Swipes of Sword And Fan 4

a slightly fluffier chapter to make up for the angsty one I made this morning 😀

Word count: 884

Chapter 4: Late Nights and Compassion.

Late
at night, a commotion rumbled from the inside of a seedy looking bar. A decrepit
sign baring the name “Broken tooth” donated it as the sort of place
people of ill repute and foul reputation looked for a drink.

A
fight breaking out in that sort of bar, even at such a late hour, was not
unheard of by any stretch.

The
fact that the noises of the fight stopped abruptly, punctuated by a series of high-pitched
yelps, on the other hand, was more notable.

A
few beats of silence followed the sudden stop of the fight before Baiken kicked
open the doors to the bar with all the grace of a sleep-deprived rhino, one of
them ripped clean off its hinges and landing on the street with a crash, startling
a few late night pedestrians who were passing by.

Baiken
adjusted the nearly limp Anji draped over her shoulder, her left hand holding
his right, with a canyon deep scowl, before making a sharp right turn and
stomping her may down the street, people clearing her path three whole steps
before she reached them.

The
difference in height between the two made the situation much more amusing for
any who happened to glimpse them, though few dared to laugh for fear the angry
looking one-armed samurai would hear them.        

Anji
blinked his eyes a few times, his vision unfocused, “Baiken,” He
started, his voice mildly slurred, “Where are my glasses?”  

“In
my pocket.” Baiken muttered darkly, “They fell off your dumb face
when you slipped on your robe.”

“Oh,
right.” He was quiet for a moment, before rubbing the back of his head
with an apologetic, and still slightly drunk, smile, “Guess I should have
watched my step huh?”

“What
you should have done,” She muttered again, “was mind your damn
business when that fight started.”

“They
were ganging up on that poor guy Baiken.”

She
scoffed in mixed annoyance and affection, “Never would have pegged you for
a compassionate drunk.”

“I
am full of surprises my dear.” He declared with a lopsided smile,
“And besides, I only drank about 5 glasses.”

“Ten.”

“Ah,
must have lost count.”

Baiken
scoffed again, and paired it with a shake of her head as she attempted to
Anji’s position again to he could walk with a bit more ease.

Anji
looked askance at Baiken for a moment, before letting out an intrigued hum.

“What?”

“Why
didn’t you try to help before I drew their attention?”

“Because
I don’t care Anji.” She stared ahead at the cold, empty street between her
and the cheap in the two of them rented for the night, her voice level and
calm, “You know that.”

“I
most certainly do not.” The booze has seemed to give him a new
level of nerve, sober Anji would never voice such things, and Baiken was disturbed
to realize she was missing sober Anji, “You care a great deal,
about a lot of things.”

“I
don’t care about people, especially drunk people.”

“Really
now?” He asked with a laugh, vaguely motioning at their current situation,
“And what do you call this then? I’d say you care a great deal
about me at least.”

“You’re
not people,” She growled impulsively, a headache growing from
somewhere behind her eyepatch, very pointedly not looking at him as a
warmth crept up her neck, “You’re Anji.”

A
few moments passed as Anji looked at her in utter shock, his legs dragging
behind him as she kept stomping forward for a couple more steps before she
stopped and whipped her head to look at him, mouth open to shout at him to move
his drunk ass.

Her
jaw snapped shut as she took in his gaze, cheeks flushed, surprised, grinning
like a fool.

It
took another second or two before she fully realized what she had said, a
second more after that for the warmth on her neck to invade her cheeks as her face
flushed at her slip.

“Never
pegged you for a romantic drunk dear.”

She growled, her blush growing a bit darker,
“I swear if you breathe a word of this to anyone
I’ll-!”

Whichever,
probably very cleaver, threat Baiken was about to throw Anji’s way was lost in
her throat as his lips met hers in a clumsy yet gentle kiss, his free hand
cupping her flushed cheek as her shoulders lost their tension and sagged down.

“Don’t
worry,” Anji said lowly as their lips separated, giving her a sleepy
smile, “I’m probably drunk enough that I won’t even remember this in the
morning.”

Baiken
smirked kindly at him, “Tch, you better hope you are, or I’ll-”

Again,
Anji interrupted Baiken, though this time he did so by vomiting on her shoes.

He
lost consciousness soon after, forcing Baiken to carry him across her shoulder
like an overstuffed sack of potatoes.  She
cleaned his mouth and put him under the covers with minimal ceremony.

She
felt mildly vindicated the next morning when his hangover eclipsed hers by a
fair margin. She offered him coffee and was only slightly disappointed when
it turned out he actually forgot.

(Anji,
now properly sober, wisely choose not to comment on the dour mood Baiken
carried all morning. Sober Anji knew to mind his damn business and drink his
coffee.)  

