Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Izuku Midoriya, 6 years old, cried out in pain as explosion after explosion blinded him. All he had wanted to do was stop Kacchan from hurting that other kid! After all, what if someone from UA saw him? Then Kacchan’s chances of being a hero would be ruined! Izuku wondered if he would die here, with how painful explosion after explosion was. Later, Izuku would know that death might have been preferable.

X

Izuku Midoriya, 8 years old, flinched as his mom got up from the living room couch to scold him. He had gotten home after dark again and Momma hated when he did that. No matter the reason. Izuku nodded along to what she was saying, because Momma was always right. They both ignored the brand new bruises that littered Izuku’s arms and face.

X

Izuku Midoriya, 10 years old, stared at the harsh words on his desk. It wasn’t usually so bad, but it seemed that one of Izuku’s classmates had had a bad day. And because of that had encouraged the others to be just as cruel. He sighed and went to grab a washcloth at the front of the room. Not for the first time.

X

Izuku Midoriya, 12 years old, stopped in his tracks at the bright red on his desk. Spider Lilies. Oh. This was suicide baiting. As laughter filled the air at the sight of the greenete stopping, said greenete couldn’t help but think a horrid thought. Maybe I will.

X

Izuku Midoriya, only 14 years old, watched as his world fell around him.

He kept repeating the same sentence in his head, ‘You can’t be a hero’. Why? Because he didn’t have a stupid quirk. Izuku was weak, unevolved, a deku. Why did he even have this stupid dream in the first place?

It was hopeless. It always had been. Izuku sank to his knees as tears started falling. The tears only fell harder as Izuku recounted the experience to himself.

 He had been attacked by a villain made of sludge, the gross, green liquid had entered Izuku's lungs. He thought he would die, and was positive he had when he awoke to All Might slapping his face. All Might had saved him! Stupidly, Izuku grabbed onto his leg when the man was trying to leave. He ended up wasting all of the man's time, and had to see him deflate. It was a gruesome sight to see the awful injury that plagued the number 1 hero. Apparently, All Might could only do hero work for three hours max now. Even so, selfishly, that's when Izuku asked the question that had been in his head for years, but had already been answered more times than could be counted.

“Can somebody quirkless be a hero?”

And now Izuku was crying on a rooftop, of all places. The answer hadn't been surprising, expected, even. But it still sent Izuku to his knees. Not for the first time, he was tempted. Tempted to teeter on that edge, between life and death. Tempted to let himself fall, to finally meet death's sweet embrace. Tempted to leave behind this world of empty promises.

And maybe he would have done it.

But then- as he sat there on the rooftop staring hungrily at the edge, he heard it. He heard the all-to familiar explosions as he quickly stood up and started heading to the noise habitually. A villain fight.

Making his way out of the building and onto the street, Izuku heard the loud telltale noise that had littered his life ever since he could remember. He sped up. 

What if it was-no it couldn’t be. It wasn’t Kacchan. Please don’t be Kacchan.

As the greenete made his way to the commotion, he started wandering nearer to the alleyway, too distracted to notice. All he could focus on was the loud banging and screaming that was so easily tied to a villain attack. Izuku would know, after all he had gone scouting for villain attacks many times in his short life. All under the guise of wanting to observe other heroes so that when he became a hero, he could use their skills. What a stupid thought.

Izuku sped his walk a little more, almost breaking into a run. He had a bad feeling. Something wasn’t right.

Lo and behold, there really was something wrong besides the villain attacking off in the distance. That wrong thing was another villain. A villain that quickly pulled Izuku into an ally and swiftly put a knife to his throat. Great.

The screams and explosions faded into background noise, static, as Izuku focused on the fact that he was being attacked for the second time in a row. While another attack was happening. An attack that had sounded as if it had plenty of heroes, which meant that no heroes would be coming for Izuku. His breath quickened and he inhaled sharply at the attackers laugh.

“No worries kid.” The man spoke, a crazed sort of joy in his tone. “I only want your money. Why don’t you get your wallet out for me, and maybe I won’t kill you.”

Shaking, Izuku complied. Stupid. He couldn’t even defend himself from a lowlife thug, and he wanted to be a hero?

Swiftly, Izuku felt the cold leather of his wallet being snatched from his hand. He could feel the criminal shift his form so as to look at the contents, but the knife still stayed at his neck.

Izuku heard an appreciative hum come from the man as he searched. “Izuku Midoriya, huh? Well, Midoriya, seems we have a predicament. I need to leave and not be hunted by the police. Unfortunately, you know my face and voice. Can’t have that, can we?”

Izuku took a shaky breath, fear building up as he realized just what the criminal was implying. “I-I don’t kn-know your f-f-face! I c-can’t see you. I p-promise I w-won’t tell the c-cops what you s-sound like either!”

The man laughed. It was a scratchy, hoarse sound. “Sorry kid. But I can’t take any chances. I read on your ID that you were quirkless-so really, this is a blessing to you and the poor people that have to take care of you.”

Izuku's eyes widened as the knife pressed closer to his throat. This is it, he thought. This is how I die.

He could feel a cold, cold liquid start to climb down his neck as a brilliant pain erupted where the metal was touching his skin. Izuku's sight started blurring at the edges as the shallow cut began to become deeper and the hand pressing around his mouth tightened, muffling his scream.

Just when Izuku thought he would die though, suddenly the pressure keeping his mouth closed dissipated, the knife clattering to the floor uselessly as Izuku collapsed to grip at his still bleeding throat.

Izuku felt a presence behind him, but couldn’t bring himself to look. He was gasping for air and desperately trying to staunch the blood flow. His vision was blurry. If Izuku hadn’t died from an important vein being cut, then he would certainly die of blood loss.

As he gasped, there was an annoyed sounding sigh behind him. The unknown person behind Izuku moved closer as the latter cried.

“Hey kid,” the presence said, leaning down beside Izuku. “I really only came here to get rid of an annoyance, but since I’m here now, you might as well come with me to get patched up a bit.”

Weakly, Izuku nodded. He was silent now, not having the strength to speak. All he could do was hold his throat desperately and hope whoever this was could help. Izuku didn’t have time to think about stranger danger, he was dying!

A few moments later, Izuku felt something in front of him. It was just a slight pull, not enough to pull him or anything else in that direction, but enough to be noticeable. Izuku looked up and met bloodshot red eyes surrounded by white-blue hair. The man gestured for Izuku to follow him as he stepped through a foggy purple mist.

Izuku should have been hesitant, but he couldn’t think straight. So he got up shakily, and followed. 

Stepping through the mist felt like going through a cold, light fog. It was disarming, Izuku guessed. But it felt nice and comforting. Something Izuku had felt very little of in his quirkless life.

When he felt the mist dissipate, Izuku found himself in a bar. It was simple and modest, not in the best condition but it didn’t really matter. What mattered was that there was a couch that Izuku immediately collapsed on. He could hear chatter in the background, but couldn’t process it. 

Izuku didn’t even process the slight dip of the couch as the red-eyed man sat beside him. He did, however, startle when he felt a cold finger press against his throat as a gauze was spread on the cut. Soon bandages were pressing against the sensitive skin and keeping blood from overflowing more than it already had.

Izuku's breathing slowed as the pain dissipated and he was no longer in danger of dying. Slowly, awareness creeped back and Izuku blinked the tears out of his eyes, wiping them with his sleeve. He hated how much of a crybaby he was, but, supposed that it was warranted in this situation.

Looking around, he observed his surroundings in more detail. All he could establish before was that he was in a bar, but now that he looked, he could see that there sat a tv in front of him. Behind, barstools and a counter were obscuring a misty figure, likely the one to make the portal that brought him here.

The figure was tall, with sharp, bright yellow eyes. The figure had no eyebrows, mouth, or any obvious features. He wore a suit with a gray waistcoat and black tie. He had a white dress shirt coupled with black pants. Overall, the man definitely looked like a bartender.

Shifting his gaze, Izuku was met with a sharp red glare. Beside him, a tall, pale man with cracked lips and irritated skin sat. His hair was long and shaggy, a light blue tone that complimented his annoyed red eyes. His lips were curved in a scowl. The man wore a lazy black sweatshirt and pants and seemed to be scratching his neck irritably.

The annoyed man huffed. “Well? Aren’t you gonna thank me for saving your life or whatever?”

“O-oh! S-sorry!” Izuku cried apologetically. “Th-thank you. I wouldn’t have s-survived if not f-for you.”

Izuku looked down nervously, before just deciding to say what was on his mind. “Wh-why did you save me? You d-don’t know m-me a-and had n-no reason to.” Izuku said with confusion. “Not that I’m not th-thankful! B-but…” Izuku trailed off with a flinch, looking away like a coward.

The man sighed, his scowl deepening. “ That’s what I was hoping you’d tell me! I have no idea why I bothered to help you. I just felt like it I guess.”

That… was weird. Why would anyone feel like helping him ? Not even Kacchan helped Izuku and they had known each other for years! Izuku didn’t even know this guy's name. Oh. He should probably ask about that.

“O-ok. What’s y-your n-name?” He managed to get out.

The man with blue hair rolled his eyes but answered. “Tomura Shigaraki. That-”

He said, pointing to the misty figure behind the counter. “Is Kurogiri.” 

Izuku nodded, shifting uncomfortably. “I-I’m Izuku Midoriya.”

They sat in an awkward silence for a couple of moments before Izuku decided to break it. “S-so… back there y-you said th-that you w-wanted to get rid of an a-annoyance. W-what does th-that m-mean?”

Shigaraki shifted, “ that means he got on my last nerves and I couldn’t stand to look at his stupidly smug face anymore. I wanted him gone and so I killed him. Duh.”

Shigaraki said it so casually, like he was speaking about the weather. Izuku almost didn’t catch the wording, but he did. He went rigid, eyes widening. Izuku was in a bar with murderers. His breath quickened and he desperately tried to catch it. Izuku couldn’t let these people in on how nervous he was. Instead, he chose to change the topic to something he was interested in. More familiar territory.

“O-oh. Di-did you use your q-quirk for that?” He asked, trying not to let his fear show.

Shigarakis' eyes narrowed, as if he was suspicious, but Izuku didn’t know why. Despite his apparent suspicion, Shigaraki answered. “Ya I used my quirk. It’s called decay.” And that was all he had to say for Izuku's original fear to completely disappear faced with a new quirk to analyze.

“Oh wow that’s SO COOL! Can you decay things to a certain state or do you decay it out of existence immediately? Can you control the spread of your quirk or does it decay the whole? How do you activate it? Can you choose when it activates? What would happen if you decayed the ground? Would you go into quirk exhaustion? Could you-“

Suddenly Izuku slapped a hand over his mouth, realizing what he had done. Stupid. Why would he ask about quirks? Of course he would start asking questions! And Izuku knew what people did when he asked questions. They got annoyed. And nothing good happened when people were annoyed at Izuku.

His eyes widened and he stared in fear at Shigaraki. But, surprisingly, the man didn’t look angry. Instead he looked… contemplative? But what about?

 Next thing he knew, Izuku was muttering a string of unintelligible words. He heard someone clearing their throat, and soon Izuku was slapping his hands over his mouth again. He was being so dumb today!

Shigaraki raised an eyebrow. Izuku tensed. “Why are you cutting yourself off?” The man asked the teen, instead of saying the thousands of insults that Izuku was sure would have been the first thing that was said.

Shigaraki waited expectantly, and Izuku stared at him with apprehension. Why was he even asking? Was the man trying to bait Izuku only so that he could hurt him later? It didn’t matter, Izuku would just make sure not to become too attached… even though he was horrible at that.

Realizing he was taking too long to answer, Izuku cut his thoughts off before deciding to respond truthfully. “Ah-um… m-most people get r-really a-annoyed when I b-bother them with unnecessary q-questions. Th-they s-say that I-I’m trying t-to c-claim that I kn-know their q-quirk b-better than th-them. Which I’m not! I-I promise!”

Izuku flinched at his involuntary stutter, worried it would bother the older man. But, thankfully, it didn’t seem to. Instead, the man was staring at him with thinly veiled confusion. He seemed to be about to say something, before shaking his head and gesturing to the misty figure behind the counter.

“Kurogiri’s quirk is called warp gate. What do you think of that?”

Izuku's eyes immediately gained an excited glint as he remembered the portal that he had passed through to get here. He turned toward Kurogiri.

“Can you make a portal anywhere? Do you have to know the coordinates? Or do you have to have been there before? Can you teleport yourself? Or only other people? What’s the limit on how many people you can teleport? How many gates can you open at once? Can you change the size of them? Can you teleport inanimate objects? Can you only teleport things to you?”

The next thing the other occupants of the bar knew, Izuku had a notebook in hand and was excitedly writing in it. This, of course, did nothing to slow the relentless torrent of questions.

“Can I see that notebook?” Shigaraki cut the boy off, he didn’t really want to bust his eardrums by listening to the never ending questions. They weren’t even directed at him this time! And besides, the man was admittedly curious.

Izuku snapped out of his daze. “O-oh, s-sure I g-guess…” He said, obviously uneasy.

Shigaraki took the book out of the boy's hands carefully, he didn’t want to disintegrate it. Slowly, he started flipping through the contents, getting more and more interested as he went on. Each entry was detailed, and it was impressive work- especially for someone so young. As he reached the end, Shigaraki looked away from the book and to Izuku.

“You have an intelligence quirk, right? That could be useful for my party…”

The man trailed off and Izuku flinched. It didn’t go unnoticed by Shigaraki. “N-no I-I’m actually… quirkless.”

Izuku waited for the sneer, the angry shout about how he had tricked the man into saving him. But it never came. Instead-

“Really? That’s surprising.”

And that was it. It was like Shigaraki had just murdered someone and said, ‘ok’. Actually… Shigaraki had done that. Maybe Izuku should be more worried. Ah… but Izuku was a naturally trusting person.

“You-you don’t care?” He asked, completely bewildered.

“Nah. It’s not like you can’t be useful in other ways.” Izuku chose to ignore the fact that the man seemed to have plans for him. “Maybe this is why I felt like helping you, I’ve been needing a rogue.”

Izuku’s eyes widened as tears gathered in them. “You-you’d really want me on y-your team?”

Shigaraki scowled. “That’s what I said. It's getting late. I have a feeling you won’t want to stay here, even though you probably should.” The last part was more of a mumble and Izuku chose to ignore it. Wow, doing a lot of ignoring today. “Here’s my number. Kurogiri will take you back to where we found you. Call when you're free to meet up again. Just text your location and Kurogiri will pick you up.” Izuku took it gratefully, excitement obvious.

He stood as Shigaraki stood and his eyes snapped to where a purple portal was opening.

“Th-thanks for everything!” Izuku said as he passed through the mist.

And surprisingly, he could hear Shigaraki mumble a ‘sure’. And it wasn’t vicious or annoyed!

That day, Izuku went home after dark to an annoyed mother and a cold dinner. But his phone was one number lighter and his heart ached just a little less. He was wanted! For now, Izuku would just forget the fact that it was a supposed murderer who wanted him.

Chapter Text

At a bar somewhere, sat a pale man who was scratching his neck, along with a misty figure. Both were looking towards a small tv that sat in a corner of the room. It read ‘audio only’ and had been on for a while now, ever since a certain boy with a green complexion had come. By now, the boy was gone. But the man on the other side of the screen still had some words to say.

“So, Sensei? What did you think of him?” Tomura asked. He had helped Midoriya on a whim, and still wasn’t sure if it was a good choice to let him leave. But hopefully Sensei would know how to proceed.

“I think that this is a good lesson on leadership. I was impressed with the questions he asked Kurogiri and it seems he would be a good addition to your team. It was a good choice to bring him here, and while his quirk status might make things harder for the boy, it can be easily fixed. You did good.” The man on the other side of the screen, Sensei, answered.

Tomura glowed with pride, a grin coming onto his face. Sensei's praise was always the most Important to him and when it was given, Tomura knew that he wasn’t lying.

“Allowing him to leave could have been bad, but I have a feeling that he will contact you again. So it’s a forgivable mistake. Hopefully, he will trust you for that at least..” Sensei criticized. “This can be a new challenge for you. Convert him to our side and he will be a valuable asset in the long run.”

Tomura blinked. Sensei usually didn’t care much for the people he brought, though they were only lowlife thugs. Sensei would approve of them, yes, but he wasn’t ever really interested in them and only cared about their combat ability. But Sensei seemed to think this boy would be important not only for their immediate mission, but for future endeavors.

“Why is he so important?” Tomura asked with a hint of annoyance. Out of all the people he had presented to Sensei, it was this one who he had had to save that caught Sensei's attention. Sure, his notes were interesting, they looked like video game stats. but could they really be helpful?

Sensei sighed. “Tomura, it is always important to have a plan for anything you do. Judging off the questions he asked, Midoriya has a fast mind and a fascination with quirks. I noticed he had a notebook, why don’t you fill me in on what the contents were?”

“It was just a bunch of stuff about heroes, he wrote their strengths and weaknesses and stuff about their quirk.”

Sensei hummed before answering. “You say he was able to figure out their weaknesses? That could be useful in figuring out how to kill those heroes. And if his mind is indeed as fast as I assume, and I’m usually correct, then he could figure out anyones weaknesses and where to hit mid-battle. He could help you plan attacks and smooth out the kinks in your plans. But, of course, it’s your team. If you don’t want Midoriya to join then he won’t.”

Tomura stopped scratching at his neck as he contemplated. Did he want this newbie on his team? “We’ll see.” He huffed.

xXx

It hit Izuku the next day just what he had done. He had gotten the number of a villain! And he had put it in his phone! And he hadn’t deleted it!

When Izuku woke up, it was the weekend thankfully, he had just about three panic attacks in the span of a minute. He had almost died! When he finally calmed himself down, Izuku had gotten his phone out in order to sever all connections to the murderer. But, for some reason, he just couldn’t.

Izuku tried telling himself how awful those people must be to be able to kill people, had tried telling himself that he was better off not talking to them. But every time he tried, all Izuku could do was remember how Shigaraki had saved his life. How the man hadn’t told Izuku to shut up even once! He kept comparing it to how Kacchan had told him to kill himself.

Safe to say, Izuku didn’t delete the number.

He felt guilty, but elected not to mention his outing. It seems he had been at the bar for longer than he thought. Izuku had likely been unconscious for most of his time there due to his throat.

Which, speaking of, needed the bandages changed. They were an ugly shade of red and the wound hurt badly from moving in his sleep. It was nothing Izuku couldn’t handle though.

Izuku got up from his bed and went to his bathroom. There was a cupboard under the sink that he kept most of his medical supplies in for when the other kids got physical. Izuku had had to take some money from his mom’s wallet in order to buy the supplies and still felt guilty about it. But, he supposed, it was cheaper than going to the hospital. His mom hadn’t noticed. 

Izuku grabbed some bandages and a washcloth as he stood up to undo the bloody bandages around his throat. They were wrapped very tightly, almost uncomfortably so. It made sense, a slit throat should have killed him.

Before he removed the bandages, he realized that he didn’t actually know how to deal with this. Izuku had never imagined that he would have to.

Grabbing his phone Izuku looked up how to care for a slit throat. After a few minutes of searching, he finally found a link that didnt just tell him to call suicide hotline.

After reading that he took a deep breath, set his phone down, and got to work on taking off the sticky bandages.

With them off, it was the first time Izuku had looked at the wound. His throat was covered in dried blood and it looked like the skin was completely separated. Immediately, Izuku threw up, only just managing to move to the toilet. It wasn’t the first time he had seen a gruesome wound, but this one was particularly bad coupled with the fact that it could have caused Izuku to ascend to heaven… It was not a pleasant sight.

After puking up the remainder of his dinner, Izuku set to work on cleaning the wound. Carefully, he wetted the washcloth and dabbed at his throat. It was painful, but nothing on what Izuku had gone through, so he managed. After the blood was gone, Izuku grabbed a bar of soap and carefully scrubbed the wound. Then he washed the soap out.

With the blood gone it was easier to look at. There was still a mean gash, and it obviously wasn’t healed, but Izuku didn’t throw up. He wrapped it up tightly and after he was done, Izuku just stood there for a moment. He felt like puking again just looking at the bandages.

Izuku was so lucky. It seemed throughout his life this was the one time when Lady Luck had chosen to bless him. 

Everything in Izuku told him that he should be dead, but he wasn’t. The cut was very thin, but another second and it would have been too deep for Izuku to be saved. Thankfully, the criminal who had attacked him hadn’t cut his arteries or windpipe. Which is why he wasn’t dead. Those were the important things, but still Izuku would have probably choked on his own blood if not for Shigaraki.

Which brought up another problem. Shigaraki wanted to meet again. And while a part of Izuku rejoiced at the idea of being wanted, he had to remind himself that Shigaraki had killed someone right in front of him. Even if Izuku had been in too much pain to actually see the dead body.

Sighing, Izuku left his room to make breakfast. His mom went to work early in the morning, before Izuku even got up for school. She always forgot to make breakfast for him because of that.

Inko worked as a nurse at a local hospital. Her work meant she had to leave early in the morning and couldn’t come home till late at night. Whenever she came home she would come into Izuku’s room to make sure he was also home. She hated when he stayed out past dark, but he was allowed to do whatever he wanted during the day. After checking on him, Inko would make dinner for both of them (Izuku wasn’t allowed in the kitchen when she did this). She would leave his portion on the table and then go to her room.

Izuku wasn’t allowed in her room, so he didn’t actually know what she did. He did think it was a little unfair that he couldn’t go in her room but he wasn’t allowed to lock his door. But it was whatever. It’s not like Izuku had anything to hide. Well, except his analysis books. His mom always seemed to get annoyed whenever he talked about wanting to be a hero, so he didn’t mention it in the small amount of time he actually got to see her.

When Izuku got home late last night, she was angry. His mom had yelled at him about how she ‘had rules for a reason’ and ‘if he couldn’t even follow those then maybe the other people were right’. It had hurt. His mom hadn’t been that mad with him in a long time. It was his fault. His mom was right, Izuku had very few rules he had to follow at home ( get home before dark, never go in Inko’s room, don’t lock doors, and be quiet) and if he couldn’t even do those then what could he do?

Izuku sighed to himself as he quickly made an easy breakfast. Just some rice and miso soup. Going back to his room, Izuku scrolled through hero posts to pass time. He didn’t exactly have any friends to talk to and didn’t want people to ask questions about his bandaged throat, so he didn’t go out.

Hours later, he heard his door open. Perking up with a blinding smile, he greeted his mom.

“How was your day?” He asked, putting his phone down.

“Fine.” She mumbled looking him over. Her eyes seemed to catch on his bandages for just a second, but Izuku must have been imagining things because she turned around after that and left the room, closing the door behind. 

It was always a bit of a surprise when his mom didn’t notice Izuku’s injuries, as she was a nurse. But Izuku graced himself with the same excuse every time it happened. She must just be tired from work. That was why she never asked about his day or how his friends were, or if he even had friends (the answer was no). She was just tired.

After that Izuku started scrolling again. Eventually he got up to check if food was done, (he would sit in the living room and talk with her or simply watch but she always sent him away, calling him a distraction.) and ate it happily.

After dinner he worked on his analysis some, even though it hurt. He would never be a hero. All Might had said it himself! But Izuku still still watched hero fight after hero fight and started a new page for Mt.Lady.

Eventually, Izuku found a video of the villain fight that he had missed after being pulled into an alley. And sure enough, it was Kacchan. Izuku knew he recognized those explosions. As he watched, his nerves rose. Why weren’t the heroes doing anything? 

Just when it seemed like Kacchan was going to die, a girl with a brown bob and pink cheeks rushed past the crowd. She reached her hand into the slime and grabbed onto Kacchans hand. 

Immediately Kacchan started floating. The villain, caught off guard, lost his hold on Kacchan. The girl scrambled back into the crowd and soon enough all might was punching the villain- the same one that had attacked Izuku, he realized- and changing the weather in doing so!

All might grabbed onto Kacchan and Izuku noticed the girl give a relieved smile as she put her hands together and muttered something that the camera didn’t catch. Kacchan stopped trying to float out of All Might's grip, so it seemed the girl had released her quirk.

The video ended there, but Izuku replayed it. As he did so, he saw a skinny man in the background. Familiar blond hair caught Izuku's attention as he saw All Might in his skinny form simply watching Kacchan die! If it wasn’t for that girl, Izuku didn’t know if All Might would have acted.

There was an unsettling feeling in his stomach as Izuku thought that.

Izuku could have fretted over how he had caused the villain to escape All Mights clutches, how he had used up all of All Mights time. And he did feel bad! But what Izuku thought about the most was how all those heroes had just watched . 

Apparently they were waiting for a hero with a more ‘suitable’ quirk. But what if that person never showed up? Would they have just let Kacchan die? And All Might may have used up his time, but surely he could have done something ! Obviously he still had strength left because, in the end, he had saved Kacchan. So why didn’t he do it earlier?

The rest of Izuku's weekend was filled with questions over how the heroes acted. He tried to dismiss their actions, but Izuku’s questioning brain wouldn’t let him. Next thing he knew, he found himself looking at civilian casualties and collateral damage.

It was… a lot. Most hero’s seemed to completely ignore who or what was in the way of their next punch. All in the sake of capturing some purse snatcher.

There were some heroes, Izuku found, that caused more civilian deaths than the criminals they attempted to capture!

And that was another thing- they called everyone a villain. 

The legal definition of a villain was: people who use their Quirks to commit crimes, cause destruction, and potentially put innocent lives at stake.

If some no-name grabbed a candy bar from a gas station and forgot to pay, a hero would come along, use their most powerful move, and capture the treacherous ‘villain’.

That hero would be praised and the police would ignore the fact that he had used excessive force to hurt a criminal. And Izuku wasn’t exaggerating! That was a literal situation that had happened before.

Izuku found that the man who was captured explained that it was an accident, and he was freed. But the ‘hero’ wasn’t even scolded!

 Evidently, heroes were allowed to do whatever they wanted as long as it was ‘in the name of good’. Izuku was smart, even if he would never admit it, and he had learned how to hack when he was young. What Izuku found shattered his image of heroes. He wasn’t good enough to hack any big names, but some of the less popular and younger heroes had less than secure security.

