#izuku is a problem child for something besides bone breaking | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

h34rtizuku · 3 years

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𝔭𝔦𝔱𝔶 𝔭𝔞𝔯𝔱𝔶

i hate angst without happy endings, but i’m also self-destructive. therapy is expensive, but ripping your own heart out and bearing your insecurities into a full-fledged story for you and others to read? free.

warnings : angst without a happy ending, insecurities, jealousy, mayhaps toxic behavior?? idk if ur looking for a good time, this isn’t for you bestie <3 also i might misspell uraraka’s name wrong a few times, i’ll fix them later :*

being quirkless had its advantages. with such a small number of us being born without powers, it left a lot of the mundane jobs open.

which is why, as soon as pro-hero deku opened his agency, i came to him with the request to be his assistant.

on the daily, he had people coming up to him asking for internships or to be his sidekick. but he never had anyone ask to be his assistant.

being the number one hero often meant that every day things, things one may take for granted or deem insignificant became just another list of things on the busy man’s to-do list.

therefore the appeal of having someone file his paper work and run to get him coffee in the morning was great enough to hire me.

and i was glad he did.

this is what i have been working for since i was a first year in high school. after watching the freckled boy break limb after limb to defeat his opponent.

yeah, i saw it as irresponsible and stupid that he had to break his own body to save others. but i was willing to overlook it.

my one goal during my remaining years of high school and up to college was that wherever that little green haired boy went, i would follow.

and that reigned true as his assistant. i would shuffle after him like a duckling following it’s mother, wherever he needed me.

if he needed me in a briefing to take notes for him, i was there. if he needed me to put in overtime to help him file the last minute paperwork, i was there. if he wanted a particular pastry from a specific bakery half way across town, i was there.

izuku was never mean, or demanding. always thanking me profusely for anything i ever did for him. leaving me to remind him that this was my job, and any way to make his life easier was good enough for me.

but maybe i should have held onto those blushed cheeks and crinkled eyes as he thanked me for the coffee that he didn’t even know he needed, for a just a little bit longer.

you know how a child will open a new toy on christmas and it quickly becomes their new favorite toy? playing with it non-stop, taking it wherever they go. until one day, they grow bored of it and never touch it again as it grows dusty at the bottom of their toy bin.

i know izuku wasn’t doing it on purpose, he didn’t have an intentionally mean bone in his body. i guess you could say, some other toys came around and took his attention away.

and that toy, was a particularly difficult mission in collaboration with uravity’s agency.

the two spent long hours cooped in his office as they went over notes, plans, intel, etc. until the conversation melted into talk about the old days and the wonderful memories they had together in high school.

i went to work the following days with absolutely no energy to handle whatever would be thrown at me. i hadn’t been able to get much sleep, as when i closed my eyes the only thing i could see was the look in his eyes when he saw her.

my patience was already thin given the events of the most recent week, but when the printer started malfunctioning leaving me unable to fax the papers izuku wanted me send, you could say that was the first domino.

i swatted and kicked and pressed any button on the stupid machine. telling myself i was merely trying to get to stupid thing to work, but deep down i knew that the printer was just my temporary punching bag. an outlet to unleash my anger and emotions onto something instead of letting them fester inside me.

so when one of izuku’s sidekicks came by, giving a snarky comment about my behavior, i was able to brush it off with a roll of my eyes and an equally snippy comment back.

but as the hunk of plastic remained steady in its plan to ruin my day, the lack of sleep and lingering resentment started to bubble within me once more.

i heard footsteps behind me and a joking voice say, “having a bit of trouble are we?”

if it weren’t for the white hot anger buzzing in my ears i may have been able to identify the voice before i lashed out on them. but we already established this was not my day.

so as my hands moved to clutch the machine below me, most likely to restrain my abuse to merely verbal instead of physical. i spit out, “listen i’m fucking trying okay? so how about you get off my ass and do something useful.”

i turned around to face who i thought would be another sidekick sent to push my buttons. but i instead came face-to-face with the green haired man himself.

eyes blown wide, mouth agape in shock, a light blush dusted under his freckles as he fought to handle the situation the best way he could.

but i beat him to it with a deep bow and an endless flow of apologies, opting to only blame my anger on the malfunctioning piece of junk behind me and not the several other reasons i was plotting murder in my head.

with a gentle smile and a soft chuckle he placed his hand to the back of his head, rubbing at the baby jade hairs of his undercut. “i see. bad days happen to the best of us.” he replied, his voice like honey.

i became drunk on the minor interaction he was giving me, bringing me back to the beginning days at this job where we would spend late nights trying to keep each other awake under the only singular yellow light as we finished paperwork. or where sometimes he’d invite me to spend lunch with him as he felt he’d enjoy the company.

i got lost in the intricacies of his face as he tampered with the printer. thin eyebrows furrowed in concentration, bottom lip captured between his thick scarred fingers as he muttered to himself.

i fell in a trance, locked on the slope of his button nose, his gemstone eyes, and chubby caramel cheeks dusted in freckles.

he looked essentially like the same boy i saw on the screen all those years ago, yet matured and hardened by the realities of life.

i wanted nothing more than to reach out and protect him any way my small quirkless body could. to be there for him the same way he was for everyone else.

he eventually got the printer to work with a boyish smile on his face as he told me that despite the good roughing up i gave the machine, he was able to locate and handle the issue. “next time, skip the punching and come find me, yeah? i’ll help with any problems you face.” he joked as he made his way into his office to resume his work.

i didn’t know it was possible to fall harder for that man, but he proved with every day of his existence that the impossible didn’t apply to him.

i was finally able to get some sleep the next few nights as my eyelids filled with the blush on his cheekbones and his gaze of concentration.

but my trip to cloud 9 didn’t last very long as the occasional meeting with uraraka became trips to her agency, and occasional meetings in civilian clothes to civilian places, like coffee shops and corner stores.

to anyone else, those would read as dates. to me, they read as dates. but izuku assured the gossiping sidekicks that it was strictly professional ~ nothing more, nothing less.

i knew that i would end up with more fits of restlessness and sleepless nights as i pictured the two of them laughing over a cup of coffee. so i sought out a replacement.

a moment. a look. a sentence.

anything directed at me that would choke out the ugly thoughts and images my brain would show me of the two of them together.

so that afternoon as i brought him his lunch, i placed the box safely onto the table beside him as he continued skimming through the papers littered across the desk.

he muttered a small ‘thank you’ but it wasn’t enough. as my hand moved to place his drink that i held in my other hand next to his food, a different idea popped in my head.

my hand moved faster than my brain could register what it had just planned to do. squeezing just enough for the lid to pop off and slip from my fingers to tumble into his lap.

as soon as the liquid and ice hit his lap he flew up from his seat and away from his desk.

my hands flew up to my mouth as a string of apologies fell from my lips. eyes watering in guilt as they moved around the room trying to locate something to soak up the mess with.

“i am so sorry, my fingers slipped and before i knew it i had lost control of the cup. i-i can’t tell you how sorry i am.” i rambled as i took my blazer off to wipe at the wet stains starting to form at the bottom of his teal suit.

“hey, hey, hey.” he said softly, taking my tinier hands into his large and battered ones. warmth enveloped my clutched sticky hands as he gently urged me to stand from my crouching position in front of him.

“it was an accident. no harm, no foul.” he said with a soft smile.

i should feel bad, as it wasn’t entirely an accident. but the warm and gentle look in his eyes made what little guilt i felt crumble away.

his thumbs rubbing soft circles to my skin as he worked to get the tears to stop streaming from my eyes was enough to get me to sleep like a baby for a good 2 weeks.

until it became a cycle. he would spend too much time around uraraka, and then i would do something all in the name of garnering his attention back on me.

was it wrong of me to do, to take advantage of his kindness? to take advantage of the fact that he was naive to my true intentions? maybe.

but i felt i deserved it. i felt i deserved to be looked at the same way he looked at her.

i wasn’t any different than she was. with the way she used her big brown eyes to pull him in. or the way her cute behavior made him blush. or the way her sweet way of talking made him laugh.

i can’t be her, or compare to her. so i found my own way around it. and no one could fault me for doing so. they just couldn’t.

at the end of the mission, uravity decided to throw a party in celebration of their win. a nice formal gathering, with everyone she had involved.

when izuku pulled me aside one late night to tell me that he was extending the invitation to me felt akin to a marriage proposal.

i wasn’t involved much in the case, merely being used as the one who provided them their lunch on their long meeting days. or filing and organizing the paperwork and notes that they would compile. i wasn’t out in the field, breaking bones like izuku or saving lives like uraraka.

i didn’t deserve to go, but i didn’t care. izuku had invited me personally and damn it, i was gonna be there.

yet, i shouldn’t have gone.

i shouldn’t have spent the hours on my makeup. i shouldn’t have enlisted the help of my best friend to do my hair as i gushed about how izuku had personally invited me, how he was the most perfect man ever, and how i was undoubtedly in love with him.

i shouldn’t have spent the week leading up to the event going from shop to shop trying to find the prettiest dress that was just the exact color of his eyes. i shouldn’t have spent about half my paycheck on said dress when i found it.

i shouldn’t have decided to face my fears and step out of my comfort zone to join a group of heroes that i knew were old classmates of izuku’s as they whispered about something that clearly was a raving topic.

because then i wouldn’t have heard how izuku was planning on confessing to uraraka. i wouldn’t have heard how this mission caused old high school feelings to rekindle. i should have known my place.

and that was far away from here, from the hero scene. i should have grown up to be an accountant or a chef.

when my father took me to get that checkup when i was 5, to confirm that there truly resides no quirk inside me.

i should have left it at that.

when i was riding my bike that day as a first year and i saw the group of boys huddled around a screen as they tuned into the u-a sports festival, i should have kept riding.

as maybe it would have saved me a lot of pain.

i backed away slowly, heels tapping against the tile floor as i hurried out of the building.

i didn’t realize how suffocated i felt until the chilly autumn hair brushed my face and into my lungs.

my whole body felt hot, i felt numb. i stumbled onto the sidewalk as i looked into the dark azure sky glittered with stars.

the tears finally spilled from my eyes as the stars muddled together into a messy blur. my stomach swirled and tensed as pit of nausea sunk in my stomach.

my chest heaved as it tried to process the crisp cold air into oxygen, but my throat was too tight to let much in.

i gasped and sobbed as my back hit the brick behind me, my legs wobbling unable to carry my weight much longer.

i slid into a crouched position as my tears mixed with the black of my mascara. streaming in pools down my cheeks, neck, and chest.

in the midst of my sobbing and heaving, i called my friend who was still at my apartment awaiting details of that night when i came home.

knowing it was far too early for me to be calling her she picked up the phone with confusion. it didn’t take much words from me, not like i gave her much, to convince her that she needed to come pick me up.

as she hung up the phone, my hand slipped from my ear, falling limp to my side as i placed my head into my other arm resting atop my knees.

this was inevitable and i knew it. no matter how many ways i was able to manipulate a sweet glance from him, it didn’t mean anything.

izuku was nice to everybody. sweet to everyone. kind to anyone.

but with her, it was different. he treated her that way, not because he had to, but because he wanted to.

they had years of memories, of laughs. they were perfect for each other, both smart, and kind, and always looking to help others. never acting selfishly or for personal gain.

they shared soft touches like they did old stories. they looked at each other with the same respect and admiration.

i was wrong. uraraka and i are nothing alike. she didn’t have to beg izuku to look at her like she hung the moon, he did so without asking.

unbeknownst to me, as i was manipulating izuku into these fabricated moments of gentle gazes and kind words, i was manipulating myself.

lying to the deepest parts of me that knew that this wasn’t real. that i wasn’t her. that he didn’t think of us the same way.

to him, uraraka is an old friend, who views the world the same way he does, who shares his same passions, who built her quirk to do some good within this world.

to him, i was a coffee-getter, the girl who knew his lunch orders like the back of her hand, the girl who filed his papers. the quirkless little fangirl who practically begged him to give her a job under him.

i heard the metal door open and snap shut announcing that someone was now outside with me. however, i just assumed it was a party-goer stepping outside for a smoke or a phone call so i didn’t bother to look up.

i also wasn’t in the mood for if the person happened to be a drunk girl who was ready to become my therapist as she saw me crouched on the sidewalk wishing to become one with the cement and simply cease to exist.

“there you are, i was wondering where you went?”

i would have taken the amateur therapist over this.

the voice belonged to izuku, dripping with sugar and default kindness.

if i could become one with the bricks just a little bit faster that would be great.

“hey, are you alright?” his tone became worried but i still didn’t dare to look up from my arms.

“do you feel sick? did something happen? do i need to take you home?” there he goes, into hero mode. ready to drop anything to help anyone facing the slightest of inconveniences.

“please just leave me alone.” i mumbled, throat tight and voice wavering as i try to hold the tears that still remain to fall.

“what did you say? i didn’t quite hear you.” he said softly, gently setting his large hands onto my exposed shoulder.

they should feel like welcoming warmth, but instead they felt blistering hot as i shoved them away as quickly as i could.

“i said leave me alone.” i said, slightly louder as i no longer was stuffed in my arms and knees.

he immediately saw the mess my face was in, i could tell by the way he quickly reverted fully into deku.

“hey, what’s wrong? whatever it is, i can help. didn’t i say you could come to me whenever you ne-“

“oh my god just stop! i can’t take it anymore.” i snapped, finally able to look him in the face.

but not for long as i saw the same look on his complexion as the first time i snapped at him.

“you’re too fucking nice. leaving you vulnerable for people to take advantage of you. giving them a reason to be selfish.”

“i dont-“ he tried to start but i cut him off.

“i don’t need a hero, izuku. there are people you just can’t save.”

as he worked to wrap his head around what was happening, my friend pulled up in my getaway car.

i bent down and grabbed my purse, but before i could fully escape this night, izuku grabbed my wrist causing me to stare into his eyes.

now lit aflame with desperation, “please just tell me what’s wrong. let me help you.” he encouraged softly.

but i wasn’t going to fall for it, not again.

i wasn’t gonna be played for the fool as i took the soft look in his eyes for anything but the gaze of a hero hoping to add another save to their statistics.

“god you never know when to quit!” i yelled as i yanked my wrist back. “and i hate that i-“

loved that about you?

no, love that about you.

i shook my head, thankful that for once my brain caught my actions before i spilled and made a mess again.

i walked quickly to the car, opening the passenger door almost as fast in hopes that within its metal sanctuary i could finally escape this hell.

“y/n- i-“

“mr. midoriya.” i just about whispered, my energy long since drained.

he laughed gently and i cursed the way my heart squeezed a little at the sound.

still head over heels for the angelic sound.

“you haven’t called me that in a long-“

“i quit.”

“w-what?” he muttered in disbelief.

i wouldn’t believe it either, not after the way i came to him nearly 4 years ago saying i would even be willing to clean toilets if he asked me to, so long as i got to work for him.

“i quit.” i repeated.

“you don’t mean that.”

he’s right i didn’t, not really.

hot tears started to dribble as my lower lip puckered in a sour quiver.

“no i do, sir.” i shook. “i will send someone to collect my things on monday.”

and with that i closed the door.

“drive.” i whispered to my friend who after a moment of looking at me, trying to read me, silently put the car into drive and started forward.

leaving izuku behind to stumble after the car, mouth muttering, trying to form any sort of sentence or sense.

but i couldn’t see him, knowing not to look at the mirrors situated on the side of the vehicle.

for they too are liars, as objects in the mirror are farther than they appear.

*** my little blue bitch working overtime

🧼 also mayhaps “soap” by melanie martinez fits this story… unintentionally ~ but if i’m wrong it’s cuz i haven’t listened to it in a while

#izuku #izuku midoriya #deku #deku x reader #izuku x reader #my hero academia #mha #bnha #boku no hero academia #izuku angst #deku angst #deku headcanons #deku imagine

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bananaink · 4 years

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I’m alive! :D With some imprint AU stuff :D

And I even wrote something for it you can read under the cut! If you don’t want to read it, here is the gist of it: After Izuku and Shigaraki fought and left both hurt, Kurogiri brought Izuku to AFO, where he gifted Izuku with his healing quirk. Also, I tried writing from AFOs perspective, which is so horribly hard and weird but very intriguing...

So, be warned if you read it! It’s not happy and has a description of an injury!

This was... unexpected. Not entirely a surprise but still... unexpected.

Keeping his hand over the small, bloody chest, All For One listens to the rattling breath in those ruined lungs. The boy couldn’t be much older than... when had he picked him up again? He can’t remember his age. Or where he had plucked him from. Just remembered the soft call of a quirk, interesting and promising enough to pique his interest, sitting in a vessel as young and mendable as he had needed it.

