It was a regular Saturday morning at the USAHS, the birds were singing, the sun was rising bright and warm, there was only a few fluffy white clouds in the sky. This picturesque morning found Austin laying on his bed, drool dribbling down his chin as he snored loudly into his pillows. The boy was sleeping in a manner no one could find comfortable, with one arm under his pillows, the other stretched out off the bed with fingertips touching the floor. One leg curled up underneath him like he was doing a jackknife dive into the pool, the other flopped carelessly over the baseboard of the bed.

Suddenly there was a heavy pounding at the door followed by a call of "Mail's here!" before heavy footfalls fell away from his door. This shout had jerked Austin out of a happy dream and caused him to tumble out of his bed onto the floor, causing a large loud THUMP to be heard by the denizens of the rooms around him, particularly Megan who was on the floor below him, although she was rather used to this by this point in their staying in the dorms.

Austin stood up and stretched with a loud yawn, before reaching lazily for both his glasses and a fresh t-shirt. Then he began his morning routine by swapping out his sleeping bracers (which were very soft and cozy and kept him from accidentally stabbing himself in the night while asleep) with his regular green ones that he wore during the day. Grabbing his toothbrush and toothpaste he headed out into the hall calling blearily out to Abel to see if he had any mail.

Abel, surprising absolutely everyone with how quick he was to get the mail, came back and started flipping through the rather large stack of envelopes before handing one to Austin. The taller boy reached out to grab it but accidentally knocked it to the ground and sighed leaning down to pick it up his glasses fell off of his nose and landed harshly with a resounding crack as one of the lenses popped out of its frame.

In the stunned silence that followed Abel started up at Austin with a blank look on his face, while Austin went slowly red from embarrassment, and then to rage at himself for being so clumsy and breaking his glasses… again… Abel laughed quietly and patted the larger boy on the shoulder "Don't worry bud, I'll read the letter to you so you don't have to worry about it."

Austin grunted in acknowledgment before scooping up the remainder of his glasses in his baseball mitt-like hands and trying to carefully put them back together. At what he considered to be a gesture of approval Abel quickly opened the letter that Austin had received and immediately dropped everything in his arms except the letter he was currently holding.

Austin glanced down at the boy in confusion, not being able to see much of anything with his glasses off, and said in a voice rough from sleep "What…?" Abel glared daggers up at the larger boy and held the paper up to his face with a movement of irritation "What?! What do you mean what?! This is a bank statement saying you just received a payment of… Jesus that's a lot of zeroes… from a company called American Pharmaceuticals."

Austin blinked down at the boy for a moment then nodded "Oh, I forgot it was about time for me to get another payment from them." And as simple as that the boy had walked towards the bathroom to brush his teeth. Abel quickly followed him, the rest of everyone's letters left in a pile upon the floor, and began to berate him "You have that much money, but you don't spend it on anything? You're the cheapest guy I know! You wouldn't even buy a burger the last time we went out because it was fifteen dollars."

Austin stopped in his tracks and turned to point a threatening finger at Abel "Hamburgers. SHOULD NOT EVER. Cost 15 dollars!" before he turned back to the bathroom sink and began brushing "Besides, I can't touch the account until I'm 18." Abel just stared at him for a moment longer before taking a deep breath and letting this conversation go, as it definitely was not the first time they'd had it, and focused on the important part of the discussion. "Why is a pharmaceutical company paying you so much money?"

Austin gestured impatiently towards his spines as an answer and Abel just continued to stare at him incredulously so Austin sighed and sat his toothbrush down, rinsing his mouth quickly. "So you know how I produce neurotoxins in my spines? Well, American Pharmaceuticals has studied my venom and used it to make products for people in need. Like pain killers that aren't addictive, or muscle relaxers that work almost as fast as my venom does."

Abel just looked at his friend blankly, then grabbed the front of his shirt and began shaking him roughly "That isn't even fair! How did all of that come about?!" Austin flopped back and forth from the aggressive shaking, wondering briefly if his smaller friend was using his quirk to increase his strength or if he was really just that jealous. Once he began to feel nauseous he quickly grabbed the boy's hands and stopped him, his eyes swirling slightly and his cheeks gaining a green tint.

"Please stop shaking me, I think I'm gonna puke." Abel immediately complied but gave him a look that practically screamed 'well?' running a hand through his hair Austin sighed and walked out towards the kitchen "Let's go get comfortable if we're gonna have this conversation, it's not something I like talking about a lot."

Abel followed his friend, surprise briefly flickering across his features at the somber look on the large boy's face. Sure Austin wasn't an overly emotional person, and his features usually held what most would consider an excellent poker face, but in the brief moment before he'd turned away Abel had seen genuine and harsh regret and sadness in the boy's eyes and features. Nodding numbly and wondering if he'd made a mistake Abel followed him towards the kitchen.

