Chapter Text
The Watanabe Memorial Orphanage is every bit as nondescript as its name. The narrow building fills a space in the middle of the street in the middle of the city, quietly wedged in between a dilapidated tattoo parlor and a secondhand bookstore. Each of its four storeys is painted a white that now peels off the walls as a consequence of time, exposing the drab concrete underneath. Five perfectly square windows pepper the front of the establishment at random, and any bystander can look into any of them and observe a piece of clothing drying from the sill, or a potted succulent perched precariously on the edge.
Typical onlookers do not notice, however, the thin vines crawling through the slither of space between the building and Magink Tattoos, and enveloping the area Nakamura Pages fails to occupy. They might never espy the stems stretch to the back of the orphanage and douse the garden with vibrant green, or grow against chlorophyll-stained walls – infiltrating windows as they twist through beds and chairs. The tomatoes and eggplants growing in neat rows will remain undisturbed save for the crows and the orphanage’s inhabitants, who routinely sell the crops to cut costs. Yamaguchi Tadashi will continue to be unnoticed, as he balances on the edge of a windowsill on the second floor and holds a paper cup to his ear.
“How long has he been staying here? At the orphanage?” A voice travels through a long vine and into the paper cup. With one hand clutching the makeshift telephone, Tadashi shifts so both his legs dangle off the window. The voice sounds male, young. Maybe the voice owns an understaffed bookstore, or an almost-bankrupt convenience store at the very corner of the city. God, he hopes the man doesn’t expect him to lift heavy boxes. Or even just regular boxes. If he’s really lucky, maybe he’s just meant to inherit the family name.
“We found him outside when we thought he was just a few months old. That’s his birthday. Or, well, officially. He’s turning eighteen in a few months. Officially,” Hirabayashi stumbles, as if a single wrong one could send his prospective parents running for the hills.
“And he’s never been fostered?”
“The few foster parents we’ve had weren’t particularly interested in him, the poor thing.” The poor thing can hear her frowning. He raises the hand not holding the paper cup, and a branch reaches out to him. Tadashi promptly picks a red apple from the tree with a whispered “thanks”, careful not to wake any of his roommates. He bites into his breakfast and smiles at the taste.
The branch returns to its original position ten feet away. A crow flies down to perch on it.
“Tadashi-kun is… shy, Takemoto-san.” Takemoto Tadashi. Huh.
“And you know nothing about his parents? They didn’t leave a letter or a card or…?”
“We just found him on our front steps, wrapped in a handkerchief with his name on it.” Tadashi hates this story, though it is, apparently, true. It’s straight out of a bad Hollywood movie, and he was poised to be the main character the second Hirabayashi opened the door and gasped at his tiny face.
“How is he?”
“He’s great! No history of any scary illnesses or injuries, both physically and emotionally.” She emphasizes that last part, and Tadashi wants to be buried alive. “Blood type O positive, the universal donor, you know. He’s the tallest at Watanabe at, um… one hundred-"
"Ah yes, but I meant, what are things he likes?” Tadashi raises an eyebrow. Prospective parents rarely ask about things beyond what’s already written on the file, especially those looking to adopt children as old as he is. Is the man looking for something more specific? Wouldn’t he need some of Yamaguchi’s omnipotent, universally donating blood someday in the future?
“Um, he reads, but not a lot. I guess he helps out in the garden most days,” Hirabayashi stutters, obviously as confused as he is.
“The garden?”
“Watanabe has a small garden at the back where we grow some fruits and vegetables. Apples, eggplants...” Hirabayashi is probably gesturing vaguely toward the window, as if vines aren’t blocking the view. “Ah, we’ve actually been told we have the best tomatoes in the prefecture!”
Tadashi blushes at the compliment.
“I didn’t think you could grow anything in the middle of the city.” Takemoto-san’s thinly disguised delight only boosts the teenager’s suspicion.
“Oh, but we do! And I’ll let you in on a little secret,” she says, lowering her voice. “Even when the crops don’t get much water for weeks at a time, they grow up to be as big and as juicy as ever! The soil is blessed,” she gushes. Tadashi snorts into his apple. That’s one way to put it.
“And that Tadashi. Wakes up at the crack of dawn to, um,” she pauses. “Water all of them.” Tadashi talks to them, actually, but that probably isn’t something couples look for in a kid. Or in a working adult, in his case.
“We’ll take him.” Tadashi can tell, even through the paper cup, that the man is smiling.
“Really?” Really?
“He sounds like a great kid.” Oh my god, Tadashi thinks. This is actually happening.
