Chapter 25

My first initial thought when I began sketching business card concepts was that I should have been working on the Nightfury OC commission. The Patre0n request had been sitting in my inbox for a little over two weeks now and I still had other responsibilities to deal with instead of putting off the commissions until last minute at the end of the month- in fact, I had been listening to nothing but John Powell since I had gotten the project just to get into the mood. Instead, I had fallen prey to the temptation of a new project, and like most new projects, it had swallowed me whole and consumed my every waking thought. I had spent the last two and a half hours buried in dozens of my old art class notes, college portfolios, concept sketches, and templates I thought would have been useful and had virtually nothing to show for it.

It was my first real, official project I had gotten in awhile. The pressure was on, not just because an actual business's success all hinged on my ability at making an eye-catching business card, but because I wanted to do a good job- for Izuku's sake if not for my own reputation. He was counting on me, his hero agency hanging on by a thread- hopefully, it was a spider's thread, something that was stronger than any man-made thread. Thoughts of spider-webs and the Human Spider comics I had stockpiled in one of my many bookshelves flooded unhindered into my head. It had been awhile since I had read them. Maybe I should- UGH! Stop thinking about other heroes and do your job thinking about the one that needs your help now!

I pressed my pencil firmly into the Strathmore sketchpad and drew another word association tree and basic concept sketches to brainstorm ideas for the business card layout, waiting for the spark of inspiration to hit with little-to-no success. I had been drawing his hero name in English and then in hiragana to see if I could do something interesting with the topography, occasionally subbing in his actual name just to see what looked better on the card- a lot of Japanese companies and goods were written in English with Japanese characters underneath it, but the lack of knowledge of what his name was in katakana or kanji layered yet another brick of frustration at trying to find my old kanji book and I was determined to find it before asking. The letters looked terrible in my scribbly handwriting, but it was just a rough draft; everything was done on the computer anyways.

Another point of my artist block was that Izuku had been very vague when it came to what he actually looked like. He had given me complete creative freedom with the project, but wouldn't give me a good description of his costume, saying that it was just a plain green jumpsuit with white gloves and armor plated knee-high boots, which was frustrating to work with. I knew he had a strength Quirk, which could easily give him a generic superhero or boxer look if he had more notable design details like bandage-wrapped fisticuffs or boxing gloves. If I had visuals of what his costume looked like, I could have at least been able to create logos off of its appearance, but he hadn't even bothered to send me a single photo of him in costume. Not one. Because of that, I was working with very bare-bones ideas for pro-heroes, which was fairly basic and could apply to literally any hero or any agency, real or fictional. Not exactly the greatest marketing strategy.

At least give me a specific shade of green, maybe some specific shapes of your costume, I grumbled internally as I texted Izuku before leaning back with a sigh, the folding chair creaking back from my weight. Maybe he was camera shy? He seemed a bit nervous when we had been taking photos together at the museum. I looked over towards the hero medal sitting in my Tui and La ceramic bowl my sister had made me for my birthday and ran my fingertips over the cool metal. My feet were warmed by the slippers he had bought me. Despite Japan being ridiculously warm and humid during the summers, it was still relatively cold outside, and since my mother had insisted on keeping the apartment at twenty degrees Celsius (which was sixty eight degrees Fahrenheit after plugging it into an online conversion for centigrade) to save on energy, I was usually cold and had to bundle myself in a hoodie or fleece pajama bottoms- today's pattern featured Mickey Mouse on white pants with a red drawstring timed with his older 'brother', Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, on my black hoodie. The chill reminded me of how warm Izuku had been when I had embraced him, how broad his back had been, how strong and encompassing his arms had felt once they reluctantly wrapped themselves around me.

UGH! I can't believe I hugged him! That was so stupid! I admonished myself for the five millionth time, face growing warm as I hopped back onto my bed and crawled under the covers, effectively burying myself in a heap of mismatched blankets and pillows. A chime from my phone had me peaking out from the abyss of my pillow pile. My eyes flitted towards the notification window, suddenly hopeful for it to be from Izuku. Instead, it was another Patre0n notification. I had just barely made the deadline with my last page, working on some of it when I had been at the Aizuri Cantina bar last Tuesday- though the only ones that knew about it were my highest paid patrons. Unlike the tense standoff in the bar, the one I incorporated for my story actually broke out into an all out bar-fight and involved thugs that worked for a villainous anarchist group called the Invisible Hand, which sounded more intimidating than the visual of a giant white Mickey Mouse glove periodically smashing itself onto a platform that my head wouldn't let go of.

