[Semper Fi] Suit Up! (Darren)

Darren looked at his phone. He had a feeling there was something he was forgetting, so he looked at his DMs. Melody bitching at him again. Alex talking about Darkshine toys. Kutsu asking about his next judo class, Eli saying he was gonna come to practice next time, he swore, Maxi finding excuses not to spar with him, Yumi, Naoru, Aki, Mari… Mari?

God damn it, that’s right, he was to meet Mari at the outfitting tent, and fuck, it was almost his turn to shoot the dragon’s breath cartridges now, he thought, disappointed, his arms hanging low in front him as he pitifully made his way out of the queue and wobbled weakly in the general direction of the outfitting tent.

He checked the news to perk himself back up. One new article about him. It used the same picture as every other article, the one where you could clearly see the blood on his dirty white running shoes, the dark cold crimson of blue, contrasting with the vibrant red of his shirt.

Right, it wasn’t exactly the picture of a super hero's fighting suit, he figured. Thankfully, he had been working on a design, scribbling terrible sketches in math class, and with Jaz’s help had managed to turn it into a series of decent pen-and-paper concepts. He liked it because he thought it was simple and very cool and looked official and reassuring, even if he had no idea what to put inside the pouches.

He found his classmate with the black heart and the heart-shaped pupils in the tent. He would normally comment on the heart-shaped pupils, but he had a goat man singing for his band, so he was used to weird shit now.

“Hey, whassup, sorry I’m late. So you peep those drawings I sent ya? I was thinking an olive drab jumpsuit, something practical, with red and black stars, Kinetic on the right sleeve, Activity on the left in white letters, and with a harness like I showed ya. It think we can get a lot of this shit here.” He felt like he was forgetting something. “And, and uh, thanks for the costumes and all. That’s pretty tight. I’d trust a proud mattress-throwing 1-C classmate any day.”

He was very bad at thanking people. “Hey, when I’m a famous hero, they will say you designed the first costume of Kinetic Activity, that's cash as fuck innit? Hell, maybe you’ll still be designin' them.” He made it about him, as always. Darren was incorrectible, and even more so because the idiot was persuaded it was part of his charm.

Right. He had to remember that, with Mari, if he talked too much like himself, he would lose her. He had to adapt his speech, something that multiple people had remarked on at school. He always adamantly refused to do so because he was an idiot, but he wasn’t a complete idiot and realized that when his classmate was helping him design a hero costume, the least he could do was to accommodate her.

“Hum. It means that it’s cool. I just wanted to thank you for making all this. I went in a helicopter the other day and they made me wear a jumpsuit, I figured we could use one as a base and tack on the other shit. Hum, add on the other shit… Stuff, I mean.” He paused awkwardly for a second, but thankfully Mari had a trick up her sleeve, or rather in the pouch of her bag.

It was a white K that turn red when shaken. Darren eyes opened wide and a childish smile drew itself on his face. His vocal chords produced a very genuine “ooooooh,” as he grabbed the letter out of Mari’s hands and started shaking it around to see the effect.

“That’s cash as fu… Fuckin awesome, I mean. You understand what ‘fucking awesome’ means, don’t ya? Cause I can’t think of any other way to say it. Can you do the same in blue? It would look fucking amazing with the blue sparks my quirk makes. If not, red is cool too. Man. This is amazing.” He kept shaking the letter. He was like a child with a new toy.

“Yeah, I think they’ll let us buy most of the shit we need. You also understand it when I say ‘shit’ instead of ‘stuff’, right?” He was being careful not to use English swear words like he often did. It made him sound like the main character of a delinquent anime. "Oh, by the way, I'm covering for the cash, I got everything here," he said producing an envelope that had the address of U.A. on it. "My dad sends me my allowance in cash every month. Lately I ain't even got time to spend it, so I have a bit or two saved."

He scratched his head. He didn’t know what to say next. “Hey, you’re helping us all make our costumes n shit. What about yours? If you need some shit, consider it my treat. As long as it's not some sort of 40 000 yen rebreather shit,” he added as if he felt he had to correct himself after saying something nice.

“I can git what you jiving yo, my hip cat.”

“What?” answered Darren. He spoke street thug, which was an entirely different language from TV thug, and even then he didn’t really speak street thug, he spoke delinquent thug, which was a third strain specific to Japanese public schools. Thugology was a fascinating field of study which was sadly too often overlooked when it came to the allocation of research funding.

The girl straightened back. Darren interpreted it as an unspoken agreement never to speak of this ever again, and he agreed.

She then got out a book, which she opened to a bunch of drawings. Of course Mari was good as drawing, she designs costumes, he thought as he leaned over to get a better look, assuming she was showing him a sketch of the suit or something. She snapped it close just as he was starting to figure out it was a picture of himself and Eli during the sleepover. He figured she had the pen-and-paper equivalent of stage fright, which he understood all too well. He’d have let it go, but curiosity was getting the better of him.

It had to be curbed for a while, cause Mama Daimon managed to instill at least some sense of politeness in her boy, so he feigned interest in Mai’s explanations and nodded when she showed him the QR code thing. It was kinda cool, and now they were looking at belts and he really needed to pick himself a cool one too, but he wanted to know about the drawings.

He faced the girl and put a compassionate hand on her shoulder, or as compassionate as he could manage, which was not a lot. “Don’t be shy about your art stuff,” he said with a smile that wanted to be reassuring. “It’s just like my music, that’s your soul right there in this book, don’t be ashamed of your soul!”

He did not get a good look at the drawings. As such, he was blissfully unaware of their ‘nature’, shall we say. “It was us, wasn’t it? I mean the class, during that slumber party. Come on! Show me! I wanna see!”

