Chapter Text
Rody, by virtue of his shit-ass bank account, did not own a watch.
He also did not own a phone, or a pager, or any number of things that could tell the time. And, because he lived in the slums of Otheon on a shoestring budget, he wasn't even close enough to town to rely on the big church bells that went off every hour. All he had was the sun, his exhaustion, and traffic to go off of.
Which meant, on that balmy Thursday morning, the fact that he knew he was late was quite a feat. A real ringing endorsement for his internal clock.
He'd known as soon as he'd gotten up that it would be a rough day. He'd been up all night with Lala, who'd gotten sick around midnight and thus needed ample hugs and shoulders to cry on. It was likely just food poisoning (the chicken he'd brought home for dinner had been weirdly grey along one side), but that didn't matter to a four-year old who felt bad. In her eyes, she was dying, and the only way to keep herself from the icy clutches of the grim reaper was to sob.
Her crying had gone well into 4am, wherein she’d tuckered herself out just in time for Roro to wake himself up with a night terror.
That had been happening a lot lately, which Rody was all kinds of worried about. For one, the kid was almost nine, which meant he was getting to be an age where night terrors should be stopping. And for two, his dreams were getting... visceral.
Like 'you were lying on the floor in a big puddle of blood and Flekt Turn was chasing us through the house trying to carve us up with the bread knife' kind of visceral.
Rody hadn't really known what to do with all that, considering he could barely afford food let alone a child therapist, so he’d just given him a hug and told him that everything was fine. Flekt Turn didn't know where they lived, and if the blue bastard ever found out then Rody would chase him with a knife until he left them alone.
That had gotten Roro to laugh at the least, and after a little honey milk and a brief stint of watching pirated Adult Swim anime on the couch, he had actually gone back to sleep.
Which was about forty-five minutes before Rody needed to get up and start chores.
Normally he’d enlist his sibling’s help at times like these, but he had to take the laundry in before the dew made it forever damp, which they couldn’t reach on their own. Then he needed to mess with the hot water heater (again) so the kids could bathe without getting hypothermia, and re-screw the front steps to their trailer before the sun made the day unbearable, and then start breakfast. Which, of course, turned into making a grocery list, because something was growing in their oats and he wasn't about to have another sleepless night of vomiting because of it.
And then, after all that, Rody had to remember how to tie a tie and go to work, because Stanleyk had set him up for a meeting today with some out-of-towner and told him to dress his best. “Treat it like a job interview.” he’d said, stopping halfway through to cough up a phlegm wad into his drying towel. “Or I guess a parole meeting, since you've never had a real job.”
He’d left a few minutes later, hopeful that Roro and Lala would actually do their homework booklets while he was gone instead of messing around all day. That had been about five minutes ago, when he was still moving through the shadows of the Otheon slums instead of rushing past them.
But, after stealing his street urchin tax of oil-drum-smoked jerky from a random vendor, he'd caught sight of the sun, realized it was a tad bit too high, and started running.
Because today wasn't shit enough, apparently.
This is all Stanleyk’s fault. With every footfall jostling his scowl, the sentiment repeated. What kind of asshole arranges a meeting at 6 in the god damn morning? And on a day where I have to wear dress shoes! He knows these stupid things are falling apart! Bastard.
As if to prove his point, the ribbon he’d tied around his shoe to keep the sole from flapping around like a loose puppet mouth unraveled. With one step it bent inwards on itself, jerking him into a freefall that was only stopped by him grabbing a nearby light-post and swinging his momentum around it Singing-In-The-Rain style.
A curse built up behind his molars and expelled itself via Pino bouncing out of his ponytail to shriek at the heavens like she was personally telling every god to fuck off at once. It turned several heads, and made him flush despite already being red-faced and panting. He plucked her out of the air by her tail and shoved her in his pocket, where she could rage all his anger out without a million people to see it.
By the time he’d gotten to the bar, he was sweaty and pissy and all kinds of tired, with a half-knotted too-tight shoe ribbon and a long streak of grime up his nice dress pants. If Stanleyk says a single fucking thing to me, I’m kicking his ass.
The bar was as dead as it always was at this time of day. Wet grime from last night’s dew had made the usually brown dirt stuck to the brick walls into dismal, moldy streaks of black. It highlighted the ramshackle spray-painted sign nicely, half-obscuring the R in Bar so it looked like he was about to enter Stanleyk’s Bap. The lights were off inside, darkening the clunky, half-sealed, prison-like windows inset into the brick wall. Rody could see the grime and cobwebs dusting both sides, ensuring no one passing could actually see through them unless they were really looking.
He wrinkled his nose; it was strategic, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t gross.
The dented brass knob gave a familiar clunk as he jiggled it forward, the secret way to dislodge the half-done deadbolt when the old man was expecting company. Overhead, the low-tech security system he’d put up a few years ago (after Rody had gotten in) jingled, loud and chipper. He was waiting for those rusty Christmas bells to fall on his head one day, but they hadn’t yet. Impressive, considering they were hanging from the ceiling by a fraying length of fly-trap tape.
Stanleyk was behind the bar, as he always was. The only time he’d seen the guy not behind the bar was when they’d met, when Rody had kicked him in the nuts and ran out with a rack of gin bottles three years ago. He was half-convinced the old man stayed behind the counter to avoid another pot shot, which always made him stand a bit taller.
He looked up the second he entered, a scowl already on his face. It was like he was already annoyed that Rody was still breathing.
For a moment, the teen considered flipping him a rude gesture, or uncorking his pocket and letting Pino fly out to bite him on the nose. But, as he twitched his arm to enact one of those bad ideas, his shadow caught the dim, dusty air in a way it normally didn’t, and he spotted the other figures slumped before his usual benefactor.
The minute he noticed them, he wondered how he ever could have looked them over.
They were obviously villains. Not lackeys like Rody, who showed up to crimes in innocuous clothes and tried their hardest to keep their faces out of view, but proper, big-name, hero-fighting villains.
