Ch. 14 Light Em Up

"They're just going to let me in?" you asked. "There's no villain ID card I need to show or something?"

Looking at yourself in your mirror on the wall of the hotel room, you pulled the hem of your dress down a little bit and smoothed out the fabric that hugged your body. You'd chosen a short black dress and black choker for tonight; might as well look the villain part, you figured, if you were going to be hanging out with criminals tonight in some hotel basement.

In the mirror you noticed Dabi behind you, his eyes staring at your body from where he sat on the hotel bed.

"Stop drooling," you muttered.

"Hard to do when there's eye candy like you right in front of me," he said. "Particularly when this candy looks sweet enough to eat."

"Well, I know one lollipop that isn't going to get licked tonight," you said, fixing your hair.

"Baby, you're so mean. You're going to let me sit here hard as a rock, on a bed in a hotel room, while I watch you wiggle in that tight little dress?"

"Yep, baby," you said with exaggerated sarcasm. "That's exactly what I'm going to do. No candy for you tonight. Or ever again. Sorry."

"We'll see about that."

"Go over this with me one more time," you said. "This gambling ring, where our target is going to be, is in the basement of this hotel, right? But I don't even know how to gamble. I feel like I'm going to stand out like a sore thumb, and they'll know I'm suspicious."

"With the way you look in that dress, you're definitely going to stand out."

"Dude, enough. I don't want to hear your bullshit. You're lucky I'm even letting you within five feet of me right now."

Dabi scoffed, obviously not convinced.

"Seriously, how do you even know that they're going to let me in?" you asked.

"Baby. No one is going to say shit to you if you're with me."

"And when we find him, this guy we're looking for? Then what?"

"We've been over this. All we need to do is get him alone so you can work your magic. Lure him up here, I'll give you a few minutes to get the info, and then I'll barge in playing the part of the jealous lover and rescue you from the creep. Done and done."

Dabi came up behind you and tried to put his hands on your waist, but you angled away from him and headed for the door.

"Don't touch me," you said as you grabbed the room key and stuffed it into the top of the dress. "Let's go."

Once downstairs you walked from card table to card table, dodging the wandering hands of the drunk men twice your age who crowded the room.

Soon after the bouncer let you both in, Dabi had wandered off to find a game so you were apparently on your own to find this complete stranger. Typical.

This was your first mission for Shigaraki, your first test. You weren't sure what would happen if you failed, but you had a pretty good idea.

You knew if you succeeded, if you brought Shigaraki the info he wanted, he was going to pay you cash tonight and hopefully leave you alone for awhile.

Honestly, you'd been expecting something way worse from Shigaraki for a first job, but it seemed like you simply needed to find out if this guy was snitching on the League of Villains, Shigaraki's team, and report back. Easy enough. All you needed to do now was find him.

You searched the room for signs of a guy around your age, light brown hair, with a tiger tattoo on his neck.

"Hey, sweetheart, come sit by me for good luck," a random man leered as you walked by.

"Fuck you," you started to say but then you remembered that you were surrounded by criminals at this gambling ring and probably shouldn't try to start something.

"I doubt a guy like you needs any luck," you said instead as sweetly as you could manage.

"You've got that wrong. I'm always looking to get lucky," he smirked, reaching out to grab your ass.

Thankfully you were able to scoot away just in time. You quickly walked past dozens of other card tables, your eyes scanning for your target.

But then you saw Dabi at one of the tables and he noticed you as well, making eye contact with you. Subtly, Dabi nodded to his right, where a guy in his mid-twenties, light brown hair, sat next to him playing cards. A guy with a tiger tattoo.

Dabi had found him first, damn it.

This was "Tiger," the man Shigaraki had sent you to collect information on. For someone with such a ferocious nickname, he didn't look like much more than an average meat-head.

Shigaraki said he worked mostly in security but he knew about the weapons the League had purchased and he wanted to see if he was giving information to the police or heroes.

You heard Tiger before you even got to the table, his laugh loud and obnoxious enough that it carried over the other noise of the room. He was definitely a little drunk, and from the sleazy way he looked at you as you approached the table, you already knew you were going regret looking into his mind.

The alcohol in his system made his mind more pliable and open to your quirk, but the downside was that it also made you feel a little woozy as well. It was as if each thought was slippery and tough to hold on to, and you had to put a hand on Dabi's shoulder to steady yourself.