There was quirk trafficking, abuse, discrimination, and so much more. It was honestly awful what you could get away with by saying you were a ‘hero’. It was unsettling to know that the people you were supposed to entrust your life to were simply criminals with a license.

To combat this newfound knowledge, Izuku tried looking for good. He looked into the police force, but all he could see was overworked people who had to let half the people who were captured go not because they were innocent, but because prisons were simply too full to hold all the different types of quirks. Quirk suppressants were expensive and the caging required for powerhouses was hard to acquire. The police force didn’t have the funds.

And the ones who funded the police couldn’t care less. It seemed that most of the government's money went to the HPSC, which in return went to hero schools, to raise more obedient soldiers. The HPSC also sent paychecks to all the heroes depending on how many ‘villains’ they put in jail.

A lot of the remaining money the government had went to funding Tartarus. And while yes, that was needed, it seemed like a bit too much money. It was only a small portion left that the government used to split between its officials, police, schooling, and whatever else they were responsible for.

And so, by the time Izuku went back to school, he knew a lot more than he wanted to.

xXx

It was a normal Monday. Izuku had woken up, gotten dressed (he wore a turtleneck under his uniform to hide the bandages), made breakfast, gone to school, been made fun of, sat in the bathroom for lunch (he didn’t actually eat, Izuku had learned a while ago not to bring lunch to school), and finally it was nearing the end of the day.

The bell rang, and Izuku quickly got his belongings together. Best to get out of the classroom as soon as possible. When he had everything, he sprinted away. By the time he stopped, he was well on his way home. It was a good day, he thought, sometimes he couldn’t even make it out of the classroom before mean jeers were thrown his way.

Most of the students didn’t try to follow him past the gates, as they had places to be.

Most students, except for Kacchan.

Kacchan and Izuku lived near each other, and so they took the same route home. Meaning that Kacchan could easily attack Izuku outside of school. But he only did that on his bad days. Suddenly, Izuku felt a hand grab onto his shoulder.

Oh ya. The sludge incident.

Freezing up, Izuku turned to look at the angry glare of his childhood friend. Kacchan looked even angrier than normal, which was not a good thing. He had been a bit crueler than usual in class, so Izuku probably should have realized that Kacchan would be upset that he had been attacked, after all, Kacchan was going to be a hero.

“Deku. What do you think you're doing?” He asked. 

“G-going h-home?” Izuku answered, but it sounded more like a question.

Kacchans grip strengthened. “You saw the video, didn’t you? Your a stupid nerd of course you did. I knew you would have watched it even if you weren’t actually at the fight.”

Izuku gulped. Why did Kacchan care? “Y-ya I w-watched I-it.” He said, hoping that he would make it home in one piece.

Kacchan’s glare somehow managed to become even more intense than it had been. “I’m not weak. That girl didn’t save me ‘cus I didn’t need saving. Don’t think you're better than me just because I was attacked. You're useless so don’t forget it.”

Izuku flinched at the words, they stung. But Izuku knew that what was to come would hurt much more. There had only been two other times that Kacchan had been this angry. He usually didn’t join in too much on the physical attacks. Luckily, both times had been when they were younger, when Kacchan wasn’t as strong.

Izuku wondered how much he would hurt now that Kacchan was older.

Chapter Text

Pain.

Pain was all Izuku could process as explosion after explosion blinded him.

Kacchan had dragged him into an out-of-the way ally, that’s how Izuku had known that this would hurt. When Izuku tried to struggle, Kacchan only gripped tighter and became angrier.

What seemed like a century later to Izuku, Kacchan finally got bored, done with his punching bag and relieved of his anger.

He had left Izuku burnt, bruised, and broken in the ally. Specifically Izuku’s hands. Izuku had tried clawing at Kacchan and it resulted in his hands being blown up multiple times. Now they were red and bleeding.

Izuku sat, leaning against the ally wall, for a while before finally he managed to bear the pain and reach for his phone. The greenete let out a pained gasp as his fingers closed around the cold, cracked device. It had seen it’s fair share of bullying, but miraculously still worked.

He couldn’t see, due to the blinding flashes of Kacchans quirk, so he had to rely on muscle memory to navigate his contacts, few as they were. Izuku’s hands shook the entire time.

From what he remembered, Izuku only had four contacts: Kacchan, Aunt Mitsuki, Uncle Masaru, and mom. So it should have been easy to click on his mothers contact and ask her to help him. He knew it would bother her, but Izuku really had no choice.

Clicking on where Izuku’s mom’s contact should have been (the top contact, because Izuku had added her after the Bakugos), Izuku shakily tapped where he hoped the call button was. There was no way Izuku could type with his damaged hands and eyes.

Desperately, Izuku prayed to every god he could think of to allow her to pick up, even if those gods had never helped him before. After waiting a few seconds, Izuku was sure that it was a lost cause. Tears began to cluster in his already wet eyes as the feeling of hopelessness resurfaced, suffocating Izuku.

And then Izuku heard the line pick up.

“ What?” A raspy voice asked, not attempting to hide his annoyance.

 Izuku flinched, that wasn’t mom. “I-I-I’m sor-sorry,” He whispered, not having the strength to talk any louder. “B-but w-who I-is th-this? I-I n-need m-my m-m-mom. P-please.”

There was a shuffling on the other line, “ this is Shigaraki. Your the kid who was mugged?”

Izuku started, he had forgotten that Shigaraki had given him his number! He wasn’t sure what to do, but his strength was rapidly decreasing so he didn’t really have a choice… Shigaraki had said that he wanted to meet up again, right?

In a barely audible mumble, Izuku gave the location of the convenience store he knew was around here somewhere, and then promptly passed out without hanging up.

xXx

Tomura was… worried?

He had just been playing a new video game when, surprisingly, his phone had rung. Tomura didn’t have many contacts, courtesy of being isolated from other kids as a boy, so it was understandable that he jumped and managed to disintegrate the controller he was holding.

When Tomura had picked up the phone, he was already annoyed because of his controller. So it only made him even more annoyed when he saw that the number was unknown. Tomura picked it up anyway though, because if this person managed to find his number, then they had to be of some importance.

“What?” His scratchy voice hissed as he answered the call. He had lost a controller for this.

‘ I-I-Im s-sorry, b-but wh-who is this? I-I n-need m-my m-m-mom. P-p-please.”

With a start, Tomura recognized the voice of the young teen he had given his number to in an effort to recruit. Sure, Sensei had said that the boy would call, but so soon? Tomura was confused.

He got up, heading towards the bar where Kurogiri was. He had a bad feeling. The kid didn’t seem to know who he was, but why would he not remember?

“This is Shigaraki,” he said. “You're the kid who was mugged, Midoriya?”

He heard a small, barely audible, gasp on the other side of the line. Either in pain or surprise. Wait-pain? Why did he sound hurt? Who had hurt him? Why was he hurt?

Nervously-which was an emotion Tomura didn’t usually feel for others- he waited for the kid to say something else.

But he didn’t say anything else. Besides a location that Tomura could barely hear.

The younger one didn't hang up. But with the silence Tomura was getting as answers, he might as well have.

Quickly, Tomura rushed into the bar, demanding that Kurogiri open a portal to the location the kid had whispered. Tomura prayed he had heard right. Wait-why did he care?

As a very startled Kurogiri opened the portal, Tomura quickly rushed inside it and found himself in a desolate area, right in front of a convenience store. He made his way to the door and quickly opened it, searching the store. But the boy was nowhere to be seen.

Panic flooded Tomura’s gut. Now in a full sprint, he ran out of the store and started looking around the area. There was no Midoriya.

Tomura began scratching at his neck, hard. Where was the boy? He looked around again, desperately trying to find any trace of Midoriya. He caught sight of an alleyway, out of the way and unassuming.

Tomura felt his eyes widen as he stopped scratching at his neck to make a desperate sprint to the ally. Inside, he found what he was looking for.

Midoriya laid in the alley, passed out. His phone was beside him with the call still active. His hands were a bloody mess and he had burns all over, bruises littered his body. Mainly around his jaw. As if someone had tried to prevent him from speaking. 

Generally speaking, it wasn’t that bad, save for his hands. Nowhere  near as bad as the last time they had met. But oh was it horrifying to see the young boy passed out in the alley all beat up. Tomura started panicking. Vision blurry and thoughts haywire. Why was he reacting like this? It’s not like he’d never seen someone bruised and burnt before. Had been the instigator a few times too. But for some reason this rubbed him in all the wrong ways.

Tomura steadied his breathing, still shaky but acceptable. He got out his phone and ended the call that had been neglected. Quickly, he texted Kurogiri his coordinates with no explanation. Kurogiri must be very confused.

When the portal appeared, he easily picked up Midoriya and, as an afterthought, Midoriya's phone, careful not to touch either with all five fingers. Why hadn’t he thought to bring his gloves? Oh ya, ‘cause he was panicking.

When he appeared in the bar, Kurogiri looked poised to batter him with questions, but refrained when he saw the limp boy in his charge’s arms. Tomura was too shell shocked to speak, but Kurogiri seemed to understand. When Tomura looked up from putting Midoriya on the couch (for the second time, both times the boy was bloody. Great.), Kurogiri had a first aid kit and handed it to Tomura.

Tomura started patching up the burns, slathering them with burn cream and bandages. Gosh, how do you get burned this much? Was the kid mugged again?

When he was done wrapping up Midoriya's burns, Tomura got up from his crouched position on the floor to slouch on the couch next to the former. Surprisingly, the kid didn’t take up the entire couch. Wow, he was really short.

Tomura, with a huff, grabbed his phone and started playing some app games. What? It’s not like he cared about Midoriya, Tomura wasn’t just going to sit there bored while the kid slept. It’s not like he kept constantly flickering his eyes to the limp body in hopes that he would wake up. Nope. Tomura just didn’t do stuff like that.

An hour and 27 minutes later (and no, Tomura was not keeping track of every minute that passed. Definitely not.), Midoriya finally woke up. Good. Tomura was getting bored. That was the only reason he immediately put his phone down and diverted his full attention to the boy. ( The only reason. He wasn’t worried, Kurogiri!)

Midoriya sat up with a groan, blearily looking at Tomura before recognition entered his gaze. The younger's eyes widened.

“ Dang it. ” He said in a whisper, before letting out a string of apologies that somehow didn’t leave him breathless. How does someone talk for that long without air!?!

“Shut up kid.” Tomura cut him off with a totally real glare. “What the heck happened anyway? Why were you so burnt?”

Midoriya shut his mouth with an audible click, then flinched when he realized how bruised his jaw was. “Sorry! I-I d-didn’t m-mean t-t-to b-be a b-b-bother. I was t-trying to c-call my m-mom, b-but I pressed your n-number by accident! I swear, I d-didn’t mean to c-contact y-you!”

Tomura honestly thought that his head was about to pop off with how afraid he looked. Why was he so freaking scared? Tomura hadn’t done anything to invoke that kind of fear yet. Maybe he should lessen his glares?

“Calm down kid.” Tomura said instead of his millions of questions. Midoriya looked like he was about to have a panic attack. Actually… he may already be there. “Why don’t you have some water and a snack? Then we can talk.” Hopefully a snack and drink will be enough to calm Midoriya down. Otherwise, Tomura had no idea what to do. He better not cry…

A few moments later, Tomura found himself in the kitchen grabbing a pack of cheez-its and a glass of water.

When he went back to the main room, Midoriya looked like he had calmed down somewhat. That was good. Tomura lazily sat next to him and handed him the cheez-its and water, waiting for the boy to finish his water before questioning him. I should be delicate with the questioning, he still looks nervous.

“So, why did I find you beat to a pulp in an ally?” Tomura said bluntly. What the heck? That wasn’t delicate!

Thankfully, Midoriya didn’t cry. But he did startle, jumping a foot off the couch and then flinching when he processed what Tomura had said.

“S-sorry” Midoriya said again. What was with him and apologizing? “M-my f-friend got m-mad at me. I d-didn’t m-mean to bother y-you.” He looked away, as if in shame.

Friend? Tomura wondered, he’d never had a friend but was pretty sure that ‘friends’ don’t beat each other up because of an argument. “Why was he mad at you?”

“U-um, he, well, h-he wan-will be! A hero… and he w-was a-attacked and c-couldn’t d-defeat t-the v-villain. H-he had to b-be s-saved.”

So it wasn’t even Midoriya's fault that the brat was angry? Who was this ‘friend’? 

“So he was mad at you and hurt you for no reason.” Tomura said in a way that wouldn’t betray his frustrated feelings. He hated bullies.

“N-no! K-Kacchan w-would n-never hurt s-someone w-without r-reason! I d-deserved I-it!” 

Tomura raised his eyebrows at the younger. “You don’t ‘deserve’ to be beaten up because somebody wants to let off steam. That sounds like a bully.”

Midoriya’s eyes widened as he flailed his hands around his face. “Y-you d-don’t understand! K-Kacchans going to be a hero! H-he isn’t a b-bully!” His rejection sounded frail even to Tomura. And that was saying something, as Tomura had tantrums all the time without sound reasoning.

“Give me one reason that this ‘Kacchan’ isn’t a bully.”

“H-he’s g-going to b-be a h-hero?“ Midoriya flinched.

“That doesn’t count and you know it”

“W-well h-he was t-told his entire l-life th-that w-what he was d-doing was o-ok!”

Tomura sneered. So this had been happening for years. “14 is old enough for a conscience to come in. He would have known that what he was doing was at least a little wrong. Stop defending him.”

“B-but-“ Tomura raised an eyebrow, and Midoriya deflated.

“If he’s been harming you for years, not only is that bullying, but if it’s as physical as this, it’s illegal. ‘Kacchan’ isn’t a hero. He’s an abuser.”

Midoriya didn’t look convinced, and had gone a little pale, but Tomura didn’t have the energy for this. Why couldn’t Midoriya see that he was being bullied? “Whatever. Just think about that. I’m bored, do you want to play a video game?”

Hesitantly, Midoriya nodded, and Tomura got up to grab a game. With practiced ease he put Super Smash Bros on the tv and nabbed two controllers, for himself and Midoriya.

They played for hours. Midoriya was awful, but got better the more they played. Tomura still won everything. Despite how Midoriya had no idea how to play, it was still fun for Tomura to game with someone else for once. He wouldn’t be against doing it again.

Midoriya’s excessive mumbling and Tomura’s maniacal laughter was cut off when Kurogiri came into view.

“Young master, it appears to be getting late. Midoriya would probably like to get home now, we don’t want to keep his mother waiting.” Behind Tomura, Midoriya flinched at the reminder of his mom. Nobody noticed.

Tomura scowled, but got up with Midoriya at his heels. “Midoriya, would you mind telling me your address?” Kurogiri asked.

Midoriya shot Kurogiri a kind smile as he recited his address. His eyes widened when the misty man created an equally misty portal to, presumably, his house. Midoriya looked like he wanted to ask a billion questions, but refrained.

“Hey Midoriya,” Tomura said, catching the greenete’s attention. “Come back soon. I need a player two for a lot of my games, even if you suck.

Midoriya looked surprised, but bounced back quickly with a blinding grin. “Of course! I had fun, if you’re ok with me coming over again, I’d love to!”

“Good.” Tomura said simply. “Bye, Midoriya.”

Midoriya stood there for a second with a contemplative expression. He seemed to come to a decision then, “Izuku.” 

“What?” Tomura said with confusion.

“Y-you can call me Izuku. I-if you w-want to.” The boy looked away nervously. “I-it’s j-just that you w-were n-nice to m-me e-even when you k-knew I w-was q-quirkless. A-and you h-helped me t-twice.”

Tomura blinked, confusion making itself known. He was allowed to call Midoriya by his given name? Was this what it was like to have a friend? Either way, Tomura… liked it. “Sure, and I guess you can call me Tomura. You should get going now.”

Izuku brightened with enough light to rival the sun. “Ok! B-bye Tomura!” He then walked through the portal, still smiling.

Kurogiri closed the portal with ease before turning to Tomura with crescent shaped eyes, excitement radiating from him.

“Don’t. Say. A. Word.” Tomura growled.

“ I wouldn’t dream of it .” 

Chapter Text

Ochako grunted as she lifted the weight over her head, All Might spotting her. He was surprisingly strong, even in his skinny form. She only had a few more reps to get through, but it was hard, grueling work. She felt the sweat slip down her head as she tried to keep her breathing steady. This is why I didn’t exercise much before.

She had been training, with All Might as a mentor, for around a month now. Ever since her rather eventful trip to Musutafu.

Ochako had been visiting in order to look around the area and find an apartment to rent, in case she got into UA like she hoped. Her parents had suggested it so that she could become familiar with the area. It was flattering how confident they were that Ochako would get into her dream school.

She had been merely looking around the shops, when she heard a commotion nearby. Curious, Ochako looked to see what was making the noise. It was a villain attack, nothing out of the ordinary in such a big city as Musutafu, so why were so many people loitering? Wouldn’t it have been taken care of by now? Or were the heroes just that popular?

She walked closer and pushed through the crowd to get a better look. It was easy due to her small frame. 

Standing in a circle surrounding the villain were multiple heroes. They were shouting something about how their quirks weren’t suited for this situation. 

Looking at the villain, it made sense why they would think that. Green, slimy sludge with nothing tangible except for his eyes, was suffocating an ash blond boy around her age. The boy was using his quirk, something to do with fire, to try to escape the villain, but it only made it harder for the heroes to help him. There was nothing they could do in this situation!

Ochako’s observations were stopped when she met the red eyes of the boy. He looked so scared! Suddenly, she realized that while the heroes could do nothing, Ochako could! Next thing she knew, Ochako was running towards the villain. She reached her hand into the cold, icky sludge, before pulling it out the second she made contact with the boy.

Ochako scrambled back as the boy floated away from the sludge villain, who was frantically trying to keep him contained but ultimately failing. The boy rose into the air, and before the villain could attack him or anyone else again, he was stopped in his tracks.

Everything had happened so fast, that when All Might had arrived, she could only gape. He quickly took care of the enemy, and Ochako watched as he was swarmed by reporters. She had only seen the hero on tv, and he was awe inspiring.

She was pulled aside by heroes before she could get swept up in the crowd. They thanked her, praising her quirk and its versatility. It was nice, Ochako thought, to hear how the heroes thought she would be a great hero. Truthfully, she couldn’t wait!

After the attack, Ochako chose to look around some more. She found a cute cafe at which she got a sweet pastry. Musutafu was big, and there wasn’t enough time to look around everywhere. Also, due to the villain and using her quirk, Ochako was admittedly tired. Checking the time, she decided to go back home.

It was on her way to the train station when she was stopped in her tracks by a large shadow. Ochako felt a spike of fear, before she looked up to see a familiar blond man.

Oh my god!

Ochako let out a yelp, eyes practically popping out of her head as All Might himself apologized to her. The number 1 hero. Was apologizing to her. As previously stated, oh my god.

All Might let out a nervous chuckle as he apologized once more. “Ahh, sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you young…”

“Ochako Uraraka!” She managed to spit out when she realized he was asking for her name. She was awestruck. All Might might not be her favorite hero (that spot was filled by thirteen, she was so cool!) but he was someone she looked up to. Who didn’t look up to him?

“Young Uraraka! I happen to have something to ask you… ahh… if we could just go somewhere a bit more private?”

Ochako nodded and followed him to a nearby ally, realizing that it probably wasn’t smart to follow someone into an ally alone. Oh well, this was All Might. She’d be fine… hopefully. Just in case, she quickly grabbed the can of pepper spray from her bag, easily hiding it behind her back as All Might turned to her.

“So,” he said in his booming voice. “I saw your brave actions today, when that boy was trapped. Truly the making of a great heroine!” Ochako beamed. “Therefore, I wanted to give you something, if you accept. But ahh… dangit! Can’t keep this form much longer! Uhh… try not to freak out?”

Ochako’s brow knitted in confusion. What form? She didn’t know what she was expecting, but it wasn’t what happened.

Ochako freaked out.

Next thing she knew, All Might was a gangly, skeletal man coughing up blood. 

Ochako panicked, and immediately, instead of coughing up blood, All Might was clutching his eyes in pain as they screwed up due to the pepper spray that Ochako was still holding, pointed in his direction.

Oops?

“Oh no! I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to do that!” She apologized as the man gave a pained laugh.

After a few moments, he spoke. “It’s okay, young Uraraka. I-I shouldn’t have just changed without warning, ah, let me explain.”

He went on to tell her about his two forms, his awful injury, and most notable of all, his quirk. That he wanted to give to her. Was Ochako dreaming?

“A-are you sure?” She asked, hesitant. “I don’t think you want to give your quirk to me! I-I mean, I’m not heroic! I just wanna be a hero for the money!”

All Might blinked. “you want to be a hero for the money?” He asked.

“Y-ya! I need to give my parents a better life, they work so hard and I can help!”

All Might chuckled, a smile forming on his face. “Young Uraraka, that is a heroic reason to be a hero! It is very thoughtful to help you parents, and I don’t see why wanting to help your family would be un heroic!”

Ochako blinked. “You… think it’s heroic?”

“Why of course! I’d be hard pressed to find a better reason! Family is important, and it’s ok to know that.”

Tears clouded her vision. Sure, it was one thing for her parents to tell Ochako that her reasons weren’t selfish, but it was another for the number 1 hero to do so!

“Young Uraraka, I think you would make a perfect choice for the next symbols of peace.”

Ochako couldn’t stop the tears from falling after that.

The whole situation had been embarrassing, but had led to where she was now.

“And that’s the last one!” All Might announced as Ochako quickly put the large weight back where it belonged. They had been steadily upping the weight every training session, and Ochako would admit she was totally getting stronger, but god was it tiring.

She got up to get the water that was seated on a bench nearby, chugging it as fast as she could. She had been training at a local gym near to her home for the past few weeks. All Might had mentioned that he had a different plan, but it had to be discarded due to the fact that she didn’t actually live very close to where she had been visiting. Ochako wondered what the plan was, but All Might hadn’t brought it up, and Ochako wasn’t very curious. 

“Great job, Young Uraraka! You really are improving quickly! Now, I trust that you’ve been sticking to the dietary plan I created for you?”

“Of course!” Ochako smiled at the skinny man. “I want to improve! and also… I’m not really interested in getting my arms blown off when I get your quirk.” And wow, wasnt that weird to say? It was surreal, really. Ochako still wasn’t sure if she was dreaming.

“Are you ready to move onto quirk training?” All Might asked. Bone deep exhaustion settled in at the words. ya, not dreaming.

She sighed. This was always the worst part, as her limit tended to be hit sooner rather than later. But she supposed that training for All Might's quirk as well as her’s was necessary. All Might would always let her rest if she needed, and she was tired, but not too tired. Besides, this training was different. Still difficult, but a different difficult.

“Ya,” She huffed as she got up. “I'm ready.”

All Might gave her an apologetic smile, before pushing another weight into her hands, this time much heavier. Ochako took a deep breath, before touching the object with all five fingers, watching as it lifted into the air.

All Might handed another weight to her, and she did the same thing. Ochako made sure to keep her breathing even as she focused on using zero gravity on every weight All Might handed her.

She felt the strain as her quirk worked harder and harder to keep the weights in the air.

“All right, young Uraraka. Why don’t you try holding those in the air for another few minutes, as long as you think you can, then slowly try to release them one by one.”

Ochako kept her eyes squeezed shut as she focused on the task at hand. Her stomach felt like a churning pot as she kept her quirk active. minutes passed by until Ochako finally thought that she couldn’t take it much longer.

Keeping her eyes shut, Ochako focused on releasing the weights slowly, instead of all at once. It was hard, but she needed to get used to it.

Putting her hands together, Ochako tuned into the feeling of a single weight and allowed herself to release her quirk on it whilst she ignored all the other objects her quirk was trying to notify her of. After that was done, she slowly focused on a different weight.

This process repeated over and over again until Ochako could no longer feel the strain of her quirk.

With a relieved breath, she opened her eyes to see All Might handing her her water bottle with a proud grin. Ochako grabbed the water and let herself smile, it was always wonderful when All Might was proud of her, even if that usually seemed to be the case.

“Great job! You held your quirk for16 minutes, you really have improved! That will be all for today, young Uraraka. You did a spectacular job! You’re really getting the hang of slowly releasing objects and holding more weight.”

Ochako beamed at the praise as she checked her phone, surprised by how much time had passed. She was about ready to pass out after such extensive use of her quirk, so good thing they were done.

“You’re improving quickly, just make sure you don’t overwork yourself!” Ochako nodded, and they said their goodbyes.

As soon as Ochako got home, she took a much needed shower and collapsed into bed.

She was training to be a hero, the thing she had always dreamed of, and All Might himself was going to give her his quirk.

Ochako was so lucky!

Chapter Text

Izuku let out a victorious yell as he beat Tomura at Mario Kart for the fifth time that day, all while Tomura screeched, shouting about how the other was a cheater. Izuku merely cackled.

Ever since Tomura had helped him that second time, Izuku had been spending much more time with him. The older didn’t seem to mind the younger's company, sometimes Izuku thought that he even enjoyed it! But that couldn’t be true, could it?

Izuku came over every afternoon, unless the other told him he was busy, which had only happened a couple of times. When it first happened, Izuku’s first thought was that Tomura had finally gotten bored of him. But that was quickly disproven the next day when the red eyed man had texted Izuku to ask where he was. Izuku had been planning on not coming, thinking he was a burden. He was thrilled when it seemed Tomura didn’t hate him!

It was great hanging out with Tomura. The man never belittled him seriously, only making annoyed quips when the greenete beat him at something or said a degrading comment about himself.

Which was another thing, Tomura hated when Izuku put himself down, even though it was true.

Izuku expressed how weak he was? Tomura told him to get stronger and stop complaining.

Izuku second guessed himself when thinking, calling himself stupid? Tomura looked at him like he was crazy and ranted about how the other could pick apart quirks like an expert, that no, he wasn’t stupid, but certainly blind if he thought so.

