Chapter 89
.::Study Time is Go::.
"So you guys don't even know about the silver ratio?"
Setsuna felt so exhausted as she stared at Jirou and Kaminari. The pair seemed pretty embarrassed, Jirou looking mildly annoyed while Kaminari seemed to be sweating like crazy. "I think I learned about it in middle school," Jirou said. "But we didn't cover that at UA yet."
"What are even Pell numbers?" Kaminari whispered as he stared blankly at the papers on the table. Okay, this might be even worse than Setsuna thought.
Jirou just sighed and squeezed the bridge of her nose. "Ignore him, he's at the bottom of class back home too."
"Hey!"
"Do you remember Pell numbers?" Setsuna asked, and Jirou grimaced.
"It's... familiar?" she hedged. "I think my middle school teacher talked about that stuff too, but..." She trailed off, and Setsuna sighed. This was definitely going to be harder than she thought.
Munakata High School, like many high schools, had a six-day school week with Saturdays being shorter. It also had one of the most renowned online learning programs in all of Japan. As such, it tended to be more forgiving to kids skipping Saturday classes as long as they checked in online, especially since today they'd just just be reviewing for the exams next week. Which was why Setsuna found herself in Yaoyorozu's dining room helping these two study.
Without Yaoyorozu.
"What's she doing again?" she grumbled, side-eying the door. The heiress had stayed for a grand total of five minutes, just long enough to say, "Hey guys, here's Tokage, she'll help you, bye!" That was an exact quote. The only reason she hadn't left immediately after saying that was because they had to ask her where they'd be studying and working.
"We're, uh, afraid to ask," Kaminari said with a nervous laugh, looking faintly terrified.
Jirou leaned back in her chair and twirled an earphone jack around her finger, grimacing slightly. "She's probably with Hatsume at her warehouse again. They've been spending a lot of time there lately."
Setsuna felt a full-body shiver and slumped in her chair with a groan. "Oh, hell no. I can't believe those two are hanging together at all." Yaoyorozu and Hatsume had to be the most terrifying combination she'd ever heard of. Hatsume's reputation at school had been well-earned, and now she was working with Yaoyorozu. The mad inventor and the genius whose Quirk could create anything if she knew enough about the schematics. Together, who knew what they could accomplish?
She scowled as she sat up straighter and faced the two dimension jumpers. "I blame you two for this."
"And we totally deserve it," Kaminari agreed with a teary smile, clearly resigned to his guilt. Once again Jirou didn't seem to care too much, just scratched her cheek.
"Yeah, we're sorry about that, Tokage. For what it's worth, Hatsume kinda approached Yaomomo on her own...?"
"We did tell her about Yaomomo's Quirk though," Kaminari added, still looking teary-eyed and defeated. "I don't think she knew before that..."
"She probably wouldn't," Setsuna confirmed flatly. "She kept it secret." Yaoyorzu's Quirk could be far too easily exploited by villains, so she'd naturally hidden it at school. Munakata High School had many students who were considered "high-risk" for being targeted, so no one had batted an eye or tried to pry for details. "I know you guys aren't used to this, but seriously? It should've been obvious you don't talk about Quirks!"
"In our defense, we didn't go out of our way to tell her," Jirou countered. "She asked where Yaomomo got the bugs she put in our apartment." She shot Setsuna a pointed look that had the green-haired girl raising her hands with a frown.
"Hey, don't guilt-trip me over it. I told her it was a bad idea!"
"You still didn't stop her."
"I'd literally just overheard you call Kaminari 'Taser Brain'. Up until that point, I was totally on your guys' side about her going overboard."
"She never calls me that outside of costume!" the blond in question protested.
"She did that day," Setsuna snarked back, crossing her arms. "What was it she said... 'Maybe that excuse we came up with about frying away your memories was accurate. Looks like Taser Brain is more on point than we thought.' Or something like that."
That was an almost word-for-word recollection of what Jirou had said while taunting Kaminari for forgetting to buy dinner. Setsuna had done a lot of memory training to memorize snippets of dialogue, since her Quirk was well suited for espionage. The training had been admittedly tedious at times, but it was nice to get some confirmation it could actually be useful.
For their parts, Jirou and Kaminari looked faintly shocked. "How did you even hear that?" the latter piped up. "Do you have some sort of super-hearing?"
