#i was like oh yes the purposeful aiming of attention is fake actually we float on the waves of it like a donut on the ocean

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

noo i do not haave attention deficit hyperactivity disorder i simply think the purposeful aiming of attention is a myth made up for i assume movies thats what people make up most things for like sex and being in love and i try to ride my galloping thoughts like im both the whipped horse and the cruel rider this is the nature of thoughts it's the human condition you simply try not to fall because if you fall your horse breaks its legs and stomps all over you until youre forced to commit a horse-human murder-suicide by shooting it in the head to relieve both its and your own suffering

[secretgamergirl]

Hate Mobs Gotta Go

Last night, I did something I have never expected to do, and just full on gave up on a fun RPG writing assignment. Which I had to do because I hit a point where it was so overdue and unfinished that I was falling asleep sitting up and stress vomiting and other such things. There’s a whole lot of factors behind that. Other health issues, the toll of being on total pandemic lockdown for months, with neighbors just straight up open mouth coughing at my door, emergencies with friends and family, multiple fires and hardware failures, but the main thing was, and still is, the constant harassment from a militant hate mob, completely out of touch with reality.

Years ago, I remember there was this thing the internet at large was fond of doing with foaming at the mouth far right religious extremists- Mercilessly ridiculing them in public to expose how disconnected everything they said or did was from reality. Remember seeing this one float around and laughing your head off?

And if I mention the Westboro Baptist Church, you immediately picture a single family of raving bigots picketing funerals and such with their big homophobic signs, with a bigger crowd mocking them, right?

For some reason, the modern version of that particular flavor of fringe weirdo doesn’t get that sort of ridicule. Presumably because they’re focusing almost exclusively on trans people, and most people have this weird thing where like if you stick up for trans people you get cooties or something and never dig into the real juicy ridicule fodder. But for real, this stuff is OUT THERE. Just look at a few examples here.

Come for the weird ravings about harvesting baby organs. Stay for the... adult woman who apparently believes breasts get their shape from actually being sacks filled with milk under women’s skin? Now, how about this colorful comparison?

For anyone who wasn’t aware, pronouns are words like “I” “you” “he” “she” “it” and “this,” while rohypnol is colloquially known as “the date rape drug,” so this is utter gibberish. The full context of course is that this person is trying to make the argument that forcing this bigot to refer to women she’s prejudiced against as “she” instead of arbitrarily tossing around “he” or “it” is... raping her brain, I guess?

So... this is pretty clearly some creep’s weird little fantasy. The obvious giveaway is pretending that trans women “aren’t in the correct bathroom” when going to... the correct bathroom, and that the non-existent law about this is somehow enforced by... random bigots opting to deputize themselves. What DOES happen for real though is bigots like this being arrested for barging into public restroom stalls with camcorders aimed at the crotches of women on toilets and trying to defend themselves by insisting they have some duty to check what their genitals look like. On which note...

That’s just disgusting. It’s also as close as I feel comfortable to posting all the graphic fantasies I see from these people about the barbaric genital mutilation they imagine trans women subject ourselves to which really has no basis at all in reality. Well maybe I can post this one.

I’m not going to go through and itemize all the baldfaced lies in that, because I really kinda hope I don’t have to, and also because the person who slapped this together was kind enough to break it up in such a way that I legitimately can say “every single line of this is a completely baseless lie.” Also the art in the corner is stolen from a child-friendly comic whose author is trans, so, that’s extra slimy. Also wow that “bone scans” bit is actually one I’ve never seen. Where the hell do they even get these ideas?

Also this one needs some setup. If you have time, this right here is a freaking journey, if not, I’ll try to summarize.

So a while ago, this one particular unhinged bigot decided the most productive way to spend all her time was to get in touch with a bulk sticker printing business and order thousands if not millions of these weird gross poorly framed slabs with a really crude drawing of a penis and bunch of gibberish she really wishes were the names of popular twitter hashtags that nobody else but her ever uses. And then after receiving these, just... wandering around the city she lives in all day every day plastering them on phone booths and power poles and the mirrors of bathrooms in like.. elementary schools and park benches, just everywhere. And then makes multiple passes a day apparently to make sure nobody has tried to remove any of them, as detailed in this amazing thread I’ll link again.

So the latest break in that particular saga is that same zealot going around plastering stickers like this around too, to make it seem like “both sides do it.”

