hey this chapter is kind of violent.
Word Count: 4,405
Enji Todoroki grit his teeth as he surveyed the battlefield. One hand was on his sword, prepared to draw it at any moment. The other was near glued to his side, where an arrow had buried itself into his abdomen.
Those god-forsaken Huns. That Shigaraki was going to pay dearly for all the destruction he'd caused. Enji longed to charge full-speed into their army, slay them all single-handedly; after all, he hadn't agreed to come down here for nothing.
But alas, they had the advantage of numbers. Their archers alone were near enough to wipe out his front-line shield-bearers. He had to concede: they had him pinned good, real good.
"I need you to remove this arrow and cauterize the wound as fast as you can," Enji said to the nearby medic, who nodded and inched closer to the dagger blade in the fire.
He would hold on. If that letter proved to be true, he wanted to be the one to well and truly kick that Shigaraki's ass.
Oh, what a pretty, pretty day~ The sun was a stunning scarlet red as it crawled over the horizon on this pretty, pretty day, the normally warm orange dawn dyed bloody from the hazy smoke still hanging in the air. A woman, she had to be just barely out of girlhood, giggled and bit down on her dagger, nearly falling off her horse in her careless wiggling.
She'd never seen a sky quite like the one this morning. The gods really know how to welcome a day like this, she thought as she ran her tongue along the flat of the blade, fighting the urge to giggle again. "Is it tiiiime yeeet?" she whined to the man sent along to keep her on track, who looked at her skeptically.
"Not quite, Toga," he chided. "Remember, we must be like the serpent beneath the flower, waiting until the hand approaches to strike. Almost, though, almost."
Almost, almost. They were almost ready, it was almost time. Almost, almost. Toga frowned. She gnawed on her dagger for a moment before pulling it out of her mouth slowly and flicked the excess moisture onto the ground in one smooth motion. She began to lazily toss the weapon from hand to hand, pouting as she drawled, "But what if I don't wanna wait?"
"Patience is a virtue, milady," he absently answered, noticing far too late Toga's sudden change in disposition when he did so.
The girl sighed; she didn't want to get off her horse to retrieve her dagger. But, she thought, a smile creeping onto her face once more, now it will be red.
She laughed into the silence and stares. She hopped off her horse and drew the blade out of the still warm, soft body, savoring the extra tang it had in her mouth this time around. Toga hummed as she mounted her horse again, then surveyed the land with a sigh.
Her first kill, huh. That was fun. It had been everything she'd hoped it to be, joining Shigaraki's army. But, killing can be done in an instant. Her lip twitched in anticipation, as did the rest of her body. I like to see people in desperation.
The morning started off with a clang!
Kirishima sat up with a start, anything even resembling the haze of sleep vaporized in an instant. He looked madly around the tent, disoriented all the same. When his eyes landed on a shock of blond hair a short distance away, he realized they'd both fallen asleep during the night before.
Crap, he thought. He still had no idea what the different morning bell was going on about, but if it was— oh, it was.
"DENKI! DENKI, HOLY SHIT, WAKE UP!" he yelled, fear clawing at his chest as his mind, crystal clear mere seconds ago, began to cloud with adrenaline.
"Mimanemamem," Denki mumbled as he rolled over.
"Crap," Kirishima said aloud, panicking now. He'd known Denki to be a heavy sleeper; he'd just never in his wildest dreams anticipated that his friend would sleep through what was starting to sound like an ambush. "Jirou's getting married to Haku!" he yelled.
"That's silly," Denki mumbled, weakly pushing away Kirishima as the latter shook him desperately. "Everyone knows Haku's in love with…" he dozed off for a second, then swatted at Kirishima's persistent hand. "In love with the captain."
"I'm getting married to who?" Oh, speak of the devil. Kirishima swiveled to see Jirou poking his head into the tent, a very exasperated expression. "We're being ambushed! What the fresh hell is Denki doing sleeping at this time?"
"Jirou, oh thank goodness! I honestly don't know about Denki, but I'll leave him to you, okaycool!" Kirishima tugged his armor on as fast as he could and snatched his longsword, running out into the chaos that ensued before he could even reply.
"What the—" Kyouka began, but Kiri had already vanished. She sighed, a little worm of fear nagging at her from her stomach as she was left, a sitting duck, with Denki unless she could wake him up. (Because like hell she was leaving him alone in a tent when he could just die) "Of course he'd want to dash into the fray first, scrappy rascal," she muttered, wading her way through some heap of man-junk to get a better angle on Denki's forehead.
