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Appearing unremarkable was an underrated skill. So many people wasted their lives scrambling to be noticed. They traded away their dignity and sense for scraps of fame or fortune as if it would change their fate. Nobles, beggars, warlords, courtesans, criminals, heroes—they all wound up feeding the worms in the end. Tomura would know. He’d sent more than one of each category to their graves with a dagger slipped through the ribs.
The man who’d just strolled through the open tavern door, however, couldn’t have avoided attention even if he’d been making an effort. He wore all black, for one thing. The only variety came from the iron studs glittering across the shoulders and on the half-sleeves of his long leather coat. Even his disheveled hair had been dyed—that shade of coal couldn’t be natural. Like most not in Tomura’s line of work, he probably believed black was the ideal color for stealth. In truth, an entire outfit declared, Look! I’m up to no good and I think I’m being sneaky about it! Clothing in a drab, washed-out brown, like the threadbare cloak Tomura had draped around his shoulders, actually worked best. With wisps of his white hair sticking out from the hood, he’d easily be taken for an old drunk nodding off over his drink. No one of note. Certainly not the heir to the most feared assassins’ guild in the empire.
The stranger approached the bar. His step hesitated for a split second when faced with the rippling construct of shadow—a guild contact by the name of Kurogiri—who was tending it. Tomura channeled his energy into a bouncing leg as the pair conversed. After a minute or two, Kurogiri fetched a wooden cup and filled it with the tavern’s finest for the man in black, who must have given all the correct pass phrases because he turned and looked directly at Tomura’s corner.
His flashy clothing was nothing compared to his skin.
Initially, Tomura thought he was staring at raw, purple muscle stretched over the stranger’s forearms, neck, and lower half of his face. Not flayed, he realized several stunned seconds later. Burned. Some disaster or curse had charred his skin in impossibly symmetrical patches. Even more striking were the neat rows of slim silver rings running along the seams, binding living and ruined flesh. They flaunted what might have been a disfigurement as decoration instead. To anyone with a taste for the macabre, the effect came across as artistic. Even beautiful.
Tomura hated him instantly. Still, he regulated his breathing and didn’t allow his hands to lift from the table to scratch his neck while the ostentatious bastard meandered his way to the table to join him. Master All For One had entrusted him with assembling the team that would eventually topple the empire. If he meant to take over the guild one day—meant to rid the world of hypocrites and bootlickers like Yagi Toshinori, the Emperor’s Champion—he would need to deal with people he didn’t care for. Nothing would get done if he just shut himself in his room and played out ancient battles with maps and models forever.
The man in black stopped at the chair to Tomura’s left, resting long, slender fingers on its back. The blue of his eyes shone as bright as the center of the flame in the tin oil lamp sitting on the table.
“Evening. Mind if I join you?” His voice shared none of the swagger of his appearance. Low and soft, Tomura had to strain to hear it.
“If I did,” he snapped, patience frayed along the edges, “you’d be on the floor already, choking on your own blood.”
This warm welcome only made the man smile, silver rings pulling at scar tissue. He sat and made the mistake of actually drinking the ale.
Now here was something to cheer him up. A nasty grin stretched Tomura’s own scar, slashed straight down the side of his cracked lips. “How is it?”
The stranger tilted his head, peering into his cup as if he’d caught something swimming in it. “I think the only thing more likely to kill me is the water.” Regardless, he took another swig.
Bah. No fun after all. Mouth sagging into a grimace, Tomura pushed his own cup away just a bit more. “So. You’re the flame mage looking to tag along on the job.”
“Afraid so. Call me Dabi. And you’re the dreaded Shigaraki Tomura, protégé of the most feared criminal overlord in the empire.”
“The same. What makes you think you’d be any use to me, Lord Call-Me-Dabi? Looking at you, I’d say your spells blow up in your face more often than they hit your enemies.”
To his credit and Tomura’s further exasperation, the mage didn’t lunge at the bait. “If only it were that simple. My scars,” he lifted his rough, pitted arms, turning them over and back for display, “are the result of my father making a deal with a demon.”
Tomura had to catch himself before he looked Dabi directly in the face and revealed too much of his own. “Your father did what?”
That earned a wagging finger. “I’ll tell you the story…but only in exchange for answering a question about your own past.”
