#ghl: renegade

[ghoulical]

Don't Judge a Book by Its Cover

Part 3 of Renegade, a My Hero Academia fan-fiction.

Word Count: 7,343 Pairing: Tomura Shigaraki x Female!OC Warnings: Minor harassment Summary: Ren’s mysterious client returns, but their light conversation takes a drastic turn, and she has to face the consequences of her actions, whether she wants to or not.

“Have you heard anything from Grubby yet?”

Ren didn’t always mean to eavesdrop on her customers, but sometimes, she just couldn’t help herself.

“No, haven’t seen him at all since last week.”

Sometimes, it was all too difficult not to.

“Bartender, another round here, please!”

She wiped her hands down with a spare cloth, threw it over her shoulder and scurried over to the other end of the bar, where the three loud men—villains, no doubt—waited for her arrival and their quick refill of golden nectar. With a small smile, she nodded and swiped the empty glasses from the bar counter, then sidestepped slightly to the right to hold one of the glasses at an angle underneath one of the faucets on the draft tower. The other hand reached up to hold down the handle, and she made sure to keep her eyes on the level of amber liquid pouring into the glass even as her ears paid their attention elsewhere.

“I heard he got caught in some trouble with a hero.”

“Grubby? No, you can’t be serious.”

“I’m not shitting you, man.”

“Any idea who the bastard is?”

She let go of the handle and slid the refilled glass over to the man closest to her, nodding at the feeble ‘thank-you’ he offered her, before she held another glass underneath the faucet and begin filling it with the same liquid.

“No clue, but I’ve heard rumors there’s a new hero in town, running around rounding villains up in the middle of the night.”

“In the middle of the night?”

“Heroes don’t sleep, man.”

“It’s not the Number One Hero, is it?”

“I think we would know if All Might himself ever shows his face around here. No, I think it’s some B-rated hero or something. Don’t think I’ve ever seen him on the charts, too, in fact.”

Another full glass. No thank-you this time, though. Another client raised their hand and was calling for her from the other end of the bar. One more to go.

“What? A B-rated hero taking down Grubby? That’s impossible, dude.”

“Not impossible, man. Rumour has it this new hero’s got some kind of Quirk that can cancel out other Quirks—sure explains how someone like him can take poor ol’ Grubby down.”

Huh. That sounds familiar.

“That’s nothing but a whole lot of bull. There’s no way a Quirk like that exists. I mean, what’s the point of having Quirks then, if someone has an overpowered one just like that?”

Nope. It’s not impossible.

“What do you think, bartender?”

“Huh?” Ren forced herself to look up, only to immediately find herself being the center of attention of all three men sitting on the other side of the bar from where she stood, eyes staring at her in genuine inquiry. “What?”

“What do you think about what Archie just said here?” one of the men asked again, smirking as he nudged the side of the man sitting beside him, who grunted and scowled at the gesture. “About some B-rated hero running around with a Quirk-erasing… Quirk?”

She pondered their question for a moment—not the content of the question itself, but of how she should respond to it—until she heard the sloshing sound of liquid spilling out, forcing her to snap out of her daze to realize she had dispensed just a little too much beer into the glass she was holding onto. She quickly yanked the glass away from the faucet as her other hand released the handle, then pulled down the cloth on her shoulder to start wiping the sides of the glass, ensuring it was dry before serving it out to the last of the three men.

“What do I think?” She slung the cloth back around her shoulder as she passed the glass over to the man sitting furthest from her. “Does it matter what I think?”

“No.” Of course not. “But it does if it means we get to call out on Archie’s bullshit here.”

A round of boisterous laughter. All the red-haired bartender could offer, however, was a smile.

“Well, nothing’s impossible,” she replied, shoulder’s lifting for a small shrug. “I didn’t think you boys would come back here after what happened last Friday night, but colour me surprised to see you alive and back on your feet for another round of drinks, Archie. We’re always glad to have you back here.”

Another series of raucous laughter, still at the expense of poor Archie, who could do nothing more than scowl at his two friends, wince at the painful memory she abruptly brought up, and raise his drink in respect for the bartender’s perfect response.

“Kudos to you, bartender.”

“I’m here all night, boys. Now, if you’ll excuse me—” She tilted her head to the side at the other customer awaiting her service. “—I’ve got a job to do. Call if you need anything else.”

She left the three men to their own devices to tend to the lady sitting at the other end of the bar, who had been calling for her attention in the last two minutes. Their words continued to linger in the forefront of her mind even as she asked the middle-aged woman what she wanted to drink, correctly guessing the next order was going to be a martini, and pretending to be surprised at the request for both the olives and the lemon twist addition to her drink.

And even as her hands began to set in motion, reaching for a pint glass, the vermouth and the ever-essential gin to the well-beloved cocktail, she couldn’t stop the men’s conversation from distracting her mind just a little bit, almost causing her to forget she already added the gin into the mixture when she started to pour another two extra ounces into the jigger. Shaking her head did nothing but push the thought aside for a brief moment, as she finished making the cocktail before serving it to the lady with an extra warm smile in addition to the extra-extra drink she ordered.

She stepped back to allow the woman to enjoy her drink in solitary peace and quiet, and allowing herself to mull over her thoughts for a little bit as she leaned her hip against the back counter, folding her hands in front of her and keeping her gaze straight across the room to pretend as if she was still keeping a close eye on all the clients in the bar as the job required her to.

So, she sighed. Shouta’s in town. She couldn’t remember when she last saw her half-brother—well, she did see him on TV about a few weeks ago. She only caught a mere glimpse of him, however, standing at the edge of a row of heroes, almost invisible behind his more well-known colleagues—that was right she heard the creaking of the front door echoing off the bare walls of the apartment, signifying her father’s return from the shop, and forcing her to shut the TV off and scurry back to her bedroom before his shadow could even reach the living room.

Imagine how livid her father would be if he caught the sight of her own half-brother—his former stepson—on TV. She didn’t need to give him another reason to be mad at her, given he could come up with a dozen each day already.

She missed him. Of course, she missed him. She almost laughed when she first caught him on TV. He looked much, much older now—there was a slight stubble growing on his chin and underneath his nose, and his long locks of hair were unkempt, almost too reminiscent of their mother’s, as well as Ren’s if she hadn’t dyed it vermillion red a few months ago, right before she took up the job at the bar.

Pro Heroes should be well-compensated for their public service work, right? And yet, somehow, her brother could easily be mistaken for a lost homeless man—a black blur in the background amongst the abundance of colours on that TV news segment. Shouldn’t his aunt be reprimanding him for keeping such an unruly, unsightly appearance like that? Was he still even living with his aunt? Maybe not anymore.

How old was he now? Almost thirty, probably?

God, it had been so long since they last saw each other. Would he even recognize her now? Hell, what would he even think, seeing her like this? Ren herself scoffed at the thought: Shouta Aizawa, the Pro Hero who has helped countless of lives and thwarted villains for a living; and his little sister, Ren Kagawa, a literal nobody who was paid to facilitate the awful habits of the people she surrounded herself with on a nightly basis.

She took a deep breath and sighed. Reaching out to him was a terrible idea. She couldn’t imagine the look of disappointment across his face if he saw her like this. She didn’t want to even think of it.

She was still proud of him, though. Hell, who wouldn’t be proud to call him a brother, or even a friend, for that matter? She could imagine all the hurdles he had to jump through to graduate from U.A.—with a Hero License, for that matter, and yet, graduate he did indeed.

Maybe, if things were different back then—if she had persevered as much as he did, she might have had the chance to attend U.A., too.

Maybe. Maybe not.

“Kagawa-san.”

She looked up, breath catching stuck in her throat as soon as her eyes rested upon the familiar sight of greyish-blue curls peeking from underneath a black hood, attached to the same black sweatshirt he wore when she first saw him about a week ago. His head wasn’t bent down as much, allowing her to catch a glimpse of his piercing crimson eyes staring at her through his bangs.

“Shigaraki-sama.” She took a deep breath. Speaking of heroes… “You’re back.”

He stopped dead in his tracks, just as his hand was about to reach out to latch itself onto the bar stool, then tilted his head slightly to the side, eyes narrowing almost imperceptibly. “Am I not allowed to, Kagawa-san?”

“Well, no—err, I mean—” She cleared her throat, hoping it would stop her from stammering so much. “You’re always welcome to come back, of course.”

Not that she could do anything to stop him, anyway.

He hummed as four fingers latching onto the bar stool right across from where she stood, then dragged it out before gliding over to sit right in front of her. “There is still business to discuss, Kagawa-san.”

“Of course.” Yoshinaga made it clear last week that this so-called ‘business’ was nothing she could nor should stick her nose into. Not this time, at least. “The manager is in his office right now. I can go call him for you if you want—”

“No, it’s fine,” the blue-haired young man murmured, waving a feeble hand at her before casting his tired glance off to the side. “Leave him be. The meeting’s not supposed to start for another half hour, anyway.”

“Oh.” She didn’t know if she should hold her breath or sigh in relief. “I see. Well.” She tried clearing her throat again, then closed her eyes before addressing him with a routine smile. “Can I get you anything while you wait?”

The three men from before had gone silent, it seemed; when she turned to face them, she caught Archie’s eye just as he was stepping off his bar stool, forcing the young man to freeze on the spot the moment their eyes met. When his friends loudly beckoned him to join them, he finally lifted his hand from the bar, revealing the money he had left to pay for the three men’s drinks, before he hopped off and scurried over to regroup with his friends as they headed out the door without a second glance back.

She felt her shoulders deflate as she turned her head back to face the blue-haired young man sitting before her, and tried not to stare when his free hand went up to start picking at his neck again.

“Maybe,” he murmured, almost to himself if his voice weren’t audible enough for her to hear. “But I think I’ll get something else for tonight.”

Not a Manhattan man, then. “Anything you have in mind?” she asked, words flying out of her mouth almost automatically.

He pondered her question for another moment, eyes gazing distantly at the rows upon rows of bottles lined neatly across the shelves behind her. “Heard from a friend that a whiskey sour’s pretty good.”

“Whiskey sour, huh?” Ren couldn’t resist smiling at his words. “Your friend has good taste.”

He hummed again, but didn’t offer her any further response as she picked up a jigger in one hand, and the bottle of lemon juice in the other. She kept her head down as she worked to make his drink—she had worked the job long enough that her hands moved on their own volition, not caring less about little spurts or spills from swinging a bottle too far or tipping a full jigger at too big of an angle, but as she poured the appropriate liquids into the shaker, she found herself physically trying to keep a steady hand, making sure she measured exactly the right amounts needed to make his requested drink.

Her eyes almost flitted up when she felt him frowning at her, as she cracked the egg open on the brim of the shaker and began separating the yolk, letting the egg white drip down into the shaker’s contents.

“What are you doing?” he murmured, voice laced with prudence but also masked fascination.

“Making you a whiskey sour,” she promptly replied, her eyes fixated on the egg, gently tossing the remaining yolk to the other half of the shell before discarding it.

She closed the top of the shaker, gripping it on one hand as she rocked it back and forth, all the while her left hand remained idle and awkward resting in front of her thigh.

“You mix a raw egg into it?”

“Just the egg white.” She bit down on her lip, feeling his gaze weighing down on her. She stopped and placed the shaker back on the table, opened it to drop a large chunk of ice into it, then replaced the cap to start shaking it earnestly the second time around.

“I’m not going to get sick from it, am I?”

She pressed her lips to a thin line. “You’ll be fine. Trust me.”

“I never said I didn’t.”

She almost frowned at his words, but he didn’t seem to pay any attention to the strange expression on her face, one she was positive she made instead of that frown.

“If I recall correctly,” she muttered, still keeping her head bowed down as her primary focus remained at the coldness beginning to spread through the metal and onto her hand, “the last time you were here, you were questioning my judgment on some things.”

“On your decision to take up a job here,” Shigaraki corrected, his voice loose and unrestricted as he leaned his head against his fist again, elbow planted firm on the top of the counter. “Not so much on how you do your job itself.”

“Oh.” She picked up a chilled coupe glass from the fridge, then set it gently down in front of her as the other hand positioned the shaker above it, holding the cap firm with two fingers before she tipped it over, letting the liquid pour through the strainer and into the cocktail glass. “Well, I suppose this is another chance at either verifying that statement, or completely disproving it in a blink of an eye.”

