Doki Doki Yoru

Inigo Myoga shared one last joke and a laugh with his gym bros before they headed off to afterschool workouts and Inigo split away towards the school's getabako. He was in a hurry to get home so he could finish his first route in the new VN he had picked up. Even when babes were just cute, fake drawings, it was unmanly to keep them waiting - especially when you were close to sealing the deal and getting a full confession scene.

When he reached into the numbered wooden box to switch his indoor shoes with his outside kicks, he saw something that made his eyes widen.

"Gigan! Is this real?"
The quirk construct of a little green dragon chirped and swam through the air towards the folded square of white paper tucked into Inigo's shoe. Then it looked back at its stupified master, reached out a clawed front hand, and gave his arm a firm pinch.

Inigo jerked his arm down out of the way from pure reflex. "Yow! Those are sharp, you know!" With an amused and slightly cruel smile on its little draconic face, Gigan swooped back to rest across Inigo's shoulders. When Inigo opened the paper, his fingers only slightly trembling in anticipation, both pairs of eyes read the overly swooping characters of black ink.

At the bottom was one of Hoge's stickers, depicting the mask of her Marumaru hero persona with the red eyes shining in starbursts. After a moment, he flipped the paper over to see if there was anything on the other side. Then he lifted it towards the overhead light to check for secret messages.

"Gigan, it's either a date or an ambush." The dragon mewed optimistically, and Inigo responded with a laugh. "Maybe I'm close to two confession scenes today! Come on, buddy! I have a lot to do."

He immediately dropped his indoor shoes on the ground and started hopping on one foot towards the front doors so he could pull his sneakers on in transit. Gigan had to swoop behind and carry the discarded uniform slippers back into the proper box and rolled his tiny eyes. While Gigan flew like an arrow to catch up, Inigo broke into a full sprint, and his brightened mood broke out into boyish laughter.

---

Maru nervously checked her phone again for the sixteenth time in the last three minutes. He wasn't guaranteed to come. Even with all the other drafts of the letter that she agonized over (and tore up into little bits of confetti), the direct approach might not have been the right one. And he could be busy. It's not like she had perfect knowledge of his schedule, with how chaotic and adventurous his life seemed to be. It wouldn't even be his fault if he didn't show up this t-

She turned around to face the brick wall of the nearest building and donked her helmet against the fired clay. The pleasant sound of two hard things knocking harmlessly against each other interrupted the unnecessary train of thought. It didn't matter! It would be nice if he showed up but she already had a backup plan for the evening if she was alone. That was what was nice about asking someone else out instead. You could stay in control.

She checked her phone again. 7:59 PM and the sun was almost completely set. She looked up at the gray-black urban night pushing down the last orange lances of daylight sky. All around, the light poles were starting to turn themselves on and give the park a soft, warm glow. Maru marveled at how there were no signs left anywhere that this place had seen superpowered brawling and crashing spears of ice. Maybe quirks that fixed things and healed things were better than every combat ability out there.

Maru's phone buzzed once to signal the scheduled time she had set. Pushing down her anxious nausea, she quickly looked around and considered climbing higher for a better sightline. Then she spotted Inigo, standing on a slowly rising and turning platform, cylindrical and green and ringed with glittering mirrors. He had posed himself in a rigid tableau of disaffected casualness, smoldering through a wink, his earrings and blonde hair shining in the reflected park lights.

Maru was almost surprised he didn't bring speakers to play theme music. She bit down on her lip and exhaled one brief, amused snort. Then she jogged up to the rotating eyesore while Inigo's back was to her, did a short, silent vault to pop herself into a seated position on the edge, and with just a bit of a hushed slide was sitting at his feet.

She reached up and slipped her gloved fingers along his bare ones, then curled her thumb around his pinky. Inigo startled briefly, but then an excited smile grew on his face and swept away the careful posing from before. Hoge was glad to have herself hidden as Maru. Her face felt warm. So did her fingertips. One corner of Inigo's mouth started to lift as he prepared to speak and Hoge's heart fluttered.

"Baka." She closed her hand firmly around his in a solid grip and pulled down hard, forcing him to counterbalance and help lift her up to her feet. "We're drawing too much attention." Unperturbed, Inigo grinned and did a theatrical half-bow with one arm sweeping out wide.

