Chapter Text
There was a young man at the barstool, feet crossing over one another, drinking a toxic looking beverage in a toxic looking beverage glass.
He took a drink every few minutes, carefully checking something every time he did, curling in on himself as his fingers glowed with a faint bioluminescence and he suppressed a faint wince.
The person next to him sighed and placed an arm around him, careful to not catch him too off guard.
“Too strong for ya, huh.”
The young man shakes his head.
“Nothing is, but I like to shock people. You should know that, Kumo.”
Kumo sighs.
“You’re lucky I didn’t make the drink. I remember when I was younger being a bit of a thrill seeker who wanted to do the prequirk tide pod challenge and my friends always made jokes about drinking bleach, but that doesn’t mean I’m comfortable mixing that in, y’know?”
The young man just grinned.
“No harm no foul, Kumo~”
Kumo cackled a highly feeling-uncomfortable cackle at this.
“What, and flavored bleach is no harm?”
The other just chugged their fancy drink with a look of determination on their face.
“Not for me it’s not.”
—
“Kill me nowwwww, Compress, or so help me I’m gonna-“
Compress tossed a marble in the air impatiently.
“It will happen, Arsenic, I know you’ve a short fuse nowadays but-“
“I don’t have a short fuse what do you mean-“
“Nothing… but you used to be so horribly straight laced, I don’t suppose you can finally tell me what changed.”
Arsenic smirked and caught the marble.
“Not much, if you don’t count ‘being poisoned’ and ‘running away’ as ‘much.’
Comprsss sighed.
“I’ll never get the full story will I?”
“Nah, Atsu, babe. You won’t and I doubt you’d want it anyway, it’s long and so so complicated and you should know most of it if you were paying attention; by the way, it shouldn’t even matter, it’s been 10+ years. Oh, here, lemme set up my amp.”
—
“Subject 42.”
The folder made its way across the table to Aizawa.
“Otherwise known as Arsenic, after his quirk.”
Aizawa opened the case file, shaking his head. Perhaps this new problem child could be handled soon and he could finally get some much needed shut-eye for once but the quirk-named suspects always were tricky little ego-filled little buggers.
“Somehow his name is redacted even to us so we think this has been tampered with, however this doesn’t preclude us from noticing things about them.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing much. But we think he was a…prototype.”
Aizawa schooled his face to be neutral as he stared at the smiling face in the case file next to the bloody matted war torn picture of the street-performer-sometimes-vigilante.
He wondered what might have broken him.
—
“Oh, sir, sir! Lemme through!”
The bouncer held out a hand.
“ID, sir?”
“Oh, I-“
His smile was blinding.
“-I forgot it in the car but my mom is waiting for me in there and I would rather be going in there to follow my mom than to be all alone, mister, don’t you think, good sir? Also you’re so cool, does your quirk involve your eyes or is it just company standard to wear the glasses?”
The bouncer rolled his eyes.
“No ID, no service. You look too young to be over the drinking age and I do not want to be fired over such a small…issue.”
The bush-head just smiled wider and tossed him a red vial. The bouncer blinked, then waved him through, but only after he had silently bargained for 5 more of the vials which were readily produced from a near-endless jacket pocket.
The greenette grinned.
“I was never here.”