Chapter Text
Much like the dead, not all things can be laid to rest.
It'd dug its way out of the ground even before they'd crossed several rooms, only pausing to spit out the dirt -- Hizashi forcing them to stop when his ears pricked up, alarm heavy on his face, before continuing onwards when nothing turned out amiss -- and dig its claws in.
Namely, the ever encompassing, steadily growing problem that showed form in a name: Oboro.
"You don't think he was real, do you?"
The answer he's offered startles him. "When you take a look at your hands, what do you see?"
"My hands," he says, irritated. "What's that got to do with anything?"
The combined cacophony of their boots shudders to a stop as they pause, again, Hizashi's hand brimming past where his headphones lay on his shoulders to point to his ear. Trained as they are, their breathing levels out into something quieter, Shouta's pulse racing only ever so slightly. When nothing happens, Hizashi letting out a sigh, they continue.
"That's right. Your hands. You see your hands, clear as day, 'cause that's what they are."
A hum. "But what happens if one day, they get cut off?"
Shouta can't see where he's going with this. "They're gone," he answers, reasonably, as that's the only obvious answer in sight. There are doorways to look for, still, and so nothing closes. He tucks his hands into his pockets. "I'd be disbarred from hero work."
"Not the point," Hizashi says, and there's almost a laugh to his voice with the way he says it, but from how much of an underbrush there is to his eyes, Shouta can't help but see the train up ahead this one-way track. "What if, in the future, maybe a way's away from then, they come back? Outta the blue? "
Maybe he sees it.
There's light in the distance, and miles of empty rooms ahead of them.
Hizashi continues. "You can use them. You can cook with 'em. Write. Clean. Fight," he adds, lastly, after Shouta's response. "But what if you never get an explanation for it? What then?"
Shouta's eyes widen.
"You're saying he could be real? You're saying you made me walk away from-- no, you didn't make me," he corrects, upon seeing Hizashi's expression turn aghast at the suggestion, "But, that could've been Oboro."
From behind him, Hizashi stops.
"I'm not sure," he answers.
It does nothing much to soothe him.
"I could've left you for something I wasn't even sure was entirely real," he realizes.
"Someone."
When Shouta looks over, Hizashi's already stepping forward to walk beside him, hands still clutched around his pouch.
Trembling slightly, if he looks hard enough.
"Real or not, that was still someone. He has the memories, y'know?"
Don't remind him.
Knowing whatever that was-- whoever that was, he corrects himself, had held the key to the locked box that was Oboro Shirakumo's memories, rusted as it was, is unsettling enough.
Knowing that at the same time, it means that other such people can exist in this space, well. It sparks nothing but a deeper interest, one he has to forcibly smother before the curiosity already smoldering from their wandering here can light another match.
Throat bobbing, he collects himself, remembering something. "Right. You... he said he talked to you."
Hizashi hums. "What'd he tell you?"
"Said you'd said yes to his... proposal to 'stay'. Did he actually try and persuade you?"
No shit, Shouta.
"If you're worried, never fear, babe. This bad boy's here to stay."
Sarcasm notwithstanding, he manages to reel in his laughter, though there's no stopping the snort. "That much is obvious," he mutters. "Clingy bastard."
But, more somberly, he adds, "No, be serious. Did you actually talk to him?"
"I did say I encountered him, didn't I?"
"And there's that word again," Shouta says, shaking his head. Hizashi's intake of breath is sharp in the staleness of the room they now cross into, the both of them taking a moment to survey the odd sight before them; piles of furniture stacked on top of one another, squared holes in the floor arranged in rows too purposeful to not have been designed by whatever crazed architect had made their rounds on a blurry set of blueprints. They move on quick. Though, Hizashi does poke his head slightly back to eye it again, before Shouta tugs on his arm. He mutters a curt apology when his fingers brush against a bruise long enough to make Hizashi unable to hide his flinch-- something he'll have to question later. Not a single pained sound left him. "What happened?"
