"Do you want some tea?"
"No."
Despite the tension threatening to bubble over into a raging maelstrom, Toshinori nonchalantly shrugged, "Suit yourself," he wouldn't push the issue. If Ryuko refused to drink some of the finest tea at UA, that was her decision. He could talk about how great it was, but once her mind was settled, nothing could force Ryuko to do something she didn't already want to do. If he tried, she'd either find a way to pour the tea down his throat or threaten to do so. And the last thing he needed was Recovery Girl wondering why most of his face, mouth and throat was covered in second and third-degree burns.
The kettle was warm to the touch as he poured half a cups-worth into one of the two cups he'd prepared on the table.
"This might take some time," bereft of the amenities in his shared office and agency, little more than an old high-definition television on the wall, a miniature kitchen and bookshelves stocked with teaching manuals and encyclopedias nobody bothered reading, the faculty lounge nevertheless felt comfortable, "If you want, I can have Lunch Rush bring you something from the cafeteria."
"What I want are answers."
On a chair she'd dragged across the lounge, arms folded and foot bouncing on her knee, Ryuko looked and sounded like she'd heard bad news, which wasn't too far from the mark.
"I know," vanilla extract and cinnamon filled Toshinori's head, leaving him swimming in confusion. He wanted to help Ryuko, but the more they pried into Couturier's past, the more questions were raised, "That's why I'll try to skip unnecessary details," still, it was a small comfort being able to talk in his natural form. He didn't need to keep everything simple and brief. He could talk to his heart's content without worrying about Ryuko discovering the truth. Granted, she figured One for All as a simple augmentation Quirk with an accompanying transformation instead of something far more potent, but given the alternative, he wasn't inclined to correct her, "But before I get into that, there's something I need to ask you."
His shadowed eyes stared at the liquid swirling inside the cup.
"When you use your Quirk," body wracked by the aftermath of his fight with All for One, he maintained a steady façade, "How long do your constructs usually last? Without using the Seki Tekko, I mean."
The chair shifted underneath Ryuko's weight, "Huh?"
"You know, your swords and axes and that shield you whipped out last week when Midoriya and Ida caught you off-guard during hostage extraction," he mimicked swinging a phantom blade, "Isshin told me once back in the day. But I can't remember what he said."
A blush spread across Ryuko's face.
"Why the hell is that important?" her eyes homed onto the weakened hero's sunken expression, "Hang on, are you saying – " it felt like someone slapped her across the face. A punch that knocked the wind from her lungs and left her reeling, " – are you saying that sword was part of her Quirk? Just how many Quirks does she freaking have!?"
"That's a complicated question."
Ryuko countered without letting him finish, "I'm a good listener."
"I know you are," as much as he loathed to admit it, complicated was the best way to describe Couturier. A villain with no background possessing four Quirks, maybe five – enhanced regeneration, muscle augmentation, memory alteration and cloth control. Someone like her didn't just pop out of the woodwork. Not without someone else pulling the strings, "I've fought countless villains over the years. Some were terrible people. Others misguided. But none of them had more than a single Quirk."
That was a boldfaced lie.
He knew exactly who gave Couturier her Quirks.
"Mirko told me she filled you in on the details – how she fought Couturier, reclaimed the villain's scissor blade and carried you to the hospital," Toshinori steeped his fingers together and grimaced, "About ten minutes after Couturier retreated, I touched down in Corusco. Pushed myself beyond my limits. I'd hoped to arrive fast enough to help, but it simply wasn't enough," he felt weary, and it had nothing to do with his dwindling power since passing the torch to Midoriya, "Back in my heyday, it would've taken me thirty seconds, but I've grown slower. The consequences of spending decades protecting the innocent and fighting all sorts of dangerous creeps and villains, I suppose."
He'd rushed into action as soon as Sir called.
He hadn't known about Midoriya, Todoroki and Ida encountering the hero killer until another hero mentioned it.
Two attacks by the League of Villains on the same night.
It couldn't be a coincidence.
"I met her at the hospital. And when I got there, things were…chaotic," doctors and nurses examining injured civilians, heroes giving statements and the families of those killed in the line of duty demanding answers. Five heroes. Five genuinely good people murdered by a psychopath for no other reason than they were in her way, "It's where I learned she intended on handing over that strange…scissor blade…to the police."
