Chapter Text
“What the fuck even was that?! I mean… I guess I don’t know how a reunion with a sibling you thought was dead but was actually just a villain is supposed to go but it was so… cold. I guess I wasn’t exactly the most warm and fuzzy either, but why were we so…off? Why did it feel so wrong?” Natsuo ranted to his sister as they sat on a rooftop overlooking one of the more populated areas of their patrol route. “He’s our brother… you’d think there would’ve been more… emotion…”
Fuyumi sighed, torn between sympathy and annoyance. Ever since their meeting yesterday, Natsuo has been in crisis about the awkward nature of their meeting with Touya. However, talking about their family drama while on patrol was a definite issue. “Knock it off, we can discuss that later.” She warned, eyes focused on the street below.
“I’m just saying… something about it wasn’t right. Why was he so wishy-washy about whether or not he was ok with what we’re doing?! Why did he suddenly decide to side with me and immediately give up trying to talk us out of this? Was it a trap? Was he just pretending to care to fuck with us? What the hell was he getting at?!” Natsuo kept ranting, voice only getting louder as he worked himself up with his theories.
“Knock it off. Talking about that shit could get us caught.” Fuyumi scolded. “You’re overthinking things. Just focus on our patrol. We’ll discuss how to best move forward with our… situation after.” In truth, Fuyumi was also struggling to not assume the worst about their new situation being associated with the League. She had much too much on her plate, trying to juggle both sides of her revenge plan, her job, and her engagement, so being uncertain about Touya and Shigaraki’s plans for them wasn’t exactly helping.
Natsuo grumbled, “You’re overthinking just as much if you think talking about that will get us caught.”
“Just work with me here, please , Blizzard” Fuyumi asked, exasperated.
Natsuo rolled his eyes, “Fine. But it’s not like anything is going on. No crime on the streets, police radio is dead, and the hero network is quiet too.”
“You two have access to the hero network?” A deep, monotone voice asked from behind them. Both siblings jumped slightly despite recognizing the voice.
“Eraser! You know you don’t have to sneak up on us, right?” Fuyumi greeted tiredly.
The hero simply shrugged and repeated his question. “You two have access to the hero network? How?”
“Not really. Just the ongoing villain activity scanner through a site we found online.” She answered, only half lying. In truth they had found a way to use Endeavor’s account to get the scanner on their burner phones through a tutorial they found on a support site for the family of pro-heroes.
Eraserhead raised his eyebrow suspiciously but after a bit of a stare down he walked over and perched on the edge of the roof next to where the siblings were sitting. “I haven’t heard from you in a while… is everything ok?”
Fuyumi sighed, she’d been doing that a lot lately, and answered, “Yeah. Everything’s been fine. Nothing major to report to you. We haven’t had a run-in with a villain all month, and only 5 petty criminals we were able to handle with little to no intervention from the police.”
“Yeah. It’s weird.” Natsuo added.
Eraserhead hummed, “Well, I’m glad to know you’re fine. There were rumors you were seen being dragged into a van by some known villains the other day.” He replied, giving her a pointed look. It was clear to her that he also mixed his teaching skills and hero skills, because that tone and look was one of the oldest teaching tricks in the book.
And a highly effective one as the guilt and doom she felt did have her scrambling to do some damage control. "Yeah, but that was… different. Some nut jobs claiming to be part of some Meta-human Liberation Front kidnapped me and interrogated me for a bit about my work because I 'was getting too close to their turf'. When they eventually realized I wasn't actively trying to go after them, they just left me tied up in some back alley warehouse. Thankfully a hero found me and helped. He took down a report and said he’d handle them so I didn’t think I had to report it to you too.” She lied quickly.
“Which hero?”
“Hawks.” She answered easily, confident the dirt she had on him for working with the League would be enough to ensure he would back up her account, especially if she had time to ask Touya to pass the story onto him.
Eraserhead raised his eyebrows in surprise but nodded. “Did he know who you are?”