"I only did what you asked, beautiful. Let me fix it." Still with his eyes closed and his arm out, the platform Inigo and Hoge were standing on instantly reshaped itself into a short, fluffy landing pad and both teens free-fell into it. With the sudden loss of light and footing, Hoge let out a sharp gasp, instantly muffled by her quirk responding to the shock. When the transformed Gigan folded around her with a bassy pomf she couldn't stifle a relieved giggle. Even though it came out hollow and echoey from acoustic suppression, Inigo's eyebrows raised up and he beamed at her as if he had just been given a major award.

Hoge couldn't take it and swiftly turned her head away to look at the empty park. Embarrassed at her loss of composure, she tucked an arm under herself so she could kick into a roll off the pillowy pad. Hoge caught her momentum on one foot, dispersed it with a half-turn spin and stopping sharp when her other foot landed. She placed her hands on her hips and tilted her head at Inigo, who just let Gigan drop him the rest of the way and pushed himself into standing.

Brushing his hands together, he said, "I was going to complain about how quickly you left our little nest there, but that was graceful. I'm glad I got to see it."

This was already going far outside of Hoge's plans. Flustered and starting to nervously blur into the dim light of the evening park, she said, "Thanks. It's something I've been practicing hard at ever since I decided to try for Hero Training. Although it has a controversial history, especially regarding the reformation efforts last century that have been accused of ahistorical mythologizing, modern ninjitsu holds-"

"Hoge, you know I think it's cute when you get passionate about this stuff, and I'll let you finish, but you missed the small talk part and a couple explanations about why we're here."

Inigo watched her lock up in place for a couple beats, then a minty cloud escaped from the stylized mandible shapes at the front of her mask and Maru visibly sharpened. Relaxing her shoulders and lifting her head, the girl he had come to see reached behind her neck and undid the mechanisms that held the hard point of her costume on. She lifted the helmet off her head and there was Hoge underneath, her hair shiny from the humidity and left a little messy from the restraint. She idly kicked a pebble out of the way of her foot and responded, mostly to the ground.

"You're right. And I've already told you what I was about to, anyway." She bashfully turned the helmet over and around in her hands. "The classwork hasn't exactly been challenging so I've been training more and that means I've been at the school less. Especially with the new security restrictions, I'm not seeing people much and was hoping... you could keep me company."

Inigo put on an expression that he thought was suave but actually looked smarmy. He stepped closer and curled a finger under her chin so he could lift her face to his. Hoge briefly considered biting it in a flash of spite, then decided to let him have this. Even after he pointed her face up, she kept her eyes looking down and away.

Don't get your hopes up too high, Hoge. He has no follow-through.

Then she opened her eyes fully and looked directly into his. She could hear him breathe in hard.
"I'll take any chance to be around such a cute girl." Hoge looked to see if he was being serious or just giving her lines. His eyes were so green. Had she ever seen green eyes before meeting him? Her gaze flicked down to his lips. Then she looked up to check where he was looking again, and he seemed a million miles away. She counted in her head, one, two, three.

Hoge quickly reached up and flicked him right in the middle of his forehead. He stepped back a pace and rubbed the spot with his hand, and Hoge took the chance to fasten Maru's face back on and lock it behind her neck. "It's still a training day, whether you're here or not. Follow me. I want to show you something."

Without waiting for a response, she hurried herself into a run directly at the wall of a nearby apartment building. Maru could hear Inigo's footsteps behind her, but not her own. Every muscle tensed as her focus tightened on just movement. With a last burst of speed, she leaped at the wall and pushed up the vertical face with her feet in two strong strides. Stretching out as far as she could, Maru just barely caught onto a pair utility pipes. She hung from the side-by-side piping and used them as leverage to brace her feet high and against the bricks. She was crouched against the wall in defiance of gravity. With a surge of strength, she hauled herself up with her arms and launched herself up with her legs. Maru sped through the air and managed to land on the top of the pipes at the spot where they seamlessly went into the building again. She balanced precariously on the narrow surface with her heels suspended high over the expanse of open air behind her.

Inigo reached the height of his own jump off a constructed springpad, causing his hair to rise in every direction and his trademark red tie to begin to curl out of the gray suit vest he had elected to wear tonight. Maru looked out over her shoulder and her eyes smiled at his silliness, safely hidden away behind the mask.

"Hoge, what are you doing?" He reached out and a streak of green from below rushed to become a barren flag pole jutting out from the wall. He caught it two-fisted to stop his descent. "And how?"

