Blood Born - JCryptid - 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia (2024)

Chapter 1: A Choice

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There's a lot in this world that Midoriya Izuku would very much prefer not talking about. Thinks about his past most of all, especially given his rotten luck. Things he may have to if he ever wants a shot of getting back his old life. And one of biggest of those things is that one mistake that would change the course of his life forever.

Because yes, there are plenty of things from his past Izuku would rather not talk about, most of them terrible, awful, and shameful, but all of them ultimately his fault. So there's not much to say about it in the end other than that, and very little room for complaint. After all he was only trapped by his own choice, now he's just paying the price.

Not a lot of the rest of that day really stands out as noteworthy, but there are a few things you should know.

In a neighbourhood full of middle income families, six year olds are left with far too much free time. Adventure wasn't a new school fieldtrip your parents had to sign for it was something you had to go out and find, and nobody embodied that ideal more than Kacchan.

Secondly, friends weren't always friends back then because they had much of a choice.

Looking back on it now, it's hard to say whether or not Kacchan really was his friend in any meaningful sense, beyond all the time they spent together. Of course, Izuku did consider him a friend, absolutely, and there was a lot of him following him around and playing heroes and villains and the like. But they were friends because their mothers were, and had been for a long time. And when your mothers are that close, well their sons would naturally be expected to as well. So if Mitsuki was letting her kid out for the day for a wander around the local neighbourhood to look for bugs or something, then Izuku would be joining him and vice versa and end of discussion. It's not like either of them really seemed to mind at first either, but as time goes on and quirks come in well… opinions seem to shift, and walls between friends grow higher and stronger. And while Izuku could hardly see through his own admiration and innate desire for a friend (no matter how brash or rude they could be at times), he would be naïve if he didn't consider the fact that Kacchan likely didn't feel the same.

After all, Kacchan wasn't acting like he used to. He was always the best, and he was always in charge and above all of that he was always going to be a hero. And he was hardly going to argue that, because in such young eyes Kacchan was just the pinnacle of, well, amazing. A natural born hero, to the point he didn't need help from anyone. Confident and brave, it was like he could face any challenge they met with no question as to if he could win. He was, in short, everything a young Izuku wanted to be. Someone who inspired him, almost more than shaky footage of a fiery rescue did, played on loop on the family computer. Someone who he would follow into hell.

And he supposed, with no small sense of regret, that he did, or at least he would have. Maybe that's why he said what he did that day. He was right after all, he didn't need his help.

But then again if he's learnt anything these past few years it's that he just can't help it. He can't help how much he needs to makes sure people are ok and that he does everything he can to help when everything seems helpless.

He just can't help but care.

But Kacchan didn't know that. How could he? So he really shouldn't have been surprised back then when he roughly shoved his hand away and looked at him like he'd just been insulted. He shouldn't have let it get to him when he yelled at him for it later. Kids were dumb after all, and they were mean and said and did things neither party could really understand. He shouldn't have let it hurt him, he should have been stronger than that…

Maybe then he wouldn't have done it.

Being singled out at forest entrance didn't feel good. More than anything else, really he was just confused as to what he'd done wrong and what exactly Kacchan wanted to say to him specifically.

The words and specifics are lost to time now, but he remembers the gist. He was nothing, would always be nothing and would never be anything more than useless, much less a hero. The regular mean jaunts and jabs about him being a worthless Deku that should just give up and stay out of his way because nobody wanted him around. That he didn't deserve to follow someone as strong as him, and he didn't need any of his damn help so he should just give it up already.

Then things escalated, of course it did. Because even through all of that he couldn't help but try to right things, even just a little. Because Kacchan was wrong, he didn't look down on him one bit he'd just wanted to help, and he wanted to tell him so much and of course he tried. And well… next thing he knew he was on the ground again, jaw throbbing, fresh tears in his eyes with a stinging red burn mark marring his cheek.

And that's how he left him. In cold, shocked silence under a fading sky. Alone on the side of the street, left abandoned like the garbage they always said he was.

And then things really started. Because that's when he showed up.

A tall man, with short white hair and all dressed up like he'd just come home from an important business meeting or so he thought. He didn't say much at first, not even a word as he lowered himself on the curb beside him and with the kindest look in his eyes, handed him an icepack and asked him if he was ok. If he wanted to talk about what had happened.

He didn't want to at first, but like so many other times it didn't stop the words from pouring out of his mouth and mixing with wet unintelligible sobs. He told him too much, though that's for sure. About how his friends weren't acting like friends at all. How everyone seemed to hate him for being quirkless and how he prayed every night the doctor and everyone else was wrong about him. That one morning he would wake up and he wouldn't be so weak and useless anymore, no matter how impossible it seemed. Because he couldn't be a hero without a quirk, everyone said that. And as much as he wanted to prove them wrong, he was a hopeless six year old who'd watched the world crumble before his eyes as everyone told him to just give it up.

And all the while the man just hugged him tightly, and shushed him and told him it would be ok. He shared his own secrets too. About how he was bullied too as a kid, and just how unfair he knows it is that people like them are pushed aside in favour of those with flashy quirks. He told him he's so brave for making it so far on his own, that everyone was wrong about him and… that he'd like to help him achieve his dream.

So as the sky got darker he asks him if he would like a quirk.

And like a fool he answered:

"More than anything,"

So the man gives him a reassuring smile, and tells him another secret. Tells him that he thinks he can be a hero, and that he could be worth something more than anyone would have said. That no matter how hard it was to believe, he could give him a quirk and help train him to be a hero.

But he also said it wouldn't be easy. That it could be really scary and that he had to be brave, like no one had ever been before.

And… that he had to come with him.

So this kind man, who told him everything he had ever needed to hear, held out his hand. And little naïve and hopeless Izuku took up what would end up being the worst decision he could ever make in his life.

That night, a six year old quirkless kid vanished from the face of the earth. A kid by the name of Midoriya Izuku, who'd only ever wanted to be a hero and help people, reported missing by his grieving mother and latter presumed dead.

And not even a trace of him would be found for the next 8 years.

And those 8 years, would be hell.

Chapter 2: Revelations

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Chapter 3: Consequences

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Chapter 4: Opportunities

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Izuku didn’t have much of a plan really. And he didn’t even have much or anything to equip himself with in case things went south.

No one had come for him yet, and whatever was going on. Whatever heroes were outside ready to get him or anyone else out of there he wasn’t going to wait for them to find him.

The way he saw it there were 3 ways this could go: either by some miracle a hero made it this far into the building and if he called out they would find him, or they miss him entirely and the villain would have a chance to move him. He couldn’t chance it with option 2, since the villains were careful enough to restrain him before he had a chance to leave even if he did manage to rush them. And he knew he wasn’t just going to sit there and hope he was found. He’d waited far too long for that already.

So that left him with option 3.

The only door to his room was reinforced and needed a keycard to open, that much he knew. He also knew for a fact that if he focused, he could puppet someone just enough to open the door and get the keycard out for him, provided he immobilized them before they told alerted anyone else. Just about anyone in this area of the facility had some kind of clearance enough to get him out of here, so if he bided his time and crossed his fingers a keycard to get out of here was guaranteed. That being said he’d have to do it before either anyone came to move him, or the threat was dealt with.

Taking the time to breath he sat himself down beside the door and closed his eyes to focus on feeling around the hallways for any moving blood. It would likely be fast paced, so he’d have better luck finding anyone if they were running, but he’d have to be ready to do this quickly.

All he needed now was patience, control, and for just one person to rush by again, preferably alone.

It felt like at least 20 minutes before anyone came, and when they did he was ready.

He knocked them out quickly, before they could so much as scream, just as they passed his door, and caught them with his quirk before they could hit the ground.

Now for the moment of truth.

Keeping the person held they stood up from the floor and peer out once again through the small window of the door. He’d gotten one of the doctors, or at least that’s what he thought. Focusing as much as they could, he pulled their hands to check each pocket for a card, pulling out just about every item they could before finally, a familiar card clattered to the ground in front of them.

It’s hard enough to grab a flat card on the ground on a good day with your own fingers, let alone anyone else’s. So it ended up taking a lot more time than he would have liked just to pick it up, and another 2 tries to bring it close enough to the lock to scan it properly.

3 beeps sang like sweet music through the lock before the door opened, and it took just about everything in him not to let out a cheer in triumph.

Thinking fast he dragged the doctor’s body into the room and locked the door again, before bolting to where he was sure the heroes must have been. It took work avoiding everyone running past, scrambling to get resources where they needed to be. He couldn’t see or hear any heroes yet, but as he made his way further and further from his room he could hear the unmistakable sounds of a battle, and feel the faint shuddering of concrete under immense force.

He was right, and it make every part of him want to cry as he pushed himself faster in that direction.

The heroes were here, and they were going to shut this place down and free him and everyone else he would have been forced to kill otherwise. He could tell them about Sensei. He could tell them about his Mom and they could protect her too. He was going to get out of there, and if Sensei got away he would tell them everything he knew and they would make sure he would never hurt him or anyone else ever again.

A firm grip on his right arm stopped him dead in his tracks, and he didn’t have time to react before he was swung back and slammed hard with his back on the floor in one harsh motion. He was wheezing now, blinking stars from his eyes as he caught sight of the person on top of him. They had a hard look on their face, and a syringe in in hand with some clear liquid in hand. As soon as he caught sight of it his face twisted into a snarl as he kicked and squirmed and bucked to get the man off him.

Nothing he was doing was like he was taught, he just needed an out. If he could just make the heroes hear him or delay them long enough-

He was a mess of pure panic as the man brought the needle closer to the side of his neck, he didn’t even think for a second about his new quirk, or the blood likely coursing through the doctor’s veins. All he could do was kick and scream as the man held him down in a desperate, pitiful plea to just get away.

The next thing he new he felt a sharp pain in the side of his neck, and suddenly he was too tired to fight anymore.

Slow tears slipped from his eyes as the result of his actions set in.

That’s when he knew he’d failed.

Izuku woke up in a room he’d never seen before.

From the looks of things it held the same bare essentials as his last room, though much different. He could hear people yelling a few rooms away, locked in some argument but he couldn’t hear what exactly it was about. The noises filtered through muffled and strange through the thick walls and this thinning haze of sleep as his body tried to burn out whatever was left over from the sedative.

The one think he noticed above all else was the distinct lack of feeling. A relief he hadn’t known since he’d gotten Blood Bender from Sensei all those… years ago. He couldn’t feel his own pulse like he used to, and it was the subtle lacking of that feeling he’d learned to grow used to for so long that drove him to look down at the gentle pressure on his wrists.

There was two cuffs there. Strange ones in dark faded blue held firm on his wrists and pressing down with some kind of thick material. It didn’t take a genius to figure out they were quirk suppressors.

The reality of what had just happened came crashing in all at once. He’d lost his chance, and he was so, so close too. But that didn’t matter a bit. Not to Sensei and not to him when it would mean…

He thought back to his first escape attempt. This one had seemed so perfect, so well thought through when he tried it but it had still failed terribly. And now he was still stuck, this time without a quirk to aid him and without the slightest clue as to how things would work here from now on. He was stuck without a clue, and thanks to him, his mother would die because of it.

He kept thinking if only he’d gotten out, then maybe he could have saved her. Had Sensei already killed her? Were they going to bring her here and make him watch?

Was Sensei going to make him do it?

