The Spider's Daughter

“Will you walk into my parlour?” said the Spider to the Fly, “‘Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy; The way into my parlour is up a winding stair, And I have many curious things to show when you are there.” 

“Oh no, no,” said the little Fly, “to ask me is in vain, For who goes up your winding stair can ne’er come down again.”

| Rules | Information | 

The puzzlement is mutual, and the villain doesn’t see the point in keeping it hidden. They’re both here, ripped out of their lives and forced to attend a program they don’t believe in, so what’s the use in acting all secretive? It would only serve to drive them apart even further than they already are, and it’s an alliance they both could benefit from.

“Arachne,” the boy nods in greeting, chin resting on folded hands. “I guess we’re using our real names here, though, so.” A shrug follows his words, but it’s not the only thing he wants to say. Give some, earn some — and so, he extends one hand towards the other “Midoriya Izuku. Nice to meet you properly, and all that.”

It’s not the worst way to find out each other’s names, at least. Everything can always go worse, Izuku has long learned that, and that, in turn, helped him appreciate small things. Such as being the only ones in the classroom. The other students should arrive soon, but Izuku and Ysabella still have a few minutes left.

“So, how’d they get you?”

She scowled, poise leaving her for a single moment before she schooled her expression.

“I had leverage over the Commission - they were aware of my contacts and my ability to expose them, and so they didn’t arrest me under the condition I didn’t let the information get out. To my abysmal luck, however, someone not even involved in the Commission assassinated them, and now I have no reliable evidence about the HPSC’s corruption due to a risky deal I made when I was much younger and inexperienced. A sloppy move I’ve been waiting to bite me in the back for years, but even then I didn’t expect this.”

She tightened her bow, pulling a stray strand of hair back into place. Her posture was annoyed, frame tense, even if she tried to relax it. She was usually much better about these types of things, but here she was truly out of her element. Years of work were down the drain. And for what?

“Ysabella, by the way. Ysabella Lafayette - or I suppose the other way around in Japan, but calling by my given name is fine if it’s not too impersonal to you. I haven’t used my family name in a while now, anyway.”

She paused, looking up and down. Dressed in these tedious UA uniforms, from far away he might almost look plain. He had a strong presence, but looked so normal. Irritatingly normal. Just like her, in her plain skirt, top and tie, and shining Mary-Jane heels. Normal. Her new reality.

Aizawa was on patrol, doing his best to keep crime off the streets of his little slice of the community. It had been a quiet night, thankfully. He was just starting to think about heading to the diner he liked and getting some very late dinner… or very early breakfast; when he spotted something strange…

A young girl, a child, alone, leaving an alley. He furrowed his brow, where the hell was this Kid’s parents? Slipping down from the ledge he was perched on, he landed a few feet away from her. “Are you lost?”

She slowly looked the man in front of her up and down, not backing away, but noting in her head that he could grab her very easily. He was strong, she could tell, and she was little.

She scowled, and raised her chin pointedly, puffing out her chest. To her it might have seemed intimidating. To anyone else, however, it looked kind of adorable.

“A priestess never gets lost. I am merely...learning the way.”

She didn’t know where she was, but it certainly wasn’t London. She’d woken up in some sort of alleyway, before stumbling weakly to the open sidewalk. The chilly night air made her shiver.

She took a deep breath, and then steadied herself, standing taller. She was a priestess - looking undignified was beneath her. She would find out her location, and then manage to get back to London, where the Church would welcome her back with open arms.

Perhaps this was a test from her Mother? Priestesses needed to be tested, after all. Though never had she been tested quite like this.

And so, she walked, ignoring the glances of sketchy onlookers. If they tried to take her, she would call upon the Mother to make them kneel to the glory of the divine, just has she had been taught.

In spite of everything, she’s here at the doors. Probably with a sniper tracking her from somewhere. She doesn’t think they’d kill her - not at this point. But it would certainly not be pleasant to be shot at, even if nonlethally.

She enters the building, and immediately feels eyes on her. Nedzu? She should’ve guessed. She respects few people, but he does have hers. In a way they were very similar: a lab rat and a girl groomed into “godhood”. She continues to muse, watching the eyes of the heroes teaching at the building graze her as she walks down the halls.

1-A. Rehab. She dislikes that word’s connotations. She doesn’t need to put her use to some faux-heroic effort. Her information broking helped thousands of people, even if in morally suspicious ways.

But that was behind her now. The bar had been taken, and she was to be living in the dorms. Monitored. Constantly.

Her brooding continues until she sees a flash of green hair. Her eyes widen in surprise. It takes a lot to truly keep her off guard, but this would qualify. She’s unused to being disconnected from the underground - if she’d still been running her bar, she’s sure she would’ve already known - but this seals her misery.

She isn’t miserable because of his presence - on the contrary, she finds him pleasant enough. Smart, not obnoxious, and not dramatic enough to have to deal with theatrics to create opportunities and deals. She’ll offer a truce, just in case. They hadn’t parted on bad terms last time they’d met, but even so, they were competitors.

Emphasis on were. And that’s what really gets her. She hadn’t known. She almost always knows. And now everything she’d built for years has been taken from her in pursuit of some “greater good”. It’s nauseating.

She walks closer to him, Mary-jane heels clicking on the floor.

@ysabellasweb​ liked for a Disordered Self-Restraint Dabi starter:

There had been a few rumours about a new project that the Commission was working on. Something about a new hero they were training, although the whole thing was very hush-hush. Even people moderately high up the chain didn’t really know what was going on, only that it was taking a whole lot of resources and had led to more than a few casualties.

Talk about the project died down, though, soon after a public announcement: Touya Todoroki, the runaway Todoroki child thought dead, had been found and returned to health. Any talk connecting the white-haired, empty-eyed person on TV thanking the Commission to the criminal ‘Dabi’ was suppressed quickly.