"Don't we go to the same school in your world?" Setsuna asked, eyes narrowing at him suspiciously. "Haven't you seen my Quirk in action over there?"
"Uh, not really. We're in different classes, and you didn't make it to the finals of the Sports Festival. First two rounds were pretty chaotic, so I barely noticed anyone's Quirks from 1-B."
Setsuna pursed her lips as she considered it, but then nodded. "Alright, fair enough, I guess. And in that case, I'm gonna keep it to myself as long as possible so you won't get an advantage if the classes have joint training."
"You're accepting this stuff pretty easily," Jirou commented. "Not that I'm complaining, but it's still surprising. You don't seem like the kind of person who'd believe this sort of stuff right off the bat, even with all the details I gave."
Setsuna hummed and leaned back in her chair once more. "Honestly, it still sounds pretty crazy to me," she admitted. "I mean, the idea of another universe sounds like something out of a sci-fi film. I guess it was the sheer number of details you knew that convinced me." And oh, there were plenty of details. Setsuna had been admittedly stunned at how much Jirou had known, and how accurate it had all been.
"I figured that much, but was there anything in particular?"
"Does it really matter?" Setsuna asked, and the other girl shrugged.
"Not really, I guess. Just curious. Two of the people we know were convinced by Kirishima having red hair in our world, so I was wondering if something sold you in particular like that."
That had Setsuna frowning thoughtfully, taking a few moments to consider it. "Well, if I had to pick one thing, it was probably Eraserhead," she finally decided, and that had the others sitting upright with sudden attention.
"Aizawa-sensei?" Kaminari asked, and Setsuna waved a hand.
"See, that's exactly what sold me on it!" she said. "You know what he looks like, and his actual name! And you say it so naturally, too!" In the short time they'd interacted with the man during pre-hero training, Setsuna had heard Eraserhead's real name exactly once, during the second year of middle school. Present Mic had been there that day, and called him that before getting harshly corrected.
That day had been probably the most informative of their few encounters with Eraserhead. It had been their third time having the underground hero as their guest instructor, but they hadn't known much about him until they saw him interact with Present Mic. The Voice Hero had made a number of comments over the day that revealed all sorts of information about the quiet man. It ranged from the name slip to the fact they attended school together, to even the fact that Eraserhead had taught at UA.
After that year he stopped being a guest teacher, but Setsuna had met Eraserhead once more since then. She was visiting Majestic's agency when he showed up to talk about a villain he'd been tracking. Majestic—Kannagi Enma—was a family friend who'd been impressed by her potential, and had been the one who'd recommended Setsuna for the pre-hero program.
Kannagi had been in a meeting with some police officers when Eraserhead arrived, so he and Setsuna had talked while waiting. The encounter had been pretty brief, but she'd asked him a bit about his time UA.
"He hadn't been teaching there very long," she recalled. "Said it was only his second year when it shut down. But since he was new and underground, most people don't know he taught there. Hell, I don't think anyone would guess he went by his actual name instead of his hero name as a teacher."
"Yeah, he is kinda the odd one out," Kaminari muttered. "All the other teachers just use their hero names. I still think we only know his hero name because Midoriya recognized him somehow," he added under his breath.
"Not sure who Midoriya is, but probably," Setsuna agreed. "He said he never really bothered telling kids at UA. Said it was a security risk or something...? I don't think even the kids who actually had him ever heard it." She'd asked him about that, and he'd actually had to pause to consider it with a blank look on his face. He hadn't been able to answer before Kannagi showed up and their conversation ended.
The others seemed to agree, since they both snorted in amusement. "Yeah, I can totally see him hiding it," Jirou said with a smirk. "Fits with his 'logical ruse' thing."
"Mic-sensei calls him 'Eraser' though, so that's a big hint," Kaminari said.
"Only if you've actually heard of Eraserhead," Setsuna remarked, and the blond paused before nodding.
"Okay, yeah. Point. But wait, Mic-sensei totally called him Eraserhead at the Sports Festival, too!"
"Well, I don't think he usually does the co-hosting," Jirou said dryly. "I think he was only there because of his injuries. And by that point a bunch of us heard Shigaraki call him that at USJ anyway." That had Setsuna sitting up to sharp attention. Jirou had told them about the Villain Alliance in their world terrorizing their class (under the name "League of Villains"), but this was a new detail.