Whether fortunately or not, the expected beat down and anguish of watching his own Mom get murdered in front of him didn’t come. That being said it didn’t take long for his brain to conjure up just about every horrible thing Sensei could be doing to her, or would be doing to her because of him. He just about lost it.

For the first time in months he allowed himself to cry openly. To properly mourn the loss of her future and his only chance at getting out of there. He’d tried so hard, and still failed and it made him think for the first time there was no chance of him getting out at all. Sensei couldn’t be beaten, this whole plan couldn’t be beaten. He was along for the ride and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

He was stupid to have thought he ever could, and that was just about the worst part. The fact he allowed himself to believe all of that, and now someone he loved would die for it.

It took too long for him to learn how to breath properly again from there. And another 5 minutes to stop the bleeding and patch himself up.

It felt like days before his captors seemed to get their act together and send him out for a medical examination. No one batted an eye at the deep scratches and dried blood across his fingernails, at least part of him felt relieved at that. But it didn’t help. Once he was properly dealt with from there he was just sent back into more training from there once he was deemed fit for it, which in all honesty wouldn’t have been much of a decision to make.

Turns out it took a few minutes for his quirk to come back in full after the cuffs were off, and as soon as it did he’d had to readjust to the sensory overload that came with it.

He never received a confrontation from Sensei though. Or even an explanation as to what had happened like he’d expected. As much as everyone around him kept in the dark about most things he was usually briefed on any changes to his routine, or at the very least he could catch someone talking about any significant news.

Needless to say he considered having a hero break in rather significant, and having him attempt an escape and now put on quirk suppressors was certainly something Sensei would be eager to have him pay for.

It did come eventually though… just not at all like he expected. He’d spent those weeks in a routine of essentially training without any opponents he was ordered to kill (something he was more than thankful for) and forced experiments with his quirk. With, of course, the added stress of not knowing a thing about what was going to happen now that everything had happened. In the end that just manifested in him practically vibrating with dread and panic at the thought of the punishment he would undoubtedly be handed, and when it finally came it was… Almost not as bad as he had thought. Objectively of course, but still…

Sensei looked tired, when he was brought to him that evening. There really wasn’t any other way of putting it. He didn’t have any deep sunken bags under his eyes (not like him) but he looked like he had very little energy to him, though that did very, very little to quell the intense fear he’d felt from the moments his lessons had been interrupted. In that moment his mind was somewhere caught between racing thoughts and absolute silence.

He felt so numb to it all, but to afraid to react when Sensei had calmly asked him to be sat down on a chair for, as he put it, ‘a nice chat’ as those that escorted him left the room.

Izuku really doubted they’d be swapping any such pleasantries. Not after everything that had happened. So he stayed silent, as they both did for quite some time. His palms slick and clammy with sweat and chewing lightly on the inside of his cheek while his teacher merely observed in almost disinterest and absentmindedly sipped at some tea.

After a while, Sensei put the cup down with a gentle, muted tap, and began to talk.

“I’m sure you have questions Izuku, about the changes we’ve had,”

Izuku didn’t respond to that. They both knew any answer he would have given, and there was no way he was falling for this ‘nice guy’ routine again.

“We had a hero attack,” He smiled, “and you were so close to freedom, weren’t you?”

He bit down harder on his cheek, and he was sure Sensei could see it.

“I wonder, was that all the hope you needed, boy? Just that small chance you could get help, and get away from here? Do you really hate my gift so much as to cast it off, after you’d worked so hard for it? You did tell me it was all you ever wanted,”

That wasn’t true. He’d wanted to be a hero, to help people. He never wanted this.

Sensei gave a sigh, as if disappointed, “It’s been a while since you’ve tried something like this Izuku,” he said, “such a shame you’d fail like this, after working so hard for it. It makes me wonder... Did you think you could get them to saver her after you’d escaped? Do you really believe that heroes would be so kind to you?”

He went along with it, shaking his head. Even if deep down he would never believe it. That was what heroes do, he couldn’t forget that. No matter what lies Sensei tried to feed him, Heroes saved people, that was their job.

Sensei had stood from his chair as he’d spoken, and leaned into his ear to whisper as he tried to stay still.

“Let me tell you something, Midoriya Izuku,” he hissed, “Not all heroes are so quick to trust in the threat of a victim. All Might wouldn’t trust the threat of a victim either and even if he did, you’ve built up heroes to fit an ideal he created. Heroes don’t care about you, most of the time they don’t even care about who they’re saving so long as they can beat a villain like you, and get a paycheck for it,”

Sensei stood back up at that.

“And even if they believed you, and that’s a big ‘if’ I promise you that. Do you really think they could have reached her in time? Do you really think that there was anything they could have done to save her from me?”

He hadn’t noticed the sting in his nose or the tears spilling unbidden down his cheeks until the first droplets hit the back of his hand. The worst part was just how right he was, and that he’d seen this coming. He wasn’t even thinking and now…

“Now, now Izuku, don’t cry. I told you this would happen didn’t I? I warned you what I would do if you attempted something so foolish as this again, and you did it anyway. And now, I’m afraid, you must face the consequences,”

He shut his eyes tight, and tried to muffle his sobs with his hands. Clutching tightly at his mouth and hunching over in his shame.

“I’m so sorry Izuku, but I’m afraid you can’t see your mother again. Not anymore. Because I was the only one who got to watch her as she breathed her last. Perhaps you could have done something if you were there, hmm? You could have stopped the bleeding, you know. I’ve given you the means to do it,” then he smiled, “Or perhaps you would have been content to just watch, hmm? You would like that I’m sure. To watch the horror in her eyes just like everyone else you’ve-”

He’d moved before he’d even registered what he was doing. Turned with his face twisted with rage before the horror of what he’d just done set in. It was the most he’d ever done against Sensei. He’d just punched likely one of the most powerful villains in the world dead on, and for the first time he’d dared meet the steel in his eyes with his own for just a moment before the panic set in.

Sensei hadn’t moved. Sensei hadn’t so much as blinked when his fist connected. He was standing perfectly immaculate with Izuku still digging his fist into the side of his jaw and he was smiling. And this time it was malicious.

“It’s been a while since a student has tried to move against me like that,” he said simply, grasping onto his hand before in one swift motion, he crushed his hand enough for him to hear an audible crack.

And Izuku screamed. Eyes glassy and crying openly now in pain as lighting raced up his arm as Sensei twisted it back and squeezed down only harder. Continuing on uncaring and cold as he screamed only harder.

“You have some nerve boy, I will admit, but don’t think for a second you could hope to defat me, not even with a quirk as powerful as the one I have given you. Don’t you dare presume you could be anything more than a tool for me uses, or have I not made myself clear?”

He couldn’t respond. Not beyond his own strangled screams. He couldn’t do anything but listen in the vain hopes of focusing on anything but the blinding agony that tore through him and continued to do so.

“You made your choice Izuku, now you live with it. You will do as I say. You will follow my orders. And when I tell you to kill someone, you do it efficiently and without question and you don’t dare, try to escape again,”

He let him go, and watched dispassionately as Izuku cried and whimpered and curled around his now mangled hand. And in one swift motion he stood him back up, dragged him to the door. Hand glowing ever so slightly as he pushed a healing quirk through him. And once again, Izuku tried not to throw up or stumble as the shattered pieces of his fingers forced themselves back into place, as he was marched back to his room.

From there training remained less intense after all that, sparing quirk training of course which remained just as cruel and painful as ever. He supposed Sensei may have lost a lot of resources when the heroes broke in, though there were still other things to fight against. Misshapen experiments and monsters that made him want to gag at the sight of them, but he never had to kill someone during training anymore. He just had to knock them down or immobilize them in some way. It was just as it was before he got his quirk in some ways, though now there were absolutely no pretences kept up about now.

The missions got more frequent as well.

Sensei must have gained more confidence in his obedience and skill since his escape, which was made clear with the quirk suppressors. They couldn’t trust him enough to keep him in line with fear alone, but that didn’t stop Sensei from continuing whatever sick course he was on. He’d be briefed every now and then and woken up early (usually late at night) to go on a job. Someone would give him the information he needed (and only what he needed), hooked him up to a com system and he’d be sent on his way through a warp gate to the appropriate location.

It was cruel really. Feeling the rush of wind on his face and seeing a gentle bustle of people going about their lives like he would have (no matter how illegal) set a deep longing ache in his chest. And as much as these small scraps of freedom swelled in his heart, Sensei was always sure enough to rip that fast from his grip, and remind him through his own forced actions of the kind of fate that awaited him if he tried to escape again.

It didn’t work. From the first time it really sunk in that his mother was dead, he took that first job as a chance to go rouge and to whatever he could to incapacitate, not kill. And he did it time and time again before Sensei caught on.

He’d never forget the feeling of having his own quirk remotely puppeted and used on someone else, no matter how hard he’d tried to stop it. He was getting too bold, and Sensei knew that. And he really feared what Sensei could do with him now that it was clear he truly held no choice.

He’d thought he could have eased their pain a little… these people that still had lives he did not. They still feared like he did, though maybe not for the same reasons. There was a reason he could never let himself forget the look on their faces when he killed them, they had to live on that way at least.

But it didn’t matter in the end. Sensei would kill them one way or another, and he had no issue using him to do it.

He’d long since given up on answering the questions of what Sensei really wanted him for. There was just no point.

He couldn’t even pretend to have so much as a chance anymore. Sensei had made sure of that.

Chapter 5: A Chance

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Chapter 6: A New Normal

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Chapter 7: Informed Denial

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Chapter 8: A Compromise

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They're afraid.

Whoever they are they're afraid for their life.

He just couldn't get that thought out of his head.

He was running, and he couldn't stop. Breaths coming in practically twice as fast as his feet pounded with his heart. He could feel their heart too, beating just as fast as his and so, so scared. It lit up the night like a beacon in his mind now he knew he was looking for it. Just a few more turns away. He could feel the much calmer one beside it. And that only made him run faster.

God, what am I doing?

There was a swelling in his chest, like fresh determination he hadn’t let himself feel in such a long time. It came bursting forth with all the force of a thunderstorm beneath his skin, his gaze set yet frantic as he ran. It wasn’t a bit like when he’d escaped, this was something new. Something primal that commanded him seek out the source of that noise and just do whatever he could to help. That kind of feeling that demanded he not let things be. That told him that there wasn't much time and he had to do something.

What that something actually was, could have been the subject of relentless debate he was sure.

He wasn’t thinking. He knew that and he hated it and he hated how he knew he didn’t have a plan. He knew what he was doing was stupid and dangerous, but even if he could tell himself he wanted to he didn’t think he could stop himself from going. So he let himself run, hoping beyond hope he could still reach them. And when he did, he only wanted to make himself stop even less.

If anything, seeing the situation only made him want to run faster.

She looked young, likely only a little older than him and she was draped over a larger man’s shoulder’s bound and gagged but still very much awake and fighting desperately to get away.

The worst part of it was the look on her face.

He could have sworn he’d seen that same look on just about every one of the people he’d been forced to kill. Pleading and silently begging for just a few more moments, with eyes glazed over with wet certainty. Only this time he had the freedom to make sure that would never happen. For once he could make sure that any of the help they were begging for would come.

The villain hadn’t heard him coming until it was too late. By then he’d already committed to driving his elbow deep into the man’s spine before grabbing the girl by her bound wrists and throwing her behind him. He didn’t have so much as a second to make sure she was okay.

That familiar seeping dread had come crashing back down all at once from where it had been. That constant wave of harsh panic he had not noticed been gone until now. And all of a sudden he no longer felt like someone who would make sure people wouldn’t die and more like someone who was going to die themselves.

