Chapter Text
“Hero Name - Bluetooth. Quirk - Mind Read and Empath. Bluetooth hears the thoughts and experiences feelings of targets within a 30 ft radius, making her the perfect undercover hero. She ranked in the top 10 this year for recon missions, making her a likely candidate for Rookie of the Year at the annual Hero’s Gala. Keep an eye on this rising star by tracking her progress at the Endeavor Agency. Next up, a robbery of a bagel store in the Shizuoka Prefecture –”
You tuned out the news program. You’ve been flooded with inquiries from the media and your socials, and the overstimulation was beginning to kick in. You worked on a big case last month, and your contributions were the reason the year-long job finally wrapped up. The police were trying to get probable cause for a warrant for a massive money laundering scheme in Hosu City, and one stakeout was all it took for you to give them what they needed. Once the case was released to the public, you had no peace.
You had been working at Endeavor’s agency as a sidekick for 4 years, and this was exactly the bump you needed to be considered a fully fledged pro hero, leading your own missions. With all of the excitement, your twitter and insta had popped off with tags and comments, the public stirring up a flurry of popularity for you. Even a small tech company contacted you for a brand deal with their wireless headsets. You were rocking a nice new pair of earbuds with a chibi version of yourself throwing a peace sign printed on the sides, and they were pretty fucking cute if you said so yourself.
After steadily building up credibility, you became a go-to choice for high stakes missions at your agency. Using your quirk before raids had turned damn near into a safety protocol, and Endeavor himself began pulling you into collaborative missions with other agencies in the last year. You’d partnered with quite a few members of the top ten, including Edgeshot, Best Jeanist, and Mirko. Other underground jobs had begun to trickle in directly from the Hero Commission, pairing you with icons like Eraserhead and Gang Orca. When detective Tsukauchi was unavailable, the Police Force asked you to sit behind a two way mirror and feed intel to the interrogators. At 23, it seemed like your career was finally starting to take off.
One of the drawbacks of your quirk was the burden of hearing everything all the time. In a resting state, you pull in a fog of the thoughts of the people in your near vicinity, picking up on the stronger emotions of others if you weren’t careful. This meant you had to actively engage your quirk for most hours of the day to filter out the overwhelming amount of information streaming in every second. You wore a discreet pair of cancelers if it was too taxing. Your quirk could be tiring, invasive, and unhealthy if you weren’t careful about separating your emotions from others. As an empath, you could confirm that the strongest feelings that people carried were more often negative than positive, and you felt them personally, even physically. Creating healthy boundaries was a necessity for your wellbeing and made you better at your job. It was better to be exhausted from filtering your quirk rather than from fielding the consciousness of the universe. Your teachers at UA and quirk counselors drilled this into you during your formative years. Especially when you were around people with chronic pain, it was critical you kept a mental barrier up with them, or even injured people. Needless to say, you stayed out of hospitals. Experiencing phantom birthing pains was the most effective contraceptive you ever took.
You carried a pair of nonlocking, single-arm quirk canceling bands that the UA tech department made for you a while back. They were elastic and looked like hair ties around your wrists, and they had a small switch that allowed you to turn them on and off inconspicuously. It was a regular part of your hero costume, but it was not public knowledge that the bands were cancelers. It was your quiet during the storm; you typically activated them when you were off the clock.
People often asked you about the privacy aspect. Was it hard not to read the minds of fellow heroes or important people in your life? How did it impact dating? What was it like hearing adult thoughts as a child? The questions were endless, and honestly, it had turned you into a bit of a hermit. The truth was that your quirk was a blessing for work but a curse for your personal life.
Dating really was a nightmare. Even the thoughts of decent, upstanding men were shocking to listen to. It was difficult to enjoy a nice meal and get to know a guy when you were fielding a stream of pornographic material in your head together. Because of your quirk, dating was relatively safe for you. Sifting through the men with bad intentions was an afterthought; the hard part was finding someone that didn’t give you the ick.