Deciding I needed a break on the risk of burnout, I scrolled through the barrage of comments on my Patre0n, tapping hearts next to the comments that I liked and feeding on the strength of the positive feedback. As per usual, SmallMight39's comment sat at the top of the slush pile along with the usual barrage of general well-wishers and trolls.

SmallMight39: The lines are really clean in this one. You can really sense the tension the air before the fight breaks out. It's scary that stuff like this could actually happen in real life. I've never been involved in a bar fight personally, but I've been in some close calls. Have you ever experienced one?

MurkerLurker: Loved the latest update! Arisa can really take a punch!

FenixRizing: AHAHHH so good! I can't wait to see more!

Falconicus Dragon: You shouldn't depict minors in a barfight.

Lilychan14: I love how well Warren moves in tight spaces.

Anom0us3: Plz update mroe! Why u no answer me?

My heart twisted inside my chest as I reread SmallMight39's comment for the third time. Hadn't I wanted to meet them in person and become friends in real life? It had been awhile since we had last talked on private message. It was like the closer I had become to Izuku, the less times I spent on SmallMight39 and the rest of my internet community. All of the Saturday night movie nights I showed on Discord for my patrons felt so meaningless in the grand scheme of things now. I had friends in real life that wanted to do things with me. Was it wrong to still crave a solitary life among online strangers when they were people I was never going to meet?

The victory theme from Final Fantasy VII alerted me towards a text from my best friend Gabby, who had finally woke up on her side of the globe on Saturday morning. Judging from the nine am timestamp of the text, she was lucid enough to respond to my text last night (most likely she probably had a cup of coffee in her) about whether or not the original Starling could be considered a pro-hero when he technically didn't have a Quirk.

Technically, I'd have to say no since he was more of a vigilante, but he was definitely a hero in the old sense of the term.

This was why I loved talking to her. Most people would have found our inquisitive and argumentative natures to be off-putting, but she almost always answered and gave her own input and contributions to whatever subject we were talking about- and that was what made our friendship so great. It was how our minds worked in tandem as writers and that similar enjoyment of picking things apart to find out what made them good was one of the core foundations our relationship and the reason why we had been such good roommates in college. Another great aspect was that we were both similar yet had different tastes. I could always expect a fresh perspective from her. While I enjoyed heroes with amazing abilities, Gabby was a fan of the less flashier superheroes, ones that had grit, cunning, and used gadgets more than abilities, and I could see where she was coming from. Heroes who had mediocre Quirks that found ways of using them to be efficient because they put in enough hard work into it were almost like regular people, almost like me. It was something that gave me hope and while they weren't my favorite kind of hero, I could appreciate and respect their honest contributions towards bettering society.

The fast paced notes of Beethoven's third movement of 'Moonlight Sonata' began rapidly playing on my phone, alerting me to the time being nine pm. Was it that time already? I began warming up my laptop and tapped the call icon on my Favorites list on my phone under the name 'Gabrielle Braun.'

"Hello~" Gabby replied with her usual, bouncy lilt.

"Hi~ how are things back in the states?" I asked, feeling the sweet relief of switching back to English.

"Nothing much. The kids are back from spring break, but we're going through testing right now, so other than having to keep the occasional kid from being too disruptive during lunchtime, it's been fairly quiet."

While she fiddled with writing a novel on the side, Gabby's full-time job was being a teaching assistant at one of her hometown's ELL schools, working with kids from grades second to fourth that had English as a second language. Though what she dabbled in was mostly Spanish, she had also taken up studying Japanese after I had spent years converting her into an anime fan, using the same language learning app my sister and I used. She had teased coming to Japan at some point later this summer when she was on break, but no plans had been made official yet.

"Oh good. My side is apparently starting school right now. I still can't get over the fact that Japan's school year begins in April, two weeks after graduating their previous year."

"It's not that strange to me. My school follows a trimester."

"Well your school also warns kids not to kick random, smoking milk cartons on the side of the road, so I'd say that your township is a bit of a bizarre minority."

