✧ RIP ✧

Her blush lit me up inside, all red n’ pink n’ flushed with life. How could anyone be that beautiful? Angels in heaven see her and question their own perfection. God just loved her that much more than everyone else, mortal or immortal. I stuck my tongue out when she made her face, red bleeding up through the blue of my neck, face. Her quiet hum, the lull of her hands in mine… We could drive like this for days n’ days n’ it’d pass like seconds. “Your hum is hella cute.” There were my words, puncturing the air where her soft song used to be whenever she was done. Our kids were so hella lucky they’d have an amazing mother, for all the reasons plus she had the voice of a celestial messenger.

I almost lost the wheel then!! “P-pregnant duty?!” Seeing her hold her hands out, like she was scooping the kids right outta her!!, I’d playfully latch onto her hands n’ shake them like a dog with a toy!! “Y-you can keep the kids right in there, baby, I think they like you more!” My voice was a high-pitched squeal!! Then much softer, the sweetness of what she meant and her wink gutting me in the best way from inside. “Y-ya mean that, hun?” Then I smirk. I was picturing so much. Helluva miracle we ain’t crash. “Good, then you’d have to clean up my mess.” Then I nearly choke!! “Your hero suit?! Baby I’d break it!!” I was picturing my fatass squeezing into that fit, tearing it into two as I slammed down on the floor!! I hella had to remind myself that her fit was the real deal, gorgeous and form-fitting as it was, somethin’ that’d protect her from the gnarliest fights atop her quirk’s protection. I had a lot of thanks to give to her hero suit, n’ if somethin’ happened to her… I’d beat the hell outta those fabrics!!

“Hella. Go out with a bang.” I grin, hooded eyes so punchdrunk in love with her it was a miracle I could see at all. Definitely ain’t lookin’ at the road as much as I could, but could you blame me when the most gorgeous girl in the whole universe sat next to you just like this?? I grin. “It’s a date then, baby.” It was hella impossible to tear my sight from her, like fireworks of never-before-seen colors erupting in my heart everytime my senses landed on hers. When she was smilin’ like now, hell when she was just existing. I was a helluva creep to watch her sleep throughout the night, practically followed her via the ring all day. Makin’ up stories ‘bout what she was doin’ n thinkin’ n’ was she resting enough? When we couldn’t talk. Pure, unending obsession over Kazashi McCoy.

I nod intently as she explains. The world of quirks was hella surprisin’, to the point of making me wonder if we needed a good seamstress for our kids’ booboos besides my cuz Megumi as their doc!! Luckily for these kids, their mom was a Superhero n’ SuperKnitter!! I idly nod a second time when she mentions him not wanting to make the connection because of her horns, gaze vaguely set on the distance. I hated how much I’d dragged her into the criminal underworld. That my presence, and her involvement with me, would make her have to even think ‘bout scenarios like that. I was two parts grateful n’ shameful. “Just ta be safe,” I say after her, squeezing her hand back super tightly as I kept looking forward. We were gliding into the lion’s den now, the home of murderers, psychopaths n’ depraved. An eerie pallor fell over this side of Tokyo, like all the light of the world fled from its demonic jaws. A switch was flipped, that quick. An edge comes to my voice. “Kaz-chan if we need to leave you tap my palm twice n’ we’re out. Don’t leave my side.”

But I couldn’t help but be alive in her infectious enthusiasm, her stammer and laugh that lit up parts of my soul I ain’t even know I have. My body melded into hers, perfectly fit, right as she nuzzled into me and I hummed into her neck. “I hella think so, baby!! Anything you touch turns to gold, on God! Your bakery’s gonna be legendary, get people drivin’ for hours for what you make!” An international destination, beloved by the local high school kids and people from all corners of the world combined!! I know that’s right! I gasp softly when she mentions having it close in the village. The biggest grin came over my face, n’ I ain’t know if it was creepy of me to be so happy!! Because she’d be closer to come, further from danger. I was so greedy for the love of my life. “Hella relaxin’!! That’s a bigly smart idea, baby. You wanna scout the nearby village next time we drive up to our plot?” A morning of building, an afternoon of exploring!! Her dream bakery was right ‘round the corner!

When the time had come and we parked next to a busted sidewalk, decrypt street lined with broken windows and potholes, I still ain’t able to tear my eyes away from her. She ain’t only hella beautiful but smart too. The hoodie, black bunny ears to disguise her horns, mask and puffed up sleeves. She looked tough, by my side like we’d just gone on a killing frenzy. I squeeze her hand, lean up and in to kiss her forehead. “One word,” I whisper against her skin, “one word and we’re out.” Then I’d open her door for her from the inside, get out and walk us through a broken-down warehouse. Dirt and soot found the soles of our feet, flickering halogens drowning the building with a plastic-like swell of light. It ain’t too far of a walk but my hand’s on her back the whole time. He was precise with the meeting point, one corridor leading dead-end to a velvet door. We knock once, it opens.