As for how it impacted your working relationships. Your fellow heroes and sidekicks knew your quirk, which left people uncomfortable or standoffish around you sometimes. Most of the people who know you had actively thought about ‘not thinking things’ in your vicinity, worried about privacy. Which, fair! You kept a lid on it 90% of the time, but it was easy to accidentally catch things when you were distracted. All in all, trust was hard to come by.
You will never forget your first meeting with Endeavor. After performing well in the first two years of your tenure at his agency, he requested a meeting to learn more about your quirk and experience. Nerves moved through you as you went up the elevator, eager to leave a good impression with the #2 hero. As you were escorted to his office, you could feel a thrum of consciousness on the other side of the wall. You heard something about ‘Shoto and the nanny’, and then quickly threw up your walls before entering the office. It was a huge corner office with a balcony; he was known for taking off of it directly during emergency calls.
He was imposing. You’d seen him just as much as anyone else, but it was different up close. His striking aqua eyes contrasted brilliantly with his crimson hair, sharpened by his serious persona. He was beautiful, and he had one of the most deadly quirks in the country. “Bluetooth, welcome and take a seat.” His gruff voice was deep and inviting, his grip swallowing yours when you shook hands. He was out of uniform, wearing a white button down with black slacks. He filled it out just as nicely. “Thank you sir, it’s nice to meet you.”
“Of course. I regularly review the performance of my employees, particularly the up and coming talent to develop the best heroes out of my agency. Your supervisors have consistently reported positive feedback, and your steady growth in takedowns despite a non-combat quirk are surpassing expectations. It’s important to continue to cultivate the potential in young heroes like you. I wanted to get to know you a bit and discuss future opportunities. Tell me, what is your fighting style? I see you use a few support items.”
It was going better than you hoped for, you couldn't keep the smile off your face as your nerves washed into excitement. He didn’t give away much emotionally, being straight faced and professional. Hearing his praise and the mentioned path to growth was more than enough to light you up.
“Yes sir. I have studied successful heroes with similar quirk restrictions and found a long range style to be the most effective for me, but I have trained rigorously in hand to hand combat to make up for my smaller stature. My goal is to always be able to protect myself despite my quirk not being geared toward battle. I am a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and have mastered Muay Thai. I keep a pair of quirk canceling cuffs on me and carry knives for self defense at all times. As for support items, I have an invisibility feature that I can activate over my costume. To use it effectively I must wear my cloak. I also have a long range dart gun stocked with various tranquilizers, and I’m training 5 hours a week at shooting moving targets to improve my aim. I am at an intermediate level.” Not to toot your own horn, but it felt good to share all of the things you were working on with the man. You were devoted to your work as a hero, and you wouldn’t stop burning the candle at both ends until you realized your full potential.
“Very good. I’m glad to see that you have identified your natural weaknesses and are finding multiple ways to mitigate them. In a fire fight, it can sometimes be impossible to protect support-type heroes at all times, so it is important to be able to take care of yourself. It appears that you have complete control over your quirk, mind reading. Your supervisor reports that it can strain you at times, mainly due to the empathetic nature of it. I would be curious to hear what you have learned about the minds and hearts of villains at another time. Your ability allows you to see the intent of people before they act, catch them in lies, and quietly gather intel from a safe distance. You have what it takes to go far, and we want to do whatever we can to help you be successful.” His composed, analytical assessment was honest and to the point. He put down the report he was reading, folding his hands on his desk as he looked in your eyes. “What are your long term goals, Bluetooth?”
“I am focused on mastering my quirk and learning additional combat techniques. I’d also like to work with more weapons, I know things will only get increasingly dangerous as I mature as a hero. I’m open to whatever comes my way, but I envision myself being on a team and providing safety with my quirk. I want to rise as far as I can in the ranks as a support hero, preventing the ugliest crimes by getting ahead of the problem. I can protect civilians and heroes in a way that most people aren’t capable of. I want to push hard these next few years to get as much experience as possible.”
