A strategy meeting with Invisible Girl

Your favorite noodle house was one of the few places you could go in town where people didn't treat you as the back-alley squatting thug that you often came off as, due to your delinquent behavior and scary face. The aproned old Japanese man behind the counter greeted you with a big "welcome," which you answered with your usual graceless frown. The rest of the store's dine-in area seemed pretty empty, which was probably for the best; you didn't want a lot of people snooping in as you ate with a hero. "What'll it be? The usual bowl?"

Lifting one hand from your pocket, you pointed up towards the menu. "Nah, give me two bowls this time. Give me one house special like always and a junior bowl to go along with it." You were hoping you could get through this without letting Invisible Girl do much of the talking, which would raise a lot of questions... of course, so would noodles mysteriously disappearing into the air throughout the meal, but you could handle that if you got questions.

"Hey, are you ordering for me? I don't need a junior bowl! I'm hungry; let me get a big one!" Toru complained, stepping out in front of you, invisibly.

The old man behind the counter blinked in confusion, then put on the kind of smile that showed he wasn't the type to question an order. "You got it! A big bowl for the lady," he grinned, then got to work. "Am I putting it on your tab?"

You wanted to say yes, but Toru got out in front of that one too. "It's all on me! Just leave the check at the table!"

You sighed, secretly thankful that you were going to get to hold on to the money. The hero business probably paid a lot better than the odd jobs that you tended to do for a living.

You and Toru shared some awkward conversation, with her leading and you begrudgingly following, while you waited for your meals. Small talk about your daily lives soon gave way to conversations about your unique quirks. "It sounds like your quirk comes with a lot of baggage," she mused, holding her gloves at where you presumed her cheeks must be and kicking her floating boots back and forth beneath the small corner table. "Mine hasn't always been easy either. I'm actually a second generation invisible quirker, you know? The big difference is I trained long enough to master the way light bends around me, so I can do all kinds of things now! In fact, if I ever get into a jam against a guy like that, I can use my special move: Warp Refraction! It manipulates the light around me to blind people. So, you see, I was never in any real danger!" You could tell she was grinning behind her invisible curtain.

You weren't grinning; in fact, you were scowling. "Not in any real danger my ass! What good would a flash of light have done if he had you in a ****-hold, huh? Would it even work against those weird eyes of Rattle's?" you questioned, lowering your eyebrows skeptically. When you heard her gulp self-consciously and saw her hands shrinking back where they were covering her cheeks, you felt a little bad for pushing on her and eased up. "That may not be the last you see of these guys, either. The Monitors are an Italian-style 'family,' right? They ain't gonna be happy about what you did to Rattle and there's a good chance there's others that have eyes just like that fucker's. You need to throw away that idea that invisibility is gonna protect you against them."

"Yeah... You might be right," Invisible Girl responded in a non-committal voice that showed you she really hadn't been hoping to talk business over the meal. "I hadn't thought about it, but you might be in danger too. Maybe we should stick together for the rest of the time I'm on assignment here? There's still more work to do with the Monitors, assuming they don't come for me first, like you're saying."

"Stick together?" you questioned, raising one eyebrow.

"Yeah! Like we can... take turns watching overnight!" she proposed, raising one gloved finger.

You nearly comically spat out your water over her invisible face. "I live in a shithole single-bed apartment! What the fuck are you picturing, us 'sticking together overnight?'"

"I-It doesn't have to be weird! I'll put down a sleeping bag! You won't even know I'm there!" she offered, clasping both hands together and pleading. "Listen, earlier today showed me that we're a great team! Not um... a 'legal' team, considering you're a civilian and shouldn't be involved at all... but now that the Monitors might be coming after both of us, we should have each other's backs! Who works better together than you and me, huh? You can hide my heat signature from those bozos and I can help you charge your Kindle without anybody seeing! It's a win-win! We'll solve the whole Monitor situation together!"

"Waaah-?!" you exclaimed, your mouth dropping open at the ridiculous suggestion. You'd intended to beat down a thug or two and make the guys shrink back, not try to blow up their whole operation! "Is that what you're here for? You're supposed to take the whole gang out by yourself?!"