(for the meme thing you reblogged) The Good, the Bad, and the Bloodied

A fic long fight scene between Bakugou and Toga, probably involving a lot of psychological prodding from Himiko about Bakugou’s “lack of heroic qualities” or the fact that the league caught him so easily the first time (”Number 1? Oh, Kacchan, a guy like you maybe my type, but being delusional is so unattractive!”)

He beats her, but she manages to get away, and her words stick, so maybe the last few paragraphs are someone giving Katuski a bit of confidence boost, while acknowledging that he still has a ways to go (either Deku or Krishima or….Camie I guess, and the latter would probably piss him off just to get him to stop moping)

I guess

Swipes of Sword and Fan 3

Warning: A bit more graphic than the last two, also vaguely sad and angsty, the best kind of angst.

Word count: 889

Chapter 3: Rain and Smoke.

The
roof of the aging metal gazeebo rattled loudly above them, heavy rain pelting
it without cease as they sat and waited for the downpour to stop, or at least
lessen.

Around
them, marks of combat scarred what was once a park not a few hours ago, trees
charred and ripped from the ground roots and all, stone walkways and roads
slashed and riddled with bullet holes and scorch marks. Around them the smoking
and bleeding corpses of Gears lied motionless, some with limbs missing and
holes large enough to fit your head through dotting the bodies of the larger
ones.

Baiken
took a slow, methodical drag from her wood and metal pipe, her eyes following
the smoke raising to gather at the roof.

Anji
closed his eyes, listening to the chaotic cadence of the rain.

Baiken’s kimono had a few cuts along the legs
and shoulder, and her hair looked scorched in places. One of the lenses of
Anji’s glasses was slightly cracked. Otherwise, they were no worse for wear,
ready to head out and reach their next destination as soon as the rain decide
to turn to drizzle.

“Been
a while since we had rain like this,” Anji said mildly, just loud enough
to be heard over the raindrops, “there’ll be a good harvest this year,
don’t you think?”

Baiken
didn’t say a word, only puffed out another cloud of smoke and watched it drift
upwards, her eyes very far away.

Anji cracked one of his eyes open to glance at
her, he held his gaze for long minute, his heartbeat drowned by the rain,
before he looked askance at the destruction they left behind.

The
park was relatively modest, both in size and in scenery, but it was a nice
change of pace from crowded villages and dirty cities. It even had a small pond
with ducks and fish in it for the park goers to fawn over and feed.

(Convincing
Baiken to part with even a tiny part of her loaf of bread was like pulling
teeth, though worth it to see a sparrow land on her shoulder as she bent down
to give her offering to duckling. It still surprised him she waited a whole
minute before shooing the bird away.)

A
bisected corpse of a Gear was floating in the pond, staining the water a sickly
red. Dead fish and birds littered the waters along with it, a few bigger fish
found themselves tangled in the hanging guts of the monster.

Anji’s
stomach stayed where it was, it did not lurch and he felt no desire to empty it
into the gazeebo. Which was just as well, Baiken would have kicked him out into
the rain if he did.

“You
think the rest of the people made it out alright?”

“Who
knows?”

(The
words were not unkind or cruel. A few years ago, he suspects her answer would
have been, “Who cares?”)

There
were not a lot of other park goers that day, an old couple on a bench, a boy
catching butterflies while his mother kept watch, a family having a picnic. An
old man sharing old loafs of bread to give to the birds and fish in the pond.

A
lump was not stuck in Anji’s throat, and his eyes did not water.  

“It
was raining then too.” Baiken muttered, somehow carrying over the rain,
“Even heavier than now.”

(Smoke
in the air, blood on his face and flooding the streets.

People
crying and screaming.

Dozens
and dozens crowding the makeshift field hospital, nurses rushing back and forth
to tend to as many people as they could, giving priority to those in dire need.

Unless
you were all but dying on your cot, you were not in dire need.

He
had a broken arm splinted and held in place by a thin piece of cloth, a head
wound cleaned and dressed with little concern for his comfort or age. He still
had blood on his face, not his blood.

He
sat next to girl with a bloody stump for a right arm, and half her face covered
in gauze, the spot where her left eye should be was a growing red circle beneath
the bandage.

They
were the only two people who could draw breath in that hospital and didn’t use
it to scream or sob.

He
focused his gaze on his bare feet, her eye blazed at some distant spot directly
in front of her.

“I’m
going to kill them all.” She said, voice clear and sharp and burning and addressing
no one who could hear her, “Every last one of them, every single one of
them.”

He
did not need to ask whom, did not dare to ask how.)

“Yes,”
He said, a second after she finished speaking, “nearly flooded the
town.”

“Or
what was left of it.”

A
second passed, he nodded his head soundlessly, and closed his eyes again to
listen to the rain.

Baiken
took a deep breath from her pipe, blowing the smoke out into the downpour.

(They
sat there for a long while before the rain slowed enough to walk through; the
sound of their shoes hitting blood soaked mud was louder than the drizzle. His
hand found hers between their umbrellas; she grasped him hard enough to hurt.
He didn’t say a word.)