Flick! She got him right between the eyes, and slowly, Denki's eyes fluttered open.
"You know," he said with a yawn, seemingly oblivious to the banging and yelling going on outside as he grinned sleepily at Kyouka. "I could wake up like this every day if the stars would allow."
"Well, you know, I sure wouldn't," Kyouoka snippily replied, and Denki's eyes fell. "We're being ambushed, Chargedolt. Get yourself together, we don't have time for chit-chat."
In an instant, Denki's eyes shot open, and every trace of sleep left him as he bolted upright, screaming (as he should be in a situation like this). "WHAT WE ARE FUCK I SWEAR I DON'T—"
"Don't finish that thought," Kyouka interrupted in a low voice, and Denki blinked at her a couple times, confused.
"Understood," he replied, uncharacteristically quiet as he grabbed a shirt and pulled it over his head. Kyouka side-eyed him, but she had her own things to be doing aside from watch him get dressed. She took a few steps toward the entrance, terrified of the clanging and yelling going on outside, then hesitated.
"And one more thing," she said slowly, shifting her gaze back to him. Kyouka yanked him down by the collar of his shirt before he could slip his armor on and glared deep into his eyes, pushing aside the pounding of her heart and the thoughts of the end all the while. "Don't you dare get killed, Denki."
Something within Katsuki burned.
It wasn't his muscles, though the adrenaline might not last forever. It wasn't his throat, since he hadn't eaten anything this morning. It wasn't even his temper, though it was most definitely a feeling.
Excitement? No, that wasn't quite it. Fear? Not in a million years. Guilt? Not for these bitches.
He grit his teeth as he slashed down yet another faceless enemy soldier, careful not to stain his hands any more than he had to. They were lucky this ambush team had no archers because he knew for a fact they were fucking toast if they had.
Nearby, the sound of clear, bell-like laughter rang through the air, sounding almost like a child, delighted at finding some tiny fairy or whatever. Katsuki scowled; who in their right fucking mind would laugh in the middle of a battlefield? Irritated, he flicked his eyes in the sound's direction and caught a glimpse of a pair of pale blonde buns bobbing up and down in the sea of chaos.
Almost immediately, Katsuki returned his focus to the task at hand, kneeing a stranger in the crotch and killing him with the sheer blunt force trauma of the flat of his blade. Who the fuck wore buns?Like, look, man, you either had a topknot, or you didn't have enough hair. That was it. Buns, now, those were a girl's style.
The laughter turned to giggles, but it was just as annoying. He was about to plow his way over to it to silence the person, but a certain sharp-toothed Hairbrain managed to poke his way over.
"'Sup, Captain," he said as he managed to catch some rando off guard long enough to render him useless. "How're things going?"
Immediately, Katsuki scowled; he thought he'd trained these idiots better than to just saunter over and start a chat. Regardless, Kirishima was still alive, and before he knew it, their backs were to each other, taking on the world together. "Pretty all right," he replied, swiping at an enemy as Hairbrain blocked a different one. "You're still too defensive, I see."
"Maybe so, but it's kept me alive this whole time," Kirishima replied, and Katsuki could practically hear the grin on his face. "Have you seen the woman with the buns on the battlefield?"
Katsuki could feel his lips twitching, tempted to become a smirk. "So it really is a woman, huh? Her laughter's fucken' awful, but don't underestimate her."
"I know," Kirishima said, suddenly lurching into Katsuki's field of view to catch a blade aimed at his face, and with a now fully-fledged grin, Katsuki impaled the wielder. "She's leaving a bloodbath behind. It was pretty scary, actually."
"Let's get her," Katsuki began, but before the two could catch a break, they were officially surrounded.
He could feel Kirishima creep backwards until their backs were nearly touching, the other boy's heavy but solid breathing almost calming. "Five against two. You down, Bakugou?"
I hope this idiot doesn't think I didn't notice he forgot to call me captain, Katsuki wryly noted, but with Hairbrain, he didn't actually mind. The guy had guts, and he respected that. He adjusted his grip on his sword and braced himself for the fight. "Oh fuck yeah."
Denki stared back into stormy grey-black eyes of Karma Jirou as his expression clouded over. Their faces were terrifyingly close together (if he just leaned forward a bit…); it almost didn't even register that for the first time in forever, Jirou had called him by name. "Promise," he breathed in reply, not breaking eye contact for even an instant. (It took almost all his willpower to push aside the pounding of his heart and his thoughts of the end.)
