Chapter Text
Rhode Kamelot had a fairly normal life, for a host of a Noah Memory. She woke up at 5:30 every morning, brushed her hair, hummed a funky little song as she made her breakfast. Most mornings Lero yells at her, fondly, to get dressed before coming down the stairs (“You can’t just come out dressed in your pajamas, Lady Rhode! Lero~”), and most mornings she brushes the floating umbrella off. Propriety was for people who gave into a stranger’s expectations.
She would go upstairs, throw on an outfit both cute and mobile enough to kill a man in, and then take the rest of the morning time to record her dreams in her dream journal. Her journal was leather-bound, covered in watermelon candy stickers, and smelling inextricably of smoke and cotton candy. Then at 8:30 AM, she would be off to her first Hero Course class of the day, bypassing the subway by just opening one of her Dream Doors directly in her classroom. She would be 5 minutes early before Homeroom officially started for Class 1B. She usually needs that time to start working on the homework she didn’t work on the night before.
After school would end, she would go on patrol across Japan. Accommodaters weren’t as plentiful here as they were in her last life, so it’s the perfect place to train her young body to tune into her Memory. The rush of the wind blowing her and Lero to their destination, the smell of the cities and countrysides below them, and the moon glowing so bright and true was the best thing in the world. Besides destroying Innocence, this is what she lived for. It was always worth the inconvenience of having to listen to her golem’s nonstop nagging.
But tonight she wasn’t going on patrol. Tonight she was going to visit an old family friend.
Rhode skips down the hall of the hospital. Despite the circumstances, she’s excited to see Hisashi again after ~soo loong~. She bobs and weaves through the doctors and families heading to visit loved ones, until finally she’s in the farthest room of the ICU hallway.
The Accommodater in the bed was deathly pale. Her heartbeat was slow on the monitor. Her hair was white as snow, so Rhode decides to call her Snow White in her head until she either gets a name or the Accommodater wakes up and tells them its name.
Hisashi Sone was standing in the corner of the room with his phone in hand. On one of the guest chairs was a plastic bag. She busies herself by looking through it until he is done with whatever he is doing. Likely texting his boss that he has an engagement for at least tomorrow. Can never be sure with All For One though, so she will not assume.
She heard a bit about the “portal” from over the phone, as well as how odd her presence is. Her kind of odd, but there seems to be more going on than just “an Innocence did it”, judging by a Hero student ID that is neither fake nor valid. At least she has a supposed name now - “Aleah Walker”. Looking deeper into the bag is a deactivated golem that isn’t one that Lord Millenium made (way too plain, he would never ). Wrapped in her “Hero” suit is a broken syringe. She holds it up to the light, trace energy from Innocence making her Noah growl at the edges of her mind.
“The doctors tried taking a sample of blood for testing. The blood almost immediately threw itself against the glass,” he says, walking over and gently removing the medical sheet from her left ankle. A cross was carved into her skin in the groove where shin becomes the top of foot. “When it did escape the glass, it flew through the air and re-entered her body through these marks. And judging from your reaction to the syringe, my hunch was correct.”
Rhode allowed the surprise that her blank mask cracked to roll through her like water from a duck. It was time to focus on the Accommodater.
She presses her two hands together. The dark matter between them seeps through her pores and wells between her fingers in a sickly-sweet black goo. The feeling was as familiar as it was satisfying. She slowly pulls her hands apart, purple lightning crackling around them as she wills open a gate to her Dreamworld. Not a proper door, but just enough to take her cute little candles out. Her Noah smiles with her in anticipation.
“I don’t think that is wise.”
Rhode hesitates. Red eyes bore into her from where he stands next to her. His broad shoulders are tense despite his face being as neutral as ever. She allows the gate to dissipate out of her grasp. With a pout, she twirls around and crosses her arms, huffing. She pauses with her back to him for a second before she turns her head to look at him in the eyes.
“And why not? She is dangerous, and needs to be taken out quick and quiet.”
Her voice is childish and light, but she chooses her words carefully despite the dramatics she loves to put on. Hisashi crosses his arms as well, half facing her and half facing the Accommodater in the bed. The arm closest to it lifts and gestures vaguely in its direction, before returning to the cross.
“There are too many things unanswered. We don’t know how she got an ID for UA that is made exactly how the school makes them so the criminal underground can’t make fakes. We don’t know where she came from. There is no record of her in UA, Japan, or even anywhere. The blood that we did get from her body after the first incident hasn’t been tested yet. We don’t know exactly what the portal is that she came out of, or why it happened, or what it has to do with her Innocence. Killing her now would answer nothing, and could even prevent your side of the war from having key information that will turn the tide for you.”
She turns fully to him and drops her act. “Keeping it alive here is too risky. There are too many people. If we are going to get those answers we need a secure location and someone who can properly restrain its Innocence.”
He nods. All for One lowers his arms from his chest and glides over to the Accommodater’s bed, scooping it up gently, almost lovingly, into his arms. Rhode restrains herself from rolling her eyes as she lets his teleportation quirk roll over her, tugging them tenderly into familiar darkness.