“He is, Takemoto-san. I’m glad Tadashi-kun’s finally found a home.” Warmth pools in Tadashi’s chest. Home.
“Did you bring the documents I asked for over the phone?”
A chirp of assent makes its way to Tadashi’s cup, and the sound of shuffling papers follows.
“Perfect,” Hirabayashi breathes. This is actually, finally happening. “Now, you’ll be registering as foster-to-adopt parents, and you’ll have to undergo a few months of basic training with Tadashi to make to make you actually fit for the adoption process. Then comes the formal interview and home visit, by either the local child guidance center or Watanabe, and then you’ll wait until the application is approved before – ”
“Um, about that. Could we actually just adopt him, um… right now?” Tadashi almost chokes on his half-finished apple. The convenience store is apparently in much more trouble than he originally thought.
“It’s just that we live very far away, and we’re worried we won’t be able to attend training sessions, and all that,” Takemoto continues.
“I’m sorry, Takemoto-san, but it’s a requirement, especially for first time foster parents. Rules are rules.”
Silence follows, and Tadashi lets out a long, practiced sigh. So much for adoption. He’ll stay in Watanabe until he’s eighteen, and with his piss-poor credentials he’ll find a low-paying job the morning of his birthday. The money won’t be enough, so he’ll set up residence at a cave in the forest north of the city. He’ll befriend the woodland creatures by feeding them tomatoes and apples from his eventual vegetable garden, like a male, tan, freckled Snow White. Maybe he’ll betray a deer every now and then when he’s in the mood for venison.
He’s snapped out of his reverie by a third voice, one he hadn’t heard before then. “I’m sure you’ll see we’ve provided you with all the necessary documents, and I’m quite confident that my husband and I have the necessary skills and emotional maturity to adopt Yamaguchi-kun, even without formal training. Don’t you agree, Hirabayashi-san?”
The woman melodically relays a robot’s speech, as if she’s singing a complex heart surgery procedure. Her voice is saccharine, but her words are laced with menace. She speaks slowly, as if every syllable should be processed, heard. Internalized. A shiver makes its way down Tadashi’s spine.
This isn’t enough to intimidate Hirabayashi, though, he knows. The head caregiver is almost as old as Watanabe itself, but she never bends for anybody, especially for things as set in stone as the orphanage’s adoption policies.
At least the other woman tried. Besides, befriending the deer doesn’t sound that -
“Of course, Takemoto-san. My apologies for assuming otherwise.”
Oh.
“Could you take us to him, please?”
What the fuck just happened?
Tadashi buries himself under his threadbare blanket and closes his eyes. He counts upwards, and it takes him until five to steady his otherwise labored breathing. Thin vines enter through the open window and wrap around his legs and torso, engulfing him in a bright green cocoon. One of his roommate laughs in his sleep when a leaf brushes against his ear.
There are people like him. Tadashi shouldn’t be surprised; it was impossible that only he’d been born an irregularity, that only he’d been randomly selected by some higher power to do god knows what. He’s surprised anyway, and he fidgets nervously with a leaf at the edge of his bed.
The woman is a mind-controller of some sort, that much is certain. She had the heavily-armored Hirabayashi in her grasp in under three honeyed sentences, and only Tadashi, who had been listening through a paper cup, could tell she was unnatural. That her sweet voice was tinged with something dark and mysterious. Tadashi shudders, and a few vines move from their different positions on his person to settle on his head. They weave through his hair to create small braids, and the leaves tickle the freckles on his cheek.
He doesn’t know what to make of the man. Tadashi had thought that he was only there to adopt an almost-eighteen-year-old son, but his visions had quickly changed from working the cash register at a convenience store to robbing banks with his adoptive super parents. Maybe Takemoto has super strength, and Tadashi was worried about carrying boxes for nothing. Maybe he can fly. Maybe he can glow in the dark. Hey, maybe he’s a demon.
Tadashi gulps. Do demons exist? He places a hand over a vine on his chest, and a small mass forms under his fingertips. The lump expands under his palm until it feels heavy on his stomach. He opens his eyes and finds a large, ripe watermelon under his relatively small hands.
Fuck. Demons definitely exist.
There is a knock on the door. Startled, Tadashi sits up and clutches the watermelon to his chest. The vines retreat from his body and leave his clothes and hair smelling like an overgrown lawn.
“Tadashi-kun? Some people are here to see you.” Tadashi doesn’t answer, and the knocks on the door increase in number and volume.
“Tadashi?” Hirabayashi tries again, in a voice thicker than her usual.