Izuku came to the bar from school, frustrated by how useless he was without a quirk? Tomura reminded him that people made bombs that could end an entire population before quirks existed and told the greenete not to be forgetful.

It was… refreshing? Nobody had ever taken the time to stop his harmful thoughts. They just ignored him, and even that’s only if they don’t just encourage the bad thoughts.

But Tomura seemed to care for some reason. Not even Izuku’s mom curved his self hatred, though maybe that was because she wasn’t around enough to do that… she would certainly help if she knew Izuku was upset… right? He just got very good at hiding his pain. Izuku ignored the voices in his head that said he hadn’t ever even tried to hide it infront of his mom. He hadn’t had to.

Well, that was irrelevant. So what if Izuku’s mom hadn’t noticed his burns and bruises? Never noticed missing knives and bloodied towels? Didn’t notice that he had started going to the sketchier part of town a lot recently? She was busy. Always.

Tomura’s evil laugh brought him back to reality as the older just barely passed the finish line before him in their game.

“Take that! I knew I was better than you!”

“You only won once! I’ll beat you next time!”

“No! We’re playing a different game.”

“What? Is the self proclaimed master of video game scared to be beaten?” That was another change. Izuku had never been confident enough to tease people before.

“No! Fine! We’ll play again just so I can rub it in your face!”

“Oh, your on.”

Izuku then proceeded to win every round in their next race. He had found that he was quite competitive when he wasn’t punished for it.

An unholy screech made its way out of Tomura as he threw the controller, only for it to be dropped on the table by a purple portal as the greenete laughed victoriously, only laughing harder when the red eyed man’s throw was intercepted.

A tired sigh could be heard from the kitchen, and the next thing either of them knew, a misty man was materializing in front of them.

“Please refrain from throwing the controllers. Again. This is the fifteenth controller this month. I can’t keep stealing one every other day.”

The casual mention of stealing didn’t even phase Izuku as he let the last of his giggles die down. He was used to the fact that his friends (and wow. Wasn’t that word weird to say?) were criminals. At least they were nice. What have my standards become?

“Hi Kurogiri!” Izuku smiled his winning smile as the misty man turned from scolding Tomura to greeting Izuku.

“Good day Midoriya. How was your day? Would you like anything?” They both ignored Tomura and his cries of ‘you never ask me if I want anything!’ 

“I’m good Kurogiri! How are you?”

“I’m good. I just came to ask that you quiet down when I cook. Are you staying for dinner?”

That was also a new thing. They asked him to eat with them. And, since Izuku preferred to eat with people rather than without, he usually said yes. It was weird, but honestly, Izuku was starting to feel more at home at the bar than at home. 

But that was crazy. Izuku had a mom (roommate) and a home (house) and a school (prison). He shouldn’t spend all his time with villains. Even if his mom had been getting more annoyed with him recently since he'd been getting home only just before it got dark outside and was never hungry enough to eat what little she made him after eating at the bar. Actually…she had stopped making him dinner entirely recently.

It was fine. Mom had just thought that he didn’t need her cooking anymore. And it was true. Stop being upset for no reason!

“Midoriya?” Oh right, Izuku must have spaced out again.

“Sorry! Yes! If it’s ok with you all, I-I would like to stay.”

Kurogiri gave a nod before he disappeared back to the kitchen, leaving Izuku and Tomura by themselves.

Tomura was still pouting from the lack of attention and Izuku giggled at his expression.

“What!?” Asked the bluenette.

“Nothing!” Izuku said, like a liar. Tomura’s face turned into a scowl as he got up to get a new game. “Are you sure you don’t want to play Mario kart again?”

The resounding ‘NO’ elicited a new stream of giggles from the greenete. Tomura stomped back to the couch after setting up the new game, a scowl never leaving his features.

Tomura slouched on the couch as the new game popped onto the screen, it looked like it involved guns. Maybe Fortnight? Izuku glared at the red eyed man as the latter pressed start. The greenete may be great at Mario Kart, but was destroyed at any other game.

For the next half hour, Izuku watched as his character was beaten to a pulp. Why did Tomura even like this game?

Thankfully, Izuku was spared being beaten again by Kurogiri materializing and promptly scaring Tomura into throwing his controller, a shocked expression on his face. Izuku didn’t even try to hide his cackling.

Kurogiri sighed. “Tomura, what did I say about throwing things?”

“You scared me!”  

“Midoriya didn’t throw his controller.”

Izuku blinked when Tomura leveled an accusing look at him, he cocked his head. “I knew you were going to show up, was it not obvious?”

The villains looked at him with confusion, making Izuku shrink back a little. Did he say something wrong? Sure, Izuku may be getting more confident, but not that confident.

“How did you know I was going to appear, Midoriya?” The misty man questioned.

“O-oh well… whenever you make a portal, there’s a slight pull. I-it’s not that noticeable but you can feel it if you're close by.”

Tomura blinked, before demanding Kurogiri warp to the kitchen and back. The misty man sighed, however seemed interested in Izuku’s theory, so he submitted.

When he warped back to the children (Tomura was practically a child), Izuku felt the pull again, like a very light breeze. And then he was there. Tomura had a strange face, his eyes were wide with realization and he had his mouth hanging open.

Suddenly, the blue haired man turned to Izuku. “ This is why I want you in my party,” he declared, slamming his hands on the couch.

Izuku made a strangled noise at the praise(?) before getting up and running into the booth where Kurogiri had set the food in order to hide his flustered face.

Tomura sighed at the reaction, probably suspecting that Izuku didn’t believe him, but sat across from him, immediately devouring the food. Izuku ate at a more modest pace. Kurogiri had returned to the kitchen, not needing to eat.

As soon as Tomura finished eating, he looked at Izuku and began the conversation that had now become daily after dinner.

Tomura offering for Izuku to join the league and Izuku criticizing his methods. It was fun!

“Join my party.” The red eyed male demanded.

Izuku sighed, “ you can’t be so blunt when offering. You have to sweet talk me and then ask me. Also, if you call it ‘your party’ people might not know what that means. Not everyone is a gamer.”

The older scoffed, “if they can’t understand what that is then there’s no way they'll survive here. Stupid NPCs.”

“Just because you might not like your recruits doesn’t mean you shouldn’t recruit them! You can always just use them as brutes and put them in the front lines, eventually they’ll be captured by heroes right?”

“That’s true! I can sacrifice them!” The villain said with a smirk.

Izuku felt his eyes widen as he waved his hands around in denial, realizing just what he had said. “No! NO! I didn’t mean that! Oh my god what did I say! ”

Tomura shrugged and took a sip of water,” that’s what happens when you're smart enough to make strategies and spend time around villains.”

“M-maybe I shouldn’t spend so much time here then. I -I don’t want to be a bad person! You probably don’t even like me that much anyway… maybe I just shouldn’t come anymore?” 

Izuku heard a shout as Tomura spit out his water and stood up in the booth, “I'LL KIDNAP YOU!” His expression was bordering on hysterical crying and anger. What?

“What?” Izuku said eloquently. For now he’d ignore the threat and focus on his friends expression.

“If you stop coming to the bar, I’ll find out where you live myself and kidnap you!” 

Izuku’s expression morphed into confusion. “ Why? Wouldn’t you be happy? After all, I won’t be bothering you anymore… oh. I’m sorry about that too.” Idiot.

“Is that what you think?”

Tomura sat back down with a huff. “Look. I’m not good with emotions and stuff but what I can say is that if you stopped coming I would…er… be really… upset. So don’t.”

There was a pang of silence before, “You-you want me to stay?” Tears filled Izuku’s eyes. “You don’t think I’m annoying, don’t consider me a charity case?”

Tomura glared at Izuku. “Do you think I keep offering you to join my league because I hate you? Well, you're wrong. You're my…friend. If you left I wouldn’t be happy. Deal with it.”

The tears began falling and Izuku tried to stifle his sniffles but they wouldn’t stop. From Tomura, that was like declaring a statement of undying love!

Panic filled the red eyes of Izuku’s companion as Izuku cried big, fat tears. “Did I say something wrong? Dangit! I told you I wasn’t good with emotions!”

“s-sorry Tomura! These are happy tears! I-I can’t believe you don’t hate me.”

He huffed. “Ya, well, believe it. And stop being such a crybaby. It’s…fine around me I guess, but your enemies will take advantage of you! Don’t let them do that! Anyways.. back to the job offer?”

Izuku let out a wet laugh as their previous conversation continued.

Maybe he should stop worrying about parents and school and villains, and just focus on how much fun he was having now. After all, there would be time for a crisis later.

Chapter Text

Izuku let a small smile grace his face as he thought about Tomura, Kurogiri, his friends .

It felt surreal, that they didn’t hate him. Didn’t treat him differently due to his quirklesness. Didn’t hate that he was a crybaby. That they liked him.

Sure, maybe they were villains, but Izuku had never felt so happy . Just because someone was a villain didn’t mean that they were evil. That was something that Izuku had learned. 

The world wasn’t black and white.

Life had been going good. Well, as good as possible for a quirkless deku. Izuku hadn’t been lonely, his mom hadn’t intervened in him staying away from home so often, so Izuku assumed it was fine. All he had to do was get home on time. And that was easy. 

Tomura had even begun training him in basic self defense! Izuku wasn’t very good, but he was getting better!

He didn’t even have to fall asleep slightly hungry anymore! His mom used to make him dinner, but it had never been enough. But Kurogiri made him dinner now, and his mom didn't have to anymore. So it was fine!

Today was just like any other day. He had gone to school, gotten bullied, went to the bar, hung out with Tomura, and gone home. When Izuku got home, he had started on some homework.

Izuku had left a little earlier today because Tomura had mentioned a meeting. He had still eaten dinner with them but had gotten home a few minutes before his mom usually did. After Izuku had gotten home, he did his homework on the living room couch. He could greet his mom right when she got home!

He wasn’t assigned much, but the hardest part was the highschool application form Izuku was required to fill out. Maybe at another time, in another universe, he would have immediately put UA, determined to become a hero.

But Izuku wasn’t in that universe, nor at that time. So instead he was left undecided.

Izuku hadn’t ever really… had a plan for if he didn’t go into heroics. Tomura strongly disagreed with the profession, but had still said that Izuku could probably do it if he wanted to. It was a confidence boost, but after spending so much time with his friends, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be on opposite sides of a battlefield. If he could.

But ignoring that, there were still problems with going to UA that Izuku didn’t really want to deal with. Like Kacchan. There was no way that Kacchan wasn’t going to go to UA. And there was no way that Kacchan wouldn’t get in. Which means, if Izuku went, and if he got in… there was a large chance of him being in the same class as Kacchan. Again. 

But Izuku had gone through years of torment from Kacchan and his lackeys! He could go through more…right?

But he shouldn’t have to.

Izuku shook the thought from his head. No! Izuku was a quirkless deku and if he couldn’t stop it, then he did deserve it! Even if Tomura said different…

But… besides UA  he didn’t have any idea what to do otherwise. After a while of deliberating it, Izuku sighed as he wrote down UA, Hero Course. It didn’t seem right , despite this being his dream for years. But what else would he do?

Izuku began filling out the rest of the paper, and after a moment, he heard the front door open.

Izuku’s head shot up and he was met with green eyes, similar to his own.

“Hi mom!” Izuku chirped. “How was your day?”

The woman looked a little surprised, before letting out a ‘fine’ and turning to move behind the couch to go to her room. And then she stopped. Izuku turned his head to see her looking at something over his shoulder. He looked down at his very own highschool application form. Why was she looking at it?

“Izuku,” she said firmly. Was Izuku in trouble for some reason? “Are those the highschools you plan on trying for?”

Izuku blinked. “U-uh…y-yes? I-Is there a p-problem?” Oh no. And his stutter had just started getting better! Why was it he reverted back to his old self when his mom simply talked to him? Shouldn’t he feel safe with her?

The scowl that had taken over her face said otherwise.

“Why did you put UA? You're quirkless. You wouldn’t even make it into general education!”

Well, that hurt. Did she really think that? Why did quirkless define Izuku? Why couldn’t even his mom see that he was more than that?

“I-I c-could m-make it i-into g-general e-education! T-they a-accept q-quirkless p-people a-and I’m s-smart!” Tomura and Kurogiri both insisted that it was true.

Her scowl deepened, if that was even possible. “Smart? For a quirkless person maybe. You would never make it in. Don’t be stupid!”

Tears welled in Izuku’s eyes. It wasn’t true! Was it? 

“You might as well not try for any highschool!”

Should he?

“What school would accept someone like you anyways!?”

I don’t know

“Someone dumb.”

He-he wasn’t dumb!

“Someone weak.”

Izuku had been getting stronger though!

“You’re useless! Stop trying to be otherwise!”

No!

Izuku wasn’t dumb! Or weak! Or useless!  

He could break down quirks within seconds simply from being told the name!

He had actually gotten a punch on Tomura when they trained today!

Quirkless didn’t mean useless and Izuku shouldn’t be told otherwise!

“Stop!” Izuku yelled. “Stop saying that! I’m not useless! I can do just as much as anybody else can!” Izuku got up from the couch, facing his mom.

“Don’t lie to yourself!”

“I’m not! N-not anymore!”

She started walking around the couch, a blazing anger in the mother’s eyes.

“You! Are! So! UNGRATEFUL! ”

Izuku’s head whipped around as his mom backhanded him. He stumbled back, eyes wide.

“Y-you hit me.” Izuku said, touching the small cut on his face from his mom’s ring. A small stream of blood dripped down his face. He pressed down, but stopped when it hurt. That would be a nasty bruise.

The mother seemed just as shocked as him, but her expression quickly transformed into one of anger, she clenched her fists. Izuku didn’t miss the action.

“Maybe you deserved it.”

She took a step forward. 

Izuku ran.

He ran to his room, slamming the door and locking it before she had a chance to yank it open. 

And she did try.

Izuku grabbed his backpack even though most of his homework was still in the living room. He shoved whatever clothes he found into the bag, grabbing some toiletries and his notebooks.

Izuku slid down the wall, tears streaming down his face as he zipped up the backpack and fumbled with his phone. Izuku tried to ignore the screaming of his mom as he dialed a familiar number.

Izuku hoped that he would be understood even through his sobs and the screaming. He hoped that they weren’t too busy.

That was the first time Izuku had ever locked his door.

Chapter Text

Tomura let out an indignant screech as he lunged for the Npc, who dodged out of the way of Tomura’s hands, eyes slightly wider than before.

It didn’t matter. Dodging would do nothing.

He felt the slight whoosh as the man made an attempt to attack his back. Instead of letting this stand, Tomura thrust his hand in front of him again, feeling a hint of satisfaction when it rushed through a wispy, purple portal.

A shriek escaped  the Npc’s lips as Tomura grasped a flailing object through the portal, likely an arm.

The shouts increased  as the man tried to wrestle his arm away from the quick acting quirk to no avail. Within seconds, Tomura felt a warm red liquid splash against his back as the man finally stopped shouting, leaving dead silence in his wake.

The bluenette felt a laugh bubble over at the lack of noise as he yanked his hand from the portal, watching it close. That laugh only devolved more into a cackle as he spun to look at the bloody mess that had once been a man. Not anymore.

Stone turned skin was strewn about with blood only accentuating it. There was a strong smell of decay in the air, figures. What a mess. Kurogiri did not look pleased. Whatever. The Npc deserved it!

Tomura had been perfectly sensible! He had even used the tips Izuku had told him to try to recruit the Npc! Even if Tomura hated him! Like Izuku had said, the Npc’s that he didn’t like could just be used as bait.

It was that Npc’s fault he was dead. And they were almost done with the meeting! If he had just kept his mouth shut, Tomura probably would have let him walk out of here with little more than a glare. But nooo ! The man just had to insult Tomura’s leadership. Tomura was a great leader!  And now Kurogiri was giving him a dirty look for the mess!

He stalked over to the bar, slouching down in one of the stools. “I'm thirsty.” 

Kurogiri glared, but moved to get him something to drink. A few seconds later Tomura had a glass of water seated in front of him. He felt his eye twitch.

Looking up at his misty caretaker, Tomura said the only reasonable thing. “Are you trying to poison me?”

Kurogiri merely sighed, far too used to this reaction. “It’s water . Tomura, you have to drink water. Or else you’ll die.”

“I do perfectly fine with soda.”

Kurogiri scoffed. “Your sleep schedule says otherwise.”

Tomura’s eyes narrowed, “I don’t need sleep.”

“Drink the water, Tomura.” Kurogiri glared.

“No”

“Yes”

“No!”

“Yes!”

“I want soda!”

“I don’t care!”

The two stood there glaring at each other, not willing to let the other win. Tomura was not going to drink that!

Finally, Kurogiri sighed and Tomura smiled in triumph. “If you drink the water, you can have soda.”

Tomura’s smile dropped.

He hissed, staring unblinkingly at Kurogiri. They were locked in a staring contest that both refused to lose. Unfortunately, Tomura eventually had to blink. Stupid mist and his inability to need to blink!

He didn’t want water. But… he did want soda. With a scowl, Tomura snatched the glass of water and drank it in one big gulp, grimacing as he coughed.

“See, was that so hard?”

Tomura glared at the man. “Give me a coke or I’ll kill you right now.”

Kurogiri merely sighed as he moved to grab the drink for him. “So violent. Do you really have to threaten everybody you come across? I taught you better than that.”

“God may judge me but his own sins outnumber my own.” Tomura smirked.

Kurugiri squinted at his charge, a tired strain in his voice as he spoke, “do you have to meme about death ?”

Tomura gave a resolute nod. “Yes. Besides, Sensei is basically god. And his sins definitely are worse than mine.”

The misty man sighed. He couldn’t refute that point. “Fine then. Here’s a different approach.” 

He raised an eyebrow as he sipped his coke, “what could possibly say to get me to kill less people.”

Tomura imagined that if he had a mouth, Kurogiri would be smiling right about now. “What would Izuku think if he found you murdering people because you were insulted? Wasn’t he the one to tell you to keep even the people you don’t like?”

The red eyed man choked on his drink turning his face away from the chuckling caretaker.

“I don’t care about what he thinks! He’s just a stupid Npc!”

Kurogiri gave a dramatic gasp, placing a misty hand on his chest. “You don’t care about him? Well then, I suppose you wouldn’t care if I told him that, right? And you also wouldn’t care if I told him to stop coming?”

Tomura growled, but couldn’t deny that yes, he would care. Stupid positive emotions. When did he even start feeling these emotions? They were annoying.

The laughter finally subsided as Kurogiri gave an exhausted sigh. He surveyed the blood and guts strewn about the room. “You made such a mess. How do you plan on cleaning this?”

Tomura perked up with wide eyes, “ clean it? Isn’t that your job?”

Yellow eyes turned to Tomura, looking at him as if he were stupid. “I’m not going to clean your mess. You need to learn responsibility anyway. This death is especially bloody and I have books to read.”

“Wh- so you're just going to abandon me!?!” The red eyed man spluttered. “ How do I even clean this?”

Kurogiri sighed again. Why should he sigh? I have to clean this! “You know where the cleaning supplies are. Use them.”

And then he floated away, up the bar’s stairs to his room. Leaving Tomura alone to clean the mess he had made. Dangit.

With a frustrated groan, Tomura stomped up to the closet where they kept cleaning supplies for situations like this.

He grabbed a mop as well as the bucket that went with it. The bucket, stained red with the faint scent of death, was lugged to the bar’s sink where Tomura filled it with a steady stream of water. Stupid Kurogiri. How dare he make me clean this up! He just left! The least he could do was help me!

Tomura turned off the water as he glanced around the room, his eyes fell on a half empty bottle of red wine, Kurogiri was probably going to finish it today. A twisted smile took over his face as he crept up to the bottle. Revenge is the only option now!

He grabbed the wine and went over to the fridge, snatching the old, cheap grape juice that hadn’t ever been touched.

Tomura’s satisfaction reached its peak as he poured every last drop of wine into the sink. And Kurogiri wouldn’t even notice because he’ll assume it’s blood!

After dumping out Kurogiri’s pride and joy, Tomura filled half the bottle with grape juice before putting the grape juice back in the fridge and the wine bottle where he found it. Kurogiri wouldn’t notice any differences, since when he had wine he was always exhausted. That’s what you get for making me be responsible and pick up after myself!

Tomura stood there laughing for a few seconds, yes. This was the best choice.

And now, he had to clean. Ew.

Grabbing the filled up bucket, the red eyed man took the mop and went over to the blood stained wood. He set the bucket down and aggressively grabbed the mop, anger in his movements.

He was about to start, when Tomura’s phone rang a familiar ring tone. He immediately dropped the mop (no. It was not because he was surprised!), grabbing the phone from his pocket with his pinky up. On the phone, Izuku’s name stood out in white letters. 

But…Izuku that Tomura had had a meeting today. Which meant that the older was busy.

Why would he be calling now?

Chapter Text

Tomura picked up the call, putting his phone to his ear, the previous task of cleaning forgotten.

He only had to listen for a second before he was rushing to Kurogiri’s room.

There was a shout . Yelling and screaming that wouldn’t stop. All from the same person (supposedly a woman). The woman was also banging on a hard surface, probably a door.

But, more urgently, was Izuku’s panicked breathing and choked sobs over the phone. “Tomura?” The teen said. 

Tomura’s eyes widened at his friend’s desperate tone. What was going on? Izuku hadn’t even sounded this distressed when that Kacchan kid had hurt him!

“Where are you?” Tomura didn’t need to listen anymore to know that he had to do something. 

He wouldn’t be like everyone else in Izuku’s life.

xXx

Izuku couldn’t describe the relief that flooded through him when the call was picked up. 

You shouldn’t be so relieved.That’s your mother, Izuku!

Tuning out the banging and yelling, Izuku focused on the footsteps he could hear on the other side of the call. “Tomura?” He knew he sounded desperate. But there was nothing Izuku could do right now. Please, please, be Tomura and not somebody else who somehow got his phone.

“ Where are you?”  

Izuku let out a relieved sob when he felt the slight air shift that meant Kurogiri was giving him a way out. 

xXx

Tomura immediately leapt to action when Izuku stumbled through the portal, putting his arm around the teen and guiding him over to the couch as a nervous Kurogiri summoned a first aid kit, just in case.

Izuku was sobbing. Big, watery, terrified tears. What could have brought this? Sure, Tomura had seen Izuku cry. Everyone who knew the kid for a day had. But never had Izuku’s tears been so scared. Sad, hurt, and happy yes, but never scared. It seemed Izuku just accepted everything else that made him cry, but this made him scared! What could’ve happened?

As Izuku sat, he clinged to Tomura. The panicked man allowed it, putting his arms around the greenete awkwardly, with his pinky up, as he not so subtly looked him over for injuries.

But there weren’t any. At least, none that were visible from Tomura’s point of view. But Izuku was still crying. What was Tomura missing?

It took a while, but eventually Izuku’s crying tapered down into watery hiccups. Tomura patted his back reassuringly as the teen pulled away jumpily. He was obviously a little worried, knowing how Tomura didn’t like being touched too much.

They stewed in silence for a little while before Tomura grew bored.

“…so,” the bluenette said elegantly. “What happened?”

This question seemed to spur even more tears. Dangit. Should’ve stayed quiet!

It took another five minutes for Izuku to calm down again, but eventually he did answer.

“My mom,” Tomura scowled at the mention of that woman. What kind of mom allowed their kid to get beat up and stay at a stranger’s place everyday? “Well, sh-she sl-slapped me be-because we h-had a f-f-fight. A-and then she-she said th-that m-maybe I d-deserved it. A-and I r-ran to my r-room b-but sh-she wouldn’t leave! A-and I w-was scared, s-so I c-called you. I-I’m so so-sorry! I-I’ll leave i-if you w-want! I-it w-wasn’t even the w-worst beating I’ve g-gotten! W-well shes never hurt m-me b-but others h-have! I sh-should’ve just not b-bothered y-you!”

Tomura grabbed Izuku’s wrist as the boy tried to tug away in order to ‘not bother’ Tomura. Well. That was a lot to unpack. Why do I have to deal with this!? I’m not even emotionally mature! What makes the universe think I can help him!?

Easily, Tomura pulled him back to the couch and wrapped his arm around the greenete’s shoulders as he broke down into more tears than should be possible. He was going to become dehydrated at this point.

They sat in silence, Tomura awkwardly rubbing circles on the greenete’s back.

Tomura let the teen cry for another few minutes before he felt like he had to say something. “J-just stay here, why don’t you? It doesn’t seem like you want to go back to your mom.”

Looking at the blood stained floor behind the couch that they had forgotten to clean, Tomura realized his mistake. Why had he said that !? Oh well, too late now. Looks like today is full of mistakes!

“B-but d-don’t you have m-meetings here?” Despite his words, Izuku’s eyes shone with hope that he might not even know about.

Tomura sighed. On the one hand, Izuku probably wouldn’t want to hear villains conversing to take down the symbol of peace or to wake up to the metallic scent of blood, but on the other hand… Tomura look at Izuku’s big, bright green eyes.

“Yeah. But you can still stay here, if you want. I don’t care, and you already know I’m a villain.” Contrary to what Tomura assumed would happen, Izuku didn’t flinch at the word like he always did. Did he stop caring that he hung out with villains? Or maybe he was still a bit shaken?

The teen seemed to think about the offer for a second, but the relief in his eyes gave him away. “I-if you r-really d-don’t care,” he said slowly, still timid, “th-then I-I’m n-not sure i w-want to see her n-now.” Or ever. Seriously, the greenete’s eyes spoke volumes. “M-maybe I-I’ll just stay f-for tonight? I h-have s-school.”

Tomura would snort, if he wasn’t trying to comfort a crying child. School? More like a prison. Actually, it was worse than a prison! At least prisons don’t let the inmates beat each other up on a daily basis! 

Whatever. Izuku would probably sleep in and miss it anyway, that’s what happened to Tomura when he was upset. “Sure. If you wanna stay longer though, Just say so.”

Izuku nodded his head before looking ahead. Why was he doing that? Just then, Kurogiri appeared. Oh right. Izuku could tell when he would appear. That would be useful for when Tomura was trying to hide soda in his room so Kurogiri couldn’t force him to drink water!