Once you were able to wrestle a few of Tiger's thoughts down, though, his mind was pretty much what you expected. He thought about how he was losing this card game. How uncomfortable the chairs were. How your boobs looked. No big surprises, but you knew this wasn't the kind of information Shigaraki wanted.

You needed him to think about the topics you wanted him to think about, and for that the plan was to get him alone.

"Hey, baby. Did you make us a new friend?" you asked Dabi, lazily putting your whole arm around his shoulders. Both the dealer and your target stopped to stare at you.

You swung around to sit in Dabi's lap and he held you there with one of his hands, his other hand holding his cards.

"I hope you did," you continued, "because ever since your accident, you know you just haven't been the same in the bedroom. I've made do, but it sure would be fun to have a man with working parts again."

You twitched as you felt the singe of a spark from Dabi's hand on your thigh. You inwardly smiled, knowing that you'd pissed Dabi off, but on the outside you did your best to ignore the burning mark on your leg.

"You've got a girl with a mouth, Dabi," the dealer laughed.

"Her? She's not my girl. She got dicked down once and now won't leave me alone. It's disgusting how she begs for it."

"That's not nice, Dabi," you said, pretending to pout and petting his face. "I only beg because you can't satisfy me anymore. I know you tried taking those pills the doctor gave you, but—"

"Get off me," Dabi grumbled, shoving you off him. "Go find someone else to fuck you."

"He's so mean to me," you pouted. "Do you both see how mean he is?"

"Come over here," Tiger said, "I'll comfort you."

Bingo.

You slowly walked over to Tiger and stood next to him.

"Sounds like you need to learn how a real man treats a lady," he said. You heard Dabi scoff behind you, but you kept your eyes on your new friend.

It didn't take a genius or a quirk to know what this Tiger was thinking.

"Oh yeah? I'll have you know that I'm really more of a hands on learner," you said, gently touching his upper thigh.

He laughed and patted his lap, where you eagerly sat and watched him play against Dabi for awhile. Every now and then you got bored with watching him lose and probed his mind just a little. There was nothing worthwhile in there though, and you had to stop yourself before you felt just as drunk as him.

After a while Tiger's hands were getting a little too grabby, so you figured it was time to make the move. You glanced across the table at Dabi who nodded back at you.

Carefully, you slipped the hotel room key out of the top of your dress and into Tiger's hand under the table. A look of surprise came over his face when he realized what you'd done, but that surprise quickly turned to smug satisfaction. You resisted the urge to cringe and got up and looked over your shoulder at him as you walked away.

You hoped that he took the bait and followed you, and sure enough only minutes later he was right behind you in the hallway, walking with you to the elevator.

You rode up with him in the elevator and realized how grateful you were that you were only on the second floor and this elevator ride would be short.

You remembered Shigaraki's words as you did your best to fend him off in the elevator. Find out if they're giving information to the police or heroes.

"Right through here," you said, pulling him by his hand down the hall to the hotel room. "Let's talk and get to know each other. Is that okay?"

"Of course it is, beautiful. Talk all you want while I fuck that cute little-"

"Not yet," you sang, pushing his hand away. "Tell me about yourself. We need to get to know each other at least a little, right?"

"I guess."

"So what do you do?"

He opened the door with the key and flicked on the lights as the two of you walked in.

"Do? I'm a weapons dealer," he said proudly. "Or at least, I guard the weapons that get sold. Actually, I drive the car to make sure they get where they're going without any interference by the police or dumb heroes. Idiots like that boyfriend of yours pay top dollar for our technology."

"Sounds dangerous," you said, pretending to be impressed. So much for interrogating any kind of high ranking criminal. This guy just drove the car...

"So you knew that the guy I was with down there works with the League of Villains."

"Yeah, they're a bunch of losers. Don't worry, my boss says they'll get what's coming to them soon enough."

"Oh, tell me more. I can't wait to hear what you're going to do to them."

You peeked into his thoughts to see if you could find out more information on this, but there was nothing there other than him thinking about how cool he was.

"We're not going to do anything to them. They make us too much money. Besides, I'd rather talk about what I'm going to do to you." He pulled one strap of your dress down off your shoulder.

"We'll get to that," you faked a smile.

It sounded like he wasn't a snitch, but you weren't completely convinced. You also knew you had a very short window of time before this went further and you needed to slow everything down.

