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His chains weren't literal. They didn't even connect him to anything not anymore. They didn't trail, they didn't click or clatter, and most people would not even recognize them as chains, but they were chains nonetheless.
Most people saw the hands he donned on his head and arms as a scare tactic, not as the remnants of who he'd been before he'd cut his fetters and Sensei had lifted him up to freedom. They didn't see his sister the golden child, his grandparents the enablers, his mother the weak-willed, his grandmother the legacy, his father the abuser, they just saw… hands.
And the young man insane enough to wear them.
But that didn't mean they weren't chains. It didn't mean that they didn't sometimes chafe and pull at his skin, didn't mean that sometimes he couldn't stand to even look at them.
There were nights still when he sought out Kurogiri, even now at age twenty, where the cool mist and rough calloused hands of his dad caretaker were the only things that could calm him. Some things, you don't grow out of.
You don't grow out of memories of being struck for the slightest mistake, of your sister betraying you to avoid punishments that should've been hers, of everyone just standing aside because Father has
money
—
The memories and moments he wanted to hold on to, the ones he cherished most, not a single one of them featured his birth family. Instead, he held tight to memories of Sensei reaching out, of Kurogiri's fingers carding through his hair, and remembered then what he was fighting for.
Not everyone was so lucky as to have a Sensei and a Kurogiri there to catch them when their bonds gave way. Tenko would carve a new world where they did, and until then…
Until then, he would be the one who reached out, for as many people as he could.
~~~
He could tell that each of his new League members had severed chains like him, their clinking and clanking unseen and unheard by everyone not wearing them. Tenko, who wore the physical manifestations of those chains when on a mission, wondered what form the chains of the others were.
Some of them were easier to spot than others. Some of them were more scarred by their chains than others. Some were truly unfettered, others weighed down even by ties severed.
Magne had a lightness, an airiness to her that made her feel more solid and steady, made her feel like someone you could rely on.
Dabi's scars were obvious markers of his chains, constantly made worse and unallowed to heal, weighing him down like he'd transferred them to a ship's anchor rather than cutting them away.
Tenko wanted to help, but Dabi didn't seem to want to be helped. He snarled when Tenko tried to probe, shut him down when Tenko tried to open up first. Worse still, Kurogiri would interfere, force Tenko to back off.
"Some people do not want to be helped," Kurogiri said, smiling but wrong, somehow, "Even if they are miserable, they are comfortable in their misery, and feel more at ease complaining without making change than attempting to push forward into the unknown. It is… a mentality of 'better the devil you know'. Give him space, and help those more receptive to it first."
Then Kurogiri pushed Tenko in Toga's direction and poured Dabi a glass of whiskey. Rude.
But likely not untrue. Himiko Toga, for all that she acted a bubbly girl on the surface, held to her an undercurrent of deep-seated hurt.
Despite having no idea where that hurt stemmed from, Tenko realized he was likely more closely able to relate to her than the hard-headed fire user anyway.
Toga was lounging on the couch, reading a manga she had, most likely, stolen. If it wasn't stolen, he had no idea where she'd gotten it as she didn't have it yesterday. Instead of spending time thinking about it, Tenko sat down next to her, barely giving her enough time to pull her legs back for him to have space.
The glare she shot his way made him question if he was actually welcome here, but she was part of his team so she would have to deal with it. "So, tell me about your chains."
He wasn't sure what to make of it when the glare turned to confusion. She had to know what he meant, her chains were obvious even if he wasn't sure of their source or how they manifested.
"Chains?" Tenko realized he had very little experience with teenage girls, and he had no idea how to respond to her incredulous question without his own incredulity lacing his tone.
"Yes, chains," he snapped, feeling like maybe this had been a bad idea after all. Damnit Kurogiri, she wasn't smart, how could he get through to her? He would try again, just once, before he stormed back to his room and gave these two up as lost cuases. "You look sad even when you look happy, what's that about?"
This time she paused and lowered her manga so she could really look at him. She was thinking, he could work with that. For a moment, as long as she didn't linger too long and make him wait. He felt a frustrated sigh coming on as she looked him over, understanding washing over her features. Understanding of what he was unsure, but the look she gave him afterwards made his stomach churn.
"What about yours, Shigi?"
He felt his nose scrunch at the unwelcome nickname, but if he was going to get through to her he needed to let it go. Right? He did want to get her to open up, didn't he?
