Chapter Text
*
“This is Eri!”
That’s what the daycare lady at the gym says to the new kids in front of her. No family name, because Eri doesn’t know what it is, and neither does the League. Skeptic had asked, when he was trying to get her signed up, with papers and seals and everything. Shigaraki said, “No idea. Does she even need one?” Which made Skeptic mad, but then Re-Destro, with his too-big smile on, said, “She doesn’t have to have one! That’s fine, it’s no problem at all!”
So she’s just: Eri. Like Twice or Spinner, one word. Or more like Dabi, who really only has just that name, nothing else.
The other kids, though, all six of them, they have long introductions. Like:
“My name’s Ishii Sanae! Trumpet is my uncle! My Meta Ability is Neuro Wave!”
Or:
“Me, I’m Koyama Junpei! Mettle’s my mom, and Geofault’s my Meta Ability.”
Or:
“Hashimoto Daichi. Dual Vectors. My grandfather’s leader of the Southern Battalions and... Scalar was my sister.”
Daichi says this, quiet and angry, looking at the ground. The daycare lady frowns, and says, “Remember, young Miss Eri is our Grand Commander’s ward. Behave yourselves.”
Daycare lady claps her hands. “Well now, let’s all be friends and have fun together!” She makes that ‘L’ sign with her fingers at her forehead. “Let’s get stronger together!”
A chorus of ‘Yes!’s and ‘Okay!’s, and a wave of L‘s. Eri doesn’t copy them. She’s not Army, she’s still a League member even if their name has changed.
“Don’t play too rough. I’ll be watching,” the daycare lady says. Then she walks away, and before Eri could even look back at her new ‘friends’, she’s surrounded, trapped in the middle of a tornado of voices.
“Is that horn your Meta Ability, and you can fight with it—”
“—my mom says your Villain League is—”
“—so pretty! Your hair is so long, and snow white—”
Everyone is so loud and much too close - it almost feels like an attack. Even though no one is touching her at all, Eri recoils.
The kids stop, suddenly silent. They back away a little, eyes wide, all watching her. Now Eri feels embarrassed, like she did something wrong. She doesn’t know the right thing to do either; so after a few seconds, she just says, “Hi,” and bows a little.
That works. The kids burst out in greetings, in smiles, in small bows as well; then it’s a whirlwind of noises again. This time, Eri is prepared. She still can’t really talk - there’s too many questions, coming at her buzzy-blurry fast - but she listens, she’s able to turn to each speaker when they talk, and she’s able to nod too. That’s right, she can handle this, she said so to the League.
When one of the kids - Nanami Kimiko (“My dad is Captain of the Center Battalions! My Meta Ability is Light Ring.”) - takes her hand, Eri lets her, allowing herself to be pulled along, ready to play.
*
Junpei shouts: “Hey, Eri! You never said! What can you do? What’s your meta ability?”
Eri pauses on the ladder to the slide. “My quirk?”
From behind her, someone says, “We don’t use that word.” (Fukui Masami. “My father is the Chief Medic. My Meta Ability is Bioaerosol.”) Eri ignores it.
“It’s... Rewind.” Eri squeezes the bar in her hands tight. Even now, talking about her quirk makes her feel a little weird. “I can... change things. I can change people back.” Images flood her mind and burst out her mouth into words. “I can make them disappear.”
She doesn’t wince and she is a little proud of herself for that. But Junpei only smiles big and says, “Cool!”; and above her on the slide platform, Saitou Yua (“My mother is Master Tactician to Mr. Skeptic, and my ability’s the same as hers: Ion Swarm.”) turns to look at her, saying, “Really? That's powerful.”
Everyone starts talking again. Eri keeps climbing up the ladder. By now, she has figured out how to deal with her new playmates: They’ll talk and talk, words upon words upon words, to her, to each other among themselves. Eventually they’ll shut their mouths and turn back to her. Watching and waiting, and it’ll be her turn to speak.
“Sorta like the Grand Commander’s meta ability. My uncle says he can make everything disappear. He was there, he saw it.”
“That means the Grand Commander is your dad! I’m right, Yua.”
“Really? He’s your dad, Eri?”
“You’re all dumb. You need to be married to have kids, and the grand commander isn’t married. He’s Eri’s older brother.”
Down the slide she goes, looping around in a small spiral. When Eri lands, everyone is waiting for her, that watching-waiting. She feels static in her hair, on her hands, like tiny sparks of power. Eri stands up and pretends she’s Shigaraki, because when he speaks, everyone listens.
“Shigaraki is my leader,” is all Eri says, even as she wonders what it would be like if Shigaraki is her brother. Himiko already says she and Eri are like sisters, and Twice’s friend Giran says Twice spoils Eri like she is his own brat. But a brother… Eri thinks she’ll like that, even if she isn’t sure what that is for.
“He’s everyone’s leader,” one of the boys mutters - Daichi, who’s been the quietest - but the other kids nod and make yes-hums.
