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Part of every patrol with Fatgum consisted of a food stop (at least one per shift, ideally). The exact location changed each day, varying with what was nearby and the needs and interests of the group at the moment. He knew every restaurant, food truck, and weird little unexpected snack stop in the district, and could wax poetic about the pros and cons of each. There were lists. Lots and lots of lists, for every requirement, preference, and desire.
Today, as it was getting a little colder, the titular hero of the Fat Gum Hero Agency and his two interns Suneater and Red Riot could be found at Minazumi’s Noodle Shop. Minazumi Kayoko, for her part, was beside herself as always to have a pro at her restaurant, especially one as popular and beloved as Fatgum. He was, she could be proud to say, a regular visitor, and she had the line cooks starting up the hero’s regular orders as soon as he opened the door. Sometimes they got new things to try in addition, but she was confident in their standards by this point. Extra-large beef ramen for the pro himself, pork stir-fry and a handful of grilled beef skewers for Red Riot, chicken-veggie noodle soup and as much calamari as could be found for Suneater, and five orders of mixed dumplings for the table.
Fatgum had intended to help his interns design new training schedules, but any plans for a working lunch went out the window the moment he spotted short ashy hair and a narrow red-and-gold dress passing by outside. He saw her rarely enough; it was more than worth pushing back the training to spend lunch with his oldest friend in the world.
“Ryuukyuu!” he bellowed, jamming the door open and making several civilians jump.
The Number Ten Hero turned around casually. She was used to this. Her interns, on the other hand, had fallen all over themselves – the one with long blue hair had leapt into the arms of the little bob-haired one and knocked her clean over, and the third, with long black-green hair bound back in a sort of bow, had just frozen like a little deer. “Fatgum,” Ryuukyuu replied, a rare smile breaking the cool-stone calm of her face, “good afternoon.”
Fatgum beamed. “We’re just sitting down to lunch, Ryuukyuu! Come join us!”
She considered the offer (or pretended to. The second her eyes flicked up to the battered Noodle Shop sign above Fatgum’s head, he knew he had her). “Very well. What do you think?” she asked her interns, who all scrambled to pretend they hadn’t all just been scared out of their wits by a surprise hero greeting attack.
“Noodles sounds great!” Uravity said with a smile.
“I’m starving!” exclaimed Shockwave with all the enthusiasm of a teenager.
“Kero,” said Froppy. Presumably this translated to yes, sure, because Ryuukyuu nodded again and followed Fatgum back inside.
Of course, they had to move tables since they were now a party of seven instead of three. Riot was immediately excited (and completely distracted) at the sight of two of his classmates, and it took some redirecting to get them all wrangled into the new chairs. Although Suneater looked nervous at the general volume and attention Shockwave was showering him with, he was much calmer than he usually was when interacting with people, and was very nearly confident as he physically maneuvered her to sit down across from him while she talked excitedly with barely a breath taken at all.
They’d ended up with all the Fatgum folks on one side of the long table and all of Ryuukyuu’s people on the other. Fatgum took up the center of the bench himself, with Kirishima to his right and Amajiki to his left. Ryuukyuu was directly across, meeting his eyes with softness in her face. To her left was Froppy (“Call me Tsuyu”) and beside her was Uravity, or Uraraka now that she was off-duty. Hadou, who Fatgum knew from previous meetups with Ryuukyuu – she’d gotten Shockwave about the same time he took on Suneater – was seated to the right of the draconic pro. How long she would stay there, with all the bouncing she was doing, was anybody’s guess.
Ryuukyuu had been to Minazumi’s before (she knew all the food in the area through Fatgum), but it had been a while, and none of her interns had ever visited the little noodle shop.
Fatgum happily guided them through the menu, plus his own recommendations. He easily accommodated for Tsuyu’s vegetarianism and Uraraka’s desire for something spicy, and navigated Hadou’s blur of directionless chatter to determine what she would actually like, added onto by Amajiki’s reminding that she was allergic to shallots.
He didn’t need to ask Ryuukyuu what she wanted. She didn’t even look at the menu. This was an old deal for them: he would order something for her, and she would love it. It had never failed.
