You got it, my friend! (I hope this is okay… Iida is hard to write. XD)
7. “How long has it been?”
When Midoriya finally comes clean about his Quirk – about One For All, about All Might, about his life before Yuuei in general – his classmates had asked the obvious questions, such as ‘what was it like’, ‘how long did it take to master’, and ‘why didn’t you tell us sooner, you dummy, we could’ve helped you’ (that last one came from Uraraka, and was accompanied by a light karate chop to the head).
Only a few people deviated from the questions Midoriya had anticipated.
Asui had asked, “What do you intend to do now that All Might no longer has his powers?”, to which Midoriya had squirmed for an answer before giving up and shrugging helplessly.
Hatsume had asked, “Can I try to modify your costume so that you can turn the energy from your Quirk into laser beams?”, which Midoriya – as well as a very disgruntled Aoyama – immediately told her was not going to happen.
Bakugou had asked (well, ‘screamed’, really), “Deku, you fucking fuck, you better not be looking down on me,” which had been followed by a series of creative insults, death threats, and Bakugou getting dragged out of the room courtesy of Uraraka and Kirishima while the other students laughed wildly.
Iida had asked, “How long has it been?”, and that had gotten the attention of everyone still in the room. Midoriya had given him a grateful smile – most likely a ‘thank you for not asking me something stupid like Kaminari was about to’ – and had simply said:
“I got it on the day of the Entrance Exams.”
For some reason, that sticks in Iida’s head. The very first day they had met, Izuku had destroyed the robot threatening Uraraka – something no one else had even tried to do – and that was the first time he had ever used his Quirk.
A sense of wonder blossoms within Iida, because suddenly so many things make sense. Of course Midoriya relies more on his brains than his brawn – he’s had the former for much longer. Of course Midoriya had had absolutely no control over his powers – he’d only just received them.
Despite the awe he feels at his classmate’s accomplishments, Iida can’t help but feel a little bit envious. Midoriya had worked hard to get where he was; he had earned his power. Iida had simply been born with it. Iida had gotten into Yuuei because he had been fortunate enough to get a Quirk that allowed him to be a hero, but Midoriya had received his Quirk solely because All Might had realized that he already was a hero.
A tiny, nasty voice in the back of his head tells him that he should feel ashamed, but he doesn’t. He feels inspired. Midoriya makes him want to become more, makes him want to become even better than the best he can be.
Go beyond, he thinks to himself.
Plus Ultra. Everyone has their own, and Iida’s takes the form of a small yet muscular boy with a mop of black and green hair, hopeful green eyes, and the light of the sun shining in his smile.
Practice was just as grueling as it’d always been.
Regardless that Midorima had just been in an important match
against Jabberwock, Coach Nakatani didn’t take it easy on him. Even as he used
his selfish requests (now cut down to merely two a day), the coach would find
ways around it. Even compared to Teikou and their training last year, it felt
particularly brutal.
It was strange, Midorima thought, how much had changed when
their third-years graduated. The whole team had to be changed, plays rethought
and strengths reestablished and trust reformed. He expected it the moment he
attended Shuutoku, but being the complete cornerstone for the team and having
everyone depend on him until they sorted things was difficult.
And yet, he mused as he shot from the half-court line,
nothing had changed. From how Coach Nakatani ran them until it felt like they’d
break. From how Takao still joined him for every after hours practice. From how
Miyaji Yuuya threatened him with all kinds of bodily harm for bringing another
gigantic tanuki and keeping it on the bench.
Of course, their thirst for victory—clawing for wins like it
was life and death because it was—hadn’t changed at all.
When he finally came to awareness, he was sitting on his ass on the floor holding a hand to his jaw. Bakugo was on his knees a few feet in front of him, bloody-knuckled fist still raised as if he was preparing to strike. His eyes were wide and wild. His teeth were bared. He looked furious and so incredibly worried as he breathed hard. The left side of his face was red, and blood smeared from the corner of his mouth.
PART ONE OF TWO || Where Johnny goes, the Devil follows; where Johnny goes, the Devil is already there.
He does try to play the thing
once or twice.
