Chapter Text
“This was a mistake.” Ochako griped, arms full of stolen goods. “I feel so guilty.”
“Quit bitching.” The tamer replied briskly, his arms similarly full.
“You know life debts are usually given, not taken, right?” She continued, the wind whistling through her hair as they hiked down towards his cave, “Repayment is supposed to be voluntary.”
“If this is about you having to carry my shit, just use your magic to lift it.” He threw over his shoulder flippantly.
“That’s not the point!” Ochako balked, spurring her weight-burdened gait to walk next to him, careful to brace her knees for the decline of the terrain, to make her presence more known. “I’m not a thief.”
“It’s either this or I make two trips. The outcome’s the same.” He shrugged, readjusting the items in his arms as Kirishima came into view, bowing a tree under one massive, gnarled claw just ahead to watch his two humans more closely, craning his neck to peer through the canopy.
Ochako winced at the sharp snapping of the tree’s limbs, the greenclad branches thumping onto the slope of the mountain unnoticed by the gargantuas lizard, who absentmindedly exhaled a shower of dewey leaves onto the pair.
She tipped her head to let a stray leaf flutter to the ground, using her shoulder to whisk away the rain droplets from her forehead instead of arguing further. She figured he either wouldn’t understand or didn’t care enough about the principle of her helping in something she didn’t agree with, so she simply slowed her walk, intentionally falling behind.
She leaned the small wooden crate away from her injured bicep tenderly, resisting the urge to itch at the reddish, irritated skin. She hoped it hadn’t gotten infected in the span of time before being bitten and getting to the cave.
She’d have to cast something later if the healing wound started to swell, but she anticipated it wouldn’t come to that. That didn’t mean it didn’t sting, though. It was common knowledge among mages to not use healing spells to manage pain, as it would lower your damage tolerance, making it worse of yourself if couldn’t heal yourself, as well as just being in poor form.
The mage peered around her load to eye the snug binding around her arm beneath her darkly stained sleeve, her lips flattening to a line. She really should say something, no matter how much of a jerk her companion was. She’d be the bigger person, and put it aside for a job well done, despite having to wrangle her pettiness to do it.
“You bandaged my bite, right?” Ochako asked the tamer, glancing at the side of his head. She didn’t expect a response from the inhospitable boy, inserting a bookend to the sentence within the next moment, “Thanks. I’ve never dealt with an animal bite before, so I wouldn’t have known what to do.”
He grunted in response, surprising the caster, eyes set ahead. “Yeah, I figured.” The blonde responded curtly. “You don’t exactly give off a ‘survivalist’ vibe.”
She probably should have expected the dig. “Wow, thanks.” Ochako rolled her eyes, sarcasm laced in her monotone, while her spite howled. “I didn’t realize.”
“Which is why I’m wondering,” He continued, ignoring her response, “Why you’re so far from your village.” he glanced at her from the corner of his eye, and it wasn’t hard to guess that he was suspicious from the expression on his face.
“That’s…” Ochako felt her mouth grow dry, feeling as though the ground had suddenly lurched out from underneath her feet. “That’s kind of a personal question, isn’t it?” she held her items closer, as if to defend herself, “I don’t even know you.” she pointed out.
Her reaction made his eyebrows raise in interest. “Just answer the question.” He pushed.
“Hey, I asked you the same thing yesterday, and you never answered it, so I shouldn’t have to either.” she pushed back, derailing the line of the conversation to throw him off her tail.
“When?” The tamer scowled, his eyebrows sliding back down his face. Startlingly, the anger was more welcomed than the neutral interest.
“When Red was on us,” The mage lifted her nose, “I asked ‘Why are you here, cause the tamer factions are supposed to be in the east’. You never answered that.”
“Fine.” He huffed, “I’m here because the faction I lived in wanted to establish trading outposts further towards the south. I’m what they call a ‘Flier’. I branch out and collect things to deliver back on my own, instead of with all the losers at the outpost. With the dragon, it's harder to hunt in a group anyways.”
“I didn’t know there was that many trading opportunities around here.” Ochako stepped over a log, pondering to herself. “With the famine, wouldn’t it be hard?” she questioned.
