"I've really felt a strong desire for matcha, lately," Haruka says.
She's sprawled half across Tenya's lap, the top button of her shirt undone, as if its unironed state and the sad state of her tie aren't sufficient to show how little she cares for the bearing of the situation. Her hair paints a splash of shimmering crimson against his formal attire, vibrant against the dark blue and stark crests. Her gloved hands impatiently tap little melodies where they rest against her nameplate, obscuring much of the neatly inked "美夏", and her knee threatens to peep up above the tabletop as she slumps, her suit jacket beginning to slip from her shoulders. Tenya is half-concerned that if she keeps this up, time permitting, she'll end up sliding off her seat entirely and into a puddle on the floor.
Her abrupt non-sequitur, he thinks, is entirely unrelated to the point at hand, but he doesn't know what he ought to expect from someone who can barely be convinced to keep her shoes off the table. Agency One Hundred and Forty One recruits for trust and competence, though, not seriousness; so he doesn't protest at being used as an impromptu backrest.
"Oh, that's a good idea," Kuchisake-ko says, because she's a terrible enabler, and food-oriented to a concerning degree besides. Her tone is careless as she speaks, waving her hands excitably like a middle-schooler. "We should get some when we're done finishing with this!"
"Ah, I need to remind you that outside excursions out of uniform are as necessary only," Nemo interjects softly, but the tilt of his head is fond as he shuffles through his papers, his lips twitching at the boundaries. "Why don't we organise something home-made? I think we're about ready for a tea-room, right?"
"You can put down my vote for a tearoom," Crocus sighs, put-upon as Tenya feels and showing none of it on her delicately masked face, "But I do need to be home by five o'clock, so we should focus, please."
"I hardly see anything difficult about this decision," Haruka complains, boredly, and tilts her head back to rest fully against Tenya's chest. He lets her; it's not as if he could stir her to action, anyway. "We have proof aplenty. I don't see why we don't simply Excise the son of a bitch and be done with it."
The "Son of a Bitch", as Haruka so elegantly put it, twitches on the ground in front of them. Behind the mass of unhealthy greens and purples that dance across his face and the gag haphazardly stuffed in his mouth, he looks furious, brow furrowed, incoherent noises spilling muffled from his throat. His legs twitch, as if he's itching to get up - as if he hasn't learned from the last three times he did. As if he hasn't learned that the leash does not end in Haruka's possession, but begin at it.
"Procedure and accountability, Haruka-chan!" Nemo chirps. There's a certain something in the way he says it; too well-versed to be rote, too faithful to really know what it means. Tenya thinks he sounds eerily like Tensei - like Tensei when he complains about his paperwork, like Tensei when he shuffles Tenya into a little nook of the agency and doesn't let him touch certain files. Like Tensei, in Tenya's head, while he stared down the point of a blade in a dark alley.
Tenya wonders what voices Tensei heard, when he saw his reflection in cold-hearted steel, and knew he was done.
"Hows 'bout you run those facts by us one more time, Nemo-chan?" Kuchisake-ko asks, cheerily. Her tone is like aspartame, sickly sugar-sweet and fake, as she claps her hands together and bounces in her seat, her long dark-brown hair moving with her in light, airy waves. The drape of her kimono sleeves, pale blue and shining, frames the hand-written "口裂け子" of her nameplate, shadow falling over all but the last character. "Let's hear everything there is to know 'bout this guy, one more time. Who knows, maybe he'll get lucky and we won't have to do any more to him after all!" She grins as she finishes; grins, in that terrible sharp way that shows off far too many teeth and makes her look more like some heavenly ape about to tear someone's face off than a petite, pretty young girl.
"I don't think I'm as optimistic as Sake-chan," Crocus allows; her head tilts as she looks across the table, Zō's face blank and level upon hers. "But I would also like to hear everything once more, Nemo-chan."
"Of course!" At the table's centre, Nemo reshuffles his papers, tapping them on the tabletop surface to re-align them. "If it helps you, then of course I'll read it out for you again!"
