Disclaimer, I own nothing.

Looks at date... It's still the 8th somewhere right?

Warning: Cannibalism and abuse are referenced in this chapter. Along with some discrimination against disabled people.

Hope you enjoy the chapter!


Saori slowly started to become aware. The world was rumbling, no. That was the car she was in. There were two people in the car with her, both smelled very familiar. The one in contact with her smelled of burnt living flesh and hair dye. Dabi. He was still here. A small piece of tension bled out of her, and another thing clicked into place.

The other person was harder to get a proper scent for. Her nose was almost completely blocked, and she was forced to breathe through her mouth. Tasting the air for a scent was a lot harder than simply smelling it. They smelled of ink and coffee, no. A mochaccino. Endo.

She was in Endo's police car with Dabi letting her use his lap as a pillow.

She lets out a stuttered breath of relief and became almost limp in Dabi's lap. A hand carefully touched her shoulder. It was tense, just like the lap. He was uncomfortable. Shit.

She tried to get off her friend, but she felt so weak. Her own muscles didn't want to move, and lethargy tried to drag her into unconsciousness. It was honestly a struggle to stay awake. The hand on her shoulder removed itself. The legs under her head tensed further then relaxed further.

"She's still out of it, but I think she's asleep now," Dabi said. Fuck, he sounded almost cornered. "You said you're Kaida's friend, but I have trouble believing that Copper."

"I make it a point to stay away from her neighbourhood," Endo stated. "My quirk lets me know when crimes are being committed and I don't intend to bust her for making herself comfortable. She isn't bad nor is she doing any real harm."

Dabi snorted, his tone condescending. "I didn't think an officer would care about that. If they're breaking the law, you need to lock them up, right? So, what's the real deal here?"

"You still entered my car; you know that right?" Endo's voice seemed amused? "But there isn't really any sort of a 'deal'. She's not doing any harm, the streets are safer at night, and she remains untraceable. That picture on the news this morning? It's the only time someone has gotten any hard evidence on her, and even then, the image is terrible enough that you can barely see her. Besides, no one believes she's doing anything technically illegal."

Dabi was silent for a bit. What was he contemplating? Saori wished her senses weren't so dulled from being sick. Her eyes might be useless, but even opening them would let her tell them she was awake. She's a bit in the dark here, and her fuzzy brain wasn't letting her connect the pieces.

"It's because she's blind, isn't it," Dabi asked without really asking. "They don't think a homeless, uneducated, blind person could be the most effective vigilante in the area that brings in criminals almost every night and some days. I saw her in action, the first time I met her. She took out a group of people in a few seconds and even made one of them pass out from sheer terror.

"He ran out of the alley right past me, and she was suddenly there. I didn't even see her move and she's what? Two metres tall? She's not exactly the most unnoticeable person in the world. But that doesn't matter because she's blind and therefore weak, isn't it?"

Endo was silent, but that seemed to be enough of an answer for Dabi in and of itself. He swore, bitter and angry. Something about this hit too deeply to him. She knew it couldn't be from the injustice to her. They knew each other for a month, she couldn't mean enough to incite this reaction.

"I asked her to deal with a group of criminals once. If she gets arrested, then she could bring me down with her if she wanted to." Endo admitted. The car slowed down to a stop. "This is where you've been staying, right? I've been getting a sense this is where she stays the most."

"Yeah," Dabi admitted. His voice was too raw. "You better help me carry her again, she's fucking heavy." That sounded a bit more like him.

The car's engine turned off. "She's only ninety-five kilograms. She isn't that heavy." Endo said as he got out of the car. Cold air started coming into the vehicle.

"Says the policeman bodybuilder." Dabi retorted, adjusting her to pick her up. The door near her feet opened. "Either way, carrying a two-metre-tall woman isn't easy."

"One metre and ninety centimetres. She's not happy about being short, I know." Dabi was informed. His responding snort did not sound like he appreciated it.

Saori must have lost her battle with sleep because she was on top of her nest bed in what felt like the next second. How long had it actually been though? She did feel like she had more energy. A cold flash made her shiver and involuntarily half bury herself into her bed.

"Call me when she gets better. I can tell if it's her if she's out of my range, but I won't be able to tell the difference when she's in it." Endo said down the hall in the direction of the door.

"So, you're just giving me a phone?" Dabi asked near him.

