Chapter Text
There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance.
Keigo knew that his credibility wasn’t what it used to be, but in the eyes of his coworkers, he could tell it was almost well and truly dead. For all that Madam President was allowing him to fall down this rabbit hole—that she recognized how important and necessary that it was—no one else really understood. To them, it probably looked like he’d finally gotten a few screws a little too loose, but that just wasn’t the case.
Sure, maybe throughout the course of his investigation a few nuts and bolts were a little looser than when he started, but he wasn’t losing it. He probably should have been, but he wasn’t. It was truly a testament to the training that the Commission had put him through—because if it were anyone else—they’d probably sit on the floor and drink until they couldn’t remember.
Keigo didn’t have that luxury.
Instead of freaking out like he rightfully should have, he merely added the mounting evidence he’d been collecting and kept digging for more. What he’d found was bizarre, unbelievable, yet annoyingly clarifying.
Hayakawa Aki was a real person in the god given year of 1998. He had been contracted as a devil hunter a handful of years prior, drifted between units until he got a partner that stuck, and shoved his nose into complicated enough business that he ended up with a squadron all his own: Public Safety’s Division 4.
It didn’t take a lot of digging from that era to find that Division 4 was something of a dead end. Division 4 was a wall that killed most paper trails and got records so heavily redacted they became a glorified list of names. While it wasn’t much, the names proved useful.
Keigo would find a conflict, an investigation, an employee’s paper trail, and find that it ended abruptly with the Division 4 seal, and that was that. Most things were signed off by Hayakawa himself, but there were a few other miscellaneous signatures too. Some shaky, near illegible script was Higashiyara or something like it, and a damn near printer perfect script read Makima.
The Makima character had no legible records—every single word was redacted, which wasn’t exactly helpful, but it put her a little more in the shit than the rest of them. Considering there were numerous documents that had Hayakawa’s signature and her’s, she was probably his supervisor.
Hiyashigama did not do much on her own, it seemed. She was a rookie, worked directly under Hayakawa and anyone outside of the division with seniority over her, and had a contract so heavily redacted that her employee records were shredded from that point downwards. Unlike anyone else, she had repeated forms to take the Violence Fiend on daily excursions and missions (a can of worms that Keigo didn’t really want to get too far into. He’d found the Violence Fiend’s write up and promptly folded the page before refreshing his coffee.)
Hayakawa’s name was on every piece of Division 4 paperwork, which pointed to him being a founding member. He wrote hundreds of reports, sometimes a half dozen a day, detailing training, interactions, missions, and research about Devils. He had a kill count in the triple digits (which, holy shit), and he’d regularly engaged with Devils that put Keigo’s daikon Devil to shame. He’d killed things that ate people on sight and leveled buildings without losing any members of his team.
But that wasn’t the only thing. Hayakawa Aki was set to turn twenty before—officially— “violating a pre-existing Devil contract” and “being erased from this plane of existence.”
These Public Safety freaks didn’t mince their words.
Alongside him, his two charges—the Blood Fiend and Chainsaw—were unfortunately erased in the crossfire.
Clearly they hadn’t been erased and something altogether more weird was going on since Hayakawa didn’t even look like he’d graduated from high school yet.
Keigo wasn’t really sure what to do with Hayakawa and his pet Devils. (Were they really siblings, like he’d said? Was that an excuse? The lie detecting quirk hadn’t been tripped by the admission, so maybe he’d taken responsibility of them? None of the three were related by blood, and Devils weren’t considered people so they couldn’t be adopted. If they’d known each other before Sukari Aka killed herself or Yameda Denji had been murdered, Hayakawa must have realized these Devils weren’t the people he’d known?)
(Would it matter?)
He was losing track.
The other members of Division 4 were equally as elusive. Some rookie died early, Hayakawa’s partner died, that Higashima girl quit abruptly, a few of the other assorted Devils in the squad also died or became too injured to work anymore, Hayakawa’s group disappeared, which ultimately left Makima as the final member (if she was ever a member at all).
Unluckily, the Public Safety records descended into chaos and madness shortly after this. The administration basically collapsed, and most of the remaining documents were glorified letters pleading about the existence of Devils and that the authors hadn’t gone mad. Whatever had happened was what paved the way for the Hero Public Safety Commission to begin brewing. Chronologically—and un-fucking-luckily—the day after the Hayakawa freaks disappeared, the glowing baby was born.
He’d be an idiot to fret over something as seemingly useless and unconnected as that, but he had a sickening feeling that there was an underlying something he was getting close to.
Keigo’s office, which was a conference room dedicated to the stacks of documents he’d been tasked with sifting through, was in wild disarray, but Madam President spoke to him like she didn’t even notice.
“What progress have you made?”
He looked at her over the rim of his mug—which was conduct that was bordering on disrespectful, though Keigo was starting to care less—and nodded slowly.
“Some things here and there,” he admitted. “I’ve got a more or less comprehensive account of Hayakawa’s working history, his relative power and abilities, including his previous contracts! But that isn’t guaranteed to speak about his current arrangements. If the Fiend that we’re working with is the same ‘Power the Blood Fiend’ as before, I’ve got all of her specs as well. I’ve got the least about Denji—who I can only assume is the ‘Chainsaw’ that’s been mentioned. His stuff’s redacted like nobody’s business.”
