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“Who is that?” Tomura spat as Sensei walked in the door, a girl following two steps behind him. She was unperturbed by the boy's venom, didn’t seem to look at him at all really, which only made him angrier. Icy blue eyes barely looked over him, a quick assessing gaze before she returned her focus to Sensei.
“This is Ikeru.” He turned to look down at the girl, “Ikeru, this is Tomura, my successor and your charge.” Sensei explained simply, and the girl gave a single short nod in return. Meanwhile Tomura was gaping at them. She was only a bit older than he was, probably not even a highschool student yet, there was no way Sensei was serious about this.
“But-” Tomura started, but was immediately silenced by Sensei holding up a hand.
“Ikeru has been tasked with protecting you, serving you, but she ultimately answers to me. Just as it is with Kurogiri,” He said with a gesture to the nebulous mist of a man, who was presently standing a few steps behind Tomura. “I thought it would be prudent to give you someone closer to your own age, but if you do not wish to be around her, she can be returned to her previous position.”
Tomura shook his head abruptly, messy blue hair falling into his eyes as he did so. “Nope, I’ll keep her,” He said and Sensei nodded, pleased, then turned and left the room.
Ikeru stayed right where she’d been standing, staring, unblinking, at Tomura. It was weird, but Kurogiri had been weird at first too. He still was weird sometimes, had minor malfunctions. But after he’d told Sensei once and he’d taken Kurogiri away for a night and he’d come back even stranger, he never mentioned his malfunctions again. He’d rather keep a malfunctioning Kurogiri than get an even worse version.
Tomura narrowed his eyes at her. Was she broken?
After a moment she narrowed her eyes right back. Not broken then.
“Are you just gonna stand there forever?” He finally asked when the staring contest got boring.
“Do you want me to?” She asked right back, icy blue eyes boring into him.
“Nope, that’d be boring,” He shrugged and wandered back over to the couch, flopping down across the cushions, legs hanging over the arm. Looking back over at her, he saw she had taken a few steps to follow after him, but stopped again. “You ever played a video game?”
She shook her head. Her reflexes were good, because she caught the controller he tossed at her with ease, despite the lack of warning. He turned back around to face the tv, not bothering to see where she went as he clicked through the home screen and found the level he wanted. She drew closer and finally sat down on the floor in front of the couch, ice blue eyes flicking between the colorful screen and Tomura, as if not sure which to focus on.
“Watch the screen and the controller,” He snapped, expecting her to recoil like Kurogiri had at first, but she just watched him, unbothered, “Learn, cause I won’t teach you and playing by myself has gotten really boring.”
She glanced down at the controller in her hands, then followed closely as he played through a few levels of the game.
The next round, he made it multiplayer and connected her controller.
She fumbled at first, made mistakes as she acclimated to the controls, to the power ups and combo moves, like a baby that had been handed a controller, but she quickly grew accustomed to it. Not nearly as good as he was, but he never expected her to be. It would be boring if she didn’t improve just a little bit, to give him some sort of competition, but he wasn’t going to just let her win, either.
It was a fighting game, and as bad as she was at first, she swiftly improved, cutting down enemies with decent speed. He sped up in turn, fingers flying across the controls as he executed opponent after opponent in sprays of pixelated blood and bursts of dropped items.
Until he fumbled, his two fingered glove catching on the joystick and getting stuck even as he tried to pry it loose. He growled in frustration as he glanced up at the screen and saw his avatar had been killed in his moment of failure. Ikeru set her controller down and looked over at him.
He snarled and ripped his hand loose from the tangled glove, his fingertips brushing against the controller's surface just long enough for it to disintegrate to a pile of dust that settled on his pants like fine ash. Irritated, he callously brushed it off onto the floor, rubbing at the discolored spots that lingered on his black pants.
The grey spot just spread like a disease, rubbed further into the fabric by his infuriated motions.
His lips were peeled back from his teeth and he was just about ready to disintegrate the pants when the tips of Ikeru’s boots appeared in the corner of his vision. Looking up sharply from where he was seated on the floor in front of his gaming console, he found her standing there, holding a neatly folded pair of pants. His pants, he realized.
When had she even left?
Tomura decided he didn’t care as he stood up and snatched the pants from her grasp with his still gloved hand. She barely even blinked at the harsh movements. It irritated him that she wasn’t afraid of him. She should have been, anybody with half a functioning brain should be terrified of him. He was powerful, he was terrifying, he was being trained by Sensei, for gods sake. She should be cowering.
Instead, she was just staring at him with her unblinking eyes.
“Turn around” He snapped.
Dutifully, she did just that.
He pulled on the black pants she had found for him, and tossed the ash stained ones onto the couch carelessly.
For a moment, he considered just disintegrating her. She still had her back turned, so she wouldn’t see it coming. It didn’t take that long to dissolve a whole human, not if he pulled off his other glove and used both hands.
But Sensei never liked it when he broke the more important toys. A controller was one thing, Sensei never cared how many of those he broke, but big things, buildings, people, Sensei got all out of sorts. He shuddered, memories of pain skittering up his spine like an electric pulse. No, he wouldn’t break this one just yet.
Years ago, before Sensei, before anything worthy of note, he’d been gifted an action figure. Some hero, he didn’t even remember which one. Somebody stupid and colorful and useless. He remembered thinking that even then, with their big plastic muscles and ridiculous suit.
The next day, he’d sat in his room and tugged on the limbs until they popped loose from their sockets, pried each articulated joint apart until the colorful pieces were scattered all across his floor. And then he’d put it back together again, or at least he had tried. Some limbs fit back into their artificial sockets, and some hadn’t, the plastic misshapen and deformed.
It had never looked the same, the limbs moved awkwardly and the head never sat quite right, lolling listlessly on its plastic neck.
He wondered how long it would take him to pry Ikeru’s limbs from her sockets. How many times he might be able to fit her back together before she too crumbled into dust.