But he'd made the choice and he would stick by it even if it killed him.

The villain (and of that he was sure he was by now) took his time standing up, but when he did it was clear they would not be getting out of there so easily. He swallowed hard as shaking anticipation let loose on his frame.

The girl was still bound behind him, and he just didn’t have the time to free her or carry her out of there. And to add only more to the ever growing pile of reasons why he should not have engaged, he had no weapon. No so much as a tiny switchblade or scalpel while the objectively much larger villain he was facing seemed to be able to pull them from thin air..

All he had left was his quirk.

And he couldn’t bring himself to use it.

The man’s eyes gleamed with murderous intent, and Izuku grit his teeth before the man dove in with a snarl. Summoning two large knives in his hands.

“You damn brat!”

Izuku’s eyes widened for half a second. Leaping to the side before the knife could make contact. He was at a severe disadvantage, and he knew it. Even if he managed to disarm the man, his quirk would allow them to make more. His only hope now was to dodge and hope the villain worked himself into some kind of quirk exhaustion. That was it. He didn’t have anything to counter it, no plan at all to speak of. All he really had was experience and a few split second chances to dodge, but for how long?

He also knew that no matter what, he would not be letting this villain anywhere near the girl they’d been trying to take.

He needed to get out of there, and he needed something to fight back with. But all he had was his quirk and he couldn’t let himself use it.

The worst part was he knew it was selfish, stupid and a complete waste of resources and time he didn’t have. Problem was he was stubborn, if his time with Sensei had taught him anything. He refused to give up and use it, not when it meant risking everything he was trying to be now that he was out.

Even while this man was trying to kill him he didn’t want to use it. And how f*cked up was that?

Right now he just wanted the man to stop. Fighting like this was bad, but if he found something to use maybe he could-

His eyes caught on the metallic shine of a knife the villain had cast away, and suddenly that was all he needed. Barely rolling to avoid another hit he reached for the heavy blade and brought it up just in time to counter the next strike to his head before swiftly twisting both weapons around and forcing the larger knife from the villain’s grip.

He seized them, and backed up. Taking up a fighting stance with the two knives in hand and breathing hard from where he stood. He met the villain’s eyes with steel of his own, and huffed a few more breaths before attempting to get him to stand down.

That went about as well as he’d come to expect at this point. He honestly didn’t even know why he tried anymore.

With a fitful snarl, the knife-villain lunged forth with another two blades of his own and Izuku tore away just in time to see him leave two hilts buried in the now cracking brickwork where he’d just been.

There was no way he was blocking that. At least not directly.

He swallowed hard and grit his teeth again. Kicking hard at a nearby dumpster and hoping it would distract him enough for him to catch them by surprise.

It came rushing towards the guy with renewed force as Izuku moved in from behind with the blades.

In less than a second the dumpster was in two, and the villain was on him.

He shut his eyes tight to brace for the blow he knew was coming-

and before he realized what he was doing, the man had fallen face first into the pavement…

For far too long he just sat there, with eyes frightfully wide.

And just like that the wave of everything he’d been keeping at bay for so long came crashing down all at once, and he couldn’t do a thing to stop it.

He didn’t even know he was moving until his back in the wall and he quickly relinquished his white knuckled grip on the blades.

He didn’t hear them hit the ground. He couldn’t hear a thing over his own panting breaths and the rapid pounding of blood in his ears. He pulled his hands up and clutched at fistfuls of long green hair before he pulled. As hard as he could. Hoping that pain could do something to fight off just this feeling. This wave he should have seen coming that had just come crashing down around him all at once and broken any semblance of the new life he’d made for himself.

He'd tried so long just to stay afloat as he was and now… now he was drowning.

All he could think of were the echoes of the man’s face. Stretched out for just a second in horror before he’d collapsed. It reminded him of too much, and all those memories had hit him all at once.

He… he couldn’t have… did he-?

No.

No, no he couldn’t be. Because if he was then that meant he’d killed him and nothing had changed. That meant he was still a killer, a monster, and still a villain using his quirk to kill and he just refused but-

Oh God… he had hadn’t he?

The man wasn’t moving. He was lying face down on the ground with the knife still hanging loosely in his grip.

He felt sick. A disgusting retching taste had taken to his mouth and it made him gag along with all the pain swelling in his head. And no matter what he did it just wouldn’t go away.

He couldn’t ignore it this time.

Because he was dangerous. There was no getting around that. No more ignoring it because he had finally snapped after all this time and now…

How could he have just let this happen?

Why couldn’t he have just taken the hit or tried to minimize the blow?

Why was this any different from…?

How many times could he have slipped up like this before? How many times did he put people in danger just by being there? By being too scared to fight the instincts ingrained in his head? He could have hurt someone, bad. Possibly far worse than he did hurt the man who’d tried to help him just on that first day.

He thought back to his face, scrunched up in pain as he pressed it into the concrete under laboured breaths of his own in a haze of panicked reaction.

How many times had he nearly killed someone because he’d been too panicked to care?

He was dangerous. Far, far too dangerous because of everything Sensei had done. Maybe if he’d made it out the first time… or even just the second it would have been okay.

But now? Now it was too late. He was too broken, too unstable to even trust himself not to just react out of pain or fear. He couldn’t trust he wouldn’t use his quirk again, and slip up just enough to kill them or hurt them just a little too much more than he'd intended. He told himself he couldn't let himself become that… He didn't want that. He never wanted that.

But no… Sensei was right wasn't he? He was a villain, a killer, and the only person he could blame was himself and he'd just keep on living with the life he had while ending so many others and nobody could stop him, not even himself. And no matter what he did-

Someone was shouting.

It was muffled, and far away, but it was something. And he tried to focus on it, but he just couldn’t beyond just the- all the noise he was sure he was making. The heaving breathing, the wet sobs and small screams he was choking back, all of it. Nothing beyond this stress, and the pain, and the sickness and all this noise.

The voice pressed harder and more urgent into his mind, in a way that didn’t seem natural. It made him jerk back violently, and he hit his head hard against the brick wall behind him as he tried to force himself back and away from her.

Her…

It was- that’s right he’d… he’d saved someone too. Hadn’t he?

Slowly… way too slowly he tried to pry his own fingers from his hair and forced himself to uncurl. He felt like he was forcing a clam to open with already raw fingers and it shouldn't have been that hard. It left a deep painful ache in his fingers, but he did it. And the girl wasn’t as close to him as he’d thought. She was still half sitting on the other wall across from him and far from the man he’d drawn away. She looked worried, and scared but she wasn’t doing anything but talk and try to… what was she trying to- ?

He was still shaking as he focused his gaze on her wrists and the loose wet gag around her neck. She must have slipped it off during the fight, and then maybe tried to crawl closer to him. But that wasn’t right. Why wasn’t she getting help? Why wasn’t she trying to get away from him when he could… had she now seen what he did to-

He didn’t hear her ask what he was doing as he forced himself up on shaking legs and pulled up one of the knives he’d dropped with him. He didn’t care to notice the words she was making as he stumbled towards her and lowered himself down. He could almost hear her talking to him though, as he got closer and reached out and fumbled for the zip tie around her wrist, before carefully using the knife and sawing at it until she was free.

Her wrists were raw with skin peeling on bruises while thin blood was still wet on her hands. She hissed quietly to herself as he got them off. His thoughts still racing, almost sounding too far off now in his head but he let himself focus on this for now.

He ankles were in better condition, but not by much. He didn’t bother getting the gag of her now. Once her hands were free she pulled out a phone from her pocket and started to dial. By the time she'd started talking he'd finished up and his gaze had fallen back to the man laying still on the ground.

He didn’t really hear what she was saying, and he didn’t seem to care to hear her try to stop him from getting closer either.

But he had to be sure.

He was still shaking, but that didn’t stop him crawling close and pulling his fingers up to his neck and wrists to check and double check for a pulse. He could have used his quirk, he knew, but that was hardly the point. That feeling had been far too overwhelmed by everything else he had going on in his head and now he'd pushed it back so hard he couldn’t feel a thing.

And he had to be sure.

The villain’s pulse was fainter than he expected. But it was there.

He was alive. Unconscious but alive.

He’d been wrong, and he could have cried again in his relief.

That didn’t seem to do much against his fears though.

By then the woman was done with her call, and lightly gripped his shoulder. He didn’t jump this time, and she told him the police were almost there and that everything would be okay. That he did so well, and that she was so thankful for his help because she didn’t know what could have happened to her if he hadn’t been there.

He stayed silent through the whole thing. He wasn’t shaking as much now, but he felt like everything was just so far away.

He’d saved someone. And to do it he felt like he'd almost killed another.

And he didn’t know how he wanted to feel about that.

He was bleeding too now, he could feel it. He’d dug his nails in deep enough to draw blood on his scalp, and the man had gotten a few scrapes with his knives even if the fight hadn’t lasted too long.

He did what he could to stop the bleeding. And the woman watched in mute wonder as he did so and stood himself up only feet that didn't feel like his own.

He could hear her trying to tell him to stop, to slow down and wait for the police to arrive. But he couldn’t do that, not now. He’d risked too much and right now all he knew to do was just to get away from there.

He hadn't realised he was so …tired.

And so he let his body guide him away. Silently yet somehow not stumbling off as fast he could with his mind still cold and silent with the world too far off for him to care.

She didn’t try to stop him.

He knew he washed the blood that'd dried off him, and wrapped what he could with some thin toilet paper from a public restroom, twisted as strong and thick as he could make it. He knew it wouldn’t be enough even with him holding back his blood to really heal properly.

Right now he didn’t care.

All that mattered was finding someplace safe.

And finding something he could do.

Because he could not go through that again. But he also knew he couldn’t make himself stop.

He’d saved someone… and he’d like to do it again. Maybe find some way to make up for every terrible thing he’d done and make sure nobody else would ever end up like him. Be someone who would save lives instead of taking them.

And through it all, all he could think was damn it…

Even after all that… he still wanted to be a hero.

Chapter 9: What could be

Chapter Text

It took two weeks of Izuku pulling just about every trick he could think of to get the money he needed, and he wasn’t proud of a cent.

Rationally he knew there wasn’t much he could have done instead, the world wasn’t kind to those who had nothing and he knew that, but he still felt no small level of remorse at having to take advantage of others to get so much as one step in this race of rebuilding a life.

Begging was just as humiliating as it was something to feel ashamed of in his eyes, even to his already barren sense of self-worth. He felt like a burden, and a liar, having to push the whole hopeless and pathetic routine up so far before anyone would even consider him as anything more than some trashy teenager looking for drug money. Even then it didn’t produce much of anything regardless of what he tried, begging was scraping the bottom of the barrel for just about whatever he could find and only seeing more and more of just how little everyone cared about him.

That would have taken months, and he didn’t have that kind of time, so he had to do something he hated possibly even more.

Stealing and pickpocketing was much more effective, though a lot more risky in a lot of ways. It felt like he was digging himself into an even deeper hole than he was in already, and he especially didn’t like how sh*tty it made him feel when he looked down at his earnings at the end of each day and, before he could stop himself felt something of a moment of pride and satisfaction welling up in his chest, before the insistent reminder that he would only need more.

It didn’t help how much he’d have to run too. He’d had enough of running.