Hizashi lets out a small sigh. "Quick run-down," he says blandly, as if he's listing out a list for grocery-shopping and not entailing what will surely be the subsequent end to Shouta's belief that one of them could make it out of here relatively unscathed, a laughable thing even before what he'll reveal, given his injuries and general state, "First thing that happened when I got in here? Met him. Our 'bud'," and he says it with air quotes loud enough to make Shouta stifle a wince despite the quiet, "Used his clouds on me 'n' tried insisting I'd be 'better off' here. Other than that? Completely normal. Again, which is why I don't blame you, y'know? He talks mostly the same when he's not a walkin' billboard."
Pensive, Shouta takes a moment to soak it all in. String the timeline together, in chronological order. When he'd first 'found' his way in here, his first instinct had been to leave a path behind, though not often, as to not attract whatever villains might've been lurking behind the pillars he'd seen far ahead.
So far, besides... no, he's not a villain.
But besides Oboro, there'd been no other encounters to be had. Moreover, right after he'd established his own trail, he'd found Hizashi's. Who'd clearly done it after he'd arrived at a location separate from Shouta's own landing path. Not only that, there'd been other evidence beyond the strips of leather still currently resting in his pouches -- there's doubt that it was tampered with, no chance it had even been glimpsed or brought out into the open, but knowing Hizashi had removed his capture scarf from his neck just in case, well, there's no seizing the uncertainty. Perhaps Hizashi wasn't comfortable dredging it up again. Letting what'd happened to him resurface.
Eyes trailing down, he allows himself a look at Hizashi's fingernails. Jagged, raw edges lie where the mute flecks of green splits back into the pale pinkish white of his nail bedding. Thinking back to the leather with those torn nails still in his pocket, his mouth parts, a Trojan Horse into Troy.
"Your jacket," he says, slow. "What happened to it?"
Hizashi seems to capitalize on the chance to gloat instantly. "You miss the way it looks on me already? Aww, Shou. I knew you liked it."
He likes anything and everything on Hizashi, but that's not the point. This is clearly not working.
Beckoning the horse to neigh, he continues, unthrottled.
"You know," he says, bored, ducking down a particularly short doorway, relief that Hizashi's hair is down and Present Mic's is nowhere to be seen to bend the logistics of such an easy task, "I would've thought you'd be bragging my ear off about it by now."
"The jacket?" Hizashi asks, startled.
He shakes his head. "The path you oh so conveniently made with it," and though confusion still reigns its stronghold on his features, it's only a moment later that Hizashi's face lights up in recognition. "The one that led me right to Oboro. Where you," and he emphasizes you with a look he normally offers his students, but doesn't press further than that, remembering their last argument, "found me shortly afterwards."
The hesitance is obvious. "Riiiight. Yeah, I did find you there with him." His Adam's apple bobs, fish bait to a hook. "Your point, man?"
This place they find themselves in unlike anything they've ever experienced before. There's no encyclopedias to explain away the meaning of the yellow walls, why the office space carries on for what feels as though it's forever personified, why some rooms breach past that expectation and shift into something more roomy, unsuspecting despite what could loom between the crevices of the barren furniture. No dictionaries to explain the malaise he sometimes feels and the luring lull of relaxation that the room Oboro must be confined in -- confined, as Shouta had observed, afterwards, once his head had cleared, that he hadn't taken chase the moment Hizashi had rescued him -- offered, his clouds another tranquilizer.
What he's trying to say?
There's no possible way Hizashi could have stumbled upon him randomly.
If he was following his own path, again, and it'd only led straight to Oboro...
Had Hizashi already been on his way to talk to him?
"How long have you been in here, 'Zashi?"
How do you talk to someone you're not 100% sure of being real?
Hizashi's boots stop clicking when they reach an arch. Lingering on the doorway, hand abuzz with anticipation, he knows the intermission Hizashi's silence ignites is just an interlude into Shouta's worst fears.
Logically, it should've only been hours -- maybe a day, perhaps, with him being knocked out after meeting with Oboro -- passing after Present Mic was reported missing.
