Work Text
[System loading…]
Ochako groans, eyes screwed closed against the pounding in her head, trying to shake out the bright text but no matter how hard she tries, it won’t dissipate.
[Loading complete. Welcome to Pleasing Our Infernal Princess! The System welcomes you. Would you like to begin?]
She tries to turn her head into her pillow, groaning at the weird half-dream she’s having, wondering if that fever was bad enough to need a hospital. Why on earth is her dream about some system talking about the stupid book she’d just finished reading?
[Please select Y/N to continue. You do not need to touch, thinking about your answer will suffice.]
{NO} Ochako thinks very loudly. Her vision, even with her eyes closed, glitches red.
[This system apologises, but this feature has not yet been implemented. Please try again.]
Huh? How can it give her two options, and one of them isn’t even real? What kind of weird dream is this? She tries to drift off again, but the System buzzes.
[Please select Y/N to continue. You do not need to touch, thinking about your answer will suffice.]
Okay, fine! Ochako thinks, getting truly annoyed now, thinking {Yes} very loudly.
[Thank you for choosing to participate in Pleasing Our Infernal Princess. This System hopes to provide you with the best possible experience. It is our sincere wish that during your stay, you will fulfil your desires and, in accordance with your wish, transform a dim-witted work for people who can barely read into a first-rate classic. We hope you enjoy!]
Then, the screen glitches out of view, and the nausea and vertigo that overtakes Ochako’s senses is so gruelling that she really does think she needs a hospital. Then, she’s lurching upright, heart hammering in her chest, looking around at an unfamiliar room, filled with unknown trinkets, pictures, and laid out nothing like her actual room had been.What the hell happened? The last thing Ochako remembers is getting sick the week before she was supposed to start high school, right after overusing her quirk at the entrance exam. Maybe she’d been a bit delirious, and she’d turned to her usual comfort hate-read – it took almost no thinking to hate on Pleasing Our Infernal Princess, and it usually cheered her up. The last think she remembers before going to sleep last night was thinking, with no small amount of delirium owed to the fever, dumb-fuck author, dumb-fuck book!Okay, it’s a little meaner than Ochako usually is, but she’s sick for God’s sake!Now, she hauls herself out of bed, no trace of the fever from last night, but also no trace of her life at all. In fact, it’s like someone else lives here. It’s only as she walks past the desk in the room and catches sight of herself in the mirror that the panic really sets in. That’s not her! She could almost scream!Whoever is looking back at her in the mirror looks equally as horrified as Ochako feels – with a brunette bob and brown eyes to match, as well as perfectly circular blush spots that wouldn’t be out of place in some anime, Ochako doesn’t recognise herself in the mirror.She does, however, recognise this face from the official artwork of Pleasing Our Infernal Princess – Ochako Uraraka.Okay, so – you have to forgive Ochako a little bit. She only picked up Pleasing Our Infernal Princess when she flicked through the book with a friend at the store and saw a character sharing her given name – the same kanji, too! It’s not common, it doesn’t happen! So she was intrigued, and bought the book, and then rapidly consumed it over the course of three nights, squirrelled underneath her covers with a torch, only to be appalled by the ending.Maybe Ochako Uraraka had never been a good character to the main protagonist of the novel, Himiko Toga – okay, that’s putting it mildly. Ochako Uraraka had ruthlessly and mercilessly tormented the main character for months – bullying her so much that Uraraka had actually, well, killed Himiko Toga. Kind of. Accidentally.It was totally on purpose in the book, but Himiko surviving wasn’t supposed to happen, and technically that means that Ochako Uraraka got away with murder, until of course the climax of the book. Right at the end, when the Demoness Himiko Toga comes into her rightful power as the Princess of the Demon Realm, she…Let’s just say there wasn’t much left to grieve of Ochako Uraraka in the end.It was stupid! Uraraka deserved so much better – she was a complex character underneath all that bitchiness, she could feel it! There were hints throughout the text about how sad Uraraka’s home life was, but the stupid author never even bothered to follow up on it! There was just so much possibility for the character, but instead she’s reduced to a shitty, one-dimensional villain that only exists to further the plot so that Himiko Toga can come into her evil demoness powers and marry her seven husbands or whatever.It's so stupid! So stupid!And now – what, Ochako has taken on Uraraka’s identity? Ridiculous! She has to fix this whole stupid novel! What a weird dream she’s having, but if it’s a lucid one, she’ll damn well make this shitshow into the best possible incarnation of an overpowered female rage fantasy novel there has ever existed!
[The System has now completed loading. We thank you for your patience and are pleased to welcome you aboard. Would you like a tutorial?]
Ochako thinks very loudly and aggressively, {Yes!}
[System tutorial successfully activated. Bound role: Himiko Toga’s sworn enemy, Ochako Uraraka. Weapon: Mobile phone. Starting B-Points: 100. Please ensure your score does not fall below zero, or the System will automatically assign punishment.]
Huh. Ochako thinks she’s read like, half a dozen stories with transmigration plots, but she didn’t actually expect any of them to happen to her. Why would she?Wait. Does this mean she’s dead?
[Player Two bound their consciousness to the game upon the activation phrase “Dumb-fuck author, dumb-fuck book.” To meet the activation criteria, the eligible player must have less than twelve hours to live in the original world. If your points drop below zero, you will be transported back to the original world to live your final hours.]