She shook the metal container a bit to let the last drops fall into the glass before setting it aside, then picking up the bottle of bitters, dashing the brown liquid across the white foam forming on the surface of the cocktail. As a final touch, she used a toothpick and glided the tip across the line of bitters, creating a feather pattern across the foam—a nice artistic touch, should she say so herself—before gently picking the glass up and setting it down right in front of the villain.

“One special whiskey sour,” she said, finally turning her eyes up to meet his crimson orbs, as he lifted his head up from his hand in clear anticipation, “for one special man.”

One of the villain’s eyebrows lifted in genuine intrigue, before he tilted his head down to stare at the cocktail placed in front of him.

“Special, huh?” He made another short, soft hum, before he picked up the glass, exercising almost as much caution as she did—four fingers clutching the stem while the fifth remained dangling in the air—brought it over closer to his chapped lips. “Is it now? Or are you just saying that to make me feel special?”

“Can’t it be both?”

He tipped the glass and took a sip of his drink without another word, eyes closed and all, before placing the glass back down on the surface of the counter. Her eyes flitted back down when his eyes flew open, as soon as he finished ruminating on whatever he tasted in his mouth just now—could be good, could be terrible, depending on his own personal palette, though from her experience, whiskey sours were always a pleasant taste to even some of her more fickle customers.

“Not bad.” And yet, he winced, creating more wrinkles on his aged face, though less noticeable than he did the first time last week. “I guess I shouldn’t complain about the sourness when it’s on the name of the cocktail itself.”

“Did it change your perception of me at all, though?” she questioned, eyes briefly flitting up to him with some apprehension, but not enough to counter her curiosity for his answer.

“Does it matter that much to you,” he asked instead, his crimson eyes quickly finding hers as he glared deeply into her, “that I do not change what I think of you?”

“You said you trusted me, Shigaraki-sama.” She shrugged feebly, turning her head down to stare at her hands resting on the rubber mat on her side of the counter. “And I’m practically a stranger to you. I just want to know how that’s possible.”

“I know your name.” He shrugged, placing his head against his fist, but not so much leaning against it, bending his spine at just a slight expressive angle. “I know where you work, who you work for, and that you have an impressive knowledge and skill when it comes to what it is that you do. Is that not enough?”

He wasn’t wrong. She saw these situations in TV shows, like those awful soap operas, before—hell, even on real-life news sometimes. A villain could take advantage of even the smallest morsel of information—whatever leverage they could obtain of their desired target—and manipulate it to serve whatever nefarious intentions they could have.

In this case, Shigaraki could just inquire Yoshinaga about her private details—her cell phone number, her home address, which could spiral off into dangerous possibilities if she wasn’t careful with how she approached him now.

She almost shuddered when she finally realized exactly everything he spoke to her just seconds ago. Her eyes flew up almost impulsively, locking into his blood-red irises for a brief moment before he turned his own gaze away from her, down to the coupe glass pinched between his fingers.

“And no—for the record, you are just as skillful as I believe you to be,” he concluded, chapped lips curving into a small frown as he continued to stare at the pearl-white foam of his cocktail. “I don’t know what a whiskey sour is supposed to taste like, but I know what whiskey tastes like, and judging by its name, I’m guessing it’s supposed to be sour, so this fulfills my expectations from you.” He brought the glass back up to his lips and took another sip. A breath later, his frown twisted into a small, contented smile. “Surpassed them, in fact. Very well done.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere, Shigaraki-sama.” She looked down, one hand already fetching a dry white cloth, while the other picked up a wine glass and overturned it, before stuffing the cloth inside and wiping the glass around the rim. “About seventy percent of my clientele here is of the gender opposite to mine.”

Another small, curious hum. “And yet, you treat me differently than the rest of your patrons.”

“Do I?” Beside them, the middle-aged woman called the bartender softly, turning the latter’s attention briefly towards her. With a tight-lipped smile, the lady nodded to the cash she left beside the empty martini glass, covering the line of her gaze with a pair of sunglasses as she stepped off the bar stool and wordlessly headed back towards the double doors.

Ren nodded, setting the cloth and wine glass down, and kept her head down as she stepped over to the empty martini glass, retrieving it alongside the cash the lady had left behind. “How so?”

She walked over to the cash register—it still wasn’t too far away from where Shigaraki was sitting, considering he sat right in the middle of the bar, equidistant to both the lady and the three men from earlier, and just a few centimeters off from where she stood now, in front of the cash register. It was almost as if he was making sure she paid attention to him, and now only him, seeing as everyone else in the room had already left, and no new customers had wandered in since the minute Shigaraki did.

“Didn’t you say I was special?” the villain quipped, before he took one last sip of his drink. “Or do you really say that to all your clients?”

“You pique my interest.” She wasn’t lying. As dangerous as he was—as much as he triggered all the red alerts, and all the warning signs inside her mind—she couldn’t help herself but be intrigued by this strange, blue-haired villain. “About as much as I have piqued yours, I’m sure.”

He made another soft sound that, coupled with his sharp exhale, almost sounded like a condescending scoff. “You seem rather confident despite that fact.”

“I don’t see why I shouldn’t.”

“I’m a villain, Kagawa-san.”

She blinked her eyes, trying to keep her focus on slipping the bills and coins into their appropriate sections.

“Look around you. Even people who don’t know me cower from my mere presence here.” He sighed, then breathed out a small chuckle. “Unfortunate for you, of course—it seems I’ve driven all your customers away.”

It was the least of her worries, she thought. If what happened last week were to repeat itself, she wasn’t going to linger too long here tonight, anyway.

“But, as I said before,” Shigaraki continued, folding his arm down against the table and shifting in his seat. She was almost positive he was leaning a little bit closer against the bar now, putting less proximity in the already-limited space between them. “You have awful judgement when it comes to determining which clients you should approach, and with how much caution.”

“I’ve dealt with villains before.” She shoved the cash register shut before returning to her post in front of him, picking up the cloth in one hand and another wine glass in the other. “I’ve had quite a few threaten me once or twice before, too.”

“You think I’m just another ordinary villain.” He frowned, almost mimicking her expression. “I assure you, Kagawa-san, I am much more dangerous than any other villain you’ve met here before.”

She believed him—she had little doubt that he was indeed as dangerous as he claimed to be, and as he appeared to be, too. Maybe she was a masochist, twirling fire batons while walking on a tightrope, talking to him like this. But, if her suspicions about his character—and about his Quirk, above all else—were indeed true, then there would be an invisible mattress right underneath the tightrope, ready to catch her when she would inevitably fall.

She just had to be careful not to drop the batons and set everything around her on fire once she does.

“Well, you’re not threatening me yet,” she murmured, keeping her gaze on the wine glass in her hands and careful not to break the fragile object. Subtle threats, maybe, but she wasn’t going to count them all—she probably couldn’t even count them with both her hands if she wanted to. “Until then, you’re a client who has recurring business with the manager. That alone is enough to spike my intrigue.”

“Is it because I look weak?”

Her frown deepened, making itself obvious without her explicit intention. “What?”

Her eyes flew up, and a low scowl was forming across his face, hidden under the shadows his bowing head casted over himself. “Thin and frail, like I’m about to fall at any second.” He lifted a lazed hand, middle finger brushing against the brim of the coupe glass. “Is that why you underestimate me?”

“Looks are often very deceiving.” She glanced back down, replaced the glass on the tray, and picked up another one. “A man can stand at ten feet tall with the build of a gorilla and skin of a rhinoceros, and yet, he can barely hurt a fly.”

“And me?”

“You, Shigaraki-sama—” She took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. “—the complete opposite.”

She had seen this in TV shows, too—read it in books when she was still able to afford them, and had time to read them without having it swatted away or thrown out without her knowledge.

It was the little people that kings should be afraid of. Sometimes, it was a wise old man who rallied his fellow survivors in a siege against their oppressors. Other times, it was the black sheep outcast, fueled with his own will, and often hatred or vengeance, who would rise up and rob the throne from right underneath the king’s nose.

Shigaraki was a man capable of great destruction, if he willed it to be. His hands told her as much.

Her eyes wandered to his hands as she thought of them, as her own remained still, with the cloth stuck idle inside the wine glass. “You never hold anything with all of your fingers,” she noted, eyes staring at his long, gaunt fingers peeking from the long dark sleeve of his sweatshirt. “If I have to take a guess at what your Quirk is, it has something to do with when you touch something with all five of your fingers.”

Then there were those lines beneath his eyes, making him appear at least ten, even twenty years older than he should be. Certain Quirks had significant side-effects on their users, even if it was just an Emitter Quirk—likely the case with Shigaraki as well, hence the wrinkles underneath his eyes, not to mention his deathly, pale yellow skin.

“I would say.” She took a deep breath as she forced herself to stare up at his deep crimson eyes, then exhaled it slowly, almost painfully. “Something along the lines of rapid deterioration or degeneration of everything you touch, with all five of your fingers?”

For a brief moment, all she could hear was the idle, but almost inaudible ticking of the clock in the far corner of the room, as well as the whistling of the wind outside the closed doors. She couldn’t hear her own breathing, nor the beating of her own heart as she remained standing frozen still, trying to ignore the anticipation and dread slowly creeping its way up her stiffening spine.

The villain took his time before she saw the slightest of twitches from his dark-clothed figure. His head bowed low enough that she had no means of seeing his expressions and facial reactions, much less decipher it and determine if she should be making a run for the doors at this exact moment.

All she could do was stand and wait, as her hands began to move again, wiping the wine glass around its brim before replacing it back on the tray.

“I’m impressed, Kagawa-san.”

Ren didn’t know what to expect from those words; when her eyes flitted up towards him, however, she caught a small glimpse of the curve of his smirk before he placed four of his fingertips around the brim of the emptied coupe glass in front of him, the little finger hovering just several millimeters above it.

“You were able to derive all that from meeting a stranger two times in the span of over one week?” She heard the click of his tongue, and her shoulders dropped. “You would have been a great battle analyst in another life, Kagawa-san.”

He lifted the glass up—an act that in itself would alarm the bartender considering how he was handling such a fragile item—but what she didn’t expect was his final finger made the lightest tap against the side of the glass, but that brief moment of contact alone was enough to cause the coupe glass to start cracking in his grip, before it shattered—no, disintegrated right before her eyes, all in a quickest blink of an eye.

The corner of Shigaraki’s chapped lips twitched. “That is, if you didn’t have such terrible judgment on people’s characters, as you do now.”

His hand hovered still above the bar counter, and all that was left of the coupe glass was a pile of microscopic glass shards, almost like ash, in a small mound right underneath it.

Ren blinked but didn’t avert her gaze from the ash pile for at least a good solid minute. She almost scoffed at the realization—at least she wasn’t wrong, she thought to herself.

“A simple ‘yes’ would’ve been sufficient, Shigaraki-sama,” she murmured, keeping her voice low as she crouched underneath the counter to retrieve a small dustpan and a spare cloth. When she stood back up, she tried not to wince under his burning glare as she moved to wipe the ash pile with the cloth into the dustpan. “You didn’t need to destroy one of our glasses to prove it to me.”

As much as she couldn’t anticipate his response to her apparently accurate assumption, her own response was something he did not expect either; his gaze continued to weigh down on her, watching her every movement as she tossed the remnants of his coupe glass into the trash bin underneath the counter, set the supplies aside and move to wash her hands in the sink beside her.

“The manager usually doesn’t take kindly to clients who mess with bar property,” she continued, though her voice grew almost monotonous, sounding more like reciting a memorized speech than making a witty remark. “But I have a feeling he will let it slide for you, Shigaraki-sama.”

Another brief moment of silence, as she felt the villain narrowing his crimson eyes at her—she couldn’t tell whether it was out of spite, irritation or intrigue, as she kept her head bowed down at a small angle, barely glancing at the blue-haired young man from the top peripherals of her vision.

“You’re not afraid of me?”

Her eyes flew up, studying the lines across his face but not quite staring him straight in the eye. “What do you mean?”

“I can kill you,” he seethed through a tight-lipped snarl, almost growling through his teeth as his expression furrowed. “I can touch your hand right now and kill you where you stand.”

“You could.” No, he couldn’t, but he didn’t know that. He didn’t need to.

She saw his jaw muscles tense, and his fingers curled inwards, forming a tight fist. “Then why aren’t you afraid of me?”

The bartender shrugged—maybe she shouldn’t have, since it probably added insult to injury, but she couldn’t help herself. “What’s there to be afraid of?”

“You’re not afraid to die?”