He even recognized one. Party-Harty, the one who’d gotten thwarted out of a really ill-planned jewelry store heist a few months ago. He remembered because a) Rody had actually almost taken that job, but had foregone it for a more lucrative drug run across country lines, and b) you can’t see a purple afro like that and forget it anytime soon.
The others, though, were not known to Rody.
One was a giant guy with a big stupid horn of blonde hair on top of his head, dressed in an obnoxious white and orange track suit with a gold chain. It was clearly new, and clearly designer, but he’d taken the time to embroider Gust on the back underneath a cartoonish painting of his head sitting on top of a big purple tornado. God, he even has his own logo. What a tool.
And all the others… looked like Halloween decorations.
They’d been strewn about the room like detritus, leveled atop back-wall booths and pulled-up chairs into a configuration both lazy and strategic.
Two girls, one auburn haired and one with bright yellow eyes, sat atop the dusty corner-booth table, one in the other’s lap as she wrangled long, tangly blonde strands into two messy buns. Rody didn’t think they looked all that much like criminals, considering one was in a Hawaiian shirt and the other was about his age, but the way the blonde one casually flipped a butterfly knife around her wrist gave them both away as people not to be messed with.
Sitting next to the edge of the squeaky leather seats, perfectly crisscross-apple-sauced, was some dude in a black morph suit. He seemed idle, simply fiddling with a few rusty bolts from some long-destroyed appliance, but every so often a short, unintelligible mumble would break from the mask, and that grey head would twitch to the side like someone had slapped him.
Atop the back of the booth seat, splayed out like he was both a dead body and a model in a Playboy magazine made for freaks, was a man smoking a stubby cigarette. He sported ripped jeans and a long trench coat, his hair a greasy, sticky-looking mess of choppy black strands. Most of his face was obscured in shadows and smoke, but when the sea of nicotine would part, Rody could make out patches of purple-black skin and piercings shining like razor blades.
Perched in front of him, their weight resting on the creaking wood of the next booth’s table, was a man in a freaky black and white mask and a guy who looked like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.
Unlike everyone else, there was something militant and tense about Mr. Turtle’s stance. He was clearly dressed for combat, with his baggy sweats and arm guards, but he also looked more like a cosplayer than he did a villain. And was that just… a bunch of knives held together with belts dangling off his back?
The guy in the mask kept gesturing wildly as they talked, all flipping wrists and tucked ankles. It allowed his pressed and starched trench coat to flutter open dramatically, revealing the satin-and-tweed ensemble below, which matched the ostentatious top hat above. Guess he was the one who asked for business casual. Prick.
It was even more insulting considering the guy beside him, slumped atop the step-stool Stanleyk used to change lightbulbs, was in a black long-sleeve t-shirt that clearly hadn’t been washed in a decade. His face was entirely obscured, some by his fried white-blue hair, but mostly from the preserved human hands stuck to his face, and around his neck, and along his arms, and… etcetera.
“-helps my back anyway. So- Ah, here he is.” Stankelyk muttered, perpetually cleaning one of his scotch glasses with the rag that was always on his shoulder.
He swallowed the horror of being the one guy in the room without a gimmick and nodded. Immediately and painfully, he was aware that something was going on. Stanleyks was speaking in English, which was reserved in the Otheon criminal world for alibis and ripping off tourists. So, either we’re ripping these guys off, or they’re cops.
Raising a hand like he couldn’t give less of a shit, Rody met his English with a grin. “Here I am. You got a lead for me?”
Normally, with their typical rhythm, this would be when Stanleyk would huff under his breath and Rody would take the three steps into the bar that he always took to hand him three hundred eurus in exchange for a way to make six hundred. Then he’d get some vague briefing, figure the rest out on his own, and try his hardest to annoy Stanleyk on his way out.
Today, though, his routine was intercepted by a gruff, loud scoff.
“Nope.” Stanleyk barked, setting his glass down and picking up another one. “But these gents do.”
The room turned to him as he turned to them. “And these gents would be…?”
“The League of Villains.” A voice, impossibly low and heavily accented with deliberate consonants and long tube-like vowels, filled in the blank. Rody couldn’t make out who was speaking, but the way the back-wall weirdos brightened at the title gave away their membership to it.
Ok, accents, costumes, and a named group. So probably not cops, undercover or otherwise. Great. We just have a mother and daughter duo, an arsonist, some cosplayers, and a serial killer who takes hands as a trophy to rip off. Anyone else?
“Welcome. We are honored to make your acquaintance.”
Oh good, and the living embodiment of the empty void of space.
He hadn’t noticed it, considering the place was dark and the creature who’d spoken was… less than human-shaped, but the more he stared into the room, the more he began to realize that that off-yellow light wasn’t a weird new fixture Stanleyk had forgotten to turn off.
It was, instead, two eyes glowing with the heat of a thousand vengeful suns.
They were surrounded by an ever-expanding, ever-shifting void of black sandy mist, thrumming with some strange low hum that made Rody feel like prey. It was edged in purple, shivering and pulsating like an arrhythmic heartbeat.
He watched the two villains who hadn’t puffed up at the ridiculous name stiffen. Party-Harty gulped audibly, his hands balled into tight little knots at his sides, and Gale had fully begun to drip sweat from his temples. So, they’re not in on this either…
He would have called them pussies if he couldn’t feel his hands starting to shake. Or Pino hunkering low in his pocket like she was a lame duck who fell into a zoo enclosure.
He swallowed around the dryness of his throat and gave the eyes piercing him a curt, short nod. “Same to you.”
I’m here for a reason. This is just a job. If it doesn’t work out, I will just leave and go back to my normal life. And if it does, I will do the job and go home with money. Everything is fine. Stop panicking. This literally isn’t even a big deal.
Idly, as if it was a habit, the blonde girl raised her knife to her finger, sliced it open, and licked the pooling blood from her blade like a popsicle.
