Takuma realized at some point he wasn't on the bench anymore. He was walking, sitting, and then walking again. Someone was with him. His Quirk didn't warn him against them, so it must have been Mei. Maybe. Everything was fuzzy, cold. He hated being cold with a passion. He liked being warm; warm was nice. Before he knew it, he was back somewhere familiar, the air smelled of oil and grease, and somehow he felt comfortable. He felt like he was supposed to know where he was, but the thought escaped him, the ringing in his ear was all-encompassing, and he doubted he would have been able to hear if someone was talking to him. His head hurt, a pounding headache that never left him since...since. What was he doing again? It must have been important; he always felt like this after flexing his Quirk, like he was hollow.
Being warm and exhausted was a terrible combo, and one blink lasted just long enough for him to doze off. When he woke up next, he still felt terrible, but not like his soul was gone to get the milk kind of terrible, so it was an improvement. He knew from past experience even the slightest break in his mental defense would leave him a screaming wreck on the ground, so he made sure to raise them as far as they could go. For once, he used his eyes to look around and try to see if Mei was around. He was in her home, yes, and seated on her couch. The same blanket he usually slept under was draped over him. He was comfy. He heard the tap running and turned his head toward the kitchen where a girl with pink hair and a school uniform was washing her hand.
Was it Mei? He didn't know; he couldn't remember what she looked like; it wasn't the first time he forgot how people looked. When the strain of his Quirk was getting too much, Nova sometimes wore a badge with her name on it to help him. Danny used to fart in his face, shat himself a few times this way, the fucker.
"Mei?" he asked, his voice broke, sending him into a coughing fit that lasted long enough for him to see stars and hammer the need for him to catch his breath.
"Here," he heard, and he felt the girl hand him something.
He realized it was a glass of water and he drank greedily, desperate to wet his parched throat. "Thank you."
"So you're not a zombie anymore?"
"Still a bit out of it," he mumbled, working hard to make sure he didn't slur his words like a drunk. "Quirk got out of control."
"I heard they found Ms. Saneyama inside a warehouse full of criminals. Is that what did this to you?" she asked again; he couldn't tell what she was feeling at this moment, and he could only hope she wasn't angry with him.
"Yes, I was patrolling around the area, one of the kids they use as a runner led me right to them," he started to say, wondering how he could turn his sentence as to not lie too much. "Found the warehouse, found the local gang that did the robbery yesterday. And of course your teacher. Didn't even have to call the cops before the Hero showed up."
It wasn't far from the truth, discounting his involvement, it was close to what happened.
"But you..." she started to say before seemingly failing to find the right word, Takuma tensed preparing himself for a hit he knew might come. "You were there, but not. It's like your body was moving but there was no one inside."
Concern? It was surprising, but he preferred it to the alternative. "Yeah, I got caught in the fighting."
Seeing her eyes go wide didn't tell him much about what she was feeling, so he pressed on. "Not like that. I was in range when the big guy started throwing his weight around and it fucked me up," he said, trying to keep as close to the truth as he could afford to be. "Feeling people get hurt isn't easy; it was quick for most of them. The hero showed right after, and I left. Sorry."
"Why are you sorry; you did nothing wrong," she said while she shook her head. "I'm just glad you're feeling better. I'm not a fan of seeing you like that."
Her hand reached toward his face, and he stilled in preparation, but he couldn't stop himself from making the biggest mistake he could do in this kind of situation. He flinched.
Her hand froze, and he swore she stopped breathing for a second before taking a step back. "I've made some food, stay here, I'll bring it to you," she spoke before going back to the kitchen in a way that felt stilted.
'Great fucking job, you dumb bitch,' he cursed himself; he tried to reach for his Quirk to know how hard he had fucked up, but only felt a wave of nausea and pain as every movement, and shift of the cloth the girl—Mei was wearing ripped at his skin. He choked back a scream and could only try to stop the shaking his hands were experiencing before Mei, the girl, came back. Even when his defenses were at their maximum, he couldn't stop the errant thought or idea making its way into his mind when he was with someone. It was something he hadn't found a way to counter yet, even after years of trying. Being left without his Quirk left him with only his eyes to see how the girl reacted to him existing in her presence. And he didn't have a clue how to do that. His Quirk was his greatest curse and gift, all in one neat package of unending suffering.
Oh, and he might have killed someone. He wasn't as detached as he was before; the thought sickened him. Takuma didn't know what that girl whose name he already forgot was on his kill count, if she was even dead. Maybe the sixth or seventh, whatever the number was, it was one too many. He couldn't think of how to stop her without enough fear to stop her heart. Maybe if he had tried hard enough, he would have found a better way to deal with the situation. Yet, apart from shattering her mind and turning her into no more than a puppet with straight-up brainwashing, he had nothing. Not from such a distance; he couldn't act on the mind with the care and dexterity it required to be left unmolested from so far away. Whatever state she ended up in was preferable to what he could have done to her. Even by mistake.
