WATERBOARDING.

one.

―i will baptize the devil from your soul and you'll thank me when this is all over.












THERE IS A DISTURBANCE―this is how a story always begins, hisashi knows, there is a disturbance standing outside hisashi' s apartment complex. it is very cold where yatō hisashi lives, but he is used to the cold. it's not supposed to snow for another two weeks, said the weather, but they're experiencing an american christmas this year.

the man is blonde, smiling, and far too short to be all might. he is wearing a mask―hooked into a vultures beak―and a look in his eyes like he wants to tear hisashi apart.

(something very important you need to know about hisashi: he's always stuck out like a sore thumb. stark white hair, bright green eyes, and foreigner freckles splattered across his gaunt, fair, malnourished face. also, his quirk automatically syncs heartbeats to match his, so, like, very noticeable if he's who you're looking for.)

this man is looking for him. this man has found him.

god fucking damn it. the hell does he pay giran for if people can still find him? what did he pay anderson for? a waste of good food money. sock money, even. perhaps, if he was in the mood, mcdonald's money.

"you're him, i presume?" says the blonde man, "scaredy cat, i mean."

yatō hisashi has gone by many names over his life; ku-nīchan, shiro-san, hisashi-sensei, and, in his most recent vigilante escapades: scaredy cat. brought on by his pseudo-little brother―whose actually the neighbors kid―who spends most of his time either with hisashi himself, or by aki-chan. (aki-chan is a god amongst man, a blessing from the heavens, she's also—on a much smaller level, hisashi' s very first boss. and is also terrifying on a level unbeknownst to the local population.)

"no," hisashi responds, as confused as he possibly can, "i can, uh, leave a message, though?"

why would you say that you dumb fucking idiot!? hisashi's common sense demands. hisashi, the self-absorbed asshole he is, completely ignores his sense, as his uncle did before him.

(hisashi's uncle is dead. he doesn't think about it.)

"i'm afraid that's not an option," says the man, and he reaches into his coat (his very, very warm looking coat) and pulls out a polaroid photograph. how old is this guy? geez.. "see, my boss wants you to do something—and it'll be a—a quid or quo of sorts. sort of like a protection fee."

hisashi, on the topic of protection, did no like the sound of that. "haha, i—i have, uh, no idea what you're, uh, talking a-about."

was his heart speeding up? no. he had this under control. complete control. so much control, in fact, there was nobody who had ever had as much control as one yatō hisashi in this very moment. the man is smiling behind his mask. 

there is something very, very wrong here. he can't put his finger on it. 

the man waves the polaroid around in a blob of color, it's a threat, hisashi knows, but he can't really see right now on the account of his glasses being shattered in a park somewhere in west kanagawa. this is, in retrospect, a very bad thing. should he ask this blurry blond man to expand on his threat? should he act scared? (really earn that moniker.) should he act like he has no idea what's going on? redact that last one—it wouldn't be an act. hisashi squints. 

the not-having-glasses thing is a problem. he rips the polaroid out of the strangers hand to get a better look. he accidentally takes the stranger with him. oops. stranger is wheezing right now, but, incidentally, hisashi is vey hard pressed to empathize with people threatening him. so, the stranger has done an oopsy daisy in—presumably with prior knowledge—attempting to threaten someone with a decently strong telekinesis quirk. hisashi grasps the paper, brings it close to his face, squints some more. 

on, would you look at that, he accidentally tore the paper to dust. a travesty. he squeezes the blond man harder, "hey, uh, quick question, how'd you, uhm, get that?"

hisashi's only response is complete and utter darkness. and also the semi-satisfying slap of blondie hitting the floor.



you know that feeling you get when you wake up, completely well rested, a half an hour before your alarm sets off? yeah, neither does hisashi. he's beginning to believe a full nights rest is a scam made by melatonin gummy companies. fuck melatonin gummy companies, cheating him out of a good nights rest. 