But, what he's noticed here, after a distinct lack of clocks and his phone, already gone from his scuffle with Tana-- he doesn't know, anymore, really -- time seems to work odd here.
Time doesn't follow logic's laws, not because it is a criminal, but because it simply refuses.
His students refuse things all the time. You can expel students. You can arrest criminals.
But you can't make someone say yes. And not just time, either.
Hizashi continues walking. Following, Shouta prepares for the fallout. "A while."
("Long enough.")
"Define a while," he says, flatly, feigning disinterest.
There's no telling what he'd do with his suspicions confirmed.
A long, long pause plays out. Long enough to drive the suspicion further, ram over roadkill and pluck the feathers out. "I'm not sure what you want me to say, Shouta."
"What's there not to say? You were clearly lonely--"
"You're not a doctor, why are you jumpin' to diagnoses already?"
He ignores it. "--And if you'd gone to Oboro, that clearly would've been a last resort, with what you've told me so far. So, spill. How long?"
Hizashi goes rigid.
"I don't know."
"No, you--" he pauses, when he looks over Hizashi, looking positively mortified. However, caving in when the debris is still being scraped away at? Not an option. An undertone of something lingers beneath the verdant green pupils of Hizashi's, red spirals having lost their hypnotism with the murky blue resting between the sunkenness of his eyes.
Something is wrong.
The fact that he can even see them this openly is distressing. Not donning on his sunglasses- he'd lost them, too, somewhere. And Shouta hadn't found them. His speaker hadn't been discarded, only put away when he'd woken up and shortly shrugged back on when they'd taken a move on, when Hizashi had explained some bits to the oddities he'd witnessed thus far. But his sunglasses had. He's not even sure how Hizashi's faring, poor eyesight and all.
Sailing for other waters, he clears his throat. "Maybe you don't know how long exactly. But you know something."
"Am I wrong?" he prompts. Harshness is something he can't help, though he does feel the regret of it settle into his chest when Hizashi looks away.
Then, something seems to change.
Harpsichord strung, wishful thinking that maybe, just maybe, Hizashi did know and it wasn't too long, Shouta's blood runs cold and freezes over, a lake he'd never be able to skate on lest the ice shatter easy with one press.
It's casual, the way he says it, not even faltering as he walks. "My watch died on the first day."
Shouta looks at Hizashi's wrist, notably barren.
"It did?" he says, forcing calm into his voice.
Hopes the gears grinding away in his head don't reveal their head, rust blooming just enough to make it tick loud enough to alert Hizashi.
"Uh huh," and Hizashi stops. Shouta looks over to see him gazing absentmindedly at another hole in the floor. It's squared. Looks filled out. "Had to toss it afterwards 'cause it wouldn't stop beeping. Sorry."
A faint memory of him, the other night, even after knowing Hizashi would still have the right to be downright pissed at him, he'd reached out anyway after his patrol to unclasp the watch from his wrist, indents from the steel already burrowed into the softness of his skin. Cautiously, in the dark, he'd wrapped calloused fingers to rub it away, careful not to make noise for fear that he stir. Hizashi had been dead-tired from his patrol, called away right after the school's bells had rung, which he'd only come to find out from Nemuri afterwards.
Still, he'd been thinking about the practicality. Logistics. The watch he'd bought Hizashi as a gift for their anniversary was a special kind; first-rate for heroes with a bad habit of overworking themselves and losing track of time in the name of their work, when to charge it up.
Not that it didn't need charging -- in a nice world of fantasy, there would be no breaks for that type of technology. It was a hybrid from the brand he's ordered it from, built in solar panels clustered within the charging port as something extra to toggle on.
Down here where sunlight doesn't roam, it makes sense that it wouldn't be able to charge. What doesn't add up is how fast it'd died. If what Hizashi is claiming is true, then it means the watch that can withstand an entire week without dying, the day -- a day, supposedly -- after Shouta had let it charge?