A gurgle, a spluttered cough and that small raw chest twitches under his palm. All For One gently lifts the boy in his arms, tipping his head back. Blood trickles out of his mouth and just a second later the body tries desperately to suck in another breath.

With his other hand not feeling for the heartbeat, All For One lets his fingertips wander over the raw flesh on his cheek, prods at the jaw bone peeking through and listens to the sounds coming from that throat. The boy isn’t conscious, of course not. Tomura has done a number on him this time and when Kurogiri had carried the dying child over, pristine suit covered in blood and voice stiffly hiding how regretful he was over it, the boy had just lost the last hold on his awareness.

All For One may had no more eyes to see with, but he didn’t need to when Kurogiri had gently handed Izuku over, one hand lingering a second too long on the curls for it to be anything but unsettled and ever so humbly informed him about the fight. He didn’t need to see how Kurogiri cared for the two boys and why he had brought Izuku to All For One instead of just disposing him somewhere. Kurogiri never neglected Tomura, followed his duties as the caregiver to a T so the chosen one could be groomed into the final chess piece - but he also never truly hid how much he’d rather have Izuku as his only ward. Until now it had never posed as a problem and Kurogiri wasn’t so dumb as to let his own feelings override his Senseis wishes. But All For One still has Izuku in his arms, not his pupil sulking somewhere.

Tomura had refused to go to his Sensei and explain himself as to why he had mortally wounded his little brother he had proclaimed to love so dearly. So Kurogiri had assumed that position, jumped at the chance to get the barely alive body to him. He informed All For One about the skill and ingenuity it had taken for Izuku to survive and almost even win the fight. How he had turned the tables for the first time, how he had learned from his observations, tried to apply and utilize them. A first try, a first real counterpunch, strong enough to force Tomura into almost killing his dear, little brother.

All For One had gotten the feeling Kurogiri had tried to upsell the child, slowly succumbing to his wounds and entirely inflicted because of his own decisions. In all these short years, Izuku had been nothing but invisible. A good distraction for the impatient Tomura, a useful little tool for the doctor, an asset for Kurogiri and his net of rumors. And when he had tripped All For Ones senses, tickling his focus for a second with one of his stupid stunts, he had made sure to duck and cover immediately. Izuku had been a quiet child until now, unassuming and harmless, the perfect antipole to a boiling Tomura, full of rage and possibility under his skin.

But to hear that a mere little prank had escalated into this...

All For One is surprised to feel a little bit of remorse about Izukus inevitable death. He never actually thought to get attached to the boy. He was supposed to be a plaything for Tomura, distract him while he himself slowly set his plans in motion. But now he finds himself looking down on the child, breath slowly losing strength and each heartbeat coming later than the one before.

He twitches when the small hand, limply resting on his own touches his exposed wrist and is surprised to feel a small, wild quirk reaching out to him. He can feel his oldest, his strongest and most guarded quirk peeking around the mass of other ones he had layered over it. The child reaches and reaches and All For One – ever the curious one – lets him touch his quirk. It's warm and inviting before it quickly turns into a vice, desperately gripping and clawing at All For One.

It’s as if a connection opened up between them, a small freeway directly into his softest part.

A call for help, fear flooding him and pain striking his insides, agitating old wounds...

It’s the first time in years he can feel his skin break out in goosebumps.

He gently pries the foreign quirk away from his own and is surprised again when it latches on to another one on the way, rousing All For Ones echolocation awake and dousing him in information. It takes longer to get the quirk away from that one and he finds himself swatting the reaching quirk away. Watches how another breath doesn’t get enough air into the frail body and the quirk flutters, losing its grip.

He remembers why he had been fascinated with this quirk in the first place. Not only had it felt so so similar to his original one, on its own useless and pointless but born to be a complementary piece... Only to be disappointed when it wasn’t even strong enough to be used in a Nomu. Maybe he had just used it wrong? Thought about it like glue, like a puzzle piece with endless connecting possibilities like his own. But maybe it was more of a... starter. Even as he is thinking that, the quirk snags the one for levitation and he feels himself floating for a second before shutting it off. It is fascinating how agile and fast the quirk jumps around in his body, touching and clawing at quirks that long lost their individuality and almost disrupts his own carefully crafted unity.

Despite its owner dying - a body with a heartbeat more dead than alive - All For One can still feel the quirk pawing at him, weakly prying at All For Ones defenses and flickering out like a struggling ember in a frozen fire.

So, All For One decides.

Reaching inside of him, he tugs forward a quirk, he had found and needed almost over a decade ago. It had once been strong, unpredictably wayward and hard to control, but after years of constant activity and the inevitable replacements piling over it, adding to its purpose and slowly suffocating it, it had lost its unmanageable streak.

He had meant to throw it away anyway, so what harm could it do to gift it to a body on the verge of death. Maybe even see if the healing was still as strong as it once was.

To activate All For One, tugging the quirk out and forcing it out of his fingertips resting on the bloody chest is something so natural to him that he doesn’t even think about it. Instead he feels the little flickering quirk latch onto him, almost ripping the new quirk out of his body and stuffing it inside Izuku without any assistance from All For One. The healing quirk immediately settles in the center of his chest and pours over the heart and lungs, scratches over bones and muscles. All For One tilts his head, listens and feels for it, how it buzzes like a little furnace with too much heat.

The boy spasms with a strong, sudden heartbeat and a gasp follows before the kid lays still again. All For One cradles the boy to his chest, immersed in the way the gifted quirk seems to rampage through the new body, eager to work on its own after years of being a link in a chain. He can feel the heat under his palm, the little shudders running up and down the flesh. And when he is very, very quiet, he can even hear the tissue repairing itself.

It takes a while for Izuku to reach a point where he has a steady heartbeat without a hitch, can breathe without a wet cough and stops bleeding outside of his body. And when he does, All For One can feel Izukus little fluttery quirk reaching out out out again, prodding at All For Ones barricades, trying to squeeze through the gaps and snag another quirk. Touch it. Activate it. Feel it.

He grasps it with his own and doesn’t let it go further. It wiggles in his hold, fearless.

A greedy little thing and he feels like a parent snagging hands away from the cookie jar when he squeezes it warningly, pulling, until it almost leaves its owner.

The kids eyes flutter and he chokes on nothing, pain lazing his features, body arching like a bowstring - and All For One lets it go. It retreats, scolded and intimidated and falls in place right beside the new quirk as if they had shared one body since the beginning. Izuku sags against him, major injuries taken care of but exhausted after such a deep change, breathing hard and sweat glazing his skin. Still unconscious.

Raking his hand through that wild hair, All For One leans back and checks his own body and if those little grabby hands had disrupted his carefully constructed quirk-creation. Then he reassesses his own healing capabilities and finds them satisfyingly sufficient. No immediate drawbacks and another healing quirk perfectly replaced the submitted one. Every other one falling perfectly into place. Machines around and inside of him keep on whirring, keeping him alive and he has lost not one piece of his own comfort. Oh, how far he has left death behind aready...

The boy stirs in his arms but doesn’t wake up. All For One lets his fingertips wander over the new scar on the boy's face, feels its texture and form. Can’t stop himself from laying his own hand over the shape and, again, notes how small the child is, how young, how frail...

Involuntary whines, high pitched and terrified, climb out of Izukus throat and an unexpected urge to sooth the child surprises the century old being. A faded wish for company, a dusty memory of a family and All For One hugs the child to his chest. He doesn’t rock him, doesn’t try to scare the nightmare away or ease the fear. Because the world is cruel and cold and a nightmare. All the phrases that come to mind of how everything is fine, you’re fine, nothing can hurt you, are lies. And All For One may be a monster, a killer, a curse to some and an abomination to others. But he is not a liar.

So, he does nothing when the boy wakes up in a fit of panic. He does nothing when he asks where he is, what happened, am I dead, did I die? He does nothing when the confusion and desperation turns into fear. And tears, into hyperventilation. He can feel the child slowly spiraling into a panic attack and does nothing but hold him.

But he listens. To the painful sobs and cries leaking out of him, the garbled nonsense his lips form that not even a death-scare can take away. Until they fade into terrified whimpers. Into painful sounding heaving. To exhausted hollowness.

All For One listens to all of it until Kurogiri comes and takes the child away.

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five-rivers · 3 years

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Long Night in the Valley chapter 8

A young man walked in. His hair was dark, the style conservative. The only thing that stood out about him was his high-collared jacket.

Aizawa knows who this man is, for much the same reasons that Uraraka knew Skyrunner.

Fidelity had literally written the book on underground heroism. It hadn’t been published until his death.

The lights flickered. The murmuring of the shadows rose, then cut off abruptly, the shadows disappearing along with Nana. The projector screen changed. It now read:

Greetings 9’s Friends! (And teacher.)

“This was my last mission briefing before I died,” said the young man. “At least, that’s what I’d say if I was really Fidelity.”

“You’re saying you aren’t,” said Aizawa, keeping his voice level.

The screen behind him changed to read Vestiges: what you need to know.

“I am based on Fidelity. I’m also based on Railgun.”

“The hero who took down Destro?” asked Uraraka, clenching her fists and briefly floating in excitement.

Why was she not getting a better grade in history?

“Not exactly. He wasn’t actually captured until years later.”

“But you broke his charge, his army! And all by yourself!”

“Railgun did, yes. I’ve put together a little presentation for you guys. Hope you don’t mind. We all figured you wouldn’t want to go any further without an explanation of sorts.” He said this all with an enviably flat voice, despite his friendly words. His body language was controlled and to the point.

Darn Midoriya for managing to build a fantasy that was so close to what Aizawa had always imagined the man to be like.

(He was not a fan of Fidelity. Underground heroes did not have fans. It defeated the point.)

(He pointedly ignored his memories of the bootleg Eraserhead merchandise Midoriya and Yamada had snuck to Eri.)

“You’d be right,” said Aizawa.

“Cool,” said Six. “Before we begin, I want you to understand that much of what I’m going to tell you will be a lie.”

“What?” said Iida, confused. “Then what’s the point?”

“The point is, there will be enough truth in it to get you through this safely, and enough falsehood to prevent the commission from taking advantage of Nine later, should they be watching what’s happening here with a quirk we can’t detect.”

“Nine?”

“Izuku,” clarified Six.

“Who you called Nine because…?”

“If we count in order of when we were supposedly born, he’s the ninth. Although, really, he’s the first. I’ll explain in a moment.” He pointed to the screen. “We call ourselves vestiges, and, like I said, we are all based on real people. We’re part of Nine’s quirk.” The screen switched to show Midoriya with eight shadowy figures behind him. “I want to stress that Nine wasn’t aware of us until the sports festival. Specifically…”

The screen now showed Midoriya’s fight with Hitoshi, right before he broke his fingers. Aizawa recognized the image as a still from one of the cameras. Except those eight shadows were there as well, right in front of Midoriya.

“You had something to do with him breaking his fingers and getting out of Shinsou’s quirk.”

“We don’t mix well with mental quirks, apparently. Nine minds all together at once are too many, even if eight of them are fictional. It’s an interesting side effect. Speaking of which.”

The new slide was a picture. An edited picture. Of a person giving a presentation.

“Is that a meme?” asked Todoroki.

“Yes,” said Six.

The slide read, You were never in All Might’s mind. Nine was just confused.

That meme was so old Aizawa could feel himself taking psychic damage just by looking at it.

“You’ve been passing through our, the vestiges’, mindscapes. Eight is simply based on All Might.”

That would be a relief, if not for the fact that that Six had admitted he was going to lie. Also, there was something off about the whole explanation.

Iida raised his hand. “Excuse me! You claim that you are part of Midoriya’s quirk, but you haven’t explained how!”

“I’m getting to that,” said Six. “Todoroki-san, you’re the one who is always saying how similar Nine and All Might’s quirks are. Do you have any theories?”

Todoroki’s eyes lit up, even though he kept his habitual deadpan expression. “Midoriya is All Might’s secret—”

“We wish, but sadly no. Pick a different one.”

Todoroki looked devastated. He collected himself quickly, however. “Midoriya’s strength,” he said, “he got it from All Might, didn’t he?”

“Yes. Eight is a bit of a complicated case, since he’s based on someone who is alive and Nine knows personally, but in the end, he’s the same as the rest of us.”

“He said something about receiving Skyrunner’s quirk, earlier,” said Uraraka.

“And Blackwhip…” said Iida.

“You’re getting it,” said Six. “Blackwhip originally belonged to Five, incidentally.”

“He has a copy quirk,” concluded Aizawa.

Six nodded. The screen changed. “Right now, Nine has four quirks, three of which he can use freely. Superpower, Blackwhip, and Float,” he read the quirk names off the screen.

“And he’s going to get more?” asked Aizawa.

“Eventually,” said Six. “We don’t want to overload his body—This whole process only kicked off when he met All Might.”

“And why you?” asked Aizawa. “Why All Might, Skyrunner and these… Five others?”

“I would like to tell you,” said Six. He raised a finger and waved it in a circle to indicate outside listeners.

“What are the drawbacks?” asked Aizawa.

“Hm?”

“The drawbacks. I get dry eyes when I use my quirk. Present Mic is deaf. Vlad is anemic. A quirk like this one has to have a drawback.”

“What, the broken bones aren’t enough for you? Or the fact he didn’t hit on the activation conditions until he was fourteen?”

Aizawa stared, unimpressed.

A tiny corner of Six’s mouth made itself visible over the collar of his coat. “Well. I think you can make some conclusions but, again…” He trailed off. “There are a few more things you should be aware of. First, Nine had no choice in who we are, although we all fulfil certain criteria.”

“Are you all relatives?” asked Todoroki.

“Man, you never do give up, do you?” said Six. “That’s a great quality in a hero.”

“Are you all heroes, then?” continued Todoroki.

The slide on the screen changed again.

Vestiges According to History:

8. Yagi Toshinori aka All Might – Hero

7. Shimura Nana aka Skyrunner – Hero

6. Tenma Rokuya aka Fidelity/Railgun – Hero

5. Banjo Daigoro aka Lariat – Hero

4. Vigilante

3. Terrorist

2. Terrorist

1. Unknown

“Unfortunately,” said Six, “no.”

Toshinori caught sight of the feathers first. He had more experience as a hero, and, as he was no longer the primary user of One for All, the mental strain he was experiencing was much lower, comparatively. His awareness of his surroundings was better.

Stay calm. Don’t speak. Don’t run.

Hawks could receive sensory input from his feathers, though neither Toshinori nor Izuku knew how much. Better to be safe than sorry.

We need to get out of the city.

Out of the country, too, for that matter, as much as it would hurt Izuku—

They couldn’t leave all their friends behind to face Shigaraki.

A compromise could be reached. They knew a few places—An island, near—

But first, the city. The first priority was to evade pursuit.

A bus pulled into the stop ahead of them, and they got on. If they could get outside city limits, where there were fewer people, fewer witnesses, Izuku could float them away. Also, Hawks was less likely to trap his feathers on a bus.

We might be dealing with the Hawks problem earlier than thought.

Izuku slouched back on the bus seat, covering his eyes. Toshinori looked up at the ceiling. The Hawks problem. AKA, the others’ theory that Hawks had been raised as a child soldier, and Toshinori had missed the signs.

Izuku put his hand on Toshinori’s knee.

“I can’t believe it,” said one of the other passengers, a few rows ahead of them. “I really just can’t believe it. It’s like something from a horror story.”

“What?” asked someone else.

“Look!”

“Someone kidnapped All Might?”

The bus filled with chatter.

Toshinori still couldn’t believe people thought Izuku kidnapped him. The reality was closer to the opposite, honestly. He’d have to apologize to Izuku’s mother…

There was a tiny incensed gasp from Izuku, and Toshinori saw Izuku glaring up at him. Izuku made a series of gestures that could probably have been interpreted as ‘You can’t kidnap anyone, you’re All Might!’ even without the psychic link they were currently enjoying, then went into an enthusiastic tangent about how the commission was probably playing up the ‘crazy stalker fan’ angle.

Toshinori sighed, ruffled Izuku’s hair, and studiously avoided any and all thoughts about what he’d done to Aldera Middle School after Izuku had shown up to training with a black eye and bloody nose that one time.

“What?” squeaked Izuku, his eyes gone very wide.

Drat.

Out of the corner of his eye, Toshinori saw three passengers near the front of the bus stand up and felt his heart drop. One of them had an obvious eagle mutation, the second had a bulging, almost spherical, neck, and the third had broad, flat-ended fingers.

Decades of hero experience told Toshinori exactly what was going to happen next. Even before the guns came out.

“Well,” said the eagle-headed man, “with all the heroes looking for the ‘Symbol of Peace,’ I guess this is our lucky day!”

