Clowning Around
Part One: Set-Up
The room stank of disinfectant and pizza. All of the furniture had moved to the very edges of the walls, revealing the discoloration of the tatami mats that proved how infrequently such a thing had been done. In the center, six pillowy futons laid side by side by side, and five sleepy occupants were dreaming the night away.
Nyoro Hoge was too happy to sleep. She was staring up at the ceiling, water stains blurred away by her glassless eyes, and she smiled serenely. She was resting square on her back with her arms directly at her sides and one part of her mind was performing patterns of isolated muscle tension and release, while the rest of it buzzed with the warm and unfamiliar feeling of being surrounded by people.
Hoge lolled her head to one side. There was a beautiful blond boy, his quietly snoring mouth agape. A silk cap of some kind was protecting his hair as he slept, and an oversized green sleep mask obscured his vision. He had also gone to sleep with the head and foot flipped from the rest of the room's occupants with his whole body up to his neck firmly wrapped in a blanket, all at the insistence of others. He had a reputation, her lovely Inigo. Not an unearned one, but perhaps an unfair one. Hoge's eyes crinkled as she watched him sleep. Strangely, she could feel her heartbeat slow into a calmer rhythm as she did. He looked harmless and cute like this, even knowing as she did the other sides of him. Like a tiger taking a nap at the zoo. She felt many things that she couldn't say out loud yet, but suspected he knew about anyway. They rolled across her like waves on the beach, rhythmic and ceaseless and cooling.
She lolled her head to the other side. Her first and dearest friend Chihiro had her face partially veiled in the messy fan of her own black hair. While Hoge watched, Chihiro's fingers -- the girl's limbs were askew all over, blanket partially kicked off of one leg, an arm flung up above her head, the other crossing herself at a harsh angle -- twitched and flexed in spasms that must have been shadows of an active dream. Chihiro had been moving about in her sleep and once or twice Hoge had been fooled into thinking the girl was restlessly awake, but closer inspection always confirmed she was gone from the world. It was nice to know that someone else in the room was also unused to sleeping among other people, and the unguarded way Chihiro did it somehow suited her by contrast. Hoge didn't even mind that Chihiro's foot had bridged the gap between futons and was resting on Hoge's own blanket. It was something akin to camaraderie, so she liked it.
Further beyond, her admirable classmate Yui was laying on her side and turned away. Yui's blanket was held up near her chin, protecting the older girl's neck, and Hoge watched the greying cloth rise and fall with Yui's relaxed breathing. She admired how Yui had been growing out her pretty, precociously white hair, and the way it reflected the blue midnight light filtering into the room. As if set in a private world apart, Yui was tucked away neatly and restfully, without a worry spared for anyone else around. She was strong in a practical, enduring way and Hoge spent a while basking in it, before her thoughts drifted and she had to dutifully cut them free from her mind.
And also Sally was there. At the end, the brunette American was clinging to the pillow wrapped in her embrace, so only her arms and hair could be seen. She had pointedly taken the spot closest to a wall and furthest from Inigo and Hoge. Every silver lining has its cloud. But even still, Hoge's giddiness could not be tarnished.
She looked up at the ceiling again, the view blurred even further by the tears that started to form in her eyes. Hoge had finally had a sleepover. This was the best day of her life so far. She smiled more fully, lips parting in a silent laugh, as a teardrop ran a wet trail towards her ear. Overwhelming joy pulled her into dreamless sleep.
Blearily, Hoge came up from the abyss of sleep to a dense, warm weight on her chest. Confusion and concern began to bloom from that spot, and she struggled to arrange her scattered hypotheses into a coherent thought. The front-runner seemed to be that it was Inigo's fault somehow, and in a queasy mixture of excitement, trepidation, and a desire to go back to bed, Hoge fought her eyes open and rolled them unfocused at the offending sensation.
Hoge looked into the accusatory red eyes of a chubby rat.
Panic immediately smothered all her thoughts and Hoge gargled out a shocked noise, bubbles of spittle muted by the action of her stealthy Quirk Wasuremono. She flashed into desaturation and thrashed about her sleep-leadened limbs, trapped by a smothering weight that turned out to be her bedding. The rat squealed in shock and awe, screaming its ratty best, and scrambled with sharp little claws to find purchase and a way out. Hoge bucked up her ribcage, arching her back off the ground, and Popsy's pet rodent popped up with the sudden motion and landed unharmed on the ground right by Hoge's bed, then raced for safety. It dove for the crack under its master's bedroom door and got stuck partway through. Little pink feet kicked around furiously until it dragged itself to the other side, the clean and scaly tail being the last thing that slithered out of sight.