"It's... fine," Shouta says, offhandedly. "It can be replaced."
"No, it can't," Hizashi interjects, and the both of them still in shock at how much disdain is scrabbled into his words. A pause. "Yeah. It can. I'm just sentimental, alright?"
Uselessly, he nods. "Sentimental."
Words have never drawn his tongue out in a swordfight. Elegance never announces its presence, the way he tangles with what he says and what he doesn't mean.
Plainly, he says things as they are, mostly, meaning and doing what he wants, but leaving his mouth in boxing gloves against a fighter already out of the ring seems cruel.
What can he even say to that? Something Hizashi doesn't know already?
In a parody, Shouta adds, quietly, "I'll buy you rose-gold steel next time. For the clasp."
Hizashi smiles at him. "You--"
A noise. Shouta pricks his ears up as Hizashi's pupils dilate, widening to the point where the world tilts on its axis and the white shows as his gaze locks onto the point past Shouta. A sun extinguished, the colour on his face drained. Tan fading into a blanch as his mouth juts open. Before instantly snapping shut as he lifts a hand to his ear, cupping it as the noise seems to linger beyond foreign and trip into the line of something barely comprehensible.
Growling.
Inaudibly, spotting a pillar, Shouta motions to it with a finger.
Hizashi's eyes flick, briefly, to where Shouta is pointing at, twisting his head over his shoulder before instantly snapping back, nodding, before interlacing his hands between Shouta's fingers.
Quiet, they move, muscle memory of patrols and infiltrations smoothing the way, though he does wince each time Hizashi's boots slightly squeak. Once they make it, they quickly duck behind it, falling to their hands and knees before crawling the rest of the way when they notice a better place to hide.
Something stomps closer.
Deducting that it might be something like Oboro is relatively easy. What's harder is accepting it, given the ferocity to which... whatever is coming makes noise, pitchy and lithe and shrieky despite the low static laced into it like a drug.
Hizashi bites his lip, a small sound bleeding out, and Shouta resists the urge to clamp his palm over his mouth, or use Erasure. There's no telling how long they'll have to wait.
Instead, he focuses on the soft sheen of Hizashi's fingers -- or, what usually remains as soft. Hardened as they are by clumps of dried, clustering blood. Not that he minds. He's seen and dealt with worse.
When the growling grows into a littany of shuffling, pitch and keens, footsteps loud and almost purposeful, the same way one would walk onto a stage, Shouta familiar with the sound from all the Hero Ranking events, before collapsing into a nerved silence-- the decision is clear.
Shouta deigns to risk it. Just to know what they're dealing with.
If it's anything like Oboro, it might not be able to be reasoned with.
Or, if it is anything like Oboro, contradictingly, maybe it can be convinced. Convinced of what, he doesn't know.
But he has to know what they're looking at.
Swallowing a breath, remaining oblivious to the obvious plead in Hizashi's eyes not to, averting his gaze, Shouta squeezes his hand. Then lets go.
Inching a fraction of his face around the edge, not making a single noise, he looks.
Shouta has seen many things in his life. After graduation day, when he'd signed that pen and paper stating his independence as an Underground Hero -- a glorified bounty hunter, their class counselor had called it -- he'd come to terms with seeing much, much worse.
In the streets. During patrol. In the barred windows of trafficked children with shiny quirks.
Dumpsters where bodies sunk into the stink of ostensible, black plastic, flies circling overhead the same way sharks do in bloodied water.
Each and every time, he'd kept his mouth shut. Minded his own business. Did his job as was asked.
Rescued kids, figured out mysteries, captured villains as he went in ambush after ambush.
No matter the revulsion, the blunt curiosity of sifting through clues in a dimly lit, broken down office, lightbulb buzzing, or the simple thrill of using his capture weapon as had been intended the day he'd scribbled down the request for it, he'd remained impassive.
Shouta does not clap a hand over his mouth when his eyes land on it. Not a single noise rattles in his chest, nervous system rapidly recalibrating the image into something somewhat understandable. All he does is simply aim his sight away, graceless.