At first, Denki feared his response was lost to the ever-growing clamor outside, but Jirou grunted and released his shirt. Denki watched him walk out of the tent and into the chaos outside, but it still felt like the other boy had disappeared like a spring dream.
Denki brushed his thoughts aside and threw on his uniform. For once in his life, he had to catch himself before he could dream the day away, or else he may never see a day again. He picked his sword and shield up off the ground, took a deep breath, and followed his friends into the battlefield.
Immediately and almost instinctively, he ducked, putting his shield up to counter the swing of an opposing sword, his heart missing more than a single beat as his stomach leapt up to his throat in fear. He gulped, lowered the shield, and swung his own sword at the stranger— whoop, and the first head had rolled.
Aizawa galloped around the borders of the fight, ruthlessly slaying any enemy warrior who dared cross before his horse. He'd never been keen on fighting in massive battles like this (hence why he circled around the main action), but he was not going to just sit around and watch the soldiers die if he could help it.
How truly unfortunate that their first battle was an ambush. It was in one's first battle that the foundational experience needed to survive was gained, but bad luck had more than likely claimed at least a few of Shoto and Katsuki's trainees.
He frowned ever so slightly, urging his horse on. He would have to remind those two to continue the survivors' regular training even while on the road. Aizawa sank a polearm into the chest of a tiny enemy runner as he tried to escape, deaf to the way all the breath audibly left the creature's lungs. They couldn't risk growing dull and losing more good men if Shigaraki was going to start playing like this.
Of course, a female leader wasn't anything new where they came from. Aizawa knew from a bit of his history studies that even prisoners of war could work their way up the ranks of the Hun army, if they pledged their loyalty to the general and proved it in battle. It was simply her loose style of commanding that made him wary. There seemed to be no strategy behind their moves; everything simply seemed to be made as bloody as possible.
Aizawa slowed for a moment and squinted into the hubbub of chaos that was their camp just a short while ago. Somewhere within the squall, the pale blonde head of the Hun party leader bobbed around, seemingly carefree as she toyed with the soldiers. Everywhere else, her troops shot each other frequent looks of tentative concern, as if they had no idea what they were to do next.
If they could just eliminate the girl, maybe, just maybe, her soldiers will retreat…
"Ugh, where's Hapa when you need him?"
If Shoto hadn't been already preoccupied with a skirmish, he would have glared at Bakugou. He knew that nickname anywhere, even if he'd long grown used to it.
"You mean Captain Todoroki?" a less familiar voice asked, and Shoto wished they'd stop talking about him. It was distracting.
"Yeah." Shoto had a rare moment to catch his breath, so he did, looking up and and madly around, his eyes briefly landing on a girl landing cuts on someone he couldn't quite make out. "Someone's gotta take care of that bitch up there."
Is she in charge of this? Shoto thought, frowning. It would be strange, but then again, their opponents weren't exactly normal to be standing up to a power as large as China. She doesn't look that dangerous— his thoughts were cut off by an attack so sudden, he couldn't even make a sound of surprise before instinctively elbowing the stranger in the gut.
No, he couldn't take care of the mysterious, bloodthirsty girl atop a hill, he realized; he was far too prominent of a figure to not be seen going after her. Plus, his appearance was like a beacon, the perfect halves of his hair color almost like a target on the field. Who could, though? He certainly believed in all of his soldiers, but who was inconspicuous enough? (Who did he trust enough?)
He dared take another look around the battlefield, and by sheer coincidence, he locked eyes with Haku, who was fending off an enemy footman. Shoto gestured in the direction of the blonde woman with his head, hoping Haku would get the message, and in half a second, he broke eye contact to focus again on his own fight.
Haku could do it. He knew he could.
Izuku Midoriya clung to Uraraka's scales as his life depended on it. He wished he had hands (or at least opposable thumbs)— not for the first time of this life, he might add— because heavens above,Momo moved so much more in actual action than in training.
Well, not that that was a bad thing, by all means. To perform better in the real life in comparison to practice was good, very good, as it showed the ability to not only pick up information based on unpracticed examples, but also adapt quickly to a sharp learning curve.
Carefully, he crawled up to Uraraka's ear, where he could get a breath of fresh air. "She's doing okay, right?" he asked her.
"She's still alive, Deku!" Uraraka chirped. "Hasn't been needing my advice or anything. She's been really lucky so far; she hasn't even got a scratch! Thanks to you, of course."
Ah, Uraraka. At it again with the lucky cricket business. Izuku shifted nervously, not wanting to protest this time around in fear of jinxing Momo. "I'm not actually doing anything, you know," he reminded her.
