chapter 3
Tomura glared at the door the kunoichi had escaped through. "How annoying." He walked across the bar, sat down on his stool and picked up his drink. "...but impressive." He muttered quietly.
"Yes, impressive." All For One agreed with his ward. "Which is why you must do your best to win her over to our side, Tomura."
"Win her over? How do I do that, ridiculous Master. You saw what happened. She won't come back now." Shigaraki picked his drink up, drank the remainder down, then disintegrated the glass to ash. "Unless I force her but even then with powers like that…"
All For One watched Tomura through the one sided video feed. The boy was thinking he could tell. He wasn't scratching, he wasn't ranting, he was still and quiet. The kunoichi had made quite an impression on him, just as he hoped she would.
"I've given you all the mental and physical tools you need, Tomura, my advice to you now is just for form's sake. All of this, remember, is all for you Tomura." All For One's voice came through the video feed at the end of the bar.
"There does seem to be one lesson however, I have forgotten to teach you." All for One chuckled to himself. "How to talk to women. Be careful Tomura. Kunoichi aren't only dangerous because they can kill, they are dangerous because they can distract you as they kill you. In my younger days I knew a woman with such talents, this kunoichi, she reminds me of her a bit."
"Distraction, didn't you tell me distractions were bad?" Tomura turned toward the television. "She said she only killed when she had to Master, she isn't like us, I don't see how I will…"
"...but she does kill Tomura. That is the very important point you are missing. Hero's don't kill. She will soon find out that her ideals align with ours much more than they do the hero's. In the meantime, watch her, learn more about her and be patient."
"Push forward slowly with her. When she reacts calmly to your efforts, pull back. You can not rush things with a woman. They are a different kind of conquest, but one I think you will enjoy. A time will come when she will be more receptive to what you have to say. A time will come when she will understand exactly what kind of world she has fallen into." All For One chuckled that low sly chuckle of his.
"Try to get to know her. Offer her conversation in lieu of aggression." All For One instructed.
"If you wanted me to befriend her, why did you have me attack her?" Shigaraki sneered. "You've made it more difficult for me 'to get to know' her as you say."
Learn about her…Master made it sound more simple than it was. Tomura began to scratch his neck in earnest. He wasn't a people person. He hated people. What was he supposed to do, chase her down and force her to have a conversation with him? He didn't even know if he wanted that himself much less to try to coax her into conversing with him.
"You may be surprised Tomura. Women are not like men you know and kunoichi are a different breed of women altogether. This one in particular, likes to fix things, is attracted to the diseased and the damned. Be persistent Tomura, offer her what others here can not." All For One watched Tomura absorb his words.
Tomura stopped scratching abruptly as a thought struck him. What others can not, but what did he have to offer her that she would want? What did she need? Get to know her, talk to her? She wouldn't talk to him now though, would she...
"The shinobi in the stories Master...they killed for money right?" Tomura began to scratch slowly at his neck again as he thought about his master's words. "They were hired assassin's right?" He needed confirmation.
"She healed that man though, she stopped that punk from getting away with that book store's money. She acted like a hero. Why would someone who kills for money do something like that?" He was confused.
"This is not the only world Tomura, but this is the world we know. We must conquer this world before we can conquer others. One world at a time. It doesn't mean we can't learn from other worlds, can't observe them and take from them that which we need." All for One said cryptically.
"Take what we need." Shigaraki pushed back from the bar, pulled his hood up over his head and shoved his hands in his pants pockets, all but his pinky fingers, and walked out of the bar.
"He doesn't understand yet. He does not fully comprehend your gift yet." Kurogiri turned toward the monitor.
"He will. Tomura is the kind of villain that needs to see to believe. He must see for himself all that the girl, excuse me, the woman has to offer. When he does, he will thank me, I am sure, for the remarkable gift I have given him." The raspy voice replied ever patiently.
"She is the one you have been watching with your new quirk then." Kurogiri understood. Their Master had planned it all. "You brought her here using that new quirk, you've mastered it already?" He was impressed but not surprised. The man was All For One after all.