“Oi, Yamaguchi, answer the damn door,” Okazaki mumbles, still half-asleep.
Tadashi slowly gets off his bed, places the watermelon on top of his blanket, and walks ten paces to the only door in the room. The knocking continues. He opens the door and finds himself face to face with two bespectacled strangers, both about half a ruler shorter than him. Hirabayashi stands to the side, hand frozen in mid-knock.
“Hello, Yamaguchi-kun,” the man says. Tadashi does not reply, does not regard anything with any sort of noise, even as Hirabayashi dazedly leads them to the small living room at the end of the hall. Neither the man nor his mind-controlling companion seem to mind.
“Mr. and Mrs. Takemoto,” Hirabayashi starts, clasping her hands, “are here to give you a new home!” It sounds like what someone would say at the pet store. Or a poster at the animal shelter, with stock photos of kittens arranged in a neat row, give us a new home right meow, printed underneath. Do you have room in your heart and home to adopt Yamaguchi Tadashi? says Tadashi’s poster, above a picture of him beside a heart topiary or something.
He realizes he’s gone a few seconds without supplying a reply, and lets out a noncommittal “oh”.
“Go on, Tadashi-kun! Ask them questions!” Tadashi doesn’t really want to ask them about anything other than what Hirabayashi probably can’t know. He doubts the caregiver will take kindly to knowing she’s being mind-controlled. A part of him doubts she’ll even react at all.
Instead, he asks things he’s at least mildly curious about. “Where are we going to live?”
Takemoto does not try to hide his thrill at Tadashi’s sudden, if not feigned, enthusiasm. “In Torono, uh, a few hours from Sendai. You won’t mind the drive, will you?”
He sounds apologetic, so Tadashi just nods. “Will I have siblings?”
“Yes,” the man beams. Tadashi’s nervousness grows. If they’re anything like the boys in the orphanage, he doesn’t know if he prefers adoption after all.
“Pets?”
“Um,” Takemoto sends a look to his wife. She shrugs back.
“Yes,” he answers.
“What pets?”
“Depends.” Tadashi raises an eyebrow. What kind of answer was that?
“Do you have a garden?”
“Yes. It’s a big garden,” the man sings, as if he knows this fact alone enlivens Tadashi. He’s right. Tadashi fights a smile. His fingers involuntarily twitch, and the ficus in the corner of the room jerks slightly.
Takemoto smiles like he notices it.
Tadashi’s questions are random but reasonable. He asks Takemoto how many cars they have (just one). He asks if they’re rich (not really). He asks what they do for work (Takemoto is a teacher, his wife a doctor).
He doesn’t ask Takemoto what his abnormal ability is, if he even has one. He doesn’t ask if Hirabayashi’s still being mind-controlled or if her current trance is just a side-effect. He doesn’t ask what they want with him or his weird plant powers.
“Why me?” Hirabayashi coos and awws, pitying his apparent insecurity, but Tadashi’s challenging tone is anything but timid.
“Because you’re a very special boy, Tadashi.”
Daichi is going to kill him. Koushi knows this.
He was worried for nothing, and now he sits in the back of Takeda’s car, bored out of his mind. It’s been approximately three hours since Kiyoko and Takeda had parked the car, and Koushi, who opted not to follow them, reevaluates his life choices.
If they find out he’s here, they’ll probably kill him before Daichi does. Bummer.
Koushi groans. He keeps his eyes trained on a crow flying in circles around the orphanage to provide some semblance of entertainment before he suddenly hears steps approach the car. He hurriedly locks the door nearest him. Yamaguchi tries to open it twice and frowns when it doesn’t budge. The crow flies nearer.
“Ah, I’m sorry about that. The car’s really old. You can get probably get in through this side.” Takeda’s voice is muddled by the glass. The car is really old. Koushi eyes the peeling brown leather through his legs. It’s probably older than he is.
Yamaguchi sits beside him on the other side of the car and clutches his bag to his chest, fingers fidgeting with the straps. He’d only brought a small backpack with him, and it doesn’t even look full.
Koushi frowns, and doesn’t notice when something comes flying directly at him.
“Ow!” A sharp pain makes him forget he’s supposed to be discreet, and he hastens to stifle his noise with the back of his hand. A coat haphazardly lays on his body, over his shoulders and chest, and he knows what it looks like. He moves the sleeve a little, hoping it just appears like it landed awkwardly on the chair.
“Tadashi! I’m so sorry, are you hurt?” Yamaguchi doesn’t answer the teacher, just stares at Koushi – at the coat, really – wide-eyed and open-mouthed. Takeda turns to look at Tadashi from the driver’s seat, and follows his gaze to the piece of clothing he had tossed to the backseat a few moments before.
