Flashback: When Akira met Tikara
"Freak!" "Villain!" "Baby!" "Go off yourself!"
Nine year-old Akira had been trekking through the small 'park' in their neighborhood, trying to corral her siblings, when the shouted taunts caught her attention. Another girl was there, being shoved around by some older children. Tears streaked face, but before she could think to do anything, the girl lost control of her quirk. A black almost mist-like energy lashed out, shoving away the older children. Who immediately panicked and ran away, leaving the younger girl sitting on the ground and crying. Where she pulled her knees up to her chest, still surrounded by a hazy cloud. Akira yelled for her siblings to stay nearby and slowly approached, standing a few feet in front of the girl.
"A-are you alright?" The girl yelled out, still crying, and with her yell, the energy around her flared.
"GO AWAY!" Akira's own quirk flared, ink shielding her from the brunt of the force from the mist.
"A-are you sure? Your... Your knee's bleeding." The other girl shakes her head, a completely incomprehensible response in this situation, but says nothing.
"I'm A-akira. Do... you wanna play with us?"
"Why would you wanna play with me? I'm dangerous. I hurt people."
"I'm not hurt." No response follows that assertion so Akira takes a few steps closer, and very carefully lowers herself onto the ground in front of the girl.
"I-I get teased too, y-you know."
"...Why?"
"M-my leg. M-my st-stutter. Lots o-of things."
"...Oh. Do you... Do you really want me to play with you?"
"Yeah!" The girl looks up and smiles, wiping some of her tears away, and only succeeding in getting dirt on her cheek.
"I'm Tikara."
"C-cool name, let's go play!"
Time Skip, 1 year later
"T-tikara! What's wrong?" The other girl is crying again, crushing stones to powder in the park with her powers.
"Everyone is mean to me because of my quirk. I hate it!" Another rock reduced to powder.
"I think it's cool." Akira doesn't dare step any closer, Tikara doesn't like people too close when she's upset.
"You always say that! But it's not! It's a terrible awful quirk and I wish I didn't have it!"
"If you didn't have a quirk, you'd wish that you did."
"No I wouldn't! Because then no one would hate me! The kids at school hate me! My parents hate me! No one cares about me... And I'm just so angry!"
"Are you sure you're angry?" Tikara whips her head around and stares at Akira, shoulders shaking and fists clenched.
"OF COURSE I'M ANGRY! What else would I be?" Akira shrugs.
"Hurt. Sad. Lost." Tikara grits her teeth and crushes another group of rocks to dust.
"You don't know anything about how I feel! You can't understand what it's like to have everyone treat you differently! You don't have to go to school every day with people who hate you, who walk around like you're... you're a freak or a monster!"
"It's okay to be upset Tikara, to cry or feel hurt. The world won't break if you let it see how you really feel." Tikara scrubs furiously at her cheeks
"I'm not crying!" A few dozen rocks are turned to dust simultaneously
"Huh, must have started raining and I just didn't notice then." The girl scowls and practically growls at Akira.
"I hate you!" Without missing a beat Akira responds.
"I hate me sometimes too." Dead silence follows, seeming to stretch on for a long time before Tikara responds.
"...What?"
"I hate me sometimes too. In the mornings when I can't get off the floor on my own. When I try to shower and fall and have to have my mom help me. When I try to learn something new. When I can't get my quirk to do what I want. I wake up every day with a million reasons to be angry at the world, a million reasons to hate the world, and a million reasons to hate myself. It's okay to be angry sometimes. Or upset, or to cry, when the time is right. You just gotta know when that time is."
"This is why you're my best friend Akira..."
"Thanks, do you feel a little better now?"
"I guess... Can we go to your house?"
"Sure! Mom made sweet rice."
Akira POV: Back to present
So I set the phone aside and pick up the small wooden box Shouji had given me, turning it over in my hands again and again. Trying to decide if I want to see what's inside yet, or if I want to wait until something in me needs to open the box to keep me going. Now that's a notion, isn't it? Perhaps Pandora was on to something after all. In the end, I do open it, and I smile the most genuine smile I have in quite some time now.
