Chapter Text
Yuuji was, admittedly, taking a page out of his middle school days as he decked some blonde kid in the face.
"Eugh," he scrunched his face, shaking out his hand. "I hate bullies."
Bullies, because the kid in question he had just punched wasn't punched for no reason. No, sir — Yuuji's eyes darted over to the side, where another kid with dark green hair was gaping at the scene.
Heh. He kind of looked like Maki-senpai.
"Yo," Yuuji called, slightly feeling bad when the green-haired guy flinched. "You good?"
"A-am I—" the guy stammered, voice incredibly high, holy shit, he sounded like his voice would crack any second. "Am I g-good? Y-you..."
"Oi!" a louder, much more annoying voice sounded out from behind Yuuji. "You fuckin'—"
Yuuji turned around, slightly bored, just in time to dodge a frankly lousy punch from the blonde kid. He'd seen Yaga's cursed dolls throw better punches than that. The image of this kid, as the only-slightly-creepy doll that Gojo-sensei had given him for training, made him snort out a laugh.
"What's so fuckin' funny?" the blonde kid fumed, throwing another punch.
"Do you always cuss this much?" Yuuji said in lieu of answering, dodging easily once more. Man, he was kind of hungry. He was craving some ramen. Maybe katsu. "That can't be, like, healthy. What are you, thirteen?"
"I'm fifteen!"
"N-no, Kacchan, you turn fifteen, um," the green-haired kid stammered. "Next month."
"Shut the fuck up, Deku!" growled blonde kid—oh boy, Yuuji was really going to need some actual names. This was getting exhausting. And, also—
"Wow, rude," Yuuji frowned. "He even knows your birthday, and everything. You need to reconsider your morals, man."
"Who the hell even are you, huh?" blonde guy whirled on him, sparks dancing on his hands. The sight made Yuuji slightly nauseous, as he felt every time he encountered a fire-based ability in this universe. "Fuckin' extra. I'll beat your ass!"
"Dude," Yuuji gaped at him. "Did I not just punch you in the—okay, whatever. Your funeral, man."
He stared, unimpressed, as blondie gave an (admittedly) impressive war cry.
What was far less impressive, was the ass beating Yuuji subjected him to in the approximately thirty seconds that followed.
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Itadori Yuuji, frankly, had no idea where the fuck he was.
Time travel? Sure, why not. It was, apparently, 2118.
Cursed techniques being everywhere? Well, Kenjaku did make the existence of curses public, so that kind of tracked.
However.
There was one thing about wherever-the-fuck he ended up that he just couldn't wrap his head around.
"...fear not, because I am here!" a boisterous voice boomed from a nearby billboard, making him cringe.
Heroes. That's what they were called.
Seriously — what the fuck was with the heroes?
They were everywhere. And when Yuuji said everywhere, he meant everywhere. It was almost impossible to avoid them. They were constantly patrolling the streets, being shown on television, talking on the radio. They had posters with costumed faces plastered on nearly every available surface. Kids wore hero-themed backpacks and adults picked up magazines with hero stories.
And, to Yuuji, the entire thing was incredibly off-putting.
He sighed, slumping against the wall of the net cafe he was renting. As loathe as he was to admit it, he was homeless. Homeless with a capital H. He’d popped into this weird — timeline? Alternate universe? Future? — with nothing but the clothes on his back and whatever had been in his pockets. Which, luckily, included a couple thousand yen.
It’d been just a few days since he woke up, blinking the white out of his blurry vision, and realized that he wasn’t in Shinjuku anymore. He’d looked insane, wandering the streets with torn clothes and absolutely covered in blood. But with the meager money he’d had, he’d secured the clothes he was wearing right now and his current comfy residence.
Which brought him to the next issue, as he winced at the dwindling stack of cash he held in his possession.
He really, really needed a job.
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Cursed techniques were called Quirks, in the future, he learned he tried to pick up a job — his look of utter confusion at being asked for his Quirk Registry certainly hadn’t done him any favors.