“Nobody move!” demanded the man with the round neck. “This is a hijacking!”

Izuku let out an incredulous grunt next to him, but Toshinori could literally feel his mind whirring at a thousand miles a minute, analyzing the quirks of the hijackers and possible motives.

Really. There was no way they weren’t going to help.

“By the way, not all of Nine is awake, so, out in the real world his body is operating according to consensus.”

“Consensus of…” said Aizawa, not wanting to finish the thought as he stared at the two entries labeled ‘terrorist.’

“All nine of us together, yes.”

“That’s a pretty big drawback,” said Aizawa, his voice rasping against his throat.

“Eh. It has its benefits. Besides, Three and Two lived over a hundred years ago. We didn’t even have the hero system back then. Things change.”

“Excuse me!” said Iida, raising his hand. “Why don’t the last four—the first four? —have names?”

“They asked me not to share them with you quite yet,” said Six. “Don’t call Three a terrorist though. That’s a bit of a sore spot with her.” He looked off to the side.

“And the quirks?” said Aizawa, hanging on to the very last bit of his will to live by the tips of his fingers. “The ones I’m presumably going to have to teach Midoriya how to use?”

“Right.”

Our Splendiferous Quirks

8. Yagi Toshinori aka All Might – Hero. Quirk: Superpower.

7. Shimura Nana aka Skyrunner – Hero. Quirk: Float.

6. Tenma Rokuya aka Fidelity/Railgun – Hero. Quirk: Internet Perception.

5. Banjo Daigoro aka Lariat – Hero. Quirk: Blackwhip.

4. Vigilante. Quirk: Danger Sense.

3. Terrorist

2. Terrorist

1. Unknown

Aizawa was not surprised to see the last four entries, once again, had little information attached.

“You know,” said Uraraka, “if you ignore the terrorists, this actually makes sense.”

“If you ignore the terrorists?” asked Iida, incredulous.

“I mean, think about who we’ve seen so far.”

“It is like Midoriya to have a split personality based on All Might,” agreed Todoroki. Because split personalities were going to be his go-to theory, now that figments of Midoriya’s quirk’s imagination had shot down his ‘Dadmight’ conspiracy.

“If you want to think of us as split personalities, sure,” said Six. “We really don’t interact that much with the outside, though.”

“And Skyrunner is basically supermom,” said Uraraka. “Like, if she was All Might’s mentor, it makes sense that that’s what he’d envision her as.”

“Ah,” said Iida, “so she reminds you of Midoriya-san as well?”

Aizawa noticed Six shift uncomfortably and look away but decided he honestly did not want to know.

“Oh, and you,” said Uraraka, spreading her hands to indicate Six, “are kind of like Aizawa-sensei!

“Except with more memes,” said Todoroki.

“Yeah, except with more memes,” agreed Uraraka.

Six faked a cough into his fist. “Anyway, I think that’s everything… No, wait. Hawks.”

“Hawks,” repeated Aizawa.

“Yeah. We’re pretty sure he was raised and conditioned to be a slave for the commission from a very young age.” Another pause. Six turned to face Todoroki. “Also, Dabi is probably your dead older brother, Todoroki Touya.”

“Oh,” said Todoroki.

“What,” said Aizawa.

“We’d just like someone in a position to do things with this information to have it. Even if we were sure Nine would retain all this, he, ah. The commission is doing a very good job of trashing his reputation.”

“Is this revenge?” whispered Todoroki. “Did I push Midoriya too far?”

“Kid, you could beat Nine up on a weekly basis for ten years, and he’d still barely think of revenge. Come on, I need to take you guys to Five.”

Barely, he said. Meaning, he did think about revenge. They had to get out of here fast; Bakugo’s life was in danger.

There were lives in danger. A simple robbery wouldn’t require this kind of setup. These three needed hostages for some reason.

Or… Izuku traced the direction the three villains kept looking to the college student in the corner. The young woman’s clothing was high quality, and she looked vaguely familiar.

He couldn’t help but be exasperated. Shigaraki Tomura was running around out there somewhere, and these guys were doing… whatever this was. Causing problems. He and Toshinori would have to try and evade Hawks after this.

But exasperation wasn’t going to keep these people safe.

Eagle-head looked like the leader at first glance, but on closer inspection, he was taking cues from the man with the squared-off fingers. The man with the round neck seemed to have a body expansion quirk of some type, possibly similar to Kendo’s, considering how his joints pulsed and how his clothing was designed with extra folds.

… He’d shown Toshinori a catalogue with similar clothing, once. But Toshinori had said that the ill-fitting look added to his disguise.

In the tight confines of the bus, that would be dangerous. The best thing to do to him would be to throw him out when the bus came to a stop.

The quirk of the man with the square finger was a problem. It was probably an emitter type, rather than a transformation type. Something to do with his hands, perhaps?

Honestly, the best thing to do for all of them, at least with regards to the people on the bus, would be to toss them off and then get the driver to gun it. But then, what about people on the street? These guys didn’t have any scruple against taking hostages, obviously.

“Hey, you, hand over the briefcase,” said the man with the round neck.

Izuku glanced at Toshinori, who nodded. Coils of Blackwhip ran up and down his arms under the sleeves of his suit, much more controlled and complex than Izuku had managed to date.

Thanks for the help, Five.

He slammed the briefcase into the eagle-headed man’s beak. Toshinori hadn’t skimped on anything when stocking the hideout, and the metal made immensely satisfying contact with bone. Blackwhip shot out from near his elbow—like Sero—and wrapped around the hands of the gunmen, forcing their aim down.

The man with square fingers reacted first, raising his hand. Each fingertip emitted a flat, square pane that traveled in a straight line and got progressive larger. Izuku pulled, slamming the man into the back of his own shield, because really, that was too slow, and how similar was this quirk to Crust’s? Could the villain change the trajectory of his panels, or no?

Not the time.

The shield cracked as Izuku hit it from the other side, and Toshinori was throwing open the back door. The man with the expanding quirk—and it was an expanding quirk—seemed to finally realize what was happening, and lashed out, but Izuku was faster than he was. The spherical throat was evidently a weak point.

“Can you stop?” Izuku asked the bus driver, who, tense as he was, slammed down on the brakes, making Izuku stumble. He hauled the villains off the bus, Toshinori hopping off the back with the eagle-headed man a moment later.

Well, that had happened.

Izuku caught a flash of very distinctive red out of the corner of his eye.

Six stopped. “That isn’t good,” he said, looking slightly up. There was nothing there that Aizawa could see, except for a collection of pipes. They were travelling through a series of underground concrete passages in an effort to find ‘Five.’

“What is it?” asked Uraraka.

Six’s form abruptly flickered and vanished. Oh, that couldn’t be good.

“Sensei.”

Aizawa turned to see Midoriya standing behind them, wearing a truly godawful pinstriped suit. He held his right wrist in his left hand, an odd bracer wrapped around it.

“Is that the Full Gauntlet?” asked Uraraka. “Why-?”

Midoriya flashed a quick smile in her direction. “I’m sorry, sensei, this is really last minute, but I need you to tell me how to use your quirk.”

We absolutely can’t strike first.

They wanted to. They knew this would turn into a battle. The first strike was an advantage they couldn’t discount.

Win the battle and lose the war.

He could see the cell phones already out, held bystanders not quite broken from the habits gained in All Might’s era. Even with the Hero Commission already slandering him, this would affect the narrative. If he ever hoped to be welcomed back to hero society, or even the public’s good graces, in any way shape or form, he could not be seen starting a fight with a hero. Much less the current number two hero.

“I don’t suppose you’ll make my job easier and release All Might from your mind-control quirk,” said Hawks, tone conversational despite the fact he was standing at least two stories above them in the air.

“I don’t have a mind-control quirk,” said Izuku, reaching up to the knot of his tie.

“And I’m not being mind-controlled,” said Toshinori, loosening his mask.

Hawks actually paused. “Oh my gosh,” he said, raising one hand to his mouth like a scandalized housewife, “I didn’t realize that was you! What happened to your hair?”

“I… cut it off.”

“That’s, uh.” Hawks quickly regained control of his expression. “Terrible that this villain made you do that.”

Hawks’ heart wasn’t entirely in this apparently.

Just as apparently, that had no bearing on what Hawks was actually going to do.

“You’ve seen me use my quirk,” said Aizawa.

“I know, and that’ll be helpful, too, but how do you use it? What’s the feeling you get when you use it? How do you activate it? What’s the internal mechanism? This is important.”

“Why?” asked Iida. “What’s going on Midoriya?”

“It’s—” Midoriya’s form flickered. He took a deep breath. He was now wearing a t-shirt and sweatpants. “I’m in a fight right now, and it would be useful,” he reported, calmly.

“Please tell me it isn’t with my mind-controlled unconscious body,” begged Aizawa, “or the League of Villains.”

“It isn’t.”

Thank goodness.

“I’m fighting Hawks.”

Why.

No, ask questions later. The Problem Child needed help now. To fight the number two hero.

He didn’t know how knowledge about his quirk could be useful in a fight against Hawks, but the claim was far, far too stupid to be a lie.

“When I turn on my quirk, I—”

Blackwhip unfurled from his arms like a dark version of Shouji’s quirk, tearing his sleeves to shreds and dislodging the feathers that had been imbedded there. The ends wrapped around feather after feather, splitting into dozens and dozens of pseudo-arms. Izuku was amazed.

Someday, he would be able to do this on his own.

For now—

For now, he was fighting Hawks, who had trained since childhood to fight on behalf of the commission.

For now, he was a hero student, with only a few months of practical experience.

For now, he was a fugitive, on the run and desperate.

For now, he was host and member of One for All, and collectively they had been heroes for over a hundred years.

And Toshinori had his back.

They wrapped the silk tie around his knuckles. Any protection for the bones in his hands was valuable. In the other, they adjusted the briefcase. They had only rarely used weapons in the last hundred or so years. Usually, their quirks made weapons overkill.

But before that—Before that, things were different. For a while, One and Two had used swords, of all things.

This battle was much more even than it looked.

Their victory condition: Escape with Toshinori.

Their failure conditions: Civilian injury, serious injury to Izuku or Toshinori, or capture of either Izuku or Toshinori.

To avoid the first point of failure, it was best for them to get away from the vulnerable civilians. They didn’t want to give away float so soon in the game, so…

They grabbed the edge of a building with Blackwhip and launched Izuku upwards, flinging feathers away from him. Toshinori would follow and provide the group with a second perspective.

Hawks did not expect to be joined in the air. An incredulous smile graced his lips. Izuku smiled back and catapulted himself directly into Hawks.

“You know,” he said, “I think that’s the first time I’ve seen you smile for real!”

“What?” asked Hawks, startled. He wasn’t one to have meaningful conversations with people he was supposed to bring in, but a statement like that had to be responded to.

Even if most of his attention was on the quirk that Midoriya controlled with much more proficiency than indicated by his school records. The kid was good, had good instincts when it came to battle, but he wasn’t quite fast enough to get past Hawks’s guard, or to really close the distance between them.

“Your smile!” said Midoriya. “When I was younger, I didn’t realize it, but once I knew the truth behind All Might’s smile, I understood!”

“Did you, now?” asked Hawks.

“Underneath,” said Midoriya, “your face is a lot like Todoroki’s! It’s—”

Conversation during a battle was usually a distraction, to the person employing it as a tactic as well as the target. Somehow, though, Midoriya was subverting that rule.

“It’s actually really sad!” exclaimed Midoriya, breathless, but apparently genuine, not mocking. “Who hurt you?”

“Heh,” said Hawks. This kid knew. How? “Shouldn’t I be the one asking questions here?”

“Gotta hand it to the commission, they really did a number on you,” said Midoriya, briefly touching down on a rooftop. “Why do you keep doing their dirty work for them?”

He was using that second quirk, but not his strength. Was it a matter of ‘won’t’ or ‘can’t?’ Either way, it was something to keep an eye on.

“Why don’t you—” Hawks briefly managed to pin Midoriya by the edge of his jacket, but the boy tore free easily. “—fly free?”

“You’re one to talk,” said Hawks. “What did you trade to All for One for those quirks?” He didn’t actually believe Midoriya was in league with All for One. Even tangentially, through proxies, they’d been at odds too many times, not to mention the videos he’d been shown by the commission of Midoriya and All Might interacting. The connection there couldn’t be faked.

He’d know. He’d tried so many times.

(Was trying now, with the League of Villains.)

(Midoriya wasn’t one of them.)

But he had a job to do.

Besides. Even he had to admit the commission had a point. The quirks had to come from somewhere.

(Just because Midoriya didn’t willingly associate with All for One didn’t mean he hadn’t been forced. Didn’t mean he hadn’t gotten out.)

(All Might was protecting him. How did they know each other?)

“Wouldn’t you take any hand offered to you if the person behind it offered to make you what you always wanted to be?”

Midoriya tilted his head to one side. “Nope!” he responded, cheerfully.

On the street below, Toshinori coughed, blood splattering his sleeve. What had Izuku been doing when he was younger, to get involved with so many dangerous and disturbing people?

It wasn’t my fault!

Kid really is a trouble magnet.

Oh, heck, I think I recognized that one—

Really, with that sharp mind, and Izuku’s propensity for both curiosity, helpfulness, and, well, finding trouble, it was a miracle he’d stayed alive for so long.

Wouldn’t call it a miracle, sonny—

HAHA I can’t believe he thought that was a dream.

In his defense, a dream makes more sense than—

Guys. Focus, please?

Yes. This was not the time to discuss… that. Now… Well. Toshinori had a role he could play in this battle, even as he was, and—

Hawks and Izuku’s path over the rooftops mapped itself out in his mind.

Oh, no.

Izuku wasn’t evading Hawks.

He was being herded by him.

They tucked and rolled across the pavement, Blackwhip cocooning them and breaking their fall. This was significantly more than what Five, what Daigoro, could use back when he was alive. It took everyone’s efforts to keep everything going.

Wait for it, they reminded themselves, bouncing back to Izuku’s feet.

Izuku looked up. This… was not a good position. Hawks had forced them into the entertainment district. They couldn’t trust that the fancy facades and art instalations of the buildings would hold up to Blackwhip. Not to mention, in places like this… He glanced around.

Fourth Kind.

Kesagiriman.

Slugger.

Death Arms.

There would be more, soon. This was… less than good. Maybe they should just grab Toshinori’s body and launch themselves with Blackwhip and Float, as far as they could. They’d lose a lot of their advantage on Hawks, but at least then they wouldn’t be fighting five different heroes.

Izuku gritted his teeth in something like a smile. Five different heroes. Well. Nine on five wasn’t bad odds.

Suzuku pulled himself along the ground, trembling. He had been falling for—for ages by the time that witch woman had disappeared. Why she had disappeared, he couldn’t guess, but…

Falling.

So much falling.

And hitting the ground again, and again, and again.

You invaded our minds, said the woman, don’t complain when we counter with something psychological as well.

Something like a laugh bubbled up from his throat.

You can leave whenever you want, can’t you?

He’d show her. He’d show her and find all her secrets. Just see if he didn’t.

Fourth Kind, Kesagiriman, Slugger, and Death Arms all had very physical, straightforward quirks. Out of all of them, though, Death Arms was probably the most problematic, followed by Slugger and his long-range attacks.

None of them held a candle to Hawks, of course. Which was the reason why Death Arms in particular was so problematic.

In order to deal with Hawks’s feathers, they needed Blackwhip. But using Blackwhip and One for All’s signature superstrength at the same time wasn’t something Izuku’s body was used to. They were limiting it to small bursts. Death Arms’ own physical enhancement quirk, while miniscule compared to One for All’s current stature, was nothing to sneer at.

If Death Arms—or any of the other heroes—landed a solid blow, that could be it for Izuku.

They refused to be locked away again.

That’s when it happened.

A scene played across Izuku’s inner eye:

A frosty morning. A little boy with dark hair. A farewell. Tears.

He flubbed the landing and a sharp pain lanced through his ankle. Blackwhip wrapped it, giving it much needed support.

He started to rise, only to drop to avoid one of Slugger’s patented Home Run Pitches (tm).

The ball spun, ricocheting off the stainless steel of an art installation before drilling right through a wooden beam on a bit of scaffolding holding up part of a building that was being refurbished. Izuku let out a breath of relief (there were still people around who hadn’t learned how to run away from a dangerous fight) before they returned to the dance with Hawks’s impressively huge number of feathers.

Blackwhip could keep up with them, barely, but Izuku was tiring. He couldn’t take much more of this.

He needed an opening to get to Toshi—

Another scene:

She couldn’t be pregnant. Not now. Not right after giving away another. The next time Sorahiko suggested drowning her troubles in sake, she was going to shove it straight up his blowholes, no matter that he was probably just as drunk as she was.