It should be obvious that that’s a “blacks rule!” sort of fake between the baffling text and using the extra inclusive, particular emphasis on supporting people of color, general purpose LGBT+ flag, but also, like their fellows on 4chan, they plan this sort of “false flag” crap in broad daylight:

I should really properly credit the whistle-blowing on that particular oddity, and I should also note that aside from the breast milk sacks, this is all just stuff I saw TODAY catching up on my twitter feed, but my main point with all this is to illustrate that we really are dealing with Jack Chick/Westboro Baptist-level unhinged zealotry... but again, nobody’s out there pointing and laughing. And it turns out, when you don’t have people pointing and laughing at this sort of thing, you get people taking it seriously. So... when I went to quickly search for a news story to link with the bit about creeps barging in on women with cameras, the results I got were... this.

That... sure is a lot of stories about totally innocent people in a demographic I belong to being murdered by total strangers goaded into blind murderous hatred by the sort of people I’m pointing and laughing at! Ha ha! There’s a very real chance of that happening to me every time I step outside, for any reason! Tee hee! I live in a state of constant fear! Whoopsie!

And it’s not just stuff like that. The people posting these rambling tirades about “breast milk sack implants” and putting crude penis stickers everywhere, never being called out as the unhinged weirdos they are, either have the world turning a blind eye to all this crap, or have everything they do downplayed in the media to the point where outright sexual harassment, doxing, and slurs I don’t want to repeat get headlines like “so-and-so made comments that some fringe trans activists on the internet deem ‘possibly transphobic’” and that’s AT BEST. More often you get stuff like the one incident I managed to bring a lot of public attention to way back when, where some bigot just literally walked up to someone on the street, grabbed them, savagely beat the hell out of them until pulled apart, had friends film the whole thing, and bragged after the fact about it, and every story that appeared as a result claimed the assailant was the victim, because they were all written by her friends.

Face obscuring provided by me here, by the way.

And that isn’t a one-off incident. Because, see, most of these unhinged weirdos spewing out all this transphobic gibberish are not, as you would think, a bunch of barely educated Trump hat wearing members of some fringe religious congregation. They’re editors and producers in major British news outlets. This isn’t me shouting conspiracy nonsense either, this is well-documented. Like, The Guardian gets public internal protests over this crap. So does the BBC. Yes, other respected news sites cover this. Media watchdog groups do their best to reign this in with hearings and such, but, don’t actually have any power to enforce anything really. So when there’s “reporting” on this crap, it’s coming directly from the “breast milk sack implant” people. Oh and here’s some screenshots of the headlines of those stories you’re too lazy to click through and actually read:

And of course, sometimes when they want to really come across as respectful, they try to find “scientists” and “doctors” who back up their ravings but all they have to fall back on are disgraced quacks who spend most of their time on activism work to normalize pedophilia.

I’m not bringing that point about Cantor up to discredit his writings about trans people by the way. He doesn’t really HAVE any writings about trans people. He just pasted the names of a bunch of random studies from the 70s about whether playing with barbies makes you gay into his blog a few years back and this crowd was so desperate for validation they declared him an “expert in the field” and started passing out links to his.... pro-pedophila blog. Which is part of this whole pattern, but I’ve written about that before. Oh and the governments of multiple countries manage to treat all these people as “experts” and make policy decisions based on their ravings. That’s fun.

Anyway, aside from encouraging random people to, you know, just randomly murder anyone they see who looks like maybe a trans woman, every so often this weird little cult pulls in an actual celebrity who then has a public meltdown as they post all this gibberish to a wider audience. Currently this is going on with Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling (who’s actively promoting the pedophile guy up there on Twitter), and I think also William Shatner, but I haven’t really looked into it. The last big one though was Graham Linehan. Who you might remember from co-writing some sitcoms that were popular decades ago in Britain, or from being the weird cartoon villain who tried to kill the funding of a children’s charity, prompting this strange pledge drive marathon of Donkey Kong Country.

You might also know him as one of... I think honestly just two people who have ever managed to be such out of control stalking hate mongers that they were actually given a permanent no possible appeal ban from Twitter. Personally though I know him more as, you know, that one absolute creep who’s been obsessively stalking me for like 5 years and never shutting up about his weird personal obsession with me.

I WOULD link the recent freaking filmed interview he did where he spent forever rambling about me, but I’d have to actually watch it to confirm I had the right link, and also the only place I could quickly find a link to it would be on his twitter feed, which as stated, no longer exists. Oh and random side note there, despite being personally, by name, the person he was explicitly targeting all his hateful ramblings at, he wasn’t banned from that site for any of the disgusting stuff he said to me. He just slipped up and mentioned a cis woman with a professorship while shouting about this crap recently and that caused people to actually take action. I do so love being invisible.