It kept casting his mind back to where he was that night two weeks ago, before he started all this. Made him think about how much easier it would be to use his quirk to rob someone blind, even if he knew he wouldn’t. Instead he let himself swallow his pride and his guilt, and kept himself on the path he was on. He did what he could to make sure he wasn’t stealing from people who would miss it, cutting someone down too much would never sit right with him, so even then he only took as little as he could. He didn’t want to cause anything more than a bad day, and he downright refused to take any kind of solace in the notion that he needed it more than them. No matter how much it could have been true.

He’d promised himself he’d steal and beg only as long as he needed to before trying to earn money in some way more reliable. He’d honour that as long as he could.

The worst part was is wasn’t going to be enough by itself.

The one knife he’d stolen from the villain he’d fought had disappeared. Or perhaps to be more specific, it had just straight up disintegrated in his hand after 24 hours because of course it did. For a while he was left without the only weapon he was comfortable using in what he was coming to understand was one of the more dangerous sections of the city, now with more money than he could let on having. He wasn’t safe like this. And true, had hadn’t felt save in a long, long time, now he just felt even less safe. Even if he knew a few ways to fight back hand to hand, and his paranoia for all they were worth, it wasn’t going to be enough. He was fighting one hand behind his back against at least 30 people all at once and he didn’t have anything in the hand he could use.

That wasn’t even mentioning just how little weight he had to him now with the definite lack of food. The difference here was, he only had to steal a knife or two once before he never had to look back again.

Shoplifting, especially in this neighborhood, felt like walking right into a lion’s den, and just hoping for the best. Only whatever lion was in there had all the resources they needed to track him down after he’d gotten away and take him by surprise when he least expected it. He wanted this all done in one go.

It felt like an hour before he finally worked up a plan to steal the knives he needed, and even then he’d barely gotten out of dodge in time. He didn’t want a repeat of the experience, which brought him to his next target.

Ugh, he hated using words like ‘target’ and ‘objective’, made him feel like this was just another mission again.

But then again that could be helpful in some ways. He’d always been able to repress his nerves when it was one of those. He had to learn from last time and skittishness almost got him caught, as much as he hated it he needed to remember his training.

He had just enough now to pay for the ID, but nothing else. And slapping on a new name and a fake identity just wasn’t going to cut it against anyone working for All For One. He needed a new look too, and he needed it quickly. A pharmacy was the best place he could think of to look for what he needed, and naturally, it just so happened to be one of the few places people regularly tried to rob.

He leant against the wall he’d been peering around and thudded the back of his head against it in frustration. He really couldn’t have made any of this easier for himself could he?

He took a deep breath in, and set his sights on the door.

He walked in with feigned confidence, giving a gentle smile to the woman at the counter as he passed hopefully to reassure her. He was wearing his hood up, hoping it did what it could to hide his face from the camera, but was still trying to not raise suspicions. For what it was worth, it looked to be working as he made a beeline for the cosmetics.

He didn’t have skills or the resources to do much of anything permanent, so he’d have to make do with what he could find. As it turns out that was hair coloring wax and some scissors, but he’d work with it. Even if he hadn’t so much of a scrap of hair cutting experience.

As for his scars and freckles… that took a little more doing. Long sleeves worked well on his arms and all, but it did absolutely nothing for the ones on his face. Freckles were find, but he knew identifying marks like these would have to be covered up if he wanted to hide form anyone, much less All For One.

And while he wasn’t one for make up even before everything had gone down, that didn’t stop him from making absolute certain that every coverage looked as realistic as possible.

The black face mask he pocketed though, wasn’t something he spent nearly as long to think about though.

Once he stuffed everything he needed into his jacket pockets and waited in a shelf near the doors to make sure nobody was looking. The woman at the counter had been called away by another customer who wanted to complain about the quality of different products in her aisle or some bullsh*t, and he would have smiled if he didn’t feel so bad for her. It was drawing all the attention though, so he took it as something of a blessing as he slipped out the doors.

He only really let out the breath he was holding and dropped the act when he’d reached the, thankfully empty, public bathroom by the train station.

He laid out his materials before deciding on what he wanted to do and quickly got to work. In a few minutes, locks of dark green hair was scattered across the floor and in the sink, after the gentle snip of scissors had died down. It took a lot more scrubbing than he would have liked to get the wax, and later the concealer off his hands.

It wasn’t perfect, by any means. His neck felt itchy, his hair while much shorter felt slightly thicker than he was used to and he was sure if he squinted it was obvious the concealer was patchy on his face. It was passable though, and that was what mattered most right now. The point was it didn’t look like him and that was all he needed right now.

Still felt weird to look in the mirror and see someone else though, no matter the circ*mstances.

Now for the important part.

It was a long walk off route to get to the dealer, and the knives in his pockets had never felt more comforting as he fiddled with them on the walk over.

The place was seedy, and not well kept by any means but it wasn’t falling apart so much either. When he’d walked in there were only two people inside and one of them looked like he was sleeping off a drunken stupor and snored loudly in such an empty space. That wasn’t his problem though, even if it made him smirk just a little in the moment.

He got some strange looks from the guy at the counter when he mentioned the listing, but he still went along with it. Taking the photo and printing it out with the details he provided, and not hesitating to take every scrap of cash he had before sending him on his way, with the discreet message to not wake the other guy sleeping in the chair.

Izuku gave him a look when he caught the mischievous smile on his face, before relenting and shrugging to himself as he walked off.

A part of him had felt almost giddy though at the prospect of just what he held in his hands.

He wasn’t going to be Midoriya Izuku anymore.

Even after all the stealing, the lying and the struggles he’d had… looking at his new name there, and all the little details printed onto the plastic, he didn’t think he’d ever felt more proud.

Akatani Mikumo.

Three years older than he actually was, with badly cut fluffy pale blond hair with dark roots and not a freckle or scar to be seen.

And for all that it mattered… he was quirkless again now too.

It’d taken some time to really come to terms with the fact he’d used his quirk on someone after so long of staying clean. It had come so naturally, so instinctively that some part of him had wondered why he didn’t just use it all the time.

But then the reminders of all he had done with it had come flooding back in. And he was forced to face the fact that he probably wouldn’t ever be ready to do that again. Ever again.

He’d let himself break down as soon as he’d found somewhere somewhat safe and hidden to sleep.

It wasn’t so much about the quirk itself more than what it stood for. Everything about its history, what he’d learnt and been taught to do with it… it all just stood for violence. That kind of sickening, needless violence that he’d been forced to commit year after year after year with no reprieve. It made him think of all the people who’d suffered for it. It was all tied too strongly to his quirk.

He didn’t even know how to use it for anything else.

It was a quirk that belonged to a villain, and he didn’t want to be a villain anymore.

But he knew he couldn’t stop himself from wanting to be a hero… and if his childhood had taught him anything it was that heroes needed a quirk because no matter how much they trained there would always be one day that someone that much stronger would beat him into the ground, and people would die for it. Even if he didn’t want to use his quirk he still had one now, and if given the choice between watching someone die and using his quirk to save them, he knew which he would choose.

But then again this wasn’t just about how he felt too, he didn’t know how long it would take, but he had no doubt in his mind that word of a Blood Manipulating Vigilante would spread far in the villain underground, especially if All for One was looking for him.

He couldn’t save people quirkless. And he absolutely couldn’t save someone with the quirk he had. So all he had left to do was compromise and hopefully come to some kind of satisfying answer to his woes.

He’d never been more thankful for his notebook then. It was always the first place he turned to when he was going to make a plan.

He’d promised himself he’d rebuild his life from the ground up, and live it the way he wanted, no matter how hard it seemed. Akatani Mikumo would be his normalcy to hide behind. Everything he thought he could have been if things hadn’t gone to hell minus a few steps. A quirkless 16 year old, living alone while his parents were away or some other lie and holding a few jobs, enough to make the money he needed to support himself. Akatani Mikumo was a blank slate he could write on and he would make sure he’d be throwing away everything from before to do it.

His new Vigilante persona though? They were going to be another matter entirely. Because they were going to pick up where Mikumo couldn’t, and they were going to save everyone they could using a quirk that appeared to be completely different from Blood Bender. Something that would keep him hidden from All for One, and make sure he could never get the chance to slip up in a way that could kill someone.

He just had to figure out how to make that happen. Because unfortunately, like most quirks these days, Blood Bender was entirely specialized and only tailored to one specific thing.

He shook his head as he tucked the ID back into his bag. He’d figure it out later, for now he just had to make his way back to the train station. According to the schedule he’d read, there should be a train heading towards Musutafu arriving sometime in the next 10 minutes, and he wanted to make sure he was on it.

The crowds made him uncomfortable, though nothing of that was a surprise by now. There were a lot of people there to see him skimp out on paying for the ride and just jump over the gates there, but that didn’t stop him from trying to be sneaky as he did so. Shockingly, nobody pulled him over for it. Not even as he was far from the gates and waiting for the train, and not even when he had boarded it.

He tried to act as normal as he could, even if standing packed among a bunch of people on a moving train was making him scream internally. His hood was around his neck and he was trying his best not to clutch at the straps of his backpack for dear life as he shuffled in place. Even with everyone largely preoccupied with their own ends he couldn’t help but feel like all eyes were on him in that moment. He was out of place, and someone might have seen it… but so long as he didn’t draw attention to himself he’d be fine so… he just had to breathe, and keep this persona as long as he could.

He was Akatani Mikumo, and right now he was as normal as the rest of them.

But then… as the train sped up and more and more buildings, looking vaguely familiar…

He felt himself press his hand against the window, looking through the faint reflections of himself and into the hundreds of miles that were passing him by each second.

It’d been so long since he really got to see something of how big the world outside that facility was… so many people, and so many possibilities…

So much space… and it’d been far too long since he’d seen it all. How it all changed, how many people he’d forgotten in the space of all that time and all those many miles away. He couldn’t help but cast his mind back to those warmer times. Kacchan was probably about to end junior high with all their other friends. Probably still explosive as always and still snapping at someone or other for whatever reason about being a hero. He remembered their world back then, in bits and pieces for what it was worth. Mom was the most painful. He didn’t want to know just how horribly she’d died, but at the very least she’d had Auntie Mitsuki and her friends to look after her when he was missing… and people who would mourn her when she was gone.

Maybe she had survived though… there would have been people there to help her… people she could call but… what if they were gone too?

He could see the concern on the woman beside him, and it took too long for it to set in that he was crying. He wiped thick tears he hadn’t felt on his sleeve and sent her a watery smile.

He couldn’t let himself thing that.

After all, either way he couldn’t see them again right? What was the point of worrying when…

Yeah that wasn’t going to make him feel any better was it.

But the passing buildings did, for what it was worth. It was almost beautiful how much of the city had passed him by. It’d be easy to lose anyone in here, and for the first time he felt like he could really do this.

It took a few more minutes of idly watching the sights pass the train’s window that his stop had come. He straightened himself out by the doors as he left, stepping off and, against some better judgement, took some time to explore the distant streets and memories of his childhood. It had been a long, long time ago, but there were pieces he hadn’t let go of. Parks he distantly remembered, stores he used to drag his mother into. It wasn’t all that familiar by any means, really it was still far enough away that it felt like he couldn’t recognize a thing. But it was easy to imagine that each store he walked passed was the one from his memories, each park was one he’d played in with Kacchan and honestly? He really didn’t have the knowledge to refute it. He could at least hold onto this for now though. It made him feel warm.

Once he was somewhat satisfied with his wander he took the time to dive head first into any job he could find. And that was a whole other field he wasn’t prepared for.