"Well, no... But seeing what we saw just now, with Rattle pushing down on that plant, you've got to imagine there's Monitors all over the place, threatening people, right? I'd rather help them quickly than wait for backup. We can put the fear of the law in the Monitors together! Once they're cagey and huddled in, they won't be messing with people and we can get more heroes on it while the police pump Rattle for info we can act on. It's a great idea, trust me!" Invisible Girl was insistent, shaking her fists up and down over the table.

Your conversation was interrupted as the owner brought over two bowls for you. Hagakure's was comically large, even more so than the huge portion you ordinarily ordered. You heard her gulp again from across the table and couldn't stop yourself from smirking at her expense; instead of pushing it, you spared her and went back to the topic at hand. "Look, you don't really know me. You're really comfortable relying on my quirk and even sleeping in my apartment? Do you just not have a sense of self-preservation or something?"

"It's really not embarrassing to me, if that's what you're worried about. Relying on you, I mean! I've always been the kind of hero that works best in teams. Besides that, you're a lot like a hero yourself, you know? You stepped in to protect people and you've got a really strong quirk! You're just a hero without a license, so, like... an illegal hero!"

"Don't say that so loud," you grumbled, while digging into your ramen bowl.

Invisible Girl attempted to do the same, then immediately dropped her chopsticks and began chugging her water. "Waaagh! That's really hot! How are you eating it already?!"

"Damn, should have warned you... I'm resistant to heat," you apologized, then continued soldiering through your meal with a crass lack of sympathy towards your friend. "Okay, so I get that you like working in teams, but what about the other part? You aren't worried about sharing my apartment?"

"He he, well... I actually spent my whole student life naked on account of my quirk, right? I'm not the bashful type~"

You ignored the vaguely flirtatious undertone of that last comment and opened your eyes wide. "The fuck? Why'd you do that?"

"For a while, that was the best way for me to stay invisible. Like I said, my family has the ability to turn our bodies invisible; that includes skin, hair, muscles, everything! That meant that when I wanted to get serious, I had to shed everything," she pointed out, seeming remarkably unembarrassed as she tentatively slurped her noodles. You watched the bizarre scene, as each noodle rose into the air, slithered for a moment, then disappeared into empty space. "Since then, I've managed to expand the field a bit! As long as what I'm wearing is pretty skin-tight, I can make it invisible too. Not just that- I can also carry utility items as long as they're super thin! You saw the rope earlier, right? I've also got bandages and things... I'm working with Edgeshot to come up with more support items that will work with my invisibility."

"So uh... what are you wearing now?"

"What a question!" Invisible Girl laughed around her noodles. "I can actually wear underwear and stuff now, you know? The gear covers my whole body except my head. Kind of silly to have a mask when you're a hero like me," she giggled. "Although, for the sake of us using our quirks together, I should probably actually go back to being naked, huh?"

This time you really did spit up your noodles. The image of you holding Toru and rubbing her small, womanly body up and down your naked flesh was causing serious heat to build up in your throat; you didn't know whether to warn her about what she was doing to your Kindle or to try to trample down the arousal yourself. When you brought up your water and began drinking to withdraw from the conversation, steam rose out from the sides of your mouth and sizzled.

"Hee hee! That's a good reaction!"

Toru made a few calls after the meal together. It seemed she couldn't carry a smartphone on her invisible outfit, but she was outfitted with some kind of earpiece that would allow her to communicate with the heroes in the major part of the city. You tried not to eavesdrop as she finished her call, then fell in step with your slouching gait. "I'm gonna stop by the nearest super-store and pick up some things for my stay. You know sleeping bag and all that. Do you have breakfast stuff? I could pick up eggs and bacon!" she commented, quick and friendly as always.

"There ain't no fucking super-store around here. You're in the shithole part of town, in case you didn't notice," you informed her tactlessly. "I don't even know where you're gonna get a sleeping bag this late."

"Oh... Well, we'll figure out the sleeping situation once we're there! Luckily, I'm not like normal girls, where I have to wear makeup and things! It's pretty handy."

"Do you even have clothes to change into?"

"... I'm not the type who has to wear clothes, either! As long as you've got a shower, I'm fine! You do shower, right?" You thought you heard the sound of her sniffing your old flannel. "Y-You do, right?!" She didn't sound so sure.

Growling, you sped up your walk a bit, leading her back to your place. It was going to be a long night...