At times like these, Tenya thinks, he can hardly tell if Nemo is being facetious or genuine. Perhaps, he hopes, it's both; a genuine like for his colleagues, and a show for the wretch on the ground. It's rather a complex hope to hold onto - but Tenya isn't sure he could take lies spilling from Nemo's lips, or believe him so unaware as to miss his effect on those dragged to his feet.
"Now," Nemo says, with a certain repressed glee - Tenya has heard it in his classmates, before, but never felt it himself. "Let me see. Hashimoto Ichirō, aged thirty-two. Born to Hashimoto Kiyoshi and Misao. No siblings. Works as an accountant at a firm around four blocks from here. Born with a simple emitter quirk, allowing him to close any hole perfectly."
How terribly ordinary, Tenya thinks. A simple, unobtrusive life, far from the highs and lows of the rich, and famous, and powerful. Was that all there was to Hashimoto's existence, the man would never have come to find himself anywhere near the cold "court" floor. In fact, given the location of his firm, it's entirely possible he'd have stayed clear of heroes, villains, and the grey wall of vigilantism entirely.
How terribly typical, Tenya thinks, because man cannot help but throw himself into danger, no matter how it burns at his heels; no matter how he wagers his skin for bruises, his cry for silence, his hot-blooded life for a red stain on the ground.
"Of course," Nemo says, "We're not here to - to discuss Hashimoto-san's business life. Right?" There's a soft murmur of assent, and he beams; for a brief moment, his closed-mouthed smile is radiant, before his teeth flash out like jagged shards of porcelain. "Right! So, let's talk about what happened after - after Hashimoto-san's work hours, alright?" He drops his first sheet of paper onto the table and continues on. "Now, some background. We received some reports that some of the citizens of this city were living under a protection racket. And, well, a protection racket sounds like a pretty nice deal, don't you think? It's pretty simple! You pay someone some money, and they keep you safe! It's just like how our taxes go to the hero system, but more direct!"
"Heroes can't possibly do everything," Haruka says; Tenya can't help but think the lilt of sympathy in her high, soft voice is sarcastic. She picks up her nameplate; fiddles with it, casually, without dropping her gaze to it. "Sometimes they don't - can't - do anything. It makes a lot of sense that people would be willing to sign up to such a simple service."
"Of - of course," Nemo laughs, and waves one hand. It's an odd movement, clunky and slightly too energetic; Tenya gets the sense that Nemo doesn't get to use it, much. "Sometimes you have to be your own hero, right? But, it's sort of - sort of funny, isn't it? Because we investigated this protection racket and found out that nobody was doing any protecting, were they?"
"Right!" Kuchisake-ko cheers, and slams her fist into her open palm with a sharp smack. "Turns out, someone out there was makin' threats, weren't they?"
"Ah, well," Nemo says, and there's a sort of sigh to it, a fond amusement or nostalgic twist that doesn't belong, really, in such a cold, dead-hearted room. "I always thought they didn't count as threats if they were followed through on, you know? So," he drops another page, "Maybe it started as threats, yeah. But - but when we heard of the first body, it stopped being an investigation into threats, and started being one into a hostage situation."
"Shouldn't it's be extortion?" Crocus asks, with a rough cough, and Nemo hums consideringly, thumb playing with the zipper of his jacket. He's the only one of them dressed down; he's the only one who can afford to be, really.
"Well, perhaps," he concedes. "But hostages are implied in much of extortion anyway. And - and, really, like I said before. A threat carried out isn't much of a threat, Crocus-chan. It's a promise, isn't it?"
Tenya glances over at her in time to see her tilt her head down slightly. It's not an angered look, exactly; more a vague consternation. It's an oddly complex expression; but he supposes Crocus wears Zō well.
"Anyway," Nemo chatters on, eager to continue, "The first corpse was a real mystery, but once more started coming in, it was fairly obvious what had happened! I mean - sure, there were no marks on the outside, but clearly for cases of suffocation you should check the outside! And with the tracheas of so many people fused over, it was - was pretty clear that someone was meddling with a quirk. It wasn't hard to get a registry of everyone in the area -"
Well, Tenya thinks, it should have been. But he's learned more than enough about Nemo's web to keep his mouth shut.
