Hello again! Here's chapter two of this story!
I hope you'll enjoy it! If you do, do not hesitate to leave kudos or even a little (constructive) comment it would make my day!
Chapter 2:
Kyoko had been there for three weeks and there was still one and a half to go until the beginning of the year.
They had arranged a small appartement for her, on the fourth floor of the building, not too far of the teachers lounge and Nezu's office. It wasn't big but it was more than what she had hoped for. There was a room with a convertible sofa, a desk and a computer, a small kitchenette area with a table and chairs, and a bathroom. And -a gift from the principal- a bookcase full to the brim with books and encyclopedias about heroes, history, science, Japanese language… everything she needed to start her year with a solid base.
She had spent more time with the latters than with the others however. Kanjis were a nightmare and her teacher was understanding but severe. She had mostly learned to speak the language, and read the required minimum, with websites, online games and forums so she really had to work on her writing if she wanted to follow the classes. As for the rest of her time, it was spent training or sleeping. She had to train everyday for at least four hours, to build her muscle, train her heart and get rid of the not-that-thin layer of fat she had accumulated over her years of almost-inactivity. She wasn't fat, but she was at the edge of chubby and her muscles were practically inexistent under that. That's what you get at being locked up in a room 24/7 for ten years… The only negative outcome of all this was that she would very soon need new clothes… And go out to find them.
She had been showed around the campus by the teachers her first days there. She had walked on more ground then than she had had in all her previous life. But the town was an all other problem. It wasn't a big city, but it was more than she had ever seen, and it was a little frightening. She had never wandered alone in the streets and gone shopping. The more she had done recently was climbing into a cab, following minors guides in the airports, and climbing into an other cab to UA.
Kyoko would never admit it to anybody, but she was as scared as she was thrilled by this new life.
One thing hadn't changed very much since she had settled there, she hadn't talked much. Aside of answering the questions during her classes and the orders during training, Kyoko hadn't had a proper conversation with anyone since the interview with the Principal Nezu.
Especially not with her always scowling supervisor, Monsieur Shota Aizawa. She liked to mockingly add the honorific title, it suited him. He was always acting so superior and annoyed, it was grating on her nerves. Watching her through his too long hair from the edge of the training field. He truly looked like he abhorred her and it really wasn't helping her to concentrate or to feel less stupid. It was already humiliating enough to have to be hit and hurt all the time…
Needless to say she was more than surprised to find him alone in the middle of the training field that afternoon.
"Gran Torino and Recovery Girl have been called on an emergency. So, I'm here to talk."
Kyoko nods, coming closer reluctantly.
"Alright. What about?" she asks, crossing her arms in front of her chest. Her face was closed as always, with a forced half smile tugging with great difficulty at her lips, which didn't reach her eyes. She had an even worse resting bitch face than him, and that was a feat…
"Your quirk."
"Hm. I could have guessed that. What do you want to know?"
What was it with the passive aggressive attitude? What had he done to her? She wasn't like that with the teachers or Recovery girl. Shota makes a sign for her to follow him to the edge of the field to sit under the trees. He isn't going to stay standing in the sun for an hour just to talk.
Kyoko sits facing him, a reasonable distance away. Not that he looked, but he couldn't help noticing that her training jumpsuit wasn't suiting her well anymore. It was too large on the tights and the sleeves were falling on her shoulders, as she had not zipped it to the neck, showing her freckled skin and the birth of her cleavage. He clears his throat, looking in the opposite direction before talking.
"The teachers are concerned that you have to be hurt to use your quirk. They want to know more about that. How it manifests."
There is a moment of silence, Shota can hear her breathe deeply a few times, gathering her thoughts and thinking about her answer.
"Well… I don't know much either, but… It appears when I get hurt, by someone else or by… myself. But not when I have an accident. I mean… it doesn't jump on a book after I got a papercut, or on a table after I hit my little toe. And It doesn't try to avoid it either. It didn't appear to stop me falling from a ladder when I was a kid, nor after even if I had broken my leg. I don't know… It only reacts to… humans. It didn't jump on my cat when it scratched me now that I think about it..."
