[closed] what a way to lose your head

[fullgauntlet]

🧙 WHO: Midoriya Izuku & Shigaraki Tomura
⚔️️ WHAT: Quest: Don't Lose Your Head
🕒 WHEN: Early October
🗺️ WHERE: The ruins of Celliwig
⚠️ WARNINGS: What happens when the protagonist and the antagonist run into each other?

Comments

[fullgauntlet]

It is hard to navigate through the ruins of Celliwig. Seeing all of the broken and burnt structures leaves a taste of failure in Izuku's mouth. He has memories of this place being so vibrant and colourful. Having gotten to explore it a few times and see places like the lively cenote underneath. The crystal towers are now broken and charred black. This kind of devastation hits Izuku harder than ever when he thinks about how he could have done more to try and stop it all from happening. Everyone had tried their best, Izuku had pushed as much as he could as an alchemist and a knight and yet Celliwig still fell.

He knows that as a hero there are going to be times where failure is inevitable. He can't save everyone. The reality of that is still a hard pill for Izuku to swallow. He doesn't want to swallow it.

He wants to do better. He can do his best with the rescue and recovery efforts. Izuku is now back in Celliwig trying to help clean up the debris and save any lasting civilians. But there is a shadow that is looming over the ruins of the small fairy town. A dark fae trampling across the paths and roads looking for another head to collect.

Izuku looks up from his work when he hears the sound of rubble or stones cracking. The grip on his sword handle tightens as he stands to observe his surroundings...

[facepalmchampion]

For different reasons than a heroic one, at least for the most part, Shigaraki isn't excited to see the ruination and familiar faces being pulled from the parts of this town. He had gone out of his way, drug Toga with him and had to deal with every lasting issue since then revolving around this place in some way or another. It was a beautiful place, at least once. Even he can say that with confidence and there had been one or two people to treat him uncharacteristically kindly within the confines of this border.

All of it finds him here trying to decide what he wants to do with this world, too. He's stuck here when what he wants is to go home. Not his home world, he wants to go home and to do that, he's going to have to play along or figure out how to start his own revolution. Alternately, doing it on his own. Toga had long since been taken and he could only hope it was back where she belonged and that Twice and Dabi were on their god damn way already. Well, at least Twice. Dabi's probably starved to death by now if the Take Outs aren't op--

Distracted walking is about the same as distracted driving, thankfully without the chance of a proverbial car hitting him on the proverbial road. It may as well be, seeing Midoriya standing there when he wasn't even close to finished dealing with the amalgamation of home world and home in memory. "Out here playing with toys?" He scoffs softly, continuing to walk over the pieces followed by his ever dutiful if not grotesque familiar. "Or out here lamenting what a shitty job an entire class of heroes—" Could someone make an emphasis palpable? Shigaraki sure just tried. "—did figuring out this would happen?"

[fullgauntlet]

The voice alone makes Izuku tense. His shoulders going tight as he looks up and meets the view of the other man standing there as lanky and conniving as usual. It makes that same sense of tense stress immediate in his nerves as he clenches his fists. The words hit him harder than he would like to admit. Their failure is a shared one and it hurts. But he has to try and not let it get so under his skin that he does something stupid and reckless.

"Shigaraki... What are you doing out here."

Izuku is painfully aware they are out in the open in a place that doesn't need any more destruction of fighting in its streets. Not with how many people have already been injured or killed. But he still can't help the way that echo in his chest grows larger just at the sight of the other man. With his memories more intact now- a future that he knows he has to face... He can't help but look at Shigaraki with an unwavering stare.

[facepalmchampion]

Shigaraki's head tilts at the sight of his fists clenching and he wishes he could manifest an enthusiastic smile about it. But the sardonic one is all either of them get. Their future is shared and one that he knows all too well. Further is that look that he remembers on Izuku's face and one that he won't admit was on his own as he was dragged off into a life of parasitic-like symbiosis.

"A better job than all of you useless NPCs." That's what he's doing out here. "Venture a guess Deku. Tell me what you think I'm out here doing. I think it'll be fun to hear your take on it." Shigaraki is much less tense, at least in stature, than his opponent is and he freely walks from standing buildings pieces of rubble, to piece of rubble, hands out in a mock shrug. Each step is one that suggests him circling, a shark who's angry and displeased but no less hungry to intimidate it's prey. Shigaraki's familiar stays close, floating behind him. Her face isn't toward Izuku it's toward her charge. She knows he's a little bitch to deal with and that this isn't the time.

[fullgauntlet]

It's the unfortunate circumstance between them now there is just no way a face-to-face confrontation between these two will ever be a decent conversation. Even if Izuku knows what he knows about the other man now. What Izuku wants to do about the future and the events surrounding Shigaraki.

But the sentence actually does have Izuku fairly surprised.

"... You're looking for the dark fae that has been rampaging out here?"

That would be the only explanation why he says that he's doing a better job than the useless NPCs. It still seems hard to believe that he would be looking for the dark fae that is roaming around. He has a few questions about that. That thing is slicing heads off of people. Allegedly.

[facepalmchampion]

This was just how things were going to be, if not for now, then maybe forever. He was still the man willing to kill to see his dreams a reality, and any hero or any person that came at him was going to learn that the hard way. Any of them and that included here, or that stupid De Chima apartment all the way to the League's complex and through straight to home.

Right now that frustration was the very same that Izuku had easily deducted. "Ding-ding-ding!" He leaned forward, head tilted, "Look at that, woman." he said to the familiar checking under some debris, not actually listening. "He can have a coherent thought. I guess miracles really do happen."

He paused in his slow flank, smile wide and unnerving on his face. "What? Did you think I was out here looking for you all like you actually deserve the queue in my quest log? I thought heroes weren't supposed to be self-centered and that I was wrong saying they were."

Even still, his target was a looming threat, watching his pursuer monologue at the protagonist. The thing Shigaraki was great at doing, an orator for the ages if ages meant disseminated, backhanded information no one wanted. "Someone has to do something about it running around here."

[fullgauntlet]

The words do sting. Even if he knows that they stand on the ground they stand on now? Geeze- Shigaraki can bit bitter and annoying. He almost has to think what Katsuki would do at words like that. Would he lose his temper? Laugh? Bite back with another just as insulting string of comments? Probably all three.

"I didn't think someone like you would be interested in looking for a creature that was ransacking the remains an innocent town. It was that or you have some other idea for all of this."

Why else would Shigaraki be out here? To find the dark fae and take it out or to control it for himself? Or kill it? He can't tell what the real motivations are. He can only pick together what Shigaraki says while not letting the obvious insults get to him.

"What are you-"

But just as he continues with a snarl on his lips- there is a loud explosion of stone. Rock and rubble go flying as a long spine-like blade cracks through old buildings and rock. Then the sound of heavy stamping hooves rumbles the ground as a dark horse approaches...

"... Tch- The headless rider!"