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Published:
2022-12-04
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2023-02-01
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Foresight

Summary:

Izuku's quirk is simple, it tells him exactly what he needs to do.
It tells him to grab an umbrella and that afternoon it rains unexpectedly. It tells him to bring cash and it turns out the card reader is out of order.
His quirk tells him to rob a bank.
Well, why not?
- - -
Does the name All for One mean anything to Izuku? Nope.
Will he tear down the empire of a powerful villain who has been terrorizing Japan for over a century anyway? Sure.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for other works inspired by this one.)

Chapter 1

Summary:

Now with a completed Podfic which can be found here!

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

"Alright, Izuku, are you ready to go?" Momma asks, crouching so she's level with Izuku. "Lunch, backpack, uniform?"

There’s a soft nudging at his hands, a reminder that he needs to get something. 

"I have those, but, umm, there's..." Izuku knows there is something else. What? The feeling of a nudge changes to a soft pull at his wrist, like someone gently tugging at him. "This way."

"Oh, alright then," Momma says, taking his hand and following him to the closet.

Izuku opens the door and reaches onto a shelf above his head, his hand finds a box and he pulls it down to see it.

Bandaids.

The feeling of a soft pull shifts to settle down, a quiet reassurance of a job well done.

"Oh, bandaids," Momma says with an easy smile. "What a good idea, Izuku!"

A good start to his first day of preschool.

 

- - - 

 

Another kid scrapes his knee that day. Before he can begin to cry, Izuku is already there with his bandaid.

His teachers praise him for being so helpful and he gets an extra star on the chart.

 

- - - 

 

That was all it is for a while. A few little intuitions. His hand twitches toward the umbrella as he’s walking out the door and it rains unexpectedly. His hands twitch around problem four on his homework and he finds he’d made a mistake. He brings an extra pencil and gives it to a peer just when a test is starting. Simple things.

He finds he has a certain affinity for plants. His hands always guide him to do the right thing; just the right amount of water, just the right amount of sunlight.

When he’s five, he notices a pair of strange freckles on the backs of his wrists. As he watches, they shift slightly. Dark curving lines begin to grow out of them. Like drawings of vines which flow across his skin. They stretch out toward his fingers and wrap around his knuckles. They’re almost black, with the slightest sheen of green flickering across them.

Izuku watches them for a while, and they guide him to one of his mom’s ferns. He nudges the fronds until the vines around his hands seem content. They shift away again, settling into the pair of freckles on the backs of his wrists. Izuku thinks it might grow out better this way.

Izuku can never quite explain the way that the lines speak to him. It’s nothing like words. And it’s not quite just the shapes that the vines play out along his hands. There’s something deeper underneath. Across his whole chest. Like his entire body is being pulled toward whatever it is he needs to do.

His mother doesn’t understand, but is excited with him and takes him to the quirk doctor.

They name it “Green Grower” and write down that Izuku can make plants grow well. Izuku tries to explain that it’s more than just that, but they tell him that it’s a lovely quirk and that it’s all he needs.

He gives up after a little while. His quirk pulls at his hands just in time to save the doctor’s clipboard from falling off the desk. Izuku doesn’t mention it.

When he and his mom get home they bake a cake together to celebrate how big Izuku has gotten.

Izuku thinks that maybe it’s alright.

 

- - -

 

Izuku thinks about being a hero, but there's no familiar tug at his hands.

He hugs his mom and decides to trust his quirk.

It starts with simple suggestions. One day after school it guides him to an unfamiliar classroom. He opens the door to find the fashion club. Izuku joins.

Izuku doesn’t need to think much. He drifts through life with an absent smile and always has just the thing for the job. He’s content, helping other people and being helped by his quirk. He finds that he doesn’t need much more than that.

The bullying starts after they learn about his quirk. They call him names. Wall flower. Useless.

But it doesn’t last long.

The first time was one day when Izuku was walking down the hallway at school. His hands tug him to the left instead of the right, and he listens. He stumbles on the janitor mopping the floor and he pauses in confusion.

Just a moment after he rounds a corner some other middle schoolers, led by their ringleader Kacchan himself, come running after him. He simply steps to the side and the kids slip on the water covering the floor. They go sliding across the hallway and Izuku shrugs at the janitor before slipping away in the other direction.

The kids that Kacchan led stop bothering Izuku, their pride a little too damaged to try and humiliate him again. 

He brings extra snacks to the fashion club and is invited to weekly game nights. He learns how to sew, how to change apparent body shape with the cut of his pants, and how to change his face with makeup. He follows the example of the other club members and dyes his hair new colors and tries new styles often.

Kacchan never really changes, but suddenly there are other people in the class who are willing to stand up to him.

Izuku trusts his quirk.

 

- - -

 

When he’s eleven years old, his quirk asks him to rob a bank.

Well, it doesn't exactly ask him. All his quirk can do is tell him to do something or go somewhere. So his quirk really just pushes him to buy a ski mask, a hammer, a gun that looks real aside from the bright orange nozzle, and some black paint.

Izuku gets the idea.

The question was whether he should trust what his quirk was telling him to do.

He decides to go with it.

At the very least, it seems interesting.

He paints the nozzle of the fake gun with the black paint. It actually almost looks real.

Izuku wears black clothes, a black backpack, and black gloves.

On the day which his quirk instructs, he leaves home and walks to a bank.

He hesitates for a few moments outside, then follows the feeling in his gut and enters. He takes a strange sort of winding way through the lobby, and Izuku realizes that he's avoiding the cameras.

A minute after he enters an explosion goes off from the back room of the bank. Izuku ducks into one of the cubicles and pulls on the mask. 

Alarms went off from all around them and Izuku peaks around the edge of the cubicle.

“Put your head down!” shouts the leader. “If you’re smart you might just get out of this in one piece.”

“Yeah! What he said!” shouts another.

Something like a dozen villains wearing almost the same thing as Izuku stream into the lobby from the back room, bags of valuables strapped to their backs.

Izuku stares at them, it was almost something out of a movie.

“You!” the leader shouted, pointing at where Izuku is half hidden. “Get out of there, we’ve gotta get out of here quick, stop your lollygagging!”

That was...a word...that this man had decided to use.

Izuku stands up and slips into their pack, holding his gun like it's real. He's the shortest person in the group, but not by much, he fits in almost perfectly. 

“We’re stealing your stuff!” a woman next to Izuku shouts.

“Yeah!” Izuku shouts in solidarity.

They walk right out the front door and into the van that pulls up to the curb. Izuku thinks that this might have been more than he bargained for.

The back of the van is empty save for the benches bolted on both sides. Izuku follows the group and slips into one of the seats. There are no seat belts so Izuku just holds on to the metal handle bolted onto the wall beside him.

The van screeches away from the curb, taking Izuku with it. It keeps moving with breakneck speed through the streets, taking a sharp turn every few seconds. The man next to Izuku sighs theatrically. 

“That was something, wasn’t it? Honestly, I was expecting some heroes or something. How disappointing,” he says, slouching into his seat. He pulls a pack of cigarettes and lit one with the flick of his finger, some kind of fire quirk. He puts the cigarette in his mouth and offers the box to Izuku. 

Izuku takes one to be polite, though he doesn’t have a lighter. Also he is under the impression that eleven years old is too young to smoke cigarettes. But the man soon becomes distracted with talking to the person with horns on the other side of him.

“Wait a second!” the leader from earlier shouts from the front. He’s standing between the driver and passenger seat, hanging onto a handle in the ceiling. He’s counting everyone in the van. “Didn’t we have eleven people?”

Izuku’s heart lurches in his chest. 

“No,” the man beside Izuku responds. “We got twelve.”

“I mean before the bank,” the leader corrects. “I'm sure we had eleven.”

Now everyone is occupied with numbering the people in the van, getting in each other’s way and moving so much that no one can get a good count. The fact that the van is still swaying and turning doesn't help.

“Did you count yourself?” someone calls.

“Of course,” the leader says.

“Did you count the driver?” 

“Aha! I forgot the driver!” the leader crows, wheeling toward the front of the car.

The attention of the van moves to the six-armed man concentrating intently on the road. He is also wearing a ski mask. 

Izuku sees a giant tree branch barreling towards the van, before the six-armed man takes a sudden right turn to dodge it.

“What’s the next turn, boss?” he asks.

“There’s more important things to worry about!” the leader shouts. “Actually, no there aren’t. You were the missing person.”

“Uh, boss,” one bank robber speaks up, “If you missed the driver, doesn’t that mean we now have thirteen people?”

The leader stares at her.

“Oh no,” he whispers, “two imposters.”

The van descends into chaos.

“The groupchat!” shouts the man beside Izuku. “Everyone write what they look like in the groupchat! Then we can find these imposters!”

Everyone takes out their phones. Izuku takes out his too, blindly hoping that this was part of his quirk’s plan.

Izuku suddenly feels a very strong urge to take the phone of the man next to him.

The car lifts off the ground.

It doesn't flip, rather it just starts to go upward. Izuku holds onto the handle above him tightly and stares past the other passengers and through the windshield.

Mount Lady stares back at him. Her face is larger than the entire windshield.

Someone shoots a blast of light at her eyes.

She shouts and flinches back but thankfully doesn’t drop the van. She sets it down roughly on the top of a building. Izuku manages to grab the phone of the man next to him during the chaos.

Someone throws open the back doors of the van. Izuku stands and grabs one of the duffel bags from the floor, then follows as everyone jumps out. They scatter. Izuku’s quirk sends him to the left and he starts to run. Behind him he hears the sound of Kamui Woods starting to gather up the bank robbers.

Izuku runs to the edge of the building and sees that the next one was only a few feet lower and maybe seven feet away from the one he is on.

He jumps, landing mostly on his feet and continuing onward.

His quirk sends him to one of the rooftop doorways, he tries it and finds it locked.

He panics for a second before remembering that he has a hammer.

With a vague sense of guilt he smashes the door handle.

Izuku sends one last glance at the fighting behind him. Kamui Woods is trying to pin down the villains while Mount Lady is rubbing her eyes and holding the driver in one hand.

Izuku rushed through the door, leaving the fight behind him. Then he shucks off his mask as he walks down the stairs. He stuffs the bag he’d grabbed into his backpack and tries to make his face as calm as he can.

He gets to the lobby. People are standing around, glancing idly out the front windows at the sounds of the fight. His quirk isn’t saying anything, so Izuku decides to stay put. He finds a couch and pretends to browse his phone for a while.

Eventually the sounds of fighting die down and people start leaving. Izuku follows.

So it turns out his quirk did have a plan after all.

Izuku walks home.

Once he’s back in the apartment, he calls out for his mom. No response, so she isn’t home, at work then. He trudges to his room and slumps into his chair.

After a few minutes of sitting there, he finally sits back up and grabs his backpack, taking out the hammer, bag, and fake gun. 

He then opens the duffel bag which he grabbed from the pile in the van and pulls open the zipper.

His brain short circuits.

Inside is more money than he has ever seen in one place. Maybe even more than Mom has in her bank account. 

Not knowing what else to do, he closes the bag tightly, then shoves it under his bed.

After some prodding from his quirk, he removes it and instead shoves it into a cubby in his closet. In plain view of anyone who entered his room.

Izuku shifts between his feet and bites his lip, fighting between the urge to hide the bag somewhere sneakier and listening to his quirk.

Eventually the quirk’s history of success wins and he returns to his desk defeated.

Izuku pulls out the phone he’d taken. It's an older model, but not that old.

He presses the home button experimentally and it opens to a lock screen. He stares at it for a long second, then feels a twitch of his fingers.

He reaches out, and follows the delicate twisting and curling of the lines around his hand. It’s half like he’s following the movement with his eyes, half just the feeling of his quirk shifting through his hands.

He types in the phone’s code, digit by digit.

The phone unlocks.

Izuku pokes around the apps for a while, there isn’t much on it but the default apps. Not even any personal texts, just some group chats about setting up the robbery.

Then Izuku realizes what it is.

It’s a crime phone.

The man must have just used it as a burner for whatever shady stuff he was mixed in with.

Why had Izuku grabbed it, though?

Izuku feels a nudge from his quirk. He needs to get something. It's fuzzy, something to do with the phone.

Izuku pokes around, and finds himself gravitating toward the app store. 

Then his quirk nudges him towards the Twitter icon.

Izuku stops to stare at the phone, just to be contrary. Now his quirk was just telling him to make social media. 

His quirk sulkily pulls at Izuku’s gut, and he gives up and downloads Twitter on the criminal’s phone.

He gets to the account setup page, then stops as he’s about to set up an account. His quirk wouldn’t ask him to make it unless there was a good reason. If the account was supposed to be in Izuku’s name, then it would just have him make the account on Izuku’s phone.

What for a handle though?

Izuku ponders it for a bit, then decides on foresight2020, because why not.

He makes the account using the phone number of the phone he stole, then opens the home page to browse through trending topics.

Then his quirk sends him a nudge towards a certain account.

“Why?” Izuku asks out loud.

His quirk continues to nudge.

Oh well.

Time to figure out how to get a friend request from the Pro Hero Hawks.

 

- - -

 

Generally, his quirk doesn't ask much of him. It's just helpful, keeping him from most inconveniences or embarrassments. 

Most things it asks of him made sense within a day or two at most and rarely were they totally crazy. But there are exceptions, like the bank, and like today.

Izuku stands in front of the sketchiest building he’s ever seen and internally curses his quirk.

It’s been a few months since the incident with the bank, he is now twelve years old. Nothing much had happened after that, he just occasionally read through the crime group chat and wondered what exactly the point had been.

He’s wearing heavy makeup which make him look older than he was and has a couple thousand dollars in his pocket.

This is incredibly sketchy.

Izuku walks in anyway.

“What’cha want?” asks an older woman reading a magazine, her feet rested casually on the counter.

“Dunno,” Izuku says, completely honestly. “What can you give me?”

There was a certain art he’d learned from having his quirk. It involved showing up to places and letting people come to their own conclusions about what it was he wanted. These days it went quite smoothly.

The woman looks up at him from over her magazine and then looks him up and down.

“What are you, fourteen?” Izuku stares at her, not saying a thing. “I think maybe we could pull off seventeen, but that ain’t gonna let you buy drinks or nothing, ya hear?” 

Izuku stares, then decides that whatever she’s talking about is probably alright.

“Let’s do it,” Izuku says.

She raises her eyebrows and takes her feet off the counter.

“Just a card or do you want something that’ll stand up to a bit more looking into?” she asks, typing something on her computer.

Izuku considers the amount of money in his pocket.

“How ‘bout the works?” Izuku asks.

 

- - -

 

An hour later, Izuku walks out with an incredibly convincing fake ID for one seventeen-year-old Akatani Mikumo.

The whole thing had actually been quite a bit of fun. For a convincing trail, they’d had to come up with a whole backstory. After a bit of consideration, they'd settled on Mikumo Akatani being a legally emancipated orphan living in a fictional address in Aichi with a vaguely described quirk called Kismet. The fake identity came with papers proving his birth and the death of his parents along with a PO box connected to his name.

After he walked out with the new ID, he's left with sixty bucks left in his pocket.

He uses fifty of them to buy a prepaid flip phone from a corner store.

Then another five to buy bubble tea.

(He ends up needing to use the last five because his bus pass has expired.)

 

- - -

 

There is a general trend in his life, Izuku thinks as he intentionally rides the subway into an active villain fight, that he tends to go towards danger rather than away from it.

He supposes that it does make a sort of sense. After all, generally, if you have the initiative, then your enemies will always be on the defensive. 

The problem being that Izuku has no idea who his enemies were.

But his quirk does.

Presumably.  

So once he's at the stop from where the ear splitting shrieks of metal and insane ramblings are emanating, he steps out from the empty subway car. There isn't any immediate danger where he is, so he sets about finding it. 

He gets to the entrance of the subway and takes in the street.

There was some sort of villain group trying to—from what Izuku can see—simply cause as much property damage as possible.

At least four of them had already been apprehended. 

Heroes are zipping around, protecting buildings and civilians. One of them catches Izuku’s eye. He's flying around in a cloud of red feathers, faster than Izuku can process. 

If Izuku isn't mistaken that is Pro Hero Hawks.

So that's the guy Izuku is supposed to get to follow him on Twitter.

The internet said that he's one of the ‘top young heroes to watch.’ Apparently he's been quickly climbing the ranks, some said he might make it into the top ten Pro Heroes within the year.

And Izuku needs to be friends on Twitter with him.

Why exactly is his life so weird?

Who is he kidding? He loves it.

His quirk isn’t telling him to move, so he leans against one of the pillars and watches the show.

The fight is winding down at that point, the villains are being put into quirk-suppressing cuffs and sent away. Izuku idly wonders what would happen if he was put into a pair of those. Would his quirk just stop? The thought is strange. He’s never really been without his quirk’s intuition. How well would he even function? Who knows. More than likely, his quirk will just never let him get into a position where it could be a problem.

It's as he's considering this train of thought that the building he's in collapses. 

Well, that was a little dramatic, he's standing in the entrance to the subway, so it's more like the structure that he's standing in front of collapses.

Thankfully, though he knows that it wasn't due to luck, none of the chunks of concrete hit him. So he is just left coughing in the wreckage. Dirty, but unharmed.

Then something grabs him and shoots him into the air.

“Oh shit, oh shit,” mumbles the person that had grabbed him. Izuku looks up and into the eyes of none other than Pro Hero Hawks.

“Uh,” Izuku says, looking down at the ground, some hundred or so feet below. “Hi.”

“Shit,” the hero says, then lands on a building. He starts patting Izuku, like he can't believe he's in one piece. “I thought that building was empty. Are you okay? How are you okay?”

Izuku stares for a minute, trying to figure out what his quirk wants exactly. He glances back at the street, the fighting seems to have ended. Well, this is as good a chance as any.

“That was...scary,” he settles on saying.

“No shit!” Hawks says, running his hands through his hair. “Oh, no. Sorry, sorry. I thought that building was empty, kid I’m sorry. How did you even get—”

“There’s something I want,” Izuku interrupts.

Hawks’ head snaps toward Izuku, and he is reminded that this is a proper Pro Hero. His eyes narrow slightly, and Izuku get's the sense that his wings have shifted into something more dangerous.

“Follow me on Twitter!” Izuku almost shouts. He doesn’t need to fake the nervousness.

Hawks stares at him.

“Follow you. On Twitter,” he repeats slowly.

“Yeah! That would make me feel so much better, and I—”

Hawks lets out a groan.

“You know what. Whatever. ” He pulls his phone out from his pouch, then pulls it to his face, he clicks some things, then looks back up at Izuku. “Username?”

“Foresight2020,” Izuku chirps. “I’m already following you.”

Hawks clicks some things, then frowns and tucks away his phone.

“There, it’s done, that make you feel better?” Izuku grins and clasps his hands together in response. Hawks rubs his hand over his face and groans, “I’m too young to not understand the kids these days.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t understand me either,” Izuku chirps.

“It does not, but thank you.” Hawks takes his hands away from his face looks down at the street. “Are you ready to get down?”

“Uh, you can catch people who are falling from buildings, right?” Izuku asks, a fantastic idea forming in his mind.

“Yes?” Hawks says carefully, turning to Izuku. 

Too late. Izuku is already jumping from the lip of the building. Hey, his quirk didn’t tell him to stop, so might as well, right? 

Hawks’ shout of surprise and utter confusion follows him down.

The feathers do catch him though.

Izuku should retroactively make a bucket list, just so he can scratch that off it.

 

- - -

 

One day, not long after that, his quirk tells him to buy a certain phone charger, and when he gets home he finds that it perfectly fits the crime phone. Huh, he never charged that, did he? At some point in the past year or so it'd died when he hadn't been paying attention.

After a few minutes, his quirk calls him over and he picks it up and turns it on. Within moments, notifications begin to pop up.

 

[LEADER!!!] 

Good evening my fine friends! It has been long since our last conquest, but it seems time to once again try our luck in the endless game that is life!

[Viena] 

Uh, didn’t almost all of us get arrested last time?

[LEADER!!!] 

A truer thing has never been said, my favored teammate! However, the time has come that we have once again achieved freedome! Thus, it has come time for a new venture!

[Slingshot] 

Would it cause you, like, physical pain to not use an exclamation point?

[LEADER!!!] 

No! It would not!

[Paper Cup] 

Leader! Did you break out of prison!? I thought you were going to be another two months?

[LEADER!!!] 

No I did not! I got out early on good behavior! Because I kept giving other prisoners heartfelt and life-changing advice which led to positive habits and happier lifestyles! 

I did this for VERY nefarious reasons! Like FRAUD!!

Anyway! My new plan! That is the thing which we should talk about now!

[Slingshot]

..is…?

[Paper Cup]

I think he’s typing, give him a minute. He’s told me that the phone is too small for his thumbs.

[LEADER!!!]

The plan is simple, but in that simplicity is complexity! There is a building which has been destroyed in a villain attack, before it is completely demolished we shall go through it for any valuable items! The relevant paperwork will be filed within a few weeks! We shall be stealing from directly beneath the heroes' noses!

[Slingshot] 

Is that...even illegal? If you;ve filed the paperwork to do it?

[LEADER!!!] 

Yes!!

[Paper Cup] 

You heard him, it’s illegal, he would know. He’s the criminal mastermind here

[LEADER!!!] 

You flatter me! Continue!

[Paper Cup] 

You have beautiful eyes

[LEADER!!!] 

This has become too much and I must now leave!

[Slingshot] 

So, we’re doing this?

 

Izuku’s quirk pushes him to answer.

 

[sparky]

I’m in.

 

- - - 

 

When he’s thirteen, Izuku stands in front of another building, this one is an incredibly expensive mansion. It looks like something celebrities would live in.

With the fake ID in his pocket and newly bought gardening gloves, Izuku walks through the front door.

There’s a man with a mustache and two heads who opens the door as soon as Izuku knocks.

“Oh, you’re here to apply?” he asks.

Izuku nods, because that seems the thing to do.

“Thank you for coming.” The man shakes Izuku’s hand, then starts to give him a tour of the entryway and kitchen. 

“My name is Konishi Kazuo,” the man says. “I’m the manager of the property.”

“Mikumo Akatani,” Izuku responds. For some reason Izuku’s quirk is pushing him to avoid the cameras, so he does.

Eventually, Konishi takes Izuku to the back yard, then sighs. “I’m sure you’re wondering where the owners of the house are, yes?”

Izuku is not, but nods anyway.

“They are currently on a vacation. That’s where you come in.” Konishi nervously looks at Izuku. “You see, the master of the house made me swear that everything on the list he gave would be completed by the time they get back.”

The man conspiratorially leans forward, grabbing Izuku by the shoulder.

“It’s impossible,” Konishi hisses.

“Really? Can I see the list?” Izuku asks, wondering why he’s here.

Konishi shows Izuku a list, then shows him the lawn, the gardens, and the other gardens.

Izuku starts to get it.

“Why don’t you have another person to help you?” Izuku asks.

“I did, I had a gardener that did all the landscaping. But she quit a few days ago,” Konishi says miserably. “Will you help me?”

Izuku stares at the huge lawn, with the expensive and complicated looking garden. He’s worked with plants before. He’s got near a whole rainforest of houseplants in him and his mom’s apartment. This seems like something a little bit bigger than that.

“Of course,” Izuku promises, shaking Konishi's hand.

He spends a few hours pretending to know stuff about having a real job, then leaves after settling on a frankly ridiculous hourly pay.

He passes the front gate and remembers to check the name plate.

Todoroki household.

Huh.

 

- - -

 

Some time later, the leader of the group sends out the time and place of his proposed meeting. Within a moment his quirk settles into his stomach, telling him to join them in the meeting. 

It leads him to get his makeup set and he begins the now familiar routine of making his face look older with contour.

He pauses in the mirror. He looks a few years older, maybe sixteen or seventeen. He’d dyed his hair black a few weeks ago and had used a bit of gel to style it away from his face. He smiles in a practiced way at his reflection. He looks clean cut but harmless.

He grabs a sturdy pair of shoes and leaves the apartment. He rides the bus to the address that the leader had texted. As he gets close he sees the rubble that used to be a building. It had once been some office building, but now most of it had collapsed to the bottom floor. 

Out front of the building is a group of people casually chatting. As Izuku walks toward them, the tallest of the group waves enthusiastically. 

He has wild, pale hair and a wiry frame. The way he moves reminds Izuku of a hummingbird.

"Good morning!" he shouts, though people are really not that far away from him. "I hope you are prepared for a productive day of villainy!"

Someone beside him gives him a smack on the back of the head and another two glance around them in alarm.

The woman who’d smacked the one Izuku assumes to be “LEADER!!!” looks similar to him, enough that Izuku suspects they're related.

"Why would you do that to me?" Leader whines.

"Because," the one who'd smacked him says with particular emphasis. "We are, not, doing anything illegal." She coughs and glances around. "We are a legal salvage party who will not be getting in trouble with the authorities today."

"But, Seiko," the leader says slowly. "It is actually legal. I just kept saying it was illegal so more people would come help."

"You…You!" Seiko makes a strangled noise and throws up her hands. "You've been insisting on this crime thing for weeks! You kept trying to convince me that it really was illegal!"

"And lo and behold; you came to help!" the leader answers cheerily.

Seiko turns and walks away.

"Alright!" The leader says after a few moments of silence. “Time for introductions!”

A few people glance around at each other.

One man, tired looking, with an air of easy going amusement, raises his hand.

“Yes! You!” the leader shouts happily.

“I don’t think giving one another our real names would be wise,” he says evenly, "perhaps we should exclusively use nicknames.”

“Oh! Code names!” the leader says, fascinated. “I love it! I am leader with three exclamation points!”

“Are we using the names from the group chat?” the tired man asks, looking a little stricken.

“Of course, anything else could be confusing!” Leader says.

“Oh.” The tired man spends a few moments seeming to muster strength. “My name is Paper Cup then.”

There are a few muffled coughs around the circle. Leader eyes Paper Cup with renewed interest.

“And I’m Slingshot,” the woman who Leader had called Seiko said from just outside the circle. She had the same pale hair and tall frame as Leader.

Introductions continue around the circle in a similar vein. Some members of the group find themselves with more reasonable names than others.

“I’m Sparky,” Izuku says when it comes to his turn.

There’s a bit of a silence when attention lands on him. Leader and Slingshot send each other wary glances and anxiety rises in Izuku’s gut. But nothing comes of it and introductions continue.

Once introductions are done, Leader begins going through the safety procedures of salvaging. For this process, he actually slows down and listens to questions.

After safety vests and hard hats have been passed around, the group disperses around the site to begin the salvaging.

It continues on for some time, the group carefully pulling apart parts of the building and prying loose anything that seemed valuable.

Izuku finds that the process is unexpectedly fun. It’s careful work. Each area that they explore needs to be first cleared as safe, then meticulously searched through for valuables.

But the group is in high spirits and Izuku finds himself joining in with the jokes and cheerful chatter as they start clearing new areas of the building. They often send him to look through the new areas first and the group give him praise or congratulations each time he finds something else interesting.

After a few hours the safe parts of the building have all been cleared and the group decides to call it.

They stack everything that has been salvaged into the truck which Leader has brought. The man himself runs to a nearby store and returns with drinks and snacks for the whole group. They sit together on the front steps of the building and enjoy the shade. The heat had grown intense during the hours they’d spent working and it’s a relief to sit and enjoy the rest.

Izuku finds himself with a juice box and a box of crackers. 

To his left is the man who’s resigned himself to being called Paper Cup. He’s sipping a soda and lounging against the step. On the other side of him, Leader is excitedly telling the group about the friends who he’d made while fulfilling his community service hours. Apparently one of them had been a fan of the same TV series as him and they planned to visit some convention together. Izuku listens idly. 

Eventually members of the group begin to leave, each thanking Leader for his plan. Leader promises to contact them once he sells everything they’ve salvaged to pay them for the day.

Once only a few members remain, Izuku decides that he should follow their lead and return home. 

“Thanks for the plan, Leader,” Izuku says, standing and stepping off of the steps. “I really enjoyed today.”

“It is none other than my duty as your leader!” the man chirps, waving happily back at Izuku. “If I ever find myself in need of minions again—”

“Don’t call them minions,” Slingshot interrupts.

“—helping hands for my nefarious deeds,” Leader continues, “then I will be sure to call for your aid! Thank you for your help my friend.”

“Of course, see you again sometime.” Izuku smiles and waves as he continues on his way.

He heads in the direction of the bus stop, but has only gone a block before his hands begin to shake and he stops to stare at them.

His fingers shake, but the vines look worse. They’re spasming across his fingers, growing and shifting in wild waves. Izuku feels a sense of nausea growing from his stomach, along with a deep sense of wrongness and a faint hiss of static in his ears.

He winces and presses his hand against his eye, the hissing quickly growing louder. 

He manages a few more steps for it becomes too much and he leans against a wall. His heart begins pounding and he glances around. 

The feeling rises up even more and he takes an uneven breath. He watches the vines flicker across his hands. Then they completely stop.

They’re frozen on his skin. Like a drawing or a tattoo. Black with the slightest sheen of green. They’re frozen as they were. Jagged and fractured across his fingers.

Something is wrong, very wrong. Something about his quirk has shifted, it's something like pain, but deeper.

The comforting presence in his chest is gone for the first time. There's an empty place in the pit of his stomach and something like nausea is creeping into its place. 

He glances up and in front of him there's a man walking down the sidewalk. He has dark tinted glasses and one of those white and red canes in his hand. 

He doesn't seem to notice Izuku and he continues onward, but then he raises his own hand to his face like he's feeling something similar to Izuku.

He stops, then seems unsure of what to do.

“Ugh,” he says, tapping around him with the cane. “Hello? Is someone there?”

Izuku thinks the man is talking to him.

“Yes? I, uh, something’s—” Izuku trails off, not sure what he should say. There's a new anxiety building in his chest. Something new and unsure that he’s never felt before.

“Oh,” The man reaches to his left and lightly touches a fence, “You have some sort of future seeing quirk then?”

Izuku jerks upright, mouth open. He leans backward again, mouth closing and opening.

“I, uh yeah I do,” he manages eventually. “Why?”

He’d never said that to anyone before. He’d let that secret lie for almost a decade now.

“Ah, you're just a kid?” The man asks, nodding his head like anything here made sense. “Have you ever run into someone with a future seeing quirk before?”

Izuku shakes his head dumbly. 

Then realized that the man is blind and that was stupid.

“No. No I don’t think so,” Izuku manages.

“Well this is your first feedback then,” the man says. “My quirk lets me see exactly eight seconds into a future where I don’t act.”

Izuku pauses, trying to figure out what this means. But the man continues.

“Say I’m walking down the street.” He gestures around. “My quirk tells me what the street will look like in eight seconds if I don’t take another step forward.”

Izuku doesn’t quite get it.

“Whatever, details.” The man waves his hand. “You’ve got some quirk that lets you see into the future. When two quirks that see the future interact you get feedback.”

“Feedback?”

“Like with audio, the two quirks will both be seeing and reacting to changes that the other one causes. This causes a loop where both quirks are continually effecting the results of each other. Eventually both quirk users can’t see anything with their quirks.” 

The man shrugs.

“What happens?” Izuku asks, anxiety rising.

“Oh, nothing, just some temporary inconvenience.” The man gestures at his glasses. “Particularly for me, since I can only see things which happen in the future. If you’re around for a while like me, these things can happen a lot.”

Izuku tightens his hands around his waist.

“Oh.” He glances around. “What do we do?”

“Well,” the man says. “One of us needs to walk away until the feedback stops. It might last for awhile, but it’s not permanent”

“Oh. Oh!” Izuku jumps to his feet. “Yes. Of course. Thank you for your help. Sorry for the inconvenience.”

He bows, he doesn’t really know what he’s supposed to do but it feels better than nothing.

“No problem, take care out there,” the man replies, still lightly holding the gate.

Izuku returns the way he’d come at a fast pace, glancing behind him.

Once he’s a block away. Izuku sits down and stares at his hands. The vines are moving. Just barely. They’re still splayed and awkward. Nothing like their normal graceful sprawling. But they are slowly moving across his skin.

He can feel just the slightest pressure of his quirk in his chest. It’s not quite comforting. It’s not leading him like it always does. It’s just there. Like it’s sleeping or something.

He looks back. The man has continued on his way.

Izuku waves, after a pause that Izuku suspects is exactly eight seconds, the man waves back, then turns a corner.

Izuku can feel his quirk, but he still feels anxiety. It feels slow and disconnected, like it doesn’t quite know what’s going on yet. He sits down on a set of stairs and presses his face into his knees.

He stays like that for awhile.

 

- - -

 

“Hey! Sparky!” 

Izuku jerks his head up. He blinks. The sun is beginning to set, but the sky is still bright.

In front of him are Leader and Slingshot.

“Oh,” Izuku says, feeling a bit slow. 

“What’s going on, kid?” Slingshot asks. Her voice is flat but not unkind.

“I—uh.” Izuku feels something unfamiliar. Indecision. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do. He glances down at his hands. They give him nothing. He wants help though. He wants someone to understand and tell him what he should do.

“I had some trouble with my quirk,” he says. He feels like he’s stepping off a cliff.

“Your quirk?” Leader asks.

“Yeah.” Izuku pauses. “Foresight.”

“Foresight?” Slingshot glances at him searchingly. “I thought it was something with fire?”

Izuku shakes his head dumbly.

“I—” He swallows. “I lied. About my quirk.”

The words feel strange.

Leader pauses, he seems like he’s buzzing with energy, but doesn’t know which direction to move with it. He sits down next to Izuku. Slingshot glances around, shrugs, and sits on Izuku’s other side.

“Why did you lie?” Leader asks, voice sounding understanding, but a little hurt.

“It’s not an easy quirk to explain. I guess.” Izuku hugs his knees, looking down at the concrete in front of him. “I don’t tell most people.”

His quirk isn’t guiding him for once. It’s just settling around his hands, not telling him to talk, but not pushing him to stop. Just there, present but still.

“Well, would you try?” Slingshot tries.

“It—It tells me things that I need. Or things I need to do.” Izuku starts. “Sometimes it’s simple, like I always grab an umbrella when it’s going to rain. Or I have an extra pencil when someone else needs to borrow one. Like my quirk knows everything I’ll need.”

“That sounds useful,” Slingshot says, her tone is reserved.

“Yeah, but sometimes… Sometimes the things that it asks me to do are just… They just don’t make sense. Sometimes things that I do only make sense months into the future. For years I’ve just been doing these things because my quirk has never led me into trouble.”

Izuku pauses, not sure what else it would be right to explain here.

“You said you're having trouble with your quirk?” Leader prompts.

Izuku glances at him.

“Well… It’s just that I’ve learned about something called feedback. I was walking down the street and I ran into someone who also had a quirk that let him see into the future and—”

“Ah,” Leader interrupts. “Feedback.”

“You know about it?” Izuku asks.

“You know something?” Slingshot asks at the same time.

Leader waves his hands dismissively. 

“Yeah. It was at school. This kid Tamaki Kin had this quirk where he knew what the weather would be, and there was this other kid who could tell which way a coin could land.” Leader was gesturing wildly as he talked. “One time I was talking to Tamaki Kin and the other kid walked by and they both flipped out. So we had a whole thing where we got the kid to try and tell how a coin would land. He couldn’t do it and got really mad and started chasing Tamaki Kin. And I couldn’t stand that, so I started chasing the kid. Then the teachers were called, and I ended up getting detention. Which is where I met this other kid called—”

Slingshot interrupts him by flicking a pebble at his knee with remarkable accuracy.

“We don’t need your whole life story,” she says.

“Oh yeah right. So anyway, yeah, feedback, it’s like a whole thing.”

“Oh,” Izuku says. “I’d never heard about it.”

“Wow kid,” Slingshot says with a whistle. “That must have been a shock then. Glad that it didn’t turn out too bad.”

“Yeah,” Izuku says. Something about the whole conversion has settled him. “It was really…I’ve never had my quirk cut out before. It’ll come back I think, but I just…”

He shrugs, not sure what he wants to say.

Leader stands then.

“Well, all’s well that ends well. Glad to hear that you’re feeling better.”

Slingshot sends him a look.

“You want a ride home kid?” she asks, she stands up and offers Izuku a hand up.

He takes it.

 

- - -

 

The offered ride is cramped. They are in the truck that Leader (or Izuku suspects, actually Slingshot) had rented to haul back the salvage they’d collected earlier today.

Slingshot drives carefully through the cramped streets.

Leader sits in the middle, filling the silence with his seemingly infinite number of stories. Most of them ended in him being in trouble with one authority figure or another.

Izuku sits in the passenger seat. Feeling light and relaxed in a way he hadn’t before.

He thinks it’ll be alright.

 

- - -

 

It takes the better part of a day for his quirk to be back to normal. The next afternoon, as he’s watering his plants, he finally gets a clear impulse.

His hands twitch away from the plant he’s been watering and he holds his breath for a second.

His quirk pushes him to store away the water spout and bring out a pair of clippers. He prunes a few new shoots off of his goldenchild ivy. Once that’s done. He watches as his vines retract back into the pair of freckles on his wrists. They settle down, a deep and comforting feeling. 

The wave of relief is so strong that Izuku needs to sit down for a few minutes.

Notes:

Fun fact: originally he was going to rob the bank at the start of the canon events, but then I realized an eleven year old robbing a bank was hysterical and did that instead.

(also if you notice a typo you are both welcome and encouraged to point it out, I assume they are there despite my best efforts)

EDIT: I realized (belatedly) that I never actually said this explicitly anywhere, but the timeline of this AU has been extended so that everything that in canon takes place over the course of 1 year at UA is spread out over the whole 3 years. You don't have to keep track of it for the story to make sense but I thought I'd mention it just in case anyone was wondering.

Chapter 2

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

There’s a text from an unknown number. Izuku unlocks the phone and takes a closer look.

 

[Unknown Number]

Prospective job for you, one day of work, long time out, yes or no NOW. 10,000 yen before and 70,000 after.

 

Izuku stares at the keyboard and wonders if he should respond.

Then another notification dings on his screen.

It’s from the bank robbers’ group chat.

 

[LEADER!!] 

Anyone else get this offer from those pretentious villain guys!?

[Slingshot] 

Yeah. I don’t understand them. One sec they’re all “you’re not good enough to join our group” the next they’re all “Come take this shady deal for a suspicious amount of cash.”

[tall one] 

What are you guys talking about?

Did I miss something good again? 

Why do you always leave me out of the interesting things

I don’t get respect for the hard work that I put into making this group into a

[tall one] 

Oh wait, the invite just came in. nvm

[LEADER!!] 

It’s fine!!

[box man] 

Sounds like a pretty good deal though? That a lot of yen for a day of work, like, objectively? Doesn't matter if they're asshats

[Slingshot] 

Unless you get arrested.

[LEADER!!] 

Those guys are the worst!

 

Izuku feels something hard to understand in his quirk. He stares at his hands. They twist and twirl across his knuckles and then creep outward. A few grow up and curl around his forearms.

He’s never been able to quite put the language of his quirk into words. Most simple things are just basic impulses. Those are easy to follow, easy to do. More complicated things means he needs to stare at the patterns of green-ish black vines that tumble across his skin. 

This pattern is somehow more forceful, a little more angular and intricate. Izuku reads it after a few moments.

“You want me to tell them to say no?” Izuku asks out loud. Sometimes that’s the easiest way to confirm he’s understood correctly.

The vines seem to curl in on themselves in glee. It feels like validation, but Izuku just snorts in amusement. 

Why couldn’t his quirk just tell him to get simple things? This was getting ridiculous.

 

[sparky]

Anyone else think there’s something wrong with this?

[LEADER!!]

Well yeah! They are the worst!

[sparky]

I mean everything’s kind of off. Why call all of us at once? Does that mean they’re looking for disposable goons?

[LEADER!!]

Are you calling us goons?!?

[Slingshot]

RUDE!

[sparky]

Of course not! But I think these guys are setting us up as canon fodder. I mean look at it. They send out mass text messages to everyone (even us who don’t like them because they are the worst) with really high payments--that we won't really get if we are thrown away by whatever they are planning to do.

[LEADER!!]

Wow thats a good point @sparky! You are right, they are the worst! I VOTE FOR A BECOT!

[box man]

I vote we do get paid? I mean, if we’re doing a vote I can do that right?

[LEADER!!]

Yes you can! However, I must warn you that I have thirteen votes!

[box man]

That means our votes don’t matter though.

[LEADER!!]

Exactly!!

[box man]

i hate it here

 

Izuku watches the group chat as, LEADER!!! convinces the rest of them to join in on the boycott. 

At his quirk’s instruction, he responds to the unknown number that he is willing to take the job.

 

- - -

 

Izuku’s first conversation with a Todoroki goes like this:

He’s working on the bushes outside the huge training gym, trimming and weeding and all the things required for the yard to look as high class as it does.

Then his quirk tells him to bring his bulky gardener’s duffle bag and go around to the front of the training room. He does, and comes face to face with Pro Hero Endeavor. He is standing in front of the doors of the gym, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed.

