Chapter Text
When Ochako was little, she believed in wishes, the magical power of the universe that could solve all your problems if only you had the will and believed hard enough. She wished on everything, lucky coins, shooting stars, fallen eyelashes. But no matter how hard she wished, she could never vanish the tired looks off her parents’ faces and life, for them, never got any easier.
Later, as she grew up, she began to see it wasn’t wishes that made things happen, it was hard work and her hard work got her into UA Law, the most prestigious law school in the country. Ochako learned that like her parents, she could make her wishes come true with her own two hands and the sweat off her back.
And so she did, graduating with the cream of the crop at UA and landing a position in the DA’s office as an assistant district attorney. Not bad for someone so young.
But, like all the fairy tales of old, wishes and dreams come at a price. So what if Ochako sacrificed time with friends and turned down dates all for the sake of concentrating on her schooling? So what if her last several dates had been complete disasters and she didn’t know how flirt to save her life? So what if she lived alone and was sometimes just a little...lonely?
She had a fulfilling career and a few pretty good friends—the kind that wouldn’t even blink if she were to drunk dial them in the middle of the night to have completely inappropriate conversations that no sane person should ever have. Most of all, she was able to keep her promise to herself as a child and treat her parents to a trip to Hawaii. Just seeing their happy carefree faces was worth a million nights cramming until the buttcrack of dawn for constitutional law.
Even though she had stopped believing in magical wish fulfillment a long time ago, she never really could break the habit of wishing for things aloud.
“I wish I had another cup of coffee,” she said, stifling a huge yawn with the back of her hand.
A cup of hot coffee in precinct standard styrofoam cup appeared next to her on the glossy wood table.
“Thanks Deku!” she said gratefully, blowing on it a little to cool it down before taking a sip. She could taste the packet of sugar and the slightly acrid aftertaste of powdered creamer.
“Don’t thank me yet,” Deku said as he taped some pictures up on the whiteboard. All around them, the whiteboards were filled with his messily scrawled and cramped writing.
She stared at him over the rim of the cup. “I assume you’ve got something for me if you’ve called me this early in the morning?”
“Something like that,” he said distractedly, muttering to himself under his breath. He wasn’t usually so scatterbrained when calling her over from the county court, but something about the tension he carried in the line of his back, told her that this was big.
“Mind telling me what it is?” she asked, glancing at her watch. “I’ve got a hearing at 10 am.”
Todoroki snorted. He was the only other detective in the room. “Wait for it, you’re really going to want to see this,” he said.
She had always respected Todoroki for striking out on his own, joining the force after he graduated UA with a major in criminal justice. He could have just joined his dad’s law firm, but over the years they’ve gotten to know each other, she gathered that he and his father didn’t see eye-to-eye.
Wordlessly, he handed handed her a file containing Deku’s police report.
Her face darkened when she saw the name lettered on the tab of the manila in heavy black sharpie. “Kai Chisaki,” she said softly.
The elusive Chisaki was a big time yakuza boss. They just couldn’t prove it in a court of law, even though everyone knew. He had showed up out of nowhere in the Eight Precepts and his rise was meteoric, taking control of the crime family after the old boss’ death, all in less than a decade. Chisaki had always maintained a plausible deniability that kept him one step ahead of both police and prosecutors.
With his bevy of well-paid defense attorneys, he was virtually untouchable. They had tried, and he was acquitted three times. The man had the luck of the devil.
“Nighteye has it out for him,” said Ochako. Last year, their DA, Sa Naitoai tried to bring nine counts of felony charges, some of which included murder, arms and drug trafficking, racketeering and extortion. Nighteye had tried to indict, using a grand jury to protect their only witness, but somehow, the jury couldn’t reach a quorum. They had always suspected tampering but again, they couldn’t prove it and Chisaki had been on Nighteye’s shitlist ever since.
Needless to say, the witness disappeared immediately after. Ochako hoped that they had fled, otherwise...
“Last night, Nemuri Kayama—” began Deku interrupting her from her thoughts.
“Midnight,” supplied Todoroki.
“Yeah, I know her, we worked together on the Grape Rush case a couple years back,” Ochako said. Midnight was her handle, and hardly anyone called her Nemuri Kayama except maybe Deku. Even their precinct captain Aizawa never called her by her real name.
“Midnight,” resumed Deku, “picked up a John on the vice beat,” Deku said, tapping at a picture on their whiteboard with the end of his dry erase marker. “Name’s Sako Atsuhiro, nicknamed Mr. Compress,” he said. “Suspected to have ties with the yakuza, but nothing proven.” He pointed to a few black and white surveillance photographs of a dapper looking man with a long tan trench, black top hat and cane seen in the company of some shady looking people.
“Ok, soliciting is a criminal misdemeanor,” Ochako said. “But I don’t get what this has to do with Chisaki.”
Deku ran his scarred hand through his messy hair, fluffing it up even more than usual. “Just hear me out until the end. There’s a lot to sort through.”
From the picture of Sako Atsuhiro, he drew a line to another individual with shiny aviator glasses, thick lips, and shoulder length reddish brown hair.
Deku took a deep breath and once again jumped in. “It would have been a perfectly normal booking, except when Midnight brought Sako to the station, he said he had intended to get caught and he wasn’t actually trying to er...”
“Pay for a lady of the night?” finished Todoroki.
A red bloom suffused Deku’s face. “Yes...thanks,” he said dryly. There was a reason why Deku didn’t work vice.
Todoroki smirked as he leaned against one of the whiteboards, rolling up the sleeves of his white button up Oxford.