She took a deep breath and sighed. “I’ve gone past that months ago, Shigaraki-sama.” Her head tilted down again as she picked up the cloth and yet another wine glass. “If I was so afraid for my own life, I wouldn’t have stuck around as long as I have. We wouldn’t have even met each other last week. And besides.” She pressed her thumb around the brim of the glass. “Does it matter that I’m not afraid of you?”

“I’m a villain,” he snarled, almost slamming his fist down to the table. His curled bangs fell over his face, casting his features back in shadows. “Pretty little girls like you should be running for the hills at the mere sight of me. What kind of villain am I if I can’t instill fear to people around me with every step I take?”

“A villain who was forced into this life,” she replied, perhaps too quickly. She didn’t even put much thought into it—the words flew out of her mouth before she could even stop herself, like dashing bitters across or spraying absinthe into a cocktail just as the customer asked her not to. “A villain who wasn’t born in it, but had no other choice but to go through with it, because there was nothing else waiting for them on the other side of this sort of life.”

Yoshinaga berated her about this countless of times about this—well, more like a light scolding, admonished her for speaking her mind in a place she shouldn’t, especially considering the job. Villains were dangerous people, with dangerous mindsets and intentions. She should watch what she said to people, especially when the old man wasn’t around, because no one would be able to stop these brutish clients from doing any harm to her otherwise.

And maybe she did underestimate the blue-haired stranger in front of her, because she sure did not predict at all what was going to happen next.

“Why, you little—”

She couldn’t move—she didn’t, not when her eyes caught the briefest glimpse of a single pale hand launching itself over the counter and latching itself onto her wrist before yanking it up and forwards towards the villain. And yet, all she registered at that exact moment was the smooth surface of the wine glass slipping from her gentle grip, dropping a solid thirty centimeters down to the lower surface of the bar countertop.

She closed her eyes on instinct when she heard the sound of the impact—the shattering of the glass as it sprayed across the area—and only opened them again when the room was plunged in silence once more, and the softest of gasps echoed right in front of her.

She expected to meet Shigaraki’s crimson eyes the moment she did, but instead found them wide open, pupils contracted as he stared not at her, but at his outstretched pale hand, and all five of his fingers that were wrapped tight around the smooth, fair skin of the bartender’s own wrist.

A breath of air choked out of his chapped lips, and for the first time since he held her, she could feel his grip around her limb—the cold temperature of his touch, and how much strength he put into his grip, despite his gaunt appearance, enough so that she had little doubt there would be a mark or even a bruise forming if this lasted a few seconds longer.

“What—” His raised eyebrows knitted together, forehead furrowing as though the moment had just now registered into his mind as well. A single finger lifted off her skin as he directed his gaze back to her, his crimson irises and black pupils searching hers, as though they could tell him exactly why he had yet to reduce her into a mere pile of dust and ash since at least five seconds ago. “What—what are you—”

“Tomura Shigaraki.”

Both their heads turned towards the door at the sudden deep voice that appeared in the room with them. Ren hadn’t realized another figure had stepped into the room, but blinked when her vision focused in on the black blur standing in the other side of the room, close to where the doors were.

It looked like a man, but was in fact a mere semblance of one—a humanoid shape standing tall and stiff in the other end of the room, possessing just a number of features that typical humans possessed. Where their head should be was a literal dark blue—a dark purple flame that seemed to ignite from a strange metallic structure surrounding where the neck should be, bare of facial features except for two long, narrow yellow slits glowing through the purple mist and extending upwards, reminiscent of a pair of eyes. Neck down, however, was a perfect gentleman’s suit—white shirt, dark green vest, black tie, dark trousers and black shoes, almost too similar to the bartender’s own uniform.

The bartender herself did not realize her wrist had been freed from its near-death grip until it fell down before her, as she straightened her back almost on impulse at the sight of the newcomer, not even minding the glass scattered all around the countertop.

“I have been looking for you,” the deep voice spoke again, and it seemed to echo from the depths of the dark mist in the suit. The neck brace twitched, but Ren wasn’t sure if the mist’s glowing yellow eyes were staring at her or the blue-haired man standing in front of her. “Had I known you were already here, I would have—”

“Well, here I am, Kurogiri,” the blue-haired villain scowled, jaw tensing as he finally leaned back from the counter and from the bartender, though not without shooting another brief crimson-eyed glare in her direction as he stepped off the bar stool and stood up completely. He stuffed his pale hands back into the pockets of his sweatshirt, then turned to the side to face the black mist in the suit. “Is it time already?”

The mist and its neck brace tilted downwards almost imperceptibly. “We are still five minutes early.”

“Kagawa-san.”

Her breath hitched, and her saliva caught stuck in the back of her throat as Shigaraki turned his head back to the bartender, all semblance of whatever emotion in his eyes gone in a single instant—in its place was instead a face of softened features, baring just the few neutral wrinkles in the skin underneath his eyes, with hooded eyelids and muted crimson eyes.

“Would you mind calling your manager for our scheduled meeting?” he murmured, all emotion also dissipated from his low voice, as if what happened mere moments ago never occurred at all.

“That won’t be necessary, Shigaraki-san.”

A familiar voice entered the room now, along with the screeching of curtains being parted to her right. When she turned her head towards it, Yoshinaga was moving forward, eyes flickering between the two people standing by the bar, then finally to the dark figure standing near the front door.

“I am here now,” the old man announced, folding his arms behind his back as he addressed his two guests. “Let us begin soon, yes?” A small hint of a frown took over his lips as he turned to his sole employee. “Kagawa-chan—”

Ren took a deep breath as she bent down to retrieve the spare cloth and dustpan once again. “I’ll clean this up first before I go,” she muttered, audible enough for her employer to hear her without turning to look him in the eye as she spoke to him.

As she stood back up and began brushing the large chunks of glass into the dustpan, the old man’s footsteps drew closer and louder. She made sure not to leave even the smallest shard left on the countertop before throwing it all out to the trash bin and discarding the supplies, and that was when she felt the old man’s hand on her shoulder.

“Here.”

She frowned as she finally looked toward him, and was about to ask what he was doing when she felt something being pressed against the palm of her right hand. With furrowed eyebrows, she looked down and brought her hand up, and found a few coins now resting in the center of her hand.

“For tonight and last week,” Yoshinaga mumbled lowly as his hands departed from her. “Get yourself a nice bowl of udon on your way home, all right? The one I usually buy for us is just down the street, but take a right instead of a left on your usual path home. It’s right beside a tofu shop—you can’t miss it.”

Her frown deepened. “Yoshinaga-san—”

“Have you tried the curry udon? A good kick from that spice is just the thing you need for this awful weather.”

“Yoshinaga-san, the glass—”

“Don’t you worry about it.” He patted her back, but when her eyes tried to meet his, she noticed his gaze was off to the side, almost as if he was glancing past her shoulder at something behind her. “Can you come in early tomorrow afternoon? I heard there’s a big corporate event happening tomorrow noon, about a couple blocks from here, and I can really use the help.”

“I—” Her head fell down as she stared at the coins in her hand. Five 100-yen coins—it was still more than the weekly allowance her father would give her, until he stopped giving her any money at all after she received her first paycheck.

She closed her fingers around the coin, stuffed them in her back pocket, and turned back up to smile at the old man. “Thank you, Yoshinaga-san.”

The old man nodded, patting her in the arm. “Remember to call if—”

“If there’s any trouble, yes.” She bent down to retrieve her coat and bag, all the while trying to ignore the many pairs of eyes staring in her direction right at this very second. “That goes the same to you, too, Yoshinaga-san.”

“Oh, I’ll be fine,” the old man chuckled. “Despite how I look, I can assure you I still have many years ahead of me.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I’ll be fine.” She buttoned up the coat and clutched the strap of her bag close to her as possible. “Be careful on your way home, Kagawa-chan.”

“I will,” she nodded, managing a small smile as she went around the bar, keeping her head bowed down to avert the gazes of the two people she had to walk past in order to get to the exit.

Five more steps, she thought to herself. It was strange—she always dreaded whenever it was time she had to head home, but for the first time since she started working here, her eyes were focused on the path towards the doors, yearning for the breath of fresh air outside this suffocating room that she desperately needed to keep herself from passing out, right here, right now, five steps away from the doors to her temporary salvation.

Four, three, two—

“Good night, Kagawa-chan.”

She stopped dead in her tracks. Her hand was loosely wrapped around the handle, but her grip tightened as soon as she heard the low voice calling out to her, and didn’t miss the light change in tone at the mention of her name.

For a split second, she could almost feel the ghost of his hand wrapped tight around her wrist as she kept her gaze forward, and slowly pushed the door open.

“You, too,” her voice called out, but it was already muted by the howling wind that greeted her outside the bar doors. "Shigaraki-sama."

[ghoulical]

A Tall Dark Stranger

Part 2 of Renegade, a My Hero Academia fan-fiction.

Word Count: 8,313 Pairing: Tomura Shigaraki x Female!OC Warnings: Minor mentions of harassment Summary: Several months into her new job as bartender, Ren discovers that maybe the job demands much more from her than she ever bargained for.

Maybe she shouldn’t have taken up the job after all.

Of course, realizations always came later than they should have. It was no different for Ren Kagawa—in her case, the realization came after she noticed the bar was almost alwaysfrequented by the lowlife of Yokohama City—it was a hotspot for the denizens crawling from underbelly of the city she had grown to know, but had yet to love.

Villain. It was such a simple word, but crude. A generalization that, not unlike its counterpart, invited all sorts of stereotypes, as the rookie bartender eventually came to realize later in her career. But as with most of society, Ren fell for that stereotype—it was what made her have second thoughts about keeping her job at the bar in the first place, until she had to be talked out of her own prejudices by none other than her own ever-generous employer.

“You’re here early.”

The red-haired young woman greeted the old man standing by the back of the bar with a small and curt smile as she flipped back the hood of her coat. “Not like there’s anywhere else I need to be, anyway.”

Yoshinaga spared her but a brief glance before his attention went back to the handful of bottles inside the small wooden crate in front of him. “School, perhaps? That’s what most kids your age should be doing, yes?”

She encircled around the bar, taking off her shoulder bag before stashing it in the cabinet underneath the first counter. “You and I both know that’s not where I belong.”

“Do you belong here, then?” he asked, without turning around to look at her this time. “This is not a place for innocent children like you.”

She almost scoffed out loud as she began taking off her coat. “You and I also know that I’m anything but innocent. And besides, you were the one who chose to take me in.”

“You told me you needed a distraction.” His croaking voice was a bit distant, only because his attention was being split between the bottles and their conversation. “Speaking of which, would you be so kind as to help me sort these out before we open for the night?”

“Sure.” She took off her coat and stashed it inside the cabinet alongside the rest of her meager belongings. She frowned as soon as her eyes rested upon the unfamiliar bottles she was just assigned to. “New shipment?”

The old man hummed in confirmation. “The list’s right there. You know what to do.”

She moved to take his place, eyes briefly glancing to the palm-sized streak of paper cast off to the side before turning back to the case of bottles. She picked up one of the bottles and twisted it around—the label was written in English, as with the other bottles, she soon realized. There were translations scribbled down on the list, but one could only do so much after dropping out of high school when the curriculum just barely scratched the surface of English studies.

“Some fancy stuff we’ve got tonight, huh?” she murmured—an off-handed remark, before she began scanning the sheet of paper for the letters she read off the label.

“A new office space had just opened up around the corner,” Yoshinaga replied, his voice growing distant and softer. When she turned to her side, she frowned as she just caught the sight of the frail old man disappearing through the black curtains, voice echoing from the back as he went around. He re-appeared where she had entered earlier several seconds later, with a winter coat of his own in his hands as he started to put it on. “It might invite a few new high-class clients in to fill up the extra space during Friday nights. I’m sure you can manage them just fine without much problem.”

“You’re heading out?” She felt her shoulders fell, and a sinking feeling settling in her stomach.

He must’ve heard the uneasy tone in her voice as he turned around the moment she spoke, a gentle gaze coming from the hardened grey eyes of her aging mentor and—dare she say it—father figure.

“It’s a Tuesday night,” he sighed, but not at her. “There shouldn’t be a lot of clients coming in tonight. I have some errands to run, but I will come back here as soon as they are done. It shouldn’t take long.”