hisashi blinks awake, there is a light so blaring he can see it peeking from behind the blindfold he has on. yikes, blindfold. not that his eyes would be any use besides for, y'know, discerning vague blobs of color, perhaps a facial feature or two, maybe even hair length, at the premise of it being a different enough color from skin tone—the only reason that hisashi even realized that blondie was, in fact, a blondie was from the contrast against his fucking beak. what a weirdo. 

speaking of weird: does this count as kidnapping? adultnapping? what's the word for adult kidnapping. he knows it. hisashi knows it—he's not that uneducated, not that young, that naive. it slips his mind. (what separates him from being a child? is it the time, ticking, ticking? he hears it when he's trying to sleep, he hears it when he's trying to sleep, he hears it when he's trying to sleep, he has it repeat in his head, it sounds like a eulogy of his own self-destruction; it tastes like grave water and cigarettes and regret—mourning at the face of his own bashed in brain—what kind of depravity is it, then? to consume one's self? to grief the gold he could have filled the cracks with—anderson-sensei could only afford cement in such a hurry; hisashi doesn't like thinking about it.)

hisashi lovingly puts his breakdown in a separate room. a box. locks it. tosses the box off a building. all gone. 

anyway—back to the issue at hand—blindfolded, abducted—(abducted! that's the word!)—in a strange, second location. something, something, stranger danger; something, something, the imminent concept of death; something, something, hereditarily bad luck. really, it's genetic. hisashi is lucky here, you should see his brother! that kid has it rough! hisashi's mizu-otōto must be swimming in his own bile right now. 

oh. right. blindfolded, abducted, and—ooooh, a new discovery—handcuffs! kinky!

so, hisashi closes his eyes (completely pointless: he is blindfolded) and thinks of why he's here. the facts are short: a man, who knows he's the vigilante scaredy cat, who knows he's taking care of nayami, sent over an underling to acquire a favor from hisashi on the verbal promise of probably-not harming nayami. hmmm—who in the fuck? scaredy cat's  the freshest identity he's got—he's surprised blondie didn't ask him for shiro-san

the amount of illegal shenanigans he was up to as shiro-san was frankly ridiculous. bonkers, even. 

then, there is light! his eyes shriek at the intrusion. pins and needles crashing as they adjust to the massive change in brightness. ew. awful—that was a torture worse than waterboarding. like stubbing your toe on a needle. (in reference to the pain itself, and not the after effects—there is no long lasting trauma in relation to stubbing your toe on a needle. except, possibly, a vigilance toward the ground.)

with the blindfold off, hisashi sees the world in color! in blobs of blurry color! how wonderful! 

the pale looking guy in front of hisashi probably agrees, but his blindfold is sort-of being used as a gag right now. he's got dark hair, brown, and eyes that are too close to his skin color to actually discern them. he's sitting, back forward, legs lax, elbows on his knees, fingers joined into one unusual blob of hand. this man is also wearing a bird-mask. strange people.

"yatō," says the man, and hisashi would groan if it weren't for, y'know, the blindfold-turned-gag, "do you know why you're here?"

hisashi says something along the lines of  because you can't ask for favors like a normal person? but, again, gagged—no clear words from here on out! or.. something like that. with the utmost respect toward someone who isn't him, the man continues, "i'm going to make an offer, and you're not going to want to refuse it."

the man shifts his posture, "my name is overhaul," says the man, "and i want to request you for a job of the utmost importance—in exchange for the safety of one saitō nayami."

he rolls his shoulder, "so, what do you say?"

(and the gag comes off.)

this is for nayami—what would hisashi do to protect the ones he loves? what would he do? doesn't he already know? there's only one answer, there's only ever been one answer.

