Work Text:
A billboard blares: “LOLI SIGNS CONTRACT WITH FOMO—”
“Sold your soul?” Liu Yuwei asks. Luo Li tenses and straightens up, meeting Liu Yuwei’s gaze head-on, none of the startled hero-worship she’d seen on her face when they had first met years ago. Then again, that had lasted only a second before burning over with rage and disconsolate grief, and since then, she has watched the hero world with sparking coals for eyes.
“Didn’t you?” she asks. To her credit, it’s polite, genuinely curious, even if annoyed.
Liu Yuwei considers this question. “I heard,” she begins, taking Luo Li by the arm and guiding her into a darkened alleyway, “that I am your reason for wanting to be a hero.”
Luo Li flushes. “I—I guess. Yeah. Your speech…”
Liu Yuwei often wishes she could wipe it off the internet. More than once, especially since the failed tournament match, she wishes she had never said all that at all. But to say so would be a betrayal to herself, and—
A disappointment to those like the one before her now. She studies Luo Li. Perfectly composed, yet exhausted eyes stare back up at her. What Liu Yuwei works toward now is a revival of sorts, determination to get back into the rankings where she belongs. Queen will be a name remembered in history. She has yet to give up.
To Luo Li, she says, “to rise up through the ranks, you must have enough to mettle to withstand all that stands in your way. Do you have what it takes, Loli?”
Luo Li laughs, and it’s a terrible, bitter sound. “I’ve heard everything I could possibly hear at this point. I’ll give them the female hero they want.” There’s something poorly-concealed in the contempt in her tone, something razor-sharp.
Liu Yuwei watches. Considers.
The next time: an interview Luo Li is sent off to late-minute, polite pleasantries exchanged back and forth; sitting together close enough for shoulders to touch, affecting more friendliness than may be strictly necessarily. Queen’s gold eyes assess her like a blade through metal every time, yet the way she melts in the face of Luo Li’s wide smiles and giggles is unmistakable.
Queen is. Queen is—
This interview is no happy accident; Luo Li’s meteoric rise to fame, paired with her decidedly violent, hands-on way of doing her job, is a mirror of Queen’s story, in the bare-bones form of it. Two female heroes, clearly gunning for the top—well, it makes for a nice image, especially as friends who are also, functionally, rivals. It works out perfectly fine for both their agencies.
At some point: Queen is asked about her loss to X in the tournament, and she answers with all the cool, poised confidence she is known for; then, it’s Luo Li’s turn to rather brazenly and shamelessly be asked about the Ruins Incident, no respect shown to the dead or the comatose.
Rather than say that she sees Nice and tastes blood with the force of her desire to rip his heart out of his chest, she says with a smile, “well, after suffering such a loss before even formally becoming a hero—I guess I have to redeem myself! I’ve always dreamed of being a hero, so I can’t let that dream die just yet.” She smiles brightly at Queen. “I believe one should never underestimate the power of belief.”
Queen’s startled eyes meet her own. She thinks about Nice and E-Soul’s dead bodies in her hands, Trust Value dwindling away into nothing, and considers sharing with Queen. Wonders what else it is that Queen works towards, despite understanding the inherent cracks widening and widening in the seams of the hero system, expectations and dreams crushed underfoot as easily as the lives it disposes of—
Thinks of Queen years ago in the Ruins, golden light flaring, defending against a hungry beast so perfectly steady and composed and majestic even in civilian wear. As if one loss against the undisputed top hero of their generation is nothing; as if she has risen from the dust of that fight and is back for more.
(Is she hungry for it, the way Luo Li is?)
Decides against it, in the end, even when they go their separate ways afterward.
Luo Li seems less surprised than Liu Yuwei when, at some point between these chance encounters laced with gradually-warming interactions—smiles and perfunctory words taking on a more sincere edge—she winds up putty between Liu Yuwei’s hands and gasping hotly against her mouth.
Her deadened eyes, so evident even in her publicity photos, seem to take on a spark of life when they fall into bed together and she gives up any semblance of the fight she appears to be raring for in her everyday life.
Coming back to life. Luo Li has become a hero to look out for, a force to be reckoned with, no longer content with doing her best and idling her days away waiting for an opportunity. Her recklessness is more calculated and daring, now; all the childishness of her sixteen-year-old self left behind in the Ruins among the blood and gore and ghosts.
Years ago, sitting curled up in a darkened room, Liu Yuwei had considered herself foolish. The ramblings of a misguided child, she had thought of everything she had said. Then, stepping back into the light, gold glinting off white, she had thought: if those are misguided, then let be misguided. She knows what she wants to do.
She knows this: that she wants to sweep through the hero system and bring a definite change to it, once and for all. But does Luo Li know what her end goal is? What comes after she hits the end point of her determination?
She smiles up at Liu Yuwei, whose heart skips a beat.
“You like cute things,” Luo Li whispers to her, afterwards. Wrung out, exhausted, hair a tangled mess, but still—sparking. The word keeps popping up again and again in her head.
Liu Yuwei hums. “Don’t burn out and fall from grace too soon, Loli,” is all the advice she has to offer.
For however many times it happens again and again, that is all Liu Yuwei has to offer. Anything she has to say boils down to this: you walked into the world of heroes with a dream, and you are the only one who can protect it.
Everyone is powerless to fight back in the face of it—and this Liu Yuwei knows, for she fights every day. So, then: who can stand tall enough to withstand it, at the very least?
Before the tournament: Queen seeks her out.
“Hey,” Luo Li says. Odd, that there’s her helmet in the way between them.
“Have you come far enough?” Queen asks.
“Do you still believe you can change the hero system?” Luo Li returns.
“Yes,” she says without hesitation. Her expression is the same as it was when she planted the seeds of this dream in Luo Li’s heart when she was young enough to be blind and oblivious.
“Then,” she says, “no, I haven’t.” She smiles, and she feels sick. She visited Wang Nuonuo for the first time in months today, avoided Zhang Lan’s blank stare as she explains that today is the day of the tournament. That she intends to win. Hidden behind her teeth, slick with blood and hate and desperation: if this is vengeance, if this is revenge, if this is selfish, then, then, for Nuonuo-jie—
Today, she visited her father’s and Da Xiong’s graves for the first time in even longer. She did not say anything, and neither did she sit, legs folded beneath her, hands flat atop her thighs, for longer than ten or eleven minutes. Did not go back home to assure her mother of victory and safety.
The heat in her blood, so hot it makes her head spin, still a little girl in so many ways, is a marked difference from the indignant rages she’d fly into at age sixteen.
Rebirth. Loli has broken into the public eye in a burst of pink, and she intends to stay here.
“How much farther to go?” Queen asks, the end of her staff dragging lightly on the ground. In the light of the setting sun, all the gold on her seems molten. Luo Li is sure, all of a sudden, that this is what she’d looked like when she had first stepped up to face X in a duel.
Determination. Belief in herself. Luo Li has wanted to be true to herself for so long that it nearly knocks her off her feet, the desperation with which she wants that, near-choking her. Self-assured belief that she can do it without cooled, icy coals and memories of dead bodies to back her up.
“Doesn’t matter,” Luo Li tells her, hefting her bat on her shoulder. Her eyes linger on the orange-streaked sky, and she completes, “I won’t give up. Not for anything.”
When they’d met, Queen had asked, sold your soul? In a tone that had suggested she understood. For years, Luo Li has made sure to not stir up a hornet’s nest that could afford her everything. Be the lovable hero Loli who doesn’t go weak at the knees when young girls and women tell her that she’s an inspiration. Don’t look at Queen and think about asking, how do you handle it?
Keep going. Keep going. Keep going.
This is the hero system: for something like a revival and a right to cling on, the steep, hefty price is learning to clutch fiercely at what makes you yourself. Even when it slips to the floor and shatters into a thousand shards.