He isn’t wearing his hero costume but he is wearing training gear.

Izuku freezes, but the hero doesn’t react at all. He just gives Izuku a contemptuous look, seeing his grass stained pants, gardener’s uniform jacket, and duffle bag. Then he looks away from Izuku and fixes his eyes firmly on the back door of the house.

Izuku, not exactly certain what he was supposed to do, bows slightly and keeps going past the hero. Izuku walks across the yard and around the corner of the house.

He almost runs into another boy.

Izuku jerks backward and stops. 

The boy is standing under the eaves of the roof. He’s peering around the corner of the house. Just like how Endeavor is staring at the back door.

The boy has white and red hair, pale eyes, and a scar that covers half his face. 

This must be one of the Todoroki children then.

The boy looks startled for a moment, then nods slightly.

Izuku would have taken it for the boy being stuck up if Izuku didn’t recognize the way the boy had no idea what to say.

His quirk isn’t telling him to keep going, so Izuku decides to stick around.

“What are you waiting for?” Izuku asks in an undertone, sitting with his back against the house, out of view of Endeavor and behind the other boy.

Said boy flinches and looks back at Izuku with wide eyes, probably hadn’t realized that Izuku hadn't left.

“Aren’t you working?” he asks, though he seemed more confused than accusatory.

Izuku shrugs.

“You wanna fire me?” If he says something bad enough his quirk will tell him to get out of there.

The boy just blinks at Izuku, then leans against the wall so he can peer around the corner and still see Izuku.

“Usually the staff avoid us. I think Enji will fire you if he sees you talking to me?” he adds contemplatively. Calling parents by their first name? Never a good sign. Meant Izuku doesn’t feel bad butting in though.

“Huh,” Izuku says, then, on a hunch, he adds, “If that's what he wants, then you could just go out and tell him.”

“Why would I do what he wants?” the boy asks. He seems to realize what he’s said a moment after he’d said it, and snuck a worried glance in the direction of Endeavor.

Izuku lets the conversation slip into silence as he thought.

Why had his quirk told him to come? Something to do with Endeavor standing guard in front of the training room.

“What are you waiting for?” Izuku asks.

The boy says nothing, just stares around the corner.

“Seems like you don’t want to talk to your old man,” Izuku muses, watching the boy for a reaction. “But you want something from the building.”

The boy says nothing but Izuku can see a layer of ice building up on his right side. 

“Not training though, you’re not dressed for it.” He’s wearing a long sleeved dress shirt and jeans. “But he is. So, my conclusion is that there’s something in there you want, but if you go and try to get it he’s gonna rope you into training, no matter what you have to say about it.”

Izuku can see the boy’s fist clenching and he glares at Izuku, though he still doesn’t respond.

There is a tugging sensation in Izuku’s gut and he stands up lugging his bulky duffle with him.

As Izuku passes the boy, he tries to grab Izuku’s sleeve and pull him back. Izuku catches a glimpse of the boy’s face, it's rather desperate.

He doesn’t make a sound though and soon Izuku is out of arm’s reach.

Izuku walks back to the training gym. 

Endeavor is still standing in front, but the hero ignores Izuku completely this time.

Izuku walks right past him into the gym.

Once inside, his quirk tells him to go to the far right corner. There is a bag laying under a bench that his quirk tells him to get.

Izuku opens it partially, inside are what look like school books. His quirk tells him to take it, so Izuku puts it inside his duffle bag and walks back out the door.

Endeavor ignores him.

Izuku walks across the lawn and back around the corner. 

The boy is staring at him, eyebrows furrowed and fists held tightly at his sides.

Izuku sits down against the house again and pulls the backpack out from his duffle bag. He holds it out to the boy.

The boy freezes, then takes it like it was some wondrous treasure.

“How’d you get past him?” he asks like he hadn’t just watched Izuku do it.

“He ignores staff. I’m staff. He ignores me,” Izuku answers with a shrug. 

The boy holds his backpack at his front and sits down beside Izuku.

He studies Izuku.

“You’re a gardener? You don’t look old enough.”

“I’m in middle school,” Izuku answers back with a shrug.

“Oh,” the boy says, then leans back against the house, staring at his backpack.

“Well, I gotta head back to work,” Izuku says, feeling like he’s borne the awkwardness for long enough. He stands up with his bulky duffle. “It was nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you,” the boy echoes softly, still staring at his backpack.

 

- - -

 

The next Todoroki Izuku meets is actually pretty normal. 

Though she does almost hit him with a glass jar.

Izuku is outside the kitchen window, tending to flowers that didn’t actually need to be tended until next week. But his quirk told him to, so Izuku is there, pruning and weeding.

Then someone shouts from above him. He looks up to see a glass jar falling down from a high first story window.

His hands jerk upward instinctively and manage to catch it in his bulky gardening gloves before it lands on him.

He looks up.

A pale face peers out from the window and stares down at him. She has pale eyes and white hair with hints of red. She’s older than Izuku, in her twenties or so.

“Oh my God!” she shouts, leaning out the window and holding her hands to her mouth. “There’s someone there. Are you okay? I was just trying to make the window sill pretty. I’m so sorry? It didn’t hit you, right?”

It is a rather pretty jar, stained a lovely green-blue color. Real artsy, good decoration.

“I’m okay,” Izuku calls. “Your jar’s okay too, want me to bring it up?” 

“No, I’ll come down, wait a sec.” She disappears from the window, and Izuku is left standing with a jar.

A minute later, the woman exits one of the side doors and runs to Izuku.

“You’re okay, right?” She asks, checking him over.

“Yeah, it wasn’t even going to hit me,” Izuku lies, he holds it out to her and she takes it. “You were putting it in the window sill?” Izuku asks, trying to change the subject.

“Yeah,” she says, calming down. “I was just trying to brighten up the place a bit. Just kind of fumbled with it. Scared me half to death when I saw that you were right under me,” she says with an awkward laugh.

“No harm, no foul,” Izuku says with a shrug. 

There’s a second of silence. Then Izuku remembers that his quirk had told him to be here. What did it want him to do? Seems like it just wants him to meet all of the Todoroki’s. Well, it was mostly successful. There couldn’t be that many more, right?

“So, you do the decorating here? You don’t have staff to do it?”

“I, uh, well I guess I could get the staff to do it,” she says with a sort of self-conscious shrug, “but I thought I should do a bit, since I’m here anyway.”

“No, no. That makes sense. I was just wondering.” Izuku can feel his quirk pushing him to continue the conversation, and he internally flails for some conversation starter. “Uh, that jar is nice, were you planning on putting flowers or something in it?”

“Huh, oh, well I was thinking maybe river stones?” she answers, she seems to grow a bit at the attention. “I’ve been looking for ideas. I thought that maybe something like crystals instead. The light from the window would look nice with the jar’s color.”

Once Izuku has gotten her into the subject, she warms up to talking. Izuku is quite content to ask the occasional encouraging question as she rambles about her various decoration ideas. She eventually brings him inside the main house and shows off some of the work she’s done already. And during the tour the conversation drifts a bit.

Izuku finds he really does enjoy her company, she is a bit bumbling and tended to interrupt herself, but she's kind and empathetic. Izuku finds himself mentioning his fashion club and the conversation wanders a bit. She tells him about her vague desire to get into more makeup and they commiserate in their twin struggles in finding a good foundation.

After fifteen minutes or so his quirk tugs at him to get out of the building and Izuku hears someone opening a door on the other side of the main house.

“Oh, wow! Sorry, I’ve got to get back to work,” Izuku says, standing up from the chair he’d settled in with an apologetic look. “It was nice to talk to you though, I’ll probably see you around?”

“Yeah, it was nice,” she answers with a smile. “Sorry about, uh, the jar thing. I’ll see you around. Oh! Uh. My name is Todoroki Fuyumi, it’s nice to meet you!” 

“I’m Akatani Mikumo.” Izuku bows back at Fuyumi. “It was nice to meet you too!”

Izuku flees from the house in a mostly orderly fashion.

 

- - -

 

Izuku’s quirk tells him to pull out a few hundred dollars and pull on his coat. Seems like he’s going shopping.

The first store he visits is filled with things for computers. It starts with some kind of cable connector that seems to go from some older version of a USB to something that will work with his computer. But that’s not as weird as the next thing his quirk guides him to.

The writing on the box calls it a RFID cloner, and his quirk seems convinced that he needs it. The vines are particularly interested. They’ve grown across his hands and past his elbows. 

Izuku looks up what this thing is on his phone and finds that it’s designed to copy ID cards. If you just scan the signals from ID cards with the thing, it can copy that signal and get through any scanner that reads that card. Izuku hadn’t heard of it before, but it is interesting. 

He buys the cable and the RFID copier and finds that that takes up most of the few hundred dollars that he’d brought with him.

The next place that his quirk leads him to is a thrift store. He wanders through the shelfs until he finds three old jumpsuits. They’re some kind of maintenance uniform, with the logo of a museum that Izuku has never heard of. 

He also grabs three flashlights from the electronic section.

The third place that Izuku goes is the most fun. 

It’s a firework shop. He spends a while looking at things that look interesting. After a while spent having fun, his quirk guides him to something that looks like a smoke bomb with a timer on it.

He reads through the instructions and finds that it’s meant for fire show productions to make things more dramatic.

He buys it.

When he goes home he starts altering the jumpsuits. Sewing is one of those things that his quirk makes a little bit weird. The actual act becomes an unusual but still fluid mix of his own judgment and experience and his quirk guiding his hands.

The changes that he makes to the jumpsuits are pretty normal though. One of them he hems to fit himself, the others he doesn’t change quite as much, just a bit thinner. 

He doesn’t know who they’re meant to fit, but he packs them away in his closet and figures that they’ll come in handy some time.

 

- - -

 

When the time comes to apply to high schools, his quirk only tells him one.

It’s an expensive place, the kind generally only open to the richest of kids.

Izuku stuffs down his nervousness and applies.

 

- - -

 

Izuku got into the school.

Not too surprising. He’d always been pretty okay at classes.

The only really hard part was convincing Mom that he got a scholarship which paid for everything. Once that’s done he just uses the cash from his job and from the bank robbery to pay the whole year’s tuition. It takes a good chunk out of what he has left, but his quirk seems to think it's worth it.

The only part he doesn’t like is that his quirk pushes him towards a tiny apartment near the school. He doesn’t really want to move away from his mom.

But.

Well, he was already pretty deep into this whole mess. It doesn’t make much sense to chicken out now of all times.

The apartment he ends up with is tiny. He doesn’t have much in terms of belongings, but he brings more than a dozen of his plants with him. They make it feel like home more than anything else he’s brought with him.

But once his stuff is moved in he finds that he really did like it, and realizes that just outside of the window is a ladder leading to the roof.

He moves in a few days before school starts, then makes sure to call Mom every few days.



- - -

 

Izuku’s quirk pulls him out of bed and he groans. It’s Saturday. His first week of school had been exhausting and he’d been looking forward to having a break over the weekend. No such luck.

He gets ready for the day. Then his quirk pulls him toward the storage boxes in the closet. He hadn’t yet unpacked them so they were still taped up. 

He opens the box and finds the items from his mysterious shopping trip a few weeks ago. His quirk tells him to pull out the jumpsuit and the flashlights. He puts the rest back. So that was still a mystery then.

He packs all of them into his bag and heads out.

Izuku’s quirk pulls him across the city to a neighborhood he’s never seen before. It doesn't look expensive but it isn't the nicest area. He slips into an apartment building behind a group of people and takes the elevator to the fifth floor.

He glances around, wondering what exactly he’s doing here. But the vines on his hands lead him to one of the doors.

Izuku is wondering if he should knock when his crime phone dings and he digs it out of his pocket. It’s a message.

 

[LEADER!!]

Greetings Sparky! I have another opportunity for you today. Would you be willing to work with our illustrious group once again?!!

 

Izuku glances at the message, then at the door in front of him. His quirk pushes him toward the door.

He knocks.

After a bit. Someone answers. It’s the woman who’s called Slingshot. She doesn't look like Iuzku remembers. She’s dressed in casual clothes and seems like anyone that Izuku could meet on the street in his day-to-day life.

“How the hell did you get here?” is her first question.

Izuku wanders past her at the prompt from his quirk.

Inside is a normal apartment. It doesn’t look like something that a villain would live in. But there are pictures of both Leader and Slingshot on the walls and it seems comfortable enough.

“Seiko! Who’s here?” yells Leader’s voice from another room.

“Give me literally one second!” she shouts back, then turns back to Izuku. “But seriously why are you here?”

“I think that Leader has a job?” Izuku tries.

“He literally texted you a minute ago,” Slingshot says.

“Well, I told you I'm always in the right place, didn’t I?” Izuku answers. “It seems like this is the place to be.”

That takes her a few seconds to parse.

“Your quirk?”

“Yeah.” Izuku nods. “It told me to be here.”

Slingshot stares at him for a few moments, then laughs. 

“Holy shit kid,” she says and ruffles Izuku’s hair as she strides past him into another doorway. “This might actually turn out well for once.”

Izuku wanders in behind her.

The room looks like it could be a kitchen under the piles of paper and string that covers all available surfaces.

Leader is standing in front of an impressive looking board that reminds Izuku of conspiracy theorists.

Leader glances back and does a double take at Izuku.

“Sparky! What? How nice of you to join us so fast” Then he pauses. “Wait, how did you get here so fast? And how did you know where we live?”

“Quirk, remember?” Slingshot says. She settles into a dining room chair, waving a can of coke.

“Oh.” Leader’s eyes are wide. “That’s…”

Izuku feels a thread of anxiety for a moment.

“Absolutely amazing!” Leader crows. He jumps toward Izuku and puts his arms on his shoulders. “I’ll be honest, I thought you were exaggerating or something when you were telling us about it all before. But that’s seriously amazing. And terrifying. You’re not like the police or something, right? This is going to be so cool. Do you want to plan with us? I’ve got the most amazing plan so far. I’ve got this buddy who knows a guy who once worked at this museum and he says that there’s an exhibit that has light security but has some pretty valuable things and, oh, do you want something to drink?”

Izuku pauses for a second. Not sure if Leader is going to let him respond or just pile on more questions. 

“Um, sure,” Izuku manages.

“Great!” Leader says.

He gets drinks for himself and Izuku, then decides he’s hungry and makes them all lunch as well. Izuku doesn’t think he stops talking for the entire time, but it doesn't really bother Izuku. Perhaps Leader is a bit abrasive but Izuku has never minded listening to people.

“So,” Slingshot eventually cuts in. “Now that my brother has talked you deaf. Let’s get down to business.”

“Oh yes,” Leader says, through a mouthful of sandwich. “Let’s.”

“What is the plan?” Izuku asks.

“Okay, so,” Slingshot says, sorting through one of the endless piles of paper to pull something out. “There’s this museum of early quirk era stuff, right?”

“Right.”

“Asahi,” Leader does a little wave and Slingshot continues. “Knows a guy who knows a guy, because I’m pretty sure he knows everyone, who worked there and left a few months back.”

Slingshot hands Izuku some papers. They have pictures of what look like vintage toys and some old type of phones that he doesn’t recognize. 

“These are some of the things that are kept there. It's basically just junk that people preserved from the early quirk era. It’s just there and not really that important to anyone. But there are some people that really like this stuff. So it’s got a bit of a collector’s market in various places. This means, that this junk that no one really cares to protect—”

“Is really, really expensive junk!” Leader cuts in, he seems to have inhaled his sandwich in the last few moments. “And that’s why we’re going to steal it!”

“Oh,” Izuku says. 

Leader stares at him for a few moments, then glances at Slingshot. Izuku doesn’t quite know what passes between them.

“Of course,” Slingshot says diplomatically. “This is just something that we’re cooking up. There’s really no need for you to get caught up in it all if you’re not looking for it. We’d love your help, but crime's not exactly for everyone and we’d understand if after that last close call if you’d not want to—"

“Oh, no,” Izuku says. After all, his quirk’s got a plan, and Izuku doesn’t really worry about morality or that kind of thing anymore. “I’ll join. What do you guys need?”

“Really?” Leader leans forward gleefully. “Just like that?”

“Yeah, what do you need? For your heist?”

Slingshot tilts her head at Izuku.

“The codes to get in”—she pauses—“and a more foolproof escape plan.”

“My plan is already foolproof!” Leader starts, but Slingshot shushes him.

Izuku nods and reaches into his bag.

He pulls out the jumpsuits which he’d grabbed.

Leader pulls them towards him and looks at the badges sewn into the front.

“Wait, this is from the museum. How’d you—?”

Leader and Slingshot look at each other. There’s a shared gleam in their eyes.

“Uh,” Izuku says, “there’s another thing actually, could I have your phone?”

Leader shrugs and hands it over.

“So, I’ve got this thing where I can…” Izuku says slowly, then he follows the movement of the vines on his hands and types in the password to Leader’s phone. “Well I can always know passwords.”

He hands it back.

Slingshot laughs, long and hard, doubling over from the force of it. It’s something between malicious and delighted.

“Kid,” she finally manages, pulling herself upright and wiping at her eyes. “You’re a goddamn natural. This is going to be so good.”

They spend a while after that planning. Izuku’s never really planned something before and is vaguely interested in learning what it’s like for other people.

Later, Izuku says his goodbyes after the details have finally been decided.

Before Izuku can duck out, Leader makes them a second lunch and sends Izuku off with leftovers. 

 

- - - 

 

After school starts, Izuku works less, but the times that he does work are now only the times where the children of the Todoroki family are home, so he soon runs into yet another Todoroki child.

It starts with what has begun to be a bit of a routine for Izuku.

He’s working on the hydrangeas. Which are actually rather difficult to work with, since they change color with the pH level and tend to be finicky.

He’s carefully adding limestone powder to the soil. The hydrangeas are meant to be a pink, almost red color, which the limestone allows, but just too much can lead to the flowers dying from the soil being too basic. 

He’s rather focused on the task, and is trying to coax his quirk into helping him, when he’s pulled out of his task by the feeling of his quirk jerking him upward.

He stumbles to his feet in time to see the Todoroki, the one with red and white hair, creep around a corner of the house.

He sees Izuku, and rushes toward him.

They’ve settled into something like companionship. The kid seems to have picked up on Izuku never being caught doing something against the rules by Endeavor. He’s taken to finding Izuku while he’s working and sticking around.

Izuku’s honestly not sure what to make of it. But he doesn’t mind the kid’s company.

Izuku smiles at him, then sits back down by his work bag. He pulls out a protein bar he’d grabbed that morning and hands it to the Todoroki wordlessly. 

He goes back to tending the soil.

“So hydrangeas, right?”

“Right,” the Todoroki replies. He starts on the bar, he’s gotten used to Izuku giving him electrolyte drinks and snacks most times they intereact.

“They have this property where they change color based on the acidity of the soil.” Izuku continues on this track for a while. The Todoroki doesn’t seem to mind that Izuku is the only one talking. And Izuku doesn’t mind talking about nothing for long periods of time. The Todoroki pulls out some school work from his bag and works on it as Izuku talks.

After a while Izuku runs out of small pruning and adjusting that he could justify on the plant and feels a pull on his quirk.

He packs up his tools and hands the Todoroki the garbage bag of yard debris he’d collected. He takes it without complaint.

Izuku heads toward the gardening shed and gestures for Todoroki to enter it. He does, trusting Izuku at this point.

Just as the kid is out of view, Endeavor walks around the side of the house. He’s got on training clothes and is obviously looking for his son.

He glances at Izuku, then continues onward without a second look.

“Okay,” Izuku said with a nod.

The Todoroki pokes his head out from the shed, then glances at Izuku.

“You know that you might get fired for this?” he asks hesitantly. “I can stop if you’re going to get in trouble.”

“Yeah, but I don’t get caught,” Izuku answers with a shrug. He hasn’t been caught doing something that he shouldn’t do in years now. And most rules are just guidelines anyway.

The Todoroki says nothing.

Which is the moment when Fuyumi Todoroki and a man Izuku doesn’t know round the corner.

The instant Fuyumi sees Izuku she smiles and waves.

She grabs the man by the arm and drags him over.

“Hi, Akatani! It’s been awhile!” Izuku has been working at the Todoroki household for almost two years now. He’s seen and talked to Fuyumi a number of times. She's seemed to take a general liking to him. They don't know each other particularly well, but Izuku knows that she lives on the Todoroki property and is a teacher at a nearby elementary school.

“Yeah! How has the year been so far?” Izuku asks.

“It’s been great! I missed it over break.” She looks up at Izuku’s head. “Oh! You’ve dyed your hair again! It looks great!”

“Thank you!” Izuku beams. He and his mom had worked together to dye it black again. He rather likes it.

“Oh, right!” Fuyumi pulled the man forward. “You should meet Natsuo, he’s my other brother!”

Natsuo looks vaguely confused but bows at Izuku. 

“It’s nice to meet you. Fuyumi has mentioned you before.”

“There’s another Todoroki?” Izuku bounces forward, he shakes Natsuo’s hand and smiles. “It’s nice to meet you, I’m Akatani Mikumo.”

“Ah, right. You’re a gardener?” He asks. He glances at Izuku’s face, frowning a little. Izuku hadn't been doing the makeup that made him looking older for months now, but no one had called him out on it yet. 

“Yeah! I’ve been here for almost two years now!”

“Really?” Natsuo says. “Usually they don’t last that lo—”

Fuyumi elbows him.

“Okay, come on,” he says, pulling away. “Everyone knows it. With dad’s shining personality”—he punctuates this with finger quotes—"no one really wants to stick around that long.”

“I mean, I just tend to stay out of his way,” Izuku says with a shrug.

“He does do that,” the other Todoroki says from behind Izuku. Izuku turns around to look at him, he’d kind of forgotten that he still standing in the shed.

“Shoto!” Fuyumi says, “I wanted to ask you if you would visit mom with us.”

The Todoroki, who’s name was apparently Shoto, goes cold—literally, since ice starts growing up his right side.

“No.”

“Right, right, that's fine. I guess,” Fuyumi says, smile growing smaller. 

Izuku’s quirk pulses.

“Does your mother not live here too?” Izuku asks before he can chicken out.

There’s a moment of silence while each of the siblings glance at each other.

“She...” Fuyumi starts. “She’s got some health issues. So she lives at the hospital full time.”

Izuku feels like he just opened a huge can of worms. But now there was nothing to do but step in it.

“I'm sorry to hear that. But if you’re going to visit her, do you want some flowers?” he manages. “I could, uh, pick some out for her?”

Fuyumi smiles at that and Natsuo relaxes.

“That would be lovely. Thank you.” Then she pauses, seeming to calculate something. “Actually, you know, you could bring them to her yourself.”

“I—I don’t know?” Izuku suddenly feels unsure. “I wouldn’t want to intrude on her if she’s in the hospital.”

“Oh, no. Of course not.” Fuyumi’s eyes gleam and Izuku doesn’t know what that means. “She doesn’t get many visitors and there’s a lot of people who she would like to see.”

As she says it she looks right at Shoto, who looks away.

“If you’re sure then,” Izuku says, “I’m done with my work today, when were you thinking of going?”

“Just as soon as you’re done would be great!” Fuyumi says happily.

Izuku shrugs and starts loading his gardening things back into the shed.

The Todoroki siblings follow Izuku as he wanders around the grounds collecting clippings. His quirk keeps sending him in random directions, which he suspects keeps them perfectly out of sight of wherever Endeavor is at the moment.

He and Fuyumi chat about their lives, and Natsuo chimes in every once in a while. Shoto trails along behind them, shooting wary glances behind him.

Eventually they go inside to get the Todorokis’ coats and a bag to carry the flowers. 

At the front door Shoto hovers around, then seems to make a decision.

“I’ll go with you,” he says, pulling on a pair of shoes.

Fuyumi and Natsuo snap around to stare at him. Fuyumi looks triumphant. Natsuo just looks shocked.

“Don’t you have to do training with dad?” Natsuo asks.

“No,” Shoto says simply, then continues with a self satisfied expression. “I haven’t gone to training for weeks now.”

“What? How?” Fuyumi asks. “How’d you get out of it? Is that why dad’s been so mad lately?”

Shoto nods, then gestures to Izuku.

“I’ve been following him around,” he says. “Somehow father can never find him. If I just stay with him the old man never has a chance to corner me.”

Fuyumi looks surprised but Natsuo just laughs.

Then Natsuo jumps forward to grab Shoto in a headlock and attempts to ruffle Shoto’s hair. It goes poorly and he ends up sprawled on the floor.

“I knew it," he wheezes. “I knew that there was some rebellion in you somewhere.”

 

- - - 

 

They go to the hospital together in Fuyumi’s car.

At the door to their mother’s room, Shoto hesitates, but Fuyumi grabs his arm and pulls him in before he can escape.

The visit actually turns out quite pleasant. 

Their mother, who’s name is Todoroki Rei, is quiet and kind. She sheds a few tears when she first sees Shoto. Izuku feels distinctly uncomfortable, but Natsuo slings an arm over his shoulder and quietly confides that Shoto hasn’t seen his mother in years.

Eventually the tears subside and Izuku takes his chance to offer the flowers he’d picked. The Todorokis’ mother thanks him kindly and arranges them in a vase near her bed.

Then Fuyumi explains to her mother that Izuku was Shoto’s friend, and that when she’d invited Izuku, Shoto had volunteered to go along with them.

Their mother seems to realize that there’s more to the story, but laughs. She has a quiet laugh, a bit sad, but still lovely.

There’s not enough seats for all of them, so the siblings sit on the bed while their mother takes one chair and Izuku takes the other. Izuku is content to sit there and listen while the Todorokis tell each other about their lives. His quirk settles down contentedly while they talk and Izuku is glad that he’s been able to do at least this much.

 

- - -

 

Finally, the day that Slingshot and Leader decided on for the heist arrives.

When he’s getting ready, he brings the jumpsuits, the flashlights, and the smoke making firework. Izuku considers the last item for a long time, then shrugs and shoves everything into his bag.

He meets them at their apartment and they pack away everything that they’ll need. Each of them put on one of the jumpsuits Izuku had brought, they fit perfectly. Slingshot and Leader pack a few things that Izuku’s quirk doesn’t push for, but he decides not to bring it up since they didn't trust Izuku's quirk to the same degree that he did.

They take the bus to the museum, then enter a nearby apartment building. They walk in like nothing is abnormal and climb the stairs. There’s roof access and they sit on the roof for around an hour waiting for the right time. 

Leader is uncharacteristically silent and tense. And Slingshot keeps asking Izuku about his gear and insists on them talking through the plan to make sure they know what to do.

Just before it’s time to leave, Izuku pulls out his crime phone. He follows his quirks instructions and pulls up the contact information of Paper Cup from the group chat.

Izuku pauses for a second, not sure what to write, then shrugs and starts typing.

 

[sparky]

Hey, sorry to ask this, but could you help us out? I’ve got Leader and Slingshot here, could you give us a ride? No rush.

 

He adds an address in the next message, then packs away his phone.

Then the fun begins. 

It’s mostly dark by the time that their plan kicks in. They climb carefully across a short gap to the roof of the museum. Eventually they find a small trapdoor access point with a keypad. Izuku puts on his gloves and follows the pull of his quirk to type in a six digit password. The lock clicks open.

They climb down the ladder and find themselves in a large storage room of some kind. It’s crowded with boxes and storage racks. There’s a few cluttered desks but no signs of people. It’s also completely dark. The three of them pull out the flashlights and look around.

Izuku’s quirk pulls at him.

He glances at Leader and Slingshot, who are pulling out those paper floor plans they'd brought and talking in whispers.

Izuku steps toward one of the huge racks filling the dark room. It's filled with dusty boxes labeled with long strings of letters and numbers which probably meant something to the archivists who had stored all these things here. His quirk pushes him to dig through the boxes for one which didn't look any different from the others. Inside it is some kind of older style memory stick. His quirk pulls at his gut with an unusual amount of force and he grabs it and packs it into one of the pockets of his bag. He doesn't know why his quirk wants it, but he doesn't know why his quirk does most of what it does.

He shines his light across the documents that had been with the memory stick and finds the item description.

It says that it’s an early quirk era relic. Apparently it was thought to contain information about some villain of those years, but that the encryption had never been cracked and it eventually had been sent to the museum since it hadn’t been used in any investigation. 

Interesting? Maybe. Izuku doesn't know why his quirk would want him to have information about this.

Then his quirk pulls him away from the rack and back to Leader and Slingshot.

Leader is walking to the main door of the storage room, and Izuku grabs his arm to still him. His quirk prompts him to pull Leader away from the door and into a nook between a number of storage boxes. Slingshot glances around and follows them.

Then the door to the storage room opens.

Izuku can feel Leader tense up beside him.

But whoever walks in only shines a flashlight around the room for a few moments before closing the door again.

Leader lets out an explosive sigh.

“Thanks, Sparky,” he says quietly. He still looks quite stressed though.

Izuku pats his arm and gets up. 

His quirk pulls at him and he pauses. He reaches into his bag and pulls out the smoke making firework.

“What?” Slingshot hisses. “Why did you bring that?”

Izuku just shrugs at her and sets it up in the widest part of the cramped storage room. 

“Sparky!” she says, grabbing his shoulder. “This isn’t part of the plan!”

Izuku spends a few seconds staring at her, trying to think of what he should say. He knows that this is the right thing to do.

“Come on, Seiko,” Leader says, pulling her away. “He’s just like this. You know? It hasn’t hurt us yet.”

Izuku carefully takes out the timer contraption and connects it to the fuse of the firework. 

He turns it on and sees that he needs to set a specific time amount.

“Ugh,” Slingshot says. “You’re always like this, you can’t just trust everyone.”

“Come on,” Leader says. “Has he let us down yet?”

"Yes, okay,” Slingshot says. “Let’s just finish this.”

Izuku's quirk tells him, digit by digit, to type in 23:32. He pauses, then at the exact moment his quirk tells him, he presses the start button.

He stands back up.

“Okay, we’re good,” Izuku says with a nod.

Slingshot and Leader share a look. Slingshot makes a confused motion of her hand and Leader just shrugs helplessly.

Izuku just heads to the door and Slingshot and Leader follow him after a few more seconds of silence.

Izuku carefully opens the door and sees the inside of the museum proper. Izuku’s been to museums for field trips before and it looks perfectly normal from what he can remember. 

They’re in a huge hallway lined with various items that Izuku doesn’t think are particularly interesting. 

There’s not any glass cases or anything, just red ropes a few feet away from the exhibits themselves.

“Okay, okay,” Slingshot says, she takes a careful look around, then steps around the ropes to start piling objects into her bag. She looks back at Izuku and Leader and jerks her head at them. “Come on guys. We really do not have all day.”

Izuku follows her lead, and steps over the rope to start shoving things into his bag. Nothing really seems that interesting. There’s some old looking phones, some figurines that he doesn’t recognize, just a bunch of old stuff. Izuku doesn’t really know why people thought this stuff needed to be in a museum. They are old, but nothing is that interesting.

His bag is mostly full when he gets a warning pull from his quirk. He pauses from trying to fit a stuffed animal into his bag and glances around.

On the other side of the hallway, Slingshot’s bag is full and she’s quietly urging Leader to hurry up.

Izuku snaps his fingers, and they both glance at him. He steps over the ropes and makes a hurry up gesture at them.

Leader keeps stuffing things into his bag, but Slingshot grabs him by the arm and pulls him to Izuku.

Slingshot steps over the red rope, but when Leader tries to follow he trips over it.

The rod which had held the rope up clatters to the ground.

Then the rest of the rods around it follow suit, pulled by the red rope. The resulting clanging is almost deafening in the complete silence of the museum.

Leader stares at the rods, then back up at Izuku. He makes a belated gesture to try to pick up the rod again.

Izuku feels the tug of his quirk and takes off running in a seemingly random direction. He hears footsteps behind them.

He rounds a corner and comes to an abrupt stop in an alcove in the wall. Slingshot and Leader rush through the doorway behind him and he grabs their arms to tug them in with him. A moment later loud footsteps sound from the direction that they’d come. Then shouting and the sounds of some sort of walkie talkie system.

Izuku pushes back into Leader and Slingshot, and a few seconds later a security guard comes into view to his right.

He jogs through the hall, only a few feet in front of Izuku, then rushes down the hallway they’d just vacated.

Izuku grabs Slingshot’s arm in his right hand and Leader’s in his left. Then takes off in the other direction. 

He takes them away from the hallway they'd come in from. He can hear Slingshot’s quiet stream of curses on one side and Leader’s quiet stream of apologies on the other.

Izuku keeps leading them through the museum. Taking a strange route that he assumes keeps them away from any cameras. There’s a few times that he catches sight of security guards, but they don’t get quite as close as the first time.

Eventually Izuku leads them to a wider hallway. He can see the entrance across a lobby with a number of columns.

There are a bunch of security guys in the front. Way too many to sneak past.

“Okay,” Leader says quietly. “Guys, I’m so sorry. I’ll go out and lead them away.”

“Like hell you are,” Slingshot hisses and grabs Leader’s sleeve. “We’ll figure something out okay. You don’t need to take the fall for something else? I'm going.”

“No,” Leader says, shaking off Slingshot’s hand. “I’ve already got a record. It’s fine, it’s just another thing.”

“That’s not a good reason, you’ll just get in more trouble," Slingshot says. “You always let yourself take the fall. Most of the time it’s not even your own damn fault.”

“I’m literally robbing a museum right now,” Leader says, almost petulantly.

“Well you wouldn’t be if you could get an actual job,” Slingshot hisses.

“I tried,” Leader says, waving an arm. “I really do, but then I just get in trouble for stuff and I’m back in the shit again. I never asked you to join me in this.”

“But I decided to,” Slingshot says. “And for once in your life can you just let someone else take the fall, please?”

Their voices are getting a little loud.

Izuku steps between them, holding the straps of his backpack and kind of wishing they’d hash this out some other time.

“Uh, we need to leave soon?” Izuku interrupts hesitantly.

“I—uh. Look, kid, those guards there,” Slingshot points. “We can’t exactly just walk out of—”

That’s the moment the fire alarm goes off.

Oh. Huh. So that’s what the fireworks were for.

The lights are flashing and the sound is bouncing off of the concrete floors. It’s deafening.

Izuku tugs his backpack into place and grabs Slingshot and Leader once again. He pulls them to the side of the hallway for a moment. 

“This is not a drill. There is a fire in the building. Please exit immediately,” a loud announcement calls from the ceiling. Then the loud alarm sound continues.

Izuku keeps Slingshot and Leader in place for a moment, then walks toward the front door, pulling Leader and Slingshot along with him.

They near the group of security guards at the same time as what looks to be a legitimate maintenance worker. He pulls out his clearance card to show the security guards, but they only give it a glance before gesturing him out the door. Izuku nods and rushes out behind him. The security guards see their uniforms and just wave them past.

Outside, there’s already a cop car and Izuku can hear sirens in the distance. Izuku pulls Slingshot and Leader along behind him and crosses to the other side of the street.

Once there, Slingshot tries to pull them away from the scene, but Izuku pulls back.

Just then, a beat-up minivan pulls up beside them.

The window rolls down and Izuku sees the worried looking face of Paper Cup.

He looks tired and seems to be dressed in pajamas.

“Guys! Are you okay? What’s happening?” he asks, glancing at the cops in front of the museum.

Izuku pushes Slingshot and Leader into the car, then sits in the passenger seat.

“We’re good,” Izuku says, then pulls off his backpack. “We just stole a bunch of stuff though, so we should probably leave soon.”

Paper Cup glances at the bag, then at the museum, then grows much paler and starts the car. He pulls out of his spot and into traffic just as the cops are beginning to run across the street towards them.

Paper Cup is gripping the steering wheel with white knuckles, so Izuku leans over and pats him on the arm.

“Don’t worry, I don’t get caught,” Izuku says placatingly. “We’ll be fine.”

Then he glances up at an intersection in front of them. His quirk sends him an impulse.

“You’ll want to turn right at the next intersection though,” Izuku adds.

Paper Cup does so and a cop passes them going the opposite direction. 

Izuku gives him a few more directions, then tells him to pull into a parking lot maybe a mile away from the museum.

Izuku leans back into his seat and stretches. His muscles had grown tense.

“Holy fuck,” Slingshot says from the back seat. Izuku realizes she and Leader had been silent for a long time. He glances back at them.

They’re both gripping their seat belts in white knuckle grips.

Izuku decides he’ll let the language slide, they seem a little rattled.

“Uh,” Paper Cup hesitantly raises his hand. “What just happened?”

What follows is a very loud and somewhat exaggerated account of the whole heist from Leader, with occasional input from Slingshot.

Paper Cup seems both worried and fascinated by the whole story. He also sends Izuku a few wide-eyed glances when his part is explained.

Eventually Izuku interrupts the conversation.

“Uh, could you drop me off back at my house?” Izuku asks hesitantly.

“What? Oh, yeah,” Paper Cup says, attention torn away from Leader loudly explaining what it was exactly that they’d stolen. “No problem, kid.”

The drive is twenty minutes or so, Izuku gives Paper Cup directions to his new apartment.

During the drive, Izuku slips the memory stick he’d grabbed from the storage room into his pocket, then removes his crime phone from the bag.

Once they’re parked outside Izuku’s apartment he hands over the bag of things he’d stolen to Leader.

He opens it and takes a cursory look inside.

“It’ll take me a bit but I’ll start selling these off,” Leader says.

“Don’t do it too quickly or all at the same place, they’ll connect it to the robbery,” Slingshot says, almost reflexively.

“I know, I know,” Leader says with a dismissive hand gesture. “It'll probably be a couple of months. You good with that, Sparky?”

Izuku’s caught a little flat footed by the attention. He’d honestly forgotten about the whole getting paid part of this.

“Oh, yeah. That’s fine,” Izuku says. “Actually, uh, could I give half my share to Paper Cup? He helped a lot?”

Izuku felt a little bad about pulling the guy out of whatever he’d been doing. He was pretty sure that nothing bad could come of it, but this was the sort of thing people found stressful.

“I—uh. I couldn’t take your part,” Paper Cup says, rubbing at the back of his head. “I didn’t do that much.”

“One seventh,” Slingshot cuts in, “You get one-seventh. Each of us gets two sevenths. Simple enough, we’re not just going to not pay you for this, dude.”

“Oh!” Paper Cup looks like he doesn’t know what he should be doing. But he seems pleased enough. “Uh, thank you?”

“Of course!” Leader leans forward and pats Paper Cup on the shoulder, which makes the man even more flustered. “As one of my minions you’ll be properly compensated for any business.”

Paper Cup seems pleased by this.

Izuku says his goodbyes and Leader promises to be in touch.

Izuku hops out of the car and walks into his apartment, sending the minivan a final wave. He walks up the stairs and into his apartment

Once he’s back inside, he lays down face down on his bed for a while. His quirk pokes and prods at him to get up, but he ignores it until it becomes too annoying.

He scrapes himself off the bed and into his chair.

His hands twitch toward the memory stick and he pulls it out. He turns it in his hands for a few moments. He watches the vines in his fingers twirl around the thing. It looks like triumph. He guesses this is the real reason for this entire venture. 

He digs around in his closet and pulls out that old cable thing he’d picked up before the museum and plugs it into his computer. Then he plugs the memory stick to that.

His fingers twitch around his keyboard and he follows their lead. They lead him to the files inside the memory stick. 

When he tries to open it, he finds that there’s a long encryption password needed to open the file.

He carefully watches the vines, then starts typing. The password is more than two dozen characters long. 

Izuku doesn’t really know much about encryptions, but he thinks that this is probably the reason that the museum was never able to access the files inside the memory stick.

Once the files finally are open, Izuku begins to explore.

He doesn’t know what he expected, but it wasn’t this.

As he gets into the files, he grabs a juice from his tiny fridge and curls up on his bed to read. 

It takes some time for him to understand the story being told. Most of the files are old news articles. Some villain attack reports. And a number of simple text files that seem to be someone’s notes on other sources.

It looks like someone was compiling these stories for some purpose and it takes Izuku a while to figure out what it was.

It’s not organized well, and some of the files are corrupted from the years. Izuku thinks that this might be upwards of a hundred years old so he’s more surprised that everything is in as good a shape as it is.

The story that Izuku pieces together goes like this;

There was a villain, very early in the development of quirks. So early that the quirk prejudice was still in full effect. He had a powerful quirk. Some said that he could copy other people’s quirks. Other people went so far as to say that he could completely take away and give quirks.

He was one of the most feared villains of his time, and he caused more damage in those years that he was active than any modern villain Izuku could think of.

Eventually his control waned and he fell back into obscurity. 

Or at least that’s what the news articles said.

The notes left by whoever created this said otherwise. They said that this person, who they called All for One, was still in play.

The person referred to their own quirk as One for All, which Izuku doesn't know what to make of at first. As he keeps reading he starts to think that One for All might instead be some type of title. That this person was part of some group of people who’d been working against All for One for some time.

From what Izuku reads, this villain didn’t lose power, so much as decide that he no longer needed to be the focus. His power never lessened, but anyone who knew what he was or what he could do was taken out of play so that he could do what he wanted unopposed.

