Chapter Text
A sigh left your mouth as you stared up at the sign that jutted out of the store front’s well polished facade. It was a franchised establishment, with roughly five nearly identical locations in the large metropolitan area, that much you knew. But there was a reason you came to this one.
A chime rang out as you stepped through the shop's glass door. The shop workers spared you a quick glance before getting back to their customers. Your eyes surveyed the room as you walked up to the nearest glass jewellery case. You glanced down at your phone for the time. You just had about forty minutes before you’d have to bring yourself back to work.
Bored eyes raked over the gleaming delicately designed accessories. What story would you use when a sales associate approached you. You thought up a few options. Mother’s birthday? Self indulgent spending? A gift for a friend? You concluded it probably didn’t matter to the sales associate. As long as you entertained the idea they’d made a sale, they probably didn’t care.
Your gaze settled on a pair of emerald earrings. The pear shape reminded you of a necklace your mother owned. Something she had inherited once. At one point in time you would’ve considered getting them as a gift. Something for Mother’s Day rather than a birthday. Lavish gift giving used to instill you with a sense of pride, but those opportunities felt few and far between.
“Can I help you with something?”
A young woman stood in front of you with a gentle smile. Her voice pitched up into an assembled cadence for customers. She looked down at the earrings, then back up at you, her facial expression slightly exaggerated as she started praising your taste.
“These are so beautiful; the green is so vivid and rich!”
Her enthusiasm dominated the interaction. She was overcompensating; Making up for your lack of energy. You guessed the staff worked off of commission. Had you actually come for jewellery you might’ve just bought something.
Just before you could reply to her comment the door chimed again. The employees’ attention was caught once again, for a moment. A man and woman entered together. The man held the door open while the woman entered. They were extremely plain looking. The man in a simple pair of blue jeans and a black t-shirt. His hair was tucked haphazardly under a baseball cap that shaded the finer details of his face. The woman that accompanied him was dressed similarly. Instead of a baseball cap, her long dark hair framed and concealed her face. Large sunglasses hid her eyes. She kept her large black purse tucked closely to the side of her.
Everyone returned to what they were doing, but eyes followed them around the store. The sales associate was too engrossed in her sales pitch to notice your attention elsewhere. You watched as they separated and began strolling through the store independently. You took note of where they lingered; Which jewellery their fingers brushed over. Their plain appearance made them look odd against the elegant aesthetic of the store and its uniformed workers. Had this been a department store in the mall you wouldn’t have thought it. They slowly circled the floor, covering as much space between the two of them as they could. Neither of them seemed to signal to an employee that they needed any assistance. They were window shoppers. Dressed in a way to indicate to staff they weren’t serious about purchasing anything.
You forced your attention back to the store attendant. She was in the middle of some rehearsed spiel about the timeless regality of emeralds. The only thing you could think of was the forty minute mental timer in your head counting down.
“You know, I need a few more minutes to look. How about you help out that couple? They look kinda lost,” you finally said to her. You motioned over to the man’s partner, her head slowly swiveling across the displays. The attendant’s smile faltered. A flash of disappointment crossed her face. She knew she wouldn’t be making a sale today. How right she’d be.
“Well if you need anything feel free to call me over,” she said with a warm tone.
“Of course,” you replied, making an effort to show her the politeness you were capable of.
With a nod of her head she left you.
The man had returned to his partner’s side once she was approached by the sales associate. You’d subtly drifted closer to the pair. Your attention tuned in and out of their interaction. Despite their effort to conceal their eyes, you picked up on the slight movement of their heads. There was no doubt their eyes were darting quickly around the store, observing ceiling corners and exits. It was only a matter of time. Once they made their move, you would be able to finally complete what you intended to do there.
You pulled your phone from the small satchel hung over your shoulder. Forty minutes had dissipated to less than twenty. You grew a little bored. You swiped down and looked over your notifications. Some news alerts and about ten messages from your work friend. Every message was something new with little to no correlation to the last. Most of them were captionless pictures of her finished work. You had noticed that she seemed to have an affinity for just creating AI based robots in between her assigned projects. Her little metal minions, you had affectionately referred to them as. You weren’t sure why she had messaged you. You’d be back in the office soon enough to see them in person. You were sure they were already crawling through the things on your side of the lab anyways. Still, you took a few seconds to like the images she sent you.
Suddenly, the sound of shattering glass spilling across polished hardwood followed someone’s desperate cry for help. You didn’t look up from your phone. You kept your attention on the time. Less than fifteen minutes now.
“Keep quiet,” a woman’s biting voice warned.
This did catch your complete attention. You turned to see the lady in sunglasses holding the shop attendant by her face. The attendant struggled a little as vicious fingers dug into the plush swell of her cheeks. Her face twisted and contorted with a chorus of frightened whimpers. Her co-workers and the few customers they were with stepped back or cowered on the outskirts of the store. Their arms wrapped around themselves or turned away, protecting their bodies from perceived harm. The man in the baseball cap walked over to a display case. You watched as the skin on his bare arm seemed to thicken over, like it had been made of reptilian-like scales. He took his fist and drove it through the glass. The shards of glass bounced pathetically off his rough skin. You watched as he greedily snatched up any and all valuables into his balled up fists. The woman threw her large purse across the room to him and he began stuffing the bag.
