Flea

Chapter Fifty

Dabi surveyed his moth-eaten, semi-collapsed bed with an exhausted pang of disgust. The villain told Maeve roughly 21 hours ago that if Psyche managed to evade him, he'd knock himself out by midnight. It was currently two in the morning.

Things had come up.

He'd needed to spend an obscene amount of time coaxing information out of the receptionist. Once Dabi compiled as complete a picture as he could, he told Goldilocks she was free to contact the police and called Magne as soon as he'd escaped a few blocks down. It went straight to voicemail. The villain didn't bother to leave a message, instead smoothly switching burner phones and waiting impatiently for Shigaraki to pick up.

"We've got a problem. Where's Magne?" He asked coldly, molten frustration searing in his chest. The secondhand surge of fear unsettled him more than he cared to admit. It had been near unbearable for the entire interrogation, causing Dabi's patience to hang by a fraying thread. His hand kept drifting to his leathery neck of its own accord, coupled with a constricting throat and increase in heart rate to the point he had to pause, gasping for breath between questions.

Goldilocks, who'd worked for Psyche the past two years, had never heard of anything like it. She clearly thought he was unhinged. Given the villain occasionally needed to use the wall as support and mutter profanities when a particularly strong wave came through, Dabi had to agree with her. His quirk would simmer without the man even realising it, inducing condensation to form on the outside of the windows. Extra heat caused the prostitute to look even closer on the verge of fainting than she was already. Thus, he'd be pressing her for information, increasing temperatures accidentally from stress, and she'd merely get so flustered the girl became useless.

At least it seemed to be easing. By the time Dabi retreated into shadows of a doorway to make calls, overwhelming panic had receded into an uneasy buzz at the back of his consciousness with random fluctuations between anxiety and anger. There were many, many... Many things he hated but having his mind messed with now topped Dabi's list.

"Where are you? You were supposed to report in an hour ago."

Even for Shigaraki, the tone on the other end of the line was unusually petulant.

"Like I said, something came up. I need to know where-"

"She's dead."

Dabi stood stock still, blocking out the sound of street chatter and police sirens in the distance.

"Doubt you could've stopped it, but still, might've been nice for the head of the vanguard to bother showing his face. Twice brought in some Yakuza thugs as possible recruits and rape accusations were thrown. Things spiralled, Magne got the brunt of it," Shigaraki explained, sounding calmer than Dabi would've expected. It seemed the absence of All for One seemed to be toughening the brat up a bit.

"Did you deal with them?" Dabi asked, tracing the staple lines across each cheek.

"One. We'll wait for revenge on the rest of the filth. I need you here to strategise because we don't have much time. What was your problem?"

"...Better I explain in person. Can you put Kurogiri on?"

The following hours strategising and making angry phone calls were what lead to him looming over his bed, desperately wishing to crash and sink into hopefully dreamless oblivion. However, the scarred man needed to ask some tough questions beforehand.

Like, what the fuck did Dabi wear informing someone who despised him his lovely patchwork face would be the thing they woke up to every night?

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