Chapter Text
1
Eri was asking about Bakugou Katsuki.
Ever since they rescued the girl from the yakuza, she had been placed under Aizawa-sensei’s care. They didn’t know how The Boy With The Red Shawl’s ability affected the girl in full and Eri didn’t want to go with the social workers.
Midoriya was sure the heroes had other concerns about leaving Eri in the system (especially with The Boy With The Red Shawl still in the wild). However, it seemed to be working since Aizawa-sensei and Togata-senpai told him that Eri was responding well to her new life on UA’s campus.
Of course, there were still many reports to fill and many detectives to meet but everything should settle down quickly since Overhaul’s gang had been disbanded. The adults were busy trying to help Eri move on. From counseling to learning how to interact with the world–such as saying hello to people and eating actual food without being deathly afraid–Eri was going to start getting homeschooled too by other UA teachers who volunteered their time.
The only remaining issue was The Boy With The Red Shawl.
He wasn’t as much of a ticking time bomb as the League of Villains. Instead, Midoriya would like to think that he was more of a thorn embedded into people’s backs. While there were no indication that the “demon” would come back for Eri, they had to be on the safe side. Eri already traded away her quirk, she had nothing else to give.
What else could such a young girl exchange anyway? No money and gold that was for sure. They were also scared of what else a demon could ask for as payment. Midoriya tried to ignore the pocket book on black magic that he once saw fell out of Aizawa-sensei’s sleeping bag when the man was storing it away. Midoriya spent plenty of sleepless nights researching too.
The Boy With The Red Shawl was Bakugou Katsuki.
But he also wasn’t him at all either.
Midoriya didn’t know what he was trying to prove. His bloodshot eyes and piles of crumpled paper filled with scribbles surely wouldn’t help him any closer to the truth but he couldn’t stop himself. Maybe he just needed to know if Kacchan was still deep inside the monster somehow or that a monster was wearing his dead friend’s skin for fun.
Anyhow, his research didn’t land him in any pretty place. Demons were always associated with misery and death. Black magic and the occult was tied with plenty of bloody history too. In the stories and documentaries, a demon always asked for one of three things; blood, life, and soul.
All of which was terrifying to even think it could be stripped away at the snap of two fingers.
“Deku,” Eri called a little louder, calling Midoriya back to reality. She stared up at him with her too large eyes as her small hand wrapped around the fabric of the teen’s sleeves. Eri was still in the process of healing. Lunch Rush was doing his best to add meat on her bones but she was still thin.
“I’m sorry, Eri.” Midoriya knelt down so he could meet her at eye level. “We talked about this with Aizawa-sensei and Lemillion before, right? You made us a promise.”
“...I will tell you if the spider calls for me again and I can’t make another wish.” She was a good girl and smart too. As deep as the fear had engrained itself, the years of being confined and hurt by Overhaul didn’t manage to scrap that from her.
After the demon vanished from the yakuza’s headquarters, the diamond spider Eri used to summon the demon turned to stone. Grey and hard, the heroes and police couldn’t find anything strange about it. It was a rock from inside out no matter what kind of devices or quirks were used to inspect it. Out of concern for everyone’s safety, the spider currently sat in the police department’s safe, locked away alongside other potentially harmful evidence.
“That’s right. You’ll let us know if Kac–The Boy With The Red Shawl–reaches out to you again, right?”
She nodded. A strand of her wavy hair fell in front of her face. Where her horn used to be was now flat and smooth skin. It was medically impossible but the demon did what Overhaul couldn’t achieve.
He took Eri’s quirk.
The mutant gene was nowhere to be found in Eri. She was now, in all sense of the word, quirkless.
Midoriya felt a sour tightness in his chest as if someone had replaced his insides with rotting trash. Fermenting meat juice filled with hatching fly eggs dripped from between his ribs, soaking his stomach and coating his intestines. It was a wretched feeling, the kind that made him want to kneel over a toilet and hurl his guts out.
Eri didn’t know the severity of what was taken from her, stripped of the chance to understand a congenital part of herself but she didn’t seem to care. Like now, when she noticed that Midoriya’s gaze had lingered on her clear forehead for too long, she tried to pat him on the head.
“I’m okay, Deku.” The girl smiled. Her red eyes were bright and no longer casted in the gloom of fearful shadows. “I’m very happy that my curse can help you and everyone else.”