Austin sat heavily down at the kitchen table and looked over at his friend, the only person he would even consider sharing this with, that thought alone caused Austin a moment of surprise, he'd only known Abel for a short time comparatively and he already trusted the boy with one of his most shameful and dark secrets. He'd truly wormed his way into Austin's heart, and Austin couldn't bring himself to regret that it had happened.

"It all happened one dark night, it was a new moon and the stars were hidden by cloud cover. It was one of the poorer parts of the town my brother works in, he's the pro hero Chameleon if you've ever heard of him. Anyways because of the danger of my quirk and the lack of pro heroes in the area we had an agreement with the police in the area. I would be allowed to use my quirk, but only in instances where I was with my brother and to support him in catching criminals."

"It was all pretty routine, we had stumbled across a bank robbery while we were patrolling and Chameleon told me to go ahead and take this job by myself. So I had snuck in behind the criminal and readied my spines to strike him when I hesitated." The look on Austin's face was sheer frustration at himself and heartbreaking sadness "I let him escape because I wasn't sure how much venom to use in my strike; he was smaller than me, smaller than you even. I didn't want to kill him, and I wasn't sure how much venom I would need to quickly drop him without overdoing it."

"Anyways, while I hesitated he got away, he'd used his quirk to become incredibly slippery and he evaded my grapple and got away. Thankfully my brother had suspected that this might happen and he got ahead of me and caught the villain. We were discussing how I might do better in the future when the villain recovered and escaped the cuffs my brother had put him in, and my brother's grasp. I panicked and I hit him with my spine across his back, and because my brother was congratulating me on my quick reaction time we didn't notice…"

At this pause Austin took a long deep shuddering breath his eyes cast down towards the table, his skin was much paler than its usual tone and Abel almost wanted to stop the boy as he could see how much pain reliving this was causing but also far too curious to interject.

"He was dying, I had injected far too much venom into him, it reacted instantly and paralyzed him and he collapsed and then he stopped breathing, and his heart stopped beating, and… and I froze. I had a panic attack and I collapsed. If Chameleon hadn't been there to slap some sense into me that man would have died Abel. I would have killed him because I didn't have control of my quirk…" Austin looked up and met Abel's eyes then, and his eyes were swimming with unshed tears.

Abel looked in utter shock at his friend, a half a dozen responses whirling through his mind but none of them seeming to fit the situation. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, looking rather humorous before finally settling on "so what happened after that?"

Austin took another deep breath, quickly drying his eyes, thankfully Abel pretended not to notice "I spit on him and Chameleon performed CPR until his breathing got back to normal. We got him cuffed and taken to jail then. I didn't get in any legal trouble, the man didn't remember what had happened and the bruising on him was pretty normal for a villain. Maybe we should have told them what happened, but Chameleon just said that the man had lived and there wouldn't be any good to come of them knowing that it almost hadn't happened."

Austin trailed a finger along the cuff of his arm guard that kept his spines carefully covered and hidden away "I stopped using my quirk after that for a while, I swore off hero work. I told my brother that I couldn't be trusted with such a dangerous quirk." Finally Austin looked up and met Abel's eyes again and smiled "Then he decided to show me that my quirk could help, that it wasn't just a machine to kill people. He scheduled an appointment with a laboratory in Lawrence, Kansas at one of the premiere medical schools in the country. I went in and they milked my venom and almost immediately they were asking me for more and to start giving a continuous supply."

The large teen blushed and rubbed the back of his head for a minute "Initially I told them I didn't want the money for it but my brother convinced me to take it, for retirement from pro life if nothing else. Heroes in Kansas don't make the most since we're pretty underground. But I used to get letters in each envelope telling me about lives I had saved with my venom, or people I had helped get back to normal lives after debilitating injuries. That's when I decided I would try my hand at being a pro again."

Abel shook his head at this and then stood up and went over and pat his friend on the shoulder "That's rough buddy, I'm sorry I made you think about all of that again. My quirk hasn't ever caused me issues like that so I can't imagine how difficult that must have been to go through." Abel blinked for a moment then looked down at Austin with a grin slowly growing wider on his face.

Austin looked alarmed "What are you grinning about?"

"I just realized something, how many times did you have to spit on yourself?"

Austin blushed furiously at this and shook his head "None of your business!"

"You sleep with covers over them, I've seen them! So that means you've had accidents in your sleep before!"

Austin groaned and covered his face with his hands "Don't say it like that, you'll make it sound like I wet the bed. Three times since I moved in here, probably two times a week before that."

Abel just began laughing at his friend "Oh my God, you still do it?! Hahaha, oh man, oh that's rich. Was that why you were late to school the other day? You paralyzed yourself and couldn't get out of bed?"

Austin waved away the questions, glad that his friend had decided to lighten the mood like he had but not wanting anyone else to hear about him accidentally paralyzing himself. Specifically any of his female classmates or, and at this Austin got an utterly horrified look on his face, God forbid Blake found out.

That would have been an absolute nightmare.