“Yeah, he did. He was actually pretty complimentary, which was surprising.” She answered honestly.
Eraser nodded, “That is surprising. I didn’t take him as the sort to be tolerant of vigilantes… but to be honest I never expect much from top heroes, especially not ones as flashy and self-obsessed as him.”
"Yeah. We aren't fans of heroes like that either" Natsuo agreed bitterly. Fuyumi tensed as he said that, as she tried to keep her feelings about heroes in check when talking to Eraser. He was a smart man and she didn't want him knowing they had personal issues with any heroes, yet Natsuo’s unconcealed anger wasn’t exactly working in her favor.
Unfortunately, before she could do damage control, or even before Eraser could react, the sound of screaming could be heard a few streets away. Fuyumi couldn’t see what was actually happening from her perch on the rooftop, but that didn’t stop her from using her quirk to create a ramp for her and Natsuo to slide down off the roof and towards the source of the scene. She could hear Eraser shouting at them to just let him handle it since he was just as close as they were. But having a hero on the scene has never stopped them before and it wasn’t going to stop them now. Besides, much like her youngest brother, she could use her ice to get to the scene just that much faster, and in a crisis every moment counts, a sentiment she knew Eraser appreciated.
Thankfully, the reason for the uproar was simply a gang of petty criminals who were using their quirks to steal from a convenience store. There were four of them, two heterotrophs, one a canine heteromorph with the head of a borzoi and another who looked like he was a big green ogre, one with a telekinesis quirk, and the fourth who could grow his nails into claws. She felt a little bad for them, all four of them seemed young, probably 3rd years in high school, and they probably weren’t truly bad people. The two heteromorphs were acting as human shields as their two buddies grabbed food, alcohol, and cigarettes off the shelves with their telekinesis or kept the clerk at bay with his claws. With the exception of a slight scratch on the clerk’s cheek, no one looked hurt and the two standing guard were preventing people from coming in, not preventing anyone from coming out, so she doubted they wanted to hurt anyone. Hopefully the police would be forgiving of them once they got here. In the meantime, the best thing for her and Natsuo to do would probably just be keeping them from running off until the police or at least Eraser could get on the scene.
However, before she could communicate this with her brother/sidekick, he had apparently decided that the half a minute she had used to assess the situation was far too long to wait and had already stormed up to the two standing guard. Not only that but she had the displeasure of watching him blast them in the face with a furious flurry of snow and icy winds, causing both of them to stumble back, disoriented as Natsuo shoved past them to confront the two inside.
Cursing under her breath, Fuyumi ran to follow and reign in her brother. She burst in and quickly froze the two who were standing guard to the wall they were leaning against as they wiped snow out of their eyes. She then ran over to where Natsuo had blasted the one with claws in the face and got to see him tackle the one with telekinesis to the ground as he tried to flee.
“Blizzard!” Fuyumi scolded as she froze the one with claws to the ground. This reckless, violent behavior was exactly why she didn’t want him to continue being Blizzard.
“What, Frostbite ? This is better than just standing around!” He argued back, correctly guessing why she was angry because this was far, far from the first time they had had this argument.
“You need to learn the difference between standing around and thinking things through ! You know damn well that we can’t-“ She argued back, but was quickly interrupted by the thunk of a metal can of soup hitting Natsuo’s head, followed quickly by a second, causing Natsuo to let up on his hold of the telekinetic criminal, allowing for him to slip out of Natsuo’s hold.
He was fast, fast enough that Fuyumi was only just able to hit him with a blast of ice as he reached the back door, freezing his leg in place as he ran. Of course, freezing his leg to the ground might have kept him in place, at least temporarily, but it didn’t stop him from using his quirk. Something she was quickly reminded of as he used his telekinesis to fire more canned goods at her. Thankfully, she was able to deflect them with a quick wall of ice after only a couple of hits to her body, but the painful sting of cold in her fingers warned her she’d need to wrap this up quickly. She had used a lot of ice to get to the scene meaning that even after her few uses here, she was nearing her limit. She quickly caused the ice keeping the telekinetic villain stuck to the ground to creep up his body, trapping his arms as well, ignoring the icy ache that was starting to grip her more tightly.