By the time Izuku has skimmed through most of the files, doing what he can to organize them by type and timeline, it’s getting late. The clock reads 1:42 and his eyes are getting heavy.

He transfers the files to his own computer, and at a twitch from his quirk, adds his own set of encryption passwords to them. That wasn’t something he'd known his computer could do, but his quirk shows him how.

He ejects and takes out the memory card. He drops it into a drawer with the adapter.

Then he turns out the lights and settles back into his bed.

This is something interesting. And he has a feeling that he’ll go through the files again, more carefully next time.

But why had his quirk done so much to get these files? It wasn’t like this villain was still in power. The files were from over a century ago. The villain was long dead, and likely didn’t have any power anymore.

Izuku feels the creep of his quirk around his hands. He pulls them from under the covers and stares at them. The vines are thick and tangled around his hands. Knotted and snarled around his fingers. He pulls out his arm and sees that they’ve climbed and are brushing past his shoulders. 

That’s the furthest that Izuku has ever seen them grow.

Which means that this is something important, and that Izuku really needs to do something. That this file is important.

It means that this villain is still alive.

The realization brings the vines to life. They shift and curl in what Izuku knows is acknowledgement. And what Izuku can read as determination and a plan.

His quirk wants him to take down this villain. All for One, whoever he is.

Once he knows this, his quirk starts to curl into itself. It pulls back, curling until it recedes back into the twin freckles on the backs of his wrists.

His chest radiates satisfaction.

Izuku spends a long time laying in bed. Staring at the ceiling and thinking about this villain. About the person who’d been working against him. He thinks about how this was the most information his quirk has ever given him about what a plan will be.

He falls asleep thinking about the sheer number of heroes who’ve died to this villain over the decades.

Notes:

look at my boy, i'm so proud of him doing all these crimes :')

Chapter 3

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Izuku stands outside the Todoroki compound and looks at the notification on his phone.

Something like regret settles into his stomach, along with frustration and anger.

And annoyance at his quirk.

The notification is that his contract with the Todoroki family is ending. His quirk is telling him to let it expire.

He wants to stay working there. He likes working with plants. And he likes the Todoroki family. They’re nice and they seem to like him too.

Well, not Endeavour. But Izuku has never actually talked to the guy.

Izuku smiles tightly at his phone and sighs. Well. He knows that his quirk is right and that whatever his quirk is planning; it’s big, bigger than he can guess at yet.

He slips his phone into his pocket, and pulls on his gloves. He sighs a final time and walks into the Todoroki compound.

The grounds are quiet, as they always are.

Izuku walks until he finds the gardening shed. Inside is Konishi Kazuo, the man with the mustache and two heads. He’s organizing some bags of fertilizer.

Izuku knocks on the open door of the shed.

Konishi looks up at him.

“Oh, Akatani!” he says, straightening up. “Good timing, as always. It’s good to see you. Have you thought about my offer?”

“Uh, yeah I did,” Izuku says, rubbing his neck. “It’s really kind of you, but I don't think I can accept it. I really have enjoyed working here. But I’ve got other things moving forward and don’t think I can continue here.”

Konishi looks disappointed.

“Really? This is quite the position,” he says, “and you’ve been a huge help here. I really don’t know what it is, but you’ve really got a touch with the grounds. I don’t think it’s ever looked so good. We really could use you here. You’ve really been the best gardener we’ve ever had.”

“Ah, that’s really kind of you,” Izuku says, glancing away. “But it’s not really in the cards for me. I really do appreciate everything that you’ve done for me over the years.”

“Of course, kid,” Konishi says with a sigh. “I won’t try and pressure you. I wish you the best of luck, I’m sure you’ll be great in whatever you choose. You can grab your things whenever you like.”

“Thank you,” Izuku says, smiling. “I would like to work one more day though. It would be nice to at least go through the motions one more time.”

“Course you can.” Konishi shakes Izuku’s hand. “I’ve got to head out, but I’m sure you know what needs to be done. Best of luck kid.”

“Thank you,” Izuku says.

He waves as Konishi leaves.

There’s still a sort of sad feeling rolling around in his gut but he pushes it down.

He grabs his gloves and whatever gear his quirk tells him to, then heads out.

It’s all standard. Trimming bushes and weeding the flowers lining the house. He’s been there maybe twenty minutes when he sees Shoto walking up to him.

He doesn’t speak, just sits down next to Izuku. He’s in his school uniform.

“Heya,” Izuku says. He’s trimming rose bushes. “Uh, there’s something I wanted to tell you.”

Shoto looks up at Izuku. His face is mostly blank. But he does look a bit tired.

Izuku looks away from him, staring fixedly at the rosebushes.

“My contract here is ending,” Izuku starts. 

“I can extend it,” Shoto says instantly, Izuku can see him sit up out of the corner of his eye.

“I, no. Konishi already offered to do that,” Izuku says awkwardly. He sets down the trimmer and sits down on his heels. “But I’ve got—Well, other things are coming up. And this seemed like a good time to...” 

Izuku shrugs.

“Oh,” Shoto says. He’s not looking at Izuku.

“I mean. I really did like working here. I’ve liked hanging out with you. And your sister, and brother, and I liked meeting your mom too. Your dad I don’t like so much, but that’s not too much of an issue.” Izuku sees Shoto’s mouth twitching at the corner. “I’m glad that I worked here anyway. I haven’t seen your sister today, but could you tell her I said goodbye?”

“Ah. Yeah, I’ll do that.” Shoto doesn’t seem to know what to say.

“Yeah.” Izuku shrugs and looks down at his hands. “But, who knows, maybe we’ll see each other some time.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Shoto echos. He doesn’t sound convinced.

“Hey, it’s not that unlikely,” Izuku says, feeling a slight smile on his face. “Things like that happen all the time, right?”

Shoto smiles.

“If you say so.” He lays down on the grass, arms pillowed under his head.

Izuku goes back to trimming the roses.

After a few minutes, Shoto starts talking. Which is unusual for him. Normally he wasn't the one to start conversations.

But he just talks; about his hero training school, his classmates and teachers.

Shoto’s a little awkward, like he’s not used to talking so much. But he can be funny sometimes, in a quiet, dry way.

Izuku laughs a few times at the way that he describes his classes' hero training exercises. And is interested to learn that one of Shoto’s teachers is actually All Might himself.

During Shoto’s stories, Izuku picks up his tools and gestures for Shoto to follow him, and they loiter around a couple trees in the corner of the property as Endeavour walks past. Izuku waves at him, but the hero doesn’t see him.

Eventually, there’s nothing left to do, and Izuku returns to the shed. Shoto tells Izuku about his recent visits to his mother and the time he’s been spending with his siblings.

Izuku starts packing up his things. He’s accumulated a bit. A few pairs of gardening gloves, an extra water bottle. Odds and ends that had been easier to store at the Todoroki compound rather than carry with him.

He packs them into his bag, and walks to the back gate of the compound.

“Well,” Izuku says, still a little bit sad, "it’s been a good one, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Shoto smiles then, just a small one. “It’s been a good one.”

“I—uh, before I go I just wanted to say, and I don’t want to overstep, but—”

“Yeah?” Shoto interrupts him.

“Well, I’m just glad that you’ve reconnected with your family, I guess,” Izuku says. “They’re good people. And I guess I don’t know the whole story, but I’m glad that you’ve got them.”

Shoto’s smile grows a bit.

“Yeah, I’m glad too,” he says. “It was good knowing you.”

“Yeah. It’s not so final though.” Izuku smiles. “I’m sure that I’ll see you, sometime.”

“Yeah,” Shoto says, “sometime.”

Izuku walks out the gate with one final wave.

 

- - -

 

Izuku’s crime phone buzzes again.

He checks the notification

 

[Unknown Number]

The prospective job will happen in two days. Meet at 7am.

 

An address follows.

Izuku stares down at his phone. So this is really happening then. He's going to work for real, actual villains.

And he needs to be somewhere at seven in the morning.

Why.

He sighs.

His quirk has a number of things which it wants him to do. He replies an affirmative to the text number.

He grabs his bag, a large chunk of cash from what's left of his crime money, and his jacket. 

He heads out the door.

He goes out and buys a very heavy hammer, a thick black bag, a pair of walkie talkies, and a golden mask that covers his whole face. Then he impulsively picks up a box of red hair dye and bleach. It’s time for a change anyway.

 

- - -

 

The morning of the attack, his quirk wakes him up at five in the morning. He groans and pulls his pillow over his head. 

But his hands tug him up and out of bed and he finally relents and pulls himself up.

He packs two bags. One of them contains his school uniform and books. The other is the bag he’s just bought, the heavy hammer, his crime phone, and the flip phone he’d bought years ago when he created his false identity.

He gets ready by pulling his hair—which he has dyed a dark red—into a messy knot at the back of his head. He then pulls on a black cloth mask and puts in red contacts. His hand hovers over the golden mask he’d bought, but his quirk pushes his hand away.

He looks odd, but not particularly notable. Not when compared with most people with mutation quirks anyway.

At six in the morning he brings his school bag and uniform and hides it in a bush near his school. Then he starts toward the address which the unknown number had sent him.

It's a shady looking warehouse in the middle of an industrial district. 

He slips through a side door two minutes before seven and is greeted with what seems to be hundreds of low level villains. 

They have mostly mutation quirks and tend toward dark clothing.

There’s some amount of posturing and arguing and Izuku pulls himself toward the edge of the crowd where he can lean against a pillar and try to look inconspicuous. Then he waits twenty minutes, during which the villains grumble amongst themselves.

Then an inky blackness appears in the center. The villains who were arguing scatter and a number of them pull out weapons. 

Then the ink settles into the shape of a man wearing a suit. At his side is a slouching man who seems to be covered in hands.

“So these are the NPCs,” the hand man says, glancing around him like he doesn’t care much at all about them.

The inky man seems to wait for him to say more, then steps forward himself when the hand man says nothing.

“I am Kurogiri and this is Shigaraki Tomura,” he says. “We’ve acquired your services today to serve as troops for an attack. We will be launching an offensive on the UA students. They are leaving the school to visit a training facility known as the USJ, where they will be vulnerable.” 

There’s a strange stirring among the villains. Some perk up with interest and take steps forward.

“Your job will be dealing with the students and the teacher of the 1A class. You will not attack one another and you use any force necessary against the heroes. Is that understood?”

No one responds, but every eye in the warehouse is on the smoke man.

“Don’t be so glum!” said Shigaraki, his face set in a wide, flaky smile. “We’re going to do something great today. We’re going to kill All Might.”

There’s a wave of movement across the room.

“The attack will commence in thirty minutes. Prepare yourselves.” Then the two of them melt back into the void.

Izuku shrinks back into the shadows as the villains break out into excited whispers.

He feels his quirk pull him towards his crime phone.

Izuku opens it and is drawn toward the Twitter app.

He follows the movement of his quirk and types in a post.

 

[foresight2020] - 7:34am

@hawks.hero There is about to be an attack on the UA 1A class. Probably within the next hour or so. Good Luck!!

 

Izuku posts it.

Huh. Wait? So is this the whole point of getting Hawks at a friend on Twitter? Probably.

Within a few minutes he starts getting messages from random people asking what he meant. None from Hawks yet though. He puts the phone on silent.

He wastes a few more minutes doing nothing. Then more than twenty minutes later gets the impulse to take out his flip phone.

He slowly types in a number, guided carefully to each digit. Then he dials.

A few rings in, someone answers.

“Hawks here," says a slightly bleary voice. "Who is this?”

“Oh it is? Well you should probably check your twitter. It seems kind of important?”

“What? Who? Why do you even have this number it’s—”

Izuku hangs up.

Just moments after that the smoke appears in the center of the room again.

“We will be deploying in one minute,” the voice of the smoke says. His voice seems to emanate from the entire cloud.

Izuku surges forward with the rest of the crowd, narrowly avoiding a few elbows to the stomach.

Then the world drops out from underneath Izuku and he lands on unfamiliar dirt. He looks around. He’s in some huge domed building. Izuku guesses this is the USJ. He’s in some sort of plaza, surrounded by a huge crowd of villains. In front of them is a long set of stairs, on top of which is standing a group which he doesn’t know.

They’re dressed in bright colors and all look rather short.

Oh. Those are the hero students. Izuku isn’t close enough to see them clearly.

A figure leaps forward from the group of students, propelling himself down the stairs with some kind of prehensile white cloth thing which just a second ago had simply appeared to be a scarf. He’s wearing all black casual clothes and has on a pair of strange yellow goggles. 

Izuku hears whispers of the name ‘Eraserhead’ from the villains. Apparently this hero is known in the world of criminals.

Then the fighting starts. The villains around him surge forward against Eraserhead.

Izuku runs the other way.

By the time he’s reached the edge of some thick vegetation, the hero has already taken out a dozen of the villains.

Izuku keeps running.

He passes through what seems to be an abandoned town, around a scenic pond, and then into a frozen wasteland.

It looks like it’s meant to be a street in some small town, but everything has been covered with an uneven layer of ice.

He’s going to keep running when he sees movement to his right.

He whips his head around and sees a familiar head of white and red hair. Todoroki Shoto.

Oh. This must be that hero school that he's going to then. Funny that Shoto had never said he was going to UA. Or he had and Izuku had just forgotten. Either was possible.

He raises his hand toward Izuku, then pauses, his eyes widen and his hand lowers slightly.

Izuku waves at him, they’re at least twenty meters apart.

“Oh! Hi Shoto! I told you we’d run into each other!” Izuku shouts. Then remembers that he’s being a villain right now. “Though I do need to leave now, nice to see you!”

Then he starts running away again.

His quirk warns him just a split second before a giant iceberg bursts through the space he’d been moments before. He has enough time to duck into a building, then scramble through it and out a small back door. He sprints through a brief empty space and into another forest. 

His chest hurts from running and he thinks that maybe he’s a bit out of shape.

As he’s running through the forest he hears the sound of cracking from behind him. He glances around and sees the entire house has been covered in ice.

Scary quirk.

Izuku changes direction and finally reaches the side of the USJ.

There’s a small door in the wall. It’s subtle and painted to blend in. 

He pulls the hammer from his bag and smashes at the handle until the door finally opens. He rushes out and into a maze of corridors. Izuku guesses this is the maintenance entrance to get into the USJ. He catches sight of an exit sign and runs towards it.

He finally gets out of the building and wastes a minute hunched over with his hands on his knees. He feels sick. He hasn’t ran that long or fast in a long time. Ouch.

Then his quirk starts insistently pulling at his hands. 

“Yeah. I know,” he grunts, and pulls out a flip phone from his pocket. Once again he goes through the process of slowly typing out a phone number digit by digit.

It rings once, then someone picks up.

“Hello. This is Principal Nedzu, who is this?” The voice is strange and high pitched but the dictation is perfect.

“Uh, huh, well,” Izuku flounders for a moment, then realizes. “Principal of UA?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

“You know your students that are, like, on a field trip or something?” Izuku manages, he’s still a bit out of breath. “Well there’s a bunch of villains attacking them. I thought you should probably know.”

There’s a short silence.

“Hurry maybe? There are a lot of villains. There’s only two teachers and they’ve separated the students.”

“The heroes have been notified.” That was quick. “Who are you?”

“Uh…” Izuku’s quirk doesn’t tell him to hang up yet and he flounders. “I’m, uh, Foresight. Yeah.”

“Why do you have this information?”

Izuku’s quirk finally lets go of the pull and Izuku instantly snaps the flip phone shut. He does not like phone calls.

He pulls the back out of the phone and takes out the battery.

He packs the pieces into his bag. Then he glances around and starts walking away from the building.

He’s maybe a block away when he hears something and looks behind him.

There’s a streak of gold that can be no one other than All Might, and just behind him there's a streak of red that he’s pretty sure is Pro Hero Hawks.

Izuku’s shoulders loosen. Everything should be okay then.

He heads to school.

He finds the uniform he’s packed away and changes in a public bathroom. He packs the bag of his villain stuff in a bush that his quirk indicates.

Finally, he makes his way into the school.

He walks in just as the receptionist at the front door is loudly copying some documents and files into his classroom, delicately avoiding the security cameras without conscious thought.

He gets back to school only two periods late, but just the right comment convinces his teacher that he’s been in school all day.

He's officially marked as present and his alibi becomes flawless.

Okay that was pretty stressful.

But it was fun.

 

- - - 

 

Izuku is trying to do homework when his quirk tugs at his gut. He spends a moment staring at his math, which is due tomorrow first period. Then decides that he absolutely does not care about it.

He grabs both the papers and his textbook and shoves them into a drawer.

His quirk tells him to put on the golden mask he’d bought. He pulls a hoodie over his hair. When he looks in the mirror he can’t see any of his face.

He grabs the heavy black bag he’s grabbed and puts in his crime phone and the walkie talkies that he’d bought before the attack. He pulls on a pair of heavy gloves.

Then he climbs out through his apartment window and up the ladder to the roof. It’s quiet up there, and Izuku snaps a few pictures with his crime phone. 

Izuku then jumps across a few rooftops until he reaches a building covered in large scraps of fabric on wooden frames.

He sits near the edge of the building for a few minutes, until Izuku sees a dark shape jumping across buildings on the other side of the street.

His quirk pushes him upright and he grabs one of the walkie talkies from the bag.

“Yo!” Izuku shouts across the large gap between the buildings.

The figure freezes and turns toward him.

Izuku waves.

The figure stares at him.

“I’ve got something for you!” Izuku shouts. “Not in a bad way! Like, literally I am about to throw you something!" He pauses and adds, "Not in a threatening way!"

Izuku winds up and launches the walkie talkie as far as he can get it. It doesn’t go especially well.

The walkie talkie would have hit the side of the other building and landed on the street if the figure hadn’t caught it with a long pale tendril of fabric.

Izuku realizes that this is the hero that protected the students during the attack. 

Eraserhead.

The hero lifts the walkie talkie up and stares at it for a few moments. Then takes it in his hand and holds it in front of him.

Izuku grabs his own walkie talkie and presses the button. It makes a loud sound. Then the figure moves a bit and the walkie talkie makes another loud sound back at him.

Izuku walks away from the edge of the building to sit near the center of the rooftop. The scraps of fabric move erratically in the wind, blocking the line of sight between himself and the hero.

He presses down on the transmit button. He settles into a more comfortable position and pulls the mask up until it’s out of the way of his face.

“Yo! Eraserhead, right? Good to see that you’re alright, how’d things go at the USJ?” Izuku starts.

“...Who is this?” Eraserhead asks.

“Oh. Did no one introduce me?” Izuku asks, crossing his legs. “I sent Hawks that message about that attack the other day.”

“That was you?” Eraserhead responds.

“Yep,” Izuku says with a pop.

“Who are you?” 

“Foresight. Well anyway. I just wanted to catch up with you and make sure that everything went alright.”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Well, ya know. I did warn you guys, thought I should know how things went, seems fair, right?”

Eraserhead ignores him.

“Where you also the other caller?”

“Oh, yeah, I called the principal after I got out of the facility.”

“Why?”

Izuku thinks about that for a while.

“I guess it was better to have multiple people aware of it so heroes would mobilize faster.”

“I see. Why did you warn us at all?”

“Listen, Eraser—Can I call you Eraser?”

“No.”

“Okay listen Mr. Head. You keep asking me questions but haven’t answered any of mine.”

Izuku can practically hear the icy stare through the walkie talkie. 

“Okay, so… What happened at the USJ?”

Eraserhead pauses for a few moments.

“Only a few minutes after the fight had begun All Might and Hawks broke into the USJ. They saved the students, along with myself and Pro Hero Thirteen from serious harm. When the villains found that their plan had failed so quickly they retreated using the warp quirk.”

“Did they say anything?”

“What do you mean?”

“About what they wanted? Because if they didn’t then I’ve got some information you might appreciate.”

“What are your terms?”

Izuku pauses. What does he want? He’ll probably tell the hero everything anyway, is there anything that they could give him that he would want?

Well…

Izuku honestly can’t think of anything. If he wanted something he could get it, there isn’t really anything that the combined force of the police and the Pro Heros could give him.

“Eh. That’s for the both of us to figure out.”

There’s a moment of silence, then Izuku thinks of something.

“Oh yeah, by the way, I would prefer if you didn’t try to catch me, it’ll be inconvenient. And anyway, it won’t work if you do try. I never get caught.”

Izuku pauses. His quirk seems sated. Twirling contentedly around his knuckles.

“Yeah I think that’s it.”

“You don’t want anything,” Eraserhead says flatly. Izuku thinks that might be the only way he says things.

“Yep, go ahead with your questions now.”

“Why did you warn the heroes?”

“Well I don’t want those villains to kill anyone, duh. Who would just sit there and let them attack the students?”

“So you were working for them and had a change of heart?”

“No, course not. I just had some information and thought that I should share it with you.”

“So you just show up out of nowhere and want to help us?”

“Hey! I didn’t just show up out of nowhere! I’ve done other things!”

There’s a long silence, Izuku senses judgment there.

“I did a whole heist thing! I stole a bunch of stuff from a museum one time!”

“You stole things. From a museum. And that should make us trust you?”

“It wasn’t important stuff! It was like early quirk era collectables. No one got hurt!”

Izuku decides that he’s dug himself deep enough a hole and should probably put down the shovel. 

“Anyway, that doesn’t matter now, I know you’ve got questions about why the villains attacked you, I’ve got information.” Izuku pauses. “You’re recording this right?”

There’s a short pause.

“Yes.”

“Okay good. So their leader’s Shigaraki Tomura and the smoke guy is Kurogiri. Their goal, or at least the goal that Shigaraki said, is that they want to kill All Might. That’s all that I know so far.”

“So far?”

“Yeah, I figure I’ll learn more over time.”

“You’re still in contact with them?”

“Nope, not yet. We’ll see how things go though.”

“You are not giving as much information as you think.”

“No, I’m aware.” Izuku’s quirk pulls him to stand up. “I’m going to head out now I think.”

“How should I contact you?” Eraserhead asks.

“You probably won’t,” Izuku says, “I’ll give you a heads up when we need to talk next though.”

There’s only silence on the other end. Izuku leaves the walkie talkie on the ground where he’d been sitting. He covers his face with the golden mask again.

Izuku is suddenly pulled by his quirk to the other side of the building. There’s some plant, long dead, in a pot near the edge of the building.

His quirk pushes him toward it, and he ends up with two large handfulls of wet soil. It had rained recently and it’s mostly mud.

“Why is my life like this?” he mutters to no one.

He’s pushed toward the lip of the building, and he winds up crouched under the railing.

He sits there for twenty seconds before his quirk sends a warning. 

Then Eraserhead launches himself directly over where Izuku is sitting.

Izuku stands up behind him and coughs.

Eraserhead jerks around toward him, and Izuku sees the start of red shining through his goggles.

Izuku throws the soil directly into his face.

Eraserhead rears back, tearing away the goggles and falling into a defensive position. His face is completely covered in wet earth.

Izuku doesn’t even pause for a moment, and is immediately scrambling the other direction. He starts laughing without thinking about it. He probably sounds more than a little hysterical.

Who leaves vents in their goggles? Doesn’t that defeat the entire purpose? Also the idea of a real Pro Hero thinking that Izuku is a threat is hilarious.

Izuku jumps the few feet between the buildings. On the other side of that he finds a fire escape going downwards and climbs down. Eventually he gets to the ground, winded but unharmed. 

Then he turns and goes deeper into the alleyway. He slips into a crevice between two dumpsters. It smells bad but he doesn’t move.

A minute later Eraserhead jumps down from the same building. He doesn’t even use the fire escape, he just uses those bandage things to slow down his fall. He lands in a fluid motion.

Eraserhead briefly looks around, then runs into the street, still looking for Izuku.

Izuku spends a few minutes sitting still and waiting for his breathing to slow down. Then eventually stands back up and climbs up the fire escape. 

Just moments after he’s gone a police car slowly drives past the alleyway entrance.

Izuku makes his way back to his apartment, sitting still and hiding just before the police, Eraserhead, or some other hero would have seen him.

Eventually he gets back to his apartment and slips back in through the window.

First things first, he takes a shower to get rid of any smell of dumpster or sweat that might remain.

Then he gets himself a bag of chips because he’s hungry. He sits on his bed and pulls out the flip phone from his desk. He opens it, replaces the battery, then once again carefully dials a number digit by digit with the help of his quirk.

“We haven’t found him yet,” Eraserhead answers instantly. “I’m checking the third quadrant now.”

“Well I could have told you that,” Izuku says casually, mouth full of chips.

“Foresight,” Eraserhead says.

“The one and only,” Izuku answers, leaning against the wall. “I was being polite before, with the whole walkie talkie thing. And yes, even if you change numbers I can call you.”

“We’ll find you.”

“Nope, no you won’t. It literally doesn’t matter what you do. I already told you this.”

“That’s a bold claim.”

“It’s really not,” Izuku says, getting tired of the whole thing. “It’s just how it works. It doesn’t matter what you do, what you try. In the end, this is true. I don’t get caught. Check the information I gave you, it’s a better use of your time.”

Izuku snaps the phone closed.

 

- - - 

 

Izuku’s at school when he hears some other students talking about the UA sports festival. They’re clustered around a phone, laughing and pointing at something. Izuku pulls out his own phone and looks up the event.

Apparently it's happening right now.

Hmm. He should probably check that out sometime.

His quirk pulls at him and he tucks his phone away.

“Hey, guys.” Izuku leans over to the other students and points to the door. They scatter away from the phone and go to their seats. An instant later the teacher walks in.

Izuku has gained a reputation as the guy that saves people from getting in trouble.

It was a little tiresome honestly. The rest of the students liked him, but he didn’t talk to them much. He just wasn’t really interested in the same things that they found interesting.

He turns to pay attention to the teacher.

The rest of the day passes, and Izuku walks back to his apartment. 

When he’s back, he lays on the bed and pulls up the sports festival recording. It’s not super interesting to him. Some of the ways the students solve problems are cool, but that’s about it. 

Then he sees Shoto and perks up. He looks cold and disinterested. He blows away most of the competition. It kind of makes Izuku cringe, how… Well Izuku wouldn’t want to describe his friend badly, but he does look cold, almost cruel. Without the quiet moments of indecision and kindness that Izuku knows Shoto is capable of, it's hard to see him as anything more than a terrifying and ruthless competitor. 

Eventually the tournament bit comes up, and Izuku watches the fights.

Which is when he notices that Shoto is only using half of his quirk. He knows that Shoto can use both fire and ice. He’d helped Izuku light a bonfire for some yard debris once.

What?

Izuku watches through the whole tournament. Shoto wins the first few fights relatively easily, but the final round starts poorly.

At that point Izuku gets distracted by the guy he’s fighting against. He’s got an explosion quirk and looks familiar.

Izuku looks up his name and realizes that he actually knew that guy. He was one of those annoying kids who bothered him in elementary school. Kacchan. Bakugou. 

Izuku’s pretty sure their moms had been friends for a while.

Man he’d been a violent kid. Weird that he's going to be a hero. Maybe he’d changed over the years or something. Izuku hadn’t talked to the guy for a long time now.

Izuku plays the video, and realizes that Bakugo is definitely still just as violent. He winces at some of the explosions that he sends at Shoto.

But Shoto never uses his fire throughout the fight and he ends up losing.

Yikes.

Izuku watches the awards ceremony out of a sort of morbid curiosity. Bakugo looks incredibly angry, which is weird, since he just won the tournament.

Izuku closes the video, then stares at the ceiling for a while.

He kinda wants to talk to Shoto. He hadn’t for a while. Not since he’d stopped working as a gardener. Though he had run into him at the USJ actually. 

The conversation might be awkward, but he did want to ask about the whole ice and fire thing.

Hmm.

He pulls out his crime phone and goes to the messages app.

His quirk seems to hesitate. Then it pushes at his fingers. He types in a phone number, then opens a chat with it. 

 

[sparky]

Yo! Hey dude. Nice show today! Good job getting second!!

[Shoto]

Who is this?

[sparky] 

Oh yeah, I worked as a gardener for you for a while, and I saw you at the USJ last week, sorry for it being awkward lol

 

There’s a few minutes of nothing and Izuku wonders if Shoto is going to respond.

 

[Shoto]

Are you a villain?

[sparky]

Oh! No!! I’m not. I just needed to be there. It was like a whole thing. I actually sent the heroes a message that you guys were being attacked :D 

[Shoto]

That seems beyond the realm of just being “a whole thing”

[sparky]

Yeah I guess. Anyway, I sent the message on Twitter if you want to check it out, my username is foresight2020. It just ended up being the best way to make things work out well. I’m glad that no one got seriously hurt.

 

There’s a few minutes of silence. Izuku thinks that Shoto might be going through his Twitter to see if he was telling the truth. Izuku doesn’t mind Shoto's checking. It’s better than if he just trusted Izuku at his word.

 

[Shoto]

You warned Hawks a few hours before the attack?

[sparky]

Yep.

[Shoto}

Thanks.

[sparky]

np

Oh yeah! My name is actually Izuku by the way! I thought that maybe you should know that

[Shoto]

Oh. Nice to meet you Izuku

[sparky]

Oh! Speaking of that, that guy you fought at that last tournament battle, Bakugou, I went to middle school with him!

[Shoto]

?

[sparky]

Yeah! Small world right? He was kind of a lot back then too

I didn’t know he was planning on being a hero, I think he talked about it as a kid, but lots of kids talk about how they’re going to be heroes

[Shoto]

That is interesting.

[sparky]

Yeah :D 

so anyway! I was watching your match today and you were great! I did have a question. No pressure tho

[Shoto]

What question

[sparky]

Why aren’t you using your fire side?

 

Shoto doesn’t answer immediately.

The silence lasts long enough for Izuku to make himself dinner. He’s sitting down to eat when Shoto finally responds to him.

 

[Shoto]

It’s Endeavor’s fire. I’m not going to use something that’s his

[sparky]

Uh

Sorry

I don’t mean to disrespect your beliefs or anything

But

That’s kind of dumb

 

Izuku waits a minute but Shoto doesn’t respond, so he continues.

 

[sparky]

Like, what if there was a civilian in danger, and if you didn’t use your quirk, it would lead to them getting hurt or dying?

Your refusal to use your quirk would put them in danger.

Plus it’s not your dad’s quirk, it’s yours. Like it just is. But if you treat it like it’s your dad’s quirk, then you’re making it into his quirk by treating it as such

 

There’s no response. Izuku finishes his dinner and cleans up.

When he’s going to bed a few hours later, there’s still no answer. He frowns at his screen, then shrugs. This is more up to Shoto, not Izuku.

He can make his own decisions.

Izuku goes to sleep.

 

- - -

 

Todoroki Shoto’s life has been turned upside down.

For years it had been the same thing. His life had been school, training, and sleep. He’d wake up, go to school, go home, train until he could barely stand, do his homework until he was completely mentally exhausted, then go to sleep. Rince, repeat.

Then his gardener had changed that. 

He didn’t know anything about the guy. Just that he worked odd times, could talk about anything for hours, and had a truly inspiring ability to avoid Shoto’s father.

It was almost magic. If Shoto just followed him around it was like Endeavor just didn’t exist. 

Dozens of times, his gardener had moved seemingly for no reason only for Shoto’s father to appear where they’d been moments before.

Shoto has some theory that the gardener had a hearing quirk or something similar but had never actually asked.

That was something Shoto had found comforting about the gardener. He rarely asked Shoto questions. Not about his quirk, or scar, or even his pro hero father. He just talked about flowers and acted like anything that happened was completely normal.

When he did have something to say that he knew Shoto wouldn’t like, he was always careful how he said it, and what he said was often right. 

And that was before his gardener had led Shoto to reconnect with his mother. Shoto still couldn’t figure out if it had been intentional or not. But somehow, everything had just lined up around that day that he’d found himself seeing his mother for the first time in years.

He decided that it really didn’t matter why his gardener had done what he did.

Shoto had been sad when he’d quit. Much more than he’d expected. Part of it was admittedly that following the gardener had let him avoid his father. But Shoto had actually enjoyed the company.

Fuyumi had also been sad. Especially since she hadn’t gotten to say goodbye. She hadn’t said much, but Shoto could tell that she was disappointed by the whole thing.

Then things got weirder.

On what was supposed to be a routine trip for him and his classmates, they’d been attacked by villains.

They’d been separated across the huge facility and Shoto had fought real villains for the first time in his life. 

Then he’d seen his gardener. 

He’d just taken care of the last of the villains who’d been attacking him, when he’d heard something behind him. He’d been about to send an ice spike at them when he’d seen the gardener’s face.

Shoto had thought it was just a trick of his stressed mind, but that was before the gardener called Shoto by name and waved at him.

It had taken Shoto far too long to realize that he had been dressed just like the villains and there really was no innocent reason why he would be there.

But by the time Shoto reacted, the gardener was gone. When Shoto had examined the building he’d disappeared into, he’d found nothing but an open back door.

He’d tried searching through the woods around the area and found nothing that could answer his questions.

But, only a few minutes afterward, the pro heroes had finally arrived. Shoto probably should have said something but no one had asked Shoto “Hey, did you recognize any of the villains?” So he hadn’t said anything at all.

He did wonder at the timing of seeing the gardener only just before the heroes arrived. He didn’t know what to make of that either.

Then came the day of the sports festival.

It had gone alright. He hadn’t won, but he’d come close.

But that night—when he was holding his right hand to his bruises to cool them down with his quirk and scrolling through his phone—he’d gotten a text.

It’d been from an unknown number.

He’d almost ignored it, since it was probably just someone who’d watched the festival and found his number somehow.

But he’d responded anyway.

He’d felt something between horror and happiness when he’d learned that it was the gardener.

But he wasn’t surprised. Something about the gardener seemed to attract weird things happening. Shoto had learned to just accept that sort of thing as it came at this point.

Shoto probably shouldn’t have believed anything that he said. But Shoto had liked him when he’d worked at the house. And he still liked him.

Plus he owed him for helping him reconnect to his family.

So he listened to him.

Shoto didn’t really understand what was going on with him, but he was pretty sure that, all things considered, he was on the side of the heroes.

And he told Shoto that his name was Izuku.

Shoto was pretty sure that Izuku wasn’t the name that he’d given Shoto when they’d met. So later Shoto had checked the family’s records and found that he was right. He wasn’t sure if he felt betrayed that Izuku had lied to him, or grateful that he’d told him the truth when he had no reason to.

It had also given Shoto a way to check if Izuku was telling the truth. 

He’d asked Bakugou if he’d gone to school with someone named Izuku. At first he’d got nothing but insults and taunts. But eventually Bakugou did say that there was a kid named that at his elementary and middle school.

Bakugou described him as weird and quiet and that he constantly would change his hair color. Shoto had taken that as confirmation that Izuku had given him his real name.

Then Izuku had to ask about Shoto using his fire side. He’d been angry at first; but eventually that had faded, now it was more a quiet consideration.

He really did have a point. And Shoto had found himself lying awake at night. Thinking about what he would do if someone died because he wouldn’t use his fire side.

He’d relented, a little bit bitter about the whole thing.

Somehow, his gardener had ended up being one of the most influential people in his life and he still wasn’t sure how.

But he’d started using his fire quirk during training exercises.

Unfortunately, Shoto still had to deal with his father. After the sports festival he’d chosen to intern with him. 

He knew it was logical. Pro Hero Endeavor was just about the best he could hope for in terms of internships. And not choosing him even though he could would just be petty. Though Shoto did want to do it.

Things had been as strained as usual. Until the attack on Hosu.

Then things had gotten very, very chaotic.

Shoto stood in the main square, working with his father and the rest of the heroes to fight the strange monsters who’d shown up.

He glances up from the fray and sees Izuku.

He’s standing on the edge of the plaza, hands in his pockets, watching the chaos and fighting like it's a sports game he doesn’t know the rules to.

Shoto hesitantly raises his hand and waves at Izuku.

Izuku sees him then. He smiles widely and waves back, like people weren’t being terrorized by monsters in the plaza between them.

Izuku makes a ‘come here’ gesture with his hand.

Shoto glances around, but none of the other heroes are paying attention to him at the moment.

Shoto glances at his dad, then at Izuku.

It’s an easy decision.

He jogs across the plaza to where Izuku is standing.

“Hi Shoto!” Izuku says, smiling widely. “It’s good to see you again! Hope everything's going well. How’s your mom been?”

Shoto takes a second to adjust to the fact that nothing in the entire world is capable of fazing Izuku.

He looks like this is the same as any day. He’s wearing the same clothes he would wear to work back before. His hair is dyed black. He’s got on another one of his backpacks.

“Hi Izuku. She’s doing well. She says it’s a shame you’re not working for us anymore,” Shoto says. “But right now there’s a bunch of monsters attacking people right here.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Izuku looks at the monsters crawling across the plaza. Then he grabs Shoto’s arm and pulls him back away from the mess.

They go maybe ten feet. Then a monster is thrown through the wall they’d been standing in front of. It lays there’ dazed, half buried in the debris from the building.

“Huh,” Izuku says, peering around Shoto. “What is that?”

“I don’t know,” Shoto says with a shrug.

“Oh, okay, whatever, it’ll probably come up later,” Izuku says, then starts walking in the opposite direction.

Shoto follows him without thinking about it. Years of practice following Izuku to avoid his father make it seem natural as anything.

“Where are we going?” Shoto asks.

“Uh. Hmm. I’m not actually sure. But I think it’s important?” Izuku pulls up his sleeve and shows Shoto his arm. There are dark, curving lines running along his skin. Emanating from a point on the back of his wrist. They’re dark green and glitter almost reflectively. Then run up his arm and around his elbow. “The more lines there are, the more important it is. I think.”

Shoto spends a while thinking about this.

This sort of thing seems natural to Izuku. Like this is just how the world's arranged. When something’s important, his arm is covered in lines.

Shoto decides that asking Izuku more questions will probably only lead to more questions and drops the subject.

He follows Izuku a few blocks, until they find a small alleyway. As they’re approaching, Izuku pulls on a golden mask. It covers his entire face. Shoto can just see his eyes through the dark holes in the mask.

When he sees Shoto looking at him, he gives him a thumbs up.

Inside the alleyway is the Hero Killer Stain, who's standing above one of Shoto’s classmates. Iida.

He doesn’t seem to be moving. 

There’s another body laying on the ground on the other side of the alley. Shoto hopes they’re not hurt too badly.

“Who’s that?” Izuku asks. He’s standing with his hands linked behind his head, looking into the alleyway with vague curiosity.

“That’s my classmate. His name is Iida,” Shoto says.

“That’s your classmate?” Izuku hisses. Then he seems to notice Iida for the first time. “Oh! Wait, the guy on the ground? I thought you meant—Okay, nevermind.”

That’s the moment when Stain finally turns around to look at them. His face distorting into something inhuman.

“Who are you? Can’t you see I’m doing something important?”

“Murder?” Izuku says, like it's a guessing game. He starts walking into the alleyway. “Oh! Yeah. I know you from something. You’re that Stain guy, I saw you on the news. You, like, kill people. That’s messed up dude.”

“Don’t,” Iida shouts from behind Stain. “This is my fight!”

Shoto’s glad that his classmate’s not dead. But's a weird thing to say when you’re lying on the ground under a villain about to kill you.

That’s the moment when Stain leaps up at them. Shoto grabs Izuku’s arm and hauls him backward. He falls like a pug down a flight of stairs, tumbling and rolling a little. 

But Shoto can’t quite focus on that for the moment, since Stain is trying to kill him.

The Hero Killer moves absurdly quickly. Shoto jumps away from him and dodges the slices of his blade.

Stain quickly lands a hit and slices a long cut along Shoto’s calf. He sends a flood of fire at Stain, who jumps backward. Shoto immediately regrets doing it, when he realizes that he’s just sent Stain directly to Izuku.

But somehow he doesn’t die.

Izuku has lined himself up right behind Stain. He grabs the bloody knife from Stain’s hand as he regains his footing.

Izuku takes a few steps back, and Stain pulls out another knife. Izuku dodges—somehow. He’s reacting so fast that it almost seems like he’s moving before Stain begins his attacks.

Each swing of Stain’s knife is lightning fast, slicing through the air with unimaginable speed and accuracy. Shoto had access to both ice and fire, and years of training and he’d only avoided a few attacks.

Somehow, Izuku is dodging every single one. Even though it looks like he’s falling down a flight of stairs. Each step somehow seems accidental, and once he even trips in such a way that Stain’s knife slices an inch off of his hair instead of his fingers.

But Stain doesn’t land a hit for long enough that Shoto can send a pillar of ice between the two. Stain leaps backward and crouches with his back to the wall.

Izuku slips on the ice and lands flat on his back.

Shoto runs to him and offers him a hand up.

“Thanks,” Izuku says. Shoto pulls him to his feet. Izuku actually looks fazed now. His breathing is fast and he’s finally actually paying attention to the enemy.

Shoto finds this both reassuring and terrifying.

Then Izuku pulls a fire extinguisher from his bag and sprays the cut in Shoto’s leg with it.

Even Stain is quiet for a few moments.

