Renegade

A Man Walks Into A Bar

She let the silence settle for another ten seconds, but when the puzzlement in the man's expression worsened, she scoffed and shook her head in mock disappointment.

"Onii-san." She picked up a small damp towel and started wiping her hands with it. "Don't tell me you've all but forgotten your own little sister."

Shouta Aizawa was reaching his hand to pull a bar stool out when her words finally registered into his brain, and just like her, his actions stopped halfway, only managing to tilt the stool at a slight angle when his expression dropped like a stone in water, and his sleepy eyes became wide awake in only a fraction of a second. "Renako-chan?"

She smiled. It wasn't the same smile she always greeted her customers with. Anyone could tell the difference between her usual warm welcome, and the nostalgic melancholy falling over her face this exact moment.

"It's just 'Ren' now." She set the towel down on the table with one hand and turned her head up to get a proper look at him. "Ren Kagawa. No one's called me 'Renako' in... well, in a while now."

"Ren?" Slowly, he pulled the bar stool out and sat down in front of her.

She shrugged. "I don't need these fools coming into the bar to know who I am. Who knows—maybe one of them can link me back to you, and you clearly don't want your identity known to the public."

"To me? What do you—oh." His change in expression wasn't as drastic now, though the previous drop wasn't quite as drastic as she expected it to be, either. "You know that I'm—"

"'Eraser Head'?" She didn't mean to say it aloud in such a mocking tone, but she couldn't help herself. She always found herself snickering at the name whenever she heard it on TV. "Of course, I do. How could I not recognize my own big brother? And besides." She picked up the closest cocktail shaker within her reach, twisted it open and checked inside. Not that she had much use for it tonight, anyway. "You went to U.A.—in the Department of Heroics. It's an entire department dedicated to producing Pro Heroes like a goddamn factory. It's no wonder to see you becoming one as soon as you graduated." She replaced the shaker back where she found it and turned back to her brother with a semblance of her previous smile. "Not to mention the fact that your hero name is a clear dead giveaway. 'Erasure Hero: Eraser Head'? Seems a bit on the nose, don't you think?"

Her smile grew wider as soon as she noticed the straight frown plastered on his face, and the deadpan glare he was giving her throughout her entire monologue. He hadn't changed a single bit, she thought.

"I didn't have anything else," he grumbled. "A friend suggested it. It stuck, so I kept on using it."

"Yeah, sure, Erasure Hero." She clicked her tongue. "All right, what're we having tonight?"

"What—oh, right." It was almost as if he had forgotten he just wandered into a bar—her bar, too, of all the places he could've wandered to in this god-forsaken city—but she didn't want to make another snide remark about that. Not right now, at least. "Just whiskey neat, thank you."

"Whiskey neat, huh?" She threw the towel over her shoulder as she turned around to grab a glass from the cabinet. "Didn't think you'd turn out to be a whiskey kind of person. Guess I learn something new every day."

"'Whiskey kind of person'?"

"Actually, no—you do look like someone who would order a Manhattan on a good night." She picked up a bottle of whiskey rye, uncapped it and poured a generous amount into the glass. "Either that, or a classic brandy. Or malt liquor. But I've always thought the best of you." On a whim, she brought out another clean glass and poured herself some of the liquid as well. "Beer's always nice, too, of course, but I think you'd know how I feel about that."