Narration POV
In an alley between two office buildings, where the neon lights from the main street couldn't quite reach, a transaction was going down. Well, it couldn't really be called that, it looked more like a plea.
Two men were talking in the dark. One of them, around his late twenties, was grovelling at the other's feet. His knees scraped against the damp concrete, leaving dark patches on his already worn jeans. Snot and tears fell on the other man's shoes, black sneakers.
The dealer seemed to be in his early twenties, wearing a baggy red hoodie along with designer jeans, fingerless gloves on his hands that did little to hide the unnatural sharpness of his nails. A metal case was at his side.
The addict's hands trembled as he reached out, not quite touching the dealer's legs but hovering there, desperate and pathetic. He had track marks decorating his arms.
"Please, give it to me, I'll do whatever you want." The words came out broken, punctuated by wet sniffles.
"What I want is 5000 yen." The dealer's voice was flat, bored even. He'd had this conversation a hundred times before.
"I-" the grovelling man began, his voice cracking. "I don't have that. Please, anything else. I'll do it. I'll steal for you, I'll- I'll find other customers. Just one hit, just one to get me through-"
"No." The dealer's fingernails extended slightly, sharpening into what looked like claws, his quirk manifesting with his irritation. "Now if you ask me again, I'll cut your tongue out, you hear me?"
The grovelling man backed away, his spine hitting the brick wall with a dull thud. His breathing came in short, panicked gasps.
"Fucking addicts, I don't understand them," the dealer muttered, looking down at the pathetic figure before him with genuine disgust. "Have some self-control for fuck's sake. You're like animals, worse than animals. At least they have instincts worth following."
Something shifted in the addict's eyes then, a breaking point. The man with his back to the wall suddenly opened his coat, and a knife glinted in the dark. It was a cheap thing, a kitchen knife, but a kitchen knife was still a knife. He thrust it forward toward the dealer with surprising speed.
The dealer hadn't expected it. These junkies were usually too broken to fight back. He was too slow to react, his enhanced nails only halfway extended as the knife edged closer to his stomach. Time seemed to slow as the blade approached...
A small hand clad in a gauntlet the color of moonlight suddenly appeared, wrapping around the addict's own hand with impossible gentleness, stopping the knife mere inches from flesh.
"Stop," a voice suddenly spoke. Young, clear, it rang in both of the men's ears.
They both looked toward the voice, and the dealer's blood ran cold. A boy. He wore full metal armor that should have been impossible to move in, yet he stood as if it weighed nothing. A sword rested at his side in an ornate scabbard, and a blue and gold cape flowed behind him. His eyes, a deep yet somehow clear blue, they entranced the mind.
"Shit, sidekick," the dealer cursed, his mind whirring into action. He turned to run, product in hand, but only took a single step before realizing he couldn't move. The boy was grabbing his arm, when had he moved?, the one holding the case of product. The grip wasn't painful, but it was absolute, like being held by a statue.
"Please don't resist," the boy said, and it was then that it dawned on both the dealer and the addict. They knew who this was. The sword, gave it away.
Though only the dealer voiced it out: "Fuck. You're him. You're Arthur. Why the fuck are you out on the streets, you fucks said you were in U.A."
"You should really control your language," Arthur said mildly, throwing the dealer against the wall with a casual motion that nevertheless knocked the wind from the man's lungs. He placed the addict at his side with equal ease, the knife now solely in Arthur's grip. The blade looked almost toy-like in his gauntleted hand.
Arthur's enhanced senses catalogued everything about both men in an instant. The dealer's elevated heart rate. The addict's withdrawal symptoms, dilated pupils, excessive sweating, the constant scratching to his wrists.
"Now then," Arthur said with a sigh. "Let's see how to deal with this situation. What's in the case?"
"What do you think?" the dealer asked in a tone that would indicate confidence, he was quite the good actor, if only his heart didn't betray him.
"Drugs most likely, but come on, I need some more information than that. Who's your supplier? What kind of drug are we talking about here?"
The dealer remained quiet, his jaw clenched tight. He remained quiet.
Arthur sighed again. With a casual squeeze, he crushed the knife in his grip, the metal screaming briefly before crumbling into fine dust that he let fall to the ground like silver snow.
His hands were free for the case now, but his eyes, those impossible blue eyes, never left both men. He could track their heartbeats, their breathing, the minute muscle tensions that preceded movement.