Glancing back at the bar he frowned at the easy way Dabi seemed to be conversing with Kurogiri. Conversing may not have been exactly the right word, given how curt the Dabi's responses seemed to be, but it was more than he had gotten out of the burnt man.
He looked back to the teenager that had yet to stop staring at him and sighed. "I asked you first," he said, absolutely not petulant.
Her giggle annoyed him, but she shrugged, her smile dropping quickly. "I guess losing my family because of my quirk?"
That hit too close to home.
"Same."
Toga took a glance at him, away from the manga. After a short moment of silence she asked: "What about the guy on tv?"
"He's sort of an Adoptive dad."
Toga seemed to ponder for a moment. Both sitting there awkwardly until toga asked: "So, how did you lose your family then?"
Tenko's brain instantly brought up the painful memories when she asked that, causing him to flinch and grit his teeth. He hated those memories and it felt like the hands where gripping him.
He gave Toga a stare that screamed that he didn't want to talk about it.
But toga picking up on it, gave a sadistic smile and said coldly: "I asked you first."
Tenko wanted to pickup the glass on the table and throw it against a wall and scream. This dam brat, who does she think she is. She should .... no calm down. He started to calm his anger down. He needed her to open up he thought to himself. He decided he needed to tell her, even if his "chains" would hurt.
Eventually he took a breath, pushed his emotions back, focused himself and looked at toga. He picked up a empty glass on the table, and in front of toga turned it into dust.
"This is my quirk. I had no control of it when it manifested. I lost my family."
The statement was so blunt and different from Tenko's usually petulant tone of speaking it caught toga off guard.
Toga looked down, feeling bad for poking into "shigi's" past so coldly. "Sorry."
Tenko pushed his memories back as far as he could. He didn't want to go into the detail that it was not the loss of his family that hurts him, but the memories of the family.
"So.. your turn." It came out a bit more cold then he wanted.
"My quirk makes me like drinking blood. I lost control of myself and my quirk. I lost my family."
As she spook her voice got quieter and Tenko noticed tiny droplets of water appearing in her eyes. She seemed to almost fold in on herself after she was done. Slowly trying to make herself seem small. As well as putting her left arm on her back pocket, which Tenko knew held her knife.
"No" was all Tenko could think, and barely thinking he hit her with a punch.
Toga broke out of her thoughts as she screamed "What the hell shigi?"
"Stop being sad, its annoying." He paused for a moment, before adding another sentence. "I have an idea."
"But why punch me? It hurt," She whined rubbing her arm, and the moue on her face looked weirdly duck-like. She was so annoying. All the time.
"I punched you because you're a liar. That's not your chain—"
"Quit it with the chains, Shigi! It's so emo and weird. Just say trauma like a normal person." He was clearly not talking about trauma. The manga that splayed open and upside-down on her chest fell to the floor as she sat up straighter. There was a dot of blood on the corner. Definitely not normal. Hypocrite.
"You know what? I'm going to ask someone else. Twice is annoying, but he's basically a dog."
"Don't insult him!" She reprimanded, jumping to her feet. She waggled her finger like he was some child. Angrily, he stood up too. But Toga continued on, too stupid to notice his intimidation. "And I want to help! Will it be fun? Please tell me it'll be fun!" Toga bounced around. "Tell me!"
Tenko rolled his eyes. "The plan is the fetter those hero brats with chains of their own."
"You want… You know what! Ignoring all the creepy-emo talk, I'm in! Will I get to kill people!" Someone at the bar, Spinner, turned his head to look at them confused. Tenko flipped him off, and the Lizard turned back to his pink drink with a little umbrella.
"Well, what's the plan-plan. Beside give the hero students chains?" she dropped her voice down on the last word, clearly mocking him. He hated her.
"I got intel about a UA training camp. I want to kidnap that Sports Festival winner, but think, if we wreck enough havoc and destruction, we'll nerf them with chains." He hoped that righteous green-haired brat especially.
"Shigi?" Toga locked her orpiment-yellow eyes with his, not the knuckles of the hands, but his eyes . She cocked her head back. "The hands you wear? Are they—-"
"Yes," he cut her off.
"Oh! Oh!" She grinned, bouncing on the balls of her feet again. "I get it! I have so many to choose from! Hunger is a chain, but so is the taste of blood. Every drop, it's so yummy and amazing and I want it so bad! But! But—" Her gaze dropped. "No. That's no it." Her pensive rasp tightened Tenko's ribcage for some alien ineffable reason. It made him want to fix it, but Tenko didn't fix things.
Toga picked the manga off the ground. She scratched off the blood and brought the finger near her mouth. Toga stopped, he was sure she'd lick it clean but she wiped her finger on the cream fabric of her sweater instead. "The hands are your family, then? Who you killed?" She hugged the manga to her chest. "They are chains because you liked it, right?"
Finally proof she had at least one firing neuron in that skull of hers. He nodded curtly, but she wasn't all correct.
Tenko hated contradictions. He hated how many were stapled in the pages of his life. He hated that he killed them. But they were supposed to love him. They couldn't. So they got what was coming. He would kill them again. He wanted them to be there with him when he finally destroyed everything, and when that time inevitably came, their hands would be as bloodied as his.
"My uniform." Toga admitted eventually. "I like when it gets bloody. School—er—society is my chain. It pretends to be normal and nice and—" she paused. "They couldn't chain me." She looked at him. "They wanted to. But they couldn't. So I chained them to me." She pointed at the engraved logo of a fern frond in the cream-plastic button, a high school logo. Beaming she added, "Plus it's so cute! Shigi, do you think I'm cute?"
An ugly, blood-thirsty expression screwed up her face, made of sharp lines and angles, from the corners of her mouth to her narrowed eyes. "Not even a little bit," he answered.
"Liar!" Himiko broke into a fit of giggles, "You're smiling! You think I'm cute!"
Tenko rolled his eyes, but the atmosphere of the whole bar felt lighter than it had a mere moment before. "Cute is for children and people you find attractive. You're not a child, and I don't find people attractive, so you're not cute."
That explanation just made Himiko laugh. "Cute is for more things than that, Shiggy! Like puppies and kittens and teen girls like me!" She placed her hands on her cheeks and bat her eyelids, which might have looked more attractive if she didn't have worse eyebags than Tenko himself.
Tenko pulled a face, which made Himiko's countenance flicker. Ugh, he didn't want her to think he didn't want her here — out of everyone here, he'd like to have her here the most — but how could he…
Aha.
"Hey, do you like video games?" Tenko asked. Without being inside his brain, such a question likely sounded apropos of nothing, but it would make sense to her soon. Hopefully. "I found this one recently about teenage girls who are also racehorses that I think you'd like."
Himiko stared at him a moment, blinking at him with her cat-like eyes. "Sure?" she said after a moment, "I've not played many before, but I'm not like. Opposed to them?"
Tenko nodded. "Great. You should come to my room, so I can show you the horse girl game." He gestured for her to follow, and then moved towards the stairs.
"Okay…" Himiko did move to follow, but it did not escape Tenko's notice that she picked up a knife and hid (or perhaps just held?) it behind her back before she did so.
Fair enough.
Tenko ascended the stairs, listening for Himiko's footsteps behind, then made his way down the hall to his room on the left, across from his real Dad's room on the right. He stepped inside and held the door open for Himiko, politely ignoring how she shifted to constantly face him and conceal a weapon behind her back.
Once she was inside, he kicked the door closed with as much expediency as he could muster. "There aren't any cameras in here," he muttered darkly, "So —"
"Try anything and I'll slit your throat," Himiko hissed, bringing her knife around to point at him, eyes narrowed, "Don't think I won't. I've killed before."
Tenko rolled his eyes. "It's not me you need to worry about. It's Sensei."
"Sensei…?" Himiko blinked, expression becoming less rigid but knife still leveled at his throat, "The TV guy?"
"Yes," Tenko nodded, letting the mask of Tomura Shigaraki more fully fade away, "He is… Not what he seems. He's got cameras in all the main rooms, too, so be careful."
"I thought he was like your dad," Himiko more stated than asked as she lowered her knife.
"That is how he presents himself," Tenko nodded, "But Kurogiri is my Dad, not Sensei."
"You're hiding from him," Himiko moved to sit on Tenko's bed, "You made a point to get me out of camera view and thought I needed to know this… why?"
"Because I don't want to be under Sensei's thumb forever," Tenko crossed his arms and drew himself up, "But if I'm going to steal his operations out from under him, I need allies… allies that see the corruption in society and seek to correct it, rather than exploit it. Allies like you."
"Are you asking me to help you stage a coup against the most powerful criminal in Japan?" her words were incredulous, but her face wore an awesomely bloodthirsty grin.
"I am. Are you in?"
Her grin grew ever wider, more feral. "Without a doubt."