"If they did, they'd lose a foot. The district is trying to make an effort of cracking down on crime by bringing in more police officers and pros to protect the schools, but there's still too many meth labs up here for my taste. Thankfully someone's going to be replacing our last police officer, Officer Carlson. He spent way too much time hanging out in the faculty lounge instead of doing patrols and bag checks."

"Yeah, thank god for that. I remember hearing you complain about him," I said, my phone on speaker as I rolled onto my back, "Still though, it's going to get so crowded during the rush hour with kids back on the subway. Thank god the train I take is after most of the morning rush. The cherry blossoms are beautiful though. No wonder anime use them so often to timestamp new beginnings." They had smelled especially fresh lately, catching myself with more than a few flower petals in my hair or coat. "So did you get the script for the next chapter I sent you?"

"I did."

"So what did you think? Was it too much? Do I need to add more people with lesser Quirks in it or do you think I need to reign in the amount of new characters?"

"No I think you do a good job of keeping it balanced. As for the new characters, that's more of your thing to figure out. Adding too many people can create too many plot-lines to keep track of," she said, "I sent over some of the edits already although I just noticed two just now. In the fifth panel, where Arisa goes to visit Warren in the hospital, you used the wrong 'your' in the sentence."

"Gotcha."

"Also I think you meant y-o-u-apostrophe-r-e instead of y-o-u-r. You are also missing a word in your sentence 'check yourself before wrecking yourself.'"

"Ugh. 'Check yourself before you wreck yourself' was the original. Thanks for catching that." I made a quick note to the script before thinking of the inspiration. I had never gotten around to visiting Izuku in the hospital when he had been admitted- hospitals and medical centers in general always made me nervous -but I still felt like I needed to do something to show that I cared, especially after learning how hard his life had been lately. The boy really did deserve all the love. At the very least, I should have brought him flowers. Did guys like getting flowers or were they too girly? What exactly did you give a guy when he was in the hospital anyways? Stuffed animals? No, they were almost as bad as flowers, plus he was probably too old to be getting stuffed animals. Food maybe? Of course, I wasn't a professional chef and Japanese cuisine wasn't exactly one of my expertise. Maybe I could pick something up for him, but I had no idea what he liked and wouldn't it be too impersonal to buy something than make it from the heart-?

"...Hello?" Gabby chimed in, snapping me out of my inner tangent.

"Sorry, I spaced out. It's just-" I bit my lip and then let out an egregious sigh. "-you remember that one guy I told you about?"

"The one you haven't stopped talking about for weeks? I don't recall," she said with her usual edge of sarcasm.

I laughed. A large part of our relationship had been sending pictures or videos to each other, usually involving the latest fandom (or character) we were simping over. Gabby was so far into my detailed updates about the latest FMB video I'd find that she was almost a part of it at this point. I'd always tried to balance it out, pacifying her with other topics like Harry Potter and Veggietales along with any new Night Owl or Starling pictures I found on the internet.

"No, not that one. The other one- the guy who I met in the subway that bandaged my foot at the museum after I wrecked it on the inflatable obstacle course? Gabby, you won't believe it. He went to my lightsaber class and Gabby-" I pulled the phone close to my face like I had reached through to grab her shoulders and adopted a serious tone, "He is just the sweetest guy ever! He offered to walk me home yesterday after we left the cantina bar."

"You went out for drinks? At a bar?"

"YES! Oh my god-" All at once, everything began pouring out of me like a torrential flood. How Izuku came to my class, how we had actually stuck around afterwards for drinks, the many texts that had been sent between us, his struggles with his hero agency and all the feelings that came with it. By the time I had finished rambling, I was on my feet and pacing, feeling like a wrung out washcloth that had been left out to dry for too long.

"-and now, I'm stuck working on his business card but unable to focus on that because I keep thinking of him! What do I do?" I ran my hands frantically through my ponytail, drawing out the vowels of my words with an air and tone of utter hopelessness.

"I don't know what to tell you. I'm not exactly experienced in the romance department." I could practically see the shrug that came with that statement.

"Ugh, I know, but like- I really like this guy- like, really, really like this guy, but I just don't know what to do." Fingers already running through my hair, I tugged at the already loose messy bun and began undoing it, needing to feel my hair be free and unrestricted. "And what about that one guy you told me about, Charlie something? Don't tell me you don't have experience."

