Controlee

77. Potential Difference

Rule 57: Sometimes friends actually can offer pretty good advice.

Seeing TT and Oboro sitting in a room together (TT's room, to be specific), one of them on the bed and the other on a wheely chair, was instantly an unnerving sight. Especially with the way they were both staring at her like a grave tribunal of two when she was most definitely guilty. She had no idea what she'd done.

"Hi." She couldn't really be blamed— faced with such a sight— for being unable to speak beyond that limp word.

"Hey, Kaos," TT began, all smiles that Otsuka knew better than to think were innocent. She was doomed the moment she opened the door. "Take a seat, we need to talk."

It felt like an intervention. She would love to be able to say she knew what they were intervening on.

With the bed and wheely chair taken, Otsuka gradually lowered herself to the floor and tried to get comfortable. At least being sat here meant she was closest to the door if she needed to escape.

"The sensing mist."

Three words. She knew exactly what this was about with three words.

"Oboro here says you're refusing to use a skill that quite possibly saved lives back at your camp."

They weren't the first people to try to have this conversation with her. She'd had enough people try to change her mind, talk her out of this. There was nothing they could say to change the cold, hard facts of the matter. The risk of death that came with the sensing mist outweighed the potential uses.

"What are you going to do if you're the first responder to a search and rescue and none of the searching equipment is working?"

Of all people, TT should've understood this. Sure, his difficulties with control had only ever harmed himself, but he knew Otsuka better than anyone. He knew, as a level one controlee, she had to make decisions that minimised (preferably zeroed) the potential deaths caused directly by her quirk. It didn't matter if she could prevent loss of life with her quirk, that idea had no place here, all that mattered were the lives she could take with it. These were the rules they'd raised her to uphold for the safety of all.

The decision she'd made to stop using the sensing mist for good was an easy one. It was a simple choice and so obviously right. She didn't understand how anyone was having a hard time seeing that.

"I'll tell them the truth," she answered.

"That you don't believe you can keep your own quirk from killing people?" 

That was a purposefully inflammatory way of putting it. Otsuka understood her quirk, its limitations, what it took to handle it safely. She respected it.

"What a hero you'll make, you'll calm the masses like nothing else."

"There are better ways to word it than that," she said. 

"Is that what you'll tell the families of the people you couldn't save because you didn't know where they were?"

She eyed the carpet, Mags' voice rattling around her mind. Don't take risks with your quirk. Don't hurt anyone with your quirk. They were simple statements and abundantly clear. Awful as it was imagining having to apologise to a family for failing their loved one, Otsuka would do it as many times as it took because she and her quirk could not be the reason the death toll rose. Never again. "If I have to."

"You're better than that, Emi."

"I don't care about better, I care about safe." She cared about not killing anyone! Was that so hard to understand?