Despite the last-minute additions, Minazumi took the group’s orders easily and all the food arrived together, steaming-hot and smelling irresistible. She’d doubled the regular dumpling order. Tsuyu’s zucchini-noodle (zoodle?) dish looked divine, while Uraraka’s hot-hot ramen steamed with heat of both the cooking and chili sorts. Whatever Hadou had was honestly unrecognizable, but it smelled so good that her chopsticks were reaching for the bowl before it even made it to the table. Ryuukyuu’s warm heavy turkey noodle soup had pepper oil and extra hard-boiled eggs added in. The Fatgum team hadn’t even needed to order, clearly as familiar with the menu as the owner was with them, and all were obviously very happy with the multitude of dishes that arrived before them.
The lunchtime talk meandered from the day’s work to opinions on the new mall to the sudden turning of the weather to appreciation of the food and beyond. It did not touch on a usually common topic at hero meetups: the rankings lists. Nobody at this particular table had much interest in such ranks, and Ryuukyuu in particular could quickly become irritated if someone brought up the subject. She was Number Ten by happenstance, and it didn’t matter. She did her work and tried not to cause more damage than the villains did, and she had Opinions about rankings and those whose priorities tended more towards fame than actually helping.
Fatgum knew this. He knew everything about Ryuukyuu, but he’d been pretty preoccupied for a while and they were both grown adults with busy lives. Sure, he’d been accused of being a mother hen more than once (more than a few times, really), but the Draconic Hero didn’t need to roll her eyes at him like a child when he asked how she was doing!
“Oh come on, Ryu!” he complained with a smile, “Can’t I ask about my own sister’s health?”
Kirishima choked on a barbecue stick. Hadou spat out half her drink. Amajiki, for his part, just froze stone-still, eyes wide as he stared at his mentor like he’d never seen the man before. Uraraka and Tsuyu both looked spectacularly confused.
“Your what?!” Hadou shrieked, bubble tea dripping slowly from the table to the floor.
“My… sister?” Fatgum said, although the tone came out more questioning than the hero had probably meant it. “We’re siblings,” he added, somewhat unnecessarily.
Or maybe very necessarily. “You have a sister?” Kirishima asked in a strangled tone.
“Since when?” Hadou hissed. She’d regained herself enough to try to dab at the tea with a napkin, at least attempting to contain the mess from reaching Amajiki and dribbling onto him.
“Since we were five years old.” Ryuukyuu looked very puzzled at the whole conversation. Uraraka and Tsuyu could join her there. “Hadou, you know this. I’ve talked about my brother before, Taishiro. Remember? I’m sure I even mentioned him just a few days ago.”
“Yes, but, but,” Hadou sputtered, waving her hands and spattering drops of bubble tea across the table, napkin forgotten, “but your brother is Taishiro. That’s someone else. This guy’s name is Fat Gum, I know because Tamaki talks about him lots and lots! His name is definitely not Taishiro.”
Ryuukyuu looked like she was getting a headache. “Fatgum’s name is Taishiro. I would have stated clearer if I’d known you weren’t aware.”
“Same goes here,” Fatgum said, a crinkle formed between his brows. “I could have sworn I’d told you both about my sister before.”
“Sure you have,” Kirishima exclaimed, “but you never mentioned that your sister was Ryuukyuu the Dragon Hero!”
“That was a detail you definitely left out,” Amajiki agreed weakly. “I think we would have noticed, if it had ever been said.”
“We didn’t know either,” Uraraka said in a faint tone. She looked a little dazed.
“I would venture to guess that it’s not known by most people,” Tsuyu added, looking back and forth between the two heroes. “There is nothing in general to suggest any connection between the two of you, and you don’t seem to interact in public any more than you do with anyone else. From that and the general reactions of your own interns just now, I would say that it’s probably something of an unintended secret.”
“Oh.” Fatgum looked a little surprised. Or maybe impressed. When he finally grinned, it was huge. “Hey, sis, we’re a secret!”
“Not for long we aren’t,” Ryuukyuu said with one hand over her face, clearly referring to Hadou who was already waving her phone around as she texted Mirio, probably in all-caps, about this revelation. Well – either Mirio, or the entirety of Class 3-A, or her nextdoor neighbor. It was really anybody’s guess.
