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written for junsuina

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Shit, she was getting serious. If he wasn’t careful, she’d actually hit him. He wasn’t so much worried about breaking any bones, more so having to sit through more of her constant stream of apologies. Luckily, he had a special someone to thank for sparing him of that fate.[break][break]

“『Titanic Sinker』”[break][break]

With a single stomp on the ground, a large glacier began to sprout from the ground. An ice-cold wall, covering the entire alleyway. It separated the salty sophomores, reflecting a twisted image of the girl back at her. It’d crack, and with enough of her swings, it’d even break under her might, but it’d buy him time. It’d keep the girl at bay while he relished in her breakdown and bite back. She was starting to lose control. If he so wanted, he could get probably get her to turn her back on all of those pretty ideals. He felt it, just one more comment, and that righteous little shit would be gone together, if not materially, then ideologically. Unfortunately, this was the one time he couldn't do that, or rather, shouldn't.[break][break]

She was starting to get suspicious. Lucky for him, she was too big an airhead to put two-and-two together. Still, even if she didn’t know it, she had pulled a proverbial gun on him. If he clarified things, he’d only be leading her to the truth he so desperately covered up. That he cared for someone, that there was a heart inside of the monster, after all. To shatter the aura he’d so carefully constructed. Without it, it’d only be a matter of time until the jig was up, Besides, that would only distract from what needed to be said. Had it been anyone else, they would’ve panicked, giving the game up on the spot, but Gen knew what to do in this situation. He couldn't allow Jun to dictate the conversation, even if it meant using a low road. He had to pull out a bigger gun.[break][break]

And he had all the spite he needed to pull the trigger.[break][break]

“Yeah, I want to see you fail! I want you to give up! You wanna know why?!?” He might’ve been trying to divert the subject, but there was no way to tell. “It's not 'cause I hate you, I hate what you represent.” His words were imbued with so much venom, it felt as if they could melt the wall between them. “You’re everything wrong with this school!” And the reason was simple, despite the layers of deceit, Gen hated Jun’s ilk, because he’d seen the kind of people they often turned into, especially in this line of work. “You're a perpetual victim.” [break][break]

“You talk a big game about your ideals, act all righteous and judge me at every turn.” His mind flashed to a dozen different cases, to the life he had before this grift. He’d seen what Real Heroes were like, and Jun would’ve fit right next to those deputized crooks. “Then, when you’re out in the real world and its time to face the music, you hide.” Remembering all of that was enough to turn his little lie into a truth. If not factual, then emotional. He got caught up in it, in all the ways he detested these Heroes. “You hide behind your tragedies, your traumas, your fears, your sad childhoods and every excuse you can find." [break][break]

"And you know what the worst part is? You're always sorry. Sorry for yourselves, sorry for others, and sorry for everyone and everything, but you're never fucking better, are you?!?" You could say a lot of things about All for One and his wicked ways, but you could never say he hid from his mistakes. He embraced them. Perhaps a little too proudly. "Y'all act like that word's magic or somethin'. Like all is forgiven 'cause you felt a little bit bad. Give me a break!" He never denied them, never excused them away, and never unironically made himself out to be a victim, but most of all, though… he never apologized. [break][break]

"Tell me this..."[break][break]

And when the ice could no longer hold her back, he shot her one last question, aimed straight at the heart of this problem. [break][break]

“What good have your sorries ever done for anyone, Junsuina Kanjo?”[break][break]

[attr="class","curragebot"] Ah what an ugly way live! [break]
Don't even ask me "Why" again [break]
You're just bleeding with greed, and doing time for the crime [break]
Believing miracles empty, breaking into pieces plenty [break]

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written for junsuina

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“That’s it?!?” Holy shit, you're such a drama queen! Momo’s figure began to slowly disintegrate, turning into the same orange gas that surrounded them, first at the torso, and then at her extremities. Before she was gone with the wind, though, her lips cracked into a grin, one that let her know just how foolish she was for getting her hopes up. “So, you broke some annoying bitch's arm. Big whoop! That happens like, every other week around here.”


[break][break]With a single swat of his hand, Momo was gone with the wind, now nothing more than trails of orange gas, same as everything else that surrounded them. With the trick now revealed, Gen would step out in front, facing the one that had so rudely given him that knock on the back of his head. It had yet to heal, or so it looked. "If anything, I was gonna' do that next week." If anything, he should thank her for that. Now that she'd beaten him to the punch, it gave him an excuse to go the extra mile with that girl.[break][break]

If she wanted forgiveness, she could go to church, but right now, the devil was fresh out of mercy. “Why do you even care, anyway? It’s not like you actually got punished for it.”[break][break]

[attr="class","curragebot"] Radiate, recognize one silent call as we all form one dark flame.