This slip almost resulted in Izuku getting his face punched in by Death Arms. Considering what he’d just learned, he’d almost welcome that fate, if it made him forget. Plus, it might have been funny for the ultimate battle of ultimate destiny, the show down between One for All and All for One, to take place between not one, but two potato-headed individuals—

There was a sharp crack from above as the damage Death Arms had done to the scaffolding made itself known.

Izuku didn’t have to think before moving.

“Alright,” said Midoriya. “I think I’ve got it. Thank you, sensei.” He looked young, now. Barely primary school age.

“I’d feel a lot better,” said Aizawa, “if I knew what you needed this information for.”

“Oh! That’s simple. You see, it’s my theory that the overlap in mechanisms between my quirk and Saito-san’s might allow for interesting emergent behaviors. Specifically, her quirk bridges a gap I’d normally have no way of crossing, although there’s certainly drawbacks. It’s like what we tried earlier, when I asked you to use your quirk. Although, I am hoping for different results than what I was looking for back then. I think, with what you’ve given me, and this processing time… Yes, this should work.” He clenched a fist. “These remnants—I can use them!”

Remnants. Vestiges.

Aizawa frowned. Something… something wasn’t right, here. The explanation Six had given them…

“Just keep going this way, for now. Six will try to get back to you as soon as possible. I have to go now! I love you guys!”

He then faded out. While waving.

“Wow,” said Uraraka. “Izuku-kun sure was a cute kid.”

Aizawa couldn’t argue with that.

“Aizawa-sensei,” said Todoroki. “You’re blushing.”

He wouldn’t lower himself to argue with that. “This conversation is illogical. Let��s go.”

“Sensei is weak to little kids,” observed Todoroki.

And if they ever discovered they could remove the ‘little’ in that sentence and have it still be accurate, he’d never live it down.

Hawks saw the eyes first, shining through the dust like two perfect green coins. Then every one of his feathers went dead, and he started to fall.

Sensation returned just in time for him to avoid hitting the ground at speed and, just as quickly, vanished again.

A breeze blew cleared the dust away.

Midoriya Izuku stood under the collapsed scaffolding, holding it up with black tendrils and sparking green arms. If this scene had been all that there was, an observer might be forgiven for wondering why he was holding up the scaffolding like that.

But Hawks knew. If Midoriya hadn’t caught the scaffolding, even he wouldn’t have been able to get those civilians out from underneath it in time. He glanced to the side, where the almost victims were standing up. Normally, he’d just trust his feathers, but…

“Is that Eraserhead’s quirk?”

“Don’t worry, I asked Eraserhead-sensei for permission, first.”

“What kind of monster—” started Death Arms.

“Don’t you dare, Mister ‘my quirk isn’t suitable.’” Midoriya shifted the scaffolding to one side and shrugged himself out from underneath it. “As heroes, aren’t you supposed to consider the civilians around you?” He laughed. “I guess we’re still a little bitter about that.”

Izuku was putting on a good show, but he was reaching the end of his endurance. Plus, he could already hear the sirens of police cars and the exclamations that followed large groups of heroes on the move.

Good thing, then, that Toshinori was about to round the corner in three… two… one… There!

To an outsider, Blackwhip wrapping around Toshinori probably looked violent. In reality, everyone operating the quirk was intimately aware of everything wrong with Toshinori’s body and did not want to add to his problems. They could have probably grabbed an egg like this.

Grabbing the newly-exposed concrete and rebar of the building behind Izuku, they launched themselves up. At the top of their arc, they activated Float. Blackwhip reeled Toshinori in, and they held onto each other as Izuku prepared to use air pressure to launch themselves forward.

He hadn’t blinked yet.

His eyes really hurt.

(And so did everything else.)

He aimed and kicked against the air, sending them soaring away.

They had escaped.

Tomura ducked behind the wall at the top of the building, glad that his party had put so many points into stealth, because he was not touching what had just happened with a ten-foot pole. He’d rather be shot again. He’d rather fight Machia for a week straight with no rest breaks. He’d rather listen to Sensei try to give him the birds and the bees talk.

What was that? Huh? What kind of a broken character build allowed for that kind of combat ability? The mods had to be asleep. If he were in charge, he’d nerf it, pronto.

That was a lie. He’d take it for himself.

Still.

“Uh, Shigaraki? Boss man? You okay there?” asked Spinner.

“No,” decided Shigaraki.

Suddenly, making all of them jump, Toga squealed. “Did you see him? Did you see Izuku-kun? He was so cute with his nose bleeding like that!”

“Hey,” said Dabi, “are we going after the green kid or what?”

“No,” decided Shigaraki, for the second time in as many minutes. And then, “Gimme the phone. We need to call the doctor to get us out of here.”

They did, but that was pretty much secondary to his primary objective, which was to cuss out the doctor concerning the cursed knowledge that was currently trying to escape his skull with a pickaxe.

“Um,” said Inko. “Aren’t you going to get that?” She pointed at the phone that had been buzzing on the table for the past several minutes.

“No,” said Garaki, pretending to sip at his tea. “You were saying?”

#bnha #boku no hero academia #fic #fanfic #long night in the valley

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hey-hamlet · 5 years

Note

Imagine: Izuku accidentally calling Aizawa Dad and Toshinori overhears and tries not to feel irrationality jealous since just because he knows Izuku longer, cares about Izuku more (and he's sure of that) doesn't mean he's entitled to being seen as a father figure over Izu's other teachers.

“Toshinori, you’re being an idiot.” All Might mumbled to himself, typing away at an email with poorly hidden irritation.

The cause of his irritation was completely irrational and something so embarrassing he wouldn’t admit it under pain of death: Izuku had called Aizawa ‘Dad’. Accidentally, obviously, the boy was still too scared of his homeroom teacher to tease him to his face. In fact, the only reason he knew about it in the first place was because Present Mic refused to stop teasing a nonplussed Aizawa over it.

It wasn’t like he’d be upset Izuku saw Aizawa like a father, lord knew the kid needed some positive role models in his life, but still.

He wanted to be dad.

He groaned, none too gently slamming his face into the keyboard, gaunt face pressing uncomfortably against the surprisingly sharp keys. This was getting ridiculous, he wasn’t a child, he shouldn’t be so upset by this. But he was. He heard someone settle onto the desk beside him. Aizawa himself, presumably.

“Tch.” Yep. Definitely Aizawa. “Hizashi won’t shut up about the problem child - it’s not even the first time someone in that class has done it. This week, even.” Toshinori turned his face slightly to the side, shooting a look at the other teacher. A little part of his heart wanted to tell him to stop bragging. The rest was hitting that bit enthusiastically with a large stick. “Besides,” Aizawa continued on, ignoring what had to be an intense aura of irritation. “We all know who Midoriya really sees as a dad.” That last part was said with a small smirk. He huffed a quiet laugh, before slinking off in a decided cat-like manner. Jackass.

It wasn’t a full minute later that Izuku stumbled through the staffroom door, not even bothering to knock, before scrambling over to Toshinori’s desk. The kid practically flew himself at Toshinori, face bright red with embarrassment. “All Might!” he kid whined plaintively into Toshinori’s boney chest, “I can never look at Aizawa-sensei again! You have to end me, please. I can’t go on like this.” Toshinori felt his irritation slipping away at the decidedly adorable sight of his successor trying to compress into the worlds smallest ball of human. He was doing a shockingly good job for a kid as bulky as he was.

“What happened, my boy?” He asked, trying to keep the laughter from his voice.

“Nope. Nah uh. Not telling.” He let out a sharp bark of laughter that quickly dissolved into some quiet giggles. Izuku tilled his head out of his ball of contortion just long enough to fix his mentor with a glare before his buried his face back into Toshinori’s chest. It had to be uncomfortable, what with the numerous pointy rib bones, but Izuku didn’t seem to care. “Don’t laugh at my suffering, meanie.”

Toshinori bit back another bark of laughter, gently rubbing circles on his boy’s back. “I’m sure it’s not the first time it’s happened to him, he’s had a lot of students, after all.” Izuku shook his head violently, mumbling incomprehensibly into Toshinori’s sternum. “I didn’t quite catch that, care to repeat yourself?”

“I mean, I’m not even sure how I did that!” He whined, still refusing to lift his head. “It’s not like I’ve even called anyone dad since I was four,” Now that did send a sharp pang through Toshinori’s chest. Present Mic, who had been silently laughing at the whole exchange winced sharply. Toshinori frantically gestured with his hand, trying to convey that any here should be not here, quickly. It worked. “Plus, he’s so scary! Cool, but I have nightmares of him handing out quizzes I haven’t studied for.” The kid shuddered melodramatically. “ ’Sides,” He mumbled softly, slowly relaxing into Toshinori’s hold, emotional drain and the warmth of his mentor’s arms making him drowsy, “You’re more like my dad. Give good hugs too.”

Toshinori felt a grin split his face, but he made sure not to move. His successor wasn’t fully awake and he wasn’t sure he’d had said the same thing fully conscious. Still, he felt like the luckiest man in the world. “You’d make a pretty great son, too.” He murmured, free hand coming to rest in Izuku’s hair.

And if the two of them sat there all of the lunch break, half asleep – or fully, in Izuku’s case - in the warmth of the staffroom? Well, that was between a father and his son, wasn’t it?

#so i got carried away but this is silly and cute #bnha #asks #bnha fic #my fic #aizawa shouta #yagi toshinori #midoriya izuku #dadmight

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kaweeella · 3 years

Text

Bonding Time, Kids

Chapter 6- Some Slight Adjustments

~~~

The experiment gets called off. All of the students who already know their new quirks get sent back to the dorms accompanied by Shouta and Nemuri. Hitoushi goes to the 1a dorms so Mashiraou is around in case he needs to know something about the tail, and so the other students in his class wouldn’t see him. There are eight students left to figure out; Juuzou, Kyoka, Manga, Mezou, Togaru, Yuuga and Yui. Katsuki also needs to figure his out, but he’s unconscious from overheating.

Going over the list the quirks that no one else has are; anivoice, sugar rush, weld, electrification, gyrate, scales, creation and copy. They first test anivoice.

Sekijirou sets down his dog.

“Strike a pose!” Yuuga says. Nothing.

“Jump.” Yui says. Still no response.

Togaru looks at the dog and points a finger gun at him. “Bang.”

He rolls onto his back. “Oruu…”

“Good.” He kneels down and the two fist bump.

Next they test copy. The remaining seven touch Hizashi’s arm and scream.

Half hearted it may be, Yui’s “Ah” carries enough intensity to shake the ground.

Then, sugar rush.

Manga stares at the packet of sugar he was handed.

“Since it doesn’t seem to be affecting anyone else, it’s either you or Bakugou.”

They test creation after. Yuuga creates so much glitter that he passes out.

“Valoir la peine…” He mutters as he’s dragged away.

Next is gyrate.

Mezou’s left arm, it’s strange only having one, spins quick enough to go through concrete.

Scales make their way down Kyouka’s forearm.

Juuzou releases static into the air, causing everyone’s hair to get frizzy.

Finally they hand Manga is handed a metal pole and he tries to weld it to the ground. It doesn’t work, so it’s determined that he has sugar rush and Katsuki has weld.

“So that’s everyone.” Sekijirou says.

“Next step is to track down the villain who caused this.” Hizashi says.

“We should give the students time to adjust first. We’ll need Eraserhead and Midnight for this.”

“Right.”

~~~

Walking back, Kyouka keeps moving to fidget with her earphones.

“Are you alright, Jirou?” Mezou asks her, noticing.

“Yeah, force of habit.”

He nods and they continue the walk in silence.

Back at the dorm all of the students, besides the ones in the nurse's office, sit in the living room with Shouta watching to make sure things don’t get out of hand.

Kyouka sits by Momo and notices bandages on her fingers.

“Are you alright?” She asks.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Thank you for your concern.” She looks around. “Where’s Aoyama?”

“Nurse’s office. He got your quirk and overworked it.”

“Oh dear. I hope he’s alright.”

They hear the door open and see… Kousei being dragged in by Dark Shadow.

“Fumi!”

“You’re supposed to be in your own dorm building.”

“I didn’t exactly have a choice.” He says, still being dragged.

“Isn’t Midnight supposed to be watching you?”

“Yeah, she’s busy…”

Back in the 1b dorms, Yousetsu clings to the wall as Togaru chases Setsuna.

“Come on! Lighten up a little!”

“Get back here!”

“Guys calm down!” Itsuka says.

Nemuri rips open the sleeve on her costume. The two of them stop before falling over. Yousetsu climbs higher up the wall, holding his breath.

Juuzou paces back and forth.

“Are you alright?” Pony asks him.

“Yeah, I’m just- wait!”

She reaches out and grabs his shoulder, quickly turning into steel when she gets shocked. Shihai tries to walk past him, though one of his left hands brushes Pony’s arm. The electricity sends him flying.

“Sorry! I’m having trouble controlling it.”

Nemuri runs over, using her quirk to knock out Juuzou, some sparks still coming off of his body. “Damn it, why'd we have to split the classes? Eraser would do so much better at this part.”

Shouta sighs. “What are you doing here anyway?”

“For Fumi!” Dark Shadow shouts, hugging him.

“Dark Shadow, you’re going to have to get used to being apart. He has to stay in his own dorm and you can’t just drag him around.”

Dark Shadow whimpers. “But I don’t like being away from you.”

“I don’t like this either, but until things go back to normal that’s how things have to be.”

Shouta’s phone rings. It’s Nemuri.

“Could you get over here? Your quirk is better suited for this.”

“Alright.” He sighs and hangs up the phone. “Come on, we’re going to the 1b dorms.”

They walk over to the other dorm building, Dark Shadow clinging to Fumikage the whole time. When he enters he immediately activates his quirk. The sparks around Juuzou dissipate, Pony turns back to normal, and Yousetsu falls off the wall.

“I thought his quirk didn’t work on quirks like yours.” Denki says to Tsu.

“It doesn’t.”

Momo quickly walks over to him. “Are you alright?” She reaches out her hand.

“Y-yeah. ‘M fine.” He takes it and gets up. “What happened to your hand?”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m glad you’re okay!”

“Thank you, kero.” His face heats up and he slaps his hands over his mouth.

“Thanks for helping out.” Nemuri says as she helps Shihai off the floor.

Jutora, Nirengeki and Yuuga are eventually released and go to the dorms.

“Where’s Kaachan?”

“He’s being held a little longer.” Shouta answers.

“Woah Shouda, are you okay?!” Pony asks him. “What happened?”

“I used the quirk I got and it messed up my arm pretty bad.”

“I take it you have problem child’s quirk.”

“Problem child?”

“Ah, he’s referring to me.” Izuku raises his hand. “Superpower. I used to break my bones with it a lot.”

“Oh yeah, you did.” Pony muses.

“So how did you make it stop breaking your bones?”

“A combination of training my body and scaling back my power usage.”

“Right, I’ll work on that. Thank you.”

“Y-yeah.” He chuckles nervously. “No problem.” Normally he’d be scribbling in his notebooks but right now he’s worried that Nirengeki might figure something out or lead someone else to figuring it out.

After a while Sekijirou, Hizashi and Katsuki enter the dorms.

“So what happens now?” Itsuka asks.

“Now you kids get used to your new quirks and after we will find the villain responsible for this.” Her homeroom teacher answers.

After they make sure that the kids are able to control their quirks enough to not destroy the buildings while they sleep, class 1a is sent back to their dorms. Shouta has to help Kousei and Fumikage because Dark Shadow refuses to let go.

“You think you’re gonna be okay, Tsuburaba?” Yousetsu asks as they walk to their rooms.

“... no.” No one else can hear it, but Dark Shadow hasn’t stopped screaming since Shouta left. “This is gonna drive me nuts.”

“Same here, kero.”

#bnha #mha #bnha fanfic #mha fanfic #quirk swap #quirk shenanigans #class 1b #mha class 1b

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you-know-like-the-bird · 3 years

Text

And One More Time

A/N: Hello again everybody! It’s me, back with another snippet of a idea I might never end up writing but hey, we can all hope, yeah? Anyways, this one is actually pretty old, and I had it a long time back, but I only ended up writing it now. You know how it is.

Now, here's what I've done. I've written a sort of prologue, which you are more than welcome to read. if you don't want to go through that, I've written a very bare-bones summary in the paragraph below, albeit very spare of details. I don't have this idea fleshed out on any device (only paper), so I'm unable to post that, but I guess my main showing here is the prologue. So it'd make me really happy if you read it!

