#once again not a meta post but still it makes me kind of chortle to myself when i read the comments

[simmonsized]

Is it cool if I keep asking for your hcs? They’re pretty fun tbh. I got excited seeing the notification for the last one and they did not disappoint. Maybe I’ll ask for Alpha Dave this time because he’s pretty fun in your fic. I love his characterization a lot! Mom Lalonde would be nice too but hmm, maybe next ask? Or do both if you’d like to. It’s really up to you.

I just really like your guardians hehe.

Of course!!!! Honestly it is a lot of fun for me and it gives me an excuse to talk because, you know! Tbh it's the first time anyone has asked me in depth about any of the silly stuff I spend all my time thinking about, so I kind of love it! (also please always ask abt the guardians, i really like them, too!!)

WARNING THIS GOT AWAY FROM ME AFTER ALL IT’S VERY LONG I’M SORRY

SO: Alpha Dave (in context of rng)

A!Dave (and Bro) broke his nose when he was 13, for plot reasons, so his nose is slightly crooked (lists to the left)

He is Tall and hunches constantly because he hates being the tallest person in the room but no he doesn't but yes he does

Also it makes it easier to talk to people shorter than him

He can in fact fit into alpha Rose's clothes

He's a nail biter

This man has anxiety

He didn't get his glasses until he met Ben Stiller obviously so before that he would just wear very funny plastic sunglasses

Speaking of plastic this man own nothing but plastic cups EXCEPT

He owns one Whataburger mug that he has had since he was 10

He slept on John Crocker's floor for like, 4 years when he said he was going to college (he did not go to college)

This man did not even bother finishing high school

The Con Air Museum was a birthday present for John (he never got to see it in person)

Absolutely refuses to eat the crusts on his pizza and leaves them lying around the house for weeks until someone else picks them up

Only owns 7 pairs of socks god help him

Yes some of them have no heel

Also Left-handed for obvious reasons

collected Zoobooks until the fall of the humanity meant the publishing company went under

He keeps them in the back of his closet where no one but him will ever know

The secret to guardians is that they are duty-bound to their "kid", even if it means dying for them (example Mr bro bad man strider) but their separation over time and a whole life lived has caused Dave (and Rose) to lose most of that. Interpret any changes after meeting Dirk as you will

He is really bad with kids, mostly because

Dave Strider does not like kids

He does not like talking to kids, does not know how to talk to kids, because by the time he died at 65, there were no kids left for him to talk to, and he is just. Kind of a weird dude

My man has not had an apple juice in literally 16 years

Also to reference my last post, the alpha guardian formula [(2024+4n)-1995+t] means he and Rose were 65 when they died, according to RNG canon

He also broke his arm when he was 12 :)

He has never been to Disneyworld but used to take himself to Disneyland once a year for Christmas, sometimes Rose if she would fly out for him

He used to work in a record shop in Houston

This man can cook even less than Mom Lalonde

all his chapter titles have a theme

He does not like puppets but his proximity to Dirks (and Bro) are giving him pretty much unwanted exposure therapy lmfao

His favorite soda is Cherry Cola :)!

This man has never wanted anyone to like him as much as he desperately wants every iteration of Dirk Strider to like him

He is more interested in getting his own way than placating people, and this causes him to routinely mow over other people's thoughts and feelings

If he realizes he cannot get his way this way, he switches to Being Nice

He cannot (will not) stop following after Bro Strider like a lost dog after a bone no this will not change

It's fucked up but he is genuinely jealous that, at times, Dirk appears to get along better with Bro than he does with Dave

He uses strawberry scented shampoo

But still buys cvs brand detergent yes even now

He has scars across his knuckles in the exact same pattern as Bro Strider

He's also got the same scar across his palm as Bro :)

Only ties his shoes into bunny ears

There was a time when the alpha guardians did not know that their lil packages would never arrive

Can sleep literally everywhere on everything

Undisclosed back injury that causes bouts of sciatica from time to time

Is 120% more likely to accidentally kill a person than Bro Strider, but both of them have that kind of control you only get from a lifetime of not being particularly kind to yourself

Not afraid of blood

Has always wanted to go to a candy store

Actually likes driving BUT

Possibly the second most reckless driver out of all the guardians, after Mom Lalonde

Has some fucked up way of viewing both the Daves through the lens of his younger self, but unfortunately for all Daves, dead (or recently back to life) daves are the enemy

Did not learn how to swim until he was in his teens

Alpha Rose Lalonde was his only friend for like 20 years and my god, it shows

It is actually so fucking funny to me that bro spent so long trying to get Dave to stab him, on purpose, and yes this is also about Bro but mostly about Dave, and yes, he was in fact hoping Dave would stab him, and he was also a little disappointed that Dave had enough control to stop himself

Probably also impressed

Dave thought he was fucking insane (he is) and thus felt guilty every single fucking time because it's just a Dirk (bad)

But also at the same time has the same compulsion as Bro to like. Poke him until one of them gets stabbed by a sword, on purpose.

