queenofminiskirts | [ INBOX ] Awash Edition

of course! i'll have you know, i've been working under the best commander in babel for the last six years! he's the man the comerican government offered 6 million dollars to hire! so trust me when i say you really are suited for this! you just need to have more confidence in yourself!

[She'd meant to tell him eventually that she worked for Babel as a special esper eventually anyway. Now seemed as good a time as any!]

and whatever you may lack, we'll support you and help you make up for it! that's what it means to work in a team!

[Oh... Izuku takes a moment to process what she's telling him. It's definitely news to him.]

You work for the government back home, Akashi-san?

I guess it's not that surprising once I think about it. If there are esper-related problems, then it wouldn't make sense not to employ other espers to deal with it.

[It would be news to everyone except Shiho and, recently, Emma.]

yeah. i'm what's called a special duty esper! or just special esper. i mentioned before that high level espers usually go to babel for training, right? most of us end up being employed as special espers. we don't just deal with esp related problems though!

our identities are government secrets though so a lot of my classmates don't know about it. normally, you'd need to have your memories wiped after knowing this, or you'd have to sign a HUGE pile of waivers but whatever. i don't have time to write up a bunch of papers for you to sign.

guess i'll just have to trust you'll keep my secret, junior commander mirodiya-kun.

[The title tacked on at the end, of course, makes him sputter like she was probably hoping. Stop....!]

You don't have to worry about me saying anything, Akashi-san!

So you're actually a secret agent for the government. What kind of things do you usually handle? If you're okay with talking about it!

[Never!]

i know. otherwise shiho and i wouldn't have trusted you this much.

well, our team doesn't really have a specialty? not like the hound or double face. we kind of did a little bit of everything...bodyguard duty, disaster relief, dealing with terrorists, investigations and manning the complaints hotline. [One of these things is not like the others...] mostly our job is to prevent predicted disasters! babel has a precog team that comes up with predictions and its our job to stop them from happening!

[Her feelings about her own powers will never not be complicated, but she actually is proud to be a part of Babel and of the work they do.]

That means a lot, coming from you and Sannomiya-san. I won't let you two down.

Wow! That's a lot of work that your team handles. You have people who can predict disasters?

[And, Izuku being the way that he is, is all too happy to ask her for more information on Babel.]

we know you won't. i already said didn't i? we trust you.

[She's smiling though because, really. It's nice that there are people Shiho can trust here.]

yeah. our workload has really picked up since middle school! we nearly missed out friend's birthday three years in a row.

yeah! precognition is another psychic power, it's usually shortened to precog. japan doesn't currently have any high level precogs, so what babel does is bring together a huge team of precog users and have them make predictions together to improve the accuracy of their predictions.

the system will take all their predictions together to calculate how probable it is and the change value!

What kind of predictions have you had to stop before? Any particularly memorable ones?

You know, if you think about it, you guys are basically doing hero work, except with psychic powers instead of quirks.

it's pretty standard stuff? you know, some crimes and accidents...that sort of thing.

[Honestly, the most memorable one was probably still the assassination attempt on Lt. Igou, the esper dolphin but that was...also traumatic and brought up way too many questions she'd rather not answer.]

there's this one time when our supervisor got taken over by a fly! the prediction said it was supposed to be a biohazard incident so minamoto thought that meant some kind of virus but what was contaminated was a researcher's brain...i think? it was a few years ago and i didn't understand it really well back then, but the researcher was an esper too and he ended up thinking like a fly? and then he could spread the contamination through other flies. he kept going on about how the era of humans was over and it was about to be the era of flies.

and you know, minamoto kept talking about how he wanted to lick the toilets and eat shit. it was really awful...

that's true! i guess it's because there aren't really heroes and someone has to do the work! but heroes don't work for the government, right? at least, it didn't sound like it when i heard ei-chan talking about it.

[Where does he even start with this one.]

Wait hold on. So was he able to control other flies when this was going on? Or just infecting other people to think like flies, too?

And they do! Even if they open their own agencies, proheroes all get their salaries from the government. That's how the system works.

it was both. he could control all the flies in the building.

it was so gross!

and when the flies landed on people it would infect them and make them think like flies too. we thought one got shiho for a moment but it was a trap. once she got the information she needed she speared the fly with a long needle!

it sounds pretty funny now but shiho's expression back then was seriously scary! [...and still is, if she's being honest.]

oh, i see! from the way ei-chan talked about them, proheroes almost sounded like celebrities and not government workers...