“Why did you just do that?” Shoto asks.

“Uh. I honestly have no idea,” Izuku mutters, he uses the fire extinguisher to spray down the knife and flicks it onto the ground behind him. “It just seemed like a good idea?”

“Ah. I see,” Stain says. “You know my quirk then? You know that if I taste your blood I can paralyze you. How clever of you to figure it out so quickly.”

“Huh,” Izuku says quietly. Then he shouts, “I didn’t know that. Thanks for telling me!”

Stain freezes. Shoto thinks that the look on his face could crack concrete.

Then Izuku turns, walks a dozen feet toward the entrance to the alley and starts climbing a dumpster, like it was the most normal thing in the world.

“Who are you?” Stain asks. There’s rage on his face, but there’s also something like wariness. Like he thinks that Izuku is a little more than he seems.

Shoto agrees with that sentiment. He’s currently having the same realization.

“Meh. No one you’ve heard of,” Izuku says. Then stands on his toes to wrap a hand around the ladder of a fire escape, then jerks it downward. It makes an awful shrieking sound, then rolls down to the ground. The whole thing looks like it’s mostly made of rust. “I go by Foresight, this isn’t really my normal gig though. But I found myself around, so I figured.”

He shrugs then reaches for his backpack.

That’s the moment when Stain attacks. It’s shockingly fast. Shoto doesn’t even have the chance to start pulling at his quirk.

Izuku once again reacts instantly.

He jumps toward the fire escape ladder, he manages to hang on, but awkwardly swings his body around. The fire escape makes a truly awful sound, then the whole thing begins to tear away from the wall. Time slows down for a moment and Shoto realizes he’s in danger just in time to start jumping backward.

A wave of tangled metal and dust falls down around Izuku. It feels like the whole alley is collapsing around them and Shoto can barely keep track of what’s going on. 

Then Shoto lurches forward, afraid that Izuku’s been crushed by the metal. But when the dust clears, Izuku is sitting on the dumpster, not even scratched. The dumpster itself had been partially crushed by the weight.

He leans forward, trying to get a look at the huge pile of rubble that blocks most of the alleyway.

There’s a sound from underneath the rusted pile of scrap that had been a fire escape just moments before.

Shoto takes a few steps forward, under the pile he sees a pair of terrifying eyes, staring at him.

“I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you all,” Stain hisses.

Izuku climbs down from the dumpster. He’s not graceful the way that most heroes are, like he doesn’t do things like this often. He just stumbles off the dumpster and barely catches himself with his hands.

He reaches into his bag and pulls out the fire extinguisher.

“So his quirk paralyzes people after he tastes their blood, huh?” he asks, crouching down in front of the pile. “Heya guy. You should probably close your eyes and mouth, google says this stuff is a bit toxic.”

Then he sprays down the Hero Killer with a fire extinguisher. Taking care to get each one of his weapons.

“That should keep him from managing that again, at least I think that’s the point.” He shrugs and packs the fire extinguisher away. “I should probably head out.”

He pats Shoto’s shoulder and wanders back to the mouth of the alley.

Shoto trots to keep up with him. Once Izuku’s out of sight of the alleyway he pulls off the golden mask he'd put on for the fight.

“You’re leaving?” Shoto asks. 

“Oh, sorry,” Izuku says, rubbing the back of his neck. Shoto realizes that Izuku doesn’t have a single scratch on him. He looks exactly the same as the beginning of the fight. “But, heroes are probably going to show up soon and all that.”

“Oh,” Shoto says, “yeah that makes sense. Nice to catch up again.”

“Yeah!” Izuku says, smiling bright. He holds his hand out for a fist bump, and Shoto hesitantly reciprocates.

He takes a few steps away, then pauses and looks back at Shoto.

“Uh, could you, uh, not tell anyone my name?” he asks, almost sheepishly. “You could tell them I said my name was Foresight, but I’ve got this whole thing going on, and like, it might be an issue if—”

“Sure,” Shoto says with a shrug. He didn’t really mind. Something about Izuku’s weirdness made it seem like the normal rules shouldn’t apply to him anyway. “I’ll see ya.”

“See ya!” Izuku says with a bright smile. Then he starts jogging away in a seemingly random direction.

Shoto stares back at him, then walks back into the alley with his hands in his pockets.

He pulls out his phone, then glances through all the twisted metal at Stain.

The Hero Killer is covered with fire extinguisher foam and still trapped. But his expression is curdling and intense. Plus his face is just creepy.

Shoto shifts away uncomfortably. He wanders over to Iida and the other hero, just for the sake of staying away.

Shoto sends out an emergency beacon to other heroes and sits next to the other body he’d seen in the alley. He looks like a hero. Shoto checks his pulse and finds that he’s alive, though unconscious.

Shoto starts wrapping the cuts in bandages, trying to muster up all his first aid knowledge.

“Who—Who was that?” Iida asks. Whatever he’d been dealing with before seems to have been backburnered to focus on the total mess of confusion that is Izuku.

“Foresight,” Shoto says, “apparently.”

 

- - -

 

It takes a few minutes for the heroes to arrive. In that time, Iida's paralysis finally ran out and he'd helped Shoto wrap the other hero’s injuries. 

Shoto wraps the shallow cut on his calf and helps Iida with his own injuries.

Then Shoto’s father is there and there’s lots of shouting.

When Shoto shows them the Hero Killer trapped under a pile of metal, there’s even more shouting.

When they ask what happened, Shoto says that a masked civilian approached him and asked for help. He’d followed and found Stain along with the other heroes. 

When he explains that the civilian had then taken down Stain with a fire escape, the reactions had mostly been disbelief.

When Shoto says that the civilian called himself Foresight, the questions change and become more pointed. At one point he repeats the whole story to a rapt audience of reporters and cameras.

Eventually Stain is carted away. Shoto and Iida are taken to a hospital. Shoto listens to his father talk at him for a while, then goes to sleep.

It was nice to see his friend again. Circumstances notwithstanding. 

The next day. A number of heroes and detectives have endless questions about who ‘Foresight’ is. Shoto deals with the interviews with slow breaths and patience that rivals nations, even when one of the heroes who interviews him is his homeroom teacher.

Shoto’s patience is tested, but he keeps Izuku’s secrets.

 

- - -

 

His quirk sends him to the store, where he gets some silver hair dye and a new contour palette. He gets the idea.

He spends an hour or so getting ready, putting on baggy flamboyant clothes and subtle heels that give him a few inches of height. 

Then he carefully applies makeup that makes him look years older than he is. He dyes his hair and looks in the mirror.

With the makeup and new hair color he’s close to unrecognizable. Suddenly he’s struck with an idea funny enough that he totally needs to do it.

He pulls out his palette and starts creating a rather realistic scar which starts from the bottom of his right ear and crosses the bridge of his nose. He leaves enough red tones and layers of foundation to add some texture.

He adds some bags under his eyes and sprays some makeup setter on his face.

He thinks the result is rather good, and it makes him fairly certain that even if someone saw him after this they would be unlikely to pick him out of a crowd.

Time for a show then.

He makes his way across the town, and finds a nice place for a dinner of teriyaki and rice. Then, at just before 8, he makes his way to a street he’s never seen before.

The place is some seedy looking bar, set under the level of the street. He settles his shoulders, then realizes that he has no desire to be serious, and it would probably be best to convince them that he's an idiot—or insane.

Well, perhaps he should channel a bit of Leader. He laughs at the thought, trying to feel guilty and failing. He’s pretty sure that Leader is a poor role model for actual villain behavior, but at the very least, it would make him seem somewhat unhinged. 

He bounces on his toes, then starts to whistle a tune under his breath before loudly slamming the door of the bar open.

He must have interrupted something, as the group of people standing inside violently turns toward the door.

It’s an interesting group.

Nearest to the door, is a man and a woman who he hasn’t seen before. The man is tall, with dark clothes and black hair. His face and arms are covered with discolored and painful looking scars. He looks relaxed but predatory.

The woman is blond and wearing a school uniform. She has sharp teeth and eyes that shine with a manic light.

Behind them is another man, who Izuku recognizes.

Shigaraki. 

Behind the bar of the counter is the man made out of smoke, Kurogiri.

“Salutations, fellow villains!” Izuku shouts, bowing deeply before bouncing to his feet. “It is an honor to meet me!”

There's a long moment of silence.

“Who the fuck are you?” Shigaraki asks.

Notes:

I’ve decided it’s canon that Izuku has never used an alarm in his life. He also barely knows how to use clocks. This won’t be relevant, I just think it’s funny

Chapter 4

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

“Language,” Izuku says, scandalized that the man would curse around a fifteen year old. “I am the Overlord of Knowledge! I can know anything I wish!”

They just give him blank looks.

“I take it you have not heard of me. That is acceptable,” Izuku says. “You see, my quirk lets me know things about people.”

Izuku leans into the role. It didn’t matter if nothing he said was factual. He was acting and he was going to be the Overlord of Knowledge. 

But the looks that Izuku are getting are only hostile and incredulous.

“For example, you two, your names are Shigaraki Tomura and Kurogiri.” Izuku pauses then adds, “Not real names, but I wouldn’t want to break any confidentiality.”

Safe bet, those names sounded fake as anything.

“You recently attacked a number of students of UA, but were unable to complete your objective to kill All Might.” Even more hostility now.

Okay. Subject change time.

“But enough about myself. I believe that I’ve taken your spotlight for far too long. I must admit that your attack on the USJ was quite impressive regardless of its outcome, quite beyond my own ability,” Izuku says, gesturing towards Shigaraki. “Now, I believe that it is time for business.”

Izuku hoped that it wasn’t clear to the villains that he had no idea what the business that he was referring to actually was.

Shigaraki’s hostility evaporates. He seems pleased with Izuku’s praise.

“As I said, we’re going to do what Stain wanted to do. What he couldn’t accomplish before he was captured. We’re going to destroy the heroes.” His face really is creepy now that Izuku can see it up close. 

“Ohh,” Izuku says, leaning forward, “Stain was a true example of honor. He believed in everything that he ever said or did.”

“I know,” sighs the woman dreamily, “There’s just something about the original that you can’t meet, what a man. And those murders in Shikoku? Masterpieces.”

She sighs and slumps into one of the bar chairs.

“I couldn’t agree with you more,” Izuku says. “There’s something about his drive. It’s just inspiring. Shame he was captured, a great loss for the community.”

“That guy,” Shigaraki mutters. “Who cares that he was caught! The Nomu attack was much more damaging and widespread. But is anyone talking about that? No. All they want to talk about is Stain and Foresight. Fucking NPCs.”

Izuku files away Nomu as the name of those monsters that were attacking before he found Stain.

Then the scarred man grabs Izuku by the scruff of his jacket.

“Hey!” the woman interjects. “We were talking.”

“Before we get into that,” the scarred man says. “How did you know that this meeting was taking place?”

Izuku doesn’t bother with trying to escape, the grip on his collar is strong enough that Izuku doesn’t like his chances of breaking it. But he shifts around until he can see the man’s scarred face.

“Well, I told you, didn’t I?” Izuku says, trying and failing to shrug. “I’m the Overlord of Knowledge! And anything that I want to know I can know!”

“Really,” the man says. He holds Izuku up with one arm and lifts him up to eye level. “What is it that you know exactly?”

Izuku stares at him. Not sure what exactly he’s supposed to do. His quirk is doing something strange. It’s curling around his arms in a geometric pattern. He feels it curl up his arms, along his neck. He can feel the vines climbing up and around his face. Sharp and focused. The scarred man sees the vines around Izuku’s face, his eyes narrow and his grip tightens.

Smoke starts rising from his jacket shoulders.

Izuku’s got to know the answer, right? His quirk wouldn’t leave him with nothing.

He stares up at the villain.

Then something clicks. Smoke, and thus a fire quirk. And there’s something in the face. It’s scarred, and now that Izuku’s close he can see clearly that his hair is dyed. It’s not naturally black.

And Izuku knows who this man looks like. The family that this man looks like.

He’s got Todoroki Rei’s eyes.

He’s got a face like Shoto. His eyebrows are the exact same color as Fuyumi’s.

The Todoroki, because Izuku knows that’s what he is, seems uncomfortable with Izuku staring directly at him.

“Did you know…” Izuku says slowly, smile stretching too wide across his face, twisting along with the vines. “That your brother finally visited your mother? The first time in years.”

His scarred face tightens.

Izuku’s smile grows.

“And that he’s been avoiding your father?”

The Todoroki drops Izuku. 

Izuku lands gracelessly on the floor, and ends up sprawled across the ground. His smile remains fixed in place across his face.

He laughs from his position on the ground. The vines tuck themselves back away, curling back into the twin freckles on his wrists.

Then he pulls himself off of the ground. The Todoroki steps away from him, like he doesn’t want Izuku to touch him. There’s blue fire crawling along his shoulders now.

Izuku stretches and yawns.

“Man! That was a good one.” Izuku glances back at this new Todoroki. “You’ve got quite the family history you know.”

“I can kill you,” the Todoroki responds.

“I’m aware,” Izuku says, then he bows politely. “Please place full trust in my confidentiality. Your history is your own.”

Then he turns to the rest of the villains.

“Do you require your own demonstration?” Izuku asks sweetly. “I’m sure I could try my power with you also.”

He’s met only with silence. Shigaraki’s hands are clenched. Even the unhinged woman is staring at Izuku with a wary gaze.

The silence grows longer.

Which is the moment when the TV in the corner turns on. Izuku looks at it, as the sound of static starts blasting. 

Then a voice comes out.

“I see that you have an unusual gift,” says a deep and rasping voice.

Izuku glances around, the Todoroki and the woman seem surprised, but Shigaraki and Kurogiri are just focused on the screen.

Izuku bows theatrically to the screen.

“Thank you, your praise speaks well of your discernment,” Izuku says, unsure of what else to say.

“I must ask you though, what exactly drew your interest to this group?” There’s something calculated lying just under the question.

Well. In cases of people being just a little too interested in you, lie.

Izuku is reminded of those files he found. Of that story of two great powers, heroes and a villain working against each other for years. Izuku doesn’t know where the thought came from, but he does know one thing.

He has a whopper of a lie. Some of it’s almost true even.

“Ah, I see, you might have noticed that I’ve not revealed this yet,” Izuku says, pressing his hand to his chest. “But…”

He lets the tension and attention build.

“There is another reason that I want to join your cause. This reason is one of my own,” Izuku says. “The vigilante who goes by the name Foresight.”

The attention of the room snaps like a whip. 

“That fucker that warned the heroes about our attack,” Shigaraki hisses, “who took down Stain and stole our spotlight.”

“The very individual,” Izuku agrees. “He is my sworn enemy. It is my greatest mission to work against him. After I learned that he was working against you. I thought that there is no better ally than the enemy of your enemy.”

“I see,” the voice from the television says thoughtfully. “Until recently, this Foresight has been hiding under the notice of all of us. I take it you were doing the same?”

“Quite so. Once he revealed himself to the world, I knew that I had to do the same,” Izuku says.

“You say that you can know all, yet you seem to know little of your greatest enemy.”

Izuku faked controlled outrage.

“I assure you, I am Foresight’s most potent enemy.” Izuku paused, staring into the wall. “But he knows me, and our quirks are the perfect foils to one another’s. Mine tells me of the past and present of what is nearest to me. His tells him of things far away and in the future. Our conflict has raged long years.”

“But nonetheless, your long conflict speaks of a lack of power on your part,” the voice says, “What use is an ally without power?”

Izuku simply nods.

“Then let me prove myself to you,” Izuku says, then flounders because he has no idea what he’s supposed to do. Fake his own death? Fight the fake villain version of himself?

“There’s something that I want you to get for me,” the voice speaks. “Something that is rightfully mine, but was taken before I could collect it.”

“What is it?” Izuku asks.

“An important relic. It once rested in a museum but it was stolen, months ago. Recently, the police learned who it was.” There’s controlled rage in that tone. “Through my contacts, I have learned that it was the individual who calls himself Foresight.”

Izuku happens to know exactly what this item is. The memory stick. Currently, it’s in one of his dresser drawers. And he now knows exactly who this person on the screen is. Because his quirk would only draw him here for one reason. This was the villain All for One. 

And Izuku is exactly where he needs to be.

He swallows. The knowledge of exactly how many heroes this villain has killed rising up in him. So this was what his quirk had been working toward. It was bringing him to All for One.

“Ah, yes,” Izuku says, smothering any feelings but those of the villain Overlord of Knowledge. “I know what it is that you want. And I will spare no expense in bringing it to you.”

Izuku is ushered out quickly after that. He makes promises that he will have the memory stick soon and is left alone on the street.

He stands outside, feeling the vines unfurling and creeping along his skin. They brush against his chin and twirl in pleased patterns across his back.

His quirk is thoroughly satisfied, but Izuku only feels the first hint of dread rising up. This was getting big, bigger than he’d ever expected.

But his quirk knows best. His quirk will protect him. It knows exactly what it’s doing.

Right?

 

- - -

 

Aizawa Shouta wants to bang his head into a wall.

He’s been working on the Foresight case for six hours now.

Detective work wasn’t his normal wheelhouse but this vigilante was related to the villains who’d tried to kill his students, so he had a bit of a personal stake in the whole investigation.

The first problem was that Foresight seems to have only now appeared. Of course, there were reports of people using the name in the past, but it was so generic that there were mentions of vigilantes, villains, and heroes using the name in the previous decade; but none of them lined up even vaguely with the vigilante they were interacting with—or gave any indication they were connected in any way. 

The name implied some kind of prescient or mastermind quirk, but so far there was no clues to what specific abilities or limitations his quirk might have. And there was always the option that the name itself had been chosen to throw them off the scent.

But that train of thought only lead to a headache, so Shouta was trying to figure out what he did know for certain.

He’d looked into the museum that Foresight had mentioned during their conversation and found a report of a fairly uninteresting break in. 

Apparently the thieves had set a firework to distract security and had snuck out in maintenance uniforms. Nothing else had ever come of it, and after insurance came around, no one had thought to thoroughly follow up the incident.

Still, Shouta sent out feelers to his contacts, trying to see if there had been anything especially important in that museum, but felt that it might just be another dead end. There was no mention of the name of the thieves in the report, and Shouta couldn’t even be sure that Foresight was telling the truth about being the one who’d robbed the museum.

Other paths of investigation hadn’t given them anything either.

They’d pulled the record of the phone which the vigilante had used to contact them. They’d found a match on a flip phone with a prepaid SIM card that had been bought three years ago. They’d pulled the call record and found that the first call that it had ever made was the one to Hawks, then just after the attack, the call to President Nedzu. Then the one he’d made to Shouta.

They’d gone to the corner store that it’d been bought from, but the camera records had long been erased and the cashier remembered nothing of the purchase. 

The most frustrating part was that the vigilante did seem to be giving them at least some good information, but most of it was impossible to verify.

He’d freely given them information about the villains and from the investigating they’d done so far all of it had been true.

But they still couldn’t really confirm anything.

Kurogiri had been a headache to track down, but they’d found a match. He was a known criminal with a quirk that exactly matched what they’d seen at the USJ.

But Shigaraki Tomura hadn’t matched anything that they could find. Regardless, it was more than they’d found from any other source. 

Worse for Shouta—personally—was that Foresight had saved the life of one of his students. Shouta had ignored the clear signs that something was wrong with Iida, and it was only because of Foresight that Iida was alive at all. Not only that, Foresight had apparently lured Todoroki to the scene as well. Putting another one of Shouta’s student’s in danger.

That, even more than the fact that Foresight had launched himself into being a household name by taking down Stain, was what was bothering Shouta.

If it wasn’t for the vigilante, his student would be dead.

And he still doesn't even know if he can trust Foresight.

It makes Shouta want to bang his head into a wall.

Shouta pulls up the recording of his conversation with Foresight. He’s listened to it a dozen times, hoping to get some clue of who the vigilante is. 

Shouta rubs his eyes and sighs. 

He isn’t getting anywhere. He needs a break.

He stands up from his desk. He's been using a small office in the police station. Lended to him while the investigation is ongoing. It's sufficient for what he needs, which is a quiet place to look through police files and take naps when necessary.

He leaves his phone and papers out on his desk. It's against procedure, but he’s confident enough of the police headquarter’s security.

He shoves his hands in his pockets and slumps through the police offices. It’s a little busier than he prefers but he can deal with it.

He gets to the public lobby and glances around, there’s the normal lines of people; a couple of beat cops, nothing out of the ordinary.

He’s about to step outside, and is shuffling around the things in his pocket to pull out his wallet when there’s something loud behind him. He turns and sees some woman shouting at one of the officers. He watches to see if he should step in.

He’s distracted and maybe sleep deprived, but he still reacts strongly when he feels someone run into him from behind.

He turns quickly, arms shifting to grab at the offender, ready for a fight like any hero would be.

The kid who’s just run into him falls on his ass.

It’s not graceful either. Shouta’s arm had pushed him away and the kid makes a desperate attempt to grab Shouta’s hand, but doesn’t get a good grip and just unbalances himself.

His arms pinwheel, then he trips on his own feet and lands flat on his back, winding himself.

Shouta stares down at him. The fight’s still going on behind him, and little attention is paid to the two of them.

The kid looks up at Shouta, trying to get his breath back. He looks a few years older than Shouta’s students. He’s got silver hair which might be dyed and is arrayed in unruly curls around his face. His face is plain, something that Shouta honestly wouldn’t pick out of a crowd. 

He also is laying on the ground because of a feat of clumsiness Shouta thought children grew out of by that age. His kids would never do something like that.

The kid’s finally pulling himself off of the ground.

“Wow,” the kid finally says. His expression is a little shocked, which is understandable. “Sorry, IUh. Wasn’t looking where I was going, I guess. Uh, ha ha?”

Shouta remembers that he’s supposed to act like a hero.

“Are you alright,” he says. He thinks that maybe that should have had a little more inflection, but he’s tired, okay?

“Uh, yeah. Um, are you okay?” The kid tugs at his clothes.

“Yes.” Shouta, now that the kid is moving on his own power, decides that he’s had enough of the conversation. “I’ve got to go now. I would suggest watching where you are going in the future.”

“Uh, will do,” the kid says, smiling weakly. “Sorry.”

Shouta just nods, and finally gets out of the building. He tries to forget it, but something about the kid had been off. He isn’t sure about what it is, but he decides to put it out of his mind.

He finds a place that sells ramen and tries to relax for at least a few minutes. 

 

- - -

 

Izuku leaves his apartment and heads to the store. He buys a small bag of disinfectant wipes, a strong magnet, a pen, and a box of ziplock bags.

In his pockets he has his RFID emulator. He’s wearing nondescript street clothes and a bit of makeup to make him look a few years older than he is. He’s also got on a jacket that’s just a bit too long at the sleeves, leaving his hands covered.

He follows the directions of his quirk until he finds the building it’s guiding him toward. He stops in front of it for a long moment, sure that his quirk can’t be serious. 

Izuku stares up at the police station.

Well. This is a little weird. He tugs his clothes into order. Then he feels his quirk tug at his wrists, and he readjusts his sleeves until they’re pulled most of the way over his hands. 

Izuku takes a deep breath, and walks through the doors, shoulders firmly in place.

There’s a bit too much going on at once. There’s a bunch of people inside, and there’s someone shouting. Izuku glances around, trying to catch sight of what’s going on.

Then he runs into someone. 

The man shifts around quickly, like he’d been tense and ready for a fight. His arm knocks into Izuku’s chest and it sends him reeling backward.

Izuku’s quirk sends an impulse and his hand snatches forward before his brain even begins to process what’s going on.

He feels his hand close around the man’s, then feels it steal something from his grip. 

Then physics takes over and Izuku begins to tumble backwards. He windmills his arms, trying to keep himself from falling, then his feet tangle together and he’s suddenly on the ground. His back impacts the ground and the breath leaves his lungs in a rush.

It really hurts and it takes him a few moments to finally catch his breath but even while he’s distracted, he feels his hands moving at request of his quirk. His hands slip something shaped like a credit card into his loose sleeves.

Izuku finally can breath and looks up and sees the man he’d run into. He really hopes that his fall hadn’t looked as undignified as it had felt.

His breath stutters.

That is definitely Eraserhead.

The last time Izuku had seen him, it’d been dark and chaotic and the man’s face had been covered in mud, but this was definitely him.

Izuku’s mouth moves for a moment, not sure what he should say. The man looks kind of tired and annoyed, but mostly like he wants to be anywhere else but right here.

But the hero doesn’t seem to actually know who Izuku is. So Izuku decides he will definitely try and keep it that way.

Izuku pushes himself to his feet, conscious of the credit card thing in his sleeve. 

“Wow,” Izuku says, wincing at how winded he still sounds. “Sorry. IUh.” What should he say? “Wasn’t looking where I was going, I guess. Uh ha ha?”

The hero looks profoundly uncomfortable.

“Are you alright,” Eraserhead says with absolutely no inflection.

“Uh, yeah. Um, are you okay?” Izuku asks. He tugs at his clothes, trying to push the card thing further into his sleeve.

“Yes,” Eraserhead says, looking past Izuku at the door. “I’ve got to go now. I suggest watching where you are going in the future.”

“Uh, will do,” Izuku says weakly. “Sorry.”

Eraserhead just nods, then walks out through the door. Izuku is left staring at his back, and then the closing door.

Huh.

So that went alright, all things considered.

Izuku glances around, there are a couple people still looking at him, and he ducks his head and settles down on one of the seats in the room.

He spends a few minutes calming down and looking at the room around him. It’s a lobby for the police station. There are more than two dozen people there. There’s a door in the back that draws Izuku’s attention. 

He watches as one of the cops goes to it, scans some sort of card, then walks in.

So that’s the way into the back of the building. Probably this is where the official stuff happens. 

His quirk draws his attention to his wrist and to the card thing in his sleeve. He pulls it out and looks at it.

It’s plain white. No name, no numbers. He flips it over in his hand, then glances up at the door. So…

Izuku had just stolen the hero's keys. Basically.

He snorts.

Then his quirk pulls at him again. Izuku slips the card into his pocket, then stands up and stretches. 

Izuku had expected to go to the door, but it brings him to a water cooler instead. He thinks that maybe his quirk is having a breakdown or something, but fills a paper cup a quarter up with water.

This time the pull on his wrists pulls him to the door. He almost walks through it, but his quirk pulls him away. He leans against the wall next to it and pulls out his phone. He flips through random apps for a minute, then a couple of cops walk through the door. They don’t notice Izuku. They walk through the lobby then out the front door.

Just as they leave, Izuku’s hands pull at him. He pushes off the wall, pulls the card from his pocket, then scans it at the reader in the door’s lock. He holds his breath, then the light flashes green and the lock clicks.

He opens it and walks through.

It’s not really as exciting as he hoped. The walls are pale and beige. There are cubicles and some people talking down the hallway. 

Izuku shoves his hands into his pockets and follows the pull of his hands through the hallways. Twice, he stops and leans against a wall as someone walks past. No one pays much attention to him.

Eventually he finds a small door in the corner of the building. His hands tug at him and he pulls out the card and presses it to the electric lock on the door. 

The small light blinks green and the lock clicks.

Izuku opens the door, glances around, then sticks his tongue out at the police station. Hah. Take that.

He slips inside and takes a look around. It’s a dull looking office. Kind of small and without much resembling decoration.

There’s a small flower pot near the small window and Izuku steps closer to check it out. It’s not quite in bloom and looks a little bit sad.

He pours the water he’d gotten earlier into the pot, then shifts it to the other side of the window sill so that it’ll get a little more sun. He sets the empty cup next to the pot.

Then he turns to give his attention to the desk.

There’s a phone and a couple of papers scattered around. He picks them up and looks through them.

They’re investigation reports. 

They list all the things that Izuku has done as Foresight. He finds records of them investigating his phone, along with a transcript of his conversations with them. There’s a lot about him taking down Stain too. Including what looks like a transcript of an interrogation of Shoto. Izuku feels a little bit bad about that.

Okay, this is interesting. But what should he do here?

He picks up the phone and clicks on the screen. It has a default home screen. He follows the push of his quirk and types in the six digit passcode. 

He swipes through a couple emails and realizes this is definitely Eraserhead’s phone. Oh.

He sets the phone down and sits down on the chair.

His quirk pulls again, and Izuku takes out his flip phone. He dials a number, digit by digit, then pushes the call button.

The phone on the desk rings.

Izuku stares at it until the ring stops and his phone tells him to leave a message.

He spends a few moments trying to think of what he should say, then shrugs.

“Yo. Hey Eraserhead. Seems like you left your phone in your office. Your plant was looking a little rough so I watered it, by the way. Anyways, I’ll just leave a message. So, uh, just a general update. I’ve gotten more information on those villain guys. They’re still planning on killing All Might and all that. So that’s an issue. Uh. They’re recruiting more villains now. So watch out for that I guess.”

Izuku stares at the ceiling, thinking of what else he should say.

“Oh yeah. Also, another thing that you should know. There’s this guy working with Shigaraki, he calls himself Overlord of Knowledge. Yeah, I know. Who even comes up with a name like that? Total megalomaniac! Anyway, the guy absolutely hates me. He might try and get at me. So watch out for that. He’s got an information gathering quirk and just really doesn’t like me. Anyway, that’s about it. Have a nice day! I’ll see ya!.”

Izuku hangs up.

Alright. Well that’s done.

He packs the phone away, then takes out the RFID emulator. He presses the buttons that his quirk instructs, and then presses the hero’s ID to the device. It makes a happy beep sound.

He packs both away again. Then he's pulled toward the computer.

He logs in with a long password that his quirk gives him, then uses the RFID emulator and presses it to the reader on the computer. It unlocks.

So it seems that Izuku now has a passable copy of a hero’s pass to get into police records and buildings. Might be handy.

His hands pull him around the computer, and he enters into some computer database, then creates a new entry. He pauses, then his quirk starts pulling at his fingers. It’s a little awkward, but he follows the pull of his fingers to start typing.

The witness reported seeing a villain who called himself Overlord of Knowledge. The entire interaction only lasted a few minutes. The witness did not get a clear view of the villain’s face, but describes him as short and wearing bright clothing. The villain claimed to have taken something that no one would notice missing, but did not clarify further. No objects were found missing during the ensuing investigation.

Izuku entered the text, filled a few text boxes with numbers and letters that he didn’t know the meaning of, then backdated the entry to eleven years ago.

And then created a few more entries. He also added small bits of text to already existing records.

…The informant added that there was some mention of a villain known as Overlord of Knowledge said to be active in the area. The informant has no further information about this individual...

…The prisoner mentioned a villain known as Overlord of Knowledge, who had reportedly hired a number of other criminals over the last few years…

And so on it went. The whole thing took less than twenty minutes.

When it was all done, there were more than a dozen mentions of this fictional villain in the police’s records. All entries were backdated, with the earliest being over a decade ago and the most recent being a few months ago.

Izuku pulls away from the computer, then feels a tug from his bag. He brings out the magnet he’d bought, then feels a tug toward the large computer sitting on the ground.

He pushes out the chair, then sits cross-legged on the floor. His hands twitch and press the magnet to one panel of the computer. There’s an odd sound from the monitor on the desk and Izuku looks up at it.

The screen is glitching and jumping around. Izuku moves the magnet across the computer, and the screen frizzes before changing to a disconnected screen. Izuku passes the magnet across the computer a few more times.

He leaves the magnet on the computer and reaches up to the monitor. He tries to connect it to the computer and nothing comes up.

So Izuku bricked the hero’s computer—for some reason. 

But his quirk is pulling at his hands again, so there’s more important things to think about. Izuku grabs one of the papers on the desk and pulls the pen from his bag.

Izuku feels a delicate pull on his fingers and starts to write. It’s awkward, the tugs at his fingers make his penmanship look truly atrocious, but he ignores that. 

He’s writing out a series of names. Nothing that Izuku recognizes, but most of them have titles like detective or officer before them, so Izuku thinks they have something to do with the police.

Once his quirk is satisfied, the list is around two dozen names long.

Izuku waits, but his quirk doesn’t give him any more instructions. He shrugs and adds a doodle of a snake at the end of the page. 

Finally, Izuku’s quirk fully pulls back, and he stretches his hands above his head. Well, that was pretty good work.

He turns off the monitor, then set Eraserhead’s ID card in the center of the desk.

He then takes the disinfectant wipes from his bag and cleans anything he’d touched while in the office.

Once that was done. He stands with his hands on his hips and nods.

Good work.

He has no idea why he’d done it though. Maybe he’d figure it out sometime.

Izuku slips out of the office, leaving the door open a crack behind him.

 

- - - 

 

After most of an hour spent trying and failing to relax at the ramen shop, Aizawa Shouta gives up. He pays and heads back to the police headquarters.

As he’s walking in to the building, Detective Tsukauchi flags him down and walks in with him to the back of the station. 

The conversation is mostly them rehashing the same fruitless leads and he soon decides to return to his office.

As he approaches his office, he sees that the door is slightly ajar. The hairs of the back of his neck rise. This is wrong. This shouldn’t happen. He was sure that he’d closed it. Worry rises up in his chest. Had he left it open? He’d left his phone in the office. He takes a few more steps and enters. Everything seems the same.

Maybe he’d just made a mistake.

Then he sees his ID card on his desk. 

Had he lost it? Had someone returned it to his desk, why didn’t they just return it to him? He grabs it and stuffs it into his pocket.

Shouta picks up his phone and sees that there’s a new notification. The worry returns.

It’s a voicemail. He plays it.

“Yo. Hey Eraserhead. Seems like you left your phone in your office. Your plant was looking a little rough so I watered it by the way. Anyways, I’ll just leave a message.” 

It was a familiar voice, one that Shouta had been examining recordings of for dozens of hours. The vigilante Foresight.

He pauses the message. Foresight had known that he wasn’t in his office. That his phone was there. The vigilante…

Shouta glances up, and for the first time notices the plant on the window sill. It looks sad and wilted, and there’s a paper cup sitting next to it that Shouta knows wasn’t in here when he left just an hour ago.

The vigilante had been here. Shouta is reminded of that kid who’d run into him, who’d seemed a little off, a little familiar.

That’s the moment when he finally puts it together that the voice on the recording is the same as the kid’s voice.

The hairs on the back of Shouta’s neck stand up and his quirk activates without him meaning it to.

Shouta had seen Foresight. Had literally run into him. The vigilante must have taken his ID during his fall somehow.

The vigilante had planned his moves so carefully. Had been exactly where he needed to be and understood Shouta’s routines enough to perfectly slip past him and get into the police station. He’d grabbed Shouta’s ID without Shouta noticing.

Just to get into Shouta’s head.

Or maybe not. Maybe he had some other plan.

Shouta hates this. Hates this so much.

He clenches his hands and stares at the phone. Pushes down the irrational urge to throw it at the wall. Or leave the station to go hole away in a safehouse somewhere.

Instead, he steps out of the office and closes the door behind him, then continues listening to the message.

“So, uh, just a general update. I’ve gotten more information on those villain guys. They’re still planning on killing All Might and all that. So that’s an issue. Uh. They’re recruiting more villains now. So watch out for that I guess.”

There’s a few seconds of pause, like the vigilante is considering whether he should say the next thing.

“Oh yeah. Also, another thing that you should know. There’s this guy working with Shigaraki, he calls himself Overlord of Knowledge. Yeah, I know. Who even comes up with a name like that? Total megalomaniac! Anyway, the guy absolutely hates me. He might try and get at me. So watch out for that. He’s got an information gathering quirk and just really doesn’t like me. Anyway, that’s about it. Have a nice day! I’ll see ya!.”

The message ends.

Shouta glances around his temporary office. This is wrong. This is terrifying.

This single vigilante knew far too much for Shouta to trust him.

But he calms himself, and sends out a message that there’s a contamination hazard at his office. 

Within minutes, a team is sent to sweep Shouta’s office. But they don’t find anything. No bombs, nothing hazardous, no bugs or recording devices; nothing that explained why the vigilante had gone into Shouta’s office in the first place.

They do find that his computer has been bricked completely, apparently with the magnet which had been left on the computer. A touch Shouta took to be mocking.

The techs tell Shouta that they couldn’t be sure why Foresight would have bricked the computer. The data there is automatically backed up. Though the data of the computer’s message traffic would be lost.

Had the computer been used to send a message? One from Shouta’s account?

No. That was impossible. The vigilante would have needed Shouta’s password to even open the computer. More questions. No more answers.

Shouta still makes the techs look through the police database for bugs or viruses. They find nothing.

When he finally returns to his office, he notices something written on the back of a police report. Shouta knows that he hadn’t written it. Especially with the doodle of the snake at the bottom.

It’s a list of names.

It takes him a few moments to recognize one. He’s an officer at the precinct. Shouta doesn’t know him well. But had worked with him before. A quick search reveals that the rest of the names are all police affiliated. 

Shouta can’t make sense of it.

More questions.

He folds the list and stuffs it into a pocket.

Then, out of an abundance of paranoia, he decides to find himself another office.

Once his account is set up on the new computer, he gets to work.

He copies the voice message Foresight had left to the project file. Then takes a scan of the list of names Foresight had written and adds it too.

Then he listens to the message again.

At least he has a lead now. He runs a search on the name “Overlord of Knowledge” on the police system.

No surprise, more than a dozen results come up. Nothing concrete. Just witness accounts of seeing or hearing of a villain named “Overlord of Knowledge”.

Shouta starts a new file on the villain. Linking the witness accounts and adding in any information that comes up.

There’s a number of reports, but no clear leads to who the villain is or what he can do.

Shouta closes out of the file and stares at the ceiling.

He still doesn't like anything about this. The way that this vigilante seems to always be two steps ahead of them; seems to be infallible; doesn’t even seem to be trying most of the time. 

According to the interviews with Todoroki, he’d taken down Stain without even a scratch.

Shouta finds himself almost wanting to trust the guy, just because having him as an enemy was proving such a headache.

Each attempt to catch the vigilante had been a resounding failure. So much so that Shouta suspects he was just humoring their attempts.

Shouta is considering just going home to start an early patrol, when his phone rings.

For an instant, he’s convinced that it’s another call from Foresight, but this time there is a caller ID.

Sir Nighteye?

Shouta wastes two rings of the phone just trying to figure out why the other hero would be calling him.

They worked in the same circles, and Shouta is passingly familiar with the other hero. But he can’t think of why Sir Nighteye would want to contact him.

Shouta answers the phone.

“Eraserhead speaking.”

“This is Sir Nighteye. Is it true that you know the vigilante who robbed the Early Quirk Era Museum?”

Shouta is so thrown off by the question that he says nothing for a moment.

“Did you get confirmation?” Nighteye asks again. “If it really was him then I might be able to offer some explanation for his actions.”

“Yes,” Shouta says instantly. Finally, someone with information about Foresight. “Well. He claimed that it was him who’d done it. We don’t have confirmation beyond that. Does it matter?”

“Yes. Yes it does. I believe that he’s sending a message.”

“To who?” Shouta asks, already starting the paperwork to add Sir Nighteye to the investigation.

“All Might.”

 

- - -

 

Izuku pulls himself out of bed somewhere around noon on a Saturday. He brushes his teeth, eats breakfast, and puts on some clothes. Then his quirk pulls at him and he learns that apparently he’s going out today.

It doesn’t tell him to put on makeup or anything but it does tell him to stop by the convenience store near his house and pick up a miniature first aid kit. He packs it away into his bag and heads to the bus station.

He rides for a while and eventually reaches the same neighborhood where he’d met with the group of villains in the bar. He gets out and heads toward a different street. He has just enough time to wonder what he’s supposed to do when he sees one of the villains.

It’s the scarred one. The one who’s a Todoroki. He’s dressed in dirty, dark colored clothes. His hood is pulled up and he’s leisurely walking down the street. He nears Izuku, who takes that as his cue. 

Izuku jogs a bit and then falls into step next to the Todoroki. He looks at Izuku like he’s going to murder him but Izuku is pretty sure that’s just the guy’s default look.

“Heya! How’s things been?” Izuku asks.

The Todoroki does a double take when he finally recognizes Izuku.

“You? You’re that guy with the stupid name?” he asks. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Talking to you!” Izuku answers honestly.

“Why?” 

Izuku just shrugs.

“And why do you look like a twelve-year-old?” the Todoroki asks, looking at Izuku with unsettling intensity. “And where’d that scar go?”

“I’m fifteen, not twelve,” Izuku corrects. “And the scar was just makeup.”

“What the fuck is your problem?”

“Language,” Izuku answers, “And I just thought that it would be a good idea to talk, since last time there were those other guys there.”

The Todoroki stares at him.

“Sooo, what’s your name?” Izuku asks. “I don’t think I caught it last time we talked.”

“Dabi,” he says eventually.

Dabi seems about to say something but then Izuku sees a boba shop.

“Oh! That looks like a good spot. You like boba tea?” Izuku asks.

“...I’ve never had it,” Dabi says. He seems a little wary, though Izuku couldn’t say why.

“Great!” Izuku leads them to the shop.

He orders for both of them and leans against a counter to wait.

