#tpiel

Ch 32. Fic Update: Will be posting update very very soon. Decided to rewrite the chapter last minute because it felt a bit wonky and am currently trapped in a dungeon of nightmares called Midterms

Sneak Peek, for the troubles:

It reminds him of a thought that's been crossing his mind a lot lately, the fact that his quirk had the apparent habit of seeping into his voice without him knowing. It'd been something he hadn't been able to get out of his head, ever since Medama had whispered about it in his ear and made him shiver and stutter.

He doesn't imagine it does much. There must be a reason he never noticed it before. It must have been too small a detail to even register in his periphery, especially since he's had his quirk for basically as long as he can remember. It'd just become a part of him. To integrated to notice.

But this is an opportunity to experiment, even if it leads nowhere, so Shinsou tries to summon up whatever vestigial bit of his quirk that's gone long undiagnosed and tries to force it forward.

Shoving it into his voice.

It's... hard. At first. To even recognize it. It's a tightening somewhere, at the base of his throat. It feels like dozens of strings being pulled taught inside of him, stressed with a high-tension that sends a tingling sensation across his tongue.

It makes him want to bite down.

The pressure in his neck is not... an unfamiliar one. It's like flexing a muscle, tensing and untensing until something just- falls into place.

After a minute, it's strikingly easy to do, especially now that he's paying attention to it.

It's a rumbling, then it's a purr- "It's not like you have any other options."

She wouldn't blame him for either.

Instead-

He sighs, a haggard sound that probably twists his mouth into a crooked smirk. She can’t tell. He’s wearing a mask, making it infinitely harder to gauge his already muted expressiveness. She thinks that, if he is though, it might suit him better than the concern he was offering her. "No one else was going to come over to pick up after your sorry-ass. My bad. Next time, I'll just make sure to kick you on my way out."

"Asshole. You're the moron wasting both of our time."

She has just enough time to catch sight of him rolling his eyes before his hands are colliding with her shoulders and she’s being shoved into the dirt.

“Ow!” She bites back a growl. “You- You are so damn dramatic, Shinsou.”

Flowing rivers of water.

There's an ocean tide beneath him, a salty spray that leaves a taste in his mouth, crystalline tides speckled with dust and dirt and fine little speckled dots that seemed to catch the sunlight like suspicious little stars he hadn't yet learned the meaning of.

He should've reacted. He should've frozen it and been done with it. But he pauses instead and that single second of distraction and second guessing costs him more time than he realizes. Enough for someone to take advantage.

"I- I can't believe what I'm seeing here, folks, but it seems like-"

He can feel his eyes widen as something sharp, thorny and like a whip rips up from the waves to wrap around his ankle.

"-students are teaming up?!"

It drags him back down to earth.

He still doesn’t know whether it’s a good feeling or not. He still doesn’t know why it makes him curious and anxious all the same. Most of all, though, he can’t help but find it familiar too. Enough that it makes his insides crackle with that unknown power he was still learning and desperate to control and that hunger, deep in his belly, telling him that he needs to scream his name to the heavens before someone drags him down and back into the deep.