"Which didn't happen," Ryuko half-asked, half-accused.
"Which didn't happen," nodding along and earning an accepting grunt from the teenager, he sighed, "Chief Inumuta is a good man. I've worked with him a few times. But considering how personal your father's case is, I thought it best to keep information close to the heart. Inumuta wasn't exactly happy, but he understood."
Ryuko listened to what he said.
And what he didn't say, "So, where is it?"
"I-Island."
As soon as he answered her question, Toshinori watched the gears turn inside Ryuko's head, "Even with I-Expo coming up, David managed to squeeze some time into his schedule."
Ryuko flinched as if struck.
"Wait a sec," her foot slipped off her knee and slammed onto the floor, "You gave it to the guy with the super bendy fingers?"
"Ha! Ha! Ha!" Toshinori found himself genuinely laughing, "Only you would remember something like that!"
Wiping a tear from his eye as Ryuko gave her best impression of a particularly annoyed lemon, he reached for the tea, having rediscovered his appetite, "As you know, every costume and piece of support equipment has a serial number detailing which company made it, who designed it and when it was made," the tea was warmish-hot. Not burning hot, yet hotter than lukewarm, "The scissor blade lacked any identification marks, which is why I gave it to David. He might not be a high-order tailor, but he has connections I don't. If anyone could figure out who made her sword, it would be him. That's what I thought, at least."
Ryuko's eyebrow twitched, "Because it's her Quirk, right?"
His suit sagged on a bony frame.
"The day before yesterday," he carefully chose his words, "David called Sir."
"Why didn't he call you?" Ryuko spat out faster than he could answer.
"Well, he did," Toshinori coughed into his hand, "But I forgot to charge my phone and…well…" perturbed by Ryuko's expression and the subtle movements of her fingers, he cleared his throat and steadied himself, "Couturier's sword isn't made from metal. Or some exotic material. It's biological," as the bell rang, signaling the start of lunch, midmorning sunlight streamed through the nearby windows, "To be more specific, it's ultra-hardened blood."
My Bloody Academia
Hunched over the table, nothing but a desk lamp illuminating the blue and white schematic, her bandaged fingers gripped the soft-tipped pencil as she scribbled, erased, swept away shavings and rewrote variables, numbers and measurements.
She couldn't remember the last time she'd gotten more than five hours of sleep.
There was simply so much to do between preparing for Paris and London, double-checking every new design, countless meetings and video conferences while ensuring their showcase at I-Expo went absolutely flawless. She was swamped. She had no time to relax or take a vacation. But this new development? The reason she was pouring over something so simple in the middle of the afternoon instead of authorizing production schedules, if the stack of papers near her desk were what she thought they were. It wasn't helpful. In fact, it was the opposite of helpful.
"No."
Nui cursed under her breath in a foreign language. She was exhausted. She was overworked. And she was annoyed at having to personally correct Ryuko Tatsuma's new costume on top of everything else. How someone in her department managed to make multiple mistakes boggled her mind. It was unbelievable. Did nobody check their work anymore? Everybody made mistakes, but this? If she didn't make it her mission to double-check everything, the hero would have transformed and either been strangled by a costume that didn't properly accommodate her Quirk's explosive transformation or find herself naked in the middle of a busy street.
A mistake like this couldn't be tolerated.
Not under her watch.
Someone was going to get fired.
"Come on, Harime, when was the last time I asked you for anything?"
And his insistence on pushing the envelope wasn't helping.
"Oh, let's start with last month when you wanted to know about the kinetic absorption padding we showcased in Hong Kong," eyeballing another atrocious tenth of a millimeter error made by a soon-to-be-former designer, Nui's head bobbed with every perfectly remembered incident, "And three months before that, you asked about the electromagnetic sneakers we're putting on the market early next year. And two weeks before that…"
"Alright. Alright. I get it."