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written for Samaritan, Jack Orion, Kaida Ikarashi, Jinx:windfall

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The moment he felt Michael’s grip slipping from the mountainside, Gen knew he did it. The wind rushing on his face only helped to accentuate the feeling of victory, or rather, the joy at someone else’s defeat. Schadenfreude. Michael’s loss was not quite his gain, but it sure did make his day. He’d found a way to make him lose, this was it, it was his “win”, if you could call it that. Any second now, he’d hear the…[break][break]

Wait… where’s the pop?[break][break]

There was supposed to be a balloon-breaking pop.[break][break]

By the time they came to a stop, the peak seemed out of sight, lightning roared above them, and the music seemed to crescendo to its peak, but none of that was as disheartening as hearing Michael’s voice again. “What?!?” After bouncing off of his body and putting as much weight as possible onto him, the Inflatable Man was somehow first to his feet. The surprise was evident on his face. “How?” Oh, right, the shield. Fuck. As annoying as that revelation was, it was the last thing Gen should’ve focused on right now.[break][break]

“What do you mean you’re so-”[break][break]

And that, along with a sharp pain from his chin, was the last thing Gen remembered about the show.[break][break]

A few minutes later, Windfall’s speech was enough to rouse him from his state of unconsciousness. The condescending words brought almost as much pain to his ears as whatever it was that had rocked his chin. Of course, the first thing he saw was that Fucking Balloon. He wanted to lash out, but it seemed like his body wasn’t really listening to him. God Dammit! After all of that, he was going to end the exercise being carried by this second-rate Hack. This Dumb Fucking Mark. He would've been forced to accept his moral defeat, if not for the bold, capital letter prompt that had appeared on his wrist’s device.[break][break]

“You lose… Michael.”[break][break]

With the last ounce of energy he had left in his system, Gen would push the big red EXIT button. In the blink of an eye, light enveloped his body, and next thing anyone knew, he was back in that endless white void. "Heh, heh..." With his face bruised from the attack and the scent of blood running through his mouth, he managed to let out one last laugh, before slumping against the nothingness that surrounded him, collapsing to the floor in the exhaustion. This was a failure, but at the very least, he could take solace in one single fact.[break][break]

Balloon Boy didn’t win.[break][break]

[attr="class","curragebot"] Radiate, recognize one silent call as we all form one dark flame.

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written for Ana Borovsky

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[break][break]
Gen’s fingers fiddled with everything he could as he waited for Ana to get ready. Lines were traced across the immaculate glass surfaces. She wasn’t the only mentally preparing themselves for the truth to drop. Gen’s eyes looked back at the window, instinctively thinking of avenues of escape, but all that stared back at him was the sad, pathetic face he’d grown accustomed to seeing every morning. One he had kept away from all the marks. Time’s arrow had slowed to a crawl during his brief reprieve, but reality had forced it to move again, and sooner than he’d liked, and way past the point it was acceptable, the time finally came.
[break][break]
He turned to face his self-appointed jury. The one person he deemed worthy of passing the judgment he so desperately deserved. The one victim he felt bad for. He raised a single finger towards the roof, and a faint purple flame came to life from it. One last bit of fake warmth before the rug was finally pulled out from him.
[break][break]
Welp…
[break][break]
Here it goes.
[break][break]
“I really hate to break this to you, but the guy you fell for? He doesn’t exist.” There it was, the heart beating under the floorboards. The reason this fairy-tale would never feel right to him. How can you love someone for who they are, if you’ve never met them. “He’s not real, he’s like…” his hand moved to grasp his chin, before his fingers snapped. “Darth Vader in Star Wars, or Ender from that other movie.”
[break][break]
“It's all fiction, baby.”
[break][break]
That’s what it all was. If you thought someone couldn’t possibly be as cartoonishly evil as Kurokami Gen, then congratulations, you were right all along. It was all a ruse, a work, a gimmick, all engineered by a phony little fraud who wanted to stick it to them. An artificial enemy, one designed to bring the bright, beautiful, shining talents of this country to their knees, and she'd fallen head over heels for it. “All the things I’ve said since I got here? Everything I’ve done? It’s all bullshit.” All those students had spent those sleepless nights seething at a parody of the monsters they would become. “It’s an act, and not even a good one, at that, because the fact of the matter is...”
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Here it comes, the one thing he was never supposed to say. Not to his so-called peers, not to the teachers, and especially towards those smart boys and girls in the Support Course.
[break][break]
“『All for One』 isn’t real.”
[break][break]
And then, it happened. With every word he spoke, Gen’s face began contorting. It was subtle, the kind of transformation you’d notice only after it had already taken root. Slight, but noticeable once it really got going.
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His chin retracted by a few centimeters; the vexing pitch of his voice shifted upwards by a note or two, staying just out of tune; his eyes took a much duller shade of brown, with black lines and bags springing out from under them; his luscious hair became messy and drab, showing an evident lack of care towards it; his skin grew paler by the sentence, to a concerningly unhealthy degree; his limbs grew skinnier and skinnier, until one wondered what else was there, save for bone and a familiar-looking lump in his wrist; he was shrinking too, not by much, just a few measly feet. All of those little imperfections that weren’t there before, adding up until what was left was like an uncanny doppelganger of who she’d come to know and love.[break][break]

However, those changes paled in comparison to the one that was unseen. By the time it was all said and done, something was gone, something all of her scientific rigor proved incapable of measuring. Unquantifiable, but qualitative. His mystique. His aura. That feeling of a bottomless well of malice sharing a room with you. The chills down the spine that instinctively repelled all good. The sense that something less than human was standing just a few feet away. What some scholars of Heroics had once dubbed as “Genergy”. And once it was gone, all that was left was just a guy. One who possessed none of the usual “pretty boy” bishonen features that were so frustratingly frequent with those in his future line of work. [break][break]

There was never a monster to slay. No generational talent that would make his peers obsolete. The flame petered out, until it was no longer there. And the only thing that remained now was that smile drawn on his lips, now devoid of that smug, condescending energy that made oh so easy to punch. If anything, now that all the bells and whistles had been ripped away, it had a certain sadness to it. Almost pitiable, if not for everything the revelation implied.[break][break]

[attr="class","curragebot"] When all of your hopes and dreams fade away,[break] Why repeat the every-day and live a life where nothing is left? [break][break]Such a pretty thing to keep saying... [break]

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