Chapter Text
“Okay, where are you broken?” she murmured as she scrolled through the lines of code. It was broken somewhere, but she didn’t know where.
The girl’s room was a mess. The desk was covered in clutter, with empty soda cans stacked on top of each other because the trash was full, and she was too busy to take it out. Blueprints were plastered on the walls, and her clothes and tinkering projects were scattered all over the floor. There was a plate of cold pizza next to her elbow, half eaten and forgotten, and a drawing tablet was discarded to the side, the stylus probably missing.
She was a pretty girl. About thirteen or so, with cat ear headphones mounted on top of wild, blue curls. Her pink eyes scanned over the lines of code in front of her, and she sneezed.
“I should not be working with a cold,” she muttered and reached for the takeout napkins stacked in a haphazard pile next to a tarot deck to grab one and blow her nose.
Yoshie Aoda was beautiful and tragic. She had gotten over being tragic rather swiftly, however. When she was four years old, she was told she would never grow a quirk, and, naturally, as four year old girls are apt to think, her response was to think, ‘well, then I’ll just have to be smarter’.
And, so, she decided to be smarter. It was relatively easy to learn programming languages. A child could do it. And once she mastered programming languages, she went on to master the mechanics of building drones. If she couldn’t be a hero without a quirk, she would just make her own quirk. She didn’t have to be flashy or fancy. She just had to be good at what she did. And maybe a little flashy and fancy.
Yoshie squinted at the lines of code in front of her, and then she highlighted a line and switched over to her discord to post it in a chat.
onobleone: What’s wrong with it?
boombayyah: No hello? No how are you doing? No how was your day?
onobleone: Hello, how are you doing, how was your day?
onobleone: Now, what’s wrong with it?
boombayyah: … not sure, give me a minute.
The key to being smart was surrounding yourself with other smart people, she had discovered. She found a discord server dedicated to support item manufacturers, and it was through that discord server that she met Boom.
Boom was brilliant in all of the best ways, a few years older than her, infinitely cooler and more mature. She specialized in mechas, where Yoshie specialized in drones, but there was enough overlap in the coding department that Yoshie could go to her with any issues she had. She was also American. Which was unfortunate, but easily fixable when Yoshie married her one day.
And Yoshie was going to marry her. She may not know her legal name, or what she looked like, but she knew her future wife when she saw her.
It was unfortunate that Boom was going into support and not heroics. But, again, easily fixable. Or not. The two of them could just be a duo with a ‘woman in the chair’ dynamic. Yoshie wasn’t picky.
boombayyah: Try this.
The line of code was sent back with a few corrections, and Yoshie ran it in the program. To her surprise and delight, the program came to life and ran.
… Hello.
It worked.
Fuck yeah.
Now, she just needed to download it into her drones.
Hello, she typed back, and there was a pause as the AI processed.
:D Hello, Yoshie. How can I assist you?
Hang on, I’ve gotta plug you into the Matrix.
The Matrix?
My drones. Let’s test this, Yoshie typed out, and then she hooked up the drone she built from scratch and started the download. The download started, and she sat back in her chair and stretched out, popping her knuckles in rapid succession.
It would take a solid hour, so she took a bite of her pizza and chewed on it. She sneezed, sniffled, and reached over to blow her nose again. The napkin was tossed in the bin, and she polished off the slice of pizza.
boombayyah: What are you even making?
onobleone: Dw about it.
boombayyah: That just makes me worry even more.
onobleone: :D
boombayyah: Noble.
onobleone: Boom.
boombayyah: You’re not going to break any laws, are you?
onobleone: Absolutely not :D
boombayyah: ………
onobleone: You worry too much. I’m gonna go grab a shower.
She hadn’t showered since she got sick, so she pushed back from her desk, pulled off her headset, and got up, carefully dancing over the mess on her floor as she made her way to the door to the bathroom. She pushed open the door and flicked on the light, blinking in the sudden assault on her retinas, and then she hooked up her phone to the Bluetooth speaker. It beeped as it connected, and she popped her hip up on the counter and scrolled through her Spotify before she settled on a song.
The heavy guitar riff started up, and then the echoing voices came in.
“Champion! Champion! I’m a savage, I’m a fighter!”
Yoshie started up the shower and pulled off her oversized hoodie, tossing it haphazardly over the edge of the hamper before she dropped her shorts and kicked them into the corner. Then, she paused and picked up the sweater, sniffing at the pits. It stank, and she pulled a face. Ah. She forgot to put on deodorant every day while she was fighting this cold. Whoops.
“Long live the champion!”
Yoshie picked up her brush off the counter and pulled out the bundle of hair stuck in the bristles. She tossed it in the wastebasket and started running the brush through her hair, pulling and yanking on the tangles with little heed for her scalp. Her curls were pulled out and left frizzy as hell, and she pulled a face at herself in the mirror. She needed a haircut. Her hair was almost to her ass, and when she straightened it, it was even longer. It was just begging for a piece of gum to get stuck in it.
With a grunt, she brushed out the last knot and set the brush down on the counter. Her hair was now a curly mess, and she turned to the shower and climbed in. Water soaked her locks, and she sighed.
