently, which is why she dresses the way she does, a distractingly low-cut tank top and a sweater jacket that he has never once seen covering her shoulders.  

She shrugs, expressive eyes briefly fluttering closed, and movement in the air draws Spinner’s attention back over to where her quirk—Sky Write—has spelled out her response.  

«I thought you’d like them too.  Can I call him in?»

“Yeah, go ahead.”  Just as long as he’s not a not surly bastard like the last two.  They’d had good quirks, the last two, but damned if Spinner’s going to work with people who can’t even manage to keep resentment out of their eyes for the length of a job interview, or whatever this process of picking subordinates out of an army full of people that were trying to kill him less than two weeks ago is called.  

Nimble’s letters dissolve into a shapeless blur as she looks over to the door, eyebrows briefly lowering in concentration.  A few seconds later, the door to Spinner’s makeshift office opens. Spinner’s eyes drop almost half-a-person’s length in height and he tries to keep the surprise off his face.  

“A kid?”

«He’s twenty-one, actually.»  

“What she said.”  The voice comes out a bit muffled through the black hood covering the kid’s—okay, the twenty-one-year old’s face.  But if he’s the same age as Spinner, he sure as hell doesn’t look it.  He can’t be over a meter tall, with the skinniest legs Spinner’s ever seen sticking out from under the hem of the black robe he wears like a kid running around the house beneath a sheet.  A big feathery ruff sits around his neck like a dried-out wreath.  

“Scarecrow, reporting in.” The weird little gremlin settles into a military rest in front of the desk, far enough back that it’s not too obvious that he has to tilt his head to look over it.  “It’s an honor to meet you, sir.”  

Spinner stares at him, trying to suppress a grimace.  Scarecrow stares back through little eyeholes cut in the hood, but without being able to see more of his face, it’s impossible to tell if he’s glaring or just has really piercing eyes.  

“Right.”  Spinner glances over at Nimble, who nods.  Her response scrawls itself in the air between them, facing first him, then angling to face the gremlin.  

«Show him your meta-ability, Scarecrow.  Catch!»  

She pulls out a 100 yen coin and deftly balances it on her thumb before flicking it out into the air over the desk.

Spinner bites back a yelp as bug legs unfold from beneath Scarecrow’s ruff, long, segmented things that narrow down to sharp points at the tips.  Two thin lines of silk jet out from the knobby second joints, catching on the spinning coin, and the legs reel it back in, bouncing it in the air, spinning it like a weight on a string, then cocooning it up with quick efficiency.  It falls neatly into his hand—not a normal human hand, Spinner notices belatedly, but a prosthetic, hard plastic and super articulated, with cables visible beneath the individual parts.

“I can fully cocoon up to twelve adult men a day,” Scarecrow rattles out.  “I can also pull myself up the sides of walls and move between buildings, if they’re close enough together.  I was inducted into the Meta Liberation Army on my sixteenth birthday; my parents have been members for ten years.  I know we’re a relatively new family, but—”

“I don’t—”  Spinner stops himself from finishing that sentence with care about that stuff, amending to, “I’m not worried about your—generation or whatever.”  Is that better?  Neither Scarecrow or Nimble react to it with narrowed eyes or a snarl, anyway. Promising?  “Why’d you join up?”  

Jumping on a bandwagon is one thing, but at least that takes a running start and a leap.  Not like joining a cult because it’s just the family business, Spinner thinks viciously at his memory of that greasy asshole Trumpet’s plated mask.

Scarecrow stares at him for a long second.  Spinner does his best to look serious, like he’s actually got a whole prepared list of questions or whatever.  Like he knows what he’s doing.  

Finally, Scarecrow holds up his hands, both spread wide, both obvious prosthetics.  His bug legs twitch and probe at the air.  

“I was born with no arms,” he says.  “Just my forelegs.  It’s not the same as having opposable thumbs, obviously, but it’s better than you’d think. But my teachers used to scold me for raising a foreleg instead of a hand to answer a question or carry things.  The kind of stuff a kid who didn’t have a birth defect could use their quirk to do and no one would look twice.  If I go out in public and so much as open doors for myself with them, people look at me funny.  Because I look funny.”

Don’t use your quirk at school outside of training lessons, Shuuichi-kun.  Spinner remembers that kind of bias, yeah.  All the non-heteromorphic kids could run around the schoolyard playing tag with snowballs in July, but heaven forbid he use his quirk to climb a tree so he can get away from bullies for the length of a lunchbreak.  

He pushes the memory away and nods at Scarecrow to keep him talking.  Not that the guy needs much pushing—he talks like someone who’s told the story before, hard-edged, voice intense despite a mid-ranged pitch.  He’s got just a hint of a—a hiss or a lisp, something that muddles the edges of his hard consonants.  The hood doesn’t move like he’s hiding mandibles under there, but…

“I’ve been wearing prosthetics for longer than I can remember.  The government pays for most of it, since I was born this way, but there’re a lot of limitations on it.  How often they’ll replace them, what my folks got charged for them.  It was always tight, and the kinds of prosthetics government money buys definitely weren’t as nice as these.”  He flexes his false fingers demonstratively.

“My folks and I met Re-Destro—” and there’s that note of reverence, the same tone Re-Destro himself’s using about Shigaraki these days “—when I was nine.  A family friend recommended Detnerat’s products to us, and he took an interest. That’s how we found out about the Army.”

“Yeah?”  Spinner crosses his arms over his chest.  

“My parents joined up because of me.  But I joined up for myself.  Because people think that because I have prosthetics, I shouldn’t need to use my forelegs in public.” Scarecrow’s voice sharpens.  “Like I don’t have the right to use the limbs I was born with.  I should have that right.  We all should.”

“We’re not out to reform society, you know,” Spinner cautions him.  He’s had to tell Re-Destro that too many times already, and that’s just having grasped it himself there in the ruins of Deika.  “That’s not what Shigaraki’s after.”  

Scarecrow gives him another long, quiet look, unreadable behind his hood.  Finally—slower, less practiced—he nods and answers, “Destro’s teaching was that oppression will always lead to revolution.  The Grand Commander of the Liberation Army is the one who’ll throw off those chains.  Whatever he makes of the world, I want to be there to help, not sitting in my shackles waiting for someone to hand me an answer.”

Spinner breathes out hard. He scratches at his hair.  

“…Right,” he manages. Don’t admit he said it better than you could.  “Well put.” He turns to Nimble and adds, “Well, he didn’t offend me.”

«I know you’d like him.»  Her words practically shimmy in the air, flickering green and yellow and pink.  «Then do we have our number 2?»

Spinner glances back over at Scarecrow, who’s staring determinedly out the window behind the desk, his back toy soldier straight.  He still looks more like a kid in a costume than anything else, but…  

Well, I like him better than people like the politician.  And we need to keep things moving, anyway.  Don’t stop running or someone might catch up.  

“Yeah, I think so” he says aloud, then takes a breath and leans over the desk, offering a hand.  Scarecrow takes it without a second’s pause, plastic clicking against Spinner’s scales.  “Welcome to the Support Regiment.”  

———–      ———–      ———–      ———–

I’ll have some links up about things here when I post this to AO3, but in the meantime, Scarecrow--whose condition at birth was called amelia--wears a hood not because he’s embarrassed of a bug face, but rather because he’s embarrassed of the way various surgeries to repair cleft palate and cleft lip have left his face looking.  He’s much more confident in showing off his meta-ability than what he thinks of as his disability.