He didn’t know a lot about asking for work, for obvious reasons. And he knew he was suspicious as all hell no matter what he did so it would make sense for people to turn him down left and right. That wasn’t really the big problem here though, they were just so god damn hard to find in the first place. He’d just about cried in relief when he’d actually found the first person who’d told him they were looking, even though they turned him down.

In the end there were some more localized stores looking for part timers to take shifts for them, but still very few of them trusted some kid with no connections to speak of and parents and the like who were out of reach. It wasn’t impossible though, just incredibly difficult. After about a day of throwing himself out there at every situation he found 3 part time jobs he could actually take. One in a small corner grocery store three times a week, one in a family owned restaurant for about 5, and another helping with some cleaning duties in some old woman’s flat. The last option offered the least pay really, but who was he to turn down an old woman looking for company and some help around the house, and for a reliable 8,000 yen of course.

All things considered, it was actually the nicest day he’d had in a while. Especially with the restaurant manager giving him some free takeaway as a sort of welcome gift. He hadn’t eaten that well in a long time, and he couldn’t help but savour some of the still warm noodles and spices as he did. Every mouthful felt like home, no matter how much he knew it couldn’t be.

He still wasn’t sure how long he really trusted that kindness was going to last.

With that done, he spent more time than he would have usually looking for a place to sleep, and ended up sleeping outside for his first two nights in Musutafu. It took all that time searching before he finally found a place to stay in an empty 4^th story room that looked half decent, and despite the rapidly peeling wallpaper and stained flooring, it was still more than he had grown to expect.

For the first time, Izuku took his time rearranging the scraps of furniture he could see to fit his uses. Propping up the three legged desk against a corner, barricading the door, clearing out some shelves and moving what was left of the bed into a corner with the rest of the scraps he hadn’t been able to find a use for yet. He figured he’d sleep as he always had on the floor until he was able to afford a futon and a decent blanket, but first he’d move in with what he had. He took his time laying out everything he had in his bag and finding some kind of suitable place for it.

The notebook and pen would take up residence with the stuff he’d stolen from the pharmacy in the shelves, hidden behind his spare clothes and scraps of wood he thought the shelves could still manage to support. It was too risky to take all that stuff with him if he was going to work the next day, he knew that. As suspicious as he knew he was as a scrappy 16 year old who ‘looked younger than they actually were’ with no phone and no references to speak of, if anyone got their hands on that notebook or any of his supplies it would be the final nail in the coffin to seal his arrest.

There was no way he was leaving to go anywhere without at least one of the two knives he’d stolen though, that wouldn’t change a bit.

There was still one more thing he had to do though.

As sketchy as vigilantism was he knew better than to go into it without a plan, and it all came down to just figuring out how to use his quirk properly. He could manage for now if he saw someone in the interim with the knives he had, but that wasn’t going to be reliable in the long term, especially if he was going to seek people out. He had a hoodie he knew he could use, and the mask. If he took out the hair wax it was going to be much harder to find him either way, and he could sort out more and more gear once he had the money but…

He needed an alternative way to use his quirk in a fight efficiently without risking anyone getting hurt. Something he’d have to train himself with that had not even a scrap of similarity to anything Sensei had tried to teach him.

He just had to think….

And boy did he spend a lot of time thinking. And writing just about everything he knew of his quirk.

It worked in control of blood specifically, and theoretically he could use it to fake having another quirk because it was ultimately emitter type and not Mutation or transformation, and often times those kinds of quirks had a lot more in common.

There were often different types of kinesis quirks, but no matter what he thought of it wouldn’t work without some kind of blood component, and he wasn’t going to use someone else’s to do it.

But… did it have to be in someone else’s body to work?

He sat up, and jerked his eyes down to his hand. He’d barely done any of this outside of someone’s body. A lot of the time the most effective stuff was done inside one, and that was always just what he needed in Sensei’s eyes but…

He took one of his knives from pocket and flicked it open, looking intently down at his reflection before pressing his ring finger firmly on the point of it, wincing as he did so. Deep enough to draw just one drop of blood, and that was all he needed. Blood always felt weird when it wasn’t constantly in flow, it was noticeable and hanging thick and almost static and slow as the thin line of it dripped down his finger.

He focused intently on the droplet that hadn’t dried just yet. It felt weird, so stagnant and the like, and he had to pour more energy into it because it wasn’t just adjusting to the flow that was already there, but he did it anyway.

A small, almost completely unnoticeable drop of blood lifted itself from the end its path and into the air in front of him.

And Izuku couldn’t help but smile.

Chapter 10: The Freedom in Lies

Chapter Text

Let it never be said that working in retail customer service was not one of the most difficult things for a person to have to deal with.

That was pretty much the only thought on Izuku's mind at this point, and it was coming from someone with more scars than he wanted to count and enough personal baggage that he'd be willing to bet not even a licensed pro would be willing to touch with a ten foot pole. He wanted to laugh at the thought, but he kept his face as expressionless as he could manage as he stared dejectedly into space, and tried to tune out the enraged tantrum of the older woman in front of him.

Honestly, considering his bad luck, he should have anticipated this. His shift so far was oddly quiet and much kinder to him than most. There always seemed to be that one customer though, and he really should have recognized storm was coming eventually. And perhaps more so than most it was pushing the upper limits of what he was willing to put up with, perhaps even more than Sensei did.

The comparison made him visibly wince, enough so that one of his Co-worker's, Miyahara, seemed to notice and edge closer. Enough to listen in warily and step in if it came to that.

He sent a warning glance their way, trying to silently communicate just how much he should not do that. But Miyahara only seemed to take that as only more reason to step in.

"Ma'am, Akatani here had nothing to do with making your meal, really. He's just here to man the register and-"

"Then he must have typed in in wrong! I told him lite milk and this useless child has been nothing but rude and disrespectful to me since I got here!"

He could see they were drawing attention, and that many eyes on them only made him want to fold in on himself more. Anyone who wasn't watching this like delightful drama was desperately trying to ignore the situation and leave as quickly as possible.

Miyahara was the unfortunate exception to this rule. They seemed to have the uncanny ability to just tell when his mind was screaming at him for an out, and it was honestly infuriating at times. Right now though, he didn't know what to feel, he just didn't want this. Miyahara stepping in was a recent development, and they really didn't seem to know how to handle things once they did other than just taking it and trying to give the customer what they wanted.

If there was one thing he hated most in the world, it was watching someone else take the fall for him and suffering for it. He dragged a hand down his face.

"Miss, I'm sorry if I came across that way, but I made sure I-"

"So you're calling me a liar!" She shot a pointed finger close to his face, and he flinched back hard despite his efforts. Any and all defenses freezing in his throat, and just begging her not to touch him right now, "This is a blatant abuse on my rights, I want a discount!"

He could feel his pulse pounding inside of him. And he took the moment to try to stamp down that fear as Miyahara tried to reason with her again.

It's not Sensei. It's not Sensei. She won’t hurt you. She's just some bratty customer, you can handle this. You're going to be okay.

"Miss, we can't give you a discount," He said it with more confidence than he felt. Miyahara shot him a look at his tone, perhaps not so subtly telling him to shut up and let them handle it.

Which was really too bad, because Izuku was famously terrible at keeping himself out of trouble.

"I want to speak to your manager! If a kid like you who can't do anything right is working here then I'm going to have to talk to someone who actually knows what they're talking about!"

"Ma'am, the manager isn't here right now," Miyahara said, "And I'm sorry but we can't just offer discounts to unsatisfied customers,"

"Put them on the phone then, I don’t care! I want that kid fired for what he did!"

He shot something of a desperate look at Miyahara, who didn't outwardly acknowledge it. Stuff like that was par for the course, and they both knew it but it didn't make him any less terrified.

"Ma'am, I'm sure he didn't-"

"The delinquent was trying to poison me! He could have used some quirk to do it, I don’t care! I want him-”

"Miss, I don't have a quirk. There's just no way I could have done that,"

Now that shut the woman up nicely. So much so, he could feel something of a small swell of pride in his chest at the look of her rapidly reddening face. He would have felt more, had it not been for the papery dryness that'd settled on his tongue, and the rising ache in his head, and gentle pounding of his blood beneath his skin.

Miyahara was currently looking at him like he'd just confessed to murder unprompted, and the people waiting in line for the register were clearly starting to look uncomfortable, while the woman seemed pent up like a balloon ready to explode as she started to try and get the words out.

"Well- You!" She looked away and scoffed, crossing her arms as she did so, like a spoiled child who wasn't getting their way, "No wonder you're so useless. What kind of person hires a quirkless screw up in a place like this? Just hand me the phone,"

He narrowed his eyes at her and obliged, not even deigning to meet his co-worker's eyes as he did so. He could hear Miyahara's clipped reassurances as he dialed for their boss, and he briefly apologized before handing the phone off to her and without another word, stalked off to the backroom to wait, either for her to leave, or for his shift to be over. Whichever came first.

He could see Miyahara's concern from space if he wanted to. But then again… maybe it was less concern and ore of just a simple worry about how he'd react. He honestly didn't care much to notice if there was difference.

He shut the door gently behind him and stalked towards the far corner, setting himself down in the small space behind the shelves and pulling his head back against the wall with a gentle thump.

God, he was so stupid spilling his guts like that. Reinforcing a fact more than was necessary only brought more suspicion because it drew into question why he needed to reaffirm it. And more importantly people, especially quirkless people, don't go spilling their guts even if it is in their defense. He should know that. He should know that regardless of how he felt about it. Akatani Mikumo was not him, and he had to keep up all the blank pages people had written for him where they were, and put all of this behind him if this was going to work out for the long run.

He ran forceful fingers through his hair, and gently held them there. Miyahara, and just about everyone there saw this is a big deal, and logically speaking Akatani would too. But being quirkless wasn't the problem. It didn't have that much of a sting anymore when it was coming from someone else. Especially now since he just had better things to think about now than their opinions on it all when it no longer held any power over him.

Being quirkless had hurt when he was younger, but only because it meant in his mind that he could probably never become the hero he wanted to be. And even if that had been true, he never got to find that out for himself. Instead he'd wasted years of his life that he'd never get back living as a villain because of a lie he fell for, and now if he could have asked his idol that question he wouldn't need them to answer.

That dream had died with the first person he'd killed. And now he had to live with that. That meant doing the best he could all things considered. He couldn't have his old life back, not completely, no matter how unfair it seemed. But it was in his hands now, and for what it was worth he was selling the façade well and doing everything he needed to. Being quirkless wasn't a problem anymore, it was something he could be privately proud of because then he could tell himself he was getting better.

But he wasn't getting better was he? Not really. Because while he knew rationally that he wasn't there anymore, it didn't stop his feelings from telling him that every entitled, angry, asshole he ran into would beat him half to death just because he messed up. Angry people sucked, but no matter what happened or how different the situation seemed it always set something off inside him that he couldn't control. And from there he would shut down for the rest of the day, to the point where it only seemed to fuel more anger from customers and sometimes co-workers for mumbling or not speaking loud enough. It somehow always seemed to scare the sh*t out of him, no matter how many times it happened, no matter what he did, and no matter if he could see it coming. Because when someone was yelling at him for even the stupidest of reasons, all he could think about was being 8 again, and how yelling had always meant he was going to suffer.

He could feel his eyes burn, and as soon as he did he rubbed the heel of his hand firmly into them. This was so stupid. He'd survived so much worse than sh*tty customers and he was still over reacting. And wasn't that pathetic? Elusive assassin turned vigilante taken down by middle aged woman just because she "sounded angry". He should be stronger than this now. He used to have panic attacks and breakdowns at the mere thought of telling someone 'no' during his first few days, and he'd thought he was getting better dammit!