"Yes, unfortunately I was unable to transport her directly to Tomura. It seems there are still limits to dimensional transportation even for me." All For One sighed.
"Forever is a long time to spend alone Kurogiri. I have given all to Tomura, entrusted all of our futures to him. He will need someone strong to support him when I am no longer available to do so. She is the perfect match for the young man. Watch over her as you watch over him." All For One closed their communication with a push of a button.
Kurogiri stared at the now blank screen for a few more minutes. "What of the world you pulled her from though. Is that not the second law of thermodynamics, you can not make something from nothing?"
Tomura Shigaraki was not a lady's man. Kurogiri sighed as he poured the kunoichi's untouched drink down the drain, and that kunoichi was smart. "I foresee great difficulties in our future."
She thought she had been pulled into the old bar beside the book store but as Sakura looked up and down the street she realized she didn't recognize anything from before Kurogiri had teleported her.
What had the old woman called that large rectangular contraption, a bus? Maybe she could take a bus to get back to Musutafu. Damn that teleporter. She had no idea where she was, or if she was even close to where she had been before.
"Does it really matter?" Sakura straightened her shorts by the elastic band. "Asshole." Shigaraki had disintegrated her medic skirt.
"At least my pouches are okay." She reached into her first pouch and pulled one of the papers Todoroki had given her earlier and looked at it. ' ¥10,000. ' She had no idea how much that was worth or what it would purchase.
Okay, she tried to calm herself, this is no different than a mission in an unfamiliar land. Except that it was, because nothing here made sense to her. Money, she reminded herself, that had to be the same though right? That thief was stealing money, that was familiar. She had seen people put money into those boxes to pay for things, that was the same. Currency was currency, the value was the only thing that changed, she assured herself.
Sakura took a deep breath, good ole' logic. She felt better already. Only...her skirt. Looking down, her cheeks flushed, she was much more exposed than she wanted to be. Her shorts covered her, it wasn't that she was indecent but they were tight and...she had to find a skirt or some pants.
Looking up she noticed two stores that looked as though they sold clothes. Again, she wasn't sure how much Todoroki had given her but she could always ask the clerk couldn't she? "Right." Sakura stiffened her back and pushed the door open to the first store on the left.
"Welcome!" A middle aged, well dressed woman bowed politely to Sakura as she entered the store with a smile on her face, that froze as she took in Sakura's clothes.
"Um, hello. Sorry but I'm new here and not aware of your er, currency? A friend of mine gave me some money, I don't know if it is enough but I need some pants or a um, wrap skirt?" Sakura held all three bills out to the woman for her inspection.
"Oh!" The woman covered her mouth in surprise, then smiled a very toothy smile at Sakura which reminded her unpleasantly of a shark. "I'm sure we can find you something."
Sakura followed the woman deeper and deeper into the store to the back, passing by several racks of skirts and pants that Sakura thought looked nice. "Excuse me but…"
"Here we go, this will look wonderful on you, goes well with your hair." The sales woman picked up a mid length skirt made of fine silk and handed it to Sakura who frowned.
"This isn't really what I wanted, I wanted something more durable, not…" Sakura turned the tag over in her hand. '¥5,000' Sakura looked back over her shoulder, ignoring the saleswoman's protests, and walked back to the front of the store.
Looking at the length and the colors, Sakura picked out a white skirt that matched her 'O" on the back of her red top and turned the tag over. '¥2,200' Sakura held the skirt up to herself and smiled. There were ties on the sides, a one size fits all, just what she needed.
"I'll take this one." Sakura handed both the skirt and ¥10,000. ' note to the woman who frowned.
"...but." The woman gave one last try.
"I would like to wear it now if you please." Sakura cut her off politely walking to what she assumed was the cash register.
"Of course, thank you for choosing Sarayachi Women's Store." The woman rang Sakura up, handed her the skirt after removing the tags for her, and smiled a kind smile now that the transaction was complete.