Kurogiri must have noticed that Izuku was a little better, immediately going into mother bear mode. “What happened? Why were you crying? Are you hurt? Who did this? Does Tomura need to kill them? Do I need to kill them?” 

If only. Izuku would never just allow Tomura to kill someone. Much less his mom, despite how much he wanted to.

The greenete let out a wet giggle as he waved his arms around, “No, no! I’m ok! I’m not hurt…physically. Please don’t kill her!”

Kurogiri narrowed his eyes, disbelieving. “Who is this ‘her’?”

“No! No murder!”

A tired sigh left misty man’s… lips? But he didn’t have a mouth? How did Kurogiri sigh, much less talk? Why can’t people just be normal?

“Fine then. You’re right, no murder.”

“ Yet.” Tomura murmured, Izuku’s head whipped toward him before he was distracted again by Kurogiri.

Specifically, the cookie tray that Kurogiri was handing to the teen.

Izuku took it with wide eyes but a thankful smile. How come he gets cookies!?

Tomura turned his glare to his caretaker, “where are my cookies!? This is favoritism!”

“Of course it is.” Kurogiri answered in a monotone voice, “Izuku is my favorite.”

“Hey!” The red eyed man yelled, an offended scowl taking over his lips before he felt a tap on his shoulder.

Turning towards a red faced Izuku, probably surprised by Kurogiri’s compliment, Tomura was surprised to see the teen offering one of his cookies to him.

“You can have some! I can’t eat them all by myself.”

“Thanks…” he muttered, snatching the cookie out of his friends hand. Kurogiri let out a low laugh.

“See, Izuku’s your favorite too.”

Tomura hadn’t known that it was possible for someone’s face to get so red!

Chapter Text

Izuku sunk back into the warm blankets that covered him and the bed, sighing in comfort.

For once, he wasn’t woken up by his nightmares! It was the best sleep he had gotten in a while. It was rare for his brain to be quiet, so he must have been really tired.

He still probably hadn’t gotten good sleep, since he woke up before his alarm, but at least he didn’t feel as tired as usual? With a groan, Izuku realized that he probably needed to get out of bed. It was Tuesday, after all. That meant school.

He sat up and finally registered his surroundings. Wait… this wasn’t Izuku’s bedroom.

In a flash, all the memories from last night flooded into Izuku’s head and he promptly flopped right back down onto the pillow, shoving his face into it before he screamed.

He grabbed his phone from the nightstand and turned it on, then groaned when he saw the time. He hadn’t woken up before his alarm, he had forgotten to set it! School had already started. Dangit!

There was no point in going now. Izuku was already late, he hadn’t even begun to get ready, and he didn't even have a uniform since he had changed when he got home. Besides, even if he ignored that and went, they would just yell at him for being late and call his mom to bring him a uniform and… Izuku didn’t really want to face her. Coward. That’s your mom!

Oh well. Izuku never really wanted to go to school anyway. It was… unpleasant to say the least. 

Since he now had nothing to do today, Izuku layed in bed for another fifteen minutes before getting up again, still sleepy. He may be more aware, but he hadn’t quite woken up yet.

He walked into the bathroom, backpack slung around his shoulder. He took care of his needs before rifling through the bag to find some semi presentable clothes. He had just shoved them in there, not really looking at what he grabbed.

Sadly most of the clothes were ones he didn’t wear often, probably because he had meant to do laundry after homework but… plans change. Honestly Izuku didn’t really want to think about the situation. He had just grabbed any clothes he could off their hangers when he was panicking. 

He sighed in the mirror after changing. He hadn’t taken a shower, unsure if he was allowed to, so his hair was even messier than usual. When he had grabbed toiletries, a brush had been neglected. So no help there. Izuku turned on the sink, running his hands under the chilly water, before trying to smooth out his hair. It wasn’t very effective, but it was better than nothing.

He looked tired, with slight bags under his eyes despite the good sleep. Must be emotions.

He wore blue jeans that were pretty normal, but it was his top that was bothering him. Light purple with a white store label on it, the shirt was just slightly too short. It fit well otherwise. Izuku remembered buying it, which was how he knew that it was meant to be short. He had seen it at a thrift store, and since it was cheap and he had to buy his own clothes with the small amount of money he could sneak from his mom, he got it. He had only worn it once and when he had, his mom had wrinkled her nose at him. It was one of the few conversations they had had that weren’t thirty seconds long.

Izuku hadn’t worn it since.

He tugged his jeans up as high as he could, which wasn’t very high, but they were a little big so it covered a little more skin. Even so, just a slither peeked out.

He sighed as he hesitated to leave. He couldn’t stay in this room forever.

Izuku wandered down to the bar, self consciously tugging at his shirt the whole way. When he reached the area he saw Kurogiri cleaning a glass that already looked spotless. 

Even from the doorway, he could smell a tinge of blood. That’s right, Tomura had a meeting yesterday. Maybe it went wrong? Was it concerning that Izuku could think about this without throwing up?

Before he could finish contemplating whether or not to reveal himself, The misty man caught sight of him.

“Ah. Good morning Midoriya, how did you sleep?”

Izuku gave the bartender a shaky smile as he walked over to a barstool and sat on it. “I-I sl-slept pretty-pretty w-well last night actually. I usually ha-have night-nightmares.”

Kurogiri seemed to smile at hearing that, though it was hard to tell. He moved into the kitchen and gathered some supplies.

“O-oh! You-you don’t ne-need to make m-me breakfast. I-it’s fine! I us-usually don’t have-have break-breakfast anyway since I o-only make it wh-when I’m not too tired.”

The misty man turned around and looked at Izuku strangely. “You don’t usually have breakfast? It’s the most important meal of the day. Shouldn’t your mom make sure your having it?”

The greenete shrugged, “I-I never r-really bel-believed that.” He would ignore the part about his mom reminding him for now.

“Breakfast starts your metabolism, making you more awake throughout the day. It’s also just good to have a proper schedule for eating.”

Izuku shrugged, deciding not to answer. Kurogiri turned back to the kitchen and continued making… whatever he was making. Izuku didn’t stop him.

“Where’s Tomura?” He asked instead.

“Tomura usually doesn’t wake up until later in the day. I’ve tried to change that, but he just won’t listen when I tell him to go to sleep.”

Izuku let out a huff of laughter before focusing on the food Kurogiri put in front of him. It was a western style breakfast, pancakes and an egg. It was unreasonably good.

“If you want, you can play one of Tomura’s video games, Midoriya.” Kurogiri said after Izuku finished eating, “he won’t mind.”

Izuku offered a smile before he went to sit on the couch. He thought about playing a game… but he didn’t really know how to set it up. He also didn’t want Tomura to be mad if he did end up caring and he didn’t want to bother Kurogiri to teach him how to set it up anyway. It was better just to scroll through his phone.

He had only been able to check the time so far, so now was the first actual look he got of the screen. And would you look at that, there wasn’t a single text message. Izuku didn’t know what he expected. Maybe he thought his mom would apologize? Stupid. It was your fault anyway.

He continued playing on it for around an hour before he heard heavy footsteps coming down the stairs. In walked Tomura, in all his exhausted glory. He was wearing black sweatpants and a sweatshirt, nothing out of the ordinary.

Tomura stomped up to the bar and sat down. Kurogiri simply slid a cup of water towards him. The bluenette grabbed the glass and took a sip, too tired to look at it apparently because he immediately spat it out.

He glared at the misty man, who sighed. “What was that!? You can’t take advantage of me when I’m tired!” 

“I can try, can’t I?”

Tomura growled and pushed the water back with a glare.

Kurogiri went into the kitchen again and grabbed two drinks, a soda for Tomura and a coffee for, presumably, himself. Tomura snatched the soda from his caretaker and immediately started chugging it. Kurogiri watched tiredly, sipping his coffee.

A few minutes later, after Tomura had had breakfast and Izuku had distracted himself with his phone again, Tomura walked over to the couch and sat down heavily next to the greenete.

“Are you staying here, at least for today?” The red eyed man asked. “And don’t say ‘only if you want me to’. I don’t care. Stay as long or as short a time that you want.”

Izuku thought about his answer, looking away uneasily. Was it really okay to stay for a while? Or was Tomura just trying to be nice? Izuku didn’t want to go home, or be alone, really. And Tomura wasn’t the type to pretend to care so…“Sure.” Was that too short?

Tomura nodded before getting up and heading to the tv, probably to play a video game. “Cool.”

Izuku felt his eyes widen with tears, though he stifled them and turned away. Did he really mean that? Izuku had never thought that he would be anything more than a burden to anybody. But lately, he had felt lighter. Who would’ve thought? The villains are the ones he feels most at home with.

Chapter Text

Turns out, Tomura really did mean it when he said Izuku could stay at the bar.

It was Saturday now, almost a week since Izuku had left home. He knew he needed to go back soon but he really, really, didn’t want too.

It was just- Tomura and Kurogiri were so welcoming!

Kurogiri made him breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He didn’t let Izuku skip out on meals. There had also been many circumstances where the misty man had made him a milkshake when he was feeling sad. Kurogiri’s milkshakes were the best!

Tomura woke up late usually, so Izuku got to spend some time with Kurogiri in the morning. Luckily, he remembered his phone charger when fleeing his mom’s house. Even if the morning was just spent in silence, with Kurogiri’s methodical glass cleaning and Izuku’s tapping on his phone, it was…nice. 

Izuku never really got the chance to just be with somebody else. And maybe it was pathetic, but Izuku didn’t want to go back to sitting in his room alone. Or at class alone. Just alone in general, really.

Time with Tomura was different. Usually, when he eventually woke up, Tomura immediately sat with Izuku and they played video games.

Izuku had never been a huge fan of video games, but he also hadn’t ever really had any, so he wasn’t one to judge. He actually really enjoyed the games they played. 

One game Tomura had introduced him to was called Spore. Unfortunately, it was single player. But that might be better actually, because it was so complicated and Tomura had to guide him through everything.

Tomura had started a new game for him and began walking him through how to do it. There were five stages, Cell Stage, Creature Stage, Tribal Stage, Civilization Stage, and Space Stage. Each stage was a different step into building a civilization, and eventually going to space.

Currently Izuku was only on the creature stage, since he didn’t play it religiously and he decided to mess around a lot. It was a very fun game!

Izuku also played animal crossing with Tomura. He was surprised the bluenette had the game, but then again, Tomura had practically every game. Izuku wondered how he was able to afford so many.

Suddenly, a static sound bursted Izuku out of his thoughts. Tomura immediately paused their game, looking at the small TV in the corner of the room that Izuku had assumed was just broken. Strangely, Tomura seemed almost… excited?

“Sensei!” He exclaimed. Who was Sensei?

“Hello, Tomura. I see your friend is here. Would you like to introduce me?” The voice that came from the TV immediately grabbed Izuku’s attention. He felt almost comforted by it? Strange.

Tomura spoke with excitement, “Izuku, this is Sensei. Sensei, this is Izuku.” 

“Alright then. I assume this is the Izuku I’ve been hearing about?” Izuku blushed, “I’ve heard you're good at quirk analysis? Would you mind giving me an example?”

Izuku’s face turned even redder as he answered, “I-I’m not that-that g-good.”

There was a slight lilt to Sensei’s voice, it was comforting. “Don’t sell yourself short. You're usually better than you think you are. Hmmm, how about I give you a quirk and you analyze it?”

Izuku nodded, blush somehow even more prominent than before, before realizing that Sensei might not be able to see him. “A-ah ya- sure”

“What about a quirk that can give and take other quirks?”

Immediately, dozens of theory’s filled Izuku’s head. A quirk that could give and take other quirks? That was incredible! “What are the requirements? Is there a limit on how many can be taken at once? Do they have to be specific types of quirks? Are all the quirks always on? If the user had a bunch of mutation quirks, do they all appear?”

A chuckle sounded over Izuku’s questioning, making him stop. “Those are some good questions. I don’t quite have time now, but maybe someday I’ll answer them. What I really came here for was to remind Tomura that he has a meeting today, in about an hour actually.” Sensei paused, seeming to contemplate something. “If you would like to stay and observe, Izuku, your free too. Just stay out of the way, in case things get bloody.” And with that, the TV clicked off.

Tomura scowled at the fact he had a meeting, then looked at Izuku impatiently. “Are you going to stay or go upstairs?” He asked. He seemed really annoyed, but maybe a little hopeful? Did he want Izuku to come? “Someone might die if I don’t like them”

Izuku thought about the question. This was a villain meeting. There was a possibility of someone dying. Shouldn’t Izuku just go to his room and wait it out?

But that was the thing, wasn’t it? Izuku always did what he should do. Never what he wanted too. Maybe he should take some more risks. After all, according to Tomura and Kurogiri at least, Izuku deserved to be happy.

And he had specifically been invited.

“I’ll watch the meeting.”

xXx

True to his words, Izuku watched as some unknown criminal listened to Tomura’s plan.

He stood behind the bar in a black hoodie with the hood pulled over his hair to hide his identity. After all, he still did have a life outside of the bar. Even if he was trying to pretend he didn’t for now.

Kurogiri stood with him in case a fight broke out. If that happened, Izuku would be warped to his room. He wasn’t that good at fighting. Yet.

Tomura wasn’t giving very many details, but the ones he did give were enough to hook the criminal. Apparently, the League of Villains was going to infiltrate UA and kill the symbol of peace.

This was, obviously, a very bold claim to make. It seemed the criminal agreed as he immediately asked how.

The answer was actually very thought out. Did Tomura come up with this?

One of the villains would sneak into UA, probably through Kurogiri’s warp gate, though the man might not be able to warp people there so maybe Izuku was missing something?

After sneaking into the school, the villain would then find a hero classes schedule and make a plan on how to ambush them.

The villain asked how they knew All Might would be with the UA students, but Tomura refused to answer. That was weird. 

Izuku hadn’t even known All Might still had any affiliation with UA, since he already graduated from there. And Izuku knew practically everything about All Might! Even if he didn’t keep up with the hero quite as religiously now… ever since that day.

Izuku reached up to his neck at that thought, touching the rough line across his throat. He had taken the bandages off a while ago but he tried not to think about it. 

Currently, it was a rough, red line. Tomura had said it would scar, eventually fading to white. Izuku knew he would hate it even when it did fade a little. It was a reminder of his weakness.

He couldn’t help but wonder why nobody had questioned him about it yet, it wasn’t hard to see. Sure, Kurogiri had asked if it hurt or itched and offered some cream that helped and Tomura had mentioned it, but nobody else had.

He had started wearing turtle necks to school, despite it being warm out. But the change in clothes hadn’t been commented on either, except to make fun of him, of course.

It was a little… frustrating. That his mom hadn’t commented on the ugly cut. He wasn’t trying to hide it. Is that okay? I shouldn’t be upset with my mom, right? That’s just selfish.

Izuku shook his head and focused back on the conversation when he heard his name. “Izuku! Tell this nobody why he should trust us!” Tomura complained.

Izuku focused his attention on the criminal that was now looking between him and Kurogiri. The thug, after noticing Kurgiri turn to Izuku with a questioning look, turned to the greenete.

This was nerve racking. Oh well. Might as well help Tomura. It’s something to do, isn’t it? “What are your worries?”

A scowl appeared on the unknown man’s face, “how do I know you even can defeat All Might? He’s not just some lucky guy who happened to capture loads of villains!”

Izuku nodded in a show of understanding as his mind ran a mile a minute. “Well, for one, we’ll have the advantage in numbers,” he looked at Tomura to confirm it and got a nod in response, “there are many dangerous, if not well known, villains who have agreed that we can take him down. Each of those villains are capable people with strong quirks. The League of Villians also has the proper funding to get any supplies you may need, so even if this doesn’t work out, you get more gear.” 

Izuku stopped his ranting and turned wide eyes to Kurogiri, who was giving him an encouraging nod. He couldn’t stop the swell of satisfaction that shot through him.

Tomura looked at the lowlife with a victorious smirk. “So, what’s it gonna be?”

“Fine. I’ll join your stupid league. Don’t contact me more than necessary.” He slammed a paper that presumably had his contact information on the table before storming out of the bar with a heated look.

As soon as the door slammed shut, Tomura began cackling like a mad man. Izuku was just confused, “did I make him mad?”

Kurogiri sighed. “No, Midoriya. You did nothing wrong. The criminal just didn’t expect you to be able to answer his question and was upset when you did.”

“Oh”

After a few moments, Tomura finally calmed down enough and turned to Izuku with the same gleeful grin from before. “So? Does this mean you’ll join my party?”

“What? Where did you get that idea?” Izuku asked in surprise.

Tomura raised an eyebrow and Kurogiri answered for him. “I believe young Tomura is referring to the way you said ‘we’ when talking about the League of Villains. Usually, that implies your apart of it. You also didn’t stutter, you seemed confident.”

Izuku’s eyes widened and he turned away with flushed cheeks. “A-ah w-well I don’t wanna be h-hasty in making-making decisions.”

Tomura jumped in his seat, eyes alert. “Does that mean your thinking about it!?”

Izuku shrugged. Truthfully, he didn’t know what he was thinking, but he felt at home here. Was that so wrong?

Chapter Text

The next day, Izuku couldn’t find it in himself to get out of bed.

It was Sunday. Tomorrow was Monday, and Izuku couldn’t afford to miss another week of school.

The problem was, that meant Izuku had to go to his mom’s house. And for some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to move.

Every time Izuku tried to get out of his curled up position under the blankets, fear left him paralyzed for no good reason. It was just his mom! Izuku had lived there for his entire life, why wouldn’t he go back?

Coward. Stupid. Just move!

He fisted the blankets as tears welled into his eyes, somehow curling into an even tighter ball. He just… didn’t want to.

After a few more minutes, Izuku’s door opened. He shot up and was met with concerned yellow eyes. Useless! You're such a bother!

“Midoriya?” Intoned Kurogiri, “are you alright?”

Izuku took a deep breath and slowly unclenched the blankets as he slid his legs over his mattress and slipped off the bed. “D-Don’t wor-worry! I’m o-okay, I mus-must have just over-overslept!”

Kurogiri looked suspicious but accepted his words. “Good, then. Tomura woke up before you so I was concerned.”

The greenete flashed a blinding smile as he moved to get ready for today, “no-no pro-problem h-here! Tha-Thanks f-for as-asking, though!”

The smile seemed to ease the misty man and he closed the door behind him as he turned to leave, “come down for breakfast when you're done.”

“I w-will!”

xXx

Annoyingly, it still took Izuku about twice his usual amount of time to get ready. He had no motivation. When he finally was ready, he stood before his door for a few minutes before finally leaving.

He walked into the bar and was greeted by a familiar sight. Tomura had his head in his arms as he waited for Kurogiri to finish breakfast and seemed to be trying to fall back asleep, even though he had just woken up. 

Kurogiri immediately noticed Izuku when he walked in, and greeted him with a smile. Izuku did likewise.

“Glad to see you up, Midoriya. What would you like to eat?”

Tomura moved his head to look at him tiredly before going back to trying to sleep unsuccessfully. “A-ah I-I’ll h-have what-whatever y-your mak-making.” Stupid stutter, usually it’s not this bad!

Kurogiri frowned, probably noticing Izuku’s nervousness, but went about continuing what he was doing. Izuku went over and sat next to Tomura on a barstool.

It only took a few more minutes before Izuku and Tomura had breakfast in front of them. After eating, Tomura finally seemed to have a bit more energy, though still not a lot. Izuku could only take a few bits of food before he felt his stomach doing flips.

“Midoriya, are you feeling alright?” Izuku jumped at the question before trying to hide his surprise behind a tentative smile.

“I’m al-alright! I must j-just be t-tired to-today.”

Neither seemed to believe it, but Tomura was the one to continue the conversation, surprisingly. “Why are you wearing your backpack? Isn’t it Sunday? there’s no school.” 

“O-oh,” Izuku hadn’t actually thought they would notice, “I-I have-have s-school to-tomorrow a-and I d-don’t have a-any uni-uniforms s-so I k-kinda need to-to go h-home.”

That seemed to put them on edge. I wonder why.

“When do you plan on going?” Questioned Kurogiri.

Izuku shrugged. He didn’t want to go so he hadn’t really thought about it. All he knew was he had to go today. Well, it was best to do it when his mom got home, right? “I-I’ll go af-after Lunch m-maybe?” Kurogiri and Tomura usually had lunch later, since Tomura didn’t know what a sleep schedule was, so Izuku’s mom would probably be home by then.

Kurogiri nodded and turned away as Tomura just looked at him strangely. What was up with them?

xXx

Inko woke up with the worst headache!

One of the worst she had had in a while. Must be a hangover. Why was I drinking last night?

Sitting up with a groan, she grabbed her phone off the nightstand and turned off that annoying alarm. It was not helping her headache. Too bad I have work. Izuku is so lucky I still provide for him!

Oh. That was why she had been drinking!

Izuku and her had fought, well, kinda. Inko wasn’t sure if it was right to call it a fight. Anyways, it ended with Izuku leaving. Probably. Inko hadn’t seen him since then, nor heard him at all. So he was probably gone.

Good riddance.

It had been almost a week since then, and Inko had never been happier. Without Izuku around, she had felt more free than ever.

Inko may not be the best mother, but at least she kept food in the house and, at the very least, didn’t hurt her child. She may resent him and hate that she had to work extra to buy him new uniforms and food, and she may make an effort to pretend he doesn’t exist, but she didn’t abuse him.

Monday, the day Izuku disappeared, was an exception. And she had only hit him once! Really, it shouldn’t matter. It was his fault anyway.

Why did the boy insist on being a hero? Inko had watched him grow up believing, somehow, that he was strong enough.

He was quirkless!

He was hurt practically everyday, some days worse than others, like the time she had seen bandages around his throat . Izuku couldn’t even defend himself, how would he defend others?

Izuku was also painfully naive. He would trust anyone in the blink of an eye and was much too excited to see her. It was bothersome. Couldn’t he see that she didn’t care?

That’s why, after the third day of his door being locked so she couldn’t see him, she finally relaxed. Maybe he had finally gotten the hint.

Inko started coming home more. She took less shifts at the hospital since she had enough food at the house for two people and there was only one. Plus, coming home before had seemed depressing and the old pictures hung up served to remind her of the good times, before Izuku ruined everything.

If he had just had a quirk, Hisashi wouldn’t have left! If Izuku had a quirk, Inko wouldn’t be looked upon with pity. She used to have so many friends, but now there were only a few.

Speaking of those friends, when they noticed she had started taking less shifts, which was pretty fast considering how much she had worked before, they immediately started inviting her to girls' nights and cocktail parties.

Not that they hadn’t before, but they stopped when Inko repeatedly said she had work to do. But now that she had free time, Inko gladly accepted the invite.

It was why she had such a hangover this morning. Inko couldn’t even remember what she did last night due to how drunk she was, but it was fun.

Grumbling, She finally got out of bed and took care of her needs, before going to the kitchen to make herself breakfast. She still had a headache when it was time to leave, but unfortunately, she couldn’t just skip work. But at least she wouldn’t be there as late as usual since she started taking less hours.

As she had expected, work was exhausting. How do you even get a lightbulb stuck in your mouth!?

At least it was distracting. For some reason, Inko had a horrible feeling pooling in her gut. It was probably nothing.

She went straight home and sighed in relief when she shut the door. She set about making herself a snack before going to sit on the couch.

She turned on the tv, but ended up tuning it out as she thought. About Izuku, mainly.

She couldn’t help but be glad. The start of all her troubles was gone! She knew she shouldn’t be happy her son hadn’t come home in almost a week, but she was.

And really, Izuku had ruined everything with his quirklessness.

Inko felt that she was justified, somewhat, because of that.

She knew it was bad, but she let her guilt leave. She didn’t want Izuku back in her life. He was just a burden. That was all there was to it.

And so, a while later, when a green head of hair showed up at her door, shaking, she would sneer as she slammed the door in his face.

It felt better knowing she was right.

Chapter Text

Ugghh

That was just his luck. Of course, on one of the bad days too, someone would be in Hitoshi’s alley.

Maybe it was a bit territorial to call it his, but he was the only one who was ever here so why not? It was the only decent place Hitoshi could go to relax. And someone was there.

The alley wasn’t as dirty as some were, and there were wooden boxes stacked around it that seemed to have been forgotten. The boxes were comfortable to sit on and sometimes Hitoshi was able to find some cool stuff when he looked through them.

He had been having a bad day. Well, he was always having a bad day, but today was one of the worse ones.

Starting off with a wonderful interrogation from his foster dad about where he was going (it was the store. After all, he had to get food somewhere ) where his foster dad expected to get answers without ever letting Hitoshi talk, Hitoshi’s day continued when he managed to trip down the apartment stairs. It was only the first story stairs but he still had plenty of bruises littering his body.

When he finally left the lovely apartment complex, he went to some cheap gas station and, predictably,  got some gas station quality breakfast with his puny allowance that obviously filled his stomach and didn’t leave him hungry at all. At least it was food.

Hitoshi had decided to take a walk after that, not wanting to go back to his foster parent’s house. It had been a great idea. Absolutely spectacular as later proven by his run in with bullies.

Since apparently, Hitoshi wasn’t allowed to be out during the weekends because it was a ‘bother to everybody’, the bullies took it upon themselves to take out the trash. How heroic.

Hitoshi had woken up in a trash can hours later with new cuts and bruises. By then, it was past lunch and only getting later. Which meant Hitoshi needed to start returning. What a waste of a day.

He stopped by the same gas station to get dinner only to see all the decent options gone, which to be fair was only three, so he just decided that he didn’t need dinner. He wasn’t that hungry anyway.

After his awful day, all Hitoshi wanted to do was stop in his alley, patch up his wounds as best as he could, and try to make it back to his foster parent’s house before they decided he needed to be taught a lesson.

But no. There just had to be some green kid sitting there, crying his eyes out.

Hitoshi groaned as he backed onto the alley wall and slid down it. Not one good thing could happen today?  