“That’s what all the Johns say,” Ochako said with a roll of her eyes.
“That’s what Midnight thought, until Sako began telling her that he suspected he was being observed and followed by men from the Eight Precepts, and that’s why the safest place for him is in police custody. Then he began ranting and raving about Kai Chisaki, and revenge...for his friend Magne.”
Ochako took a sip of her coffee. “Sorry, that name has never appeared on my docket. Alias?”
“Her real name is Hikiishi Kenji,” Todoroki said, taking over the narration from Deku. “Not exactly an upstanding member of the community.”
“Now that, I do know.” Two counts of assault and battery, five counts of burglary, and also possession with the intent to sell. Sometimes, Ochako remembered people better by their rap sheets, which when she thought about it, was kind of...sad.
“The important thing is,” continued Deku, picking up where Todoroki left off, “Hikiishi Kenji disappeared sometime last week that we know of, and when she turned up again, dockside, she was dead.”
“In fact,” said Todoroki, “we couldn’t even ID Magne due to decomposition. If that weren’t enough, she had been shot in the face point blank range, making identification through dental records impossible. We had to wait for Forensics to come back with the DNA analysis.”
Ochako’s stomach twisted uncomfortably at Todoroki’s matter-of-fact words. “How does that link her to Mr. Compress?”
“Because, Mr. Compress told us it would be Magne,” Deku said pacing, “five hours before Forensics got back to us on the DNA analysis. And the thing is, it hadn’t even been picked up by the media or officially reported.”
“He gave us details about the vic that haven’t been released. So the only way he could have possibly known, is if he knew who killed Magne,” concluded Todoroki.
Ochako raised an eyebrow. “Or if he killed Magne himself.”
“The guy’s an accountant,” said Todoroki flatly. “There’s no motive. He and Magne had been friends for years.”
“A falling out, maybe?” Ochako surmised.
Deku shook his head as he walked over, flipping a chair around and straddling it, hands dangling over the back. “My gut instinct says he’s telling the truth. Also, he says he has information that can help us put Chisaki behind bars and he’s willing to testify, in exchange for immunity.”
Ochako sat up abruptly, eyes wide, fatigue forgotten. “A witness testifying against Chisaki?” When they tried to indict Chisaki, none of their witnesses had wanted to come forward, too scared of the far reaching hand of the yakuza. “How credible?”
“Very,” assured Todoroki, sweeping the red side of his hair back from his eyes. “We ran a background check on Sako and he came up clean. Just a few speeding tickets, and that’s about all. He said he wants us to put Chisaki behind bars for killing Magne.”
Ochako shook her head, thinking quick. “If this guy’s so squeaky clean, what does he want immunity from?”
“We don’t know yet,” Deku said. “But he said he wasn’t giving us anything until we could assure it.”
Ochako’s face hardened. “I’ll be the one to decide that...after I hear him out.”
Deku’s mouth tugged to the side in a dry smile. “Hey, that’s why we called you!”
They all rose from the table, Todoroki gestured ‘after you’ as he held the door open for her, and they headed down to the interrogation room.
The interrogation room smelled like old cigarette smoke, burnt coffee, and the stale smell of fear sweat. Deku and Todoroki accompanied her, but their captain Aizawa, who always looked like he would fit right in with the people under the overpass, remained behind the one way glass as he waved them in.
Deku sat at the head of the stainless steel table, while Todoroki remained standing, leaning against the door casually with his arms crossed. Ochako sat across from their potential witness and for a moment no one spoke as they took each other’s measure.
Sako Atsuhiro was still dressed in his tan trench, and shiny black spats, though his top hat and cane were missing, she recognized his ensemble from the pictures Deku and Todoroki showed her. Aside from his large hooked nose, the rest of his face was bland and unremarkable.
“And who is this lovely lady, detectives?” he said, giving her an appreciative once-over as soon as she and Deku settled in their seats.
“I’m ADA Uraraka, she said extending a hand in greeting, trying to maintain her professional veneer and not roll her eyes. “It’s my understanding that you have some information tieing Kai Chisaki to the murder of Magne, also known as Hikiishi Kenji?”
“My dear, I’d like immunity first,” he said.
“My dear,” Ochako said, voice flinty and hard. “I’ll be the judge on whether your information warrants it. So let’s hear it, Mr. Compress.”
He leaned back then, brown eyes keen and sharp on her face. “I’m an accountant,” he said slowly, “I’ve never been...directly involved with the yakuza. I’ve never killed or hurt anyone. All I’ve ever done was...falsify some records.”
Ochako raised an eyebrow. “Income tax records, I’m guessing?”
“I’m neither admitting or denying until I get my immunity. After all,” he said spreading his hands on the table, whatever I’ve done...or haven’t done, is a mere drop in the bucket compare to Chisaki.”
In her peripheral vision she saw Deku perk up at the mention of Chisaki.
“Was Magne just a drop in the bucket?” Todoroki said from the corner.
The only tell was a fine tremble in Mr. Compress’ hands. “Back in the days of the old boss, the yakuza had their own sense of honor. Now, they’re just a bunch of senseless animals. Chisaki will kill anyone who gets in his way, who doesn’t agree with his methods on how the world should be run. He’s a monster, and he killed her in cold blood. All I want is justice.”
Ochako leaned forward. “Then cooperate with us, so we can get him behind bars once and for all! Tell us what you know, and we can work out a deal. But I can’t give you blanket immunity if you won’t tell us everything you know.”
Mr. Compress sighed and dipped his head. “You’re driving a hard bargain.”