Madam seemed to think about his findings, briefly of course, because everything was brief with these fucking big-wigs, before nodding.
“There’s nothing in the registry about him?”
And that was the real kick in the pants. “No, that’s the thing!”
At the mildly amused expression that Keigo spied on her face, he quickly tried to compose himself, but his outburst was so genuine it was hard to tamp.
“There’s not even an entry in their records about him. As far as I can tell, he walked onto the team after being recovered in the field, and nothing else exists. He’s marked as a highest level threat, but he’s not denoted as a Devil or Fiend or a contract bearer.”
He placed his empty mug on the table, hoping to express his point better without a distraction.
“I’d say even they had no idea what he was, and they weren’t too keen on asking questions about it.”
Madam smiled ruefully at that.
“So we’re flying blind again,” Keigo shrugged. “We’re no worse off than when we started.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Madam placed a packet on the table by Keigo’s mug, “Things are starting to get worse.”
Keigo was leafing through the packet of reports before she was done speaking, noting the pictures of slain Devils and the personnel that were getting injured subduing them.
“Ever since those three showed up, we’ve seen an uptick in Devil sightings and attacks. Non-responsive Devils have multiplied, though those are the easy ones. You’ve dealt with half a dozen cognisant upper level Devils over your career, and in the past six months we’ve seen triple that number.”
She pointed at the packet, and mimed flipping to the back.
“That last Devil sighting was three days ago. It’s back.”
Internally, Keigo was correcting the madam, We can’t actually be sure if it’s a Devil or a Fiend by mere sight .
The fucked up weird looking ones were clearly Devils, but knowing that Denji—something decidedly not Devil or Fiend—and Power—a Fiend—looked the way they did, it was clear the more humanoid ones could fall on either side of the aisle. It was dangerous to assume a creature was one way or another, but that was Keigo’s job to know and account for. Never to correct anyone else.
The thing that stared at Keigo from the paper was… it certainly was.
It was humanoid, that much was clear. It had a human head, torso, (presumably) legs underneath it’s clothing, and nothing else. Absurdly long hair hung limply around its head, pin straight, and ratty, while wings extended above it’s head. Whether it was by the thing’s nature, or it was a lucky shot, it’s halo was perfectly centered between the two.
It stared at the camera with unconcealed boredom and exhaustion.
“This was the one that got away.”
Shock was not a word capable of describing what Keigo was experiencing.
“You know as well as anyone else that you’re our best when it comes to Devils, but considering the only reason you walked away from it last time was because it let you—well, I don’t need to say anything else. The higher ups are meeting tomorrow to discuss options. Despite the shit show that’ll follow, I think they’re going to vote to assassinate those kids while they’re still in UA. The Devils got worse when they appeared, so the simpletons will expect it to go away when they do.”
Keigo mutely nodded, still reading the report and flipping through pictures, and missing the half pleased smile on Madam’s face.
“I’ll leave you with this. Let me know if anything changes.”
Keigo didn’t notice her going, but at this point it didn’t even matter.
Didn’t matter that he’d come up with a theory about why people could see certain Devils, and why others were visible to all (and how to make people see Devils). That chill had come back with a vengeance—nearly as bad as the pain that the scar on his stomach twinged with.
It was the fear of dying, he realized hazily. He’d fought that thing before and lost. Keigo was a dead man walking, and he’d let himself forget that. This time, he would be better prepared.
(Three re-reads of the report later—because face it, reading during an-almost-but-not-quite-a-panic-attack was not effective—Keigo realized what the report was actually saying. When he looked at the photos with new eyes, he saw the unmistakable figure of Shigaraki in the background. Keigo’s Devil had teamed up with the League, and for some reason that made him want to laugh.)
Killing two birds with one stone, right?
It didn’t matter if he killed the Hayakawa kids—that Devil of his would still be kicking around, and that was all he really cared about. Maybe he’d read a few too many reports written by Hayakawa (and a few too many letters of recommendation by his various partners and supervisors), but Keigo didn’t care about him. The kid was a threat! That was easy! But he didn’t think the kid(?) was bad news.
He’d warned Keigo, had given every single person as many warnings as he could’ve, and only did damage when he was prevented from doing exactly what he said he was going to do.
Sure, he and his merry little band of misfits had killed Stain and a Nomu or two, but Keigo knew they could’ve done worse. In the—what?—last eight months they’d been around, that was all they’d done. Hayakawa was not lying when he’d said all that he wanted was to be left alone. His history was paved with gravestones and blood, it didn’t seem like he was rushing to get back to it.
The mystery of Denji was useless at this point, Hayakawa was a non-issue in Keigo’s eyes, and whatever Power was now as opposed to before probably didn’t mean shit.
Instead of pulling up the feed from Denji’s tracker, Keigo started leafing through one of the larger stacks of records. As he combed through the directory, looking for anything tangentially angelic, he lamented the fact that he’d need to brew another pot of coffee.
Denji punched Power hard enough to bruise—or at least he hoped he did. Judging by the way she hissed and grabbed her arm, he’d managed to do it.