That being said, for a guy who definitely wasn’t a villain, he was being kept on a tight leash. Officially the person following him was his ‘caretaker’, but they really seemed more like a handler.

Which was what made it so strange when Touya wandered into The Spider’s Parlor alone.

Well. This was a surprise. The eldest Todoroki child, in her little parlor? And without a leash? Hm. Her day just became a lot more interesting.

The underground more or less knew he was Dabi. The commission could silence them, but he still had a face. One that was admittedly fairly known. Ysabella had, after the announcement, wondered why they hadn’t surgically reconstructed him. It was clear he wasn’t there of his own free will, so if they were willing to go that far, why not further?

She tightened the bow laced around her hair, and took out a menu from under the counter, putting it on the wooden tabletop’s edge for when he sat down.

“Welcome to the Spider’s Parlor. I’m Arachne, the owner. Are you looking for a drink or for information?”

The Commission knew about her activities, but they wouldn’t dare kill her. In the event of her death, a few choice people had been incensed to release specific unsavory information about the HPSC. Likewise, she couldn’t release it, because as soon as she did she’d be as good as dead. They were at a standstill.

“Oh, absolutely.” The villain agrees immediately, words accompanied with a small nod and polite smile.

Despite what some may think, he wouldn’t have it any other way. Contracts, while undoubtedly boring and sometimes borderline irritating to draft and compile, ensure that his payment for fulfilling his end of the deal is going to be protected, just as much as it ensures the other party’s safety. It something that just has to be done.

“I agree with your terms. In fact, I was going to suggest the same. We’re still competitors,” the man jokes, head tilted to the side as he speaks. “So we should keep our areas of expertise to ourselves. For the most part, that is.”

Her lips quirk into an echo of a smile. 

“I’m glad. It’s been a busy day, and I didn’t want to have to fight you on that front. Want a drink? It’s on the house in the hopes of a successful future partnership.”

(And maybe also because alcohol loosened people’s tongues. Ha. Mostly, she was just being polite).

“If not, we can head straight to my drafting room. If you try to murder me while we’re in solitude, I reserve the right to use my quirk on you and return the favor. I apologize if that comes off as vulgar, but it’s a warning I give everyone.”

While physically fragile - (quite literally, considering the state of some of her limbs...) - her quirk was powerful. Mind control on it’s own was a rare quirk. Mind control that could bypass the victim’s survival instincts? Rare and extremely dangerous.

Straight to the point and no unnecessary pleasantries — what a pleasant change.

Expression unchanged, the villain rests his chin on interlaced fingers, elbows propped up against the counter as he addresses the cafe owner again: “You could say we share certain qualities of our professional lives,” he explains. Although it’s more of a way to pass time to him now, the memories of the days past, when he’d make a living out of finding information, still live fresh in Izuku’s mind. “We could help each other. You have access to some of the channels I don’t, and vice versa.” Gossip and whispered truths and closed, protected databases. If they were to put the two together, it could yield some very interesting results.

“What do you think? Hm?”

Ysabella pauses, tightening the bow that holds her hair back in thought. A habit of hers. Her eyes seem to glint in a calculating way, not focused on the man in front of her as much as she is the potential pros and cons of that sort of deal.

“As much as I like that idea, before agreeing to anything, I’d like to make a contract that states the details of this exchange. No loopholes to exploit. The sharing of information can be beneficial, but to me the information I hold is currency, and so I’m not only cautious of it getting into the wrong hands, but also the amount of it that gets distributed.”

Her eyebrows furrow in thought as she pauses once again, fishing a key out of her pocket.

“Instead of giving each other open access to the networks and channels that we’ve cultivated respectively, I think that, in simplified terms that I hope to expand on later, every transaction should be considered individual. As much as I’d like to expand our business relationship, allowing you to have access to the channels I’ve presided over without being critical of my own distribution choices would be to, hm, put all my eggs in one basket, so to speak.”

She hesitates again, before letting her instincts win. His offer is, on his part, smart. But he is a villain, and she is an informant. Their lines of work, while similar, have differences. The reason she is so desired as an informant is because some of the knowledge she has access to is exclusive. To allow someone to access that, even with the benefit that she would also gain a medley of previously unknown info., would be a risk.

Even so...

Her ears are ringing. That’s the first thing the girl notices. Her vision twists, and she falls over in a bout of vertigo. Mother bless her, what’s happened?

On instinct, she tries to connect to her divinity. It’s there, and she sighs in relief, almost as if she’d feared it being taken away. Her quirk is her blessing as the Priestess. If she had failed in her duties, would she be forced to relinquish it? She shivers at the thought. She thinks it might kill her.

When her vision clears, she notices a man. He looks a bit scraped up, but not terribly injured. White hair. Around them is suspiciously colored dust - reddish, with a gory like consistency.

She stands up wobblily, not backing away from the man. If he tried anything, she would simply do her duty as Priestess. Eradicate any threats to the Church of the Great Spider.

@ysabellasweb

“Miss Arachne,” he addresses the cafe owner with warmth reserved to familiarity neither of them possesses. Still, the smile on the villain’s face seems genuine, enlivening the features that usually stay neutral. “I’ve heard a lot about you in the recent days… and I was thinking, we could be useful to each other.”

Ysabella narrows her eyes, but otherwise doesn’t seem perturbed. Internally, though, her hackles have risen. Usagi is an incredibly dangerous villain. While she deals with smart people fairly often, it’s rare that someone can match her manipulation skills. Just from the glint in his eye she has a feeling that manipulation comes easy to him.

“Oh? I’m flattered. What exactly were you thinking?”