Everyone in the store is glancing or openly staring at Dabi. It’s probably his general air of looking like he’s about to kill everyone within fifty feet of himself. But he doesn’t say a word, just stands there staring at Izuku.

It’s a bit awkward honestly, but then Izuku’s name is called and he goes to the front.

Izuku grabs his drinks and at a prompt from his quirk he also grabs a couple of napkins and stuffs them into his bag.

Izuku elects to bring them outside. They sit on a table looking out on the street. 

Izuku takes a sip of the boba and is pleased to note that it’s pretty good.

He’s not really sure what the next step should be here and his quirk isn’t giving him much direction at the moment.

Well, honesty is the best policy. 

Partial honesty anyway, along with whatever lies he thinks up along the way.

Izuku opens with, “so, I lied to those villain guys before.”

Dabi chokes on his drink.

“Yeah. I know, but what can you do?” Izuku asks with a shrug.

“And you’re telling me, because?” Dabi asks. “I’m one of those ‘villain guys,’ and I can just tell them that.”

“Really, you’re going to tell Shigaraki?” Izuku asks, “that guy?”

Dabi flexes his hands like he’s resisting strangling Izuku.

“Just tell me what you want, kid,” Dabi says.

Izuku nods.

“So, my power’s not really knowing everything, that was a total lie.”

Dabi looks wary.

“You demonstrated otherwise,” he says. There was a dangerous intelligence in those eyes. Underneath the goth clothing and massive swaths of scars.

“Well, about that, I really didn’t,” Izuku says with a shrug. “Like, the thing with your family, right? Not a quirk. I was your dad’s gardener.”

Dabi’s boba tea leaks out the top with the force of his grip.

“What.” 

Izuku pulls the napkins out from his bag and hands them over to Dabi, who takes them in a tense grip.

“Yeah, I worked there for a couple years,” Izuku says, nodding. “It’s a nice enough gig if you stay away from your dad. Pays good too. Plus your siblings are pretty easy to get along with.”

Dabi doesn’t say anything. He just stares at Izuku.

“So yeah. No omniscience. I just noticed that you look, like, a lot like your family and figured that it probably wasn’t a coincidence.”

Dabi takes a few breaths. Then he uses the napkins to wipe the boba off his hands.

“Why—and I feel I’m going to regret asking this—did you decide that you were going to infiltrate a villain organization?”

Izuku just shrugs and takes a sip of boba.

“Well, I wasn’t really planning on doing that at first, but then I just figured I might as well go with it.”

Dabi looks at him.

“You know that we can kill you, right?” he asks.

“Oh yeah!” Izuku says cheerily. “You actually can’t. That’s part of the lie that I told before. You see, my actual quirk means that I can’t get hurt. So no matter what happens

Dabi is then moving so fast that Izuku barely has time to move. He pulls a knife and as Izuku’s hands come up to block his face, swipes the knife toward Izuku.

Izuku jerks back and grabs his left hand. There’s a shallow cut through the meaty part near his thumb. It’s over an inch long, just missing his inner palm.

“Ow! Why? Dude!” Izuku hisses. It stings. 

“You can get hurt,” Dabi says pointedly. He tucks the knife away.

“No. Not like. Well. That’s not what I mean,” Izuku says. What the hell? This was not what he was expecting to happen.

Then he remembers the first aid kit in his bag. Ugh. So it was part of the plan then. He pulls the kit from his bag and thumps it down on the table. He takes out the antiseptic wipes and cleans the cut.

“That was so rude,” Izuku mutters. He smears some neosporin on the cut and plasters a large bandaid over it. Then he packs the kit up and puts it back into his bag.

“So, as I was saying. No matter what happens, I’ll be fine, so it doesn’t matter if the situation is dangerous.”

Dabi stares at him for a long time.

“So you’re just… crazy.” He turns away from Izuku and stares into the distance and mutters, “He’s just crazy.”

“I’m literally right here,” Izuku says.

“I seriously thought that you were a threat,” Dabi says, his hand is at his forehead.

“I’m just like some guy. Why would you think I was dangerous?” Izuku says, then brushes that aside. “Anyway, since you stabbed me, I think it’s fair that I ask you a question.”

Dabi sends him a sideways look.

“What is it?”

“Why are you a villain? Like, you’re dad’s a hero, and your brother’s training to be one, why villainy?”

Dabi looks caught between frustration and wariness.

“I’m not answering that.”

“Well, then I’ll just figure it out then,” Izuku says, he kicks his feet as he thinks. “So, fire quirk. Similar to your dad. Based on Shoto, he probably trained you when Shoto was young. But now you’re off doing your own thing and Shoto wants nothing to do with him.”

“What?”

“Yeah, Shoto hates training. Wants to be a hero but wants nothing to do with your dad. I’ve helped him avoid training with your dad like so many times.”

“You’ve—” Dabi starts laughing. It starts shocked but soon turns hysterical. He’s leaning on the table with his elbows and his forehead is resting on his palms. “You’ve been helping him, dodge training? From the number two pro hero?”

“Yeah?” Izuku asks. Dabi looks like he’s a nudge away from crying. “Well he doesn’t want to train, so what else am I supposed to do?”

Dabi claps an arm on Izuku’s shoulder.

“Yep, you’re actually fucking crazy.” It sounds almost complimentary.

“Uh, language. I’m fifteen.”

“Right, right.” Dabi leans back away and settles into his seat. He takes a sip of boba, then makes a face and pushes it away. There’s still some hysteria in his smile but he continues, “So, why am I a villain, right?” 

“Right?”

“So I was born with a pretty powerful fire quirk,” Dabi says, leaning forward with a predatory gleam in his eyes. “My father wanted someone to be his successor. So he trained me to be just as good as him. But, the thing was, he wanted something more than that. Which is why he married my mother, who has an ice quirk. Because he hoped that their quirk’s would combine to something powerful.”

“Oh no. That’s terrible,” Izuku’s heart drops at the thought of the Todorokis’ mother only marrying someone to create a child with a powerful quirk. “Rei-sama doesn’t deserve that.”

“So thenWait, Rei-sama?” Dabi pauses.

“Yeah she said to call her that,” Izuku supplies.

“You’ve met my mother?” 

“Yeah. I brought her flowers.”

“You know what, I don’t care.” Dabi looks a little like he does care though. “Anyway, Shoto was born a few years after I started training. He basically has both of the quirks of my parents. Once my father saw that potential, he stopped wasting time on something like me”—Dabi gestures to himself with a sneer—“and moved on to training Shoto. But I still trained, without any oversight. I managed to cause serious damage to myself in the process.”

Izuku glances at Dabi’s extensive scars.

“But no one gave a shit about what happened to the inferior kid. So I spent some time at the hospital by myself.” Dabi pauses. He seems to realize how much he’s been sharing and jolts. “Anyways, whatever. I decided that there’s no way to succeed the way I’d been going, so I went another way.”

Izuku sits there for a long moment, trying to understand all of Dabi’s story. That was a hell of a reason to become a villain.

Then he snorts.

“What?” Dabi looks like he’s thinking of pulling out the knife again.

“Okay. Don’t get me wrong. There is so much messed up about the way that your dad treated you,” Izuku says. “I mean, children aren’t vessels to fulfill their parents' dreams. You shouldn’t just choose one kid to pay attention to and ignore the others. But, like that’s all obvious you know? Like, you know that the way you’ve been treated is just incredibly unfair and unjust.”

Dabi looks a little stricken. Izuku really hoped Dabi already knew that.

“Anyway, I just think that you’ve gone the wrong direction.”

Dabi’s face shutters into a leer.

“What, villainy is wrong and I should switch to the light?”

“Well, sure, if you want to do that I guess you can, but that’s not what I mean.”

Dabi pauses, and stares at Izuku.

“What I mean is that you dealt with your dad abandoning you. But you dealt with it by obsessing over it and letting it take over anything else that could have happened in your life”—Izuku gestures vaguely—“You’ve just let him stick his hooks into everything that you do. Because of him still being the focus of your life, you can’t move onward.”

Dabi’s head jerks back in the tiniest motion.

“That’s not real revenge, is what I’m saying.” Izuku shrugs. Then looks away and takes another sip of his boba.

“Are you saying I should just kill him and be done with it?” Dabi asks. He sounds more confused than anything.

“What? Ah, oh no, please don’t do that,” Izuku says. He’s not sure what’s going to convince Dabi. “Um… Killing is wrong?”

Dabi laughs again, long and loud. And a little hysterical maybe.

“What is it that you mean then?” he says once he’s finally stopped.

“Uh,” Izuku tries to remember what his point was. “Oh, well, I guess the best way to get revenge would be just to never let his legacy see the light of day. Shoto’s already heading in that direction. He’s going to be a hero, but is doing it separately from your father. Being his own person instead of just your dad’s son.”

Dabi seems thoughtful, then shakes his head.

“What does that even mean though?” he asks, seeming frustrated.

“Well, you could do something really impressive all on your own.”

“Like what?”

“Take down that villain from the TV,” Izuku wagers.

Dabi freezes.

“Sensei?” he asks hesitantly.

“Yeah, him.” Izuku nods, kicking his feet as he gets into the idea. “That’d be something that people would recognize, and they wouldn’t even be able to connect what you do to anything related to your dad.”

Dabi’s looking at Izuku like he’s crazy again.

“...Is that what you’re going to be doing?” Dabi asks.

Izuku shrugs. “Uh, yeah I think so. I’m not so clear on the details yet, but that’s the direction that things are going.”

Dabi stares off into the distance. He seems to be thinking through some things. So Izuku leaves him to it. At least a few minutes go by in silence. Izuku just watches people walk past and lets Dabi make up his mind.

“You know what?” Dabi says into the silence. “Let’s do it. Let’s take him down. I’m getting a little tired of putting up with Shigaraki anyways.”

He stands up from the table and stretches.

Izuku smiles and gathers up his bag and their cups.

“Great!” he chirps. “I have no idea what’s going to happen.”

Dabi looks at Izuku, then laughs again.

“Crazy, right,” Dabi says resignedly, but he seems a little more focused now. There’s something a little more grounded in his eyes, like that edge of malice has been softened down the slightest bit.

Izuku throws the trash away.

“Do you have a plan? At all?” Dabi asks, trailing behind Izuku.

“Yeah. I do. I just don’t know it yet.”

Dabi seems to take this as just the way that things are going to be now and nods.

“I’m sure that something will come up soon,” Izuku offers in a conciliatory way.

Dabi just nods.

They part ways on the street. Izuku cheerful and Dabi thoughtful.

Notes:

Handy tip: If committing actual crimes is too much work, it’s much easier to just break into a police station to plant evidence of fictional crimes!

Chapter 5

Notes:

Okay, commenter who said they wanted more chapters, this one's for you. This chapter ended up with way too much stuff in it so it got cut in half

Happy New Years!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Aizawa Shouta opens the door to his safehouse. Standing outside is Pro Hero Sir Nighteye. He’s in civilian clothes, more casual than his normal wear. But Shouta instantly recognizes his green hair and glasses.

“You said you had something to tell me?” Shouta asks as he pulls the door open and Nighteye enters. “And you couldn’t just call me?”

“Yes. You’ll understand,” Nighteye says, glancing around the small apartment. “This is your safehouse?”

It’s barely furnished and covered in a layer of dust, but it’s the most secure place that Shouta has access to. 

“Yes,” Shouta says, both of them knowing that it’s only one of many. He crosses his arms and slumps into a wall. “What is it that you want to tell me?”

“That list? The one that Foresight wrote for you,” Nighteye says, glancing around again. “It’s a list of plants.”

“Plants?”

“All of them are working for the same villain,” Nighteye explains. “Some of them we knew about, some of them we never suspected. But my team is almost certain that they are all working for the same individual.”

“What?” Shouta asks. That list had been more than twenty people and all of whom worked for the police. They had all worked for the same villain? 

Shouta had gone through the list, looking up each person. They were stationed all across Japan. None of them seemed to have anything in common. But apparently they did.

He resists the urge to say that it’s impossible and instead asks, "Do we know who this villain is?”

“That’s the other thing I wanted to tell you,” Sir Nighteye says. He straightens his back and looks Shouta directly in the eyes. “I want to tell you something very dangerous. Because I imagine there is no way to convince you to drop this case. If you continue this investigation you will be in danger.”

“Just tell me,” Shouta says. Thinking of the danger that his students are in.

“Of course,” Nighteye says with a sigh. “This will be a long story.”

Nigheye sits at the table and Shouta joins him.

“I’ve gotten All Might’s permission to tell you this, since it involves him, but this story starts two hundred years ago.”

Nighteye tells Shouta the story of a villain with the power to steal and give quirks; who turned that quirk on his brother; how that brother’s quirk was passed down from user to user, each of those users working against the villain All for One; with the most recent user being Sir Nighteye’s own student, who’d inherited this power from All Might himself.

“And that brings us to today,” Sir Nighteye says. 

Shouta is still staring at the table, trying to understand what he’s been told. All Might had inherited his power, something Shouta hadn’t even known was possible. 

“How does Foresight fit into this?” Shouta asks.

“Ah. Yes,” Nighteye says, he leans back in his chair, staring into the middle distance. “That’s what took me so long to piece together.

“I knew that Foresight was acting against Shigaraki’s group of villains. I knew that he had an enemy called Overlord of Knowledge who is working for Shigaraki.” Nighteye drums his fingers on the table, staring into the middle distance. “I only put it together when I learned that Foresight was the one who stole that memory stick from the museum.”

“What memory stick?” Shouta asks, thrown.

“That was the important part of the robbery. There was a memory stick, one that slipped through the cracks and landed there, without the museum knowing its importance. You see, that memory stick was created by one of the users of One for All, and contains a wealth of information about All for One.” Nighteye leans forward. “If someone could access that data, they would know everything which I’ve told you today, and perhaps more.”

Things start clicking into place in Shouta’s mind. 

“The connections Foresight must have imply that he's been working the field for a long time, but he never made any significant waves until recently. My theory is that Foresight stole that memory stick not knowing its importance, but cracked the encryption somehow. He then learned everything about All for One from it. Using this information, he made the connection that I’ve only made in the last few days.”

“What is that?” Shouta asks.

“Shigaraki is not the true leader of this group,” Sir Nighteye says, “All for One is.”

“The one who almost killed All Might the first time,” Shouta says, sorting new information into conclusions.. “And Foresight knew this, and knew that Shigaraki was working for All for One. This is why he was learning about their organization, this is why he warned us. Because he knew who All for One was.”

Shouta realizes something.

That’s why he’s been so cryptic. He knew that All for One had plants in the police force, so anything that he told us would be leaked to the villains,” Shouta says slowly.

“And that brings us to the message he gave you, that you wouldn’t understand because it was meant for All Might.”

“The museum,” Shouta says quietly, figuring it out as he speaks. “That’s why he told us that he was the one who’d robbed the museum.”

“He knew that eventually the information would get to All Might somehow,” Sir Nighteye says. “That was his way of telling All Might that All For One was active again, and that Shigaraki is connected to him.”

Shouta takes a long moment to take this in.

“He planned everything,” Shouta says. “He knew every piece on the playing board and carefully gave us just the right information to do what he wanted.”

“Yes,” Nighteye says.

“Christ,” Shouta breathes.

“Quite so,” Nighteye says, leaning back in his chair.

There’s a long moment of silence. Shouta looks back at every interaction with Foresight with this new information. He’d been played, not maliciously. But played nonetheless.

“What do we do now?” Shouta asks eventually.

“I imagine we do what Foresight wants us to,” Nighteye says resignedly. “Because that makes the most sense at the moment.”

“What’s that?”

“We need to go through the list he gave us, and remove each of All for One’s plants in the police force.”

“Ah, of course we do,” Shouta sighs. He stands, already thinking through what exactly they’d need to do.

Time to dance to Foresight’s strings.

 

- - -

 

Izuku arranges the pockets of his jacket.

He’s got a couple of playing cards, a wrist watch, and another copy of the memory stick, this time with a new password.

He has no idea why, but he’s willing to go with it.

Izuku crouches on the top of a dumpster in an out of the way corner of the city, carefully aiming his arms to try and catch the fire escape. He takes a deep breath, and launches himself at it.

He misses.

Well that’s not quite right. He does impact the fire escape, but it’s his wrists that hit it. That impact thoroughly unbalances him and sends him tumbling to the ground. He lands flat on his back on a neatly packed pile of cardboard. Which is the only reason he doesn’t break something on the concrete.

He lays there trying to get his breath back for a while. Even with the cardboard, that had completely winded him.

Then someone opens the nondescript window on the second floor which the fire escape leads to.

It’s Dabi.

“Oh,” Izuku says, still laying on the ground. “How’s it going?”

“Why the fuck are you trying to get into my house?” Dabi asks. “How did you find me?”

“Oh, well, you know,” Izuku says, and pulls himself up. “I think that it’d be good if we did a bit of communication, being co-conspirators and all that.”

“Shut,” Dabi hisses, glancing around, “up.”

“Well let me up and we can talk inside,” Izuku says diplomatically.

Dabi looks like he’s considering strangling Izuku, but he climbs out through the window and drops the fire escape ladder down.

“Thanks!” Izuku chirps, then climbs the ladder. It’s much easier this way.

Izuku follows Dabi inside. It’s a small apartment, the only things inside are furniture and a few packed bags arranged so Dabi can leave at a moment’s notice.

Dabi himself is leaning against the counter in the kitchenette. 

Izuku glances around, then hops up to sit on the counter next to Dabi.

“So, update time,” Izuku says. “I’ll start.”

Dabi stares glumly into the middle distance.

“I told the police that the Overlord of Knowledge and Foresight are enemies,” Izuku starts, “which I think means that they know Overlord is working with Sensei, and also that Foresight is more solidly on their side.”

“Why’d you tell them that?” Dabi asks, “And also how did you tell them that?”

“Left Eraserhead a voicemail,” Izuku says with a nod. “And I think the point was to make it clear that Foresight is on their side or something. It’s not super clear from where I’m standing.”

“You really…”—Dabi stares at him—"don’t know anything?”

“Hey,” Izuku says, “I might not know anything, but everything’s worked out so far. Anyhow, you got any updates for me?”

“Sure, okay, we won’t address that then,” Dabi says. “Foresight did something. We don’t know how, the heroes somehow suddenly knew every single mole that Sensei had in the police force.”

“Huh,” Izuku says. “He doesn’t know how?”

“Well, he knows some of it. The heroes somehow got information from the Foresight case about the moles,” Dabi recites. “They launched a synchronized arrest of all of his contacts at once. This has left him basically blind to whatever the police are planning. And it might be even worse than that, since that was a significant amount of his contacts in general.”

Something finally clicks in Izuku’s brain.

“Oh!" Izuku says, snapping his fingers. “That’s what that was!”

Dabi seems to be gathering his strength and mutters something under his breath.

“What is it?” he asks, like it pained him to do so.

“That list of names I gave to Eraserhead!” Izuku says, “I gave it to him when I left the voicemail. Since I was in his office I just wrote it on the back of a random paper. They were the moles that worked for Sensei.”

Dabi spends a long moment staring at Izuku. Like his brain is buffering. Then something happens and he jerks away from the counter.

“Oh shit,” he breathes. Then starts walking around the room. “Oh shit. Holy Shit. What the fuck?”

“Uh, language,” Izuku says halfheartedly, he keeps on bringing Dabi to the edge of a breakdown and feels kind of bad. “What?”

“You’re Foresight!” Dabi shouts, hands dragging through his hair.

“Hmm.” Oh, Izuku had forgotten that Dabi didn’t know about that yet. He’d only known about Izuku being the Overlord. “Oh yeah. I’m Foresight.”

“What the fuck!” Dabi hisses. “You’re Foresight?”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re the Overlord of Knowledge?”

“Yeah.”

“Aren’t they enemies?”

“Nope.”

“Why?” Dabi asks despairingly, hands splayed in front of him.

Izuku just shrugs.

Dabi takes his hands and drags them down his face.

“Why did I think this was a good idea?” he hisses, then starts pacing. “Oh shit. If Sensei or Shigaraki find out they’re going to kill you. And me. And anyone within a ten mile radius. Why?”

“Hmm.” Izuku pushes down the thread of anxiety that Dabi’s questions are pulling out. It would be fine. His quirk would make everything work out. It always did. “Well, I think I needed the narrative of two powers, good and evil, fighting. It got me into Sensei’s good graces. And this is easier and safer than actually making enemies.”

Dabi pushes his face into his hands and screams, the sound muffled by his palms.

“It’ll be fine,” Izuku coaxes, swinging his legs from his perch on the counter. “Everything works out for me, I told you, that’s my quirk.”

“What does that even mean?” Dabi shouts. “I thought you were just crazy.”

“Oh. Uh.” Izuku thinks about what the best way to explain this would be, then he remembers what’s in his jacket pocket. “Well, uh, think of a random card in a deck of cards.”

Dabi pauses his pacing and stares at Izuku.

“Why?”

“Just do it,” Izuku says. “It’ll make sense.”

“Ugh. Fine. Whatever,” Dabi says. “Three of spades.”

Izuku pulls the top card from his pocket and holds it up to Dabi.

“What?” Dabi asks, stepping toward Izuku. “Five of hearts.”

Izuku pulls up the next card and shows Dabi.

“Ace of diamonds,” Dabi says quickly.

Izuku pulls the next card out of his pocket.

“What else is in your pocket?” 

Izuku turns his jacket pocket inside out and shows Dabi that it’s empty. 

Dabi stares at Izuku for a minute, then darts his hand into Izuku’s other pocket and pulls out the watch Izuku had brought. He stares at it for a long moment, then drops it like it had bit him.

Dabi stares at Izuku for a long time, then sits down heavily on the arm chair.

“What else does it do?” Dabi asks in a defeated tone.

“Mostly that sort of thing,” Izuku answers honestly. “It also leads me to places or people. Guides me toward doing certain things. You know, stuff like that. It’s been guiding me toward taking down Sensei. That’s the reason I created Foresight and Overlord of Knowledge.”

Dabi spends a long few minutes staring at the ceiling. Izuku can almost see the gears turning in his head. That sharp intelligence is back in Dabi’s eyes. Izuku is pretty sure that Dabi’s thinking through the whole plan more than Izuku himself ever had.

“Jesus,” Dabi says eventually. “So that’s why you were my dad’s gardener?”

“Yep,” Izuku says. “Never would have recognized you and proved my power without it. Plus I’m friends with Shoto now.”

“Jesus Christ,” Dabi says. “It was planning years ahead of time?”

“Oh, yeah I guess.” Izuku hadn’t really thought about it that way before. But yeah, his quirk really had been working the long game.

Dabi stares at the ceiling some more.

“Oh yeah, speaking of that,” Izuku says, digging through his pocket and finding the new memory stick he’d created. “I think you’re supposed to have this. It’s about Sensei.”

Dabi stares levelly at Izuku, then snatches the memory stick out of his hand and stuffs it in his pocket.

“It’s got a password so—”

“But your freaky power made it so it’s something that I’ll be able to figure out.” Dabi interrupts him.

Izuku thinks about this for a moment. 

“Yeah probably,” he allows.

“Okay,” Dabi says, “turns out you have time and mind breaking abilities that disprove the very concept of free will. But yeah it probably can figure out a password I’ll use.”

Izuku stands there.

He’s pretty sure that he accidently sent Dabi into a full on mental breakdown. Which he feels vaguely bad about but isn’t sure how to fix.

“I’m going to…” Izuku starts. “Leave?”

Dabi says nothing.

Izuku wanders away from Dabi and slips out the window, then climbs down the fire escape.

Dabi would probably be fine.

 

- - -

 

Izuku lays on his back and stares at the ceiling. His conversation yesterday with Dabi had unsettled him a bit.

Sure. At this point he was well aware that his quirk knew what was best. And Izuku second guessing it generally did nothing.

But he still felt anxious about the whole thing.

Dabi’s reaction had made Izuku even more sure that this was getting out of hand. At this point he had enemies on all sides and few friends that he could count on.

Izuku rolls over onto his belly. This line of thinking wasn’t really helping. It wasn’t like Izuku could back out now, even if there was a good way to do it, Izuku wouldn’t.

He couldn’t back out now, not in good conscience. He knew everything that All for One had done. The villain was too powerful, had done too much harm, killed too many heroes for Izuku to just back out because he was scared.

Izuku presses his palms into his face and sighs heavily.

He needs a distraction.

Which is the exact moment his quirk unfurls from his wrist and tugs at him to get out of bed.

Well. Speak of the devil.

Izuku sighs again and pulls himself out of bed. It’s a Saturday morning and it’s not like he has anything better to do. He pulls on a jacket and wallet then heads out the door.

He stops by a hardware store on the way. He buys a high visibility vest, a hardhat, and a clipboard. 

Eventually his quirk guides him to a construction site. It seems like it’s empty. Makes sense. It is the weekend. 

Izuku pulls on the vest and hat and tucks the clipboard under his arm.

He spends a while poking around at the construction sight. It’s pretty cool. It looks like it will one day be an office building of some kind nut for now it’s just a bunch of skeletal looking frames with a few walls and lots of concrete scattered around.

He finds an excavator on the far end and is poking around at the buttons, trying to see if he can start it, when he hears voices from nearby.

He glances up and around, wondering if some construction workers are here or something.

Instead he see a group of particularly large and intimidating men walk into view. There's a half dozen of them, all wearing bulky clothing that Izuku is vaguely aware would be quite suitable to hide weapons in.

What interests Izuku though, is that they’re surrounding a familiar figure.

Leader.

Izuku sits up in the excavator and listens in.

“Listen guys,” Leader says in a conciliatory way. “I thought we agreed no hard feelings?”

“We agreed to no such thing,” one of the thugs says. “We agreed we’d part ways if you paid us our due.”

“Well I can’t pay you, okay?” Leader says, he’s raising his hands in front of him. “The job didn’t go through, right? I never got paid, so I’ve got nothing to give you.”

“Well that’s not our problem, is it?” the thug asks, stepping towards Leader.

That’s the moment when Izuku’s quirk pulls at him. He glances down and sees the vines curling up his hands and around his fingers. Seems like it’s his turn to act.

He glances at his high visibility vest and has an idea. He sets the hard hat firmly on his head and tries to hold the clipboard in an official way.

He stands up in the cockpit of the excavator and waves his arm at the group.

“Hey!” Izuku shouts, the whole group turns to stare at him. “You can’t be here!” He waves the clipboard. “I’ve called the police!”

That causes a reaction. The thugs step back away from Izuku.

The one who’d been talking to Leader says something too quiet for Izuku to catch, and shoves Leader in the chest. Then the whole group leaves.

Well, Leader doesn’t leave, he stays staring at Izuku.

Once the group is out of sight, Izuku jumps down from the excavator and wanders over to Leader.

Once Izuku’s closer, Leader’s face breaks out in a grin.

“I thought you sounded familiar!” he says, putting his hands on his hips. “Thanks for the save, Sparky!”

“No problem,” Izuku says, not sure what else to say.

“How did you know that I’d—” Leader cuts himself off, then smiles ruefully. “Wait, dumb question, nevermind.”

“Yep,” Izuku says, he pulls off the hard hat. 

“Man, that's handy,” Leader says with a whistle.

“Uh, what was up with those guys?” Izuku asks.

“Oh, them?” Leader says. “Just a deal that went a bit bad. That sort of thing happens sometimes. I usually don’t end up in that much trouble.”

“I’ll take your word for it?” Izuku tries.

“Good! My word’s about as good a thing as I can give these days,” Leader says, he then pulls out a stack of bills from inside his jacket and winks at Izuku. “Anyhow, what do you think about me treating you to lunch, since you did just save me from being beat up again.”

“What do you mean 'again'?” Izuku asks.

“I’m thinking ramen!” Leader says, rather loudly, grabbing Izuku by the arm and pulling him away. “It’s been awhile. What do you think?”

“Ah,” Izuku says, “yeah that sounds good.”

“Great!” Leader says, leading Izuku out of the construction site. “Let’s go!”

It ends up being a rather pleasant lunch. Leader is as talkative as always, but he’s always got enough funny stories to keep his monologues interesting, so Izuku doesn’t mind it.

Leader insists on paying for the food, and somehow extracts a promise from Izuku to call him if he ever needs help.

Izuku’s pretty sure that he’ll never need that, but can’t get out of Leader giving him his phone number on a napkin.

Eventually Leader realizes he’s late to something and has to hurry off.

Izuku’s left on the street near the bus stop.

Well, that wasn’t too bad really. At least it was much more relaxing than the normal sort of trouble his quirk leads him into.

Izuku heads back home, feeling a bit better than he had before.

 

- - -

 

This time, when he goes in to meet the villains who would kill him if they knew who he was, Izuku wears a top hat.

He found it at a thrift shop, laughed until he cried, and bought it.

When his quirk pulls him to assemble his villain outfit again, he reluctantly does it. Then goes through the whole routine of putting on the scar with makeup. The motions themselves are comforting, and Izuku tries not to think too much about the whole thing.

Before he leaves, he stares at himself in the mirror. 

He looks completely ridiculous. With the scar, silver hair, and over-the-top suit, it’s all a bit too much. But maybe it’s really just the right amount of ridiculous. 

He puts it out of his mind.

His quirk first brings him to the kitchenette and he stuffs a ziplock bag into his pocket, then goes to the dresser.

He pulls out the memory stick. The original one, which he’d stolen from the museum, not one of the copies he’s made.

He heads to the bar that is the villains’ hideout.

Izuku takes a deep breath then slips through the door.

Dabi is there, along with Shigaraki and Kurogiri. 

“Hello, friends!” Izuku chirps.

All three of them swivel to stare at him.

“Hello,” Dabi says flatly. He’s watching Izuku carefully.

“You,” Shigaraki hisses.

“I hope I’ve not disturbed your meeting,” Izuku says, closing the door behind him. “But I thought it was time to finish our discussion.”

“We didn’t fucking invite you,” Shigaraki says. He’s sitting on one of the bar stools.

Language.

Dabi is standing nearest to the door, and Kurogiri is behind the bar.

“Which I’m sure was an unfortunate oversight,” Izuku says consolingly. “But I’ve got something that your benefactor requested I retrieve. I do apologize for the delay, but there were some complications.”

Dabi’s face twitches oddly. But he’s facing away from the other two, so they don’t see it.

“I trust that he is available?” Izuku asks.

Shigaraki slams his hands on the bartop and it starts disintegrating under his fingers. Then he stands up and stomps out of the room.

Izuku just smiles blithely and waits.

“I will tell him of your arrival,” Kurogiri says, and disappears into black smoke.

Izuku smiles and sits down on one of the bar stools.

Dabi’s staring at him. Like you’d stare at a wild animal who is, for the moment, hunting something else.

Izuku dips his top hat at him and an odd expression twitches across Dabi’s face.

Dabi sits next to him.

“You know you’re absolutely nuts, right?” He mutters under his breath. “On top of…everything. Shigaraki’s real pissed that Sensei is talking to you. He’s also fucking nuts. He’s going to try and kill you the instant he can. And he doesn’t even know anything.”

“He won’t get the chance,” Izuku says with a shrug. “Don’t worry about it.”

Dabi just nods, then looks Izuku up and down. He leans back a bit, examining Izuku’s face critically.

“Why the whole getup anyway?” Dabi asks. 

Izuku shrugs.

“Honestly, villains are just weird. I think this just makes me fit in more.” Izuku pauses then adds. “Plus, it’s funny.”

“Oh God,” Dabi mutters. “Don’t get us both killed because you think something’s funny.”

“Just don’t worry about anything. It’ll work out. It always does,” Izuku says, patting Dabi’s arm consolingly.

Dabi grabs his wrist, and moves it away.

Izuku tilts his head at him, feeling the vines along his arms twist in odd ways. 

“Hey, wanna fight?” Izuku asks. His quirk settles in satisfaction.

“What?” Dabi asks. 

“Well, it’d be good if they thought we also hated each other,” Izuku says and slips off his chair, then grabs one of the glasses from the counter. He starts swinging it at Dabi, who grabs his wrist with ease. Flames rise up around his shoulders and there’s a hint of confusion in his face.

Kurogiri appears at that moment, and instantly there’s a black cloud between the two of them.

“Please restrain yourselves from fighting gentlemen,” he says, long-suffering.

“I will always attempt to do so,” Izuku says, and takes a few steps away from Dabi, bowing and tipping his top hat to him.

“I’m leaving,” Dabi says. Something like understanding flickering across his face. He stands from his seat and saunters out the door. Izuku catches a self-satisfied smile on his face as he goes.

“I do apologize,” Izuku says, turning to Kurogiri “Shall we?”

The black smoke surrounds Izuku and after a moment the ground falls from beneath him.

Izuku lands in a huge dark room. It’s a warehouse of some kind. The lights are dim and the air is cold. 

In the center of the room, directly in front of Izuku, is an enormous pile of pipes, curled and jumbled.

On top of that, is a man. He’s wearing a suit. And his face is strange. His eyes and nose are nothing more than scarred skin pulled over his face. He’s wearing an oxygen mask and there are a number of wires connecting to his skin.

“Greetings, Overlord of Knowledge,” the man who Izuku knows as All for One says. There’s layers of condescension just under the surface of his words.

Izuku empties his mind. He is the Overlord of Knowledge. He can’t be Izuku. He’s a villain. He wants to be here. He needs to think and breathe that identity.

“Greetings Sensei,” Izuku says, bowing and tipping his hat at the villain. “I hope I’ve found you at a convenient time.”

“Of course,” All for One answers. “Now, I must ask you, have you found the thing I requested you retrieve?”

“Yes,” Izuku answers. “I do apologize for the delay. There were a number of unforeseen obstacles to my work. But I’ve brought it today.”

Izuku reaches into his pocket and pulls out the memory stick he’d stolen months ago. 

“I’ve yet to find Foresight himself, but he couldn’t keep me from taking this,” Izuku says. He holds the memory stick in front of him.

All for One’s arm changes, something unnatural and twisted. Izuku can see the muscles under the skin shifting and crawling under his skin.

Then his arm grows—stretching through the dozen meters between them—and plucks the memory stick out of Izuku’s hand.

By the time Izuku has processed that something was happening, the arm is already pulling away from him and back to All for One. He holds it in front of him and examines it it carefully; which is kind of weird because he doesn't have eyes.

“I do thank you for your service,” All for One says. “Kurogiri, take this. Check its contents.”

Kurogiri’s smoke surrounds the memory stick and it disappears from view.

“You are quite welcome,” Izuku says. “I’m interested in working as a part of your group. I have my reasons. I’ve shared them with you. But I truly admire what you’ve created here.”

“Ah, yes.” All for One tilts his head. Izuku knows he doesn’t have eyes, but he still feels like he’s been examined under a microscope. “I do have to ask. Do you want to know what was on that memory stick?”

“I—” Izuku pauses, and feels the reassuring pressure of his quirk twirling along his hands. He continues, “I do wonder, but I know that it is not my place to question this.”

“Ah, I appreciate your discretion. But”—All for One leans forward—“I think it right to tell you. This memory stick contains the notes of an old enemy of mine, one who’s been a thorn in my side for long years.”

Over a century, Izuku translates in his head.

“This enemy has passed a torch. The torch of working against me, from person to person. Each has tried and failed to gain the power to defeat me. However”—he gestures to his own face—“They have grown more powerful, and have risen to the level of a threat to my own might. But something recently has changed.”

All for One leans forward, fingers lacing together.

“They’ve always been skilled at only one thing; brute force. I’ve always been ahead of them, through my spies, through manipulation, through my knowledge. But I believe that my enemy has found an ally.” He points at Izuku, who very carefully remains calm. “Your Foresight, your enemy.  He has been aiding my own enemy. You see, my plans have found new problems. Information that should have been secret has found its way free. My spies have been revealed. And your enemy is the one to do this.”

“What do you mean?” Izuku asks.

“For one. My contacts with the police were rooted out. Revealed by this Foresight. He tore out a great amount of my influence.” All for One’s voice is calm, but his teeth are bared with fury. “With the help of your enemy, my own knows more of my movements. This cannot be tolerated.”

“What is it that you want me to do?” Izuku asks, stepping forward and clasping his hands behind his back.

“I want you to join me. Not simply as one of Shigaraki’s lackeys, but as an aid directly to me,” All for One says.

Izuku takes a deep breath. He can feel his hands shaking behind his back but he can also feel the deep satisfaction of his quirk. The vines are wrapping around his wrists, climbing up his shoulders and around his chest. Satisfied. Confident. 

So this was the plan then. 

“I could think of no greater honor,” Izuku says. He bares his own teeth, matching All for One’s grin.

 

- - -

 

Izuku lands face first on his bed.

Oh god.

That was a lot.

All for One had made a few more speeches, then given Izuku a phone. He’d claimed that it would give Izuku a direct line to himself, whenever Izuku, or rather Overlord of Knowledge, had something to tell him.

Izuku now has four phones, so the whole thing was getting a little out of hand.

Izuku had used the ziplock bag to wrap the thing up and hid it under a bush in a public park. Then he’d stared at a pond for a while.

The walk back to his apartment had only given him more time to think about how much trouble he would get in if a single thing went wrong.

Izuku sits up from bed and grabs his laptop. He pulls up the files he’d copied from the memory stick and starts scrolling through them

He knows that he shouldn’t but he starts going through the news stories, calculating how many heroes and civilians had gotten killed because of this villain. He stops after two hundred because this really isn’t helpful.

And now this villain thought that Izuku was his ally. And also thought that Izuku was one of his greatest enemies.

Izuku is kind of regretting everything he’s ever done.

His quirk wraps comfortably around him. The vines curl across his skin, wrapping his arms and chest. Climbing up around his face. It was like getting a hug from a being made of pure feeling.

Izuku isn’t comforted.

Izuku closes the computer and shoves it away.

He turns and curls onto his side, pulling the blankets over his head.

Izuku knows he's being ridiculous. But the whole situation is ridiculous. He tries to calm himself but can feel an unfamiliar anxiety in his gut.

He’s trusted his quirk his whole life. It always led to safety, always made everything work out just so.

But he still remembers the feeling of losing his quirk. When he’d first discovered feedback. The feeling of aimlessness. Of simply not knowing what it is that he should do. That feeling of his quirk giving strange and aimless directions.

It stuck with him, even now, years later.

It also had told him that his quirk wasn’t without flaws. That it could fail him with just bad luck.

It brings forward a feeling of anxiety and foreboding that he doesn’t know what to do with. He isn’t a planner. It isn’t something that he knows how to do. It isn’t something that he’s ever needed to do.

But he knows someone who does.

Someone who’d promised to help Izuku if he ever needed it.

Izuku pulls his head out of his blankets and then pulls himself out of bed.

He grabs his phone and enters in the number that Leader had written on a napkin.

He hits the call button.

After four rings, Leader answers.

“Hello? What, who is this?” he says slowly. Izuku looks up at the clock and realizes it’s almost midnight.

“Oh. Oh no. Sorry, it’s me, uh, Sparky. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have called,” Izuku says, instantly feeling guilty.

“No, no, Sparky,” Leader says, voice growing less tired. “It’s fine kid, give me a second.”

Izuku hears the sounds of Leader moving.

“What’s…Asahi? What’s wrong?” Izuku hears in the background. 

Is that…Paper Cup? What’s he doing there?

“It’s okay, it’s Sparky, just go back to sleep. I’ll tell you later, okay?” Leader says quietly, and Izuku feels like maybe he shouldn’t be listening to this.

Then Izuku hears the sound of a door opening and closing.

“Alright Sparky,” Leader says, walking somewhere. “What’s up?”

“Uh, it’s,” Izuku mumbles, “I shouldn’t have called. It’s nothing.”

“No, no,” Leader says, something of his normal tone filtering into his voice. “You’ve helped me out plenty of times. I’m here to help whenever you need it. What happened, kid?”

“Um, well,” Izuku says, realizing now he doesn't know what to say. “Could I-Uh. Well, I was wondering if. Maybe I could ask you for a favor? Not that you need to help or—”

“ 'Course kid!” Leader says, as upbeat as Izuku remembers. Izuku hears something softly clinking in the background. “Nothing I wouldn’t do for my favorite terrifying friend.”

Izuku isn’t terrifying. He’s—

Whatever. Later.

“Well. It’s just that. Remember when I had that feedback thing?”

“Yes?” Leader says. “I remember.”

“I was just thinking. Well. I’ve gotten into even more situations. And it’s just getting more and more serious I guess,” Izuku says, and maybe he’s talking too fast but he needs to explain. “But now it’s getting really big and the more it goes on the more the stakes rise. And my quirk always keeps it from blowing up in my face, but what if something like that happens in an important time? And then I don’t have my quirk? Things could go really badly and I—”

Izuku runs out of breath.

“Woah. Kid. It’s okay. Just relax. I’m sure it’s not that bad.”

“I convinced a bunch of murderers that I’m a villain and am working with them against a hero persona that is also me and if they figure it out they’ll definitely kill me.”

There's an uncomfortably long silence. Izuku considers hanging up and burying his phone somewhere.

“Huh,” Leader says. “That’s a lot. Do you…want to talk about it?”