He nods, listening to her attentively. She was saying all this like if it wasn't a big deal, like if she didn't realize how important that was to understand her quirk and to find a strategy to work with it…
One piece of information had caught Shota's attention more than the others.
"You said… Did you… hurt yourself on purpose?"
Kyoko sucks in a breath, her eyes wide and her cheeks redenning. He would have laughed at her flustered appearance if the subject hadn't been so serious. That was a weakness she couldn't afford to have now, they don't have time to work on that kind of things.
"Oh! Hum… I wanted to test it… After… I had only used it once, when I discovered it, and after… It was… the only way I… I found to…" she stammers, visibly lying but Shota chose to indulge her, for this time. It isn't an easy subject to discuss, and it wasn't like if they were close or anything, so it wasn't his place. But it would need to be adressed sooner or later.
"Okay. So, what happens then? When you're alone with it?"
"It follows me, watches me. If I try to… hurt myself again, if I take something it deems dangerous it takes it away from me. But it doesn't hurt me. It is quite scary though… Not really a comforting sight, having a sleep paralysis monster looming over you…" she lets her sentence trail, losing herself in her thoughts and memories.
"Did it happen often?"
It wasn't as subtle as he wanted it to be. And Kyoko wasn't fooled. She shoots him a look from under her curled bangs. He hadn't noticed until then that her eyes had different colors, but with the low sun of the afternoon hitting them it was obvious. Her right eye was golden in the light, like honey and the other one was dark brown. Although not entirely, a small part on the inner side of the iris was honey too…
"Quite." her voice tears him from his contemplation. "Not as often lately though. I was more occupied with organizing my journey here…"
"And what happens if someone else appears?"
"I don't know… Never happened." she shrugs. "But if the person who hurt me disappears from its visual range, it won't go after them. Won't open a door, or leave my side."
"That's good to know… How do you stop it?"
"How it disappears you mean?" he nods. "I don't know. Generally I fall asleep or do something else and next thing I know It's gone. If there are other people around now… Only happened twice. The first I fell unconscious so I don't remember. And the other… She ran out of my room just in time so…"
He listens attentively. She truly doesn't realize how important all these things are to know to learn how to control her quirk. She's acting so nonchalant about all this, fixing her abnormal eyes everywhere but on him and playing with the auburn curls escaping from her loose hairbun.
He tries not to show it, but he's slowly but surely getting mad. How can people not control their quirk? It's like not being able to use one of your limbs! He knows he's being a little unfair considering her story, but still! She has nothing to do here, it's a Hero High School, not kindergarten! And she's stealing a lot of his precious time he could be using naping, working or training.
"Do you want to try a few things?" Shota asks after thinking for a while.
"Hum depends… You're sure you can handle…"
"Yeah I'm sure." he cuts her rather harshly. Who is she to question his abilities? "I want to see what you said by myself."
"Oh… Okay."
"You really can't… summon It without getting hurt? You tried that?" he asks while getting on his feet and walking to the center of the training field.
"Can't say I tried but… I thought a lot about it, in many ways. And it never appeared like that."
"Try."
Kyoko scoffs at his rudeness but doesn't comment and walks a few feet further before sitting on the ground, her face bowed toward her knees. Ignoring him. He takes advantage of that to walk behind a tree and observe her.
He wonders if he had been like that when he had arrived here last year. She was focused on her task, but she was utterly unprepared to anything else. She was slouched, her muscles inactive, her senses cut out. If they were in a hostile environnement, she wouldn't sense the threat come and she would be the first to fall. And her quirk would be of no use after one fatal blow. Even him deeply asleep was more attentive to his surroundings. He was ready to bet she hadn't even heard him walk away. She was no hero material yet, and he strongly doubted she could ever be.
They stay like that for about ten minutes before he calls it quit.
"Okay, it's visibly not working." Shota says without leaving his hidding place. "Stand up and outstretch your arm."
She frowns and turns her head in the direction of his voice, but obeys without arguing. He uses his grey scarf as a whip to hit her arm and tears a satisfying cry of surprise and pain out of her. He hears her mutter something that sounds like an "Asshole." but this is the only thing that happens.