Momentum. Duh.
She turned in place and dangled one leg completely unsupported. Then she grabbed on to Gigan too, deciding to take advantage of the new shortcut. She used the flag pole as a handhold to run up and along the wall and built up a swing, then released at the height of her arc. She flew across a couple meters of open gap towards a fire escape. She caught its railing in her hands and smoothly pulled herself up over it while swinging her legs clear of the bar.

Maru was getting caught up in the thrill. Instead of taking the stairs, she instantly hopped onto the handrail of the fire escape stairs and sprinted up it with confident balance. She made it to the opposite side of the fire escape and met the end of the handrail where it cornered across a grate landing. Once there, she jumped out over open air again and angled towards the building's wall. Her foot struck the bricks and her fingertips brushed rough clay. She kicked the wall as hard as she could so she could go back the way she came with added height. Only her fingertips caught the guard rail of the fire escape one floor up. Maru snapped her hand closed in a vice grip and the rest of her twisted out over a deadly drop. Even though her back smacked against the railing and she lost all her speed, the only sound was the gentle hum of resonating metal.

Maru looked down from where she was dangling off the side of a building. A concrete pedestrian path a dozen meters below, lit orange by park lights. Her heart hammered in her chest, her muscles were starting to burn, but she was happy. Were her eyes dilating? Everything seemed bright even with the sun having set. Breathing hard and smiling, she worked herself into a swing and her shoulder reported a satisfying ache. Her feet caught the brick wall again, and perfectly horizontal, she ran herself up into a handstand. Shoulder and abs worked together to turn her whole body and line up both arms along the guard rail. Maru lowered herself in the handstand, trembling slightly in the effort to stay balanced, and tucked in to slip her legs through the clearance between fire escape landings. She stood on the other side again, leaning away from the railing, and tried to catch her breath.

Inigo noisily ran up the fire escape steps with Gigan sweeping playfully around the bars.
"That was amazing! And hot! So cool! Hey, if you're not busy later in the week there's this race that-"
Maru was making a dark blur of her arm in the low light, rapidly swiping away the noise. She knew she was too worked up to be able to speak well, so just held one hand in front of her mouth in a shushing gesture while the other one pointed at the roof of a nearby building. Maru had to hope he got the hint so she wouldn't have to waste paper and time on this. Then, with adrenaline still pumping, she continued her improvised ascension of the twenty meter building and cat-leaped over to the other side of the nearest alley.

In short order, Inigo and Hoge made it to the roof she had indicated before, some old commercial building with a geometric glass gable taking up most of the space. The blue glass seemed to glow between the light reflected off the sky and the ones that still remained on in the atrium below. She circled the building in a relaxed walk.

The park was a vision of dark green shadows and yellow-orange lights. Water features were transformed to silent black pits with sparkling golden waves. Hoge watched leaves manifest in the gloom, visible only when they shimmered in the unfelt breeze. All the figures of the city were far from here - just shapes wandering distant streets, just silhouettes behind gauzy curtains. Second by second, Hoge felt internal heat calm under the coolness of her skin, and knew that Wasuremono was disappearing too. She was completely present.

Then Inigo hooked an arm behind her neck and hung it over the other shoulder. Her skin buzzed again. He was drinking in the scenery.

"Is this what you wanted to show me?" He sounded somber. So different from his usual self. Maru reached up and held just his middle finger, gently, pinched in the triangle of the thumb, index, and middle fingers of her right hand.

"Almost." She lifted his hand above her head and turned under it to free herself from his arm. But she didn't let go of him. Instead, Hoge led Inigo towards a water tower on the roof and began to climb the struts on the legs to reach the narrow grate near its crown.

"Careful here. Any damage could contaminate the water inside and incur fines on the building manager."
"Sure, sure." Instead of following directly after her, Inigo held on to the rungs of a ladder-shaped Gigan and they advanced up the side rails almost like escalator steps. When he got to the top, Maru was already lounging on the curve of the water tower with her legs braced beneath her. She was facing down a long avenue, where sparkling lights and foot traffic made its own kind of black river in the evening. It was teeming, lively, vivacious, and - from this distance - almost totally silent. This high up, almost everything in the city was below them, and they were invisible due to the angle and the darkness. Slate clouds drifted lazily overhead and covered the moon in a silver veil.