"-and from there it was - it was pretty easy! Ask a few questions, and everyone knew Hashimoto-san was - was pretty bad at staying behind after work, wasn't he?"
"Yeah - so unfriendly!" Kuchisake-ko chimes in gleefully. Her smile is wider now, somehow, her cheeks pinker; Tenya no longer thinks he sees the monkey in her, if only because any trace of heaven in her seems wiped clean away. "Sorta like Hashimoto-han had better things to do than be with friends! Sounds pretty stupid to me, dontcha think?"
"Right," Nemo sighs, and slumps back in his seat with an air of satisfaction. "And you - you tracked him down, didn't you?"
"Yep!" Tenya gets the impression that, if Kuchisake-ko was the sort to puff out her chest, she'd be doing so right now. "Can't say I caught him doing any murder, Nemo-chan! But I did see him doing some of that promisin' of his! Ain't that a real bad thing?"
"Very bad," Nemo agrees. The agreement is perfunctory; everyone already knows Nemo's opinion on the matter. But it doesn't hurt, really, and Kuchisake-ko seems happy with it as she can be. "So - so you brought him back, and that - that's where we are. Any - any questions?"
Crocus taps her nails on the tabletop for a moment. "Can I see the pictures of the bodies?" she asks, abruptly, and Nemo nods, holding out a handful of printed-out polaroids. It's old-fashioned and clunky; but camera that took the images is long gone from any plane of existence where it might implicate them for their investigation, or Nemo for his red-handed catch. Tenya should know; he felt it shatter beneath his feet.
Crocus doesn't spend long looking at the images; just holds them up to her eyes carefully, tilting each so she can see them from every angle before moving on to the next. She's completely silent all the way through, even as she holds the images, careful not to let the visages printed upon them to leak out to her neighbour. In half a minute, she's satisfied, handing the slips of coated paper back, and Nemo is tucking them away between his printed files, and slipping those into a folder. "Well," he says, "That's everything! Are we - we ready, then?"
"I'm afraid I haven't been listening," Haruka says blandly. Her knee has actually escaped the confines of the under-table space, now; Tenya doesn't bother trying to get her to put it back. "You know how I intended to vote from the beginning, though."
Haruka, Tenya thinks, is really the worst.
"Ah, thank - thank you," Nemo says, his voice a little higher than usual, and Tenya glances over at him - he's trembling, all five-foot-five of him, and smiling too, with a barely-restrained mania that reminds Tenya of an incident from his childhood, one involving a babysitter and several energy drinks and several packets of raw coffee grounds. It's the sort of tremor that promises danger. "I'll note - note that down, Haruka-chan! What about you, Kuchisake-ko-chan?"
She perks up at the formal address; meshes her fingers together, raises her clasped hands and ducks her head to them like she's shy, peering out from behind them with her wily, pale-brown eyes. "Same as Haruka-chan, Nemo-chan!"
"I will also vote in the same way," Crocus adds simply, and Nemo claps his hands together.
"That's - that's excellent, Sake-chan, Crocus-chan. Ah, what about - what about you, Forger-chan?" He turns to Tenya, leaning forwards across the table. "Have you made - made your decision, yet? You've been - you've been very quiet, today!"
Tenya glances over at the man on the ground; at the fire in his eyes, at his hands tied behind his back. At the rage, burning off him like fire. "I've been thinking carefully, is all. Don't worry about me."
"Oh!" Nemo practically sings out the word, light and musical. "Well, that's - that's good! Have you come to a conclusion?"
Tenya thinks - thinks of bodies in back alleys, and paralysing terror weighing down on his throat, and hands that reach out and take. He opens his mouth. "Yes," he says, clearly. "I have. I will vote with the rest of my peers, Nemo-chan."
"Ah," Nemo says, and turns to face the front again, head snapping across so his indigo-violet-dead-of-night curls sway away from their place, the faintest glint of equally dark eyes catching the light before the curtain swings shut again. "That's - that's excellent. That makes this a unanimous decision, then."
There's a sharp, hanging pause. Haruka's weight stiffens slightly in anticipation against his chest. The air smells of ice and bruised-raw flesh.