“Trust us, we want Chisaki as much as you do and we’re going to go after him anyway,” Deku said.
Mr. Compress passed a hand over his face and all of a sudden, he looked ten years older. He rested his arms on the table, clasping his hands together. Ochako saw that his eyes were bloodshot and when he looked up at her, they blazed with the desire for vengeance, the kind that would eat someone alive.
“What if I told you...” he said, dropping his cool haughty mannerism, and for the first time since she entered the room, she felt like she was seeing his true self, the man behind the showman’s mask. “What if I told you I knew how Chisaki is laundering his dirty drug money, and also why he killed Magne personally?”
Ochako exchanged a glance with Deku who nodded just once. “I would say, we have a deal.”
Nearly an hour later, Ochako exits the interrogation room, having heard all that Sako Atsuhiro had to say.
“Miss Uraraka,” he said stopping her on the way out. She half turned to face him.
“Do you know the difference between a lawyer and an accountant?”
She shook her head.
“Accountants know they’re boring.”
She laughed, albeit a little stiffly and then held up the thumb drive he had turned over to her. “Your story was anything but boring and if this checks out then we might just have enough to nail Chisaki.”
“I hope so, I really do.” There was a loaded pause. “Watch your backs. Chisaki has bribed elected officials. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few dirty cops in this precinct.”
Todoroki frowned darkly. “You’re accusing our fellow cops of being bought out? These people are our friends. Some of them have saved my ass.”
Mr. Compress shrugged carelessly. “Maybe so, but everyone has a pain point.”
“What about you?” asked Deku. “Aren’t you worried that Chisaki is going to come after you?”
“Oh, don’t you worry about me. I know a great disappearing trick,” Mr. Compress said with a small smile and a wave of his fingers.
It only took Nighteye a few moments looking through Sako Atsuhiro’s thumb drive before reaching a course of action.
He leaned back in his office chair and steepled his hands together. It was a mannerism that Ochako found herself adopting, much to her chagrin. “I think a subpoena for Kai Chisaki’s financial records are in order.”
Tapping the end of pen against her lips, Ochako mused, “Since we can’t get him for murder, racketeering, and drug trafficking, we’re going to nail him on tax evasion...kind of like Al Capone, huh?”
“Precisely,” Nighteye said, light glinting silver off his glasses as he leaned forward again. “We could put him behind bars for at least twelve years, more than enough time to begin cleaning this city up.”
Nighteye disconnected the thumb drive from his laptop and handed it back to her. “Keep this safe.”
“Me?” she said, shocked. “I mean, I thought that you would take the lead on this one, sir.”
“This came to you first. Do you not think you’re capable?” Nighteye asked rising from his desk and walking over to the window. The blinds had been drawn, and on the third floor of the county courthouse, they could see the city from their downtown vantage point spread out like a million points of twinkling lights before them. Sometimes it felt like the city was never more alive than at dusk.
Ochako squared her shoulders and stood a little straighter. “I’m ready for it,” she said confidently. This was guaranteed to be a huge case, her biggest one yet, and her mentor had pretty much handed it to her.
“Good,” he said. “Now what are you still doing here? It’s the weekend, go home.”
“You’re one to talk,” Ochako said, still pumped from being handed this case to worry about teasing a superior, “no one is sure if you actually go home or if you just live under your desk.”
Nighteye merely grumbled a bit.
Before she left, Ochako turned, “Oh I forgot the daily joke! Two pretzels were walking down the street...one was a-salted.”
Nighteye snorted. “Already heard that one!”
“One of these days I’m going to get you with a joke you haven’t heard!”
On the way back home, Ochako stopped by her favorite cafe, the Lily Pad, owned by her old friend Tsuyu. The Lily Pad was a favorite haunt of both the drones in the county courthouse, and the police department. Tsuyu knew pretty much everyone around these parts.
“Tsu!” she called, waving to a slim, green-haired girl behind the polished countertop. “I’ll have my usual, to-go, please!”
Tsuyu walked by with a pile of dirty dishes. “Sure thing, Ochako, one Curry in a Hurry, coming right up.” She leaned over the counter and said in a lower voice, “Sorry Ochako, it’ll take a bit longer than usual. We’re a little short-handed tonight.”
Ochako looked around and sure enough, the place was packed. “No worries, I don’t mind waiting!” It’s not like anyone was waiting for her at home. “ETA?”
Tsuyu put a finger up to her chin in thought. “Give me twenty minutes and it’ll be ready.”
To pass the time and get out of the way of the busy servers and the line of waiting customers, Ochako walked outside. The little shop next door caught her eye. An antique shop with the sign still flipped to open. She felt a little tug of curiosity pulling her towards it.
Ding! The bell above the door jingled cheerfully as she stepped in to the dimly lit store. It smelled like old wood, and dust, underneath something maybe a bit mildewy.
A stooped old woman with gray hair tied in a bun came out from the back with a startled expression on her face. “Oh! I didn’t realize…” she looked towards the sign at the front, “I could have sworn I closed it.”
“Uh, I was just going to browse while I wait for my takeout order,” Ochako said, pointing backwards toward the door, “I can leave!”
“Nonsense,” the old woman laughed. It sounded like the crackle of old parchment. “Come on in, young lady, I’m not going to chase out my fifth customer of the day!”
Fifth customer?! How are you still in business!? Ochako thought, immediately feeling bad for the old woman.
