My sister came to pick me up from the police holding cells. She wore a headband ornamented with the kanji "最愛". I noticed the ornament only because the headband was easier to look at than her crestfallen frown.

Saiai. Beloved. Her name, and also what she was.

"Junichiro…" My ears perked up, an involuntary response to hearing my name.

Instead of completing the thought, she motioned to the policeman escorting her to open my cell.

He stepped forward and unlocked the door while I studiously avoided meeting her eyes.

With another motion of his keys, my hands were unlocked. The policeman reached for my face, but then hesitated and turned to my sister. "You're sure he doesn't have a voice-activated quirk? If the MLA has some sort of hold over you, if they're applying some sort of pressure, you just need to say so and we can keep him in here a while longer while we get you to protective custody…" The policeman trailed off suggestively.

Saia turned to the policeman, eyes hard and lips subtly peeled back to bare her teeth.

"I am, in fact, quite sure. He's not some raving villain. Sir." She bit out the last syllable almost as an afterthought.

The policeman shot her a dubious look, but nevertheless unlocked my muzzle. He placed a not-so-gentle hand on my shoulders and marched me out of the cell.

My snout itched, bad. But the policeman's gaze burning into my back kept my hands at my sides, deliberately nonthreatening. I settled for rubbing my wrists, instead. Even the extra-small cuffs they'd put on me couldn't get tight enough to cut off my circulation, but they'd rubbed my fur backwards and I hated that.

I wasn't surprised to see the other holding cells still full of my fellow rioters from last night. I was, however, surprised to see them flash me respectful nods and the occasional "L" sign.

I shouldn't have been suprised, really, considering I'd started the whole mess, but yesterday somehow felt… dreamlike. Like it was something I'd learned about third hand from a news ticker, or a history book, instead of something I'd lived through and participated in. Instead of something I'd caused.

None of the other prisoners had been handcuffed or muzzled like I'd been. The perks of infamy, I supposed.

We stopped in front of a reinforced steel door, the last barrier before freedom. The policeman gestured at the black orb of a covered camera and the door's mechanism unlocked with a clank. He motioned towards my sister to lead the way.

She opened the door and stepped through. I moved to follow her, but the policeman's sudden grasp on my shoulder stopped me in my tracks. I felt his warm breath tickle my ears, and had to stop myself from sneezing at the pungent smell of the soy sauce and grain alcohol.

"Usually, when we get a delinquent like you here for the first time, the chief likes to come down here and give them a talk, all nice and grandfatherly, to try and set them on the right path. But he can't do that today, because he's in the hospital, breathing through a tube, next to his sobbing wife." He leaned even closer. "So I'm going to give you that talk instead, and it's going to be real simple."

My sister was standing still for now, but I could tell she was on the cusp of intervening. I shook my head side to side to dissuade her, even as I felt my fur start to poof out and a surge of adrenaline telling me to either run or fight.

"I know you didn't do anything technically illegal. And I know scum like you never have to- not when you have an endless number of fanatics willing to do the dirty work on your behalf. But I also know your name. I know where you live. I know where you post your so-called 'blog,' and so does the rest of the police department. So do the heroes. We've all got our eyes on you, and it's only a matter of time before you slip up. Chew on that, eh?"

He straightened out, but not before sending me stumbling towards the door with a harsh shove.

I regained my balance against the doorframe. For a moment, I just stood in place, eyes screwed shut and breathing fast. An onlooker could be forgiven for thinking I was terrified.

But fear wasn't the emotion coursing through my veins.

I wanted to stab my tail into his spinal cord.

I wanted to hold him in my power's grasp.

I wanted to make him writhe. To make him hurt .

A gentle hand against my cheek snapped me out of an increasingly dark spiral. I opened my eyes to see Saiai's gentle eyes.

"C'mon, big bro. Let's go."

I let out a deep, shuddering breath.

And we went.

Today's sky was a desultory gray, which I was grateful for. My eyes were squinty enough without trying to adjust to bright daylight.

"It's… Sunday, right?"

"Yup."

We fell silent for a bit as I considered my next question.

"Think our parents will kick me out?"

Saiai gave a quick shake of her head. "They haven't heard."

I blinked. "What? Then… how?"

She fished out an identity card from her purse and waved it in front of my nose. I grabbed it from her.

I looked towards it, then towards her, then back towards it.