“Yeah. Maybe. I don’t know. I just. I don’t know how to make sure that it doesn’t blow up in my face I guess. That I don’t lose my quirk at the wrong time and mess everything up somehow.”

“Oh,” Leader hesitates. “Are you asking for advice?”

“Yeah. I guess,” Izuku says. He realizes he’s been pacing around his room and sits down on the bed.

“Okay. I can try. Though, give me a second.” Leader walks somewhere and opens another door. Leader seems to cover the microphone but it doesn't actually do very much to block the noise. “Seiko! Oh good you’re up. Come here for a minute, I need emotional maturity!” 

Izuku can’t hear the response.

“It’s Sparky, it seems pretty serious. Come on, I’m making tea.”

Leader uncovers the microphone again.

“Okay, Slingshot’s going to help too.”

“Oh,” Izuku says, sort of wishing that this wasn’t becoming a whole thing, but also grateful that it was. “Okay, thank you.”

“Course kid,” Leader says. There’s the sound of more clattering, then the sound quality changes. From a distance Leader says, “You know, you don’t really have the same problems as most kids I know.”

That makes Izuku laugh.

“Like what?”

“You know, girls, boys, homework. That sort of thing,” he says, there’s something clinking in the background.

“Oh, yeah,” Izuku says, he pulls himself back toward the wall. He pulls the blanket from his bed and wraps it around himself. “I just haven’t had much time for that sort of stuff. Never been that interested either. And homework’s not that much work anyway.”

“Sure, yeah. Was always too much work for me though,” Leader says, he walks toward the phone again and there’s some sound of moving chairs. “School was always a lot for me. What year are you anyway?”

“First year of high school,” Izuku says. 

“Wow,” Leader says. There’s something a little off in his voice. “You know that you’re a bit too young to be in crime, right?”

“I guess.” Izuku had never really thought about that. “It just happened this way. Not much I can do now.”

“You could leave, get out,” Leader says. “If you need help we could arrange something for you, keep people away from you. I know I'm not a huge mastermind or anything, but I have a few friends in useful places for when things get serious.”

“No,” Izuku says, keeping his voice steady. “I really can’t. I…”

“You what?” Leader prompts.

“There’s a lot riding on this,” Izuku says. “There’s people that are going to get hurt if I step out now. People that don’t deserve it.”

“What do you mean?” the voice of Slingshot cuts in. Izuku hadn’t heard her enter the room.

“It’s complicated,” Izuku says. “There’s a lot to it. Some of it’s dangerous.”

“Well,” Leader cuts in. “Just tell us, we know that this sort of thing is dangerous, but we’ve decided to be a part of it anyway.”

“It’s a lot,” Izuku says.

“People say that about me all the time,” Leader says, pride in his voice. “But I’m still doing just fine. Come on kid, cut us in. We want to help and we’re asking to know what’s happening.”

“You’re sure?” Izuku asks quietly.

“Yes we’re sure,” Slingshot says, her voice even.

“Okay,” Izuku says, he leans back into the wall and thinks about where to start. “You remember that museum we robbed? There was something there that my quirk specifically wanted me to get."

So Izuku tells them the whole story, what he found in the memory stick; how he went to the attack at the USJ; how he’d created the identities of Foresight and Overlord and pitted them against each other; and how he’d been giving the heroes information about the villains and their actions. 

It takes a long time, but eventually he tells them about infiltrating the villain’s organization and convincing Dabi to join him against the villains.

Izuku stops talking.

For almost a minute, Slingshot and Leader are silent. Izuku glances over at the clock and realizes that it’s almost one in the morning.  

“That’s a lot, kid,” Slingshot says. Izuku is pretty sure that she started taking notes at some point.

“Yeah,” Izuku says.

“Your quirk’s a real headache,” Leader says diplomatically. 

Izuku just leans his head against the wall.

“Do you know what it plans to do next?” Slingshot asks.

“I–” Izuku says, then glances at his wrist. His quirk stubbornly refuses to grow and let him see what it wants him to do. “I don’t know. I never know." He swallows, feeling like he just admitted to something important.

“Well. I don’t know what exactly I can tell you that’ll help,” Leader says. “But I can tell you that we’re here, and we really do want to help.”

“We’ll keep you safe,” Slingshot says. “It doesn’t matter if your quirk is all-powerful or not, next time you feel like you need something you call us and we’ll be there with you. You got it?”

“Yeah. It’ll work out,” Leader says. “Don’t worry about anything, you got us in your corner. You hear?”

“Yeah,” Izuku says, sinking into his blankets. “Thank you.”

“Course, kid,” Leader says.

“And speaking of taking care of you, it’s getting late,” Slingshot says. “Teenagers need sleep, right?”

Izuku snorts softly at that.

“Yeah,” he says. He finds himself wiping tears away from his eyes and tries to keep the emotion out of his voice. “Yeah we do, thanks for letting me talk.”

“You’re welcome, and I wasn’t kidding earlier! You feel like you need help, you call us, right?” Leader says. Izuku could imagine him grinning.

“Yeah,” Izuku says. “Yeah, I will.”

“Alright, goodnight Sparky,” Slingshot says and Leader echos her.

“Yeah, goodnight,” Izuku says, and reluctantly hangs up the phone.

He drops it on the bed and curls into the mattress.

Yeah. He’d needed that. He needs someone on his side, at least, sommeone who doesn't look like he wants to murder Izuku all the time like Dabi does.

Izuku curls up under the blankets and falls asleep.

 

- - -

 

“Hey, want to fight?” Izuku asks Eraserhead.

Eraserhead, who only just answered Izuku’s phone call a moment ago, says nothing.

“Like, right now?” Izuku asks uncertainly. “You’re tracking where this call is coming from, right? I’m down if you are.”

“Why is it that you want to fight?” Eraserhead asks. He sounds out of breath, which Izuku takes to mean that he’s running toward Izuku’s location. “You’ve said that your only goal is to aid us.”

“I’m not entirely sure, if I’m being honest,” Izuku says. He’s sitting on the edge of a building, feet swinging over empty air. It’s dusk and the view over the buildings is spectacular. He’s wearing a hood and the bright yellow mask that covers his whole face. “It can be a bonding experience, we can figure it out together.”

“That seems unwise,” Eraserhead says, a little absently. Izuku guesses that he doesn’t want Izuku to hang up, but also is busy getting to Izuku’s location. 

“Yeah. Right?” Izuku agrees, running a hand through his hair nervously. “It does seem out of character.”

Then Izuku’s quirk pulls at his hand, and Izuku snaps the flip phone shut, hanging up on the hero.

He stares at it for a few moments. Then stands up and carefully moves away from the edge of the roof.

He hops across a thin gap and walks to the other side of the new building. There he finds a fire escape and carefully climbs down it. He manages to get to the bottom safely and drops onto a dumpster. He feels a pull at his hands and perches on the dumpster for a few moments. 

There’s sounds from above, and Izuku looks in time to see someone in a brightly colored costume jumping from building to building above him.

Izuku’s quirk pulls again and he jogs to the entrance of the alley. The street it looks over is unremarkable. There are a number of people walking through it, Izuku doesn’t recognize anyone and doesn’t see a hero for the moment. It seems like the end of the dinner rush, there are a number of restaurants lining the edges.

His quirk pulls him out onto the street.

Izuku takes a few tentative steps, then his quirk guides him to a specific person. The man is tall and broad. Much bigger than Izuku. He’s wearing a tank top and loose pants. His hair is blond. When he turns his head, Izuku sees a huge scar running down the left side of his face, through his eye.

Izuku doesn’t recognize him, but is fairly certain that this is a villain.

Izuku walks along behind the man for a few moments and sees when the villain notices the heroes in the area. He tenses, shifting into a defensive posture. He starts scanning the rooftops.

Then he looks behind him and sees Izuku.

Izuku, who currently is wearing a bright yellow mask that screams hero like nothing else.

The man smiles, the scars on his face twisting, and turns to face Izuku completely. The oversized muscles on his arms start shifting under his skin, growing and changing.

Izuku stops as well, and there’s a few moments of tense silence.

“Hey dude!” Izuku calls, feeling the twisting of his quirk. Like the vines are growing thorns and crawling up his fingers. “Wanna fight?”

The man launches himself at Izuku.

But Izuku’s already following his quirk’s pull and dodging to the left. He doesn’t quite maintain his balance and rolls across the pavement. But he rolls back upright and scrambles forward in time to dodge the villain’s second attack. Izuku laughs wildly, high on adrenaline and movement. 

Izuku turns back to him, breathing hard.

The villain’s crouched a dozen feet away, leaning on one hand and staring back. His muscles have escaped his skin to wrap around his arms and back.

“You’re that pest, that Foresight that the boss is so intent on,” he says, baring his teeth. “You think that you could beat me? Too bad no one told you this, but I’m Muscular, and going after me was your last mistake.”

“Oh, nice to meet you, Muscular!” Izuku chirps and waves.

Muscular screams and launches himself at Izuku again. Izuku tumbles away and turns in time to see Muscular collide with the wall of a building. It sounds like it hurts. 

There’s sounds of civilians yelling and leaving around them. The dust from the building rises and the light from the sunset catches it. Izuku pushes down the impulse to stop and take a photo.

His quirk pulls at him, and he starts running in the opposite direction. He sprints to the entrance to the same alleyway from before and starts climbing up the fire escape. He hears a scream from behind him and meets the gaze of Muscular. 

He’s at the entrance to the alleyway. There’s blood on his face and arm but he’s walking perfectly fine.

Izuku moves faster, but he can see Muscular winding up to leap after him.

Then, just before he moves, a forest of bandages surrounds Muscular, pulling him up from the ground.

He’s quickly completely surrounded with the bandages and then Eraserhead steps into view.

He looks up at Izuku, who’s only now gotten to the top of the fire escape. Izuku throws his leg over the ledge of the building, then turns back to Eraserhead.

“Yo! I guess I mean do you want to fight this guy? He’s pretty strong, his name is Muscular!” Izuku pauses. “He’s one of those League of Villain guys that works for Shigaraki!”

Eraserhead’s eyes go red and his hair stands on end. Izuku feels a huge wash of cold as his perception of his quirk winks out. He has time for the first strings of panic, before the bandages next to Eraserhead burst into motion with a huge tearing sound. 

Eraserhead leaps back as Muscular tries to grab at him, flinging himself toward the entrance of the alleyway.

Muscular’s fist hits the wall behind Eraserhead and creates a huge hole in the brickwork. 

Whatever happened to Izuku’s quirk stops, and he feels his quirk return to his hands with a feeling like they’d been asleep for too long.

Izuku steps back from the edge of the building and the sounds of fighting from beneath him. Eraserhead would be fine, this was his job basically.

Izuku feels his quirk pulling at his hands and starts running away from the fight. 

From there it’s similar to his last phone call. He slips into cracks and shadows as shapes flit through the streets, always just missing him. The last of the sunset is fading and the dark helps him.

But soon he’s out of reach once again, and Izuku climbs through the window of his apartment.

That went alright.

He slumps down heavily into his chair, pulling off the mask and tossing it onto his bed.

So that was Eraserhead’s quirk? He could temporarily erase other people’s quirks. 

That was…

Izuku lets himself go boneless in the chair and stares at the ceiling. Well, it could be bad, but only if Izuku manages to get caught by him. If that doesn’t happen then there’s not an issue.

Just something else to worry about then.

Izuku’s wrists pulls at him again and he groans. He closes his eyes and doesn’t move, but the pull from his quirk increases and eventually Izuku relents and stands up.

He changes into other clothes and walks out his front door. He he follows the instructions of his quirk until he finds a park.

He’s confused for a few moments, then remembers the phone that All for One had given him. Izuku groans and stomps over to where he’d hidden the phone.

He drops it out of the ziplock bag and puts the battery back into it. The screen turns on and Izuku squints at the bright light in the darkness of the park.

He finds the text messages and clicks on the only pre-added contact. He pauses for a long few moments, then shrugs and starts typing.

 

[Overlord]

The heroes are moving against us. Foresight led them to one of Shigaraki’s team and captured him.

 

There’s no response, and his quirk doesn’t tell him to stay, so Izuku powers off the phone and takes out the battery.

He puts it in the ziplock bag and tosses the thing under some bushes.

Good enough for today.

Notes:

Izuku bringing Aizawa LoV members like a cat leaving dead mice on the doorstep

Chapter 6

Notes:

TW:
Minor injury and treatment of said injury
Canon-typical Himiko

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

The next step of his quirk’s plan takes place a few days later, just after Izuku gets back from school.

The instant that he sets down his book bag, he feels a pull from his quirk. He shrugs out of his jacket. Vines twirl down his arms, moving and shifting. They reach past his shoulders and brush at his chin. He changes out of his school uniform into jeans and a hoodie. He stuffs the golden mask, his first aid kit, and his crime phone into one of his many black backpacks.

He walks out the front door and his quirk guides him to the bus station. He gets on and pretty quickly recognizes that this is the route to the villains’ hideout.

While he’s riding the train he feels a pull from his quirk, and takes out his crime phone. 

He waits for a moment, then his quirk guides him to the Twitter app.

He opens it, then his fingers move toward the private messages.

He creates a new message to Hawks, then follows the pull of his fingers.

 

[Foresight2020]

Hi! I thought that I should let you in on something.

 

Hawks answers within a minute.

 

[Hawks.hero]

Your'e the person who warned us of the attack at the USJ?

[Foresight2020]

Yeah that’s me

Anyway, there’s about to be a fight in Kamino and you should be there

 

Izuku then switches to the text message app. His quirk guides him to type in a new number.

 

[sparky]

Hey Dabi! It’s me, could you bring the people you’re with right now outside?

 

Izuku stares long enough at the message to see the read receipt from Dabi appear. He doesn’t reply though and Izuku tucks the phone away again.

Izuku isn’t sure what that means exactly but before he can really think about it his quirk pulls him out of his seat and he gets off the bus.

He’s a few streets over from the villain hideout, so he heads toward it. But before he gets there his quirk pulls him in another direction. 

He keeps walking, then takes a turn into a side street where he sees someone he recognizes. Two people, actually.

One is Dabi, and the other is the woman who Shigaraki had also called in to work for his villain organization. Izuku had never gotten her name.

With them are two people who Izuku doesn’t know. One is a tall and broad woman with sunglasses and casual clothes, the other is a man wearing a full body black and white bodysuit.

Izuku assumes they are also villains, but has never seen them before.

He ducks out of sight behind a building.

At a command from his quirk, he takes his golden mask out of his bag and covers his face with it. Then he pulls his hood up.

His quirk tugs at him again and he steps from around the building and starts walking toward the villains.

The blond woman is the first to see him.

“You!” she shouts, bringing her hands up to her face in excitement. “You’re that one that Shigaraki wants us to get!”

Izuku doesn’t say anything, but stops walking. Standing in place some ten meters away from the group.

“What are you doing here?” Dabi asks. His face is blank and so is his inflection.

“I’m waiting for something,” Izuku says, figuring that it’s true.

“Oh! What is it?” the blond woman asks, then claps in excitement. “Is it me?”

She sprints towards Izuku. Izuku feels a strong urge to run away but feels his quirk push him to stay in place.

So when the woman lunges at him and throws him into the ground, he’s more surprised than anything. He’d expected something to stop her.

No such luck.

It hurts, his back and head smack into the ground. His hoodie gives his skull some protection from the fall, but his head rings.

“Ohhh. Hi! I’m Himiko, it’s nice to meet you!” she says, then pins him. Himiko leans into his face, pressing his arms down into the pavement. That’s the point where Izuku starts to panic and tries to escape, but she’s shockingly strong and he doesn’t make any headway. 

“Oh don’t do that!” Himiko croons, then leans toward Izuku’s neck and bites it. 

Izuku lets out a strangled scream as she does it. It hurts more than he’d expected and he can feel it break skin.

The only reason that Izuku doesn’t start completely panicking at that point is that his quirk is curled across his arms in a calming way. 

This is part of the plan. It’s part of the plan. He needs to be calm. 

He doesn’t feel calm. He feels like his heart is going to beat out of his chest. He feels trapped. He feels like he doesn’t know how to get out of this.

Which is the point where something reaches down and flings Himiko off of him.

Then there’s shouting and fire and things flying around.

Before Izuku can process what’s happened, his quirk yanks at his arms and he stumbles to his feet.

There’s chaos around him and it takes Izuku long moments to realize what’s happened.

Pro Hero Hawks has arrived

His distinctive red wings are whipping around the whole street.

He’s fighting the villains. 

All four of them. 

At once.

Hawks himself is flying above the scene, overseeing all of his razor sharp feathers.

The villains are trying to defend themselves. Dabi has created a ring of fire around himself and the two new villains, but it seems to have only lit the feathers on fire and not actually stopped them.

Izuku has the time to process this, before suddenly his quirk yanks at his arms and he stumbles to the left.

He turns and sees Himiko lunge past where he just was, this time swinging a knife.

She turns on a dime and darts toward Izuku again. He steps out of the way just enough that the knife scratches through the sleeve of his hoodie but misses his arm.

Izuku suddenly feels a strong pull from his quirk and he dives to the left. Just after he’s moved, a dumpster is flung through where he’d been standing a moment before.

He scrambles forward, and finally reaches the street he’s come in from. He ducks behind the building, and finally has a chance to see the whole fight.

It's devolved into even more chaos.

Somehow there are now copies of Dabi and the older woman, the latter of which is now using her quirk to launch the copies of Dabi at Hawks. 

The resulting fight is tearing the street apart. The brick buildings are collapsing from Dabi’s fire and the objects which Hawks is throwing around. Debris is everywhere and fire is quickly spreading across the street and toward the nearby buildings.

Izuku feels his quirk pull at his attention and sees Himiko. She’s crouched at the edge of the fight, attention hooked on Hawks.

Then she transforms, turning into a perfect copy of Izuku.

Izuku stiffens as she stands. 

Himiko is wearing his hoodie and mask. She’s Izuku’s height and build. He can even see wisps of his silver hair escaping his hood. So that's her quirk then.

Izuku presses back against the building as she glances around.

Then she sprints toward the middle of the fight.

Himiko tries to approach Hawks, and when he sees her he sends a fleet of his feathers to try and grab her.

She must have thought that Izuku and Hawks had an alliance of some kind, because she’s caught completely by surprise. Within a moment, she’s completely trapped within the feathers.

Then Dabi launches himself toward her.

He sends a wall of flame at where she’s trapped. Izuku feels dread as the wall of flame approaches what looks exactly like him, but Dabi doesn’t harm Himiko.

Instead the fire spreads around her, and singes off the feathers. Then Dabi steps closer to Himiko, hand out like he’s about to send fire her way.

The woman says something that Izuku can’t hear and Dabi stiffens. He glances up and around.

Izuku sees the moment that Dabi spots him. Izuku hesitantly waves at him from where he’s hiding.

Izuku is pretty sure that Dabi rolls his eyes.

That’s the moment that Dabi seems to have figured out what’s happening, because he starts attacking Himiko for real.

She’s once again caught off guard but reacts quickly. She leaps forward and starts to swipe at Dabi with the knife from before.

He dodges the first hit, but takes a slice to the arm.

Himiko is getting closer to Dabi, and Izuku realizes that his quirk gives him an edge in long range combat, but it’s more limited in close quarters.

Then Dabi grabs Himiko’s arm and flings her away from him. She might be strong, but Dabi is a whole lot bigger.

Dabi gathers fire in his hands and steps toward Himiko.

That’s the moment that Hawks intervenes. He launches himself between the two of them, Himiko behind him.

There’s a standoff, Dabi standing there, staring at Hawks. He seems to be calculating his chance of success.

Then he sends a huge wave of flame all around him. 

Hawks jumps back, covering himself and Himiko in his wings.

Izuku shrinks back behind the building as the wave of fire passes by. Then feels a pull from his quirk. He peers back around the corner.

Dabi is gone. 

The other two villains are both unconscious, being held in place with Hawks’ quirk.

Himiko is still wrapped in Hawks’ wings.

There are a number of civilians standing outside the range of the fight, some of them recording the fight on their phones.

That’s the moment when the police finally arrive.

They swarm across the scene, pulling up with police cars and quirk suppression cuffs. The two new villains go in the cars first, then Himiko. 

At that point, most of the attention is on Hawks. The civilians are trying to get to him for autographs and the police are holding them back.

But Izuku is watching Himiko inside the police car.

There’s someone with the police, not a cop but working with them, he’s got green hair and a sharp suit. He reaches into the car and moves to take Izuku’s mask off of Himiko.

For a moment, Izuku thinks that his face is going to be revealed and recorded, then Himiko’s shapeshifting peels away, and once again she looks like herself.

The green haired man jerks back and says something into a walkie-talkie. 

Then Izuku’s quirk pulls at him again and he steps back from the fight. He pulls off the mask and stuffs it into his bag. He’s now surrounded by the crowd of civilian onlookers and is completely unnoticed as he slips away. His breathing is still fast and his heartbeat is loud in his ears. His hands are shaking from adrenaline and he stuffs them into his pockets.

He’s gone about half a block when someone steps along beside him.

Izuku jumps, but then realizes that it’s just Dabi.

“Heyya kid,” Dabi says affably, “You know you’re bleeding, right?”

“I’m—” Izuku touches his neck and realizes that, yes, he is bleeding. From where Himiko had bit him. There seems to be a lot of blood, it’s being absorbed by his hoodie mostly. “Oh.”

He reaches into his bag and pulls out the first aid kit. He stares at it for a bit. He’s not completely sure how to start, and his quirk isn’t giving him any clues.

This continues for another block before Dabi runs out of patience.

“Jesus, kid,” Dabi says. He grabs Izuku by the shoulder and guides him to a bench. It’s out of the way, and there’s not many people on the street now. Most had either gone to watch the hero fight or taken shelter in a building somewhere.

Izuku sits still, hands folded together and staring at the street as Dabi sits down next to Izuku and pulls what he needs from the first aid kit.

“So your quirk knew that this would happen then?” Dabi asks, sanitizing his hands.

“Yeah.” Izuku shrugs, eyes still fixed on the street. “I guess it did.”

“Seems kind of shitty, it putting you in danger like that,” Dabi says, “Here, take your hoodie off. It’s in the way.”

Izuku does. Then slumps back into the bench. It’s cold with just his t-shirt.

Dabi is silent as he works. He’s not really gentle but at least he's fast. He cleans the blood from the bite on Izuku’s neck, then disinfects it. That hurts the most and Izuku clenches his hands together.

Then Dabi uses some medical tape and a gauze pad to create a makeshift bandage.

Izuku finds himself remembering that, despite becoming a villain, Dabi had been a big brother once.

Once he’s finally done, Dabi leans back and stares at Izuku.

“You going to be okay, kid?” he asks.

Izuku just shrugs and pulls on the hoodie again. There's a significant amount of blood staining the collar area. Ugh. He’ll have to throw it away at this point.

Dabi sighs and packs away the first aid kit into Izuku’s backpack.

“When you get home, clean it with soap and water, then cover it again. It’ll heal fine,” he says mechanically. He stands up, then pulls Izuku to his feet. He looks Izuku over, then turns to leave. “See ya.”

“See ya,” Izuku echoes.

Dabi takes a few steps away, then stops and lets out a huge sigh. Then turns around and stomps back to Izuku.

“Your quirk is absolute bullshit. You know that right?” he grumbles. He grabs Izuku’s backpack off of the bench and slings it over one shoulder. “And it’s not even subtle, I know what it’s doing.”

“Okay?” Izuku asks, feeling like maybe he’s missing something.

“Yeah okay, what’s your quirk say you’ve got to do?” Dabi asks. He sounds annoyed, but he sets his hand on Izuku’s uninjured shoulder. This close, he smells like soot and sweat. But the weight helps ground Izuku. “We’ll get it over with.”

“Okay. Thank you?” Izuku tries, then pulls up the sleeve of his hoodie. He stares at the vines on his forearm for a long time. “We need to send All for One a message. The phone’s in the park.”

“Fine,” Dabi says.

And so Dabi walks with Izuku to the park, where he pulls out the flip phone from under the bush. Izuku types in the message that his quirk tells him to.

 

[Overlord]

Foresight is growing more bold. Protect the members of your new organization.

 

Dabi snatches the phone from Izuku's hands and reads through the texts. He seems to find it funny for whatever reason. Once he’s done with it, Izuku takes it back and takes out the battery. He wraps it in the bag and stashes it under the bush again.

Dabi stays with Izuku. He takes the bus with him back to his neighborhood and walks him to his apartment. Slowly, Izuku feels himself calm down again. His hands stop shaking and he feels his head clear.

Finally, Izuku feels like himself again.

“Thank you,” Izuku says, as they stand by the front door of his apartment building. 

“Yeah, whatever,” Dabi allows. He pulls off the backpack and gives it to Izuku. “Remember to wash the bite that Crazy gave you.”

“Okay,” Izuku says, then smiles despite how sore he feels. “See you around.”

“God, I hope not,” Dabi mutters, but there’s something like a smirk on his face.

Izuku waves goodbye and goes up to his apartment.

He pulls off his hoodie and shirt. He realizes that he’s covered in bruises. Must be from when Himiko tackled him. His back has a huge one, and his forearms are turning dark in the shape of where her hands had grabbed him.

He takes off the bandage and looks at the bite. It’s not bleeding anymore, but the skin around it is bruised. Izuku sighs and washes it in the bathroom sink. He covers it with another bandage. He pulls on a clean hoodie and sweatpants.

He walks around the apartment and waters all the plants with just the right amount in just the right places. Once that’s done, he digs around in his kitchen and finds a microwave dinner and ice cream. 

He sets his dishes around him and creates a cocoon of blankets on his bed. Then sets up his laptop with a TV show his mom had told him about.

Yeah.

Yeah he’d be okay.

 

- - -

 

A few days later, after getting back from school, Izuku lays flat on his face on his bed.

He’s been wearing turtlenecks under his school uniform, which kept people from asking awkward questions. But his neck still hurts. The bruises have started to fade though.

He reluctantly pulls himself out of bed and microwaves a heat pad. He changes into pajamas. Then lays back on the bed with the heat pad spread across the huge bruise on his back. It feels fantastic.

That’s when he gets a text on his crime phone.

He leans over, wincing at the twinge of pain, and grabs the phone off of the desk.

 

[Dabi]

There’s another attack on that UA class soon

 

Izuku frowns at the screen. That isn’t good. Shoto would be there. He'd think Dabi would be a little more concerned too, since that is his little brother and all. 

Though maybe this is just what Dabi sounds like when he's concerned.

 

[sparky]

Oh, where/when?

[Dabi]

The class is going on some training exercise thing. They’ll be there for a few days

We’ve got the original location, but apparently they changed it at the last second. We don’t know the new location yet but we will soon

I think the attack is happening soon, do that thing that you do

[sparky]

 

Izuku stares at the ceiling for a few minutes, thinking about nothing in particular. His quirk will let him know when he needs to act.

True to form, his quirk starts to pull at his hands. He sits up in bed and leans against the wall.

He pulls up Shoto’s contact on his crime phone.

Huh.

He opens the messages app.

Their last conversation is still there. Shoto never responded to him. Izuku stares down at it for a few moments, but his quirk doesn’t tell him what to type, just pushes him toward the phone.

 

[sparky]

hi! Uh, this is awkward, but a bunch of villains are planning on attacking your class again, you guys are doing like a training exercise right? It’s happening there

 

It takes Shoto a few minutes to respond.

 

[Shoto]

How do you know?

[sparky]

One of the villains told me. He’s defecting, it’s a whole thing

[Shoto]

ok 

Do you know when?

[sparky]

Not exactly. You guys changed where it’s happening, so they’re figuring that out rn. They’re gonna attack as soon as they know

I don’t actually know where the training thing is happening though so I’m not much help right now, but I figured that you could use a warning

 

Shoto sends Izuku a set of coordinates.

Izuku drops his phone on his bed and runs his palms down his face. Goddammit Shoto. This is not the sort of thing that you just tell people!

 

[sparky]

Dude

Don’t just

Sent people that. People literally want to attack you guys?!!

[Shoto]

Oh yeah

Don’t attack us

 

Izuku sighs and gives up.

 

[sparky]

Okay. So that was a bad idea, but I’m going to put that on twitter, if they know that people know where they are the heroes will move you guys. But like. Dude.

 

Shoto sends him a thumbs up emoji.

Izuku sighs and opens the Twitter app. He goes to the Foresight account.

 

[foresight2020] - 5:12pm

@hawks.hero @hero.news Hey guys! Thought I’d give you guys a heads up. There is, yet again, another attack about to happen to those UA students! Total downer, I know :( They’re at 35.703853, 138.068619 (p.s. The villains already knew that :o )

 

Within a few moments, people start commenting and tagging people in the replies.

Apparently after the USJ thing, people started paying attention to the Twitter account. Izuku isn’t really clear on how it happened. But it’s probably good. It means that there’s lots of people paying attention to his warnings.

Izuku doesn’t bother reading the replies, just switches to his messages with Shoto.

 

[sparky]

OK, sent the tweet. Heroes will probably move you guys soon

[Shoto]

k, should I tell Aizawa?

[sparky]

Na, you’re good. He’ll probably get a call real soon

Anyway! Now that we’ve dealt with that, how’s your training been going :D 

[Shoto]

Bad.

[sparky]

D:

[Shoto]

They made us get off the bus and walk hours while fighting mud monsters and we didn’t get lunch afterward

[sparky]

Oh wow that sucks dude

Are you making friends and stuff??

 

There’s a pause of a few minutes.

 

[Shoto]

Not really. They’re kind of annoying. And loud. And that blond guy still wants to fight me

[sparky]

Oh yeah he’s like that. I mostly ignored him

But like! Talk to people! It could be fun. I’m sure that some of them are nice, they’re trying to be heroes and all that, so they can’t all be bad

[Shoto]

Aizawa got that call, and now we’re being evacuated

[sparky]

Okay. Stay safe!

 

Shoto sends him another thumbs up emoji.

Well.

Izuku lays back down on his bed.

That was alright. As far as treacherous undermining of his allies, that was pretty low effort. He hadn’t even needed to change out of his pajamas. 

Izuku is hungry though, which is something that can make him get out of bed. He rolls off the bed, aiming to land on his feet and missing.

He pulls himself off the ground and presses his hand into his back. Okay, that really did hurt. His quirk pulls at his hand and he slips the crime phone into his pocket.

He walks to the kitchenette and starts on dinner. He pulls out some vegetables his quirk had made him buy and starts cutting.

It’s pretty relaxing. He just lets his quirk move his hands. Things like this are straightforward. He just goes with the impulses and everything works.

It turns out he's making fried rice with vegetables. He dumps it onto his plate and starts eating.

His crime phone dings and he pulls it from his pocket. It’s from Dabi.

 

[Dabi]

Holy shit dude. Shigaraki is so fucking mad. He’s losing his absolute shit

We showed up to attack and the students were gone, but there was a shit ton of heroes there waiting for us, most of us got out pretty quick but not everybody

Also just using Twitter too? He’s going to be screaming about this for hours. He might actually kill one of those villains they just recruited too. This was a great idea

[sparky] 

:D 

 

Izuku returns to his food. He scrolls a little bit through the Twitter responses. There’s lots of random people freaking out. A couple of official hero accounts are trying to get a hold of him in private messages. Izuku gets bored after a bit and starts looking through pictures of people’s cats and liking the ones that are particularly cute, which is most of them.

Eventually he’s done with his dinner. He made the exact amount that makes him full, like always. He cleans up the kitchen at the push of his quirk.

Then his quirk pulls on his hands and he realizes he has more to do.

He sighs, then pulls on his shoes and a jacket. He pulls out the flip phone and battery then stuffs the both of them into his pockets.

Izuku walks out the front door and walks down winding streets for most of a mile, then he takes out the flip phone.

He replaces the battery and is greeted with a flood of notifications.

A lot of them are from Eraserhead, but there are a couple from other numbers he doesn’t recognize. Izuku looks through them and thinks maybe they’re other heroes.

He ignores those because his quirk is pulling at his fingers.

He calls Eraserehead.

The line rings four times, then he picks up.

“Foresight. What. The. Hell?” he asks.

“Language!” Izuku chides, “Aren’t you a teacher?”

“Shut the hell up! You put my students in danger. They were almost attacked by the villains who you told our location to,” Eraserhead hisses.

“Hey!” Izuku says, he feels a pull from his quirk and starts walking in a random direction. “Listen, I didn’t plan the attack. It was already happening before I said anything. If I hadn’t warned everyone, then you wouldn’t have had any warning at all.”

“You didn’t have to tell the whole world where we were,” Eraserhead says. His anger seems more simmering than boiling at this point. “You put my students in danger.”

“The League of Villains put your students in danger,” Izuku points out. His quirk pulls and he takes a sudden turn down an alley in front of him. There’s some loud noises from behind him that he ignores. “If I’d stayed quiet, you would have been attacked with no warning. All things considered, this is a whole lot better.”

Izuku can hear the simmering anger in the hero’s silence.

“O—kay,” Izuku says, drawing out the word. “How’d the evacuation go? The students all got out before the villains showed up?”

“Yes. They did.”

“Oh. A little more detail maybe?” Izuku prompts.

Eraserhead hangs up on him.

Izuku spends a few seconds staring at the screen, then shrugs. He absently pulls the battery out of the phone and stuffs both back into his pocket.

His quirk pulls at him to stop and he does, just ahead of him, he sees what looks like heroes charging down the street.

He steps to the side, next to some outside tables where people are eating dinner.

He glances around the street and sees that there are a number of heroes around. He wonders if there’s a villain attack or something, then remembers he’s a vigilante.

Right, they must have been tracking Izuku’s phone, trying to catch him. Izuku had forgotten about that whole thing. So it did seem like they still wanted to catch him.

Oh well.

Izuku follows the pull of his quirk. Moving through a few blocks in odd ways. Stepping around cameras and occasionally walking behind larger groups to blend in.

Then he presumably escapes the heroes’ search radius and he doesn’t see them anymore.

He walks back to his apartment and goes to sleep.

 

- - -

 

A week after the UA students’ trip is ruined, Izuku feels something on his arm.

It’s a Friday and he’s walking home from school. The pulse from his quirk is so strong that he stumbles. He pulls back the sleeve of his uniform jacket and looks at the vines on his arms.

They’re thick, thicker than he’s seen before. They seem angular and gnarled. Izuku watches the movement of the vines and reads in them that today is dangerous and important.

He takes a deep breath and quickens his pace back to his apartment.

He steps inside, then grabs the crime phone from off his desk.

Izuku finds Leader’s contact and calls him.

“Hey Sparky!” he says almost immediately, “What’s up?”

“Uh. Remember, when you said that—Uh.” Izuku swallows, he shouldn’t be pulling Leader and Slingshot into this.

“Let me guess. You’re doing something sketchy, and you want some backup?” Leader asks cheerily. “If that’s it, then you’ve called the right guy! I do sketchy things all the time.”

“Yeah you’re right.” Izuku smiles into his hand. “You guys can come?”

“Yep! Well, Slingshot won’t be back from work for another hour. Can it wait that long?”

Izuku glances down at the vines on his wrist. They don’t seem hurried.

“Yeah. I could meet you guys at your apartment?” Izuku asks. There’s relief bubbling up in his chest.

“Sounds good kid!” Leader says cheerily. “See you in an hour.”

“See you then,” Izuku says, then hangs up.

He sighs heavily, then glances around his room. 

Okay, what does he need to grab?

He follows the pull of his quirk and starts pulling things up. It’s a bit odd. He pulls on the suit that he’d worn as Overlord of Knowledge, but doesn’t put on the makeup. He does put a little bit of concealer over the bruise on his neck. It’s almost gone now, along with the rest of the bruises. But he hides the slight discoloration anyway.

Then he packs his bag. He grabs his crime phone, a lighter, his golden mask, and what's left of the money Leader had given him for the museum heist.

Then he digs through his dresser and pulls out the RFID emulator. He’d almost forgotten about the thing. He powers it on and sees that it still has Eraserhead’s ID copied. He packs that away with everything else.

He leaves his wallet, normal phone, and keys in the apartment, then opens the window. He resists the urge to grab them and slings the backpack over his shoulder. Then he climbs out the window and starts traveling across the rooftops.

He eventually finds a fire escape ladder and climbs down it.

Once at street level he heads in the direction of Leader and Slingshot’s apartment. He takes the bus and steps into their neighborhood just shy of an hour after he’d called Leader.

He climbs the stairs to their apartment and knocks on the door.

Leader opens it and grins when he sees Izuku.

“Yo! Nice to see you! You ready for some crime?” he asks cheerfully.

“Always,” Izuku says with fake seriousness.

“That’s what I want to hear!” Leader holds out his hand for a high-five and Izuku obliges. “Slingshot’s back. She’s getting ready. It’ll be just a bit. Come on in, you want something to drink?”

Izuku steps inside and Leader herds him to the kitchen area. As always, Leader is loud and friendly. He talks enough for the both of them and Izuku finds himself sitting at the table with a cup of tea without quite knowing how he got there.

After a few minutes, Paper Cup wanders in from the bedrooms.

He pauses when he sees Izuku.

“Sparky?” he asks.

“Oh, hi?” Izuku says. “Been awhile, how’s things?”

“Oh it’s been—” Paper Cup glances at Leader and a smile flickers across his face. “It’s been really good actually. How’ve you been?”

“Eh,” Izuku says, bobbing his head to the side. “I’ve been dealing with it.”

“Oh, well, that’s good,” Paper Cup says hesitantly.

“Daichi, move it,” calls Slingshot from behind him. 

“Oh, yeah sorry,” Paper Cup says and gives her room to walk through the doorway to the main room. “I’ve got a night shift so I have to head out. You guys have fun with…?”

“Crime,” Izuku answers.

“Crime, yes, of course,” Paper Cup says. “You guys stay safe, okay?”

“Of course we will!” Leader says, he slips through the doorway and pulls Paper Cup toward the front door, still talking as he goes.

“Are you doing alright, kid?” Slingshot asks, leaning against the counter. She’s wearing dark clothes and has a bag slung over her shoulder. 

“I—” Izuku takes a moment to think. “I’ve been doing alright actually. There’s been a couple, uh, close calls recently, but I think that I’ve got some backup now?”

“That’s good, kid,” Slingshot says, “Are you ready for today?”

“Yes,” Izuku answers, “I think that I am, actually.”

“Then let’s go do some crime!” Leader shouts, sliding back through the doorway, looking rather pleased with himself.

 

- - -

 

The first stop is a hardware store.

Izuku grabs a cart and gestures to the two of them to join.

Izuku follows the pull of his quirk until he reaches the line of gas cans in the back of the store.

The three of them spend a long few seconds staring at them.

“So,” Slingshot starts, “How many of these do we need to bring?”

Izuku pulls up the sleeve of his hoodie and watches the vines twist along his arm. 

“All of them,” Izuku says.

“Of course,” Slingshot mutters. But she starts packing the gas cans into the cart. “We better not get arrested today. I’ve got a day off tomorrow and I plan to enjoy it.”

Leader barks a nervous laugh, then starts helping her. He seems much more nervous about the gas than Slingshot is.

Soon the cart is filled and Izuku walks back to the front and uses the cash from the museum robbery to pay for it.

“Alright,” Izuku says, stepping out into the street. “Let’s see how this goes.”

Slingshot pulls her car around. Her license plates have been removed, which Izuku thinks is a nice touch for a good criminal escapade. They head out. Izuku sits in the passenger seat and gives them directions from his quirk.

It leads them to Kamino.

When Izuku tells them that they’re near the villains’ base, Slingshot’s hands tighten around the steering wheel.

His quirk doesn’t guide them to the bar though, instead it takes them to the outskirts of town, near a large group of warehouses. 

The second stop is a police car which is idling in front of a shop.

“Pull up behind,” Izuku tells Slingshot.

“The cop?” she asks, sounding offended.

“It’ll be fine,” Izuku assures her, still staring at the vines on his forearm. He tilts his head to get a better read on what they’re saying. “I’ll just need a minute.”

“Okay, kid,” Slingshot says and pulls behind the cop car.

“Be back in a sec,” Izuku says, then grabs his bag and hops out of the car.

He jogs over to it and peers inside. It’s empty. He tries the door, it’s unlocked. He opens it and slips into the passenger seat.

There’s a computer thing mounted to the dashboard and he pulls it to him. Then he follows the pull of his quirk and takes out the RFID emulator. He pushes the button to make it emit the signal of Eraserhead’s ID, then sticks it on a card reader thing.

The computer unlocks and there’s a welcome screen for Eraserhead.

Huh, so the hero system and police system were related somehow. Or maybe Eraserhead just worked with the police a lot?

Izuku starts typing. He doesn’t quite know what he’s doing at first. But then realizes that he’s setting up a series of requests for backup sent to other heroes. Each of them will be sent at a specific time to specific heroes. All of them are within the next thirty minutes.

There’s something like two dozen heroes. Izuku doesn’t know what’s going to happen that needs this many people, but he decides not to think about it.

