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Monoma traced the window pane, finger aimlessly following the birds outside as he listened to Vlad King’s drone on hero ethics. Words mixed into seamless sounds that fell empty after the revelation of what UA had planned for the first-year classes. A whole summer meant to hone their skills. To learn how to be the best.
Finally, the training Monoma imagined when he signed up for UA. No more ‘sorry, the other class destroyed the USJ’ or schedule change because 1-B’s homeroom teacher was needed to handle another mess UA’s golden class made.’ Now was the chance they had been waiting for. The doors opening to the potential that circumstance kept locked tight.
But, of course, UA never did anything that might level the playing field, too focused on it’s golden class to spare resources on any one else. He felt a coiling, bitter surprise when Vlad King tried to rally the class’s competitive spirit by announcing that they could show 1A what they were made of, only to get a resigned sigh from Kendo and murmurs of varying degrees of false enthusiasm. Reading the obvious disdain in the room Vald quickly changed back to the regular class after handing out the necessary slips.
Outside, Monoma watched as a raptor swooped down and struck one of the unsuspecting birds. He knew what he had to do.
Deft fingers sent a message on the burner phone with only one number on it. The weeks since he last used the phone bled together. He kept meaning to throw it away, hovering over it as the night died and turned into morning. If he was caught with it, bye-bye hero career. Yet the phone stayed in his pocket, unanswered messages screaming for his attention until he reached for it, like a sinful habit he couldn’t quite cut. At the very least, she was useful for favours like the one Monoma was about to ask.
His phone vibrated, the notification flagging the message from the unknown number, with a warning against spam. A simple “❣️2night❣️” with a location following shortly afterwards, which he committed to memory. Moving his back phone under his desk, Monoma replied with a quick thumbs-up before deleting the conversation. Anything written down could be used against him, and he hadn’t kept contact with a known criminal for so long without playing it smart.
The clock ticked loudly, the thrum of seconds passing by impossibly loud. His heart gave awkward tiny jolts whenever the bell signalled the hour and the giddy feeling of guilt or excitement — Monoma didn’t quite know — grew until finally they were dismissed.
Here he had plans to meet with a known murderer, a fugitive of the law, and no one was any the wiser. It was amazingly easy to get past all the supposed security UA boasted about. So stupidly simple that even the rising amateur Shigaraki had no trouble getting in.
To be a real genius, however, was to play both sides.
Grabbing the extra shirt he kept hidden in the depths of his locker, Monoma left campus waving goodbye to his classmates, cocky grin hiding anything that might give him away. Slinking through the alleyways, he dropped his bag behind a rusted piece of metal a block away from the rendezvous.
His footsteps grew hollow the closer he got, the unforgiving concrete stealing sound and heat as the sun began to dip behind the buildings. Shadows swallowed the warehouse where Monoma was supposed to meet her. The place was oddly fitting for two people that society would also abandon as soon as they stopped being useful. Dust rose as he dislodged the door and Monoma brushed off cobwebs that settled on his shoulders. Clearly, no one else had been here in a long time.
Now all that was left to do was wait.
Pulling his knees to his chest, Monoma watched with mild curiosity as pits of disgust grew as his friend spun with her prize to the sound of music only she could hear.
Old childhood friends, Monoma was well used to her antics by this point. After all, there were only so many people his parents allowed in their inner circle. The two of them met at the private elementary school and, shunned by the rest of the class once their quirks came, had little choice but to become friends.
That was, until his parents took notice of her… particularities.
Especially after what they heard Toga did to the neighbour’s cat, the news spreading through their small circle that her parents sent her away to be fixed. After the summer her parents sent her for quirk therapy, she never was quite the same. Disappearing for three months only to reappear slightly broken. The light behind golden eyes turned cold, calculating and feral. Danger lurking where innocence used to be. A stark reminder of what happened when you went against the norm.
The soft golden light of the setting sun painted the area in warmth before the night blanketed everything in darkness. Finally, slowly, Toga plopped down on the grass next to him.
“Don’t you want to be free, ‘Mona?” With more care than what was needed for something dead, she gently caressed the small bird in her hand. “You feel it too, right?”
Monama winced, the sweet words stinging like daggers. Especially when, sitting on his desk at home, the application results to UA waited to be opened. He wished that he didn’t have an answer for her.
But Monoma couldn’t avoid the single cruel fact that would haunt any his chances of becoming a hero. The constant reminder that a cursed quirk was worse than no quirk.
The horrible reality was that, to the society they lived in, they were a grotesque mockery of everything quirks should be. It was obvious in the way adults looked at him with repulsion barely hidden behind fake smiles, how people physically recoiled when they learnt what his quirk meant. No. In this world of heroes, a quirk like his was something vile. It took away something sacred, something so unique, that to Copy it was the same as defiling the single thing that defined them as a person.
“I thought so.” Toga’s lips curled around the sharp edges of her teeth as she bit into the bird. Drops of half-congealed blood fell lazily to the ground, staining the corners of her mouth a ruby red. Using his finger, Monoma traced the crimson path, trying to wipe it away, but only succeeded in contaminating himself and smearing it further.
Revolting and beautiful all at once.
And at that moment, draped in the pale light of the stars, Monoma never thought he had seen Toga look more free.
It came as no surprise that the next time he saw Toga was on the news, labelled as the murderer. There were rapid interviews with classmates and teachers who had no issue casting her out from their world, quick to abandon her to save their reputation. Dealt the wrong hand of cards, the world closed its doors for her, all for being born with the wrong quirk.
“Such a shame,” his mother sighed before asking him to pass the salt. Barely looking up from his dinner, his father spoke as if pitying the weather, “she was so pretty, with a good family too.” Casually tossed away for the quirk that no one bothered to understand. Just like him, if Monoma so much as faltered in becoming a hero.
“A tragedy.” Bitter betrayal strung as the words slipped from his mouth like whispers. Quickly Monoma turned the TV off right before the next news story could finish introducing All Might’s latest victory, hoping his parents didn’t notice his hands trembling.
He just had to prove that he could be better.
Monoma propped his arms on his knees, leaning forward to rest his head on his hands as the door finally creaked open. Cold air slithering into the room, yet somehow her presence made the room’s temperature plummet further.
“You’re late.” Monoma grinned into the shadows. “It’s not easy meeting like this, you know.”
“Awe!” Even from this distance, Monoma could see the sharp glint to Toga’s smile, the limp white wing hanging from her hands; good to see some things never changed. “It’s not easy for me too, you know, Mona.”
Holding her prize behind her back, Toga moved forward, light and lethal, cutting through the darkness like she was born in it. There would be no backing out now, not when any sign of weakness meant a knife to the throat.
Still, sitting on the window ledge like a king of a broken castle, letting the moonlight cloak him through the remains of shattered glass, Monoma had never felt more in control.
Was it the wrong thing to do? Quite possibly. But, at the end of the day, which hero in the top ten could say they got there the right way? With all the opportunities handed to class 1A on a silver platter, it was about time that someone else got a turn.
And class 1B was ready to go.
“I know where they will be this summer.”