Oh my god I’m going to die here.
“Thought you said you were bringing in a professional, not a teeny-bopper in daddy’s flasher coat?” The one who’d monikered himself Gale grumbled, half into his cup and half to Stanleyk. His voice shattered the standard silence of the bar, raking up Rody’s nerves like he was being skinned with a cheese grater.
Scowling, he leveled the freak with as harsh a glare as he could muster. “The hell did you just call me?”
“Ah, guess you’re too young to know all those big words. What are you, thirteen?”
Pino squawked in indignation from within his pocket, forcing him to clamp it shut before she could escape. Don’t rise to it.
He smiled, forcefully easy, and raised a brow. “Why, you like ‘em on the younger side?”
With so much satisfaction, Rody watched the guy rear back. One of the perks of being a minor: he could insinuate people were pedophiles for talking to him.
“I- wh-” Either sensing his smugness or simply catching wind of the stifled snickers behind his back, the heavy-chinned villains scowled and snorted through his nose. A small gust of wind, like someone had blown through a straw, flared from each nostril. An air quirk, huh? So, he’s literally full of hot air? He’s making this too easy. “You sure this is your guy, Stanleyk?”
Just to piss him off, Rody blew him a kiss, looking around his massive shoulders at Stanleyk with a shit-eating grin. “You talkin’ about me? I’m flattered.”
The old man grunted something that was likely an insult under his breath, but Rody could see the thick patina of amusement overtop his usual grumpy attitude. “Nothin’ flattering to say about you, punk. Now sit.”
With a roll of his eyes, he slunk over to the bar and perched atop a half-deteriorated stool. He knew no drink would be offered to him, so he took one of the freshly-cleaned scotch glasses and started idly playing with it, just to piss Stanleyk off.
Party-Harty swirled a bright pink drink with a purse to his lips, as if dousing for prophecies with the carbonation. “We ready to begin?”
Stanleyk gave a nod, mirrored by no one. “Yes. Er- hai. And ari-gato, for meeting us.”
Rody recognized that words he’d butchered; he’d foregone most of his studies by now in lieu of work, but he could never turn down the half-done language booklets left in second-hand shops. Thus far he’d gotten somewhat-conversational in Russian and Italian on top of his native Portuguese, Spanish, and Tourist-English. His latest project was Japanese, which he was nowhere near fluent in but was now able to translate their early morning anime’s with a fair amount of accuracy.
Hm, guess these guys are based in Japan. Weird for them to be hunting this far out.
“Thank you for your… attempt.” The black mass at the back of the room gave an erratic shift that could have been a polite nod, which did well to cover the leer that the burnt guy gave to the ceiling. “We appreciate your hospitality.”
Stanley waved a hand like the two were old friends, dripping with that quiet power that came from a lifetime of uncaught crimes. “Of course. Least I could do, really. If you’d like a drink, just say so, first rounds on the house.”
The demon smoke-blob nodded. “I might request a Sazerac at a later date.”
“A fine choice! I actually just got in a vintage cognac from Spain. I’d be more than happy to bust it open whenever you’re ready.”
“Your generosity is greatly appreciated. May I inquire as to your choice of rye?”
“Oh, we’ve got all kinds. I mainly stock American, but I keep my best Canadian choices on the top shelf. The rabble can never appreciate a good Canadian rye, can they?”
The dark matter gave a low, polite chuckle. “No, I suppose not. If I may-”
“Quit with the old-man talk, Kurogiri.”
A high, scratchy voice broke the idle chatter. It didn’t speak in English like the void-guy did, but Japanese proper (which made Rody feel very smart for knowing roughly what he said). The last word hung him up for a long moment before the void creature gave another shuttering nod and Rody surmised that that was his name. “We have business.”
For a moment he was sure there was someone invisible in the room grousing because there was, once again, a total of zero visible mouths moving when the new voice spoke. But, after a moment, Rody noticed that the guy on the step-stool had stopped tapping his fingers against his smartphone, and his hand-mask was pointed up to those two glowing eyes like he was annoyed with them.
“Of course, Shigaraki.” The low voice flipped effortlessly between Japanese and English, returning his attention to Stanleyk, who looked pleasant despite clearly having no clue what had just been said. “Pardon, my colleague wishes to move on with our business.”
“Ah, of course.” Stanleyk shrugged, waving a hand at the hands-guy. “Well, Mr….”
The shadow man mumbled a quick “He’s asking for your name.” to which the hands-guy gave a long-suffering sigh and looked to Stanleyk like he’d rather shoot him now than say or hear another word.
“Shigaraki.”
“Shigaraki.” Stanleyk repeated, giving him a nod as he hooked his thumbs into his belt loops. “I was made aware of your need for some extra hands for an upcoming project of yours, yes? So, I threw my net and rounded up the finest Otheon has to offer.”
His thick, stubby hand waved through the air like a carnival barker, stopping in turn at each waiting face. “This here is Party-Harty, he specializes in explosions, and our resident wind-manipulator, Gust. The kid with the mouth is Rody, who’s our top runner. He may look like a slip of nothing-” Hey! “but he did smuggle ten kilos of Colombian nose candy across country borders without getting caught!”
In a low monotone, he heard Stanleyk’s words translated (and made far fancier) by Kurogiri the Shadow Monster. It was jarring, like listening to an echo warp around a concrete room; when he reached the end, all eyes turned to them, and several faces split into incredulous smiles.
Oh great, we’re jokes. Not a hard thing to believe, considering he looked like a penniless ragamuffin, and he had The Disco Daddy and Discount Eminem at his backup.
“… Are you kidding?” Shigaraki didn’t sound as amused as the leers and grins of his colleagues, instead piercing each of them in turn with what had to be a painfully cold, unseen glare. None reacted, considering he was still speaking a language only the back wall (and Rody) could understand, but his flat tone gave away his irritation. “This is the best Otheon has to offer? Two tutorial enemies and a kid?”
