Chapter Text
Teru‘s seen him a few times, the boy with all the sugar daddies. At least he’s quiet about it, the building doesn’t need cops everywhere just because some kid can’t keep a lid on his compensated dating. Teru wonders how he’s managing to pull so many people with such a plain face. Some of the men and women that Teru’s seen him with are even kind of cute, for adults. Though they all dress so boring, just suit after suit after plain black suit. Maybe that’s his neighbour’s taste, Teru smirks as he snaps the wrinkles out of his sheet.
About a month ago, Teru’s new neighbour moved into the empty apartment down the hall. He’s a kid, a middle schooler Teru’s age; Teru first learned about it from listening to 2B and 2C, two chatty women who gossip loudly enough on their adjacent balconies during chores that he can use them as a building newsletter.
They’re out again now and so is he, listening while he hangs his laundry out to dry.
The kid lives alone, like Teru, and now that school’s started 2B knows that he goes to Salt Middle School. She shares this, along with a complaint about how her brother acts so superior, just because he happens to live in a district that lets him choose between two schools for his daughter. The information is good, what’s there, but Teru has to sort through a lot of aural chaff to get anything useful from their conversations. And this is out of date; term started a couple weeks ago, for both Salt Mid and Black Vinegar.
The name of the school is familiar, and in retrospect so is the uniform; he had to take care of a budding gang war from there in the spring. And, of course, that’s where Kageyama goes.
Kageyama. The only other esper of any note he’s ever met. A natural, and yet barely more than a commoner; he folded like wet cardboard when Teru showed him his place. Still, he remains a potential threat, and that’s interesting.
Actually, enkou kid kind of reminds him of Kageyama, if only visually. Maybe it’s just the uniform; he’s never seen either of them wearing anything else. But then, he only saw Kageyama the once.
Their paths haven’t crossed since Teru taught him a lesson a few months ago. Maybe it’s time for a refresher course. It might be fun to cultivate an antagonist, someone stronger than ordinary people but exponentially weaker than himself. It’s not like anything else in his life has ever posed a challenge. Psychic powers truly are convenient.
He goes back inside to make dinner, and thinks about paying a visit.
In the mornings, he sees his neighbour leave for school on foot, half an hour at least before Teru even considers heading out.
The timing implies he walks to school, which is odd, but maybe he likes the fresh air. Teru watches him disappear into the city sometimes while he eats breakfast, when the news gets intolerably boring. It’s slightly less interesting than watching a fish, but at least it isn’t the hundredth ‘urgent news bulletin’ about those five students that disappeared. They’re either dead by now or they don’t want to be found; either way, Teru is sick of hearing the same handful of voice clips from their Tragically Grief-stricken Families.
Teru never sees the boy in the afternoons. Enkou kid always gets home late; stepping out of the same black car but driven by a rotation of strangers.
It must pay pretty well, if he can afford an apartment. Teru’s place is paid for by his parents, who live across the city. His mother calls him every so often to invite him for dinner; once in a while he’ll even go, but it’s better if he stays away, for everyone’s sake.
Teru checks the time and gets up. It’s time for him to go; he has a date this afternoon, to see a movie he’s not particularly interested in with a third-year girl he doesn’t particularly like. He’ll probably have a not-particularly-tragic breakup in a few days, before moving on to another one of his fans.
Still, appearances must be kept. He doesn’t bother with the keys as he leaves, locking the door behind him with a flick of his finger as he walks down the hall.
Maybe it’s time he talks to Kageyama. His life’s gotten pretty routine lately, it could use some shaking up.
A few days later, Teru is loitering outside Salt Middle, waiting for his target and attracting the attention of the local students as he leans against the wall, artistically dappled by the sunlight shading through a tree. They admire him, as they should, and form a suitable backdrop for the coming confrontation. Teru’s been plotting how the conversation will go as he waits, and he’s excited to get started.
“Ah, Kageyama,” he says, when he sees a flash of black hair from the corner of his eye, turning to stand in front of the other boy.
Enkou kid stares at him blankly.
“My mistake, I thought you were someone else,” Teru says, with a winning smile, “I don’t mean to trouble you. Go right ahead.”
“You’re… from the apartment,” the kid says, hands straight at his sides.
“Yes, I am. I’m not surprised you noticed, I’m pretty distinctive,” Teru says, with a wink.
“Hm. You are,” the kid says, and walks away, to the car idling in front of the school.
He gets his clients to pick him up at school? That’s so brazen, Teru is starting to like this kid.
Enkou kid pauses, and turns back to him.
“Kageyama-kun has student council. He won’t be out until 4:30,” he says, and then he’s in the car and gone.
At 4:25, Teru finishes off his cafe au lait and walks the block back to Salt Middle School to find Kageyama.
He sees the rest of what must be the student council as they disperse off-campus from their cluster around their unhealthy looking president, but not the member he’s looking for. There’s something weird about the president, like a haze that hangs around him, but Teru doesn’t concern himself with that; he’s here for his foil, not some incompetent, nameless nobody who trails enmity like a smokestack.
Everyone else is gone by the time Kageyama emerges, but Teru’s grown to appreciate the abandoned schoolyard. Absent of anyone but the two of them, it might even be eerie, if it weren’t so sunny. Clouds would be better, thick stormclouds that would blot out the sun and add an electric current to the air. Dramatic effect; this is the kind of thing that looks better in the dark.
No students means no audience, but it also means no witnesses. Instead of a battle of words, like he planned, maybe they’ll just battle. It won’t last very long, but at least it’ll be something.
Any psychic confrontation between them won’t be much of a fight. There’s too great a difference between them; in power, in skill, in hierarchy. Teru’s simply better—even if Kageyama’s been training full throttle, it’s impossible for him to catch up.
Kageyama’s reached the approximate centre of the schoolyard, halfway between the building and the exit. It’s good staging; Teru steps away from the gatepost and into view, to stand squarely across from Kageyama in the opening, backlit by the afternoon sun. A dark shadow stretches on the ground in front of him, reaching toward Kageyama where he’s frozen in his steps.
Kageyama clutches the strap of his bag hanging from his shoulder. He stares, and his powers rise around him, coalescing into the visible spectrum.
The pecking order’s been firmly established, but Kageyama’s stronger than he was the last time they met; the power hanging around his shoulders is more practiced, and Kageyama manipulates his aura confidently, forming it into defensive spikes.
If Teru were an amateur, he might skewer himself flash stepping over there, but as it stands they really serve no purpose but warning him of Kageyama’s hostile intent. He returns the message, letting sparks play across his fingers and lift his hair. The sun washes out the colour of his powers, robbing the display of some of its effect. Next time, they’re definitely going to meet at night.
“Ah, Kageyama,” he says.
“Hanazawa,” Kageyama says guardedly, staring grimly, his spare hand in a fist at his side, “Why are you here.”
Ah, he’s perfect. Teru smirks, and cocks his hip, planting a fist there as he tilts his head playfully.
“What, aren’t you happy to see me?” he asks, opening up the field. It’s exciting, improvising. He throws out the rest of his old script, calculated for a social climate that no longer exists now it’s just the two of them. Kageyama raises a resentful eyebrow.
“You have to ask?” he says. His spikes writhe into faint corkscrews, their ends splitting into forks with his agitation. Clearly, he hasn’t yet figured out how to keep his powers from betraying his emotions, an advantage Teru is happy to take.
“I thought I’d check in on you, see how you’ve been doing. It’s been a few months, you know. How’s school?”
“Oh, perfect, except I’m being stalked by a blond peacock,” Kageyama says with a smile, brittle and insincere. “Have you just been waiting here since school let out?”
“Someone helped me out,”—an NPC—“A boy, with a bowlcut, maybe you know him? He let me know you’d be a bit delayed.”
Kageyama's manifestations shimmer for a moment, then snap back to solidity as jagged, branching spires of hoarfrost, a crystalline thicket of animosity that wreathes his body with razor fractals.
“Of course…” Kageyama muses, and then spits, “That makes sense, Hanazawa. Like calls to like.”
Teru has found a nerve. He’ll think about it later, why Kageyama feels so strongly about dating for money that he thinks Teru will be insulted by the baseless implication that he does it too, but now he rolls with the opening, keeping the momentum of their conversation.
“Bitter, hm? What’s the story there, someone you liked didn’t like you back? Don’t worry about them, Kageyama. They’re the background characters, the unimportant people. From now on, you can just focus on me.” And with that, he attacks.
Teru surges toward Kageyama, pulls up inches away when his startled opponent swings the bag at his face. Teru bats it away with his forearm, snapping the strap as it rockets away to skid across the ground and thrusting his palm out to send Kageyama flying in the other direction.
Kageyama skips; once, twice, before recovering, rolling with the inertia to his feet and reaching out a clawed hand that clenches into a fist.
Wood cracks and Teru zips back five feet in an instant to watch the tree branch spear through the ground where he was standing. He tucks in his toes and throws his arms out in front of him; a wave of powers hurls the branch’s quivering leaves at Kageyama, a maelstrom stiff and sharp as knives.
Kageyama fields most of them, arms wheeling around his head, but a few get through, opening paper-thin cuts that weep bleed from his face and hands. Ooh, that pissed him off. Kageyama glares, swipes at his face with the heel of his hand, smearing red across his cheek as he pants, then slaps the first two fingers of each hand together, ripping chunks out of the asphalt that whizz at Teru’s head.
Teru lets them hit his barrier, bouncing them off with a spray of gravel and minimum effort as he zigzags in flash-step spurts to where Kageyama’s fetched up next to the school. Kageyama’s looking the wrong way when Teru appears in front of him, and the knuckle-punch to the solar plexus blindsides him, propelling him back the scant distance to slam against the wall of the building.
Kageyama’s impact craters the masonry, and Teru follows up with another stone-cracking punch to the gut which Kageyama spins away from against the wall, whipping up his hand in arc that sends a sharp crescent of power slicing at Teru’s neck. Teru tilts his head and it scythes harmlessly past his face, except for where it’s caught some of his hair.
Teru telekinetically flattens Kageyama against the wall with an outstretched hand as he reaches up to inspect his slightly shorter bangs, then flicks the hair out of his eyes. The shorn pieces float away on the wind.
Kageyama’s aura swells, stabbing out at Teru though his body is pinned, breaking Teru’s concentration so he can move. He hurtles forward, fighting with his hands and feet, jerking a knee up that Teru deflects, throwing out a haphazard haymaker that Teru ducks back from before stepping in and hitting Kageyama with an elbow to the chin that knocks him back for Teru to slam his palm against his chest, pressing him to the wall again and pumping him full of electricity.
Kageyama’s mouth opens but no sound comes out as Teru’s power jolts through him. He twists, muscles tense until Teru cuts it off and lifts his hand to let him slide down the wall.
Kageyama isn’t out, but it’s close. He flops his head back to stare up at Teru spitefully where he sits on the ground. There’s still blood on his face.
Teru drops easily into a crouch so his antagonist doesn’t have to look up as far. He’s considerate that way.
“Nice job. That branch thing was pretty good, but the sound gave it away,” he says, helpfully.
Kageyama flips him off with a finger that still twitches with aftershocks, venomous.
Teru grins. This is gonna be great.