The old shop was stuffed to the brim with antiques and knick-knacks, practically spilling off the metal shelves. She spied an old typewriter perched precariously atop a stack of books that seemed to sway dangerously as she walked past. The whole place either like a hoarder’s dream, or a neat freak's nightmare. As she perused the narrow aisles, heels clicking on the hardwood floor, she checked out the price tags on the items. A lot of it was junk and just didn’t seem worth it.
Then, as she got to the back, an overfilled wooden crate caught her attention. FRAGILE in big red letters and an icon of broken glass was stamped in red ink on the side and what appeared appeared to be a bunch of sand or dust was spilling out from between the wooden slats of the crate. In it were dishes, clay pottery, and all kinds of miscellaneous items. Curious, she wandered over to take a better look.
Everything in it certainly looked old, though not necessarily valuable. But then again, what did she know? She came from a solid blue collar background and had no eye for these kinds of things. Towards the bottom of the crate, she spied a gleam of gold winking in the light.
“Oh, I forgot this was here,” the old woman said from behind her shoulder. Ochako nearly jumped.
“What is all of this?” she asked, running her fingers through the pile of fine sand that had accumulated at the margin of the crate and then dusting them off on her black slacks.
“Ah, I got that from an archaeologist’s estate sale. I haven’t even priced them yet.”
Ochako glanced at her watch and then down at the old woman, who was smiling so hard that her eyes had disappeared into the wrinkly folds of her face, so pleased to have a customer. Guilt tugged at her heart and so she reached into the crate without looking and fished out the first thing her hand touched.
It was a dirty and dented old antique oil lamp that was most likely brass and looked like it had seen much better days. “How much for this one?” she asked, crossing her fingers and hoping it wouldn’t put too much of a dent in her pocketbook.
In the end, she got it for cheap, hurrying back over to Tsuyu’s to pick up her takeout order and catch the train going home.
Once home, Ochako pulled out an opened bottle of wine from the back of her fridge, poured herself a glass, and immediately dug into her takeout, eyes closed as she savored the delicious curry that Tsu made. She placed her antique find on her dining room table and contemplated it as she chewed.
It was a lot dingier than she had expected under the bright track lighting of her kitchen. Soot blackened the mouth of the oil lamp, and the top and sides looked like someone had thrown it in a fit of pique, denting the once convex brass surface on one side. The whole thing sagged to the side, as though it was melting from within. It was one of those things that was ugly enough to be kind of cute.
While she ate, against her better judgement, she scrolled the instagram feeds of her friends, stopping at a picture of her old friend from law school, Yaomomo, who had doubled up on a material sciences phD and a JD specializing in patent law. Next to her was a girl with a dark trendy asymmetrical bob and both of them were beaming into the picture, palm trees against a backdrop of brilliant blue tropical sky in the background.
“She said yes!” the caption read as Yaomomo proudly held up Jirou’s hand up to the camera, sunlight glinting off her engagement ring. Since Yaomomo had more money than sense, the engagement ring was jaw-droppingly over the top and Jirou looked like she knew it, blushing shyly, but looking thrilled nonetheless.
Ochako smiled, happy for Yaomomo, who had had a rough time after breaking up with Hatsumei Mei, going through a series of bad rebound relationships before finally meeting Jirou Kyouka, a talented and aspiring rock musician.
They had met in a music store when Yaomomo had gone to look for a piano and found Jirou instead, hitting it off right away. It was like a match made in heaven, both of them supporting each other in their creative endeavors, whereas with Mei and Yaomomo, it had always been more of a competition and Mei wasn’t above industrial espionage.
Ochako quickly typed out a ‘congrats’, feeling happy for her friends but also a little bitter for herself.
After she was done, she dumped the takeout box into her trash and picked up the lamp, fingers idly tracing the curves and softly rounded sides. There was a tingle at the tip of her fingers.
“Ew,” she muttered, pulling her finger back and finding it covered in dust and soot. She proceeded over to the sink and began to scrub the hell out of it until the brass sparkled.
After drying it with her dishcloth, she placed it on top of her empty mantle, turning it around until the dented side faced the wall. Then she stepped back to study it as she sipped another glass of wine.
Suddenly her phone buzzed, rattling against the wood of her kitchen table. She jumped and hurried over, fumbling and nearly dropping it when she saw that it was her parents trying to facetime her.
“Hi!” she chirped after swiping the answer button.
“O-cha-ko!” her parents’ happy faces filled the screen, each vying to squeeze into the frame as they waved. Ochako laughed.
“It’s gorgeous and sunny in Hawaii!” her mom said, smiling brightly, face relaxed and even a little bit tan.
“But not as sunny as your beautiful face!” her dad said with a grin.
“Dad! What am I, five? Did ya’ll have a good flight?” she asked.
“Mmm,” her mom said nodding her head, “though I almost had to drug your dad, he was so nervous.”
“Hey!” her dad protested, “I did fine for my first time in an airplane.”
She could see her mom glancing around in wonder. “Ochako,” she said softly, “this hotel...you’re really spoilin’ your parents rotten.”
“Of course! You both worked so hard to get me through school,” Ochako said puffing up proudly. “I told you I would take you to Hawaii right?”
Her parents’ expressions were full of such tender love and pride that Ochako had to avert her eyes for a moment.
“We never cared about that,” her dad said quietly. “We wanted you to be happy and doin’ what you liked, livin’ life to the fullest. And while we’re going to enjoy being in Hawaii, we wish you were here too.”
Ochako fiddled with the edge of a manilla folder containing information on Chisaki. “Next time,” she promised. “I’ve been really busy at work lately and I can’t step away at this time.”
Her parents looked at each other and then back to her again.