Anyway, point is, prior to Rowling grabbing the baton from him as his social media presence went up in flames, this guy was name-dropping me a LOT. Presumably he still is, just in places fewer people see it. And when you have as big an audience as he did, and that audience is as full of hatemongers as his was, that has a pretty noticeable effect. I’ve been deluged with so much hateful garbage for so long it’s impossible for me to put any numbers on it. The closest I can do to quantify it is note that hate dump was big enough that I was also flooded with more weird messages intended as support from total strangers than I could deal with, totally losing access to social media feeds and my e-mail from the volume for a good bit, and THAT flood was big enough that I got this whole second wave of creepy stalkers who’d built up this whole weird fanon where this stalker here is like, someone I used to date or be business partners with and not just some creepy dude like twice my age stalking me over the internet, from a completely different hemisphere.

And I mean... in the broadest of strokes, I can kinda laugh all this off. Because... these people are completely ridiculous, out of touch with reality, and mostly live in other countries. But... all the threats and shouting are very real and very constant and like.. picture someone outside on the street shouting at your windows about how they’re going to break in and kill you. You really can’t ignore that. Even if they’re unarmed, and all they’re really capable of doing is shouting and pounding on your door, you can’t really just ignore that shouting and pounding and just watch a movie or play a game or write this article you promised would be done 3 months ago. You can certainly try, but a pretty big part of your brain is going to be occupied with thoughts about how maybe you should call someone to see if they’ll escort this violent person away, or maybe you should barricade your door in case all that pounding does something.

And I mean this isn’t a bad metaphor for how all the constant threats and stalking I’m dealing with thanks to celebrity bigots personally obsessed with me impacts my life, but it also does a pretty good job of describing how my night went pretty recently when I ACTUALLY DID HAVE SOMEONE POUNDING ON MY ACTUAL REAL PHYSICAL DOOR SHOUTING ABOUT STABBING ME TO DEATH, and no, there was no resolution to that beyond the sound of sirens causing that person to back off.

I also had an experience not too long ago where I was supposed to take a cab to a routine appointment, a car showed up with the cab company’s name on it, somewhat early, and proceeded to drive me... out to the middle of the freaking woods like an hour from where I live, and when my phone rang with my actual cab asking where I was the driver freaked out, had me get out of the car, and took off leaving me just... stuck in the middle of nowhere freezing to death and trying to find a landmark an actual cab could pick me up from. Still don’t know what the hell that whole thing was about and whether a cab driver just REALLY didn’t know what he was doing and panicked or what, but I do know that talking about it publicly in the vaguest of terms lead to a bunch of unhinged shouting from... apparently some unconnected ride share driver with a habit of dumping trans women between stops when they try to get medications or something, convinced I was calling him out for that.

So.... yeah. Things aren’t exactly going great in my neck of the woods. I’d really appreciate it if people would properly treat these unhinged violent weirdos like unhinged violent weirdos and not respectable members of society so they quit getting so bold and public with the violent stuff, and people who listen to them get properly shouted down for doing so.

[zombiesbecrazy]

translation not required

Summary: "I don't know, Robin. I'm not an expert but I think that’s a lot of blood. More than normal."

AO3

There were three thoughts running through Damian’s head on a loop. The first was ‘run’ because, despite his usual instinct for fight instead of flight, he knew when he was outgunned and they needed to escape to in order to regroup to figure out how to get back to the space taxi that was miles away. A very close second was ‘Father will be so jealous’ because despite the gravity of their situation they were running from a dinosaur-like creature, which Father always had a keen admiration for. The third and final thought, though it was quickly closing rank on the other two was ‘ouch’ because in their haste to escape from the dinosaur and the hoard of local planet natives who appeared to be worshiping it, he had ended up with a knife embedded in his thigh.

It was a matter of numbers. They had thrown at least fifty knives and as skilled as he was there is only so much dodging someone could do.

Gravity was strange on this planet and Jon had issues getting height when he attempted to fly so they were running at top speed, dodging through purple shaded trees with their sharp branches slashing against their bodies, until suddenly they were airborne, having apparently run off the side of an unseen cliff with the ineptitude of an animated coyote. Damian felt Jon's arms wrap around his waist and he somehow managed to slow their fall and adjust their trajectory into a natural cave opening half way down the cliff instead of them plummeting to the ground. They still landed hard, but Jon did his best to take the brunt of the force, tumbling with unpracticed clumsiness but it was sufficient for the purposes of not dying.

They were temporarily safe from their pursuers in their accidentally discovered shelter and that was satisfactory enough for a moment of reprieve.

Assuming that the dinosaur couldn't fly.

Jon scrambled to his feet, brushing of his hands on his pants and breathing heavily, then rushed over to look out the mouth of the cave to see if they were in the clear. “Hecking poop. I think we lost them.” Apparently convinced that the coast was clear, he wandered back to Damian, plopping down beside him. “Did you see that? That was a dinosaur.”