Meeting the questioning, concerned look of Hizashi makes what must be done dawn on him.
Wordlessly, Hizashi mouths, 'what-is-it'?
Shaking his head, he holds his tongue. Does not let out any grievances that may linger beneath the saliva grinding away in his teeth, lubricating the insides of his cheeks. After a moment, iron swallowing his senses, he brings himself to sign, instead.
'Not-worth-it.'
Hizashi frowns at him. Bringing both hands to his chest, interlacing the four fingers of either one together, he signs, 'Sure ?'
Unsure of how to sign 'I'd rather eat my own boot, swallow it, then throw it up in front of the entirety of my class', he reasons it with a simple 'Yes.'
Still unconvinced, his partner's jaw clenches, hands falling back into his lap.
Shouta mimes zipping his mouth. 'Must-Stay-Quiet-Though.'
Another growl.
What can you tell the Voice Hero without it falling on deaf ears? Despite the super hearing he boasts, private to the villains but never to Shouta and the ones he discloses his ability to, he just never seems to listen. Or, he does-- but breaches it immediately through technicality.
Somehow, quietly, Hizashi reaches over him, peering at the edge before Shouta even has the chance to spin around.
Grabbing him is too late of an action when there's a hitching of breath, a faint gasp leaving Hizashi's throat-- made worse by it clearly being boosted by his quirk.
Erasure looks pitifully on as Shouta's hair lifts, but the damage is done.
It goes quiet.
Shouta reaches for his capture scarf, and prepares for the onslaught.
"Everybody say hey!"
As soon as they break free, finding a secure corner after miles of running and ducking into loose corners, they book it down another hallway before sliding into a smaller compartment, squeezing in as Hizashi unclasps his speaker and shoves it through, pouch thrown in afterwards, before diving in himself, biting his lip. Surveying the scene behind him, checking if the coast is clear, deducing it should be fine when nothing appears, no sound to behold, he divebombs in afterwards, head folded into his chin as he shuffles through.
Panting, once they make it to a new room, Hizashi's speaker now slightly frayed, Shouta's scarf missing a few strips-- Hizashi rounds on him.
"What in the ever-living fuck was that?" he hisses out, voice raspy.
Again, the curse comes out in English. But Shouta can hear the message for what it is.
"Language," he says, aimlessly, knowing it redundant as Hizashi glares into him, "I thought I told you not to look."
That said, telling Hizashi not to do something when he's that determined is like giving a child a lollipop and expecting not to see the end of the stick.
"You know as well as I do why that wouldn't have worked on me," Hizashi mutters. Unlike Shouta, still panting from all the cardio, the strong lungs remaining firm in his partner's chest envy him, making it so that whatever comes out of his mouth isn't marked down by a wheeze. "Why'd you even try and hide it?"
He jolts in alarm. "Why wouldn't I have? What was I supposed to say, Hizashi?"
Not even a bullet-pointed list would have convinced him not to demand he not look.
Hizashi seems intent on breaking that. "For starters, ya coulda told me the truth!"
"I would've told you after." Shouta grits out, well aware of the lie boiling in his mouth. Potentially, if given the chance, he would've preferred to file it away in his long list of 'nevers', joining mundane things like 'Don't ever give into Ms. Joke', 'Never tell Hizashi you lost that ugly, vomit-coloured sweater he bought you one Christmas,', and 'Never speak ill of All Might around Midoriya', among many, many other such examples. The plain. The bland.
Hizashi goes pensive. For the briefest of moments. Fire lit aflame in the green of his eyes, forest trees burning down, he seems as if he's going to add something-- then stiffens, when a thump rings out.
Equally as startled, Shouta is quiet, looking ahead into the open tunnel they'd climbed out of in the distance.
They wait a few moments.
Nothing changes.
The forest keeps burning. "I would've told you," Hizashi says, bottom lip bitten as he rolls his teeth over it. Hurt.
