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As the sun set, I could feel Dark Shadow become anxious within my chest. A heavy feeling, a slow crush of will as the darkness inside of me grew.
I crouched low to the ground, cutting a glance to Koda and Ashido behind me. Ashido’s brightly patterned costume did not suit this training and like a thick paste I could feel the encroaching dread spreading through me extremities. This was going to be bloody.
“Come on Tokoyami,” Ashido whined. “How are we supposed to be the bad guys if all we do is sulk in an ally?!”
“To win in this we must become one with the darkness,” I replied. The words sent a small thrill through my whole body. Dark Shadow shivered within me in delight.
“Phht,” Ashido intoned waving a dismissive hand. “Let’s get into some trouble. What do you say Koda? Let’s run around and act like hooligans!” She punched and kicked the air to emphasize.
Koda mumbled something. I couldn’t hear him, but I doubt that he agreed with Ashido.
The training exercise was a simple one. It took place in one of the mock cities. Each session had two groups of three. One group the heroes, one the villains. The heroes had to catch the villains by spotting them and shining a flashlight on them. There was one more element to this training exercise to make it unique.
It took place in the depth of the night.
Well that was a little dramatic, even for me. It was only about 8:00 pm. Heroes patrolled at night as well as the day and this exercise was supposed to help us learn the basics of doing so.
We were only three minutes into a, at most, twenty-minute exercise, and Ashido was already causing problems. I had nothing against her, but she was so bright and…un-dark. She could never understand the weight that consumed someone such as me. She only saw a world of swirling colors and adventure.
Then, a presence. “Shhh,” I said through my beak.
“I’m going to assume that means let’s make some noise!” Ashido crowed, framing her mouth with her hands.
“They are near by,” I informed quietly.
“How can you even tell that?” Ashido said with a smirk. She placed her hands on her hips and leaned forward, wiggling her eyebrows. She really should have worn something other than her hero costume. Its bright colors would be very easy to see in the dark.
I tilted my head and closed my eyes briefly. “There is a light traveling nearer us. Not far. In hearing range.”
“You can sense light?” Ashido asked in some surprise.
I opened my eyes and stood up. “Not really, but Dark Shadow can sense the lack of darkness.”
“Just kind of seems like a different way of saying the same thing to me,” Ashido said with a shrug of her shoulders.
“We should go,” I said quietly.
For the next for minutes we evaded the hero team, which consisted of Kirishima, Hagakure, Midoriya. I wasn’t too worried about Kirishima and Midoriya actually. Both of them were low on stealth but Hagakure would be able to sneak up on us.
All we had to do was avoid being seen by them for twenty minutes. That’s what I kept telling myself. Just remain hidden, remain one with the darkness around me. I could do that.
We kept to the edge of the buildings, to the shadows of the shadows. Seven minutes, we were seven minutes into the exercise. We could do this, only thirteen more minutes to go….
Dark Shadow lurched inside of me. A sudden light source. Near by!
I grabbed Koda by the arm and Ashido by the collar of her rather over dramatic fur lined crop jacket and pulled them back into the ally.
“Hey what…” Ashido began.
I covered her mouth with my hand and Dark Shadow burst from my chest. He swept himself over us, blanketing us with a swath of darkness.
Hopefully, Dark Shadow’s black form disappeared into the shadowed ally, and who ever was looking into the ally wouldn’t notice the bulging form.
“Oh, drat it,” Hagakure, snapped.
“What is it?” I could hear Midoriya call over a distance.
“I could have sworn I heard them in this ally, but they weren’t in there,” Hagakure replied, her voice drifting away.
With a sigh I let go of Ashido.
“She was staring right at us!” Ashido exclaimed.
I winced, hoping the others had gone away far enough that they couldn’t hear her.
“That was a really cool trick!” Ashido continued.
“Oh, uh, thanks,” I said.
Ashido leaned against the wall. “You know, you’re probably right about the strategy. We could probably just hang out here the entire time and be perfectly safe.” She let out a peeved huff of air.
Koda was petting Dark Shadow. I opened my mouth to tell him to stop, Dark Shadow did not like to be pet. But it seemed that Koda was an exception.
“Good shadow of the night,” Koda said quietly, patting Dark Shadow on the head.
Dark Shadow liked it, so I couldn’t quite understand why Koda’s attention bothered me so much.
“You know Tokoyami,” Koda began, his voice soft yet somehow still straining, “Dark Shadow has always felt strange.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Koda shook his head. “Oh, I didn’t mean to imply anything or, oh. I just. He’s just…always felt like a different person you know. I can talk to him. I just always thought that was strange since he was your quirk, and not a separate person.”
“You talk to Dark Shadow?” I asked in surprise. I could feel a vague sense of guilt coming from Dark Shadow.