"I know it doesn't compare to what you see all the time when flying around. I've only been higher a few times, though. And this is the highest I've climbed by myself."
Hoge adjusted herself so she was tucked up into a tighter, coiled shape. She made a smooth scraping sound when she did.
"Step by step, I got this far. A few months ago I wouldn't have been able to overcome the fear of heights. But here I am. After everything that's happened, acrophobia just seems silly. There's worse things than falling."
Only after it came out of her mouth did Hoge realize the opening she just gave for some corny line. To her surprise (and to some small, unlistened to part of herself, disappointment) Inigo didn't take it. He stood on the narrow walkway and leaned back against the water tower, looking out in the same direction that Hoge had been facing.
"It could still hurt," he softly smirked.
Maru stuck her legs out beneath her and slid down from her perch, catching the railing with her toes and letting herself onto the maintenance ledge one foot at a time. She looked down into Inigo's face and tried to control her breathing.
"Don't misunderstand. I was still nervous when originally trying to get up here on my own. But not when you're around." She kept eye contact with him. It was so much easier with lenses in the way. She swallowed and her throat felt thick, and dry. "You'd catch me."

Inigo grinned, just like usual. "Yeah, I'll protect you." They both knew it wasn't just about playing unwisely on roofs. "I'll protect everyone."

Damn. So close.

Hoge was suddenly angry. Mostly at herself. He was being heroic! He was being brave! That's the right thing for him to be. She had no right to be upset about him doing the right thing and thinking about other people.

But did he have to be doing it right now? argued the spiteful and petty part of herself. In this place? This spot where she had thought of sharing something she had experienced and wanted it to be with him?

Her foot twitched, but she refused to stamp in front of him. She didn't want to be worked up, at least not like this. She wanted to-

Hoge noticed a glint in the wrong place, a flash of light from what should have been a dark alley. Gunmetal gray. She looked passed Inigo and focused in on the spot, every mote of attention on this one abberation. In the poor lighting and high angle she could still make it out. A figure in a dark grey overcoat and man's suit, a brimmed hat - she didn't really know many hat names - pulled low on his head to further shadow his face. The figure had a bundle wrapped in non-descript brown paper in the crook of one arm and a revolver tucked into his slacks to be held by a leather belt. He stopped in a particularly dark part of the alley, in the shadow of a wall-mounted utility box that blocked one of the street lights. He began to look around, and lifted his head to scan the rooftops.

Swiftly, Hoge pressed herself against Inigo and clamped a hand over his mouth. She pinned him hard against the water tower to compress their silhouettes into the construction of the building and break up the humanoid shapes. She tried to cover up as much of him as she could in the darkness of her stealth costume and her quirk Wasuremono did the rest. It flared up hard, the gloom of the night bleeding into every edge, leaving her looking smokey and indistinct. Even the metal of her helmet drained of color and reflection, looking like a matte lump of desaturated urban detritus.

In shock or maybe confusion, Inigo tried to catch his own balance, or look around at what her head was pointed at. Marumaru fought against him, knowing that any motion could give them away. He must have tried to speak, because she felt his mouth move under her glove, and his eyes widened when he realized all the sound was swallowed into her hand like a black hole. After a few moments of racing thoughts, he slammed his eyes closed with the furrowing of his brow, and Gigan slithered low across the ground and towards the edge of the roof.

The man in the alley finished his check and squatted down. He pantomimed tying his knotted shoes and pulled the package from under his armpit. He slipped it into some spot in the black shadow and stood up without it, then casually exited the alleyway and disappeared into the throng. Hoge waited, alert, for a few minutes more, just to ensure there wouldn't be anyone following along soon after to access the dead drop. She made sure there was enough space between his nose and her hand for Inigo to breathe, and they naturally synchronized their breathing in the confined spacing so one inhaled only when the other's exhale gave room. Somewhere in that span, Inigo slipped an arm around Hoge's waist and over her hip. His fingers rested on the cylinder dispenser of rolled paper that made up the heaviest part of her utility belt. So that was fine.

After the cautious minutes passed, Hoge finally uncoiled and pushed away from Inigo and the water tower. She was a quiet streak in the dark as she traced an efficient path from the walkway, to the roof, and dangling off the edge. By dropping, catching, kicking off interior corners, and shimmying down while braced between two narrowly spaced walls, Maru made her way back to street level and zeroed in on the hidden package. She carefully felt around with featherlight touches to check for triplines and other triggers for nasty surprises, trusting in her quirk to confuse electronic sensors. Clean. As far as she knew, the only protection for the paper-wrapped object was the subtlety of its secret placement.

