caleanope

[caleanope]

[caleanope]

She is special.

In their society, where (almost) everyone is magic, she is special.

Not in the way the Malfoys are with all their wealth, not in the way the Ollivanders are with their family magic and knowledge and not the way the Blacks were with their blood as pure as butter soft gold.

She is a half-blood, as most are, with both her parents also half-blood, as many are. But she is special, still. She has something all those others would love to have and kill to have and die to have and would kill her for and over.

She is a necromancer. It comes to her as naturally as reading minds comes to a natural born legilimens and as naturally as swimming comes to fish.

But when you think about a necromancer, you think of someone exceptional. Striking, in appearance and personality, but she is not.

Long, blonde hair more on the side of ashen than golden, not dark enough to be luscious and not light enough to gleam. Hazel eyes that barely count as such, a light brown with the barest flecks of green. A plain, oval face with moderately high cheekbones, a bit of an aquiline nose and bloodless lips that nearly faded into her face.

The only thing that would count as conventionally attractive about her were her long dark lashes (too long in her opinion, when they fell into her eyes it was agony) and her clear, lightly tanned skin from sleeping in the sun. Her mother hated it and kept waking her to slather sunscreen all over her face and arms.

She's glad she is not pale, even if it would fit with the whole necromancer aesthetic. Her dad is, having inherited it from his dad even if he didn't have the ginger hair to go with it, and he burns into a crisp if he so much as thinks about going into the sun.

[caleanope]

PoV: it’s 3am, you’re a talking dog and your high-strung human boss? partner? charge is obsessing over inconsequential things like how many leaves he counted in a forest and what angle they must have fallen from the trees

Kurogane watches Sakumo furiously write his mission report in the dim light of a candle and whatever light the moon provides. He is a little particular about light sources in the night, but Kurogane thinks Sakumo is just being melodramatic for the heck of it. A flickering candle can't be good for his eyes, especially with his tiny spidery handwriting. 

How Sakumo has handwriting on the verge of illegible despite being considerably talented in calligraphy is beyond him.

(That his ability to read is a work in progress is not the point. The point is, that even if he wants to, he can't. And for reference: He's seen actual dogs try to write. Also, in Kurogane's defense, Sakumo's father has even worse handwriting so it's not like he has a very good teacher to begin with.)

The scratching of the pen pauses again in favour of unrolling another stretch of the scroll. Kurogane decides to intervene.

"Sakumo, I think this is quite enough"

"Huh?" His eyes are predictably bloodshot. "I'm not done yet!"

"I don’t think this is what they mean"

"It's a mission report. I have to report what happened," Sakumo says slowly. 

It is frankly a little offensive even if the slowed speech really is just him still trying split his attention between finessing his sentences for said report and arguing with Kurogane.

The report that encompassed three scrolls now and has extended into a fourth about half an hour ago. 

"Aren't you only supposed to fill out that one form? This is a little excessive"

"This is what happened!" Sakumo ruffles his hair in frustration and continues to mumble under his breath. "…what type of wood made the campfire on the third day? We were nearly at the border to River-- I should bring a notebook next time…"

"This was a C-rank mission. They just want to know how it went in broad strokes and what you think was noteworthy," Kurogane says. 

Oh, no, wait--

"So everything might be important!" 

Sakumo starts to let out a whine barely audible to human ears.

If only his father hadn't left for a mission of his own that afternoon. Hatake Kumogi had basically raised Kurogane alongside his own son, so he knows that the art of writing mission reports is left to the parents to teach their children instead of a thing that is formally taught at the Academy, something which Kumogi is very relaxed about and not here to demonstrate to his son-- 

Kurogane gives up on Sakumo when he starts researching the acidity of some random stream in the Land of Rivers and actually tries to pull out a book on it.

The Academy itself wasn't established for that long yet, so there is still a chance they will improve on it. Sage, he prays they will improve on it, for al their sakes. Sakumo's class is only the fourth one to officially graduate, now that the syllabus is standardized enough to not interfere with clan techniques but also extensive enough that it does not require any clan training to pass. 

Generally. There are always some outliers.

Theoretically. 

Fine, it still somewhat expects training outside of its walls, but it isn't like families don't train their children regardless!

Maybe the Academy will incorporate lessons on how to write a mission report when the mission desk tires of piecing together a coherent timeline for one scroll and muddling through trivialities in the next few on top of having to deal with the different shinobi clan's idiosyncrasies regarding perceptions and reports. 

Sage knows how much of Sakumo's second scroll is dedicated to the incense that each of the merchants favour.

[caleanope]

Neighborhood Watch (4/?)

The first time Shiki had met the resident hero, he had been loitering in front of her door. She'd thought Aizawa was a homeless guy with questionable taste in goggles and somehow too much money if he managed to repurpose bandages into a scarf. That shit was expensive.

Then he had glowered at her when she didn't keep going (he was standing in front of her door!) and she had amended her thoughts from taxidermized raccoon made human to soon-to-be homicide convict. His weirdness was so potent, nothing would be able to hide it.

It turned out he was neither (but also closer to both than she would like). He was her new overworked neighbor who had forgotten both his keys and the number of his apartment. Back then, Shiki had thought that nothing could possibly be weirder, but it turned out that a lot of their meetings were skewed in the stressed-and-depressed direction and breaking his reasons for escalating a situation were less a matter of time and sleep or whatever the hell he ran on and more about something entirely out of the scope of her understanding. 

The number one incident to date had been him accusing her of stealing his cat when he had been out of the prefecture for nearly two weeks and she temporarily moved in with her brother's family on the other side of Musutafu. A villain had burst all the pipes on their street barely after Aizawa had left and, of course, the street was pristine when he came back. Surely sending a SWAT-team to break down the door in broad daylight and retrieve a cat that wasn't even stolen was some sort of abuse of authority.

But this was going to be a new low that neatly dethroned that. She could feel it coming as soon as she laid eyes on him.

Aizawa was a walking mummy, bandages swathing his form from head to toe with his capture weapon still looped around his neck and making him look like he was on the verge of actually becoming a pupa to undergo a metamorphosis into something that could probably survive on spite alone.

"What happened?!" She blurted out unthinkingly.

The nasty look he sent her pierced through the bandages obscuring his whole face from view.

"I'm counting that as a strenuous activity!" The blonde man fluttering around Aizawa shrieked, moving to slap him around the head and immediately aborting the move in an awkward sort of flail that nearly took both of them out.

With his blonde hair in a sloppy bun, out of his hero costume and, most importantly, not smiling, Shiki hadn't recognized Present Mic even after having met him a couple times in civilian clothes already. (Un)fortunately, he was not shy about using his quirk.

"…do you need help, Yamada-san?"

"No," Aizawa said.

"YES," Yamada shouted, ignoring Aizawa and his glowering.

"He discharged himself from the hospital today!" He continued in a non-quirk enhanced voice, but it wasn't that much better. She could hear the exclamation marks, especially when he gestured with his entire body at how Aizawa definitely still belonged in a hospital bed.

"How long," she asked as she unlocked the door to Aizawa's apartment since neither of the two of them seemed capable of it at the moment.

"How long what?"

"How long is he not supposed to do any sort of work more strenuous than breathing? I can prevent him from going on patrol for a while - if that's even necessary," she added under her breath, eyeing Aizawa being gently lowered onto his couch,"-but if you really want someone to sit on him you should ask the granny in apartment 19B."

"No--," Aizawa attempted to cut in again.

"YES!" Yamada yelled over him, already halfway out the door.

His mummified head snapped around with an ominous crack that undermined the poisonous and betrayed glare she could feel he was aiming her way.

"I'm going to tell them your neck did that." She smiled at him pleasantly.

As if to rub it in, his cat gently butted his arm before abandoning him to sit at Shiki's feet.

Aizawa's eyes flashed red in warning, shining through the bandages like pieces of coal.

"Watch it, I'm still on the clock!"

[1] [2] [3] [x]

[caleanope]

Shikaku is just passing by the compound gates when he sees Hatake Sakumo approaching, a white dog tucked under his arm like a sack of rice. Or a sack of fluff as it may be because the dog('s body?? It's shockingly limp and that cannot be any more comfortable for a canine than a human) is nothing but a cloud of white. Maybe it's not a dog at all but a plushie or something. What dog stays that clean?

"You were supposed to come get your dog, not bring another one," cousin Isuke drawls, his arms crossed in front of his chest. 