“Ignore her,” he groaned. “Promise not to tell the old bat that we’re sneaking out? We’re supposed to be on bed rest, but, you know, we’re hungry?”
Let it be known that Denji could lie. He wasn’t great at it once you got to know him, but at first glance he just came off as a grumbling mess walking around with a walking fire hazard that couldn’t possibly lie. People tended to pay more attention to Power when things were weird, and Denji had learned to capitalize on that.
When Denji turned to the other group of kids, he was shocked to find the two boys staring at him with true terror on their faces. The girl was normal, if not sympathetic.
“Don’t worry about it!” she beamed. “We’ve all done it once or twice.”
Denji could’ve kissed her.
“Right boys?”
Denji could’ve killed her.
When she turned to her friends, they met her cheery grin with faces frozen in fear. Too quiet to hear, they spoke to one another, the girl’s face screwing up with confusion, while the freaky green one never took his eyes off of Power.
Denji pinched Power this time, not minding her hiss of pain.
“What the fuck is going on?” he growled. “What did you do?”
Power slapped his hand away, expression not even slightly bashful.
“Remember when I said I encountered a villain that I summarily subdued?”
Denji had come across heroes when he was loose in Hosu, but all that shit had worked itself out. The blood rushed from his face nonetheless, because he was missing something obvious.
“There may or may not have been some other people around when I did so.”
Denji met Izuku’s eyes with an equally horrified expression. Murder was not cool here—Aki had made that much very clear.
“Well fuck me,” Denji bleated.
Things were not looking good. On one hand, clearly one of the kids was injured, and probably wouldn’t be able to run and tell somebody about them, on the other, there were two kids who very much could go find someone. Any one of them could yell too. Even if he and Power were to just turn around and leave them be, the nosy ass hero students (because this couldn’t be a normal school, could it?) would probably go tell someone anyways.
Denji had seen the sports festival on the TV, he knew that these kids could do some real damage if they needed to.
When he tore his eyes from the suspiciously silent side of the room, Power was already staring at him. He hoped his face truly expressed how badly he wanted to say don’t do anything stupid.
Her sneer told him that she was waiting to be thanked by the ants she’d saved.
There wasn’t enough time to bust Aki out of his hospital room, ransack the place of everything they could find, and beat a hasty retreat before any of the kids alerted someone.
“How did you find us?”
Denji thought he’d made up the shaking voice, but the green one had spoken to the surprise of—well, of everyone.
Before Power could say anything, Denji cut in. “We weren’t looking, okay? We’re not here because of you.”
The kid nodded once, but he didn’t seem convinced. “Then why are you here?”
When Power caught his eye, he could tell what she was thinking about. It’d be dumb to tell them about why they were actually there, because it’d expose their biggest weakness—Aki was still sick, and he’d still be sick for any number of days after this. It didn’t look like the kids were getting ready to make a break for it, so hopefully keeping them talking would keep them distracted enough to wait for Super Nanny’s return.
But that didn’t mean Denji couldn’t lie to keep them busy. They should lie, but that would put them in an equally bad position, just in a different direction. If the kids thought they were lying—like it sure looked like they did—they could do something about it.
Shit!
They could’ve already done something about it, and they were actually stalling Power and himself for some reason.
What should they do if one of the heroes or trainers tried to attack them? What would Aki want them to—
“House arrest,” Power sighed. “We’ve been put on house arrest.”
The green one gaped, mouth opening and closing around words unsaid.
The blue one cut in. “What does that even mean?”
“Watch your fucking mouth, okay? This is weird for us too,” Denji barked.
Something about the kid’s tone had grated on him—like Denji was being chastised for a job poorly done. This one was angrier than he was afraid, and Denji could work with that. He was due for a shouting match, Power too. Maybe if they raised a ruckus Recovery Girl would come back? Or would it only draw unwanted attention? Denji wasn’t meant to make decisions like this. (This was what Aki was for, if the asshole wouldn’t just wake up already.)
The girl, in lieu of quite literally anything else, raised her hand. Denji thought she looked like an idiot, but they were in a school, right? And that’s how things were supposed to work, weren’t they? Power pointed at the girl to speak.
“Uhm. I think I’m missing something here, do you guys know each other?”
The blue one’s hands turned to fists at his side, but he didn’t make any moves.
“I saved their lives during a rather precarious outing,” Power preened. “It was not a hard won battle, but it was necessary to keep them alive. That man had such a foul smelling quirk, you really ought to be thanking me!”
Her arms were crossed, chin jutted out in a show of petty superiority.
“You killed Stain! You ate him alive!”
The blue kid had downright shouted it, face ruddy and expression crumpled in anger. He’d been so sure of himself when he’d said it, but that perfectly disdainful grimace had all but melted from his face—replaced by horror, and a hand covering his mouth.
Shit. Was blue hair not supposed to say that? Didn’t they already know? (and why was it so fucking quiet all of a sudden?)
Power scoffed like she’d been insulted. “Yes, and? If he wasn’t dead, the both of you and that other guy would’ve kicked it. If you’d rather be dead I’m always amenable to a snack.”