"That's not fair. It's different."
"How is it any different?"
Shouta has never been good with words. Or, biting them down. "I'm not the one with the persona."
Hizashi stares at him.
"So, that's how it is?"
The ring is cold on his neck.
Highly illogical. This conversation isn't healthy, productive at all. "We would be having a very different conversation right now if it had, in fact, been an Eraserhead out there," he says, coolly. Closing his eyes. "It's time to face the music, Hizashi."
"Good idiom for the situation. Real neat. You lookin' for a grade?"
They snap open. "I'm looking for a way not to upset you! I didn't want you to see that!"
"I'm not one of your students," and Shouta goes cold, déjà vu striking through him with the blunt edge of a sword at the wording, drawn back to the argument from the other night -- something which he believes has been days ago for Hizashi, now -- "Please, this ain't-- you weren't protecting me by doing that. You couldn't have made me not see it. I would've eventually, anyway. I'm not..."
Crumpling, Hizashi falters, fingers drumming against his speaker as his head tucks in, like a turtle withdrawing into its shell. "Geez, Shou," he laughs, and there's a coldness in there that Shouta had only been privy to after Oboro's death, for a little while before Shouta had abandoned him, too. "How'd we end up here? Why the hell are we even talkin' about all this? About whatever that nasty imperfection was?"
The nickname falls out of his mouth the same way a luggage clatters off a carousel when it's left alone long enough. "I don't know. We just have to, songbird."
Hizashi slumps against the nearest wall.
"You'd think after long enough running around in here," Hizashi says, after a moment. His speaker is quickly wiped at, adjusted before there's a small click, winded around his neck again. "You wouldn't find anything new, right? But, no. Just gotta keep rolling with the punches and all that. Take the hits as they come."
Shouta decides to just go for it. For the question rolling around in his head. Hope Hizashi doesn't fall out of the ring.
Pulling at his capture scarf, quickly adjusting the torn strip beneath the rest of the fabric, he asks, "D'you think we could've talked to him?"
"Who?"
A grimace crosses his face. "...Present Mic."
"Shouta," Hizashi snorts, "It's the Voice Hero. 'Course it isn't non-verbal. It just didn't want to talk. Definitely more interested in killin' us than talking to us about the weather-- and I mean, what would it even ask? Does it even know what the sun is? Such an awkward conversation!"
Remembering the conversation from earlier makes his head spin, detergent in a washing machine about to tumble for hours on end. He sets it to rain-mode. "He," Shouta corrects.
A pause.
"That thing isn't real."
"That thing clearly had intent," he counters.
Pinching the bridge of his nose, Hizashi sinks back, back scratching against the tiled wall, still in his now yellowed undershirt. Now that he thinks on it, there's a chance he could've torn off the upper half of his jumpsuit for Hizashi to wear, gone in his undershirt the rest of the way, but with how immune to the cold Hizashi is and he isn't, and the mere knowledge Hizashi would turn his nose up at it the moment his tanto even makes it to the fabric, maybe it's kinder not to.
"What's intent without valour," Hizashi says, blinking slowly, sounding as if he's reciting something he's mentioned to his own students before. Seizing the moment to pad over, falling to the floor with a huff, Shouta slings an arm around the other's shoulder. Hizashi shudders into the hold. They most certainly need to get out of here, 'ASAP', as Hizashi would call it, and very, very soon, before the lack of reconnaissance comes back to bite them in the ass, but there's a time and place for everything -- even in the very place that has no space for time.
Shouta lets himself snort, after a moment. "Intent without valour? I'm struggling to see how you're the same man who thinks abbreviating twenty words into one text message is efficient. If I remember correctly, that was a Pre-Quirk era thing. You're not getting charged by the letter."
A beat passes. A one, a two, a one two three four arrives as Hizashi picks up the drumstick.
"Hyperbole. Absolute and utter slander."
"See! You even use words like that!"
"What, slander?"
"No, what the hell is a hip-per-bowl-e?"