“Charleston.” He’s framed by smoke and dozens of exorbitant alcohol bottles behind him. He nods at my superhott goon. “Mother sends her regards to you and your beloved.” He ushers for us to sit at a table, goes to pour us drinks.



This man’s Satan in a business suit. Ain’t age a day since the last time we saw him years ago, radiates pressure from his presence alone like a long-ago feared Heroic tyrant from a lost generation. Mono-no-nah? Somethin’ like that, I’m hella bad with names. “So you’ve come to claim your bag from Kamisu, eh?” He smiles. Intuition tells me I ain’t like where this is going. “You’ll be glad to know I’ve invested it for you. Your gains have come back with interest, tripled your original sum.” He shuffles papers in a manila folder, fat stack, with one hand and handles his cigar with the other. Opulent rings bulge out of his fingers, blood diamonds and other things people died for. “Let’s discuss the proposal before the terms of our transfer, shall we?”

A deal. He was gonna make us a deal.

This bastard.

“Now Charleston,” he starts handing us papers, one by one. “This is your ‘uncle’ on your father’s side, Arturo Crews. He died February 16th, this year, in his home in Virginia.” An image. This was a real person. My gut was sinking. “You don’t know him. Estranged from your father, he lost contact with you although recently learned of your existence years into his diagnosis. Survived by no one, no children, no spouse, he’s put the death benefit in your name.” He smirks. “Lucky you.” He shuffles more our way. Falsified documents, AI-generated images. It’s a kiloton in my hand. “Here you are at his funeral…” There’s my image, blurred just enough you can’t make out the particulars of my face, alongside what I assume are real people. “And here’s a copy of the death certificate, your tax forms, his last will and testament. A copy of the bank’s repossession of his house. There’s no estate to worry about.”

He takes a long hit from the cigar. “I’ve covered you from all sides, see? And that’s how you earned [X] yen overnight.” He leaves us time to flick through these sin-stained pages. It’s impossible hard not to look at Kaz, cause if I did I’d give us away that quick. “So, what do we think?”

✧ RIP ✧

There’s a certain bite real strong people have to their eyes. You live life as a Villain long enough, y’know exactly what it is, can weigh your life’s worth in their irides like ten-ton measuring cups. That girl, the one way down there - she only got one visible eye and twice the badassery in it anyway!! Heartass smirks, shifting his attention away from the boy writhing out in indescribable pain. “Oi oi, lil lady.” A nerve beats under his aorta!! Which one, iunno!! “So you wanna be a part of the execution, do you?” He flicks his wrist at his dogs and, like clockwork, they pull out a volley of standard grenades and swords, using the latter like bats to fling them towards her.

I ain’t know it was prolly futile. A name had floated around Villain circles, the infamous Bakuretsu, the engineer, the explosives extraordinaire - but in typical Villain fashion, you ain’t really know what anyone looks like unless they were an idiot. I’m kinda one, honestly. “HEY!! I LIKE YOUR COAT! N’ I HOPE YOU AIN’T AN EXHIBITIONIST OR SOMETHIN’!” There my ass goes, climbing up the metal crane!! “Phew, okay son, get the hell up,” I tell the boy when I finally make it, casual as if he got lost at the grocers!!

“You people don’t know how to mind your business.” Heartass opens and closes his fist, bulging veins glowing vibrant blue over his scarred-up hand. Uh oh. “GET LOST!”

I fell to my knees instantly. The most insane pressure overcame me, sensations amplified into a colorless blur as something inside me damn near exploded. According to shounen law, Heartass smirked before explaining his power. Not that I could hear it over the deafening pain. “My quirk, Heartstopper, stops my target’s heart as long as this fist is closed. What will you do now?” I swear I prolly choked up!!

OP ASS ■■■■!!!

✧ RIP ✧

Junkyard diving!!

It’d been a helluva long while since I went and I’d be sure to call Taiki later and compare our finds! My car just ain’t the same without the godly mods he’d made. But today ain’t ‘bout my car or even wranglin’ in shit for gear. I was lookin’ for house materials!! Melt down a few cars n’ suddenly you had all the pipin’ you coulda ever dreamed of for your house! Then there was a helluva lot more you could repurpose for kitchen counters, sand down for cabinets and so much more! Ever since I’d learned my wife was pregnant, I was playin’ it extra safe with criminal shit. Not stealing, fightin’, doing my best to bury Zombae. So I was gonna do my damndest best to get our house the “clean” way but I ain’t opposed to gettin’ free materials with a lil extra elbow grease!