“Suga.” Koushi doesn’t dare respond. He holds his breath and hopes Yamaguchi will stop staring at him.
“Sugawara, my coat is floating in mid-air.”
Sighing, Koushi picks up the piece of clothing and sets it on his lap. The coat seems to hover a few inches in the air.
“What am I going to do with you boys?”
“Shower us with love and affection?”
"Put the coat on so Tadashi can see you. Or, well, you know what I mean." Koushi does just that. Takeda pulls his seatbelt over his body and turns the key in the ignition, and the car starts with an unpleasant hum.
“Sugawara,” Kiyoko’s voice cuts through from her seat beside Takeda. “Who’s with the kids right now?”
“Daichi and Ennoshita have it covered, I swear!”
“Daichi was at work when we left.”
“He’ll be back soon! He left Ennoshita in charge, anyway,” Koushi grumbles. This, at least, is true, though unfortunately and wrongly so. He was the oldest, ergo the most responsible. He’s the senior here, Daichi!
“Besides, we just wanted to meet the new kid! He would have been scared out of his mind if it were just you two bringing him over. See?”
Yamaguchi, bless him, is still looking at the coat like it’s going to breathe fire and burn them all alive.
“I think he’s more scared of you than of us, Sugawara,” Kiyoko deadpans. He flinches because she’s undoubtedly right, but it’s not like anyone can see him, so he huffs anyway.
“He’s not! Watch. Hi, Yamaguchi.” Koushi waves. The coat sleeve swishes pathetically in the air.
“Y-you’re invisible.” Yamaguchi’s hands are raised, and they shake as if he’s not sure whether he wants to touch Koushi, protect himself, or open the car door and make a run for it.
Koushi high fives him, and Yamaguchi swiftly pulls his hands to his sides. “Good guess. Though I could just be really, really tiny.”
“He’s invisible,” Kiyoko confirms.
“I’m Sugawara Koushi, but most people just call me Suga.” He holds out his hand, and Yamaguchi feels for it in the air before finally finding it. Koushi shakes his hand. “Are you really an Elemental?”
“A what?”
“Oh, right. Elementals are able to manipulate different –“
“Sugawara, you said we,” Kiyoko interrupts, and they turn their heads in her direction.
“P-pardon?”
“Earlier, you said ‘we just wanted to meet Yamaguchi’. We, plural.”
Damn. Of course she’d catch that, and of course Koushi was too distracted to realize his words sooner. “Oh, did I? Must have been a slip of the tongue, that –“
A loud crash on the roof of the car startles everyone except Kiyoko. Koushi winces when he hears the whine of a crow above them.
“I swear to god.”
“Sugawara, let him in, please,” Kiyoko says, voice flat but obviously pleased with herself. Koushi would know, he’s been the recipient of that tone for years. “Ah, Yamaguchi-kun, could you scoot a little closer to the door?”
When Yamaguchi all but attaches himself to the side of the car, Koushi cranks the lever – the car was that old – for his side’s window. As soon as he does, the crow swoops in and alights on the middle space of the backseat. He caws and darts around in the tiny area he’s been allowed, and stops randomly flitting only to edge closer to Yamaguchi, who stares at him with eyebrows raised apprehensively.
“This is the tomato guy?" The crow says, voice undeniably human, and Koushi watches all the color drain from Yamaguchi’s face as he gasps.
“T-tomato guy?”
"You know, the guy who made those kickass tomatoes!"
"Uh, I guess." Yamaguchi grips his bag like it’s a life jacket and the boat’s just hit an iceberg. The bird gives up standing on his legs to flutter a little in his space, and it does nothing but exacerbate the situation. The kid looks like he’s going to puke.
"Man, that's so cool! You must be pretty powerful, too, to get them to taste like - ow." Koushi smacks him hard on his tiny bird head. His flying falters for a second, and he settles on his seat once more.
"You're overwhelming him. Maybe change back first." Koushi doesn’t really want Yamaguchi to puke all over the car, not when they still had four hours of travel to get through.
“He’s right, Tanaka. Yamaguchi-kun looks stressed out,” Kiyoko pipes in.
Tanaka’s wings flutter at the sound of her voice. “Anything for you, Kiyoko-san!”
Koushi realizes too late - “Wait, not in the car!”
“Kiyoko, don’t let him get in front!” Takeda yells, gripping the steering wheel as he hastens to slow down the car. Kiyoko quickly shoves both her arms in between the headrest of her seat and Takeda’s.