She took a single, threatening step forward, and all three kids jolted backwards. The brown haired one was starting to look faint, while the two boys were starting to get twitchy. Clearly they were all torn on what to do.
Denji and Power were standing on one half of the world, while those hero kids were standing on the other. And that was the thing, wasn’t it? This wasn’t the world that he and Power were supposed to be in. This wasn’t their home. So what if it was shitty, at least it made sense! (At least when things wanted you dead they just tried to kill you. They didn’t have nice nurses and adults that helped and hurt and rules that only seemed to apply to some things and not others. It was too confusing.)
(Despite knowing what was going to happen, he almost missed the simplicity of living life under . It was awful, he’d been trying to tell himself. It wasn’t right. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t the first place he’d ever willingly called Home.)
Denji pulled on the hem of Power’s shirt until she was pouting at his side, and summarily distracted from the others. “Look,” Denji sighed, “I don’t know what you want from us. Recovery Girl and Aizawa have been hiding us here for days, and we’re gonna steal some ice cream and waffles because it sucks in here. You guys want any?”
No one responded, in fact, it didn’t even look like the trio were breathing. Just staring at him with thinly veiled horror. Power’s nails were digging into the flesh of his arm after scarcely a second, tugging him to the door with renewed excitement—Aki’s House Rule #4, if you don’t answer you’re just saying no in fewer words, ringing in his ears.
They could leave right now and those kids would be too shocked to do anything, they really could.
(But Denji didn’t want to leave Aki unattended and didn’t want to let them regain their confidence. He wanted to be in the fucking wind though, he wanted to turn around and never come back to this place. He wanted to go Home. He wanted his brother to be okay. He wanted to kill every single one of those bastards that thought they could fuck with them, wanted them to suffer and choke and drown on their blood while Denji pissed on their graves. He wanted to eat ice cream with Pochita in Aki’s living room while complaining about Meowy’s fur getting in the bowl.)
Denji was stuck. He wasn’t made to think this hard.
When Aizawa opened the door to the infirmary, it was only second nature that Denji did something stupid.
Blood spattered against the ceiling as his skull cleaved in two, as the whine of blades cut through the silence.
Aki is sitting in an adirondack chair on the balcony of the apartment that used to be his. There is a cigarette in his hand that smells like the perfume he got Himeno for her birthday both two and a thousand years ago. The tree that used to tap on his window during stormy nights is smiling at him. His phone is ringing inside, but he isn’t going to get it, because hands are pressing him down into the chair by the tops of his shoulders.
“Something isn’t right,” he says.
Blunt cut bangs brush the shell of his ear as a voice he wants to forget whispers. “And what would that be?”
He shivers, but he isn’t cold.
A car passes by on the street, his phone rings again, nails bite into his flesh through his shirt.
“Aki, what’s wrong?” she asks.
He catches the tree’s eye and watches as it leans forward.
His phone is ringing. He wants to get it, but he won’t. Can’t. Something is keeping him here.
(It is not a some one , it is a some thing, that, Aki is certain of. She has never been human, not once, and he knew. God fucking damn it all to hell, he knew. He knew she was a fucking monster and he didn’t do anything about it. Couldn’t. In fact, she’d made him love it.)
“You,” he says. “You’ve never been here.”
He expects blood to stain his shirt when bone peels back skin, but nothing seeps out. He expected there to be something more underneath, but maybe he was emptier than he should’ve been. Even then.
The tree’s laughter is shaking its leaves so hard that it’s bare.
Aki hasn’t smoked a cigarette since before, so the one in his hand isn’t real.
If is here, then either Here isn’t real, or She isn’t real—just, one of them isn’t, and that’s good enough for him.
Fingers grip his clavicle, and he can taste the blood of every person he has ever cared about. He thinks his bones are dirty now. (But the smell of perfume, of a sickened flutter in his stomach tells him that maybe they have been for a long time.)
“You’re good, even quicker than before,” the tree whistles.
Aki doesn’t preen, but he doesn’t bristle. The hands don’t even hurt anymore, In Fact, she’s not even there.
“I want…” he can’t find the right words to say what he wants. “Wherever it’s real. The real When and the real Where.”
The trees shake and rattle in a way that Aki can feel is distinctly happy, like a dog wagging its tail, like a particularly happy spider crawling up to a fly.
“That’s up to you,” Future says, all knots and fuzzy pollen. “It’s always been up to you.”
Aki nodded once, too-short hair irritating freshly pierced ears.
Aki closed his eyes, and waited.
When Shouta walked into Recovery Girl’s office, he did not anticipate getting a face full of blood.
He’d seen blood before, had been bled on, knew that he himself was a bleeder, but nothing had quite prepared him for the fine mist of red, in a perfect vertical line that went from chin to hairline, right between his eyes.
And nothing really prepared him for the way that Denji was staring at him—chainsaw through the front of skull and cords protruding from neck—looking for all the world like the terror that the commission said he was. Pictures did not do the boy justice, because the sight of metal where sinew should’ve stretched and shaking headlight eyes were not things that an image could convey,
Gears grinded somewhere in the kid’s throat, every breath sounding like it had some kind of kickback. (The Commission did not release videos of the kids in action, which—despite how much it was biting him in the ass now—was probably a pretty smart move. Even he, self-proclaimed pretty good hero and Not A Piece Of Shit, would’ve been shocked by such a sharp absence of humanity.)