Ochako stares at the words. Oh. So she is dead, then. Or as good as.And now she’s stuck in this novel, where if she’s not careful, she’s going to die again. She knew she should have seen a doctor for that stupid fever! Damn it!Fine. She’s stuck here, then – she’s going to have to fix Uraraka’s plot holes! She won’t be murdered by Himiko Toga! She’s better than that!So, with complete determination, she walks through the tutorial with furious concentration, ensuring she doesn’t forget anything. Ochako Uraraka is going to become Himiko Toga’s best friend, come hell or high water!
Ochako makes her way to high school, squinting at her mobile phone’s mediocre calendar to figure out where she’s supposed to be. From the looks of things, she’s about halfway through her final year of high school, which means that Himiko Toga is about to transfer into her homeroom.Which means that a few months from now, Himiko Toga is going to die, and then when Ochako moves away to college in the fall, she’s going to be hunted down by ghosts, demons, and finally, the vampire princess herself. After that, it’ll be about two years of a long, painful death by exsanguination as Himiko Toga bleeds her just shy of dry over and over.Okay, maybe Uraraka deserved to die for being such a horrible person, but two years of torture?! Uraraka didn’t even bully her for one! Ochako will fix that. she just has to make sure that Himiko does manage to awaken her demoness powers so the rest of the plot can happen, and Ochako stays untouched. There! It’ll be easy! She can just, y’know, not bully Himiko Toga. How hard could that be? She managed to not bully anybody in her actual life every day! It never even occurred to her to be mean. Why would it?!Of course, in the real world, she didn’t have friends like, uh…
Those.
As soon as she steps foot inside the building, the girl who must be Kyouka Jirou yanks at her sleeve, recognisable by the earbuds dangling from her ears and the obnoxious bubble-gum she’s popping.“You’ll never guess what I overheard Sensei say this morning,” Kyouka says with a snicker, leading her to the pink-haired girl that must be Mina Ashido, and the elegant brunette that has to be rich girl Momo Yaoyorozu.“Oh?” Ochako says, playing coy; she knows what they must have heard, but Uraraka doesn’t, so she has to play along.“I heard that there’s going to be some fresh meat joining our homeroom. And halfway through the year, too!”“No way,” Ochako says, feigning surprise, twisting her lips innocently. “Well, I can’t wait to meet them, whoever it is!”Instantly, her vision starts to flash violently red.
[OOC WARNING! OOC WARNING! Player is required to complete at least one quest or pay 1,000 B-Points in order to unlock the OOC Feature without consequence! Please be careful Player Two!]
Fuck, Ochako thinks succinctly with an internal wince. Maybe not bullying Himiko Toga will be a little bit harder than initially anticipated.“So we can remind them how things work around here, of course,” Ochako adds on at the end, winking at Kyouka’s raised eyebrow. At once, her girlfriends laugh, easily placated by Ochako’s reminder of the status quo that they all, apparently, adhere to.Honestly, in the original novel, it had completely confused her why neither Mina nor Momo were at the top of the pyramid – Momo was described as effortlessly beautiful and rich, while Mina was naturally outgoing and gained the trust of anyone she spoke to.But then, Ochako supposed, Momo was also described to have crippling confidence issues and was easily walked all over, and Mina was too much of a people pleaser to be the one on top. Kyouka never wanted to be on top, she just wanted to have fun.Ochako – her home life had been vaguely implied to be a struggle, with absent parents that barely sent enough money for her to get by, and a silver tongue that managed to get others to bend to her will whenever she needed to get something. So, she supposes, a bit begrudgingly while living Ochako’s life now, it sort of makes sense why the poor underdog Ochako Uraraka became the top dog in High School.“I heard it’s a girl,” Mina says, shimmying across the floor in front of them in a strange half dance, although not nervously; Mina is a dancer, Ochako recalls, and doesn’t ever really stop moving.Well, until she’s strung up in the air by her ankles and exsanguinated, but that’s neither here nor there, and is in some nebulous future that Ochako will have to try to ensure doesn’t exist.“Then we’ll have to make extra sure that she doesn’t step on any toes,” Ochako sing-songs.
[50 B-Points! This system congratulates you on advancing the storyline so quickly!]
Advancing the—Ochako whirls around the second she sees Momo’s eyes widen, seeing a small-ish girl with hay-like hair knotted into space buns on either side of her head watching them, eyes darting between all of them as she licks her lips. Her eyes are bright, and even from this distance, Ochako can see the way her canines are just slightly too sharp where her overly white teeth worry her bottom lip.Crap, Ochako thinks, staring at the pretty girl, who, she realises at once, is absolutely Himiko Toga. It didn’t go like this in the book! Himiko didn’t even pay any notice to us in the book by now! She was just supposed to walk past us and hear us laughing – she wasn’t supposed to hear me say that! No, no, no! I’m going to get violently murdered and drained dry of every drop of—“I’m sorry,” says Himiko timidly, shuffling forwards and visibly swallowing. “I just, um – do you know where Kayama-sensei’s homeroom is?”
How do I answer that!!! I don’t know where the fuck anything is!!! I’m new here too, Himiko Toga!!! Curse you system for not giving this transmigrator a functional map!!!