Of course I saw it, I didn’t just not see a dinosaur trying to eat us, said Damian to himself, but kept his sharp words to himself and nodded. “I think it was more specifically something close to our carnotaurus, but yes. A dinosaur who they think is a deity of sorts.” Damian was still on the ground, but had shuffled back to lean against the cold stone wall. His injured leg was stretched straight out in front of him, but he hadn’t shifted his attention to inspect the damage yet, opting instead to take a moment to collect himself. He leaned his head back against the wall, closed his eyes and started counting up in French in multiples of six as a way to relax and distract himself from the pain that was building as the adrenaline wore off.

Jon apparently had other ideas once he noticed the primitive knife sticking out of Damian’s thigh. “Oh, shoot. Does that hurt?” He sounded like he wanted to poke it for some reason to see if it actually hurt or not but was restraining himself because he knew they Damian would snap at him. “That looks like that’s gotta hurt.”

"It's intense," he managed to not spit out, parsing out his words so that they were measured and balanced. He managed his breathing and forced himself not to grit his teeth. "It's manageable." He could almost hear a voice that sounded a lot like Grayson in his head "in case you need a translator, that's Damian speak for 'ahhh, this really fucking hurts'", but this was Jon and Jon didn't need a translator because he was perfectly fluent in Damian.

There was silence in the cave for a bit and Damian mildly wondering if he was starting to fall asleep when Jon piped up again. "I don't know, Robin. I'm not an expert but I think that’s a lot of blood. More than normal." It was a lot less jovial and a much more concerned tone now. When Damian first started taking Jon under his wing, Jon had overly freaked out over any little scrape that Damian got, but he hadn’t overreacted about anything in quite a while. Perhaps being in space made him more anxious. "Is it supposed to… spurt like that?"

Those words caught Damian’s attention, opening his eyes lazily to cast his gaze down to his leg, ready to argue with Jon because it was just a flesh wound, but on closer inspection he wasn't wrong. Damian could see blood leaking out around the hilt of the blade still in his leg, spurting out in perfect rhythm with his heart rate, and now that he was sitting still it was pooling beneath him, staining the golden interior of his cape crimson.

Spurt versus ooze was the difference between artery and vein and that was the difference between dying and living, especially when they were lost in space, potentially thousands of miles from home.

"We need to cauterize the wound." He tried to keep the tension that was building in his chest out of voice, trying to keep Jon calm before Damian had to ask something that he knew would terrify Jon. He knew it terrified Superman, but Jon was still just a kid. Maybe he wouldn’t have to tell him? Maybe Jon would understand?

"How? We don't have anything hot enough." Jon scanned the cave, but if was of course barren of any fire making tools. “Unless you have something in your belt that I don’t know about?”

He didn’t. Nothing that would work as fast as or well as the alternative.

“Superboy.” Jon blinked at him without any sign of understanding what Damian was hinting at, causing him to sigh, breath shaky with controlled effort. He didn’t want to say the words. He wanted Jon to just understand and do it and for it to not be a big deal, but that would be too simple. "You have heat vision, Jon."

"Yeah? I don't understand how that…" his words trailed off and the confused look was slowly replaced with sheer terror as he understood and he immediately started backing up across the cave, scooching back as if that would make the problem and the solution go away. "Damian, no."

"It's the only way. The blood spurting like that means that the knife hit my femoral artery." Stony voice covered his fear, attempting to be strong and stoic, trying to channel his Father and his bravery. He was terrified, but he could control his fear. He needed to be the calm one. He may be the injured one, but he wasn’t the one with the difficult job to do. "It's barely stemming the blood now but in order to get out of here it needs to be removed. And without your skills..." Damian looked back towards the growing amount of blood underneath him and inhaled sharply. "I'll bleed out."

"But my aim… I'm still practicing Damian. I can hit bottles in the backyard. I'm not ready for something like this." He edged closer again, carefully making sure not to touch the injured site.

"I need you be ready." Damian grabbed his hand. “I refuse to bleed to death in a cave on a random planet.”

"I don't wanna cut your leg off by accident," Jon whispered, eyes welling up with tears. He was terrified. Damian wasn’t sure if he was more scared that he would hurt Damian more or kill him, leaving him alone and lost in space by himself, but both were valid concerns.

But just as Jon spoke Damian, Damian also spoke Jon.

