It is one day later.
"Do you ever wonder," says Camie casually, "if fate is actually, like, yanno, real?"
Sparkler rebounds the ping-pong ball with a ferocious, fiery kick. Together the ladies converse in a type of solemnity often reserved for unorthodox congregations—bluntly, theirs. Sparkler had wanted a game room in the agency accessible from the lobby; Bakugou heard, Bakugou gave. She asked, she received.
"Fate?" Sparkler laughs, grunting as she kicks once again—the hall looks worse for wear at this point. "Hell no!"
"Fr? You don't?" Camie pops her gum and gently slams the ball back over the little net as if it hadn't just been kicked at her at terminal velocity.
"Why d'ya sound surprised?"
"Dunno. You sorta . . . strike me as somebody who'd, like, have lil good luck charms. Like, for romancey stuff."
"Oh, Maboromi, I find that extremely offensive!"
"Sorry not sorry."
Camie hasn't been able to keep her eyes focused in one area. This causes an erratic misinterpretation in her step, which in turn causes a miscalculation in her field of depth, which ends up with Camie tilting her head just in the nick of time to avoid earning a hole in her face from a rogue ping-pong ball traveling at speeds faster than bullets. On the back wall it destroys an old forgotten photograph of Scorch and Tatakai by sending it across the continent.
"What's got you fessing over something so stupid?" Sparkler asks as she readies yet another ball. She doesn't even need a paddle. Her legs look like those of a sculpted god.
"Eh. Tbh it ain't really got anythin' to do with cause-an'-effect. Just a thought, rlly. Wait, so like, you don't ever think about that stuff? At all? Why?"
"About what? Fate?" KICK!
"Yea." WHACK!
"Well, firstly, relationships suck ass, second, it's extremely uncoordinated and cruel, thirdly—I don't believe in all that mythological hoo-haa whatsoever!"
Camie quirks a brow. "Whazzat mean, mythological?"
"Y'know how people like to diagnose themselves as a person by their star signs? It's like that, in my opinion. It's all in your head. Fate can't be real no matter how much you want it to be."
"Huhhhh? Why not?"
"'Cuz if all our lives are written in the stars, what would be the point of looking at them at night?"
With a little WHACK! of the ball Camie gives this some thought. Sparkler appears to be in a rather steadier mood today. Scorch hasn't come in for work yet. The clock (the poor thing had been destroyed by one of Sparkler's feral ping-pong comets, despite its metal protection) says more sidekicks should be well on their way here soon. Nothing like a game of risk-it-all-ping-pong to clear your head.
Oddly enough, Camie cannot get her head clear. For the majority of her previous night she had . . . struggles. Well, not so much struggles as internal conflict as her role as a main character. Words were said and a story was shared. Kendo had a rather fascinating way with words.
Like how she kept trying to make Ashido look like a bad guy.
She had used words like "coerce" and "manipulate" and something weird like "legerdemain" that Camie carefully plucked from the soup. Admittedly she had a hard time imagining Phantom Thief and Big Fist as a . . . thing, but then again, she had a harder time coming to terms with herself that she was happy with who she was.
A lot of things have happened in such a short expanse of time. Camie is not particularly looking forward to her apology to Scorch . . . but why worry about such ludicrosities, when your life's on the line via ping-pong?
Why worry about anything?
"Sparkler, girlie," says Camie. "Why're you sayin' relationships suck total donkey?"
"What doesn't?"
"C'mon, gimme something good."
This time Sparkler purposefully loses a point and, without looking at the damage, allows the Goofball table (she had been very specific with that type of party game) another hole in its structure.
"I don't like relationships, period."
Camie grins and leans on the ping-pong table. It's covered with scorch marks. "Come onnn."
Sparkler can't help but smile back. "Lookie, lookie, Maboromi—I've never even had a relationship before."
This takes Camie by great surprise.
"Huhhh? Then like, why're you sayin' you don't like 'em?"
Sparkler taps her nose. "Because. I don't like people."
"You don't . . ." Camie frowns at this.
"Nope! Not at all!"
There's some idle silence then, as Sparkler giggles like a child and a blank line sits there, waiting to be filled in.
Camie flourishes a hand. "And this's because . . .?"
"Hm? Oh," the fire-starter looks up in thought. Suddenly an almost despondent gaze shrouds her expression. "You can't really trust them. In the end you always end up on your own, y'know? You always get let down, and everything, everyone's a letdown, even me. I used to have a lot of friends. Or I guess I considered them my friends, don't really know what they thought of me. I know what they think of me now, though. Long story short, I got no friends anymore!"
"Uhhh. Could ya like . . . elaborate on that more?"
"I don't want to. It hurts to think about it. But that's kinda why I don't think fate is actually a thing. If it really did exist," this time Sparkler doesn't hide her sadness, "I would be with Uragiri right now."
"Who's that?"
"A friend, an old friend. But not friends now anymore, an ex-friend."
"Ah."
For the very first time, Camie never imagined she would ever see the type of sadness on the facial features of somebody like Sparkler. It feels uncanny to look at. Nobody like Sparkler should ever have to make that face. And Camie can nearly reach out and touch Sparkler emotions when she looks at the floor, thumbs worming over each other, and says:
"Y'know. Now that I'm thinking about her again, after all this time, um. I think I . . . did like her more than just a friend."
"What happened?" Camie asks quietly, as though she were speaking to a shaken animal.
"A lot. And I don't wanna think about it anymore, so, let's stop talking about this. Fate is bullshit, end of story."
They cease the conversation and redirect themselves to another game of play-or-die ping-pong. Camie tries her best to clog up all that had been said in the last few minutes. She sees the evident struggle in Sparkler's body language—how easily everything poured out without a fastened lid. How terrifyingly effortless it was for it all to break free—how, without even wanting it to, love slinked its way into the world no matter how tightly sealed it was. It has to get out. It must. Or else it will drive you mad.
After some sullen silence Sparkler perks up with, "Maboromi, are you going to attend the summer festival this year?" KICK!
"Hell yea I am." WHACK!
"Neato. Who you going with?"
Don't let it escape. "I asked Bakugou to come with me. Don't look at me like that!"
The look in question is a set of waggling eyebrows.
"I'm jokinnggg. I'm just surprised he said yes!"
"Oh, you'd be surprised atta lotta things. Are you going?"
"Me?" She looks shocked. "Me and what partner? No, I'm not going, and you can't make me."
"I just asked, is all."
KICK!
WHACK!
Once more a random, innocent object gets blasted to smithereens via rocket ball. Figuring that's enough destruction for one morning, they clean and rescue whatever can be salvaged from the damage. A few sidekicks have arrived. Together they surreptitiously snake back into the lobby and commingle as though they had always been there.
"Maboromi?"
"Yea?"
"I just thought of this. Since you're asking me all this weird stuff, do you believe that fate's a thing?"
Well . . . it helps that Ashido being the one paving her road through the stars gives her an answer:
"Metaphorically, yes. Literally, no."
"That sounds dumb. Literally and figuratively."
The summer festival is arriving.