She never even told him about the apprehensions rising in the back of her mind, but she didn’t have to, because he was there when it first happened: one of the rougher, burlier patrons—villains—making some inappropriate comments towards her, likely because she was a young female who looked far too vulnerable to be working in a place such as this, and stretched his arm out—quite literally, for that was apparently his Quirk—forcing her to cower away to the back of the bar the moment she saw him reaching for her.

Yoshinaga—bless his soul—stepped in just in time, his own hand reaching out to intercept the path of the stretching limb and causing it to bounce off to the side, before the older man went to berate the brazen fool, tossing out a few unkind remarks of his own before threatening to toss the villain out into the cold, harsh streets of the rough neighborhood they happened to be located in.

Of course, the indecent act also invited a few scowling glares from some of her better clients—some of them villains themselves, she noticed and later realized—who did not take too kindly to such unbecoming behavior.

That was what made her stay—the fact that maybe, even despite whatever illegal activities they got up to outside of these walls, not all of them were as bad as they seemed to be. On the other hand, maybe they were just paying back the welcoming service she gave them. Maybe out of necessity at first, but out of habitual hospitality more recently. Nevertheless, it was a nice thought, even if it wasn’t true.

Then again, she was well-aware of the villains’ general lack of inhibitions—they were villains because they used their Quirks in public, an act illegal in itself here, never mind the damage done to lives, property, and so on and so forth that made them characteristic villains. People with that sort of attitude usually didn’t pair well together with alcohol intoxication, and that was exactly what this job invited.

Fortunately for Ren, her Quirk could help protect her against most of these unwanted situations, but it could only do so much, and it was most certainly useless against the disgusting perverted rats that would come crawling into this bar every now and then.

“Call if there is any trouble,” Yoshinaga assured, securing his coat around his thin, bent frame. “I will be back as soon as I can.”

Ren reluctantly nodded, watching the old man as he headed for the front door, bidding him safe travels just before he put his hand on the door. Yoshinaga waved back toward her before heading out into the coldness of the fast-approaching winter clouding the streets outside, leaving her alone in the silence of the bar, with nothing much to do other than sorting out the new bottles sitting in front of her.

Part of her could breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that Tuesday nights were usually slower nights, meaning she could handle tending the bar alone without much problem at all. Unfortunately, the new shipment could only do so much to keep her busy; it took her about half an hour at most to finish sorting them out, and by the time an hour had passed, she was chewing on her bottom lip, staring at the far side of the wall with her palms planted flat against the bar, idle and itching to do something other than cleaning more glasses that were already pristine clean, or cleaning floors that were barely trampled on since she left work just the night before.

She casted a glance over to her right, where the counter bent towards the left to form a little nook pressed against the brick wall. She didn’t know when Yoshinaga first installed the LCD television sitting there on the nook. All she remembered was coming in on a Monday after he insisted she took the weekend off—something she did with great reluctance, too, but could not protest against—and her eyes immediately landing on the sudden sight of the television already sitting there, screen dark as midnight. It had been a slow night that day, too, but she failed to find the remote to the TV, nor could she even find a single button on the damn thing that could turn it on.

When she finally asked Yoshinaga about it, he told her it was important, yet she need not worry about it too much for it was ‘nothing she should ever be concerned about.’ When she questioned exactly what it was used for, if not for watching normal cable television, she was interrupted with the arrival of another customer, and was unable to inquire about it any further.

Most people knew better than to just go along with it—the demographics of her clients, the mysterious TV, and the only ever occasional unspecified errands her employer ran, including the ones tonight. She should know better than to go along with it, but who was she to question suspicious activities and secret motives, especially those of the one person she respected more than anyone else on this goddamn planet?

Well. She took a deep breath and sighed. Almost everyone.

But it was clear as daylight that she was indebted to the old man. He did give her the job—gave her a distraction, as he reminded earlier—when she was sure no one else would. After all, what did anybody in these parts would want to do with a high-school drop-out with absolutely no skills whatsoever?

With a heavy sigh, she lifted her palms off the surface of the counter, turned around and faced the bottles she arranged in the back—the ones she just organized, in addition to the current selections. She wasn’t allowed to drink—bartenders weren’t allowed to drink on the job, not to mention the fact that she was still underaged. It didn’t mean she had never tasted alcohol, however—Yoshinaga told her she needed to know the cocktails she was making if she was going to tend the bar here. She had her own favorites, knew which ones tasted better than others, and she definitely knew which ones she personally wanted to avoid at all costs.

In retrospect, it seemed strange how she ended up here of all places. And to think she should have a personal vendetta against alcohol in general…

Her train of thought was interrupted, however, by the sound of the door clicking open, the gust of air that rushed in, and then the door swinging back shut followed with a set of heavy footsteps against the hardwood floor. She took a deep breath, pushing the unwelcome thought to the back of her mind, before turning around to face the client who had just entered.

“Ah, Oshiro-sama.” She clapped her hands together, before folding them in front of her as her eyes followed the brute of a man dragging himself over to the far side of the bar—his usual seat. “Nice to see you here tonight. How’s the weather out there?”

“Cold,” the man grumbled curtly under his breath, head not even turning to look at her.

Her smile lingered. Despite his apparent discourtesy, Oshiro had always been a man of very few words—she figured it was side-effect of what she could only assume was a mutant-type Quirk, but she was never one to pry too much about other people’s Quirks, especially mutant-types, in fear of accidentally offending someone if she inquired just a little too much.

But if the man was ever irritated by her occasional chatter, he sure never acted upon it. In fact, she dared say he was rather fond of her, considering the large tips he always left for her despite

“What’ll it be tonight, Oshiro-sama?” she asked, taking a spare cloth and wiping her hands down with it, slowly approaching the other side of the bar.

“The usual.”

A cold bottle of cheap beer. Despite the new shipment coming in, some of the regulars were just going to be content with the same old poisons. “Coming right up.”

Without much surprise, she stopped in her path and immediately twisted on her heel, turning to face the bar fridge underneath the back counters, then crouching down to retrieve his drink. It was right at that moment when she heard the familiar sound of the door opening and closing again, also accompanied with a loud rush of wind to announce the client’s arrival, as if the noise of the door wasn’t enough to alert her to it.

Unlike last time, however, the footsteps that followed were almost inaudible—in fact, they were hardly footsteps at all, as all she heard in the silence of the room was the sound of something being dragged across the hardwood floor. Clearly, it wasn’t Yoshinaga—as old as the man might’ve been, he might as well be healthier than she was, with more than enough energy to carry him through to his nineties.

The sliding against wood drew closer and closer until it stopped, right at the other end of the bar from where Oshiro was sitting. She waited until she heard one of the wooden chairs being dragged out of its place before standing up with the beer bottle in hand, closing the fridge door shut with her elbow then placing the bottle firmly down on the counter.

She spared the newcomer but a glance over her shoulder; whoever it was, they had their head bowed down, thus allowing her to catch a glimpse of a pale hand reaching up to pull back a black hood, revealing a mop of unruly greyish-blue hair, with bangs long enough that she couldn’t even take a peek at their face.

She couldn’t recall any of her regulars having blue hair, or at least, one of this shade. Must be new, then.

“Good evening,” she called out in a soft but warm voice, lips stretching as she uncapped the beer bottle with a light, satisfying pop. “What’ll it be for tonight?”

She strode over to where Oshiro was sitting, handed him his drink, then turned back to the new patron.

“Sir?” She frowned when her inquiry was once again met with silence, then strode over to her new customer with slow, even steps. The man had a rather slight figure, much slighter than Oshiro and almost as thin as she was but no doubt taller than her, judging from how tall the bar chairs were. “Anything you want to get? Anything at all?”

For a moment, her voice seemed to snap him out of whatever daze he was in, as he briefly lifted his head from the hand covering his face and hummed. “I don’t—” His face fell again as he raked a hand through his hair. “I don’t know.”

The bartender cocked an eyebrow. “You don’t know?”

She glided forward, approaching where the stranger sat on the bar, then placed her palms down on the edge of the surface. She could take a closer look at him now—she could see that his skin, in fact, had a more deathlike pallor, and it was stuck to the bones, making him look gaunt and thin. His long, thin fingers now rubbed against the side of his neck, right at the edge of his collarbone. There were bandages peeking out from underneath the cuffs of his long-sleeved, black V-neck shirt, ending where the visible veins in the backs of his hands began.

“First time here?” she asked at first, studying his reaction. Given the lack thereof, however, she added, “First time at a bar, then?”

The stranger looked up, holding his head up longer this time, enough for her to catch sight of the piercing red pupils staring back at her from his upper peripherals, and the visible wrinkles underneath his eyes, making him appear much, much older than she was sure he was. There was something about the gaze that unnerved her—something about those small red pupils, that did not burn with annoyance, but rather filled with dimmed embers of exhaustion.

“I came here to meet your manager,” he murmured lowly, before his gaze drifted, and his head leaned against the back of his hand with his elbow planted firm on the surface, bowing low enough that his bangs shrouded his face from her view once more.

“Ah.” She glanced to the side, checking to see if Oshiro needed her attention, which he no doubt didn’t. “The manager is out running some errands, but he should be back any minute now.” She hoped so, at least. “Might I suggest you order a drink while you wait?” This seemed to elicit some attention from him—he raised his head again, offering her a brief, harmless deadpan glare. “Hey, I’m just doing what I’m being paid for.”

Not to mention the fact that she couldn’t let him linger long without ordering anything. Considering his slight figure, his somewhat irritable attitude thus far and discounting the wrinkles underneath his eyes, she was starting to doubt whether she could even serve alcohol to this man at all.

But, to her relief, he did seem to consider her offer for a moment, before his other hand went up to start picking on the other side of his neck. “I’ll have anything, then.”

Ren cleared her throat in a feeble attempt to disguise her cough. “Anything?” The corner of her lip twitching up to form a pretend scowl, though it bordered on a smirk. “That’s no fun.”

“Hmm?” Her response seemed to intrigue him now—his eyes fleeted upwards again, and she could feel his gaze following her as she bent down, retrieving a chilled glass from the fridge beneath the counter. “How so?”

She resisted the urge to smile as she straightened her back and turned his back to him. “What a person orders tells me quite a lot about who they are.” Her eyes scanned the row of bottles in the furthest rack in the counter. She was going to memorize the selection soon—cocktail recipes were next, just because there was so much more to it than remembering which liquors and ingredients were needed for each one, but she was making some progress within the four months she had been working here. “For example, an Old Fashioned tells me that you either know your alcohol, or you’re just a wannabe prick.” She picked one of the bottles up from the rack, uncapped it, and poured some into the chilled glass in front of her. “Gin and tonic means you’re a boring old man, a Manhattan means we’ll get along just fine, and bourbon—” She replaced the bottle before picking up the glass, turning around, and placing it in front of the stranger with a smile. “—is for someone who’s been through quite a lot of shit.” She waited until he realized what she was doing and turned his glare back to her again, her smile remaining unfaltering. “Someone like you.”

She took another close look at him. There was a scar running through his right eye, and another, smaller one across the left corner of his chapped lips. She always thought scars added character to a certain individual, not to mention the stories they held within them.

She couldn’t help but wonder how he got his, but it sure seemed that the bourbon was a perfect first pick for this unfortunate soul sitting before her.

“So.” While the other hand still picked on the skin of his neck, the other raised a single index finger, and began tracing the rim of the glass she’d set down in front of him. “Are you some kind of smart-ass, hmm?”

“No.” She leaned back, tilting her head to the side. Four months with a full-time job forced her to interact with villains more than the average citizen—it was going to take more than that to scare her off. “Just observant. Not a lot going on within these walls, but it sure invites an interesting crowd.”

She almost heard him scoff as his gaze drifted down to his finger encircling the edge of the glass. “There’s nothing interesting about me.”

“Oh, no, that’s impossible.” She walked backwards until her hip bumped against the back counter, leaning her weight against it as she crossed her legs one in front of the other, arms folded in front of her. “Folks who come here always have stories to tell.” And she was always eager to hear these stories, whether they were meant for her to listen to, or otherwise. “And besides, no one’s less interesting than me—trust me.”

She heard another hum from him. “A pretty little girl like you,” he murmured, “should be in school—not here, surrounding yourself with filthy miscreants and low-lives of society. There should be something there, right?”