“Oh, I uh…you didn’t know?” Koda muttered.
I slit my eyes and looked away, trying to hide my embarrassment. I don’t see how I could have missed it. Dark Shadow was always right there. I tried to recall moments where Koda had interacted with Dark Shadow before.
“Don’t you know everything that Dark Shadow knows?” Ashido asked.
I shook my head. “Not necessarily. We do share a bond…but we each have our own minds. Specific facts don’t always translate, we usually have to deliberately impart those. I do generally have a fairly good grasp on what he’s feeling, as I feel it too, but as to specifics I don’t know unless Dark Shadow tells me.”
“Can’t you just tell him to tell you everything?”
“I don’t control him,” I said, regretting the sharpness in my tone the moment the words were out of my mouth. There was no taking it back though. “He can resist me, and I can resist him. We truly are two separate minds living in one body. Controlling Dark Shadow isn’t a matter of learning physical control, it’s more like learning to become stronger willed and a better negotiator. We’re two wills helping and fighting each other.”
“Your quirk is kind of a strange one,” Ashido said, tapping her chin. “There are some pretty weird quirks in the world but yours is the only one I know of that’s all spiritual and stuff.”
I could feel Dark Shadow writhe under the attention. He stayed out to hide us, but I could tell he wanted nothing more than to hide away into my body again.
“I suppose Dark Shadow has never fit in with the other quirks of this world,” I said. “I never quite understood it either, the darkness that exists inside of me.”
“How did he show up?” Ashido asked. “Like I was always pink, but I couldn’t squirt acid until I was three.”
I pressed my hand to my chest, right underneath where Dark Shadow trailed from my body. “I have never known a moment without Dark Shadow. My parents even have a couple of ultrasounds that show Dark Shadow being in the womb with me.”
“Wow, really?”
“Yes.”
“I wonder what that would be like,” Ashido said, narrowing her eyes and poking at Dark Shadow, who grumbled threateningly. “To always have another consciences inside of you.”
When I was a very small child, I hadn’t really think of Dark Shadow as being strange. He just was. He was shy and didn’t like to come out around people, so he had never come out for anyone to comment on. I couldn’t recall if at the time I thought everyone had a shy being living inside of them, or if I even bothered to think about it. All I knew was that it was the only thing I had ever known, so why question it? To always have him there, to feel what he felt, to sense his growing hunger for darkness as the sun set, to see his drifting mind when the sun rose. To live without it would have felt strange.
I remembered the day I first realized that it wasn’t normal, that this thing inside of me was something strange, even in this world of quirks and superpowers.
I couldn’t have been more than four or five. It was night and I had been instructed by my parents to go to sleep over an hour ago. I never didn’t fall asleep until much later. Night was the only time that Dark Shadow liked to be active. Even though it would have been hard to deal with his emotions 24/7, I did miss him when he was less active during the day.
We spoke in a language only we had. The two of us had been speaking it ever since the beginning of us, it felt like. Small gestures and quiet noises that to most people would have been nonsense. We also talked about our day, and sometimes we would play. Dark Shadow felt alive running around and living in the night. And so did I.
It was one such night, I don’t even recall what Dark Shadow and I were doing. Perhaps we were playing too loudly so Father came in to tell me to go back to sleep. Perhaps we were just talking quietly, and he opened the door the way parents do to admire their sleeping children. My memory isn’t clear until I saw Father, the door to my room still slowly creaking open. The bright light of the hallway cast sharp shadows on his frightened face.
”Fumi…” he said, reaching out hand and taking an instinctive step back. “Who…are you okay?”
“Of course I’m fine,” I remember saying. My father had already charged into the room and scooped me up before I had finished my sentence. I was scared now. What was this. Why was he clutching me to his chest, why was he spinning around? Why was his heart beating so fast I could feel it thrumming through his chest? I felt a terrified sob choke my throat.
“What are you?” my father’s voice came out, harsh and sharp. Firm…but scared.
That’s when I felt it. It was like something ripping through my soul. Like drowning and being lit on fire. Fear and hate and loathing and joy and rapture and anger flooding into my body.
Dark Shadow.
I had never called him anything before. This other inside of me. I just excepted its existence. I still hadn’t named him.
I AM DARK SHADOW, he said again, screaming the words in my mind, his form bulging and growing to fill every corner of the room.
My father pressed me closer to himself but that only made me more terrified. But also…also…
Dark Shadow ripped me from my father’s hands.
AND HE IS MINE! Dark Shadow screamed. I screamed too. The anger. It felt…the terror…
I relished it.
The joy that came from the darkness. The ecstasy of loosing myself to it. I don’t believe I will ever be able to fully explain it.