Confronted with the situation before him, Shouta could not make himself focus. His students were frozen in fear, he was covered in blood, Denji was poised to kill. Shouta should have been more concerned—he had better things to be worried about—but as blood trickled down the side of his face, all he could find it within himself to care about was where that fucking cat had run off to.
Over the hiss of gears, Shouta cleared his throat.
“What’s going on here?”
In the gurney, flanked by Uraraka and Iida, Midoriya’s body stiffened.
Shouta took a gamble like he had never gambled before in his life, and scoffed, hands in his pockets.
“Put all that away, Denji,” he glowered. “What are you and Power doing out here?”
He prays the kids can’t tell he’s sweating, and that he seems calm enough to diffuse whatever the fuck is going on.
Power—angel that she was—had the gall to look guilty. Even slapping Denji on the back and hissing something or other. At the very least, she didn’t seem like she was being threatened or was planning on doing anything violent. He turned his gaze towards her and pounced.
“Where’s Recovery Girl?” he asked.
Head turned, as if she were ignoring the conversation she was actively a part of, she shrugged. “I dunno. Out.”
“Did something happen to Aki?”
The girl’s face twisted briefly, into something that could’ve been a snarl if she committed.
“No.” She crossed her arms. “Aki is unchanged.”
As the conversation carried on Denji slowly straighted out of his crouch. Chainsaw blades hissed as they slowed to a halt, and eventually splattered on the floor. (Distantly, Shouta noted that he’d need to ask about that. The blades could melt?)
“Then why are you out here?” he asked instead.
Power tapped her foot on the ground, trying to stare a hole through Shouta’s head. He didn’t actually care why the two were out of their wing when they weren’t supposed to be—it was clear they didn’t actually mean any harm. Denji was pale, face bright with sweat, and Power seemed to be playing up her cluelessness because she knew they were caught.
Shouta kept his gaze focused on the two of them, not allowing his eyes to drift towards the students he was supposed to be protecting from these two.
“If you’re feeling too shy to speak up, I’ll talk to you privately. In your room.”
Shouta wasn’t sure if he was cashing in on every piece of good luck, goodwill, and karma he’d ever accumulated, because instead of raising fuss, whining, or otherwise fighting, Power pulled Denji’s hair until he silently followed behind her. Shouta watched the duo go, not daring to move until he heard the click of the door shut behind them.
Now, this was the delicate part of the ooperation.
Based on the general mood when he walked in, something had happened. Denji didn’t freak out unprompted, and while Iida could be a bit grating, all three of his students were unobtrusive and generally kind. For them to have spooked Denji, something must have happened. But that said nothing of how badly Denji and Power must have spooked them.
Which was the predicament: Shouta didn’t want to scare them any more than they probably already were, but he needed to be firm. Despite the cold sweat—or was it blood?—on his brow, Shouta could not tilt his hand. It didn’t matter how badly he wanted to round on the kids and demand to know what happened, he knew that wouldn’t help any of them.
Shouta tamped down the panic in his chest, and calmly, oh so calmly, turned to his students.
Iida’s eyes had not left the door that the problem children had disappeared behind, body taught, and hand fisted in the blanket that Midoriya had pushed aside. Uraraka was staring at him with something like utter incomprehension on her face. She didn’t seem as frightened as the boys, but something was hanging over her head. The uncharacteristic behavior of the others was nothing compared to Midoriya. Midoriya, who was paler than Shouta had ever seen him, and was sat so perfectly still, mouth unmoving (no telltale muttering or jittery hands).
The kid wasn’t even half this bad when Shouta had met up with him in Hosu— oh.)
That’s right. Midoriya and Iida absolutely ran into Power during the Hosu debacle. The famous incident where Stain was brutally murdered, but the news wasn’t allowed to announce it as such. Shit.
In the cosmic scheme, everything could’ve been worse, but on the very realistic and specific level where Shouta was presently locking eyes with the kids who saw a girl eat someone alive and just watched her saunter off—things could be going better.
Like a grown adult and hero, Shouta bit down on the traitorous tongue that had a million questions and then some. He turned in a measuredly casual manner, and situated himself at the foot of Midoroya’s gurney.
Three pairs of eyes mutely stared at him. It was not horror, but it wasn’t not not horror.
Shouta sighed.
“I see you met our stowaways.”
Uraraka was the only one to nod, which he chose to see as a good sign. No one was breaking out into hysterics and Iida wasn’t trying to vault over him, so… little victories.
“I’m under strict confidence,” Shouta said slowly. “The Hero Commission is very interested in making sure no one knows about those two. And I know what you saw, but I am under strict orders not to let this get out. Your and my heroics licenses are on the line. If anyone finds out about them, all of us will be sitting in front of the Hero Commission.”
He hadn’t lied yet, but Midoriya was blinking at him like he wanted to call bullshit.
“I’m sorry that you had to see them—I thought what we were doing was working, but it didn’t. That’s my fault. And I’m not sure how I’m going to fix it, but what I can say is that all of you are safe.”