"uhm—s-sure?"




his job goes by the name eri, a red eyed girl with stark white hair that matches his own. it's probably really mean to think of a living, breathing, child as a job—but that's what she is. it would be crueler to think of her as a burden, considering the fact she's wearily eyeing him from the smallest corner in her room, but that's what she is. hisashi—since becoming so close with nayami—has forgotten how just how skeptical children could be. 

she's shaking, he realizes. oh—that's not skepticism, that's fear. "it's against my terms to hurt'cha, even if it wasn't against my moral code."

she doesn't believe him, and really, that suits him just fine. hisashi's really good at the making-people-scared-of-him thing; nayami says that he's scary when he wants to be—aki-chan says that he's a walking nightmare with a quirk like his, and just plain creepy regardless. the fact that—if nobody couldn't feasibly feel him walk into a room—then he could walk in and out of rooms with every soul none the wiser he was there to begin with. if his morals were to slip—! he doesn't think about it, eye's slipping away from his own thoughts. focusing, y'know in a manner of speaking, on something.

he hums, squinting at the red-eyed girl. 

"you, uh, know.." hisashi starts, "..your eyes are really, uhm, pretty. like apples." 

like apples—what a stupid thing to say—! he wonders, sometimes, if he should've thrown himself off a building and left his meager will to nayami. 

"what's.." she turns her head down, "—wh—what's y-your na-name?"

hisashi grins, so wide it must smatter the freckles on his face into clumps, "name's yatō! uh, call me ku!"

eri's shoulders loosen, "ku-ōnīchan."

hisashi doesn't flinch, because why would he? "uh-huh! and you're eri-chan. uh, right?"

she doesn't look at hisashi, and hisashi can't really blame her—he kind of looks like a desecrated corpse of a man. it's a weakness and a skill—looks are great for him, gaunt and decrepit as he is. does it mean he's prepared to undo his own damage? in the name of a sweet merciful buddha— abso-fucking-lutely  not. hisashi's identity is currently riding off him looking as inhuman as he can; it helps him distance himself from shiro-san and ku-onī. the likes of which are being tested right now.

"hmm, what's your, ah, favorite color, eri-chan?

"eri-tan's favorite color is — is grass! bush—like—" her body curls up again—stiff, "—summer."

eh? summer is—there's this memory that hisashi has of the summer. (yellow rotten wallpaper and skin sloughing off the boy next to him. toasting to the new them with freshly lit cigarettes in hand; smoke pluming off courtesy of a lighter the boy next to him stole. it's one of the best memories that hisashi's got.)

"uh—that's cool. my favorite color's, uh, red."

(the sun melting everything, even his chills, away. his fathers' eyes from behind a closing door. the picture at the end of the hallway, smiling down on him. glint red in the pupils of everyone in it. hisashi doesn't think about it.)

hisashi focuses in on the world like it's drawn simply. in such simple colors, in such easy words. "did you know that, uh, red is a, uhm, primary color?"

she blinks, or, at least, that's what hisashi takes it as. he really needs to get a new pair of glasses—or find the old ones. rummaging through a park doesn't seem like much fun, and the nicer parts of town get cleaned a little too often for his glasses to still be there. a shame, really, hisashi liked those glasses. nayami picked them out for him. they fit his face right , he thinks, nayami could've been fucking with him. nayami likes messing with him sometimes.

"what's—a primary color?"

hisashi grins, "have you— have you ever seen a—a, uh, color wheel?"

she—possibly—shakes her head, but the movement is too subtle to be sure. 

hisashi squints, the world compresses a little, the fuzz becomes more solid. he can't keep it up, it hurts too much, it strains his eyes. it feels like an aching muscle, a tender bruise, a kick to the jaw—throbbing. he resigns to his watercolor of a wash world. 

"well, do you have, uh, crayons, by chance?"

her eyes sparkle—possibly—when she nods. 

he thinks, maybe, he can do this without accidentally getting nayami killed.