"Neither do I and you won't," Damian squeeze Jon’s hand, trying to lend him some of his faked confidence. "But if you do, cauterize that as well. It is alright. I’ll forgive you. I just need you to stop the bleeding."  Jon bit his lower lip, looking at the wound, watching the blood steadily flow, before looking back to Damian and nodded firmly.

Jon let go of Damian’s hand and shifted lower to the injured leg, hand hovering over the knife, ready to pull it out before trying to seal the wound. “On three.” He swallowed and started to count.

He went on two, just as Damian knew he would. All the Kryptonians he knew always seemed to go on two.

Screams filled the cave, echoing off the walls and Damian was aware enough to know that not all of it was his. The pain he had expected, but the smell of his burning flesh was something else entirely. Logically he knew what it smelled like, he had experienced it before, but knowing that it was his own was a million times worse. He didn’t quite black out, hanging onto consciousness with the last scrap of his willpower, knowing somewhere in the back of his mind that there was a chance that they’d have to move at any moment if they were discovered and he couldn’t afford to be fully out of it right now, but he was close to the edge, detaching himself from the pain, losing himself in his coping techniques, trying to meditate away the worst of it. Everything became dreamlike and vague as he floated through the waves of pain.

It was finally Jon’s voice that brought him back into himself, slowly making him more aware that it was over. Haze leaving him, he could hear Jon’s tearful apologies, and was able to recognize that he was no longer attending to his leg, but instead was now between Damian and the wall that had previously been holding him up, arm strapped across his chest, holding him in a tight hug as they both trembled, whispering in his ear and Damian wasn’t sure if Jon was actually talking to him or more to himself.

“I’m so, so, so sorry, Damian. You’re okay though. I did it. The bleeding stopped. You still have a leg and everything.”

“Jon.” Damian had to choke out the name for the sound to come out and the arm around him tightened. “Thank you.”

“That was terrible,” he mumbled. “You screamed so loud.”

Damian hummed in agreement. "I wasn't aware that you could cry while using your heat vision. I would have assumed tears would evaporate." It was such a stupid thing to say. Why on earth would he say something like that to the person, his best friend, right after he had saved his life? It was just something that came out without thought and he cringed at his own misstep. He didn’t mean that. He meant to say ‘thank you for saving my life, Jon’ not sound like a total ass that most people thought he was.

But thankfully, Jon laughed softly and lifted his arm to wipe his cheek with his sleeve. "Shut up. I'm not crying. You're crying."

"It was an observation, not a criticism. And we're both crying. It isn't anything to be ashamed of." Years ago he would have thought that it was a weakness, something to be exploited and used, before he understood the good that it could do. ‘Just pain leaving the body, kiddo’ the internal Grayson voice told him.

"Good. Because that was really scary. Let's never do that again." Jon sniffed and his arm tightened around him again. “I’m sorry it hurt so much.”

“I’m sorry you had to do it.”

“Its okay.” They sat there for a while, just the sounds of their breathing filling the cave while they rested. It was beginning to get darker beyond the mouth of the cave and Damian was about to suggest that they attempt to make an escape, but Jon beat him to it. “We really have to start thinking about getting out of here. They had to have heard us. Do you think that you can handle being moved if I give you a piggy back ride? I think I know where we can find Space Cabbie and then we get the hell off this planet.”

Instead of focusing on how much it would hurt to move or thinking about how they had almost been sacrificed to a dinosaur lord and how he had almost died, Damian snorted. “Language, Jonathan Kent.”

“I think I earned that one.”

[mintchocolateleaves]

We’ve Only Just Begun (2/??)

Summary:  The world comes to a halt, everything torn apart, All-Might left as dust, Deku the last hero left standing. In this world the villains win. In a fit of desperation, Midoriya Izuku turns the clocks back. In a fit of desperation, he rewrites everything. TimeTravel!AU

[Beginning]

Before

Embers from the fire crackle beneath his feet. Izuku stomps on them until all that remains is ashes, black soot staining the side of his shoes.

“Jeez Deku,” the voice is feminine, and Izuku resists the urge to turn, instead leaning down to grasp at a single page that's not burnt into embers. It crumbles beneath his fingers, joins the pile of ashes as if it'd not been holding on seconds before. “Reckless much?”

If lighting a fire in the hopes that anybody – hero or villain, as long as they're alive it doesn't matter who – will notice is reckless, Izuku supposes he's the most reckless person alive.

“You're back,” he says, deciding not to respond to the goad. He shifts, forces himself to turn away from the fire, the burnt remains of bloodied textbooks, “I was beginning to think you were dead.”

He receives a look that's neither annoyed, nor particularly worried. Izuku thinks the look might be more exasperated than anything, but in an almost... fond way? He doesn't know, it's a lot more difficult than it used to be to read Uraraka Ochako's expressions these days.