“Okay, thanks for sharing. It seems like your goals align with the vision of my agency, so we will commit to getting you the experience you need to grow. We will boost your responsibilities and start taking you on more dangerous missions. Expect invitations to team up with other agencies. Thank you for your service Bluetooth, we look forward to seeing what you do in the future.” You stood up to shake hands again, thanking him for his time.
As you made an exit, you felt a sense of curiosity and appreciation come over you. An image of you walking away filled your visage, looking you over from top to bottom. A shiver ran through you as you shut the door, scurrying back to the elevator. Did he just check me out? Or am I misinterpreting it? You pondered it occasionally when you saw him, but you kept a firm wall up in your mind when you interacted. It wouldn’t suit you to start looking at your boss like that.
//////
In light of your recent successes, your friends took you out for drinks to celebrate. Previously your supervisor but now a partner, Burnin’ made a toast. “Ahem, EXCUSE ME party people! We have an up and coming top hero in our midst, let’s hear it for Daphne!”
“Yeah! You go girl, glad to see some recognition for your hard work.”
“That’s right Bluetooth! Proud of you.”
“Cheers to many more successes.”
Your coworkers were so kind, you thanked everyone and enjoyed a night of beer and games.
Burnin’ was about 3 years older than you, and her hero name matched her spunky personality. “So Daph, how’s the big man doing? Haven’t run into him in a while because he keeps stealing you away for undercover missions.” A lecherous grin spread across her face as she laughed.
“Ugh, c’mon Moe, don’t make it weird. He’s the same as always. Big and serious, and obsessed with becoming #1.” You stared into your glass of Sapporo, trying not to think too hard about his ripped upper body.
“Yeah, but since he lost his wife I heard he’s cooled down a bit.”
Your head snapped up. “Shit, no kidding? I had no idea, that’s awful.” You straightened up, the news was a huge surprise. You thought back on how he was around that time, and you supposed he might have been a bit less aggressive than usual.
“Yeah, you shut in! Rei passed away half a year ago. Apparently it was totally unexpected, she had a stroke. This is another example of why I keep trying to convince you to get out more!” She gesticulated like a mad woman. “You’re hardly on social media, and you don’t keep up with any news beyond what’s needed for the job. When was the last time you got out before this? Or read a gossip rag? You’re in your early twenties, you need to go live your life!” Her green hair stood up in the air as she spoke.
“You know why I keep to myself, it’s exhausting listening to and feeling everything all the time. Besides, if you had to constantly hear all of the nasty things people thought about you personally, you’d be more inclined to spend time alone too.” A sigh left you and you leaned against the counter. It’s not like you wanted to be a loner. But wearing your bands made you feel anxious when you were in public, like you were making yourself vulnerable to an attack.
“You gotta ignore the haters, toothache. Do you wanna look back and regret not doing more? I mean I’m your friend and we don’t even catch up unless I literally force you. Not trying to make you feel bad at all, I know it’s not because you don’t love me. I just want to see you be happy. Now that you’re starting to get some new opportunities, it’s the perfect time to introduce the new you! Just think about it, okay?” She pleaded with you, kindness in her eyes. You were both leaning over the bar, and it was late. The rest of your coworkers had gone home.
“Damn, you’re going to break my arm, you are twisting it so hard Moe,” a small laugh left you. “Fuck, fine. I will TRY to do more. Don’t expect anything crazy.”
“Thank fuck! I might save you from becoming a shut-in spinster yet.” She threw an arm around you and gave you a hug.
“Don’t push it, or I might change my mind just to spite you hehe.” You had a devious side that made an appearance from time to time.
“No! I will steal your dogs if you walk it back. Those little fluffy angels deserve to get out more too.”
“Geez, okay okay, leave my babies alone. The last time you came over, Suki hid under the bed because of your cackling.”
“It’s not my fault the place is always silent. Anyway, let’s get out of here. I have an early patrol.” She grabbed her things and tipped the bartender.
“Sounds good. See you tomorrow.” You parted ways and walked to the train in the cold February air.