“Man, what jack■■■■ even throws away somethin’ like this?! Hella looks brand new!” I huffed, turning a marble slate this way and that with all four arms before tossing the thing in the cart I stole from the grocery store - can’t quit all my bad habits! Then I’m surfin’ the massive heaps of garbage again. Years of Villainy had trained my eye to see what was worthwhile. Anyone who’d been in the game long enough also knew time alone made you a magnet. For danger, distress. I ain’t even doin’ anythin’ really n’ here I already hear it -

A bloodcurdling scream, stifled by a thick punch to the gut. “Here ‘gain, are we now?” You can smell the pungent burn of blood n’ these guys are meters away, up on a crane. Thugaroo and his entourage. “Got anythin’ to say for your sorry ass, kid?”

The kid’s a lil worse for wear. He spits out blood as the words stammer word. “P-Please, another week.” His lip’s busted, bruises where his dimples should be. “I-I’ll get the, the, t-the money in just another week. I have a check comin-!!”

The heartass pushes the kid down, massive military boot crushing the kid’s clavicle. The lanky boy’s dangling, half-on and half-off the hangin’ edge of the crane. Lifeless eyes watch him. Heartless as it sounds, this ain’t my problem. This kinda shit happens all the time. I’ve been both the heartass n’ the kid he’s ‘bout to kill. Hell, maybe the lackeys, too! Not as well dressed tho!!

So why am I runnin’ over to the crane?

Can’t hear my steps over the kid’s ear-rendering scream. But somehow, I hear the heartass. “That’s a week too late, boy. You can thank your mistress of a mother for your death.” N’ there he goes, a sec before flingin’ him over the edge!!

✧ RIP ✧

Milky white eyes follow every curve of her auric own, wanting to see what scenery her gorgeous mind had set its sights on. Was it too far in the pregnancy to get a flight out somewhere? Or would a boat be better? She could say right now she wanted us to go halfway across the globe and I’d carry her the whole way. “Somewhere nice,” I repeated after her, leaning up and in to kiss her cheek as her hands lit a fire down my back, “somewhere only we know.” I breathed her in, tension banished from my body the second her hands massaged my shoulders. Just one touch, just her smell and taste alone was enough to soothe me. I used to be so angry at the world… I wanted to send a kite to lil me, tell him an angel would save his life. Even if life would always be hard on us, lovers on opposite sides of the law.

The fattest, most shameful grin spread over my face seeing her blush. Watching red hot flowers bloom over her face in the heart of the spring. I laugh, in love with the rapid pace of her breathing. “No rush. Naughty.” I push in closer to her, wrap my arms tighter ‘round her and breathe in the wildflowers of her hair. Her whisper pours liquid shock down my spine, whole body alive at her words. “hell yeah!! I want what you want.” Always. I was hella on the same page; we could stay in all day n’ be happy as clams clammed up together. (She’s the pearl, of course). Sometimes, that seemed like the best course of action, anyways. We had enemies surrounding us on all sides, with the secret of who I was an ever-looming death threat above us. I never forgot the fact that my moongirl coulda had the whole world with someone else. She was beautiful, badass, and it seemed like countless Heroes and Heroines would take her hand in marriage at the drop of a beat. No shortage in suitors, no short trolls like me on the list. Life would have been so much easier for her, no sacrifices in putting up with me.

So I’d do more, be more. Make it worthwhile for this breathtaking angel who deserved more than the world, all its suns, moons and stars combined. It was a promise I held to my soul as her soft, sweet hands came in for the tickle fight!! I was dying laughing, then dying straight up if I couldn’t kiss her right then and there all over. Her every giggle, flush of her skin alive under my lips - maddening. I smile wickedly up at her, tracing downwards still, drunk in love. I’d cherish, worship, what was mine.

“I hella do!! My jaw dropped, straight up!” It did again when she posed, fluttered her thick eyelashes!! Then I chuckle when her scarf hand does what it does, a hand going up the back of my neck. Truth be told, I was hella worried ‘bout timin’ too. Time to fool around in the morning, time to take the cutest woman in the whole wide universe out for our weekly dates… How much would a Friday night babysitter cost? Eight pm to midnight, that’s sixteen hours a month for just us. I’d pay one of those UAU brats a fortune to do it. No cost too great to keep our kids safe, but bigger than that to nurture the relationship with the love of my life.