“You know, I'm starting to miss when the way you used to be so naive.” Uraraka states, huffing as she jumps from some of the rubble. The street is a fairly open one, mainly because buildings have been levelled, leaving behind nothing short of ruins.

Izuku feels the same. He missed the smiles she'd worn once, the way they'd both been able to laugh when talking to their classmates. Now, most of their classmates are gone and they've lost the innocence they'd once worn like badges.

Now, Uraraka fights dirty.

They both do. It's the only way to fight fair.

“We can't afford to be naïve any more Uraraka–”

“I found it,” she interrupts before he can remind her that being naïve only gets everyone killed – (They're living proof aren't they? They know first hand). “I found Todoroki's transmitter.”

They've been searching for it for weeks. Ever since they first heard word of the raids and linked them with Todoroki's lack of response to radio transmissions. And now, finally, they've got it.

“Any sign of tampering?”

Uraraka shakes her head. The transmitter isn't something easily found, a seemingly common object that any who don't know it's true purpose will overlook.

“Have you listened to it yet?”

She shakes her head again. Dropping the transmitted into Izuku's hand, she says, “I didn't want to listen to it alone.”

Understandable.

Izuku presses play.

After

Izuku refuses to wear the mask.

Maybe it had been cool the first time he'd been fifteen, for the thirty minutes it had lasted when he'd first worn it. But it'd quickly lost any cool-factor by the time it had been repaired and he'd been expected to wear it again. By the time he'd turned sixteen, it'd been cringe worthy.

Now, it's just mortifying.

Instead of embarrassing himself – and by association All-Might, (subtlety has never been Izuku's strong point) – he stuffs the mask into his back when he's certain none of his classmates are watching. He zips up his bag with a hum to his voice, listening to his classmates gush over their costumes and kicks it under his desk just in time for All-Might to tell them which training area they're going to for today's class.

By the time Izuku has changed into his costume, racing towards training grounds, his mask is too far away for him to change his mind. He almost thinks that will be enough to stop people from commenting.

They still do though – comment, that is.

“Oh, Deku,” Uraraka says when she notices him jogging towards the group, readying himself with quick stretches. It's odd moving in his costume again, the way it feels glued to his arms. It's light, yes, but the colour scheme is to bright, almost as if it's inviting trouble.

It is, but Izuku doesn't need to be particularly happy about that.

Uraraka continues when she receives a small wave. “You don't have a mask?”

Izuku rubs at the back of his neck, offers an almost awkward laugh. Shaking his head, he says, “I must have forgotten to put one in the design I put on my special request form...”

A smile. It's almost refreshing to have one thrown his way, although the pat he receives on the shoulder is little more than alarming. Izuku freezes from the touch, attempts to override the instinct to grab Uraraka's wrist and throw her to the ground.

Thankfully, they both remain rooted to the ground. After a second, Izuku's shoulders loosen out. And Uraraka mentions nothing, which is nice, especially since she's probably already noticed the way he's stiffened at the touch.

Hopefully, she'll weigh it up as the result of bullying. It's the most plausible answer, after all.

“Either way, you're costume looks really practical!” Uraraka says, her grin never once wavering. She looks down at her own suit, pulls a face. Izuku resists the urge to laugh, mainly because he doesn't want her to think he's laughing at her. “I kind of wish I'd been more specific on mine, you know?”

Izuku drops his arm, offers a grin. He says, “I kinda like it though, it reminds me of an astronaut.” He pauses, watches as her eyes sparkle. “I think it really fits your quirk.”

Uraraka scratches at her cheek, but Izuku can practically feel the happiness rolling off of her. It's like waves – he hopes it's infectious, because seriously, looking at some of his classmates they really need to just... chill out. “I didn't think of that...”

She hadn't the first time either. Her own lack of enthusiasm about her costume had lowered her own self esteem; To think that just a few words would make her happier. Izuku almost wants to punch 'past him' for not speaking the first time.

There's not enough time for either of them to continue any further conversation – a small blessing, Izuku thinks – as All-Might's voice booms from the front of the class. It doesn't take long for him to explain the rules, indoor anti-personnel training is pretty straightforward after all. And soon they're being sorted into their groups.

Like before, Izuku is teamed with Uraraka. They're group A. The Heroes.

Nothing's changed on that front. Izuku's still got to fight Iida and Kacchan. They play the role of villain, get to go in five minutes before Team A.

As the others make their way towards the monitoring room, Kacchan and Iida making their way into the building, Izuku turns to Uraraka. They'll have to take this five minutes to form a semi-coherent plan, in order to take both 'villains' down and steal away the fake nuclear weapon.