Thinking of mistake, Mei was still stilted in her movement as she prepared the plate of food; he should have known better than to flinch. He couldn't tell what she was feeling. Anger? Anxiety? Deprived of his early warning system, he was left absolutely blind as to what was going on in her head. And that scared him.
If she felt insulted by what he had done, he wouldn't see it coming. He wasn't used to being blind like this, not with people around, not even Nova or Danny. He fled human contact when he was like that, and he now remembered why. Because without his Quirk, he had no idea how things worked. How people worked.
They were friends, right? Surely there was a bit of a leeway when one fucked up. Maybe she wouldn't be too angry with him, maybe.
Walking back from the kitchen, he didn't notice any obvious signs she was upset with him.
"Made some rice; I used a bit more spice than usual, so careful with that tongue," she informed him while setting a plate in front of him on the coffee table. He realized she was keeping her distance from him, and he felt a burgeoning of guilt and fear in his stomach.
Should he mention it, or wait it out and hope she would forget about it? He didn't know what was the best course of action, so he decided to deal with it the expeditious way; at least he wouldn't waste his time being scared.
"Thank you," he said, grabbing a fork. "Sorry about the..."
He mimed the way he had reacted when she had come closer to him than he had liked, and he couldn't help but notice a frown on her brow that was uncharacteristic of her. "Don't worry about it, your Quirk mess with your head a lot, right?"
"You can say that," he agreed drily. "It leaves me raw and hypersensitive to pretty much everything; I can barely support the feeling of wearing my own cloth right now."
She swiveled her head while eating a bite. "That sucks, but on the bright side, if you ever feel like telling me the name of those that made you think you had to protect yourself like that, I have a few bombs lying around."
Takuma froze as his brain refused to compute what he'd just heard. "You what?"
"You wouldn't believe how easy it is to make napalm," she added as if it was the most normal thing in the world. "Some styrofoam, some gasoline and whoosh!"
The mad glint in her eyes he sometimes saw when she was deep in her craft surfaced during her last sentence. "Huh."
"I can make a few firebombs if you prefer; works pretty much the same," she pondered while scratching her chin. "It's been a while since I've made any explosives."
Mei had a gift, the gift of being so out of pocket he didn't know if she was serious or not. If it was even her. Everything told him it was, but he could never be sure without his Quirk.
"Thanks for the offer, but I don't think that's gonna be necessary," he said, half a question, half a statement.
She stared at him straight in the eye. "Give me a name," she demanded in a feral tone of voice that got a nervous chuckle out of him.
"If I start now, we'll be done by the end of next week, so I'd rather not," he deflected, not that he remembered the name of most of the people that hurt him. "Close to two decades outside get you a list of enemies longer than your arm."
"I don't like it. I'm giving you grenades next time you go outside, just to be safe."
A small laugh escaped him. "I can't just walk around with a bunch of explosives, Mei."
"Flashbangs aren't explosive," she stated with a delighted grin.
The nervous laugh that was bubbling underneath finally exploded into full-blown laughter. He could only tone it down enough to not sound hysterical. His side hurt from how hard he was laughing; he tried to stop himself, but it was harder than it should have been, and he was left gasping for breath after a minute or two.
"Sorry about that," he said. "Don't know what's gotten into me."
"Don't worry about it, but fair warning I am hugging the shit out of you later."
The words were whimsical at best, yet to him, this might as well have been a death sentence as his gut twisted painfully. He hated being touched, and even if he'd been okay with Mei so far, it didn't mean he wanted a stranger to put his hand on him.
"Sure," he agreed, unsure if saying anything could save him from whatever she had in mind. "Just warn me before you do; I'm still a bit jumpy, I think."
"The more I see what that Quirk is doing to you, the less I like it."
He shrugged. "You haven't even seen the worst part yet. Being overwhelmed by my Quirk with only you around is an entirely different beast than in the middle of the city. It would have taken me a month to recover from the bite incident rather than a nap and some cuddle."
"C-Cuddle?" she stuttered, choking on her food.
"You were playing with my hair while I was recovering; that did wonders for the headache," he told her, desperately fishing for any proof he was interacting with the gremlin inventor he had become so fond of. "Isn't that what you were doing?"
"Heh, I wouldn't call that cuddling, more like petting," she said, her voice changing tone. Takuma had the impression she was flustered, and he had no idea why.
"Like a cat?"
"Cats are cute; those fluffy ears I could pet them all day," she hummed, her eyes glazing over as she lost herself in her thoughts.
"I like cats, but I can't be around too many of them or I start acting like one," he confessed, being able to understand the general idea of what an animal tried to tell him made him a riot with the furry population.
"What do you mean?" Mei asked, back from her daydreaming. "Do you start hissing at people?"
"I started to lick myself in an attempt to get clean; humans aren't meant to do that," he told her, loving the journey her face went through before landing on laughter. "My Quirk tends to change the way I act depending on my environment; animals are probably the worst since their habits are so far removed from our own."
