A Maiden and a Monster
Kyoto in the Hero Age is known for three things. First, the ancient temples and other historical sites which have drawn students and tourists for generations. Second, the thousands of martial arts dojos of every size and age, a subculture fed by the boundless optimism and egotistical fame-mongering of the professional Hero industry. And third, the famous Shiketsu High School and its vocational training program to turn out tomorrow's Heroes.
But such things do not make up an entire city. After the Age of Chaos, much had to be rebuilt. The modern Kyoto is remade partially in the image of the old, with a new skyline laid upon its bones. Things that could be patched to like-new, were. Things that could only be cleared away for the radically new left many gaps. Hidden in the maze of residential neighborhoods, or in the labyrinth of literally underground ruins and tunnels, are spaces carved out for less reputable elements of society.
There is a dance club. There are many dance clubs in the dark spaces of Kyoto, but there is one in particular that caters to the real freaks - and no one would dare to breathe a word of its regulars to the Law, because such betrayals are repaid in blood. It is Monstrus Corpora, and the joint is thick with abominations.
Tables circumscribing the room are filled with people trying to disappear into bottles or with small parties hunched together in private conspiracy. Behind the fully seated bar, a bull-headed woman eight feet tall and patchy with green-black scales pretends to be focused on cleaning the glassware while waiting for someone to cross the line. A disk jockey covered in wiggling cilia and gelatinous tentacles is not only live-mixing the thumping, surreal tunes, they're creating the light show as well in response to the activity of the crowd. But most of the floor space is a teeming mass of writhing and cavorting nightmares in gloom and shafts of colored kaleidoscope.
Countless permutations of chimera dance together and throw twisted shadows against the walls. People with hooved legs, canine heads, or painful thorns bursting from their skin; people covered head to toe in human teeth, or shaggy blue fur, or anthropod limbs jutting out at strange angles; a rooster-headed man with a snake head on its scaly tail; the too tall and lean with too many joints, the short and wide with fang-toothed grins and nubby horns; and a woman who spins and leaps within the crowd with a new shape every time the lights sweep by again.
Thief, catastrophe, and fugitive KÅkishin Yuuki - better known by some as the chaotic Shoggoth - is an ever-blooming assemblage of mouths splitting open her skin, blisters of bubbling eyes, flowing arcs of flesh careening away and bending back into herself again like a visceral display fountain. A graceful young limb twists in a green beam and slops into pseudopoda to coil around again. She leans her head back in laughter, her belly grinning with mismatched yellow fangs alongside her, and her arms become legs and legs become arms in smooth transformation with her head receding into her trunk and erupting out from the new top end.
She is a comfort in some ways to the dance partners she briefly joins and just as easily abandons again. Her exultation in the grotesque freedom is beautiful in its own way, and the ugliness she can become and shed again is a balm to these other mutants with less volatile anatomy. Hours pass in this way, among chugging basslines and fluting synths, until the DJ's set is finally over and the patrons erupt in a medley of appreciation and jeering.
Ten minutes later, freshly hydrated and tipsy from something fruity and alcoholic, Yuuki wanders out of Monstrus Corpora. Monstrous admirers petition from the dark entryway for her to stay longer or at least leave with them, and Yuuki - grinning smugly - waves a one-handed goodbye. She is sticky with sweat and buzzing with both fatigue and joy.
Her cropped jacket with its high fur collar is loose on her bare shoulders. She is dressed again for street level, though she has a way to walk and climb before reaching it. With a stray thought, she reaches up to make sure her black eyepatch is fixed in place to hide the birth deformity that marked her as different from infancy.
As she walks, she looks all about her. She looks at the cracked brickwork with deep shadows above her, twisted pipes long ago cut away from any source. She looks at tunnels and subterranean alleys and the collapsed corners of dusty buildings. She looks at the way behind her as she marches up out of the dark.
She often looks without turning her head. Eyes open across the exposed parts of her skin just for this purpose, and when they close again, it is smooth like nothing was ever there. But when she pushes open a metal maintenance door and emerges onto the blinding afternoon sun, she keeps her head turned to look over her shoulder. She watches the shadows retreat from the advancing yellow rectangle cast by the doorway, and her waifish silhouette stretching within it.
Yuuki turns away and sticks her hands into the pockets of her jacket. She brazenly slouches along the sidewalk in the face she was born with, the same one undoubtedly on wanted notices in post offices and flagged in government databases. You don't slither away from a shattered transport van and return to normal life, or at least no one sane tries to.
