Snack Time [Darren]

“These boots are made for walkin’,” hummed a pair of boots and their owner. The song was both being hummed and played on a mobile phone’s cheap-ass speakers. There was a spring in the step of the feet who were wearing the boots, made of thick black leather, and the song their owner was humming told no lie about their purpose.



Above the boots was a pair of cargo pants, and if his white T-shirt didn’t say “Booty” in black letters, the adolescent and his wild blonde hair could have easily been mistaken for another private. At first sight, at least. Upon closer inspection, one would have noticed the boots were brand new and shone like a bald man’s head. They had been bought from the surplus not a week ago. And upon spending any length of time with Darren, they would also notice there was no way in hell this idiot could be a soldier.

Slung across the idiot’s chest was the sling of a sports bag. The bag was filled with all manners of snacks, all manners of cheap: store brand soda, store brand chips, store brand candy bars but also a pair of 4oz gloves, a pair of 8oz gloves, hand tape, a pair of boxing shorts balled up in a corner, a mouth guard in its box between two packs of chips and a towel, also balled up in a corner. The only semblance of order in that sports bag was that the soda was placed below the chips so as not to crush them.

After a long afternoon of trying to break his previous record at the obstacle course, with and without using his quirk, he was drained. His Autokinesis could even burn into his fat if he overused it; he got a clear reminder the other day when he went skydiving with Yumi, and he showed her he was an independent man who didn’t need no parachute but still needed to be saved from drowning.

He had to spend hours in the infirmary even though he claimed loudly that didn’t hurt himself. The geasles was almost gone, but there were still a few dots on the back of his arms. Darren hated spending the afternoon in bed; that was something he reserved for his mornings. From then on, the blondie was not seen at the military base without his sports bag full of snacks.

He had found himself a nice spot to eat at, just out of view, in the shade of one of the only actual buildings in the maze of tents. It was quiet, no one bothered him here and he could pork on chips and look at memes in peace. Rest was important too.

Today, however, there was a girl in his spot. “Yo,” he said automatically when he spotted her. Well, it was never really his spot, but neither was it hers, and there was enough room for two people to sit, he reasoned as he sat his ass down casually, like he was sitting next to an old friend. He turned down his music a notch or two, but didn’t cut it off entirely. “I see you know the best lunch spot in here too,” he said with a grin as he tore open a convenience store triangle sandwich. He began to devour the first one.

As he did so, he opened his phone onto his social media feed. His social media feed was carefully curated to display exactly two things: news about himself and memes. Everything else was irrelevant. For every selfie, for every cat picture, there were a half dozen memes and an article or two about U.A. The articles about U.A. were particularly interesting these days because they often mentioned him and his shark wrestling adventures. Nothing pleased Darren more than reading about his shark-wrestling adventures.

Except being asked about them. Why, if the girl sitting next to him -- that he sat next to in reality, but details -- happened to recognize his picture as he scrolled down his social media feed of news and memes, that was just a happy coincidence, wasn’t it?

Darren didn’t hear the girl’s stomach grumble over the music, but he did see the bare feet and the oversized shorts. Now that he thought of it, it was rather baggy attire she was wearing. In any case, her body language was opening in his direction. He didn’t think the news would work so well.

Holy shit, he thought when she addressed him, they really work like a fucking charm, until she got to the point, which was the other sandwich in his pack. He took a bite of his own and stared at her blankly as he chewed. He swallowed. She wasn’t looking at him, looking very embarrassed. She even scratched her nose like a textbook tsundere.

“What’s with the boku?” he asked with characteristic bluntness. “And, sure, I guess. Mama always told me to share,” he added with a smile. “In her eternal words: share your toys, or I’ll kick your ass.”

He fished a can of coke from the bag to wash down his sandwich. It was a store brand. It pschiited and cracked like a name brand when he opened it, and it was just as unhealthy.

“I’m Daimon Darren. Maybe you heard of the shark thing? You follow U.A. News?” he asked proudly, eager to be asked more so he could brag more about the news articles about himself he couldn’t shut up about these last few days.

“Issa alright,” answered the delinquent, unhelpfully in delinquent jargon. “Fuck, I lived here all my life and I still get confused by this shit.” He switched to English, with a bastard mix of an American, Australian and Japanese accent. “We can speak English if ya want. My dad is from Australia.”

Robin Engell, he name was. She gave it after she devoured the sandwich in three bites. She asked for more food, saying that no, she didn’t see the news, but he could tell her all about it in exchange for some food. “Holy shit, you drive a hard bargain. Fine, help yourself to my extensive collection of unhealthy crap,” he said opening his sports bag wide, revealing the full extent of his cheap sodas and store brand chips so-called ‘collection’.

“You’re new to town, ain’t ya? We’re close to U.A. here. Surely you heard of it. First hero school in the world, yadda yadda, long story short, I study here,” he said, beaming proudly, sure to impress anyone who wasn’t a student with that. “And I got some real world practice recently. There I was, minding my own business -- for real, because often when I say I was minding my own business, I wasn’t, but in this story I was -- anyway, minding my own business, jogging through the park, and out of the fucking ground comes a god damn human shark who start eating people, so I played matador to the thing for a while before he retreated, I even saved a cop! Snatched that mothefucker straight from the jaws of death. Maybe next time I get in trouble they’ll have clemency, heh?”

Without any prior warning, Robin received their first exposure to the rapid-fire verbal shitposting that Darren was capable of executing, spitting roughly a thousand idiocies a minute. Roughly.

“What about you? Whachu doing here?”