"Wait, you ran into villains at a theme park?" she blurted. That had the others shooting her incredulous looks, and for some reason Setsuna suddenly felt like she'd asked a stupid question.
"...Uh, no," Jirou said after a minute. "It's the Unforeseen Simulation Joint. It's a rescue training place run by Thirteen. We got attacked there in the first week." She scratched her cheek as she added, "I guess we forgot that people don't know about it here, since it was all over the news back home."
Setsuna just stared at them in silence. She knew their class had been targeted by villains, but the first week? What the hell?
After struggling with how to respond, she finally sighed. "Know what? If I ask questions, we'll just be here all day. We don't have all weekend to study, so we should just get to work."
"Yeah, fair enough," Jirou agreed, grabbing her math workbook. "Wanna start with math since we were just talking about it?"
"Fine by me." Setsuna grabbed her own workbook, as did Kaminari with a dejected groan. "Okay, so I guess we'll start with the difference between the golden and silver ratio, since I think it's gonna come up on the exam..."
"So he has staring contests with a bird?"
"That's what the others say. Mic and Yuuyake spend most of their time just staring each other down when he's inside the cube. I think getting knocked out by Yuuyake hurt his pride."
"More importantly, who wins the staring contests the most?"
"According to Mime, Yuuyake. He gets way too proud whenever Mic blinks or looks away first. Just makes Mic glare at him even harder."
"That is hilarious, and I am absolutely telling everyone when I get back. I can already see the news headlines: 'Pro Hero knocked out by bird and then loses staring contests with said bird. More at 5.'"
Mail seemed very smug as he floated with his arms folded over his chest, a clearly amused smirk on his face. "Can you even talk to that many people?" Mashirao asked, carefully considering his next move as he stared at the go board. They (or well, Mashirao) sat on a blanket under a bridge, Glitch somewhere nearby since Mail was obviously visible. "You can't even make yourself visible without someone else's Quirk."
"Yeah, but there's two people with compatible Quirks at Nighteye's place," Mail replied easily. "One of whom is a high school girl, and the other who kindly uses it at pretty much all times. And he has many coworkers who are also chatterboxes."
"Why'd you specify the high school girl?" Mashirao asked, placing one of the black stones.
"Because high school girls gossip." He nodded in understanding while Mail floated over to the board to inspect it, before pointing at one of the intersections. "There." Mashirao promptly placed a white stone there. He'd been tasked with helping Glitch distract the ghost today while the others worked, and one of the ideas he had was to play go. It was a simple enough game, and he could move the pieces for Mail.
"Do you get to play a lot of games like this?" he asked.
"Eh, sometimes. There's only a few board games at the agency. Most of the time I'm just reviewing case files or eavesdropping for the best gossip though."
"And they're okay with that?"
"They really don't have a choice." Mail grinned, sharp and cocky, and Mashirao shivered before moving one of his stones. He quickly realized that was a mistake though, seeing he'd left an opening on another piece once he placed it. Mail noticed too, because he smirked and pointed at said opening. "Here."
Mashirao sighed as he placed a white stone there, letting Mail successfully capture one of his pieces. Placing the stone himself made the loss more bitter. "Are you really a ghost?" he asked.
"Yeah. Got to see my own body get cremated and everything. I highly recommend against that, by the way," he added, far too nonchalantly for such a disturbing topic. "Probably added some extra layers of trauma."
Mashirao imagined it would. Just the idea of watching his own body being prepared for cremation had him shuddering before quickly focusing on the board. "How are you even still around, then?" he asked, partially to distract himself from the thought.
"Good question," Mail replied lightly. "Here's one for you: did you run away solo before coming to live with the runaways?"
Mashirao scowled. "So not gonna answer. Got it." He placed a stone a bit more aggressively than necessary, and Mail floated over to inspect the board once more.
"Actually, serious question now, what are you planning to do with Mic?" he asked while considering his move. "I'm assuming murder is off the table."
"Did you really think it might be on the table? We're all teenagers."
"What does age have to do with killing people?" Mashirao side-eyed Mail warily as the other male continued to study the board. Not for the first time, he got the sense there was something very wrong with him even beyond the whole "ghost" thing. After a few seconds Mail pointed. "There."