Wears a watch for the funnies

I really like the concept that Dave and Rose both maintained some kind of connection to their aspects but for Dave who never had a connection to the horrorterrors or Light (fortune), he mostly came across as what I am currently calling "a Failed Knight" (thus my joke about the old knight adage, "service without complaint")

Has a tendency to put things into his pockets instead of his sylladex without thinking about it

Started smoking younger than Bro

Pall malls, always, shitty on purpose, yes

Learned to sit still during [redacted] but has since pretty much lost that ability and is now completely fucking unlikely to stand still for longer than necessary unless it's like

Performative

I think he is more likely to yell than Dave, because that cold anger is a Learned Trait, and I think he has a lot to be angry about

He absolutely is going to need bifocals one day never before has a man squinted so much as a computer screen for so long

Coffee is half his diet

His favorite color is blue

stardust is an intentional parallel of neptunium

Remember that time Dave beheaded a juggalo president and no one talks about it what the fuck is up with that

He also has a fucked up death scar but I think I already said that

Thank you for asking I'm realizing I could go forever so I'm stopping here

[stillness-in-green]

Stress Management

Guess who woke up with post-Deika Shigaraki/Re-Destro on the brain?  (Spoilers: it me.)  

A few months after Deika, when everyone is beginning to settle into the new status quo, Rikiya finally gets to meet Shigaraki’s other most mysterious ally.  (Content Warning: Ujiko, Shigaraki being kind of handsy.)

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When Rikiya entered the lab, mouth still tasting unpleasantly of bitter black ichor, his first thought upon seeing the twelve tubes and their contents was, Ah.  So, we never could have won, after all.  

“Why didn’t you bring these with you to Deika?” he asked, gaze taking in the obsidian-black Noumu floating in their rows.  “It would have saved everyone some injury and expense.”

Shigaraki Tomura, slouching as ever undisturbed behind him, huffed out, an edge of exasperation to the sound.  He didn’t have time to answer, though, as the figure in the chair at the end of the room turned to face them.  

“He hadn’t earned them yet,” the little man replied, eyes masked behind thick green lenses.  

Curious, how much function shaped form.  Rikiya had never met a true mad scientist before, but of course he had imagined how this one might look when Shigaraki had, the day prior, called him out of the blue and told him to make time for a doctor’s appointment.  And here Ujiko-obvious-pseudonym-Daruma sat, a perfect embodiment of Rikiya’s idle imaginings.  

“I have to thank you!” the man went on.  “The winter training retreat was getting fairly dull, but I couldn’t ask for a better result.”  

“Training retreat?” Rikiya echoed, raising an eyebrow.  He looked back at Shigaraki, who never had bothered to explain what he and his team were doing up in Niigata when the Liberation Army made contact.  “How—youthful.”  

Shigaraki rolled his eyes—a perfectly youthful response—and the doctor chortled.  

“Come, come.  Sit down, Yotsubashi Rikiya!  I want to talk about your quirk.”  

A skinny robotic arm extended from behind Ujiko’s chair (truly, the Platonic ideal of what one imagined when asked ‘what sort of man creates things like the Noumu?’) and indicated the rather more mundane folding chair across from him.  

Rikiya hesitated for only a moment—he still wasn’t accustomed to his new prosthetics, and that cluttered floor looked to be a nightmare—before a hand alighted between his shoulder blades.  He stiffened at the four little points of contact, his skin prickling, suddenly hyper-sensitive to where the fifth might fall.  

“You heard him,” Shigaraki Tomura, middle finger hovering, said in the casual voice of a man who knew he didn’t need to threaten.  He pushed Rikiya forward—well, pressed him forward.  Despite everything, Shigaraki lacked the physical strength to do more than suggest. Suggestion might as well be doctrine, though, when it came from a hand like his—certainly if one appreciated the uncertainty of living another day.  Rikiya went, picking his regrettably wobbly way over the sprawling oversized cables.  Shigaraki ambled along behind, hands back in his pockets.