(the thing is—there is something fundamentally different about yatō hisashi on the count of that not being his name. though, he did go through a lot of trouble making it his name: a couple thousand yen, bargains, and a little threat on the side as a treat. he walked into an alleyway a dead man and came out with irony lining the outside of a photo id. 

the thing is — hisashi only knows when the line is crossed long after someone crosses it. an absolute truth scarred on his second-to-last rib. he is on a cliffs edge waiting to be pushed off.

the thing is—there is something off putting about being put together in a body that doesn't want to work; it's damn near impossible, actually. hisashi — hisashi hisashi hisashi — makes it work on account of his mothers will and spite. spite, he knows, is an excellent motivation. 

the thing is, yatō hisashi is—in layman's terms—a bastard son-of-a-bitch without self preservation. what that means is that, combined with the spite, he's fairly ready to bite the hand that beats, feeds, and greets him should it appear out of nowhere.

yatō hisashi, the thing about him, is that he's nice enough that if you don't meet him head on with a threat, you and him could be very, very good friends. and yatō hisashi takes great pride in caring for his friends.)


to view things from a biased point of  view is to cut off another perspective. 

so, the problem: eri is six years old and eri is always scared. hisashi has this tucked away somewhere in his brain, bet refuses to think about it further—if he gets mentally attached to the job in and of itself, they won't even need to threaten nayami to get to him, and another weakness to drag himself to death with is giving overhaul another shot at hisashi's head. tragic, really. 

okay, look, maybe hisashi already knows that his weakness is children scared of the world, and maybe he exposes his soft belly to anything with big eyes (that feral cat that won't stop scratching him, for one—he's still not giving up). there has to, in the very least, be the outward precedent that hisashi doesn't actually like anyone aside from nayami and—if they find her—aki -chan. there's his uncle, of course, but they can't really threaten a long decayed corpse. his uncle's been dead since before hisashi was born some twenty-two years ago. 

(he sort of regrets never asking how—but it's all for nothing now, anyway.)

the problem—hisashi overcompensates a little too much with hiding. he always has. world-champion of hide-and-seek, he's hard pressed to think his mother ever found the keys to his desk drawer after he left home (you know, in a manner of speaking), and he's willing to bet his whole identity that the cops ever found the fake cover up for the cover up paper trail of shiro-san. so. 

he doesn't want to be unnecessarily cold to a six-year-old, but if he shows any attachment then she becomes a bargaining chip on his already difficult-to-maintain life. there's always the disconnect option. he thinks he might just take it. hisashi's really good at this.. sort of not-being-a-real-person trick he found in middle school. 

(somewhere along the lines of being pretend asked out and fake friends.)

so. an outside disconnect. he can do this, he can do  this. his track record of picking up orphans and little kids alike profusely ignored, hisashi resolves to not outwardly like this kid. she's probably going to die down here. a depressing thought. (hisashi does not think of the horror stories of the prequirk era. he doesn't.)

the solution. that's a tough one, get back to him later. hisashi can't answer the phone he'll get back to you later. you've dialed a number that is no longer in service, please try a new number. that's kind of funny, in a sort of irony kind of way. 

anyway, that asshole overhaul took the kid to a different room. which means that hisashi is here for no substantial reason other than sitting in eri's room drawing a (very shitty) color wheel n some scrap of cardboard from one of her untouched box of toys.

(she doesn't even have a window. hisashi doesn't think about it.)

light from the hallway filters in, and eri slumps in. she looks sort of woozy, like she's just gone through intensive surgery. her shoulders are caved in. her eyes half-lidded, glaring disdainfully at the ground. hisashi approaches and a different man with a bird-beak mask dumps her into hisashi's arms. he looks vaguely disgusted, from what hisashi can tell—which, again, isn't very much. 

she mumbles something along the lines of just like ēku and is curled into hisashi's chest, half-sleeping, half-awake—one eye open—for the next three hours. until she actually knocks the fuck out. hisashi lets out a sigh of relief, like he was actually worried about her. he doesn't think about it. 

(hisashi, resolutely, sucks at not thinking about things he said he wouldn't think about. 

hisashi doesn't think about it.)



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