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Rating/Warnings: Teen and Up, referenced suicide (but no actual suicide)
Fandom: BnHA
Characters: Chisaki Kai, Todoroki Fuyumi, Mentioned Endeavor
Relationships: Chisaki Kai &/ Todoroki Fuyumi, pre-relationship
Additional Tags: Secondary Quirk AU, First Meetings, On The Run, Anxiety
Summary: Todoroki Fuyumi meets a handsome stranger in the middle of the night who decides to help her in her time of need.
So: if you've read the tags, you know that this is a Secondary Quirk AU. Basic explanation is--people are suddenly getting second Quirks, usually at an adult age, and it's spreading through the population a lot like the first appearance of Quirks. Not everyone gets a second Quirk, of course, but there's a decent chance for any adult to get one. Both Todoroki Fuyumi and Chisaki Kai have recently developed second Quirks.
“I wouldn’t recommend that,” a voice says behind Fuyumi. “The water’s cold at night, there are far too many heroes patrolling the coastline, and it’ll hurt like a bitch if you survive.”
She flinches and turns to see a brown-haired man standing behind her, black sick mask covering the lower half of his face, and feels her face heat up against the cold night wind. “I wasn’t going to jump.”
The man’s face tilts to one side, and his eyebrow raises. “No?”
“No, I was just—enjoying the view.”
“It is a pretty good view,” he admits, coming up beside her.
They stand on the bridge’s edge in silence, watching the moonlight glimmer off the waves. He’s right. It is a good view. But Fuyumi’s far too anxious to enjoy it, and the addition of this stranger’s presence is only making it worse.
“So why are you out here?” she questions, trying to gain some control over the situation.
“Just for pleasure, actually. I’m far too fond of the darkness for my sleep schedule. As for why this bridge in particular…” He hums. “I met a friend out here, once. Although it wasn’t exactly the best of circumstances.”
Okay. Fuyumi doesn’t really know what that means, but okay.
“And what’s your name?”
“Huh?”
“Your name,” the man repeats. “I’d forgotten to ask.”
“Uh.” During her mad dash away from the house she’d just used her legal name, but maybe that’s not a good idea now, but she doesn’t have any other ideas, so she ends up stammering out “To-Todoroki Fuyumi” like an idiot.
“Mm,” the man acknowledges. “Chisaki Kai.”
Chisaki Kai? Also known as Overhaul? The yakuza? That Chisaki Kai? Fuck, Fuyumi’s in so much trouble—
“You’ve heard of me,” Chisaki says mildly.
“Uh,” Fuyumi says for the second time in ten seconds. “I don’t—I mean—I just—no?”
That damn raised eyebrow again.
“I saw your name on some police records,” she finds herself blurting out. “Are you—you can’t be, uh, Overhaul, can you?”
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. Practically every report on him, every piece of gossip in the archives, stressed his temper, his homicidal tendencies, the sheer painfulness of his Quirk, and now Fuyumi’s provoking him because she’s unable to control her tongue, and maybe dying now would be easier than what’s coming for her but she doesn’t want to die like that, like—like—
Actually, maybe she deserves that kind of death.
“I can be, actually,” he confirms. “But I haven’t been that for a while, not since I got used to my secondary Quirk, and frankly it’s rather miserable being Overhaul. Wouldn’t recommend.” He chuckles, so at least it doesn’t look like Fuyumi is going to die in the next minute. In fact, Chisaki seems perfectly content to stand next to her, chin propped up on his hand, watching the moonlit waves with those pretty long-lashed golden eyes peeking out over the edge of his mask—
Wait. What?
Right, shit, she hasn’t responded. “I see,” she says, because they’re the only words that come to mind, even though she really doesn’t see.
“As for you.” His eyes switch from the sea to her, pinning her down like a butterfly on display. “Todoroki Fuyumi, hm? Like Todoroki Enji? Endeavor? I hope you haven’t inherited his cruelty.”
She looks down. Her hands clench on the railing. “You don’t—you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.”
“My mistake,” he says smoothly. “You were there when he was killed, weren’t you?”
“I—” She has no alibi. “Um. Yes. I was in the house with him.” She had been in the room with him.