His groaning caught the green haired kid's attention, who immediately got up and started frantically apologizing. For what, Hitoshi was unsure. It was the kid who was crying, not Hitoshi.

He was tempted to let the boy go on his merry way so he could finally relax a bit, but, unfortunately, Hitoshi didn’t find that very heroic. Ugh, morals.

“Stop.” Hitoshi snapped as he stood. The greenete froze and looked at him sheepishly, eyes still a puffy red.

Hitoshi sighed, “go ahead and sit back down. I have to bandage myself anyway so you might as well tell me why you're crying.” He tried to sound less harsh, but if the boy's flinch was anything to go off of, he failed.

Regardless, Hitoshi walked over to him and sat heavily on some of the boxes across from the greenete. Like he said he would do, Hitoshi grabbed a first aid kit out of the box next to him that he liked to keep stuff in in case something especially bad happened. You know, normal things.

He glanced towards the greenete, who, by now, had gone silent from shock, and waited for him to start talking.

“A-ah w-well it-it’s a long st-story so you p-probably don’t want to-to hear it…”

Hitoshi sighed again, “I have time. Your story will give me a distraction anyway since bandaging these cuts can hurt.” 

Finally, it seemed the boy relented. “I-it’s really n-nothing b-but… I- I think… I’m- I’m h-homeless now?”

Hitoshi’s head shot up and he stared incredulously at the shaking teen. How could he not know if he was homeless? How did he become homeless? What did he mean it’s ‘really nothing’? 

Despite all his racing thoughts, all he was able to croak out was a confused “ huh?” What was the situation he had just involved himself into?

The greenete looked away in embarrassment, “uh, well I-I’ve been st-staying with some f-friends? For-for a f-few weeks Because- um- some-something ha-happened at my m-moms h-house a-and I went b-back today a-and-“ tears filled his eyes again as he began shuddering with sobs.

Hitoshi wasn’t quite sure what to do, so he just patted the teens shoulder as he cried- and wow- he could cry a lot.

Eventually, he continued the story. “I-I a-apologized to-to her,” something about the green teens body language and words made it seem like that apology wasn’t deserved. “B-but she just glared a-at me, c-called me u-useless a-and a waste of s-space a-and then sh-she slammed the door.”

that’s a lot.

The boy started crying again.

By this point, Hitoshi had completely abandoned his bandaging and  was just staring at the stranger in front of him helplessly. He was lost. Hitoshi had never had to comfort someone before- after all, who wanted to be comforted by a villain- so he didn’t know what to do. He supposed, though, he could try?

“Do you know why she may have kicked you out? Or do you have a suspicion?” Was that too straight forward? was he prying to much? Oh well, guess I’ll find out.

The greenete slowed down his sobs to quiet sniffles before answering, although hesitantly. He looked at Hitoshi with suspicion and fear, as if he was expecting to be hurt. “I-I’m q-quirkless.”

Oh. Well that explained it. Quirkless people weren’t exactly treated with kindness. Quirkless people were probably treated even worse than people with villain’s quirks, like him. At least people with villain quirks had the ability to scare off their abusers, but quirkless people…

Well, safe to say you would not want to be quirkless. This teen was probably lucky to be alive.

With a flinch, Hitoshi realized he hadn’t said anything yet. The stranger was tense and wouldn’t look at him, probably expecting to be hit or laughed at. Hitoshi still didn’t know how to comfort him, so he blurted the first thing that came to mind.

“I have a villain's quirk.”

Stupid Hitoshi. When has your mind ever been reliable!?

Well, at least that declaration seemed to do something. The greenete was now looking at him with confusion, which confused Hitoshi. He had expected fear.

“W-what do you m-mean? N-no q-quirks are v-villainous. O-only the u-users can be v-villains. N-not the q-quirks.”

Hitoshi blinked and the two boys stared at each other for a few seconds, before the awkward staring contest was ended by Hitoshi looking at the dirty ground. “Brainwashing. I can control people when they answer a question I ask.” Oh, so he was just sharing all his secrets today, huh? Where was his brain to mouth filter!?

Hitoshi looked up to see the greenete’s eyes shining and barely-there grin on his face. He raised an eyebrow, and that seemed to break the dam. All of a sudden he was being bombarded with questions as the stranger explained how- how useful his quirk could be for villain work. Useful. Not villainous.

The teen ranted for a few minutes before he seemed to notice how Hitoshi’s mouth was hanging wide open. He shut his mouth with an audible click as fear welled up in his eyes. “S-sorry I-I know it’s a-annoying wh-when I m-mutter.”

“Y-you really think my quirk is that cool? That it’s not villainous?” 

 The greenete seemed surprised that Hitoshi hadn’t commented on his muttering? Hitoshi didn’t really care to clear up his confusion, not when he was confused himself. “N-no? L-like I s-said, q-quirks can’t b-be vill-villainous.”

Hitoshi just stared at him in shock. He had been told his entire life his quirk was evil, not a single person had said otherwise. Especially not someone his age. It… felt nice. 

“You know,” he spoke lowly, “I don’t think your useless or weak because your quirkless. After all, before quirks were even a thing, humanity created things like guns, and bombs. Based off your muttering, your smart, so who’s to say you won’t do the same?”

The green haired boy looked at him with surprise and wariness, similar to how Hitoshi must have looked moments earlier. Without giving himself time to talk himself out of it, Hitoshi ripped a part of the bandage he was using off and, with a pen found in his pocket, wrote his phone number on it.

He shoved it into the greenete’s hands before standing and leaving the alley with his first aid kit. He could bandage himself at his foster parent’s house. Right now, he kinda felt like he was going to cry. He had just told someone his quirk, and not been called evil. He deserved to cry.

Just before he left, Hitoshi remembered the reason the green teen was present in his alley. He stopped and turned back to the greenete. 

“By the way, if it turns out you were kicked out, you should probably ask your friends if you can stay with them. They let you stay with them for weeks, so I don’t think they would mind now.” It wasn’t much, but maybe that would help the surprisingly nice teen.

And with that, Hitoshi left, hoping that his foster parents would ignore him when he got to the house so he could go cry in his room.

Chapter Text

Standing in front of the door to the bar, Izuku kept his hand on the doorknob as he tried to make himself open it.

He didn’t really have another choice, well, unless he wanted to be homeless. Or go to an orphanage. Or (possibly) live with the Bakugos. All those options were horrible, so Izuku was left here.

He had decided to walk to the bar, not having the courage to ask Kurogiri to teleport him. Also, it gave him time to think about the cute boy he had met.

He had seemed annoyed at first, but when Izuku started talking about what was wrong, he not only gave some (probably) good advice, but gave Izuku his number!

Nobody ever gave Izuku their number. He was the worthless, useless, quirkless freak. Wait, no. Tomura said to stop saying that stuff.

But the purple haired teen, who was his age, had given him his number! And Izuku didn’t even know his name!

Why were strangers so much nicer to him than the people he had known his entire life? First Tomura and Kurogiri, then this teen? And they all knew he was quirkless too! It was very strange.

Tomura and Kurogiri were probably the first people to actually enjoy spending time with him even after learning of his diagnosis. So maybe they wouldn’t mind if he asked to stay with them?

There was only one way to find out.

With a shaky breath, Izuku finally managed to open the door.

He walked in to see Kurogiri stationed behind the counter, like usual, and looking at the door that had just been opened.

“Oh! Izuku, I thought you were going home? Did something happen?” In contrast to his words, Kurogiri’s smoke seemed to lighten, if only a bit, when Izuku walked in.

“A-ah w-well,” how to phrase this? Izuku didn’t exactly want to admit that his mom had kicked him out. That wasn’t typically something you just said off handedly. Except if you were talking to a certain purple haired stranger, apparently. “I-I think I’m-im gonna st-stay here if-if that’s o-okay?”

Kurogiri looked confused, “you're not going home?”

Izuku looked away as his hands curled into fists, “I-I don’t th-think so? I-if that’s o-okay?”

“Why, of course it’s okay . I’m simply just confused. You can be here as long as you want, whether that’s hours or months or more.”

Immediately, all the tension leaked out of Izuku as tears came to his eyes. “Th-thankyou!”

xXx

It had been two days now since Izuku had asked to stay at the bar. Kurogiri and Tomura still didn't really know why, but they hadn’t tried to push him, which Izuku was eternally grateful for.

Izuku still didn’t feel good, but he was just trying to ignore that for now. He kept telling himself that everything was fine. Even if it wasn’t. If he didn’t do that, he was sure he’d start crying again.

Currently, he was sitting on the couch and scrolling through his phone as Kurogiri wiped glasses in the kitchen. Tomura was out, probably looking for a new game.

They stayed like that for a while, just relaxing. It was nice.

Everything was fine, and then it wasn’t.

Izuku continued scrolling through his phone, but his eyes caught on a picture of a nice, happy family. There was a mom, dad, and a little boy. The mom was bending down to pat his head as he showed off his quirk, some kind of water manipulation, while the dad just looked lovingly at the mom.

They were whole and happy, no absent father, no neglectful mother, no quirkless child.

And just like that, the world seemed to blur around the edges as Izuku’s  breaths quickened. His throat tightened and before he knew it, his eyes were filling with tears.

He kept looking at the photo of what his life could’ve been and everything seemed to crash down all at once.

Useless, Idiot, Quirkless, Stupid, Dreamer, Weak

He-he couldn’t focus on anything else. It was all too much and it felt like nothing would ever be ok again-

“ -uku! Izuku!” 

His head shot up to look at the misty figure coming towards him, his hands were up in a placating position, but Izuku couldn’t focus on that now.

His breath became even faster as he realized the tears sliding down his face. He was being a burden and was probably ruining this guy’s day- and he didn’t deserve whatever the misty man was trying to do-

“ Izuku! Breath with me.” 

Immediately, Izuku followed the command. He focused on the comforting hand that had found its way to his chest as he closed his eyes and tried to listen to what the man was saying. A breathing pattern? It seemed impossibly hard, but Izuku was used to listening to people. That was familiar.

“Breath in, One- two- three- four, Hold, one- two-three- four- five- six- seven, Breath out, one- two- three- four- five- six- seven- eight, you're doing great.”

Within a few minutes, his breathing slowed and he remembered where he was. Izuku opened his eyes to see Kurogiri on his knee in front of him. He had long since dropped his phone, so when he recognized the misty man, he didn’t even have to think about it before he hugged him.

Kurogiri seemed surprised, but didn’t try to stop him. Instead, he hugged the teen back and moved to the couch, seemingly not caring about how wet Izuku was making his suit.

They stayed there, hugging as Izuku cried his eyes out. Eventually he calmed down, but still, neither dared to move.

“Izuku? Are you feeling better?”

Izuku nodded into the misty man’s suit. He had stopped crying by this point, but he didn’t feel like moving.

“Would you be able to tell me what happened?”

He thought about the question, before nodding his head. He took a shaky breath.

“Wh-when I went b-back to-to the ho-house, m-my mom. She-she kicked me o-out. D-didn’t even ask-ask where I had-had been.” He whispered. He didn’t have the strength to speak any louder.

Kurogiri stayed silent for a little while before answering. “I’m very sorry that happened.” He spoke softly, it was comforting. No adult had ever been so kind to Izuku. “For what it’s worth, you will always have a place here. Your mother was wrong to leave you, she doesn’t deserve you.”

Izuku turned the words over in his head, still hugging Kurogiri. He felt… safe. For the first time in his life probably, he had found somewhere he felt safe. Where they didn’t treat him like china or a punching bag. Where he wasn’t looked at with pity, anger, or disgust.

And it was with villains, the type of people he had promised he would beat up as a kid. The type of people who tried to destroy society. But… maybe that wasn’t so bad?

Izuku had been hurt, bruised, broken. He had tried, so hard, to be liked. Because he was the quirkless weakling, the punching bag, the charity case. He wasn’t ever treated like a person.

He stayed out of his mom’s way, so she wouldn’t be inconvenienced. He didn’t fight back at school, because he had been taught he was weak. He didn’t ask for help anymore, because no one had ever bothered to help him before. Why would that change now?

Izuku…hadn’t deserved any of that treatment. No one did. Not Tomura, who assumed Izuku would run away screaming as soon as he saw his quirk. Not that teen he had met, who seemed surprised Izuku even talked to him after revealing his quirk.

And society didn’t care to stop any of that treatment.

Warmth surrounded him as he was hugged by a misty villain who had just calmed him down from a panic attack, as he sat in the familiar bar that had felt more like home than anything else ever had.

He made his decision right then and there.

Izuku would never be a hero. Society would never let that happen.

But he wasn’t weak. He wasn’t expendable. He wasn’t just there for others to get quirk practice. No one was.

He would prove it.

Chapter Text

It’s been three days. Katsuki hadn’t seen the nerd since Monday.

Sure, it wasn’t that long, but Deku had never missed so much school before. Katsuki wasn’t concerned. He wasn’t. He was surprised.

Izuku had come to school before when he was sick, the teachers didn’t care if he was in the dang hospital, they would still mark him up for skipping, so it was strange that he didn’t come now. Huh, maybe he was in the hospital.

It didn’t matter.

Katsuki had no reason to worry, it just meant he’d have to find a new punching bag until the nerd returned.

At least Katsuki wasn’t as distracted with the nerds stupid mumbling habit.

xXx

Katsuki stomped home, annoyance getting the better of him.

Stupid Deku hadn’t come to school the rest of the week. Nobody seemed to care or even notice, Katsuki obviously didn’t care either, but it was strange.

He slammed the door open and closed when he got home, immediately alerting his mom to his presence. 

“Don’t slam the door!” She yelled.

“Don’t tell me what to do!” Walking further into the house, he caught sight of her in the kitchen. “Hey, has Auntie Inko told you anything about Deku?”

She turned around to face him, raising an eyebrow, “no, why? Also, I told you to stop calling him that!”

“Yeah yeah, I get it. Haven't seen him since Monday, thought you’d know if he was sick.”

“Inko and I don’t talk as much as we used to. She always seems to be at work, being a single mom and all that,” she clicked her tongue with a thoughtful expression, “I’ll ask her about it, though.”

Katsuki scoffed and turned away, “I don’t care. Just thought you’d want to know if you didn’t already.”

xXx

Katsuki froze for a moment when he saw Kamui Woods helping a civilian stand as police apprehended a villain behind them. He recovered quickly and stuffed his hands in his pockets as he began to walk faster.

He didn’t need to fawn over some random hero like the extras surrounding him were doing. That was something stupid Deku would do.

He huffed at the thought. It was Tuesday, and Deku still hadn’t come to school. Katsuki was beginning to wonder if the nerd really was in the hospital. 

But no, he would’ve been told if that was the case, right?

Katsuki clenched his fists in his pockets in annoyance. Would he have been told?

No , a small voice in his head spoke up. Who would tell him?

His mom and Auntie Inko apparently didn’t talk much anymore, and even if they did, his mom could clearly tell Katsuki and Deku had grown apart. Hah, that’s an understatement. 

Aldera certainly didn’t seem to care. He had been bullying Deku for years and they did nothing. Heck, After the fourth day of Deku not being there, the teachers just stopped calling his name for roll call.

Nobody even acknowledged he was gone except for the whispers Katsuki sometimes heard.

“Maybe he took the hint and finally killed himself. It would do us all a favor.”

But those whispers weren’t true. There was no way. Katsuki knew Deku better than that, and the idiot never gave up. Even when it was clearly good for him.

Currently, Katsuki was heading to Auntie Inko’s place. Apparently she still hadn’t answered his mom and Katsuki was sick of not knowing what was going on.

He walked in silence until he spotted an ice cream truck and decided to get something. After getting a treat, he went to sit on a bench in the nearby playground. He sighed as he sat, before a noise caught his attention and he promptly forgot about his icy treat.

“Hey! Stop!” Some girl with strange green eyes screamed at a red headed boy.

The redhead seemed to have been punching some purple skinned girl, who quickly scrambled away in tears when the green girl distracted him.

Redhead looked confused, “why? She’s a villain! She deserves it!”

Green girl scoffed as she violently stomped up to the redhead, before slapping him with a stone hard scowl.

“She’s not a villain, idiot! What did she ever do to you? If anything you're the villain! She was just minding her business when you decided to attack her! Only villains attack people for no reason!”

Redhead looked shocked and just held a hand to the part of his face he was slapped as he stared at the steaming girl, “what?”

Green threw her hand out towards the teary purple kid, “ are you blind!? ‘Cause I'm certainly not! There are small burns on her arms from where you hit her, meaning you used your quirk! My ma told me the definition of a villain is someone who uses their quirk to commit a crime, and guess what!? Assault is a crime!”

Katsuki looked at the purple girl again. Huh, she did have small burns all over her arms. He hadn’t noticed before.

The redhead's eyes filled with tears at her yelling and he still looked shocked. The green eyed girl looked at him with a glare and raised an eyebrow at his starstruck expression. She put her fist back on her hip.

“ She’s not a villain, you are. A quirk doesn’t make someone a villain, their actions do. Clearly you're in the wrong. Apologize. Now.” She demanded.

“S-sorry Hon,” he sniffled after a second of silence. He seemed to actually be sorry as he looked at the purple girl. “I-I made a mistake. Will you forgive me?”

The purple girl finally got over her obvious shock and stood, brushing dirt off herself. “Ok. Just don’t do it again!”

A small smile appeared on the redhead's face as he bowed, “I won’t!”

The purple girl, Hon? Looked at the green eyed girl before going up to hug her. Katsuki didn’t hear what was said but he assumed it was a thanks.

“You're welcome! My ma didn’t raise a bully and I won't let others be hurt for no reason! After all, I’m gonna be a hero!” That solidified that it was probably a thanks.

The redhead laughed, somehow already over his apprehension to the green girl, “you’ll be a great hero!”

Determination flashed in those strange green eyes as she gave a sharp smile, “I know.”

And for some reason, Katsuki didn’t even need to see her quirk to believe her.

xXx

Katsuki flopped onto his bed feeling exhausted, confused, and weirdly guilty.

He had no reason to feel guilty, he was the greatest. So why was his stomach twisting into knots? It was late as well. This had been keeping him up.

Even after he left the playground, Katsuki had still remembered the conversation he had overheard.

Something about it stuck with him. The redhead had been beating up the supposed ‘villain’ one second, then apologizing to her the next. Maybe it was just kids being kids, but why did he apologize? If he was able to beat up the little purple girl, he was obviously better than her. So why apologize?

And the green eyed girl. She seemed so certain of herself becoming a hero, so why stop for the little people? Why defend those who were obviously meant to be on the bottom? Shouldn’t she just ignore it and focus on herself? How else would she get strong enough to be a hero?

“K-Kachaan! St-stop, please! Leave the kid a-alone! H-he did n-nothing!” 

Deku stood in front of his latest victim, some extra with a mouse quirk that could do nothing. It just gave him bigger ears, what was even the point?

Katsuki scowled at his once friend (if you ever could’ve called them ‘friends’. Even from a young age, Katsuki hadn’t been humble.).

“Stay out of the way! Or I’ll hurt you too!”

Deku took a deep breath and tensed, arms still spread out in front of Katsuki’s victim. “No Kacchan! I won’t let you hurt him! He did nothing to you, he doesn’t deserve it!”

Katsuki scowled. He didn’t care who was in his way, he would beat them all.

Deku was an obstacle. One that Katsuki would be happy to take care of.

Katsuki shook his head at the memory, scowling harder than he had been before. Why was he thinking of the nerd now? He wasn’t a part of this! Just a stupid extra who made Katsuki’s life miserable! Katsuki was glad the nerd was gone!

Because when Katsuki had finally gotten to Auntie Inko’s place, she had said he was gone. Apparently Deku wouldn’t be coming back. And then she slammed the door in his face. 

His gut churned at the memory of Inko, his Aunt who he had known since birth, who always secretly gave him a piece of candy behind his mom’s back whenever he visited her when he was younger, who had watched him when his parents were busy, who had always been a comforting memory.

But when he went to see her, he was greeted by a cold, tired woman. Her smile was fake, threaded with annoyance. She hadn’t cared when he mentioned Izuku hadn’t been to school in a while. She couldn’t even be bothered to lie when she told him he probably wouldn’t see Izuku anytime soon, if ever. Nothing like the warm woman of his childhood.

Katsuki stretched his thin blanket around himself tighter and squeezed his eyes shut. He just wanted to sleep! Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like sleep would come easily.

Katsuki had been sure of everything his entire life. But recently, especially with today, he felt a churning in his gut that made him feel… weird. 

He didn’t know this feeling, and that scared him.

Making a promise to himself, Katsuki knew he would find out why he felt weird. He would do it, because he was the best, and he would make sure he continued being the best.

Chapter Text

Izuku gave a happy hum as he read something funny on his phone. He was sitting in his usual spot on the couch as Kurogiri went about making breakfast in the kitchen.

After his panic attack the other day, Kurogiri had made him some cookies and distracted him until Tomura came back from the store.

After he had returned, Kurogiri asked Izuku if he wanted to tell Tomura what happened. Izuku told Kurogiri he could explain it, since Izuku hadn’t actually told him about being kicked out, but he was a little too sheepish to do so himself.

Dutifully, Kurogiri had explained to a seething Tomura the actual reason Izuku had been staying with them instead of with his mom. Tomura proceeded to threaten to kill her, predictably.

Izuku had told him not to, obviously. But he may have implied that he would be okay with it in the future. Possibly.

Tomura was still sleeping for now. But he would probably be up in just a little while.

Izuku kept scrolling through the internet when a thought came to him. He hadn’t used the number that pretty purple boy had given him. Maybe he should contact him? Or would he even want him to? He probably just gave Izuku his number out of pity.

But… he also hadn’t seemed to care that Izuku was quirkless.

With a sigh, Izuku decided to contact him. Remembering how he slid the piece of paper into his phone case so he wouldn’t lose it, Izuku quickly grabbed it. 

On the paper was a phone number which, for some reason, surprised Izuku. To be fair, no one had ever really given a phone number to him. Maybe he was expecting it to be a trick?

It still could be a trick, he reminded himself. Who’s to say the purple boy didn’t just give him his number so that he could laugh at him for thinking he was serious?

Izuku shook his head, before hesitantly typing the number into his phone. What should he even say? “ Hi! This is the boy who you walked in on crying the other day and who then trauma-dumped! Wanna be friends?”

Yeah, no.

Izuku stared at his phone for another minute before finally settling on a ‘Hi, this is the boy you met in the alley.’ He closed his eyes and sent it before he could second guess himself.

Thankfully, a distraction decided to make itself known when Tomura walked into the bar, groaning. Izuku put his phone in his jeans pocket and went to sit beside the unresponsive man.

“Good morning!” He chirped happily as Kurogiri slid plates of food in front of each of them.

Tomura mumbled something into the counter as he blindly reached out to grab a fork, then stabbed it into the awaiting pancake. In contrast, Izuku ate like a normal person.

They ate breakfast in a comfortable silence, Tomura getting more awake after each bite he took, before a thought came to Izuku. His gut churned and he started chewing his lip, sticking his fork into the pancakes uselessly as he ceased eating.

“What’s wrong, Izuku?” Of course Kurogiri would notice immediately.

Tomura looked up, “something wrong?” Well now what was Izuku supposed to do with all the attention on him? 

“A-ah nothing… it’s nothing. I-I’m fine.”

Tomura narrowed his eyes, “you're really bad at lying you know.”

Izuku huffed, “I’m not that bad! I’m just… an emotional person.”

“And what’s the reason for those emotions now?”

“It… I’m just worried. About… school. Because I can’t really go with-without my uniform and- well I clearly don’t have it. So I don’t really know what to do?”

Tomura raised his eyebrows, “do you really need school? You seem smart enough already. I thought you would’ve tested out by now.”

“Agreed.” Kurogiri chimed in.

Izuku sat nervously. They really thought that? Why? He wasn’t that smart?

Kurogiri gave Izuku a smile. Probably. It was always hard to tell with the misty man. “If it worries you so much, you could always do online school. You won’t even have to interact with anyone there, so no bullies.”

Izuku blinked. Online school? Why hadn’t he ever thought of that? Then again, Inko probably wouldn’t have agreed to that and Aldera would have called her to inform her of Izuku’s ‘skipping’ class. So maybe that was why.

“U-um… sure, why not?”

Kurogiri nodded, “in that case, I’ll look up some online schools. In the meantime, why don’t you and Tomura play a game?”

Tomura grinned and grabbed Izuku’s wrist with four fingers, “c’mon! I’ve been wanting to play Don't Starve Together but havent had anyone to play with!”

Izuku smiled. It was nice, having a friend.

xXx

Izuku sighed tiredly as he finished the mandatory test to be accepted into the online course Kurogiri had found.

It was a two hour test where the problems got progressively harder or easier depending on how many you got right. 

Izuku found it incredibly difficult, which was why he was nervous. If he didn’t get a high enough score, he wouldn’t be accepted into the program. It was already bad enough that he was joining late into the year.

Izuku stared anxiously at the ‘loading’ icon on the screen as he waited for his test score. Shouldn’t it be done by now? Did I really do that bad?

He heard a ‘ping!’ And looked to see whether or not he passed and if so what level he’d be at. Izuku’s jaw dropped and his face twisted into confusion.

“Izuku? Is everything ok?” Kurogiri floated over to look over his shoulder at the phone. “Oh. I can’t say I’m surprised.”

“Wh-I-HOW- huh!?”

Tomura looked back at them from the couch in interest. “What were the results?”

“Izuku’s intelligence is, apparently, on a college level.”

Tomura nodded. “Cool. Sounds right.”

“But- how? ”

“Izuku, what have we been telling you?” Kurogiri put his hand on Izuku’s shoulder, “you're very smart.”

“B-but my grades are only average in school?”

“Your teachers could very well have been giving you harder work, or just grading you unfairly. Who knows? The point is you're very smart for your age.”

“But-that-that can’t be right!”

Tomura snickered at his side. When had he gotten there? In the midst of Izuku panicking? “It seems like it is right.”

xXx

Izuku groaned as he flopped onto his bed. Today had been tiring.