"Crocus-chan," Nemo says, softly, "Normally I would - would have you Excise our guest. But if you are busy, Haruka-chan will- will be able to fill in."
Crocus reaches up a finger, tapping the chin of her mask. Her face tilts upwards; Zō smiles as she stands, the fine-grained Edo-patterns of her dark green kimono rippling with her deliberate motion, hanging green ornament swaying from its firm seat in her elaborately-coiled hair. "Thank you, Nemo-chan," she says calmly. "I'd love to stay, but I really should get going."
"Right," Nemo agrees; plucks his nameplate from the table with a deft hand, tucking it away into nowhere. "Crocus-chan, Sake-chan, Forger-chan, meeting is dismissed. Haruka-chan, can you...?"
"Of course," Haruka says, cheerfully, and slips off Tenya's lap into a crouch, then a stand. She rolls her sleeves up, striding across the room to where Hashimoto kneels, and grabs him roughly by the collar, the movement sharp and careless. "I'm afraid you're going to have to come with me."
Hashimoto makes a horrible, strangled noise; yanks himself away, face pulled into a mess of creases and swelling, and lashes out in a side-long headbutt. Haruka barely blinks; in a blink she's stepped clear, then over, and then she's delivered a sharp kick to the man's head and he's keeling over forwards, forehead kissing the concrete.
"Your struggles are admirable," she says, and leans down for a better grip on him, unironed, badly-knotted tie dangling like a free-hanging noose. "But unearned. You ought to calm down. It's already going to hurt when we Excise you - don't make it worse."
"Stupid~," Kuchisake-ko sings, mockingly and far too close, and taps Tenya's shoulder. He has to repress a twitch of suprise; he'd not noticed her getting up from her seat, nor her footsteps as she came over to stand next to him. "Hey, Forger-chan. Are you coming, or what?"
"Ah..." Tenya pauses, glances back to Haruka. She's back to grasping Hashimoto by the collar, dragging him to his feet as his legs tremble beneath him. Her pretty face is twisted into a sneer; she seems, to Tenya's eyes, utterly unafraid of the man who could suffocate her in an instant, should the weak ropes around his wrists fail and snap. It's a terribly familiar sight to Tenya, one he's seen on his classmates, some more than others; it's a terribly unfamiliar sight, to Tenya, staring back at his mirror-silvered reflection.
"Forger-chan?"
Nemo has made his way to Kuchisake-ko's side. He tilts his head towards Haruka, mouth twitching at the corners as he slips his hands into his pockets. "Don't worry about her, Forger-chan," he says. "She can take care of herself."
"I know," Tenya replies, because he does, really. He knows she's capable of standing strong against anything Nemo asks her to; he can only picture her bowing by grace of the day of their meeting, can only draw forth the memory of her head bowed exactly as much as she wished to, as not an inch more.
"C'mon," Kuchisake-ko says, and leans forwards, tugging at his sleeve. The movement rustles the fabric of her own kimono, sends a phantom wind across the forest across her waist and legs. In these moments, when she's in motion, green flower in bloom at her brow and leaves in flight across printed fabric and freckled cheeks by the dance of a self-generated gale, she really does look like something more than human. "It's been a long day, hasn't it? Let's go home."
She's too lighthearted and fierce in turn to really tug Tenya's mind into submission, and he sighs, a little too heavily to be quite ideal. His lips purse of their own volition, before he tilts his head to Kuchisake-ko in a jerky nod. "Ah, one moment? I wished to speak to Nemo-chan."
Kuchisake-ko doesn't reply to that; but her eyes dart from Tenya to Nemo and back again, warm with hues of honey and all too knowing. Not for the first time, a familiar sensation creeps up Tenya's spine; that of facing something that knows far more than you do.
"Ah," Nemo says, and nudges her with his shoulder. "Go ahead, Sake-chan. I'll meet you at the station, yeah?"
"Alright," she replies, and turns to leave, bouncing lightly on her toes, before she turns abruptly back, to call over her shoulder, "Remember we want matcha!"