Kimiko pops up right next to her. “That’s kinda scary, your Meta power, but that’s good too. Making people disappear, they’ll be gone, so you’ve beat them forever! Right?”
Kimiko’s eyes are all white and glowing, and right now they glow even brighter as she talks, excitement in each word. It makes Eri feel like she shouldn’t let her down, which is why she says yes.
“Yeah, see! Eri has the Grand Commander’s meta ability!” Sanae announces.
“It’s not really the same—”
“Then you would be the next leader when he dies,” Masami says, then smacks her hands over her mouth. When Eri turns to her, Masami’s face becomes red and she bows. “S-sorry! Not that the Grand Commander would!”
“Heh, Masami’s saying careless things again.”
“Now Masami jinxed it!”
“Stop that! You’re being mean, Sanae. Junpei too!”
Eri goes to climb the ladder again. Being around the other kids feels like being around 50 Twices. Everyone is friendly; they’re also very loud and they say weird things.
When she reaches the top, she finds Daichi there, sitting curled up like a ball on the platform. He takes one look at her, before turning away. Eri says hi anyways.
“If you want the slide, go ahead,” Daichi says, still not looking at her.
Eri stays where she is on the ladder. “You were here first, so you can go.”
“I said, you go.”
Now she definitely doesn’t want to go first. “Are you sure?”
“Yes!” Finally Daichi looks at her, scowling. “You go first, because you’re Great Princess Eri—” he says that loudly, like it’s something gross, and then he’s shouting “—and we’re all s’posed to be nice to you!"
Eri shrinks away, stepping one rung down the ladder. “Sorry.”
This only makes him madder. “No—!”
Glowing rings flash around the boy, tying him up like rope. Daichi falls over, landing hard on the metal surface of the platform.
Kimiko climbs out of the slide, eyes glowing bright again. “I’m telling.”
”Fine! Go be a tattletale!”
And then everyone is here with them, coming up from the slide, the stairs at the other end of the jungle gym, all over, shouting.
“You’re in troubleeeee.”
“Daichi couldn’t do it, huh?”
“Now you’re gonna get the Twenty Twenties, you know.”
Kimiko walks over to Eri and helps her up. “Eri, are you okay?”
Eri nods. She’s fine, but Daichi is not, looking like he wants to cry.
“Daichi’s sister died in the battle,” Yua says. Hopping onto the platform, she crouches next to him, and pokes his cheek. “And he’s still being a crybaby over it.”
“I’m not!”
“You’re about to.”
“Oh, suck it up!” Sanae yells from the slide. “One of my cousins died. My dad says he’s a, a martyr. We shouldn’t be sad, we should be proud he gave his life for the cause!”
For some reason, Eri suddenly remembers the smell of bitter, sour smoke; remembers blue-white air that felt boiling hot. She remembers Dabi, standing in the middle of a street of twisted ash-black bones.
Eri wonders if she had seen in that burning pile Daichi’s sister, or Sanae’s cousin.
Daichi finally starts crying. “That’s so stupid! My sister, Yuuko, she…” He hiccups, before snapping his head up to glare at Eri. “You cheated! You and Shigaraki and your dumb League! It was all those doubles against her. A million against one. It wasn’t fair!”
“That’s how Mr. Twice’s meta ability works. He was just stronger.”
“Yeah. Mr. Destro said it, he said...” Masami paused, thinking, before continuing. “He said ‘The gifted will rise while the bereft will fall. That is the fundamental truth of life; to accept this is to be liberated in mind and will.’ ”
“Show off.”
“Shut up! My sister was gifted! She was one of the best! She wasn’t weak!”
“But she’s dead now.”
“S’fact. Only the strong survive.”
“That’s not true.”
Everyone turns to look at Eri. Even Daichi. It makes her shiver a bit, all these eyes on her, their gazes like solid things, prodding and grabbing and demanding. Still, Eri keeps talking. “Um...I don’t think it’s true.”
“But Eri,” Kimiko says. “It’s why the Grand Commander is now the new Grand Commander. He defeated Mr. ReDestro, so Mr. ReDestro had to let him lead.”
“Shigaraki, he… I mean, it’s just…” Eri doesn’t know how to say it. It doesn’t feel true. She’s thinking of Machia, she’s thinking of Twice and Spinner and quirks. There is a lot she wants to say, that she needs to say, but the words aren’t coming together. She rubs at her horn. “I dunno. But that’s not what Shigaraki thinks.” This, she knows. “Shigaraki wouldn’t say something like that.”
All throughout last month, Machia roared Weak! Weak! Weak! like it was his favorite word. He yelled it at Shigaraki and the League everyday, morning to night and back again. Shigaraki even agreed. We have the worst team makeup.
They never did manage to beat Machia in a fight - and yet they still won.
Shigaraki wins here too. It’s as if his name is a quirk that makes people calm. The kids all quiet down, looking at her with thinking frowns.
“Well… I guess if the Grand Commander says so.” Sanae says hesitantly.