"Why didn't it work?"
"I don't know." she answers, annoyed, then snickers before adding "maybe it wasn't bad enough, maybe I'm not afraid of you…"
Shota lets out a snicker of his own, knotting the edge of scarf to the handle a small pocket knife. He doesn't warn her before throwing it again, this time creating a nice gash on her biceps, blood spilling on the floor.
"DAMN MAN!" the girl screams, clutching her arm with one hand and searching in her pockets for tissues with the other. She doesn't even acknowledge the tall dark presence in front of her.
Like he had thought, It hadn't seen him, and didn't know where he was. So It can't see what she can't see. Does it have a conscience of his own or is Kyoko the one controling it without realizing it? Anyway, It had adopted a defensive stance a few feet from her, turned in his general direction but red eyes darting around.
He was close enough to study it for once. It wasn't smoke, it wasn't a shadow, it wasn't really physical either. It looked like… nothing. Like the idea people have of black matter. It was like looking at lightning but in negative. Some kind of black energy. And it was strong, built like a muscular silhouette, approximatively his size, but much larger.
Shota doesn't realize he had moved, until he sees both her and Its heads snap toward him.
"MOVE!"
He just has time to activate his quirk to make the jumping creature vanish in the air, but not without breaking a few big branches above him. It had only needed a second to cross the 30 feet separating them.
"Shit, you okay?" Kyoko asks him from her spot, still holding her arm.
"Yeah. Now do it yourself." he commands, throwing her the knife and walking away to hide further.
"Yes sir…"
Sarcasm now… better and better…
He is settled facing her, a solid 50 yards and a few trunks and bushes between him and her, when she traces a deep gash in her forearm. In a too practiced manner to be a coincidence…
It stoods before her as she is frozen to the spot, knife in hand and blood dripping to the ground. The instant she moves her hand, It slaps it with his big hand, sending his knife flying away in the woods. Great…
Shota walks closer, careful to where he puts his feet this time. It doesn't move, even when he comes into view on the field, still focused on her. It was partially hidding her from him, but Shota could see she had her head bowed to look at her arm. Maybe she hadn't seen him. He stomps his foot a little louder on the ground on purpose, and they both turned to him at the same time. So he was right… Fortunately for him, It doesn't move, only watches him closely with it's glowing red eye.
Was that what his eyes looked like when using his quirk?
He keeps coming closer and closer, the monster still hesitating between him, the possible threat, and her, the known threat, in this case. Shota is only about 10 feet from the creature when It makes his mind and takes a aggressive stance, ready to attack him any second.
"Stop!" Kyoko screams but he uses his quirk on her before anything happens.
"What changed? What did you do? Why didn't It attack immediately?"
Can't she get a break… ?
"I don't know! I did as I always do! Tried to control it, to feel it, a connexion… Maybe being just the two of us helped… Less people to pay attention to." she answers his interrogatory with a shrug. "Or maybe the fact that I don't really care about you being hurt helped relieving me of some anxiety. No big deal if I miss…" she adds under her breath, hoping he wouldn't hear her.
"Do you really think that all a joke? Can't you work seriously? You do realize that you could kill people?" he yell furiously, pointing to the broken branches and almost split trunk on the side.
"Yes, I know It can!" she yells too.
Why does he think she's here for? What does he think she was judged for in the first place? What does he know of her life to speak to her like that? He is only supposed to be here to help, not lecture her!
Kyoko doesn't wait to see his reaction before turning around to pick up all her blood soaked tissues on the ground. At least he has the good taste of not replying to her argument.
"Think about it. Today versus the other trainings. What was different. You have only ten minutes left before your curfew." with that he walks away, without so much as looking at her or waiting for her to accompagny her back to the building. Not that she cared, she would certainly have refused, but it would have only been the polite thing to do. Ruffian…
"Yes… Aizawa-sensei." she replied, with a mocking curtsey and sticking her tongue out to his back.
Oh she would think about it alright… If only it could help her get rid of him, she will work twice as hard.
And here we go! More mysteries to unwrap and a great relation in the making! Next chapter we'll meet some new friends !
I hope I'll see you there!
xoxo