“Hah?” He replied, one eyebrow drawing down in questioning as he hopped over the same log, “That doesn’t make any sense. There’s plenty of food around here.”
“No?” She returned the perplexed gaze, speeding up at the mouth of the cave to set her load down ahead of him, eager to be rid of the burden. “Well, maybe not for you, I guess, since there’s only two of you.” Her eyes widened at the forest outside, as if she could see through the dense flora to the nourishing fauna within.
He followed her lead in setting down his stuff sturdily, rolling his eyes as he followed the items, sitting as to organize them into categories of usefulness. “Whatever. Your turn.”
Ochako puffed out her cheeks, biting on her tongue. She didn’t owe him an explanation, nor did she intend to give him the truth. He was rude, and hasn’t done anything for her but piss her off.
...Except, he prevented her from bleeding out, and didn’t take the chance to just let her perish. The dragon probably wouldn’t have even realized he could’ve helped her, she speculated, despite the massive lizard’s mental faculties.
The caster gathered her resilience, immediately distancing herself from what happened as she rolled up her sleeve to inspect her arm idly, trying to answer without giving too much away. “I was… dismissed,” She tested, “From my mage duties, so I had to leave the village. It’s no big deal, sometimes it happens, so.” she unfurled her sleeve, letting it drop back down so she could keep her focus on something anything her own words, and what they meant. “That’s why I was ‘dicking about on a cliff’, as you so eloquently put it.”
“You were kicked out.” The tamer cut in, intentionally oblivious to her attempts to cushion her explanation.
Ochako deflated, turning her attention to the scroll on the top of her items. “In other words, yes.” She ground out, her nose wrinkled in distaste. “Sometimes it happens.” She repeated, running a thumb along the seal of the paper. “We were running low on goods, so I was chosen to leave so there would be less bellies to feed.”
‘Chosen’ was an interesting choice of word, as it had been more of a tournament to see who would be exiled from the village. It was neither here nor there though, so she left it out.
The tamer frowned. “The village up on the plateau, right?” he sounded skeptical.
“That’s the one.” Ochako addressed humorlessly. “Why?”
“You mages sure don’t act like you’re in the middle of a shortage,” He sorted through both piles, under the watchful eye of Kirishima, who was eagerly licking his lips, “My outpost trades pretty regularly with your village. The last time I went to the outpost, they were sending out a group that would hit that one.”
Ochako frowned again, eyebrows pinching with confusion. “We haven’t been open for trading for nineteen years,” she turned her gaze back towards the blonde, “Are you sure we’re both talking about Whimstead?”
“What else would I be talking about?” He returned, dusting off a thefted book with the back of his hand contemplatively, before setting it down in a neat stack of the other stolen goods beside him.
“But we don’t have anything to barter with.” Ochako disclosed, running her left thumb over the seal on the scroll, the decorative waxy divots gleaming in the dull midday light. “What… what do we usually trade for? Meat? That would make the most sense...” Her brow knit thoughtfully, as her stomach rumbled. She hadn’t eaten since the barely serviceable snack the day before.
The tamer rolled his shoulders back, unfurling a long scroll in the corner of her eye. After a moment, he tossed it to the side dismissively. “No.” he claimed, “It was usually luxury items, like furs and shit.” he swept his gaze to the side of the mage’s head, then down to the parchment she was meditating on, some sort of epiphany overtaking the puzzlement on her face. Bakugou had a feeling he was on track to his own realization, piecing together their conflicting stories.
Ochako blanched, her cloaked eyes blinking dumbly. “We… we use cotton. My village has to make our own furs, and the elders say that’s too time-consuming in the first place.” She murmured out loud, forcing a smile, as if going one step above thinking would make the words untrue, while the paper under her fingers crackled a bit under her tightened grip. “I haven’t even seen fur aside from old blankets and hand-me-downs from forever ago.”
“Guess they lied.” The tamer came to the conclusion leisurely, missing how the mage’s face whitened at the comment.
“The elders wouldn’t do that...” Ochako insisted, dispelling the raw magic that threatened to spill out of her being with a struggled slump in her shoulders.