Still, he found himself ducking into storefront after storefront, and, after each rejection, wandering downtown.
Musutafu, as Yuuji came to learn the city was named, was anything but peaceful — despite the almost pervasive presence of Heroes. Maybe even because of their presence.
In any case, as night fell, that fact became increasingly apparent.
”Hey—stop!” a guy’s voice suddenly pierced through the air, making Yuuji jump.
It was a dinky alley he’d turned the corner on, half out of desperation. The streets outside had been lined with bars, run-down smoke shops, and nothing like the bustling city center that Yuuji had familiarized himself with uptown.
Here, there were no Hero advertisements, and Yuuji almost felt a sense of relief.
”Stop? You’re askin’ me to stop?” another voice sounded out, low and mocking and mean. “D’you know how much money you owe us? You’re lucky I’m not fuckin’ bashing your skull in.”
”I already told you, I’d get it soo—“
There was the sound of a collision, and the first guy cut himself off with a groan.
And, damn it.
Yuuji hated bullies.
With a sigh, he rounded the corner.
It was, honestly, a pitiful sight. A man was crouched down on the cold sidewalk, two more men looming over him. They looked pretty much exactly how Yuuji had expected them to — not menacing, by any means, but holding themselves in a way that said they thought they were menacing.
And funky-looking. Don’t forget funky.
“Fuck it,” one of the gangsters scoffed, reaching into the side of his pants. Yuuji’s eyes widened when he saw the guy pull out a gun — he must’ve been concealed-carrying. “I’ll just blow his shit.”
“What?!”
”Shut your trap,” the guy barked.
Okay, situation just became dire. Yuuji felt his body tense, his footsteps slowing so that they became inaudible.
The other gangster grunted. “The Boss won’t be happy about that.”
“Don’t fuckin’ care,” gangster number one — Yuuji really needed to start getting names — replied. “Plus, he’s not even running shit anymore. That Overhaul kid…”
The alley was shadowed not only by the cover of night, but by various awnings and fire escapes that jutted out of the narrow walls.
Yuuji tip-toed closer. He could feel his fingers spark with cursed energy, waiting in anticipation.
Silently, he splayed his hand out on a wall.
Dotted lines appeared along the brick and concrete. They trailed forward, along the wall, almost undetectable if one wasn’t looking for them. Snaking up onto the underside of an awning, one that looked positively abandoned, the lines formed a perfectly circular outline in the brick.
Directly above the gangsters’ heads.
Yuuji smiled slightly. Then, with the built-up cursed energy in his hands, he pushed outwards.
Snip.
“Wha—“ one gangster started, his head snapping up at the sound of scraping brick against brick. It was too late, however — both of the criminals were buried under a pile of carved-out building.
“Whew,” Yuuji sighed, stepping forward through the dust his actions had kicked up in the air. He spotted the guy the two gangsters had been harassing, still frozen on the spot. He frowned. “Hey, you good?”
He was about to step even closer when the guy took one look at him, then turned tail and fled in the opposite direction. It was even deeper into the maze of alleyways, which, in Yuuji’s opinion, was the dumbest possible thing to do after just getting assaulted in — well, an alley.
He paused where he stood, blinking after the guy. He was long gone, if the fading footsteps were anything to go by.
He sighed.
Striding past the pile of concrete and limbs — which were still twitching, so they were probably fine — Yuuji came to a stop in front of the gun. It had fallen out of the guy’s hand, and was sitting peacefully on the floor.
Now that he thought about it, he should probably bring it to a police station. Maybe drop it off? He wanted to keep contact with any kind of government thing to a minimum, but he couldn’t just leave it around.
Nonetheless, in the middle of his musing, he bent down to pick up the weapon.
His hand was halfway there when a long, white strip of fabric wrapped around his wrist.
”What the—“ Yuuji started, before the fabric seemed to tighten and pull. He grunted as his arm was yanked to the side, and snapping his head in the direction of the fabric’s origin, he narrowed his eyes into the dark.