“I dunno, Shiggy,” The burnt guy hummed in a rusted voice, blowing a long plume of smoke to the ceiling. “Maybe there’s some power hidden in that helmet hair?”
“Don’t be mistaken by appearances.” The white and black mask piped up, only denoting himself as the speaker by his ever-present, flowery movements. “Most don’t think I pack much of a punch either, and here I am with a body count in the hundreds!”
The auburn-haired woman (whom Rody was still convinced was female even after he’d clocked her chin stubble and Adams apple. There was just something about her that resonated with his own Tinkerbell-ass face and monthly need to steal tampons from the gas station) snorted, raising an accusing finger. “Is that your body count or your body count?”
“Both!” The mask chirped back, taking off his stupid top-hat to bow at her like he’d just finished some performance. “And besides, we can surely doll these paupers up before the big show, can’t we?”
“We’re not spending money on outfits.” The lizard guy groused, sending the room a harsh, serious glare. “They look stupid, and if we hire them, they’ll look stupid during the attack. They’d make us seem like amateurs.”
“Oh yeah, because your purple mohawk is so respectable, Spinner.” Mr. Cigarettes hissed, smoke pouring not from his lips but the thin fissures along the sides of his cheek.
“Watch it, Dabi.”
“C’mon, you two, fight when we’re back in the bar.” Rody probably mistranslated that, considering they were already in the bar.
With a high, chipper giggle, the blonde girl piped up. Her knife flipped through the air, caught in hand by the blade. “The little one’s kind of cute! We can kill the others, but can we keep him?”
“Shut up.”
“Yeah, Shiggy,” The burnt guy chuckled, raising himself lazily onto his elbows to pin the hand-guy with a smarmy smile. “Let her have a new toy. I’m sure Ponytail over there doesn’t need all his blood, right?”
A growl, raspy and tense, escaped that petrified hand. “I said shut up!”
Oh shit, tensions were running. And, judging by the vein bouncing under those porcelain fingers, they were running high.
With criminals, and especially big gangs of high-end criminals who had a lot of pride about being big gangs of high-end criminals, infighting was deadly. Even something this stupid could have him catching stray bullets in the next few minutes. And he had too much to do when he got home to let that happen.
In a moment of panicked impulse that could have awarded him a psych-ward visit had the right people been there to witness it, Rody stepped forward and raised his hands. His tongue tied itself around his best pronunciation of kanji, forcing a casual smile like he wasn’t shitting bricks.
“While I’m flattered, I’d like to know your name before you try blood-letting me.”
The silence that followed should have been a violation of the Geneva conventions, it was so painful.
Every eye pinned him to the locked doors behind him, all in varying states of disbelief. Stanley looked like he wanted to kill him (a common occurrence), the fop guy had a tilt of his head that Rody hoped denoted amusement, the hand-guy had a rise to his shoulders that was certainly annoyance, and the blonde girl in question… was looking at him like he’d hung the moon.
Oh, now you’ve done it. Ms. Vampire has the hots for you...
Thankfully, before she could do much more than breathe, the guy dressed like a comic book character burst into raucous laughter, clutching at his stomach. It made everyone in the room startle, twisting to look at him as he wiped a nonexistent tear from the lens of his mask “I like him, too! He’s a moron!”
That at least got a few other people to smirk, which further shattered that mounting tension that had made Rody speak in the first place. Hell, even he was fighting a real smile. It seemed the only one still hanging on to the strange energy was the blonde girl herself, who was still staring at him. Her grin was growing, showing off long, sharp canines and a pale pink tongue like a snake’s.
“Toga.” She hummed, a light dusting of pink taking over her face. “My name is Toga.”
“Nice to meet you, Toga.” he repeated, giving her a slight smile that finally made her blink.
“Careful, Casanova.” The burnt guy hummed. “She likes to stab the people she likes.”
Think of the money. Think of the money. Think of the money. He shrugged, subtly shifting so the sweat running down his temple would drip behind his ear. “Good to know. I’ll stay out of stabbing range.”
Toga kicked her feet at the guy despite being too far away to properly land a blow, pouting like a little kid. “Spoil-sport.”
“Rody.” Stanleyk said between the tightest-wound jaw Rody had ever seen. His gaze was murderous, and yet Rody was relieved. Probably because someone other than the knife girl was talking to him. “You wanna translate?”
Oh yeah, that was all in Japanese. He’d been too panicked to remember to be proud of himself. “She thinks I’m cute and wants to stab me.” He groused back in English, finally letting his voice slip just a bit from his forced charm. “Not much else to say.”
“And you were going to tell me you could speak Japanese when?”
“It never came up!” He hissed, throwing his arms up only for Stanleyk to aim smack at his head. “If you had told me anything about this gig, then maybe-”
“So he can speak Japanese, whatever!” Gale butted in, snarling. Quick bursts of wind left his nostrils like a bull, his irate gaze raking over all of them in turn. “He hasn’t done anything but annoy us since he got here. He was late, he’d dressed in rags, and now he’s mouthing off to the bosses! What’s his power, even? Not knowing when to shut up?”
Rody whipped around so fast his ponytail swung behind him like a horse’s tail, pissed and amused in equal measure. A tight, patronizing grin immediately stretch over his face; if there was one thing prideful adults hated, it was when Rody looked at them like they were stupid. And he was certainly looking at Gale like he was stupid. “Careful, Gale, you’re being very rude right now. You wouldn’t want our lovely guests thinking you’re some kind of thug, would you?”
A thick, scarred finger pointed square at his chest, which only furthered his grin. How had this guy gotten this far if he was this easy to rile? “Watch it, punk! I get more action in a day than you have your entire life!”
“And there you go again,” Rody sighed, heart pounding in his ears like a runaway racehorse “talking about your sex life with a minor. I’m not interested, dude.”
“Fuckin- not that kinda- criminal action you-” “You’re annoying.”