Hizashi stares at him. "How have you made it this far?"
"Okay," Shouta deadpans, thoroughly invested in defending his honour, now, even if it is inappropriate here. "Try this. Do you know Article 284 from Chapter 4 of Hero's Ethics: Heroics Beyond the Classroom?"
"Bite me."
"Do you?"
Hizashi leans into his shoulder. "Does a bear shit in the city?"
Isn't it in the woods?
"Even I know that's not how the saying goes." Shouta grumbles.
At least Hizashi's having fun, he thinks, reaching a hand over to ruffle at his hair. Not even a scowl crosses his face when his fingers slide into the remnants of dried up gel unable to be washed; Hizashi had been smart about things, and if he'd survived here for however long Shouta has expected him to, there must have been water rations that he'd kept solely for drinking. Vanity had not made an appearance.
"See, you're halfway to graduating English. Congrats, bro!"
They'd managed to dust themselves off after a while of small-talk, brief, distracting comments on how their students and coworkers must be doing 'out there.' Finding it better to get a move on than to let whatever else besides 'PM', as Hizashi dubbed it, and 'Old Friend', as Shouta had coined the other, that lies in here make a move on them.
Stalking through the tall reeds of grass -- this new collection of rooms they find themselves in, tiled instead of wet carpet, water instead of floor sometimes -- without sight is better than remaining in the cut ones, able to see for miles ahead. Shouta keeps his breath under control and eye drops on hand for when there's a new development and Hizashi now has to stop every so often, quick to clamp to his hands to his mouth and send a wide-eyed glance to Shouta, utterly mortified, as his quirk activates periodically, muffled under his hand.
Several theories rush into Shouta's head despite the alarm, one such thought being that since Hizashi had now met PM face-to-face, perhaps they were connected through their 'abilities', too, but addressing the idea of PM being real enough to affect Hizashi's quirk seems rather cruel when the other can't shoot off a rebuttal without accidentally screaming.
Soon enough, an epiphany seems to hit Hizashi, then, petrified look fading into something obscure and unrecognizable. Jackknifing Shouta's astonishment into a paralyzing disbelief as Hizashi unwinds the last remaining leather strips around his wrist and ties it into and around his mouth as a makeshift gag. His hand reaches out to stop him, to potentially reassure that he can keep using Erasure as he has, but his eyes betray him as he blinks and black hair falls back into his vision, a sting-ray like burn on the surface of them as blurriness hides Hizashi away from him for the briefest of moments. The blurriness also reminds him that Hizashi had, obviously, as he hadn't worn his contacts here, and before he'd disappeared, the last thing Shouta had seen him wearing were his sunglasses with the prescriptions on their lenses, it's obvious which of them is faring worse in eyesight, too. To make matters worse. The aperture goes away after a moment, and Hizashi is already staring back at him, shaking his head no.
Exhaling, he elects to sign. 'Certain ?'
'Positive' Shouta receives. A long, blond strand of hair works its way out of the frazzled stage of Hizashi's scalp, maneuvered over his head like an antenna.
'Fool,' he signs back, but doesn't let his smile dissipate. Unable to grin, Hizashi finger guns at him, pouch latch still thrown over his shoulder bouncing back a bit.
Leave it to Hizashi to voluntarily restrict himself of his own quirk, despite the clear unrest he'd shown over to the years to the idea.
Pressing on, disembarking, they manage not to glimpse any other setbacks on the way, though Shouta himself shudders quietly to a stop each and every time Hizashi's breath hitches, clearly breathing around the leather and already, seemingly instinctively, reaching around the back of his head to untie it before clearly making a sound close to something resigned, shoulders slumping as the idea gives way. Resisting the urge to reach for him and attend to it himself comes easy when he imagines Hizashi's eyes glazed over. Unable to even be dignified with a hearse.
So he just uses his eye drops, sighing pleasantly in relief when they hit his eyes. Doesn't take notice to the affectionate look Hizashi shoots over his shoulder.