"You can throw it away if you really want, I just don't want to get Kaida into any trouble." Her police friend said.

"There's a photo of her. She fought a goddamn hero, and 'Land Shark' isn't exactly a common quirk. How are you going to handle that?" Her homeless friend said.

"It's already being handled. Kaida admitted she got her quirk from her mutant father. If people figure out the connection, they'll just label her a villain's daughter. I can't help any more than that." Endo admitted.

Something niggled in Saori's memory. That seemed significant somehow.

"So, you're why she went into a panic attack. Maybe warn her before you tell the news that it's her apparent abusive father that is in the neighbourhood." The door was closed before Endo could react.

Whatever Endo did, she couldn't hear anything. Dabi walked back into the living room she's set up in, much more space to lounge in her nest bed. He froze in the entrance and sighed.

"How long have you been awake?" Dabi asked while grabbing some stuff out of plastic bags.

Saori just shrugged. She didn't think she really heard anything worth panicking over and she wasn't really interested in asking what else Endo and Dabi must have talked about. The latter didn't really relax but he accepted her answer.

"Swallow these." Some pills were shoved in her hand by a gloved hand. She managed to move enough to do so but the expended energy left her eyelids drooping. "Your father isn't nearby. Now explain on before. What did you mean by failed product?"

The emphasis was only on the last word. While Saori didn't want to explain, especially while she was like this, but she did kind of owe Dabi for staying. Still, she could help but groan. This wasn't going to be fun. At all.

She looked over at where Dabi sat on the ground near her. His arms were crossed, and he was still tense. "It's kind of fucking explanatory." She told him. He didn't convey any acceptance of that as an answer. She sighed but continued. "I was bred. At the dawn of quirks, a group of quirkless people in my birth country got together and decided to breed people with quirks into creating bioweapons that would follow their every order."

Saori uncovered herself from her nest bed and pulled the side of her pants down. Just enough to reveal the set of numbers across her hip that was uncomfortably close to a specific area. "445 is a number I share with my father, but he's Mark 1 and I'm Mark 2." She pulled her pants back up.

"Each number denotes which template that was originally designed all those hundreds of years ago. My father was their first successful version, I was born from him and one of the eggs they cut out of my Mum. No one was pleased when I was born blind, and none of my siblings from the same father ever survived long enough if they even survived being born. The shitstain is always really pissed when he sees me. I'm his only living progeny and I'm fucking blinder than a bat."

She hacked up some snot that somehow got in the back of her throat. How it got there, she doesn't know. Maybe she should have paid more attention when Phocidae talked about biology and physiology. Those are about the body, right? Body… fuck, there's one more thing she needed to admit.

"I probably wouldn't have hated my father as much if it wasn't for what he made me do." Her head dropped so he wouldn't see her face. "The one thing they kept me alive for after realising I'm blind is for body disposal. It cut costs for feeding me and it's why I hate dead bodies. My survival instincts cut in and I can't stop myself."

She stopped. Cannibalism wasn't a topic you could share with anyone really. Her family accepted it but the place they were in and how they met her… They said they'd never hold it against her. She'd never be able to tell Endo, but Dabi had killed before and he cremated the bodies. Most of her accepted the large risk for the greater potential benefit. The rest of her didn't want to lose one of her only friends.

"Well fuck." Her attention was dragged back to Dabi. She remained silent while he kept thinking about what she revealed. Info dumps like that could take a while to process. "You're from Reborn."

"Yeah, I am. So what?" Saori asked, raising an eyebrow.

Dabi was silent again before he stood up and walked away. No comment on her being a cannibal. Although that silence really was an answer in and of itself, wasn't it?

She sighed but buried herself completely in her bed. The medicine that Dabi made her have was slowly working. Her head had stopped pounding and her body didn't ache as much as it used to.

Although fuck her if she knew anything about taking it. How much did he buy? When could she have it? How much could she have? All questions she had no way of answering. However long this sickness was supposed to last was going to suck. Tsarina gave many very strict warnings about how overdosing could turn any medicine into poison.

A bottle of water was thrown at her pile and bounced off her, apparently, not completely covered head. She sat up too fast and almost passed out as everything went dizzy and nauseous. While she was recovering from her own self-inflicted condition, Dabi flopped on top of her nest bed. She blinked at him but couldn't react properly with the blood in her head being all weird.