We rampaged. We dug ourselves with delight into destroying the room. We screamed and we laughed at their terrified faces. At their desperate attempts to separate us.
Still, in the back of my mind.
Mother…Father.
They begged so, risking their lives to try to reach me.
A part of me wanted nothing more than to peal away from Dark Shadow, to be separate from his raging lust of destruction. I wept even as a reveled, to see their sobbing faces.
I don’t remember much. I suppose things couldn’t have escalated too far. The only property damage done to my room was a couple of punches in the walls. The only thing I remember clearly about that night was the way it felt. My parents have related the story. I guess they just eventually thought to turn the light on, and Dark Shadow disappeared inside of me again. They tell me I feel asleep soon after.
Since then I’ve also slept with a nightlight. Dark Shadow doesn’t like it, and we’ve mostly come to terms with each other, but a part of me still feel wrong about that night.
“We should try to capture one of them,” Ashido said.
“What would be the point in that?” I asked.
“More points! Duh.”
“We don’t need to risk it.”
Ashido rolled her eyes. “Of course we don’t need to. And we don’t need to dress in flamboyant costumes and have catchphrases, but being a hero is about saving people flashily. You know there’s always extra credit if we get into our roles.”
“That generally doesn’t translate into better grades.”
“Better grades. Better grades?!” Ashido stood up and slammed her fist into her open palm. “This is about more than better grades! This is about style, about branding, about living with conviction!” She strutted about, throwing herself into the words, grabbing at anything. “About learning to control your fears by embracing them! About learning to fight villains by learning to think like them. It’s about embracing the darkness inside of you to better control it!”
I sighed, dusting off my legs while I stood up. “Are you trying to convince me or Dark Shadow?”
“Well you were a dud, so I thought I’d give Dark Shadow a shot,” Ashido said with a cheesy grin. “Did it work?”
I could feel Dark Shadow shake with excitement. “What do you want to do?”
Ashido punched the air. “Let’s capture and kill the heroes!”
Of course she was speaking figuratively (I think), which is what I told Dark Shadow, who seemed a little too sincerely on board with murdering our friends. The plan was a simple one, we didn’t really have the time to concoct a complicated one.
I watched our momentary enemies from above, gliding on Dark Shadow’s wings. The heroes had a fairly good strategy. They were close enough they could hear each other by raising their voices only a little, but far away enough it didn’t look like they were together if you saw them from the ground. Or at least Kirishima and Midoriya were. There was no telling where Hagakure was, which was probably the point. By now Midoriya was the only one with an on flashlight. Hagakure kept hers hidden, for reasons we had already witnessed, and Kirishima had accidently broken his when he was startled by a cat.
I landed on one of the buildings, watching Kirishima look down an ally.
The previously mentioned cat walked up to me and looked at me expectantly.
“Tell Koda that Kirishima took the bate and went down the street we wanted him to,” I said, scratching the cat under the chin. Dark Shadow grumbled jealously. “Also lead Midoriya more south. Where he is right now, he’d be able to get to Kirishima took quickly.” I accompanied this with pointing at Midoriya and then pointing south. Koda had explained the animals didn’t understand our words, but the cat would relate how I had pointed.
Kirishima continued heading north west while Midoriya began to go south.
A different cat returned. So far, I think all the cats that Koda had been using were different cats. I had no idea why we had so many stray cats at our school. They all looked far too taken care of to be mere strays. Almost like someone must have been leaving food out for them.
The cat used its tail to point and pulled at my pant leg.
That was the signal to follow it. Kirishima had gotten to the ambush point and Koda was letting me know to follow the cat so I could meet up with him. Dark Shadow surrounded me again and we followed the cat, gliding where it leapt and bounded.
“You’re quirk really is useful,” I said as I stepped onto the ground next to Koda.
Koda was petting the cat gently. “It’s not as cool as yours though,” Koda said softly.
“Cool?”
Koda blushed. “Well I just…I’m just a friendly animal guy. You…you get to do all the darkness stuff and I, I’m sorry I know it must be hard sharing your body but…it’s useful and cool. I’m just useful.”
Useful and cool, I thought to myself.
“Animals are cool,” I said awkwardly.
“Animals are great,” Koda said with a smile, waving goodbye to the cat. “But I can’t fly with my quirk. I’ve tried. Even the biggest birds working together can’t do it. Anyway, you should go back to scouting.” Koda sighed. “I told Mr. Peanut here to tell you to stay, not to follow. Cat’s can be so contrary sometimes.”