Hoge sat bolt upright and tried to swallow. She messed up doing so, prompting a coughing fit that came out like wheezing heard from inside a tin can. As her heart hammered in her chest and disgust roiled through her body, her edges chaotically jumped between sharpness and indistinctness like sea spray crashing against the lip of a cliff. She immediately forced herself up. Her unsteady and anxious footsteps brought her into the kitchen, where she hurriedly began to wash her hands.
"Good morning, Coru-chan," said Inigo brightly. "Didn't expect you to be the last one awake."
Slack-faced, wide-eyed, quirk-suppressed, Hoge lifted her head out from under the faucet, cold water dripping from her hair and face. She didn't know what to say, so didn't say anything.
"I'm about to make pancakes! How many do you want?" He was already in slacks, shirt, and signature red tie. She was in her modest black sleep clothes. He was grinning at her. There was not a single thought in her head. Unbidden, the phrase, 'Ah, a moment of zen,' presented itself. It was such a stupid thing to think that the rest of her mind unjammed all at once, and she found herself responding numbly.
"Three. Rat?"
"She seemed to like you."
"Animals don't like me, Ini. I make them nervous." And I don't want to play with vermin.
He shrugged and an expression too complex for Hoge to decipher passed his face. She found herself touching his arm, near the elbow, and blushed with embarrassment. She jerked her hand away. "Unless they're small, then six."
He didn't get lost in her jump in conversation. She loved that about him. "Pan sized, I promise."
"Then three," Hoge said mostly to the sink. She turned and slid past him, pinching the rolled up cuff of his shirt as she went.
Yui shot Hoge a questioning look as she noisily popped her sternum and shoulders in a stretch. "Ya good?"
Hoge flicked her eyes towards the ceiling and looked out the window at nothing. "Yes." She got to the tightly packed bag that contained her things for this stay, and retrieved a vacuum sealed bag with a white towel inside. In a few seconds, Hoge was squeezing the reinflated towel against her scalp, drawing the moisture from her bob. The trendy hairstyle she started the year with hadn't made the splash she wanted, but she still disliked the feeling of it brushing against her neck, and hadn't let it get much longer. She cut it high in the back by habit and touch, and to her frustration, the scant growth elsewhere had made her natural cowlick more visible.
Clearly unconvinced, Yui dismissively growled, "Alright," and let the matter drop. In a similarly peacekeeping mind, Hoge ignored Sally giving her judgemental looks about the momentary lapse in self-control.
Sally was sitting with her back propped up against the wall with a cushion under her, knees up near her body. She was on her phone and texting. From the guarded posture and occasional doe-eyes, Hoge assumed it was Sally's boyfriend Noah. Considering she could hardly say anything about it given her own outlandishly forward behavior with Inigo only minutes ago, Hoge physically bit her tongue and turned her gaze elsewhere.
Everyone else had already folded up their futons and was busy with warming up for the day. The kids weren't exactly on vacation, interning for an active Pro Hero like they were. Yes, it was Popsy, who was not what Hoge had been led to believe, but she was indeed registered and this was an official activity. Anything could happen today. Even if it was more hands-on training, the first session had been so intense and bizarre that a bit of prep was only prudent.
As such, Yui was stretching the fatigue and stiffness out of her joints, and ensuring the flow of her quirk's tough, red strings were smooth and swift. Chihiro was slowly going through a routine of kata, posing as if a blade were held in her empty hands, the measured pace making things more difficult as she concentrated on the unrestricted movement of every muscle during every motion. Who even knew where powerful and diminutive Kaga was. Flustered at being behind, Hoge went back to her bedding and began airing it out with heavy, loud flaps of cloth. She made a mental note to either wash these at some point today, or burn the blanket. For sanitation. Rats were well known to be involved in several plagues, and Rattus norvegicus even left urine trails in its wake. Hoge's carefully placid face broke into a disgusted scowl for a full second.
Inigo began loudly singing a rock song from the kitchen as steam and oil hissed. He was clearly prioritizing volume over melody. Sally rolled her eyes and adjusted herself in her seat, and everyone else ignored him. Though she kept herself busy, Hoge thought it was better than any morning radio. Her hands suddenly halted. She was squeezing the futon in a white-knuckle death-grip, and staring straight through to the core of the planet, lost in her own thoughts. Her throat clenched.
'This is bad. I think I need him around.'
