Work Text:
When Kanon was young, like way young, Leon used to take her to the arcade sometimes. For where they'd lived, it'd been a kind of crappy arcade. Maybe that was the point, though. If everyone was rich enough to have stuff in their house, then who was even going to the arcade in the first place?
Still, it'd been nice for the few years it'd stayed open.
Neither of them were very good at any of the games, but it was a fun way to waste money and time and get out of their respective houses.
After filling up on failed game after failed game, Leon would take her to the toy capture machines. The owner was always shoving the most random crap in them; it wasn't like the machines ever had any themed toys.
Leon was good at them, though. Had gotten good at them, because he'd learned a trick sometime in between seven and eight, and he could usually win her something. He'd called it 'strategic aiming'; where the claw would be aimed ever so precisely.
She'd always cheer so hard—
Not as hard as at his games or his graduation or anything like that, but super hard for an elementary school kid. Her hands would sting and her cheeks would hurt, then he'd present whatever he'd won like a magician presenting a rabbit.
Kanon had lined the small ones up on the shelf above her desk, tucked the plushies firmly on the side of her bed, and clipped the bag charms and phone charms on religiously until they snapped off. Each loss felt like she was losing something precious and towards the end of everything she'd shoved those in her desk drawer too, scared to lose anything else.
After that, he'd take her hand and they'd walk to the nearby burger joint. The food had been okay, mostly, but in memory it tasted better because she could remember Leon smiling at her. The kind of smile that had started disappearing after her one thousandth confession.
He still smiled after that, it just never felt the same.
So whenever she had a burger, she couldn't help but think of those days, when everything seemed so easy.
"This is wack," Kanon said, scowling at the limp burger in front of herself. There was no lettuce— fresh vegetables were hard as heck to find in a disaster. The meat was tough and flavorless. The ketchup was the only thing good about the entire thing and that was just because the salt covered the rest of it. She shoved as much as she could in her mouth, chewing roughly. It was better than the starving and scrounging while running around Towa City, but barely.
"It's not that bad," Yasuhiro replied, taking his own big bite then grimacing. "Never mind, it's a lot bad. Better than the moldy bread we found in the train, though."
"I guess. Ugh to all of it."
He shrugged and kept eating. It wasn't like she'd done any different, to be fair.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw one of the suits walking toward the two of them, probably with a mission in hand.
Some days it was harder to justify just why she went and joined the Future Foundation. Part of it had been practicality. Her home was gone; from her parents, to her diaries, to her pictures, to all of the little things Leon had bought her over the years, to Leon himself—
Thinking about it opened the pit inside herself, the one she'd tried to close after trying to save Yasuhiro.
The Future Foundation at least let her do something. She didn't have to like them or sing songs together. People didn't like their coworkers all of the time. They had food, as terrible as it was, and shelter she didn't have to worry about.
His friends were annoying and too often condescending, but they let her dress how she wanted and mostly do what she wanted. She could sneer at them behind their backs and they were probably doing the same at the both of them, but—
Well, coworkers could hate each other. That's what her daddy had always said, at least.
The other part…
Yasuhiro finally noticed the guy and perked up.
"Yo, what's up?"
Kanon tapped her leg, right above the scar she still had there. It was despicable, really, how much she'd grown to like him.
The stupid Future Foundation made him light up.
Well, mostly light up. When the guy started droning on about a new mission his face fell.
"We have been here, like, a really long time."
"Oh?" He frowned, finger tapping at his chin. "Oh! You're right. Well, as a great member of the Future Foundation I couldn't possible refuse a mission. Especially one so important!"
Kanon doubted it was that important, but whatever. She tuned out again, picking at the rest of her food.
Ysuhiro nudged her then, looking way happier than he had a moment ago.
"Yoo-hoo, they're having us go to Yonezawa."
"Yonezawa?"
"Some Towa executive that lived there got a good dose of that brainwashing video and let a bunch of Monokumas loose. They want clean up."
"And you're suspiciously excited, why?"
Yasuhiro would sit in their base all day if she ever let him. It didn't hurt that most of the assignments had been waiting.
Kanon was used to that. There was a time she'd laid flat under Leon's living room window, the wet of the grass seeping into her school uniform, just to keep an eye on the girl he'd brought home for a school project.
She missed him.
Kanon shook her head.
At least shooting the Monokumas let her work out some pent up energy. Waiting around in the Future Foundation bases felt a little like waiting in that hellish apartment she'd been stuck in.
Yasuhiro grinned, standing and putting his hands on his hips. "We'll be right beside Fukashima!"
"And…?"
"UMAs, UFOs! It's a hot bed for all of 'em, right?" He leaned forward, whispering. "Plus, new customers…"
Kanon burst out laughing. "Whatevs, I'll be happy to get out of Towa, at least."
"You should be! I've got a good feeling about Yonezawa, you know?"
"A feeling-feeling or an actual prediction…?"
"You'll see, you'll see," he said, waving the mission papers at her face.
"I don't wanna see, I wanna know!" She hopped up, swinging a leg so it bumped against Yasuhiro's own.
He didn't bump her back or anything, but there was a slight redness on his cheeks. Kanon smirked, skipping ahead to the elevators.
The elevators were a smooth ride now, since that'd been one of the first things repaired in the Towa Foundation's base. Kanon hadn't a chance to use this one and was surprised at the innocuous toy capture machine sitting next to the opened door on the ground floor.
"Oh man, it's been forever since I've seen one of these…" Yasuhiro squinted at it. "You'd think someone would've come and ransacked it by now."
"You think it still works…?" Kanon leaned forward, taking the machine in. At the very least, there weren't any Monokumas in the toy capture machine. It looked like a collab with some cutesy anime. There were pink and blue monsters on top of stars and in tea cups. The branding on the side of the machine was embossed with a Towa logo.
The stupid thing had an electronic lock on the side, where an employee would restock toys.
"Ah man…I remember Yamada-chi talking about these!"
"Are they old like you?"
"Oi, oi…still these have got to be worth a lot, right? Anime figures always go up in value."
Kanon had no idea how true that was. She'd focused more on buying light novels, not any of the figures. Yasuhiro was still eyeing it up. She remembered their first meeting and how dumb he'd looked trying to meander off with that huge machine in his hands.
Her hacking gun sat comfortingly in her hand as she lifted it from her side and then pointed it. The toy capsule machine broke as easily as a Monokuma, the door flopping open on the side.
Kanon couldn't care less if one of the Future Foundation losers saw her shoving anime figures in her bag, but Yasuhiro cared about that sort of thing, so she hurried and started scooping them up.
"W-what?"
"Hurry, hurry, let's go—" Kanon shoved her bag at him and rushed off, bellowing. "We need to go now!" There wasn't really a reason to panic, but seeing how flustered Yasuhiro got was the real reward.
She glanced down. She'd kept one of the figures out in her hand, since it hadn't fit with all the stuff in her bag. It was the same sort of trinket Leon would shove in her hands when she was little, crowing about how he was the best at these machines and ignoring just how much money they'd lost. Something dark bubbled again, before Yasuhiro's hand was on her arm and he was pushing her along.
"C'mon, c'mon, this was totally your idea of course! I'm just a helpless bystander who—"
"Well, duh," she said, rushing ahead. "Now try to keep up, old man!"
"Hey—"
She shoved the toy in her pocket, sliding into the car as Yasuhiro panted and did the same.
Kanon couldn't change the past, as much as she wanted to. All she could do was move forward. And as she chanced a glance at Yasuhiro as he groaned and complained while guarding the bag of figures, there were worse ways to do it. She nudged him again, snickering.