The strip trailed to a man.
The fabric circled around the man’s neck, loose and bandage-like. They half-obscured his face, and combined with the weirdly-shaped sunglasses, the man looked positively like a mummy.
Yuuji felt his arm get yanked once again, and before he knew it, the weird bandages were dragging him along the floor.
What the fuck, Yuuji’s mind screamed. He had never seen this kind of cursed tool before — was it even called that, anymore? He really needed to do some reading.
He blinked when he realized that the fabric was dragging him towards the man. In fact, he was so close that—
“Dumbass,” he quipped, a small smile on his face and feeling very much like Gojo-sensei. He sparked cursed energy in his unoccupied fist, drawing it back as he met the man’s sunglasses.
Shouldn’t have brought me into punching range, Yuuji thought triumphantly as he let his Black Flash fly.
He was gonna punch the lights out of this dude, then fucking bolt. He had to. His fist was about to connect, and—
Coldness.
That was the only way to describe what Yuuji felt wash over him. His eyes widened, the sensation of a bucket of ice water being dumped on his head.
All of a sudden, everything felt out of sorts. Like where his cursed energy was stored, there was instead a hollowed-out spot, like it had been scooped out of his chest and spat onto the ground. What—
What was this?
Yuuji looked up, not having even realized he’d looked down, and saw that the guy’s glasses were off, his eyes glowing red.
Fuck! Yuuji panicked. I’m so stupid. Of course he has a cursed technique, too — something like the Inverted Spear of—
Yuuji was snapped out of his thoughts when he felt something grab his fist, which had faltered at the chilling feeling he’d been slammed with. Between one second and the next, both of his arms were pinned at his sides by the fucking bandage thing.
”It’d be better not to resist,” the man said, his eyes still glowing red. His voice sounded supremely bored. “They’ll only get tighter.”
True to his word, Yuuji could feel the fabric squeeze even more coiled around his body. He stilled.
Think.
”Now,” the man said, still looking at him. His face was really close. “I’d like to—“
Wait.
His face was really close.
With nothing else to do, Yuuji drew his head back, minutely. The man kept droning on about something — he didn’t quite care what.
With enough force to knock out a mid-sized orangutan, Yuuji slammed his forehead against the man’s skull.
Immediately after, he felt his cursed energy flood back into his body. The surge of it left him feeling light headed, like he’d stood up after soaking in the bath for too long.
But, more importantly, his assailant was reeling back, eyes shut in pain. The bandage loosened around Yuuji’s body.
If Yuuji was anything, he was an opportunist.
Ripping his arms out of the constraints, he stumbled back, almost tripping over his own feet. Everything looked and felt off-kilter — he hated it. He could understand why Gojo-sensei had gone and destroyed anything and everything that could cancel cursed techniques; it felt awful. Terrible, like something had been ripped out and shoved back in the wrong way.
The man was still recovering from the blow, and Yuuji wasted no time sprinting out of his sights. He rounded the corner, almost skidding with how fast he was fleeing.
Yuuji looked over his shoulder to affirm his escape, and shivered at the thought of being hit with that technique again.
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His best opportunity for a job came in, quite possibly, the sketchiest bar in the entire area.
“Alright, kid,” the bar’s owner had said to him, the night he’d come looking for a job. “You’re on graveyard. Starting tomorrow.”
Yuuji had blinked at him, bewildered. “You don’t need, like…my documents? Or anything?”
The gruff man had simply looked at him. Then, bursting out laughing, “Why’re you tryna sabotage yourself, huh?” he extracted a large cigar from his mouth, tapping it on the counter. Small ashes fell from the tip.
“I don’t give a shit,” the man continued. “We need someone who’s willin’ to work ‘till the ass-crack of dawn, and it ain’t gonna be me.”
So Yuuji was a bartender now.