Uraraka finally voiced the question. “Okay but, how? Like, how is this a thing, and a secret, and,” she waved one hand vaguely between the two pros, “everything?”
“Only if you’re comfortable telling us,” Tsuyu added, and all the interns nodded vigorously. “If it’s personal, we’ll drop it.”
Fatgum waved a chopstick vaguely. “Oh, it’s no secret,” he mumbled, then cleared his throat and put the chopstick down. “If it’s okay with you, Ryu?”
The Draconic Hero nodded, attention returning to her soup. “As you said, it’s not a secret. I would say I’m surprised that it’s not more known, but neither of us draw enough attention to warrant investigation into our childhoods or the like.”
Fatgum shrugged. “No complaints here. At least we get to do our job mostly unimpeded.” He shook his head. “Anyway, Ryu and I are siblings and have been since I was four and she was five. That’s when we were adopted by our parents. We grew up together, went to school together, and became pro heroes around the same time as each other. I don’t know how much more there is than that.”
Kirishima shook his head violently. All his stir-fry was gone, but Tsuyu pushed one of the remaining dishes of dumplings towards him and he took to it heartily. Between bites, he said, “No way, Fat, there’s gotta be more. You literally grew up with a dragon, how can you not have stories about that?”
Fatgum’s smile turned Cheshire. “Oh, kid, I do. I do have stories about growing up with a dragon.”
Ryuukyuu put her face in her hands. “Will you never forget that?”
“Absolutely not. Never in my life.” He leaned forward. “Hey, Hadou, did you know that your mentor once got stuck in her dragon form?”
“I was seven!” Ryuukyuu exclaimed, at the same time that Hadou gasped delightedly, leaned forward with bluebell eyes wide and hands pressed together, and said, “Oh please please please tell me, Fatgum! I absolutely need to know.”
Fatgum launched into the story (which, in Ryuukyuu’s defense, had happened when she was seven years old so it wasn’t really her fault that she couldn’t control it), much to the delight of the interns. Even Amajiki seemed interested, although he stayed quiet as always and mostly focused on finishing his soup.
Ryuukyuu, for her part, seemed ready to sink underneath the table, only restrained by a (rapidly-eroding) sense of pride. But she didn’t stop her brother, allowing him to meander from that story to recounting just how much food the two of them had gone through – fat-building quirk and literal giant dragon quirk made for some hungry mouths – to their parents’ mixed pride-and-despair when both their children applied and got into the hero class of the nearby academy. It hadn’t been UA: Fatgum moved here as a pro, long after graduating, and after a few years Ryuukyuu followed. She still thought she would be most powerful as a rural or smaller-town hero – less chance of destroying every nearby building when she shifted – but both she and Taishiro wanted to be close to each other and she was willing to make it work.
Hadou and Uraraka were practically in tears at the imagery of a tiny Ryuukyuu, her draconic form about the size of a small pony, unable or unwilling to change back and living happily for a full week as a dragon while wreaking minor havoc in the family’s house. She turned back, Fatgum said, in order to steal some of his dango while the grown-ups were busy worrying about whether this new change was permanent or not. Turned out no, she just liked being a giant lizard, but being person-shaped was useful to better steal her little brother’s dessert.
Ryuukyuu got him back, though. Kirishima just about choked to death when she told the story of ten-year-old Taishiro falling off a mountain because he wasn’t paying attention, and the poor parents and park rangers finding him at the bottom, totally unharmed but about seven sizes smaller, poking through the pockets of his now far-too-big clothes looking for some snacks. Amajiki pointed out in an only slightly-wobbly voice that he basically still did that on a weekly basis, and Fatgum had to concede the point.
The remainder of the lunch was filled with questions from the interns – mostly Hadou, Kirishima, and Uraraka – learning about the pros’ childhood together. Eventually, they would have struggled to understand how they couldn’t have noticed that the two were siblings. By happenstance the two had not been together much in the past few months, which had to be the only reason this accidental “secret” had been a secret at all. They were just too comfortable, too familiar, to not know each other deeply. It was a closeness that could only stem from a lifetime spent together.