There's a sparkly rock, carefully carved into a locket, with a note from Shouji's mother.
Your father had asked me to make you a locket for your next birthday, I hadn't started it yet, but Shouji suggested I use this to make it when we heard the news. Keep your chin up, and remember, sometimes life gets worse so that it has room to get better.
There's also a small packet of the pop rocks, and inside the locket is a picture of me and my father. He's holding me, despite the fact I know I was nearly eight in that picture, it's not from long before my accident, looking off into the distance and laughing, his eyes crinkled shut and head thrown back just a little. I'm looking at him, wide-eyed and with a bright smile on my face like he just hung the stars up in the sky right in front of me. The sun is at just the right angle to light both of our faces up. The locket is inscribed, front, back, inside, and around the picture, carefully with four quotes. One from my father, one from my mother, one from Grandpa Toro... And one from Daydream, from an interview not long after she beat out All Might's rescue record.
Heroes can't become great until they learn that the problems no one else sees, are still worth solving. - Toro, cleverly placed on the back of the locket.
Brave and frightened are not antonyms, they're siblings that just never learned to get along. -Mom, inside the locket, right across from the picture.
It's not about how many you save, it's about why you're doing it. -Daydream, wrapped around the picture of me and my father.
You don't get to raise a hero, but you do get to watch them rise up. -Dad, right front and center on the locket.
My fingers are shaking as I put the locket on, and I just sit there and cry softly for a while, then the phone rings.
"H-hello?"
"Hey."
"Oh, Tikara. How are you?"
"I feel like maybe I should be asking you that question."
"Maybe you should be, but I asked first."
"I'm worried about you."
"I'm always worried about you. Guess we're worriers."
"You can't do this all the time."
"I don't know what you mean."
"Walk around like you're okay when we both know you're not."
"I am okay, this is just another part of life."
"A wise woman once told me that it's okay to be angry or upset sometimes. When the time is right. If there ever was a right time, this is it. If you shoving it down it'll just keep coming back stronger. You know that." I sigh and run my fingers through my hair.
"It's not the time to break down Tikara, there's so much to get done."
"Why is that always your job?"
"Mom's babysitting the kiddos right now so-"
"It's not babysitting when they're your own kids."
"You know what I mean-"
"I know that you have a bad habit of pretending you can hold up the world by yourself. I learned that a long time ago. That's how I know you're not okay."
"I'm fine. I really am."
"Why do you do this to yourself?"
"It's easier."
"That's like saying drowning is easier than breathing."
"Feels like it most of the time."
"We're gonna all be over in fifteen for a conference. I'll see you then. Okay?"
"Alright."
There are things you should know about my friends and I. According to all of them, I've saved and changed their lives many times. I like to think the opposite is true.
1. Tikara comes from an abusive family. Her parents are still around somewhere, but she left when she was twelve. I don't think they ever cared about that, and now she lives with an elderly couple down the street that was willing to take her in. They'd never had children of their own.
2. Holly's parents were villains, she lives with her grandmother and they're in jail. None of us knew that until recently. She doesn't like to talk about it. She's afraid she'll end up like them whether she wants to or not, and she knows she'd want to if she didn't have us.
3. Fumi's father was emotionally and mentally abusive towards the family, luckily he left when we were still younger. Her mom struggles with it a lot, blames herself, and Fumi spends a lot of time alone. While her mom runs the hotel and tries to forget that her other daughter is dead.
4. Maiko's probably the best off of all of us, as well off as people in our area can be at least. She's got the most pressure to do well as a hero though. It's what her parents expect her to do. Sometimes I think it's one of the only reasons she's trying to become a hero.
5. Aniya has anxiety. Really bad anxiety. She hides it well, but you can see it well up in the air between her fingers, or hear it in a quiet room as the hum of her quirk grows louder. She'll hyperventilate and tremble. She hides it behind an apathetic mask. And she channels that energy into relentless planning and training.