Her personal studio wasn't exactly small by industrial standards, perhaps not the same size as the general production departments downstairs. On the far side of the room, past stacks of forms, papers and ledgers, beyond equipment and machinery most engineers wouldn't recognize without reading the manuals, nearly hidden by empty coffee mugs stacked nearly two feet above the table, taking up half the monitor while sitting in the comfort of I-Island, David Shield shrugged, "Can't blame a guy for trying. But this is important, Harime."
"I don't care."
She genuinely and legitimately didn't care, because she knew exactly why he'd called, "Unlike you, I have actual work to do."
"Let me guess – you're trying to reverse engineer the heat dump and transfer system I emailed you, right?"
The pencil snapped between her fingers.
"…I hate you."
That was technically more of an exaggeration than outright lie.
It wasn't that she hated David, more like, well, she despised having to rely on his expertise and knowledge to address her shortcomings. Self-hatred and loathing. She should've been able to solve the issue concerning how to properly distribute the excess heat from Endeavor's Quirk with her eyes closed. But no matter how she'd approached the problem, nothing worked. It had been so frustrating. She'd emailed David to vent. But within minutes, barely enough time to rub her temple and get coffee, he'd not only responded, but forwarded a revolutionary heat dump system he'd developed two years ago concerning another hero with a fire-based Quirk.
Something she'd never once considered despite the idea being so simple.
"Look, I'm just asking for a favor," his attempt at shifting the conversation crashed and burned before leaving the earth, "Nothing involving your current projects. You have my word."
The lukewarm super-sweetened coffee poured down her mouth.
"Right," invigorated by the sudden rush of caffeine and sugar, exhaustion staved for another few minutes, Nui tried sounding annoyed. She wanted to be annoyed. But spending more than an entire day working on everything from blueprints to prototypes to dealing with nonsense only a grand couturier needed to deal with had sapped her will to live, "Is that why you're asking for something illegal?"
On her screen, every pore and hair follicle on his face visible thanks to the ultra-high-definition camera, David laughed, nervously at that, "Of course not!"
"You ~threatened~ me."
"I didn't, actually."
"Is that what you call blackmail these days?"
"Now you're putting words in my mouth."
Her coffee suddenly tasted awful, as if someone dumped rotten sugar while she wasn't looking. Maybe twenty plus hours hunched over erroneous blueprints, conferencing with the regional managers, pretending she cared about company gossip and informing Madam Kiryuin on every development concerning their showcase at I-Expo while subsiding on nothing but coffee and microwaved meals wore down the edges of her mind. Or exhaustion finally overpowered the combined strength of caffeine and sugar. Whatever the case, Nui decided to finish what remained of her coffee before deigning to lower herself to David's level.
"Fine," her disheveled hair bounced gently as she began typing a department-wide email to the international division chiefs, general managers, design managers and floor managers detailing next Tuesday's meeting concerning their I-Expo showcase and itinerary, "But if it's illegal, I'm ratting you out to Madam Kiryuin. Now, what do you want?"
"I'm sending you some notes."
Nui didn't say anything when a fifteen-gigabyte file suddenly materialized in her mailbox alongside a ping, "As high-order tailor, you have unfiltered access to the vast majority of the world's Quirk Registration databases," as David talked, her attention drifting elsewhere, towards something far more important than underhanded blackmail, "I was hoping you could compile a list of people whose Quirks were theoretically capable of creating something to this effect and send it to me."
That was an odd request.
But then again, he was an odd individual, bendy fingers notwithstanding.
"I'm not sure why you need access," a strand of blonde hair fell onto her face as she steadily moved the mouse across the computer towards the little box in the corner, "But I'll need to run this by Madam Kiryuin. That's not a problem, is it?"
"Not at all," safe and sound in his workshop, David leaned backwards in his chair, "This is just a side-project I'm conducting in my spare time," he laughed, hoping it would be enough to make her forget the last few minutes, but she wasn't fooled, "Anyway, are you attending I-Expos this year or – "
Click!
She ended the video conference before he could finish.
And after what felt like an eternity given her exhaustion, lethargy and desire to close her eyes and sleep, Nui gathered enough energy to download David's file, wait for the company security net to determine it was actually safe to open and double-clicked, "Alright," rubbing a finger against the corner of her eye, a yawn escaped her mouth as charts, graphs, notes and information filled the screen, "Let's see what's so important…"