Era

3

New bag, new textbooks, new cloak, new cups of instant ramen… Era leaned against the wall with a groan, letting her heavy pack fall to the ground next to her. She hadn’t taken her mask with her, this time, just to keep her from sticking her nose where it didn’t belong again. Not like it’d helped.

Era glanced down at her ruined shirt, let her eyes linger on the red stained gashes that tore jagged lines through the fabric. Damn, she really couldn’t mind her own fucking business, huh?

She needed a shower. Some food. A god damn nap, probably, though the dreams were bound to be terrible as usual and—actually, on second thought, it wasn’t really worth sleeping.

The generator hummed into life as Era poured bottled water into the styrafoam cup of noodles, swirling it around absentmindedly before crouching down to stick it in the battered microwave. She punched in the cook time and let it run while she glanced at the generator again, groaning when she saw that it was almost out of fuel. Just her fucking luck.

No generator meant no power, not in her burnt out husk of an apartment. No power meant no microwave, no computer, no heater…

She needed to go out again. Head down to the gas station and fill up some tanks with fuel, then make the long trek back on foot, because no way in hell was she carrying something flammable onto public transport. And, of course, it was getting dark again.

The microwave let out a shrill ding, and Era hurried over to slurp down her noodles as quickly as possible. She didn’t have time for this, not with the entrance exam looming a few months down the line. Not to mention the half-skimmed textbooks, with their facts and numbers that never quite found a place to rest in her cluttered skull. And fuck, there were still a few papers she needed to forge, a few systems she needed to plant files into… Era froze, cup still pressed against her mouth.

The papers. The forged documents. Her fucking quirk registration, fuck.

She’d told that nosy hero her quirk and her age at this point, it wasn’t exactly rocket science. This was the most high profile schools in the country, and she was going in registered as a fourteen year old with a regeneration quirk.

Era scarfed down the rest of the noodles, ignoring how the too-hot broth burned her tongue and throat—not like she could do any permanent damage, anyway. She tossed the cup into a cardboard box with the rest of the garbage and dove onto the bed to open up her computer. She needed a new quirk and fast, but… shit. Her fingers hovered above the keyboard, blinking away that looming exhaustion that threatened her with every twitch of her eyes.

She had official registration for a regeneration quirk. Well, okay, not official, but official enough. But that had been arranged for her when she had far more resources, influence, well-placed bribes in the right pockets. If she wanted something new, she might be able to hack into the system and put it there herself, but there wouldn’t be any sort of physical copy filed away.

UA was big. They’d check up on it. And when they didn’t find any sort of real documentation, they’d start digging around, find her grubby little fingerprints all over a data breach. Too much pressure; the whole thing would collapse beneath her.

So… she’d get inside, then, forge the documents from there. Couldn’t be too hard, right? Not like they had those places locked up tight. Quirk registry was only managed by the federal government, that was all. No trouble at all, just… Era sighed. It struck her, not for the first time, to wonder whether this was really worth all the damn trouble.

It’s not a high security prison. You can handle this.

Breathe. She did. It helped, a little.

Okay, she still had some time. Era rubbed at her temples and put together some semblance of a game plan: fuel, shower, break into her local quirk registration building. Simple. Easy. A child could do it.