That high, scratchy voice came in again, and this time Rody knew to pin it to the metal-0capped hand-stump pointed his way. His hands- his real hands- were twitching, fingers wiggling in the air, but the rest of him was completely still. Like some kind of ambush predator.
Rody flipped his thumb between them. “Me or him.”
One pale finger rose, leveling squarely at Rody’s face. “You.”
Pino gave a sad, sharp warble from his hip. It was a sound denoting a mix of hurt, understanding, and enough unbridled panic to kill a horse.
None of that. It’s barely an insult. We hear that, like, ten times a day.
The light from the shadow monster glinted off the metal clasp around the dead wrist.
Yeah, but not from a serial killer.
He shrugged his bony shoulders up to his ears, letting his hands rise in an imitation of relaxed acceptance. The scotch glass he was fiddling with clattered noisily under its own gravity, rolling around the heavy bottom rim. “Yeah, I get that a lot.”
“I don’t like annoying things.”
I’m not a thing, you bastard. He sucked in a deep breath, long and slow, masqueraded as the beginning of a petulant teenage sigh. His hands were shaking, so he shoved them in his pockets. Pino immediately burrowed into his palm, ruffling her feathers against his threadbare grey gloves. Eyes closed on their own accord as he didn’t need to keep his focus on the threats in the room, he began to twist away. “Then I’ll leave.”
“What’s he saying?” Gale grumbled, pointing his long cone of hair at Rody’s face. His cheeks were red, pupils’ pinpricks and face set in a barely-concealed snarl. “What the fuck are you two talking about?”
Rody huffed, casting his gaze between his colleague and the unseen but very felt gaze of the man sitting on the step-stool. “He thinks I’m annoying.”
He thought that would make him laugh, considering his clear hatred of Rody’s presence, but all it did was turn the high points of his cheeks an even-blotchier scarlet. When Gale spoke, he did so with a spray of spit that made him cringe away. “Bullshit.”
Then Rody noticed that his knuckles were popping as his fists clenched and unclenched at his sides. Irate aggression rolled off his stupid track suit in waves. He was pissed.
It was likely, Rody suddenly realized, that he thought this would be his big break. He’d get plucked out of the chorus by some big cool villain who thought he was big and cool, too, and whisk him away to a better country with more money to steal than Otheon First National had to offer. He’d get a cooler outfit, and a hot villain girlfriend, and he’d never have to sneak around derelict bars with the likes of Stanleyk or Rody ever again because he’d be way over their pay grade.
And instead, he was getting laughed at by a bunch of freaks in a language he couldn’t understand, and the stupid twerp who was late to the meeting was getting all the attention.
Party-Harty held up a hand, giving his fellow villain a sharp glare. “Gale-”
“They want us for a job, right?!” He snapped, voice raising above any sound in the past few minutes. The barstool under him clattered backwards against the tile floor, and suddenly Rody was reminded that Gale was a full-grown adult and about twice his size in every way. Tornadoes of air gusted from his nose, the high points of his face both pale and flushed. Sharp blue eyes whipped from Party-Harty to the villains before them. “So why don’t you quit wasting our goddamn time and get on with i-”
Vwoom, shink, gurgle.
Rody felt like he blinked and Gale was dead.
That amorphous shadow man moved, graceful and unhurried yet fast as a snake-strike. Long ropes of black sand cascaded along the floor, flowing between the chair legs and shoe soles like irrigation around a construction site, and coalesced under Gale’s stupid chunky sneakers. The dim shadow they all casted underfoot opened into total darkness. Gale lost all gravity, fell, and then it closed.
Around his neck.
All that was left was his head, mouth still open with his half-baked complaints. Everything else was gone, fed to the monster lurking along the back wall. His eyes remained looking around for a moment too long, a trachea with no air whistling useless gurgles as his brain caught up to what his body had lost. A pool of blood, ever-expanding and yet not enough for such a gruesome death, seeped into the carpet below.
Rody looked away before Gale’s gaze went wall-eyed.
It wasn’t his first time seeing a dead body, not when he’d been in this business since the age of twelve. Nothing was easier than killing in a world that didn’t value life. He’d seen druggies overdose in alleyways, blood pooling in strange parts of their body, leaving them both cold and feverish. Lots of kids he used to work with ended up with a bullet through their brain because they tried to take a cut of whatever they were smuggling, and he (the one who didn’t) was usually made to wrap their bodies in trash bags and tape for the bigger, stronger guys to dispose of later. It was common. A standard, like a printer was to an office.
His stomach roiled, and he set his hand to his mouth like he was scratching his nose to keep from retching. From his pocket, warbled sadly and regurgitated a wet patch onto his glove cuff.
Stop looking at him. That’s just the price of opening your big, stupid mouth. He had it coming. Stop looking. He’s not even there anymore. He was an idiot and he died for it. You know better than that, so it won’t happen to you. So, stop looking.
He didn’t know how long he stared exactly but he knew it was long enough to make his eyes water. And long enough for the conversation to pass without him.
“-hope you remain amicable to our offers.”
“Oh, we are, no worries! Gale was a prick, I only brought him because of his powers. The other two are far more my cash cows than that jackass.”
“I see. We will make use of his quirk, even in death.”
“Oh, uh, good. Glad to hear it.”
With a long suck on his teeth, he sighed and held his lungs shut until it started to hurt. When it did, he breathed in, rolled his neck, and looked back at the conversation he’d missed. Put it away. Pay attention. You can be a baby later.
“-pretty straight-forward. We want to kill the Symbol of Peace, and we need manpower to do that. Japan doesn’t have enough, so we’re outsourcing. To you.” Shigaraki rolled his head like he was rolling his eyes, backed by Kurogiri’s gentle thunder of translation. “So, what can you do?”
It was a lucky thing that Party-Harty went first, because Rody was immediately too busy trying to explode Stanleyk with his mind to come up with a good lie.