Neither one was terribly famous. Interviews with Ryuukyuu tended to either focus on the fact that she was a literal dragon, her ranking (a surefire way to piss off said dragon), or the sexist nonsense that far too many female heroes had to deal with. Fatgum, similarly, was mostly asked something or other about food, if he was asked much of anything. Nobody bothered to search out their origins, or it would have been instantly clear that they were family. Taishiro’s given name wasn’t a secret, and Ryuuko had barely changed hers for her hero name. Their family names were different, which was probably why nobody even guessed at the relationship. Taishiro had kept the name of his birth family, while Ryuuko had taken on that of their adopted parents. It was the best-kept worst-kept secret in the city, the interns were sure.
Eventually, it was time for the two groups to go their separate ways and return to work. Fatgum insisted on paying for everyone, “since I dragged you all in here,” but Ryuukyuu took the tip. She left what was probably an excessive amount, but hey, she was a pro hero and could do what she wanted with her money. Plus, they were seven people, all of whom ate a lot and hadn’t exactly been quiet during their lunch. She wanted Minazumi to want them back, and this was at least one way to do so.
Despite the massive amount of food that had been delivered to the table, there was nothing left now except empty bowls with a few drops of broth and some leftover oil on the stack of dishes that had once all been heaped high with dumplings.
As the interns chattered amongst themselves, the three first-years a little chirping knot of color while Amajiki and Hadou talked quietly a few steps away, Ryuukyuu laid one hand on Fatgum’s arm. She looked tiny and birdlike in comparison to his massive boulderlike form, but they both knew that appearances could be deceiving. “I’m glad you and Amajiki and Kirishima are alright,” she said quietly. Her eyes said more.
With anyone else, Fatgum would have laughed off the concern, but this was his sister. She knew everything, and she’d been there. Not in the heart, but Ryuukyuu and her interns’ arrival had helped keep the yakuza raid from becoming an utter bloodbath. She’d seen the immediate aftermath, and the state her brother and his interns had been in after everything.
“We’re doing a lot better,” he nodded. “Recovery Girl helped a ton – especially with Riot – and we’re all okay.”
Ryuukyuu nodded. In her opinion none of the first-year interns should have been there at all. But the past was the past, and all they could do was take what they had and move on. She would trust her brother’s words and keep an eye on her own students. The world was changing, with the loss of the Symbol of Peace, and the next generation of heroes needed to be prepared for whatever was coming.
They parted ways reluctantly. Fatgum hugged Ryuukyuu so hard her feet lifted off the ground (although the way she hugged him back produced audible pops from the BMI Hero’s spine) and demanded that she come over to his house for dinner as soon as their schedules lined up. She knew how he cooked and gave no protests to this plan. At last the Dragoon Hero departed, her three interns trailing behind, headed towards the suburbs. Fatgum went the other way, followed by a birdlike shadow and a bouncing red lion.
“I can’t believe your sister is Ryuukyuu!” Kirishima burbled as they continued the patrol. “She’s so cool. Besides Crimson Riot – and you, of course – I think she’s one of the best heroes in the city! Like – she’s a dragon. And such a good strategist, and she’s really observant, like she can just arrive on scene and figure out the best way to solve the problem in minutes. And she’s really calm, and so confident, and…” and he kept on going, in a way that Fatgum usually only heard reserved for Crimson Riot alone, or Red Riot’s closest friends.
He was proud of her, of course. Ryuukyuu was a good hero for more reasons than her shifted form, although it was rare for the general public and especially the media to acknowledge more than that. Sometimes he wondered how things might have been different if she’d put more attention towards ratings, but neither of them had ever cared about that and it was part of who they were. Ryuukyuu wouldn’t be Ryuukyuu if she cared about her popularity ranking.
Same went for Fatgum himself. He did his job well and he helped people, and that was what mattered – not whether random people thought he was cool. The people he helped were grateful, and his family and friends and interns cared about him. That was what mattered, and Fatgum would take it over some hollow “popularity” any day.
Enough introspection. Lunch break was over (although in a few hours it would be snack time), and they were fully-fueled and ready to get back to work. With Suneater on one side and Red Riot on the other, Fatgum headed out once again.