Mashirao placed a white stone down. "We're going to let him go," he said. "After we move out of Odawara. And no, I'm not telling you where we're going."
"I wasn't going to ask. Any idea on when that will be though?"
"Hell if I know." Neito, Rogue and a few others should be out scouting the new location even now, hence why Mashirao had been put in charge of distracting Mail today. They couldn't have him following them. Unfortunately, that also meant Mashirao was, for now, out of the loop on the exact details of the plans. They couldn't talk about moving unless they knew for a fact Mail wasn't around, part of why Mashirao had volunteered to babysit him.
The other part was that he didn't want to leave Odawara, and didn't even want to think about it.
The mere thought had his jaw clenching, placing another black stone with a loud clack. Mail didn't look at the board right away though, instead studying Mashirao for a few moments longer before finally turning his attention to it. "You're not too happy about moving, are you?" he asked idly.
"Is it that obvious?" Mashirao huffed.
"Do you like Odawara, hate moving, or is it something else?" This time he didn't bother responding, just waited in silence for Mail to make his next move. After about two minutes he pointed to a spot, and as Mashirao placed a white stone down he said, "I'm guessing it's the third from how tense and silent you are."
Mashirao scoffed, tail twitching in irritation as he leaned over the board. "Or maybe I just don't want to answer."
"If it was just liking Odawara, or not liking the moving process, you wouldn't need to avoid the topic. But if you don't want to talk about it, I won't press you."
"Then why even ask?"
"Mixture of curiosity, and knowing sometimes it helps to actually vent instead of bottling things up. If it's personal, I won't force you to talk. But sometimes it's easier to talk about worries to people who don't know you that well than those who do. You never realize how much you can take something as venting to strangers for granted. I don't really get many options to do that."
His voice took on a slightly rueful note at the end, and it took a few seconds to realize what he meant. As a ghost who could only be made visible by a select few Quirks, Mail's interactions with others were severely limited. "What, do you have stuff you can't talk about with your siblings?" Mashirao asked, tone more snarky than genuinely curious.
"Plenty," Mail replied. "For starters, I don't really want to worry everyone about the whole 'I don't know how to stop existing, and I don't want to be stuck here as a ghost after everyone I know is dead' thing." The comment, so deceptively casual and light in tone, had Mashirao freezing and feeling yet another cold chill.
"...Never really thought about that," he muttered, and Mail huffed.
"Well, I had over eight years to think about this before we found out the illusion trick," he said. "Eight years of watching my kid siblings training for a job that meant I might have to watch them die, while I was helpless to do nothing. And once they die, then what?"
He rolled onto his back with arms folded under his head, staring at the underside of the bridge. "I don't have any ties to the world outside my siblings. Even after meeting the folks at Nighteye's place, I honestly don't care for them that much. And if all of them were to suddenly die, or Figment or Utsushimi went missing..."
He trailed off, and Mashirao shuddered once more. He hadn't thought about it much, but Mail's situation actually had a lot of horrifying implications. He was dependent on other people's Quirks, but it sounded like he also had no idea on how to end it. If he was truly, physically dead, there might not be a way to stop it. He might be genuinely stuck like this forever.
Forever. It was something so large and long, no one could truly imagine it. It was disturbing and made Mashirao's stomach curl in on itself, chest feeling oddly tight with immense discomfort. "Are illusion Quirks the only way you can be visible?" he asked, trying to distract himself from those thoughts.
"Mostly," Mail hummed. "I have met a very small handful of people with other Quirks that let them see me. Karla could when she transformed, and so could..." He trailed off with a frown, expression becoming a bit more distant.
"Karla?" Mashirao repeated after about a minute of silence.
"One of my sisters," Mail answered. "She basically had a classic werewolf transformation with some vampire mind-bending powers mixed in. We called it 'the standard horror movie monster power,' she even looked a bit like those ghost girls with stringy hair. She could see me when I'd use my Quirk when she transformed." Mail smirked as he added, "We had a lot of fun with that part."
His usage of past tense wasn't lost on Mashirao. Neither was the fact he'd started to mention a second person who could see him, but that he'd been unable to even say the name. He frowned, glancing back at the go board. There was a certain wistfulness to Mail's expression when he spoke about Karla that left him feeling oddly guilty, like he'd delved a bit too deep and personal with his question.