"I'll take them both back with me," Hatake-san assures. "It's just easier with this one." He hefts the dog up and it raises its head minimally to blink at Isuke and then turns to Shikaku to blink at him too before it went back to being a limp sack.

Isuke remains skeptical but dutifully drags himself into the compound. Shikaku tags along. He doesn't really have anything else to do and this promises to be somewhat entertaining. Hatake-san's nod towards him is friendly but the smile on his face is somewhat stained.

One of the deer, Hiromaru, is waiting for them at the edge of the Nara forest, shifting around restlessly. He settles a little when Isuke pets his flank but doesn't turn away from the outsiders.

"Alright" Hatake-san sets the dog under his arm on its feet, carefully arranging the legs like a toy whenever they threaten to give out. In the end he just lays the ninken on its side.

"Tsurara, come on" He cups the dog's head and rubs slowly at its ears, but the ninken just whines pathetically. 

Shikaku can sympathize -- he just wants to bury his face in the soft looking, impossibly clean fur. This is probably the one thing better than watching clouds: napping on one. 

Isuke watches on dubiously, silently judging Hatake-san's ability to keep his ninken in line and this particular one alive. 

"You should teach your ninken better," he says caustically. "Maybe then you wouldn't have to come and stop them from hunting our deer"

The ninken makes an offended noise that sounds more like a whine than anything and even Hatake-san looks put out instead of the permanently sheepish expression he had donned up until then. 

"He's really just herding them," Hatake-san mumbles.

"If Mao actually wanted to hunt your deer, there wouldn't be any deer left," the dog slurs at the same time.

Shikaku stares at the dog for a beat, the incredulity he feels mirrored on his cousin’s face.

"You're drugging your ninken? Isn't that some kind of violation to the contract?"

"She came to me like this!" A pause. "Pretty much exactly like this."

"So you're feeding her addiction," Isuke deadpans. He is summarily ignored.

"Look, part of me isn't even sure if Mao understands the human language and Tsurara here is the only one he even pretends to listen to anyways. Can you burn through the chakra inhibitors yet?" He asks the barely conscious sack of fur.

Tsurara sneezes. 

As if in answer, a loud bark echoes from deep within the forest, underlined by barely audible trampling of hooves. Hiromaru's head snaps towards the sound but he stays planted right next to Isuke.

With a resigned sigh, Hatake-san slings his ninken over his shoulders. It makes him look like a parody of the Nidaime and also explains why he didn't do that before when it would be more comfortable for both of them -- he can barely see anything through the fluff and he's trying not to get any of it in his mouth left and right.

"At least finding him is going to be easy"

[caleanope]

In which Sakumo’s Dog Summons help raise Kakashi before...before. I have a bunch of snippets for that but...it’s sorta hard to introduce them all bc it’s a pack, like Kakashi’s Summons.

may or may not become AU/canon divergent

"I think your dogs secretly hate me"

"Secretly? Jiraiya, I don't know how to tell you how much I wish they would keep it quiet. They tell you to your face that they hate you - they tell it to anyone who would listen. I'm sure if the Inuzuka recovered the Wolf contract, they would hate you through sheer proximity."

There was a brief silence in which Jiraiya was processing the words. Apparently Sakumo thought he wasn't taking him seriously enough because he tried to drive the point home.

"Just the other day Mao asked if you were replaced by an infiltrator because you weren't being weird enough."

"…but I just got out of the hospital yesterday after three months of employment"

"Remember what happened before you were discharged?"

He didn't exactly remember, but it was impossible to not hear about it. There was a sinking feeling in his stomach.

"You mean the time when I broke out of the hospital while they were still testing out antidotes?"

Sakumo shot him a sympathetic look.

[caleanope]

Neighborhood Watch (3/?)

Paperwork was sort of her thing. With a paper processing Quirk, she was incredibly good at being a paper pusher, hence her employment at the Archives of the Hero Public Safety Commission. Contrary to popular belief, however, Shiki didn't actually like doing paperwork, especially when it was just mind-numbingl sorting and boring stuff like study plans, field trip requests and school related things generally.