Nemo just waves after her as she skips away down the hallway, a flash of painted pales and long dark hair, and disappears around the bend. She's the last to leave. Crocus is long gone, slipped away like a drop of water in a rainstorm, as is her specialty; behind them, Haruka has dragged the unfortunate Hashimoto through a side door, her calm voice and perfectly-enunciated curses fading away alongside her target's staggering footsteps. Tenya doubts he'll hear Hashimoto again, today; with some luck, he won't hear him again, ever. But it's not a sure thing; Excision, for all the way his colleagues speak of it as a death, is no true end. The dead are not left to suffer, after all.
Tenya knows that, now.
"Forger-chan?" Nemo asks, and tilts his head curiously. His eyes are brighter, up close; proximity shows how the shadows thrust vibrant underlying colour into the blackened haze, the barest glints of what remains beneath peeking out between painted-on fibres and his unstyled - or perhaps meticulously styled - curls. "You wanted to talk to me, right?"
"I - yes, I did wish to speak to you," Tenya says. "I - perhaps somewhere else?"
Nemo blinks; glances around them. "Oh? Ah, well, I don't think anyone will walk in on us here, but we can use the office, if you like?"
Kuchisake-ko has skipped off. Crocus has vanished. Haruka is busy with Hashimoto, and will not be back until the Excision is done, and the errant man's hands are as harmless as any other pair - longer, perhaps, if he's resistant. "I - suppose here's fine," Tenya concedes, as much as the emptiness at his back scares him, and Nemo smiles at him, closed-mouthed and genuine.
"Oh, okay, then! What is it, Forger-chan?"
"I wished to -" he pauses. The words stick in his throat, because they are more than just words, and Tenya needs to find where they live in his heart and lungs, first, before they go anywhere else.
"Nemo-chan," he says - but that is wrong, the address ephemeral as the sea air, and he bites his lip, shakes his head as the boy in question stares at him curiously.
"Seiji-san," he tries, again, but that is wrong too; the boy in front of him is young, and barely a man, and there's nary a crack nor jaded glaze to him. The syllables shatter somewhere on his tongue, and he swallows them down again, and wonders if Seiji knew how they would scratch, when he pieced them together.
"Midoriya-kun," he chances, throws the dice to the ground and hopes they won't smash on the concrete, and cover his feet with broken glass until the vulnerable thing inside his skin bleeds out.
And they don't.
He tastes the defeat on his tongue, paired ones and lacking fortune. But the dice do not break, and that is all that matters.
"Iida-kun," the boy says, slowly - because he's not Midoriya, not really, and he's hardly Seiji, in his deep blue-violets and immature gaze - but he's not Nemo either, for all that seems to be all he could be. Because Midoriya is something, and Seiji is everything, and Nemo - Nemo is nothing.
"I wished," Tenya says, every word heavy on his tongue like the weight of a gag in his mouth, "To know. To ask you. If we're doing the right thing."
It's not quite what he means to say; and the boy seems to know that, if the way he steps closer, slipping into his space, and places a hand on his shoulder is any indication. The pressure is warm and pleasant; the boy is terribly alive, and lacks sharp edges as if by design, as if filed-down until all that was left of the mirror-sharp polish was the gemstone chips in his eyes. "Iida-kun?"
"Do you think," Tenya asks. Someone else's blood is in his mouth, sickly-sweet and salted with tears and iron, iron, iron. "Do you think Tensei would be proud of me?"
The boy stares at him for a moment, eyes wide with surprise; and then he looks away with a sigh. Tenya can count every freckle on his cheeks, from here; can see every microscopic twitch of the brows, scrunch of the nose, quirk of the lips. "Oh," he says, quietly. "Iida-kun."
Tenya is helpless; struck down on a concrete floor, gazing into his killer's scarlet eyes and seeing an artificial silver gaze staring back at him in the glassy reflection. Helpless, glaring down his own will-be corpse under a darkened sky, watching a desperate heart flutter for breath beneath a steely, caved-in breast.
Tenya thinks he is dead, and doesn't know if it was the kindness of a blade, or the creeping cold at his back, or brutal force, or the reckless burning of a dying engine that killed him.