[This system would like to inform the player—]
Screw off! She hisses violently to the system, which wisely remains silent after. Instead, she pastes on a bright smile that she knows is described as innocent and welcoming, without a trace of deceit until you look at the glint in Ochako’s eyes.“Oh, sure!” Ochako lies, and then decides to just give directions. “You want to head down the corridor, up the stairs, and then go back on yourself until you pass the boy’s bathrooms. Can’t miss it!”Himiko gives her another timid smile. “Thank you, I don’t – I don’t know where anything really is…”“You’ll get used to it pretty quick,” Ochako assures her, hoping it’s true for her own sake. “Maybe we’ll see you around!”With another tentative smile, Himiko disappears without giving her own name; as soon as she’s out of earshot, the girls around her start laughing.
[50 B-Points! This player is very good at remaining in character! You will be whizzing through the plot in no time!]
What? Ochako hisses at it. no, I’m trying to stop the plot!“That was great, Ocha,” Kyouka says approvingly. “She’s going to be lost before we even start! Sending her to Kame’s class is a stroke of genius! Now there’s a way to make sure she knows where she belongs!”As the girls all giggle as though in on one big joke, Ochako can’t help the unease churning in her gut, the worry at knowing that already, she has made Himiko Toga feel unwelcome, and already set her on the path that will place her on the demonic throne and drain Ochako of every drop of blood in her body.Okay, put like that, it sounds so overdramatic. But it’s true!
Hey, system?
[Yes!]
What did you say the criteria was for the OOC warning?
[The player must pay 1000 B-Points, or complete one entry level quest. The player’s current B-Points are 200.]
Crap, Ochako thinks. {Is there a quest I can do, or..?}
[This system will alert you when there becomes an available quest!]
Double crap. That means Ochako has to either continue to be mean to Himiko Toga another fourteen times at least or hope that she gets a quest soon. Fourteen isn’t that many, right..? She could totally do it.As she ponders how she’s going to spend the next few months, she tries to remember what the key plot points that OGako (Ochako thinks she’s very funny, thank you) had done in the novel. Something about – stealing something of hers? Crap, what was it? Lunch money? Food?No. A necklace. It had been Himiko’s necklace, her only known connection to the Lord of the Underworld, her father, the great Demon All For One, gifted to her on her first birthday and binding her to the throne. And then, of course, Ochako steals it, pretends not to, and pushes it back into Himiko’s chest at the same time she threw Himiko out the window, thereby breaking the seal with Himiko’s demon blood.Oh dear, Ochako realises. She can’t skip that – Himiko needs to become the Infernal Princess, or there’s just not plot to the book! She has to be completely unimpeachable, has to be powerful beyond measure, has to have her dying blood activate her father’s demonic sigils and bring her to the underworld to claim her throne, come into her power, and seek revenge!Oh, no!Ochako is just so screwed!The bell for homeroom rings, startling her out of her reverie. Luckily, she gets swept up by the other girls, who pull her along in the right direction for Kayama’s homeroom, which is in totally opposite to the way she told Himiko to go.They chatter away and wait for the second bell to ring, and the door slides open just as the second bell sounds; in shuffles poor Himiko Toga, looking dejectedly at her feet, glancing up and finding Ochako looking back at her, and then dropping her gaze immediately.“Right on time,” Kayama-sensei purrs, giving the girl an encouraging smile. “Class, please join me in welcoming your newest classmate Himiko Toga. I hope you’ll all be very welcoming to her.”They chorus their agreements, but Himiko doesn’t raise her gaze from her feet other than to take the only empty seat in the class.The one to the immediate left of Ochako.“Hey,” Ochako whispers as Kayama starts to babble on about something useless or boring that the narration of the book always whizzed over. It can’t be important if it wasn’t in the book, right? “Sorry for giving you the wrong directions! I could have sworn I heard you say Kame, not Kayama!”Himiko hesitates at that, her brows pulling together, as she gives Ochako a sidelong glance. Ochako tries to look encouraging, hating how this is just going to make her look like such a two-faced bitch.“If I’d known you were in our homeroom, I’d have walked with you myself!”The other girl’s expression broke into a tentative smile at that.“Oh,” she whispers. “I – sorry. I should’ve spoke up, I guess… what was your name?”“Ochako Uraraka,” Ochako chirped. “You’re Himiko, right? I think we’re going to get along super well!”She’s sure to emphasise it slightly too loudly, pumping her fist, earning a scolding from their teacher, and stifled giggles from the girls behind her.
[100 B-Points! This system isn’t sure how you’re being so nice while staying in character!]
Internally, she sticks out her tongue at the system. {Because being a two-faced bitch involves being nice to Himiko’s face, and a bitch when she’s not around, which is easy! This mean stuff is great! I’m going to get a thousand B-Points in no time! What am I at?}
[300 B-Points.]
{…Okay, maybe not no time. Anyway…}
They suffer quietly through the rest of their classes for the day, and it takes very little convincing for her posse to join in on her plan when she frames it like she’s humiliating Himiko Toga, somehow.Ochako feels like a genius – she has totally circumvented the whole OOC warning by behaving perfectly in character as a “nice” person, thereby racking up the B-Points, ready to expend them to get rid of that stupid OOC warning that might end up costing her points in the long run. Genius! She’s a genius!By the end of the day, she’s only fifty points down! By tomorrow morning, she’s easily going to be able to buy herself out of this little problem.
That night, she sleeps soundly, albeit pretty hungry, because there’s not really any food in her fridge, knowing that she’s going to be able to fix this whole problem pretty quickly. She’s sure of it!