That's really gross. At least you guys managed to stop it before it got a lot worse.

And I can imagine how scary her expression must have been! You know, before I got to know her a little better, I thought she was really intimidating...

[You think a lot of girls are intimidating, Izuku...]

They're both! They help the government by fighting the villains and rescuing the civilians, but that also means they're in the spotlight a lot. So the really well known ones have celebrity status! Some of them even do commercials and stuff like that.

if it got out of the building that would have been a disaster...

would you believe me, if i said she's way better now than when she was back then? i mean, if she wants to be she can be scarier but she was a lot more prickly when we were younger.

[They all were, honestly.]

oooooh. that's kind of cool. if we end up in the news or something our faces are always blurred out to hide our identities. it must be really different to be recognized!

Wow, it sounds like you guys have known each other for a really long time!

Kind of sounds like the old comic book heroes that had to keep their identities secret! If you had a choice, would you want to be recognized?

we've been friends since we were 5!

i guess i'd never thought about it. but probably not? i mean, i'll never be normal and people not recognizing me doesn't mean i can suddenly do all those things i'm not allowed to because i'm a government esper, but it's nice sometimes to talk to people and have them think i'm normal.

besides, being recognized would mean my family and friends could be targeted by anti-esp groups.

but it would be nice if i could explain to chisato why we ditched her two years in a row on her birthday after inviting her to our apartment to celebrate.

I think it makes sense. No one wants to stand out in a bad way... and from what you've told me before, espers are still regarded with suspicion in a lot of cases, right?

Anti-esp groups?

There are waivers that your friend could sign if you wanted to tell her, aren't there?

yeah. kids are fine but i know especially the adults can be a bit weird about it.

[And it's especially hard, she knows, for Shiho.

She....sits here and stares because. Ugh. She's used to people knowing what that means. And for people other than special espers these sorts of people were a distant sort of problem even for people with psychic powers if they're a low enough level. But there was really no way to explain it to Izuku that probably wouldn't make him worry...]

they're people who think esp is a threat to society. it's usually just writing awful books or saying mean things on the internet. but some of the more extreme members like to pick fights with babel and special duty espers.

[Which is...one way of putting it. Yes. Maybe not the most descriptive, but it should be...good enough, right?]

that's another reason why our identities are top secret. so no one else gets dragged into these things that can't protect themselves.

besides! chisato's forgiven us anyway! and it's not really a problem now since we have the shadow children!

[Look, Izuku, she's dangling something new to ask about to change the subject! Do you take the bait?]

[Hmm it's tempting! He does want to ask about the shadow children, but... at the same time, what she's describing sounds a lot like what he's seen in his own history books. And he can't just let the subject drop just yet.]

That sounds like how things were in our world, back when quirks first started manifesting. There was a lot of chaos in society, because people were suddenly questioning what it meant to be human.

Have you ever run into trouble with those people yourself?

[Izuku why couldn't you just take the bait??]

so things were like that before in your world too...but everything is fine now?

[It sounds like it from what she's heard but...she just wants to make sure!

Also...hahaha...ha.]

it's kind of hard to avoid them as a special esper. my team and i have had to deal with them...a few times? i think the pr department's the one who's had the most trouble with them.

[Because special espers usually only deal with the extremists.]

[Because he's too curious for his own good.]

Yeah, basically! It took a while, but once people started getting used to quirks and they became more widespread, society eventually accepted them.

So PR handles most of it... was it bad? The ones you had to deal with yourself?

that's good. people should be judged for what the person they are not whether they have powers or not.

[Though from what she's heard it seems like his world isn't without some problems...]

yeah. they deal with the ones who sit around writing books and making appearances on tv and stuff.

[...at this point, it feels pointless to try to redirect him away from this topic. Which was fine because she felt like she could be honest with him.]

they just make me so angry because these people think that just because we're espers that we're not people. when i was younger i really just...hated them so much and the feeling could be overwhelming.

but i know now that i don't have to feel that way. people like that aren't worth it and the fact that they think like this is all the more reason i can't sink to their level. because if i do then nothing will change.

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