“You always were a hard worker,” her mom said, sweeping her brown hair back from her shoulders. It was peppered with a little more gray than the last time she’d seen her in person. “But lately...I worry about you. All you seem to do is work.”
“Whaddya mean?” Ochako laughed as she scratched the back the back of her head. “I’m not workin’ any more than usual!”
Her dad fixed her with a stern look, brown eyes focused intently on her. “Are you happy, Ochako?”
Blinking in surprise, Ochako answered without thinking. “I’m...yeah, I’m happy! I mean I’m not unhappy,” she said looking away from her mom and dad’s face.
This was apparently not the right answer as she watched her parents exchange identical tight-lipped looks of concern. God, how she hated those worried looks on their faces.
“Look,” she said, “I’ve just been given a really huge case by my boss. It’s really important work, catchin’ these bad guys and making sure they’re put away so that they don’t hurt innocent people anymore.”
Ochako fidgeted under her parents’ gazes and pushed a strand of her own brown hair behind her ears. “I’m really happy doing what I do! It’s my dream job!” She laughed, trying to reassure her parents but it only sounded forced to her ears. “It’s a lot of responsibility and maybe I’m a little stressed...but I’m not unhappy. Really! Stop worryin’ about me!”
Her parents were slightly mollified though not wholly convinced. “Ochako,” her dad said, “You’re our only child, no matter how old you are, we’ll always worry about you.
Her mom touched the screen on her phone gently. “All we want is to see your beautiful smile.”
Her dad gave her his signature cheesy thumbs up, “Because when our Ochako smiles, the world gets a little brighter!”
She could see her mom nodding in the background.
Her lower lip wobbled. “Ok, alright!” she choked out thickly. “If I promise I’ll take a vacation once this case is done, will ya leave me alone?”
Both her parents laughed. “We’ll see,” her mom said teasingly.
After Ochako made them promise to have fun and send her lots of pictures, she disconnected and heaved a sigh, elbows on the table as she held the phone against her forehead.
The reality hit her in the face that it was a Friday night, and she was alone in her apartment, two glasses of wine into the night, with no plans other than finish some work she brought home and snoop through Mr. Compress’ thumb drive some more while she waited for Chisaki to respond to the bitchslap of a subpoena that Nighteye had served up like a cold dish of revenge.
Sure, she was doing good work, no great work, putting away dangerous criminals, and feeling like a hero...but sometimes, she was also heartachingly...lonely. She envied her parents, and even her friends who seemed to be pairing up left and right, even as she told herself that her career came first and that she was just fine being single.
And she was just fine being single. It really wasn’t as though she felt she absolutely needed to have a significant other or her life wasn’t complete, but sometimes, alone in her own apartment, she’d ruminate on how she could have so many friends, and yet feel so...alone. She really needed to get out more.
“I wish…” Ochako started. Time seemed to dilate for a moment, and even the ticking sound from the clock in the kitchen seemed to slow down.
Ochako snorted, and downed the glass of wine in one gulp and headed back to the kitchen.
As she rinsed out of the glass, she sighed. “I wish I wasn’t alone.”
Bang! Ochako jumped at the noise, dropping the glass into the bottom of the sink where it shattered into pieces. She whirled around, only to see a cloud of black smoke and sparks rise out from the spout of her lamp.
The smoke swirled violently like a mini tornado with sparks crackling at the heart of the twisting black cloud, whipping up a wind so violent that it rattled her windows, and knocked a picture off the wall and a lamp off her coffee table, flipping the pages on her magazines. And then between one moment and the next, it condensed and coalesced until a man materialized from the smoke.
“About damn time someone made a wish!” he snarled, stretching his thick arms over his head and rolling his head until his neck popped with an audible click.
He was bare chested, wearing nothing but a necklace with red beads and gold disks, and gold cuffs on each wrist. His pants were loose and white, billowing out before ending in cuffs at the ankle, barely held up by the red silk sash at his waist. He shook his spiky blond hair like a dog shaking off water, and when he opened his eyes, Ochako found herself frozen, looking into intense red eyes that glittered like rubies.
“So you’re my new master,” he spat the last word like curse as he prowled towards her, the gold disks on his necklace jingling together with each silent step.
“S-stay back!” she yelled. Ochako backed up, jerkily until the back of her thighs hit the dinner table. Her hand probed back until it met her purse and frantically, she dug inside it until her fingers met hard plastic.
“Gotta say, as far as first wishes go, that was the dumbest one I’ve heard,” he said, continuing forward until he stood in front of her an arms breadth away. He tilted his head down, looking at her curiously. “But here we are—”
Ochako did what any single woman would do when a half-naked man appears out of nowhere in her apartment. She tasered him.
He convulsed, muscles locking up as he fell face first with a thump on the cheap laminate of her kitchen floor.
Ochako held a hand over her mouth, surprised she hadn’t screamed.
“Oh my god,” she whispered, mind immediately going to suspects that have died in police custody after getting zapped by high voltage electricity. She dropped her taser and crept forward, nudging the man with the tip of her foot.
A hot hand shot out and grabbed her ankle, pulling her to the ground.
“What the hell was that for?!” he yelled angrily.
She did scream then and kicked him in the face for good measure as she scooted back on her butt.
Cursing, he reeled back, clutching his nose. “You little…! I’m here to grant wishes, not deal with bullshit!” And then with fiery swirl of smoke and a dramatic bang, he disappeared back into the lamp.
“W-what just happened?” Ochako asked from her spot on the ground.
Slowly, she got up and picked up the taser. Her eyes flickered to the half empty bottle of wine. Picking it up she sniffed at it suspiciously before putting it down.