Ochako waits until she rakes up 1100 points before unlocking the OOC trait – that way, she has some wiggle room just like at the start where she doesn’t risk instantly dying if she turns around and loses herself any B-Points. The issue is, she still kind of has to keep up her cover between the girls and Himiko.It takes a bit of time and careful manoeuvring, but she manages to convince the girls that folding Himiko into their friendship group is the best way to get back at her; she’s shy, not too outgoing, and a little bit awkward. The rest of their classmates can tell exactly what kind of schtick they’re going for, but most of them wisely stay out of it. Unfortunately, Himiko can’t tell, and Ochako hasn’t got the courage to dissuade her… friends that that’s not what she really wants to do.The thing is – Himiko is just… nice. She’s pretty, in an understated way. Nice to look at, not overpowering, and she has really interesting thoughts. Why OGako ever bullied her so much was a mystery! She’s truly so nice!“That’s such a pretty necklace you have,” Ochako says one day, after an almost dizzyingly long-and-short period of time when the System finally informs her that there is a quest available: Take Himiko’s Necklace.This is going to royally fucking suck, but Ochako Sucks It Up.“This?” Himiko says, baring her sharp canines in her pretty little smile, cheeks rosy. It’s so strange that, for a vampiric demoness, she is just so lively. Maybe she’ll get paler later. “It’s… all I have left of my Dad.”“Oh!” Ochako fawns over it, acting as though she made some big faux-pas by bringing up Himiko’s evil demonic overlord father – not that she knows about that. “I’m so sorry! What happened to him?”“I don’t know,” Himiko shrugs. “I don’t have parents, anyway. I just live in the orphanage, and I got moved to this one after… well, it doesn’t matter.”That gives Ochako pause. Why Himiko had moved schools had never been brought up in the book. Was there something to unlock here? The system gave her no hints.“That’s so sad,” Ochako dithers. “It must be nice that your dad left you such a pretty necklace to remember him by. I wonder if it’s a family heirloom?”It definitely is. The demonic kind that would only break open at his daughter’s blood spilt and imbue her with the powers of a demonic princess. Oh well, whatever. That’s a problem for later.“Maybe!” Himiko says cheerfully. “I just like the way it feels. It kinda feels like it’s alive in there – like it’s beating. Like it’s humming. I like thinks that are so… full of life! So rosy and bright, and just – so full of energy. Don’t you?”Ochako doesn’t grimace only because she does actually understand the feeling – she pretends she doesn’t know that this is one of Himiko’s more demonic traits coming to fruition, in that she likes to suck the life out of people with those pointy canines, and nods along.“Oh, sure! It’s like when you see babies with really super chubby cheeks and you just want to pinch them!”Himiko nods emphatically, eyes bright. “You understand! Like – like your cheeks, too!” At that, Ochako can only blink at her, but Himiko isn’t the least bit deterred. “Your cheeks are so – rosy, and pink! I could just bite—”“—uhm!” Ochako interjects, a little high-pitched, only saved from embarrassment by the appearance of Mina, who slides onto the bench at her side and immediately begins to chatter about the boy she’s been paired with for her English project, some Bakugou Katsuki.When Ochako chances a glance at Himiko, she finds the other girl’s eyes bright, her cheeks flushed, her smile just the slightest bit too wide.Oh no, Ochako thinks faintly. She wants to eat me anyway. It was all for nothing!The day continues, and the interaction continues to weigh on Ochako’s mind for hours afterwards – not least because she hasn’t yet figured out how to get Himiko’s necklace away from her. It’s a key component of her awakening those evil demoness powers! She needs to lose her necklace, and then die tragically when trying to take it back!Ugh! She hopes there’s not a time limit on that stupid quest.Except, in the middle of the afternoon the following day, the System suddenly lights up her vision.
[150 B-Points! Quest Completed: Take Himiko’s Necklace! This system congratulates you for being so efficient!]
Are you stupid? She cusses the system, slamming her locker door with a huff. Obviously I didn’t do anything! How could I? I’m standing right here!But then, like drowning her in ice, she looks over her shoulder as she hears now familiar stifled giggles, spotting the precise necklace dangling in mid-air between Mina’s fingers.“Look what we got,” Mina sing-songs, and Momo hides her giggles behind her slender hand. “She took it off before getting in the pool, and so we swiped it. Think it’s too fancy for some orphan, don’t you?”Ochako can’t quite form a sentence; she should say no, she should defend Himiko, she should insist they give it back, but – but doing so would revoke the quest. Doing so would mean she’d have to take it from her some other way. And doing so would completely destroy the social hierarchy that she’s in charge of, here – not to mention it could completely impede any chance of Himiko coming into her demoness powers!“Nice,” is all Ochako manages instead past the lump in her throat, sauntering over and snatching it from Mina’s fingertips and dangling it from her own instead. Like this, it’s so easy to feel exactly what Himiko had meant by it – it’s thrumming in the palm of her hand, like it’s breathing it’s own breaths, waiting patiently for the key to unlock it. “Why don’t I keep hold of this?”She tries for a smirk, and it must be convincing, because Jirou hip checks her with a laugh.“Of course you want to keep it,” she says, as though in on a little secret. “She’s your little pet project anyway.”What she means by it, Ochako isn’t totally sure – but the other girls share a secretive look that she can’t interpret, either. Still, none of them fight her when she tucks the necklace into one of her inner pockets, close to her chest, without running the danger of someone stealing it.Well – stealing it again.When Himiko emerges from the pool completely distraught, turning all of her bags and belongings upside down in her desperation to find the necklace, Ochako can only shamefully avoid her with burning cheeks; this is necessary for the plot, so why does it feel just so awful? Why does she feel like she’s being so cruel?She knows why – because she is. It’s just necessary. Necessary cruelty has never, ever sat right with Ochako, not in her real life, and certainly not here. Unnecessary cruelty was one thing, easily avoided, easier still to condemn, but necessary ones? No. She hated being party to this.If I ever get to meet the dumb fuck awful of this stupid fucking novel, I’ll have a few choice words to say! She mutters angrily to herself on her journey home. She should put the necklace aside, somewhere safe, but she doesn’t. instead, her finger caresses the whining locket, as though it can tell she is not its master and tries to soothe it.“I’ll give you back,” she says to it, a bit forlorn. “I promise.”It doesn’t soothe the demonic energy buzzing in the locket. It doesn’t soothe her conscience, either.