On a whim, Yuuki reaches out to feel the flower petals of a florist's stand as she wanders by, and never sees the impatient look the proprieter shoots her. She jogs across the street a couple intersections later, to window shop at one of the many vintage music stores in the city selling the nostalgia of the residents' great-grandparents. She looks up at the rooftops and watches a train go clattering by on the overpass tracks. Then she slips into the gap between two buildings where shadows and vent steam live throughout the day.
Nyoro Hoge, bespectacled and bob-haired and festooned in acid-colored club clothes with spiked accessories, is caught unaware when Yuuki springs out on pneumatic tendrils from a crack in the brickwork no one else could have fit. As her heart skips, Hoge's quirk Wasuremono causes her to haze into a misty grayscale, muting the garish outfit but doing nothing to stop Yuuki from pinning her by the shoulders to the wall.
"Why've you been following me, kid?"
Hoge furrows her brow and forces herself to breathe slowly. Her heart is still hammering but she feels something drip-feeding out of her mind, and her edges sharpen somewhat. Crucially, Wasuremono stops silencing her voice, though it comes out quieter than all the air she's forcing out would grant her.
"Who are you calling kid?"
Yuuki scoffs and lets Hoge drop back into balance. Yuuki's arms turn from twisted squid tentacle back to human shapes.
"You might be big, but there's no hiding that babyface and eagerness. Now really, what do you want? I'm busy today. Who's making runts do their tailing for them?"
"I don't work for anybody," Hoge answers with irritated honesty. Yuuki sees the truth of it in the twitch of the girl's eyebrows.
"Well, little brother, what's the deal, then? I don't know how you got into that club but I'm no cradle robber."
Hoge clicks her tongue. No, just the regular kind, she spitefully thinks. "Back off, hag. I've already got a boyfriend."
Yuuki snorts at this. Her words return to Hoge soaked in mockery. "Oh, did I have you pegged wrong."
Hoge blushes and swiftly pulls out her phone, earning a squint from Yuuki, who is briefly wary of a knife from the furtiveness of the motion. Her eye widens again and head twitches back as she sees Hoge's lock screen: a blonde with sparkling greenish eyes and a cocksure grin in a lush party gown. Yuuki is once again scrambling to figure out how to categorize her stalker.
"Uh," she begins, and is immediately cut off.
"This is professional," Hoge insists, thumbing the display off again. Yuuki catches her expression in the black mirror and masters it back to affected, cool disdain.
The two stare silently at each other.
"I'm a girl," Hoge adds.
"Okay," Yuuki replies flatly.
They stare.
"Professional how?" Yuuki crosses her arms and slowly needle-like fish teeth begin stretching out from every hair pore across them, transluscent and sharp, reaching out in row after row like crystals growing.
Hoge watches for a few seconds with her affixed pokerface, then reaches up to with both hands. She hides the tip of her nose and her mouth with one hand and her forehead and bangs with the other, leaving her large, sharp eyes framed. She looks the dangerous criminal Yuuki right in the eye and quotes the older woman's words from weeks ago back to her in Hoge's deep, even voice.
"'So tell your bosses what a good boy you are and be on your way.'"
Yuuki tilts her head and puzzles this out, then her face slackens in surprised recognition.
She breathes, "You're the Taro...!"
Not recognizing the slang but definitely not letting someone catch on to a moment of ignorance, Hoge nods and drops her hands.
Yuuki scrunches up her face. "If this is a retrieval thing the gunk we left with is long gone."
Hoge's mask breaks as she sticks out her tongue and tries not to retch. "No! And don't talk about it!"
"You sure are squeamish for-"
"I was infiltrating! I don't work there! That was nasty from beginning to end and I don't want to think about it anymore!" Hoge petulantly stomps her foot.
"Huh? A break-in? For who, the mob? Because who do you think bought-"
"I already told you I don't work for anybody," Hoge interrupts again. "Aren't you listening?"
Yuuki waves her hand, and when she does, it's without any aberrant anatomy. She's been distracted away from twisting her form and is now plain old rapidly-sobering Yuuki dealing with a weird girl in an alley.
"You're rude, you know that? It's starting to piss me off. So again, why are you bothering me?"
"You're the one that jumped me."
"Fuck you, kid. I've done way worse to tails. I'm not ending up in a jar in a fed lab. So talk straight."
