The arcade smells like rusted electricity and old sugar dust, the kind that clings to carpet long after the machines have stopped dispensing anything sweet. Neon lights flicker overhead in broken intervals, casting thin blue shadows on the graffiti-tagged walls. The hum of dying CRT monitors fills the air like a distant wasp nest. It’s strangely comforting, a failing chorus, persistent in its decay.

This hideout isn’t official. You knew All For One was aware about this spot, but preferred not to think about it. The League’s real base is too cold, too full of whispers and bloodied regrets. But this place, this graveyard of childhood distractions, is yours and Shigaraki’s secret pause. A place where the world doesn’t end. Not yet.

You sit cross-legged on the cracked faux-leather stool of a fighting game machine. “Fury Duel: Final Uprising”, the name barely legible on the glass. The joystick squeaks when you move it, and one of the attack buttons sticks under your finger. Shigaraki is hunched beside you, hair messy and unbrushed. The machine’s screen glitches every ten seconds, but you’ve learned to time your moves in the rhythm of its death.

“Cheap move,” he growls, as you string together a combo that sends his avatar, a red-eyed cyborg, flying across the screen. You chuckle softly, and it almost echoes in the emptiness of the arcade. Dust floats through a shaft of light cutting between shattered blinds. Time here is thin, stretched, like neither of you is sure what day it is anymore.

The match ends in a blur of flickering pixels. His cyborg stands, barely, over your twitching warrior. Victory text stutters across the screen. “WINNER: PLAYER ONE.” He leans back with a grunt, cracking his fingers under one hand. Tomura is silent at first. Just stares at the screen. “You let me.”