I nodded and took to the air once more. I became one with Dark Shadow and one with the darkness. It being night I could do it with ease, like breathing. Alone with Dark Shadow, nothing but black air all around me, Dark Shadow enveloping me, I lost myself. I thought again about my quirk. I recalled a night after I had been teased about my bird head. My beak made eating noodles hard and other students always mocked me for it. I wanted to cry that night. Dark Shadow had waited patiently. And when I was done, he had shown me how to make sorrow something to delight in, how important sadness was to the human soul. I remembered him telling me to cry, to not be afraid of the darker emotions, to not hide them and be ashamed, but to feel them and relish them no matter what.
I watched Ashido effortlessly corner Kirishima. The cats also helped.
There were a lot of things about my quirk that were hard. But in the end, I was glad.
Useful and cool.
I found it odd how good those words felt. I could even feel Dark Shadow rumble with pleasure at the phrase. Dark Shadow told me Koda was always saying nice things like that to him. Apparently, he and Koda already had quite the friendship.
Still not sure how that happened without my noticing.
But still, Dark Shadow was a part of me.
And I was a part of Dark Shadow.
There was no separating us and I wouldn’t want it. He was my worst enemy and my best friend. We were opposed, but we were also one. It was the way things were meant to be, and it is what felt right.
Ashido had Kirishima tied up and gave a thumbs up to the cats. She was doing a dance and I couldn’t help but smile.
Then…
Light. The sparkle of blue lightning.
It leapt behind Ashido.
Midoriya.
He had turned his flashlight off and had snuck up on Ashido.
I cursed and swooped down to join the fight. All Midoriya had to do was turn on his flashlight and we would loose. We only had a couple of minutes left. We didn’t have to escape, just stall him.
I landed. Dark Shadow reached out and smacked Midoriya’s flashlight from his hand. Ashido was on the ground, twitching from a punch. She pushed herself up.
Midoriya darted for the flashlight but Dark Shadow smashed it. Now we would win, as long as Hagakure didn’t show up.
Midoriya, being Midoriya, fought on. His power leapt and danced over his flesh, the sparks of light twisting and pulsing. He aimed a punch at Dark Shadow, who easily dissolved and shifted.
Midoriya punched the wall instead. It burst apart.
I stepped back, asking Dark Shadow to shield Ashido from the debris. He swooped to protect her, but she was already up and darting away from the falling rubble.
I should have told him to protect me.
A chunk of wall hit me in the head. Sparks burst in my mind and things blurred and shifted. Everything became vague and distant as I shut my eyes for just a blink.
When I opened my eyes again, I had obviously been out for more than a blink.
Dark Shadow was rampaging, screaming and destroying everything around him. He was filled with rage. Rage at my pain, rage at Midoriya for ruining our perfect plan, rage at the world in general. He blossomed in the darkness and the brief seconds I had been unconscious he had let him take full control.
My head still pounded. The world still spun around too quickly.
Ashido and Midoriya were dodging Dark Shadow’s thrashing limbs.
Please, I begged. Stop.
RAGE. HATE. POWER. HUNGER.
You’re going to hurt them.
But my pleas didn’t make it through Dark Shadow’s torrent of emotions.
“If only I hadn’t dropped and broken my flashlight,” Kirishima bemoaned, darting from one of Dark Shadow’s contorting limbs. He still had his hands tied behind his back.
“Get out of the way!” Aizawa yelled, leaping onto the scene. His scarf warped and twisted, pulling and tossing the others out of danger as he leaped into the fray. Dark Shadow reached for Aizawa, his many limbs merging towards my teacher.
Aizawa dodged Dark Shadow. His scarf took advantage of a rail and he leapt backwards, pulling himself towards a wall and then keeping his feet planted on it by pulling the scarf taut. The pressure kept him in place as he snapped open his eyes wide. They turned dark red, his hair defied gravity and thrashed.
I fell to the ground. My head still rang, but I felt calmer. Or…
It was strange. I almost felt empty. Like I couldn’t feel at all.
The first thing I became aware of outside of my own numbness was the yelling. No words. Just an inarticulate scream of rage.
I gingerly pushed myself up to my feet, holding my hand to the sore spot on my head. There was a person in front of me. They were the one screaming. Their throat was already horse and strained. They rolled and thrashed; their voice now not only angry but scared. So scared. It was unsettling. Where this child, teenager really, about my age, had even come…
I moved my head to look at Aizawa, his eyes trained on the thrashing, screaming person in front of me. His eyes not only wide with his quirk use, but shock as well.
No.
No that wasn’t…
Aizawa blinked.
The person in front of me burst into shadow and tossed themselves into me. I stumbled back with the force.
Dark Shadow had been with me from the womb.
Not a quirk.
A twin.
A horrifying dread crept over, more ominous and overpowering than anything I had ever felt before in my life.
“My quirk,” I spoke, the words thick and heavy, “is just bird head.”