The test was hard, but the results were shocking. It took a while for Kurogiri to assure Izuku that he hadn’t somehow cheated. Even then, Izuku was still anxious.

Kurogiri assured him that he could still take the classes the course offered, so he would still be learning if he was really that worried about being behind. Izuku had definitely wanted to continue. He still couldn’t quite believe he was apparently at a college level.

Sighing, Izuku pulled out his phone to watch something before sleeping. Just as he pulled up a video, his phone chimed with a text notification.

Why would I get- oh! OH! OH NO.

Izuku dropped his phone onto the pillow and put his head in his hands, groaning. He was not ready to learn if that cute purple haired boy had only given Izuku his number as a joke or if he was serious.

Even so… he didn’t just want to ignore him.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad?

You and (#)

You:

Hi, this is the boy you met in the alley

(#):

Hey

I’m surprised you actually used this number

Weren’t scared off by my villain’s quirk?

You:

No quirk is villainous! It only matters how you use it!

You helped me out so I kinda hoped you’d want to talk again

Izuku looked at his phone anxiously. Was that ok to say? Was he annoying the other boy? How do you talk to people?

It took a few minutes for the boy to reply, Izuku panicking the entire time. Did he say something wrong?

(#):

I don’t think I caught your name?

You:

I’m Izuku!

(#): 

Just Izuku?

You:

Heh. Remember why I was crying when you met me? I guess I don't really have a surname anymore? I mean, my mom isn't really my mom anymore so…

Oh shoot that was awkward wasn’t it? Why was Izuku so bad at this!?

(#):

Oh ya 

I guess your right

I’m Hitoshi Shinsou

You can call me Shinsou

Izuku smiled, changing Shinsou’s contact.

You:

So does this mean we’re friends now?

Shinsou:

I’m not good at making friends

But I think so

Chapter Text

Izuku sat, flipping through one of his notebooks, as Tomura and Kurogiri talked with a group of potential recruits.

The meeting seemed to be going well so Izuku had elected to ignore it. Instead, he was scanning his notebook for errors. His mind always moved faster than his pen, so sometimes he misspelled or forgot words when he analyzed heroes.

He felt his phone vibrate in his pocket and quickly put his notebook down to grab it, a smile forming on his face when he saw the message.

Shinsou:

Are we still meeting today?

You:

Ya!

Only if you want to of course

But nothing has come up so I don’t see why not!

Shinsou:

Cool

See you later then

You:

See you later!

Izuku grinned as excitement bubbled up. He and Shinsou had been texting frequently since Izuku got his number and they had decided to meet up and hang out today. Izuku hadn’t really hung out with anyone since… well it’s been a while.

He put his phone down and continued editing his notebook as the meeting finished up. There were no fights, Tomura hadn’t sounded upset, and Izuku hadn’t been asked to explain anything, so it seems everything went well!

“Ughhh”

Or at least, as well as it could’ve gone.

“I hate these meetings! Stupid NPCs don’t even deserve my time! They’re all idiots!” Tomura groused as he sprawled onto the counter.

Izuku bounced up to the stool next to him and sat, “At least that one went well!”

Tomura just groaned again.

“Oh, Izuku, I did have something to ask.”

Izuku turned to Kurogiri curiously, “what?”

“Well, the UA exams are coming up in a few months, I was wondering if your planning on entering?”

Tomura looked at Izuku with an unreadable look at that. Izuku shrugged.

“I-I don’t know. I don’t really think I… want to be a hero anymore.” It was hard to admit. Weird, really. But it…it was true. “But that’s the only dream I’ve ever had. I don’t know what to do besides that. And it’s not like I can just stay here forever!”

Tomura narrowed his eyes, he looked frustrated. “Why not? I like you being here.”

Izuku blinked, surprised. Tomura liked it? “But-but I can’t just live off of you forever! I need a job at some point!”

“Izuku, we do not mind if you ‘live off of us’. Even so, if your really that worried about it, why don’t you just sell your analysis? I’m sure you could get a good price for it.” Kurogiri intoned.

“Yeah! Or you could work with us! Your analysis could be helpful. Why do you have to leave? Besides, wouldn’t it be hard for you to get a job anywhere else? You mentioned a lot of people discriminate against quirkless people.”

“Oh. I guess your right.” Izuku looked at the counter, wondering why he had never thought of selling his analysis, or of quirk discrimination at any job he tried to get. “That sounds good. Selling my analysis.”

“…And joining my party?”

Izuku laughed, “Nah, but I mean it’s sounding more appealing. Keep asking and maybe I’ll finally accept!”

Tomura’s eyes lit up and he pumped a fist in the air, “I’ll get you to join in no time! You’ll see how useless hero society is and want to help change it!”

Kurogiri huffed a laugh before cutting in, “so, are you not planning to enter UA?” 

“No. I-I dont think so.”

Kurogiri nodded and Tomura smiled slightly, as if he had won something. Well, I did tell him I might join. I guess he did win something.

And then everyone continued what they had been doing before.

It was strangely anti-climatic. Izuku had wanted to be a hero since he knew what the word meant. It had been all he wanted in a world where he was refused everything.

But that wasn’t true anymore.

Because Izuku was no longer disillusioned by the grandeur of hero society. He had learned that hero’s lied. They used their power to further their own agenda, didn’t care how many people they had to step on to succeed.

There were heroes like endeavor, who caused damage wherever he went, who killed incocents when he was meant to be saving them! Sure, maybe it wasn’t on purpose, but he still did it! 

Heroes weren’t supposed to kill people. That should be obvious.

Then… then there were heroes like All Might. Who crushed kid’s dreams if they didn’t have a suitable quirk. Left clearly abused kids on roofs.

Something- hatred, anger, sadness- stirred in his gut at that.

Izuku wasn’t stupid, it had taken a while to realize that, but he wasn’t. He knew he looked abused. It was impossible not to see the bruises, the destroyed notebook, the stuttering. Signs were everywhere.

But all All Might could focus on was himself.

He took a deep breath, pushing down those feelingsfor when it mattered, before remembering something, “Oh! I forgot to tell you, I’m going to meet up with a… a friend today.” It felt so weird calling Shinsou a friend. Izuku wasn’t used to having friends. “So I may be back pretty late.”

“I didn’t know you had a friend. I thought everyone bullied you?” Tomura asked. Well that was a blunt way to put it.

“I met him recently, after-after my mom kicked me out.” 

Tomura shrugged, “don’t die. Try not to get arrested.”

Izuku laughed. “I’ll try!”

xXx

Hitoshi tapped his foot anxiously as he sat on a park bench.

He was meeting with Izuku today. His friend. To hang out.

Was he sure he wasn’t just dreaming?

What if it was a trick? Izuku must just want to go Hitoshi to trust him so he could turn on him in the end!

No! You can’t think like that!

Still. Hitoshi hadn’t ever really had a friend. 

His thoughts were cut off as a familiar green eyed boy ran towards him, a bright, clearly nervous smile on his face.

“Shinsou! Hi!”

Oh no. He was cute.

It had been hard to see when he was crying, tears staining his face and red eyes. But now it was clear.

Izuku had about a million freckles crammed onto his nose and cheeks. His green eyes shone like emeralds when they weren’t crying and his smile was as bright as the sun.

Hitoshi felt his cheeks heat up as the shorter boy came towards him.

“Hey! I wasn’t actually sure you’d come- Not that I thought you were mean! Or-I mean-“

Hitoshi gave a startled giggle as the teen stumbled over his words, “it’s fine.”

“O-okay,” Izuku seemed to calm down a bit, before sitting down on the bench next to Hitoshi.

“Anyways! How are you?”

“I’m fine,” He answered shortly, nerves taking control. Oh, he should probably ask too, huh? “How’re you?”

Izuku grinned, “I’ve been good! My friends said I could stay with them for a while, and I decided I’m going to sell my analysis! And…”

Hitoshi listened as the teen chattered on and on, easily carrying the conversation. Occasionally, he would ask Hitoshi some questions but it always landed with Izuku answering something else.

Hitoshi silently wondered if he needed to talk more, but this was nice. He liked listening to Izuku.

They- mainly Izuku, though Hitoshi butted in at times- talked for a few hours before Izuku paused.

“Oh! It’s getting dark, I should probably leave. It was nice talking to you! Usually people tell me to shut up if I ever talk that much but you didn’t! We should meet up again!”

“Oh-sure. Yeah. Let’s meet up again. Oh! And by the way, it’s weird with only one of us using given names. You might as well just call me Hitoshi.”

Izuku’s smile was blinding, “really? great! Will do! I’ll see you next time we hang out, Hitoshi!”

He left, leaving Hitoshi to sit on the bench alone. He was too shocked to get up. Izuku wanted to meet up again? Even knowing Hitoshi’s quirk? And he was happy to use his given name? Most people would never allow themselves to get that close to him!

Huh.

His mouth curved up without his consent and he slapped a hand over it.

Today was a good day.

But he had to go back to his foster parent’s house now.

Well, that wiped the smile right off of his face.

Chapter Text

Izuku walked back to the bar, practically skipping, with a huge smile on his face.

That had gone… surprisingly well. Izuku had never been the best at social stuff. After all, who wanted to hang out with the quirkless kid?

But. Shi- Hitoshi knew he had no quirk. He just… didn’t care.

Even after repeating that fact over and over in his head, Izuku’s chest still filled with joy at it. It had been so long since somebody had accepted him. And now, he had three full people who did!

He hoped desperately that the newfound joy in his life wouldn’t disappear.

Izuku continued on his way, thinking as he walked. At one point he brought out his phone to write down his thoughts and became so absorbed in it that he almost didn’t notice when he wandered into an alley unbidden.

There was a surprised grunt, before Izuku’s head snapped up, only to lock eyes with one of the most interesting people he had ever seen. Leaning against the wall of the alley, a boy- around Izuku’s age- was patching up what looked like burns along his arm. 

He had red and white hair, perfectly split down the middle. One of his eyes was a blinding blue while the other was a more dull grey. The blue eye, he noticed, had a red burn mark running down along his face. 

Izuku gaped up at him. It was kinda ridiculous how many eye-catching features he had. How come he was the one to get all the cool features while Izuku was stuck as one of the most plain people to be seen?

The red and white haired boy sighed, his eyes glancing down at the burns he was patching up then back up at Izuku.

Izuku’s earlier interest immediately faded as he was shocked back into reality. He scrambled over to the strange boy with concern written on his face, “are you alright?”

The boy sighed. “What do you think?” He snapped, seemingly frustrated.

Izuku bit his lip, nerves taking over. “I have a med kit in my backpack,” he offered, slinging off his backpack and opening it before the boy could even answered. “I can help?”

“Sure. Why not.” Izuku immediately took the taller boy’s arm and began wrapping it in gauze as he rubbed burn cream on the wounds. 

He grimaced at every single burn, recognizing the severity of them. These weren’t just kitchen burns, they were pretty bad. And Izuku knew what bad burns looked like.

He was practically an expert on them.

Really, the boy should probably be going to a hospital, but these weren’t life threatening wounds, so Izuku let it slide. And, if the way the boy barely flinched when Izuku cleaned them was any sign, he was used to this.

If this was the kind of thing he was used to, Izuku knew how little help the hospital would provide. He was used to it too, after all.

Izuku worked on his wounds in silence, neither of them speaking. The boy hissed in pain every so often, but nothing louder than that. Honestly, with how apprehensive he seemed to be, Izuku was surprised he was even being allowed to help.

Eventually, the silence was broken with a deadpan stare, “not going to ask who I am? Or how this happened?” Those blue and grey eyes stared down at him with distrust.

Izuku shrugged, looking down at his work so as to not show the emotions swirling in his eyes. “Would you answer? Or just run away?”

There was silence again.

This time, Izuku was the one to break it. “I’m Izuku.”

“Just Izuku?” A red eyebrow raised appraisingly.

Izuku huffed out a laugh and smiled ruefully, “yup. Just Izuku.”

There was a ghost of a smile on the other boy's face- it was so slight most people would have missed it. He paused before speaking with uncertainty, “you can call me Shoto.”

Izuku raised an eyebrow, just like he had done moments earlier, “just Shoto for you, too?”

Shoto’s eyes crinkled slightly, “no, I have a last name. I’m just not a huge fan of it.”

Izuku nodded as he tied off another bandage. “Of course. I can only imagine how awful it must be.”

Shoto’s eyes brightened almost imperceptibly, “exactly. I’m glad you can get it.”

Izuku sighed dramatically, deciding then and now that he wanted to make Shoto laugh. “Of course, I can only guess. Since you seem so inclined to keep it from me.” His eyes lit up in excitement, “what could it possibly be?”

Shoto glanced at him with a bit of confusion, before he seemed to understand what Izuku was getting at. A guessing game.

Izuku grinned, “well, for starters, your hair is part red so… oh! I got it!” Izuku definitely didn’t have it. “Is your last name Ketchup?”

Shoto just stared at him for a second, taking in his exaggerated confidence, “no.”

Immediately, Izuku deflated. “Aww, I really thought I had it.” He had not, in fact, thought he had it. “Well, what else could it be?”

Izuku paused wrapping bandages around a burnt wrist to look determinedly into Shoto’s eyes. Shoto seemed perplexed, but also wasn’t looking away, so Izuku continued in his endeavor to make him laugh.

“Hmmm… well. One of your eyes is grey so… oh! Maybe Gure?”

Shoto’s lip quirked up, “no. I can assure you my last name isn’t just a color.”

Izuku frowned. “Are you sure?”

“I- yes.” Shoto coughed and hid his mouth behind his hand. “I’m pretty sure I would know what my last name is.”

“Welll,” Izuku announced, “you never know! I mean, what if you had forgotten your last name!?”

Shoto raised an eyebrow again and crossed his arms, since Izuku had finally finished bandaging them. “Really?”

“Really!”

“Okay then, Izuku.” He replied. “How many people have you actually met whose last names are colors?”

“ For your information,” Izuku grumbled, standing up straight, “ my last name is- or was, I guess- a color!”

Shoto stared at him for a second, “was your last name Midori?”

“I-“ Izuku gaped at him, completely flabbergasted at how quickly Shoto had guessed. “I- well, technically no!”

“Oh really?” Shoto huffed in amusement, the beginnings of a smile taking over his face, “what was it?”

Izuku open and closed his mouth a few times, before crossing his arms and looking away, “Midori ya .”

Shoto blinked. “Are you being serious?”

“Of course I’m being serious!”

He let out a startled laugh. Izuku’s goal was accomplished!

“Your hair is green. Your eyes are green. And your last name just happens to be green?” He was trying to keep it back, but the smile was fully spreading across his face now. “Who’s last name is a color?”

Izuku glared at him and puffed up his cheeks, though he couldn’t hide his satisfaction. “Lots of people’s!”

“Oh, yeah. Sure. I’ve, personally, met oh so many Yellows. And, of course, Mr. Orange lives just down the street. And you can’t forget about the famous Ms. Purple!” 

Izuku sighed with resignation. “Okay, fine! Maybe it’s not that common.”

Shoto grinned victoriously. It was a good look on him.

Izuku pulled out his phone to stop himself from staring and glanced at the time with a sigh. “I’d better get going,” He muttered, not quite ready to leave Shoto.

Shoto sobered immediately, “you have somewhere to be?”

“Yeah,” Izuku sighed. He glanced at Shoto, barely thinking before asking what was probably a stupid question. “Where are you going to go?”

Shoto looked down, “home, I guess.”

“Is that where you got those burns?”

There was a bout of silence, before Shoto simply looked at him with an unreadable glance, “I don’t have that many choices.”

“Can I at least give you my number?” Izuku knew what the answer would be, but thought he may as well try.

There was a sort of sadness to his eyes as Shoto looked at him, “my Dad would find out.”

Izuku nodded with understanding.

They stood there for a moment, both unwilling to leave the other’s company, before Izuku broke the silence. 

“Do you think I’ll see you again?”

Shoto looked away with a sigh, “probably not. It’s a wonder that I managed to get out of the house without being stopped today. The probability of that happening again is slim to none.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

Shoto looked at him again. He looked helpless. “no.” 

He didn’t say it in a mean way, or anything of the sort. He said it like it was just a fact of life.

Izuku vowed, then and there, that he wouldn’t let this boy be ignored.

Like he had been.

xXx

“I’m back!” Izuku yelled, a little less enthusiastically than usual, as he entered the bar. He walked in to see Tomura sitting on the couch and Kurogiri, unsurprisingly, behind the counter.

“Hello, Izuku. How did meeting with your friend go?” Kurogiri asked.

Izuku smiled, thinking back to his time with Hitoshi. “It went well!”

Tomura sniffed, before throwing a controller that Izuku barely caught. “Good. Now let’s play Mario Kart.” 

Well, he had never been the most tactful, but it seemed Tomura had caught onto his somewhat sullen mood.

Izuku went and sat down next to him, a small smile on his face. It felt nice for someone to care about him, even when he seemed relatively okay. Tomura cared no matter how small the problem.

 (Well, that wasn’t quite true. Once, Izuku had screamed about just missing the cutoff to buy a piece of limited edition hero merch and Tomura had told him to just get over it! Really, how was he ever supposed to get over something so important!?)

Izuku proceeded to get demolished at Mario Kart for the next hour. It was fun, even if it was frustrating  when he continued to lose. It brought his mind off of Shoto.

Eventually, Kurogiri made them stop so that they could eat dinner. After that, Izuku went up to his room to work on more analysis. And maybe he also did a little bit of digging to try to find out as much as possible on Shoto. But nobody else needed to know that.

There were ups and downs, but overall, Izuku considered it to be a pretty good day.

Chapter Text

“Shoot!”

Izuku’s head snapped up at Tomura’s pained cry. Tomura- he wasn’t even supposed to be here? He had gone to another villain’s hideout in order to negotiate with them and he was back far too early!

Izuku quickly got up from the couch and rushed over to the kitchen, where Kurogiri had put Tomura. “Tomura? Are you okay?” Worry knotted in his stomach. What could have happened?

“Izuku-“ Kurogiri seemed to want to stop him from entering, but thought better of it. Izuku wouldn’t have listened, anyway. They both knew that. He entered the room and stopped in his tracks.

Tomura was lying on the ground and breathing heavily. His hair and clothes were matted with blood, though Izuku was unsure of who’s blood. Izuku’s eyes caught on the long rip in his shirt, and he could see enough to know that whoever had hurt Tomura, they had not held back.

Izuku fell to his knees next to him and immediately helped to take his shirt off as Kurogiri teleported some stuff into the kitchen. Tomura gasped and struggled throughout the process and Izuku bit his lip, apologetic. He didn’t mean to be aggravating his wound, but there didn’t seem to be another option!

With the shirt off, he could see that it was a knife wound. In his abdomen. Which was, decidedly, a bad place to get stabbed. It would need stitches. Tomura had bruises and scrapes all over his body, but that was by far the worst wound.

What had happened? The guys Tomura was negotiating with weren’t known for nearly killing people just because they were upset, and even then they had a sort of alliance with Tomura! 

So what happened!?

Izuku was quickly going into a panic, but he still had the sense to move out of the way when Kurogiri gently nudged him. Izuku moved to the other side of Tomura, who was whimpering with pain, and watched as Kurogiri cleaned the wound. Tomura’s skin was pale and clammy, and his eyes were screwed shut.

Izuku didn’t know if he should- could- do anything. Tomura was probably in so much pain! But Izuku didn’t have a healing quirk- he couldn’t stitch up wounds or make the pain go away. All he could do was watch!

Belatedly, Izuku realized that he was crying. He reached up to wipe away the tears, only to realize he had far too much blood on his hands from lifting Tomura’s shirt to do so. The blood only served to make Izuku more panicked.

Izuku could only watch as Kurogiri helped Tomura. He had been right, Tomura needed stitches. 

Izuku desperately hoped that he would be okay. If he wasn’t- what would Izuku even do?

“Izuku…” Kurogiri was looking at him with pity, “why don’t you go to your room? I'm going to help Tomura.”

Izuku glanced at his hands, which were holding a suture needle and thread. So he was about to stitch Tomura up. It made sense why he wouldn’t want Izuku there. This would hurt Tomura, who had already been hissing and gritting his teeth during the cleaning process, a lot .

Izuku opened his mouth to object, but the only thing that came out was a choked sob. The next thing he knew, he was in his room. It seemed Kurogiri hadn’t been willing to hear his argument, he noted as the portal above him closed.

Izuku leaned against the wall and slid down it until he was sitting, bending over and covering his ears harshly as he cried. 

Abdomen wounds… were some of the worst wounds you could get. There were a lot of organs you could hit. You could rupture or cut said organs, which was not something you wanted to happen.

Even after the injury, months later, something could still rupture. The scar tissue could twist an intestine, and the organs could swell up too much.

Of course, most of that was unlikely, and Kurogiri was good with first aid. But Izuku wasn’t exactly thinking clearly.

All he could think about was Tomura, bloody and hurt. Tomura who had helped Izuku when everybody else had turned against him. Tomura, who Izuku considered to be his brother!

Whoever had done this to him would not get away with it.

Izuku tried to calm his breathing, using the method Kurogiri had taught him. When that didn’t work, he stumbled to his bed, grabbed a pillow, and shoved it over his ears.

He laid there crying for what seemed like hours, though it was probably more like half an hour. Eventually, it seemed his tears ran out. He calmed down enough that the breathing method actually worked this time, and then he just… laid there.

He felt so… empty. That was the only word to describe it. He was angry and scared and frustrated and it was too much! He felt his breathing speed up again and quickly forced himself to calm down.

Izuku let go of the pillow to grab his phone and headphones and put on some music. He wanted to turn off the lights, but didn’t have the energy. Instead, he laid in bed and drifted off to the melancholy songs.

He didn’t fall asleep, though he certainly felt exhausted. Eventually, he registered that the lights were off. Kurogiri must have come to check on him at some point and turned them off. Izuku wondered how he hadn’t noticed the misty man.

Around 4:00 am, Izuku woke up, so he must’ve fallen asleep at some point. He hadn’t taken off the headphones, it seemed, so the music was still playing.

He felt horrible. Exhaustion weighed down his body and he felt sore all over. Knowing himself, he had probably only gotten about three or four hours of sleep before his stupid body woke him up. Anxiety did that.

Groaning, he sat up and took off his headphones. Izuku went up to the bathroom, catching a glance of himself in the mirror, before stopping in his tracks when he noticed the red around his eyes.

The events of the previous night hit him like a brick and he immediately felt sick as emotions of all kinds overwhelmed him. Izuku rushed out of the bathroom, intent on seeing Tomura’s condition. He flew down the stairs as tears welled up in his eyes.

“Izuku?” Kurogiri caught him as he nearly tumbled to the ground in his haste, “Izuku- why are you up this early? It’s-“ he turned to look at the time, “it’s 4:25 AM. How much did you sleep?”

Izuku ignored Kurogiri’s questions, worry clawing at his chest. He looked around the room, noticing the blood stains that led to the kitchen. “Where is he?” Izuku asked frantically.

Kurogiri sighed, gently letting him go but keeping his hand on Izuku’s shoulder. “Hey, you need to calm down, Izuku. He is in his room- but please be quiet.” He paused, “Izuku… be aware that while he may not look it, he will be alright. You don’t need to worry.”

A spike of panic coursed through Izuku at that. He didn’t look alright? Was he really okay? Had something gone wrong?

“Izuku! Calm down. Like I said, he is okay. I wouldn’t lie to you about that.”

Izuku nodded with watery eyes, “okay.” Everything was okay. He wasn’t worried at all.

Kurogiri clearly didn’t believe him. He sighed again, “I’ll make you some breakfast while you go see him.” He seemed reluctant to allow Izuku to go, but after a moment he took his hand off of his shoulder and moved to the kitchen.

Izuku took a deep breath and hiked back up the stairs toward Tomura’s room. He paused outside the door, poised to knock before realizing that Tomura was sleeping- even if he wasn’t, he probably wouldn’t be able to get up. Izuku lowered his fist and opened the door himself.

Like Kurogiri had said, he didn’t look so good.

Tomura was lying in his bed. His skin was pale- somehow paler than usual. His hair still had some blood in it- it was probably difficult to get out without taking a full shower, and Tomura was not in the condition to do that- and the scrapes and bruises were more prominent.

His shirt was still off, but now bandages were tightly wrapped around his torso. Parts of the bandages were red, the blood having soaked through. They would probably need to be changed when he woke up.

Izuku stumbled forward towards the bed. He crouched down in front of Tomura’s face as tears slid down his own.

How- how had this happened? Izuku was still unsure about that. There shouldn’t have been a reason for a fight, more less for a fight to get this intense!

Izuku sat by his bedside as all his worry and fear overwhelmed him again. He must’ve cried for at least fifteen minutes. He was so scared! What if Tomura died? What if whoever hurt him found the bar?

A while later, Kurogiri called Izuku down so he could eat. Izuku didn’t really want to leave Tomura, but he knew better than to ignore his needs, especially when Kurogiri was worried. So, reluctantly, he left.

He stared for a second more before closing the door, as if that would somehow make everything better. It didn’t, of course.

Izuku walked away slowly, tiredly. His gut churned with fear and anger. Which- was a surprise. Izuku never got angry, not really. 

He didn’t get angry when his best friend abused him. He didn’t get angry when his classmates told him to kill himself. He didn’t get angry when his mom kicked him out.

The realization settled in his gut. Somebody had tried to kill one of the only people who had ever been kind to Izuku. His-his brother! And Izuku was angry. 

Whoever had done this would pay. Izuku would make sure of it.

Chapter Text

Edgeshot.

That was who had hurt Tomura.

It had been three days since the incident, and Izuku had been researching day and night. Kurogiri was starting to get worried.

But he had finally found out what had happened.

A day after he got injured, Tomura woke up, exhausted. Izuku and Kurogiri had fussed over him until he yelled at them. He wasn’t injured too badly, thankfully. He would heal up just fine. All of Izuku’s worries had been for nothing.

When Izuku asked what had happened, Kurogiri pretending not to eavesdrop, Tomura had scowled. He had said he didn’t know.

