Metal Fatigue

[Soundtrack https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVaNkZnUzEM ]

It’s a chilly afternoon, and rain dribbles down in uncertain spurts as if even the clouds aren’t ready to get out of bed today. Feeling cold and unmotivated, Mochi rolls himself down the hall towards the sheltered path to the dorms. The effort feels unrewarding, and he curves himself out of the walking path to park next to one of the windows.

Outside, one of Shiketsu’s many flower gardens. They’re dotted here and there to liven up the place, make it look like less of an eyesore. Mochi doesn’t hate them. They don’t cheer him up, either. His eyes stare through the colorful petals blankly while he tries to recover enough spiritual strength to press forward. Leaning to the side, he presses his forehead against the cold glass. There’s a massive weight hanging over him, it’s been hanging over him all day. Unable to focus on his school work. Unable to focus on his temple work. He bites at the inside of the mouth, trying to ground himself with the sensation. The pressure and the cold.

Opening his eyes, Mochi spots a glint of red out in the gardens. Kawano Reiji, seated under a tree in a canopied alcove. Glaring from under his brow, Mochi drags himself upright and seizes his wheels with a new sense of purpose. It’s a thin veneer, barely enough to gift his hands the momentum to propel himself forward.

Rolling down one of the shallow wooden ramps from the covered path onto the damp dirt and grass, Mochi swings towards Kawano’s alcove. Every shove over the soggy ground is harder, forcing Mochi to pull more strength from his exhausted arms. Casting his eyes up and around them, he doesn’t see any cameras angled towards this spot. A little blindspot. Must’ve been plain for the hacker to see with his techno-senses.

“Hey,“ voice brittle and cold like ice, Mochi rolls to a stop looming over the younger boy, who’s planted himself on a dry patch between some roots. Kawano jumps a little and looks up, eyes swiveling as if tossing aside computer windows obscuring his vision.

“Oh, Uranus-senpai,” visibly reigning in discomfort at Mochi’s presence, Kawano pulls his knees in with his arms. “How was… school today?”

My parents are missing. It almost slips out of Mochi’s mouth. A sudden non sequitur, confided in this hacker boy he barely knows. The news came in earlier that morning. After one of Legion’s attacks on Tokyo, Mochi’s family had failed to report in to their jobs or an extended period of time, and now a week or more later someone reported them missing. A fucking week. Missing is a euphemism. He knows. Yet some fragile part of him still clings with fraying sinews to that word, holding it up in front of the truth he doesn’t want to see yet. Doesn’t want to see ever. Just like him, forgotten in the rubble…

“It was fine,” he replies instead, short and sharp, like the point of a blade cutting through any of Kawano’s feeble attempts at small talk. “What have you accomplished?”

Swallowing down some nerves, Kawano looks around them for eavesdroppers. His voice is low, and Mochi has to strain his ears against the white noise of the sputtering rain. “I was able to get into her school account,” he murmurs. “I’ve been sabotaging or deleting her written assignments and essays…”

Mochi smiles deviously. So much is digitized these days, even here in Kyoto. Imamu was wise to find someone who could exploit that weakness. “That’s good,” he praises his underhanded kohai. “It’ll stress her out, hurt her grades, and best of all it’s untraceable.”

There’s a slight swell in Kawano’s chest as he raises his chin. “Of course. I’m good at…” the swelling deflates, “What I do.” The release of hot hair coincides with his realization that he’s bragging about cyberbullying some girl he barely knows. He shouldn’t feel so bad. She’s a piece of shit.

“Don’t feel bad,” Mochi says so, “She’s a piece of shit.”

“Right,” a short, dismissive response, not wanting to linger.

Looking away, Mochi struggles to turn his wheelchair back around towards the ramp. “Keep up the good work,” he says simply, then leaves. That vacuous hollow inside still hangs open, leaving Mochi’s mind feeling fatigued from holding the gaping space open to avoid collapsing in on itself. But the cruel satisfaction of knowing the sword bitch is hurting too gives his brain those extra few endorphins to stave off collapse. Fragile pillars of schadenfreude prop up the ceiling.