But a fiddle of gold is heavy as
shit, and the sound’s all wrong—loveless, and cold as Hell, with vicious
strings that split Johnny’s fingers when he plays. (There’s never any blood
when he looks, and Johnny wonders if it’s drinking him up, dry; leaving scars
at his fingertips and an ache in his hand that won’t quite ease. Then again,
it’s the Devil’s instrument; it can probably do any evil thing it likes.)
In the end, he loosens the
bow-hair and puts the thing away in a battered, borrowed case, goes back to
playing his box maple. Wood is living, it breathes and breaks; swells like your
best girl’s clit under your tongue, shivers like a warm wind through leaves.
Wood remembers the sun, wants to sing about it.
There’s nothing gold wants to sing
about, except being dead.
Johnny’s playing the maple that
night at the Bellows Club—well, used to be ‘Club’ until the owner’s second wife
decided they were destined for better things, had it rechristened ‘Café’. The
Tuesday-night regulars are the same, though, and they whistle or lazily applaud
when he finishes his set, greet him by name after he’s put the fiddle away and
come down off that high-as-Heaven stage. Johnny wades out among them to make a
little small talk, then wanders his way to the bar.
……..also while I firmly believe that T’Challa, Nakia, and W’Kabi went to the same schools that all children in the capital city attend (because Wakanda isn’t about to socially stratify its educational system—rich or poor, royalty or no, all children from all tribes attend the Wakandan schools) they also had a whole bunch of additional lessons. As royalty and de facto nobility, they were being raised with the expectation that they would one day rule, so they were stuck in lots of boring English/French/Mandarin lessons; lessons on the laws of Wakanda and the intricacies of the Council’s etiquette, etc.
And then, when they’re a little older they have combat and warcraft; statecraft lessons with the Dora-in-training, and this is when they meet Okoye. She’s a gawky teenager—taller than all of them, she had her growth spurt first—who scowls whenever they whisper or giggle in class. (She is not from the capital city, her Wakandan still accented; later they learn she traveled hundred of miles with nothing but her pack, just to come before the head of the Dora and throw herself on her knees, begging to be considered. She has sweat and bled for it, and she thinks they are not taking their duty to Wakanda seriously enough.)
Still, despite being stiff and disapproving, she’s smart, and fierce; the other Dora-in-training seem to look up to her and like her. (They also have gone disapproving and haughty when it comes to the Trio.) However, maybe a year into their lessons, the Dora-hopefuls play a hilarious prank on their Modern Politics instructor. It involved a jackfruit, a pun on the Wakandan word for colonialism, and their teacher’s inability to remember anyone’s names; it was extremely funny.
And T’Challa, Nakia and W’Kabi are floored when they discover it was Okoye who planned it—they didn’t think she had a sense of humor, or was capable of something like a prank, even if it was a hilarious and generally harmless.
They decide they like Okoye immensely, and she should be their friend. They put their heads together, and carefully plan charm offensive—behaving in class so she doesn’t glare at them, asking to sit with them and eat with them; inviting her to the market with them and encouraging her to tell stories. The Dora-hopefuls live in the barracks, so they cannot invite her to sleep in T’Challa’s rooms, the way W’Kabi and Nakia often do, but they would have her study with them there.
This, they think, is a good plan.
She looks spooked, the first time Nakia asks her to sit and eat with them in the gardens beyond the Dora training building. Okoye sits cross-legged and stiff, barely touches her food, her eyes darting around as though she is a trapped animal. When Nakia reaches out—just to indicate the tattoo on her shoulder, ask about its meaning, she was not going to touch her—Okoye flinches.
Title: The Miskatonic Project Rating: PG-13 for horror themes, death Summary: Abraham Erskine may have invented something new with the Serum – or maybe he re-created something very old. Something…Elder. Notes: I should be working on like three other fanfics but I had a TERRIBLE DREAM this afternoon and anyway this only took about half an hour to write.
***
Steve came out of the Vita-Ray machine…different.
Of course he looked different – taller, thickly muscled, skin gleaming. But it wasn’t the change in his appearance so much as the…sensation people felt around him. Howard claimed not to feel it, and Erskine died before he could weigh in. Peggy felt it, but not in the way others did. To her, he seemed otherworldly, but like an angel or a religious vision – comforting under a layer of unreality. She even liked the strange black pupils he’d developed, so big and dark you could hardly see the whites of his eyes at all.