"Why don't you lie down and I'll give you a massage?" you suggested. "Then you can tell me all about this dangerous work you do. I bet you're so brave."

"Not just anyone can be a driver," he said as he took off his shirt and laid down on the bed. You climbed onto his back to massage his shoulders. "I was hand-picked by my boss. When we get enough members, I'm pretty sure they'll put me in charge of the whole route. My boss will want to train me to take over one day, I'm sure."

"Of course," you said, thankful that he couldn't see you roll your eyes. You waded into his thoughts for a moment but they were only about how much power he thought he was going to have once he was in charge. This was going nowhere.

"So these weapons... If you told the police about who you're selling them to, the League would be in a lot of trouble."

"Why would we do that? They're one of our best customers. I'm not a snitch. We'd lose all of our customers if we did shit like that."

You quickly scanned his thoughts. He was confused about why you'd even suggest that, which meant he was telling the truth. There were no memories of talking to the police, no thoughts of heroes, nothing.

You breathed a sigh of relief that he was just a regular horny scum bag and not a traitorous one, and you were already imagining what you were going to tell Shigaraki when suddenly he rolled over, flipping you off him onto your back on the bed.

"I'm tired of talking," he smirked, climbing on top of you.

You started to panic a little as his eyes roamed your body. Where the hell was Dabi? How far was Dabi going to let this go before he got his ass in here and ended this?

He leaned down to kiss you but you swerved, his lips landing on your ear. Tiger's mouth was sloppy, and you felt your skin crawl as his lips and tongue traveled down your neck to your shoulder.

He was just about to push down the other strap on your dress when the door burst open.

"Fucking finally," you muttered, shoving the guy off you with a hard push.

"Are we good?" Dabi asked you as he came in the room, and you nodded quickly.

"Sorry, my boyfriend is here, gotta run," you told Tiger.

"Oh, he's not running anywhere," Dabi laughed and before you had time to react, Dabi grabbed Tiger by the throat, lifting him up off the ground. He couldn't speak and tried desperately to get Dabi's hands off him.

"Dabi!" you shouted at him. "Dabi, he doesn't know anything!" you shouted again but he ignored you.

"Who cares?" Dabi said. "First up, that tongue's gotta go. Can't have you tattling on us to anyone, can we?"

With a flick of Dabi's wrist, a burst of blue flame shot from Dabi's fingers across Tiger's face and into his mouth, his tongue and lips suddenly aflame, like a twisted version of a fire breather you'd seen as a little girl at the circus.

You didn't even hear yourself scream, even though you know you did, as Dabi tossed him on to the floor where he writhed in pain, struggling to make noise while his mouth burned.

You watched in horror as Dabi stood over him, glaring down. "I know your disgusting hands touched her, didn't they? Then I think they need to go, too."

Before Dabi could send another burst of flame across the other man's hands, the fire alarm started shrieking and dark brown water came spraying out of the sprinkler system from the ceiling all over the room. You shrank back against the wall, your hair plastered against your face from the dirty water, as Tiger rolled around in agony in front of you.

The alarm only made Dabi pause for a second. You saw another blue flame start to form in Dabi's palm almost immediately.

"Stop!" you shouted over the fire alarm. Summoning your courage you ran to Dabi and tried to grab his hand to stop him. Your heels made you too slow, and Dabi grabbed your arm instead. You had to force yourself not to scream when his hot fingers dug into your skin.

Dabi simply shook you off and took out his phone, despite Tiger's screams getting louder. You took this moment to try to help the guy, and you rushed over with a towel to put out the fire.

"Can you hear me?" Dabi was asking someone on the other end. "Yeah, this guy won't shut up. Get us out of here."

By the time you got the fire out, Tiger had mercifully lost consciousness. You checked to make sure he was still breathing, and thankfully he was. The smell of burning flesh filled the air, and you had to do your best to not vomit from the sight of the damage Dabi had done to his neck and face. He was alive, but you couldn't even imagine what recovery for him was going to look like.

You didn't have time to think about it much, because Dabi roughly pulled you up next to him, pressing you against him as a purple mist enveloped you both. Next thing you knew, Dabi let you go, and you fell to your hands and knees on a cold tile floor. 

You picked your head up and realized you were back at the League hideout.  Shigaraki was standing over you.

"Took you two long enough."