The rest of the quests that get offered after that are fairly inane. Cheer up Himiko (Optional), which, obviously, wasn’t optional, was it?! Was she supposed to watch the girl cry, when she could cheer her up a little bit with bubble tea that explodes on her sharp canines, dribbling the syrup down her lips, and glistening under the sunlight?No.Obviously not.Then there was, Study with Himiko (Optional), which got interrupted by the ever-annoying, overly cheerful Katsuki Bakugou, who had sat with them and chattered for more than an hour and meant that they didn’t actually get any studying done. But the System gave her the points for it, and said it counted, so who was she to complain?Of course, she noticed that as soon as Bakugou thought she wasn’t looking, his smile dropped off his face, and he scowled in irritation, folding his arms and staring into some middle distance and squinting.“Do you want to walk to the station together?” asked Himiko, eyes wide and hopeful.Ochako felt bad for dashing her hopes, but she was pretty suspicious – never in the book was it ever mentioned that Katsuki was anything but overtly friendly – in fact, he was an ally of Himiko’s, a smart boy whose cheerful positivity made up for the fact that he, mostly accidentally, kept insulting people.“I just have something I need to do,” she says apologetically. “I’ll see you tomorrow, though!”A little crestfallen, Himiko nods, a hand ghosting over her neck where her necklace should lie. Ochako again swallows the lump in her throat at knowing she’d taken it from her.“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she agrees, before leaving. As soon as Himiko is out of earshot, Ochako slams her hands down on a desk and making Bakugou nearly jump out of his skin.“What the fu—” and then, he stops, grimaces, and deflates. “Ah, fuck.”“Ah fuck indeed,” Ochako repeats, narrowing her eyes at him. “Who the fuck are you?”“You’re the other player,” Bakugou says, sounding annoyed about it. “I’ve been DMing you! You’ve been ignoring my messages! This is a multiplayer game, moron!”“You’ve been what?” Ochako says, mentally opening up the menu.
{System, my DMs?!}
[This system automatically notifies you of every DM at 3:33am, in line with manufacturer guidelines. You have sixty-two unread messages from Player One. Would you like to open the first unread message?]
“I am going to kill this stupid fucking system,” she mutters under her breath, glaring at – Bakugou? Katsuki? “I never even thought about who player one was. How long have you been here?”Bakugou grimaces. “About a decade.”Ochako blinks. “Bull.”“Seriously.”“You’re kidding?”“No. It fucking sucks, you know. I had to wait eight years for anything even remotely plot relevant to happen. I had to go to middle school. Do you know how much middle school sucks?”“Yeah, I do. I’ve only been here four months.” Ochako makes a face. “How did you even end up in this place, anyway? I mean, I was reading it while I was sick, and then I think I died of fever, but what about you?”The boy goes mulishly silent, crossing his arms as though trying to avoid the question. Ochako just kicks him.“Hey, fuck you!” he snaps at her. “I was reading the manuscript for the sequel and fell down the stairs and died, okay?”Ochako barks a laugh before she registers what he actually said, and then abruptly stops.“Manuscript for the – you’re the fucking author?”Bakugou looks even more furious at her. “Well, duh! Fucking obviously!”“You – you wrote this – this stupid book? Pleasing Our Infernal Princess was written by – by some guy?!”“Watch your fucking mouth,” he says, narrowing his eyes at her. “You’re the one who’s perfectly on track to get fucking drained, soon!”Any argument leaks out of her at that, snapping her jaw shut with a click and sucking on her teeth. That, she can’t deny.“I cannot fucking believe you wrote this shitty book,” she complains under he breath anyway. “What were you even thinking with half of this shit? Plot holes for days, and Uraraka had so much potential! What were you thinking throwing it all away just for Himiko to – to do all that?!”Bakugou shrugs. “My editor said it made for a better story. Made me loaded, though.”“So you hate it too!”“Of course I hate it too! And now I have to live this bullshit, so of course I want to fix it!”“You want to fix it?” at his nod, Ochako relaxes, settling into a determined stance. “Okay, fine. We’re going to fix it. Can you tell me how to fix it?”He stares at her like she’s grown an extra head. “No,” he says slowly, like he’s talking to a five-year-old. “I don’t remember all that shit. I wrote it years ago, and instead the worse stuff is all stuck up here,” he knocks against his skull. “I’m remembering shit as I go, okay? So fuckin’ help me or don’t. figure out what ending you want to have, and I’ll try to make sure you don’t get double-killed, okay?”Dubiously, Ochako nods. “Fine,” she says, seething just a little. “But you owe me for writing such a shitty character.”“Your fault for reading the damn book,” Bakugou mutters under his breath.Ochako doesn’t dignify that with a response.