That’s what they wanted?! Fighters?! Why in the fucking hell did the old man invite him to this?! They were looking for grunts, not runners! Rody wasn’t a henchman; he was a teenage nobody who wore a size small! Why the hell would Stanleyk put him in a room full of straight-up terrorists when all he had to offer was average human speed and a fucking bird?! Was this his master plan to finally get him to spill about Pino? On pain of death? He didn’t have anything useful to offer this team of whack-jobs; they’d just told their extremely top-secret high-end assassination attempt to a guy who could offer them nothing!
Oh god… they’d just told their extremely top-secret high-end assassination attempt to a guy who could offer them nothing.
The old man really is trying to get me killed….
“-sheds a gunpowder-like substance from my body that I can ignite when I snap.” Party-Harty’s smooth, confident voice barely registered until he heard the gentle click of fingers and a pop like a firecracker went off next to his head.
He caught a face full of smoke and crackle, finally abandoning his losing staring contest with the side of Stanleyk’s head. Little sparks ignited the air around Party-Harty’s hand. His other came up to wave the detritus away, showing off a bright pink fuzz-ball he’d been keeping up his sleeve. “I can store it in these, too. They’re engineered with a flint-clicker to ignite after I throw them.”
The lizard guy, for the first time that night, made an expression that wasn’t a bored scowl. His face opened, lit up like a kid being introduced to a candy store for the first time.
“Our compatriots are impressed.” Kurogiri said from the back of the room, warbling idly after finishing his translation duties. In all honesty, the other ‘compatriots’ looked disinterested at best, but Rody assumed it was polite if they pretended anyone but the Ninja Turtle gave a shit.
Party-Harty pocketed his little balls of dusty yarn with a satisfied grin. Stanleyk gave a slimy smile and a nod, like some kind of proud dad showing off his kid’s A+ report cards. “Glad to hear it!”
Shigaraki’s severed wrist pointed to Party-Harty, looking him over, before it turned to Rody. As if telepathically (maybe that was part of his quirk?) the shadow guy turned with him and gave him a slow blink. “And you?”
Shit, he hadn’t come up with a lie to give them. He’d been too busy trying to explode Stanleyk with his mind. Uhh, fuck! Fake it, fake it, fake it!
“Well, for one I can already speak Japanese.” he said in his most smarmy of pronunciations, shrugging his shoulders. Ok, a good enough start. Usually when he faked having a quirk it was some kind of teleportation thing, and then he’d give them the slip, or he’d say he could teleport little objects into his pockets and show something he’d picked off them earlier.
But he didn’t have anything to show, and he couldn’t escape with all of them watching him. He had nothing. Fucking nothing.
Pino gave a harsh, loud squawk that made even the bored burnt guy turn his head a bit, which made a flush rise to Rody’s cheeks despite his perfectly sculpted smirk counteracting it. “What was that?” Shigaraki hissed.
Well, nothing but the truth.
“... My quirk.”
The little bird flew up and nestled atop his head, ducking her beak into her wing like she was injured and hiding. “She’s sentient, but she acts on my intentions and emotions. I can’t control her, per se, but we’re usually on the same page… Her name’s Pino.”
The silence that passed was painful. Were there a working clock to tick or some crickets to chirp, he was sure the noise would deafen him. The crack-pots all stared like he was either insane, stupid, or both for playing such a stupid joke on people like them. Party-Harty was looking down at him with one perfectly quirked eyebrow, both like he’d won and like he was pitying second-place. Rody wasn’t even going to look at Stanleyk, the malicious glee he’d be sporting was probably potent enough to kill him.
Honestly, the only gaze he could hold was Gale’s, who was staring up at nothing from his place on the floor. Rody would probably be joining him soon.
Slowly, like he was thawing, Shigaraki tilted his head to the side. “... That’s it?”
And Rody, feeling the weight of his own mortality lifting, wheezed a shrunken, manic laugh and switched back to Japanese . “Yeah. That’s it.”
“...Huh.” He clicked his tongue. “That’s useless.”
“You’re telling me.” He was buzzing too hard to feel the insult land, instead shrugging with total agreement. “Honestly, I’m not sure why the old man even brought me. I’m more of a runner than I am a fighter, y’know?”
After he’d said it, he realized it was likely a bad idea to throw Stanleyk under the bus like that, considering these guys were hack-jobs and he was Rody’s best source of income. He was a smarmy asshole, but he didn’t deserve to die at the hands of Rody’s best-kept secret.
Or, at the least, he didn’t deserve a painful death about it.
“So… what do we do with you?” The auburn-haired woman asked, looking him over from behind her sunglasses.
Despite her question clearly being meant for the group of allies, Rody couldn’t help but answer. “Great question, ma’am. I have no idea.”
A silent pulse went through the room like he’d set off some kind of secret bomb. The villains before him were staring at him like Christmas had come early, and the Othenians were staring at him like they were really getting tired of him speaking Japanese without them.
“... What?”
Quietly, the girl sitting on the woman’s lap tilted her head, her giant cat-like pupils blown to be even bigger than they already were. “You called Magne ‘ma’am’.”
Ah shit, had his trans-radar lead him astray? A flush creeped up the side of his neck, and despite the habit of immediately grabbing Pino and hiding her when such a thing would happen, he let her sit and burrow into his hair. Maybe if they saw the embarrassment was legitimate, they would spare him the torture before they killed him.
“Sorry, was that not accurate?” “No, it is.” It wasn’t in a hurry, like how he used to interrupt people who assumed he was wearing cargo shorts for lack of a flowery skirt. She was immediately confident, a hard pillar of stoicism and assurance when she corrected his correction. Like she’d been doing it her whole life. “This is just a pleasant surprise, is all.”
When he spared her a glance, he could see some strange mixture of practiced steel and genuine- almost parental- affection aimed in his direction. It made something in him squirm. He wasn’t used to anyone looking at him like that, not with eyes that weren’t his same steel grey anyway. And those eyes hadn’t look at him for a long, long time.
He shrugged with a purposefully flat, bored expression. “Cool. Happy I got it in one.”