Going over these things was the work of a moment - especially if you actually kept to the deadlines which was the minimum required for semi-functioning time management. Unfortunately, she was the neighbor (and sort of forced supervisor) to a teacher at UA. Which meant he was a Pro-Hero. An Underground Hero, even. And on top of that, he was the homeroom teacher to a Hero course.

Time management for Aizawa was about as solid as a house of cards in a hurricane which coincidentally is what his living room looked like at least twice a year. The average was closer to about once a month actually, what with all the extra stuff these kids did and needed on top of a normal high school education.

Naturally, she had looked forward to seeing him drown in a wave of bleached white paper, miniscule printing and illegible handwriting but then the neighborhood hero had managed to look pathetic enough that she was forced to intervene. For the sake of her ear drums, at least, so that that man's pet cockatoo cursed with human speech wouldn't show up at their apartment complex every week to shriek him into motivation.

So yes, she was a little bit bitter about spending a Sunday evening at Aizawa Shouta's coffee table, seperating out last school year's paperwork from this year's. Which had started one week ago, so they were already behind. Maybe if she complained enough about it, he would kick her out and never speak to her again.

"Well, if your stupid lifestyle is not going to kill you, this backed up paperwork might. Look at this. I could kill a man with how big this stack is"

She shook said stack in her hands, then let it drop unceremoniously on the table. It creaked dangerously which was echoed by the cat sitting next to it.

"You could kill a man with half a sticky note," he droned from the other side of the couch.

"So could you. It's not exactly a special skill"

"That's not what I-"

"I'm not your secretary," she interrupted him.

Aizawa grumbled a bit but subsided (for now). With bit of luck, he would forget that they knew even each other because she had actually volunteered to do some of the paperwork for him years ago and has since been saddled with at least half of his workload, but she was realistic enough to settle for him being too exhausted to bring it up ever again. It kind of defeated the purpose of her being here, but nobody ever accused her of being a decent person.

In a trance, he watched her flick through the third file as thick as his thumb in as many minutes. On the other end of the table, crinkled papers smoothed themselves out  and shuffled into stacks with each one bearing a soft pastel sticky note declaring its contents in handwriting so neat it might as well be printed.

"Wanna switch quirks?"

She snorted. "And have you become even more of a ninja? No thanks. Edgeshot would sue me; that's his shtick. And you would give all your kids papercuts every time they annoyed you."

He grinned manically. They'd be dead within the week couldn't be more clear on his face if it was tattooed on his forehead. The boost of energy he got from that at least made him attack his own paper tower with newfound vigor.

Sadly, it didn't last very long.

"Isn't Togata Mirio one of UA's Big Three or something?"

Aizawa slowly raised his head but didn't look away from the suddenly very interesting schedule he was working on.

"Care to explain why I have a test from Togata Mirio, Class 1-A in my hands?"

When she flipped the test over to shove it in his face, nearly a whole stack came up with it. It was stuck to the top of a packet that was held together by too many staples in the corner and an out of shape paperclip.

"Are these from last year's homeroom?! Whoever thought you being a teacher was a good idea should be shot."

She let him snatch the papers out of her hands but he paid for it with a paper cut that she hoped would inconvenience him for the next week.

"Hizashi is going to cry when he hears about this" he replied, mulishly staring at two of his fingers slowly gathering blood between flaps of split skin.

"Hizashi is going to die you mean." She started on a new stack of files that turned out to be his current homeroom. "I guess you do learn though. At least you haven't expelled anyone yet, even though there are at least three students that warrant it"

Recovery Girl had yet to write a recommendation for some green kid who looked like his picture was taken at gunpoint though, so despite his numerous injuries he was probably fine. Maybe. If this was a requirement of his Quirk, wanting to become a Pro-Hero was either a way of living out his masochistic tendencies or a death wish.

Aizawa should really talk to that boy instead of penciling in a reminder to do so. And adding 'eventually' to top it off.

"I re-enrolled last year's class, didn't I?!"

"And who did the paperwork?"

"You offered!"

She jabbed him in the side with her pen.

"So you could take a nap, not make an effort to get yourself killed! And how do you repay me? By siccing Hound Dog on me because apparently you never carry your phone whenever he calls! Honestly, your timing must be some kind of sixth sense. Otherwise Present Mic would be here screaming down the building at all hours of the day"

He grumbled noncommittally. Now that she thought about it, it really was a minor miracle that he always managed to ignore Hound Dog without Present Mic also feeling snubbed.