“Uraraka,” Izuku says, raking his mind for how it had gone the first time. It'd been years ago, and Izuku's pretty sure the only reason he can still remember is because Kacchan hadn't let him forget. It'd been embarrassing to lose against him the first time, and it had only been like that because he and Uraraka hadn't worked together properly. “Let's come up with a plan.”

Uraraka nods, passes him the building plans that they'd been given before hand. She says, “yeah, we should memorise these right?”

“Yeah,” Izuku glances at the paper, memorises probable routes in and out of the building. The windows have reinforced glass, which while he could punch through them, he doesn't quite want to risk making too much sound. “But really, we need to come up with a way to fight Kacchan.”

Uraraka glances up from the plans, offers him a grimace. “Bakugo's the one who bullies you, right?”

“Yeah,” Izuku says, not that it bothers him much any more. It's not really been at the forefront of his mind in recent years, sharing a bigger enemy and having to work together had kind of... forced Kacchan to mellow towards him. “But let's focus on this...”

He receives a hesitant nod, which, is probably the best he's going to get on Kacchan related matters amongst his classmates.

“Anyway,” Izuku says, “Kacchan's probably going to leave Iida behind and seek me out to fight. So... let's come up with a plan to fight him when he does.”

“You're really serious about this Deku,” Uraraka laughs, but she seems excited. “I almost feel like we're actual heroes.”

The infiltration into the building is quick. Instead of wearing themselves out by racing up the stairs to one of the open windows, they use Uraraka's quirk to quickly float upwards. It's a familiar feeling, but Uraraka gives him a grin after they enter the building.

“I'm surprised you don't feel queasy,” she says, as they climb in through the window. Izuku sends her a strained smile – resists saying anti-gravity quirks are like roller-coasters, go on them enough and you become desensitised – and points forward.

“There's lots of blind corners,” he says, bites into his lip, “so watch out for Kacchan, okay?”

Izuku isn't completely sure how much of One for All he can use. Certainly not 100%, even with the mental understanding, he'll need to strengthen his body before he can even risk it. With how tense he feels, and his own feeling of being mismatched – (his own balance seems slightly off, he'd been taller than this, more toned) – he can't really use more than 15% without leaving himself injured.

Not that he'll need 15% of his power though, inside a tight space like this one anything more than 10% will easily take a turn for the dangerous.

“Sure,” Uraraka responds, turning the corner behind him. Izuku feels almost guilty for taking the lead, but they'd quickly decided that if Kacchan was going to aim any ambush around him, then he needs to be in front as a form of bait.

(Izuku hadn't actually called it bait, there's something about the word that he knows Uraraka won't sit well with. Instead, he's just... 'diverting Kacchan's attention.')

They make their way up one flight of stairs before things become more... tense. Izuku wonders whether Uraraka feels it, the heaviness that seems to filter into the air, but by the continued spring to her step, she doesn't.

He'd not been expecting her too – she's not been weathered with many battles yet, doesn't feel the slight shifts as they come across someone with malicious intent.

So while Kacchan's attack isn't so much a surprise to him, for Uraraka it seems to come out of nowhere. Izuku has to grab her arm and force them both out of the way of the explosion that follows from Kacchan throwing himself into the corridor.

“You okay?” Izuku asks as he glances down at Uraraka. The blast has thrown them both off of their feet, but while Izuku's been quick to roll back onto his feet, she's only just managing to pick herself up. She even takes a few seconds to brush dirt from her costume which – Izuku refuses to roll his eyes, but he certainly wants to.

“Nice dodging Deku,” Kacchan says, and it's the first time he's heard his voice today. Which means, it's the first time hearing that almost-feral voice in months.

Okay, maybe not wearing the mask was a bit stupid. Izuku wishes he'd have worn it just to avoid the tears. Seriously, he tells himself, I should not be this emotional.

“I just knew that you'd come after me,” Izuku mutters, glances at Kacchan's form. It's not difficult to read into his muscles, but even without the insight to each of his movements, Izuku already knows how he's going to move. Part of being a hero includes knowing how your teammates will act and reacting to make sure you can accommodate for their weaknesses, openings that villains might take advantage of.

Sorry, Izuku thinks as Kacchan growls at him, rearing his right arm back, but I'm taking advantage of our friendship.

Izuku sidesteps, wraps both hands around Kacchan's wrist. Jutting an elbow up, he swipes Kacchan's feet out from beneath him, throws him over his shoulder.

As Kacchan lands, Izuku sidesteps him, so that he and Uraraka are on opposite sides. Not that Kacchan would ever consider running, but it gives them an advantage of sorts. Plus, if Izuku's the sole focus of the fight, then if gives Uraraka a better chance at going undetected and helping him.