She pulled the glasses down. Her eyes were glowing. A red light seemed to capture her iris and her pupils were now a burning yellow center.
“If anyone makes any sudden movements I have no issue melting the flesh from your faces,” She said, her words spoken with a deathly calm.
The hostages moved slowly together against the back wall of the store. They huddled against each other like a herd of farm animals. Safety in numbers.
You kept still, holding your position. You were unsure how they didn’t notice you. The only apparent hostage still unsecured. You looked down at the case in front of you. It was filled with pearl jewellery. You kept shopping the display, looking unphased by the commotion and threats. Your fellow hostages looked at you with a warped kind of beguiled expression. They’d assumed you could be some kind of savior to them. Wrong.
“Hey you!” The man shouted.
Your moment of invisibility had been short lived. You didn’t spare him a sideways glance. You just kept eyeing the price tags. Wow, were pearls expensive!
From the corner of your eye you watched as he stalked up to you. His form, a dark creeping shadow as it moved in on you like a storm cloud. His presence attempted to swallow you whole. You refused to turn and look at him. You knew he was lowering himself a little to look down at you. He decided coming closer to the side of your face was the best next move.
“Didn’t you hear me?” He practically growled out. His voice was rough, like tires over gravel spitting up rocks. He came even closer. You could practically feel the intense heat that radiated from his body.
A tremor ran through you. A mild anxiety rattling your body. Your breathing now uneven, but you refused to allow yourself to slip further into panic. You would not give him the satisfaction of intimidating you. So, you kept looking over perfectly rounded and polished jewellery. A string of pearls caught the display's careful lighting and reflected it back to the eye in a stunning way. You had never really appreciated the way pearls looked, like little perfect rounded beads wrapped in creamy silk. Then again you’d never been forced to stare at them for this long.
His non-scaly hand slammed down on the case in front of you. The rattle of the jewellery was layered with the low moaning creak of the mental frame supporting the glass. From the corner of your eye you saw the hostages’ retreat back even further at the sudden sound. Even your own body tensed, jerking away a little. He brought his face even closer to yours. The brim of his hat mere centimeters from touching you. His hot breath fanned the profile of your face. He smelled like garlic. Rancid. You offered him what you withheld this entire time, a turn of your head and a direct glance that met his eyes.
Then you dared to speak. “I wouldn’t touch me if I were you.”
It was less of a warning and more of a challenge. A dare of sorts, highlighted by the gentle grin on your lips.
Angrily, he reached forward. His fingers dug painfully into what appeared to be the bare fleshy part of your mid-bicep. You winced as he yanked you downward, pulling you off your balance. Your ankles and knees collapsed together. You fell into his legs. His grip still didn’t let up as he hoisted your weight up by your arm. You bit into your lower lip; a suppressed pained yelp came out as a deep grunt.
“What the hell is going on back there?” The woman barked. Her own grip tightening on the sales associate. Her marked face now wet with tears.
The man ignored his partner’s question. His hold on you in that moment felt impossibly tight. A single aggressive jerky movement away from dislocating your shoulder. Anxiety told you, if you dangled there long enough you’d lose circulation in that arm.
“Listen to m-”
His own panicked gasp escaping from the back of his throat, disrupted whatever threat he had started to make. Desperately, he tried to let you go. His fingers unwrapped from your arm, but he failed to fully pull away, his palm and curled fingers still pressed against your arm. His whole body followed as you fell without his support, knocking the cap off his head.
A flesh toned layer of something like a second skin peeled from your arm and clung to his hand. An animalistic bellow ripped through him between shaky labored breathing. He attempted to wipe away the second skin embedded in the thin skin of his head. It was in vain; it just pushed it deeper into him. He clutched his wrist. His scaly, quirk affected arm returned to its former soft fleshy state. He looked down at his injured hand with wild eyes. You knew the feeling of the quills stung and he had pressed them deeper into himself than you had ever attempted on yourself.
He cradled his injured hand against his chest. He curled in on himself; his head came down so low to the floor you thought they’d touch his knees. He fell away from you. You suspected his mind was disassociated from the pain, but still.
“I-It burns!” he cried out in a blubbering series of words. “M-My blood, it burns!”
“Uh huh,” you hummed with a nod. The sound was almost musical. Like someone responding to a child.
His partner had let go of the poor sales associate, who scrambled on hands and knees away from the woman. She turned her body around to face you. The sunglasses on her face slid down the bridge of her nose and rested on the bulbous tip. This revealed her wide eyes as they darted from her partner, to you, and back. She must’ve disengaged her quirk. Her glowing eyes were now a soft natural brown.
“What the hell did you do?” Her voice maintained that hostile roughness, but her body flinched away from you.
You already suspected these two hadn’t really harmed anyone in their long standing criminal career. Targeting chain jewellery stores ensured hostage compliance most of the time. Company policy forbade staff from acting as loss prevention. Everything in the store was insured.
