:::

There's a girl in the alley behind the League of Villain's bar, sitting among the trash as if she belonged there. Dabi glared at her, with her bubblegum pink jacket and her dark, shorn hair. She stunk of money, a single item of clothing worth more than everything in the alley put together - Dabi included.

He hated her on sight.

"Scram," He snapped.

The girl - didn't run. Didn't even turn to face him. All she did was glace at him, her dark brown eye bored, and went back to systematically shredding a piece of dark blue paper.

"Are you fucking deaf?" He snapped. "Get lost, we don't need loiters out here." If Dabi had to listen to Shigaraki's fucking whining about cheat codes one more time, he'd take their glorious leader out before the heroes had a chance to.

She snorts. "I was here first. You leave."

This bitch -

He slams his hand against a piece of discarded pallet wood, feels it ignite. Blue fire fills the alley. "I said leave. This is your last warning."

The girl blinks slowly. There's still no fear in her eyes. Instead, she looks thoughtful, one painted nail - electric blue and chipped - tapping the cracked pavement. "Huh. Can you do that to people too?"

He glares at her. "Yes, of fucking course I can. Including you, if you don't get lost -"

"How much to get you to kill my dad?" She asks.

Dabi's flame died out as if they'd been snuffed. He stares at her.

"What," He says.

She turns to face him head-on for the first time, and he realized that the left side of her face was one big bruise. Also, her left arm was handing at an odd angle. Broken or dislocated, probably.

"He's the one who..." Dabi asks, for lack of anything better to say.

"Duh."

This bitch.

"Why don't you just kill him then, smart ass?"

She rolled her eyes. "Are you stupid? I don't wanna go to jail, or live like a criminal. I'm way too cute for that. You don't seem like you'd give a shit though."

Dabi hissed out a breath. "Has anyone told you you're kind of a bitch?"

She shrugged. "If they have, I've forgotten it because I'm so great."

She seemed to mean it too. How the hell did a person live with that much self-confidence? It didn't seem real like she'd be crushed under the weight of her own ego.

"What's in it for me?" Dabi asked. Because, yeah, if her dad was shitty he didn't really have a problem with barbecuing the asshole.

The girl hummed. "I have a bottle of moisturizer, and some unused chap-stick."

"Maybe you should stop insulting the person you want to do you a favor," Dabi snarled.

"Maybe you shouldn't look so crusty, then."

Dabi was rapidly reconsidering his decision not to just kill the girl herself.

The girl seemed to sense he was losing his patience because she rolled her eyes. "Fine, whatever. You don't seem like the type of guy who gives a shit about money - mostly because I've seen fishing nets with fewer holes than that shirt - so I guess I could give you access to my quirk."

Dabi blinked. Whatever the girl was going to say, he hadn't expected that. "What's your quirk?"

She flicked an earlobe, bringing Dabi's attention to the tiny red studs set into her ears. Only - they weren't earrings he realized. They were literally embedded into her ears. He watched her press on the back of the earlobe - and the little orb just popped right out.

She held the tiny orb between her thumb and forefinger, gesturing at it with her bad arm as if to say 'ta-dah'.

"I don't need any weird marbles," Dabi said.

The girl rolled her eyes again and popped the little orb into her mouth. "Watch," she said. He could hear the audible crunch as the girl bit down. She swallowed - and Dabi watched as her very bruised face started to rapidly heal, going from looking black and blue to greenish, to yellow, to fully healed in the space of a few seconds.

Dabi looked at the girl. "And you can... keep doing that. Keep making those. What do they heal?"

The healed everything, as it happened. Illness, colds, severed limbs, even old age up to a point. Apparently, the old bastard called her father had been very thoughtful in his testing, the girl explained dryly.

Dabi stared at her. "And you'll never run out?"

She shrugged. "They grow back. Do we have a deal?"

How the fuck did the heroes not hear about this quirk? How did she slip through the cracks? With a quirk like this, hero work was almost guaranteed.

Still.

Dabi wasn't stupid enough to say no to a deal like this.

(Every inch of his skin ached, that remembered heat pressing down, sparking blue. He hurt more often than he didn't.

To not be in pain - that would be priceless.)

He held out his hand to the girl - only to come back to himself when she eyed it like it was diseased. Of course, she'd be scared of him, she literally just saw him roast a wooden board like it was nothing.

Then the girl - reached out. And shook his hand.

He stared at their hands together - chipped blue paint, ugly scars - and then at the girl herself. She looked bored.

"We have a deal," Dabi said.

They shook on it.

:::

Later, when the man was little more than dust, the girl dug around in her bag and brought out - a tin with colorful anime characters on it. She shoved the tin into his hands and Dabi had to scramble not to drop his own payment.

"The bigger the marble, the more it heals," The girl said. "Thanks for your help."

Then she was gone, off into the crowd as if she'd never been.