"Yeah, but it's still good to have you here! You could have still gotten trampled if we left you behind, and where would all her luck have gone then?"
Her words made him almost want to smile. The more she said it, the easier it was getting to believe. "To you, of course."
Uraraka laughed softly. "I wouldn't call myself lucky, not any more so than any other dragon anyway. Besides— DUCK!" The last portion was spoken straight into Momo's ear, but the force with which it was said left Izuku instinctively obeying as well.
"What's going on?" he whispered, his nerves far more frazzled than they had any right to be as a cricket.
"Some girl threw a huge, long needle at us," Uraraka replied. "The captain looked at her, then signalled to her, too, so my guess is that she's next."
Izuku gulped. Oh boy.
He really hoped Uraraka was right.
It wasn't getting to the girl that was hard to Momo, since everyone was busy and she made a run for it. Neither was subduing her, since the blonde had been preoccupied herself with the slow laceration of some poor, unrecognizable soldier. No, getting the strange girl pinned to the ground and the sword up to her throat was not hard at all.
Rather, it was the act of killing a victim whilst staring them straight in the eye that was getting to Momo.
The entire time, the thought of true murder had left her uneasy, though she'd known from the start that to survive a war, one had to take a life. Throughout the battle, she resorted to decommissioning the enemy soldiers, or at least focusing on the impalement zone when killing them.
But she couldn't for this person, no. If Shoto had thought her important enough to give specific orders to kill her, she had to stare this woman straight in the eye and make sure she was well and truly dead.
The girl only grinned at Momo now that the former had a sword held up to her throat. "I like to see people in desperation," she said simply, and Momo pressed the flat of her blade more firmly into the girl's windpipe, unsure of what the girl was getting at. For all of a moment, the blonde's eyes and grin only widened, and Momo thought she was truly going insane, but then—
"You're a girl," the girl choked out, her eyes turning bloodshot as she hacked out a few drops of blood. For a second, Momo froze, terrified to the core.
How did she know? She found herself thinking, though her inner Kyouka merely whispered back, woman's intuition.
In Momo's hesitation, the general girl began wriggling, managing to free her hand and dig her long, sharp nails into Momo's hand. The latter let out a sharp cry, nearly letting the blonde sadist escape, but in that moment, someone called out to her.
"Haku!" Momo whipped her head around, reasserting herself over the blonde as she did so, and saw Shoto looking straight at her. His face had blood smears, and for a foolish second, she was scared it was his own. (But it wasn't, he was too good for that.) "Kill her, and we win the battle!"
In the background, the girl began to choke on her own laughter.
"I believe in you!"
The apical moment was over before Momo's memory could even think to record it, and she found herself kneeling atop a warm, wet body with a maniacal grin still emblazoned on its face. Shouting surrounded her from all sides, but it was fading out of her mind. Vaguely, she could feel pinpricks shooting up her spine; where were those even coming from? She wiped the sweat off her brow, realizing far too late she and Shoto now matched, with their bloodied hands and faces. How did she even start to kneel? She didn't remember anything.
Stars began to dance before her eyes, and weakly, she tried to bring herself to her feet again.
A familiar face filled the last of her tunnel vision with his mismatched hair and eyes, making her smile faintly just before all the world faded to black.
Shoto didn't understand why that Jirou kid was so insistent on being the one to tend to Haku's wounds on his own, but it seemed the boy was nothing if not loud, persistent, and really good at insults. So he waited outside the medical tent until Haku regained consciousness.
"Aight, Haku's awake," Jirou said almost sourly as he exited the tent, nearly tripping over Shoto all the while. "He's asking for you now that he knows you're waiting, so if you don't mind, I'll just leave you two to it."
Shoto could have sworn he saw Jirou smirk as he walked away, but then again, he'd never been the best with reading faces. "Thank you," he said, mostly to himself at this point.
He poked his head into the tent, giving himself a moment to adjust to the dim light, and he caught the glance of one now-conscious Haku Yaoyorozu. "…Hello."
Haku blinked at him for a moment, as if he wasn't quite sure the person in front of him was real. "Hello, cap… Shoto."
Shoto entered quietly, taking great care with his steps in case something sharp was haphazardly strewn about, and he crouched down by Haku so that they could better talk. "You're all right, right?"
Haku flushed a strange color and looked away, laughing nervously. (What was this feeling, the pounding in his heart—) "Oh, well, I just fainted. That's all."