You pushed yourself up off the ground. You rose above him, standing to your full height. You leaned in to observe everything you could. You carefully stepped around him as he writhed in pain at your feet. You grabbed him by the wrist, yanking his hand closer to your face for a better look. The skin on his palm was dotted with small gaping pore-like holes. Blood seeped from them and pooled in the center of his hand. The dark red sticky fluid filled in the lines on his palm like redirected river flow.
“It’s burning! My god it burns!” he cried again. An apparent sheen coated his skin. Droplets of sweat formed at his hairline. His face and lips paled with a sickly pale purple-blue undertone.
“What did you do to him?” The woman demanded. The hostility in her tone completely dissipated. She rushed past you. She got to him just as you released his wrist. Then she hesitated. The woman made little effort to comfort him as he begged anyone to help him. Ironic. She didn’t fall to her knees to be at his side. She stood over him with you and watched. Her mind tried to make sense of the situation.
“He’ll be fine,” You told her flatly. You rooted around in the satchel you were still wearing till you found it. A college rule notebook. A pen clipped against the thin cardboard cover. The edges were worn significantly, the pages curled over on themselves, a few dog-eared. The pages were creased and stuffed with sticky notes and additional paper. The little book bulged. The threaded binding threatened to unravel apart and send all of your data and research scattered to the wind.
You clicked open your pen with a quick jab to your outer thigh. Your thumb urgently flipped through pages before landing on a clean blank one towards the backcover. You began documenting his experience.
“What is this!” She demanded again. Her face crinkled with concern and quivering with fear. You rolled your eyes. A deep huff audibly forced the air from your lungs.
“He’s been injected with a quirk nullifying neurotoxin. I told him not to touch me.” Your tone was cold, clinical almost.
You continued your inspection. You focused on the physical changes he was undergoing. Taking note of the full body tremor that set in. You scribbled down the rigor-mortis like quality that followed. You were certain the burning wouldn’t last much longer, he no longer begged for it to end. He no longer made sound. His face was frozen; petrified in the same pained expression. This was the final stage, temporary paralysis. Just like the last time.
The woman couldn’t seem to take shocked eyes off her partner. Her lips parted and mouth hung open. She stumbled back. The first physical movement she had made in what felt like ages. You two finally made eye contact. You stared blankly into her wide eyes. You caught a glimpse of your worn reflection in them. Your minuscule expressionless face stared back. This meager curiosity in you. You caught almost your full reflection in one of the countertop mirrors.
It told the story of a disheveled young woman. Discolored skin lined the underneath of your eyes. Your once neat updo was now mussed with a halo of flyways surrounding your head. Once smoothed down, hairs now stand up on the edge of your hairline. You weren’t exactly sure if the week you had contributed to your appearance or the physical assault from earlier.
Once you couldn’t bare to look at yourself anymore, your attention went back to the woman. Her partner, now overlooked by the both of you. Her gaze was no longer on you. She stared at her forgotten purse. The one filled with priceless merchandise. You could see it on her face; see the calculations she made in her head. Your eyes also dropped down the purse the man had dropped when he collapsed in pain.
“Do you want that?” You asked with a raised brow.
She didn’t reply. She’d grown timid over the course of this robbery. You tilted your head waiting for a reply she wouldn’t give. You figured that one of the employees tripped the silent alarm by now. She would be the Musutafu police department’s issue.
You side stepped over to the bag. With a light sweeping kick from the inside of your foot the bag slid against the hardwood in her direction. She looked down at the bag in a studded silence.
You shrugged, you didn’t bother looking at her, ”I’m not a cop, or a hero. I don’t care about that.” You told her.
The man prone at your feet made a low guttural noise. Perhaps, his attempt at protesting your vague suggestion. His eyes darted between you, who hovered over him with bored eyes and stoic expression and her. You and him wonder the same thing. A non-verbal conversation exchanged through continued eye contact. Would she leave him behind?
Then you heard it. Confirmation of her decision in the sound of fast paced footsteps. The sound of running. You caught a glimpse of the back of her head. Dark hair bouncing behind her with every high-impact stride. The purse was no longer on the floor.
“Well,” you breathed out, still looking at the incapacitated man. You cringed a little. “That is really awkward.”
You predicted she’d get out of the store, but not far from the area.
What you would have never predicted was the sudden flash of green light and the shattering of the door's glass pane that followed. A violent rush of air barrelled through the room. The force was enough to make you stumble back and lose your footing. You watched from the floor as the woman flew across the room, her body following a perfect arch. She crashed into the decorative wall panelling. The impact shook the room. The crystal chandelier above swung uncontrolled vigor. Plaster dusted the store like a powdery snowfall. Her body hit the floor along with the wall’s crownmolding. The contents of the purse she’d been holding spilled across the room. Jewellery rained down. You ducked your head down and held up your forearm in front of your face. A spray of pearls pelted you like hailstones.
Well, that wasn’t part of the plan.
In the damaged splintered doorway, with a raised chest and wide stance stood the Symbol of Hope. Number One Hero, Deku.
This definitely didn’t look good you thought to yourself as you glance over at the nearly paralyzed man just a couple yards from your feet.
No, this didn’t look good at all.