6. Kimiko, her parents are always out, she doesn't talk about why too often. So she spends a lot of time at Aniya's house, hanging out and lounging around. She likes to think none of us know why she hangs out there and not with one of us, Aniya might be clueless, but we aren't.
7. My parents have been like surrogate parents to all of them, Grandpa Toro filling in too. Life for me might not be easier than theirs, but it's had a lot of love and support.
Akira POV
Everyone shows up together, finding a place on the couch or the floor. No words exchanged between us. Holly is curled up beside me, head on my shoulder and holding my hand. Tikara is sitting on the arm of the couch next to me, fingers threaded into my hair gently. The others fall into place around us. We stay like that for a long time, just sitting together, as the most important people in each other's lives.
"Akira?" Fumi's voice is soft, hesitant, unlike her.
"Yeah?" She rests her head against my good knee.
"How... How did you keep it together for me when Emi died? All I want to do is scream and cry right now, but I feel drained at the same time. And he's not even my dad. How do you do it? Just be... Strong for other people?" I sigh and rest my head back.
"I don't know. You needed me, so I just... Did it." She plays with her sisters charm, the one that hangs around her neck. A little black sword bent into the shape of a music note. 'Delicate but deadly' engraved into it.
"I always wondered why she sent this to you."
"I made it for her when she started at UA. I'm surprised it's held up this long, I wasn't as good with my quirk back then." Fumi leans back to look up at me.
"...You never told me that, why wouldn't you keep it?"
"It was made as a good luck charm, you needed a little bit of luck more than me. I'd imagine that you still do, even with all things considered."
"You always know what to say you know."
"I'm really just making it up as I go." Holly chuckles, nudging me a little bit.
"You're pretty good at making shit up then." I nudge her back, a small smile on my face.
"I try yeah. I've got a good reason to." Tikara's starting threading tiny braids into my hair.
"Yeah? What is it?" I think for a moment.
"Have you ever thought about how... There are a lot of kids out there just like us, but without the opportunity to rise up out of it? I mean... If I didn't have you guys I wouldn't even try I'd- I'd have given up. There are so many kids in the world, in our neighborhoods, that are starving. Who have parents that struggle to make ends meet. Or that have parents that are shit. There are kids in better circumstances with parents that still shit. No one looks twice. No one thinks about it. Pros don't think about it. We've got each other's backs around here, nowadays. Grandpa Toro says it didn't use to be like that. That it was him and my dad working together to get anyone to care around here. Most people still don't. In a decade there could be a girl sitting right here, with no hope. Lights shut off, no food in the house, and no one that cares that her life is like that. I don't want that. I might not be able to fix everything, but there's got to be so many more ways to help. More ways for heroes to do good. More ways for everyone to do good really. That's what my dad always wanted for people. A world that cared a little more." Holly nods against my shoulder, and I hear Tikara start to giggle a little.
"What's so funny?"
"I still remember the day your dad came to my parent's house like it was yesterday," Aniya speaks up.
"You never told us what actually happened."
"Well... I'd been over here a lot. He saw the bruises one day, I had a black eye. I tried to tell him it was from kids on the playground, but he didn't believe me. So he walked me home that night when it started to get dark. My dad was home, drunk. Didn't even notice him them. Tried to hit me right in front of him. Akira's dad picked him up by the throat and threw him into the yard, told me to get my stuff. Shouji's dad was there too, I don't know what happened after that. I just know that even when I see him around the neighborhood... He never even looks my way."
"Your dad was always pretty badass Akira." Kimiko kicks my foot as she speaks.
"He was yea, a big softie though at the same time. "
"Definitely. Are you... Are you really okay though? Or are you just gonna say that anytime we ask, so that we don't worry?"
"I don't... I don't know what I am yet. Lost maybe is the best word for it."
"Well, we're here."
"I know."