I never thought I'd see shipping week revived after being gone for like 5 years so yeet. AU is everyone has a shitty superpower. Some are more shitty than others. Sorry this is so late.
Friendship IDK
"Welcome to Friendship IDK!" said the cheerful tour guide.
"Why is it called that again?" asked Yavien.
She had seen the advertisement flyer for the university slash college slash high school slash office building slash retirement home slash vacation resort slash zoo three days ago while sifting through her secret stash of mariju— I mean her real life garden. It had seemed interesting enough at the time, so she thought she'd at least look into this weird ass thing. Since it seemed a popular location, it couldn't be too bad, right?
And thus, a phone call and a voicemail later, she had booked a tour of the...place.
"Well," explained the tour guide who's name tag read JOAN pronounced JONE not JO-ANNE you insolent fool! "I think whoever made this place really wanted the initials to be FI for some reason but gave up halfway through, so we're stuck with this shitty name."
"Right," said Yavi, as if that was an adequate explanation.
"Anyway, back to the tour introduction," continued Joan. "FI is a university slash college slash high school slash office building slash retirement home slash vacation resort slash zoo slash Howl's Moving Castle except instead of a castle it's a walking dumpster disguised as a challenge forum discord. But everyone here has something in common!"
Yavi wondered if she could get a refund.
"Everyone who lives here has a shitty superpower!"
"What?" asked Yavi.
"Yeah, everyone here has a shitty superpower. In fact, the only people can even see or hear about this place have a shitty superpower. So we're kind of like Hogwarts or Professor X's house except for people who are too shitty to be proper superheroes, you know."
"I don't have a shitty superpower," she protested.
Joan scoffed. "Of course you do. You just have to discover it. If you commit to living here, the Sorting Cat will help you discover your shitty superpower."
"What's your shitty superpower then?"
"Me?" Joan laughed. "I can remember anything down to the last detail except only useless shit, like this tour dialogue."
o w o
Joan took her to the swimming pool next. According to her, the tour of Friendship IDK started in the university campus part because this was the most respectable part of the walking dumpster. Then they would progress to the retirement home, the zoo, and the other main places. It was a weird way to structure a tour, but Yavi just went along with it since Joan promised free lunch and a free 30-day trial on something called fanfiction dot net.
"Ah yes," Joan declared, opening the door to what Yavi presumed was the athletic center. The sign on the front said "gainz before raimz ho ho ho" so it was really hard to tell.
Inside was a swimming pool with what looked like a swim coach talking to a group of students, waving his arms dramatically and blowing his whistle for emphasis. Except... he was standing on the water.
Like, on the surface of the water.
Like, if someone had put an invisible surfboard under the guy's feet.
"Meet Jordan," said Joan. "He's a student here, and sometimes he comes here because he's kind of obsessed with water."
"How's he doing that?" asked Yavi.
"I told you. We all have shitty superpowers. He can walk on water."
Walking on water didn't seem like a shitty superpower to Yavi, more like a useful life skill that involved never having to walk in a puddle ever again.
"I LOVE WATER!" Jordan boomed.
Joan rolled her eyes.
"I'm the LAST WATERBENDER, I'll have you know. I love water so much that I can EAT it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Water is so VERSATILE. I can make it turn into ice and form anything I want. I can even STAND on it like this. Anything is achievable with—"
Before he finished his sentence, he plunged into the pool.
"What the—?"
"Yeah," said Joan, grinning at the flailing Jordan in the pool who looked like a character right out of Free! "His shitty superpower is that he can walk on water but only sometimes."
o w o
After they left the pool, they went to the computer lab, which looked more like six or seven monitors set up in someone's garage.
"This is where we fix the robots," said Joan. "We have like five different bots around the town to help entertain people, but sometimes they go offline and we bring them here to be fixed. They can all do different things. Fred the music bot hangs around in the library sometimes to play calming music and to rick-roll people. TriviaBot hangs around the retirement home to provide entertainment, but every single bot has different commands. Allow me to demonstrate with this little one here."
Joan walked up to the robot.
"T!daily," she said.
The robot spat out a wad of monopoly cash and gave it to Joan.
"T!fishy."
The robot spat out an old shoe and gave it once again to Joan, who patted it on the head.
"Good job, Tatsu," Joan praised, and Yavi swore the robot uwu'd.
"What's his name?" she asked.
"Tatsumaki. Tatsu for short."
"Sounds vaguely weeb," Yavi commented.