Something she wasn’t supposed to show? Darren grew increasingly worried and increasingly curious. He could very much relate to having to filter what went through his head; for all that he seemed to be a thoughtless delinquent saying whatever he wanted all the time, Mama Daimon had done an impressive job teaching him to keep his damn mouth shut for a god damn second sometimes, in her words -- Darren used his mother’s expressions a lot more often than he was willing to admit.

And then, Mari opened her book. He couldn’t help but blurt out “Oh, that’s what you meant,” when she showed him. She explained to him why she drew him and Eli in a 8-bit heart. He scratched his chin pensively. He wasn’t sure if he was a fan of the setting, but having pictures drawn of himself stroked his ego in all the right ways, again. “I, uh. That’s some good shit, yes, but I don’t know if the reality is like you imagine… Though I wonder… Maybe… You think I can hit the yaoi demographic with them drawings? What do you think?”

Ever a Darren, he was thinking of how he could twist it and use it for his own benefit. Popularity was everything to adolescent boys, especially those in hero class, and Darren was willing to do almost anything for the noble cause of getting people to talk about him. He didn’t seemed to be offended by it, at least. It was 2070 in the world of quirks, after all. Man on man action was almost vanilla nowadays, compared to some of the discussions people had on the PEGI 18 usage of quirks.

“Also, why does everyone think I’m with Melody?” It got him wondering too. She was certainly pretty, and they got along pretty well. But every time he was alone with her, he felt out of place. He felt like he was intruding in a world that wasn’t his. He felt alien, even more so than usual. He shook his head. Since when did delinquents think about feelings so much? He’d see in Akihabara. They were supposed to go tomorrow.

Mari was explaining the reasoning behind her various gay ships. “Well, I don’t know any of these niqqas. Except my boi Ryuusei, but I think he has the hots for the evil overlord. Rin, I mean. The blood girl.”

The mention of Rin put a thought in his head. “Oh, oh, oh, do you have one of Alex? I bet he will flip his shit if I send him a picture. God damn, please tell me you have one of him and Akio. They will both flip their shit and it will be fucking awesome.” He was grinning like he did when he was up to no good, which was a grin most of his classmates knew very well by now.

He flipped some of the pages himself, looking for his Graal. "You're pretty good, anyway. They got that mood on them, these drawings. Though I do wish some had girls in it."

Darren scratched his head at Mari’s explanation. Holy shit was she into this. While the attention sounded nice, though, he figured it may not be the best for a delinquent. “Yes, but see, that’s the thing with these things, it has to be will they won’t they, and if I go ham on this shit I'm gonna lose my main demographic and-- AAAAAH HOLY SHIT THERE IT IS,” and he erupted into laughter. He had just turned to book to the page with Alex and Akio, and it was better than his wildest dreams.

“HAHAHAHAHA THE KIMONOS AND THE SPRINKLERS, IT’S PERFECT!” he shouted between uncontrollable fits of laughter. He managed to calm down enough to take a picture, but he was off his ass again from expectation when he sent it to the both of them. It drove him to tears, which he wiped with his hands.

“Aaaaah… God damn, this thing is amazing. So much potential. Please please please draw more Alex and Akio and send it to me. This is too good. I’m 100% a fan.” He was a fan for the worst possible reasons, of course, as was fitting of a Darren.

She went on to explain her theory of two hearts, which made Darren scratch his chin pensively. “Fuck, I guess it makes sense if you’re bi. You’d want both, right? Though I gotta say, I’m not sure about your pairings in my case. Everyone keeps putting me with Melody, but… I don’t know. We get along, but I’m not sure we get along that much.”

He paused for a second. His delinquent's instincts told him he was being a candy-ass niqqa right now and be better bring up something less gay right now. “Anyway, shall we get that suit bread?” he said, using another one of his incomprehensible expressions. “I mean, let’s get the shit we need.” He grabbed a belt, completely at random. “How bout this one?”

“Really?” he answered when she said the belt he picked was no good, or in Darren’s own words, a piece of shit. He certainly didn’t want to wear no piece of shit that didn’t have enough utility. Darren was an exigeant delinquent.

Thankfully, he had a great costumeer, or what seemed to him like a great costumeer -- he had very little experience in hero costume design after all, that is to say absolutely none -- who picked a good once for him, complete with a set of suspenders and straps to carry a lot of utility, and it was made of something that sounded very cool because it involved not only a word that starts with the letter W, but a word that started in K, finished in R, AND included a V.

You can’t do cooler than that, folks. The blonde delinquent was immediately sold, hurriedly grabbing the thing out of the girl’s hands and thanking her and saying she was the best, and that he was gonna try it out right now, and that is precisely what he did, hopping from one foot to the other to get in the straps, pulling the suspenders over his shoulders, adjusting what he could adjust. He couldn’t do the back, so he turned around. “Little help?”

Over his civilians clothes, it looked a little stupid, to put it nicely. But when Darren looked at himself in the mirror, his extraordinary powers of imagination -- which were especially strong when it came to his image of himself -- painted in his mind a picture of Kinetic Activity in his full OD green jumpsuit, with the color-changing letters Mari came up with stitched on the arms, his feet clad in tough black leather boots and his hand in steel-reinforced fingerless gauntlets that were very edgy and very badass, and with cool red and black stars all over.

His eyes were sparkling with joy as he looked at himself in the mirror, looking very sharp with his military suspenders and belt apparatus with the pouches hanging all over his jeans and Rolling Stones t-shirt. “Mari, you’re a god damn genius.”