"...Don't tell me you actually blocked Hound Dog."

There was a telling silence.

"I swear to God, if you don't sent your class to Hound Dog should something happen, I will get you a one-way-ticket to paperwork hell, don't test me."

[1] [2] [x] [4]

[caleanope]

Neighborhood Watch (2/?)

Every time she stepped foot into Aizawa's apartment, Shiki was pleasantly surprised by the home feeling it had; it was absolutely not something that he was responsible for, she was sure. If left to his own devices, he would have the blank walls of a Hero's polar opposite - which, surprisingly, was not a serial killer because Heroes and Villains alike plastered their work spaces with photographs and notes like maniacs.

(She would know, the Archives of Hero Public Safety Commission contained basically everything that even remotely related to Heroes at all. Some of those walls looked like the owner was planning on marrying whoever was on there, others like they planned on murdering them and some even both.)

Aizawa tried to wiggle out of her grip, but it was half-hearted at best. Or maybe he was just that weak now. Either way, it just proved her right and Aizawa knew it. He went boneless when she pushed him onto his beaten up couch.

There was no way he would be sneaking out tonight, especially with his cat curled up on his lap and purring like a motorboat.

"I'll make tea," she announced and marched into his kitchen where she spotted drying dishes. At least she only had to worry about his lack of sleep this time around and not how to feed him. For a man who looked like he could barely afford his apartment, Aizawa could be an incredibly picky eater.

Honestly, she was surprised he ate at all. It's such a human thing to do and he was more of a caricature of a human, too serious and silly all at once, that is was hard imagining him doing something so mundane.

Shiki once saw him rolling down the stairs in his sleeping bag because he'd nearly bashed his head open on the handrail trying to hop. He'd then decided that getting up would be too much effort and wormed his way to the konbini down the street.

He also swung into (and broke!) her window like a demented monkey when he locked himself out of his apartment one night and instead of knocking on the door or ring the bell like a normal person, Aizawa had decided breaking and entering was a valid tactic for retrieving his spare key.

This guy was certified law enforcement.

(She didn't want to even think 'Hero' because she associated that with eye watering colors and too tight bodysuits which was nothing like Aizawa at all.)

"Sure, make yourself at home," came the sarcastic drawl.

"I'm here about as often as you. I'm practically your live-in nanny"

There was a momentary silence before he made the noise akin to a beached whale. It spooked his cat enough that she nearly brained herself with the kettle when it barreled into her legs.

[1] [x] [3] [4]

[caleanope]

Neighborhood Watch (1/?)

Shiki was struggling up the stairs when she saw the human form of sleep deprivation slouching down their landing. As soon as Aizawa spotted her head peeking over the steps, he froze, one foot still in the air, before he set it down deliberately.

The smile she plastered on her face was as wide and plastic as the All Might figurine's from the boy in apartment 31A. She made sure to shift half a step to the left so that the setting sun was beaming directly into his scruffy face.

"You don't have patrols scheduled tonight, right?" She asked brightly, fully aware that he knew that she knew that he knew he didn't.

"One of the Pro Heroes was hospitalized-"

"And I'm sure his agency organized a replacement for his patrol"

Aizawa scowled at her. "Crime doesn't sleep-"

"And neither do you," she cut him off again.

They shuffled back and forth, him trying to get the sun out of his eyes and her making sure it burned right into his retinas. Not that it made that much of a difference. He would have to hunch uncomfortably for her head to actually block out the light.

"Wanna know what you find when you look up 'workaholic' in the dictionary?"

"Is this a trick question? ….is the answer supposed to be 'a picture of me'?" His blink was bleary and slow. It looked more like he'd closed his eyes one by one and his scowl was about as intimidating as-- okay fine, it was plenty intimidating but his face was naturally set in a scowl so Shiki was sort of immune.

"No, it's the definition of workaholic, which is what you are, and the only reason there is no picture of you next to it is because you will be dead before they can take it." She stared him down, ignoring the way the grocery bags bit into her fingers and the crook of her elbows.

"So, you have patrol tonight?"

"I guess not," Aizawa sighed after a tense pause and stepped forward to relieve her of some of her burden.

[x] [2] [3] [4]