Over the next few weeks, she and Bakugou develop something of a plan. A rough one, anyway – the rest of the girls are basically lost causes, according to Bakugou, since he’d intentionally written them to be fairly disposable and pretty one-dimensional. Ochako still wants to try to save them. Bakugou’s not too bothered either way.Still, though, something seems to bother Himiko more and more each time they meet up; she looks sadder and sadder, her big catlike eyes round and wet every time Ochako looks at her. It makes her so hard to say no to whenever she suggests they do anything, like a walk in the park, or sitting under the trees and studying together, and going to little cafes just to gossip, and…And she’s not really hanging out all that much with the other girls.Which means it totally blindsides her when she walks into homeroom one morning to find that Himiko’s back is against the window, her golden eyes turned red with the tears that stream down her face. Surrounding her on every side are Momo, Mina, and Jirou, all three of them smirking, all three of them laughing.No, Ochako realises, heart nearly stopping in her chest. No, no – not now, I’m not – I’m not ready, I can’t do this today—“Oh, look who finally decided to join us,” Mina snickers.“I’m sorry,” Himiko sobs, wiping at her cheeks and shaking her head violently.Ochako knows how this goes. She knows that, in the book, Ochako will take great offence to Himiko’s obsession with her, will grab her by the collar and laugh in her face, will pull the necklace from her pocket, and tell her that even her father didn’t leave her anything of value, so she may as well have that back. The force will push her through the window, weakened from a crack that the school had never bothered to fix, and Himiko will slam into the ground.“Let – let her go,” Ochako insists, stepping weakly forwards, unsure how to defuse the situation. “C’mon, guys, aren’t you – aren’t you being a bit too—”“Of course,” Jirou rolls her eyes with a put-upon sigh. “You’re taking her side. You’ve barely texted us back for weeks, all because you’re making eyes at this trash? Seriously? Her own family doesn’t even want her.”As horror coils in her gut, Ochako realises that she has completely misunderstood the dynamic of the quartet of girls; she tries to recall the original text, tries to remember anything that clued her in that Jirou hadn’t been a follower, but had really been coercing them from behind and letting Ochako take the fall, but – she can’t remember. her mind is blank, especially with Himiko crying so hard just feet away.“Seriously, leave her alone,” Ochako insists, stepping forward and trying to push Jirou and Mina out of the way, but neither of them budge. “She didn’t even do anything to you!”“I’m sorry, Ocha,” Himiko pleads, swiping at her cheeks with shaking fists. “I’ll – I’ll stop bothering you so much, I promise—”“What are you talking about?” Ochako demands. “You’re not bothering me with anything! It’s fine! Guys, seriously—”“Oh, well, you know, maybe Himiko should know what you’ve done, really,” Mina says with false innocence, tapping on her chin before darting forward, quick as lightning. All her dancing has made her smooth and fast – Ochako doesn’t even know what she’s flinched from until Himiko’s necklace dangles between them in the air.For a moment, both Ochako and Himiko stare at it, dumbfounded, before Himiko’s face pales, her distraught expression melting into betrayal, devastation, misery.“Wait,” Ochako pleads, trying to start forward but pushed back with a mirthless laugh by Momo. “No, come on, it isn’t – it isn’t like that! I didn’t steal it, they did, I just—”“Kept it from you,” Momo points out. “For – what, months? How many times could you have given it back, Ocha? And you didn’t. Not once.”“Why would you – but, but you—” Himiko’s chin wavers, her voice equally as unsteady. She tries to start forward, but Mina’s hand catches her in the palm of her chest, the necklace slapping against her.“You want it back? Take it,” and Ochako knows what’s about to happen, and she can do nothing to stop it.It doesn’t stop her from trying, though, leaping forwards as Mina roughly shoves Himiko back into the window. She’s not close enough when the glass shatters to grab her, but she tries anyway. She watches Himiko’s eyes shrink to pinpricks, reaching out desperately, her fingertips grazing against Ochako’s, and then—Ochako slams her eyes shut so she doesn’t see Himiko hit the ground.The bell rings for homeroom. When she opens her eyes, Himiko’s necklace is in a pool of her blood. Himiko isn’t moving.