“I know your fighting style Kacchan,” Izuku says when his friend stands up, and maybe he's goading him a little bit, but the more riled up he can get the other boy, the wilder his attacks will be. If he can break through any plan Kacchan has, forcing him to rely purely on instinct, Izuku will have the upper hand.

Or something like that.

Kacchan glares, “fucking shut up Deku. You're pissing me off.”

Yes, Izuku thinks, that's the plan.

Izuku blocks the next kick with both arms. Throws himself back into a roll at a following explosion, eyes flickering every so often back to Uraraka, floating above them waiting for just the right moment to turn her own gravity back on. She's got her capture tape in her hands, pulled out, poised for an opening.

How much time do they have left of their original fifteen minutes? Still more than ten, Izuku's certain of that much.

Another explosion – this one is weaker, there's a lack of nitroglycerin stored back already – and instead of flinching away from the flames, Izuku throws himself towards it. It's hot against his skin, but the heat dissipates as he flicks it away with a finger, using 1% of his quirk to brush the flames away so the fire fans out around him.

His finger still stings though, from the touch. He'll need to make sure it doesn't blister when they finish the training session, because while cuts and bruises are a pain, burns are always the worst.

This time, when he swipes Kacchan's feet from beneath him, he grabs at his shoulders, using his momentum coming forward to tackle him to the floor. At this point, he calls Uraraka's name, lets out a sigh of relief as she drops opposite him, holding one end of the tape and throwing the other end out to Izuku.

Izuku catches, stretches the tape out more, and by the time Kacchan's risen to his feet, he's entangled in capture tape. His face goes red, but Izuku glances at Uraraka with a smile, ignoring the swearing echoing the corridor.

“We caught a villain,” Izuku says, stepping towards Uraraka and glancing in the direction Kacchan had arrived in. “Let's go steal that nuclear weapon, alright?”

Uraraka nods, and they leave Bakugo behind, captured as they race to the weapon room.

They use up more of their time simply making their way to the room where Iida stands protecting the 'weapon' but they still have roughly seven minutes by the time they get outside the room.

“We either need to capture Iida,” Izuku whispers to Uraraka as they peer around the corner into the room. There's a distinct lack of objects, which means it's going to be difficult for Uraraka to use her quirk. “Or we take the weapon.”

The weapon seems like the easier option. With Iida's speed quirk, it'll be nigh-impossible to corner him and capture him with tape. Izuku turns, ready to relay the plan to Uraraka when a large boom echoes through the corridor.

“Wha-” Uraraka glances up, just as Izuku glances over his shoulder.

Kacchan.

The second explosion is bigger. Fire doesn't just explode, it engulfs the corridor. The shock of the boom leaves Izuku's ears ringing, the explosion blasting through the walls. Izuku doesn't have the time to throw himself into the room with Iida, and he is thrown backwards along with the blast, into the next room.

He hits his head on one of the walls, but the force isn't enough to cause any more than a sharp pain. Maybe he's concussed, but Izuku isn't sure, there's adrenaline pumping through his veins overriding everything else. No wait – Izuku's pretty sure he's got a burn on his shoulder, it's numb.

Izuku stands up, glances around.

The world shimmers for a moment. And it's not like Izuku wants to see red, but for a moment that's all he can see. The walls are rubble and it's like he's back there, grey bricks stained with blood.

It splatters the walls, stains the floors. And there's so much on Izuku's hands that he'll never be able to scrub it off, it's under his nails and – and Oh God there's blood everywhere and – And -

And –

Where's Uraraka?

“Deku, are you okay?” Uraraka's voice echoes through the transmitter in his ear, worried. But it's most certainly her voice.

When Izuku blinks, everything is back as it should be. Except, Kacchan stands in front of him, not glaring now. No, he's glowering, eyes clouded with something akin to fury.

“What's wrong Deku,” Kacchan growls, as Izuku glances up at him, trying to calm his own heartbeat, “you're still alive aren't you?”

“We caught you,” Izuku mutters. He's quiet, but the sound carries, and Kacchan eye twitches. “This is just poor sportsmanship.”

“You think real fucking villains are just gonna step out when you fucking capture them?” Kacchan snarls stepping down from some of the rubble, “get real. You wanna be a fucking hero right? Act like one.”

Izuku clenches his teeth. Uraraka asks again whether he's okay, but it's impossible to find his words.

“Fucking use your quirk this time,” Kacchan says, voice low and menacing as he takes another step toward him. “Because I'm going to beat you at your strongest, Deku.”

[Next]