Summary: The basis of this idea is that after things go to shit, with what Japan in the throes of a whole ass revolution led by the one and only Deku, Shinsou Hitoshi and Uraraka Ochako travel back in time to keep the revolution from happening in the first place. You can bet your asses they adopt eleven year old Izuku Midoriya when they realize that he's a child still, and that they will do everything in their power to keep Izuku from becoming a revolutionary figurehead.

Prologue:

The girl stumbles out of the front door of her house, almost tripping over the steps that lead down to the flat pavement. Not that she notices, that or much of anything else with the fat tears rolling down her cheeks as she hesitates for a split second before booking it, choosing one direction and running like her life depends on it. It's a good thing her parents aren't home, they might have been worried with how badly she seemed to be falling apart, even as she tears across the city like a mad woman on a mission.

Hitoshi takes his first gasping breath like a dying man starved for air. He shoots upright into a sitting position, taking in huge greedy gulps of oxygen, because if there's one thing he never wants to do again, it's being put under the effects of a quirk that feel like you're being drowned.

His fingers clench around soft cotton, which is actually the first thing about his surroundings that get his attention. He stares at the cotton blanket under him, the faded cat pattern is so familiar that it hurts. Hysterically, he remembers his bad habit of leaving his ink pens open on this very blanket, leaving small splotches of black and blue all over the soft purple cotton. The curtains drawn across the window block out the morning sun's attempt at peeking into the room, but its light enough that when Hitoshi looks up, what he sees hits him with a wave of nostalgia so strong it's like getting hit by a run-away train. Posters of obscure Underground and Rescue heroes line the space above a study desk set up in the corner of the room, with misplaced pens and papers sprawled across the surface. A school bag leans against one of the legs of the table, half open and where a tiny Ferocious charm leers at him from its keychain. A school blazer hangs on the back of the chair tucked halfway under the table, and a school shirt seems to have fallen to the floor, forgotten. A bookshelf boasting a full house, all the way from school books to his favorite collection of comics to the few novels he's bothered to buy, one shelf holding three picture frames with photographs of his family from when they went to the beach.

It's a bedroom. Shit, it's his bedroom, back when he used to live with his parents, back when he was just 14, back when-

Back when the world hadn't gone to shit.

There's a tidal wave of emotion that Hitoshi lets wash over him, because he deserves that much right? After- everything really, the least he deserves is one quiet moment to sit here, on his childhood bed, and cry, right?

Because- fuck, they were screwed, weren't they? No idea how they would get back, no idea where to start, what to do, where to go-

He had no idea what he was doing. And, because he was the one between the two of them who had known the little girl longer, neither did Ochako. That's something to- he feels guilty that she has to be here and deal with this mess too, but at least he's not alone, right? At least he has some sort of support going forward, a friend by his side to help him figure this out. They might both be equally clueless when it comes to a situation like this, but at least they’re together, right?

Because- time travel. Shit.

You didn't really see that outside the movies, did you?

What were- what were you even supposed to do, in a situation like this? What was even the correct course of action? Any rules to follow, things you did and did not do? Don't find your past self- that problem was solved since they were their past selves. Or at least- he was.

Fuck- fuck, he needed to find Ochako. He needed to find-

The address.

One sensible idea. If this thing of letting a little girl use her quirk to send them back in time was a terrible idea, then the least they could do was keep their wits about them. And well- there hadn't been a lot of time to discuss their options, right? Not when it was go go go, we can't stop for too long they’re coming-

No time.

But the one thing- one thing they did do. The address. A simple meeting spot. A 'if you make it, meet me in the middle Hitoshi. Promise me that you will.'.

He did promise her. And, he hasn't seen her in so long, not since- it wouldn't do good to break his promise, huh?

Hitoshi manages to scrape himself together enough to get dressed and ready. His eyes are still a little red, that happens when you cry for too long, duh, but he's fine. The only person who'll be able to tell he was crying is his mother and well-

He'll just have to avoid her, for now. The discomfort of this idea makes itself known like a black hole in his chest, because really- the world was ending only moments ago and he hasn't seen his mother in so long. When was the last time she hugged him? Told him how proud she was of him, that he'd finally made his dream, that he'd become a hero? How long ago had he visited home just to be teased about only coming back to see the cats, asking when his father would come home, asking about how she's getting along with Mrs.Wakita from two houses down that she loathes?

The truth of the matter is, if Hitoshi runs into his mother now, he will breakdown. Forget pulling together a plan of action to save the world, he won't be going anywhere until he's made sure that he doesn't ever forget the tilt of his mother's smile.

But- more important things happening, right now. There's someone- Ochako, who's depending on him, who'll be wondering if he made it or not. She'll need his support, just like he needs hers, and he has to meet her in the middle, because otherwise-

Well.

So, Hitoshi is quiet, when he slips downstairs as silent as the night. He doesn't quite know what day it is, doesn't want to distract himself by pulling out his phone and check either, but it must be the weekend if he was in bed until what looks to be the later part of morning. So, either his mother is in the kitchen, prepping for lunch or just doing household chores, or she's in her room, reading or doing some office work. Hitoshi wonders if he'll be lucky enough that she's in her room, but immediately dispels the thought when he hears the clinking of glasses and the sweet smell that wafts from the kitchen. The smell of... cookies.

She's making his favorite.

Standing just beside the doorway, out of sight, he wonders if some part of her knows that he's having a bad day, a sort of mother's intuition that seems unexplainable to the workings of the universe. He wonders if she's gotten specks of cookie dough in her hair, like she somehow always manages after she makes the dough, and wonders if she'd let him have a few chocolate chips to snack on. He wonders if she's wearing that apron his dad got her as a gag gift, the one that's a hideous yellow but she wears it none the less. He wonders that if she sees him, she'll smile, and try to pull him into helping her bake.

Hitoshi wishes he could stop then, for just a moment, and see his mother again. See her smile again, have her hugging him again but-

Not yet. Not yet. He wouldn't be able to go on if he stopped now. He wouldn't be able to leave if he went into the kitchen right now, and broke down in her arms. Because then the urge to just be Shinsou Hitoshi, Shinsou Hikari's little boy would be something he wouldn't have the strength to build himself up from again.

So, he slips past the kitchen and out the front, silently shutting the door behind him as he goes.

The address is unsurprisingly one where a quaint little cafe stands. Unsurprising, because it looks like the kind of quiet place where you can talk without being disturbed. No distinguishing features from any other cafe that exists out there, not overly crowded or overly loud. People come and go as Hitoshi scopes the place out for a few minutes from the other side of the street, under the guise of looking through the books at the bookstore that mirrors the cafe. Ochako probably chose the cafe because it's pretty close to U.A, and since they both went to the school, close to their houses. Or at least, the house she rented. Ah, that makes him wonder, will he even meet her here right now? It might take her a while to get here, and he's not exactly living alone that he can bum around for too long without his parents getting worried. Hitoshi expects that he'll get a call from his mother in the next hour, actually, no doubt wondering why he left without even saying goodbye. He'll handle that later, and all those feeling that try to come crashing through like a tidal wave when he thinks of his mother but for now-

He's on a mission.

He goes inside the cafe a few minutes later. Pleasant music hangs in the air, the kind that fits seamlessly into the background, unhampering to conversation. Just as Hitoshi could tell from the outside, it isn't very crowded in here, a group of two and three sitting on opposite sides of the place and one lone teenager sits hunched over his laptop in the corner with the kind of dead eyed stare that speaks of late-night assignments and too-many-for-your-good shots of coffees.

Hitoshi cruises through the menu by standing a little way away from the counter, not quite ready to order. When he settles for something, he steps up to the kind smiling cashier and asks for his own drink and something he's pretty sure he's seen Ochako drink before. It'd been.... a long time since they hung out, but he likes to think he knows his friends well enough to know what they'll like. The cashier cheerily informs him that his order will be brought to his table, so Hitoshi backs off in search of a quiet spot to sit. He finds one in the other corner of the cafe, by a painting of a cheeky looking cat licking at her paw. She's a pleasantly painted orange tabby, and Hitoshi wonders after his own two little ladies. They're probably in the kitchen bothering mom right about now, because the kitchen apparently equals snacks for them, the little rascals.

There's the couple of two just a table down from him, speaking in hushed, breathy whispers. They seem happy, like they've got no care in the world, just the two of them in this small cafe. Like the world can be defined in just the spaces we're comfortable in, and they're making this one theirs. They remind Hitoshi of his own boyfriend, and how he never got to marry Kaminari like he'd dreamed he would on nights when the moon was the only light he needed to feel that soft tingle of hope. That their futures wouldn't be washed away in society's insistence on playing heroes and villains, two sides of the same goddamn war. It took a lot from him, Hitoshi will never be too proud to concede, this whole business of becoming a hero took a lot from him. It took his family, it took his friends, it took his boyfriend, it took him.

But Hitoshi knows that no matter what he tells himself, he will never stand by and watch someone suffer. He will never be anything but a hero.

Just like the girl with her hair in a brown bob, who's got a fierce sort of sadness in her eyes and a wild desperation as she scans the cafe. Under who's gaze Hitoshi freezes, because she's here, and Ochako's face finally crumples into a cocktail of relief and mourning, because they've just lost everything but gotten another chance to fix things. He's already surging out of his own seat as she stumbles to him in turn, and catches her in a hug over the top of his table, desperately gripping her shoulders as he takes in the sooty smell of her hair.

"Hitoshi. Hitoshi, you're alive, you're-"

"Right here- right here, I'm right here, we're right here 'Chako." He turns to press his face firmly into her hair, trying to ignore the tears that slowly slide out of his eyes, "We made it. We made it. It worked- we're- okay, we're okay."

She lets out her first sob then, full of grief and a twisting pain, and he squeezes his eyes shut against her hair at how broken she sounds- at how broken he feels. Ragged edges that draw blood with every movement, pieces missing for all the people they've lost. They're in the past, that much is true- and their friends and family will never live through the future they've just abandoned if they can say anything about it. Hitoshi doesn't know how that makes him feel, because no one will remember them, but no one remember the terror of Deku's revolution either.

Bonus:

"What are we going to do?"

For someone in her pajamas and her hair swept slightly to side like she'd been licked by a cow, Ochako still exerts that unmistakable aura of authority. It's in her body language, from the straight set of her shoulder, to the way she pins you under that authoritative, 'I won't be taking any of your shit' gaze. Hitoshi's missed it, misses the way she wears that same look when she's squaring off against Bakugou, misses the way that it's how she runs her very own team of support heroes with her at the lead. But definitely, it's all made up for the way he just saw her march up to the counter and order them both something to eat, which Hitoshi had been too preoccupied to do, and how the cashiers had cowered under a single determined glance and said nothing about her being in her pajamas.

She's cutting into her pastry right now as she speaks, headstrong and always the kind of girl who would rather take the fight to the trouble rather than the other way around.

"We'll have to be careful, of course. Finding and renewing old contacts, making new ones, allies, foes... the one who started it all...."

Hitoshi doesn't like saying his name. Deku. He knows the history behind that name, of course. Bakugou told them all, it was the least he was able to do after he'd been blamed for that whole mess in the media, of a time when Deku and Kacchan existed as two little kids who were once childhood friends. How Kacchan got a 'heroic' quirk (and how angry that had made Hitoshi, to find out that Bakugou wasn't just an asshole with no substance to back it up, but had a history of bullying that got aired on live television in front of millions), and Deku didn't get one at all. How Kacchan didn't like that and...

Well.

Deku was- strong, manipulative, charismatic. He had a strength in the way he said his words, so convinced of his own beliefs that he could make you a believer too if you gave him enough time. He was sympathetic, kind, understanding of the hardships of society because he had gone through the worst of it and still come out standing.

He was quirkless.

That hadn't diminished his worth. In fact, it had only made his actions more potent, the boy behind the July massacres, the man behind All Might's death.

Quirkless.

Something the world couldn't believe. He was probably lying. He probably has a mental quirk, an invisible quirk, there's no way he's-

Quirkless.

But he was. Is. Japan's greatest revolution, Deku's revolution, bought along by a quirkless little boy who dreamt of a world greater than him.

Hitoshi thinks of himself in that name. Little Shinsou Hitoshi who had a 'villain's' quirk and wouldn't have hesitated for even a second if Deku had offered him a place by his side if he had still been the bitter middle-schooler he once was. When society had made it very clear what they thought of him and his quirk, he would've rather been by Deku's side, where a promise of a better, more understanding society, one that doesn't discriminate and doesn't tell him he dreams too big. He wouldn't have hesitated for even a second.

"I don't know how we'll find Deku." Ochako says over her strawberry smoothie, swirling the straw thoughtlessly until the foam starts to thin, "We don't know his civilian name or anything about his childhood other than- oh."

Indeed, oh, looks like they figured out one thing, "Bakugou."

"Yeah," Ochako agrees, smiling lightly at the small win, "Well, okay, that's one. But there's still- a lot, huh? That could go wrong."

Hitoshi nods, "Deku was the leader. He probably didn't rally that many people under his cause all on his own. We'll need to find the other influentials, other people who were involved."

"Hmmmm. We have old contacts, at leats. People who we know we can trust, stuff like that. The problem will be getting them to trust us."

"Yeah," Hitoshi pouts a little sullenly over his chocolate cake, "Being a- what, an eleven-year-old doesn't inspire the most confidence."

"Mmmm yeah." Having said that, Hitoshi marvels at how much softer Ochako looks this young, chubbier and squishier with all the baby fat she eventually burned off in hero training. He probably looks the same to be honest, a lanky but little eleven-year-old with a glare he thought was mean and a chip in his shoulder. Although, he probably looks as threatening as baby deer right now.

"We'll just figure that one out later! First, let's focus on tracking down Deku, okay?"

Hitoshi gives her a stilted nod, not all too enthused about the idea, to be honest, but knowing they have no other choice. They need to know what they're up against, know what Deku was like when he was as little as eleven years old. They need to know, so they can mitigate the damage, stop this disaster from happening before it shapes into the full-blown revolution it had become last time.

They need to do this, for everyone they lost.

#bnha #mha #boku no hero fanfic #boku no hero au #boku no hero headcanons #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #my hero academy fanfiction #my hero fanfic #my hero acadamy #shinsou hitoshi #uraraka ochako #izuku midoriya #And One More Time #pt 1

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nightskywrites · 4 years

Text

Chapter 2/2 of The Big Three

read it on ao3 here

“Wow, it sure took you guys a while to get changed!” Midoriya waved enthusiastically as the current Class 1-A entered the training area. “So, who are you fighting? Bakugou or Todoroki?”

“It better be me,” Kacchan snarled. “I’ve been itching for a good fight.”

“No one in their right mind would have chosen you ,” Shouto said under his breath.

“Actually, Problem Child,” Aizawa said with a smile that had alarm bells going off in Izuku’s head screaming logical ruse incoming! . “It was a unanimous decision that they would be fighting you.”

“WHAT?” Bakugou yelled, explosions going off.

“Me?” Izuku stutters. He’s sure his face is a bright, flaming red. “They don’t want to fight Kaachan? Or what about Todoroki?”

Aizawa shakes his head. “They all wanted to fight you .”

“This is bullshit,” Bakugou spits. “If the nerd doesn’t want to fight, let me do it!” The angry boy whirls on him, and he automatically takes a step back, hands raised. “You don’t want to do it, right shitty Deku?”

“No, let Izuku do it,” Shouto comes to his rescue.

“Fine,” Bakugou grumbles. “Show these twerps whose boss.”

The twerps in question look apprehensive as Izuku hesitantly shrugs off his jacket, their eyes tracking as he folds it and places it on the sidelines.

“What’s with the arm thing?” One of the girls asks, eyes drawn to the black sleeve on Izuku’s right arm. “Is it support gear?”

“It’s none of your business,” Todoroki snaps.

The girl freezes in fear, and Izuku gives her a gentle smile. “It’s ok, I don’t mind.” He turns to his boyfriend. “And while I appreciate it, Shouto, don’t bite their heads off. They’re young.”

Shouto frowns. “You almost died.”

“ What !” The class exclaims.

Izuku looks to Aizawa for permission, and at the man’s nod, he slides the sleeve off. He hates the way the scar looks - ugly and twisted, skin marred and raised. It covers the whole top of his arm with faint lines trailing down. Even after all these years, it’s red and raw instead of white.

“Holy shit,” he hears one of the first years whisper.

“Not pretty, right?” He smiles self-deprecatingly. “Our first year, the training camp run by the Wild Wild Pussycats was attacked by the League of Villains, which I’m sure you all heard about. Mandalay’s nephew was attacked by the villain Muscular, and I was the only one fast enough to get there. ”

The girl from before bows. “I’m sorry,” she whispers, eyes on the ground. “He gave you that scar.”

“Azuma, stand up,” Aizawa says. “Problem Child did that to himself.”