Just a little while now until she could test the drones in a live environment. She was going to have such a messed up sleep schedule, but it would be worth it. In any case, she had a messed up sleep schedule anyway. There was just so much to do, and so few hours in the day. The autopilot system would make things much easier.
She just hoped she didn’t start a machine takeover of planet earth.
Well, even if she did, it would be fun, so who cared? DAP was going to be fine. She didn’t even program a morality complex in it. It only listened to her commands, and while it was a learning software, she didn’t think it would be a problem.
Boom was probably going to be disappointed in her for breaking the law, but you couldn’t break the law when you were quirkless. Sure, you could break the spirit of it, but not the actual law. Vigilantism was defined as using your quirk to stop crime, and, well. She didn’t have a quirk. So, it was fine.
No one would be able to trace the drones back to her, anyway. She made damn well sure of that. And it wasn’t like she was going out. No, she would be safely ensconced at home, in her fuzzy socks and Dr. Peppers galore. Maybe hot cocoa in the winter. Doing other things.
Yoshie started the laborious process of washing her hair, squirting out copious amounts of shampoo into her palm to scrub into her hair. How long had it been since she washed her hair? One week? Two? She didn’t remember. It had been a surprise when she found out you weren’t supposed to wash curly hair every day.
When was Dad coming home, anyway? He had been gone for ages. Like, at least a week, and he hadn’t told her when he was coming back. Was Spain that entertaining? It probably was. He was probably enjoying tapas and wine right about now. He needed to get a job so he stopped fluttering off whenever he felt like it. She was bored. And she had to tell him about---
Actually, no, she did not need to tell him about the drones. And he would probably be annoyed with her when he came back and her room was trashed. She should pick up, because the maid refused to clean up after her when her mess was this bad. Persnickety woman. Gods.
Well, she had time to kill, she thought as she sprayed out more shampoo. Gods, it had been a while since she washed her hair. It was oily. She scrubbed at her scalp, waiting for the shampoo to foam, and when it finally did, she stepped back under the spray and rinsed it out. The suds circled around the drain, and she got out an unholy amount of conditioner to lather up her ends. She twisted up the thick, messy length of it and clipped it in place, and then she lathered up her whole body with soap.
Wow, she really needed to shower, she thought as she lifted up her arm to scrub at her underarm. A pungent odor hit her nose, and she crinkled it. She had been sick for a week now, and she was beginning to think she had the flu. She was missing a lot of school.
Oh, well. She could make it up. She could always make it up. School had always been painfully easy and boring. She never liked it. The subjects were droll and stale, and the teachers were always stupider than her. She could honestly be homeschooled, but no. Per Japanese law, unless she had a murderous quirk, which she didn’t, or a disability, she had to go to school.
Maybe they could qualify being quirkless as a disability, she thought wryly as she scrubbed the underside of her feet, getting in between her toes and under her nails. She needed to trim her toenails, she thought, and she finished scrubbing and started rinsing off.
The conditioner had sat long enough, she thought, and she undid the clip and let her hair fall down, heavy on her back. She started rinsing it out, and she hummed. Maybe she would do a face mask before she blow dried her hair. It never dried all the way when she let it air dry. It was too long and heavy.
Yoshie turned off the shower and stepped out, grabbing a towel and scrubbing herself off, and then she eyed the lotion.
Eh, the shower was good enough. She didn’t need lotion, she thought, and she grabbed the second towel and wrapped up her hair before she wrapped the first towel around her body. Then, she waltzed into the bedroom and collapsed facedown on the bed.
Maybe she should go to bed, she thought. She was sick. But, DAP was downloading onto her drone. She had another program to build, too, and she wanted to get started on that. She also wanted to spend a little time hacking UA. She knew it was a bad idea, no, a terrible idea, but she wanted to get the lay of the land before she aimed for it. Of course, quirkless students were still banned from the heroics course at UA, but she could check the emails to see if that changed.
With a groan, she sat up and walked back into the bathroom to start washing her face. She ran the water, waiting for it to get hot, and when it was warm enough, she splashed it onto her face and started scrubbing. Really, she should do an oil cleanser and a foaming cleanser like the other girls did at school, but double cleansing just sounded like work to her. She had more important things to do.
Yoshie dried off her face and uncapped the egg white pore mask, smearing it across her skin to paint her face white. She finished and made her way back to her room, sitting down in front of the massive gaming computer and jiggling the mouse to wake it up. Her headphones were henceforth unplugged so she could listen to music as she paused the music coming from the bathroom, and she started working on the other program.
It was a simple virus, but she needed to work on her viruses. Viruses were important. This one was virtually undetectable and perfect to attack UA with, and she wondered if Nedzu would notice and try to trace it back to her. UA was having an open house next week, and she could connect to the WiFi then and let it loose. It would be a piece of cake.
With a yawn, she started building the program and ignored the pings of messages from her future wife. Really, Boom worried too much. It was going to give her wrinkles.
Not that Yoshie minded wrinkles.
Wrinkles were cute.
Ah, so many things to do.