There’s a lot of foot traffic into and out off the dorms right now. Students leaving, going somewhere. Students coming back from somewhere. All their faces blur together, some vaguely familiar, but forgotten. Others willfully ignored. One face stands out among them. Framed by lavender hair, eyes downturned at the small table she’d seated herself at in the common area, eating from a bowl of dumplings and reading. Reading a novel? Studying? Doesn’t matter.

Takako is at peace in this moment, the faintest ghost of a smile on her face, and the bubbling vitriol inside of Mochi’s gut needs something to attach itself to. She makes an excellent scapegoat. The withering death gasp of her smile will be delectable. Sour intent pours into Mochi’s eyes, but at first there’s no response. Like a sleeping limb, intangible, flailing in the air as he tries to restore blood flow. What he wanted to be a recoil of disgust is only a mildly perturbed curl of the lip as Takako puts another dumpling into her mouth. Instead of the dry, bitter taste of mold, he only manages an unpleasant aftertaste. Quirk incontinence, acting up again, just like last time. Gritting his teeth, Mochi tenses his entire face, focusing until Takako’s face twitches and she dashes from her table to one of the trash cans to spit up her dumpling.

Forcing his grimace into a grin, Mochi rolls on before she turns around to see him. The grin is only a thing of spite, curled inward caustically, the response of a body frustrated at the lack of satisfaction. No dose of mood-lifting chemicals answers his promise to himself. Why?

Stopped in front of the elevator glaring at his lap, Mochi’s vision suddenly swims and spirals around as something grabs him from behind. With her foot on his knee, Takako slams the back of Mochi’s wheelchair into the steel doors of the elevator, glaring down at him through. Hair frames her face, like a ghost from a horror film. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she spits at him, leaning forward and pressing a palm against the corner of his chair. A blade extends from her skin, just barely brushing his shoulder, not enough to pierce the fabric. But it punches through the back of his chair, scraping the metal doors. “You think that was funny, traitor?”

“Please,” Mochi begs, putting on his best expression of faux-fright. He leans back and holds up his hands. “Don’t hurt me! I d-don’t know what you’re talking about!” It’s maybe not all faux. Mochi’s heart pounds as he wonders if he laid down the straw that broke the camel’s back. Apprehension and doubt shackle his attempts to feel accomplished in it.

Eyes narrowed at him, Takako looks up at the camera above the elevator. She silently sheathes the blade in her palm, flesh closing behind it, and takes her foot off of his chair. “Leave me alone. You won’t get a second warning.” She starts to walk towards the stairs, then stops and looks flustered, returning to the common area to collect her book and leftovers. All the while, students awkwardly stare. Only when the scene breaks up, Takako moving on and Mochi rolling himself in front of a window, does the world restart itself into motion.

Panting, Mochi stares out at the wall surrounding the dorms, and the metal gates that seal it shut. His heart slowly returns to resting, and that emptiness takes hold again. “Why won’t you do what I tell you?” he mutters to himself, clenching his fists around the armrests of his wheelchair. He can’t afford for his quirk to crap out on him like this out there, when he’s working for the Red Finger. When it’s life or death.

Slumped in his wheelchair in front off the window, Mochi feels like a lifeless lump of meat. He hears a set of footsteps approaching on the tiled floor of the lobby. Two feet and a cane. “You two… exes or something?” a familiar voice asks, Kyoda Hiro’s tone betraying a lack of social confidence. There’s concern, though, however passing.

Swallowing, Mochi shakes his head. “Guess it’s just hate at first sight.”

“You really shouldn’t provoke her,” standing beside him, leaning on a cane, Hiro stares out the window too, until he realizes there’s really nothing to see. “You never know when somebody’s going to… just, snap.”

There’s barely an acknowledgement in Mochi’s faint, “Mhm.”

“Did something happen?” Hiro asks, and Mochi looks up at his former classmate. Heavy bags are still settled beneath both of their eyes. When there’s no immediate answer, Hiro breaks the stare and looks down at the tiles. “You’re looking like you used to again. Like the fire’s gone out,” he says, as if explaining how he noticed would make it easier to respond.