“Wait,” the boy with wings interjects, shifting his weight from talon to talon. “Now I’m confused.”

“This,” he says, sliding the sleeve back on, “is what happens when you don’t know your limits. My quirk came in late, because if I got it any sooner I probably would have blown my arms off. Even then, I broke a lot of bones my first year.

I knew the risks, but I couldn’t have beaten that villain without using my power at over 100% when my body couldn’t even handle 20. I’m extremely lucky my arm is still functional. So,” he smiles, “Let this be a lesson in self-restraint.”

“Dude,” a girl with white hair says. “That’s so badass.”

“Thank you, Problem Child, for that lesson in self-control,” Aizawa flops on the ground, yellow sleeping bag cocooned around him. “Wake me up when it’s over.”

“Yes sir!” Izuku grins.

Aizawa mutters something about eye damage then promptly rolls over and falls asleep. The Class 1-A students spread out, dividing themselves into groups. The boy with wings takes to the air, flapping gently to keep himself hovering as he instructs his classmates.

So that’s the leader , Izuku thinks. Right now, he’s the basis of their strategy. They don’t really seem to be objecting, meaning they’re used to following his plans. Which means . . .

One For All thrums beneath his skin, green lightning flashing as he activates Full Cowl. The nerves of presenting in front of fellow students are gone, replaced by the familiar rush of adrenaline and the beating of his own heart. “Come at me,” he grins, and the fight begins in earnest.

The close range fighters charge. An abnormally long arm shoots for him, and he twists, letting it rocket past his head and embed in the stone behind him. Izuku grabs the arm and flips himself up, settling into a kneeling position before launching himself into a flip like a swimmer off a diving board.

He lands behind the four students, one still trying to get his arm out of the concrete. Izuku sweeps low, knocking out the kid's legs and he goes down hard, arm trapped.

“Make sure you always know your surroundings!” He says, dancing under a punch before sliding between the legs and aiming a well placed kick to the side. “You want to be careful that your quirk is always an advantage and not a hindrance. Always have a plan!”

“Fall back!” The winged kid shouts, and the remaining two close range fighters comply. He can’t obviously tell what their quirks are, but he doesn’t have to. Although they’re not bad, they still don’t have the same close-knit teamwork his class did in their first year, forced onto them from surviving villain attack after villain attack, every event a fight for their lives.

Izuku is thankful for what that means, even if it is hurting them right now.

“Oi, Deku, hurry this the hell up!” Kaachan shouts. “We have patrol later!”

Izuku huffs. “I am trying to teach them, not just beat them up.”

Time for action. He activates Float, taking him into the air until he’s parallel with the winged boy. Without giving him time to react, he sends Black Whip snaking out, wrapping around his wings and immobilizing him, pulling him to the ground. The darkness winds around the kid’s limbs and mouth, gagging him and stopping him from communicating.

As Izuku predicted, the class falls apart.

Some kids lunge at him, attacks sloppy and predictable, which he dodges with ease, using Propel to maneuver himself through the teenagers with ease.

The sky above him darkens, and he looks up to see a massive cloud. The girl with the white hair is hovering, arms outstretched and palms glowing.

“You may be a badass,” she grins, “but you’re not the only one with a little lightning.”

His eyes widen and he shoots himself forward into a roll. The lightning arcs down besides him, cracking the pavement.

“That’s so cool!” He gushes as he Propel flips him to his feet. “Can you summon any sort of weather, or just lightning? What’s your voltage limit?”

A tail wooshes over his head as he ducks, grabbing on to the appendage and spinning twice before launching the poor student into his fellow classmates like a bowling ball.

Strike! Izuku thinks victoriously.

From that point on, it’s easy to use Black Whip to make quick work of anyone still standing and restrain those he’s already taken out. In under five minutes, the entirety of Class 1-A is sitting in a pile in the center of the training ground, bound by Izuku’s second quirk and utterly helpless.

“Aizawa-sensei,” the boy with wings calls, squirming uncomfortably from where the appendages were pinned to his back. “We’re done.”

The yellow sleeping bag rolls over, and the exhausted face of Aizawa peers out through a mat of tangled hair.

“That was fast,” the teacher remarks dryly, shamelessly using the wall to lever himself into a sitting position. “I was hoping my nap would be longer.”

Midoriya grimaces. “Sorry, Aizawa-sensei.” He releases Black Whip and starts helping first years to their feet. “School is almost over, though!”

A cold hand lands on his shoulder and he yelps. “Shouto!”

His boyfriend laughs. “I thought Bakugou was having a conniption.”

“I can fucking hear you, Icy-Hot,” Kaachan snaps from somewhere behind him. The blonde stalks forward until the three of them are standing side-by-side. “Good job, shitty Deku, or whatever. You beat Togata’s time in dealing with us, that’s for fucking sure.”

“So,” Aizawa drawls, looking entirely too pleased with himself at the outcome. “What lessons have we learned from this? Sando.”

The boy with wings bristles. “We need to work on our team work,” he says finally. “It was sloppy, unrefined, disjointed, and absolute shit .”

Kaachan snorts. “Damn right.”

“Against a powerhouse like Midoriya,” he continues, “We were completely helpless once the original plan fell apart.”

“We couldn’t even touch him!” the white-haired girl groans. “Dude, is precognition one of your quirks or something?”

“Yeah, how come you only used three?”

“What are the other ones?”

“Can you show us?”

“You’re so cool!”

“Um,” Izuku steps back, a little overwhelmed.

“One at a time, don’t harass the Problem Child,” Aizawa seems resigned to his fate. “Sando, you’re correct in your assessment - the teamwork was terrible. For the next month, we’ll be doing joint exercises with Class 1-B in order to improve that.”

Groans.

“But,” Aizawa continues, logical ruse smile back in full force. He’s not even Izuku’s teacher anymore, and it’s still terrifying. “Depending on how well you do, I’ll give you another go at Midoriya. He did, after all,” now the smile is directed at him , shit, “only use three of his quirks.”

The girl with white hair breaks away from the rest of the cheering first years and makes a beeline for him. “My name is Morita,” she says. “My quirk is Weather.” Her face goes very red all of the sudden, previous confidence disappearing. “Canyoupleasetrainme?”

“Uh,” Izuku says, bewildered. Is that what his muttering sounds like? “I’m sorry, I didn’t really catch that.”

She takes a deep breath. “I said, can you please train me?”

“What?” Izuku squacks. Her face falls, and he hastily waves her hands. “It’s not a no, of course I would love to train you, I’m just realized surprised you would want me to train you, that’s all!”

“So you’ll do it?”

He nods, and her face breaks out in a grin. “Sick!” She turns back to the rest of her class. “Hey losers, guess who’s gonna get trained by the future Symbol of Peace? Suck it!”

Class 1-A explodes as Bakugou stills beside him.

“What,” he growls, “did you just call that shitty nerd?”

“Kaachan, calm down.”

“THE FUTURE SYMBOL OF PEACE? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?”

“Down, Bakugou. Good boy.”

“Deku, put a leash on your boyfriend before I explode his face.”

“That’s not very heroic, Kaachan.”

Pausing his attempts to reign in his class, Aizawa groans. “You three never change, do you?”

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simkjrs · 7 years

Text

know what i’ve made by the marks on my hands, part ii

my spirit academia au, 5k: the one where Izuku breaks in. (part 1)

–

The plan, otherwise known as Operation Restore Eraserhead’s Quirk Without Him Knowing It, is a little bit disastrous from the very beginning, simply due to the sheer disadvantage Izuku has. Eraserhead’s guardian spirit, at his request, takes a thorough look through the building and gathers information on all the measures put into place to catch Izuku. The prognosis starts no good and moves to worse. In addition to the cameras, there are also a few heroes keeping watch on the perimeter, and apparently they have actual traps set up in case he slips by them, too. Izuku, on the other hand, has his clothes, a pocketknife, and a pen.

But Izuku is nothing if not resourceful, and there is absolutely nothing saying he has to carry out the plan tonight. He and Eraserhead’s spirit spend the entire night casing the building and its surroundings, and then Izuku goes back home and sleeps.

The solution, in the end, is deceptively simple.

Izuku has been restoring people’s Quirks by creating a gateway between himself and their spirit, allowing him to find and destroy the barrier that’s blocking their access to their guardian spirit’s power. He’s done this by drawing an abbreviated gateway glyph over the node of spiritual energy in the forehead. It’s the easiest way to create a gateway — a shortcut, really. The only downside is that it requires sustained and willing physical contact to work.

It is, however, far from the only way to create a gateway, which is why Izuku is standing here at 2 a.m. with a can of red spray paint in his hand.

Clever, the spirit says, sounding grudgingly impressed. You are remarkably adept at Script.

Izuku shakes the can and finishes spraying the last glyph onto the ground. “Comes with practice,” he says glibly. He takes a step back and surveys his work, then looks back up at the spirit. “How does it look?”

Remarkable. It is… simple, elegant, though your handwriting leaves much to be desired. I have no doubt it will work.

Izuku smiles a little at that. If Eraserhead’s spirit is as old and powerful as he thinks it is, then it’s quite the compliment he’s just received. “Thanks. I guess the only thing left now is the hard part.”

The Script he’s just written encircles the building that Eraserhead is waiting in. It gives the subject — Izuku, in this case, marked by a simple trigram over his heart — access to the spirit of the object of the sentence. As long as Izuku stands somewhere within the Script, it will work. The only problem is that the object of the sentence, Eraserhead, needs to be marked, too.

Izuku has designed the Script to be as smooth as possible so that no matter how messily he marks Eraserhead, it should work. To that end, Izuku has brought two weapons: an ink stamp with its own ink refill, one he designed himself long ago, and a sharpie. As long as he gets the glyph onto Eraserhead’s skin, he wins.

First, though, he has to bypass the security. Izuku shifts his sight to the second plane and surveys the pretend apartment the heroes have set up. Eraserhead’s aura is in a room on the second floor; he can see a few other auras moving slowly about. There’s someone on the roof as well. The cameras, as they’ve been installed, capture almost every entrance within their fields of vision — and Eraserhead’s spirit has helpfully informed him that there are cameras at every single stairwell, too. Unsurprisingly, the elevators are turned off.

This would be a tricky situation to get in and out of unnoticed. But the thing is, Izuku doesn’t need to go unnoticed — he only needs to go unrecognized, and be quick about his work. Subtlety is not really a problem here.

Which is why he doesn’t worry too much about avoiding notice as he walks up to the building. Oh, he has his hood tugged over his head and his disposable face mask on, and he avoids the most obvious cameras — but he pretends he doesn’t notice the others, circling to the back of the building and lockpicking one of the basement windows to get into the below-ground rooms.

“Where did you say it was?” he whispers to Eraserhead’s spirit, pulling his disposable face mask more firmly up around his face.

Follow me, the spirit answers, sweeping out the door. Izuku slips out after him into a hall and follows him to another locked door. It only takes a few minutes to pick this lock, and when he slips in, his eyes land on a gray box attached to the wall. Perfect. Izuku picks the lock on the box, too, and when he finally gets it open, he flips the circuit breaker. Anything running on the electricity in this building will go out.

He switches his sight to the second plane and gauges everyone’s auras. Most of them are flaring with surprise, but a few have already taken action, moving through the floors and probably towards the stairs. Izuku needs to get to his goal before someone arrives and flips the circuit breaker back. He unlatches the window in the room and turns to the spirit. “Okay, time for part two. How close can you get me to Eraserhead?”

The spirit just tosses its head as if to say who do you think I am, and then it grabs Izuku’s jacket in its mouth and tosses him onto its back. Izuku winds his hands in its fur as the spirit leaps out the window and into the air. The night wind rushes around him and tangles playful hands through his hair, and the spirit beneath him almost seems to dissolve into movement, its fur and aura billowing into mist. It bounds through the air, circling around the building and towards the room where Izuku can see Eraserhead’s tense aura fluctuating with little spikes of frustration. A moment later, Eraserhead’s aura moves away, further into the building, as if he was called away.

Izuku seizes the chance. “To his room,” he whispers to the spirit urgently. It soars swiftly to the window, hovering as Izuku leans over with his lockpicking tools. To his surprise, the window doesn’t have any higher security than any of the other locks in this place — it takes a mere thirty seconds to shimmy the lock, and then it’s child’s play for the spirit to fly him in. It’s almost as if they… oh, right. They want him to show up and restore Eraserhead’s Quirk.

Izuku quickly closes and locks the window behind him so Eraserhead won’t realize anything is off about his room, and he gives a quick cursory scan of his surroundings. A desk with a few screens on them, bundles of wires running amok, a couple chairs, a mattress, a closet. Perfect. Izuku ducks into the closet and cramps himself into the corner, behind the few behemoths of shadowy machines crammed in there. He’s just gotten the door closed when the lights in the room suddenly flicker on. Someone’s fixed the circuit breaker, then. Izuku looks through the building on the second plane and spots Eraserhead’s aura coming up the stairs, and the other heroes scattering around the building — probably to try and find him.

Eraserhead’s spirit glides in through the closet door. This plan of yours is rather risky, it observes. And what will you do, if he chooses to search through the room?

“All I can really do is hope for the best,” Izuku admits. He should probably feel more worried about it, but the whole night feels rather surreal to him, almost as if he’s watching some outside event transpire through a window. “Besides, you’re going to do your best to minimize that risk, right?”

The spirit’s nine tails wave pensively behind it as it watches him, something inscrutable passing through its eyes. Then it dips its head and glides back out through the closet door.

When Eraserhead walks back into the room, the spirit blankets the room with its aura. Izuku shivers as it passes over him, a quicksilver mercury that sends little sparks from his nerves shaking down his spine. It emanates confidence, security, and a strange and sleepy warmth that tries to seep into Izuku’s bones. Only the sheer wrongness of it — how unfamiliar the energy, how invasive it is — keeps his eyes from falling shut.

Eraserhead won’t notice. His guardian spirit’s energy has been flowing through him his whole life; a nudge to his mood won’t ring any bells. If all goes well, Eraserhead will feel just a little more relaxed — a little more tired — and hopefully, safe enough to let his guard down. That’s when Izuku will strike.

He hears the chair at the desk squeak as Eraserhead sits down and rolls up to the screen, letting out a sigh. A quick check on the second plane shows Eraserhead’s aura fading, jumping back into vibrancy, and fading again, gently pulsing with the edge of sleep. Already, it is fluttering on the edge of third plane, towards dreams and visions and glimpses of what goes unseen by day. Izuku may not have to wait for long.

Eraserhead speaks quietly to the other heroes with some telecommunications device. From the little snatches Izuku can hear, they’re still searching within the perimeter for him. One of them has discovered the spray-painted Script, and is in the process of copying it down on paper. “It’s — there’s something weird about it,” says the voice. It sounds warm and familiar somehow, as if Izuku has heard him before. “I’m looking at it from less than four feet away, but it’s still blurry. I can’t — I can’t quite make it out. It’s like it changes every time I look back.”

Eraserhead just tells the person on the other end to do his best, but to stay on alert. Then he checks in with the other people on his team. He asks one of them if there’s any coffee in the vicinity, but judging from the way he sighs, the answer is no. “I’ll make do without,” Eraserhead tells the person on the other end of the line. “As long as we check in periodically, there should be no problem.”

Izuku waits in the long dark, training his every sense on tracking Eraserhead’s movement through the room; strains them so far that he barely notices the cold-metal touch of the spirit’s aura fluttering at the edge of him. He is nothing but sense: the rustle of cloth as Eraserhead crosses the floor; the quiet hum of the computer fans and swift fingers tapping on the keyboard; the drowsy, hypnotic pulse of Eraserhead’s aura as he moves ever closer to sleep. He waits so long and still he forgets he has ever been anything but waiting, until Eraserhead’s aura smooths into the third plane and passes into dream.

And then Izuku remembers that he needs to breathe. He sucks in a deep lungful of air, breathes out, rubs his eyes and feels how his legs have cramped up from staying so long and still in the dark. A minute later, when he’s worked the pins and needles out of them, he carefully opens the closet and lets himself out

Eraserhead has nodded off in his seat, in front of the monitors displaying footage from the cameras. His guardian spirit hovers next to him, watching with a plaintive sort of look to its face, and its fur casts a ghostly white glow on the room that Izuku knows no one else would see.

Hurry, the spirit says, so soft it barely carries.

Izuku nods and gingerly approaches, pulling his stamp from his pocket. One of Eraserhead’s hands rests limply on the armrest, and gently, lightly, Izuku presses the stamp to skin. It only takes a touch of his energy to burn the Script to life. The glyph lights up across all three of the planes Izuku can access at a glance, unfolding into impossible shapes and a promise yet to be made, pulsing with anticipation of what is to come.