Did he just call her pretty? “I’m flattered.” She was no stranger to compliments from bar patrons, though, especially from men, only because of her gender and not so much her own appearance. It was usually just harmless flirting, mild harassment at most. With Yoshinaga around, they usually knew better than to cross the line. “But the same goes to you, buddy.” She nodded at his hands. “They’re rough, but not because of age nor experience. Other than your face—which isn’t an insult, by the way, ‘cause you don’t look too bad yourself—you don’t look a day past twenty. I should’ve asked you for your I.D. before giving you that bourbon, but that would just be hypocritical, now wouldn’t it?”

After all, serving alcohol to minors was the least of their problems here in the bar, considering their clientele. Then, there was the mere fact that the sole employee here was a minor, but no one else was checking her age, and no one else seemed to make note of it, or at least made a fuss about it.

Not until now, anyway.

It seemed that it was just now brought to his attention that she had just served him a drink, despite the idle finger leaning still against the rim of the glass; the stranger then picked up the glass with four of his fingers, with his fifth digit hanging loose in the air without discomfort—out of habit, perhaps?—then brought it close to his chapped lips. After a moment of pause, the man then threw his head back and downed the entire shot in one go, waiting until all the amber liquid had slithered down the glass and into his open lips, before setting it gently back down on the countertop between them.

“Not bad,” he muttered, but followed up with a small cough almost immediately afterward, one that pulled Ren’s own lips to a small, unintentional smirk. She didn’t miss the small twitch in his narrowed eyes, too. “I expected worse.”

“I prefer on the rocks myself,” she said with a tilt of her head and a quirk of her lips. When she noticed his frown, she pursed her lips and resisted the urge to smile. “With ice. Don’t tell anyone I said that, though. As much as my nose has been dulled to the smell of alcohol-laced vomit, the taste buds tell a different story.”

His eyebrow twitched. “There’s a difference?”

“It dilutes the alcohol,” she quickly answered, “so it won’t burn as much going down the throat. To me, it’s really just a matter of personal preference—there’s really no right or wrong way to go about it—not to me, at least.” She sighed as she pushed herself off the counter and approached the bar again. “Anything else I can get you? Something to pass the time with—something to savour a bit longer, at your own pace maybe?”

Shots were a bad idea in the case of important meetings—she had witnessed and figured out as much, though she had no idea what reason this young man had for meeting with Yoshinaga. Still, shots were the last thing she wanted to serve this mysterious stranger before her, because even she knew the limits—how far she could push the boundaries to a man’s patience before things could turn sour.

He might look about just as old as she was, but those hands, and those red eyes—the shiver crawling down her spine just from staring into them a second too long told her he was not one to mess with.

“I came here to meet the manager,” the stranger reminded, and Ren pressed her lips to a thin line. “Not to drink.”

“One drink can hardly make you drunk.” She turned around to avoid his gaze, and started chewing on one side of her bottom lip as she considered doing her usual routine—cleaning glasses like the typical idle bartender—just so her hands had something to do. “Depending on your tolerance, several can make you tipsy, at worst. If not, then, we serve mocktails, too, you know—non-alcoholic drinks.”

She glanced over to Oshiro. The brute was just sitting there, eyes staring hard at the wall opposite to him as he occasionally picked his bottle up and tipping it towards his mouth. She closed her eyes, pursed her mouth, then turned back to the blue-haired stranger.

A few moments later, he responded with a short hum, then followed it with some more silence. Then, “A Manhattan, was it?”

She couldn’t resist raising her eyebrows at his words. A Manhattan means we’ll get along just fine.

She stood there for a second or two, stunned in silence and disbelief, only snapping out of her daze when she noticed the slightest movement of his head lifting up again, quickly giving him a single courteous nod as soon as he did.

“One Manhattan, coming right up.”

She sidestepped over to reach for a pint glass before spinning around to snatch the small bottle of bitters on the back counter. Her hands worked almost on their own accord—she added in the bitters, then the sweet vermouth and the rye, all without spilling a single drop on the countertop. She scooped some crushed ice into the glass before retrieving a bar spoon, dipping it into the caramel-colored liquid before stirring it.

“I’ve never seen you around here before,” she murmured offhandedly, before her eyes glanced up to find the stranger’s crimson eyes gazing distantly at the glass in her hands—no, he was staring only at her hands, almost as if he was caught in some kind of stupor from the circling motion that was starting to tire her hands just the slightest bit. At least I’ve got something to do. “Come around these parts often?”

It took him a second longer than expected to reply. “Not usually, but I know my way around.”

She nodded firmly, gaze drifting back downwards to the glass in her hand. “Can I ask what the meeting’s about?” She knew she had to be careful with this—not a lot of people were fond of a complete stranger sticking their nose into other people’s business, but it felt like walking on a tightrope when it came to sticking her nose into villains’ business, and for good reason, of course.

However, this was Yoshinaga he was talking about, and he specifically asked to talk to her manager, meaning whatever this meeting was about would most likely be about the bar itself, rather than something personal.

With eyes focused on her hands, she stopped stirring the drink once she felt the glass was cool enough, then took out the bar spoon, holding it still between her fingers. She crouched down to retrieve a chilled coupe glass from the fridge, then reached over to fetch the small jar of cherries, scooping one out with the spoon and setting it down on the center of the coupe. She then strained the cool, stirred liquid into the glass, before picking it up by its stem and carefully setting it down in front of the blue-haired stranger.

She almost didn’t notice he hadn’t answered her question until she turned to face him again, eyes cautiously watching to see if he had anything to say about the cocktail she just served him.

“How long have you been working here?”

Her stomach dropped. “A few months,” she quickly answered with a frown, then tilted her head ever so slightly. “Why are you asking?”

“Hm.” She froze, having no idea what to make of such an impartial response to her questions. “Yoshinaga never told me he had an employee. And so young, too.”

She held her breath at the tone of his voice. There was something odd about it, as if he was calculating something in his mind—it was as though he had something else planned beforehand, perhaps something involving Yoshinaga, and it sounded as if her apparent employment here disturbed those plans, or perhaps even ruined them.

She sure hoped not, because it didn’t look like this blue-haired, crimson-eyed stranger took kindly to disrupted plans.

“Looks like he trained you well, though,” the man then remarked, hand reaching up to hold the coupe glass by its fragile stem. “I wonder if he will be training you in some things other than bartending, though.”

Her right hand found her left forearm as she rested both limbs in front of her. Something other than mixing drinks? she wondered, even more confused now than she was before.

Instead of immediately drinking the cocktail, however, he tapped the side of the glass with his right index finger, leaning his chin against his left fist with both elbows planted firmly on the surface of the bar. “Aren’t you scared working here?” he then asked, voice distant as his gaze was focused on the glass before him. “This is a bad neighbourhood, you know. A lot of fighting going on in the streets—a lot of villains running around making a mess at every corner of the block. Don’t you get scared coming to work everyday to a place like this? Always in the company of villains like this?”

“I don’t—” Wait. Always in the company of villains? Is he— Was he talking about himself?

She quickly glanced over to where Oshiro was sitting, only to find that the brute had already disappeared from his seat, and all that was left was the empty beer bottle and some cash sitting right beside it.

She felt a sinking feeling in her stomach, struggling to find her breath and the words caught stuck in her throat as she wandered over to the other end of the bar to quickly dispose of the bottle and swipe up the money Oshiro had left behind to input it into the cash register.

When did Oshiro even leave? How come she didn’t even notice he had already left?

That means—

Looking up from the cash register, her eyes fluttered over to the blue-haired stranger sitting just a few metres away from where she stood. So, he is a villain. Maybe she should’ve anticipated as much, with his all-black clothing, the pale skin and the red eyes. She couldn’t say she was surprised, but…

She made a quick scan of the room, eyes finally landing on the door to the far left, then swallowed hard. They were alone here—just her and the blue-haired stranger, engulfed in a silence so loud, you could hear a pin drop. The faint whistle of the seasonal wind outside was barely audible through the doors and windows, and it didn’t seem that anyone else was coming in here soon.

Tuesday night, she scowled to herself, returning her focus back on the cash register as she finished stashing the money, then found herself meandering back to the side of the bar where the stranger sat, finger still idly tapping the side of the glass, the caramel liquid it held still remaining untouched.

“You still haven’t answered my question.”

Her eyes flitted back to him. “I mean, sometimes,” she muttered, lifting her shoulders ever so slightly as she placed her hands behind the bar, palms facing down and fingers pressing close together. “A girl’s got to be careful everywhere she goes, you know? You get used to it over time, though.”

“You’re not scared of what people can do to you?” He lifted his head ever so slightly, enough for her to catch a glimpse of his crimson eyes once more. “It’s a dangerous world out there, with some dangerous Quirks out in the playing field, you know.”

She was always scared of what people could do to her because she was a woman, but when it came to the question of Quirks, she could breathe just a little bit better than most. “I’m aware of that.” She never bothered telling people about her own Quirk, though, not unless they asked her about it, and even so, she would describe it as vague as possible—leave as many things to the imagination as possible. She learned long ago it was much better this way; what was the point of having this Quirk if everybody knew about it? “But, people do what they gotta do to get by, you know? I’m no different than the rest of society out there.”

“Are you, now?”

As her frowned deepened in her confusion, he finally decided it was time to have a taste of the cocktail she had set down in front of him, picking the glass up with four of his fingers, fifth finger noticeably sticking out again as he brought the glass to his chapped lips, before taking a small sip of the cocktail.

He made a face when he set it back down on the surface of the bar again. This time, the urge to smile wasn’t even there.

“People like this stuff?” he asked—fortunately for her, more puzzled than offended, if anything.

“There’re worst things you could’ve ordered.” Like a Mojito, for example, though she hated it only because it was a little bit more complicated than most, but considering her clientele, not a lot of people ordered it that often. Then there was also the Bloody Mary, which was not only complex, but had a combination of ingredients that sent shivers down her spine just thinking of having to make one, much less drink one herself.

“Well,” the stranger continued, staring down at his drink for a moment before bringing it back up to his lips, “you have poor judgement when it comes to employment opportunities, but I’ll trust you this one time with this drink.” Then he took another sip, and as he forced himself to swallow it down, he didn’t wince as noticeably this time around. “It’s not so bad, actually.”

She didn’t want to question what he meant by her apparent ‘poor judgement’ about ‘employment opportunities.’ She had been asking that question to herself for the longest time—she didn’t need this mysterious stranger to send her back into another spiral of doubts and anxiety. At least, not tonight.

“I can get you something else, if you want—”

“No.” He took another, longer sip of his drink this time before setting it back down on the countertop. “No, this is just fine. I mean, we are getting along, aren’t we?”

She took a deep breath and held it for a second before exhaling softly. Part of her felt like it was a mistake to make that statement earlier. What-ifs and could-haves. She couldn’t take it back now, could she?

If only her Quirk was rewinding back time. Maybe that would be just a little bit more useful than the one she already had, especially in times like these. What-ifs and could-haves.

“And good thing, too.” He tilted his head to the side, leaning his cheek against his fist again as though boredom had once again settled within him. “Your manager sure is taking his time with those errands—”

She almost jumped when the loud noise of the door being opened, once again paired with the howling of the seasonal wind, disrupted the tranquility of the room, bouncing off the walls and echoing through the near-empty space even more so as the door was thrown shut. She felt her shoulders stiffening as she recognized the familiar sight of Yoshinaga’s slightly bent figure standing by the doorway, though the old man himself had yet to notice the two people by the bar, his gaze instead fixated on the floorboards in front of him, mouth moving imperceptibly as though grumbling inaudibly to no one but himself.

Ren drew in a sharp breath. “Yoshinaga-san—”

“Yoshinaga.” Her smile faltered when the blue-haired man’s voice cut through her own, even more so when she noted the odd tone of his droning voice. The stranger then lifted his head again, turned his neck at the smallest angle, as his crimson pupils wandered to the corners of his eyes. “We were just talking about you. You’re late.”

Late?

“Shigaraki-san.” The old man inhaled sharply as his eyes flew up and immediately found the blue-haired man sitting by the bar. Ren noticed the sheer look of surprise across the old man’s face, before the latter’s attention quickly shifted over towards her, but only for a split second before he immediately averted his gaze away, bowing his head down just slightly to stare at the floor again. “I wasn’t expecting you until later tonight.”

The mysterious blue-haired stranger—Shigaraki, as her employer had evidently called him—didn’t bother turning his gaze over his stiff shoulder at the old man. Instead, he picked up the glass in front of him, holding it at his eye level with his fifth finger sticking out as before, keeping still like that, as if pondering on the old man’s response—or rather, what he should make of it instead.