Then she walked tentatively over to the lamp on the mantle.
“H-hello?” she called softly, feeling like a crazy person as she knocked on the lamp. Because for sure, she thought she had seen a guy come out of her lamp, some guy that looked like he had come straight out of 1001 Arabian Nights...the version that wasn’t safe for kids.
Smoke once again drifted out, coalescing into a familiar shape of a man and she backed up hastily, nearly tripping over the Ikea lamp that had been knocked over from her coffee table.
“What do you want now?” he said with the most surly and disagreeable expression on his face. “You zapped me with a spell, you witch and then you kicked me in the face!”
“What...where...you went bang, and then poof and then how—” she said, pointing at the lamp and trying to stem her hysterical babble, “what are you?”
He crossed his arms, which did interesting things to his chest and Ochako could feel her eye twitch as she struggled to keep her gaze on his face and not let it wander down the broad expanse of sun-bronzed skin stretched over lean hard muscles.
“I’m a lamp slave, spirit of wind and fire, granter of wishes...master.” The last appellation, which Ochako supposed he applied to her, was said with a fair amount of resentment.
“So, just to be clear...you’re a-a...genie,” she said, waving her taser around wildly.
He rolled his eyes, even as he stayed well clear of her wildly waving taser. “Obviously,” he snapped.
Ochako noted that for a self-styled ‘lamp slave’, he wasn’t very respectful. The stiff way he held himself just radiated pride.
“Technically I’m an afrit,” he said with a shrug of his broad shoulders, continuing as though Ochako wasn’t having a mental crisis where she just discovered that magical beings, in fact, really did exist, “not that you’d care, you damn witch. What year is it anyway?”
Wordlessly, she pointed to a calendar. “A.D.” she added, just in case, because he seemed sort of...lost.
“Tch,” he scoffed, looking like he was doing some quick calculations in his head, “I’ve been asleep for about 400 years.”
400. YEARS. “Please excuse me,” Ochako said heading back to her room on wobbly legs, as he began to wander her apartment curiously, poking at the light on the ground with his foot.
Slowly, she closed her bedroom door and locked it. Then she went into her closet, sat on her pile of dirty blouses, and called the first contact on her favorites list, drumming her fingers impatiently on her thigh as she waited for the call to go through.
“Hello?”
“Tsu, there’s a genie in my living room,” she said getting right to the point.
There was a long pause, and then— “Have you been drinking again?”
Ochako felt betrayed by the judge-y tone in Tsuyu’s voice. True friends don’t judge each other, they judge other people together. “Wha—again—no!” she sputtered.
There was another long pregnant pause.
“Ok a little…but just one glass of wine!”
More silence.
“Okay two glasses of wine—I’m not drunk! You know what, that’s not the point,” she said, taking a deep breath. “There’s a genie in my apartment,” she said slowly. “He came out of a lamp…in a puff of smoke, and—and sparks! He called me his master and I tasered him, but it didn’t really work.”
She took another deep breath and crept back to her bedroom door, cracking it open a couple of centimeters and watched as the half-naked genie fiddled with the remote, jumping when he accidentally turned on the TV.
“What kind of witchcraft is this?!” he yelled as he inched cautiously towards her television, sparks shooting out from the palms of his hands.
Ochako quickly shut the door, heart pounding hard.
“Was that him?” Tsuyu asked in a sharp no-nonsense voice.
“Yeah,” Ochako breathed as she locked her door again.
“Stay in your room, grab a baseball bat, and call the police.” There was rustling in the background that made it sound like she was moving quickly.
“And report…what, a genie break in?” Could she even prosecute a supernatural entity for breaking and entering?
“Are you safe?” Tsuyu asked, voice as serious as ever, but Ochako could hear a tiny hint of strain.
“Y-yeah, I think so.”
“I’m coming over,” she said and in the background she could hear Tsu starting her car.
“Please hurry,” Ochako whispered, “I’m freaking out.”
He had been dead to the world for hundreds of years. Bakugou Katsuki, the spirit in the lamp, a djinni, granter of wishes, though he could have none for himself. His lamp sat buried in an arid desert, in what was once a bustling city filled with marvelous riches, looted long ago so that the city was like a carcass, picked clean by carion until only the bare bones remained, half-buried in the desert sand. He had lain there centuries and would have lain there for centuries more, if an archaeologist hadn’t dug him up.
But the archaeologist was just a common human and couldn’t hear the ancient and compelling call of magic, or the voice of a djinni trapped in the lamp. So though he had been fished out of the shifting sand dunes, Bakugou hadn’t been called. He sat in a dusty crate and for years and years, among numerous other antiquities as old or older.
Until, one day, he felt a spark of warmth, rousing him from his long solitude, like an ember burning in the dark and so he pushed against the sides of his lamp prison, calling into the void, in the hopes that someone out there might release him from the accursed darkness of his magical confines, so that he could breathe in fresh air and feel the wind in his hair and the heat of the sun on his skin once more.
When his new master had made her first wish, it was unexpectedly...mundane. He had nearly exploded out of his magical prison from the power that had been pent up for so long, eager to get out. And so, like always, chafing against his bonds that the great wizard king Solomon set on him so long ago, he granted her wish interpreting it as he wanted, twisting the magic deftly within the confines of the rules in a way that would let him stretch out from the lamp for the first time in centuries.
After all, she merely wished that she wasn’t alone. She never stated whose company she had wanted.
At first glance, his new master was unremarkable. She was no queen or sorceress, just a normal human girl, without even a tiny bit of magic to distinguish her from countless others.