“Are you sure?” Junpei asks. Someone smacks him, making him yelp.
“If Eri says he did, then he did. We’re not supposed to ask stupid questions.” There is a round of nods and ‘yeah’s.
Eri points at Daichi. “Can you let him go?”
“You sure?” Kimiko says, but she’s already making her hands dance in the air. The light rings dissolve. Daichi sits up, his hands immediately flying up to rub hard at his eyes.
“I hate all of you,” he whispers, words all cracked and broken. He dives for the slide, tumbling down face first. They all watch as Daichi lands in the ground with a crash and scrambles away.
“Should we—?” Eri glances over at the daycare lady, who’s been standing next to the doors this whole time. She’s straight and still as a statue, arms behind her back; making no move to come to them or go help Daichi.
Sanae shakes her head. “Prism’s really just a bodyguard. She's only supposed to stop us if we get hurt or go too crazy with our meta-abilities.”
Off on the other side of the gym, Daichi crawls into a lonely corner.
“This is boring,” Yua says loudly. “Eri, let’s go back to playing! We haven’t gone on the monkey bars yet.”
Noise fills the air, as everyone starts chattering again. Sanae offers a hand to Eri; Masami asks if she can go on the slide first.
Eri stays where she is.
“You guys go ahead,” She says, and immediately everything stops. “I wanna…see how Daichi is. I think he should come play with us too.”
Masami’s eyes go wide. “Are you gonna fight him?”
“…No.”
Ignoring the look of disappointment from the girl - from some of the other kids too - Eri goes back down the slide herself.
She heads over to Daichi.
The walk seems to take forever to reach the corner, every step smaller and slower; but once she’s there, it’s also too soon, she got there too quickly. Time twisted up like how her heart feels.
She’s here, though. In front of her, Daichi is a tight, curled up ball again.
“What do you want,” Daichi mumbles. He sounds empty; empty and small, the way sadness makes you when you give up running from it. Lines of almost-pain run up Eri’s arms, for just one imaginary moment.
Eri takes a deep breath. She says, softly, “I… I’m sorry about your sister.”
What would that be like? Losing a sister. Losing Himiko, losing any one of the League…
Terrible. Like being ripped to pieces, and never put back together. Seeing the League all hurt and bloody had already made her feel like she herself was breaking, legs crumbling, arms falling away.
“I’m sorry Tw—” Eri starts to say, then stops.
To tell the truth, she’s not sorry Twice killed Daichi’s sister. She doesn’t have anything to apologize for. People kill each other. That’s what Villains do, that’s the way of man. Mister told her that. We’re all murderers, yes, it’s immoral, it’s wrong, think of the children, all that hand wringing. But it’s really quite simple, so listen well, Little Eri. Either he dies, or you die. Either they die, or we, your allies, die. Which result would you rather have?
None of the League died, and she’s more than glad for it. Now she also wishes no one had to die. That no one has to die, if she can pick that choice.
Eri crouches down to look at Daichi face to face. It takes a few seconds, but he peeks out from his arms, eyes still angry and wet; so with all her heart, Eri tells him, “I want to be allies.”
Just like everyone in the League.
“I want to be friends,” Eri says. “Because… Because then you'll be on my side, and I’ll be on yours. If we’re on the same side, no one has to kill each other.
“...And having friends, it makes everything feel better.“ A sea of Twices loud enough to chase away the screams; fire blue and bright enough to burn away the darkness. “It feels like you can do anything.”
Destroy everything they ever hated. Nothing more to hurt them. Free to do whatever they want, always and forever.
“We can become strong and stronger, as long as we’re together.”
Daichi doesn’t say anything, and he’s buried his face back in his arms. After a few seconds, Eri awkwardly stands back up.
“So… That’s what I want.”
There’s only silence. She doesn’t hear any crying anymore.
Eri walks away. She’s not very surprised to find everyone a few feet behind her. They’re standing right there in the open, but it still feels like spying.
“You’re so nice, Eri,” Yua says. The other kids nod.
“Well, I’m your friend!” Kimiko exclaims. “Come on, let’s play.”
After one last look back at Daichi, Eri goes.
*
When playtime’s over and Eri steps out of the gym, someone from the League is there, waving hard at her and opening up his arms. Heart skipping high and free, she runs straight into them as fast as she can. Twice scoops her right up, smile-creases on his mask.
“Eri! How was it?” Twice holds her against his shoulder, raising her to be taller than him, the way she likes it. “I hope you made a lot of friends! I’ll beat them up if they were mean to you.”
“No, it was fun!” Eri says, buzzing with the need to tell him everything. Below her, the other kids run by, slowing down only to greet Mr. Lieutenant Twice then taking off again. “I—”
She stops when she sees the last one to leave. Daichi’s eyes are puffy and red, but they look up to meet hers. For a second, that’s all they do, staring at each other.
Then Daichi gives her a short, stiff wave, before running away as well.
“Yeah,” Eri says to Twice again. “It was fun. I think I’ve made some good friends.”
*