"My father forced my mother to marry him. He wanted a masterpiece blending their two quirks to achieve his dream for him." Dabi whispered with his tone carefully flat. "I was the first. My quirk is stronger than his, but my body isn't suited for it. The next two after me were even more useless so he kept training me. But then his masterpiece was born, and he had the perfect quirk that my father wanted. Then everything he did to me was for nothing."

He didn't add anymore and chugged some water. She really needed to get more variety of drinking options. She opened her own bottle of water and drank. They didn't talk until both of their bottles were empty.

"How are your siblings? And your mother?" She asked. Dabi stiffened.

"Don't fucking care. Though I heard that flaming garbage pile sent Mother to a mental hospital. Didn't need her after he finally got his masterpiece." He crushed the bottle in his hands. She handed hers over to him. He did a double take but took it.

"I've got seven older siblings and one younger. Same Mum, different dads." She told him. "My father killed one of them with his own hands. Mum tried to rip his throat out afterwards. You can guess what happened to my brother's body." She grabbed and ripped a piece of fabric from her nest bed. "She ended up ripping my father's tongue out and then making him eat it when she found out about me. They reckoned I was about twelve then, but my brother died a decade before that."

"Well, at least your Mum cared enough to stand up for you all." He growled, destroying the other bottle. "I looked too much like dear old dad too much for her to bear helping me."

She snorted. "Well, I'm fucking identical to the shitstain when transformed. It's our scars that tell us apart." She poked his skinny arm. "How close in appearance are you?"

He slapped her hand away. "Aren't you blind? How does it even matter to you?"

"Misery loves company? Shared trauma buddies? There's some quote from Rina's books that says it." She rolled her eyes. "And blind or not, I've got echolocation when my hearing isn't stuffed. I can tell body types, just not colours."

Dabi stared at her. Then he snorted a broken-off repressed laugh. It wasn't truly amused, more bitter-sweet.

"A lot of people see colouring before body unless there's a mutant quirk involved. I used to have his colouring. His body is a lot beefier." He ran a hand through his hair.

"I won't complain about you dyeing your hair as much." She responded. "But that shit still stinks, so I can't promise full silence."

He actually laughed at that. It was quiet and broken, but nice. He stopped abruptly. "He's Endeavor. The Number Two hero."

"That'd make getting rid of him more difficult, sure." She shrugged. "Although revealing him and turning his own people against him would be more entertaining. Killing is honestly more of a mercy. Making him watch his life crumble before his eyes and see years later how people are better off without him can be so very sweet."

Dabi was staring at her, she raised an eyebrow back. "What? Hero or not, he's still an abusive fucktard who's lying to people and hurting kids. I don't know how you feel about your own siblings. But while I may not get along with my little sister recently, not even I would want to leave her in a shitty situation like that.

"Besides, my father is a villain and what better way for me to stick it to him than by becoming a Hero who ousts arseholes like him? Although I guess I really can only do vigilantism. Same thing sometimes."

Dabi moved to face her with his body. "I suppose…" He moved to a different line. "None of this is going to be easy, Kaida."

"Fucking move in then." She quickly interrupts.

"Huh?"

"I'll likely die without you anyway." She told him. "I'm cold-blooded and allergic to ice. And a fire-resistant partner in taking down shitty fathers is not a common thing."

Embers were conjured in his hand and flicked into her face. She pinched the one smouldering lock of fringe out with an unimpressed look.

"Well, it seems that now we are roommates." He snorted at a joke she wasn't aware of. "Never took myself for a house-husband. If you weren't useful to me, I wouldn't be doing this."

She grinned and flopped back into her nest bed. He didn't seem impressed by her strangely impish attitude. "Don't think you're going to get out of chores when you're better! Money-maker or not, I've got other jobs I've got to do to accomplish our task."

She patted his arm and started singing. Her croaky voice seemed more suited to HighveKing's favourite sort of music. And the double meaning in the music choice was fun even as Dabi rolled his eyes at her and shoved her.

"I've become so numb
I can't feel you there
Become so tired
So much more aware
I'm becoming this
All I want to do
Is be more like me
And be less like you."


Me: Typing she's blinder than a bat and laughing.

Saori's bat sibling: Am I a joke to you?

Also Me: I don't think that line works but kind of.