"You seem to have a habit of doing that," Shoto noted, and Haku laughed again, more genuinely this time. (It wasn't meant to be a joke, but oh well.) When it died down, an awkward silence ensued. Shoto looked to the side; Haku was better at talking, he would know what to say. "You did good," slipped out of his own mouth, catching him by surprise as he stood up again. "We move again in two hours, so if you're well enough, please do so on your own."
And before he knew it, Shoto was out-of-doors, staring at the horizon on a midsummer afternoon, Haku left gawking at his abrupt exit.
"Y'all, that ambush was crazy."
"I'm just glad we're all alive."
"Brooo, you guys should have seen me! The way Bakugou and I just took on like, five soldiers at once was pretty epic…"
"Okay, but we have to give Haku credit here…"
"…Let's not talk about that."
"Why nooot? You literally saved us all. Kind of again, if you wanna count the arrow as like, a mock trial or something."
"Yeah, dude. After that lady was dead, the soldiers pretty much scattered as if nothing happened."
"Yaoyorozu."
("Hey, Denki, you wanna go bug Bakugou?")
"Oh, Todoroki."
("Take me with you, I feel like I'm intruding on something.")
"You can call me Shoto, you know. No one cares."
("I thought you didn't like Bakugou, though?")
"What? But Jirou and— oh. Huh, I guess you're right. They were here just a second ago. Oh, well."
("I'll swallow my pride just this once. I don't want to be a third wheel.")
"Why do you call him Jirou? That's kind of formal."
("Hey, Bakugou, what's going on over here? What's that smoking up front? It's way thicker than any campfire I've ever seen us have. I can't see what's up ahead yet— oh.")
"Same reason we call Kirishima by his last name: he asked us to when we met."
("Hairbrain? What the fuck're you and fuzzhead doing here with peony's buddy?")
"Huh. That's strange. I wonder why they'd prefer that."
("Wow, thanks, I can't believe that one, I'm not even anything except Haku's friend, and two, you guys are actually friends with this guy.")
"I don't think it's really my thing to tell…"
("He grows on you, I promise—")
"Oh."
("—Stop the chatter. Go back and tell Hapa about his shitty dad's army. Now. Scram.")
"…It's okay. You could ask them yourself, if you'd like."
("That was hostile. You guys sure he's really that good of a guy?")
"Hmm… I suppose, but—"
("Trust me, Jirou. Kiri's right, he's just prickly…"
"Captain Todoroki! Hurry, there's something up with the site your father told you to go to…"
"…Oh? C'mon, Haku, let's go."
"What could possibly be wrong? Surely they didn't lose; they're too powerful for tha—" Yaoyorozu stopped dead, both in word and in action, as did Todoroki. Nearby, Jirou, Kaminari, and Kirishima settled their horses, nervous themselves as they tried not to look at the land before them.
But Todoroki stared and stared, his mouth agape just slightly with the shock of it, his eyes a fraction larger than they usually were. And Yaoyorozu couldn't keep focus, switching between Todoroki and the battlefield before them, as if neither of them could exist at the same time.
There before the group lay the charred and smoking remains of what had once been Endeavor's army.
Author's Note xi. i was just going to delete the previous author's note chapter like a day or two after it went up but then you guys were all so nice and supportive i didn't have the heart to do so ;w; and ALSO i made it onto rec lists since the last story chapter and i think i almost cried because FINALLY writing two years of straight trash for (mostly) attack on titan has paid off. i do believe that the one i found on tumblr was from the lovely oceanbluart, (oceanblu-writes here, if i'm not mistaken) so i am eternally grateful. another was a screenshot of a reddit post a mutual sent me and like i just feel so loved rn so friendly reminder that i love all of you v much
so yeah! some fun stuff happening this whirl around. like some bones thrown in the direction of deku's origin story as a cricket. because he does have that. which will not be covered here. that's sequel material. to cover baku and deku's history wouldn't really fit neatly in the narrative of orchid.
kaminari mentioned "I would wake up like this every day if the stars would allow", which is a reference to the zodiac. Kind of. it kind of has a dual meaning too I guess. I think the more common reading would be "I'd marry you if fate allows it", since "the stars" very synonymous with fate in english, but my intentions were "I'll marry you if the feng shui is right," or, "I'll marry you if we're lucky enough (to be compatible and get out of this war)" words and perspectives are so complex ;-;
so yes that is all this time around! thank you so much for reading i love you all so so much follow/fave if you're new and into it, and as always, have a greaaaaat daaaayyy~~