Eraserhead shifts and mutters. Izuku freezes. But the spirit only leans forward calmly, and its heavy aura presses down on them both and sings with safety comfort home.

Rest easy, the spirit murmurs. Its words ring with a power or truth that was not there before. There is nothing that will harm you here.

And Eraserhead’s aura, previously fluttering its way awake, slips away from the boundary of the second plane and smooths back down to calm.

Izuku lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding and mouths a thank you to the spirit. It merely inclines its head. You should depart as soon as possible, it informs him. Shall we go?

He holds up a finger to say, one minute. Pulling his marker pen from his pocket, he writes directly on the desk, heedless of property damage. It’ll wash off easily, anyhow. Don’t touch the stamp, he writes. It’ll come off as soon as your Quirk comes back. Until then, stay here and let it do its job. After a moment of consideration, he adds, Toodles, and a small smiley face.

That should take care of things, in case Eraserhead wakes up before Izuku can finish restoring his Quirk. Tucking the marker away, he carefully climbs onto the desk and unlatches the window. Without prompting, the spirit sweeps him onto its back and carries him out the window. A quick scan of the second plane reveals their path is mostly clear, and Izuku leans forward on the spirit as it flies away.

They alight a few blocks away, where Izuku spray-painted the first sigils of the Script. Izuku slips to the ground and lands lightly on his feet, and when he looks back up at the spirit, it nods curtly at him. I will keep watch as you do your work, it announces, and with a flick of its tails, it disappears.

Izuku lets out a slow breath. “Right,” he says. “Time to fix his Quirk.”

He bends down and presses his hands to the marks on the pavement, closing his eyes and sending a tendril of his energy down its length, and in his mind’s eye, the Script lights up. Good; it is still complete. Izuku takes a deep breath and, gathering his energy, channels it into the Script.

It blooms to life, unfolding through the planes in a burst of white light. Blazing brightest of all in his mind’s eye is Eraserhead, marked by the stamp on his hand. Izuku takes hold and flows into the gateway that opens into his mind. Eraserhead’s spirit scorches like plague and cold, but there is vitality to it like the tundra in spring. Far to the edges, the channels are stoppered up, and just like before, Izuku lets his energy surge through the channels and break down the dam.

The cold touch of Eraserhead’s guardian spirit bursts back in, whirling like the north wind and singing with triumphant joy. But there is something oddly narrow about the channels, places where the grooves are uneven and cannot quite carry the energy right. Izuku hesitates, but he can’t resist: he carves the channels smooth, molds them just a bit until everything flows, and only then does he let himself be carried out the gateway. A moment to gently close it behind him, and he returns to himself with a dizzying falling sensation, satisfied.

Then he realizes that he is falling, and only barely catches himself before he can faceplant on the ground. His entire body seems to burn faintly, as if his muscles have all gone a minute without air. Exhaustion hits him like a truck. Oh well, he reflects. At least I didn’t knock myself unconscious this time.

Eraserhead’s spirit appears again with a pleased gleam to its eyes. Well done, it says. Let us return you to your home.

Izuku nods and climbs to his feet, feeling oddly heavy and light all at once. The paint used to write the Script has lost its color, and already, it is flaking away and blowing down the street. Soon, there will be no trace of it at all.

“Let’s go,” he agrees, and reaches to climb onto the spirit’s back.

Its eyes crease into a smile. But before either of them can move, someone shouts, “Wait!” and a blurry gray-stone spirit tackles the fox spirit away.

Izuku whirls around, pulling his face mask up further along his nose. There — a boy his age, with spiky red hair and diamond-sharp teeth, hurtling towards him at full speed. — It’s Red Riot, the hero-in-training who debuted the day Suneater lost his Quirk. He glances to the side, but — Eraserhead’s spirit is snapping and snarling, grappling with the hulking stone creature that must be Red Riot’s guardian spirit. He will find no help there. Izuku turns and bolts.

“Hey, hang on—!” Red Riot shouts. Footsteps pound on the pavement behind him. He’s too afraid to look back, as if the act of it might bring the hero closer to his heels. Instead, he turns a sharp corner into an alleyway and vaults himself over the fence. He lands with a somersault, and then he’s on his feet and running again. Red Riot lets out an exclamation of surprise; the fence rattles even as Izuku pelts away.

But he’s mostly running on adrenaline. He expended more energy than he should have, fixing Eraserhead’s Quirk, and he hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in weeks. Izuku weaves wildly through the streets, pulling on every trick and acrobatic feat he’s ever taught himself to be as fast and tricky as possible, but he’s slowing down. As soon as he can no longer hear Red Riot on his heels, he takes a couple turns into a narrow street and nearly collapses. He manages to catch himself on one knee, leaning against the wall with one hand, and he just stays there for a while, panting harshly and waiting for his fearfully beating heart to bring itself back down.

“Gotcha!”

Izuku spins around, just in time to be tackled to the ground by Red Riot. His hood gets dragged off his head by the impact, and his face mask gets torn off, too. He shouts and twists, and when that doesn’t work, tries to headbutt Red Riot’s face. But the hero-in-training’s aura flares, and a stone-hard armor of spiritual energy grows over him on the second plane. The impact hurts Izuku much more than it hurts the red-haired boy, and when he recoils, he accidentally hits his head on the pavement too. His head rings. He thinks he can taste blood. — No, that’s definitely blood, dripping down from his nose, apparently. He must have overdone it with the Script tonight.

Red Riot’s grip loosens; he even has the audacity to look concerned. “Hey, are you okay?”

“Just peachy,” Izuku snaps out, flaring what little energy he has left to feel out the armor Red Riot has grown.

“Er, yeah,” says Red Riot, looking a bit awkward now. “Sorry about all this, but—”

Izuku channels his spiritual energy to his mouth and bites. The armor parts before his energy like butter, and his teeth sink into the flesh of Red Riot’s arm.

The red-haired boy yelps and yanks his arm away. It’s opening enough for Izuku to push him off, scramble to his feet, and take off. He only gets a few steps before Red Riot tackles him again, though, and moments later he’s pinned face-down to the ground. Damn it. Izuku tries to wriggle out of his grasp, but Red Riot twists his arm and pushes it up his back and the pain is enough to make him gasp and finally be still.

“Hey, calm down,” Red Riot says, sounding as though Izuku is the one making this difficult, where does he even get off doing that? “I’m not gonna hurt you! I just want to talk.”

“Oh, sure, you just want to talk,” Izuku says, wild with disbelief. “That’d be more believable if you didn’t set a trap for me.”

“Wha — you knew?”

“Right, because it’s so hard to notice all the patrols and traps and cameras—”

“Are you kidding me? We tried so hard to make sure no one would notice!”

“Well, try harder next time!”

“What kind of logic is that? — and if you knew it was a trap, why did you come?”

“Because I love waking up at two in the morning to go traipsing across the city and help some ungrateful pro hero who decided it was a good idea to risk losing his Quirk — obviously it’s the fucking delight of my life—”

“We’re not ungrateful! We just wanted to get into contact with you! We’re trying to—”

“No thanks,” says Izuku.

“Aw, come on! You didn’t even hear me out!”

“Sure, I’ll hear you out when you aren’t — fucking — pinning me to the ground,” Izuku bites out. “Let’s have a rational conversation when you’re grinding my face into the gravel — I sure do love a five star meal of coercion with a side dish of pain—”

“I’m not trying to coerce you,” Red Riot says, sounding almost shocked.

“Then get off me.”

“Promise not to run again?”

“It’s my free rights as a citizen,” Izuku says. “And if I’m not being detained or arrested then I have every right to run — and if I am being detained, why wouldn’t I run—”

“Please,” says Red Riot. “We just need some information.”

“Why are you even putting up a pretense of negotiation,” Izuku says. “We all know who has the upper hand here.”

“Pretense of,” Red Riot repeats, and then he’s quiet for a moment. Izuku does his best to beam let go let go let go straight into his head. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t work. “Let’s just — go to the heroes,” Red Riot says, sounding a bit uncertain now. “They’ll know how to explain it better.”

“No,” Izuku says, so immediately and violently he almost takes himself aback with the force of it. He somehow finds the energy to briefly throw Red Riot off his back, and they scuffle anew — but once again, Red Riot knocks him down and holds him there, this time face-to-face. This is getting real old.

“Look,” Izuku says, and licks his dry lips. “If you let me go right now, I’ll answer three of your questions truthfully. If you arrest me, I swear to every spirit I know I’ll fill your audio transcripts with every single bit of bullshittery I can pull.” Which is admittedly not a lot, but Red Riot doesn’t have to know that.

Red Riot’s brows furrow, and he tilts his head and does this little pouty thing while considering Izuku’s proposal. “And you have to listen to our request.”

“For one minute, and once that time is up, you won’t try and stop me from leaving again,” Izuku counters.

“Five minutes.”

“Three, and within that time you ask your questions.”

Red Riot screws up his face in thought. “You promise?”

“Seriously?” Izuku says. But Red Riot doesn’t budge, just trains his weirdly honest and intensely earnest gaze on Izuku, and he just knows that he won’t get anywhere if he doesn’t give his word. He closes his eyes, resigned. “I promise to uphold the terms of this deal if you do,” he says, and even as he says it, he can feel the promise binding him, sinking its hooks deep into his blood and marrow.

Red Riot studies him for a moment more, and then he nods once. “Okay.” He releases Izuku, and Izuku immediately scrambles to his feet and puts some distance between them. Red Riot is still watching him, a little bit tense, still looking as though he’s ready to chase after Izuku at a moment’s notice. Hah, as if Izuku can do that now.

“Well?” he says, wiping the blood away from his nose as best as he can before replacing his hood over his head and pulling on the drawstrings. “What do you want to know?”

“You’ll really answer?”

Izuku sighs. “I promised, didn’t I? Hurry up. Clock’s ticking.”

“Okay, got it. Wow, you really don’t mess around.” Red Riot scratches his head. “This is a lot of pressure to put on someone on the spot, you know? Uh… Me and the hero agencies I’m workin’ with — we’re trying to hunt down the Eight Precepts of Death, since they’re responsible for the Quirk-breaking drugs and all. There’s a girl we need to save to do that, but we can’t find any information on where she is. We need that info, and we were hoping you could provide that.” He looks up at Izuku through his lashes hopefully, and the golden-dusk light of the street lamps catches on his irises, lighting them up from within.

“You are picking the worst possible person to help you, ever,” says Izuku.

“Not true! You’re pretty fast, dude, and whatever you’re doing to fix people’s Quirks is really useful,” Red Riot protests.

“You would think that,” Izuku says flatly. “Where do you even get the idea that I know anything about this? I’m not the right person to ask.”

“You somehow managed to find where we set up the trap,” Red Riot says. “You’re getting your information somehow. And you decided to help, even knowing that this was a trap.”

“Sure, under duress,” Izuku snorts. Specifically, the duress of feeling horrifically guilty if Eraserhead never got his Quirk back just because Izuku decided not to come.

Red Riot frowns. “Are you being forced to do this?” he asks, and, “We can help you! We’re heroes; it’s our job to protect people.”

Izuku just looks at him for a moment. “Thanks,” he says finally, “but even if I did need help you wouldn’t be able to help me. I also can’t help you, despite what you think. Ask your questions.”

Red Riot looks like he’s about to protest for a moment, but then he bites his lip, probably just as aware of the minutes ticking by as Izuku is. “What’s your real name?”

Izuku stares, surprised. And then he can’t help but let out a startled laugh — because that’s such a clever question, a wealth of information, and it would have forced Izuku to give up almost every advantage he had… if he had been any other person. “I don’t have one,” Izuku says. “Next.”

“What do you mean, you…” Red Riot shakes his head. “Okay, nevermind. Since you don’t have a real name, what name do other people use for you?”

He is really going for Izuku’s identity. “Some people call me Deku,” he says. Technically, it’s true. At this point, more people call him Deku than by his legal name.

Red Riot runs a hand through his hair. “Do you know, or could you find out, where the Eight Precepts’ headquarters are located, currently?”

“No,” Izuku says, “and possibly yes, but…” How should he put this. “…I’d rather take my chances deep diving in the Pacific without any gear.”

“You feel that strongly?”

“I said I’d answer truthfully,” Izuku says. He promised, anyways, and he’s bound to his word.

At that moment, he feels a flare of energy, and something blankets itself over him, heavy and cold and stifling. Izuku shudders. For a moment he can’t breathe, can’t move, but then the feeling recedes and he looks behind him.

“Is something wrong?” Red Riot asks, shifting on his feet to a fight-ready stance.

Izuku sweeps the second plane. It’s mostly quiet — but there are a few auras in the distance, moving, closing in, and there’s one signature across the street in particular that Izuku recognizes instantly. Of course Eraserhead is here and back on his feet already. He sighs. “It’s fine. But remember your side of the deal. Okay?”

He can feel the exact moment that the binding of his promise releases him. And then he’s running past Red Riot and swinging himself up onto the fire escape of one of the alleyway buildings, eyes trained on the roof. He can hear people bursting into motion after him, voices crackling on their communications devices. One last burst of speed and Izuku has vaulted himself onto the roof, wincing — he offers a mental apology to anyone he’s accidentally woken with the noise — and runs across the rooftop and jumps across the alleyway to the next building. It’s a moment’s work to scramble back down to the street, and then he runs for it.

Eraserhead’s aura pulses behind him, blankets his spirit and freezes it with the same mercury-cold touch as his guardian spirit’s power. All of Izuku’s muscles seize; he trips and falls to the ground, skin scraping open on the hard asphalt. He can’t breathe. He can’t move. He tries to flare his own energy and burn out the freezing cold of Eraserhead’s aura, but his energy is slow and frozen and refuses to budge. He feels like sleep paralysis has set over him, only now he’s perfectly lucid and aware for the burn of his lungs and the footsteps rapidly approaching and there’s not a single thing he can do.

“—just fell over—”

“—shouldn’t have that kind of effect on—”

And then Eraserhead’s aura retracts, and Izuku gasps for air. He hauls himself to his feet and runs. There’s no time to look back, but — too late.

White bandages wrap around his legs and pull his feet from under him. Izuku nearly eats the dirt again, but he manages to catch himself on his elbow and roll over, one arm raised to — to what? Fight an officer of public law? And then Eraserhead is there, and he grabs Izuku’s wrists, and something cold latches onto them with a snap.

Izuku lowers his hands and stares at the new pair of handcuffs gleaming mirthfully at him in the lamplight.

“You,” Eraserhead announces, “are under arrest.”

#simk writes #my spirit academia #bnha fanfiction #is there a more ideal way for izuku to introduce himself. i dont think so #have some more incredibly self indulgent writing that is solely for the purpose of entertaining myself #thanks @salvainterra for proofreading <:

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five-rivers · 3 years

Text

Long Night in the Valley, Chapter 6

Plans were made.

And discarded.

Different plans were made.

These were also discarded.

The problem (besides the fact that their best planners (except Yaoyorozu) were out of commission) was that no one knew what needed to be done. If anything. Yes, Midoriya had run out of the testing center. Yes, the whole situation where Midoriya was initially placed in a group apart from all the rest of them was shady. Yes, the fact that Aizawa and the other half of class was still missing was distressing.

But they didn’t know what was actually happening. They didn’t know if the others needed help, or what help they would need. They didn’t know why Midoriya was running, chased by heroes of all things. Jirou had wondered out loud if Midoriya had been mind-controlled by a villain with a quirk like Shinsou’s. In response, Kaminari had a (brief) breakdown agonizing about whether he had inadvertently helped a villain kidnap his friend.

What a mad banquet of darkness.

Luckily, they were training for… well, not situations like these, to be honest, but situations. Just. In general. Dark, mysterious situations, where one wrong step could send a person plummeting into an abyss of misery.

Anyway.

When in such a vexing a perilous situation, the thing to do, as Momo had pointed out, was gather information.

Was Jirou plugged into the wall? Yes. Did Shouji manifest enough ears and eyes to make even Fumikage slightly disturbed? Yes. Did Yaoyorozu make tiny listening devices that fit on the mice and insects that Kouda had called? Yes. Did Kaminari spontaneously manifest hacking skills that no one knew about and then deny that they were hacking skills? Yes. Had Dark Shadow pressed herself flat to sneak under doors and temporary room partitions?

Also, yes.

He tugged on Dark Shadow with his mind, directing her to return.

“Find anything new?” he asked. Tsuyu, his current partner in not-crime-quite-yet and lookout, leaned closer as well, interested.

“The lady whose quirk they were using passed out,” reported Dark Shadow. “Everyone she used it on is still asleep.”

“Nothing about Midori?” asked Tsuyu.

Dark Shadow’s facial expressions were often limited, but, this time, her scowl was clear. “Stupid stuff.”