She wished she could do more, but only being a vigilante her hands were tied. Any physical damage they do to the villains with their quirks would push them into being legally classified as villains, even if that damage was no more than a bruise. And she needed to maintain her good standing with the heroes as long as possible.
That was something that Natsuo was well aware of, yet kept putting in jeopardy. She turned to her brother once she was sure the final criminal was contained, yet unharmed, still incredibly angry, but that anger immediately dissipated as she saw him still sitting on the ground clutching his head, his hand tinted red.
“Blizzard, are you ok?” She asked worriedly, dropping down beside him, carefully grabbing his head, trying to assess his injury through his ski mask.
Natsuo batted her hands away gently, “I’m fine, really. It’s just a cut.”
“Just a cut, you’re already bleeding through your mask!”
“I’m fi-“ he started before it felt like they were suddenly hit by a truck.
It took her several minutes (or maybe just seconds, it was hard to tell) for her to realize that the telekinetic villain had not been subdued and had used her ice shields to batter the pair of vigilantes.
She picked herself up off the floor with heavy limbs in just enough time to see Eraserhead burst onto the scene and take down the telekinetic criminal with ease, disabling his quirk and quickly wrapping him up with his capture weapon, as he had somehow broken free of the ice she had trapped him in.
She turns to find Natsuo also slowly picking himself up on trembling legs, only for him to stumble as his left leg gave out from under him. He caught himself on a shelf, thankfully, allowing Fuyumi to use her quirk to shape a cane out of ice to help stabilize him, at least a little bit. Once Natsuo had the assistance he needed to limp forward, they both moved to approach Eraser to debrief, only to be met with a gruff, “Get out of here before the cops arrive. Through the back door.” The warning came without so much as a glance at them since he was actively using his quirk to keep the telepath contained, but she didn’t need to see his face to guess his expression.
So, cursing at herself for letting this job get so sloppy, she helped Natsuo get out the back door as quickly as possible and the two shuffled off to a secluded back alley as quickly as possible. She and Natsuo limped along in silence for about two miles, sticking to their usual path of back alleys they knew well to avoid confrontation with either more villains or cops. Once they both seemed to decide they were far enough away, they sat down in the shadow alcove of an office building, exhausted, injured, ashamed, and frustrated. Or at least that’s what Fuyumi was feeling.
She silently watched as Natsuo rolled up the leg of his pants to check on his left leg. To her horror, his entire leg had already bloomed into a disgusting bouquet of sickening colors. “Should we take you to a hospital?” She asked, breaking their uncomfortable silence.
“No. It’s bruised to shit, but it’s definitely not broken. I wouldn’t have been able to walk this far if it was. I’ll have a limp for a while but it’s nothing I can’t handle.” He shrugged casually, before looking her over, face falling. “What about you? Do we need to take you to the hospital?”
“What do you mean?”
“Fuyumi, you’re violently shivering and your hands are unnaturally pale.” He replied seriously, sitting up and looking her in the eyes.
Fuyumi looked at her hands and sure enough, not only was she violently shivering without noticing, but her hands felt warm but were ghostly pale with the familiar sensation of pins and needles… meaning she had gone too far and would have to come up with an explanation for why her hands will be covered in blisters in a day or so.
“Your name should stay a name, not something you give yourself a few times a month. You’re going to lose a finger one of these days.” He teased weakly.
Fuyumi scowled, still annoyed with him for his dumbass behavior and a part of her really, really wanted to snap at him, but now was not the time. Besides, she had lost her shit enough these past couple days.
“I’m sorry, I accused you of standing around and not doing anything back there. I appreciate you covering my ass” He apologized, clearly uneasy with her scowling silence.