"Thank you, um, if I might trouble you, can you tell me how far I am from Musutafu, in the Shizuoka Prefecture please?" Sakura asked.
"You are in Kanagawa Prefecture now. This is Kamino Ward." The saleswoman replied politely with only a small hint of curiosity in her voice. "Musutafu isn't that far from here. If you choose to walk it is only a twenty five minute walk but you may also ride the public bus."
"Thank you, this may sound odd but those large boxes that dispense drinks, how do I use them?" Sakura asked again, ignoring the raised eyebrows of the woman before her.
"Large boxes?" The saleswoman couldn't hold back her amusement and began to giggle at Sakura. "I apologize, please forgive me for my rudeness. You said you were not from around here, your Japanese is excellent, I didn't expect you to be a foreigner."
Japanese? Sakura blushed in embarrassment. "No, it's okay I know I must sound terribly foolish."
"Those are called vending machines, the large boxes you are referring to. You take your bills…" She held up one of the bills from her till for Sakura to see. "...and slip it into the slot with the pictures of the bills, then a light will come up for you to make your choice of drink or food, whatever the vending machine has to offer. You press the button in front of the item you want to purchase and it comes out the bottom along with your change if you have any." The woman explained.
"Thank you." Sakura smiled a genuine heartfelt smile at the woman, forgiving her at once for being so pushy earlier. "I appreciate your help."
"It is my pleasure. May I ask, where are you from?" The woman smiled back, pleased to be speaking to such a novelty. "Your Japanese is perfect, again, I never would have guessed you to be a foreigner. You look Japanese."
Sakura paused. It didn't matter, did it, this place was so different from the one she had come from, but that transmission, that man had known about shinobi so perhaps…
"Somewhere very far from this one. I must go, thank you for your kindness." Sakura bowed quickly, picked her skirt up from the counter and tied it around her waist, pulled her pouches up and over it and placed her change into the first one on her hip. With a nod and a wave she walked out of the store, past a man in a black sweatshirt who had his hood up, and down the street toward several blinking lights she had learned decorated the 'vending machines', as the woman had called them.
"Okay, so I put this in here." Sakura took out one of the smaller 'bills' from her pouch and slid it into the only slot available to her like the woman had instructed. "Then it blinks at me." Sakura waited for the machine to blink. Nothing happened.
"You didn't put enough money in." A raspy voice behind her spoke into her ear making her jump and turn sharply.
"Ah ah ah." Shigaraki Tomura caught her fist with four of his fingers when she tried to punch him in the face. "We don't want to cause a scene and have the Hero's come, do we?"
Heroes.
Sakura remembered the man from earlier when she had helped the family in Musutafu. He had been dressed differently than those around them, he had been a hero hadn't he? No, she might not want the Heroes, as they were called, to show up and ask her a bunch of questions she wasn't able to answer.
"What do you want?" Sakura turned back around toward the vending machine. She could see his reflection in the glass, he was smiling. It infuriated her.
"Don't you want me to help you get your drink? You must be thirsty. Kurogiri will be so disappointed when I tell him you preferred a vending machine over his expertise in cocktails." The man's voice was teasing, almost playful.
Different than before.
Sakura, her eyes still on the reflection in the glass, pulled another bill from her pouch and slid it into the machine, pressed the button for pineapple juice and waited. Nothing happened.
"Now you've gone and put too much in the machine." Shigaraki laughed at her. "Master wasn't kidding when he said you weren't from around here was he?"
Shigaraki leaned forward, pressed a red button on the side of the other buttons and watched as Sakura's change fell out the bottom slot.
"The coins, just use the coins this time, put your bills away." Tomura was amused. He had never met anyone who didn't know how to use a vending machine before. "You only use the bills if you are going to buy more than one drink, or using a machine with product in it, or higher priced foods." He explained as though they were old friends. "The first bill was okay but you don't have any smaller ones. The second bill you put in could buy you 100 drinks."
He laughed at her. The tension between them faded, just a tad.