He clenched his teeth, and tried to swallow down a sob. He was getting better… but once again he was reminded that it just wasn't going to last. Because he couldn't help but ruin everything he touches, and because villains like him didn't deserve a life like this one.

It hurt just how many times he saw those people smiling at him, and wishing him a good day. The people from work that tried to talk to him or invite him to things and reassure him that they were glad to have him on the team, even if he was quirkless.

And all he could think of through it all was how much differently things would be if they knew. Because if he told them and everything was out in the open after him lying for so long and about so much…. They would hate him. And they had every right to. Because under everything, the masks, the lies, the constant reassurances that he was fine… he was a murderer. He had the blood of countless innocent people on his hands and he couldn't let himself forget that.

Miyahara popped in to check on him a few minutes later, and found him staring dejectedly at the wall across from him. If Miyahara could see the remnants of tears he didn't show it.

"Dude, don’t you get bored waiting like that?"

Izuku still didn't have a phone, or really anything to keep himself distracted in times like these and they knew that. So really at this point it was more of an expectation that he'd be sitting there and doing absolutely nothing but stare at the wall or the ceiling like it held all the answers. Still didn't stop them from asking every time.

He just shrugged in response. He was used to having nothing to do, and even more used to being alone. When you lived like he did when he was a kid you learn that no matter how crazy it seems, staring into empty space could be pretty fun. His thoughts could take him to interesting places if he let them so it wasn't so bad most of the time, even if it could have been much better.

Miyahara just hook their head again, "Look I spoke to Dad, he's saying you can take the next two days off and the rest of this one if you want. We're basically all covered here, and I think anyone would want at least a few days after the week you've had,"

He sat up straighter and looked back seriously, "That's nice of you guys and all, but I'll be fine. I've dealt with worse,"

"Worse than a gang of delinquents trying to mug you in the dead of night just yesterday?"

Izuku winced at the half-baked lie and didn't answer beyond putting a hand to his small patch of bandages under his shirt sleeve.

They sighed at his silence, "Fine, I'll tell Dad you've coming the next two days so long as you go home early today,"

He stared blankly at them for a long moment, before relenting and getting back up.

"What time should I leave?"

"Now, preferably,"

"Now?"

"Now,"

He ended up taking the long way back thanks to a hero fight on one of the main roads. It worked out for him though because there was a good convenience store around his new route that had some cheap meals he liked to hit up and that was always nice.

In the end he scarfed down a packaged bento on a park bench as his one meal for the day and even if it was pretty small it felt good to have something in his stomach after all that. It was still daylight for once by the time he returned to the place he was squatting, and looked like it would be for at least a few more hours. In all honestly it was something rare all things considered, which just meant he had to be extra careful getting in lest someone take notice and report him for trespassing, even if it was in a relatively secluded area.

He had to leave behind that old apartment room he'd found too and it was grating on him. He'd overhead the place was scheduled for demolition and he'd never cleared out faster. By then he'd already bought a futon and a blanket, and hadn't thought twice about trying to shove them both in his backpack so hard it had just about burst. And from there he'd had to spend a full night scouring every edge of the city for a new place to stay that hopefully wasn't going to knocked down in the next few weeks. And even then he was always on high alert when he moved in somewhere unfamiliar. So naturally the next few nights would be hardly restful.

At least the new place was somewhere along his route though. Albeit three districts over and hidden in the backstreets behind some major buildings.

He used a nearby pipe to prop open the garage door, and slipped inside. Light was pouring in through one of the higher windows and casting warm light into an already steamy room. And he heaved a sigh of relief as he shrugged off his shoes and socks and set himself down on one of the empty crates near his bed.

He took a few moments to breathe and make a plan, before stalking over the small pile of his belongings and pulling free first a small syringe and needle, and another much heavier box filled with soulless weaponry.

The blades were cheap but strong, small and simple in design and replicated more than a hundred times over. A kite shaped blade and small handle and leather loop he could use if need be, but most importantly a thin air sealed tube embedded in the center, designed to hold at most five milliliters of his own blood.

He'd spend hours on the design, and while the materials themselves didn't take all that long for the broker to produce, they took a lot longer to fill since he had to space out filling a few at a time each day. It was by far his least favorite part of his new routine. And not only because of just how sensitive he was to feeling his own blood moving in ways it shouldn't. He didn't let that stop him though, and by the end of the afternoon he'd filled about 16 more blades before he had to stop himself, and give himself a break.

From there though, he didn't waste any time getting changed, cleaning up all his cosmetics and assembling what he'd put together so far of his vigilante costume. By all accounts it was very simplistic, but that was not something he really paid much mind to beyond some petty disappointment. A dark green/black hoodie, some jeans and his mask and that was pretty much it. So once he'd donned it and thoroughly equipped himself, he pulled up his black mask and hood and slipped out the window and into the night.

Being a vigilante was absolutely thrilling. And it was made even more so every time he took that first jump between rooftops and was reminded again that he was using every bit of his training, his quirk, his freedom to do exactly the opposite of what he was told he was made for.

He took a moment to stop once he was far enough from his hideout. He couldn't help but stutter out a small laugh between panting breaths. The night air was cool, almost refreshing on his face, and for once the quiet pounding of his own blood didn't ache with his fear.

He wasn't afraid, and he didn't have to be afraid. He was free and he hadn't even felt like it until his first night like this. Not even when he first got out, in time that seemed so long ago now. And he was doing what he could to make sure nobody else would have to be afraid like he was.

Now to make good on that.

He took a slow deep breath in before he shut his eyes and took the moment to focus intently on the people he could feel around him. Tracking their movements, how fast they were and more importantly how scared they were, through his quirk. And before long 5 racing hearts shot up like hot beacons in his mind, and he made his plan. There was more people there than he would have liked all at once, so he'd have to prioritize. He had a process for it too, and it generally started at who was closer, and what could likely be dealt with quickly.

Right now that looked like there was someone facing a large group all on their own on a nearby street. A gang of some kind perhaps, and whoever their victim was he wasn't going to abandon them.

He broke into a run after locking on to the location. Pulling a few of his blades out of his pocket and clutching them lightly in his hand before breaking into a run again, and drawing the rest from their hiding places around the area to hover alongside him.

He was in visual range now. Six people stood there in all, quirks at the ready and all of them baring the marks of a smaller local villain gang he'd seen signs of before. They had the man in front of them cornered, barely beaten but beaten all the same. Some brandishing quirks while their victim continued to search desperately for a way out. A cornered animal without so much as a defense in sight, and soon enough he could guess they'd get desperate and do something they'd regret.

Everyone here was tense. Adrenaline and thudding hearts fit to burst with anticipation or fear. He had to be careful. Tense criminals like them were likely to slip up exponentially when it comes to dealing with something unexpected. And all of them were ready to move, he'd have to start this slow.

He made a point to make his footsteps loud and slow as he walked up to them. Traipsing toward them like he had not a care in the world to notice what was happening. Like he was bored, experienced, and more importantly, dangerous.

He saw the guy they had cornered perk up at the sight of him, but not relax. Which was good, he needed them alert and ready to run if things went south. But as soon as he did the gang members took notice and turned their attention to the new player on this field.

The night was silent, but the roaring in their veins was loud.

"I'm sorry, is there a problem here?"

One of the gang members, the man at front and center growled, "f*ck off kid, this ain't got nothing to do with you so beat it!"

Izuku visibly sighed, "Seriously? Look I'm a busy guy, and I've got a lot more to do than bring down a bunch of street punks like you, so how about we call it quits,"

Two of the gang members, a woman and a man snorted out a laugh, and a wide grin cut across their leader's face, "Ya got a lot of nerve kid I'll give you that, but you're nuts if you think we're just going to back down 'cause ya asking nicely, get lost!" he yelled, as many of the other gang members directed the force of their quirks in his direction.

"Yeah, no," he smirked, "Don’t think I'll be doing that,"

Three bullets cracked through the night air right as he ducked down launched the blades in their direction. He could list their quirks just from the top of his head, since they showed their hand too early. Gang leader had a shark mutation, another a strong form of telekinesis. 2 hand guns and were demonstrating a strong defense despite their clear weak points, another had a knife mutation in her hands, another strength enhancer, and he was getting serious hornet vibes from the last.

Blades moved in a flurry of movement. Moving in numbers like an elegant swarm and overwhelming them in his divided attention. Strikes came to each of their weak points, through the handles of guns and bats at speed and to joints uncovered by quirk formed armor. Slicing indiscriminately through hands, ankles, the backs of knees, anything that would bring them to the ground and make sure they remained alive no matter how long the police took.

His fighting style had certainly changed since All For One was in the picture. He still specialized in weaponry, but his hand to hand skills had become a lot more useful. The blades, after considering his initial designs, were a lot more for distractions, immobilizing and disarming than anything else. He'd decided a long time ago that he'd rather avoid hurting people so long as he could help it, so it only made sense. As harmful as blades were to the human body, simply injuries in the right places could get a lot of the more hard ass villains to back down.

These people, no matter what their quirks were, were clearly nowhere near as dangerous as they were making themselves out to be. Due in large part thanks to a lack of organization, teamwork, and most importantly experience in this particular field.

Unfortunately for them, Izuku had experience in spades.

The blades hit their mark, and each one was finished off with a firm knee or wall to the face. It was, for the most part over, but it took way longer than he would have liked. He didn't dare waste a second with restrains, as he attempted to reassure the now shaking man in front of him.

"Who are you? Some kind of hero?"

He gave a fitful shrug, "Something like that, can I use your phone?"

The man gave him an odd look but obliged, handing it over and watching him intently with an odd look of mild shock mixed with fascination as he called the police. It was likely to be much to their frustration or confusion he was sure, though who was to say which one really. Once the call was done, he handed it back and turned his attention back on the thugs, still largely out cold if not clearly beaten down, and he frowned.

For good measure he handed the man one of the loaded guns.

"Keep that trained on them until the police arrive, and don’t get skittish unless you have to. They'll all be fine so long as they don't make any sudden movements,"

The man scrambled into action, spewing out some garbled thankyous and taking a few steps to chase after him when he took the chance to run.

He caught the tail end of flashing blue and red lights out the corner of his eye as he climbed the roof tops and swore as he pulled himself up. Checking again to make sure he still had all his knives with him before bolting to the next location.

He didn't think he'd ever get tired of this. Even if his shoulder burned with blood still barely kept inside, and bruises he was going to have to cover well the next morning.

It was in times like these he thought he could forget all about this being a lie.

Because This was the most authentic he thought he'd ever be.

Chapter 11: Fresh Eyes

Chapter Text

Chapter 12: Two Steps Forward

Chapter Text

Chapter 13: A Name

Chapter Text

He didn't think he could afford today to get any worse.

Angry people in pretty much any part of his day didn't bode well for him, or really anyone for that matter. He was sure everyone had figured that fact out pretty early on.

Akatani Mikumo had… issues. That was the one thing he couldn't avoid, couldn't scrub clean or hide no matter how he tried. People had seen that, people he knew and lied to and kept lying to had seen that, and for what it was worth he was thankful they all had their own ways of dealing with it.

Miyahara and the woman he cleaned for, Mrs Hasegawa, tended to treat him with a level of care he wasn't used to. Handling him with kiddy gloves and going out of their way to make him feel comfortable, or at least what they would have thought he'd find comfortable, because if anything he just felt more out of place than ever.