Yuuki watches Hoge scrutinize her, as if she's already a specimen being anatomized. It's unnerving. It's making Yuuki seconds away from doing something rash, and even she doesn't know yet if that's going to be fight or flee, though either one would be easy enough.
"I don't know."
Hoge says it with such defeat that Yuuki finds herself immediately defused. She creates more eyes across her face just to communicate how emphatically off-guard she feels when she blinks away the surprise.
"You don't know?"
Hoge looks at the ground and rubs her opposite shoulder.
"Yes. I don't know. I can't do anything by myself to bring you in. No one needs any proof you were there, since you were already caught for it. If I tried to tell anyone it brings up too many questions about how I would know certain details. But I couldn't let it go. I keep..." She flexes her hands and watches her fingers clench and unclench as if the right words could be hidden there.
"This was really stupid. And I couldn't stop myself from doing it. I had to know what you were doing, or maybe why. And I hoped that maybe I would just... figure out what I needed when I saw it."
Yuuki lets Hoge get the entire confession out. Then, while Hoge is still distracted by her own rumination, she reaches up and flicks Hoge in the forehead hard enough to immediately leave a red mark in the unbroken skin.
Hoge jerks back and stumbles into the wall again, rubbing the mark with a mixture of disbelief and ache. Yuuki stalks directly out of the alley and back onto the sidewalk as if totally alone once more.
Hoge bursts out of the alley, startling a man she doesn't even glance at, and certainly takes no notice of the bubble he lets out of his wide, flat head. The thief and the vigilante fall into line, speed-walking down the street.
"Hey!"
"Don't follow me, kid. It's not healthy."
"So what?"
Yuuki throws her hands up.
"Why do you do it?"
Yuuki growls. "Do what?"
"All of it!"
"Because I can, kid!" She screws her face up and shoots a look over her shoulder like Hoge is the dumbest bug alive. And Hoge frowns because that's already how she feels. "Why do you skulk around as a busy-body?"
The younger girl doesn't pick up on the rhetorical tone. "Because it's... it's job training," she replies lamely.
Yuuki plants her feet and turns to face Hoge again. "What the fuck kind of job training means you do B&Es, stalker."
"It's not-" Hoge begins on angry reflex, then realizes she's lying. "...Heroing."
Yuuki laughs, then blows a raspberry at the answer.
"What a waste of time."
"And making things worse on purpose is better?"
"You wouldn't fucking get it." Yuuki flicks her fingers at Hoge like she was spraying water at a bad cat. She turns away and addresses her words to the way in front of her, dismissing Hoge entirely. "Some starry-eyed shoe-shined do-gooder doesn't know a damn thing about what you need to do when the whole world writes you off and waits for you to die alone."
Hoge grips Yuuki's shoulder. She doesn't realize how much strength she's giving it: enough to break her nails through the skin, if Yuuki weren't allowing the flesh to dimple like dough. The one-eyed woman looks back with a sneer, which softens to curiosity at the sight of Hoge's own expression.
The girl has pinched her mouth into a grim line. Her large brown eyes, tears starting to well but not yet enough to spill, are balefully glaring with a hidden fire. Her breath hitches. Her body shakes with a barely contained rage, light and shadow steaming out from her. Hoge swallows hard and spits out her words like every one of them is a pulled tooth.
"You have. No. Idea. What you're talking about."
Hoge shoves, hard, finally letting go of Yuuki. Yuuki turns with the force of it, facing Hoge fully once more. Flickering in place, superimposing after-images with herself, Hoge lets out her pain in wrenching yells, the track of tears staining down to her chin. The sound has a quality of being muffled by water. And still she glares as if meaning to boil Yuuki away with the heat of how insulted Hoge feels.
"I spent ten years an afterthought! To everyone! Even to me! Don't you dare say I don't know what loneliness is!" Hoge shoves Yuuki again, and Yuuki squints, taking a step back with it but refusing to give up ground. "Take it back!"
Hoge is clenching her fists at her side, teeth clenched also in a silent snarl. She feels water drop from her chin and, finally realizing she's crying, her face twists in shame and self-directed anger. She hides her eyes in the crook of her elbow and the desaturation of her haze hides the reddening of her face.
"You have no idea," she squeaks out, whiny and pathetic, which causes her impatience with herself to grow. Hoge grabs fistfuls of her clothing to keep her hands from shivering more and leans into the tense self-embrace.