The job, by all means, was…fine. It paid something like minimum wage, at least enough to sustain his little encampment in the net cafe while he apartment-hunted. He worked from midnight to five, would leave as the sun was rising, and immediately collapse into the cramped mattress on the floor of his current residence.
Plus, he could take home leftovers from the food portion of the establishment.
As long as he carefully ignored the legality of the entire arrangement, it was a pretty sweet deal.
“A seven-and-seven?” Yuuji smiled brightly as he approached a patron with a drink. He already looked tipsy, but, well—that was what they were here for, he guessed.
He slid the glass across the counter at the patron’s slurred confirmation, and turned his sights on the next customer.
”Hey, sorry about the wait,” Yuuji said, wiping his hands on a towel. “What can I get you?”
The customer in question had his elbows on the counter, his face partially obscured by both his outgrown dark hair and the sunglasses over his eyes. In all honesty, he looked kind of homeless — but then again, Yuuji was also technically homeless, so he was in no place to judge.
“A water,” the man said.
Yuuji smiled slightly, quirking an eyebrow. “Just a water? Nothing else?”
”Yeah,” the man confirmed. He seemed to be observing Yuuji closely, but he just filed it away as him being weird. Most customers were some degree of it.
Yuuji shrugged as he turned around to grab a glass.
”Hey,” the man said. “You look a little young to be working in a place like this.”
Okay, definitely weird. “I’m twenty.”
That made the guy snort. “Nice try.”
Yuuji returned to the counter with the glass of water, letting it drop into the table with a little more force than necessary. “You gonna get anything else, or are we good here?”
So sue him, he was a little prickly at four in the morning, talking to some creepy guy who pried a little more than regular customers.
The man seemed to put a hand up in concession, taking the glass easily. “I didn’t mean to offend, kid.”
”Mhm,” Yuuji swiped an empty glass from farther down the counter, left by another customer. He bit back the instinctive response of, I’m not a kid, as he placed it in the dirty dishes section.
The light chatter of the bar filled the air. Yuuji started toweling off a cup.
”So. What’s the reason for this…” the man spoke again, gesturing to the bar around them. “…career choice? You got a Quirk well-suited for bartending?”
Yuuji, despite the mild twinge of unease at the question, indulged the man anyways. Quirks were small talk, here, like asking someone’s favorite color or what they were studying. “Um, not really any reason,” he said. “My Quirk’s pretty good for cooking, though. Slicing, dicing, stuff like that.”
“Oh?” the man seemed interested. “That’s interesting. I wonder how it was classified by the Commission.”
Yuuji shrugged. “Well, I don’t carry my registry on me, so I couldn’t tell you—“
“The registry that doesn’t exist?”
The cup slipped out of his grasp.
Immediately, his hand jerked out to grab it, luckily nabbing the glass before it could shatter all over the floor. Despite the save, however, he could feel the way his heartbeat had accelerated in his chest.
“Hah, uh,” Yuuji chuckled awkwardly. His eyes darted towards the man, and — was it his paranoia, or did he look familiar? “Come again?”
The dark-haired man’s slight smile had slid off his face. He leaned forward on his elbows, unnerving, and Yuuji had to resist the urge to inch back.
”You know,” the man said, his voice low, low enough that anyone outside of their bubble wouldn’t be able to hear. “It’s said to be biologically impossible to have more than one quirk. And yet, just a week ago, you displayed two.”
Punctuating his sentence, the man took off his glasses, folding them before elegantly sliding them into a pocket.
And Yuuji felt the pieces click together in his brain.
The hair, the voice, the weird demeanor, and most importantly—
Yuuji felt the chilling coldness was over him once again.
The man’s eyes were a glowing, eerie red.
”It’s you,” Yuuji breathed. His hand twitched with the urge to use dismantle, or, not even that, just anything to get out of here. But for some reason, that man’s damn cursed technique—quirk—whatever—
“Correct,” his attacker said briskly. “Now, let’s have a chat. Maybe you can enlighten me on why you don’t exist in any database, anywhere — Itadori Yuuji.”