"That was ages ago and getting coffee at a Starbuckes is hardly a date. Charlie and I aren't even friends, just people who went to the same church. Besides, that still doesn't change the fact that like you, I don't have a ton of dating experience." I muffled a groan into my Emilia pillowcase, somehow having flopped onto my bed during my tirade of pacing back and forth. "I'd wait and see what happens. You don't want to scare him off by acting like you want to jump his bones."

"Oh my god, no! No nonononononono!" I could already feel my face burn hot, now pacing my bedroom floor like a caged animal. "But... I feel like I have to do something. I've always been so passive to guys that I like, and I know I'm not exactly subtle when it comes to these types of things. Plus, I really like this guy, Gabby. Really really like him, and that's what I don't get! He's far from the usual kinds of guys I go after. He's like six inches shorter than me, he doesn't know a thing about Star Wars or the dozens of anime that I like, despite being from Japan, and he gets so incredibly timid that I feel like I might accidentally steamroll over anything he says or does to get my way-" I ranted, running out of air before I sucked in another breath, smacking my lips together, "-but he's just so nice and considerate. I don't know if it's just because of his culture or that's just who he is, but I've never met that many people who are genuinely like that and I love being around him. He... he makes me feel good about myself, you know? Like Ben did. Like I'm not some clumsy, huge neurotypical freak."

I thought of the tall, kind redhead I had interned with at the state museum back when I was fresh out of college, when news of my mother's cancer was new and uncertain and it was still an unknown if the mass in her head was cancerous or not. I wondered what happened to him. With any luck he was probably working at some big architecture firm in a big city like New York or Boston, somewhere in the New England territory, most likely married or engaged to the girl he had started seeing when we had worked together.

"Wow, you really have it bad for this guy."

"I know!" I growled at my old college roommate, practically shouting into the phone even though I was on speaker.

"I don't know what else there is you want me to say."

"I don't know... some advice maybe? Isn't that what best friends are supposed to do when they talk about guys?"

"Umm sure if either of us had more than two boyfriends in our entire lives. Besides, I already told you what I think. Just take a deep breath and calm down. Right now, you are just trying to be a friend to him and help him out, so just be that for him. If somewhere down the road that situation changes, then you'll be ready for it. If not, then oh well. If it's meant to be, it's meant to be."

"Okay..." I relented, feeling that reluctant somberness creeping in. That wasn't exactly the advice I had been wanting, being told something I already knew, but then again what else had I expected? I had wanted a second opinion and no one was going to present me with a magic button that would give me all the answers. "It's going to be hard though. We literally spent hours talking about comic-books the other day. He even said he liked my comic."

"That's great."

"No, it's not. He doesn't know I'm the author."

"Why not?"

"I don't know! I was... embarrassed, I guess? I've never met a fan before, besides what if I know him online?" SmallMight39's username flashed briefly into my mind.

"There are dozens of people who read your comic. I doubt you know him at all."

Comics... comic books... Wait a minute!

"Oh... OHHH! YES!" I exclaimed into the phone, head now full of ideas and concepts. "Gabby, I have to go. My business card crisis is averted! Ohhh it's going to be so good-! I just-! God, I can't even talk about it!"

"Alrighty, then. Glad I could help," she said with a bemused tone. We said our goodbyes before I hung up the phone and quickly shot Izuku a text before grabbing my pencil and getting to work.


Author's Notes: References are How to Train Your Dragon, Tui and La from Avatar the Last Airbender, the Master Hand from Kirby, and Emilia from Re:Zero ~ Starting Life in Another World.

Hero/Villain Profiles

Gabrielle Braun
Quirk: Location Memory
She can divide and send her cells to 'teleport' herself to any location she has traveled to in-person, as long as some of her DNA exists there and she can picture herself there. Depending on how far away she is can determine how long it takes for her to transport herself there.

Grayson Swift
Hero Name: Starling
Quirk: Flit
He can travel into a void dimension through shadows, which is a shadow/reverse world of our own world where nothing lives, giving him the appearance of teleportation when it's just him traveling on the other side. He can't take anyone there with him, so it's difficult for him to travel there if someone is hanging onto him.
Fun Fact: He is a descendant of Night Owl and the original Starling, and has had the latter name passed down in the Swift family. He is the fourth Starling in the family, but is actually most alike to the original in detective skills and snark.