“One moment I was negotiating with the Buki Duo, and the next- some hero must have appeared. He was too fast. He took out the Buki Duo immediately and almost got me- would’ve, too, if I hadn’t dusted his arm and sent my coordinates to Kurogiri as quickly as I did.”

Izuku remembered feeling his heart go cold at that. Tomura had been so close to being captured- or worse. If he hadn’t reacted as fast, if he had been just a second slower… Izuku didn’t want to think about it.

It made the slivers in his chest grow. It made him feel the burning he now associated with anger multiply and carve open his heart. It made his fists clench and his eyes harden.

Izuku had always had so many reasons to be angry in his life, but now- now he had someone to protect . And Izuku had always wanted to be a hero.

He shook himself out of his stupor. Anyways. Tomura’s testimony was a dead end. Izuku wasn’t going to figure out anything from him, so he would have to research himself. 

Izuku sighed tiredly. What a disaster. Not only had Tomura been hurt, but whatever hero it was had also arrested the Buki Duo, allies that they needed. 

(Somehow, Izuku didn’t notice how he said ‘we’. When had he started considering himself part of Tomura’s ‘party’?)

So, Izuku had spent the next two days scouring the internet, looking for any documentation on who might’ve done this. There was no news coverage- predictable, considering the time of night. Izuku couldn’t find anything public that was helpful, so he resorted to… less legal methods.

When Izuku was interested in something, he went all the way…. Which was why he sorta-maybe learned how to hack when he was younger. Just to find out more about his favorite heroes! He didn’t use it for anything nefarious! And besides, he wasn’t even that good.

But. He had the skill, so he was going to use it. No point in feeling guilty over it now. 

It turned out, Izuku had just enough knowledge to be able to hack into the nearest hospital’s records. He had tried the police’s system, but that was beyond his capabilities.

It was lucky Tomura had disintegrated his arm, otherwise Izuku didn’t know how he would’ve found the hero who did this. He felt bad for the thought- who was glad that a hero had gotten injured? Certainly not a good person!- but, well, Izuku was angry.

And, he found, he was beyond guilt when he was angry.

Looking at hospital records, Izuku was able to find a file on one of the most recent patients. A hero. A hero who had to undergo surgery to fix the nerve damage he had obtained in a villain fight. The nerve damage that was on his arm.

Bingo.

Well, nobody could ever say Izuku wasn’t a good investigator. Hm. Maybe he should’ve become a detective- well, that would be if any place even hired him on account of his lack of quirk. Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen.

So now Izuku had a target.

Edgeshot was the #5 hero of Japan. He was incredibly strong. He didn’t talk much about his quirk in interviews, but that was fine. Izuku didn’t need him to talk about it.

Izuku had never really been interested in Edgeshot before- well, he was interested, just not as much. Edgeshot tended to keep a low profile for a limelight hero, and his costume wasn’t exactly eye-catching, so Izuku focused on other heroes. He had an entry on him in one of his notebooks, but it didn’t say much. 

From what he could decipher from videos of his fights, Edgeshot had some kind of folding quirk, or at least something that made him thinner. He usually fought by stabbing his opponents- with himself, it seemed. Sometimes it looked like he just disappeared, then reappeared somewhere else. It was awesome how he could make himself so thin you couldn’t even see him!

Anyways.

He was insanely fast. Faster than most heroes, at least. Izuku was surprised Tomura had escaped, it looked like Edgeshot was perfectly capable of taking down him and the Buki Duo in less than a second. Tomura must have incredible reflexes!

They weren’t enough to save him from being hurt, though, as the pool in his gut reminded him. So Izuku kept looking.

Soon enough, Izuku was able to compile enough information to form a plan. A plan for what, he wasn’t exactly sure yet. Honestly, he wasn’t really thinking clearly at this point. He was just doing whatever he felt like he had to do.

It was crazy how quickly he had gotten all this information together. Izuku had never made such a thorough, accurate, and deadly analysis before. But he wasn’t thinking about that. For him, it had still taken too long. He needed to do this soon, or he might do something stupid and act without a plan.

All he knew was that his mind was working a mile a minute and whatever he was writing was going to work. It had to.

Izuku wouldn’t settle for less.

Chapter Text

A full week after hatching his plan- which had taken way too long, in Izuku’s opinion- Izuku stood in the middle of a large abandoned warehouse, admiring his work.

Tomura and Kurogiri thought he was out with Hitoshi. They expected him to be back in a few hours, so he had to make this quick. Luckily, he had planned for that.

A deep satisfaction settled in his gut as he stared at the trap he had set. He left the building, shifting his black medical mask and beanie as he hid in a nearby alley- close enough to admire what was about to happen, not close enough to be in range.

He tensed when he heard the loud shouts of the guy he had hired to be bait. He had a speed quirk, which was the only reason Izuku had picked him. He needed someone capable of running from the inhumanly fast Edgeshot.

Izuku watched as the man with the speed quirk rushed into the warehouse, Edgeshot on his heels. He scanned his phone, and grinned when he got the ‘ready’ text. Everything was set in place.

xXx

Shinya Kamihara, Pro Hero Edgeshot, immediately burst into action when he heard the shout. Quicker than should be humanly possible, he sprang on the purse-snatcher, already folded into a thin thread. 

The criminal jumped away, panic clear in his eyes. He stumbled back, before speeding into an alley Shinya hadn’t noticed before. Shoot. He must be really off his game, then. 

Shinya had had to deal with so many villains today. Usually, his route was fairly calm. But today… well. In the morning, he had to take care of a bank robbery. Then, there was a street fight, which somehow managed to evolve into an entire brawl. And just when he was about to take his lunch break, he was called in for a hostage situation! After that, there was tons of paperwork, and then of course he just had to run into this purse snatcher. And of course he had a speed quirk. Making him even harder to catch! Plus, it didn’t help that daylight had slipped away already.

Suffice to say, he was exhausted.

Instead of dwelling on that train of thought, he shot after the criminal. Unfortunately, the path he was taking had lots of turns, making it hard to travel as fast as Shinya usually would. He would just have to make do.

Even with the obstacle, Shinya still managed to catch up to the criminal, who looked behind himself in shock. Just before he reached out to grab him, the villain burst into a warehouse. The purse-snatcher was also moving faster than he was before. Maybe because he was about to be caught?

Shinya sighed, deciding not to dwell on the sudden burst of speed, and continued following. He slowed down slightly when he reached the doors of the warehouse, though not to a full stop. His gut was screaming at him. …But he was a hero, he reassured himself. Being a hero was dangerous.

He ignored the feeling and pushed open the doors.

And there was nobody in the building.

Shinya stopped. He looked around, confused. There was no way for the villain to have escaped, right? The front doors were the only doors, all the windows were closed and didn’t seem capable of being opened. There were no signs of breaking a window or wall. And besides, Shinya hadn’t slowed down that much. The villain still wouldn’t have had time to escape without Shinya seeing him.

So… where was he?

Shinya entered further into the building, snooping around cautiously. Maybe the criminal was hiding? There were a lot of wooden beams stacked about. Maybe he was faster than Shinya had assumed?

And then he heard a click.

Shinya spun around to the door in the blink of an eye. He pulled. Nothing. It was locked.

His hands froze and he felt goosebumps travel up his body. He threw himself against the door, breath quickening when that did nothing. How strong was the thing blocking the door? 

Suddenly, there was a crash. 

He turned back, only to see a figure standing on a ledge and quickly escaping through a hole in the ceiling. He sped towards it, faster than he ever had before, but was still too late. The man sealed the hole in the ceiling up, using some kind of metal quirk, Shinya assumed. It must’ve been a different man.

Shinya threw himself to the ledge, against where the hole had been, hoping the quirk was weak, or that it was just an illusion quirk. He was wrong.

 In his panic, it took him a few extra seconds to notice that the banging noise hadn’t been from the man escaping.

Down below, a flicker of light and the scent of smoke made itself known.

Shinya froze.

It had been years since he was this scared. Way back in his highschool years. Shinya was one of the top heroes. He was one of the fastest and strongest. But he didn’t know what to do.

The fire crept up the building, catching onto logs of wood Shinya hadn’t thought much of in his exhaustion. He looked around. Those logs were everywhere. It was the perfect place to set a huge fire.

Somebody had planned this.

Shinya immediately set about trying to bang himself against the front door again, and again, and again. He kept trying, his bangs getting more desperate as the fire crept up, up, up.

It grew bigger, hungrier, every second. The scent of smoke was getting more prominent. Shinya coughed, even though his mask was covering his mouth.

Eventually, he stopped fighting. The coughing was getting too rough. He fell to the ground, curling up defensively. Fear, longing, and pain danced through his senses.

What would the world think? Would he just be another dead hero? Would he be considered weak for dying like this?

What about his family? He would never get to say goodbye to his mom. His mom would have to bury her son!

If the body was even salvageable.

That thought sent him into an even harsher coughing fit. He couldn’t breath.

xXx

Izuku watched as the building went up in flames. The man with the speed quirk and the villain with the metal-bending quirk appeared next to him.

He threw two sacks of money carelessly to the ground, a clear dismissal that the older men gladly took. He had saved up enough money from selling his analysis, but now…

Now he was seeing how valuable it actually was.

Izuku smothered a laugh as the flames rose higher.

Chapter Text

“I’m back!” Izuku called as he walked into the bar with a wide smile.

Tomura glanced back at him from the couch, “what’s got you smiling so big?”

Izuku walked over to the barstools and took a seat, gladly sipping at the orange juice Kurogiri had provided for him. “Nothing. I just saw my friend, why wouldn’t I be happy?”

“You’re not usually… this happy after hanging out with him…. Whatever. It doesn’t matter.” Tomura said, though his eyes were narrowed. 

Izuku rolled his eyes and shrugged. “Anyways-“

“Izuku, why do you smell like smoke?” Kurogiri chimed in, brow furrowed.

Izuku jumped, he hadn’t heard Kurogiri sneaking up behind him. Hm. Usually he heard everything. He must be tired. Focusing back onto the topic at hand, he paused, smile faltering. “Um…”

Before he could even blink, Tomura was up out of his seat and right beside him. Both of them looked over him, but Izuku knew they wouldn’t find any injuries. He had been careful.

“Izuku,” Tomura started dangerously. “Did that Kacchan kid come after you again?” He looked murderous.

Izuku started flailing his hands around, “no! I’m fine! Everything’s fine! Well, except of course for Edge- you know what? I’m gonna stop talking now.” Shoot. Why was he so bad at lying? He could only hope he had been speaking too fast for them to understand.

“Then why do you smell like smoke? Answer that!” Tomura demanded. He had stopped checking Izuku over though, so at least he wasn’t as worried.

Izuku stayed silent for a moment, face contorting as he decided what to say. “Ummmm… there was a fight?”

“A fight?” Tomura asked, eyebrow raised. “You don’t sound so sure.”

Izuku huffed. “Well, I am sure.” His mind was running a mile a minute as he tried to come up with a cover story. “There was a villain who had… a fire quirk! Yeah! He… um… his quirk made a lot of smoke. That’s why I smell like smoke.”

Tomura looked at him suspiciously. “Oh really?”

“Yes really!”

“Hm. And who was this villain fighting? I haven’t heard about any fight today with fire.”

“That’s only because you’re always playing video games all day!” Izuku scrunched up his nose. “For the record, the hero he was fighting was-um... It was Edgeshot!” Shooooot.

Izuku mentally face-palmed. Why was Edgeshot the hero he thought of?

They glared at each other for a full minute before Kurogiri chimned in, looking down at his phone. “Does this ‘fire villain’ who was fighting Edgeshot have anything to do with his death?”

Izuku shut his mouth with an audible click. “Umm… yes? I guess?”

Kurogiri raised his eyebrows- or, whatever constituted as eyebrows on his misty body. “Mhm. The attack where he was seemingly led to a warehouse before someone was seen climbing out of the roof, and then the building miraculously went up in flames, then collapsed?”

“Umm, yep! That must be the one!” Izuku looked down nervously. Tomura coughed to cover up a laugh.

“The attack that was confirmed not to have been done by someone with a fire quirk, by a crime-scene quirk specialist?”

Oh. “Uh- well, you know how finicky those tests to figure that out can be. They were probably just wrong! It was definitely someone with a fire quirk!”

Kurogiri stared at him, before looking down at his phone, “ ‘Witnesses claim that the only villain they saw was a man who seemed to have a speed quirk, and Lead Specialist Kusenoaru Tadashi has guaranteed that there was nobody with a fire quirk on the scene using his quirk; past vision, which allows him to see what happened during a certain minute of his choosing in the past.’” He read off.

Izuku sat where he was, frozen. “Umm… it was actually a different fight?”

Tomura burst out into laughter. “Look at your face!”

“Oh, shut up!” Izuku swatted at him, though he was relieved that he clearly wasn’t worried anymore. The only price being Izuku’s pride.

Kurogiri sighed. “Well, you’re obviously not hurt. But you are going to have to explain why you were at the scene of Edgeshot’s death long enough, and close enough, to smell like smoke.” He looked at Izuku with narrowed eyes.

Izuku groaned, laying his head down on the table as Tomura’s laughter finally died down. “Fine.”

They waited in silence expectantly. “Well… you know how I figured out that the hero who almost killed you was Edgeshot?”

Tomura grumbled. “He didn’t almost kill me. But yes.”

Izuku looked at him with eyebrows raised. Tomura scoffed. Izuku simply rolled his eyes and continued. 

“Well…” he looked down and smiled anxiously, “I may have… accidentally, Gone a little…crazy. And thought up a plot to kill him. Which succeeded.” There was silence. “How was I supposed to know it would work!?”

Tomura’s face broke into a huge smile. He cackled, “ finally! If I knew all it would take to get you to join my party was to get hurt, I would’ve done it ages ago!”

“Tomura- no!” Kurogiri shouted, to which he was responded with an excited ‘ Tomura yes!’

The cackling and sighing continued for a few more minutes, before Kurogiri eventually got Tomura to calm down. Tomura was still smiling maniacally. “So? How did you do it?” He looked a little feral.

“Umm… I don't know…” Izuku muttered, exhaustion finally catching up with him now that he was laying his head down. He was running on pure adrenaline at this point. He had been barely sleeping for weeks, using his brain to its fullest extent, and just executed a perfect murder-

Oh frick.

He had just killed someone. A hero. What was he thinking?

Izuku passed out.

Chapter Text

Izuku woke up with a groan. He had slept horribly.  His dreams were filled with images from the fire, images of Edgeshot burning.

What had he been thinking!? Killing a hero!? Why me… 

Izuku was forced to come to the conclusion that he had been way too sleep deprived to be thinking clearly. It didn’t matter that… that it felt good to get vengeance. That it felt amazing .

Plus, to be able to see his analysis actually be useful for something? It was validating. And Izuku was in charge. He had finally been the one in power. Izuku couldn’t help but smile as he remembered the feeling. The smile fell away quickly. No, Izuku! Bad!

He sighed, but finally got up out of his bed. Huh. Maybe Kurogiri had put him there after he passed out? Oh, wait… he had passed out. Izuku sighed again. The others were probably worried about him.

He rubbed his eyes for a moment and then went downstairs. He had no idea how he was going to react to everything. How Kurogiri and Tomura would react to him. Well, this sucks.

“Oh, Izuku. I’m glad you’re awake.”

Izuku looked over to the shadowy man. He walked to the bar and sat down with a grunt. Kurogiri gave him a concerned look. “Didn’t sleep well?”

“No.” Izuku replied. He looked around, “But I’m still awake before Tomura.” He said, trying to lighten the mood.

Kurogiri huffed as he handed him a plate of food and Izuku immediately set about devouring it. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was.

“So, Izuku,” Kurogiri chimed in while he ate, “are we going to talk about your little adventure last night?”

Izuku paused. He put his fork down, losing his appetite. “I was hoping you would maybe forget about it…” he mumbled nervously. He reached up to rub his eyes and ended up putting his head in his hand.

“I did not. You need to talk about it at some point, anyway, and I would advise you to do it before Tomura comes down.” Kurogiri chuckled. “He was definitely pleased, by the way.”

Izuku smiled back at him, though it was small, forced. “Yeah. I just… never imagined I’d-“ He sucked in a sharp breath. “that I would kill a hero. ” Izuku realized he was shaking a little bit. The light mood was gone.

Kurogiri quickly came to his side, hand on his shoulder. “It’s alright, Izuku.” He guided him to the couch.

“Is it?” Izuku responded shakily. “I’m- I never wanted to be a villain- I wanted to be a hero! What have I done?”

His breathing was getting shakier by the moment. In response, Kurogiri knelt in front of him. “Remember those breathing patterns I taught you?”

Izuku nodded and started counting in his head. It took a moment, but he was able to calm himself back down again. That didn’t mean he felt better, though. “Doesn’t this make me a horrible person?” He whispered, “I killed someone.”

“Izuku,” Kurogiri said a tad sharply, causing Izuku to focus on him and the way his hands tightened around Izuku’s shoulders. “How did it feel when Tomura was hurt?”

Izuku blinked, tensing up. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Just humor me.”

He shuffled uneasily, but answered after a few moments. “It felt… bad.” Izuku looked away. Kurogiri’s eyes tracked the movement, and he definitely noticed the discomfort. “I was scared for him.” He took a deep breath, “and… I was angry, too. I don’t remember the last time I let myself be angry.” Izuku finished quietly.

Kurogiri nodded. He seemed to have expected that answer. “Why did you want to be a hero, Izuku?”

The answer came as easily as breathing, “to help people.”

“And? What changed your mind?”

“Well…” Izuku looked down. What changed his mind? Being a hero was everything he ever wanted until… “You and Tomura.”

He soldiered on, “Tomura convinced me to look more into heroes and what I found… wasn’t great. A lot of heroes are only in it for fame or money, and it shows. Heroes cause so much collateral damage… and that’s not even mentioning the human casualties! The heroes only care about capturing the villain, when their focus should be on helping the victim!” Izuku paused, realizing how passionate he had gotten at the end of his little speech. “Sorry…” he mumbled.

Kurogiri merely smiled at him- well, as much as he was capable of- and carried on. “So, you wanted to be a hero to save people, then found out how cruel the heroic world really is, right?” Izuku nodded. “And you care about Tomura, don’t you?”

“Of course!” Izuku said immediately. “Why wouldn’t I? He’s like a brother to me!”

Kurogiri huffed a laugh, “I know, I know. I’m just laying out everything. My point is that you care about Tomura.” His eyes suddenly gained an intensity that had Izuku zeroed in on him. “You want to save people, and that’s all well and good, but sometimes you have to choose who to save.”

Izuku opened his mouth to respond, but Kurogiri cut him off. “By killing Edgeshot, you helped- saved- Tomura. Like you said, Tomura’s like a brother to you. Shouldn’t that help you decide?”

Izuku’s brow crinkled, “how did I save Tomura? I wasn’t there when he got hurt. I couldn’t protect him.” 

“No, Izuku, but you’re an analyst. I’m sure you can see how a hero as powerful and influential as the #5 hero knowing what Tomura looks like and even a little bit about how his quirk works could be dangerous. And, since Tomura disintegrated part of his arm, he may have wanted to seek revenge for that. You potentially saved Tomura’s life , Izuku.”

Izuku blinked, staring heavily at Kurogiri. He… hadn’t thought of it that way. But still… “but isn’t it still wrong to kill someone? Just because he may have potentially hurt Tomura more? Tomura didn’t die, he ended up fine. So aren’t I in the wrong?” 

“Izuku,” Kurogiri said seriously, using his ‘I’m-not-your-dad-but-I-might-as-well-be’ voice, “sometimes it’s okay to be selfish.”

Izuku frowned, “what?”

“You were angry. I know.” Kurogiri responded. “You weren’t controlling yourself. But that hero hurt someone you care about. ” Kurogiri squeezed his shoulders, and he saw a bit of emotion pass through the misty man’s eyes. Izuku wondered if he had been as worried about Tomura as he had. Izuku hadn’t asked, so focused on vengeance.

“It is human nature to want them to pay.” Kurogiri paused, then- “Izuku, you have been paying for crimes you didn’t commit for your whole life. Why shouldn’t others do the same? Don’t you deserve some happiness?”

Izuku opened his mouth to reply, but nothing came out. He just sat there, processing the words. They felt surreal. Because, well, wasn’t Kurogiri right? 

Izuku had been paying for the crime of simply existing his whole life. He hadn’t deserved any of it. But Edgeshot… well, in Izuku’s book, he did. Edgeshot almost killed Tomura. Tomura, who was one of the only people who had ever been kind to Izuku. 

And so what if he didn’t deserve it? …Kurogiri was right. Izuku should be allowed to be selfish for once in his life.

“Izuku,” Kurogiri said seriously, “ it’s okay.”

Izuku felt tears running down his face.

Chapter Text

Kurogiri was right. Tomura was overjoyed , and he didn’t even try to hide it.

He had come down the stairs, much less grouchy than he usually did in the morning, and when he saw Izuku, he positively beamed.

“You did it!” Was the first thing out of the man’s mouth. You could tell he hadn’t had anything to drink yet, from how scratchy his voice was. He didn’t seem to notice the redness on Izuku’s skin from when he washed away the tear tracks on his face.

Izuku frowned, “I thought we already established this last night?”

Tomura waltzed over to sit next to Izuku at the bar, gladly accepting the meal- and glass of water, Izuku noticed slyly- that Kurogiri slid to him. “I thought that was just a good dream! But then I saw the news!” 

Tomura shoved his phone into Izuku’s face, showing him the multiple news headlines, all mourning for Edgeshot. “But no! You really did it, Izuku! You finally turned to the dark side!”

Despite Tomura’s obvious enthusiasm, Izuku wasn't quite so ecstatic. He felt a familiar stone settling in his gut as he was once again faced with the crime he had committed. Sure, Kurogiri had said it was okay, and Izuku trusted him, but… 

He killed a man. No matter how much Izuku trusted Kurogiri, years and years of hero worship wouldn’t be undone so easily. 

He shook his head slightly to be rid of the thoughts and plastered on a weak smile, “haha, yeah. I guess I did.” He didn’t miss how Kurogiri seemed to zero-in on him, clearly sensing Izuku wasn’t as alright as he pretended to be.

Finally, Tomura seemed to notice the energy of the room. He looked back and forth between Kurogiri and Izuku, before his eyes settled back on Izuku. His brow furrowed. “Were you crying?” His voice was more subdued than it had been before. He seemed confused.

Izuku opened his mouth to reassure him, but no words came out. He looked away, shifting uncomfortably. “Yeah.”

“Why?” Tomura asked. Izuku noticed him raising his hands, probably to scratch at his neck. He sent a pointed glare towards his hands, causing the older man to scowl, but put his hands back down.

Izuku looked away again with a shrug, “ I’ve never killed anyone before.”

Tomura stayed silent for a moment, just looking at Izuku. “Um.” The older boy offered, clearly at a loss for words. “I’m… sorry?” He had no idea what to say, huh? But to be fair, Izuku wouldn’t have known what to say either.

Izuku just put back on his frail smile, “you didn't do anything. It was my choice. I’ll get over it.”

And he would. Because, at the end of the day, Izuku found that he would do anything for his new family. And wasn’t that a scary thought? Izuku would do anything for them

And he would be more worried, too, if he didn’t know that they would do the same for him.

Edgeshot had hurt Tomura, so Izuku got revenge. He was allowed to want revenge.

“If it makes you feel any better,” Tomura started, still looking unsure. “I was going to thank you.”

Izuku startled. “Thank me? Why?”

Tomura blinked once. He narrowed his eyes at Izuku as if he was being an idiot. “What do you mean ‘ why’? You went out of your way to get payback for me. You spent a ton of time analyzing and gathering information. You lost sleep over me. And then you came up with a perfect plan and killed someone for me. Of course I want to thank you!”

It took a moment for the information to set in. “Oh.” Izuku said, awed. “I guess I did.” He hadn’t realized just how much work he had put into this. Really, Izuku had been in a sort of haze for the entire thing, not really processing any of it. But now that he was finally more aware, he realized that he was exhausted. 

Tomura threw up his hands in the air, “Why are you like this! Appreciate yourself, for heavens sake!”

Izuku finally laughed for the first time that morning as Tomura continued to complain about how he ‘undervalued himself’. And not for the first time, he was struck by just how glad he was that he had met these people.

And if he had to hurt some others to keep them safe, well… 

then they shouldn’t have messed with his family.

Chapter Text

It had been a few days since the incident, and Izuku was feeling a little bit better about it. It helped that Tomura and Kurogiri had been so happy for him. They had even taken him out to celebrate once he had confirmed that he would be part of the league. Or, well, Tomura did. Kurogiri was too eye-catching.

Of course, just because he was feeling better, didn’t mean the guilt had completely disappeared.

He was confronted with that thought as he stared down at his phone, anxiety eating away at his gut.

Shinsou:

Are we still hanging out today? You haven’t texted me in a while so I wasn’t sure

I’m sorry if I did something wrong

Izuku had completely forgotten about Hitoshi.

He groaned, dragging his hand over his face. The first friend he had made his age in years, and he ghosted him. Sure, he had good reason. His brother had almost been killed and he committed his first murder. But Hitoshi didn’t know that. 

Izuku sighed as he finally read the missed texts. There weren’t many, since Izuku usually texted first, but there were a few more recently. Izuku could tell that Hitoshi was unsure through the way he texted.

You:

I’m sooo sorry for not responding!!! Something came up and I completely forgot about anything else

I really didn’t mean to and I’m sorry!

If your not too mad at me I would love to meet up again today! I’m really really really sorry!

Izuku bit his lip as the other boy typed. He couldn’t believe he had made such a huge mistake! How could he be so stupid? He pinched his skin and stared at his phone intently, as if a response would come faster if he just willed it. 

Shinsou:

It’s okay

I’m glad we’re still on for today

Izuku sighed with relief. Atleast Hitoshi wasn’t too mad at him. Izuku would have a chance to apologize again later when they met up.

The only thing was that this would be the first time they met up after Izuku had killed someone.