"...I'm worried that some people won't be able to find us if we leave," he finally said, drawing Mail's gaze again. "My group traveled a lot before finding the runaway network, and we still do. We just chose to stick around Odawara for winter because it's easier in the long run to be in one place with a group when weather gets bad. We're not the only ones who do that."
"I take it some of them aren't here right now," Mail commented, and he nodded.
"Yeah, a few. We have some people who can't stay in Odawara full-time, even in winter. There's too many people looking for them, whether it's family or villains, so staying in one place is risky. Sometimes they have to head off and ditch Odawara for a while to try to lower suspicions and all that. They don't even take burner phones with all our numbers them, just in case they get caught."
He didn't know why he said that. Revealing that sort of information to Mail felt risky, even if he didn't go into specifics. Maybe it was because he felt bad for getting Mail to talk about something so clearly personal and heavy, and he wanted to reciprocate the effort. All he could really offer was why he was so reluctant to leave Odawara—and besides, like Mail had said, sometimes it helped to vent to outsiders.
Mail rolled into a sitting position as he spoke, legs crossed and watching Mashirao intently. "Anjou's Quirk is useful for tracking people, though," he commented. "Can't she use that to contact those people?"
Mashirao's jaw clenched at the reminder that Mail had eavesdropped enough to get an explanation of her Quirk, or at least that part. Mail knew so much about them, and they still knew very little about him. "Not all of them are on her network," he said simply, and left it at that.
He wouldn't tell Mail, but there was a way for people to break the connection on their ends. It required a specific action, paired with the specific intent to break it. He still didn't know how Anjou had discovered it, since it wasn't the kind of thing someone would do on accident. Either way, people wouldn't know it existed unless she told them about it.
And since then, a few had chosen to break the link for whatever reason. Most recently it had been Mora, codename Namo, barely two weeks ago now. His mother had shown up while he'd gone shopping for hair supplies with Naota. He had sent off Naota, and one of Kouda's birds had reported seeing his mother catch him and have a long conversation before leading him to a car. Between Kouda reporting that and them finding Naota with Todoroki, Anjou reported Mora had broken the link.
At least they knew why he'd broken the link though. Too often Anjou had notified them of someone's link suddenly disappearing while outside of Odawara. In those cases, they never got any sort of heads up before they vanished. It was an absolute last resort, and they usually didn't have burner phones on them for the reasons he'd mentioned to Mail. The circumstances leading to such a heavy decision wouldn't provide many opportunities to contact them anyway.
For Mashirao, that was the worst part: to have someone suddenly disappear with no warning, and potentially never knowing why. All you could do was wonder. Wonder what made them do that. Wonder if you'd see them again. Wonder if they were okay. Wonder if you could have done something differently and they'd still be around.
He'd become far too familiar with those sorts of thoughts lately.
"And you think they might come back anyway?" Mail asked, and he nodded.
"I do," he said firmly, and placed a black stone on the board. The resounding clack against the wood seemed to mark the end of this particular topic, the pair refocusing on the game once more.
They'd come back. They had to.
He had to.
Yes, the silver ratio discussion at the start is a Persona 5 reference. Also worth noting that Majestic is actually a canon character who appeared in the most recent manga arc! He barely appears, but he got a full "Shifuku" profile page with his full name in a volume extra. We don't even have that for Snipe. Downix on the Discord has a theory that he's the one who recommended Tokage, which makes sense, so carrying that over here!
Also, the bit about Namo is a reference to when Todoroki met Naota in Chapter 19! I don't think I mentioned it back then, but Namo is actually Mora Nagamasa, the Shiketsu student covered in hair. I think I got the codename "Namo" from the first syllables of his name.
As for Karla, her Quirk's official name if "Vaewolf", because I recently learned that vampire/werewolf hybrids are a thing. I'd already come up with Karla and had the "standard horror movie Quirk" with a werewolf-esque transformation and some light mind-screwery powers, but having an *actual* reference/source for it makes it so much better. If you're curious, she was closer to Mail's age and would be ~30/31 if she was still alive.
Question for next time: Do you have any headcanons for who recommended the recommendation students? (Specifically Yaoyorozu, Honenuki, Tokage and Inasa.) Could be a specific canon character, could just be "a hero in the family" or "political connections"