The boy does not make eye-contact again, not yet; he breathes, instead, deeply and slowly, and reaches up to tuck a lock of hair behind Tenya's ear. Crooked fingers, so quintessentially Midoriya, linger there like the last autumn leaves; the slight pressure leans against the tucked-away locks beneath, all the same colours as the wig on his head, yet somehow so different as to be hidden and buried. "Iida-kun," he repeats, soft enough that Tenya can barely hear it, even as they stand so close that Tenya could feel the boy's breath, if he wore something less weighty, less heavy and stifling on his shoulders. "You know you're doing amazing, right?"
"I-"
Tenya shudders; the blood in his veins belongs to someone else. "I don't know what I'm doing, Midoriya-kun." I don't know what I've done, he doesn't add, doesn't dare speak aloud.
The boy's gaze flicks to his, for a moment, sympathetic; sad, almost, but not quite. His fingers trace the shell of Tenya's ear, catch at the teardrop dangling from Tenya's earlobe. It's only a clip-on, a simple bright green thing with a hint of blue and no value to speak of, but it tugs, gently, as the boy examines it, as if fascinated - as if he wasn't the one to offer it, in the first place. "You've done everything that could be expected of you, and more," he says, soothingly; the teardrop slips from his fingers, and he places his hands on Tenya's shoulders, rubbing gentle circles with his thumbs. "You're doing your best, you - isn't that enough?"
"My best wasn't," Tenya croaks. Something twitches, spasms, deep within his chest. It sounds like a sob. "It wasn't. And then it was too much."
"Iida-kun." The boy's mouth twists, wryly. "You know, I think knowing when it's too much is half of the fight, yeah?" Seiji's voice is like a bell, clear and grounding and meaning far, far too much to Tenya's addled mind. "You know what I'm like, right? I never know my limits, Iida-kun, and look what it does to me."
Tenya thinks, as the boy stares up at him, that if he looks closer - past the long, delicate lashes and wide gaze, the telltale ring around falsified violets and the smothered emerald beneath - that maybe, just maybe, if he stares deep enough into the glow of the boy's gaze, he might see something. Something that isn't another Tenya, staring back at him. "Do you truly think I can do my duty?" he whispers, and feels the boy squeeze his shoulders gently. "As a hero? And a brother? And - someone who does the right thing?"
"Of course I do," the boy replies, and smiles, smiles so widely, as if there's nothing to hate lurking beneath Tenya's skin, nothing dead and curled up and rotting away, nothing half-rabid and bleeding and too vicious to live. "You're our President, right? And our Forger. I'll put my trust in you, to guide us, and you can let us support you. Okay?"
"And if I choose the wrong path?" Tenya asks, and the boy's hand comes to touch his face, supporting the weight as Tenya leans into it.
"Don't worry about that," 人面 tells him; and Tenya's chest burns with the phantom of shaped steel. "That's my job. Let me carry this weight, Iida-kun."
Tenya's heart is too hot, and his feet are too cold; and the boy is blessedly warm, and Tenya wants to hold that warmth to his drained soul forever. "You can call me Tenya," he says, and a thumb caresses his cheek as his silvered eyes flutter closed.
Izuku's voice is gentle and warm as ever as he replies. "I know - you. You can call me what you like, too."
"Hey, did you get us matcha?" Uraraka squeals happily, snatching her little cup off the cardboard carrying-case. Her eyes sparkle as she beams up at him, sweet and cute as a button even as she radiates glee. "That's so nice of you, Iida-kun!"
"I just wished to show my appreciation for my friends!" he exclaims; waves a hand for emphasis. "Proper communication is integral to any relationship, but it doesn't always have to be verbal, you know! It's important that you know I care!"
"You should accept our thanks, then," Todoroki mumbles; pushes a sharp chin into Iida's shoulder. "That's communication, isn't it?"
"Right!" Midoriya exclaims. "And - and some of us aren't so good at that, either! So - so we should all practice! Making sure our friends know we love them! Right?"
"I have no complaints," Asui says, and snags a drink. "Thanks, Iida-kun. Kero."
Forger smiles at them. "It's the least I can do," he says, and means it.