It made me so damn happy when she leaned on me. To see the most important person in the world, my soulmate, mother of our kids, smile like that. “A-a lot, yeah.” Then I flushed. Father’s Day, n’ me in the same sentence seemed like something that ain’t make any sense. But now it did. We were becoming parents. And I couldn’t be happier ‘bout it. My hand tightens around hers, the loudest, most obnoxious laugh coming when she stuck her tongue out!!

✧ RIP ✧

She was infinitely beautiful, mysterious and unknown at the same time. Like she spoke and thought in the sacred language of girl goddess I’d never understand, would just worship her at her feet and be grateful she’d shine her light on someone like me. “Yeah you,” I whisper, mystified by her engorged pupils and their crosses lying dead center like targets to my soul. She could ask anything of me and the answer would be an instantaneous yes. What else is there to do when your wife’s a seraphic seductress, cast a spell on you? I didn’t even know what I was saying anymore. “Yeah,” I reply idly, looking her up and down before leaning up again to kiss her forehead. That I made her laugh lit up my heart in a way you ain’t believe!! “Alright, but you’re the most adorkable!!” I tease her back, skin of my cheek afire where she touches. Like it was healing, just her skin pressed to mine!!

A thick, rough-padded thumb swept between the edges of her wrist as her fingertips ran a soft circle into the back of my hand. It’s like a lil game we play, winning each second we’re still touching. Communicating bounds of love and appreciation in a realm beyond words. The longer the drive went on, the more we were intuitively on the same page. So if I did pick up Villain habits in the nighttime, it ain’t the end of the world, right? If everyone had to hide out, they’d go to my girl’s mom’s place. Wasn’t it worth it to have so much more time with my wife and kids? Besides, who better to protect her than me? I could be right there - my manic, obsessive and all-consuming desire for her aside - right there if anything happened to her or them. Can’t do that if you’re working a double shift mopping floors on the long side of the city, way outta the countryside.

I’d do it.

It’d be easy… What’s a couple kills, downing pigs the world was better off without anyway?

Her voice lifts me out of the trance, real, raw sunshine spilling over the peaks and valleys of her gorgeous lilt. I grin, then gasp, throwing two hands out in caution. What’s driving the car?! “K-Kaz-chan! Take turns?!” I was picturing kids in my “womb” with cigs in their lil demonic mouths, throwing me the bird from the ultrasound scan!! “Baby I’m already short! I can’t have a big belly or be BALD that would be the end of me!!” I shriek as she cackles, flushed and so, so in love with her wink. It was hella silly!! How could she even think of all that?! I pout, lifeless eyes locked on her lips at the stop. “You’re hella fine in my janitor’s fit tho.” She could strut a trashbag and bring it into high fashion, she was just that breathtaking!! N’ seein’ her clothes on me whenever she wore them… Like havin’ a Barbie wear a Trolls’ fit. I smirk, biting my lip just imagining her with that on or nothing at all. “Lucky, lucky us…” Good thing we were married or my oogling her would be hella creepy!! I reach over to press a fat, tender kiss over her neck after she sticks her tongue out, needing to taste her skin. When she cuddles up to me, I feel my soul relax on a level that’s near unfathomable. “Ya, not a moment’s rest. I’d hella not get any work done, too. Just how I like us. Wanna try that?” I tease. If I could give her more fun while she was at home, in any way, I hella would!! Never wanted her to feel like she was doing pregnancy alone or felt alone point blank. I ain’t care if I get fired or what!!

I was laughin’ right with her, loving that we were always on the same page. Then I squinted at the road in thought. Should she transform… “Would it upset them?” I turn back to her. “Whatever makes you most comfortable, baby!! I have a spare mask if you ain’t wanna transform at all! I ain’t think he’ll do nothin’.” The ugly truth is that we have collateral. We know the sweet old lady, this guy’s mom. He tries anything with us, I burn her whole farm down and hunt him to extinction. It’s nothing I’d ever want, not in a million years, but everyone who’s in this lifestyle knows the rules. I squeeze her hand, blushing at what she says. Her giggle that lives rent-free in my heart, bouncing between my ribs.

I was still dizzy with her kiss. My voice is a pleased, low purr as my right arm tugs her closer, rubs her shoulder. “That’s beautiful, baby.” Her visions were the most ebullient, radiant living thing, pouring color onto this dark rainy night. I could see us there so clearly. Us, our kids. My happy wife and soulmate, finding a new rhythm in something that brought her joy. “I’ll be there. In the mornings n’ daytime I’ll go beat up the dough, bus our tables and wash dishes n’ whatever!! Take out the geezers trying to flirt with the world’s prettiest and best baker!!” I flexed with my wheel arm. I’d get that dough like it owed us somethin’!! Keep our kids under control, live the dream. “Where you thinking ‘bout putting it?”