"Don't worry about it."
"Yeah, don't worry about it," said a voice behind the counter, and Yavi realized there had been a man sleeping with his head on the table the whole time. "There ain't no weebs around here."
"Yavi, meet Peter. He works here. Sometimes fixes the bots."
"What's your shitty superpower then? Fixing robots but only sometimes?" asked Yavi.
"No, but I wish it was that," Peter replied mournfully. "It is true I can fix robots but actually, it's very tragic. See, I am a good programmer but only when I sleep. I sleep right next to the lab, you know. Apparently I sleepwalk and when I sleepwalk I find myself wandering over here and fixing everyone's needs. But I can never remember how I did it."
Oh.
Well.
That was definitely a shitty superpower then.
o w o
They went through a bunch of classrooms, labs, and study lounges in the university next. First, they went to the language department where she met a girl called N, who could sound like a native speaker in any language but only when she laughed or screamed. Then the biology building where someone called Jay had the ability to fly but only when cosplaying as some emo teenager from a series called Minimum Pride while someone named Ari laughed. Oddly specific shitty superpower, but Yavi supposed that wasn't the weirdest thing this place had to offer.
In one of the study lounges, she met Hilda who could use anybody's Netflix account but only watch what the other person had watched last.
"I've been watching Riverdale for days," Hilda said in a surprisingly-not-so-mournful voice over the current situation. "Also Richard Madden is hot, don't listen to the haters."
Yavi didn't know how to respond to that one, to be honest.
"Come on," said Joan, rolling her eyes. "It's time to go to the zoo. You better brace yourself."
She wondered what could possibly be in the zoo that was more alarming than anything she'd seen already, but she didn't dare to ask. It probably had something to do with furry-related nonsense, and satan knows Yavi's time in the anime continent had been enough of that. She just followed Joan as they walked past the buildings and across the lawn where two people Joan said were named Ray and Hazel were attempting to summon a Darth Vader frappuccino from a sewage drain.
"Is that something to do with their shitty superpowers?" asked Yavi.
"No," replied Joan. "They're just fucking idiots."
o w o
At the exact midway point between the college-esque part of Friendship IDK and the zoo, they came across what looked like a giant panda hauling two bags full of hardcover books across the sidewalk, one excruciatingly short inch at a time. Yavi wanted to offer and help but thought better of it when she realized the person's superpower might be infecting everyone around them to be a furry.
Not that Yavi strictly opposed to being a furry, of course, but that's a story for another day.
"'Sup Ange," Joan called. "Overestimate your teleportation abilities again?"
"Fuck off," the panda said.
Joan snickered and explained to Yavi. "Ange can teleport anywhere, but only halfway to the destination every time, no loopholes. They just end up in the dead center every single time."
Right. Because that explained the fursuit that had nothing to do with teleportation.
"Shut up," said Ange, as if sensing Yavi's judgement. The panda fursona-looking humanoid heaved as the bag of books dragged another inch along the ground, and Yavi swore she saw one of the books vomit Rupi Kaur poetry. "It's fashionable."
o w o
"God, I wish I could be a dinosaur," said Joan as they finally approached the gates of what Yavi assumed to be the zoo.
She said "assumed" it was the zoo because the only "signage" indicating what the enclosed area was for was a giant loudspeaker that kept playing an inappropriate song to the tune of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat." FUCK FUCK FUCK A DUCK, SCREW A KANGAROO, SIXTY-NINE A PORCUPINE, AN ORGY AT THE ZOO! This is your vocalist, Rachelly pronounced like Rachel-Li not Ray-shelly you illiterates.
"The dinosaurs are all dead though," Yavi reminded Joan.
"Exactly."
They were let in by the ticket collector named Zadi, who was hovering at exactly the height of an average person and muttering something about how Jordan was still taller. Joan pointed to a farm pen that only contained a singular sheep who seemed to be eyeing the neighboring horses with unbridled lust.
"That's zero."
"What's a zero?"
"Zero clue!"
Sure, Yavi didn't question it.
Next they went towards the emu pen, which was filled by a giant ostrich-looking thing screaming what Yavi assumed to be the lyrics of a BTS song. Not that Yavi was a dirty BTS stan of course, that would never ever happen. Never ever.
"ONION HAIR EYYO," the bird screeched. "SO SICK OF THIS FAKE LOVE!"
"That's Eun," said Joan reluctantly. "That's actually a human, but their shitty superpower is that they can only sing while in emu form and can only sing K-pop songs they don't actually like and also with bad pronunciation."