“Well.” He tilted his head down again, his blueish bangs covering the direction of his gaze, but Ren could briefly feel his glare piercing through her before he brought the glass to his lips and taking another short sip of his drink. “I came here to remind you about the proceedings for tonight, but it seems that you didn’t even get the memo that Master has left for you—the one about moving up the time of the meeting?”

Ren’s eyes went back to her employer, whose face paled for a brief moment—an expression she had never seen on him before tonight—before he cleared his throat and started smoothing down the creases of his shirt.

“Ah—I see,” the older man stammered with a small nod, even though there were no means for Shigaraki to see it. “It appears that I have made a mistake then—the fault is no one else’s but my own.”

A strange sound came from the stranger’s mouth—a soft chuckle, one that almost made the hairs along her arm stand up in attention. “No matter,” he murmured, voice low but loud enough for all three in the room to hear. “Your sweet little bartender here has been keeping me company while we waited for you.”

She felt herself stiffen at the nickname he had so casually given her. What have I done?

��Ah—yes.” Yoshinaga turned his head up to look toward Ren, his wrinkled forehead furrowed. “Kagawa-chan, feel free to take the rest of the night off. We’ll be closing early tonight.”

Immediately, she forgot all about the current topic of conversation between the two men—hell, she even forgot all about the mysterious stranger sitting at her bar. All she felt was her stomach dropping as the realization of her mentor’s words settled within her, and the bile quickly growing in the back of her mouth as all the blood rapidly began draining from her face.

“What?” Her shoulders fell, hands falling flat against the edge of the bar counter. “Yoshinaga-san, you know I can’t—”

“I know.” The old man circled around the bar, sparing a quick glance in Shigaraki’s direction as he beelined straight towards her. He didn’t stop as he caught her by her shoulders and started pushing her back towards the corner of the bar, almost as if he was taking them both out of the other man’s earshot, only speaking once he was sure the two of them were not being eavesdropped. “I was under the impression that things would proceed differently tonight.” He then spun her around to face him, and she could almost immediately see the additional lines stretching across his aging face. “Alas, it was my mistake, and for that, I deeply apologize to you.”

“Yoshinaga-san—”

“It is for your own good, Ren,” he asserted in a rather hushed tone, especially when he mentioned her name—likely for her protection, she later realized. “I know it doesn’t appear that way for now, but I assure you, this is what’s best for you right now.”

Peering over his shoulder, she could see the stranger, Shigaraki, still remaining where he had been sitting for the past half hour or so—how long had it even been since he first got here—face pointed at the shelves and racks lined up against the back wall behind them. His fingers were still lingering along the base and stem of the glass, all save for the fifth finger, and she could’ve sworn she saw his red pupils in the peripherals of his eyes as soon as she looked toward him, forcing her to turn her attention back to Yoshinaga standing in front of her.

“Who is he?” she asked as she faced the old man with knitted eyebrows, folding her arms in front of her. “He said he came here to meet you. How did you two know each other?”

For the first time since she’s known him, Yoshinaga seemed to be at a loss of words—his lips parted slightly several times, before sighing heavily with a few rapid blinks of his eyes. “Ren—”

“What are you hiding from me? You said we don’t do business with villains.”

“Ren, you’ve been serving villains almost every single night—”

“You know what I’m talking about, Yoshinaga-san.” She let out a heavy sigh, shoulders falling as she allowed her gaze to wander. “Not that kind of business.”

“Kagawa-chan.”

He weakly raised both his hands and placed them on either side of her shoulders. He did this once before, just a few months back—it was when she first asked him for longer shifts, and he instead started asking about her home life. No—in fact, he had deduced it, even though she didn’t spare a single detail about what her life was like outside these walls. Maybe it was just written all over her face. Maybe she should’ve known better.

“This is for your own good, all right?” She looked back up at her mentor, the old man, and felt another sigh leave her breath. When she tried to avert her gaze away again, he followed it, almost as if he was forcing her to look at him still. “But if anything happens, call me—call me the second anything goes wrong, understood?”

“I can’t—” She tried to shake her head, allowing her arms to fall to her side. “Please, I don’t want to—”

“This will just be for tonight.” His hands gave her shoulders a slight reassuring squeeze, and before she realized it, one of them reached up as if to pat her head, but stopped short midway up, before quickly retracting back and falling back down on her shoulder again. “You will have your normal shifts tomorrow.”

Even without looking, she could almost feel Shigaraki’s red-eyed glare leering in their direction. She swallowed hard, and, without glancing over Yoshinaga’s shoulder, she leaned down and spoke low enough that only the two of them could hear. “Who is he, Yoshinaga-san?”

“An important client,” was all he offered, lips briefly pressed to a thin line before he turned towards the back counter, hands now lingering at the edges of the surface as his eyes leered across the bottle racks. “But he is someone you shouldn’t concern yourself with,” he whispered back. “At least, not right now.”

Not right now? She was all too tempted to look back in Shigaraki’s direction. Yoshinaga was scared—no, he was anxious around the younger man. It was strange to see him like this—the old man barely even bat an eyelid at all the rambunctious clients that had ever came and went around here, regardless of how much these men, often villains, would glower, tower or even threaten the two bartenders. Hell, the tables would turn the moment someone so much as leered in Ren’s direction with the slightest hint of malicious intent, and said ruffian would be lucky if Yoshinaga didn’t just kick them out of the bar right then and there.

But this—whoever this Shigaraki is, or rather, whoever their Master is; Ren didn’t even think there was anyone above Yoshinaga when it came to this establishment. The old man always said that he was her sole employer, because he was the one who owned this bar, and all his older regulars recognized him and told her as such, too.

Had he been working for somebody else this entire time? Had she been working for someone else this whole time?

“For as far as it concerns you—” Her eyes fluttered back to her mentor, and he offered her a gentle, reassuring glance before he turned back to the bottles and trays of glasses, nudging them just the slightest bit from their previous positions. She knew what he was doing—it wasn’t like he ever complained about her organization, as he did nothing but the opposite. “—you’re only working for me. You are just a bartender here—nothing more, nothing less.”

She didn’t want to be anything more, and she had a feeling she didn’t want to be anything less here, either. Then again, what was more and what was less sure seemed nothing but relative at this point.

“Now.” He turned back to face her, folding his hands behind his back. “I will see you back here tomorrow afternoon—or perhaps even earlier, if you would like an extra shift to make up for tonight.”

“I—” She took a deep breath and sighed. There was no weaseling herself out of this—his decision was final. “—would appreciate that, thank you.”

“All right.” He spun himself away from her, turning his attention back to the bottles again. Come in at two, then. We’ve got another few more cases coming in tomorrow—I would really appreciate your help in getting them sorted out.”

She inhaled deeply again, then exhaled all at once. There was nothing she could do about this, she realized. Maybe I shouldn’t have…

What-ifs and could-haves.

Without looking back at either of the two men, she spun around and bent down to retrieve her belongings from the bottom cabinet. She stood up straight as she put the coat back on, before hurling her bag over to the surface of the counter, skimming through its contents to make sure she had everything with her. Of course, she did—other than her phone, she hadn’t taken anything else out of the bag tonight, but she wanted to extend her time here for as long as she could, even though everything else was telling her she really shouldn’t.

From the corner of her eyes, she saw Yoshinaga turning around to stand beside her, still sorting out glasses and keeping his hands busy even though he didn’t need to. She drew in a sharp breath as she zipped her bag shut, stashed her phone in her coat pocket, and slung the strap of her bag around herself.

“Stay safe out there, Kagawa-chan.”

She turned her head to Yoshinaga, giving him a small nod, a smile and mouthing a silent ‘thank you’ to him. She could see the guilt written all over his face, and the apologetic look in his eyes as he watched her walk across the length of the bar to exit through the other side, all the while trying to avoid drawing in the attention of the single remaining client still sitting at the bar where she last left him, fingers still clinging onto the outer surface of the coupe glass in front of him.

The old man did his best for her. He tried to help her as much as he was allowed to—employing an underaged minor should be frowned upon, but evidently, the society outside was always more pre-occupied with other matters far more important than some minor handling alcohol. For that, she was still indebted to the old man, even if tonight’s affairs made her start to question his affiliations.

Even if she should’ve seen this coming all those months ago.

With her head bowed down and eyes trained at the floorboard beneath her feet, she began to head towards the exit without another word, and she almost made it out unscathed until she heard one last voice calling out to her, and it wasn’t Yoshinaga’s.

“Good night, Kagawa-san.”

She almost stopped dead in her tracks as her palm pressed flat against the wooden door, and the sudden rush of coldness from the autumn wind outside almost overwhelmed the feeling of his crimson eyes piercing into the back of her skull.

“Good night, Shigaraki-sama.”

[ghoulical]

A Man Walks into a Bar

Part 1 of Renegade, a My Hero Academia fan-fiction.

Word Count: 6,202 Warnings: Mentions of trauma, PTSD, poverty and death Summary: Pro Hero Shouta Aizawa visits a bar in Deika City in search of answers, but instead finds a bittersweet reunion with an old face. Note: No romance, just platonic non-canon siblings.

The red-haired bartender heard the ringing of the bell just within the edges of earshot.

“I’ll be there in just a second!”

She was just thinking about closing up for the night when her latest customer came in through those doors. It had been a slow night so far—a couple of regulars came in but didn’t linger long, perhaps because of the off-putting atmosphere, the lack of boisterous laughter coming from some corner of the room, or just the sudden abundance of empty spaces in a place that was used to having every other table occupied, even on weekday nights. She had been tuning in to the news all day and hadn’t heard about anything particularly disconcerting—at least, not one that would affect her sales of tonight. Then again, a relative and rather surprising quietness in the streets also meant there weren’t a lot of people with baggage that needed to be lifted with the help of alcohol—her alcohol.

But it appeared that there was at least one other person who needed a little help tonight, and Ren was always more than happy to serve.

She finished cashing in the last of the change and loosened her ponytail as she pushed the office door open and headed back out to the bar.

“Welcome to Pluto,” she greeted, pushing a smile back to her face, then finished re-tying her ponytail before looking up to meet her customer. “What can I get you tonight, sir—”

Her hands froze midway to the top of her head as soon as her eyes fell on the ragged-looking man standing on the other side of the bar.

A pair of half-opened black eyes glanced up and met hers. The man frowned.

“What?” he drawled out, clearly taking notice of her expression. “Something wrong?”

Something in the back of her mind told her she should be crying right now. That was how people often reacted at times like these, right? The typical person would burst out in tears, screaming and sobbing and falling down into a heaping mess right where they stood.

For some reason, however, Ren simply blinked, the gears in her brain still grinding, still trying to process the sight before her, even as her limbs began to move like pre-programmed automatons that didn’t give two shits about their fried computer processor.

“Err, no.” She took a deep breath, blinked, and sighed. Her hands fell back down to her sides. She almost laughed. “No, nothing’s—” She cleared her throat. “Nothing’s wrong.”

“Hmph.” The man was clearly not pleased with her answer but started to approach the bar anyway. “Well, you looked like you just saw a ghost there. A bit rude, if you ask me. I hope you don’t greet all your customers that way.”

“I mean.” She looked down. She didn’t even feel the smile on her face as she briefly averted her gaze away to smooth down the creases on her uniform. “Can you blame me?”

When her gaze rose back up again, she saw confusion written all over the rugged man’s face. “Hm?”

She blinked a couple more times, staring straight into his dark eyes. There was no mistake—he looked exactly like he did the last time she saw him on television just a few days ago. Well, all with the exception of his mustard-yellow goggles, which she was sure she saw a brief glimpse of just behind the white strips of cloth draped around his neck.

“Do you… not remember me?” Now, she really felt like laughing. “Well, I guess it’s been a while since you last saw me, huh? It’s been like, what—a little over ten years now? I only reached up to your, like, waistline back then, and look at me now—I’m almost a little past your shoulders.”

She let the silence settle for another ten seconds, but when the puzzlement in the man’s expression worsened, she scoffed and shook her head in mock disappointment.

“Onii-san.” She picked up a small damp towel and started wiping her hands with it. “Don’t tell me you’ve all but forgotten your own little sister.”

Shouta Aizawa was reaching his hand to pull a bar stool out when her words finally registered into his brain, and just like her, his actions stopped halfway, only managing to tilt the stool at a slight angle when his expression dropped like a stone in water, and his sleepy eyes became wide awake in only a fraction of a second. “Renako-chan?”