Memories from much younger days, when her parents had given up on keeping track of her and had started leaving sticky note communiques everywhere, arrested her thoughts. She had needed them so badly -- of course she did, every child needed their parents -- and they had given up in the end. Everyone gave up in the end. No matter how hard she tried to be who they wanted, or how else she tried to make a mark in the minds of somebody (anybody!) it never lasted. If even the people who gave her life didn't care, then how could anyone else? It was always just her and Wasuremono in the end, always just her desperate mind and the body that smothered it: Hoge had never wanted to be that vulnerable again, never wanted to be in the position to be cut all the way through by inevitable loss, but she was only fooling herself; she had let it happen in small stages, like drop torture, and she didn't even notice when she had lost the control and protection, she hadn't been careful and now the future pain that would unravel her loomed in her mind's eye as an echo of thousands of lonely afternoons solitary in a silent bedroom with
"Hoge, it's just a pet rat." Sally's words shot through the illusion of memory, and they collapsed into tatters. Hoge forced herself to breathe slowly in through her nose, nostrils flaring, airway forced open. Her entire body from her face to her toes relaxed and she slightly slumped forward. Hoge finished the tight roll she made of the blanket and twisted it into a flat spiral.
Voice breaking, she managed a, "Hai," and folded the futon to stack on the others. Then she picked up her travel bag and made for the one bathroom to change.
"Don't stay in there long!," Yui brusquely called out to her back. "I'm gonna need to wash off soon!"
Hoge just raised a thumb and closed the door.
Inigo was crooning and howling, enjoying the joke of laying it on so thick. He was a little surprised no one, even a neighbor, hadn't told him to shut up yet. Using the bright green and oversized spatula in his hand, he scraped the bottom of the over-seasoned iron pan that he was using to cook with and mindlessly flung the pancake -- extra fluffy in the Japanese style -- flipping end over end into the air. The spatula opened a draconic eye to watch the path of the pancake. When it closed again after, the bubble curve of the eye flattened away and disappeared as if it never existed. The pancake landed most of the way onto the messy stack near the stove, about a third hanging limply over the side, and Inigo released his spatula mid-air to reach for the bowl of batter.
Gigan swooped back into draconic form as he was released, and the quirk construct glided towards the stack to nudge it into a more stable configuration. It looked coyly over its shoulder and spied Inigo pouring with his eyes closed, too caught up in mangling the chorus of the song he was singing. With a furtive motion, Gigan ripped a bit of crispy irregular spatter at the edge of one of the pancakes in the stack and shoved it into his mouth before anyone could see.
Inigo crooked his arm back to mime the start of using a spatula again, and Gigan sprinted and flapped its leathery wings to reach his hand in time and transform back into the utensil. The two cooked a little longer while the last intern, Kaga, returned from his morning run with a plastic sack of convenience store snacks.
"Yo, Fight Man!," Inigo called out.
Kaga poked his head into the kitchen in passing. He looked at Inigo expectantly, the smaller boy's heavy eyebrows furrowed. A small amount of sweat beaded on Kaga's shaved stubble of hairline. Inigo, who had only been making a greeting, gave Kaga a finger pistol and a wink. Kaga gave Inigo a small smile and a head nod in return. Then he left to put the bag in the living room with a rustle of plastic.
Inigo was just starting to carry the finished super-stack into the common space when he heard Hoge, who had been flicking through the television, cry out with all the rage of a wounded animal. He became startled and dropped the platter, and Gigan -- equally alarmed -- turned into a translucent green ball that caught the whole meal and fell to the ground with a thunk. The ball, full of berry and pancake, rolled autonomously into the next room.
The kids scrambled to check on their classmate only to find her shaking in front of a news broadcast. They even heard something get knocked over in Popsy's closed bedroom and the muffled honk of a bike horn. Inigo stood with a hand braced against the wall, the other feeling his heartbeat. Yui called out "What the hell," as Chihiro came close to look up at Hoge's hyper-focused face. Hoge's expression was scrunched up like a tengu mask and Chihiro was indecisive about what to do. Kaga had his arms folded behind his back like an old man while he watched the TV with a calmer, yet still firm, expression.
Sally was more direct.
"What the <fuck> is wrong with you?" She had to lapse briefly into her native English, not knowing any Japanese cusses equal to her irritation at the moment.
Hoge held both of her fists in front of her chest and shook them back and forth. "He's beating me!!"