“It was going to happen no matter what,” Bakugou tells her, just the wrong side of flippant. “It’s canon. She has to become the Infernal Princess somehow. This is just – written into the core of the story.”“Shut up,” she tells him without much heat.They were given a week off, since Himiko died and they all witnessed it. The other girls all claimed it was an accident, and Momo’s mother threw money at the problem until it went away, so Ochako gets off with not even a slap on the wrist. She knows Himiko isn’t dead, but… still.It feels… wrong.There’s an ugly, awful twisting to her gut that she doesn’t like. It must be guilt. It must be the fact that after all the time she’s spent with Himiko, just… enjoying her company, it had still backfired in the end. Himiko is still going to want her dead for stealing her necklace.Ochako deserves it.She trails around school for the rest of the year with a detached listlessness that nobody seems to really get. She’s lost the rosy tint to her cheeks, she keeps her eyes downcast, and she just shoots scathing looks at the girls when they continuously try to convince her that it was for her own good. That they were just trying to protect her from the strange newbie that nobody liked, because she was getting too close.They were just trying to protect her.Never mind that Ochako had been protecting them – and she would have managed it, too! If she could have just – tripped. She could have made it an actual accident, rather than look like one, and then Himiko would still have her powers, and Ochako wouldn’t feel this great big well of grief and anger and longing and bitterness in her chest because she misses her friend.She wants Himiko back.How strange it is, she thinks, that she misses a person who, in her real life, had only been a power fantasy. In this life, Himiko Toga had been real, alive, living and breathing and laughing and smiling and easy to look at and speak with and hold. It had felt right in a way that nothing ever had before.And now Himiko Toga is going to kill her, and Ochako will deserve it.Oh, it’s going to be a long and slow and torturous death, she thinks miserably, and she will deserve it.The System doesn’t speak to her, after Himiko’s – fall.
[The System is beginning an update and will thus enter hibernation mode until the next major plot point is activated. Thank you for participating in Pleasing Our Infernal Princess! Leave us a review!]
{Fuck you,} she thinks, knowing she won’t get an answer. It makes her feel a tad better anyway.So Ochako toils away the months. She starts at college, and starts to count the days, before remembering she doesn’t actually know exactly when the next plot point even starts! She should have paid more attention, and it’s hard to want to remember, given that her whole plot right now is about pinpointing when her slow, painful death begins.Weirdly – it starts with a plate of mochi on her shelf in her fridge. She doesn’t remember buying it, and nobody else in her dorm claims it. Ochako throws it in the trash; if college has taught her one thing, it’s that she shouldn’t accept food or drinks from strangers, especially with a demon princess on the loose waiting to consume her blood.The next day, there’s another plate of mochi. She again throws it in the trash.The third day, she stares at it in a huff, but notices that this time, it’s in a sealed plastic box, and not an open plate. Store-bought. Whoever has been putting it here must have seen her throwing it away, and correctly deduced why.Now that the main issue is resolved, Ochako isn’t going to turn down free mochi. She happily snacks away while studying for classes, before the gloom of her impending doom sets in in the darkness of night, before she dreams of Himiko’s golden, catlike eyes and her freeing laugh.It’ll be nice, she thinks while half asleep, to see Himiko again, even to suffer, if it means getting to hear her laugh again.There’s a necklace on her desk when she wakes up the next morning, and she freezes at the sight of it.It’s not her own, but it’s a near perfect match – not a copy – for the one that had laid so beautifully against Himiko’s neck. A locket, a pendant, exquisitely carved, the colour of the gold a perfect match to offset the rosiness of her skin. She shakes ever so slightly as she brings it to her neck.She knows who is bringing her these gifts, now, but she doesn’t know why. What on earth does Himiko gain from gifting Ochako her favourite treats? For giving her a beautiful necklace just like her own?The third gift she receives—Ochako nearly runs screaming.Okay, you can’t hold it against her. You really can’t! It’s not like she’s ever seen an actual dead body before, and especially not one of someone who was supposed to be one of her friends!Mina is floppy and pale on the ground before her, clearly all blood drained from her body, and Himiko stands above her, head tilted curiously at Ochako as she smiles. There’s crimson on one of her sharp teeth. She looks like a bird, Ochako thinks nonsensically; a carnivorous bird.She looks pretty under the light of the moon. Ochako has missed her so much that despite the corpse on the ground between them, the only thing she can look at is Himiko’s eyes.“She hurt you,” Himiko pouts. Her voice is stronger than it used to be, no longer holding that shy, uncertain quality. Her time with her father has made her confident, although just short of arrogant. “I made her pay.”Ochako swallows thickly. Murder is bad, she wants to say. “Thank you,” she says instead, voice high and uneasy. “That – that was – thank you.”I’m sorry, she prays to Mina. I should have helped you.Himiko smiles, though, wide and brilliant, her eyes shaped into half-crescents from the apples of her cheeks.“You’re wearing your necklace,” she says, so playful and sweet that Ochako feels herself inevitably drawn in; no wonder she had seven boyfriends! Or husbands! Or – whatever! If this was how she spoke to Ochako, there’s no wonder any number of men fell to her feet! Ochako certainly wants to! “I’m so glad you like it, Ochako. I made it especially for you.”Her knees weak, Ochako only hums another thank you. Her hands shake.“I’ll be back soon,” Himiko promises, tongue darting out to wet her lips. “Will you miss me?”“I miss you every day,” Ochako says, a touch too honest. It startles Himiko, but then her expression softens.“I miss you every day too,” she says in return. Between one blink and the next, she’s gone.Ochako manages not to scream. Thankfully, she isn’t caught on any cameras as she walks away from Mina’s corpse, which means that the police neatly clean it all up in the morning and Ochako never has to get involved.Three days later, Himiko brings her Jirou’s corpse.“You really don’t have to do this,” Ochako says, trying to hide her distaste. She feels, oddly, like a cat’s owner, when the cat has brought in a dead rat.
[-50 B-Points! Player two, you hurt Her Highness’ feelings!]