Chisaki hums. It feels like the hiss of a metaphorical monstrous snake just behind her, waiting to devour her at the slightest wrong move. “If I may ask—how did he die? The news surrounding his death hasn’t been forthcoming—”
“It was an accident, I swear—”
The silence that follows only underscores the implications of what’s slipped out of her mouth. She wants to reach out and take them back, stuff them into her mouth and swallow them like rotting bread, but their stench has already reached Chisaki, now staring her down fully.
“And how, exactly, do you know that?”
His hand reaches out. She flinches so hard she stumbles and falls backwards. “Don’t touch me!”
(Before this whole—fiasco, she’d asked the kami to grant her a secondary Quirk that would make things easier around the house. Instead she’d gotten—she’d gotten—)
(—seeing her father bent over his work—the tunnel vision that had taken over her head—her fingertips just barely brushing the back of his neck—running away at the sight of the blood leaking from his mutated mutilated corpse—)
“Don’t,” she repeats. “For your own safety.”
“Was it a Quirk accident, then?”
She has to curl up to avoid that pinning-butterflies gaze. “Maybe.” She’s twenty-three years old! Shouldn’t she be able to control her Quirks, even if she just got them? Shouldn’t she be able to stop whatever cold hatred had possessed her in that awful critical moment? (Shouldn’t she be able to keep herself still and smiling and subservient—)
That intense gaze has lifted. Chisaki’s looking back out over the sea, contemplating something. How best to kill her? No, that’s ridiculous. He hasn’t been aggressive yet. But then again, this is Overhaul. He doesn’t have to be aggressive.
“They can be brutal.”
“Huh?”
“Quirk accidents. Especially ones that kill people.”
“…oh.” Would he know about that?
Yet another round of silence. Neither of them move.
“I have a few safehouses you could use if you need a place to hide,” he says mildly. “The cops aren’t so kind to those with evil Quirks.”
It takes a few moments to process the offer, but fuck it, it’s not like she’s got any better options. “Um. O—okay. But I—need to grab my stuff. I don’t have it with me.”
“Naturally.” He points to one end of the bridge, where a single old black car is parked perfectly in between the lines. “Is it far? I can drive you.”
“No! No, not far at all.” She may be taking up his offer of a safehouse but that doesn’t mean she wants to get in a car alone with him just yet. Also, her own car, with all her stuff inside, is maybe a fifteen minute walk away, so it’s not like she’s lying. “I’ll be in a white Subaru, I can just follow your car. I’ll be back in twenty minutes, okay?”
She scurries off before he can respond, and ten minutes of trying not to sprint away finds her crouched behind her car, going through the deep breathing exercises she’d found online that one time. It’s times like these when the weight of what she’s done—of what she’s doing—weighs down on her, the proverbial millstone around her neck, but it’s even worse this time because someone knows now. Someone knows she was the one who killed her father, knows this terrible curse that’s settled into her hands.
It’s not like fucking Overhaul can go to the police with it, a voice snarks in the back of her head, and weirdly enough it helps.
She manages—barely—to make her estimated time of twenty minutes, driving over the bridge carefully as Overhaul watches from just outside his own car.
“You ready?” he asks, and she thinks he might be amused.
“I’m ready,” she says anyways, and off they go.
Fuyumi: having a full on panic attack on the floor
Chisaki, sitting next to her: me too girl
Chisaki's secondary Quirk is called Beast--it's a shapeshifting Quirk that isn't limited by petty things like 'matter' or 'energy', so he can turn into basically anything that's alive. It also operates off of his emotion and subconscious, though, so trying to keep up a form that feels unnatural or uncomfortable to him (like a wholly human form) is a cognitive load on his mind, and if he loses focus he may slip into a more comfortable/natural form. It also has the nifty little perk of making him functionally immune to all disease and injury, which is part of the reason why he's so chill in this piece.
[Chisaki pre-Beast Quirk: I hate all Quirks they're a disease I want them gone I hate them, if I get one of those Secondary Quirks I'm killing everyone in this city and then myself, don't test me
Chisaki w/ the Beast Quirk: ...I feel like I should hate this so that I'm not a hypocrite, but also this is the most comfortable I've been in my body since I was a child and I am not in fact being hunted for sport so actually maybe this isn't the worst thing to ever happen to me. I'm okay with this actually. I like it even.]
As for Fuyumi's secondary Quirk...think Mahito from Jujustu Kaisen with a side of bouts of homicidal rage. :)