Tanaka takes a few steps back before he launches himself into the air. His dark feathers shrink into his skin as his wings beat against his body, revealing the tan underneath. His wings curl and contract into themselves as they form imperfect cylinders. The arms, legs, fingers that arise from his wings and bird feet elongate, and he stretches them out in the very, very limited space of the backseat. His right foot kicks Yamaguchi in the shin, and the other boy immediately moves back as much as he can. His left arm hooks Koushi right under his chin, earning him a loud howl.
“Was that your arm? Sorry!”
“That was my face.”
The fowl’s beak and eyes morph into more familiar human features: a mouth, eyelashes, a nose. He hits his head against Kiyoko’s outstretched arms before Tanaka the Human ends up sprawled across the backseat, both legs piled on Yamaguchi’s lap and his head planted on Koushi’s chest.
“I’ve been practicing, Suga-san,” Tanaka says to the coat next to him. He sits up and sinks into the suddenly too-small chair with a long, happy sigh. Koushi can’t help but feel more than a little proud that the animorph had managed to fully transform in such a small space, but Koushi’s supposed to be the responsible one here.
“I’m not going to encourage something that horribly reckless.”
“He’s right. You could have gotten seriously hurt,” Takeda assists.
“Sorry, Take-chan,” Tanaka replies, sheepish. He rubs the back of his neck and stares at the floor. “I guess I got a little carried away.” He offers the teacher a small smile.
“W-what’s going on?” Following the chaos, the sound of Yamaguchi’s voice reminds everyone he’s still there. Koushi’s heart clenches when he catches the croak in his voice. This is all too much for him.
"What's the matter, freckles? Intimidated by your sen-? Oh no." Tanaka trails off when he seems to realize the same thing. Small tears pool in the corner of Yamaguchi’s reddening eyes. The boy struggles to control his breathing, or at least slow it down. He wipes the tears from his cheeks with the back of his hand when he fails to keep them from falling.
“Why can she control minds? And why are you invisible? And how did you… how?” Koushi prepares the speech in his mind, about how he shouldn’t be scared, that they’d help him, that they were just like him, that they were friends. But when he opens his mouth to speak, Tanaka beats him to it.
“Hey, don’t act like you aren’t a freak of nature, too!” He winces. Tanaka means well, but oftentimes his means of encouragement aren’t for everyone. Not a lot of people appreciate being called a freak.
“Tanaka…” Koushi starts, but Tanaka doesn’t seem to hear him.
“I watched you move an entire tree. That’s so cool!”
To Koushi’s surprise, Yamaguchi’s breathing calms down. He lets out a long, deep exhale. “It was just a branch.”
“And I can’t control minds,” interjects Kiyoko.
“You can kinda control minds, Shimizu.”
Koushi is largely ignored. “I’m a kind of empath, Yamaguchi-kun.”
“An empath?”
Kiyoko nods. “As an empath, I can feel exactly what other people feel. I can understand their current emotions, and replicate them if I want to.”
“What did you do to Hirabayashi-sensei, then?”
She hums. “So that’s why you think I’m a mind-controller. I see now.”
“I don’t have super hearing, if that’s what you think,” Yamaguchi quips, cheeks now entirely dry.
“Very few empaths can manipulate the emotions of others, depending on how strong or weak both the empath and the recipient are. I tapped into Hirabayashi-san’s emotions and found a link between a relaxed mood and general agreement, so I made her feel more… mellow.” Kiyoko raises her head to meet Yamaguchi’s eyes in the rear-view mirror.
“But I’ve only been an empath for a year, and I just started practicing emotion manipulation a month ago, so it wasn’t that strong of an attack,” she continues.
Besides Daichi, Koushi has known Kiyoko the longest, has known her ever since she was four and a Three. Even then she was incredibly headstrong, extremely hardworking, and at times irritatingly responsible. Her natural talent had only aided in enhancing her abilities, and she had become a Five the day of her eighteenth birthday. Only a handful of people knew how powerful she really was, even as a new empath.
“That wasn’t strong?” Koushi wonders what exactly Kiyoko had done to incur Yamaguchi's confusion.
“Truthfully, it’s never worked that well before, Yamaguchi-kun. We didn’t really expect it to work.” Koushi wouldn’t have either. Kiyoko had told him manipulation was apparently a skill only a small number of empaths were naturally blessed with, and a difficult ability to master completely.
