Um.... if it isn’t too inconvenient, is ok for u to share your thoughts when you wrote Never shut? Thank you and sorry for the inconvenience!
it’s not an inconvenience at all. there’s no need to apologize. like with breathing room, Never Shut is just too long for me to go through the whole fic, so i’ll pick a scene!
it was difficult to pick (i would love to talk about aizawa saying oboro’s name), but i chose oboro being attacked by the nomu and then his first follow-up fight with aizawa.Â
The creature’s mouth opened. It shrieked. Red stained its maw. He realized dizzyingly, all in a rush, that it was his blood. That in moments it would be stained with the blood of his kids, of-
Oboro moved. He didn’t know what he was doing, driven by instinct and a distant rage that roared in his ears. He drove his staff forward screaming, but Oboro didn’t make it far.
Starting out with this description, hahaha. I just wanted to convey how scary the Nomu was, but also how protective Oboro is of his students. He’s very soft for kids, and he’s already attached to his class. (His kids.)
“No—”
Someone tackled him in a flurry of limbs. His shoulder wrenched back. He screamed. A thin, bony hand gripped his wrist. A curtain of long, dark hair fell around them, shadowing both of their faces.
“Let me- no!”
Oboro reached for his Quirk. Under the long trailing hair was a gaunt, scarred face; set into it was a pair of dark eyes that suddenly became awash with bright gold. And Oboro’s Quirk vanished like he was snatching at thin air.
In all of his years, Oboro had never known any other person with a nullification Quirk. Not since—
They were rare. As he reached for his Quirk and found it gone Oboro felt it begin to stir faint memories he’d tucked away. Oboro gritted his teeth.
Aizawa blocks Oboro. We get a hint of some of the descriptors assigned to Aizawa, that are just slightly off-putting and abnormal—a thin hand, the curtain of dark hair, his gaunt face, bright gold eyes.
And then Oboro’s Quirk disappears in the same moment that we meet him.
Oboro makes the immediate jump to Aizawa, but he stops himself mid-thought because it’s too painful and unfathomable. It hurts too much, especially to think about in a fight.
“You seem like you know how to have a good time,” Oboro gasped, trying to smile as a hand pressed down on his chest. The wrists looked all wrong and the arms were too thin, inhuman, but the villain pinned him with an unnatural strength. “Kill me while you’re at it, why don’t you?”
The villain didn’t say anything, but he did draw in a breath like he was going to speak. His eyes, still a brilliant gold, peered down at Oboro. He paused.
“What,” Oboro said, then broke into coughing. Pain exploded behind his eyes. Oboro kicked out only half-voluntarily as a hand curled into the front of his shirt and pulled upwards.
Commence a little ass-kicking. Unfortunately.
In the beginning, Oboro tries for a joke, trying to push Aizawa’s buttons, but he can’t get a rise out of him. Also continuing Aizawa’s description, implying that something has been done to him to make him different than the character we imagine.
Aizawa also pauses here, once he gets a good view of Oboro’s face.
There was a moment as Oboro stared up at the face of the villain—a long, deep scar stretching under one glowing eye, dark shadows pooling in the crevices. What unnerved Oboro the most was the lack of emotion. There was no anger, like in Shigaraki; there was no wicked, terrible smile. Just a dead, heavy stare that seemed to pin Oboro down more than the villain’s strength.
And those eyes…
If there was a color beneath the burning gold, Oboro couldn’t see it. Light overtook the irises of the eyes, turning them tawny and strange. Disconcerting. Oboro met those eyes; the villain didn’t blink once as his grip on Oboro tightened.
And here we get a little more description to round it all out. Overall in this scene with Aizawa’s introduction I really enjoyed how I wrote it. I wanted Aizawa to feel familiar and recognizable, but clearly different, having gone through something terrible.
The line about the lack of emotion and his eyes. Both of these are meant to draw attention, and to emphasize the idea that “something bad happened but you don’t know what.” Aizawa’s emotionless and basically reactionless save for what he’s ordered to do. Even though canon Aizawa may sometimes hide emotions, this Aizawa seems to feel nothing at all, and I think that’s one of the saddest parts of the fic.Â
While I don’t say it quite outright in this part, this is also one of the parts in the fic where I write about what was done to Aizawa; namely that his Quirk was enhanced, and that he doesn’t blink (because he can’t), removing a weakness of his Quirk which means he can activate his Quirk at will for a long period of uninterrupted time.
Then he slammed Oboro down. Oboro’s ears rang. Pain splintered up the left side of his head as he felt the ground crack beneath him. The dome above him, the dirt next to him—all of it swam out of focus.
The world was sideways. Someone called. Oboro couldn’t hear individual words, really, just sound echoing from somewhere. He saw a pair of legs running towards him, and forced his eyes upward. Midoriya.
The name cleaved through him like lighting. Oboro forced himself up, and the world burst back into focus.
Sensei, Midoriya was calling. Under the lights Oboro could see tears on his cheeks, but he ran forward instead of running away. To Midoriya’s left was the Nomu- the Nomu—
This fic isn’t all about Oboro and Aizawa, of course. This part shows Oboro’s dedication to his students and in this case to Izuku.Â
Oboro tried again. He didn’t know what he was doing, what desperate reserves he was drawing from. Oboro felt the cool rush of power sweep through him and almost wept in relief as the air dampened and clouds poured into every space he could manage. He reached Midoriya. Grabbed his student’s arm, even as an inhuman scream rang around them.
“Sensei—” Midoriya gasped, eyes shining, “sensei, you’re hurt, oh, God, sensei you’re bleeding, your arm—”
Oboro tried not to think about his shoulder, about the pain that was rendering his left arm useless. He pulled Midoriya close to him, pulled more clouds around them to shelter them, to hide them.
Quirk’s back! Just in time for Oboro to give them shelter using his clouds so they can start making an escape. This serves another purpose as well, which is to keep Aizawa from seeing them and erasing their Quirks again.
(Oboro’s arm might be a little wrecked. He and Izuku are arm buddies.)
“Midoriya,” he said, keeping his voice steady and low. “It’s alright, Midoriya.”
“That thing— the—”
Oboro moved his arm up and put it around Midoriya’s shoulders as they ran together, stumbling on the hard ground. His head pounded. He couldn’t imagine what he must look like to his student. Oboro could feel blood on the side of his face and soaking through his shirt, could feel his own fear like a tangible thing, a sharp knife out his back. But he summoned a smile.
I feel like this is a representation of the Oboro-that-could-have-been, which is to say how he is as a teacher. He cares deeply. He smiles. A little bit like All Might but maybe more personal, bright, reassuring for his students. Even when everything is falling apart around him.
send me your favorite scene/chapter from one of my works + i’ll write commentary on it!