A harsh cackle, high and bouncy, suddenly escaped the comic-book guy still perched on the floor. “This kid’s great!” He gave him a double thumbs-up before he twitched and they twisted into a thumbs-down. “I don’t like him!”
Rody didn't know how to respond to that, so he just blinked and looked back to the big shadow-monster along the back wall.
“I know I’m not much use with this,” he muttered, holding Pino out in the palm of his hand. “But if I can help somehow, I’d like to. And if not, uh, well then just call me whenever you need a runner, I guess.”
Immediately the burnt guy scoffed a plume of smoke into the air (odd, considering he hadn't taken a drag of his cigarette beforehand). “You really think we’ll just let you walk out of here, pipsqueak?”
“Why wouldn’t we?” The auburn-haired woman- Magne, was that her name?- snapped, staring daggers into the strands of his greasy hair.
Head dipped back so his Adams apple stood stark against his neck, he shifted to his elbows. “Two words: Information. Leak. If we let him leave, he could rat us out.”
He knew he'd been thinking the same thing a few moments ago, but the admission made his heart jump in his chest. Pino squeaked, and he pocketed her entirely. Yeah, they knew, but he needed at least some dignity.
“Y’know, I don’t exactly have ties to Japan’s police force, right?”
The smoke-guy blew out a hoarse chuckle, flashing nicotine-yellowed teeth. “No, but I bet you do to some Portuguese thugs who’d want to chirp in on our success.”
“Otheon’s not a part of Portugal.” The dumbass, or anymore were both left unsaid. Now was no time to make enemies, and it certainly wasn’t the time for an Otheon History Lesson.
He waved a burnt, stapled hand in Rody’s vague direction. “Whatever.”
Then, because you can never trust a man in a top-hat, that stupid black-and-white mask decided to pipe up.
“Hmm… it could be a possibility.” It was far too loud and enunciated to be a loose thought, especially when coupled with the theatrical cradling of his chin. Rody could almost feel whatever eyes were behind that thing staring at him with the world’s most smug of grins. Bastard. “I’d hate to see our performance ruined by a limelight thief.”
In a desperate attempt to keep his head attached to his neck, he grit his teeth together and grinned. “I’m flattered, but I’m not that integral to the underbelly of Otheon. People don’t listen to runners, and they certainly don’t come to them for tips.”
A true fact, but paltry even to his ears. The smoking guy chortled, rolling his head to stab him with an electric blue gaze. “Perfect way to elevate yourself, then, isn’t it?”
And Rody, feeling the noose tightening, snorted. “Who said I want to elevate myself?”
“A lack of conviction is nothing to be proud of.” The lizard guy groused, snarling with offense at his want for a simple life demanded.
Rody whipped to him and snarled right back, because if he was going out, he wasn’t going to go out being thought of as a coward. Not by his family, not by his fellow criminals, and certainly not by a lizard in a bad cosplay.
“Sorry, but this isn’t exactly my life calling here.” He snapped, his smile going harsh and jagged along the edges. “I work to live, it’s as simple as that. And ratting you guys out to the OPD or whoever isn’t exactly going to get me anywhere but imprisoned.”
This time, it was the blonde girl who spoke up, tilting her head to the side like the cat she got her eyes from. “They wouldn’t cut you slack for helping?”
“Pfft, you must not be familiar with Otheon’s legal system.” Rody snorted, thinking back to the multiple hours of manual labor he’d been forced to do after some tourist reported him stealing from the dumpsters behind a chain bakery when he was eleven. It was the only time he’d gotten caught and charged, and even that little community service sentence had left him with scars on his hands that had never healed right.
At her pitying look, he turned away and addressed the room as a whole, shoving his hand in his pockets. “No, I would get the slammer like anyone else involved. Or the electric chair, depending on how nice they felt.”
An awkward silence rang before the burnt guy set his stupid cigarette to his lips, took a long drag, and flicked it into a nearby plant-pot.
“Hm… I still say we kill him.”
“Er- Mr. Kurogiri?” Stanleyk, more shaken and more fake than he’d ever heard him before, raised a hand. “I hate to interrupt, but if you wouldn’t mind tra-”
“They want to kill me.” Rody snapped, glaring daggers into his not-boss’s sweaty sideburns. “I have a useless power and I can’t fight, so they just told their top-secret terrorist murder plan to a rando who could sell them out, and now they want to kill me. That’s all you missed. Thanks for inviting me, by the way.”
He’d expected his blatant sass to be met with a sharp slap to the back of the head, maybe a curse in his direction or some old-man phrase about being civil in mixed company, but instead… Stanleyk looked sick. His face went pale, the red of his shiny nose falling to a pallid deli-meat color. Only the high points of his forehead remained flush, everything else fell like he’d suddenly shit all the blood out of his body.
Whip-fast, he turned to the gaggle before them. “Now hold on, fellas. Let's not to anything rash here! Mr. Kurogiri, we’d discussed an alternate assignment, right? So, I’m sure-”
“Shut up.”
It was like a gunshot, despite being little more than a dismissive, muffled noise from the half-distracted-on-his-phone hand-guy. His compatriots turned to him, questions on their brow, but his gaze never left Rody. It was… painful. Itchy. Like he was being infested with ants, or the top layer of his skin was being scraped away. Despite the greasy hair and stick-thin limbs, there was something off about the guy. Something erratic that Rody wanted no part of.
In choppy, stuttering English, he said “We will take both.”
Everyone in the room, Othenians included, stared like he was insane. Even Rody, who knew this was going to save his life, was baffled. Had he not heard all the very valid reasons to want him dead? Was he just fucking with him to make it hurt more? Guys who kept trophies often liked to make things hurt, but if so, then why not get his gang in on it? Surely, they’d be holding him down when he chopped him into pieces.
“Shigaraki,” The top-hat guy began with a creak to his voice “if I may-”
“How old are you, kid?” He cut off, as if he hadn't even heard it.
