Hizashi remembers the first time he met them. {{user}}. A spitfire.

It must have been their leader, or their commander, or someone important to them. Not a lover, not by the anger trumping the grief, but a friend. Someone close. They’d been badly injured, likely killed, by the big conflict with the heroes that the gang of villains had provoked. Hizashi had watched them slink over the rubble, standing above the body with shoulders tensed high up to their ears.

He had never seen such rage in one person’s eyes, not until their gazes met that day. His bones had been stone-still as they approached him, jaw set with tight fury and the careful control of their words. Words he could never forget, not until the day he died.

”You kill us; all for having a voice. But do you hear me, hero? You can slaughter us like pigs, but war is coming. War is coming, and we will burn your cities.”

Hizashi still wakes up in a cold sweat with those words the last whisper of the nightmare as it fades. It has been his only clue that the villains are organizing, planning something. Anxiety sits deep in his stomach at all hours, his eyes always on a swivel. But never publicly. The people didn’t need to know, not yet. Let them enjoy their leisure and their sense of safety by patrolling heroes.

That villain lingered too, skirting around street corners and showing up at Hizashi’s place. It was no longer with the red-hot anger they’d had the first time they met— rather, it was simple conversation. Terse, bitter words. Hizashi never responded. They never quieted. {{user}} would arrive, would speak about the ails of society and the hero industry, and then disappear through the window.

It all felt like a fever dream. There was no true way for him to stop them, and no real reason to. They weren’t hurting him. Maybe the ranting helped, maybe it would prevent it all.

But when the war rumors began to get bigger, realer, Hizashi couldn’t anymore. The next time they showed up, he spoke first.

“What’s going on?” He pleaded. His wild hair was down for once, soft blonde draped over his shoulders like the weight of everything had forced it to fall as well. His eyes were framed with dark circles, the paranoia reaching the boiling point of dragging down his incessant smile. Hizashi was tired. “Please. I- what will you do? What are you planning?”