Sakura slid the coins into the machine, noticing how the number on the pad changed each time she slid in a new coin. "Oh."
"Yes, oh." Tomura watched her grit her teeth in the glass, smiling broadly. "Fast learner I see."
Sakura watched as she punched the button, her drink fell to the bottom into the bin, she was delighted. "How unusual."
"Do you mind?" Sakura motioned to the bin where her juice was, then at Shigaraki who was standing directly behind her.
Shigaraki backed up a pace or two, watched as Sakura bent over, and pulled her juice from the bottom bin.
"Nice skirt. I like the white better than the pink." He commented as she looked at the top of the juice confused. "Here." He reached over and pulled the paper from the top of the juice, then the tab for her.
"Thanks." Sakura begrudgingly thanked him. "Why are you being so helpful? You don't think that just because you helped me with this I'll go trotting back to your crappy bar with you do you?" She snorted at the very thought of that happening.
He told her not to make a scene, so she didn't think he meant to take her by force, even if he could.
"Where's Kurogiri?" She asked Shigaraki suspiciously.
"At the bar. He doesn't like to leave the bar unless he has to." Shigaraki liked this.
He was having a real conversation with someone other than Master or Kurogiri. He wanted to talk to her more. Master told him to learn about her, was this what he meant? It was different in person, talking. The games he played, if the other player pissed him off all he had to do was log out, block their handle, easy, but this was something more.
He wanted more.
Sakura sipped her pineapple juice in silence. Shigaraki made no move toward her. He just stood there in front of her, waiting. What was he waiting for? Did he expect her to say something?
"So, if you're not here to drag me back to your crumby bar...I'm gonna go." Sakura stepped around the man to the left toward the main walkway.
"I'm coming with you." Shigaraki fell into step beside her effortlessly.
"You don't even know where I'm going." Sakura pointed out, relaxing as they joined the crowded sidewalk along a main street, tall buildings rising on either side of them. "I could be going somewhere you don't want to be."
"I don't care where you're going, that's not why I'm following you." Shigaraki grumbled. They had been doing so well he thought, now she was being…irritating.
"Why are you following me then?" Sakura joined a group of people waiting for the light to queue.
"Master told me to get to know you." Tomura said bluntly.
"So you decided to stalk me?" Sakura quirked an eyebrow at the awkward white haired man, who had apparently decided to stalk her.
"Yeah, I guess." He shrugged. "So where are you going?" She hadn't tried to hit him again, so he figured he was doing okay.
"I'm going to get on a bus, right, that's what those big metal things are called? People wait for them on those benches?" Sakura pointed to a bus stop bench farther up the walkway.
"Come on, you don't even know what a bus is?" Shigaraki shook his head. "Do you even know how to use the public transportation system? How do you know which bus to get on? If you don't know what bus to get on you could end up on the other side of Japan. It's pretty foolish to wander around a strange world not even knowing where you're going." He scoffed openly at her stupidity.
"I know where I'm going." Sakura put her hands on her hips and tapped her toe angrily. Who did this guy think he was anyway, following her after he had abducted her.
"Sure. You just don't know how to get there." Tomura watched her carefully. She was relaxing around him, he could tell even if she was mad at him, she was relaxing in his presence, just like Master said she would.
Sakura opened her mouth to argue with him but couldn't. He was right. She knew she needed to get to Musutafu, but she had no idea how to get there or which bus to take.
"Come on." Tomura walked past her toward the bus bench. "Where do you want to go?"
"Musutafu, in the uh Shizuoka Province." She told him, not noticing how his whole body seemed to stiffen before he forcibly made himself relax again.
"Why?" He asked her.
"None of your business. I'll find my own way." Sakura sped up walking past the bus bench Tomura had stopped at, to walk to the next one down the road.
"That one doesn't go to Musutafu." Tomura called out to her, watched her turn around and stomp back over to him. After she was seated on the bench beside him he added, "Actually it does, it's the same bus, but you didn't know that, did you."