Manilla folders sitting upright in a wire organizer, a somewhat dated laptop computer, a mug full of writing utensils—up close, Ujiko’s desk was a spot of normalcy amidst the lab’s draping shadows and looming, flickering observation monitors.  As Rikiya sat down, the doctor examined his new legs with a professional eye.  

“Better quality than that stump your magician was working with,” Ujiko aimed over Rikiya’s shoulder, to the sound of a snort from Shigaraki.  

“You haven’t seen what they put together for him since then.”  

“Detnerat is very proud of our upcoming prosthetic line,” Rikiya put in, aware of the commercial-quality falsity of his good cheer.  “Those who give their all in the line of duty deserve only the best.”  

Shigaraki actually laughed at that, a throaty snicker mostly drowned out by Ujiko’s slapping at the arm of his chair amidst belly-shaking guffaws.  The sounds echoed up through the canyon-curve contours of the room, perfectly at home and perfectly unsettling.  Rikiya didn’t move, didn’t react, didn’t let the smile fall off his face, but felt his stress spots swell a fraction of an increment larger.  

“Government subsidies!” Ujiko barked in his humor.  “They do buy the best, eh?”  

Rikiya settled for inclining his head.  Modesty was generally a good tactic, he’d found.  

Still chuckling, the doctor pulled a folder over and slid a sheet of paper out of it.  Rikiya accepted it when offered and skimmed over the contents as the other man brought himself back under control.  

“Does it look accurate?” he asked, his mustache still bristling around a smile.  

Rikiya’s name, his alias, a brief on his meta-ability (titled his quirk, of course), one on his personal history, followed by a section on one half of his parentage and that man’s ability.  The paper was a non-standard size and, sure enough, the bottom looked slightly uneven, as if a portion had been cut away.  

“In general, yes,” he replied, trying to pass it back over, then letting it settle in his lap when Ujiko made no move to take it.  “What did the rest say?”  

“Considerations for my work here,” Ujiko answered, prompt if unspecific.  “Now, tell me!  You transform your ‘stress’ into power.  Was there ever a time when you did so inadvertently?  Can it happen by reflex, or must it always be a conscious choice?”  

“It does have an accumulation condition, if that’s what you mean.  Imagine the board meetings if it worked solely on reflex!”  

Ujiko did not laugh at that joke, only leaned closer in interest, eyes narrowing behind his goggles.  That proximity was less alarming, though, than the sudden twin weights on his back.  

Shigaraki had leaned on him—not dropped those deadly hands over his shoulders, but, from the feel of it, propped his thin elbows on them instead.  He was close enough that Rikiya felt the brush of his hair—still overlong despite Rikiya’s tentative suggestion of a trim and Trumpet’s frequent backroom complaining.  

Rikiya’s stress markings gave another twinge.

“Ho!  Hohoho!  So there is a degree of reflex involved!”  Rikiya looked back up to find Ujiko staring intently at his forehead.  “What admirable self-control you must have, then!”

“Getting brought up to be a cult leader will do that for you,” Shigaraki said, the sneer audible in his voice.  

Rikiya almost opened his mouth to protest the designation, but the sensation of Shigaraki’s fingers (his good hand; he seldom wore the prosthetic Detnerat had produced for him) tapping restlessly over his shoulder killed the objection before it could reach the internal committee governing the kinds of smart remarks Rikiya allowed himself to make out loud.  

No rhythm, no real pattern, but somehow never all five fingers at once.  Rarely even four, in fact.  And Shigaraki Tomura was the successor of All For One, as that beast who had so recently joined his group unceasingly reiterated in its refusal to call the youth by name.

Really, it’s no wonder he laughed so freely back then.  Rikiya relaxed, incrementally, ignoring the doctor’s interested hum.  I must ensure he’s able to do so again soon.

Ujiko, it became rapidly clear, had brought him in to sound out his quirk for the purposes of placing it in one of his Noumu.  Quite an alarming prospect—I’m afraid I can’t be parted from it! he’d said with jovial force—until Ujiko waved off the protest with a dismissive comment about rudimentary genetic splicing he’d mastered in college.  