After a few minutes it’s done and Izuku logs back out of the computer. He slips the emulator back into his bag and hops out of the car. He’s stepping away from it when he sees a police officer step out of the building nearest to the cop car.

He sees Izuku, then ignores him and gets into his car.

Izuku walks, carefully casual, back to Slingshot’s car. He slips into the passenger seat.

Leader starts laughing a little hysterically. 

“Sparky,” Slingshot says. Her knuckles are white from her grip on the steering wheel. “That was the most stressful thing I have ever experienced.”

“Oh,” Izuku says. It hadn’t been that bad he’d thought. Though maybe that was because he’d never gotten caught doing something illegal. Or at least he’d always been perfectly able to slip away before anyone could actually capture him. 

“I’ve got very good timing?” he tries.

“Yes you do,” Slingshot sighs, “What’d you do in there anyway?”

“Oh yeah. I sent out a request for heroes to show up,” Izuku explains.

“What!” Leader says. “Heroes are coming here?”

“Oh, no. Not for a while,” Izuku says, “We’ll probably be out of there by the time they show up.”

Slingshot just sighs and pulls the car back onto the road.

Eventually his quirk pulls him towards a specific warehouse.

“That’s it.” Izuku says, pointing. It doesn’t seem any different from the others but Izuku can feel the pull of his quirk drawing him towards it like a black hole.

Slingshot pulls to the side of the road and parks next to it. There are no street lights around and the warehouse looms over the street, casting a shadow over their car.

“So,” Slingshot starts. “We are…burning down a building?”

“Uh,” Izuku says. He glances back toward the trunk. “I guess.”

“Goddamn," she says, “Well. There’s no stopping it.”

“Um, guys,” Leader says. Slingshot turns back to look at him. “Is this moral? Like, are we just cool with burning down a building for a reason we don’t know?”

“Yeah,” Izuku says with a nod.

“I mean,” Slingshot says, “This is maybe the only time in our lives where it’s justified. It’s probably a secret villain base, right?”

“Probably,” Izuku agrees.

“So it’s good that we’re doing this,” Slingshot says with a nod.

“Right.”

“And, we get to burn down a building. Come on, you’ve never wanted to try it?”

“No!” Leader exclaims. “What if it’s dangerous? Like we get burned, or the villains attack us when we get close?”

“You’re the most boring villain I’ve ever met.” Slingshot sighs. “Come on kid. Let’s get our arson on.”

She steps out of the car. Izuku gives Leader a thumbs up then follows her to the trunk.

Izuku follows the pull of his quirk and starts pouring the gasoline along the base of the building. 

Leader eventually follows them outside, with only muttered protests this time.

It’s only the one side of it, so the amount of gas that they brought is plenty to cover the building up to a few feet up. It takes around fifteen minutes, but soon enough the entire side of the building is ready to go up in flames.

Izuku pulls up the sleeve of his hoodie and lifts his forearm close to his face to read the vines crawling across his skin in the dim light from the distant streetlamps.

“Okay,” he translates. “Start the car, I’ll light it, then we’ll get out of here.”

“Got it,” Slingshot says, she steps into the car and turns it on, Leader gets into the backseat. Both of them are staring at the puddles of gasoline. Slingshot has her phone out and is recording a video. Leader is tapping his fingers against the frame of the car.

“Well. Time to go.” Izuku crouches down near a spot where the gas had begun to trickle away from the wall and holds the lighter he brought to it.

It goes up instantly and Izuku hops away, cackling as the fire spreads. He takes a few more steps then runs back to the passenger seat of the car.

The fire reaches the building and ignites across the whole side, instantly the dark street is lit up with orange and red light.

“Holy shit! Holy shit!” Slingshot laughs. Izuku laughs with her and cranes his neck to watch the flames as Slingshot peels away from the building and down the street. 

Leader’s laughing too, a bit more hysterical than the two of them.

Izuku feels a sharp tug on his quirk.

“Left!” he shouts, and Slingshot makes a hairpin turn. Just as the warehouse is leaving his line of sight, Izuku sees something large and black climb out of the burning building. 

A Nomu?

“Oh shit,” Izuku mutters as they start down a new street. 

“What?” Slingshot shouts. “This is not the time I want to hear an ‘oh shit’ from you.”

“Oh,” Izuku says, “It’s just…Well that building is definitely owned by the villains, you should probably speed up.”

Slingshot does so.

“Okay,” Izuku says. There’s a sound like metal twisting from behind them. “We’ll be fine.”

“What the fuck is that?” Leader shrieks from the back. 

Izuku looks behind them.

Oh. 

That’s definitely a Nomu following them.

Well shit.

There’s another pull from his quirk. 

“Right turn!” Izuku shouts. Slingshot turns and Izuku is violently tossed to the left.

“Uh.” Izuku glances in front of him, there’s an intersection with a red light. There’s traffic crossing from the left and right in a solid wall. There’s a violent pull from his quirk and Izuku breathes deeply to keep calm.

“Speed up!” Izuku shouts. Behind the car the Nomu is getting closer. It’s smaller than the one at the USJ. It has longer limbs and a strange, awkward gait. But it has the same exposed brain and pitch black skin.

“What?” Slingshot yells. 

“Do it!” Izuku shouts.

“Oh fuck shit!” Slingshot shrieks, and her car’s tiny engine screeches. They approach the intersection, heedless of the traffic flowing through from the left and right. The Nomu only a few meters behind.

Izuku feels the vines crawl across his whole body and his breath catches in his throat.

Leader and Slingshot are screaming.

They reach the intersection. 

They pass through it. Cars honk but they go through it unscathed. 

Izuku turns behind them and watches the Nomu. One second it’s screaming, leaping toward them, an instant away from landing on the back of Slingshot’s car.

The next second, a truck from the left slams into it at full speed.

The thing is sent flying and before Izuku can follow its movement, they’re out of the intersection and out of sight.

Slingshot continues onward. 

She makes a few idle turns, then coasts to a stop on the side of the road. She leans forward mechanically and shifts the car into park. She collaspes back into the seat and exhales heavily.

Izuku leans into his own seat and stares at the street for a few long moments.

Eventually he looks up at Slingshot. She looks back at him. Izuku has no idea what to say.

“Wow!” Leader says cheerily from the back seat. He awkwardly climbs forward, half leaning over Slingshot’s seat. “Well that actually wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. I was worried there was going to be a bunch of orphans in that building or something. Or that we’d be hit by lightning by that villain guy. But that was shockingly manageable. But you do have very good timing! Is that what it’s always like having your quirk?”

Izuku laughs.

At least Leader was back to his normal self.

“Kid,” Slingshot laughs. “Seriously! What? Like what even? What sort of plan was that? That was insane!”

“...Yeah it was,” Izuku says, slumping into his seat. “Usually it’s not that close.”

“I hope so!” Leader says, hand waving around. “Did you see how close that monster thing was? It was like right there! Jumping at us! And we went right through traffic, like, woosh!” He illustrates the point with his hand. “And then that truck! Like, right out of nowhere. Bang! Jeez Sparky! That was crazy! I need to tell my book club about this! They won’t believe it! I mean they usually don’t believe my stories cause they don’t think I’m actually a villain but this was extra crazy. It’s going to be

Leader continues on that vein for a few minutes. His unexplainable ability to fill silence coming back in full force.

Izuku settles in to nod occasionally. Slingshot rolls her eyes at her brother but doesn’t tell him to shut up.

Eventually there’s another pull at his quirk and Izuku lets out a heavy sigh. He rolls back his sleeve and stares at the vines on his forearm.

Leader’s monologue cuts off as Izuku stares at his arm. The vines are lazier, less like something needs to happen, and more like the whole adventure is close to its end.

It doesn’t seem to be actively pulling him toward anything.

“You guys want to check out the fight?” Leader asks after Izuku stares at his arm for a minute.

“The fight?” Slingshot asks.

“Well you called up some heroes earlier, right?” Leader says, “Bet the fight is going to be fantastic.”

Izuku glances up at Slingshot, she shrugs, then grins. 

“I’d be down,” she says.

“Oh. Let’s do it then,” Izuku says, leaning back into his seat.

“Ah yeah!” Leader says, sitting back down. “This’ll be great!”

Slingshot starts up the car and drives back in the direction of the warehouse. A few blocks away, crowds of people are watching the fight which has broken out across the streets.

It’s too full to drive, so they leave the car parked. Izuku shoulders his backpack and they walk to the center of the crowds.

Leader was right.

The fight is fantastic.

The warehouse had been almost completely destroyed, along with a few of the neighboring buildings. Fire and smoke are scattered across the battlefield.

But what really gets his attention is the heroes.

There’s more of them than Izuku has ever seen in one place. Some he recognizes from TV, some from the hero ranking awards, some as teachers from the UA Festival.

Hawks is there, as is All Might, along with more than a dozen more.

They’re fighting the Nomu, but also a number of villains who Izuku hasn’t seen before. He would guess that they’re the other villains who All for One hired to attack the UA students during their training trip.

The fight is amazing. All Might is going toe to toe with three Nomus. They’re weaker than the one at the USJ, but they’re still splitting concrete with their hits. All Might seems to be taking them in stride. Izuku watches as he pummels one with his signature punches.

Hawks is flying above the fight, swooping in to give backup to any hero who needs it. Mt Lady is there, and Izuku sees her grab one of the Nomu and drop kick it toward Kamui Woods, who catches the thing in a wooden net.

Izuku sees a villain with a lizard mutation quirk go toe to toe against Present Mic. Along with even more heroes who he doesn’t recognize.

The villains are powerful, but the heroes are too. 

The villains and Nomu outnumber the heroes, but they have enough heavy hitters that they can manage the fight. Izuku tries not to think of what would have happened if the heroes didn’t have the forewarning that they did. Or if the villains had had more time to prepare their attack.

The crowds don’t seem worried, most are cheering or recording the fight on their phones.

Leader leans over Izuku and slings an arm around his shoulder.

“Sparky, you’ve done it again!” Leader says. “You see this! This is a real show. See, I told you we should check it out!”

“Yep,” Izuku says, laughing. “Seems like it went pretty well.”

Then Izuku glances up and sees Eraserhead looking at him.

He’s standing on the other side of the street. He’s in full hero costume and definitely recognizes Izuku from that time at the police station. Izuku sees him reach down and say something into a walkie talkie.

Izuku’s stomach drops down and Eraserhead steps toward him. Then Eraserhead’s quirk activates and Izuku’s awareness of his quirk winks out.

It’s like one of his senses has been cut off and he suddenly has trouble breathing.

Izuku slips out from under Leader’s arm and steps away from Eraserhead. The hero’s moving slowly, having some trouble with the thick crowd.

“Kid? You okay?” Leader asks.

Slingshot notices something’s happening and glances around the street. 

“I’ve got to go,” Izuku breathes.

“Kid, what’s—” Leader says, stepping forward to touch Izuku’s shoulder at whatever expression he sees on Izuku’s face.

But Izuku is already sprinting away from them. He slips into an alleyway. Izuku’s quirk doesn’t return, so he keeps running. He doesn’t know exactly how Eraserhead’s quirk functions, but he’d escaped from its effects before.

He runs.

He gets to the end of the alley and turns into the next street, heading opposite the direction of the fight. He ducks through the crowd and into another alleyway.

Then finally he feels his quirk return.

Izuku takes a deep breath and leans against the wall of the alleyway. He feels his quirk rush through his body, and the vines start growing and twirling across his skin.

Everything is okay. Everything is okay. He spends longer than he should have just crouched against the wall, breathing deeply and slowly.

Izuku feels a tug from his quirk, and pulls himself away from the wall and onto his feet. When he sees the entrance to the alleyway he freezes.

There’s someone standing there.

Izuku glances deeper into the alleyway. It’s a dead end. 

He takes a cautious few steps toward the street. 

Izuku doesn’t recognize the man standing between him and freedom. He’s tall and thin. He’s got on a sharp suit, glasses, and his dark green hair has been neatly styled.

His eyes are sharp and pale yellow and he stares down Izuku as he gets closer.

Izuku shrinks to the right and touches the wall of the alleyway with his fingertips. He steps forward but the man steps to intercept him.

“Um, hi?” Izuku tries. His quirk is telling him to leave the alleyway, but something about the man unsettles him. On top of his already frayed nerves from only just escaping Eraserhead. “Can you—”

“You’re Foresight,” the man says. Izuku freezes, looking him in the eye.

Then he bolts. 

He dives toward the entrance of the alleyway, but before he can pass by the man, he grabs Izuku's wrist.

The moment he touches Izuku, his quirk erupts in pain.

Izuku screams briefly as his head is filled with deafening static, and jerks back away from the man. He scrambles back into the alleyway.

The distance doesn’t stop the effect on his quirk.

Izuku recognizes this feeling from years ago. The feedback from when he’d first interacted with someone with another future-seeing quirk. This man must have an ability like Izuku's.

His quirk wasn’t going to help him now.

Last time it had taken most of a day for his quirk to function again.

Izuku breathes deep and looks up at the man. He must be a hero, Eraserhead must have sent him to capture Izuku.

This time it might even work.

The hero looks as shocked as Izuku. Something’s wrong with his eyes. Before they were yellow, but now lines and spots of purple shoot through them and his balance seems to be suffering from whatever’s happening to him.

Maybe Izuku can still escape.

He pushes aside the feeling of wrongness that his quirk is sending him. It’s not like with Eraserhead’s quirk, which just made the feelings from his quirk disappear. This instead makes it feel like he's getting a thousand conflicting commands from his quirk. He pushes the feeling away and forces himself to his feet.

He runs at the hero. 

He tugs off his backpack and throws it at the hero’s face. 

It takes him a moment too long to register that Izuku is moving, and he only reacts by lifting his arms to defend himself. He stumbles back when Izuku’s bag hits him. Izuku weaves to the side and continues onward, past the hero and into the street.

Maybe he can escape. 

Then black smoke surrounds his feet. Izuku stumbles as the ground turns soft beneath him. He has only a moment to realize that this is Kurogiri's portal, before he’s sinking into the blackness.

Izuku desperately reaches out for anything to grab and sees Eraserhead on the street in front of him. The hero looks as shocked as Izuku feels terrified. Izuku has just enough time to reach for the bandage that Eraserhead flings at him before the ground completely falls from underneath him and his vision goes black.

Notes:

:)

EDIT: I've retconned the phones a bit, now Izuku only ever contacted Shoto on his Crime Phone (TM). Considering the amount of details this thing has I'm considering a single retcon a win

Chapter 7: Interlude

Notes:

Brief chapter that will make people mad at me, final chapter will be out tomorrow ;)

Chapter Text

Aizawa Shouta’s phone rings. He glances up from his paperwork and curses. It's late, he’d been about to call it a day and head out for patrol.

This better not be something else he has to deal with.

“Eraserhead,” Shouta says, accepting the call. “What’s this about?”

“Oh.” He recognizes Hawks’ voice. “Well, I thought. Hmm.”

“What?” Shouta asks.

“You sent out a backup request?” Hawks tries.

“What?” Shouta asks. He knows that he didn’t. 

“It came through the network? It has coordinates right next to where we picked up those villains the other day.” Hawks says quickly. “I’m in the middle of a patrol right now, should I head that way?”

“Foresight,” Shouta realizes.

“Yeah, think so,” Hawks agrees. “So I should check it out?”

“Do it. Send me the coordinates, I’ll be there soon,” Shouta says, then hangs up.

He forwards the recording of the call to Nighteye and Tsukauchi, then gathers his hero gear and sprints to the front of the office. He grabs the arm of the nearest cop and tells him that they’re going to Kamino.

During the ride, he calls Nighteye.

“You heard what Hawks said?” Shouta asks.

“Yes. I agree, it’s got to be Foresight’s doing somehow,” Nighteye says, the sounds in the background indicat he's walking somewhere.

“I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“I’m getting a hold of All Might,” Nighteye says, “Once he’s aware of the situation I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Got it,” Shouta says, then hangs up.

For the rest of the drive he holds tightly to the seat belt and tries not to come up with disastrous reasons that Foresight would have faked a backup request.

When he finally gets to the coordinates, he finds the remains of what once was a warehouse and he realizes that he’d underestimated the vigilante. 

He hadn’t just contacted in Pro Hero Hawks.

He’d called in over a dozen pro heroes.

And now they were fighting creatures like the one who’d attacked the USJ, along with a number of villains Shouta recognizes.

They were in the group who attacked the training exercise, the ones who hadn’t been captured during the fight.

Shouta steps out of the police car, then leans back into the door.

“Create a perimeter,” he tells the driver, “At least two blocks in all directions. Call in more squads.”

Then he turns abruptly and heads toward the wreckage of the warehouse. As he gets closer, his fears lessen. These new creatures don’t seem as strong as the one which attacked the USJ. They are unmistakably of the same kind. But some have wings, or other strange appendages. 

Shouta recognizes Mt. Lady and Kamui Woods, as well as a number of fellow teachers at UA.

Shouta sees a creature about to leave the scene pulled back toward the center of the fight by Hawks’ wings.

Shouta steps forward to help, then pauses. There’s not much he can do here. Most of the heroes are heavy hitters, optimized for direct combat. If he went in, his quirk would be entirely ill-suited to the fight. He’d be more of a liability than an asset.

Shouta realizes that this is the perfect attack for causing significant harm to the villains.

Foresight had planned this. He’d called in heroes who would be well suited to the brute strength of the creatures. Along with choosing heroes with quirks powerful against villains present. Foresight had carefully planned it so that they’d all appear at the same time, a simulacrum of an organized attack against All for One.

Once again, Foresight has played them perfectly.

Eraserhead watches as the fight continues. A few more heroes arrive, and then All Might crashes into the fight with his signature flare.

The sun has long since set, it’s nearing midnight now. It’s getting cold and he absently wonders if he could find a sleeping bag somewhere.

Shouta’s walkie-talkie crackles to life. He carefully doesn’t jump at the sound.

“I’ve arrived,” Nighteye says, “Status?”

“I’m watching the scene. Seems that we don’t have anything to do here,” he says flatly.

There’s a long moment of silence, Shouta can imagine Nighteye sighing.

“I’ll stay here and deal with the paperwork,” Shouta offers resignedly.

“I’d appreciate that,” Nighteye answers.

Shouta glances away from the fight, which is winding down now, and toward the crowd. 

Despite the late hour, a large number of civilians have gathered to watch the fight. They’re being held back from the fight by the police line, and seem to be

Shouta freezes.

That’s Foresight.

That’s definitely Foresight.

He’s short and slight. He seems younger than Shouta remembers. But he has the same pale gray hair and green eyes.

A man and woman are with him, both tall and thin. 

The man is smiling widely as he slings an arm over Foresight’s shoulder. He gestures toward the fight and says something that makes Foresight laugh.

God, he looks too young to be a vigilante. 

Then Foresight sees Shouta.

He instantly pales and freezes in place. 

Shouta reaches down to his walkie-talkie.

“Belay that. I’ve spotted Foresight, he’s East of the fight, on 24th. He’ll likely run North, we can corner him if you’re in that direction.”

“Copy,” Nighteye responds instantly.

Shouta starts moving toward Foresight, activating his quirk on the vigilante.

That seems to scare him even more and he shoves his way away from the man he was with. Then he starts sprinting away from Shouta, heading North, just like Shouta had expected.

The crowd is too thick for Shouta to launch himself with his capture tape, but he keeps moving forward in Foresight’s direction.

“He’s running,” Shouta says into his walkie-talkie. He forces himself to keep his eyes open, not letting the effect of his quirk fade, Foresight is out of sight, but for as long as he doesn’t blink his quirk will still effect the vigilante.

He then starts moving faster through the crowd. This is the closest he’s gotten to catching Foresight. Every time they’d sent teams after the vigilante, it had ended in abject failure. This might be the best chance Shouta will have to actually capture him.

Shouta forces his way through the crowd and to the alleyway. He’s about to finally escape the crowd when someone grabs his arm.

He reacts instantly, grabbing the arm and twisting it. He shoves his attacker into the wall next to the alley.

It’s the man who’d been with Foresight. 

He’s thin with pale hair, in his mid-twenties.

“Hey! Dude. Uh. Whoever you are,” he says, his voice quick and reedy. “What’s up? You okay? You seem kind of stressed. I know hero fights can be a lot. Could I get you something, water, a snack? I could

Something impacts the back of Shouta’s head. He stumbles. He feels his quirk’s hold over Foresight slip.

He turns and sees the other one. The woman who’d been with Foresight. She’s holding a bag like a weapon. She must have hit him with it.

He doesn’t have time for this.

He drops the man, then sends out his capture tape and encircles the two of them. They’re clearly not experienced with combat and don’t react in time to escape. He wraps the capture tape around a pipe mounted to the wall. 

“Oh fuck!” the woman shouts, then turns to the man. “This is why we shouldn’t pick fights with heroes!”

“Hey!” he shouts back, elbowing her with his very limited range of movement. “It could have worked!”

Shouta turns and runs in the direction Foresight had gone.

“Wait! Leave him alone!” the man yells after him, “He’s just a kid! He’s trying to help!” 

Shouta ignores him.

He crosses through the alleyway and into the next street.

At first he thinks he’s lost Foresight again, but then he spots Nighteye standing in an alleyway on the other side of the street.

He heads towards it. He gets close just in time to see Foresight barrel past Nighteye and into the open.

For a moment there’s hope on his face, then black smoke gathers around his feet. Shouta realizes this is the same black mist as the villain in the USJ. 

Kurogiri. 

Shouta is violently sent back into the memory of being in the plaza of the USJ and seeing his student teleported away by that black smoke.

Before he knows what he’s doing, he flings his capture tape toward Foresight.

Shouta sees Foresight’s face when he’s falling. It’s pure terror. He knows what the smoke means. He knows where he’s going. Foresight knows he’s being taken to All for One.

Shouta isn’t fast enough. Before his tape reaches Foresight, the vigilante falls through the portal. The smoke instantly dissipates behind him.

Shouta stumbles to a stop and stares.

They hadn’t caught him.

They’d led All for One right to him.

God dammit.

Shouta slowly steps forward to the spot where Foresight had disappeared. He crouches and touches the asphalt.

“Eraser! Eraserhead!” Shouta’s head snaps up and he sees Nighteye directly in front of him. Shouta had completely missed him approaching. Nightye’s leaning to the side, and has a bag slung over one shoulder.

“We got him killed,” Shouta says numbly, standing.

He looks up into Nighteye’s face, and notices that something’s wrong. His normally yellow eyes are filled with purple dots, changing and morphing across his irises.

“What happened?” he asks, stepping toward Nighteye. There’s something wrong with him. He looks moments away from falling over, though Shouta can’t see any injuries.

“We were wrong,” Nighteye says. Shouta grabs his arm as he stumbles slightly. “We were wrong about Foresight. It was obvious but we missed it.” 

“What?” Shouta asks, “What were we wrong about?”

“Foresight’s quirk. It has something to do with seeing the future. That’s how he knew so much. He was seeing the future and acting on that knowledge,” Nighteye says sharply. “That’s why he’s always been two steps ahead of us, because he has known what’s going to happen next”

Shouta freezes.

“...He was never spying on us,” he says slowly. Months of events come back to him, now entirely different with new context.

“Do you know what feedback is, with prescient quirks?” Nighteye asks. Distracting him from his realization.

“It’s when” Shouta knows this, it’s come up in cases before. “It’s when two future seeing quirks interact, it causes both quirks to no longer work.”

“That happened,” Nighteye says hoarsely, “When I tried to use my quirk on him so he couldn’t escape.” Nighteye stops and looks down. “That’s why he couldn’t avoid All for One taking him.”

“God damn it,” Shouta mutters.

“Quite,” Nighteye answers.

Shouta grinds his teeth and glances toward the fight still happening. It should be almost over now. It should have been a victory for them. But instead they’d lost the greatest edge that they had against All for One.

“What do we do?” Shouta asks, “Can we get him back before

Before All for One kills him.

“We don’t have any leads,” Nighteye says. He takes off his glasses and presses his palm into his forehead, like he’s warding away a headache. “We don’t know what Foresight knew, which was our greatest ace.”

Shouta stares into the distance.

“I just captured his accomplices,” he says slowly.

“You” Nighteye lifts his hand and stares at Shouta. “You what?”

“Come on,” Shouta says and supports Nighteye back toward the man and woman who’d been with Foresight.

They pass back across the street and through the alleyway.

The man and woman are still trapped in Shouta’s capture tape.

The woman is attempting to cut through the tape with a pocketknife. With both arms restrained it seems to be going poorly.

“Oh shit he’s back,” the man hisses.

The woman glances up, then makes a furtive attempt to cut through the rest of the tape.

Shouta steps forward and pulls the pocketknife out of her grip. He steps back and crosses his arms, staring at the two.

They don’t seem like vigilantes. They seem like civilians who wandered onto the street. 

Their faces and builds are quite similar. Shouta suspects they’re related. 

They also have the same hair color as Foresight. Which could be a coincidence, or could mean that they’re related to the vigilante.

“You,” Shouta says, looking at the man. “You said that Foresight just wanted to help. What did you mean?”

“Foresight?” he asks. “Oh. You mean Sparky?”

“Sparky,” Shouta repeats.

“Yeah,” he says. “Tiny? Kind of absent minded? Pretty fast when he needs to be, you should have seen him run the first time we” The woman elbows him. “We, uh, ran together. Yeah. He’s a runner. We run together.” He smiles with faux innocence at Shouta. “That’s why he ran! He just likes running. He wasn’t running away from you. This is just a misunderstanding.”

“I’ve been chasing him for months,” Shouta says, “I somehow suspect this isn’t a misunderstanding.”

The man and woman share a look and something passes between them.

“Oh!” the woman says cheerily, “You’re that hero guy that he’s been chatting with!”

“Facetaker!” the man says.

“No, Eraser Guy!” 

“Eraserface?”

“Eraserhead,” Shouta cuts them off. They don’t have time for this.

“Oh!” the man says. “Nice to meet you! I’m, uh, Leader!”

“You’re the leader of your group?” Shouta asks skeptically. Nothing about the man seems suited for running a criminal operation.

“Nope. That’s Sparky’s thing!” he answers, “That just became my codename at some point.”

“And I’m Slingshot!” the woman adds cheerfully, “So Eraserface, listen, he’s been helping you with that villain guy, so you shouldn’t be trying to capture him. You should be helping himand his associatestake down that villain.”

“Oh yeah, the villain guy.”

“Half Off?” Slingshot asks.

“No,” Leader corrects, “All In!”

“No, House Takes All?”

Nighteye coughs, loudly. He’s supporting himself with the wall of the alley.

The two of them seem to notice him for the first time.

“Your friend has been captured by the villain All for One,” he says, voice stiff.

They freeze. They share a look Shouta can’t parse.

“No,” Leader says. His easy smile now looks forced. “He can’t. He wouldn’t have been caught. He

Slingshot elbows him into silence and they share another look.

“His quirk was out of commission,” Nighteye says. He steps forward and gestures to his eyes. “My quirk and his had an adverse reaction to one another. It led to his capture by one of the villain’s underlings.”

In Shouta’s line of work, he sees many people receiving bad news. People feeling regret. People learning that their loved ones are in danger or have died. There’s something visceral about the expression of someone experiencing something unexpected and awful.

So he knows that the two of them care about the vigilante. He sees the way Leader’s fake smile instantly disappears. The way that Slingshot takes an abortive intake of air.

“Oh god,” Slingshot says, “We told him we’d keep him safe.”

“We promised,” Leader echos.

Shouta’s caught off guard by the sudden change, and feels his guilt from earlier rise up. 

“Wait.” Leader leans forward, this time earnestly. “You said that one of All for One’s underlings captured him, which one?”

Shouta pauses at the question.

“Kurogiri, the one with the warp quirk.”

Leader deflates again.

“Okay, uh, shit, okay. Sparky has a mole,” Slingshot starts.

“A mole.”

“A spy, a double agent, you know?” Slingshot explains. “In the villain organization. It’s the guy with the fire quirk. He’s been on Sparky’s side for a while now.”

“We’ve seen them fighting,” Shouta says, frowning.

When Hawks had been called in to fight the villains by Foresight he had needed to step in before villain with the fire quirk killed Foresight. Shouta has seen the video taken by civilians of the fight.

“No,” Nighteye says, stepping forward. “We saw him fight one of the villains who had shifted into Foresight’s shape. So really he was fighting his own supposed allies among the villains.”

Shouta stares at Nighteye.

“So there’s someone there, in their organization, who could help him?” he asks, trying to stop the spark of hope he can feel in his gut.

“Yes,” Leader says, “But, there’s no way to contact him. Sparky’s the only one who talks to him.”

“Dammit,” Shouta says, running a hand through his hair.

“There’s got to be something we can do!” Leader pleads. He’s still bound to the wall, but he leans forward as far as he can.

“We need to regroup and find out what we know,” Nighteye says, “We might get information from the villains we capture today.”

Shouta pushes down the fear that Foresight might not make it long enough for any of this to matter.

 

- - -

 

Slingshot and Leader don’t run as soon as they’re freed from Shouta’s capture tape. Which he’d been half-expecting.

Instead they keep telling Shouta and Nighteye to hurry up, which is almost as annoying as them running would have been

Soon enough they get to the Kamino police station, in a conference room that they’ve commandeered for the operation.

“We could start with the bar that he mentioned,” Nighteye says. He seems to have recovered somewhat and has taken to pouring over a map of the Kamino area spread across the large table.

“But how do we know that he’s still there? Or even still in Kamino.” Shouta tries not to let his pessimism show in his voice. Foresight’s been missing for hours now. “All for One could have taken him anywhere.”

Leader and Slingshot have taken to whispering between themselves. Leader has been audibly tapping his foot for the past fifteen minutes.

“Even if he’s not there, infiltrating a known location could give us more information about possible places he could be hiding,” Nighteye argues.

“That’s assuming that

A phone starts ringing.

Shouta stops talking and looks around. No one answers their phone.

“Oh my God, you have his bag,” Leader says in one breath, and Shouta remembers the bag that Nighteye had been carrying after his altercation with Foresight. Leader scrambles out of his seat and almost trips trying to get around the table and reach it.

Shouta is closer though. The bag had been left behind him, leaning against the wall. He reaches back and digs through it until he finds the phone.

He pulls it out and hits the answer button without thinking.

“Hello. Who is this?” he asks, turning the phone on speaker as Leader tries to grab it out of his hands.

There’s a long enough pause that Shouta worries the line has dropped.

“Aizawa-sensei?” asks a very familiar voice. Shouta pulls the phone away from his ear and reads the caller ID.

It says Shoto.

Which must be Todoroki Shoto.

Who had fought the Hero Killer Stain with Foresight, and had, apparently, left out some details about what else happened that night.

“Todoroki,” Shouta says slowly, trying to figure out where exactly his anger should be aim at, his student or Foresight. “Why are you calling this number?”

“Oh. Well,” Todoroki says. “Is Foresight okay?”

“What?”

“Is he okay? I heard about the thing in Kamino and I thought he was probably involved. But when I texted him he didn’t answer. So I called?” His voice sounds a little weak.

“Why do you have Foresight’s number?” Shouta asks.

“He gave it to me,” Todoroki says, “After…the thing, uh, with Stain.”

Shouta resists the urge to shout at Shoto.

“Is Foresight okay?” Todoroki asks before Shouta can calm down enough to talk. “Why do you have his phone, did he get arrested?”

“No,” Shouta says. Inside him, the impulse to get information to save Foresight and the impulse to keep his students uninvolved and safe are warring. 

“Okay. Where is he?” Todoroki asks. His normally flat voice has grown a bit tighter.

“That villain captured him!” Leader breaks in. “Do you know anything about where he would have gone?”

Shouta grabs Leader by the arm and forcibly moves him away, ignoring the man’s sputtering.

“He’s captured?” Todoroki asks. His voice doesn’t quite crack, but he’s a teenager so it comes pretty close. Then there’s the sound of things moving in the background. “You’re in Kamino, right? I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Todoroki. Do not” his student hangs up on him.

Shouta watches the phone, like it’ll start being useful if he just glares at it enough.

“Leader,” he says, voice very, very flat. “If you do something that leads to my students being in danger. You will thoroughly regret it.”

“I definitely will not,” Leader says. He takes a few steps away from Shouta. His voice sounds a little strangled. “Absolutely will not do that.”

“Good,” Shouta says.

He sets the phone down on the table.

“Did that help us at all?” he asks resignedly. 

“Do you have his number, we can call Todoroki again” Nighteye is interrupted by the sound of ringing from the phone.

Shouta stares at it, then picks it up again.

The call ID says Dabi.

Shouta answers the call. This time he stays silent.

“Uh, kid, you there?” asks a voice, this one is unfamiliar to Shouta. Whoever Dabi is, he sounds older than a teenager at least. “Were you at that thing at the warehouse?”

“Who are you?” Shouta asks.

There’s a pause of a few seconds.

“You first,” Dabi says. His tone is neutral and controlled.

“This is Eraserhead.” He grits his teeth and says, “Foresight has been captured. We are attempting to find his location.”

“Huh,” Dabi says, “You sure about that?”

“His quirk was rendered useless at the time of his capture,” Shouta explains.

“Oh shit,” Dabi hisses, the careful neutrality falling away.

“So you know of his quirk?” Shouta says.

“Yeah, yeah.” There’s the sound of movement on the other side of the line. “If you’re right, then this has all gone to shit real quick.  You’re that hero he’s been terrorizing, right?”

Shouta considers not answering that.

“We’ve been in contact for a number of months,” he allows.

“Okay. Well, I’m the guy on the other side who he’s been terrorizing. I was with the villains but have been helping him. My name is Dabi,” he says, “If you don’t arrest me, I’ll help you find him.”

So this was the villain who had been working for Foresight.

Shouta tries not to let himself hope. But this might be exactly what they need.

But could he let the villain off without charges? This Dabi, the villain with the fire quirk, didn’t have any priors. It seemed that joining Shigaraki’s group was his debut into the villain scene. 

Shouta decides that it’s worth it to save Foresight.

“We can do that,” Shouta says.

“Oh can we have that too?” Leader chirps.

“Who’s that?” Dabi asks. 

“Oh hi!” Leader says, he leans into the phone still in Shouta’s hand. “We’ve been helping Sparky with all his Foresight stuff for a while now. We helped him rob that museum” 

His voice cuts off abruptly when Slingshot elbows him in the stomach. 

“Allegedly helped him rob a museum,” Slingshot adds smoothly. Shouta hadn’t noticed her join them on this side of the table, she was at little more subtle than her fellow accomplice. 

“Yes,” Shouta says. He stares at the ceiling. It’s not like this could become any bigger of a mess.

“Whatever,” Dabi says, “I don’t know where Foresight is, but I do know where All for One is.”

All eyes in the room snap to the phone.

“You do?” Shouta asks.

“Yep,” Dabi says with a pop, “And I’ll give it to you for a single measly favor.”

“What is that?”

“Don’t let the kid get killed.” 

 

- - -

 

Todoroki Shoto stares at his phone.

He’d just hung up on his homeroom teacher. He chews on the inside of his cheek.

It’ll probably be fine? At least Aizawa hadn’t immediately started yelling at him.

He pulls on a jacket and opens the window to his room. It’s almost three in the morning and he doesn’t want to risk being caught.

Shoto closes the window behind him. He creeps across the short overhanging roof, then grabs the gutter to drop soundlessly to the ground.

He needs to hurry.

He glances around then jogs out of the grounds.

As soon as he can he flags down a taxi. It isn’t the cheapest way to get to Kamino, but it’s his father’s money anyways.

It takes him twenty minutes to get there. He checks the news during the drive. It seems like the fight itself has ended. Finally, he sees a picture of Aizawa. He’s entering the police station.

Shoto has the driver take him there. He pays and steps out.

There’s a lot of activity. There are a number of flashing siren lights and people milling around. Shoto sees what he thinks is a villain being dragged into the station in quirk-suppressing cuffs.

He steps toward the police station, not sure where he should go. Maybe he should call Aizawa again, figure out where he is.

But his teacher probably won’t let him get close to the fight.

Not that Shoto would stay behind anyway. Izuku is his friend and he’s in trouble. Izuku is his oldest friend actually. In his loneliest days back in middle school, Izuku had been the only bearable person who wasn’t his siblings or mother.

He bites his cheek and steps toward the door of the station. No matter what, he is going to find Izuku.

Then Aizawa-sensei walks out of the building.

There’s a group of people around him. Shoto doesn’t recognize any of them, but it doesn’t matter right now.

Shoto runs toward him. Aizawa sees him long before he gets close. He looks exhausted. Shoto wonders if he fought in that giant hero fight that started the whole thing.

Aizawa gestures for the people with him to continue on, then turns to Shoto.

“Todoroki,” Aizawa says flatly. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m going to help,” Shoto says.

“You are not,” Aizawa answers.

“I know who Foresight is,” Shoto says, “I’ve known him for years.”

That stops Aizawa in his tracks.

“You’ve. Known. Him. For. Years,” Aizawa says slowly.

“Uh, yeah?” Shoto says.

“Do you, perhaps, remember the interview we had with you about the Stain attack, when we asked you if you knew who Foresight was?”

“He asked me not to tell you?” Shoto tries.

“And you listened to the vigilante?” Aizawa says. His eye is twitching.

“Well. He’s nice? We’ve been friends for a while,” Shoto says. Then he pulls out his trump card. He feels a bit bad for it, but he has to help Izuku. “Let me go with you, I don’t need to join the fight, I just need to be there when you find him. I’ll tell you what I know about him.”

Aizawa’s hands are twitching.

“You’ll stay in the back,” he says, “You will listen to every order which we give and under no circumstances will directly engage the enemy.”

“Yes sir,” Shoto says.

“God dammit,” Aizawa mutters. Then continues walking. Shoto trails behind him.

They load up into a police van. It’s Aizawa, a hero Shoto doesn’t know, and two people he thinks are civilians. In the front of the van are two police officers.

“We’ve called in everyone who attacked the warehouse,” the other hero says to Aizawa, “We’re arranging a coordinated attack on the location Dabi gave us.”

Aizawa just nods, then stares at his hands. His fists are slowly clenching and unclenching.

The van starts moving. No one is talking. Shoto sits and tries to not remind Aizawa of his presence.

Eventually the van stops.

“Stay here,” Aizawa commands.

Shoto realizes that he’s talking to the two civilians as well as Shoto. Maybe they also know Izuku?

Aizawa and the other hero leave the van. Then the doors click. The two police officers in the front settle down, glancing back at Shoto and the civilians occasionally.

The civilian woman leans across the van.

“You’re one of the kid’s friends, right?” she whispers.

Shoto nods slowly.

“And you’re one of the students at UA?” she asks.

He nods again.

“I’m sorry to ask, but” She gestures to everything around them. “But fighting has never been my thing exactly.” She presses her hands together. “If you get the chance, can you protect him?”

“I will,” Shoto promises. She smiles, a bit strained, and leans back in the seat.

That’s when the explosions start.

It’s the light first, a split second of blinding white. Then the shockwave hits the side of the van. The entire thing jolts. Shoto bangs into his seat, and the civilians would have been thrown across the van if not for their seat belts.

After a few seconds of skidding, the van stops moving. The police officers in the front shout into the radio.

Shoto figures that this is the best distraction he’s going to get.

He jumps out of his seat, then with a spear of ice, forces the back doors of the van open. He accidentally sends one of the doors off of its hinges. No time to worry about that.

He drops out of the van and looks around. There’s dozens of police vehicles set up in a barricade around a building.

It doesn’t look like anything special, just a generic four story office building. Maybe it’s some kind of front? Shoto doesn’t have much time to think about it, because a second explosion rings out. 

He looks up and sees heroes fighting. There’s more of those monster things that had been attacking Hosu. Shoto sees All Might punch one of them, it sends out a shock wave that makes Shoto stagger. More of the monster things are climbing out of the building. Definitely not a normal office building, it must be a secret hideout of some kind.

Shoto needs to get closer.

He glances back at the van, the civilians have climbed out. One slings a bag over his shoulder and sends Shoto a salute, then they start running away from the fight.

Huh. 

Well they have a stronger self-preservation instinct than any hero Shoto knows.

Shoto turns and runs toward the building. More heroes are approaching it. As he gets close, All Might launches himself at the side of the building. Shoto braces for the shockwave All Might’s punch will release.

An entire wall of the office building shatters under the weight of his punch. Inside is a huge dark room.

There’s someone standing in the center, he’s wearing a black mask with tendrils which wrap around his neck. He’s huge and standing next to an enormous, tangled pile of pipes. His hand is resting on the forehead of another person.

The other figure is small, crumpled to his knees. 

Shoto recognizes him.

Izuku.

His breath catches in his throat.

The villain, the one who'd captured Izuku, looks up at the line of heroes outside the building. Then he casually lifts his hand and Izuku falls to the ground.

Then the floor around Izuku turns a liquid black, and he slips into the void.

Shoto freezes.

The world around him moves. The heroes charge and the villain responds with a punch of pure force.

The wind whips around Shoto and tears at his face. He still doesn’t move.

Had the villain

Had he killed Izuku?

No.