Unease played with the hair along the back of Tomura’s neck. “Let’s hear this question first.”
“Fair enough. I want to know whether it’s true you’re cursed to destroy anything you touch.”
Muscles knotting down his spine, Tomura stiffened. How did this flashy asshole know more about his past than Sensei’s own network of informants had been able to dig up on him? Was he lying about the demon story just to get Tomura to talk? For what purpose? He couldn’t determine an advantage for doing so. But…since he already knew about the curse there didn’t seem to be any use in hiding it. Anyway, maybe his reaction would reveal further clues.
Reaching out with his left hand and keeping his right on one of the daggers sheathed against his ribcage, Tomura touched Dabi’s cup with all five fingers. A series of soft crackles filled the silence as the wood split apart first along the grain, then into individual fibers before disintegrating into a powdery ash that plopped to the table as a pile of mush when combined with the ale. The mage’s eyes became as round and shiny as marbles.
“Fascinating.” He lifted one of his own half-scarred hands. Instead of curiously poking the mound of pulp, though, Dabi went for Tomura’s wrist. His fingers brushed skin, warmer than the sunlight it rarely encountered, before Tomura recoiled.
“Are you insane?”
“Depends who you ask.”
Two fingers carefully folded against his palms, Tomura tucked his hands under his elbows and shoved away suddenly intrusive thoughts of what the mage’s touch might feel like on other parts of him. “How did you hear I’m cursed?”
Dabi chuckled, low and deep and quiet like his voice. The sound sent a little thrill racing out from Tomura’s belly to the crown of his head before plummeting straight down to the tips of his toes, which curled in his boots. Bastard. He had to be using some sort of enchantment to enhance his voice. Had to. “So many questions. Information is too valuable to just give away, though. You of all people should know that.”
Tomura’s jaw clenched hard enough to make his teeth squeak. “What do you want?”
“Nothing much—the answer ties in with your initial question, actually. A kiss should cover it.”
The remaining cup of ale tipped over and splashed its contents across the table as Tomura sprang up, jostling the edge.
“You want what?” He could sense the eyes of the handful of other patrons in the tavern locked on him from the outburst. Kurogiri, surely, must have been staring at him like he’d lost his mind. But Tomura couldn’t stop gawking at Dabi, who, despite an amused quirk of the brows, didn’t appear to be joking.
“A kiss in exchange for information,” the mage said. “To be collected in private, at your earliest convenience, of course. A more than agreeable price, if you ask me.”
For the first time in his life, Tomura was left speechless. “Wha…but…you…”
“’Why a kiss’, you ask?”
“Yes.”
Dabi’s shoulders bobbed in a shrug. “There’s already plenty of gold to be had for accepting this job from the guild. Ten tablets of gold upon completion, wasn’t it? A story about kissing a deadly assassin and living to tell the tale, though? Much harder to come by. Anyway, it seems fitting. I tell you something interesting about my past and you give me a new tidbit to share in the future.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“I thought we already touched on that subject.” Leathery forearms folded on the table, the mage craned forward. “So? How about it?”
Realizing how far his common sense had flown from him, Tomura yanked his hood closer around his face and plopped back into his seat. He began snagging his thoughts out of the cyclone of emotion that had swept them up. From a purely practical view, Dabi lost in this bargain. Even if everything he said turned out to be a pile of unicorn shit, Tomura could still learn something from the telling itself. There had to be a hidden angle to this farce. A ploy to see his face fully and sell a description to the authorities? Hardly the easiest, most efficient way to go about it. An attempt to get Tomura alone and off guard to exact revenge? Plausible. He’d killed dozens of people, including two mages, in his career. There was no reason one of them couldn’t have been a friend or relative of Dabi’s. Giving the mage what he wanted, keeping him close, was an ironclad way to find out. A bit of pride was a small price to pay to destroy an enemy with their own trap.
And if paranoia had made something out of nothing…he could always kill Dabi anyway rather than live it down.
Tomura sniffed. “Fine. I agree to your insane terms. Now answer my questions.”