Until she zapped him with an electrical spell and kicked him in the face.
It had been the first time he had been assaulted like that. Nonetheless, he was drawn to her. Something about her called to him and underneath that soft exterior, he sensed steel.
And now she had shut herself into her room. He could hear her voice quietly speaking to someone, and he ignored her in favor of exploring his surroundings.
A lot had happened in 400 years. Perhaps this was a sorceress’ home after all, he had thought as he examined the lights that seemed to have no source of fire to them. The whole world smelled funny, full of metal and glass instead of stone and dirt.
Bakugou picked up something slim and black, covered by colorful dots. He tapped one and instantly dropped the device as a black box flared to life in front of him.
It seemed to be a window to other parts of the world and when he tapped on it, it didn’t seem as though the people on the other side noticed him.
Suddenly, there was a knock on the door. His master slunk out of her room and he watched, befuddled as she held a wooden stick before her and inched her way to her front door unlocking it, to let another human woman in.
He crossed his arms and waited sedately for instructions or perhaps a second wish, hoping that she wouldn’t burn through the three wishes too soon because he wanted to stay awake just a little longer not go back to sleep, not knowing when he’d next awaken.
“That’s him,” his master said, gesturing in his general direction.
He glared at them. “I can only have one master at a time, unless you want to give up your possession of the lamp?” These humans were so greedy, but at least his human was willing to share. He’d had masters before that would have rather throw his lamp into the sea lest someone else have the good fortune to find him and obtain their three wishes.
The other woman scanned him up and down, lips pursed in displeasure. “I don’t know how you got here,” and then her wide froggy eyes flickered to Ochako, “or what you fed Ochako, to make her think you’re a...a genie, but you’d better leave before we call the police.”
“Look Tsu, I don’t think you can reason with a magical entity,” his master said clinging on to the other woman’s arm. “And I told you I’m not drunk and I didn’t accept any drinks from strangers, magical or otherwise!”
Bakugou scoffed. “I don’t think I’m a djinni, frog face, I am a djinni. One of thousands that raised Solomon’s stupid temple.” He could tell from the doubt written plainly on her face that she didn’t believe him. Not that he cared what some dumb human thought. Not. At. All.
“Please show her,” his master said, brown eyes round and wide.
“What do I look like, your personal magician!?” Bakugou barked.
The companion that his master called “Tsu” made a tsking noise. “So you can’t. Everything you said is a lie.”
Oh, that’s it! Sparks flew from his fingertips as he coated himself in his own magic and shifted shape into the most regal of animals. A feline.
His vision became much sharper though the hues around him were a lot less saturated. He sat there, posing imperiously as he looked down at the humans from the tip of his whiskered nose.
The woman called Tsu blinked down at him. He bristled, arching his back as he hissed, swiping at her foot with his claws for good measure, laughing on the inside as she as she jumped backward like a frog. The human called Tsu then walked calmly to his master’s table, plopped heavily into a chair and reach blindly for the bottle of wine that his master kindly pushed into her seeking hand.
She took the proffered bottle by the neck, raised it to her lips and took a long hard swallow all without taking her eyes off him. “Okay,” she said, voice as calm as a still lake, as she turned towards her friend, “good news, you haven’t gone crazy.”
He released his cat form with a flourish of sparks, smoke curling around him and a small self satisfied smirk hovering at the corner of his mouth. Like he needed validation from some lowly humans...though he did enjoy the dumbfounded looks on their faces. It had been a while since he was able to freely exercise his power and he was pulsing with it.
Katsuki crossed his arms. “So, shitty master, now that you’ve wasted your first wish, what else do you want?”
“Wait,” she said waving her hands in front of her. “I don’t really remember wishing for anything in particular!”
“Unbelievable!” he shouted, sparks shooting from his fingertips and making her jump. “You wasted a first wish and you can’t even remember what you wished for?!”
“Hey, to be fair, until half an hour ago I didn’t think genies existed!” Next to his master, ‘Frog-faced Tsu’ as he had begun calling her in his mind, took another swig of wine, straight from the bottle.
“The proper term is djinn—get it right! And didn’t you read the rules on the lamp?”
“Read the wha-huh?”
“I’ll take that as a no,” he said sourly. “The rules were written on the bottom of the lamp.”
“Why would you hide the rules on the bottom of the lamp?” she said irritably as she scurried over to the mantle to grab his glorified magical prison. “Who looks on the bottom of things anyway?”
“Not you,” he said wryly. “Too bad,” he said teeth bared in a fierce smile as he felt no small amount of glee. He intended to make the most of her poorly worded wish. It wasn't exactly freedom, but then again, freedom was never his lot in life and he'd take what he could get.
He watched as his master and her friend flip the lamp over and read over the rules.
“Gah! These letters are so tiny!”
Katsuki leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, barely paying attention as he watched the two humans read the rules aloud. It hardly mattered; he knew all all of them by heart and how to bend them.
His master absently fiddled with a strand of brown hair before pushing it behind her ear. “So…” she said thoughtfully, “if Tsuyu touches the lamp…”
“Then my allegiance switches to her,” he huffed.
She tried giving the lamp to Tsu, but she merely held her hands up without touching it. “No thanks,” she said giving Bakugou a wary once-over.
“What do you mean, ‘no thanks’ huh?” Bakugou sputtered indignantly, trying and failing miserably not to be offended.
“I don’t want him as my djinni,” she said. “He’s a little...scary.”
Laughing, his master took it back. He noted that she her laugh was quite warm and she looked up at him with bright brown eyes and rosy round cheeks. “He’s not so bad!”