“Like?”

Dark Shadow huffed, and Fumikage felt her annoyance. “Like he’s a villain or a spy. Stupid.”

Tsuyu closed her eyes and swallowed with obvious distaste.

“Do you think that’s why he ran? It seems unlike him.”

“Huh?” said Dark Shadow. “Midori didn’t run.”

“What are you talking about, Dark Shadow?” asked Fumikage. “Speak clearly.”

Dark Shadow elbowed him. “Midori’s friends ran!”

“You mean Ochako, Todoroki, and Iida?” asked Tsuyu.

“No, they’re still asleep. His friends. Like you and me are friends, Fumi!”

“You mean his quirk?”

“Uhhuh,” said Dark Shadow, bobbing. “They’re like us. Isn’t it obvious?”

“Not really,” said Tsuyu.

Fumikage leaned and against the wall and slid down to put his head in his hands. “What a mad banquet of darkness, indeed. It is as if we journey at night, through a verdant and shadowy valley—”

“Come on, we have to tell the others,” said Tsuyu, nudging him.

“What happened?” asked Hitoshi, softly, not quite believing what he’d heard. He rubbed his fingers over the folds of his artificial vocal cords, stored in the top pocket of his backpack. Legally speaking, he wasn’t supposed to have it, or any hero support gear, outside the school he wasn’t licensed, even provisionally. But Hizashi had insisted, and Kayama-sensei didn’t object, so…

“According to the Hero Commission,” said Hizashi, voice tighter than his hands around the wheel, “Shouta and some of the 1-A students were targeted by a villain at the testing center.”

“What? What villain? Shigaraki?” That was the one that had been targeting 1-A again and again and again. The one that had hurt him so badly at the USJ.

“No,” said Hizashi. “They said it was Midoriya.”

Hitoshi blinked, his brain first trying to find a villain that matched the name before shoving his fellow student’s face into his mind’s eye. “You mean, he’s the one that wound up fighting the villain. How many bones did he break this time? Or did he get a new quirk?”

“No,” said Kayama-sensei. “They’re really saying that Midoriya is a villain.”

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” stated Hitoshi. “They think the second coming of All Might sunshine child is a villain? If he got locked in Tartarus, half the population would, I don’t know, start confessing their sins and become model citizens before the day was out. If his quirk wasn’t bone-breaking nonsense, I’d say it was the power of friendship.” He stopped, considered that last sentence. “Wait, this is about his quirk, isn’t it?”

“We don’t know,” said Hizashi.

“They’re saying he kidnapped All Might.”

Hitoshi wondered if this was what people felt like when he used his quirk on them, because his brain had just bluescreened and was struggling to restart.

“They’re what?” screeched Hizashi. It was a good thing he was the one driving the car. Hitoshi winced and covered his ears.

“Didn’t All Might steal Vlad-sensei’s car?” asked Hitoshi, feeling dazed. “How do you get from that, to Midoriya kidnapping him from across town.”

“I don’t know,” said Kayama, “but it’s all over Heronet and the commission is starting to release it to news networks.”

“That has to be the- the stupidest thing I ever heard! I’d put more money on Yagi kidnapping Midoriya,” said Hizashi, loudly and angrily.

“What the rat god said before we left makes much more sense now,” said Kayama, mournfully.

Hitoshi blanched at her reference to the principal. But then curiosity got the better of him. “What did he say?”

“That to keep custody of all our staff and students, we were going to have to be creative.”

Hizashi had expected many things upon arriving at the testing center. Being refused access to the unconscious teacher and students was one of them. Obstructive bureaucracy was one of them. People telling him something was illegal or forbidden by protocol when he knew it wasn’t was one of them. Chaos was one of them. Confusion was one of them. Lack of organization was one of them.

In these things, he was not disappointed.

What he didn’t expect, however, was for the remaining half of Shouta’s class to not only be one hundred percent down with kinda-sorta kidnapping, but to have already laid a lot of the groundwork for it already.

Maybe he should have. But he didn’t. How was it that Shouta, aka Mr. Expulsion, aka Mr. ‘you have no potential,’ had kept all the students from a class that had no scruples against committing things that most people would consider crimes? A class that, having been given time to bond, would probably collectively turn to villainy rather than betray one of their number?

He paused and considered his long relationship with Shouta. Mentally squinted. Never mind. He could see it now.

Well. It wasn’t as if Hizashi wasn’t like that, too. He’d never really considered expelling any of them. Except Mineta. Grape Juice was on thin ice.

“We most likely would have acted already,” Yaoyorozu said as the rest of the class distracted the commission officials who were supposedly supervising the pickup of the children, “but we didn’t know what we’d do after. No escape plan.”

Reasonable. The bus driver (Green Light, the Transit Hero) had gone back to the school after dropping them off and had to turn around once he heard the news.

But, now, Recovery Girl was coming around with a fleet of ambulances from the hero hospital UA contracted with. A hospital that was, incidentally, not the same as the one the Hero Commission wanted to bring all the people still affected by Saito’s quirk.

Ambulances had room for riders. It was unorthodox, but it would work.

“Well, you have one now,” said Hizashi, quietly. No one expected him to be quiet. It made him almost invisible when he was.

“I know you already have a plan,” interjected Hitoshi. “But is there anything I can do?”

Momo blinked. “Actually, yes. We could get them out anyway, but it would help a lot if we had the keys.”

The search for Uraraka hadn’t been going well before the city started to fall apart around them. In fact, it had been going incredibly poorly, because various versions of All Might kept popping up to try and punch Suzuki’s face off. Literally. At least two of the All Mights had declared that as their intention prior to attacking.

Tenya wasn’t sure if he should be concerned about his friend’s mental state or baffled about his incredibly violent mental view of All Might.

Perhaps the eyeless villain in Kamino had left a strong impression on him? But All Might couldn’t have been responsible for the villain’s injuries! It was All Might. He hardly ever injured villains he took down.

On the other hand, the villain at Kamino had been terrifyingly strong. If there were to be an exception to the rule, he was certainly it.

But the real reason, in Tenya’s opinion, the search had been going poorly was Suzuki. The man would not stop talking. His theories were even worse than Todoroki’s!

“That All Might is fake,” he was saying. “He isn’t even using his quirk, just like Midoriya.”

“I think we all know that the All Might that exists in Midoriya’s mind is not, in fact, the real All Might,” said Aizawa.

“This destruction is just another ploy, another distraction—”

“We get it,” said Aizawa. “But it isn’t centered around us, so, logically, it must be centered around Uraraka.”

Suzuki scoffed. “We should be looking for what Midoriya is trying to hide.”

“The only reason we aren’t beating you up right now,” said Aizawa, “is that we are looking for Uraraka. So, shut up.”

“What about me?”

Tenya whipped around to see Uraraka stooped over behind them, breathing heavily, hands on her knees. “Sorry,” she said, “I ran all the way here.”

Aizawa hurried over to her. Tenya noted that he never quite turned his back to Suzuki.

“What happened?” he asked. “Where were you?”

“D- Izuku wanted to talk to me,” she said. “He said something dangerous was about to happen, but if we went farther in, we could maybe get out?”

Under normal circumstances, the overly vague report would have been cause for scolding, but Tenya could see how her eyes flicked to Suzuki. There were details she didn’t want him to hear.

“Did he say how to go further in?” asked Aizawa.

“No. That happened and he ran off.” She gestured towards another building that was slowly collapsing.

“Wait a moment,” said Suzuki. “If you’re here, what’s there?”

“Uh,” said Uraraka.

“He told you, didn’t he? What did he say?”

“Excuse me!” said Tenya. “You are being very rude right now! Uraraka has just come back from a harrowing experience!”

Tenya was not very good at lying, but this wasn’t really a lie, per-se.

The distinction didn’t seem to matter to Suzuki, who gave him a brief, incredulous look before turning back to the gathering storm. “He doesn’t want us to see this.”

“Don’t you dare,” said Aizawa, eyes narrowing.

Suzuki didn’t listen.

Tenya caught up to him without any trouble and punched him in the back of the head. “Ow,” said Tenya, who had forgotten he wasn’t wearing his hero costume.

“Did you break your fingers?” asked Aizawa as he dragged Suzuki back by the foot.

“I’m going to have you all arrested and stripped of you licenses, unless—”

“Because we didn’t help you with an illegal interrogation? No, you’re not,” said Aizawa.

“Nana!”

The voice bounced off the buildings and was swept away by the wind.

“Nana! Master, where are you?”

It was the voice of the younger, vigilante All Might.

“Is he calling the name or the number?” asked Uraraka.

“Master! Please! Answer me!”

With a shuddering heave, the building right next to them tipped over, falling into rubble before it even hit the ground. The storm wind, heavy with rain and lightning, whipped down the street with all the force of a hurricane. Tenya had to brace himself and cover his eyes.

When he could see again, it was to discover Suzuki had run off again. Towards the fallen building.

Tenya was honestly torn between letting him get beaten up by whatever had flattened the building, whether it be Midoriya’s subconscious, the illusory All Might, or something worse. Although, arguably, all those were the same the same thing.

But Tenya was training to be a hero. Heroes couldn’t pick and choose who to save. He, and everyone else took off after Suzuki.

They all stopped, though, when a boy in a torn UA uniform clambered over the rubble. The boy cupped his hands around his mouth. “Nana!”

That hair was recognizable from a mile away, not to mention the height. All Might. Yet a different version. Tenya had known UA was All Might’s alma mater, but seeing him in a uniform like this, seeing him vulnerable, not in the way of a man at the end of his career, but as someone just starting out, someone like them, was oddly humbling and completely terrifying.

What pushed him to this? What put that distraught tone in his voice? What put that bloody slash in his uniform and bruised his face?

Tenya had a sinking suspicion he knew what. He didn’t even want to come into contact with the memory of that monster from Kamino.

All Might was scanning the ground, looking for- Looking for something. Someone?

His eyes fell on them, and even from this distance, Tenya could see them widen. All Might began to scramble down the hill.

“You,” he shouted, as he came closer. “You—Underclassmen. Have you seen-?” He gasped for air.

Even Suzuki, from what he could see, looked taken aback.

“Have you seen a woman about—” He hesitated and adjusted his hand downward, to about the height of his chin. Which was still taller than Tenya.

All Might was tall in high school. Or, at least, Midoriya thought All Might was tall in high school.

This was confusing.

“A woman about this tall. She’s—She has black hair, and she wears it, um, half up.” All Might fanned his hand behind his head to illustrate. “She’s a hero. Wears- Wears yellow gloves.” He paused for a moment, eyes flicking from one to the next. “You haven’t seen her.” He whipped back around. “Nana!”

“What even is this supposed to be?” demanded Suzuki.

“Truly,” said Todoroki, “their bond is inspiring. For All Might to tell Midoriya even of this tragedy…”

“Todoroki! That’s entirely inappropriate!” exclaimed Tenya, turning to face his classmate.

The wind picked up again. The buildings began to twinkle.

Earlier, you said something about being a vigilante. What was up with that, anyway?

Midoriya’s voice sounded like it was right next to him, and yet the sound was entirely sourceless.

The colors shifted.

Izuku wasn’t sure if he wanted to curse the bystander culture encouraged by the hero system or bless it for its unintentional effects. Even though Toshinori was clearly suffering, slumped against a wall and shoulders heaving, no one stopped to help him. In fact, most people were averting their eyes, barely looking at him.

Generally speaking, Izuku decided, he’d curse it. In this particular instance, however, it benefitted them.

He looked back and forth before dashing across the street, not caring about jaywalking at the moment. He jogged up to Toshinori, swallowing the name before it left his lips. Right. They were undercover, and the commission definitely knew Toshinori’s real name.

“Dad,” he said instead, and mentally felt himself collide with a wall. Couldn’t he have picked something else? Come up with some fake name? Or just not used a name to begin with. With effort, he picked himself up and his dream-self kept running. “I got your text,” he said, instead, for the benefit of anyone listening. He inserted himself under one of Toshinori’s arms. “Let’s go home.”

He smiled at a couple of people who were staring and hoped they wouldn’t report this.

“I can walk, I can walk,” said Toshinori heaving himself off the wall with a shudder. “I’m fine.”

This was a lie. Izuku could still see the flashback playing out in his mind’s eye. Even so, he nodded and tried to give Toshinori space, even as Toshinori put one hand on his shoulder and leaned on it heavily.

This mental invasion was wearing both of them out. No. All of them out. This was not, they reminded him, at all normal.

Five gently pressed ways of dealing with flashbacks into his awareness. Thank goodness for Five and his comparative normalcy.

“We’re okay,” he said. “We’re just on a street in Musutafu. You can feel me, right? And the sidewalk under your feet. And you can hear the traffic and smell the cars.” He kept going.

Toshinori gave a hum of assent after each item Izuku listed, but he could tell it wasn’t enough. He might be able to see and hear, to touch and taste, but he could do the same things to that mental battleground.

“What if,” said Izuku, desperately, “you tell me a story?”

“A story?” rasped Toshinori.

“Y-yeah. Earlier, you said something about being a vigilante. What was up with that, anyway?”

It isn’t well known, said Yagi’s voice as the world came back into focus in an entirely different city with entirely different weather and signage, but I didn’t grow up in a terribly pleasant area.

In fact, there was quite a lot of crime.

Aizawa caught sight of a familiar head of yellow hair positioned above a plain gakuran. The younger version of Yagi was staring down an alleyway.

Suddenly, Aizawa felt himself pulled to stand right behind Yagi. A man with a mutation quirk was being mugged by two young men with fire quirks. He blinked. The scene didn’t change, even behind his eyelids. He couldn’t see his students, or Suzuki.

What was this, a cutscene?

I, ah, rather disliked that. Obviously, my thoughts about become a symbol of peace for the world were, well… Just thoughts. But even then, for my own little corner of the world, I wanted to make a difference.

Yagi, showcasing the fact that he’d always been a bit of an idiot, pulled on a medical mask and threw his bookbag at one of the muggers and punched the other one in the face. At least he wasn’t using his quirk to do it. The villain would have been paste on the side of the building.

On the other hand, this was presumably some imagining of Midoriya’s, possibly based on a story he heard from All Might, if the voiceover was anything to go by.

Oh, said Midoriya, I did that a couple of times. Stop a mugging, I mean.

I thought you said you weren’t involved in any vigilantism.

It wasn’t vigilantism! They were just things I happened to run into, and I couldn’t just not help.

Sometimes, I wonder if your quirk really isn’t something like a villain magnet…

The scene shifted again, making Aizawa feel dizzy, even though he wasn’t moving. Except, maybe that was why he felt dizzy. Motion sickness.

I never knew my parents. I grew up in a foster home.

Aizawa blinked, and the scene became clear. A small apartment building with a tiny, tattered lawn. Someone’s shoe had been left on the sidewalk in front, and Yagi was climbing the stairs to the door.

Then, Aizawa was inside, and internally wincing at the noise level. Screaming preteens were so far out of his comfort level you couldn’t see it with a telescope.

(The exception, of course, was Eri.)

As he watched, Yagi was shoved several times, tripped, and had a water-manipulation quirk used to drop something that Aizawa suspected was toilet water on his head.

Overall, the attitude towards people like us wasn’t quite what it was now, but to be parentless on top of that? Many of the other children at the home thought there had to be something wrong with me. There was a sigh. Judging from what I’ve seen of your memories, I suspect you had the worse time of it.

I had Mom, though.

Aizawa found himself in a small bedroom. Pinned to one of the walls was a corkboard. Which looked distressingly like Todoroki’s. Yagi crossed his arms as he contemplated it.

Once I had built up my confidence, one of the things I was trying to do was find out about a human trafficking ring.

Oh, yeah, those suck.

… Why do I feel like you have personal experience in the subject.

It wasn’t my fault.

Soft, fond laughter filled the room before it was whisked away and replaced with a warehouse that just screamed ‘villain hideout.’

There was a fight.

I tried my best, tried to be sneaky… I knew I wouldn’t win in a straight-out fight. But…

Yagi was surrounded and clearly losing. Then the doors burst open. A figure floated, framed by the threshold, backlit by the streetlights.

First contact, whispered a voice like the wind.

Nana, said Midoriya.

Nana, agreed All Might’s voice. She saved me. I… Didn’t want to get caught. I ran. Went back to the muggings.

And then?

And then—

Another change in scenery. A sidewalk by a stream. Yagi stood in his gakuran a few meters away from a woman in a hero costume. The yellow gloves stood out.

And then, a week later, she found me.

The woman’s head snapped in Aizawa’s direction, and he had just enough time to realize she could see him before the scene glitched out and he was falling through an empty sky.

#bnha #boku no hero academia #fic #my fic #long night in the valley

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