Boots squelching, they reach a certain part of the rooms that makes them take pause. It's not a long, constricting hallway this time, wading through the drag of shallow water that Shouta only tests once for freshness before Hizashi waves his arms at him, reaching into his bag to gesture to one of the half-emptied water bottles Shouta had come to find out hadn't gone stale just yet, but it raises the roof nonetheless. In the strictest sense of the word. The long arches they'd crossed through on the way here, the white ceramic tile Hizashi had signed a rather crude comment of 'this-reminds-me-of-our-bathroom' when he'd spotted it lining everything, all falter into something of a Noah's Ark when they cross a larger arch and make it into a room where Shouta knows he'd only be able to touch the ceiling of if he uses his capture weapon.
Shouta motions to Hizashi's mouth, index finger curling, narrowing his eyes.
'In-this-room?' Hizashi signs, chagrined. 'Why?'
If his calculations were correct, from what he'd been counting in his head, Hizashi's quirk hadn't gone off for roughly two hours -- a far cry from when it went off sporadically.
He shoots back with a question of his own, brow raising. 'Why-complain?'
Hesitation shows its teeth in Hizashi staring blankly at him.
'Sound-acoustics-here-too-good'
Rolling his eyes, Shouta points at his own chest. 'I,' and he points back up to his eyes, 'Erase-for-you.'
Another beat. Drumstick thrown aside, clattering onto the floor, it takes many moments before Hizashi, reluctantly, winds his arms back to untie it.
When it's unraveled, he stares blankly at the strip in his hand. Shouta snaps his fingers. Startling, Hizashi wipes at it, sighing before tucking it to join his pocket.
Best not to let him get sidetracked by whatever he's thinking, Shouta thinks.
His partner's voice is hoarse when he speaks. "Y'know, you're very eloquent with your words now. That change while I've been gone?" and his voice turns teasing, "Did those kids of ours finally scratch it into your head?"
"You've been gone a day for me," Shouta reminds him, not acknowledging the pronoun.
A sucking of breath. "Right. Yeah." Hizashi's head twists to face back to the room. "You sure you want me to speak?"
Shouta looks at him perplexedly. Crouching, water slips through his fingers as a hand reaches to cup it upward. "Dead certain."
Drip.
"Are you willin' to test that?"
("Use your quirk on me.")
"You're already speaking, aren't you?" he says, plainly.
"Don't quit your day job as a hero," and before Shouta thinks to correct it to 'night', Hizashi adds, "I meant the 'dead' bit, yanno."
Drip.
He can read between the lines most times. If Yagi Toshinori can do it, so can he. "I'm not letting you mute yourself again out of something as illogical as fear, Hizashi."
Hizashi raises an accusing finger at him. "Using the word alone is already implying something like it is there!"
Pausing, he goes quieter, hand already reaching to unclasp his speaker.
Haphazardly, Shouta rises from his squat.
"No," and years of experience as an underground hero emerge from how quickly he wades through the dim pool to stop Hizashi mid-motion, "Don't."
"C'mon, Shou."
"I already told you," he says, insisting, then pauses, letting Hizashi's hands fall to his sides before his own cross over to his chest and sign, 'I-erase-for-you.'
Beyond the simple sentiment of not wanting to see Hizashi subject himself to his worst fear, there's also the added practicality of his quirk. Of Hizashi's quirk. In here, Erasure means nothing except to the living -- to Hizashi, mainly, thinking back to his voice. 'Voice' is powerful enough to level buildings, destroy cities if it's amplified hard and long enough.
But, when controlled, as Hizashi had applied it for earlier, against PM, it can effectively disable the dangerous parts of their journey here. B
Benign as Erasure usually is, practical as it is for erasing quirks, whatever this place is? Whatever it holds? Not a quirk. Shouta is useless all over again within its confines.
Hizashi, on the other hand, can do real damage.
His partner goes quiet.
"..Okay."
In relief, Shouta grunts.
"Okay," he echoes. "Let's carry on."