A sliver of white, straight teeth glimmered in the mage’s smile. Tomura had to rein in his imagination before it ran away with picturing them leaving bite marks all over his neck. “The reasons this story happened at all are rather prosaic, I’m afraid. My father was a powerful flame mage who wanted to be above all other warriors. Wanted to be the Emperor’s Champion, in fact. He fought in tournaments and dueled noble-funded contenders, beating every opponent, rising quickly through the lists despite being only twenty-five. Then he faced the man who would become his life-long rival. No matter how many times my father challenged him, he could never best him. So, not getting any younger, he changed tactics and decided to have a perfect child capable of beating this better man.”
Turning just enough to peek at Dabi past his hood and messy hair, Tomura snorted. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Told you the motivations were uninspired.”
“Don’t tell me he summoned a demon woman to bear him this perfect child.”
“The circumstances of my birth aren’t half so interesting, sadly.” Lacing his hands behind his head, Dabi leaned back in his chair until it was balancing only on two legs. “No, my father scoured noble families for any daughters with promising magical talent. Eventually, he wound up marrying an unlucky woman from a line of ice mages and she had me not long after. I inherited my father’s power over fire, but apparently not to the god-like levels he’d been hoping for. When ten years of trying to beat greatness into me didn’t produce results, he turned to alternative methods.
“I’ll spare you the gory details, but the old bastard summoned a demon with the authority to make the type of deal he wanted. He offered it my soul in exchange for augmenting my power. And now…”
With a flourish of one hand, flames the same brilliant blue of his eyes rippled up from Dabi’s fingertips. Heat slapped Tomura in the face even from that distance, sucking the breath straight from his lungs. Another flick of the wrist and the mage clenched his hand, snuffing the fiery ribbons.
“My flames burn hot enough to melt steel—hotter than any mortal can cast. Therein laid the problem and the demon’s trick. My new powers were too intense for a fourteen-year-old boy to withstand, let alone control. The attempt broke me, leaving me severely burned over most of my body and on the verge of death. In his infinite wisdom and mercy, my father declared me a failure. He sent me away to a monastery to ‘recover’. Really, he figured my injuries would finish me off and the demon would have its prize early. Fortunately, I’m more resilient than he gave me credit for.”
Despite Dabi’s casual, even flippant tone and posture, something in his eyes told Tomura that maybe this story—the core of it anyway—wasn’t a complete fabrication. Something within the burning-blue irises too cold and hard for even them to melt. “Not only did I pull through, I learned ways to protect myself somewhat from my own magic thanks to the monks and their connections to various rare book sellers and libraries. By the time my father sent someone—perhaps one of yours even—to finish what my injuries hadn’t, I was ready. I spent about another five years after that in hiding, accumulating knowledge and skill. Skills like breaking wards, or getting minor spirits to collect tidbits of information, such as a curse placed on an infamous assassin, say. When I finally had the strength, I summoned the demon who’d traded with my father and renegotiated the terms of the deal.
“See, promising somebody else’s soul, especially a child’s, is tricky when you don’t just outright sacrifice them. Comes with all sorts of cosmic snags. Rather than risk winding up empty-handed, the demon was willing to heal me as much as it was able and accept my father’s soul instead for services rendered. The next week, I delivered.”
Slowly, Dabi let his chair rock forward back onto all four legs. At the same instant, the scales in Tomura’s mind tipped as well.
“Fine. You’re on the job. Ten tablets of gold before, as you already heard. Thirty after. You cooperate with everyone else on the team, no exceptions, no complaints. Agreed?”
Dabi bowed as much as the table would allow. “I’m at your service.”
“Hmph. We’ll see if it’s worth anything soon enough. Are you familiar with the old entertainment district on the west side of the city?”
“I’ve kept an appointment or two over that way.”
“Do you know the fountain?”
The mage tapped his scarred chin. “Dried up, statue of a fox woman, lots of crude writing all over it?”
“That’s the one. Be there at sunset two days from now. Be on time or don’t bother to show up at all. I’ll take you to meet the rest of the rabble helping with this venture.”
“Perfect. And about that remaining payment—”
Tomura stood from his chair abruptly. “You’ll get it when I say so. Don’t push me or you’ll wind up with a blade through your windpipe instead.”
“I look forward to it.” Smiling, Dabi offered his hand across the table. “Working with you, that is. Not the slashed throat so much.”
He didn’t even glance down at the gesture of goodwill. “We’re complete opposites then.”
That parting barb still wasn’t enough to stifle the soft laugh that followed Tomura as he strode away, pretending not to notice the strange fluttering in his middle.