No that couldn’t be it. He’d just sent him somewhere else. Shoto just needs to find him. He just needs to save him.

There’s a hand on his shoulder.

Shoto jumps and jerks away.

It’s someone Shoto hasn’t seen before.

He has spiked black hair and scars covering his face and arms. His clothes are worn and dark.

He’s staring at Shoto with a blankness that's unsettling.

Even as the explosions and fighting ring around him, Shoto doesn’t look away from the stranger’s face.

There’s something there. Shoto doesn’t know what it is and that sets him on edge.

“Hey, little Todoroki,” he says. His voice is rough. “Want to help me find that friend of yours?”

Chapter 8

Notes:

TW: minor violence and quirks changing people's bodies

Sorry (not sorry) for the last chapter! Now let's roll it back and see what really happened to Izuku ;)

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Izuku is lying on his stomach. There’s something soft beneath him.

Then his heart starts racing and for a few moments he doesn’t remember why.

Without warning, everything that’s happened catches up to him. Lighting the warehouse on fire. Watching from the crowd. Eraserhead. The other hero. The feedback. Kurogiri’s portal pulling him down.

A wave of nausea rolls over him. He winces. His head is pounding. He can feel his quirk. It’s not silent, which would be much better. Instead it’s punishingly loud. It feels like a thousand different impulses at the same time. The vines are crawling across his arms in erratic fits. It feels deeply wrong.

He spends a long time with his eyes closed, trying to get used to the feeling. Eventually, the waves of nausea subside and he can think again.

Izuku sits up and looks around.

He doesn’t know where he is.

It looks like some kind of waiting room for an office building. It seems bland and nonthreatening.

Izuku’s laying on a couch. His brain finally catches up with everything that’s happened.

Why isn’t he dead?

He should be. He’d lit All for One’s warehouse on fire, then immediately been captured.

He should have been killed as soon as he was caught.

But he hadn’t been.

Izuku pulls himself up and looks around. His bag is missing. He’d thrown it at the hero.

Oh goddammit. He doesn’t have his phone. He needs it. He needs it very badly. He has to call someone for help.

He desperately wishes that his quirk would tell him what to do. Should he leave? Should he stay? Should he try and find a phone?

Oh wait. That’s a good idea actually.

But what would he do with that? Shit. He doesn’t even know anyone’s phone number. Well he does know his mom’s, but he absolutely does not want to get her involved.

The police?

Would that be a good idea? They might try and arrest him. Wait, that's ridiculous. Being arrested is much better than whatever All for One will do to him.

Izuku mutters under his breath and chews on his thumb nail.

Is this what it’s like for other people all the time? No wonder other people seemed so stressed. Having to make your own decisions sounds exhausting.

He should find a phone. He needs to find a phone.

He steps away from the couch. It’s as generic as the rest of the room. It screams ‘this is a normal business place’.

Izuku takes a few steps and tries to open what looks like a front door.

It’s locked.

He tries the one that seems to go further into the office.

It’s also locked.

He goes behind the reception desk and finds the door to the closet is also locked.

He tries the phone on the desk and finds it doesn’t even have a power cord.

Oh shit. This must be where All for One keeps the people he’s planning to kill.

Izuku starts pacing around the room. Trying to think of a way to get out of here. This is not his specialty.

Then he pauses.

He looks down at the clothes he’s wearing.

It’s his Overlord of Knowledge outfit.

The outfit of the person who All for One believes is one of his few remaining allies. A person who he would want to protect.

And if All for One had seen one of his few remaining pawns being chased through a series of alleyways by multiple heroes, he would probably send his employee to grab him off of the street.

Was that…what happened?

Had Izuku been caught, or had he been saved?

For the first time in a while, Izuku thinks that he might survive this. Because that might mean that this is what his quirk wanted to happen.

It might mean that there’s a way to get out of this.

That’s the moment when Kurogiri appears in front of Izuku. He looks weathered. The metal around his neck has been dented and his smoke seems more wispy than normal.

Izuku doesn’t even breathe.

“Overlord, you’re awake,” Kurogiri says. And it takes everything that Izuku has not to break out in cheers. “Sensei has called for you.”

Izuku violently pushes down every feeling he’s currently experiencing, and tries to imagine what the villain Overlord of Knowledge would be feeling right now.

“Of course,” Izuku says, trying to make his voice deep and smooth. He’s rather conscious of his own face at the moment. The rather obvious lack of a huge scar. “My thanks to you for the timely exit.”

Kurogiri says nothing, but the ground under Izuku’s feet turns to dark smoke, and falls out from underneath him.

Izuku lands roughly, and ends up on his hands and knees. The jolt triggers another wave of nausea from his quirk. He closes his eyes and breathes.

“Overlord,” a deep voice rumbles.

Oh wait, yeah. All for One.

“My apologies,” Izuku says, he cracks an eye open. He’s in the cavernous, dark room where he’d first met All for One. The villain is still sitting on the throne of pipes, but the wires and tubes are no longer connected to him.

His face, with the skin going over his eyes and nose, has been covered with a black mask, with pipes which wrap around his neck.

Izuku can’t panic right now. He needs to be a villain. He needs to ignore all distractions and feelings and get through this.

I am the Overlord of Knowledge.

He repeats to himself, like a mantra.

“The heroes” Izuku says slowly, thinking, what would the Overlord of Knowledge say? What would he be thinking right now? Izuku needed to be that villain. “They attacked me. Their quirks…they had an adverse effect on my own.”

“I see,” All for One says, “Do you at least know what has happened?”

“Foresight.” Izuku pushes down the urge to laugh maniacally. “He sent heroes after one of your strongholds. Where a great number of your Nomu were stored.”

“He did,” All for One says. He leans back on his throne. There’s something off about him. Something beyond being an egomaniacal villain who’s killed at least hundreds of people for his own gain.

Izuku is still on his knees. The residual strain from the feedback is too much for him to manage standing. But he stares at the villain.

Then it clicks.

All for One is scared.

He’s frightened by what’s happened to his empire. His eyes and hands had been suddenly and unerringly cut off. Everything that he depended on for his power he’s lost without warning. All he has now is his own physical power. And he isn’t even sure of that, since he has no way to know what Foresight’s next move is.

Izuku has a moment of indecision. What is the best thing to say? How will he know if he’s made the right decision or not?

He takes that feeling and pushes it away. It isn’t the time for doubts. It’s time for him to be sharp, perceptive, and decisive.

“What will you do?” Izuku asks. “In response to the pure gall of this vigilante?”

“I’ll kill him,” All for One answers. “Then I’ll take everyone who he’s ever known or cared about and tear them apart, while making sure they know who it was that doomed them.”

I am the Overlord of Knowledge.

“Of course you will, Sensei,” Izuku says, teeth bared in something which was not a smile. “And I will be by your side as you do it.”

“You would stay?” All for One asks. “After the events of today?”

“Of course,” Izuku answers. 

“Why?” All for One leans back in his throne, chin resting on his fist.

“Today was a setback, but I know that you are the one to follow,” Izuku says, deciding what to say as he says it. “Other villains, they think small. They have no intention in the things they do. No legacy which they try to build. They just grab whatever they first see. Like a child choosing a toy over a bar of gold.”

Izuku shifts his weight to his other knee. He ignores the feeling of vertigo which passes through him.

“You on the other hand, you understand legacy.” Izuku gestures to the huge cavern around him. “You create things which last. You don’t concern yourself with spreading fear for your own vanity. You don’t waste time on the things which don’t matter. That is why I think that I must join you. Anyone else would be a waste.”

Izuku pauses. He shouldn’t overdo it.

Well, he’s not really sure what he’s doing, but it seems like the sort of thing that his quirk would have him do.

“I see,” All for One says. There’s something sharper about him now. Izuku can feel his attention like a spotlight. He feels goosebumps on his arm raise with a shiver. “And, why, exactly, do you think I would take you on?”

Huh. Okay.

“I wouldn’t think to tell you what to do” 

“No obfuscation, Overlord. Let us talk without veils,” All for One interrupts. “Why should I take you on, should I not leave this place, cutting the things which tie me here, and create a new empire elsewhere?”

Izuku stares at All for One. What does he care about? What does All for One want?

Why would someone do the things which this villain does?

Egomania. 

He believes that he deserves power over people, and that they don’t deserve to be treated well. A steadfast sense that being the person who he is means that he’s allowed to do the things which he does.

More than that, a belief that the power that he holds justifies what he does. If you can do it, then you are allowed to, because that is all there is.

Power.

“I couldn’t ever change your mind,” Izuku starts, choosing his words carefully. “You’ve been a leader for years, longer than anyone knows.” A gamble, but he needed this to have some meat to it. “But you have seen how these battles are being played. Brute strength has been useless. Foresight, along with your enemy, can break any defense you raise. Block any offense you send. I mean no disrespect, because you must have seen this yourself.”

“What is your point?” All for One asks. 

Okay Izuku needs to back off.

“The game has changed, with the new player. It is now a battle of tactics and knowledge. It’s about undermining your enemy before they can see you coming.” Izuku lays each layer of his argument carefully, even if he doesn’t know where it’s going. “To win in this battle, the player needs to be swift, have knowledge, along with power.”

“You’ve not yet justified why I would let you join me.”

“The reason is that I have that knowledge,” Izuku says. “I am the linchpin which would allow you to rise victorious. With me by your side, the heroes would be wiped away.”

All for One stares at Izuku. Which is uncomfortable because he doesn’t have eyes.

Izuku leans back, settling onto his heels.

Time to wait. Izuku uses the lull to close his eyes. His quirk has settled down somewhat. He can still feel the vines jerking across his skin, but it’s no longer so violent. The feeling of a thousand urges has faded to the background. He still feels lightheaded and strange, but it’s manageable.

Izuku opens his eyes.

All for One is standing directly in front of him.

Izuku manages to not flinch, instead he stares levelly up at the villain.

Then there’s sounds of explosions and things shattering from outside.

“Ah, they’ve come.” All for One somehow sounds meditative now. “I guess it was unavoidable.”

“What will you do?” Izuku asks again.

“Me? Nothing,” he says. His enormous shoulders shrug. The muscles underneath are wrong somehow. “I’ve realized something, Foresight is not the kind of enemy which can be fought from the front. You’re right about that. But here is what you haven’t said.”

“What is that?” Izuku asks. 

I am the Overlord of Knowledge.

“That you fought Foresight,” All for One says. “For years, you went against an opponent which took only months to tear my empire from me. And you even stole from him, stopped his plans, helped his enemies. You are the one most suited to fighting this enemy.”

“What are you offering?” Izuku asks.

“Everything,” All for One says, he holds out his hand. There’s a black dot in the center of his palm. 

He rests his hand on Izuku’s forehead.

The wall of the building collapses. Light pours into the dark room. Izuku hears shouting from outside. The sounds of battle. 

He stares at All for One.

Izuku feels strange. Like ice is running through his veins. Like All for One sent pure cold from his hand into Izuku. He feels like he’s not quite in his body, like he’s only just connected to his chest and the rest of him is floating. He feels his quirk start to move sluggishly, like it’s being pressed down into him.

“You will become me,” All for One murmurs. Izuku can feel the rage and triumph in the words.

Then Izuku feels like he’s burning. The heat is sudden and intense and Izuku can’t even bring himself to scream.

All for One lets Izuku fall to the side, and Izuku lays sprawled on the ground. Then the ground around him turns liquid black.

The last thing that Izuku sees is the heroes rushing toward All for One.

 

- - - 

 

Izuku might have blacked out, because he feels himself jerk awake.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been unconscious.

He hauls himself off of the ground and to his feet.

He’s in the bar. The one where he’d first met the villains as Overlord of Knowledge. The secret hideout.

It’s empty, from what Izuku can see. He sighs, then a wave of pain sends him back to his knees.

It’s his arms. It feels like the skin is tearing at him. He throws off the suit jacket he’d been disguised in and stares at his hands.

There’s something deeply wrong with his quirk.

Not in the same way that it’d been wrong before. It isn’t aimless or confused. Now it feels like it knows exactly what it’s doing.

And it’s attacking Izuku.

The vines, which had only ever felt like ink on his skin, now are like cuts across his forearms. Instead of smooth skin, the vines are lines of raised scar tissue. The skin around each is red and swollen.

The worst of the pain is on his hands. The back of his wrists feel pitted and searing, and Izuku sees a thick knot of dark vines in the place where his quirk rests when it’s not active.

There’s another pain though, sharper and stranger. Izuku flips over his hands and finds two small black holes in his palms. 

Like the ones on All for One’s hand.

Izuku stares for a long time, mind muddy with pain.

He watches, as the vines swarm across his arm and slowly sees the pattern in it. The pain stays, but it fades to the back of his mind. He feels tired. Scared. But he just needs to keep going for a little while.

His quirk isn’t attacking Izuku.

It’s attacking what All for One gave him.

The vines continue.

They wrap around the holes in his palms. Whatever it is, it wants to spread, widen its influence. Izuku feels something in his gut, and knows what the holes are. They’re a quirk. A quirk with a mind. Like his own quirk. Something which has goals, and wants to use him to achieve them.

He reaches his mind toward the pinholes. The motion is like reaching to his own quirk for guidance, but this quirk doesn’t want to help him, doesn’t want him to understand.

Izuku doesn’t let it stop him. He’s spent his entire life dealing with an unwieldy quirk. This is his specialty. This is what he’s been learning to do for over a decade.

Izuku reaches into the quirk.

It feels like All for One.

Not like just a quirk. It feels like his mind is there.

The thing launches another attack.

Lines of black spring from the pin-holes, they spiral across his arms, up his shoulders and toward his head. They want to take control.

Izuku reaches for Foresight and it answers him. The vines tear apart the black lines. It hurts. Izuku ignores it.

The vines close around the holes. Blocking their power. Suffocating it like a snake around a rat.

Izuku doesn’t know how long it takes, but he feels All for One’s influence wink out.

He slumps down.

He did it. 

All for One tried one last trick. He gave Izuku his quirk, and sent part of his consciousness along with it, hoping to take over Izuku. 

One last shot at continuing his legacy. 

Izuku doesn’t know what to think about this. He’s too tired now. The pain has faded, and he watches as the vines retreat towards his hands.

They’re different. Lighter, a little greyer. With a silvery sheen rather than a dark one.

His quirk feels wrong. Ill fitted, like it’s been stretched, then shrunk back down onto him. The familiar shape has changed, and some parts feel thin and weak.

Izuku pulls himself to his feet.

He should get out of here. Find Leader and Slingshot, get them out of Kamino.

There’s someone standing in the open doorway.

Shigaraki.

He’s wearing his whole villain getup, with the exception of the hand over his face. Which he’s gripping in one of his real hands.

When Izuku meets his gaze, Shigaraki dissolves the preserved hand and steps forward.

“I knew it,” he breathes. His eyes are wild, with deep bags underneath them. His smile is wide, and his lips are stretched and cracking. “I knew you weren’t who you said you were.”

“I’m the Overlord of Knowledge,” Izuku says, pulling the dredges of his persona around him. “It’s not my real name, or even my only one, but what’s a few false identities between friends?”

“You’re Foresight, aren’t you?” Shigaraki says, like Izuku had never spoken. “I thought something was off. You and him showing up at the same time? Too weird. Sensei didn’t notice. You were too exciting for him to doubt. A little mini-him? Nothing else in the world could have caught his attention like that.”

Izuku should lie. Should make a big speech and make a big thing out of it. But he’s tired, in pain, and his quirk feels like it fits him wrong.

Izuku just stands there.

“You’re good at it, though!” Shigaraki croons. He takes a few deliberate steps forward. “Such a good liar, must have been tricky, keeping all those identities separate. You did such a good job.”

Izuku steps back. Shigaraki follows, only an arms reach away. He smells like formaldehyde and rot.

“You made a few mistakes though,” Shigaraki says. “You made it too neat. Everything lined up too well. And Overlord only knew things which weren’t helpful to our cause. The cops thought Overlord was real, but no real villains had ever met him, and I asked a lot of them. Your scar.” Izuku’s back hits the wall, Shigaraki runs a pinky along Izuku's facewhere his scar should be. “Well that was the last confirmation I needed.”

Izuku can’t quite breathe.

“So many mistakes,” Shigaraki says, smile cutting across his face.

Izuku looks away from Shigaraki and glances at the door. He freezes.

Shigaraki sees it and twists around.

He’s hit by a wave of ice. It launches him away from Izuku, toward the back of the room.

Izuku scrambles away, and manages to get a few feet before losing his footing. He sprawls across the icey floor on his back. A face comes into view above him.

“Shoto?” Izuku asks. 

“Hello Izuku,” Shoto says, then grabs Izuku by the arm and hauls him to his feet. Izuku almost falls and Shoto grabs his shoulder to steady him. “Are you alright?”

Izuku wants to cry. He wants to laugh. He wants to scream. He wants to sleep for an entire day.

“Ehhh,” Izuku says. He sounds like a deflating balloon.

“Let’s get out of here,” Shoto says.

Izuku looks up at where Shigaraki had been a moment before. There’s a wall of ice across the entire room. Izuku can’t see through it. He does know that there’s a back door to this room and Shigaraki won’t be held back by ice for long. Not when he can dissolve anything he touches.

“Yeah,” Izuku says.

Shoto has to half-carry Izuku at this point, but he brings them to the front door and up the stairs to the street. It’s light outside, which confuses Izuku for a moment, then he realizes that it’s predawn light, and he’d been captured by All for One for an entire night. 

Then there’s the sound of a guttural scream. Izuku’s stomach drops. It’s a Nomu. Shigaraki has a Nomu.

“You need to leave,” Izuku says. “Right now. I’m the one he wants.”

Shoto takes one look at Izuku, then picks him up in a fireman’s carry and starts running.

Izuku’s clinging on for dear life, but he hears it when the Nomu smashes through Shoto’s ice wall. 

Then Shoto skids to a stop. Izuku twists around and sees a second Nomu blocking their escape.

Izuku really hopes that the last thing he does isn’t getting his friend killed.

“Foresight!” Shigaraki screeches from the door of the bar. “This is the

A wave of blue fire washes past Izuku. It forms a circle around them. Shoto drops Izuku and brings up walls of ice around them.

Then the Nomu start screaming.

It’s awful. Izuku presses his hands to his ears. The wrongness inside his quirk grows at the sound.

The screaming cuts off. The silence is almost worse. The fire dissipates. Where the Nomu had been, there’s now only charred lumps.

As the light spots clear from his vision, Izuku sees Dabi. He’s standing in front of Shigaraki, who’s shaking in rage.

“You,” he screams. “You’re with that bastard? You joined that cowardly, lying

Izuku doesn’t know what Shigaraki would have called him, because Dabi sends a wave of fire at Shigaraki.

It’s quick. Dabi at least gives Shigaraki that.

When there’s nothing but ash left, Dabi turns back and looks at Izuku, then his eyes shift to Shoto.

He sticks his hands in his pockets and saunters back to them.

“Hey there kid,” he says. His voice is exactly the same as it’s always been. Like he hadn’t just killed someone. “You caused a lot of trouble today. How’d it all work out for you?”

Izuku stares at him.

“I’m going to start crying soon,” Izuku says, because that’s the truest answer he can give.

“Fair enough, want to see some fireworks?” Dabi asks.

 

- - -

 

After Dabi sends a spiteful farewell burst of fire at the villain bar, he turns around and leads them to a carone that Izuku suspects hadn’t been his this morning. He drives. Shoto and Izuku sit in the back together. Izuku’s tired enough that he almost melts into the car door once he has a chance to sit down.

“So anyways,” Dabi says blithely. Shoto and Izuku had been silent since Shigaraki. “I saw all the fighting and chaos and such, and then I thought; if All for One was to send the kid somewhere, and he’s not dead, where would it be? So I grabbed your Todoroki friend and we started scouting places. Good thing we got there at the exact time that we needed to be there, huh?”

Dabi looks through the rear view mirror and makes very intentional eye contact. Izuku stares at him, then rolls his eyes. That makes Dabi smile like he’s figured something out. It’s not a nice smile, but Dabi’s smiles never are.

“Lucky that it worked out that way,” Dabi says, then reaches forward and turns on the radio.

No one talks for the rest of the drive.

Soon enough, they arrive somewhere Izuku doesn’t recognize.

It’s been thoroughly destroyed. It looks like it might have been office buildings once. Not anymore. Buildings have collapsed. Streets have been torn up. Izuku hopes that the area has been evacuated. 

When they get out of the car, Izuku sees who’s fighting.

It’s All for One and All Might.

Izuku stares at them. The actual fight is happening blocks away, but Izuku shudders at the attacks that All for One is using.

Izuku feels something land on his shoulders. He stiffens, then realizes that it’s Dabi’s jacket. Dabi, now only wearing his t-shirt, just shrugs. 

“Thanks,” Izuku says, he wraps it tighter around him. He ignores what he’s pretty sure are bloodstains.

“Come on,” Dabi says, grabbing Izuku by the arm, “Let’s get a better view.”

He pulls Izuku along, and Shoto trails behind him like a lost duckling. 

Dabi brings them to a fire escape, but Shoto insists on using his ice to taxi Izuku up to the top of the building. Dabi mutters something and climbs the fire escape.

Once they’re above street level, Izuku gets a better few, and sees the start of the sunrise. No wonder he feels exhausted. The light feels good though, and the warmth that comes with it.

They settle on an air conditioning unit to watch the fight. 

It seems like it’s been going for a long time. There’s a wide perimeter around the fight, enforced by the police, and a number of other heroes are jumping in to help when they can. None of them hold a candle to All Might. Izuku hasn’t seen him fight with this intensity in years. 

Izuku watches as All for One’s arm grows horrendously and he sends a punch at All Might which is so powerful it tears up buildings behind him.

Then he feels something. Something familiar. It’s a pull from his quirk. A normal one. Izuku almost sobs.

He listens to it. His wrists pull at him, and he holds his hand out to Dabi, like he’s waiting for something.

Dabi gives him a look. Then grins widely and tosses Izuku something from his pocket.

It’s the phone. The flip phone which All for One had given him. Izuku looks up at Dabi.

“After I heard about you, I grabbed it.” He shrugs. “Thought it might be useful.”

Izuku just nods and snaps the battery into place. He powers it on and opens All for One’s contact.

He pauses, wondering what to write, then his fingers move.

 

[Overlord]

I’ve escaped their watch, your gift is seated. Your legacy is secure, friend. 

 

Izuku closes the flip phone, then drops it on the ground and smashes it under his foot. It breaks into a hundred very satisfying pieces.

Izuku looks back to the fight.

All for One pauses in the middle of an attack. His head tilts like he’s listening to something no one else can hear.

He laughs.

The sound is amplified. Far past what should be possible with human vocal cords and lungs. The sound booms past them, even from blocks away.

“All Might!” he crows. He moves upward, floating into the air to hover above the battlefield. “You think that you have won today? You’re wrong. Today was the worst mistake you’ve ever made. Today, my successor, Overlord, has risen.”

A light appears in All for One’s hand. It’s blindingly bright, even from this distance.

“He’s taken on my power,” his voice booms. “He’ll soon be even a greater enemy than me. Today will be the first day of your downfall. From my ashes, your doom will come.”

The light grows, then grows more. 

Then it explodes outward.

Izuku barely has time to register what’s happened, but Shoto reacts instantly. A sphere of ice surrounds the three of them.

The shock wave hits a moment later. There’s the sound of cracking. But the ice shield holds.

Finally the sounds end.

Shoto and Dabi simultaneously summon their fire to melt the ice. Between the two of them it only takes a minute for them to bore a hole through the wall.

Dabi steps out first.

“Holy shit, kid,” he says with clear appreciation. 

Izuku follows him out.

There’s destruction everywhere. The windows of every building within four blocks of the fight have been shattered. There’s scorch marks on anything that was facing the blast.

When Izuku looks back toward where All for One was, he sees destruction.

The few buildings that were left near the fight are destroyed.

Where All for One had been, there is only a crater.

“Looks like the old man bit it,” Dabi says contemplatively. “Huh.”

Then he takes another look at Izuku. His face twists. He takes a step toward Izuku and puts a hand on his shoulder. 

“Everyone was evacuated,” he says slowly. “The heroes had warning. This is about the minimum destruction which could have happened.”

“Yeah,” Izuku says faintly. That’s the point where he starts crying.

Neither of the Todorokis know what to do, so they just sit on either side of Izuku as he curls into a ball and cries his eyes out. 

It’s the most cathartic moment Izuku has had in months.

He feels like a huge weight’s been lifted off his chest.

None of it is his problem anymore. All for One is dead. His followers have been scattered or arrested. Izuku doesn’t have to worry about any of it now. 

 

- - -

 

When they climb down from the roof and walk back into the street, the heroes are waiting for them.

Dabi pulls up short and grips Izuku’s shoulder with iron fingers. 

Eraserhead is there, along with the other hero from before. Izuku doesn’t know how they found him, but he has no choice but to talk to them.

Eraserhead is standing in front. He looks years older. His scarf thing looks mostly shredded. There are holes and burned patches across his jacket and pants. His goggles are missing. 

Izuku touches Dabi’s hand and he lets go. Izuku steps forward. 

Izuku tries to figure out what he’s supposed to say.

The heroes don’t scare Izuku like they did before. Now they just seem tired. Like they’re going through the motions of finishing the investigation.

“He took it then?” Eraserhead asks.

Everything that Izuku had been about to say goes out the window. He very carefully doesn’t react, and thinks about what the heroes know.

They know that Izuku was captured as Foresight.

They saw All for One use his quirk on him and then saw Izuku fall.

And now they’ve found him, beat up, wearing a bloodstained coat, with tear tracks on his face, looking about to collapse.

And they have no idea how many little things had to line up for this day to end as well as it did. They think that Izuku’s quirk failed and he barely survived.

They think that All for One took his quirk.

Izuku looks away from Eraserhead. Shoto has gone very pale. Oh yeah, he has no idea who All for One is, or what he could do. Izuku only then realizes he has no idea how or why Shoto is here.

“He took your quirk?” Shoto asks in a strangled tone.

Izuku resists the urge to immediately cave and tell him it's not true. He needs to be strategic right now. The next couple minutes will be very important for how this plays out.

“We got him though,” Izuku says. He looks Eraserhead in the eye. “He’s gone now.”

“Yeah,” Eraserhead agrees. “You got him, Foresight.”

Izuku doesn’t need to fake how tired his smile looks.

“You made a real mess, you know that?” Eraserhead says.

“Yeah,” Izuku agrees. “I know. It was the only way to take him down.”

“That other villain is still out there, though,” Eraserhead says. “The Overlord of Knowledge. We know that All for One gave his quirk to Overlord. He’ll be looking for you.”

Dabi makes a stifled noise. Izuku looks at him.

With the scars that cover his face, Dabi’s not an easy person to read. But Izuku’s picked up the knack for it by now, so he knows that Dabi is trying not to laugh. 

Hopefully the heroes think that he’s just worried for Izuku.

“I know,” Izuku, who has an ironclad poker-face, sighs. “I know how to disappear though.”

“Without your quirk?” Eraserhead asks. He takes a few steps forward. Izuku sees Dabi tense beside him. “We can hide you.”

“Thank you,” Izuku says, “But I think that I’d better not.”

“We can’t just let you go,” Eraserhead says, “Not after everything that’s happened.”

Izuku looks at him. His tired eyes and stooped frame.

He knows that Eraserhead is a good hero, that he only wants to make the world a better, safer place. Izuku knows that he would keep his word. He would do everything in his power to protect Izuku.

But Izuku’s not in the habit of telling the truth. Not when his quirk tells him to do otherwise.

And right now his quirk is telling him to talk to Shoto.

“Shoto,” Izuku says, turning toward him. “Can you tell them how we met?”

Shoto looks a little startled.

“Oh.” He looks at Izuku. Shoto’s not quite the actor that Izuku is, but he hesitates in a convincing manner. “Okay.”

He turns to Eraserhead.

“His name is Akatani Mikumo," Shoto says. "He worked for a number of years at the Todoroki compound as a gardener. He was my friend for much of that time. That’s why I didn’t tell you that I knew him after Stain’s attack.”

Eraserhead seems shocked at how straightforward the answer is.

“Is that enough?” Izuku asks. 

“That is” Eraserhead stops and looks over Izuku’s face again. Izuku knows he looks absolutely miserable at the moment. “Yeah. Yeah that’s enough for today. We’ll find you again. And if you ever need help, we’ll be willing.”

“Thank you,” Izuku says, genuine this time.

There’s a honk from the street.

The trained fighters startle. Dabi summons his flames. Shoto’s right side freezes over. Eraserhead whips his bandage toward the noise.

“Hey Sparky!” Leader calls cheerily from the back seat of Slingshot’s car. “How’d it go?”

Izuku, who has slow reflexes at the best of times, hadn’t yet moved.

“It went pretty bad!” he calls back. The heroes and villain around him slowly relax.

“Hard knock life!” Leader replies. “Want a ride back home?”

“Absolutely!” Izuku shouts back. “Give me a second!”

“I’m going with you,” Dabi says levelly. 

“Oh. Alright,” Izuku agrees when he sees Dabi’s expression. He turns to Shoto. “Thank you, for, uh, saving my life?”

“You’re welcome,” Shoto says.

Izuku hugs him. Shoto freezes, then pats his back a few times.

“I’ll see you around,” Izuku says, then pulls back. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Shoto echos, a slight smile on his face. Izuku grins back.

He turns to Eraserhead. He just sighs, then gestures for Izuku to continue. Izuku marches to Slingshot’s car, Dabi in tow. Dabi joins Leader in the back, and Izuku’s getting in the passenger seat, when something stops him.

The other hero, the one with the future seeing quirk, steps forward.

“Foresight,” he says. “I’m sorry for the harm I caused you.”

Izuku looks at him, and sees the devastation in his face. The guilt there.

That stops Izuku in his tracks. He can’t quite stomach the idea of this hero spending the rest of his life feeling guilty for something he didn’t do. Well. Izuku makes poor decisions all the time. What’s one more?

Izuku stoops down into the car. 

“On my mark,” he tells Slingshot. She blinks at him, then suppresses a smile. Izuku stands, still half in the car.

This isn’t really a good idea, and it isn’t something that his quirk wants him to do. But Izuku is done with causing people pain today.

“Okay,” he shouts back at the heroes, being fully honest with them for the first time. “I thought I should tell you that he didn’t actually succeed in taking my quirk. Thanks for all the help though! Okay now!”

Izuku manages to swing himself into the car as Slingshot floors the gas. His door bangs shut beside him.

Izuku sees Eraserhead fling his bandages at the car, but they’re already too far. The other hero looks dumbstruck. Shoto looks relieved.

Izuku hopes that Shoto doesn’t get in too much trouble for this.

“Left!” Izuku shouts, buckling his seatbelt. Slingshot makes a hairpin turn and the heroes are out of sight.

Dabi is laughing hysterically in the back seat. 

They continue through the streets at breakneck speeds for a few minutes, with Izuku giving them directions from his quirk.

Eventually the sense of urgency disperses.

“Okay, we’re good,” Izuku says. 

Slingshot slows down to a normal speed, then joins the stream of traffic.

“Kid,” Leader says from the back seat. Izuku looks back at him. His face has a sort of seriousness that Izuku has never seen on him. “Promise that you will never, ever, do anything like that again.”

“I will never, ever, do anything like that again,” Izuku says with complete sincerity. “I hated every single thing that happened today.”

Leader relaxes into his seat.

“You’ve got blood on your coat,” Slingshot says, “Did you get hurt? Should we take you to a hospital?”

“No, I’m fine,” Izuku says. “This is Dabi’s coat.”

Then something occurs to Izuku.

“Wait, did you get hurt?” Izuku asks.

“Not my blood,” Dabi says with a smirk.

“You’re super creepy!” Leader chirps. “I’m Leader, it’s nice to meet you!”

Dabi doesn’t seem to know what to do with Leader’s enthusiasm, and says nothing. Leader, however, has never been one to be discouraged by silence.

“Thanks for helping rescue Sparky! I’m a bit of a criminal myself, but all that fighting stuff is a bit out of my wheelhouse. I’ve always been the type to avoid the fighting part of villainy. Not that I don’t do interesting things sometimes! I lit a warehouse on fire today, which I think is some signifi

“You lit the warehouse on fire?” Dabi asks. He sounds baffled. “That was you?”

Izuku leans against the car door and closes his eyes.

“Yep! It was my first arson, actually, I’ve got a bingo card I’ve been filling out with different crimes and this might fill out a row. Which I think

Izuku flinches as something touches his arm.

He’s disoriented for a few seconds, then realizes he’s in Slingshot’s car. It's parked on the side of a familiar street and is softly clicking in the cool air. They’re outside his apartment. Dabi had opened his door and is looking at him.

“Oh.” Izuku blinks heavily, he must have fallen asleep. He feels even more tired than before. “Thanks.”

He unbuckles and steps out of the car, except he’s exhausted and almost falls before Dabi grabs his arm and hauls him upward.

Leader and Slingshot are standing on the sidewalk.

“Hey kid,” Leader says, he pulls Izuku into a hug. “Please don’t commit any more crimes, okay?”

“Alright, will avoid that,” Izuku agrees.

He hugs Slingshot, and then she gives him a bag. It takes him a few moments to realize that it’s his bag. The one he threw at the hero. He has no idea how Slingshot even got it, had she talked to the hero? 

Whatever.

Izuku half leans on Dabi as the two of them get back in the car. He waves as they drive away.

“I left my keys in the apartment,” Izuku says meditatively.

Dabi takes a deep, calming breath. But he doesn’t let go of Izuku. Which is good, because he would have fallen on the pavement if he had.

“Fucking babysitting duty,” Dabi mutters. But he helps Izuku up the stairs. He takes a tool out of his pocket, then uses it to pick the lock. 

He drops Izuku on the bed, then looks around.

“What’s with the plants?” he asks.

“My official quirk is that I can make plants grow good,” Izuku says.

Dabi stops. 

“That’s dumb as shit,” he says.

“Yep,” Izuku says. He hasn’t yet moved from where Dabi dropped him.

“Don’t die when I’m not there,” Dabi says.

“Okay, thanks.” Izuku says, because that’s about as nice as Dabi gets.

Dabi mutters something, then stomps out of the apartment. But he shuts the door behind him and Izuku hears the click of it locking.

Izuku makes the monumental effort to turn his head toward the window. It’s now fully light outside. It would absolutely suck if he couldn’t fall aslee

And he’s out.

 

- - -

 

Aizawa Shouta sits down heavily on his desk chair. Yesterday had been a headache of unimaginable scope. 

There had been property damage the likes of which they hadn’t seen in decades. Dozens of heroes had been involved. Multiple police departments had been mobilized. A minimum of a dozen procedures had been either ignored or actively broken. Not to mention the injuries All Might sustained from All for One's final attack.

At least now some of his questions have been answered.

There are still problems. The Overlord of Knowledge is still out there. And if All for One had been telling the truth, then he’d inherited the villain’s quirk. But that was a known threat. Something that could be worked on over time. It will take Overlord time to establish a power base, and when he does, the heroes will be ready for him. 

Shouta sighs and pulls his computer to him.

He’s not pleased that Foresight, or rather, Akatani had managed to escape.

He really should have immediately got him in quirk-suppressing cuffs the instant he’d found him with Todoroki and the villain Dabi.

But the kid had looked exhausted.

It hadn’t hit Shouta until that moment that Foresight really was a kid. He couldn’t have been older than Shouta’s own students.

Something in Shouta’s chest had twisted at the idea of arresting him. Even after he’d told them that his quirk hadn’t really been taken. Shouta had made only a token attempt to capture him.

Mostly, because he knew that the kid was in danger from Overlord, and it wasn’t like the heroes had done anything to earn his trust.

But Shouta did have a name, and at least a few years of work records on the vigilante.

He sighs and runs a search on Akatani Mikumo.

He sees a few years of records. Years of perfectly normal existence. With taxes and an address. Perfectly solid.

But the instant he looks deeper it’s obviously a fake name.

Akatani Mikumo had been made up three years ago. As far as fake identities go, it’s solid, but there isn’t much to make up for the fact that his school records, his parents, and his address are all fabricated.

Shouta sits at his desk, very carefully not moving, for several minutes. The urge to smash his computer into tiny pieces is almost unimaginable.

God.

Fucking.

Dammit.

 

- - -

 

A week after Kamino, Izuku asks his mom if he can move back in with her, citing loneliness. She enthusiastically agrees and within a few days he’s back in his old room.

He spends his time reconnecting with her and managing his schoolwork.

Over the next months, almost without Izuku noticing, things start to feel normal again.

He texts Shoto. And in return, gets stories about being a student at UA and all that it entails. Shoto insists on meeting up every week to teach Izuku self-defense and Izuku reluctantly agrees to do so.

Dabi takes to sending him updates on how the criminal underworld is changing in the wake of All for One’s disappearance. He also tells Izuku about the heroes’ increasingly futile attempts to locate Foresight.

He meets Leader and Slingshot for lunch occasionally. Which is as entertaining and comforting as they’ve always been. They tell him that, for whatever reason, they’ve taken to faking further sightings of the Overlord of Knowledge. And have been growing an objectively harmless, but widely feared network of contacts. 

And Izuku’s nightmares are mostly gone now.

Everything is quiet and uneventful, until his quirk tells him to get a cat.

 

- - -

 

“Are you sure you want her?” the veterinarian asks.

“Yeah I’m sure,” Izuku says. He runs a hand along the cat’s back. They’d said that her name was Chimera, but Izuku thinks that's a bit mean. He’s going to call her Bella.

“Animals with quirks aren’t the easiest pets,” the vet says again. He’s been trying to dissuade Izuku since he first came in. “Especially this girl.” He holds out his hand to her and she sniffs his fingers. “She’s sweet, but she’s had some serious health issues in the past, and it’s not going to be the easiest thing to take care of her. It’s a big responsibility.”

“I’m sure I want her,” Izuku says. He looks the vet right in the eye.

“Okay. Okay,” he says, lifting his hands. Izuku had copied that particular facial expression from Dabi and it tended to make people do what he wanted. “I’ll get the paperwork.”

Once he’s gone, Izuku crouches down and looks Bella in the eye. Well, one of them. She has one normal cat eye, and a few other ones.

She’s one of the rare animals with a quirk. But as far as anyone can tell, she can’t control it. The vet told Izuku that she had already been through a few owners, who had given her back after learning how much work she was. Growing new limbs and organs occasionally would do that.

“Hi,” Izuku says. Bella makes a noise like a distorted purr. She waddles over to him, inconvenienced by the different lengths of her legs, but not dissuaded by it.

Izuku pets her some more.

It takes another hour to get all the adoption papers in order and get her back home.

Izuku unlocks the apartment.

“Mom!” he calls. No answer. She’s still at work then.

He carries Bella into his room, closes the door, then opens her carrier.

She waddles out, and Izuku feels a pull from his quirk.

It’s different than it once was. Heavier, slower, but with greater pressure. Today is the first time it’s been active beyond the soft nudges of daily life in the months since Kamino.

Izuku reaches out his hand and sets his palm on the cat’s head. She purrs.

The vines curl along the entirety of his body, thin and fractal.

Izuku feels something new in his quirk. A sort of emptiness opens up in his palm, and then he feels something pass from Bella to himself.

Izuku breathes in and out slowly. Then he passes out.

He wakes up to the sound of purring. Normal purring, not the strange noise that Bella had been making before. He opens his eyes and sees Bella. She is sprawled across his chest and looks quite content.

She now looks like a perfectly normal cat. 

“Oh,” Izuku says. She meows back at him. Then she gets up and starts exploring his room. 

Izuku looks at his arms.

The vines are shrinking. Curling into twin dots on the back of his wrists. Now silvery gray, instead of the dark green they once were.

Izuku feels something new under his skin. It’s flowing and changing, like a liquid swirling through his body.

It’s not painful, but there’s that same feeling of wrongness as when he’d first got All for One. It’s not nearly as intense though.

Izuku concentrates on his hand. The feeling is unnatural, but then his own quirk spreads out and helps him. The skin changes to silver, then green. The fingers lengthen and shorten.

He examines the changes. Then he pushes the new quirk down and his hand returns to normal.

“Huh,” he says.

Bella walks over to him and Izuku pets her.

His quirk settles into his bones, satisfied.

So he has a shapeshifting quirk now?

The heroes are still looking for him. Izuku wonders if, armed with this new quirk, they’d even have a chance at catching him.

Izuku laughs.

Notes:

And that's a wrap, folks!

This is the first full length story that I've ever actually completed, so thank you to everyone who left nice comments, it's what inspired me to keep going and finish this! And I'm always glad to know that people have enjoyed my stories <3

EDIT: So, I've seen people asking about a sequel, and, well I've got ideas for it, but please know that it took 2+ years to even get this story to the point of writing anything...so if that does happen it won't be soon. I have really loved seeing your ideas about what Izuku might get up to in the future though!

And finally! I give anyone full permission to make anything inspired by this work, as long as you include credit (you can also send me things here). I'd love to see anything which you might make!