What is unspoken hangs in the air. It worked because she was weak-willed. Yamaguchi looks like he doesn’t want to believe it. Kiyoko had been practicing on Anomalies. She had practiced on Koushi once, and it didn’t work for a second. Humans without abilities, however, are naturally weak, in any aspect.
“If it didn’t work, we would have come back later,” Tanaka reassures. He winks at Yamaguchi, and the other gives a weak smile back.
“Oh, and our names aren’t really Takemoto.”
Four hours, one lunch break, and three gas station stops later, Yamaguchi and Tanaka finally doze on each other, the former drooling on his senior’s shoulder. Koushi thinks they look kind of cute. He tries to get Kiyoko’s attention in the rear-view mirror, but she’s sleeping as well. He sighs. He’s never been able to sleep during travel, and after hours of listening to Tanaka converse with Yamaguchi about Karasuno with a loud voice and long, expressive arms, he feels like he needs at least a power nap.
"Why are you really here, Sugawara?" Takeda pulls him from his reverie. Koushi turns his head toward him and watches him drive in the dark night, his eyes trained on the road. They look like they’re about thirty minutes away, if the trees and ferns the car’s headlights illuminate are any indication.
“I told you, sensei,” he says, hoping he’ll drop the subject. “We really wanted to meet Yamaguchi.”
“I don’t doubt you did. But there’s something else, isn’t there? Or you wouldn’t have brought Tanaka with you.” He’s right, of course. Koushi wouldn’t have brought Tanaka outside the border if he wasn’t the only other person who could hide himself, not when it was so much safer back at the house.
He sighs. "Someone else went missing in Tokyo. Kuroo called yesterday." The call had come when Daichi was at work, so he’d talked to Koushi instead. When he’d told his friend what Kuroo had said that night, Daichi had pursed his lips and checked every switch and generator thrice.
"Who?"
"I don't remember her name. She's a pyro, Seven."
"Seven," he breathes out. "What else did Kuroo say?"
"That she was popular." Koushi doesn’t tell him that she was a famous Champion Kuroo routinely bet on in the underground arenas, and that the dark-haired boy sounded more disappointed he’d technically forfeited the upcoming tournament than scared they’d all be next.
"Sensei, you know we appreciate everything you do, but -" They need an augmentator. They’ve needed one for a while, actually, but Karasuno wasn’t a powerhouse Power House, at least not anymore, and no one was willing to train a bunch of no-name super kids for free.
"I know. I know, Koushi." Takeda sighs. A wave of guilt washes over him. They’ve been trying to help in any way they could, but being the only person older than twenty-five must have taken a toll on Takeda by now. The teacher continues, “I’ve been calling –“
Just then, the moon shines on a figure flying toward the windshield, and Koushi’s heart beats hard against his chest as he screams.
"Look out!"
His yelling wakes everyone up as the body careens into the window and sends glass flying into the car. Bloody and most likely lifeless, it lands on Kiyoko’s lap, and she shoves it away from her before pushing open the car door.
"Sensei, go take Yamaguchi!" She runs out. Koushi gets out of the car and bolts to her side. A few feet ahead of them, a girl hovers one feet above the ground as a tall, dark-haired man holds her up by her neck. She struggles against his grip, but he tightens it every time she squirms.
Koushi sees Tanaka run to them in the corner of his eye, but the three of them go unnoticed, even as Takeda’s car provides a bright beacon of light in the darkness.
“Where is he?” The man demands.
“Suga,” Kiyoko whispers. He taps her arm once to let her know he understands before quietly treading to the two figures. The voices increase in volume as he nears.
“I-I don’t know! Please let me go!” The girl tries to pull off the man’s hand, but she only weakens as her efforts prove futile. Her legs swing helplessly in the air. Koushi stops three feet away from the girl, by the wrecked, overturned car she must have driven in with her newly-deceased presumable friend. He bites his lip to keep from swearing when he accidentally steps on a glass fragment on the ground.
“You’re lying!”
"Let go of her,” Kiyoko’s manipulation voice rings clearly in the dark, underlain with a chilling, commanding tone. Koushi looks back and doesn’t see Tanaka beside her. “You don't want to hurt us. You're tired. We are your friends." For all her bravery and skill, her voice quivers once, and the man laughs upon hearing it.
"I can guard myself against a run of the mill empath, thanks."
When she takes out her gun, the man only laughs louder. The girl falls to the ground when he lets go of her. Her screams, in more distress than before, startle Koushi.
"No, stop! Stop!"
"Suga, the girl!" He picks her up and tries to take her to the car. Other than trying in vain to swat his hand away, she doesn’t seem fazed to be carried by an invisible man. He runs back to the car and shoves the girl behind it, into the dense forest.