But his manager at the corner store he worked at was thankfully a very different case.

Mr Omori had never been cruel, and for what it was worth he had recognised he needed the job and had been willing to give him a shot, where pretty much every other place had taken one look at his status as poor, quirkless and an utter wreck and told him take a hike.

He wasn't overtly kind, wasn’t cruel either. He was reasonable, predictable in a way he could appreciate.

From minute one he'd given Mikumo as many chances as he could to prove himself a valuable employee, and when he couldn't deliver he knew how to work with what he could. That didn't mean he spared him or his excuses like the others did, it didn't mean he took pity on him, or was particularly gentle when delegating tasks. And when he showed up to work covered in bruises, or left some of his scars exposed he didn't ask any questions, didn't go out of his way to make sure he was alright.

He respected that Mikumo was someone who took care of himself, and that meant he wouldn't treat him any different to anyone else on the job. And for the most part he was thankful. Their system was a simple one, predictable. It meant he knew what to expect.

Mr Omori had learnt early on he had issues with confrontation, so his many days there mostly consisted of stocking shelves, unloading supplies, cleaning or making stuff for the deli. And while it wasn't great, it meant his time there would mostly just be him getting on with what he had to get done, and he could take solace in the fact that while he knew he wasn't needed, he could still do something simple and relatively hard to f*ck up, to take the weight off everyone else.

Of course that didn't mean he could flawlessly avoid people every time, it just made things easier to do since he wasn't put on the spot so often.

Which is why when he saw a bunch of high school kids, probably just a few years older than him at least, coming his way, he did his best not to panic and just get on with what he was doing. Just let them get on with their business so he could get on with his.

He was still tense though, and it didn't make him any more prepared when a partially unscrewed bottle of chocolate milk collided firmly with the back of his head and burst.

It knocked his head forward hard and abruptly when it made contact, and for a few seconds he just sat there in mute shock, coming to awareness slowly at the sickly sweet smelling liquid that now coated him and his work uniform.

"Oops, must've dropped that," one of them jeered, "could you be a good boy and get that for me?"

The boys behind him kept on laughing, and he did his best to just calm down and ignore them. They were just being… like that. People did that. And it's not like they were hurting him anyways, so it was fine. Annoying, but fine. They weren't going to hurt him… probably. Just mess with him until they got bored and left. He could handle that. He'd handled much worse.

His heart was still beating way too fast.

The others had taken up taunting him, some picking out drinks of their own and when the mood suited them, threw them his way.

He did his best to save some of the less than waterproof items he'd been stocking, and shook off what he could of the milk before it could set in too much. The bottle itself had rolled off, leaving a clear path on the floor and with a good portion of its contents scattered through the aisle.

He took a look at the mess.

He needed to get the mop, hopefully clean this up before it became too much of a problem. He could only hope the boys behind him were gone by the time he came back.

"Hey dumbass! Your sh*tty hair dye is coming out!"

He froze.

No. No this couldn't be happening. Not today, not here. Please not here. Please…

"Hey idiot! You listening? What's wrong? Too poor to afford being a real fake?"

He left the colouring at his hideout, he always did.

He didn't think… he hadn't thought about what he'd do if he got caught out like this while on the job.

He bit into his lip.

They could find him. He wasn't protected here. He was vulnerable, stuck out in the open for anyone to see. And if Mr Omori found out he'd lied on his ID and application form… if any of the others saw him like this-

"Hey I'm talking to you sh*thead!"

A firm hand grabbed his shoulder and tore him to face the waiting crowd. It took everything in him not to move. Not to give in to that screeching instinct inside him that demanded he just get away. Leave. Defend yourself, anything! They're going to hurt you!

He let out something of a whimper. His assailants laughed.

Come on, just bite your tongue, as long as you can. You can't do anything like this. Just wait. You're good at waiting right? Just don’t talk back, don't react. Let it come, because you know you can take it and you know it can't last forever.

That way nobody has to get hurt but you…by you.

"You think he can ever hear us? Probably too stupid to understand,"

He took a tentative step back, shaking hands moving to try and pry the strong, hard grip from his shoulder. Mind going numb, a deep fog over his eyes only barely kept at bay, too busy trying not to think about last time, or the times after that, because he knew couldn’t let himself fall into that now.

One of the other boys took notice and smirked.

"Nah, he hears us just fine," he said, stalking over and grabbing a fistful of his hair. Pulling him up painfully and making him wince. His own fingers twitching at his sides, silently begging them, pleading with them to just stop.

"The little sh*t probably just thinks he's better than us," he snarled, "That right? Got something better to do sh*thead?"

No. Stop, don't- don’t do anything just- They'll leave. Please just leave.

"Bet he's working his life away here like the lowlife he is, Mommy and Daddy probably don't even want to see him,"

Stop talking. Stop talking, please. Please just don’t-

"Wonder if he's too poor or just too damn stupid to go to school?"

They aren't going to hurt you, it's going to be ok.

They aren't… you aren't back there.

"Hey moron, what's 2 + 2?"

Don’t react, don’t fight it. It's fine, you've dealt with worse than this. It could be so much worse than this, its-

"Hey! Answer me sh*t head!"

It- it's not-

A deep punch to the gut came without warning.

He doubled over and dropped the boxed he'd been holding. Gasping, kneeled over like this hardly able to move so much as speak or hear the muffled laughs and jeers coming his way. Harsh voices, tearing at his chest and making him flinch back before another strong punch, spiked and rough and piercing the skin with something like rock on his hand, making him cry out hit his arm before he could so much as react.

Don’t fight back. Don't you dare fight back. Not here. Not here.

One was still sinking harsh fingers into his scalp, pulling hard at his hair, keeping him up, kicking a his shins enough to make him let out a few more involuntary grunts of pain. He tried to stay quiet, tried to keep it in and it only seemed to egg them on more.

His head felt like it was racing, not even a tornado of thoughts he could read but like an unseeable static, bursting behind his eyes, making him want to break down. To curl up and have this all over with. To let so much of a sliver of the pain he'd been feeling for so long out, to stop it all from rushing out all at once and hurting so much more

And he couldn't breathe. His mind, his eyes, they couldn't seem to decide where he was. He was folding in on himself, now on the floor, lying and trembling in a puddle of something. Something strong smelling, that hung in his nose. Figures above him, familiar and unwelcome and having fun with what they were doing to him, just like they always did.

Those brief flickers of moments, those flashes of things he didn't want to remember, couldn't help but be reminded of kept coming back. And they looked less, and less, and less like the bored delinquents he should know they were…

And more and more like the countless opponents he'd faced in the ring, the ones he couldn't save himself from unless-

And the doctors responsible for his punishment, the ones who'd chased him down that first time he'd found out where he was and tried to say no and-

Sensei… all those people who'd hurt him again and again, and Sensei who would make sure it wouldn't stop.

You're not there, he's not here. You aren't there anymore, no matter what happened, what's happening, you aren't there, it's not him, it's not-

"Get up Akatani,"

A deep, loud voice cut through the static.

And in that moment, despite the voice, despite the fact he knew the wet soaking him wasn't blood, the people in front of him not the monsters from his past… despite the deep aching pain across his skin, in his chest, the sharp smell of sugar in his nose that should have brought him out of it…

He looked up and he saw something that couldn't be there.

Something big and inhuman, monstrous, and incomplete. Something reaching for him, with a strength that would snap him in two if it got the chance, and he couldn't let himself die like this, he couldn't and-

He reacted.

There was a loud and solid snap that rung through the air, the kind you could never forget. And then a scream of pain.

He was back in the store he worked at. Same shelves as before, same aisle. Chocolate milk still clinging to him in sticky droplets falling into his eyes and dropping in small plops onto the floor. The boys were still there, only now they looked far more scared.

They were scared of him.

By the time he looked back down and realised his mistake, it was far, far too late to take anything back.

Mr Omori.

Oh god, he'd-

He let his arm go and stumbled back into the shelves behind him, knocking down boxes and packets in a flurry of movement. All this as the man, his boss, cradled his broken arm to his chest and tried to recover himself. While hurried voices, panicked feet and rapid, beating hearts fled in fear from the scene. And more people, adults from surrounding aisles came over to see what had happened for themselves.

Everything, while he sat there wild eyed at his manager. Still sitting drenched in the same puddle of chocolate that'd started this whole mess. This time only barely managing to bring in the beginnings of breaths as he brought a hand to his mouth and tried to muffle the beginnings of a cry. Still staring in his own shock at the man he'd hurt, the man who trusted him. Someone who was trying to help him.

He was pulled off shift after that. Forced away and left to stay in the back room to clean himself up until they could figure out what to do with him as Mr Omori was dragged off to the hospital for treatment.

And he'd been too wrapped up in all of this to say sorry, or for anyone to tell him if he was ok.

He jumped at the sound of the door slamming open. The furious expression of their assistant manager, yelling at him and demanding he meet them in her office.

He'd started that day with three jobs. Not high paying, but just enough to sustain himself and get himself back on his feet. Enough to give him food, reliable food and let him save for resources like a bed, like a phone he knew he needed, without having to do anything bad.

He'd counted himself lucky that day… leaving with the two he had left.

Vigilante Patrol that night didn’t do much of anything to make him feel better.

He tried not to think about it, he really did. Tried not to think about how it could still happen again, how much he couldn’t let it.

He had other sh*t to worry about, on top of everything else. He wasn’t a hero for one, not legally speaking anyway no matter what he heard people tried to say to defend him, and knowledge of his existence was spreading way faster than he’d anticipated or wanted. He had enemies in both in hero and villain circles, and as a vigilante he was vulnerable on all fronts. All he had to protect himself really was his anonymity, his quirk and something of an ability to fight and run like hell when he needed to. Because both sides of whatever war this was hated his guts and he had made plenty of enemies since he’d started. And the worst part was it had gotten to the point it was getting harder to tell the difference between the two sides, or if All For One was even involved.

So he started up some new habits, took the steel pipe and his pocket knives with him every night, just in case. And whenever he sensed someone on his tail he ran like hell. Didn’t matter who or why, didn’t matter what happened, he couldn’t let himself get caught. Not again.

There’s never going to be room for mistakes, because everyone was his enemy out here, and they weren’t going to give him any second chances.

Just like it always was.

But doing this… saving people. It always had some way to make him feel at least a little better. To remind him of why he was doing this. To make sure he could do some good despite everything that happened before and every time he was reminded of what he had done and who he was and the constant fear and reminders of just how broken he was…. The simple message that he had changed, that he was still worth something more than what Sensei wanted to make him.

It was a reminder that he needed right now. He just needed to know he could still save people. He needed to remember that he could still do some good, even if it couldn’t make up for so much as a quarter of what he’d done.

Because even if he was afraid of himself as Akatani Mikumo, even if he was the absolute scum of the earth and a murderer and a villain, even if he broke someone’s arm and hurt people completely by accident because he was just that much of a wreck…

At least he could do this.

Crime was decreasing in areas he’d most commonly hit. It was nice to know, that even if he knew for a fact villains were either moving on or laying low till they thought the storm passed, those back ally crimes almost no one wanted to look for were clearing up, because of him, and because of the heroes hunting him down. That meant something to him.

But there was still trouble, because even if he knew just where to look he’d only barely made it out of that fight with Eraser, and it had taken the sheer luck that Ms. Hasegawa noticed and had a friend with a healing quirk who didn’t ask too many questions. Looking back on it he was lucky he didn’t pierce a lung in the interim, still hurt like a motherf*cker though.