“Are we though?” Iida hissed. “That villain almost took your head off!”
(And there was a bitterness in his tone that Shouta wasn’t expecting, a kind of venom that he hadn’t thought Iida had developed yet.)
“What happens to me while I’m an active pro hero is none of your concern. This isn’t just some risk I haven’t thought about, it’s my job. There haven’t been any, and there will be no issues.”
Midoriya looked at him with something like betrayal in his eyes, but nodded his head once. Iida didn’t react, but Shouta knew he’d heard. To his surprise, it was Uraraka’s uneasy voice that broke the looming quiet.
“So we can’t talk about those two to anyone?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“Okay,” Uraraka nods. “What about the third?”
While she was never top of the class, Shouta could never let himself forget that Uraraka was clever. She had an eye for detail like no other, even though it usually came at the expense of the bigger picture; of course she would’ve noticed an errant name.
“Him too. Aki, Denji, and Power are off-limits.”
“Why are they here and not in prison?” Iida cut in. “Why keep them here at all?”
Shouta watched Midoriya move for the first time since he’d walked in the room. The boy turned towards his classmate and said, “The other one is injured, isn’t he?”
Midoriya said it like a question, despite the fact that they both knew it wasn’t.
Shouta ran a hand across his face, flakes of dried blood fluttering from where he’d brushed them off. He couldn’t pin down the moment when this whole thing got away from him, but at some point, it had.
Was it when he got the case? When Midoriya stared through him in that interrogation room? When Fujiko called him with tears in her voice? When Hayakawa Aki died in front of him? When Hisashi gave them a name? Was it the goddamn cellphone video?
Shouta was exhausted, and no amount of holding his breath or weighing which group of children he owed his loyalties to would make it better. It was his problem, and it was his responsibility to fix it. (If only fixing it didn’t involve spilling government secrets.)
“I’m going to be honest with you three in a way that I will never be, ever again,” he spoke. “The less you know, the better.”
After letting the statement sink in—neither a confirmation nor denial—Shouta rose to his feet.
“You three don’t need to leave or anything, but I’m going to make sure those two aren’t getting up to any mischief. Just take it easy, alright? And don’t go spreading rumors.”
He left the trio with the distinct impression that he’d made a wrong turn, somewhere in there, but it was too late to go back. He’d made his bed—taking in the trio—and now he was lying in it. As Shouta made to open the door, Midoriya’s voice reached him. Hisashi would never ask him what he was thinking in that moment, but Shouta knew he would wonder.
Though he couldn’t identify what was in the kid’s voice—it didn’t lack affect, there was something there— it made Shouta proud. Despite everything, Midoriya’s kindness persisted.
“They were hungry,” he called out.
Shouta’s eyebrow raised. “Yeah?”
“They wanted ice cream and waffles.”
Yeah, that sounded about right. Incarnations of fear and pain, and they wanted to eat sweets like children.
(Midoriya was catching on far too quickly.)
Where Nezu was walking the school grounds, he caught the eye of a particularly rambunctious cat. The creature lifted his head, rising from where he’d settled in a shaft of sunlight.
The principal raised a paw. “Don’t worry, I come in peace. Surely Aizawa is taking care of you and your guests?”
Meowy licked his chops, flicked his tail, and yawned.
“I see! Then I must be paying them a visit soon. Things could get out of hand quickly if any more students found out. Please, don’t let me keep you any longer.”
Meowy watched the principal until his meager form disappeared around the corner of the building. Only when he was alone did he rest his head upon his paws.
Denji didn’t want to breathe on the chance that Aki would close his eyes again.
“Look, I knew this was like a different group when I signed onto this shit, but what the fuck is this?”
To say Dabi was doubting the legitimacy of this Shigaraki kid was not saying much. He felt like he was crazy for saying it too, considering no one else seemed to have a problem with it. Spinner was actively playing video games with the kid, while Magne refereed between the two of them. Compress—Dabi’s last tether to fucking normalcy—was standing across the room from him, watching everyone (but lacking any outward indication of disgust or concern).
But this was where everything went wrong. While acting like everyone was buddy-buddy grated on his nerves, it was something he could deal with.
Toga, sat next to this random fucking stranger at the bar was what stepped over the line. You could only go so long watching someone else watch as Kurogiri spooned food into the guy’s mouth because he had no fucking arms. Not to mention that due to Toga’s interest in the guy’s soup, he was pretty sure it was blood.
It looked like Shigaraki had pulled the guy out of a crypt, hosed him down in the backyard, and sat him at the bar like a party decoration. The guy’s hair was a matted and tangled mess, so long and unwieldy that it pooled on the floor behind him. Dressed in what could only have been a repurposed bedsheet toga, the guy didn’t have any shoes for Christ’s sake.
And all of this, without any kind of notification or heads up. Made decisions about the group without even thinking about getting their two cents.
No one reacted to what Dabi had said though, save for what he could only assume was a pitying glare from Compress.
“Who the fuck is this guy, and what the hell is he doing here?”
