Gracie Abrams is eking out a solitary existence, fighting day-in, day-out against the drain of working customer service and nursing two newborn kittens in her off time. Out on her own ever since her sister moved in with her boyfriend, the burden of...
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It happened in the middle of another sleepless night, as I knew it would.
Those four promised days had passed in a series of hailstorms and rain damage. It was all hands on deck, even for people wearing boots that weren't really meant to get wet. Like me.
Somehow, we'd ended up at my old Meijer, where I got to see what Amanda was talking about with "loving what we'd done to the Home Department." It had been converted into a news room, people diligently trying to communicate with the outside and create some semblance of a news log to be posted at the front checkout areas.
The changing rooms that hadn't been opened since COVID became meeting rooms. A small group of local leaders had come together in negotiations to tear down the wall. They met there daily with representatives from the government, escorted by armored police and national guardsmen. My old workplace, the neutral zone. Who knew?
Cozy decided it would be better for the new attention focused on Saitama's rise to fame to dim down before attempting our portal jumping. Our deadline moved back another month, which was for the best, really.
The witches had all decided it would work best if there was a "conduit" tethering this world to the next during the transition where our bodies were stuck in between. I would be Kakashi's tether, even though I was going with him. Enough of my—mojo, or whatever they called it—would make the path recognize me. Would keep the highway clear, just enough for us to follow Kakashi's mojo-whatever into his world. Talia decided she would do the same for Kirishima, which brought on a whole slew of new experiments to make sure they could get back on their own later.
I'd warned her that if she was going to jump into the My Hero world to find Shigaraki, there was a major chance that he wouldn't listen to her. At all. He might be too far gone. But I also knew what had happened with Shigaraki had left a deep scar. If I had the chance to make things right, would I jump into a portal? Hah.
Kakashi still hadn't asked me to go with him.
He clung to me more blatantly, though, barely letting me leave his lap for three seconds, before pulling me back into a blanket nest, two little demons mixed in there somewhere. Dog-lover Kakashi had even made peace with His Majesty in the kitchen, even tempting the old boy off his throne to perch on the edge of the living room to be with us. Well, up until the girls annoyed him so much he went back, grumbling and vibrating at the overall disrespect.
I told him all the secrets I've been keeping about his world, explaining everything I could remember about how it all got so messed up. The things that could still be fixed. The things that couldn't. Kakashi had come to my world after he'd already lost most everyone he cared for, and there was no changing that.
We talked about Obito and Rin, Naruto and Sasuke. We talked about the hidden agendas and sinister evil of Danzo.
The connection was spotty on my iPad, but I even got the chance to show him all sorts of headcanons people had made about him.