“Even so, it’s quite distinct, as meta-abilities go,” Rikiya argued.  “Part of why I can do what I do is my position.  I can’t have that position brought into question by a High-End Noumu rampaging through, oh, Sapporo or somewhere, with stress blots mottling its skin every time a hero lands a good hit.”  

Before Ujiko had done more than inhale to volley back, one of Shigaraki’s spidery fingers touched Rikiya’s forehead, causing them both to look up.

“No one would see it.” Shigaraki’s red eyes flicked to Rikiya’s and away.  The young man’s touch skated lazily over his skin, following the pulsing movements of his stress markings—across his temple, around the hollow of his eye, over the bridge of his nose.  “I’ve seen you covered head-to-toe in this gunk.  It’s not that different-looking from those things.”  

Ujiko sputtered briefly, probably torn—at a guess—between protesting the unique wonders of his “children” or backing up Shigaraki in hopes of swaying Rikiya’s opinion.  Shigaraki went on.

“If I know the doc, they’ll all perform different anyway.  One with your quirk”—he paused, then grinned wide enough that it probably hurt his cracked lips, and continued in a mocking tone—“sorry, your meta-ability.  People won’t even raise an eyebrow, as long as it’s just doing the armor-buff thing.”

“Naturally they all perform differently; that’s called scientific progress, you brat,” Ujiko said with his strange, amicable malice, then reoriented.  “In any case, Mr. CEO, as you’ve pointed out, you don’t make a habit of getting into brawls in front of news cameras.  Just good sense, really.  Until you all decide what you’re going to do with that footage out of Deika, no one even knows what the combat applications of your quirk look like.”  

“Think Skeptic’ll leak a video or two?”  Shigaraki leaned over him, leering.

“Of course not,” Rikiya demurred.  “Not Skeptic or anyone else.  They are all loyal to Destro’s will.”  

“And remind me who’s the one carrying that these days?”  

Rikiya sighed, settling back into the chair.  Shigaraki’s weight shifted with the movement; he was left curled over Rikiya’s right shoulder, radiating self-satisfaction.  Rikiya truly had not expected the leader of the League of Villains to be so—touchy-feely?  One day, he hoped to gain enough of Shigaraki’s favor to find out whether it was a mark of affection or a display of dominance, or perhaps some strange blend of both.  

“You, Shigaraki Tomura,” he said, voice level.  “As I said in the ruins of Deika.”  

“Right.  So be a good minion and roll up a sleeve for the nice doctor.”  

Rikiya obeyed.  

“How droll.  Well, he’s no Gigantomachia, young man, but he’s not a bad start,” Ujiko said with shades of approval, rummaging in his desk and pulling out a syringe with unsettling rapidity.  He drew two vials of blood, movements brisk and efficient—part of Rikiya, the part not preoccupied with the way Shigaraki’s chin tilted into a prouder angle at the compliment, considered this evidence that, terrifyingly, Ujiko Daruma might actually run some kind of day-world clinic where he worked as a perfectly normal doctor, all-unbeknownst to an unsuspecting populace.

The bright blue and yellow child’s band-aid he applied to Rikiya’s arm after removing the needle did little to allay the suspicion.  What a disturbing souvenir, he thought, rolling his sleeve down as they stood up.

“Where will it be?” Ujiko asked, pulling a truly appalling assemblage of brain and legs, red tennis shoes and bulging eyeballs into his lap like a favored pet.  “Back to the office?”  

Pulling his jacket back on, Rikiya looked down at Shigaraki.  “I keep a water pitcher in the mini-fridge.  It should help with the—flavor residue.”

“The office, yeah. I wanna hear more about that hero line of yours.  See you ‘round, Doc.”  

A grunt from Ujiko, whose attention was obviously straying further by the second, and then the sudden engorgement of sticky fluid, bursting in his mouth like a rotten grape. This method of transportation really was just awful.

Back at the office, Shigaraki spat the goo out onto the tile with no sign of embarrassment whatsoever and stalked over to the mini-bar.  Rikiya sighed.  The young man had no manners at all.  

But then, etiquette was one of the first restraints one learned as a child.  Of course, there were limits to how charming such coarseness could be, but…  

He allowed himself a small smile.  

Well, it wasn’t as if it was the worst thing Custodial had ever had to clean up off his floor.  

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(And now I’m going to post this on AO3, where, incidentally, everyone who likes this pairing should go read the other post-Deika fic about it, A Different Kind of Weight.)