"ONION! HONEY-ON! WASTE IT ON ME!"
Joan covered her ears in frustration, and Yavi wondered if it was still too late to get a refund.
o w o
They managed to make their way out of the park, but not before getting lost and taking the wrong path two different times. One of the wrong turns took them to a dogfighting pen where a robot spat out Pokemon for eager people to fight over and on their way out, Yavi swore she saw a group of red pandas conspiring to murder the other animals in the zoo and a lizard that looked surprisingly like Jay the emo teen from before.
Just your ordinary walk in the FI Zoo.
"Are you ready for the final part of this tour?" Joan asked her, grumbling as she picked off the bird droppings on her tour guide shirt. "Fucking birds with wings."
"Sure I guess?"
Joan clapped her hands together. "Okay! It's time to get you classpected, I mean sorted. But we also need to get you classpected, but that's just between you and me and some sacrificial ceremonies. Now we shall go to the retirement home where the Sorting Cat resides."
"Why is the Sorting Cat in the retirement home?" Yavi asked.
"I don't know. I feel like it was necessary to add in one more location to this story for a sense of closure you know?"
Which definitely wasn't a good explanation, but Yavi continued following Joan towards the nursing home. In the front yard, a giant tangled tree stood in the middle of the walkway, and upon closer inspection, Yavi saw that it wasn't a tree at all, but rather a shrewd-looking human pretending to be a tree. But the questionable human wasn't pretending to be a tree either, because the tree was actually a family tree with many many branches incestuous twigs. Like, many incestuous branches. So many that Yavi reckoned it could give George R.R. Martin a run for his money and for church.
"Lol," the tree said as Yavi approached, and by this point, she wasn't even questioning the laughing tree.
"How many fucking people are on this thing?" she asked.
"That dick over there is Yew. He's the literal family tree because he turns into a tree in the presence of people, and there's too many branches to count," admitted Joan. She pointed to a particular branch that weaved around the trunk and into every other section of the tree. "Some of the people have left already. Like that one is Zoey, she's not here anymore but she married into every branch of the family she could."
Then, as an afterthought.
"Her shitty superpower was the ability to make anyone jizz by pointing at them, so you know how it goes?"
Which was way more details that Yavi thought was appropriate for a SFW work, but whatever.
They said seven blessings to the gardner, Sydney, who seemed to be hacking away at the roles of people on the tree at random and enjoying the sounds of distant screams and whose superpower was that she could adopt a bunch of children but they all turned out to be idiots. ("Yeah, those two fucks who were trying to summon coffee from the sewer, Ange, and the 69 song girl for example.")
Inside the retirement house, they discovered what looked like a wise old man sitting by the fireplace. A younger person sat next to him, napping with a sign that said "go away unless you're an animal" on the head.
"So..." he said slowly. "You have come for the Sorting Cat?"
"I have," Yavi said cautiously.
"That's a shame," the guy said. "The Sorting Cat's name is Zippy."
"Oh."
Well, how the fuck was she supposed to know that?
Joan sighed. "This is Marz. His shitty superpower is aging quicker than the rest of us. As you can probably tell. The Sorting Cat just takes a liking to him, probably because they're both ancient. Antiques."
"Not the Sorting Cat, Zippy," Marz corrected again. "He came with this name, but none of you are old enough to remember."
Marz gestured to the cat on the other side of the room, who seemed to be yowling softly inside a fountain of water and vodka.
"How do I know what he's saying?" asked Yavi.
"We have a translator," said Joan, gesturing towards the now-awake person next to Marz. "Emrys has the fortunate shitty superpower of being able to understand animals but only during sorting ceremonies like this one."
"It's a rare opportunity to talk to Zippy," Emrys admitted. "Or you know, the only intelligent one around here."
Between this and the emu screaming BTS lyrics, Yavi was sure she had found the shittiest superpowers in the world today. But... what if the cat didn't tell her a superpower? What if the cat said her superpower was equally as shitty? What if the cat wanted payment in blood and Fancy Feast before coming to a conclusion? Did benevolent cats giving out helpful information about someone's identity really exist?
"Well?" she asked in anticipation. "What's my shitty superpower?"
Emrys seemed to listen to the cat's yowling in contemplation, then answered dramatically. "You have 20/20 vision but only with glasses."
"Eyyy!" Joan cheered to Yavi's disbelief.
"Welcome to hell! Welcome to hell!"