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Nanako hadn’t had a maternal instinct in her body before. She still didn’t have them now. There was no primal part of her mind which told her how to take care of people. She was selfish, down to her core.
What she had, instead, was trained skills. A keen mind. A willingness to do what other people found distasteful if it meant it kept what little she had to herself.
Dabi threw the doors open, and Nanako gathered her shaken wits together. “Cover your ears!”
The police officers driving Kai to his holding cell ducked low in their seats, to no avail. Nanako didn’t have guns to disable their cars, or an oppressively strong quirk to fight with. She wasn’t going to be able to fight the sand-based hero which was guarding the transportation truck- and she didn’t need to.
Nanako screamed. Her hair unfurled from its braid like a living thing, all spines and waves undulating around her head. Her wail was animalistic, a shriek overlaid with a growl as her throat tore itself to shreds just as surely as it amplified the officers’ stress until they felt they were dying. One clawed their own face and ears while the other curled into a ball around the steering wheel. Shigaraki jumped out, caught by the struggling hero, and she yanked on his panic.
Annoying set-back.
Dabi flew out on a jet of flames, Mr. Compress following behind him with a step. The three of them handily bested the hero, disposed of the barely coherent officers, and soon had Overhaul laying on the asphalt.
Kai barely looked up as she and Shigaraki stalked over to him. Smoke rose in thick, dark clouds from the disabled cars. Rubble littered the street.
The world quieted. Nanako knelt next to her husband. He glanced, first, at Shigaraki, then at her.
(This bastard...)
“Have you come to kill me?” Defeat lined his golden eyes. The purple of his jacket surrounded his pale face like a casket lining.
“Divorce,” she refuted his spineless request, and pulled the hair pin he had given her as an engagement gift from her kinchaku.
That seemed to wake him up. “What?”
“I want a divorce,” her vocal chords strained and rumbled like metal over glass, shattering all the more. She placed the hair pin into the knot of his tie.
“What the hell?!” He tried to lift his head, but she ignored him and stood.
“Bullets in his coat,” she told Shigaraki, careful not to meet his eyes with her quirk so active.
As the leader of the League of Villains taunted Kai, and Mr. Compress took his arm in a fair turnabout, Nanako gathered the edges of her quirk’s awareness and reeled it in. Her hair whipped around and lashed out as she did, an obnoxious tell she had never been able to tame.
“Back-up’s coming!” Spinner honked the truck’s horn. “We gotta go!”
She wasted no time and climbed into the back. The other three were a little slower, but then again, Kai had been an enemy of theirs. She would want to gloat, too, if she’d had any energy to do so.
Spinner took off, just as unsteady as before in his driving, but without the sort of franticness that had marred the start of their trip.
After some time, Dabi spoke up, “So... any reason your eyes are closed in a truck full of villains?”
Nanako hummed. “Same reason as my hair attacking Compress.”
“And that is, my dear?” Mr. Compress valiantly held his own as her hair tried to absorb his head.
“Calmness quirk,” she explained and rubbed her throat as her voice broke. “You’re calmest.”
“The scream attack wasn’t very calm,” Shigaraki pointed out. “Besides, you said you had a panic quirk.”
“Sides of a coin,” Nanako coughed. There was no water, no relief to be had until they arrived at the base. It didn’t take much longer, thankfully, and Compress helped her down while the others strolled ahead.
Grateful as she was, she kept her distance once they were inside and her eyes away from anyone’s face. Kurogiri handed a water bottle her way as the rest of the League caught up and celebrated their win- especially their win against Overhaul.
Oh well. She had no great love for the man, and her own complicated feelings weren’t anything to bring up among what basically amounted to strangers. Her hair calmed the hell down once she was able to center in on herself.
Centering in on herself didn’t mean that she lost awareness of her surroundings. Somebody was agitating on the edges of her vision. She turned her head and regarded the man in the all black body suit.
“Yes?” she took a sip of her lukewarm water.
“Hey, are you new to the League? You look familiar.” He asked, then continued in a different voice, unprompted. “Yeah, introduce yourself, you rude fuck!”
Nanako scanned him from head to toe. He did look familiar... as a matter of fact, she distinctly remembered having to break up a fight between him and one of the yakuza brothers.
“I’m Nanako,” she didn’t have a codename or a villain name - she hadn’t needed one. Still didn’t, technically. “We met at the Shie Hassaikai, briefly.”
“What’re you still doing here?” Toga joined in, eyes narrowed in mistrust.
“Recovering,” she motioned to her long, black hair that was tangled around her elbows and her clearly wrecked voice. “Then I’ll get going.”
“Why should we let you go? You’re one of Overhaul’s lackeys.” She produced a knife from some pocket. “Just because Shiggy and Compress took his arms doesn’t mean he’s paid us back yet for Magne-nee!”
This wasn’t good. They were drawing attention, and in what appeared to be a tight-knit group, Nanako would be the problem no matter that she hadn’t done anything.
She lifted her hands harmlessly. The Shie Hassaikai base had been raided by the police and heroes, not to mention torn apart by the ensuing fight. She had personally called on Shigaraki to assist him with his plan to humiliate and permanently cripple her husband once she found out she wasn’t going to be able to retrieve her daughter. There wasn’t much else she could do to prove that she wasn’t loyal to the man, or the group.
“Kai isn’t sentimental enough that killing his wife will get you anywhere now,” she cleared her throat, for all the good that it did. “Besides, I did just help Shigaraki. I don’t mean you any harm.”
“Wife?!” The man in the full body suit exclaimed. If everyone wasn’t paying attention, they would be now. “That dead-eyed fuck is married?!”
“...yes?” She glanced over at Shigaraki, who shrugged indifferently. Well, he’d be no help. “Kai was using our daughter’s stem cells to make the bullets, so of course I couldn’t support him anymore.”
“DAUGHTER?!” the man exclaimed. There was no second voice.
“Where is your brat now?” Dabi grinned sardonically at her predicament.
Nanako hadn’t had much down time between her jobs and the raid of the Shie Hassaikai, but even she saw footage of Kai fighting, and losing, to a first year hero student and Eri.
“The heroes have her,” she explained and motioned to her drawstring purse. “It’s all over the news.”
“That still doesn’t explain why we should let you go,” Toga stalked closer.
“I mean, I guess you could kill me,” Nanako shrugged. Eri was safer away from her, as much as it pained her to admit it, and she didn’t exactly have a life outside of the yakuza to return to. “I can’t fight... but I could get everyone hotel rooms for the night in thanks for disabling Overhaul?”
“Weird that you would thank us for that,” Spinner eyed her suspiciously.
“My daughter comes before anyone else,” she obviously reached for her phone and turned on the screen. Eri’s sweet little smiling face was front and center, covered in dirt and flower petals. “Don’t any of you have kids? Siblings?”
Various negative noises filled the air. Kurogiri, who she noticed had doted on Shigaraki, said nothing.
Nanako suddenly felt much older than her years would suggest. A warehouse office full of villains around her age, and she was the only parent.
“A warm bed is the least we deserve after today,” Shigaraki finally spoke up, tipping the scales in Nanako’s favor to live. “Go ahead and call whoever you need to to set that up, support.”
She nodded and bowed her head, hair falling forward in ratted clumps. “Please take care of me, everyone.”