Fuyumi didn’t reply for several long moments, choosing her words carefully so she could keep her cool. She didn’t want to yell. She didn’t want to respond in anger. She couldn’t respond with anger or shrill panic. She’s been so overwhelmed by her emotions lately she needed to prove to herself that she could control her emotions.
“You can’t keep doing that.” She responded in a cool, even voice. Natsuo looked alarmed by her nearly monotone response, stumbling to reply like a child who knew he was in deep, deep trouble with a parent. But Fuyumi quickly cut him off. “You need to slow down and think your actions through before you do them. The stakes are so, so much higher now and we need to keep ourselves in the heroes’ good graces. Besides, what if this was a mission that he assigned us? We were taken out tonight by some teenage delinquents! We're going to be going up against people with infinitely more training and resources than us. We’re in way over our heads and I’m already distracted trying to keep everything in balance, I don’t need to also be focused on keeping you alive or preventing you from getting yourself classified as a villain!” She was getting progressively more worked up as she went so she took a moment to breathe and bring herself down. “Stop acting so impulsively on missions before you get one of us killed.” She ended bluntly, her anger, worry, and frustration not nearly as repressed as she would have liked.
To his credit, Natsuo looked properly ashamed as he gave a small, “I’m sorry, ‘Yumi.”
“Just fix it.” She said bluntly, slumping against the wall, taking off her wig to rub at her aching head, suddenly hit with a deep exhaustion now that she had voiced her emotion.
“You really need to use your hand warmers, Fuyumi… you already have superficial frostbite and you’re upset so you’re not going to warm up naturally until you’re calm again. I don’t want you to actually lose a finger.” Natsuo warmed in a small concerned voice, nudging her slightly.
Reluctantly, Fuyumi put her hands in her pockets and activated the hand warming packets inside and just tried to rest before making the trek home. Which, of course, didn’t last long.
Her rest was quickly interrupted by Eraserhead showing up to debrief the shit-show he saved them from, at least that’s what she assumed but he decided to open with, “So that is a wig…” A comment that immediately snapped Fuyumi out of her spiritually exhausted haze.
She completely forgot to put her wig back on in her exhaustion and now Eraser had seen her without it. Thankfully she kept her wig cap on, but that doesn’t mean that he couldn’t tell what color her hair was. Maybe this was a small detail that shouldn’t make her as panicked as it did, but then again, small details can get people killed. Regardless of whether or not she was overreacting she quickly put her wig back on, and took note of the look Eraser gave her as she put it back on.
“So… what was that?” Eraser asked bluntly. “I have enough trouble making pains in the ass to keep track of, I don’t need to add two more.”
Fuyumi sighed, “I know. We were just distracted tonight. It won’t happen again.”
“Good.” Eraser nodded, crouching down with them, perched on the balls of his feet. “I won’t be on patrol tomorrow. So you shouldn’t be either. Hell, maybe you shouldn’t be going on patrol at all until your ‘distraction’ has been handled.”
“That would be ideal, but unfortunately we can’t do that. But we won’t be going on patrol tomorrow, so you can enjoy your night off without worrying about us.” She replied tiredly.
“Why are you off tomorrow? Got a date?” Natsuo asked in a casual, friendly manner that Fuyumi wasn’t a fan of.
And clearly Eraser felt the same as he gave her brother a disapproving look and replied flatly“A familial obligation.”
Natsuo thankfully picked up on the hint and backed off. They all sat in awkward silence for several moments, before Eraser spoke up yet again. “Be careful… I can get you more hero contacts if you need it.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you” Fuyumi said with a smile as Eraser stood and walked away.
The siblings took his departure as their cue to head home as well. They ducked into a scummy public bathroom about 3 blocks from the train station to change out of their costumes and back into their civilian clothes, then said their goodbyes before getting on their respective trains to go back home. Thankfully Endeavor was still gone when she got home around 1am, not unusual for a Friday night, allowing her to take a nice warm bath and try to recover. After all, tomorrow night had the potential to be just as stressful, even if it was for vastly different reasons. She hoped that Tensei’s friends liked her, and that Shoto liked Tensei…