A/N: Only one scene this time: Hitoshi's. I have surgery tomorrow morning, and I'm nervous. I keep psyching myself. No joke: On the drive home from work today, I thought to myself, "what if my creativity is stored in my tonsils and once they take them out I won't be able to finish this story?" Lmao. I'm a mess! Please enjoy! If you don't get a chapter back right away, I might still be alive, just too out of it to write if the pain meds interact with my other meds too much. If you don't hear from me on Discord… well… RIP, I guess. Lmfao! See you on the flip side! 3
"Not you! Anyone but you! Please!"
Hitoshi swore under his breath, causing his former foster care caseworker to flinch. Hitoshi opened his mouth to apologize, thought better of it, and promptly snapped his mouth shut again, opting to back out of the side panel room, hands up in a placating manner.
Of all the goddamn people, it had to be Wakakuro Seibo.
Hitoshi did a quick visual check in both directions and listened carefully but didn't hear or see any indication of anyone else coming to help. Huffing at the unfortunate circumstances, he shoved an irritated hand through his hair, glancing at the still-terrified gaze of Wakakuro. The emotion in his eyes wasn't anything new, but the higher level of absolute terror and panic was.
Hitoshi, not moving anything but his eyes, did a quick visual scan of the man, and it didn't seem like he was majorly injured and in need of immediate assistance. By "stuck," Wakakuro seemed to be trapped against the wall between a ladder leading up to the city streets by the bent metal of the ladder that must have been crushed in the chaos, but it didn't seem that any of Wakakuro's limbs were crushed, just his clothing, so Hitoshi had time to work through this diplomatically. Well, that was unfortunate. It would have been much easier to rush the situation and apologize for the mental scars afterwards, explaining it all away due to the nature of emergency of the situation.
Hitoshi took another deep breath and coughed, the dust sticking in the back of his throat, making Wakakuro flinch again, and Hitoshi sighed. It looked like they were their only options, so they were stuck with each other, whether they liked it or not. Hitoshi was also on a time limit; he had his soulmate to save, after all.
"I'm a Pro Hero," Hitoshi said, stepping cautiously and slowly into the room again, like he was approaching a wild animal. "Pro Hero Mindjack. I graduated UA this year—"
"You're lying," Wakakuro accused, fear still deeply lacing his voice. "I haven't heard of you."
"I'm an underground hero," Hitoshi said. "If you would think about it for two seconds, you would realize that is the best fit for my quirk."
Wakakuro flinched, and Hitoshi ran his hand through his hair again. Hitoshi forced himself to relax, making his shoulders drop, trying to get Wakakuro to mirror him, even just a little.
"Sorry," Hitoshi apologized. "But there's no one else coming—"
Wakakuro broke out into a coughing fit, and it went on longer than Hitoshi felt comfortable with. Just as Hitoshi was about to step forward—to do what, he didn't know—Wakakuro finally regained control over his lungs again.
"You're a villain, aren't you?"
"I have my hero license," Hitoshi said, reaching for his pocket.
"Those can be faked."
"My soulmate, you remember him, right?" Hitoshi asked, wondering if he could use his more influential and public soulmate as his way in, at least long enough to get this former foster care caseworker out of there.
Wakakuro flinched, and Hitoshi swore under his breath.
Right, no questions, got it.
"Sorry," Hitoshi apologized, again, shaking his head. "Monoma Neito. He's Phantom Thief, now. You have to know Phantom Thief. He's—"
But Wakakuro was already shaking his head, shoulders drawing up near his ears in fear of—what? Retaliation for not knowing?
"Chargebolt, then. He's mine and Phantom Thief's boyfriend. We were both just on the news about him."
Hitoshi watched as Wakakuro's eyes went from staring at the floor to jolting up to looking straight ahead at the wall before hesitantly dragging across the room before meeting his own eyes. Progress.
Hitoshi took another small step forward with a lazy shrug. "Everyone thought we were crazy at first, because Neito and I are soulmates, and everyone thought that that should be enough. Not everyone gets a soulmate, but there we were, wanting Denki, too. Everyone thought he was crazier because he wanted us back, thinking that there was no way that we were going to last and that it was just going to end in heartbreak for all of us, but we're still going strong three years later."
"Chargebolt works at Endeavor's agency," Wakakuro commented skeptically, but Hitoshi could see his doubt wavering.
"Yeah. The Commission tried to contract him before he even graduated, so he rushed to sign on with Number One for protection. I knew I wanted to be in underground anyway, and Denki was already too public for anything like that because of his recognizable quirk and his run in with the League of Villains. He'd never get away with going undercover!"
"And Phantom Thief?"
Hitoshi smiled. "Neito follows Ground Zero wherever he goes. Explosion is one of his favorite quirks, and he loves to torment him. Ground Zero won't admit it, but everyone knows that he likes having Neito around for the training. Ground Zero is working on opening his own agency eventually, and I'm sure Neito will be there to support him as soon as he decides to break away to make his debut."
Wakakuro almost smiled, Hitoshi was sure, before looking at Hitoshi consideringly. Then there was a distant crash from the direction that Hitoshi had come from, and Hitoshi would bet a month's worth salary that it was the entrance to the metro that he and Neito had come through collapsing. Even though the sound was distant and not loud, Wakakuro still jumped, scared out of his skin, his breathing picking up once again.
"I don't think any additional help is coming. It really is just you and me," Hitoshi said, the unspoken question of the offer of help lingering between them.