It does. Mochi turns up his palms and looks at them. There are still some old scars from the collapse that trapped him. “My parents are gone.”

“What? When?”

Saying it aloud makes it real, and Mochi feels his voice shaking. “They were d-declared m-missing, after the Legion attacks in Tokyo,” he breathes each word out more than speaks them. Missing. Declared missing so long after the attack, he knows what it really means. Just like him. Forgotten, left behind. Probably dead by now. Taking a deep breath, he slumps his head back against his chair, the material sagging beneath the pressure. The ceiling lights stare down at him, painting trails of color onto his eyes. “I feel like I’m not a real person.”

Quietly, Hiro moves over to one of the lobby chairs and sinks into it, laying his cane across his lap. “Do… have you talked to anyone about this? Like the counsellor or something?”

“I talk to people at church.”

“Ah. That’s good… good that you have someone to talk to,” rubbing his hands together, the ginger-haired boy chews uncertainly at some other words. “How about friends you can be with right now? I really think it’s, it’s not a good idea to be alone right now. If you don’t have a focus, something to keep your mind from spiraling.”

One. Maybe one friend. Sniffing, Mochi wipes his arm across his face and turns his wheelchair around. Before he goes, he holds back. “How are you doing, Kyoda-san?” he uses the honorific as a way to show he still considers the other boy a peer, even though he was held back. But not his first name, too personal. They’re not really friends. Just fellow cripples.

Hiro smiles softly. “I’m doing good.” From the tone of his voice, Mochi can tell he means it.

“Good. I have a friend I can hang out with. Thanks,” with that, Mochi rolls himself into the elevator, taking it up to the first-year dorms. He gets a few looks from the kohai milling about, it’s not usual he shows up here. Rolling through to the boys’ side, he looks at the numbers on the doors until he finds Lixdite’s room.

Raising his hand, Mochi hesitates just before knocking. What right does he have to beg a pity party from the godling? But fist meets wood, once, in spite of his doubts. Someone else answers. The door swings open to reveal a taller boy, shirtless with a towel across his shoulders, clearly just finished a workout, with a bottle of water in hand. “Hey?” clearly not recognizing Mochi, the boy chugs the bottle of water while waiting for an explanation.

Opening his mouth, Mochi struggles to speak, “Hey,” he awkwardly responds, earning a confused furrowing of the younger student’s brow. “Sorry. I’m Uranus, third year. A friend of Lixdite. Is he out?”

Taking the empty bottle from his mouth, the other boy tosses it into a recycling bin in the corner. “Right. He usually studies on the roof, one second,” walking over to the open window, letting in the cool rainy breeze, he reaches out and slams a fist on the outside of the window, causing it to rattle. Going back to his mat to take a seat, the boy pants from lingering exertion. “Yamasaki. Nice to meet you, Uranus-senpai,” the boy introduces himself while they wait.

It doesn’t take long for Lixdite to descend from above, perching on the outside of the window like a strange bird. “Mochi-senpai?” he asks, swinging inside feet first, wings curling up behind him after he slips through the gap with serpentine precision. “Did you need something?” he asks in his halting Japanese.

Rolling into the room, Mochi closes the door behind him. “I just needed to hang for a bit. Arcade, maybe?” he suggests. “And… that gaming club you were talking about. Maybe I’ll join,” he adds. Lixdite had asked him about it earlier, after the club announcements, but Mochi had brushed it off at the time. It was just a pointless distraction. But gods, does he need a distraction right now.

“Arcade, yes,” Lixdite nods his head, putting away the book he was reading on a pile of others. School books. He looks at his roommate. “Would you like to go?”

“To the arcade?” rubbing the back of his head, Yamasaki hums to himself. “I finished my workout already. Sure.”

Mochi hadn’t been planning on it being a group thing but- well, maybe he could use some more friends. Imamu had been pushing him to take better care of himself and make friends, and not just to bring more people in to the temple. It couldn’t hurt to get to know this Yamasaki better.