He let his quirk burn for just a moment—let off a few plumes of rotting smoke—to get his point across. Dabi was not one to be ignored, and certainly not on things of this magnitude. If Shigaraki was too out of control, he’d never be able to accomplish what he needed to. He’d have to start again, with a new group—which he would do! It would be a pain, but he’d rather get started now than get tangled up with whatever misguided shit Shigaraki was doing.
That very man groaned, the head to head match pausing. Kurogiri stilled.
“What?” Shigaraki hissed.
For lack of any better answer, Dabi merely gestured to the new guy.
Dumbly, Shigaraki gave no response, as if he couldn’t understand what Dabi was trying to say. Instead, Kurogiri cleared his throat.
“Our benefactor has given us a fine weapon for our next endeavor.”
Stepping forward, Compress spread his hands in a placating manner. “Well, while we’re all here, please, introduce us.”
Though Kurogiri distinctly lacked a face, Dabi could tell he was unhappy. Why?—surely they were going to find out. (It was never good when the voice of reason was hesitant.)
“This is Angel,” the villain warbled. “He will be handling the frontal assault for the next mission.”
For how he looked—all one-hundred pounds sopping wet, and gaunt features—Dabi assumed the guy would have an insane quirk. To hear he’d be handling the main battle single-handedly put things into perspective.
“On his lonesome?” Compress asked Shigaraki, head inclined in the boy’s direction. “Surely you don’t expect him to do that much of the heavy lifting when you’ve got us?”
Shigaraki merely waved his hand.
“You’re all irreplaceable pieces, I’m not risking you this early. Angel is a limited time offer—I’m gonna use him while I still can.”
Toga sat back against the bar, an exuberant pout twisting her face. “Awe, that’s so sad! I was just starting to want to kill him! Why’s he not sticking around? S’ he have an expiration date or something?”
Shigaraki shrugged, sleeping television screen coming to life as he settled back against the couch. His torn voice was practically impossible to discern from the video game’s sound effects, but Dabi thought he’d heard him say the dog can speak for himself.
(Which was shocking, considering the man hadn’t made a single sound the entire conversation.)
When Toga batted her eyes at Angel, a silent plea to keep bothering the new guy, Dabi relented. It was her funeral if the guy was insane. (Or more accurately, Angel’s, if he was crazy enough to interest Toga.)
“Well? Why won’t I get to carve you up after our successful mission?” She whined.
Angel didn’t look up from his blood soup. Didn’t even twitch, as Toga held a knife to his throat in glee.
“I’m looking for someone,” he said, like it answered anything. “I don’t care about your mission, or the heroes. The person I’m looking for will probably be with the heroes.”
Toga gasped like she’d been stabbed. “But if you’re not careful, you could get arrested! What would I do without my new favorite friend if that happened?”
“I don’t care. I’ve waited a very long time for him. If they catch me, so what. He doesn’t want anything bad to happen to me, so nothing will.”
The flatness of the guy’s voice was jarring, more than the perfectly blank mask that was his face. He didn’t seem to care that he was in a villain den, that Kurogiri was spooning fucking blood between his teeth, that Toga was practically nose-to-nose with him. Dabi shocked himself when he spoke, the words bubbling out before he could stop them.
“You’ve got a lot of faith in some hero wannabe brat.”
Angel didn’t stiffen, didn’t scoff, didn’t really do much of anything. Just smiled, flaunting blood stained teeth, and turned his head just enough to see. For some reason, Dabi thought he was being laughed at.
“Aki isn’t a hero. Hell would be empty the day Aki became a hero. We made a promise, and I don’t know how he did it, but he kept it,” Angel shrugged. “He was hurt recently too. Badly. I want to see how he’s faring.”
Toga squealed in delight, practically swooning where she sat.
“Oh, Angel, I’m so excited to meet this Aki! I wonder if you’d be able to tell the difference between us if I became him. Will you even recognize him? You said you’ve been waiting, like some kind of fairytale princess.”
The man just turned his gaze from where he’d been spying Dabi, flat eyes meeting unrestrained joy.
From the halo above Angel’s head, a sword fell out of nothing and halted only inches from the skin of Toga’s forehead. When she flinched away, knife clanging against the fucked up white metal of the blade, Angel huffed. This time, Angel really was laughing.
“It would be easy to tell. Aki wouldn’t flinch.”
And with that the man yawned, retracted the sword, and slid off of the seat. Seeing the guy move, especially after the little display he got up to was comical. The guy was like a newborn—spindly legs too thin to hold up the rest of him as he teetered on his feet. With no arms to counter balance himself, his chest slammed into the bar with a bone rattling thunk. Dabi didn’t move to him, as he struggled to get his feet under him. (Curiously, despite the fact that he’d initially extended a hand, Kurogiri didn’t try to help. Toga was just content to watch.)
Even curiouser, Compress did.
He took a couple quick steps, hand extended in a clear bid to help, but Angel’s shout silenced the room.
“Don’t!” he hissed.
Hands raised in surrender, Compress backed off.
Angel managed to push himself off the bar, feet no longer tangled in his hair, and took a steadying breath.
“If you touch me, you’ll die.”
On the TV, Spinner lost, head turned and staring at Compress and Angel.
“You’re shit at introductions there, Shigaraki,” Dabi chided, stomach turning itself in knots at the thought of how close Toga had been to death.