She smiled. It wasn’t the same smile she always greeted her customers with. Anyone could tell the difference between her usual warm welcome, and the nostalgic melancholy falling over her face this exact moment.

“It’s just ‘Ren’ now.” She set the towel down on the table with one hand and turned her head up to get a proper look at him. “Ren Kagawa. No one’s called me ‘Renako’ in… well, in a while now.”

“Ren?” Slowly, he pulled the bar stool out and sat down in front of her.

She shrugged. “I don’t need these fools coming into the bar to know who I am. Who knows—maybe one of them can link me back to you, and you clearly don’t want your identity known to the public.”

“To me? What do you—oh.” His change in expression wasn’t as drastic now, though the previous drop wasn’t quite as drastic as she expected it to be, either. “You know that I’m—”

“’Eraser Head’?” She didn’t mean to say it aloud in such a mocking tone, but she couldn’t help herself. She always found herself snickering at the name whenever she heard it on TV. “Of course, I do. How could I not recognize my own big brother? And besides.” She picked up the closest cocktail shaker within her reach, twisted it open and checked inside. Not that she had much use for it tonight, anyway. “You went to U.A.—in the Department of Heroics. It’s an entire department dedicated to producing Pro Heroes like a goddamn factory. It’s no wonder to see you becoming one as soon as you graduated.” She replaced the shaker back where she found it and turned back to her brother with a semblance of her previous smile. “Not to mention the fact that your hero name is a clear dead giveaway. ‘Erasure Hero: Eraser Head’? Seems a bit on the nose, don’t you think?”

Her smile grew wider as soon as she noticed the straight frown plastered on his face, and the deadpan glare he was giving her throughout her entire monologue. He hadn’t changed a single bit, she thought.

“I didn’t have anything else,” he grumbled. “A friend suggested it. It stuck, so I kept on using it.”

“Yeah, sure, Erasure Hero.” She clicked her tongue. “All right, what’re we having tonight?”

“What—oh, right.” It was almost as if he had forgotten he just wandered into a bar—her bar, too, of all the places he could’ve wandered to in this god-forsaken city—but she didn’t want to make another snide remark about that. Not right now, at least. “Just whiskey neat, thank you.”

“Whiskey neat, huh?” She threw the towel over her shoulder as she turned around to grab a glass from the cabinet. “Didn’t think you’d turn out to be a whiskey kind of person. Guess I learn something new every day.”

“’Whiskey kind of person’?”

“Actually, no—you do look like someone who would order a Manhattan on a good night.” She picked up a bottle of whiskey rye, uncapped it and poured a generous amount into the glass. “Either that, or a classic brandy. Or malt liquor. But I’ve always thought the best of you.” On a whim, she brought out another clean glass and poured herself some of the liquid as well. “Beer’s always nice, too, of course, but I think you’d know how I feel about that.”

She could only imagine the expression on his face—or general lack thereof, considering her brother—as she spouted all this. “How did you end up like this?”

“Long story,” she sighed, turned around and placed one of the glasses down firmly in front of him. She lifted her own glass briefly and tilted it at a slight angle towards him. “Cheers.”

She didn’t even wait for him to toast with her as she took a quick but little sip of her whiskey.

He stared at his own glass but didn’t touch it.

“Renako-chan.”

She set her glass back down in front of her and looked at him. “Hmm?”

“What happened to you?”

Her fingers lingered on the sides of the glass, lifting them to trace her index around the cold rim. “Life,” she murmured absentmindedly, eyes drifting downward to the amber liquid before her. “Life happened. Isn’t that how it always goes for everyone?”

“Where’s your father?” he quickly asked.

“Oh, right. Father.” Without looking at him, she picked up her glass and took another sip. “He died two or three years ago—can’t remember. Days have been blurring for a while now. Not because of the alcohol—god, no. This—” she raised her glass, “—is the only thing that still keeps me going, figuratively and literally.”

She swirled the remaining liquid around a bit. Unlike most people, she liked it better on the rocks. She had gotten quite the few lingering glares if she voiced that opinion to some of the more serious whiskey aficionados, but she couldn’t care less about her own drinking choices.

“That long?” Her eyes drifted upwards and saw his eyebrows knitting together. “And you haven’t reached out to me since then? Why am I finding this out now? Is this where the two of you have been this whole time?”

“Calm down, Shouta.” She set the glass down gently on the surface in front of her. “No, we moved out to Yokohama at first. Lived there for a few years, then after he died, I moved out here. Not because of the whole ‘liberation’ thing—no, I never gave a damn about that. I just knew someone down here who said they would help me out if I was ever in a pinch, so…” She took a deep breath. “And I did reach out—at least, I tried to. Sent a letter and everything to the old address, then to U.A. when I never got a response. Still haven’t.”

His forehead loosened. “I never received any letter.”

“Huh,” was all she said as she finished the last of her drink. Goddamn, she thought. She was going to need something else, but something lighter. There was no need for her to get drunk this early into the night, but if she was going to have this conversation right now, she was going to need something to get her through it.

“Renako-chan.”

“Stop calling me that.” She turned around and decided to pour herself some cider. It was definitely lighter than whiskey, with the same tangy feeling that would linger in the back of her throat. “Not that I don’t like people calling me that, it’s just—” She unscrewed the bottle cap and poured a little into her glass. “Nobody’s called me that in a while. And that’s good, because it helps me forget.” She screwed the cap back on and sighed. “It just reminds me of Father. And Mother. And us.”

“Is that why you took up this job? So you can drink to forget all you want?”

She shook her head and tried to ignore the minute hints of anger rising in his voice. “I got out of school—was kicked out, mind you.” She turned around and, instead of closing up the distance between where she stood and where he sat, she leaned back against the counter, swirling the amber liquid around in the glass. “I needed something to do—something to keep me busy, and hopefully pays enough so that I can save up in case I need to buy my own freedom from the old man, or something like that. I wandered into this bar, tried to pass off being legal enough to drink, but that didn’t work out. Luckily for me, the owner must’ve seen I needed help, and he needed a pair of hands to help him out from time to time, so he offered me a job. Said I didn’t need to be legal to handle the drinks as long as I didn’t drink them.”

“And your father was all right with this?”

“Who gives a damn what the old man thought,” she grumbled, mostly to herself, but tried to withhold her malice as much as possible. It was easier to do with a spinning head, she thought. “I got the job to get away from him. He doesn’t give a damn about what I do as long as I came home every night, and I did.” She pointed towards his glass of whiskey. “Drink up. You’re gonna need it.”

And, after some initial hesitation, he did. He remained silent as he finally picked up the glass and brought it to his lips. “What happened to your father?” Shouta asked solemnly, tipping his glass just enough so the liquid flowed smoothly past his lips and down his throat.

“We lived in a bad neighborhood,” she began, eyes glancing away. “Heroes and villains fighting all over the place all the time. Our apartment complex was caught in the cross-fire.” She took another sip of her drink and forced herself to swallow. “My Quirk saved me. Just me. I don’t give a damn that Father didn’t make it out. I just—”

I just don’t want to talk about the others, she wanted to say, but couldn’t bring herself to say it out loud.

She remembered the first time waking up after that incident. Survivor’s guilt—that was one of the things the therapist told her during their first appointment after she made full physical recovery. She couldn’t remember much else of what the therapist said, though—all those words were nothing more than a blur in her mind, and the building collapse became nothing more than a scratch in her memory, and a few actual physical scars still lingering all throughout her body that she doubted would ever heal.

The doctors did their best, she thought. With the double-edged sword that was her Quirk, they most certainly did their best on her.

When she looked back at her brother, Shouta’s expression had changed very little, but she could see his softened gaze, even if he were still displeased with her revelations.

“One of my old regulars at the place I used to work at told me he could help, if I ever needed it.” She scoffed. “He knew what kind of crowd I was getting involved in, working there and all. So, he said, if I ever needed an out—someplace to stay, or a fresh start, he was willing to lend me a helping hand—”

“Crowd?” Shouta’s frown deepened. “Wait—what kind of crowd?”

A slip of her tongue, she thought. She knew she should be more careful with her words around Shouta, considering his occupation, and especially considering her own.

“The bad kind,” was all she tried to say at first. “You know how it is. I told you, it was a bad neighborhood—but it’s all good. My old boss—he was a better father figure than Father ever was. He made sure no one dared to lay a single finger on me, be it our clientele or even people outside of work.”

“Bad neighborhood.” His tired eyes squinted. “You mean villains?”

She tapped the glass with her index finger before taking another sip. “I said what I said.”

“You’ve been dealing with villains this entire time?”

“I’m an adult, Shouta.” Goddammit. “I can take care of myself.”

“How long ago was this?”

“Believe it or not, I wouldn’t be here if I couldn’t handle myself back then, all right?”

“And you didn’t tell me you were dealing with villains?”

“Well, I couldn’t tell you shit, now could I?” She stopped herself, took a deep breath and closed her eyes as she set the glass back down on the counter behind her. “I’ve been through enough. No one—not even Father—gave a damn about me. My old boss did, but god knows if he still remembers me—god knows if he’s still alive, for that matter.” She scoffed lightly. “I’m used to it. I grew up having to deal with this shit all the time. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about my customers because I clearly had no means to do so. But of course, it’s my fault, isn’t it?”

Maybe this was the alcohol talking. She prided herself in having grown a decent tolerance, but she could only take in so much at a time to prevent her liver from collapsing in on itself.

She closed her eyes and sighed. Her hands reached up to rub her face. Maybe she should just close up for the night. She owned the entire goddamn place, after all. It was a Tuesday, so there shouldn’t be any more than five people stopping by, at best, tonight anyway.

“No, it’s not your fault.” At Shouta’s somber voice, she peeled her hands off her face to look at him again. He finished the rest of his drink and sighed as he placed the glass firmly down on the surface of the bar. “You’re still my little sister.”

“I’m almost twenty-one.”

“But you’re still my sister.”

“Half-sister.”

“Stop it.” He exhaled slowly. “You’re right, I needed this. Can I—” He cleared his throat. “Can I get another?”

She pushed herself off the back counter. “For you?” She moved forward and picked up his glass. “On the house, brother.”

And she poured him another, without question. And she set the glass back down in front of him, refilled, without question.

He decided to take another sip before he continued.

“You’re still my little sister,” he said then. “I was supposed to be your big brother. I don’t know why I never received any of those letters, but.” His eyes drifted down to his glass as his hand lingered around it. “I graduated from U.A. as a Pro Hero. But some hero I am if I can’t protect my own little sister.”

“Twenty-one in literally two months’ time.”

“You’re almost a whole ten years younger than me, Renako.”

“I’m a legal adult, you know.”

“Not the point I’m trying to make here.” He narrowed his eyes at her again. “How did you turn out like this?”

“Shouta, I literally just told you—”

“No, I meant—” he cleared his throat, “—how did my sweet, innocent little sister end up becoming a sarcastic little know-it-all, hmm? I don’t remember raising you like this.”

She glared at him, livid. “Since when was I ‘sweet’ and ‘innocent’? And besides—” she picked up her drink and brought the glass to her lips, “—you barely raised me at all. Maybe that’s the problem.”

“Renako.”

She didn’t mean it to sound so condescending. She knew what he meant earlier—that despite it all, he was blaming himself for not being there for her while growing up. It was a bad habit to make some snide remark to anything he said—and, to some extent, to what her customers said, but she had more self-restraint when it came to her job—and she offered him an apologetic look as she took another sip of her drink.

“I’m sorry,” she spoke with sincerity, as sincere as she could make herself sound. “I didn’t mean it like that. What I’m saying is—maybe if I was with you this whole time, I would’ve turned out better.”

“Maybe.” He sighed. “I should be the one who’s sorry, you know.”

“I know you are.” The corner of her lip twitched. “You haven’t changed one bit, you know? Don’t worry—I know you are.”

The two fell into the depths of silence quite naturally after that. They were both adults, after all; back then, she would’ve been the one pouting and giving him the silent treatment, and Shouta, being the much older brother, had to be the one to apologize—to bury the hatchet, leave the water under the bridge and all that—but in the most passive—and, rarely, just slightly aggressive—way possible, characteristic only to one Shouta Aizawa.

Ren felt her shoulders relaxing at the fond thought of that. She had missed him—of course, she had missed him. She was never angry at him, though—simply confused as to what happened between them, having fallen out of contact just like that. She had thought her brother loved her enough to try looking for them. Maybe it was her father’s doing. She wouldn’t put it past the bastard to resort to something as cruel as that, just to cut off all ties with the step-son he loathed to no end.