Her laugh suddenly ended as her eyes grew wide. "Wait, wait, wait, your Quirk makes you easily influenced?!"
"Yes, it's kind of a pain to deal with. I learned how to separate myself from what the people around me push me to do, but it's not an exact science. Sometimes someone else's behavior gets into my head, and if I can't pull it out of my head in time, it stays."
"What stayed then?"
"Well, I'm a recovering alcoholic of thirty years despite having only drunk alcohol three times in my life," he admitted, noticing the wince that went through her features. "As for the rest, either I don't know, or I'd rather not share, sorry."
She shrugged, luckily not too upset from his lack of an answer.
"Wait, does that mean I've been influencing you this entire time?!" she realized with a sudden shout that made him jump.
"N-Not really, it's more of a gradual thing. As long as you keep me around, the risk is there, but I've been doing a good job of keeping both of our respective minds separate," he said before grabbing a bite of his own diminishing plate. "And to be fair, there's worse minds to be influenced by than a genius inventor."
"G-Genius?" she stuttered, her face taken again by a red tint.
"I mean from my point of view, you might as well be, because I sure as hell don't understand anything you do. You might as well be a wizard for all I know," he answered her silent question as best he could. "Casting spells with wrenches and power tools. You might want to get that explosive spell down before you try those boots again though."
"It was one time!"
"Twice, in a single day. And we're not even mentioning how many times you burned and cut yourself on either a misplaced tool or a burning piece of scrap," he countered with a fake easy-going smile that worked in most social interactions. "You should take better care of yourself."
"It's okay; you're here to patch me up," she deflected. "And you don't have a leg to stand on when you end up a screaming wreck or looking like a zombie after a day in the city."
"Fair, but you know what the difference between you and me is?" he said with a small hint of dramatic to hide how much her words hurt. "It happened through no fault of my own, while you bypass so many security protocols whoever created them must be turning in their grave so fast they could power a small town!"
"How do you know that? I thought you didn't understand what I do!"
"I don't. You just confirmed it for me!" he declared, keeping the easy-going smile on while he freaked out internally about what to do next.
"I am hurt and will now hug you to dull the pain," she deadpanned before moving next to him on the couch and stopping just before touching. "Can I?"
"You can," he assured her before she embraced him from the side.
Takuma took a step back from his own body. He was watching the scene from the other side of the room.
He watched himself return the hug with one arm as Mei rested her head on his shoulder. "Try not to get hurt like that again. Please?"
"I'll try; my Quirk doesn't give me much of a choice sometimes. Sorry," he replied in a dull monotone tone hoping to reassure her. "And it's not like something like that happens every day; a surge isn't that common, and I don't go and actively feel the mind of random people without a good reason either."
He witnessed her hug him harder, and he could feel her nod against him; it wasn't as overwhelming as when he felt her through his Quirk, but he still needed a few seconds to process the warmth of her skin against his or the weight and pressure of the arm that held him; even now, she threatened to pull him back, and he watched himself tear up, the girl didn't notice, thankfully.
Yet something felt wrong. Her heartbeat, strong, kept rocking him out of his placidity. She was still against him, yet her hands were nowhere where he was used to feeling them when a woman was so close to him. Nothing was happening. Nothing hurt. She wasn't hurting him. And something else kept coming back to the forefront of his mind even when he tried to stop it. The smell of hot iron always on her skin. A smell he got used to living so close to Mei.
Takuma closed his eyes. If he couldn't trust his eyes, then maybe his nose and ear would do the trick.
She was warm. Takuma liked being warm.
'What's something she would do right now?' he wondered, unsure if doing anything was the right call.
He laid his free hand on her head and started playing with her hair; the thick dreadlocks were surprisingly soft, and he found himself enjoying the sensation.
Takuma felt her hot breath against him pick up, deeper and hotter than it was before as she relaxed in his grip and let herself sink into him just that slightly more. He assumed she was okay with it and kept going, enjoying the moment like he rarely could. Trailing through her scalp with a delicate touch he rarely experienced from a single point of view. He had no idea if he was succeeding, unlike when his Quirk was force-feeding data, he was going in blind, and the only things he knew was that Mei wasn't complaining and breathing easier under his touch. So he took it as a good thing.
The girl—No. Mei kept him grounded. With how hard she was hugging him. Again, he found himself beginning to cry for another reason entirely. He bit his tongue to distract himself; the metallic taste was another thing that helped keep his mind sharp.
This was overwhelming in a way he couldn't quite describe. Maybe his Quirk wasn't as shot as he first thought it was. Because he couldn't think of a reason where he would have let anyone be close to him without being sure they had no bad attention. He must have known it was Mei, from the start. They're was no other explanation. The girl. His friend. Mei was there with him. He knew it, she had to be. And that meant one thing.
He was safe. And that was worth more than anything in the world.
I hope I conveyed how much Quirk exhaustion sucks for my boy. And also. Trust.