No fucking wonder this guy was their frontal assault. No fucking wonder he wasn’t scared of getting taken into custody.
Shigaraki tsked. “He got there eventually.”
When Angel slipped out, he was followed by every pair of eyes and an overwhelming silence. When Magne went out for a cigarette later that night she was shocked to see Angel sitting on the fire escape.
“I take it you’re not much of a smoker?” she tried.
With his back to her, she hoped he at least smiled at her joke, because he certainly didn’t laugh.
“Me?” he intoned. “No, not me. But I knew some people who did. Reminds me of easier times.”
She flicked the lighter a few times until it caught, and took a long awaited drag.
“And how long ago would that be?”
Angel breathed in deeply, seemingly savoring the smell of her drag.
He shrugged, wings bobbing a half beat behind his shoulders. “The last time they took me outta there it was something like two hundred years. But that was pretty recently, so.”
Magne whistled, mind privately whirring. “Well, at the very least you look good for your age. What’s your secret?”
The man just hummed, head tilted to the side in thought.
“A steady diet of ice cream and entrails. And secondhand smoke. And bedrest.”
She laughed, the sound punched out of her. She knew he wasn’t joking, but she certainly wasn’t judging. After seeing what had happened earlier, she could dismiss a little nonsense. (She wondered what she’d be like if she couldn’t touch anyone—if she’d never even gotten a hug without guilt.)
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
When Aki opened his eyes in what he could only assume was the real world, he was alone. It felt like he’d been hit by a bus, a kind of exhaustion burned into his body that he didn’t have a name for. Instead of waking to the sounds of bugs, cars, birds, and pedestrians like he always did, he woke to the sterile hum of air conditioning and fluorescent lights. The room, dimly lit and stinking of antiseptic, was too familiar.
It was like back then. Like Himeno. Like Hell. Like grandma Katsuri. Like every other stabbing, head wound, injury, and broken teammate from before.
Was this real?
Any second now, Denji was going to walk in with a basket full of apples that he and Power would end up eating. Aki was going to find a cigarette on the bedside table. Angel was going to say something shitty from the bed next to him—some dumb joke about only having one arm—and Aki was going to wake up again.
His chest rattled with the force of his breathing, lungs burning against the inside of his ribs as he tried to fill them until they burst. Aki desperately wanted to fling himself out of the bed, scream, do something to prove that he was awake, but his body wasn’t listening. Clawing against the sheets left him shaking, legs twitching throbbing instead of swinging off the edge.
Sure, if he was calmer, maybe he’d be doing a little better, but fuck he couldn’t breathe!
By the time Aki managed to wedge his traitorous hands underneath him and sit himself up, his hair was plastered to his face with sweat. The IV port in the back of his hand ached with the pressure, but it kept him sharp. His vision wasn’t tunneling, but it was a near thing. He just needed to get on his feet and he’d be fine. He had everything under control, all he’d have to do was actually do it.
Yeah! This was fine! He was fine, and this was real. And this was real.
(He might have been shaking. He couldn’t tell.)
And he was alone.
When Denji kicked in the door to Aki’s room—not like he had to be fucking quiet—with a tray of lunch in his hands, he actually felt a pang of remorse when he dropped the food directly on the floor.
Aki was sat up in bed, eyes wide, and was staring straight at him.
When Power knocked into him, halfway to shouting something or other, she fell silent with a gasp. Denji couldn’t move. Stuck in the doorway, stuck watching as Power threw herself on top of Aki, as he wrapped his arms around her, as she screamed in joy. (There was something about doors that gave him the heebie jeebies.)
It felt like he stood there for years, watching to make sure that what he was seeing was real. Denji didn’t want to breathe on the chance that Aki would close his eyes again.
His voice sounded like shit when he croaked. “Get over here.”
And Denji was slumped across the bed, squished somewhere between where Power stopped and Aki started. (His chest purred with satisfaction—the ghost of Pochita howling with joy.) If anyone asked, he wasn’t crying—and that was the truth—but Aki was. Fucking sweating, crying, shaking, the whole nine yards. But they were laughing too.
(It wasn’t the same as before, clearly. There were new doors with extra padlocks and deadbolts between them, but maybe just a few of the older ones were gone.)
“We leave in forty-five. No later. Make sure you’ve got all your shit by then,” Shigaraki snapped. “We have a timed mission, we can’t be late.”
Spinner scoffed, clearly already raring to go. “Someone better figure out a way to wake up Sleeping Beauty over there, and it won’t be me.”
Angel was sleeping on the bar, forehead flat down on the wood, completely oblivious to the battle preparations happening around him. He was either that heavy of a sleeper, or he honestly didn’t give a shit. Dabi gave him props for that—whichever one it ended up being. Being in their line of work and still being able to conk out and have a nap? Invaluable skill.
Compress waved a gloved hand, tone playful as he stage whispered. “Eh, let the kid sleep a while longer. He’s gonna have one hell of a day ahead of him, let him sleep while he still can.”
Spinner grumbled something or other, but went back to oiling a blade.
Internally, Dabi grinned. Forty minutes left.
“He said I've seen you here before,
I know your name.
Yeah, you could have your pick