Wakakuro nodded, and Hitoshi was across the small room, on his knees next to the man, utility knife in hand as he worked on sawing through the straps that could not be pulled free from where the metal of the ladder compressed into the concrete of the wall.
It was slow work, the knife not being much of a match for the material that was quirk-enforced and designed to last. Having Hitoshi so close just increased Wakakuro's anxiety, keeping his breathing rate high, causing him to breath in more dust floating around, making his coughing fits more frequent and longer in duration as Hitoshi worked.
Without looking up from his task, Hitoshi mentioned, "Neito's quirk is called Copy. He's put me under my own quirk, before." When Wakakuro didn't say anything, Hitoshi took that as his sign to continue.
"The first time I put him under, I was terrified that I was going to lose him, that he wouldn't want to be my soulmate anymore, but then he told me how cool it was and offered to show me what it was like, and I couldn't say no to that," Hitoshi said, a small smile growing over his face as he painstakingly sawed away at the material. "With how everyone always reacted, I was expecting something terrifying, cold, maybe even painful, like how I would get headaches when someone would resist, but it was like a nice cloudy haze, a warm floating feeling. Disconnected and disconcerting, sure, but I trusted him, so there wasn't anything to fear from the command aspect. The cool thing about it is that it has a forced calming effect," Hitoshi revealed, continuing to saw away at the straps, not reacting or even pausing his movements when Wakakuro's breath hitched at the implicated offer.
"I—I'm scared," Wakakuro admitted.
"I know, but you're already panicking as it is," Hitoshi pointed out. "Look at it this way. Even if you still doubt that I'm a hero, and you think I could still be a villain, I wouldn't gain anything from hurting you or taking you hostage—I know what kind of salary social workers make," Hitoshi deadpanned, and smiled softly when Wakakuro actually snorted, "and if I was going to leave you behind, I wouldn't have to put you under my quirk to do that. So," Hitoshi said, with a sense of finality, "you can panic and breathe in all of this dust at a rapid pace, or you can be scared under my quirk, but at least spare your lungs while you're at it. If you're going to be scared either way, you might as well get a benefit out of it, don't you think?"
Hitoshi asked the question, Wakakuro squeezed his eyes shut as he braced himself, the question not slipping by unnoticed, and he answered, fully understanding that what he was agreeing to would activate immediately.
"Yes."
And just like that, Wakakuro's mind was Hitoshi's, and Hitoshi didn't waste a second getting to work.
Standing up, he explained to the slack-faced social worker, "you were panicking before and would have passed out, but now…"
Hitoshi removed his capture weapon, wrapping it around Wakakuro's head so that it would filter out some of the larger dust particles floating around in the air. Even though it opened up Hitoshi to more dust himself, he knew he had more access to healers as a hero than the social worker would at the local hospital, so it was fine.
Hitoshi's fingers brushed against his support gear that hung unused around his neck, wishful, but knowing that the plates wouldn't protect him from the dust and putting it on and breathing through it would only encourage the dust to get in between the plates and scratch them up. He'd receive hell from Hatsume for a stunt like that.
"Sorry about this in advance," Hitoshi muttered, dropping his hands as he gave up on the fruitless idea of using his artificial vocal cords as a buffer, "but this way you'll know what it feels like when I command something, so you aren't worried about it sneaking up on you later. It's necessary because you can't control your reflexes while under my control, so if dust got into your eyes, you wouldn't be able to blink it away."
Hitoshi gave him a second for the explanation to sink in before commanding him to close his eyes.
Hitoshi knew how sketchy it must seem to Wakakuro, so he continued to talk as he worked, just about anything and everything: How far he had cut through the strap thus far, little details that are already public knowledge about his, Neito's, and Denki's work, and, eventually, all of the things Wakakuro had done.
"The Hamabis were great," Hitoshi said, pausing in his work to clear his throat, blink the dust away from his eyes, and quickly shake out his cramping hands before continuing with his tedious task. "They threw me a birthday party. I had just been placed with them, so I didn't really know what to expect… I didn't know what I could ask for."
Hitoshi sneezed, watching the dust scatter from the force of his breath in disgust, trying not to think about the scratchy particles that had to have been coating the inside of his lungs.
"I only invited Denki and Neito, but then all of these kids that I had met at Fields showed up," Hitoshi said, getting lost in the memory as he worked. "They were the most understanding friends I ever had. They answered my questions without hesitation. Even Denki and Neito, even after I had put them both under my quirk before. No fear whatsoever—"
Hitoshi noticed the fog start to waft in and thicken, but there was nothing he could do, not with Wakakuro still very much stuck. Hitoshi hoped that whatever the hell it was, it wasn't poisonous or acidic.
Not wanting to alarm Wakakuro or give whoever was giving off the fog any indication that Hitoshi had noticed their presence already, he continued to talk as if nothing was amiss.
"—Imagine my surprise when I made it into UA only for it to be like déjà vu! There must be some correlation between mental health patients and heroes. In my mind, it's that they don't want anyone to ever have to feel as hopeless as they did, but that's just anecdotal," Hitoshi rambled. "If I had gone onto university instead of going straight into underground heroics, I think that's what I would have based my dissertation on, though."
"And what a dissertation it would have been!" chirped the voice from the doorway behind Hitoshi.
A/N: The last three chapters in a nutshell:
Neito: *struggling to navigate a tense situation between villains and potential hostages*
Hitoshi: *struggling to convince someone from his past that he actually didn't turn out to be a villain, all things considered*
Isozan: Do a flip!
Denki: Bet!