“I’m sure.” He added sarcastically, carelessly dropping the statue into a slowly growing pile of wood with a harsh clack . “Instead of standing around, make yourself useful and take this stack to the burnpile.” he instructed, seemingly too absent-minded to lay any spite into his words, “Take whatever you don’t want to get burned, but make sure there’s enough left to last the day and night.” he added neutrally.
Ochako stooped to gather the pile into her arms, her gaze hooded as she slid the scroll in her hand to her pocket. The guilt intermingled with dubiety made her stomach churn uneasily as she stood at full height and turned silently, plodding back out into the open air.
Her legs felt stiff, as if made of oak limbs, the cool breeze outside doing little to ease the storm of the mage’s mind. She halted at the scorch marks on the far end of the cliffside, ash and soot soaked into the ground where she had assumed the dragon had been letting loose his own inferno.
Unwilling to set ablaze things that weren’t hers, Ochako made an abrupt left face and marched right back up the mountain, the musty scented trinkets in her grasp clattering within her embrace.
The notion of doing the noble thing helped clear her mind. Distantly, she worried shoving those feelings down would raise some problems in the future, but she sweeped that thought away immediately, storing it with the rest of the feelings labeled ‘to deal with later’.
As she trudged uphill, she heard a shuffle behind her, Kirishima’s curious muzzle parting the trees. She leaned her load onto one arm, reaching back to give the beast a rub between the nostrils. He rumbled quietly in response, blowing back Ochako’s shredded cape with a warm, contented huff.
After a few more moments, the mage retracted her hand, reallocating the weight into both arms, resuming her walk, creature in tow, his head hovering over her shoulder as he carefully maneuvered the curvy, thin paths of the mountain.
“You know, I still haven’t forgiven you for not backing me up back there.” Ochako mused fondly, her agitated nerves slowly returning to a mild simmer. “Stealing is bad, Red.”
The beast groaned petulantly, setting his chin on the mage’s shoulder as his scales rippled, his wings drooping from their curled up position on his back drearily.
“Oh, don’t be like that.” Ochako scolded lightly. “C’mon, I’m sure they haven’t come back yet. Let’s get these back to the wagon. Then, on our way back, we can collect firewood. No harm, no fowl, right?”
The beast lifted his skull, following her lead as she continued to climb, meticulous to not bump into the foliage crowding the trail as she retraced her steps back to the clearing she had first discovered the merry band in.
Soon, the wagon came into view, it’s light, damp and dirty wood marked up by scars of travels past now familiar to the young mage. She wasted no time in boarding the cart, gently emptying her arms under the bench to the left, and backwards crawling from the creaking vehicle.
As she did so, the scroll in her pocket crickled, pulling her attention towards the stiff material. She ran her finger atop the edge before plucking it from her skirt pocket, fiddling again with the wax seal contemplatively.
“Okay, Kirishima.” Ochako began, sliding from the back of the ox drawn vehicle, just to collect her thoughts while she walked, stuffing the curled paper back into her pocket to free up her hands so she pick at the twigs and sticks on the needle strewn ground, “So this thing I found in the wagon, it’s really hard to read, but I can get the gist of a few things on the wax seal.”
Despite only being able to understand the tone of her voice and not what she was saying, the dragon tugged up his ears, occasionally biting off nearby branches so that he could help with her efforts.
“It’s some sort of mind magic. One of those one-use scrolls. I didn’t get far enough in my studies to interpret magical literature, but it’s something like ‘Mind bend’ or ‘Perception bend’.” She glanced up, the creature’s cherry eyes flicking from her to his path alternatively.
“It’s super illegal.” Ochako added, “Every village in south of the equator knows that. It has to be from the north, then.” she meandered, her breath picking up from the extra effort of bearing the slightly dewey sprigs and boughs, “But why would these guys have something like that with them?”
Kirishima listened to his kin chirp, watching her dump her arms into one of his favorite person’s human flame piles. Unfortunately, his favorite person could not produce fire, much to his dismay. He hoped his kiddo could. He set his own collection off to the side, separating it into two twiggy stacks.
“Hm? What’re you doing?” Ochako asked, shifting her weight from foot to foot.