"I get it." Sakura refused to look at him. "I have no idea what I'm doing, but that doesn't mean I'm stupid enough to trust you."
Shigaraki didn't answer her right away. She wasn't stupid no, but in a way, she had already begun to trust him. He thought about what he had learned about her so far, what his master told him about shinobi in the past and how she had told him before at the bar, that she didn't kill, unless she had to.
"So who have you killed?" He asked her in a quiet voice.
Sakura swallowed. Two more people had joined them at the bus stop.
"You said you didn't kill unless you had to, which means you've killed before, so who was it, who did you kill?" He asked her again, more impatiently. He had been nice, he had been calm, he had humoured her enough, now he wanted answers.
"Women like to do useless things don't they… Even connected by blood ties as we are, I won't feel a thing if grandma dies here. My heart… is just like this body…"
Akasuna no Sasori's words came back to her as she contemplated Shigaraki's question. She may have helped Lady Chiyo kill her grandson but she didn't consider herself a killer. She was a shinobi, but that was what Shigaraki meant wasn't it? Shinobi killed, for money, for their village, they were killers weren;t they. She was a killer, a kunoichi.
"Another shinobi, from a different village." Her voice was nearly inaudible but Tomura heard her. She was hunched over in upon herself.
Tomura leaned closer to her. "Then you can't be a hero, you know. You're a villain, like me. That's all they'll see you as, that's all you'll ever be to them, but not to us, not to Master and I. With us you could find a home. It must be lonely here. It must be hard being alone in a world you know nothing about."
Sakura's head snapped up. "Do you think this is the first hardship I've faced? Do you think you know me so well after abducting me, then stalking me for an hour to know how I feel?"
"I know that you don't know how to pay your bus fare. I know you don't trust easily and that you like pineapple juice. I know that you're much more skilled than the skill you've shown me so far and that you're a stubborn ass." Shigaraki countered.
"...but I also know you're smart, that you'll think about what I've said to you and you'll figure it out on your own." He stood up, reached into his pocket and pulled out a small plastic card. "Here, you'll need this for the bus. There's enough on it for whatever you need. Think about it okay. Master and I can give you everything, the world. All we ask for in return is your loyalty."
Sakura caught the card between her two fingers, the same two fingers he had used to throw it at her. Tomura smiled.
"Scan it at the console right after you get on the bus and again right before you leave the bus." He told her. "When you come to your senses, you know where to find me."
Sakura looked down at the card. It was green and grey with a small penguin in the bottom right. "Suica." Sakura read the words along the left. When Sakura looked back up to hand the card back to Shigaraki, he was gone.
"What a nice boyfriend." A woman beside her commented.
"He isn't my boyfriend." Sakura said with a bit more venom than she had intended, making the woman raise her hand to her chest in apprehension. "Uh, sorry. I just met him. I'm new to the area." Sakura tried to back track in the form of an apology.
"Could you tell me what this is please?" Sakura smiled sweetly at the woman who began to smile back, lowering her hand from her chest.
"Why, that's an IC card. You can use it to pay for the bus fare, for vending machines, certain shops and restaurants. It was very kind of that youngman to give that to you if you just met. He must have a crush on you dear." The woman was still smiling. "Providing there is money on it." She added giggling.
"We'll find out." Sakura stood up from the bench and walked to the end of the bus as it pulled up with the others.
She watched as the woman scanned a card that looked similar to Sakura's under the small reader. Fascinated, Sakura saw the light turn green and waited for her turn to hold the card Shigaraki gave her over the scanner. Like the woman before her, the light turned green. Sakura sighed in relief, it had worked, this thing had money on it.
He had been nice to her considering how he acted when they had first met but Sakura wouldn't put it past him to give her a blank card to prove his point, that she didn't know where she was, what she was doing, or how to find her way in this world yet.
"I will." Sakura chose a seat in the middle, away from as many people as she could. "I'll survive this, you'll see Shigaraki. I'm a ninja, and ninja endure." She clenched her fists together as the bus pulled away from the curb.