“Where do you live now?” Shouta asked all of a sudden, bringing Ren’s attention back to him.

“Oh, uh.” She pushed herself off the counter with her drink still in hand. “Just upstairs. Why?”

“Do your customers know that?”

She shook her head. “Of course not. You can’t even get into the apartment through here. There’s a separate staircase and entrance to it around the back.”

“I suppose that’s good enough.” Grumpy old man. “Oh, right, before I go—I came in here to ask you a few questions at first, since places like these usually invite a whole slew variety of the city’s locale—I just never expected in a million years that the bartender would be my own little sister.”

She couldn’t resist rolling her eyes. “Shouta—”

“There have been some rumors going around that the Meta Liberation Army still exists here.”

He raised his head to stare at her; anybody else would’ve shrunk away in fear of what his Quirk could do, but, considering what her own Quirk could do, she wasn’t even sure what the outcome of both their Quirks’ activation would do to her. Neither of them had tried it, however—neither of them wanted to risk finding out what would happen if they did.

“The Meta Liberation Army?” She frowned at the name.

“Have you heard of it?”

“Heard of it?” She scoffed. “It’s all they ever talk about here in Deika.”

“Do you talk a lot with your customers?” he asked, expression turning grave.

“Oh.” She knew where this was going. “You mean, the typical bartender stereotype? Chat up my clients, pretend to be friendly and such, pour more alcohol down their throats to coerce them into telling me their deepest darkest secrets—”

“Renako.”

“I’m kidding.” Mostly, anyway. She didn’t do it out of malice, though, but more out of habit. Alcohol worked differently for different people. She couldn’t say her own life hadn’t been exciting so far, but the job made it more exciting than it should’ve been otherwise. And with quieter days like these, she wouldn’t mind listening in to a couple of customers telling her a story or two each from their own personal lives.

However, she did have a policy—just one, to uphold her integrity as an amateur therapist of sorts. Unfortunately, Shouta was no exception to it.

“I’ve heard people say things.” She has heard a lot of people say a lot of things, much more than she ever should. “But nothing I can or will tell you about what you’re asking of me.”

She knew what his reaction would be—anticipated it, even.

He frowned and narrowed his eyes at her. She could see the lines all over his face. He was getting older, she thought. “What?”

“Look.” She coughed to clear her throat, then moistened her lips with a swipe of her tongue. “I know this was going to happen someday, all right—heroes coming in here, asking me questions about a certain villain of sorts, asking if I’ve overheard any of their plans and such. And that is precisely why—” she took a deep breath, “—I discourage them from saying it out loud—from saying it to me. I would stop them before going too far, or I would interrupt them and change the subject, or leave the room altogether.”

“Renako—”

“I want nothing to do with it, Shouta.” Her eyelids fluttered and twitched. “And yeah, sure, it doesn’t stop me from accidentally overhearing a conversation or two from a group of villains huddled in the corner of the room or something. But I want nothing to do with it—it’s none of my business.” When she blinked, she felt heat pooling in her eyelids. “This hero-villain business, and all the work that comes with it—I want nothing to do with it. I’ve seen my fair share of conflict. And, as owner of this here bar, I will have none of that happening around here.”

“But you know what they’re doing.” He blew a sharp breath through his nose. “And you know what they’re doing is wrong.”

“And what can I do about it, Shouta?” She scoffed. “I’m not a hero—I’m a bartender. I work to meet ends meet, and I still have my fair share of debts to pay back. If doing what I do keeps the regulars coming back here night after night again, then I’ll do it. I have to.” Another scoff, this time accompanied with a feeble shrug. “I don’t have a choice.”

“You do,” Shouta quickly answered. “You can come with me. You can train to become a Pro Hero—”

“That’s not a life for me, and you know it.” She shook her head and her gaze started to wander. “Don’t get me wrong—I want an exciting life, just not that exciting.” Her hand went up to the juncture between her neck and her shoulder on its own. The scar underneath her clothes, where her hand now rested, throbbed almost imperceptibly. “I’ve had my fair share of that sort of excitement, and I can say for sure that it’s not for me. I’m fine living like this—sitting by the sidelines, on the bleachers—just observing. It’s more than enough—more than I can ever ask for.”

He must’ve seen the look in her eyes, and how her hand moved, and how her fingers brushed against the material of her clothes. She had told him enough for him to know what she meant, and why.

She didn’t realize her head had bowed down from her own words—the words she spoke out of her own mouth, and even more so at how pathetic and weak she sounded. She must’ve sounded so selfish. Of course, she couldn’t use her Quirk as an excuse to weasel out of the argument, not with Shouta around—his Quirk was no more offensive than hers, and yet, he managed to pull through, graduating from the prestigious U.A. High School as a Pro Hero—a result of his own blood, sweat and tears. If she had joined him long ago, perhaps she would have followed in his footsteps, too.

It was an excuse, but not the reasons for the choices she had made thus far in life—the choices she made right here while standing right in front of her own brother, the Pro Hero.

She gave him but just one reason. She could sigh in relief knowing it was already enough to win her the argument, because she sure as hell did not want to give him the other reasoning she had in mind.

“It’s not safe for you here, either,” he said instead, casting his gaze down at the glass in his hands. “If you truly want out, you shouldn’t be standing right at the fence of it all.”

“I’m not, and I never said I wanted out.” Her hand fell to her side. Maybe she should start taking those pills again. “I just don’t want to be part of the conflict. Eye of the hurricane, Shouta.”

“You can do so much more, Renako.” He held his glass up to his lips, then paused for a moment before downing all of its contents in one go. “You can help us. You can help people.”

“I am.” You don’t know it yet, brother, but I am. “I let them talk. I lend an ear to anybody who needs it, and occasionally, a few words of advice here and there, whenever appropriate. I’m helping as much as I’m able to.”

“You know that’s not what I mean.”

“It’s as much as I can do right now, Shouta,” she said with finality. “There is a reason behind every single action that a person does. People deal with all sorts of different things in life. I can help them, either by pouring them another drink to help them forget it all, or I let them talk—all for a price of at least 800 yen. That’s not bad compared to your local therapist, you know.”

“Oh—right.” Much to her confusion, he suddenly reached into his pocket and pulled out a small black square—his wallet—flipped it open and began pulling out some cash. “How much for the—”

She immediately shook her head. “I told you—it’s on the house.”

“Renako, I insist—”

“Here’s an idea on how you can pay me back instead.” She extended her palm out. “Cell phone, please.”

“What?” He frowned and glared at her, but when she bent her fingers in beckoning, he sighed and pulled out his phone instead and planted it on her open palm, before stashing his wallet back to his pocket.

“And stop calling me ‘Renako’.” She held it up briefly for him to enter his password, then brought the phone closer to her as her fingers immediately went to work. “It’s literally been years since anyone called me that—not even my own boss knew what my full name was.” Was. Is. What’s the difference. “And besides, we don’t want any of my clients accidentally wandering in here while you’re calling me that, yeah?”

“Right.”

As soon as she was done with the phone, she handed it back over to him. He frowned at the lit screen.

“Don’t be a stranger,” she said, corner of her lip twitching as she spoke. “And don’t share that with anyone, all right? It’s a dangerous business, Shouta, and I’m right in the eye of the hurricane. I still need to take precautions, you know.”

“Yeah.” His frown disappeared as soon as he realized the new contact added to his phone was none other than hers, and he stashed his phone back to his pocket. “So, you’re staying here?”

It took her a little longer to find the words to say. “I have some unfinished business of my own here.” She wasn’t intentionally trying to be all cryptic and mysterious. She wanted to be truthful to him, her own brother, but she knew she couldn’t. She doubted she would ever be able to. “And besides, this is the only place I’ve got—nothing else.”

“I can help you, you know.” He stuffed both his hands into his pockets. “I’ve just a new job offer—homeroom teacher at U.A.”

She quirked an eyebrow in genuine curiosity at his words. “Homeroom teacher? At U.A. High School?”

“Yeah.” He was mumbling again, eyes casting off to the side. She was sure there would be many others who were jealous of him at this exact moment, and yet, Shouta didn’t even seem the slightest bit enthusiastic at the otherwise once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. “They offered it to me since, you know, I’m an alumnus and all. I usually operate at night, anyway, so it’s not that bad of a day job, if you ask me.”

“Teacher by day, Pro Hero by night.” She shook her head. “You need sleep, too, you know. And a break.”

“I’ll be fine.” She scoffed and rolled her eyes. He narrowed his gaze at her. “It’s a decent job with a decent pay, Rena—Ren.” He took a brief pause to clear his throat. Ren. “Enough to provide for the two of us, if you want to.”

“I can’t.” She shook her head. There was no hesitation whatsoever, because she had none. “I’m making enough to get by, all right? I can still afford a couple of little luxuries every month or so, too. I’m just saving up for a car, is all. Baby steps, you know?”

“Ren—”

“I’m fine.” She offered him a kind smile, not caring that he didn’t explicitly return it himself, knowing he silently did in his own way—through his persistence, for example. “Seriously. I’m an adult now, Shouta—I can take care of myself. And I’m happy for you, you know—that job offer?”

He scoffed at the reminder. “Honestly, I don’t know if teaching a bunch of high-schoolers is really my thing—”

“You can do it.” She had doubts, knowing her brother, but her faith in him triumphed even those. “You’ve dealt with me before, back from even when we were kids.”

“Teenagers are worse.”

“You’ll do fine.” It was strange how both of them were trying to convince the other of doing things against their initial will. She was winning, though. Was this a habit of his? Letting her win, just because she was the younger sibling? She had hoped not, but she was enjoying it. “You’ll do great. I know you will.”

He scoffed at her words. “You sure act like you know a lot of things, don’t you?”

“That’s because I do, dummy.” The corner of her lip twisted to form a smirk. “I know enough, anyway.”

“Hm.” His eyes briefly wandered to the clock on the far side of the wall. “I can’t stay for long. I was just going to ask a few questions and leave, but—”

“I don’t know anything about the MLA.”

His head snapped back towards her, eyes lazily staring up at her in question.

She shrugged. “Even before I told them to stop talking to me about what they do outside those doors, I really don’t know anything about them.” She crossed her arms in front of her. “Officially, they’re gone. But people here in Deika don’t see them as villains—they see them as literal liberators.” She nodded to the doors. “People out there running around using Quirks however they like—that’s pretty much what the MLA stood for—from what I’ve heard, anyway. There’s talk here and there about how they’re still running things from behind the scenes, but as far as I’m concerned, that’s all there is to it—just talk.”

He pondered it for a moment before replying. “Are you sure?”

“These people are fanatics,” she said. “To them, the Meta Liberation Army were heroes. They won’t just stop talking about them just because most people think they’re gone—if they’re really gone.”

“And what do you think about it?”

“What do I—” She stopped herself as soon as she realized what he’d meant, then scoffed. “I think they’re nuts, honestly. I’m just lucky to be born with a Quirk that can protect me from all of that—well, most of it, at least.”

“Right.” After sparing her a brief lingering gaze, he stood up from his seat as she moved back to lean against the counter, arms still folded in front of her. “Are you sure you don’t—”

“Shouta.” She gave him a look, and his shoulders fell. “I’ll call you if I ever need anything, all right?”

“You don’t have—”

“I memorized it when I was adding mine to your phone.” She brought an index finger up to the side of her head and tapped her temple. “At least five of my regulars have tabs that need to be paid, too. I keep all that information up here—only because I’ve never gotten the chance to actually jot it down somewhere.”

She smiled when he sighed and shook his head, before he turned around and started heading for the door.

“Please come again.” She said it out of habit—she said it to all her clients, regardless of regulars or not—but there was a hint of something else in her voice that wasn’t deliberate at first, until she saw him turn his head around briefly to look back towards her. She smiled. “And don’t be a stranger, yeah?”

To even her own surprise, his tired eyes stared back at her, lingered for a few more seconds, as the corners of his lips quirked up to form the smallest of smiles.

“Take care, Ren,” he said with crystal-clear sincerity.

She nodded. “You, too, Shouta.”

The two exchanged one more reassuring glance between each other—one more reassuring smile—before he bowed his head down, hiding half of his face—his smile—behind the white cloth wrapped around his neck and draped over the top of his chest, as he pushed the doors open and exited the building with a promise between siblings.