“Whoever you are, stop her! He’s a –" The word is muffled by the sound of a gunshot, but Koushi hears it loud and clear.
“Kiyoko, duck!”
She hears him both too late and just in time. The bullet she fires changes course. Meant for her heart, it burrows into her left shoulder.
Koushi’s chest constricts. “No!”
"Kiyoko-san!" The tiger pounces on the magnetopath and digs his teeth into the latter’s shoulder. The man howls in pain and raises his hand. From beside Koushi, the car door abruptly severs from the car and slams into Tanaka’s body. He changes form every two seconds, unable to control his ability as he writhes in pain.
Koushi doesn’t think. He grabs a shard of glass from the ground and charges.
Thick branches reach out and curl around the magnetopath’s arms and legs just as the car door rises a third time. The man thrashes ten feet in the air as the branches tighten around his limbs.
“It’s not going to hold him for long!” Yamaguchi runs to them, Kiyoko and Takeda right behind him. “We have to get out of here!”
"Get on!" The horse stops in front of them, limping.
“Wait! The girl!”
“Hurry!” Koushi bolts back to get her. She hides, quivering behind a tree, but doesn’t protest when he lifts her up. He hoists her up onto Tanaka and lifts himself up behind her.
“Go!”
"We're only a few miles from the house! I can get us there!"
"No!” Fear and desperation laces Takeda’s voice. “He can’t know our location!”
"We don't have a choice! Suga, yell for Kageyama! Kiyoko, call Hitoka!" He forgoes the road to enter the forest.
Koushi calls for Kageyama as loudly as he can and hopes it’s enough.
"Hitoka, a magnetopath is following us to the house! We need help a few miles south! Hurry!" he hears Kiyoko shout into her phone, as he yells for Kageyama a second time. A faint dirt path begins to appear from under them.
"Just a little more!"
Koushi sucks in a breath when he looks behind him and spots a light in the distance. The magnetopath was hurtling toward them on a hunk of metal. "Sensei, he's using your car!"
Tanaka’s pace increases. Koushi tightens his legs around the horse’s body to keep himself from falling when he notices something else flying directly at them.
"Duck!" He’s too late; the car door slams against Tanaka’s behind and sends them flying toward the trees. Koushi's back slams against a trunk. He forces himself to stand up and hastily scan the trees for the girl. He finds her a few feet away from him, concealed by a shrub. Yamaguchi lies about a meter away; the teenager summons a branch to help him stand. He sees Kiyoko, Takeda, and Tanaka unconsciously lying on top of each other amongst the ferns, Tanaka back in human form.
"Give me the girl. He needs her." The magnetopath’s voice keeps Koushi’s eyes from fluttering closed. His eyes follow the car door as it picks itself up from the ground and rams into Yamaguchi, pinning him down as the magnetopath walks closer.
"H-he?" Yamaguchi says, through labored breaths.
"My master." The edge of the car door starts to push down on his neck. Koushi tries to run to him, but is ten steps away from the teenager when his feet fail him and his knees fall to the green. His crash makes a sudden rustling sound in the otherwise quiet forest. The noise startles the magnetopath, and he stops forcing the car against Yamaguchi’s body.
Koushi tries to stand up again, but the magnetopath’s sharp yell surprises him and he falls a second time. When Koushi looks up, the magnetopath’s body is glued to the ground by a thick layer of ice, and three of his friends are crowded around him. One of them stands over the immobilized man, his arms raised and composed entirely of copper.
"Daichi,” Koushi breathes out. He drags himself toward Yamaguchi and helps him lift the door from his body. The teenager realizes the aid when Koushi grabs his hand to help him up. “Daichi!” he yells, “we’re over here! By the car door!”
"Grab them,” Daichi says to his two companions. “Get away from here." Without Daichi, they run to Koushi and Yamaguchi. Tsukishima hoists Yamaguchi up over his shoulder without any gentleness, which earns a hoarse cry of pain from the latter. Ferns suddenly shoot up from around them and constrict Tsukishima’s legs. They’re thorned, Koushi realizes in horror, and blood starts to appear in small dots on Tsukishima’s lower limbs.
"The fuck? Is he doing this?" Tsukishima tries to kick them away, but they hold on tighter. Koushi hears Asahi gag behind him.
“Be gentle!” Koushi yells, exasperated. “His ribs are probably broken!”
Tsukishima grunts, but both in annoyance and understanding, Koushi thinks. “I’m going to cool his chest.” He gingerly presses a hand on Yamaguchi’s back, and Koushi is relieved to hear the other teenager sigh.