By the time she slowly slid it out and had it off the ground, Inigo had made his way to her side again.
"What was that about?" He sounded irritated, but maybe it was just that he was as worked up about the odd interruption as she was.
"Maybe nothing. He had a gun, though. He wasn't dressed like Yakuza either."
"Some Yakuza just look like normal middle aged guys or young professionals, you know." What was he getting defensive for? She rolled her eyes in the expressionless helmet and stepped towards the edge of the alley.
"Innocent young professionals don't carry secret firearms and leave anonymous packages in hiding holes."
Sounding less sure, Inigo replied, "They might. I don't know any."

Hoge tactically left out her memories of the scummy office workers that worked with her father. Instead, she memorized the shape of the knot that tied the package together, in case it was part of some code. Then she began to open it up. "Step back," she advised. "I've read that things like this can contain disease-carrying powders or explosives."

A green net shot passed her eyes, snatching the package out of her hands and tightly wrapping around it layer after layer like an octopus devouring a crab.
"Inigo!," Hoge snarled.
"I'm not letting you unwrap a bomb!"
Hoge stomped her foot and squeezed her hands into fists. "Let me? You won't let me? You won't let me investigate something? You won't let me do what we're all training to do? How are you going to let me do anything, king let-me of the Nyoro clan?" She began stalking towards him, her eyes blazing.
Inigo put his hands up with his palms out to her, rolling his eyes around as he scrambled to think of the right words to say. "Wait wait! I meant-- Uh, I meant I won't let you without protection! Wait hold on hear me out!"
Maru stopped right in front of him. She tightly crossed her arms and glared at the ground, pouting about losing control again. Her outline shimmered, firmed, loosened again. Quieter than she meant to, she said, "Fine."

Inigo side shuffled around her, keeping himself facing in her direction until he was several steps away. He crouched down and the net formed a little dragon head so the two could have a whispered negotiation. After a minute or so, which was enough time for Hoge to calm down, drop her arms, and become embarrassed again, Inigo swaggered back with his hands in his pockets and giving her a toothy grin.

"I had to give up some time on Saturday to a soup kitchen and promise nothing bad was going to happen, but he agreed to help."
Hoge palmed her face. "Ini, we still have classes on Saturday."
He shrugged and put on an innocent look. "Well, Gigan will be there. And instead of playing Heart-thumping Sugar High Summer Saga 2, I'll be ladling soup."

She turned back the way she had come so she wouldn't have to look at him. Faintly behind herself when she kneeled on the ground, she heard, "Wait, 'Ini'?" But she was already putting her arms into the armored flexible gloves going through the curved blast shield that Gigan had transformed himself into, and she watched through the thick translucent window. Much more clumsily, she undid the packaging and allowed it to bloom like a flower. Petals of paper sheets unwound within, covered in official looking text and cradling a memory stick. She went around the dragon barrier and crouched close over it, reading the pages without touching anything. Inigo quickly hurried over to meet her there, but didn't get as low so alley mud wouldn't get on his nice date clothes.

"Huh? This isn't Japanese. Or English, by the way."
"I know. I get perfect scores in English, Myoga."
"What happened to Ini," Inigo muttered, pouting.
"It's a simple substitution cipher for katakana."
Inigo looked at her bug-eyed, but she was totally focused on the top page. "How can you possibly know that?"
Hoge looked up at him, with body language like someone waking up from a dream. "Isn't it obvious? You can tell from the symbol frequency and word length."

She looked down at the page again, then bent low so her cheek was resting right against the ground, and she squinted at what could be seen on the curling pages below. "If this isn't a feint, then whoever dropped this off either can't handle an actually secure encoding system, or they don't trust the recipient to be able to handle anything more complicated. It's kind of like a door lock. It's just there to keep out the most unmotivated bystanders."

Inigo laughed at that, even though Hoge hadn't made a joke. He was such a weirdo sometimes. "Inigo, I didn't want to show we had intercepted their system, but we should take this." She started getting back up to her feet and bound up the package again. She cradled it against her chest like an infant.

"What? Why? It's not our problem. It's just some weird package some weird guy left in a weird alley. It might be weird but we're not even official. And the night is still young! We could go to karaoke! We could do more of that cool running stuff! Or we could go back to your place and-"

She stopped him with just a hand placed on his bicep. "Inigo. The writing was about Shiketsu High."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIbhGHfOm30