Tat for tat (Ai)

He rolled his eye so hard it almost fell into the other socket.

Japan's top doctors, all gathered in one place, to perform a few measly checkups. Not only has the military fished out precious talent from an already limited pool, thus depriving underserved regions of medical attention, but this hoax of a department wanted to capitalize on the recent upsurge of potential puppets.

After those fearmongers feverishly refused to engage with superhumans, they suddenly had a change of heart. Yesterday, people like him were dangerous, ticking time bombs ready to go berserk at the drop of a hat. Today, everyone from the lowliest grunt to the highest ranking official was on their hands and knees, licking his boots. Tell us about yourselves, their eyes screamed. So we can use it all against you.

Ai scowled. This hole crawled with hypocrites.

Even the air reeked of dirty money, inside jobs, and jingoism. It was one thing to slink around among sullied hands, but what wrenched his gut the hardest was the number of civilians that got hoodwinked into this ploy. These bastards roped in high school students. In his eyes, clueless teenagers. In the military's, war fodder. Nothing made him want to vomit more than generational indoctrination. Still, for the sake of his cause, he had to endure.

Today served two purposes: fuck up their records, then extract the research for online distribution.

The first point got accomplished easily enough. All he had to do was sweet-talk that rookie into letting him "sort files" for her. For the price of one dazzling grin, throwing in a cheap line about being a first-year med student, he had poor Nadaiyo wrapped around his finger.

He got shunted to the tent corner, since tablespace proved scarce in this outdoors environment. Encircled by manila folders and rolling cabinets, he sat cross-legged on the dirt. He scanned a document and chuckled. That new grad crumbled before his flirting, but she kept her wits about her. Nothing in this stack of papers was particularly sensitive.

To be fair, he didn't expect otherwise. The military was as paranoid as they were corrupt. Tampering with this information provided low gains, but he shrugged off the unfavorable economics for now. He spent the next hour completing his assigned bitchwork, guaranteeing each file at least one erroneous fact or figure, courtesy of his quirk.

Scrambling the ink was slow, and his hands were really starting to burn. He handed the fruits of his labor to his temporary supervisor. She seemed a little disillusioned by how sluggishly he went about one simple task. Still, after doing this much, maybe he would be allowed to observe one of their quirk trials?

"Ah, I wish I could," stammered Nadaiyo, struggling to maintain eye contact with the young man. "But even letting you shadow me would be a violation of the subject's right to privacy."

How about a right to open access, you fucking sellout? he bit back. Instead, he responded with an understanding nod.

So much for phase two.

Disgruntled, Ai brought an arm over his chest to alleviate an aching shoulder. Planting his ass on the ground for that long could not have been good for his posture. His ears then picked up on some right bitching. He swept his recently halved gaze across the medical tent and saw a man brooding in a chair. Roughed up from a fight, it seemed. He scoffed. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

He headed in that direction, intending to abandon this zone, when upon closer inspection, his attention locked onto strange patterns painting the man's skin. Ai raised a brow. Although this backwards-ass country was slowly warming up to tattoos, he'd never come across anyone else with this much ink. At least, he recognized the illustration on his back as a product of a fellow artist. Those red lines, however, didn't look quite right.

Intrigued, Ai grabbed the closest chair, swung it around, and sat himself in front of the stranger, arms dangling over the back support. He smiled. It wasn't every day he got to play his "Edgy Backwards Chair-Sitting" card.

"You have good taste," commented the foreigner. He jutted an indicative thumb over his own shoulder. "The ink work. Who did it for you?"

Although he'd only caught a sliver of it, he could tell the piece was high quality. Subject matter was irrelevant to him, since the dye manipulator could wear any design he wanted.

Wanting to defend his reason for taking up the guy's free time, Ai rolled his left jacket sleeve up to his elbow. Embedded along his forearm, toned as ever, was an eye. Two dimensional and constructed with pigments, of course, but lifelike nonetheless, to the point where if he blinked, so might it.

When it came to photorealism, he excelled. It also helped that the eye was based off the one he lost, aka a mirror image of the one he still had.

---

For a hot sec, he felt a pang of disappointment at the stranger's mention of religion. Only with his luck could he find himself at the receiving end of another fanatical sermon about the mystical source of quirks. He'd had enough of that at home. His brain went into overdrive, calculating his nearest exit, when the conversation turned remarkably sane.

He let out a surprised hmph. "So they're birthmarks, in a sense." It was one thing to be graced with pigments at the start, but when mutations were involved, clearly the red patterns served a purpose beyond mere decoration.

Part of him wondered if these lines worked similarly to his ink, able to dance across the skin and serve their master. The corner of his mouth tilted up. Imagine the odds, originating from two different countries yet born with adjacent abilities. He prayed their maker wasn't this uncreative.

His expectations to hear more fell short, unsatisfyingly. The man opted to keep his lips sealed, offering the bare minimum. Ai gave a flat laugh. "Alright, I'll bite," he conceded. "What's your mutation?" There was no way he could be impossibly against sharing the details. He'd walked into this tent all battered, after all, and the only opportunities to get this roughed up must have involved a demonstration of his powers. Otherwise, the army bastards would've booted him off the grounds for wasting their time.

But Ai knew very well that a demonstration didn't necessarily reflect the full story behind the biology. He ultimately skirted these conversations by hand waving his skill as a hardening quirk, whatever it took to get these military vultures off his back.

Not one to abide by common courtesy, he was fully prepared to pester him into dropping more information without reciprocating the gesture himself. However, the one sitting before him seemed to appreciate his art, already earning him points, then suddenly, he proved he was either stupid or confident enough to probe Ai directly for ill intent.

He narrowed his eyes. It was likely this man was on the lookout for shady characters, but he had no clues as to why. Given the massive security risks of letting randos enter this base, he had to assume he was talking to a mole of sorts. A government dog. He scowled.

"I'm Ai," he articulated slowly. "And what'd you expect? The doors are propped open. Don't be surprised when everyone here gets fucked over by their own arrogance." If this piece of shit decided to have him strapped down and interrogated, so be it. He was more than happy to waste their time and feed these nationalists all kinds of baseless threats and conspiracies. His record was forged and spotless, they couldn't hold him forever.

He leaned back, stretching his shoulders with the pull, gaze locked onto Julen's. In the end, he posed no physical threat to the ones topping the authoritative pyramid, and he certainly wasn't about to try. His forte lay elsewhere.

Speaking of forte, this guy just wouldn't pipe down, drawing unsubstantiated, yet accurate, conclusions about his mischief purely from his choice of artistic expression. "Such a narrow view, assuming tattoos mean bad news," Ai scoffed, never mind the fact he himself played right into the stereotype. He certainly hadn't come here to sightsee, and Julen had exhibited a bothersome sense of curiosity.

He shrugged. "I wish I could say I had something up my sleeve, but only paperwork's been eating my afternoon." The truth was all he had to offer. "Although I'm sure I still somehow messed it up." A self-satisfied smile sat on his face, knowing the mess was very much deliberate, but it quickly dissolved. There was no glory in small victories.

But if this guy happened to be a bootlicker, then he might as well share some unsolicited advice. He pointed to the recently bandaged wounds. "I see you were out there playing their carnival games," he remarked, treading finely between teasing and condescending. "So what'd you win? After going through all that, surely you didn't leave empty-handed."

It was his duty to cut a puppet's strings. Why anyone would willingly hand over free data and labor to these warmongers, he'd never understand.

---

While uncommon, he’d certainly come across his fair share of birthmarks, and every time he did, the result was anticlimactic. The human body hosted a number of mysteries. Among them, inexplicable pigmentation straight out of the womb. From coffee stains to purple spills, these marks graced only a scatter of the population, but his attempts to stir these paints had always ended in disappointment.

Now presented with a twist in the usual script, his interest rekindled once more. Marks by quirks. Would they bend to his will? He stared at Julen staring at him and cocked an unamused brow at his stubborn response. “Are there cards worth hiding, or are you just being cute?” he laughed, eyes not. Given how the other redhead arrived a battered mess, his couldn’t be all that impressive. Not everyone's was suited for combat, but then again, this recovering patient deemed his formidable enough to test it in action.

So he'll find out soon enough.

Ai shifted into a half frown, withdrawing for now. He had, after all, said nothing of his own abilities either. Still, this guy thoroughly tested his patience with obtuse cracks and lowborn simplicity. That aggravating inability to decouple art and morality, intent from effect.

His jaw tightened at the unsubtle display of skin, a showcase of permanent damage, each bearing stories, none fading anytime soon. He clicked his tongue and shook his head. "Good person or not, it's a shame to see a perfectly fine canvas go to waste," he said, surprised by his own sincerity.

Scars don't play well with ink, which was why he steered clear from physical altercations as much as he could. Other people were free to do as they pleased with their own bodies, but he had to admit, it pained him to see flawless skin blemished, especially on someone easy on the eyes. An absolute shame.

"The Yakuza have good taste." A dull response to a dull remark. "Have you ever seen their tattoos in person? They're gorgeous." In this country, decorated bodies struck fear into the common people, sweeping patterns and colors indicating ties to gang activity. But look beyond the specific whys and hows and it was obvious their members invested great care into the art. "I'd replicate their designs if it didn't paint a literal target on my back." He didn't have the resources to take down both organized crime and organized corruption.

At this point, he really couldn't deduce Julen's game. His bitterness seemed genuine, fatigue in his voice. If he turned out to be plainclothes security, then the government knew how to rope in the best. It took all he could to swallow a patronizing remark about the loss, though. "Learning experience" was doublespeak for failure. Trying to pitch it otherwise only deepened the foolishness.

As he searched for a more polite form of acknowledge, he almost missed the invitation to bring their conversation elsewhere.

He tensed. Was this an interrogation? If so, he was more than ready take on whatever cheap tricks the military had in store.

"Mhm, one sec." While he still sat within reach, he may as well sate his curiosity. "May I test something? It's harmless, I promise." His hand hovered over Julen's arm, awaiting permission, and once granted, closed the distance. He kept a light grip, fingers hooked underneath, while a gentle thumb traced red lines adorning his skin, elbow to wrist, then lingering at the circle embedded in his palm.

Like breathing sans air, he fought to switch on the reflex that was his quirk. No heat meant no effect. The red stayed in place. If these doctors hadn’t been government sponsored, he’d have leapt at the opportunity to understand why genetic coloration evaded his grasp. Such was not the case, and he found himself more disgruntled than inspired.

Experiment over. "Looks like you weren't lying when you said it wasn't ink." He pushed himself off the seat and brushed imaginary dust off his shoulders. "Call it artist's intuition." He sent him a cocky smile, all but throwing him a wink since he, y'know, couldn't.

He tapped the leg of the chair with his foot, impatience manifesting. "You have somewhere in mind?" At some point, it toppled over onto its side, but he didn't bother straightening it back up. The staff here could deal with it, because fuck them.

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