“Fuckin’ rude. I’m standing right here, you know,” he groused with a toss of his head.
“Sorry,” she said gesturing to the upturned lamp. “This is just so much.”
Unable to remember when someone last casually apologized to him, he stared at her. “The rules are so basic, even an idiot would get it. What don’t you understand?” he found himself saying, and then shut his mouth with an irritable clack of his teeth.
It wasn’t exactly his job to explain the rules. The 400 years of solitude must have really messed with him.
There was a thoughtful expression on her face. “So when I wished,” and here her face flushed, and she stuttered to a stop.
Bakugou stretched, rolling his shoulders. “You wished you weren’t alone, and so here I am, wish granted.”
Frog-face gave him a look of accusation. “You just interpreted her wish however you wanted.”
He shrugged one shoulder carelessly, and smirked. “What’s that age-old saying? Be careful what you wish for. Not my fault she picked a dumb wish.” Let that be a lesson to her not to make wishes so carelessly. If he had been in the mood for it, he could have twisted that wish into something much, much worse.
“You’re rotten,” Frog-face said before turning to her friend. “Ochako...are you okay? If you’re feeling lonely...you know that I’m always here for you.”
She huffed, puffing out her cheeks. “I’m fine! I was just thinking out loud. I mean, I didn’t know all this would happen,” his master said, clearly embarrassed as she waved her hand over Katsuki.
“Anyway,” she said clearly wanting to steer the conversation away from the topic at hand, “what does it mean on the eighth rule, ‘each wish carries a corresponding price’?”
Dancing sparks flared in his hands, crackling at the tips of his fingers. “It means that whatever you wish for, whether good or bad has a price and no one, not even the wish giver knows what that price might be until it’s already paid.”
Conjuring up visions in the palms of his hands, he continued. “Maybe I should tell you the story of the boy who wished to bring his mother back to life.” The vision in his hands turned into a ghoulish skull, gaping maw of a mouth opened in a silent scream.
“Or, perhaps, I should tell you a story of a woman buried by her own greed?” With a flick of his wrist, the sparks swirled into an image of a woman with her hands raised, face set in an expression of fear as thousands upon thousands of gold coins rained down upon her.
“Nothing is more dangerous than getting what you wish for.” He smiled grimly as Frog face clutched his master’s arm in fear and concern, looking like she wanted nothing more than to throw his lamp out the window.
But to his surprise, his master stared at him, unafraid and resolute. Unflinchingly fearless, she squared her shoulders and met his gaze challengingly. Something in the pit of his stomach flipped and grudgingly his respect for her went up a notch.
“What’s the price for my first wish?” she asked.
Before he could open his mouth, Frog-face Tsu beat him to it.
“Ochako, isn’t it obvious? The price is his company,” she said, looking at Bakugou apprehensively.
“Hey, watch yourself,” he snarled at her, “I’m a fucking delight.”
“See?” Tsu said as if he had just proved her point.
He made an irritated noise in the back of his throat. “You have two wishes left. What’ll it be, master?” He hoped she’d take her time and think about it, longing for the opportunity to stretch out, to let his power unfurl like smoke, to shift his shape and fly under the moon and stars, tasting freedom for a moment, even if it was just a mirage.
“For starters, how about you stop calling me that? I don’t believe in owning people as property.”
“Is that a wish? Because I’ll need to hear the magic words.”
“No, but it’s a strong preference. And I have a name you know!”
Katsuki sneered. “What makes you think I care what your name is?”
She was but a fleeting moment in time, just like all his other masters, even the clever ones. There’s no point in learning her name because she was a mortal, and he had stopped aging as soon as he’d been trapped in the lamp. Time was like a stream that flowed around him.
“You can call me Uraraka,” she said, smiling brightly. “Neither of us wants you to call me ‘master’, so how bout it?”
Frowning, he shoved his hands into the pockets of his voluminous pants. “I thought your name was Ochako.”
Coughing, Frog face sputtered on a sip of wine. Serves her right, he thought spitefully.
‘Uraraka’ patted her on the back, face an interesting shade of pink. “Well-that’s-Uraraka is my family name!”
Frog-faced Tsu fixed her wide eyes on him. “I thought you didn’t care to know know her name?”
“Shut up! I don’t!” he shouted. The nerve of that bug-eyed piece of shit. “I’ll call you Uraraka or whatever the hell you want me to call you!”
“Now that you know my name, you have to tell me yours,” Uraraka insisted.
“I don’t have to do shit,” he growled.
She bit her lip looked down and away. “I...I just don’t want to call you ‘hey djinni’ all the time. It’s rude and you’re not my servant. You must have a name...right?”
How long had it been since anyone called him by his name? He couldn’t remember, and maybe that was why he wasn’t reluctant to reveal it to her. “In your language, it’s Bakugou Katsuki, djinni of wind and fire.”
She held out her dainty hand and his eyes flickered to it and then to her, not sure what she wanted. No way in hell was he going to kiss it or whatever. Not. A. Chance!
She must have read the recalcitrant expression on his face because she thrust her hand even closer to his chest. “Sometimes, people greet each other with handshakes.”
Gingerly, he took her hand in his. Her hand was so soft and the tips of her fingers were stained in ink, but her grasp was strong and tight, holding him in place as she pumped his hand up and down once.
She grinned up at him, a jaunty, toothy smile that was so bright that it seemed to light up the room. “Nice to meet you, Bakugou Katsuki. The name’s Uraraka Ochako, assistant district attorney, and...I’m going to be the one that frees you.”