Yuuki wordlessly watches. She frowns slightly as her eye rolls to take it in. The wretchedness of it. The nakedness of the emotions. She brings herself up off the back foot and, two full seconds later, steps forward to draw the younger girl into an impulsive hug.
Hoge gets her elbow between herself and the older woman, and tries to knock her away, but Yuuki stubbornly holds on to the ginger gesture. She rubs Hoge's back the way small children get comforted and Hoge begins sobbing. She presses her face down into the same shoulder she was crumpling earlier and goes slack, and Yuuki accepts the weight.
People in the street begin to linger nearby but they hurry off with a start when Yuuki shoots a mean look at them and opens her head at a hinge halfway up her face, showing scores of yellow fangs and glistening sinuses.
"I take it back," Yuuki maternally coos with her human mouth. "There, there."
The toothy second gash is seamlessly sealed back up by the time Hoge has finally calmed down again. This time, when she weakly pushes Yuuki off, Yuuki pulls away and stands a pace off. Hoge retrieves a travel sleeve of moist towelettes from her day bag and tries to clean her face and arms with all the dignity she can pretend to. Although she stands with a steel rod back, Hoge can't look directly at Yuuki anymore, and instead suspiciously eyes the pedestrians almost jogging to either side.
"You want to get some ice cream?," Yuuki asks in an almost matter-of-fact way.
"I'm lactose intolerant," Hoge replies emotionlessly.
Yuuki sighs. "Buzzkill down to your guts."
"That's not the most heroic reason to want to be a Hero."
Hoge lets the remark wash over her for a bit. The park bench is hurting her butt. She watches her shaved ice slowly melting into its cup. Half eaten. The lemon is too sugary and the coconut tastes very artificial.
"Maybe not. But that doesn't matter. People do it for all kinds of reasons. It's not any worse to help people to be liked than it is to help people for money or fame."
Yuuki lip-smackingly mouths a dollop of French vanilla ice cream across her tongue and palate. She slurps in some air to bring out the subtleties of fatty, sweet flavor. She lounges unguardedly on the bench and her arms take up the entire back. Hoge side-eyes Yuuki as her hackles raise. The one-eyed woman takes as long to respond as the taciturn teenager did.
"I guess not. The whole thing is a big sham like that. You know, you can get people to like you just by throwing money around. Why not get rich instead? It would be easy with what you can do, kid."
"No one likes bank robbers and contract killers. When they find out how you make the money they won't like you anymore. Or when you run out. It's not real."
Yuuki shrugs. "Not no one but fine. You want to be popular and you can't sing and dance," at this, Hoge winces, "so you're going to be a freelance rent-a-cop for the government. No one likes a narc either."
"Is there a point to this?"
Yuuki rolls out her tongue too far and drags the cone across it, pulling the white mass into her gob. Smack smack smack.
"You work too hard. You're going to burn out."
Yuuki taps Hoge on the back of the head, and the teen frowns at Yuuki. Their gazes lock. "No one stays with you forever. Nothing is permanent. There is only ever the present. Are you hearing me, kid?"
Yuuki looks more serious than she ever has. "You won't get what you're looking for from outside because it all rots away."
Hoge searches Yuuki's face for every micro-expression. She weighs how much she believes in Yuuki's sincerity, which is not much.
"Stop calling me kid."
Yuuki burbles up a laugh. "Okay, sure. I guess I should be nicer to someone who's beaten me up. What should I call you then, Your Grace?"
There's a beat as Hoge considers. "Marumaru."
Yuuki smirks.
"You know you can't really stop me, Marumaru. Stronger people than you have tried."
Hoge doesn't break eye contact as she brings the red plastic spoon of fruity ice into her mouth. "Nofink laffs forever."
Yuuki laughs again, and a smattering of secondary mouths open down her arms to join in. She ruffles Hoge's hair and stands up.
"Well, I have to be going now. Don't try to follow me. You'll end up shot by the locals." She gives Hoge a finger-gun blast and what would be a wink if she had two eyes. She begins to casually saunter away, and Hoge downs the whole cup of ice and syrup in one go as she stands up to follow, which only results in the girl having to watch with a brain freeze as Yuuki's stride gets longer and longer as her legs stretch out further and further. Yuuki's clothes hang off of her limply, held up by hooks of bone, as she contorts her mass towards flesh stilts and steps onto the roof of a two story building. Soon enough, she's completely out of sight, and all Hoge's left with is a paper cup and the distant sound of an inconsolably frightened grade-schooler.
Marumaru crushes the cup in her fist.