The thought struck so suddenly that Izuku felt the air leave his lungs. His hands shook a little bit and he placed his phone down after a second, wary about dropping it. He curled up and placed his head between his knees as he sucked in a breath, trying to follow the breathing pattern Kurogiri seemed so fond of.

What would Hitoshi think of Izuku if he knew?

Izuku didn’t want to think about it.

Suddenly, he wished that he had told Hitoshi that he was busy. But it was too late now. Izuku had made a commitment, and Hitoshi would be suspicious if he suddenly backed out of it.

…It would be fine. Probably.

xXx

Izuku had only been with Hitoshi for a few minutes and he was already messing up.

He was stuttering more than usual, for one. After meeting Tomura and Kurogiri, he had become more confident. Plus, Izuku knew Hitoshi wasn’t going to be mean to him- probably- so he usually didn’t stutter around him. But today, his mouth seemed to have other plans.

“Ah- s-sorry,” he mumbled, looking away. “I-I hav-haven’t asked ab-about y-you yet. How-how’s your week be-been?”

Hitoshi looked at him strangely, “….fine,” he said after a moment. There was an awkward silence again when neither of them continued. 

The silence went on for a tad too long, and Hitoshi shifted, catching Izuku’s attention. He angled himself more towards Izuku from his place beside him on the bench, and asked the one question that Izuku was really hoping wouldn’t be brought up, “Izuku… are you feeling alright?”

A small squeak left Izuku’s mouth and he clamped a hand over it. “F-fine! Everything is fine!”

Hitoshi looked at him, eyebrow raised. “Right. Listen, Izuku-“ he paused, seeming to think better of his words. “You know… remember when we first met? In that alley?” He waited for Izuku to nod before continuing. “I helped you then, right? I don’t know what’s going on with you, but you’ve been really off for the past week. I don’t know how much help I can be, but if you even just want to talk a little bit, I’m here.”

He looked at Izuku with all the sincerity in the world, and Izuku felt his composure break right then. 

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to confide in someone once in a while? Maybe he would feel better?

But- this wasn’t just something he could tell every person ever. Izuku had committed a crime. 

Mind made up, Izuku opened his mouth to reply, but he choked on his words as his vision blurred and he felt wet, hot tears run down his face. Suddenly, it didn’t seem to matter what his head was telling him. His emotions had other plans.

“I-“ Hitoshi choked out, hands frozen in the air, as if not sure where to go. “Um- there, there?” He started patting Izuku’s back mechanically, eyes wide. 

“I-I’m s-s-sorry.” Izuku furiously rubbed at his eyes, but the tears didn’t stop. He shoved his fist in his mouth, furiously biting on it to stop the pathetic noises from escaping his throat.

Hitoshi continued to pat him awkwardly, trying to placate him. This was horrible. Izuku hadn’t meant for this to happen! 

Izuku continued to squeeze his eyes shut, trying desperately to stop his tears, until finally, Izuku was able to stay the,, though he still hiccuped a bit. He took deep breaths and glanced over at Hitoshi, who was still staring at him in shock. Izuku shut his eyes tight again.

“Uh, Izuku?” Hitoshi muttered after a moment, “do- do you want to tell me what’s going on?” He shuffled and glanced away for a moment, before looking back at Izuku with that same uncertainty.

Izuku opened his eyes and forced himself to sit up straight, hands shaking. Well, he kinda had to explain now, huh? What other option was there? But… he still couldn’t tell the truth, could he?

He had to be smart about this.

Hitoshi must’ve sensed his hesitation, “you know, it’s fine if you don’t want to talk about it. I mean, I’m not trying to force you or anything. Sorry-“

“No, no!” Izuku quickly sputtered out. Everything was going so horribly wrong! “It’s just- um, well… it’s hard to explain.”

Hitoshi’s eyes softened, “well, we have a while, don’t we?”

Why did Hitoshi have to be so nice? Izuku had never been treated this way before! How was he supposed to lie to him? Could he even lie?

…he didn’t have a choice.

Izuku drew in a deep breath. “I’m s-sorry for ghosting you. I- uh, recently, something pretty bad happened to my-uh, my brother. Of course, that’s no excuse-” 

“Is he okay?” Hitoshi interjected, unsure. He looked away. “I didn’t know you had a brother. I thought… well, did your mom kick him out too?”

Izuku blinked, before a hesitant smile spread across his face. “No. Um, technically he’s not actually my brother. He’s one of the friends I told you about, remember? I just- he’s like a brother to me. And he’s doing much better now.”

Hitoshi nodded, moving his hand to the back of his head, playing with his hair. “What happened to him?”

Izuku looked away. “Someone… beat him up. Pretty badly….Yeah.”

“Well, I’m glad he’s better.” Hitoshi muttered. He didn’t seem to sense the stretched truth. 

“Me too,” Izuku replied. “But that’s not the real reason that I’m so upset.”

Annnd he made a mistake. Why couldn’t he just leave it at ‘my brother got hurt’? Why did he have to add on that last part? Now he was going to have to figure out how to explain that he felt like a horrible person, without telling why!

Predictably, Hitoshi furrowed his brow. “So why are you so upset?” 

“I may have done something . In retaliation.” Izuku looked up at Hitoshi, “I love my brother- even if we aren’t actually related. So… when I learned that someone hurt him, I kinda got upset. And I wanted to hurt them back.”

“So you did?” Hitoshi asked, eyes locked onto Izuku’s. Izuku hoped that he couldn’t see the massive amount of guilt behind them.

“I did.” It was practically a whisper. Izuku looked away in shame, “I think I hurt them worse.” That was a lie. Izuku knew it.

Hitoshi was silent for what felt like a while. When he still didn’t speak after a full minute, Izuku decided that he couldn’t take it anymore. 

“I- I know that I shouldn’t have done that. But I did.” He glanced at Hitoshi again, waiting for some sort of admonishment, “does that make me a bad person?”

Hitoshi still didn’t say anything for a moment, but then he seemed to gather himself. “You said… this person hurt your brother pretty badly?”

“…Yes.”

“Well, then.” Hitoshi looked him in the eyes, and there seemed to be something there, a sort of steel. “ I don’t think you're that bad. You were only defending your loved ones. What else were you supposed to do?”

Izuku felt his heart skip a beat as Hitoshi gave him a small, soft smile. “You don’t seem to realize that you deserve to be happy too.”

Chapter Text

Yelling surrounded him as the hero team, Octave and Crusher, flipped through the air, working in tandem to capture Vizor, a villain who had attempted to invade and destroy one of the league’s warehouses. Izuku still wasn’t sure what had been in the warehouse that was so important, but Sensei- and, therefore, Tomura- had been very upset about it.

Izuku had been asked to capture Vizor somehow so that Sensei could “talk” to him. Tomura said it was a test of some sort, before Sensei would let Izuku know more about their plans. Izuku had just been excited for the challenge, if a little nervous. 

At the end of the day, this whole thing hadn’t been too difficult. All it took was a few corrupt heroes who were happy to take some money in exchange for capturing Vizor. The exchange had made Izuku feel uncomfortable, after all- should it really be that easy to convince heroes to turn? But… It helped out the league. And Izuku liked to feel useful.

He had stayed on the scene so as to make sure Vizor got transported in one piece (and, just maybe, to analyze the heroes too), and, finally, the fight seemed to be coming to a close. 

His writing was paused as a ping sounded from his pocket. He pulled out his phone, only to smile when he saw who had texted him.

Shinsou:

I’m off to my death 

Don’t miss me too much when I’m gone

You:

Don’t be dramatic!!

You’ll do great!

I believe in you!

Shinsou:

It’s too early for all of this positivity

He let out a little laugh, switching his attention back to his analysis. He had to pay attention.

Despite Hitoshi’s grumpiness, Izuku knew that he would do the best he could today. After all, it was his dream. The UA entrance exams were about to begin.

xXx

Hitoshi yelped as a 3-pointer attempted to take his head off. He dodged out of the way, making the robot slam into the building behind them. It was still moving, but at least it was a little damaged.

There was someone- a girl, probably?- he had seen who had taken off all her clothes. She was invisible, so that was clearly the reason, but it was still shocking to see how the robots didn’t even notice her! 

Then, a succession of robots just suddenly stopped working, one by one, but only in a direct path and having no damage done to them. Which had to mean-

Hitoshi spun around, landing behind the robot in a move Izuku had taught him. He scanned its back, from its head to its legs, and- there!

Unfortunately, just then the robot turned back around, charging. Hitoshi had to dive out of the way to dodge, and even then it took another minute before he was able to get behind the robot again!

He managed it, though, and that was what mattered. 

The moment he got behind the 3-pointer, he dove for the ground, hand reaching out to smack the red switch. Without any more delay, the robot paused in its tracks, completely stopped by its off-switch.

Wonderful. He got 3 points. That is- if UA counts just turning it off. But that was his only chance, the only possible way for him to pass this quirkist, unfair exam!

Hitoshi knew that UA was going to be difficult, that he would have to fight harder than anyone else to earn his place.

He just wished he hadn’t been so right

xXx

This was the easiest thing he had ever done. Okay, maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration, but it was easy. 

Katsuki felt a grin spread across his face as he collided with robot after robot, not even really keeping count of his score. He was going to get in. Obviously.

He flew past his competitors, although, could they really be called that? Most were struggling. Why would they even try out if they couldn’t handle these weak little things? 

He considered leaving a few of the people who looked to be panicking to fend for themselves- it was a test . Katsuki wasn’t obligated to help anyone, and it was a waste of time!- but, unfortunately , the little voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like an old friend convinced him otherwise. 

He had noticed it more recently, that voice. Telling him to hold back, to be weak just like De-

It was bothersome. Katsuki wanted it- and that terrible feeling in his gut- to leave him alone.

xXx

“Oh no!” Ochako dodged a huge rock, somehow managing to make it hit the robot next to her. The 2-pointer went down, completely wrecked. That made 32 points.

That was good, right? Hopefully. She did feel like she was moving faster today, that the weight her quirk carried wasn’t feeling as heavy as it usually did. Was that because of One For All? But she had only gotten it a few hours ago, so maybe it was just because she hadn’t gotten to practice very much yet with her new endurance from All Might’s training.

Whatever! That wasn’t important right now. She needed to focus.

She was about to turn to the next robot when all of a sudden, there was a rumbling in the stadium. She turned, hands held out defensively, only to see the biggest robot she could’ve ever imagined!

And it was coming right for her.

It was too close already, there was no chance of running away! What could she do!

Ochako steeled herself, turning towards the beast. It was now or never, huh? Time to figure out what One For All could do.

xXx

Shoto was tired. That seemed his perpetual state, really. Every day was the same.

Wake up before the world did, eat whatever perfectly balanced breakfast his nutritionist prescribed, do schoolwork for hours, have yet another perfectly balanced meal, and train with Endeavor until an hour before dinner, when he was to take a shower. 

Training had been worse, lately, now that the recommendation exam for UA had passed. Shoto knew he got in. Of course he did, he was the son of the #2 hero. But Endeavor wasn’t so sure. That, or he just really liked to punish Shoto for no reason.

Honestly, it could be either. Or both.

The point was, Shoto was not happy. He never was. His acceptance letter should come tomorrow, and while that might sound good to some, for Shoto, it would only be an excuse for Endeavor to punish him for whatever he got points off on. No matter what, the man found a way to hurt Shoto.

His only solace was the chance moments he got to sneak out, to just be a normal kid for a little while. They were few and far between, but they were his only sense of freedom.

Sometimes, he dreamed of the boy he had met on one of those outings. Who had made him laugh for the first time in a while.

Shoto wondered if he’d ever meet him again.

Maybe, if he did, he would be a little less tired.

Chapter Text

Accepted, as expected.

Shoto read over the letter UA had sent, hand grasping onto his blanket, back aching. He had already rewatched the tape. It seemed to have little relevant information, and was more so just a way to show off their new teacher. Endeavor hadn’t liked the announcement, as he made abundantly clear in the training room. Shoto had.

He was… excited, he supposed. He used to idolize All Might, when he was little. A true Hero. Someone who would save him from his dad. But, obviously, that was a baseless dream and had led to nothing. 

However, Shoto still held some of his childhood awe. Even if All Might hadn’t saved him, he was still the Number One Hero. That meant he was powerful. Surely, Shoto could learn something useful from him. He only hoped that he wasn’t cruel. He didn’t seem to be, but one never knew. Certainly not Shoto.

But. Shoto would continue as normal. Being trained by the Number One Hero himself… he was on his way to surpassing Endeavor already. 

And he would do it without his fire.

Xxx

“Oh, Shoto-“ 

“Just leave me alone!” Shoto barked out, leveling a glare at his sister. It faded quickly when faced with her surprise. He sighed, backing up from her. “I-sorry, Fuyumi. I just need to be alone.” Without further ado, he stepped into his room, slamming the door and locking it behind him. He slid down it.

Shoto could hear Fuyumi walking away, sniffling slightly. She hated being yelled at, and he hated the thought of her being yelled at- much less by himself.

His head fell into his arms, knees curled up in front of him. The door was cold against his sweaty shirt, his back stinging and burning. He was surely getting blood on the door, but he couldn’t find a way to care. Silent tears fell from his eyes, but quick breaths stopped them. He would not cry over some stupid injury, that was weakness. He could not be weak. He wouldn’t. 

He shouldn’t have yelled at Fuyumi. She had only been trying to help, and he had gone and snapped at her for it. She was his sister, of course she’d want to patch him up. Shoto just couldn’t bear to hear her nervously chatter about why he shouldn’t be too upset with Endeavor again. It was her way of coping, he was sure. But he couldn’t stand it.

With a groan, he forced himself up, stumbling against the wall. His back was really starting to hurt now. His legs, too. He was pretty sure they were only bruised, though.

He made his way to his bathroom. Grabbing his medical supplies from under the sink. Removing his shirt was the hardest part, it having been glued to the injury. He was panting by the end of it, shivers running down his spine and body seizing up. He struggled to hold himself up.

Instead of falling, he leaned against the wall, picking up a thin, red towel and wetting it. It was only because he was used to it that he was able to continue cleaning the wound throughout his body’s jolts. 

After cleaning, came the burn cream. It was so incredibly relieving that Shoto nearly collapsed again. He wouldn’t, though. 

And finally, the bandages.

Shoto grabbed his bandages- a pristine, perfect white. He stared at them for a moment.

Green flashed through his mind.

Shoto jerked his head sharply, beginning to apply his bandages. But thoughts couldn’t be controlled so easily. Shoto wondered where Izuku was. Where he had gone.

Could he see him again?

These were dangerous thoughts. Shoto couldn’t- didn’t want to- stop them. 

He finished applying the bandages, going to sit on his bed. The cushy blanket was the top of the market, of course. The rug under his feet was as soft as a bunny. It wasn’t enough.

Shoto was so….used…to pain. His back hurt, but he could hardly feel it. His legs were thrumming, but he ignored their bruises. He had an amalgamation of scrapes and cuts along his arms, he was sure, but he didn’t notice. He had a brother who was never home, a sister who tried her best. And brother they didn’t speak of anymore.

The overwhelming kindness Izuku had shown to Shoto, before even knowing who he was… It stuck with him. Shoto had little else to think of in his off time. And, he found that he missed the tenderness Izuku had shown when treating his wounds.

Shoto’s life was exhausting. He ate what he was told to, then learned what he was told to, then practiced and fought when he was told to. Any other parent would have been grateful for such a talented, obedient son, but not Endeavor. 

No, all he focused on was Shoto’s faults. His refusal to use his fire. His mistakes in battle. Him getting second place at the UA exam, something entirely unforgivable.

Shoto was so tired. He didn’t know how much longer he could take this for!

Endeavor should stop their training once UA begun, right? He had to. Shoto couldn’t do hero training at school and at home, on top of the likely more difficult curriculum and increased homework. It simply wasn’t possible. Endeavor would stop, right?…Right?

He felt a haze coming over him, something akin to panic, maybe? He felt distressed, distracted, foolish. He…didn’t know what to do. He didn’t even know if there was something to do.

Shoto wondered.

Endeavor wasn’t home. He was at his agency, likely having just finished a late night patrol, now doing paperwork. He wouldn’t be home until tomorrow afternoon, at least. Natsuo, of course, was never here-Shoto couldn’t blame him. No employees were allowed in the house after dark. And Fuyumi’s room was on the opposite side of the building.

Maybe it was the panic making his brain foggy, maybe it was his injury. Or maybe this had just been building for some time.

Hurried, desperate, Shoto ran to his window, pushing it open. He paused, doubling back to grab a backpack and shoving clothes into it. He zipped it and slung it around his shoulder as he climbed out of his window, glad the house was a single story.

His foot touched the grass, and he paused. The chilly air filtered in, batting his face. His backpack was light. Too light, probably. His sister would cry. She would be hysterical. And his father… he didn’t want to imagine what his father would do once he found out. Shoto might never recover

Surprisingly, he found that he didn’t care.

It was now or never.

Shoto jumped the rest of the way out of his window and ran to the garden wall, grabbing onto the overgrown ivy. He climbed up, trying to copy the steps he had taken months ago, when he had snuck out and found Izuku. It was dark and dangerous, but he managed. 

Would he find Izuku again?

He reached the top, and slipped over the wall onto the ground. Gripping his backpack straps as hard as his muscles allowed, he ran. He narrowly avoided tree after tree, branch after branch. He tripped a few times and had to catch himself, not quite being able to see.

He wasn’t thinking. He couldn’t think, because this was already the stupidest of plans. It didn’t matter, he had already committed. Instead, he just kept running. His legs screamed at him, but he continued. His breath ran out, but he didn’t stop. He just kept going. He didn’t know where he was going, but he would figure that out later.

At some point or another, he saw a glimmer of daylight along with muffled voices up ahead of him. Fear coursed through his wrecked, exhausted body and he swerved into the nearby alleyway. It seemed to be connected to others like it, so he kept running.

Eventually he hit a dead end. It was quiet, dirty, and a little wet. This… this couldn’t be a good part of town. Every instinct in Shoto was screaming at him to keep running.

But he didn’t.

Shoto’s body finally failed him, and he collapsed in the corner.

Chapter Text

Himiko hissed as the light pierced her eyes, not unlike a wild cat. She hissed even louder when a real, black cat she somehow hadn’t noticed yowled at her. The cat growled appropriately at her hiss, but Himiko was bigger and stronger, so it quickly scampered off through the door of the warehouse. Well, it was less of a door and more of just an opening. Could that be called a door? Eh, Himiko didn’t know enough about doors to answer that question.

She wiped at her eyes, likely leaving some residue on her face. Their warehouse was not clean- or pretty, or fun, or comfy- but at least it wasn’t the streets. She did hate how ashy it was inside, though. Himiko didn’t know how Dabi had found it- completely abandoned, too- but she was glad he had.

She got up, stretching her arms out above her head with a groan. Her eyes caught on Dabi’s. He always seemed to awaken before her, but was constantly exhausted. Once, she had asked him why he didn’t just continue sleeping if he was still tired, and he had just shrugged. ‘Someone has to keep an eye out, y’know?’ He had said, after much prodding. Himiko had just pouted and told him to get more sleep.

Likewise, she pouted now. “Dabi! Why didn’t you catch that cat! Or scare it off! That wasn't fun to wake up to!”

Dabi smirked, getting up. “I thought it was funny.”

He messed up her hair as he passed her, to which he received an angry growl and a near bite. Himiko glared at him, arms crossed. She huffed, but ultimately let go of her anger. It wouldn’t do anything.

She followed him over to their supplies. “What are you looking for?” She asked, kneeling down beside him. He was rummaging through the bags, frowning.

Dabi sighed, “we’re out of food. And cash. Again.” His frown deepened as his eyes flickered to her, then back to the bag. 

“What?” Himiko said, “Why are you looking at me like that?” She twisted, sitting fully on the ground to face him. “It’s alright. We’ll just pick-pocket someone mean, like usual.”

He stared at her for a moment. “It’s nothing, just-“

“Come on, Dabi!” Himiko balled her fists in her skirt, glaring at him, “don’t lie to me. I’m good at reading people, you know that. What’s wrong?”

Dabi grumbled under his breath, glaring right back at her. “It’s nothing.” He said. “You’re just young, that’s all. You… shouldn’t have to be doing this.” 

“I’m not that young…” 

“You are.” Dabi stood up, sighing. He reached his hands down to help her up, and she took them. “You are young, you should get to act like it. But this is the way it is. I just wish…” he trailed off, a strange expression on his face. 

Himiko didn’t like it. “It’s okay, Dabi.” She smiled at him. A full, real smile Most people disliked her big smile. Too many teeth, too sharp of teeth, they said. Dabi didn't, though. Himiko liked that about him. “C’mon, I’m hungry!”

Dabi chuckled at that, to Himiko’s relief. “Alright, alright. Gosh, you’re so needy.”

Himiko merely grinned wider.

Today would be a good day. She just knew it.

xXx

Himiko hummed to herself as she skipped through the streets, twirling and attracting baffled looks. Dabi was somewhere ahead of her, hiding out in an alley or something. He wasn’t very good at blending in. That meant that it was Toga’s job to do the pickpocketing! Dabi was listening though, of course, just in case.

It took her no time at all to step past the businessman, reaching into his pocket and quickly disappearing onto a side street. With luck, he wouldn’t have even noticed her taking his wallet. Either way, he would have a lot of trouble trying to find her in this crowd. Plus, her breathing trick worked wonders! Nobody would find her!

Himiko didn’t feel bad. This was necessary, otherwise, how would sh survive? Plus, that guy had kicked at some sick dog when walking past it. How cruel! He hadn’t even stopped to smell its blood! But not to worry, Himiko grabbed some of its blood after putting it out of its misery.

She glanced down at the wallet, opening it to count the cash as she tossed the credit card. No use keeping that, it would only get her into trouble. Cards left an online trail that someone could follow. Better be safe. 

Inside, was 6500 yen. That was pretty good! That would keep her and Dabi fed for a little while! 

She grinned sharply. A mother nearby looked at her with distrust, guiding her child away, but that was neither here nor there.

Continuing her skipping, Himiko bounded over to the nearest alleyway, intent on finding Dabi. He would be around here somewhere—there! “Dabi!” 

He turned around, bristling, but relaxed as he saw her. He raised a hand in greeting, but Himiko just bulldozed into him with a hug instead. “What’s got you so peppy?”

“6500 yen! That’s pretty good, right?” She grinned at him.

Dabi gave a small smile, “Huh. Nice job.” He touched her shoulder lightly, guiding her away from the nearby crowds. “That's great. Now we just have to actually buy some food.”

“Yay! We should ge-“ Himiko stopped in place, spine going rigid. She sniffed.

“Himiko?”

That was blood! Human blood!

“Himiko? What’s wrong?” Dabi was looking at her, brow furrowed. He had taken his hands out of his pockets and seemed ready to pounce at a moment’s notice.

Himiko started walking towards wherever that scent was, “there’s something over here,” she muttered. Dabi clenched his hands, but followed her.

“Do you know where you're going?”

“No,” Himiko sniffed at the air again, “I smell blood.”

“Could just be some cat or something.”

“It’s not, I can tell.” Himiko had always been great at knowing the differences between blood. Dog blood smelled more meaty, cat’s blood was more bitter. People smelled sweeter.

As they rounded a corner, now near one of the worst neighborhoods, Himiko felt like the smell increased tenfold. She could smell exactly where it was!

And—there!

She ran ahead of Dabi, who cursed. He couldn’t move as fast as her, with all his burns. Himiko didn’t care.

Finally reaching the scent, Himiko grinned. It was a guy, probably around her age. He looked strong, but he was just laying there in the corner of the alleyway, half his hair soaked red with his blood. He had a head injury, she could see. Maybe he banged his head into the wall or something? Weird. It didn’t matter, though. Himiko didn’t know if he was dead yet, but he definitely smelled good. 

Dabi finally caught up to her, a scowl on his face. “Himiko, what-“ he stopped.

Himiko looked back at him when he didn’t continue. He was just-standing there. Staring at the bleeding boy. His eyes were super wide and he was shaking, a little bit. “Dabi? What’s wrong?”

Like she had unpaused a movie, Dabi spurred into motion. He ran over to her, gently, but forcefully, shoving her aside as he grabbed the boy’s head. He put his fingers on his neck and seemed to sigh in relief. He was still shaking.

“Are you okay?” Himiko asked, starting to get worried herself. 

“I…” he looked shaken. “It’s just—He-” Dabi stopped, seeming at a loss for words. He was still staring down at the body with—was that fear in his eyes?

Himiko frowned. “Do you… do you know him?”

“I—yes. I do”

Chapter Text

Hey y’all! 

First, i wanted to say how thankful i am for all the support yall have given! You’re so kind and I really appreciate it. I’m sorry for how long it’s been since the last update. Unfortunately, I’ve lost my interest in this fic so I don’t think I’ll continue it. Im not as interested in the story and I think I’ve grown a lot as a writer, so the writing in this kinda makes me cringe.

im sorry that I’m not able to finish this (and also that this isn’t a real update), but I wanted to give the opportunity for someone else to take over if anyone wants to. I likely wont finish this story, but if you want to you comment and mention it, and we can talk about it. I’ll likely ask for a writing snippet if multiple people want to take over. That way, the story can actually be complete!

if nobody wants to continue this story, that’s fine too! It just means that it won’t be finished. If nobody takes over, there’s always the possibility that I’ll write another chapter, but it won’t be soon and it may not happen at all.

This was my first multi-chaptered fic that I ever wrote and it was a lot of fun to think about it and write! I like a lot of the fun details I added to this and it taught me a lot, but now I want to focus on some other things (new fics and current ones that I also haven’t updated in a while- if you want to check them out, feel free to!). 

thanks to everyone for the support and I hope you liked this while I was writing it! If you feel like you could do a good job moving forward, comment! Thanks for all the kind comments and kudos!

-Bunny

Chapter Text

Hey y’all!

Im here to let you know that the fic has officially been taken over by DemonicLolbit and BlackRose! From here on out, they’ll be writing this fic and I’ll likely not play a part in it. Thanks so much for all the support and I hope you enjoy moving forward!