A single finger found the lock. Arthur tapped it lightly, with perhaps point one percent of his strength. The lock exploded off the case, flying across the alley to embed itself in the building's brick wall, mere inches from the dealer's head. Bits of mortar rained down on his red hoodie.
"Fuck, kid! Watch where you're sending shit flying!" The dealer's voice pitched high with fear.
"If you're not going to cooperate, please be quiet," Arthur said, his tone still conversationally polite as he pried the case open. The hinges groaned in protest before giving way.
Arthur saw the addict's eyes fly to the contents in the case, pupils dilating further with naked want. Arthur's own eyes fell to the case's contents. Eight syringes lay in foam cushioning, filled with sloshing red liquid.
His enhanced vision picked up details invisible to normal eyes, microscopic crystalline structures suspended in the liquid. It reminded him of something he had seen before, he wasn't quite sure though, it looked slightly different.
Just as Arthur's eyes were diverted for a moment, cataloguing the drug's properties, the dealer took his chance. His claws extended fully, three inches of sharpness, and he slashed forward toward Arthur's exposed face.
He struck, his claws raking across Arthur's cheek. But it felt like hitting a unmovable wall. Through the gaps between the man's fingers, Arthur's two blue eyes looked at the dealer with something that looked like a mix between resignation and disappointment.
"Seriously. I told you to stay put, didn't I?" Arthur's voice carried no anger, just a tired sort of exasperation.
"I had to try," the man shrugged, pulling his hand back.
Before the dealer could even process what was happening next, Arthur flicked his forehead with as little strength as he could gather. The dealer's eyes rolled back, showing white, and he crumpled into unconsciousness, sliding down the wall into an undignified heap.
Arthur's eyes then landed on the addict. The man was still staring at the syringes in Arthur's hand, his whole body trembling with need. He probably would have tried to make a grab for them by now if not for the whole debacle which had just transpired.
"Do you know what they are?" Arthur asked gently. The man shook his head, though his eyes never left the case.
"Do you know what they do?" The man nodded, a jerky, desperate motion.
"So what do they do?" Arthur encouraged, his voice soft as talking to a frightened animal.
"Uhm," the addict began, scratching at his wrist, so hard it looked like they were about to draw blood, Arthur's free hand gently stopped him. "They make me... stronger."
"They enhance your quirk?"
The man nodded, finally tearing his eyes away from the syringes to look at Arthur's face, and in it, Arthur only saw a small smile.
"They do look similar to trigger, but not quite. But why would they only go for 5000 yen? This is probably incredibly diluted."
Arthur's eyes landed once more on the addict.
"What's your name?"
"Uh, Rin," the man said, scratching at his wrist again, which Arthur once more stopped.
"That's a beautiful name." Arthur replied. "So how come you're after this stuff?"
Rin's voice dropped to barely above a whisper. "It... just makes me feel strong. Like I mattered. Like I'm not just... nothing."
"Did you hurt anyone while on the high?"
"No, never," Rin replied quickly, the words spilling from his mouth along with droplets of saliva. Arthur's enhanced vision caught the state of the man's tongue, no black, which meant that it wasn't the ideo type, which meant he probably hadn't suffered too much from the aggressivity that came from trigger."
"Are you going to take me in?" Rin asked, his eyes darting to the unconscious dealer at his side, then to the alley's exit, calculating distances he knew he couldn't cross.
"That depends."
"Depends? On what?"
"You, of course. I really do want to take you at your word, that you never hurt anyone while on trigger. So for that, I need to ask you some more questions." Arthur's tone remained conversational. "What's your quirk?"
Rin's face flushed with embarrassment. "I can make soups colder."
Arthur's eyes widened slightly, and for a moment Rin thought he was about to be mocked. It wouldn't be the first time.
"That... actually sounds like a cool quirk."
"It does?!" The shock in Rin's voice was palpable.
"Yeah, seems incredibly practical. Instant gazpacho, perfect noodles, etc. So what were the effects of the quirk while on trigger?"
"I could make an icy wind. Nothing special, just... cold air that could push things around a little. Freeze water sometimes." Rin's voice grew smaller with each word, expecting disappointment.
Arthur smiled, a grin from ear to ear.
"Okay, then that's that. I believe you didn't hurt anyone, and since you didn't have them on you, I have no reason to take you in."