On the screen, another kid from their class was giving an interview. It was Christopher Cain, in his professional persona of the Mirror Devil. He held his face in an expression of seriousness, blankness, his goggles pushed up onto his forehead and tilting back his hat. To them, who were all familiar with the boy, there was a suppressed boredom and a trace of contempt in his eyes. The camera lights occasionally flashed as he spoke levelly with the reporters. Behind him, police milled about in front of a closed bank, and yellow caution tape criss-crossed the scene. Ambulances and EMTs clustered near blanketed civilians and shadowed, digitally blurred faces could be spotted in the rear of a few patrol vehicles. One seemed to be a figure with long hair, her forehead pressed gloomily against the divider between the back seats and the front of the cab.
Most of Cain's words were covered up by the news voice-over and the quasi-conversational chatter of the hosts contained in a view box taking up one corner of the screen. Below, a ticker of text scrolled by, explaining the incident was a bank robbery foiled by a team led by hero Smokin' Se◯y. He had been injured along with the suspects. All hostages were recovered unharmed. The broadcast was intercut with footage taken from security cameras inside the bank, as well as some less stabilized footage from stranger angles. The talking heads laid out crime statistics and talked up how amazing it was that nobody died.
"Was that old man too busy chain smoking to do this job? Unbelievable! Cain-san is the first one to do a solo debrief with the media! Tsk, and he's doing it so lazily. What was all the practice for, Christopher, if you're going to be a dead fish and dissuade the public with a who-cares attitude?" Hoge's chastisements came out at bullet speed, futilely hammering against the television screen. She didn't say aloud her thought -- it should have been me! -- though everyone else could hear it clear as a bell regardless.
"Way to go, bro! Oh, I should take a photo and text him. I wonder if we can get Smokin' Sexy and Popsy-sensei to hook up together... for a patrol, of course." Inigo rambled on to deflate the tension, and sent off a message to Chris containing an image of Hoge flickering in front of the TV. He quickly began excitedly typing up how cute she was when she was worked up. His thumbs tapped out, <She says congratulations and good job!> Whether that translation was a lie to himself or to Chris remained unclear.
"In that getup he almost looks like a normal undergrounder. He could nearly pass for an adult pro."
"Yeah, he's doing okay. If he had really screwed up they would have been eating him alive in the report."
"That's what Rosethorn-sensei says but, it can't be that bad, can it? The real story must be more important."
"Hm. I wonder."
Five sets of eyes drifted towards Popsy's door, all except Hoge reminded of how their current mentor's fall from grace had been accelerated by a media set to frenzy by scandal. It was like blood in the water, and whatever held attention best would be in the news longer. The stations lived and died by the size of their audience, and there were always degrees of compromise with journalistic ideals.
Hoge muttered notes and criticisms to herself, spiraling out from not just Chris but eventually to the activity of police in the background and the outfits of the news anchors, until even her attention was ripped away by the owner of the apartment half-falling through her own clattering open doorway. Popsy, one eye squinted closed at the painful daylight, stood while brandishing a stick menacingly half in and half out of her messy bedroom. A castle made of empty beer cans was half-annihilated, like a kaiju had decided to smash through a gap in the wall and got bored after collapsing a single tower.
"Huh? No attacks? Injuries?" She waved around the stick a bit and the last browned, desiccated leaf fall off the end of its twig and twirled to the floor.
"Good morning, sensei," said Inigo with sunshine cadence. "Breakfast is ready."
Behind him, Gigan plopped the disheveled pancakes, spattered with crushed berries, onto a plastic tray acting as serving platter on a too-small table. Popsy eyed it and grunted.
"Yeah, okay. Give me one minute." She threw the stick randomly over her shoulder and it coincidentally smashed other hole into the can castle like a ballista bolt. Then the door was closed and unrecognizable sounds came through the other side. Once everyone was seated, and surprisingly almost exactly one minute later, Popsy emerged again with a smile instead of a scowl and a suspicious shimmer to her face. She hid a burp behind her fist. She had changed from her stained sweat pants used for winter sleeping into more recently laundered sweat pants for sitting around her apartment. Her oversized sleep shirt had been changed for a blank pink tee. Her hair was a mess, but years of faking it made her blue eyes shine with false joy.
Everyone squeezed in close and held their plates one-handed and close to their chests. Hoge let her thoughts flow away and come around again and again, like the swirling of a whirlpool, and made double sure with a swiftly stabbing fork that she got her three pancakes. The teens were hungry and their temporary guardian was mentally mostly somewhere else. Together yet apart, the large group breakfasted in relative silence.