He taps Asahi’s shoulder to announce himself. “Kiyoko, Takeda, and Tanaka are back there,” he picks up his friend’s arm and points, “and there’s a girl…” He tries to show Asahi where he was earlier, but he ends up pointing at an unimpressive shrub.
“Uh, Suga?” Asahi asks carefully, as Koushi guides his hand toward nothing.
Koushi sighs. She must have hidden somewhere else during the chaos. “Nevermind, I’ll get her. You go ahead.”
He watches Tsukishima and Asahi run farther into the dirt road, the latter picking up their other friends before leaving. He walks back to where the magnetopath and Daichi are, careful not to make a sound.
"I’ll ask you one more time. Who are you working for?” Daichi’s hand squeezes the magnetopath’s face, and Koushi would have thought it funny if the latter weren’t so close to killing them all earlier. And if their almost-killer didn’t look so young.
“You can’t stop us, Mimic.” The magnetopath smiles as best as he can with Daichi’s fingers on his face. It isn’t a pretty sight, especially with that bowl cut.
Another man abruptly appears right beside Koushi, his hair bright red and spiked in every direction. He holds up the girl they had saved earlier over his shoulder. Koushi’s so close he can feel his breathing, and he holds his breath so the other man can’t do the same.
The man vanishes into thin air.
"Daichi, let him go!" Startled, Daichi drops the magnetopath’s face the same instant the phase jumper reappears in front of him.
"We'll be going now." He places a hand on the magnetopath’s head, and they both promptly disappear.
For a while, Koushi and Daichi both just stare at the patch of ground the teleporter had stood on, the latter still straddling a heap of ice.
"Suga? Where are you?" Daichi calls out, still staring.
"Ah, wait,” he jogs to Daichi and takes one copper hand in his own. “I'm here."
Daichi peels his gaze from the ground and shifts his head to the trees, the scenery drenched in black save for the soft glow of the moon and harsh shine from Takeda’s headlights. He feels around Koushi’s hand and ends up rubbing his thumb against Koushi’s knuckles. "What did he look like?"
"Maybe a Seven? I can't tell for sure though." The Mimic hums in reply, squeezing his friend’s hand. Koushi’s suddenly very, very glad his fucked up genes don’t encode for body heat. He pulls on Daichi’s hand to get him to stand up. Unfortunately, though, copper arms are much heavier than regular, carbon-based human arms.
“Uh, could you change back?”
“Oh. Oh, right. Sorry.” He lets go of Koushi’s hand to shift back into his normal skin, and Koushi slips his hand back in Daichi’s as soon as it’s completely changed.
"And the one with the red hair?" Daichi says, as he tugs on Koushi’s hand to pull himself up.
"Literally appeared out of nowhere, right next to me. I think he might be a phase jumper."
"Jesus.” He furrows his brows, and Koushi tries his hardest to look away. “Thanks for telling me in time." They walk in comfortable silence, hand in hand, until the headlights of Takeda’s wrecked car fail to light the dirt road and the moon vanishes above the thick trees. They depend on muscle memory then, even as the road disappears and their feet get tangled in the ferns. They find the Gate a few minutes later. The rectangle, completely transparent save for the erratic flickering on its four corners, beckons to them, welcoming them home as they walk through it.
Home is a large, shabby house in the middle of a sunken meadow, as it has always been to Koushi. The lights in Karasuno House glow dimly in the darkness, dousing the grass in warm yellow. He watches his empty footsteps make temporary indents in the ground as Daichi drags him forward.
Koushi stops walking. Daichi realizes when his hand is pulled back, and he turns back to look at the space he thinks is his friend. He’s off by at least five inches.
“The magnetopath killed someone. And the girl they took… he said he wanted her. Daichi, do you think they’re…?” Related to the Tokyo disappearances. They must be. Anomaly-instigated crime in the Miyagi prefecture is rare, crime against Anomalies almost unheard of.
“I don’t know. I’ll call Kuroo later, but… I don’t know.”
Koushi purses his lips, looking down at the old house he’s called home all these years. He thinks of Takeda taking him in after his parents had died, all silver hair and pale skin and random cases of invisibility. Asahi lifting a platinum Daichi for practice because they could never afford heavy barbels. His accident. Kiyoko’s countless attempts to heal him. Realizing they would never see Koushi again. Home has always been safe because they have always been strong.
“We’ll figure it out,” he tells his best friend, hoping he imagines a smile on Koushi’s face, and not the dread pooling in the pit of his stomach.