"Just like that?"
"Just like that. I needed to ask you a few questions to listen to and gauge your normal heartbeat," Arthur said as his index finger touched the man's chest, right over his racing heart. "It's quite erratic from the withdrawal, so I couldn't gauge it by normal standards. But there's no deception in your voice, no tells of lying. You're telling the truth."
"Uh, thanks," Rin said, his hand automatically going to scratch at his wrist again. Arthur's hand intercepted his gently for the third time, and Rin noticed for the first time how warm the gauntlet was.
"I do have one more question though." Arthur began his conversational tone continuing. "Would you like to not be an addict anymore?"
"Huh?" The word came out strangled, disbelieving.
"I can cure you. All you have to do is grab her tip," Arthur said. Excalibur, still sheathed in Avalon, materialized in Arthur's hand with no flourish, no longer strapped at his waist, just suddenly there as if it had always been. He pushed the tip of Avalon toward the man, not aggressively, just offering.
Rin's hands shook as he stared at the scabbard. His already confused expression grew even more bewildered, but his hand found the scabbard's tip anyway, drawn by something he couldn't name.
Hope, maybe, that foreign feeling that bubbled in his chest.
Arthur's dragon heart thrummed. Mana traveled from Arthur into Avalon.
Avalon's healing properties invaded Rin's body gently, seeking out the damage years of trigger use had wrought. The energy found the scarred neural pathways, the damaged dopamine receptors, the depleted serotonin production.
It found the hormonal dependency that trigger had carved into his very cells, the biological chains that kept him crawling back to dealers in dark alleys.
Rin gasped as he felt it working. It wasn't painful, but it was overwhelming, like a warm shower hitting you at once after a long day at work.
He could feel the fog lifting from his mind, the constant gnawing need that had lived in his bones for so long beginning to fade. Years of damage being undone in moments.
After what felt like eternity but was only seconds, Arthur pulled Avalon back, placing her once more at his waist.
Rin looked down at his hands, turning them over as if seeing them for the first time. His wrists, God, his wrists didn't itch. For the first time in two years, they didn't itch.
The constant need to scratch, to claw at his own skin, was gone. The absence of that compulsion was so profound it felt like losing a limb.
Tears formed at the edges of his eyes. He fought against them, because what was the point of crying? Rin had learnt long ago there was no point except for weakness, so he wouldn't cry. He kept the tears at bay with everything he had.
"Tears fall for a reason," Arthur's voice was impossibly gentle. "So let them fall."
With those words, the dam broke. Rin began to cry.
He bawled his eyes out, pouring out all of his spirit on the dirty alley floor. His shoulders shook with the force of it, and he might have collapsed if not for Arthur's steadying hand on his shoulder.
Arthur stayed next to the man in perfect silence, simply there. He could hear every heartbeat, every hitched breath, could smell the salt of tears. But he simply stood there, a guardian in blue and gold, letting a man remember how to be human again.
Finally, the tears stopped, leaving Rin's eyes reddened and swollen.
"I'm sorry for that," Rin whispered, wiping his face with his sleeve.
"No need to apologize," Arthur replied. "I may have cured you of your dependency, but I can't be sure about the lingering psychological effects. The body might be healed, but the mind needs time. So tell you what, take out your phone."
Rin fumbled in his pocket, pulling out a battered smartphone with a cracked screen that still somehow worked.
"My number is 643341917. Dial it in."
With shaking fingers, Rin entered the numbers. A ring came out, and Arthur moved at superhuman speed to cancel the call before it could properly connect, the motion so fast Rin only saw a blur.
"You ever feel the need to get more of this," Arthur said as he jiggled the now-closed suitcase, the syringes clinking inside. "Call me, please. Day or night, doesn't matter. There's also a group on a webpage called the Round Table, you can contact me through there too. I'll help you. And remember, you're much stronger than you think you are."
Arthur pulled Rin to his feet, gently, giving him one last smile. Then, in one smooth motion, he grabbed the unconscious dealer and pulled him over his shoulder.
"Take care of yourself, Rin. You're worth taking care of."
With that, he was gone, moving with speed that left only a flutter of blue and gold cape in his wake.
Rin stood alone in the alley. The silence was deafening after all that had happened.
And there, in that perfect silence, Rin heard it, the buzzing of a bee.