That was a part of the problem, wasn’t it? A quirk was a part of someone, so innate and natural that it was like breathing air. Midoriya himself worked his butt off to get a quirk and after hearing about how AFO stole power from people, he couldn’t fathom how painful it would be to lose it. Not just because it was power that he longed for all his life but also because it was a gift of trust from the very man he idolized.
But Eri traded her quirk away without regrets.
To her, the power in her veins was the source of all her troubles. It was a curse that brought her pain and the reason why the people who should love her turned on her. She was happy to lose her quirk.
Midoriya knew there were quirks that people considered unfortunate. Mutant types that made the owner unconventional in appearances, quirks that were labeled villainous, and those that brought a lot of inconveniences to daily life. Maybe when it all began this was why people followed All For One. They were willing to do everything to be rid of what made them unique.
What made them different.
It was kind of ironic. A year or two ago, Midoriya would be all giddy and excited for any quirk but now he realized that what he longed for might be another person’s nightmare.
It didn’t mean that he thought All For One was right. Surely the villain didn’t only take people’s quirks with their consent. He robbed those who didn’t have any intention of giving up through force.
But what of the demon that was once his friend?
The Boy With The Red Shawl offered deals. A fair exchange where something must be given up in order to gain another goal. But was it truly fair? Desperation was a strong motivator that could justify any cost.
“Deku?”
He sighed and got up, extending a hand to the girl.
“You’re a hero, Eri.” Midoriya managed to smile. He tried to wave his thoughts away, focusing on what was important at the moment. What Eri did was selfless, regardless of the details. A quirk didn’t change the fact that she had a good heart or found the courage to run back towards her biggest nightmare because she wanted to save others. That was her. She was the one who made the decision and she was the one who acted.
Her quirk didn’t define her.
And maybe, that was the truth of what being a hero should be about.
2
“What are you two doing?”
Nanami didn’t want to ask but he was kind of bothered by the way the older men were lying in the middle of the dorm’s hallway. Also, the two human roadblocks were preventing Nanami from getting to the communal fridge so he had to ask before he approached the two physically.
He didn’t want to get creepy upperclassmen under his shoes. Those things were like chewed gum, once the sticky bastards got stuck, it would be a pain to peel off. Since jujutsu already don't work on them, he might need to bring out some purifying salt to see if the duo would turn flaccid like slugs.
“Dying,” Getou said.
“Bored,” answered Gojo.
The two young men rolled over, arms floppy and legs flailing as if boneless. Nanami for sure didn’t want to get any closer now.
“I thought you two had a date.”
“Canceled.”
“Did you finally get dumped?”
“We didn’t get dumped,” grumbled Gojo as he lifted a middle finger at Nanami. “Katsuki has demon duties to attend to.”
“Demon…duties?” Nanami frowned. He wasn’t apologetic for the thoughts that popped into his head but safe to say that it wasn’t anything nice…or legal for that matter. Most of it was similar to scenes out of horror movies and the rest was from occult books. “What, is he eating the hearts of sacrificed children? Sucking people’s life out of them or throwing their souls into an eternal fire?”
“We don’t know. He just said he has to attend a ball.”
A ball. That wasn’t as horrible as what popped into Nanami’s head. It sounded very western too, the kind that appeared in princess movies or romantic films. At least, he would like to imagine them along those themes. If they turned the tune darker, his mind was going right back to the horror movies aisle. While Nanami wasn’t scared of ghosts and the likes, he was still very much grossed out by the imagination of blood and guts flying everywhere.
“So you two have a free day.” Unlike him, who had to go on a mission this afternoon. Life was unfair.
“With nothing to do,” grumbled Getou.
“Then go handle some missions.”
“No way. It’s my day off.”
Gojo flipped himself over, swimming over the polished floor with surprisingly agility. “Not me either. I don’t want to do anything.”
Sighing, Nanami hopped over Gojo before the latter could grab his ankle. Racing to the fridge, he opened it and snatched two cans of cold frizzly drinks out then leaped onto the edge of the opened window, avoiding the small dark curse that popped out of the air.
“Can you two stop making living here feel like a survival game?”
“No.”
“Nope!”
Gojo was ranting about how this was good practice and it was his duty as an upperclassman to teach his juniors. The whole nine yards of bull shit. Getou wasn’t much help in that he had his limbs extended to span across the entrance to the kitchen.
Although it would be ironic, Nanami really felt that the two wiggling worms on the ground were the ones in need of exorcism.