Why, do you only kill kids? “Uh, fifteen?”
“Do you go to school?”
Why, do you only kill educated kids? “...No?”
“Have you gone before?”
“Yeah- sorry, what’s this-”
“And you can speak Japanese.”
Rody was only refrained from snapping a blunt and frustrated “Obviously!” by the lizard guy standing to attention and turning in full to his gang-member. “Shigaraki, what is this about?”
“Remember that idea we were playing with? Getting the source code from UA?”
Everyone but the burnt guy nodded (he just rolled his eyes); apparently, they were all familiar with whatever a source code was. Despite that severed hand obscuring so much of that guy’s face, Rody could see the corners of a truly grotesque smile screeching along his pale, dry cheeks. His fingers twiddled over the phone still in his hand, the blue light casting him in horrid, stark shadows.
“He’s going to get it for us.”
… Huh? Was this guy having some kind of episode? Someone who stuck hands all over his body probably wasn't the most stable, of course, but he hadn’t expected a total break from reality in the middle of his dogshit job interview.
“We’re still doing that?” The auburn-haired woman muttered, looking between his phone and Rody. “I thought we’d scrapped it.”
“But we scrapped it because we didn’t have anyone who could pose for it.” Lizard-guy pointed a finger at the girls “Toga wasn’t willing, but it’s still technically viable.”
“It is.” With a jerky sort of pride, the guy flipped his phone around, showing everyone what he’d been playing with. “And it’s going to make our job quite a bit easier.”
It was hard to see, what with the dark room and the screen on full brightness, but Rody could make out some strange, sparse schematics and a plain, simple logo of an A inside of a U. What the hell is AU? Doesn’t that mean gold? Are they going to have me stealing from some high-end bank?
The building was shaped… really weird. Like a big four-columned H, with sky bridges running every which-way and a million tiny rooms lining every wall. What numbers Rody could make out were all wrong, either way too tall or in strange 9/47th-ass fractions.
But buildings bigger than they should be weren't enough to truly unsettle him. That came from the fact that nothing about these blueprints was labeled.
In the blueprints he’d perused before, every room had been labeled with some kind of code number (was that what a hand-guy meant about source code?) or name. Here there was nothing. Just lines to indicate walls and the understood assumption that whatever he was looking at was a place made by people who wouldn’t want to put the full layout of their building on the internet for anyone to download. Every room was labeled off-limits; only the basics of hallways and bathrooms were public knowledge, it seemed.
Rody looked up, blinking the blue light out of his eyes, to find his companions as stumped as he was and the villains clearly cottoning on to whatever this freak had running through his head. The top-hat guy hummed, tapping at the chin of his mask with an obnoxious clacking noise. “Well, we do need better intel…”
“And the insult would certainly add to the injury.” Magne chuckled, looking Rody over like she was trying to determine what size jacket he wore from intuition alone. “I like it.”
“But how would we even get him in?” The burnt guy groused, rolling his eyes. “You saw his quirk. Not exactly hero-material.”
“No, but with some Trigger it could be.”
“Oh yeah, an army of ducks is really gonna impress the judges.”
“It’s not the material, my dear Dabi, but what you do with it! I think our little ragamuffin could pull it off with the proper rehearsal.”
“But can we trust him?”
“If he knows what’s good for him, then we can.”
“Rody…?” Stanleyk hissed, leveling his glare as the gaggle before them continued to argue. “You mind telling me what’s going down?”
“Would if I could, old man.” He huffed back, still thrown for too many loops to do much more than blink and gape.
Every member of the gang before them suddenly turned as one, like a hive mind ready to claim its next victim. It brought all of them to attention; even Stanleyk, a man who never stood up straight in his life, was a few inches taller. Next to him, Party-Harty gave Gale’s severed head a final glance, knowing it would soon be out of sight for the rest of his life.
The shadow-beast, with that thundering, godly voice, spoke a sentence so plain it could do nothing but completely alter the entire course of Rody's life forever.
“Young man, we have a proposition for you.”
Stanleyk let Rody sit in his bar for another twenty minutes, rolling scotch glasses around with his palm.
Party-Hardy had left immediately after their visitors had; apparently, he had a base nearby that he would rather get caught sauntering to in broad daylight than spend another second with the two of them. Rody couldn’t blame them, he was as shaken as he was irritated.
In some ways at Stanleyk, for getting him into this mess, but more so at himself.
He had a rule: never work with villains if he could help it. He was a criminal, sure, but he wasn't a monster. He didn’t kill innocents or ruin lives; he just stole shit and passed it off. He lived in a dinky trailer with two kids and he was doing what he had to do to feed them. Nothing to make him rich. Just survival. His morals could handle survival.
The papers weighed heavy in his other hand. He hadn’t been able to take his fingers from around them despite shoving the bundle deep in his pocket the second he’d gotten it. If he twitched, he could feel the slight embossing of numbers against the smooth, unrippable plastic-cotton fibers that made up Otheon’s legal tender.
1,000 euru’s. One thousand. Equivalent to twenty-one-thousand peso. Almost nine hundred pounds. A hundred-thousand yen. One. Thousand. Euru’s.
It was enough for food that lasted. Actual homeschooling books. Some clothes with no holes in them. He could afford real medicine; no more hoping honey and peppermint schnapps would fix whatever was wrong! They could live, for a while, on a thousand euru’s. It wouldn’t be enough for a mansion in the Bahamas or anything, but with money like that he could actually plan for things. Say no when strangers offered him money in exchange for an hour of his compliance.
The villains had given it like it was nothing, a paltry thanks for meeting with them.
Because they’d offered more. Much more. Like, 1,000 a week more.
In exchange for aid in the murder of the Number One Hero of Japan: All-Might, The Symbol of Peace.
And he, like a greedy child, had taken it.
The glass rolled away from him, and Stanleyk took it back with a long, low huff.
“So… Pino, huh?”
“Fuck you.”