{I hate you so much.}
“I just mean,” she hurries to correct herself as Himiko’s expression becomes utterly crestfallen. “You don’t have to – um – feel obligated? To – to do this? For me?”She hasn’t even worked out what, exactly, Himiko is even doing yet!“I want to,” Himiko says with a frown, turning a scornful look to the girl’s body at her feet. “She was so awful to you. They all were, you know, when you weren’t around to hear. They said such awful things about you. That your parents don’t care about you and sent you away, that you needed them to make you feel worth anything, that you were never as smart as they let you think they were. They were so terrible to you. I know you didn’t want to hurt me. I know they were the ones hurting you, really. I want to fix it. And now I can,” and she smiles again with those sharp, sharp teeth. “They taste good when they beg for their lives.”Ochako’s eyes flicker closed, and she doesn’t let herself wonder what her own blood might taste like to the demon princess.“One more,” Himiko promises sweetly. “And then we’re done. Right?”“Right,” Ochako agrees faintly. She thinks that maybe agreeing so easily might be a mistake, might be some kind of trap that she’s walked into, but she can’t quite pinpoint what.She’s not surprised, this time, when Momo’s corpse appears on her journey back to the library.“Thanks,” she says, before Himiko can speak, hoping to head off any weird, awkward corpse talk. “I appreciate it.”Sorry Momo, she thinks, wincing. You weren’t that bad, you just fell in with the wrong crowd. Rest in peace?!Himiko beams at her, and then, steps over Momo’s corpse. As she approaches, Ochako takes an uncertain step back, eyes darting between Himiko’s, waiting for the other shoe to drop. The demon princess’s eyes are glittering beneath the full moon’s light – hasn’t it been a full moon for like, a month?! Who is even in charge of this world’s moon phases?! Bakugou Katsuki, you are in big trouble – filled with mirth and joy, and a softness that Ochako cannot place.As she slowly raises one of her delicate hands, her thumb resting on the apple of Ochako’s cheek, her breath hitches; she doesn’t flinch from the other girl’s touch, vision hazy except for the look in Himiko’s eyes.“We’re done now,” Himiko purrs, as though pleased. “Are you ready?”It snaps Ochako out of her reverie, startling her from her admiration of the flecks of silver in Himiko’s golden eyes, of the whiteness to the canines that poke her lower lips.“Ready?” she repeats. She doesn’t get to ask, ready for what, because Himiko leans forward, her lips pressing softly against her own, and her mind promptly goes blank of any and all questions she has ever had.Himiko kisses gently – as though she has never kissed or been kissed before. She kisses tenderly, though she pulls Ochako in the slightest bit; Ochako reciprocates the motion through an instinct she hadn’t known she had, kissing back as though starved, as though thirsty, as though she has been dying in the desert and the Infernal Princess is an endless buffet for the dying.She’s still somewhat surprised when Himiko pulls back first, the air chiming with her melodic laughter, the chimes she’s missed in the months she has not had Himiko. The world made perfect sense for the moment their lips had touched, and Ochako would rather like to have that back.“Ready to get married, silly,” Himiko teases. “You accepted my engagement gifts!”“Your—” sense slams back into Ochako like a truck. “The necklace—”“And the bodies!”“And the bodies?!”“You said we were done,” Himiko pouts. “Did you want more gifts? I can get you more. How many would you like?”“No, no,” Ochako hurries to insist, terrified that Himiko will bring her more corpses like a misbehaving cat. “These ones are – perfect. Thank you, no more corpses, please!”
“Aw,” Himiko pouts, sounding a tiny bit disappointed. Guiltily, Ochako adds,“Unless you… want to?”That, unfortunately, perks up her – girlfriend? Fiancé? Princess-wife?!Oh god.“You can meet my dad,” Himiko says cheerfully. “I think he’s going to love you! He’s so, so grateful that you awakened my powers, you know! Only someone who cared that spilt my blood could have awakened me, and he was so pleased that you had so much remorse, that he let me decide what I wanted to do with you! He says it’s been centuries since there was a wedding in the Infernal Realm, let alone a royal one! Oh, Ochako, it’s going to be so beautiful! Can you imagine it?”And the strange, terrible, stupid thing was, she could.“Yes,” she says, dazed, taking Himiko’s hand in hers, the ghost of Himiko’s lips on hers lingering too. “I can’t wait.”
“YOU MADE THE INFERNAL PRINCESS A LESBIAN AND YOU DIDN’T TELL ME?!”Bakugou just shrugs. “Yeah. I liked it better, but the editors said it was weird for a dude to write about lesbians, so I just made her obnoxiously straight.”Ochako’s brain might be a little bit broken. “You gave her seven husbands!”“Yeah, like – uh, what’s that book? Evelyn Hugo?”
“NOT ONCE DID IT OCCUR TO YOU TO TELL ME THAT SHE WAS A LESBIAN?”
Again, Bakugou shrugs. Ochako is going to punch him. “This was the original ending. I liked it better. If I told you it ended with you guys being gay it might’ve freaked you out. It’s not like you mind, though. You’re a lesbian too.”“I’m—”It doesn’t matter.The wedding is held in hell. She makes Bakugou be her maid of honour, just for revenge.
[Thank you for participating in Pleasing Our Infernal Princess. We hope you have enjoyed this founder’s edition of the Transmigration. You have completed the Main Quest to restore the author’s original plot. You may now freely travel anywhere within the world. The map has been updated, and we hope the player will leave a positive review!]
{There was a fucking map this whole goddamn time?!}