Others, however….
She didn’t see him pull the Hydra agent out of the submarine after Erskine’s assassination. Only three people did – a cab driver, a little boy, and the boy’s mother. The cab driver wouldn’t say a word, and the boy’s mother stuttered and stammered so badly they finally gave up. The little boy just said, “Well, he got him,” and looked admiringly at Steve.
Steve wasn’t wet, but the submarine lay on the deck of the pier, and the man next to it was dead, a rictus of horror on his face.
Short, I said. Easy, I said. Definitely won’t take long, I said….
Aaaand here we go with part two…
***
On the first night they made camp, Peggy found herself surrounded by men – not in the sense that she was the only women, but in the sense that they actively, intently surrounded her. They weren’t impolite, exactly, but they had just come from a place of desperation and fear, and were happy to be alive, and all that…entailed. Their presence, their willingness to bring her tins of food or start a fire for her, the warring exhaustion and relief and want, pressed in on her insistently.
And then suddenly it was like the sun rose and the air cleared – and she saw why.
“Gentlemen,” Steve Rogers said, appearing from the darkness, lit by the fire and with Sergeant Barnes at one elbow, Sergeant Dugan at the other. The men all took a sort of spiritual step back. “How about you tired soldiers find places to bed down for the night.”
They cleared out fast. Steve looked at her, a question in his bright face, and she nodded. He settled in, others joining him – Dugan, Jones, Morita, Dernier and Falsworth, names she’d learn later. Steve sat on a fallen log one of the men had dragged over earlier; James Barnes sat at his feet. These men were calmer, and she sensed that they, like her, saw angels rather than devils when they looked at Steve and Barnes. They were here with her, not because of her.
“I was capable of looking after myself,” Peggy felt obliged to point out.
“Sure, but why should you have to?” Barnes said. Steve’s eyes still looked, at least in some lights, mostly normal. Barnes, you couldn’t see the whites at all.
the reason why fake dating fics are so enjoyable is because they are a combination of slow burn and established relationship fics. the reader is able to picture what a relationship between the 2 characters is like, but there is still an element of suspense and a chance to develop this relationship because they are not actually dating. in this essay i will
okay, so, admittedly i misread this, but it was already turning out in a super fun way so i just decided to run with it. have a little something from post-canon!
On the third ring, Joaquin has to step out of his math class, because whoever’s calling him is calling instead of texting and that means it’s serious.
All eyes are on him as he whispers an apology to his teacher and steps out into the hallway. He’s sure it’s not just because of the call; having magic powers tends to make him a target for people’s stares, nowadays. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to have gotten him much else. An exemption from math class, for example.
The door swings mercifully shut behind him, and Joaquin presses the phone to his ear. “Uh, hi, whoever this is?” he whispers, because one of the hall monitors is a few doors down and eyeing him suspiciously. “This isn’t a good time.”
“Hey, kid! Am I on the right frequency?”
Joaquin freezes and cranks up the volume. “Uh, sorry… is this—”
“Taako,” the voice on the other end drawls. “Y’know, from TV? And also the end of the world, keep fuckin’ forgetting about that one. Uh… listen. I’ve got a bit of a—uh, we have a bit of a situation here, and—”
“Whoa, just—hold on a sec.” The hall monitor is definitely staring now. “Where is here? Where are you? How did you even get my number?”
“World savior privileges. So the thing is—”
Joaquin blinks. “Oh my God, are you… are you here in this world? Like, actually here?”
He can practically hear Taako’s shrug through the phone. “Near as I can tell.”
I like how fanfiction culture decided to drop all pretense about self-insert oc characters hooking up with canon characters and just leaned into “character x reader” stories. These were just non-existent in my early FF days, we’re talking 15+ years ago, and they’re everywhere now. I appreciate it, chase your bliss dears
GOD I WISH I HAD THAT SPINE OF STEEL
WHY DID YOU LEAVE OUT THE BEST PART, THIS IS A LEGEND
just moving along like everyone else 