She shot me a smug grin. "I convinced Mom and Dad you were out having a sleepover. They were asleep when the police called, so I just sort of handled it."

"Me? A sleepover?" I frowned, incredulous. "And they just bought it?"

She shrugged. "I've got the golden voice. You know how it is. Anyways, I grabbed mom's ID, came down here, told the police I was her, gave them the old razzle-dazzle, forged some signatures on a few files, and here we are."

I shook my head. "And they called ME a criminal."

"Oh, which reminds me- what friend were you having a sleepover with? You've gotta have your story straight if they think to ask."

"Um." My mind blanked for a second. Izuku's name was on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn't stop thinking about the glimpse I'd seen of him in the crowd, some unreadable expression written across his face. Horror? Awe?

I decided not to risk it.

"Toshiharu," I said.

"The kid with the eyes? I thought he was terrified of you?"

"He is. That's why he won't contradict my story."

"Nice," said Saiai, in English, with an exaggerated japanese accent. My tail flicked with suppressed irritation as she gave me a shit-eating grin. When we were children, I taught her to speak English with the same accent I did. Naturally, she thought it was funnier to pretend incompetence.

Our trip back to the family residence happened without incident, save for a few heteromorphs slipping me covert "L" signs.

"I'm home!" announced Saiai. She slipped off her shoes and replaced them with slippers. I scuffed my bare paws against the carpet in front of the door in cursory deference to cleanliness; my shoes had been lost at some point during the riot.

And by "lost" I meant "thrown at riot police."

"Welcome back!" yelled our father. "I'm in the living room!"

Saiai jogged towards the sounds of his voice. While she talked to my father I slipped behind her and into my room, mercifully avoiding his attention.

And, finally, I cracked open my laptop.

My inbox was more full than it had ever been- I'd long since turned off replies to my blogs, but at some point the wider internet had gotten a hold of my personal email.

None of the messages were from Izuku.

I forced down the apprehension in my gut and, for lack of anything better to do, started writing.

In the distant past of a few weeks ago, Izuku and I had originally conceived of attending the protest as a method to gather data about gang participation in the heteromorphic community. With the benefit of hindsight, I now realized that had been nothing more than a paper-thin pretext.

I'd spent years, at this point, blogging about the heteromorphic rights movement. I'd gained a following; started to accrue some influence. But I'd always been on the outside looking in: an objective, third party observer. Or at least, as objective as an opinionated blogger with skin in the game could be.

I wanted… not power, not exactly. I was already the supreme autocrat of my blog. I ruled its community with an iron fist. But at the same time, I wasn't part of that community- I was above it.

"Better to be feared than loved," went the first part of Machiavelli's famous quote. And boy was I feared. But the second part of that quote was, "if you cannot be both."

I'd wanted to be a part of something: a community; a cause. And Izuku had removed the last logistical impediments standing between me and the MLA.

Why?

Could I take him at face value? The part of me that still thought of him as a hero in an anime wanted to say yes.

But another part of me, the part used to reading statistics and intimidating classmates, saw how I'd never be where I was now if it wasn't for his influence.

I'd never doubted that Skeptic was using Izuku to manipulate me. He'd made no secret that Izuku was also on his payroll, and I was good enough at reading between the lines to see Skeptic has similar aims for the both of us. But was Izuku just another pawn like myself, or was he one of the players?

For now, all I could do was withhold judgment.

Withhold judgment... and maybe prod the beehive a little.

The article I'd intended to write, before this had happened, was an analytical think piece. The same sort of work I'd done a dozen times before.

But what had happened at the protest had left me with a shortage of statistics and a surplus of emotions. Memories of faces and people and actions and words, disjointed and impossible to place on any coherent timeline, yet held together by a common thread of collective rage.

The article I actually wrote was a piece of Gonzo journalism. Eccentric and self-indulgent in all the ways I usually tried to avoid. Almost six thousand words of stream-of-consciousness commentary and run-on-sentences.

I put it through a spellchecker, trying to salvage what I could. Then I hit control-Z probably close to a hundred times, having decided the spelling and grammar errors added to the authenticity.

And only then did I realize that I'd accidentally written the whole thing in English instead of Japanese.

I agonized, for a moment, over whether this would be the straw that finally outed me as a reincarnation, that revealed the Anglo-American stuck hiding in the rat's body like a bad parody of Kafka.

And then I said, "fuck it," and hit the submit button.