Tonight was treating him with just about the same luck.

Because he may be able to tell the traps of heroes apart from the everyday mugging, but villains had no issue putting someone in serious danger if it meant some revenge for putting their buddy behind bars.

And he really had no choice but to step in.

But by the time he’d managed to swoop in, tear the victim away to safety and get them to chase him in the direction of the heroes he had a new problem.

Namely that he had just traded a pack of attempted murderers for a whole host of trained heroes, who now knew where he was.

He had only half a second at best to drop off the boy he’d just saved, and that was the first person he’d saved he didn’t have time to make sure was really okay, and to make matters worse they were clearly having a hell of a rough time with some kind of shock response.

In the end all he could offer then was a quick sympathetic glance before he had to turn tail and run, and he felt like sh*t.

Their heart rate didn’t go down, not for a long time even after the heroes had found them and directed them towards the local authorities. He could still feel it miles away, still nagging at his head like an important task he’d left undone.

And even after he’d managed to evade the heroes enough to grant him some breathing room to hide and come up with a plan, all he had still to offer the person he’d just saved was the simple, unvoiced hope they’d be okay.

Still didn’t make him feel any less sh*tty.

He sent some knives in a small swarm to act as a decoy, hoping as much as he could that it would be enough to draw them far enough from his location.

He focused for a while, making them keep shape before they dissipated. He could count that as just about the only stroke of luck he’d had today, but he wouldn’t chance it.

First he let himself breathe, focus.

This side of the city had Heroes practically everywhere. He’d gotten too bold letting them know he was there, because someone had clearly called for backup.

Right now all he could really do was give them the space they needed and go home. Trust them to find the others and needed and actual hero right now.

He supposed he could do with some sleep anyway, it’d been a sh*tty day anyway.

He felt a heartbeat a few paces behind him, getting faster and closer, the tell-tale rustle of fabric making it all to clear.

He acted before Eraserhead could so much as let a word out or activate his quirk.

14 blades had his costume and capture weapon pinned firmly into the wall behind them without so much as a wave of his hand or outward acknowledgement of him being there.

“Dammit, why can’t you leave me the hell alone?” he muttered under his breath.

He felt a firm glare burn into his back, his quirk went dead but much too late. The blades held strong and stuck firmly into the wall, making sure they couldn’t budge.

“Kid, I just want to talk,”

He gave a frustrated sigh, walking away from him and towards the edge of the roof to find a good route to take, a good place to jump.

“Listen, that’s all well and good but I’m really not in the mood,”

"Trust me you're going to want to hear what I have to say," he hero's expression spoke of warning, like he held all the power to shoot him if he moved.

Izuku knew better. And made to wave goodbye.

"Maybe," he said, not looking back, preparing himself "Anyways-"

“We know about Midoriya Izuku.”

His world shattered.

A thousand tiny shards of lies and walls and everything he’d been trying to build just came crashing down around his ears.

Izuku sucked in a harsh breath, chest tight, his stomach dropping a thousand feet per second. Heart practically stopping yet leaping at his throat, all at once.

He stumbled. He barely caught himself on the edge there from where he’d been ready to jump and turned back wide eyed to look at the hero.

Eraserhead looked back. A face and gaze set hard with determination and something else he didn’t dare want to mistake as concern. A small victory dancing there just on the edge among the tension and weight of the air that now settled around them. Air almost too hard to breath.

He couldn’t move.

None of them moved, not for a long time.

“How do you know that name?”

His voice came out low, shaking and trying to sound dangerous but still much too quiet and dipping with a fear neither of them could touch. He didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to do anything more than run but he just couldn’t.

And he had to know how bad this was going to be.

Thee hero took a moment to answer.

“He went missing a long time ago, and I’m sure you know we found his blood inside one of your blades,” his eyes narrowed, eyeing him carefully, “and that means you know where he is,”

He didn’t speak. Mind still reeling and running too fast for him to see.

That was his name, his real name. Not Akatani Mikumo, not Viridian his name.

Someone… someone outside of Sensei knew his name.

He didn't know whether he wanted to cry or in relief or because he was so terribly afraid.

“Listen, all I want to know is where he is. I want to know why, but I need you to tell me if he’s safe first,”

The tightness in his chest turned to a crushing pain.

But something in that voice spoke in authenticity… something that told him he was telling the truth. Something he couldn’t let himself believe no matter how much he wanted to.

He flinched back hard when Eraserhead tried to move again to reach out to him.

They noticed, and frowned… but he stopped his attempt.

“Please kid,” his voice, his eyes were softer now. Careful. “I can’t make you trust me, but I need you to tell me what’s going on,”

He could run. Eraserhead was pinned and he could run without saying a thing. He’d risked exposing himself just once today, and now it was staring him right in the face.

They were asking him to trust them… trust them with too much. He couldn’t afford it. He hadn’t let himself fall into that for a long time now and he knew well what it meant if he was wrong about them. He knew what it meant for his freedom, then and now.

Eraserhead was restrained, pinned with knives digging deep into a brick wall and unable to move until either someone found him or he made it far enough out of sight to retract the blades.

He could run.

Somehow he couldn’t bring himself to.

“Kid, what’s going-”

He slapped hand hard over his mouth to muffle anything he might let slip and took a step back.

He could feel the gentle sting of tears in his face, the tremor to him he was sure Eraserhead could see but he couldn’t let them. He couldn’t lie here, not anymore. He’d already let too much slip already just by reacting.

They probably already knew he and Izuku was one in the same.

The hero still didn’t move.

“Viridian,” he tried again, “I can’t help you unless you tell me what’s going on,” tear shined eyes took a wary look back at his face.

They swallowed.

“It doesn’t have to be everything right now, but I need you to talk to me kid, please.”

He shifted now watering eyes back to the ground, fingers still clutched to his mouth and digging in red lines beneath the mask like that would do any of them any good.

“c-cant,” came the soft muffled voice.

“I’m sorry?”

He pried his hands from his mouth slowly, much too slowly, and swallowed through the paper dryness in his mouth and tried again.

“I can’t... I can’t tell you that,

“Why not?” their gaze hadn’t faltered, “Kid, is there-“

“I just can’t okay!” he brought in a few more shuddering breaths at his outburst, and looked away, “I… I just can’t,”

He let his hand back up to cover his mouth and things went still once again.

A few more moments passed, tense and still and silent save for the distant sounds of a city below them both, and then Eraserhead let out a sigh and his quirk let up.

“Can I have my hand back for a second?”

He fixed him a wary look, but complied with no small degree of caution. Watching in trepidation mixed mild fascination as he pulled a pen free from a pouch on his belt, and reached out to hand it to him. Offering silent reassurances as he hesitantly reached out in turn with a shaking hand to take it. Rolling it over and examining it a few times and granting the hero a confused look in return.

“I’ll give you my private phone number if you’re willing to take it,” he said, “I’ll let you think about it, however long you need. And if you do decide to talk, give me a call and I’ll listen,”

Izuku looked to the pen, from him and back again.

And then hesitantly, too gently, he pulled back a sleeve on his left arm and poised the pen to write.

11 numbers later, he pulled the sleeve back down, gave one last glance to the hero.

The rapid beating of approaching heartbeats came to his attention, and he jerked his head in their direction.

"What's wrong?"

He shook his head, and he before he could think twice, he bolted. Heart thundering the whole way back. Not stopping for the hours to come.

Chapter 14: Run

Chapter Text

The first thing Izuku did when he got back after everything was make sure he was alone.

By then he was breathing hard through his mask, both from exertion and his own anxieties he was sure. So much so that he tore it off violently the second he came through his opening, and even then it didn’t feel like enough. And by now the rapid thumps he could feel in himself wasn’t something he could ignore, much less aim to stop. It pounded at his head like a sledgehammer in his skull, overwhelming his senses even as he did try to block it out. But tears were prickling in his eyes, and as he did his attention was seized by the ever present dread of the minutes previous.

He couldn’t stop. There was no stopping. Not until he knew he was safe.

He spent maybe ten? Fifteen minutes just trying to get his own heart to shut up enough to scan the area for anyone coming his way. As far as his quirk could reach, just like he’d practiced night after night. Making sure for the simple fact that he couldn’t afford to miss anything, more now than ever before.

He’d scared himself more than once like that. Searching like this every other night when he couldn’t sleep and fear and unease was rearing its ugly head. And as he felt the world move around him, someone would take a few steps in his direction, and his breath would get caught in his throat before they made a turn down a side street or into a nearby building.

He’d felt like he was going crazy with the paranoia, but he had bigger things to worry about than scaring himself. He had good reason to be afraid, he always would.

And then, even then when he knew there was no one coming for him at that moment, he didn’t stop until he’d checked and double checked every small hole, window, entrance and weak point he could find. Went over his plan again, his route if things turned bad and he needed an out. He always had to have an out.

Only after all that, did he give in and slump down in his own exhaustion, leaning against the closed garage door and bringing his knees up to his head.

Only then did he let himself break.

He was just so tired. All of this, today and every other day, it was wearing him thin and he could feel it, and he just wanted it all to stop. But really, what other choice did he have? And now, the little peace he’d found was going to be ripped apart, no matter how fake it felt, no matter what he did or what he sacrificed… someone knew his name. Someone knew who he was and where to find him and that meant he was still going to be found. Sensei would still find him, just like he’d said. There was just nowhere to run. Nothing he could do but hope for one more day, keep moving and running because at this point it was only a matter of time.

And all of this, because he’d been too stupid to see the writing on the walls and get out when he had the chance. All of this just because he’d been an idiot kid who thought he could be a hero.

The tears weren’t slowing down. Through shuddering breaths and wet sobs that racked his frame, the deep hurt in his chest that wouldn’t leave, that thought would always be there and it would always be true. No matter what he did, no matter what had been done… people had died because he had been selfish, and there was no way out.

He ran shaking hands over his eyes, and thumped his head back against the metal door. Once, twice. Eyes shut tight and screwed up like it would do anything to help. Sitting there, pathetic in a way only he could be used to. Just sitting there, by the door like so many nights before. Crying, just sitting there and crying through the pain.

And when it felt like he had nothing left in him, when he was so exhausted he didn’t even want to think anymore, his eyes finally considered the number on his wrist.

It wasn’t something he deserved, and he couldn’t stop that thought because it was the truth. A hero had looked him in the eyes like he was someone who needed to be saved and held given him… what, a chance? Something he hadn’t asked for, a plea for him to reach out for help with something like a genuine promise that he would receive it. That gentle look in his eyes that told him he could be safe if he chose to be, that told him there was nothing for him to fear. A look in his eyes that was too much like Sensei’s for him to trust.

And despite that, they held a quiet desperation that he couldn’t quite trace, that he hadn’t seen from the hero before. He’d been trying to make it seem like he didn’t care anymore about knowing more of Viridian, just that he was trying to find a missing kid. A kid who was still missed and desperately in need of help.

And he hadn’t missed that the hero suspected they were one in the same.

They couldn’t have been looking for him all that time. They wouldn’t have. There’d be maybe a week or so of searching, maybe a month at most, and then he’d be dead to the world and his mother and they’d move on like nothing had happened. Maybe they would have thought of him once or twice but he knew heroes had more important things to do than track down quirkless kids like him. There would always be people who needed it more too. People like his Mom. People who had needed saving from him.

And it wasn’t lost on him that he was a vigilante for f*cks sake! A villain, a murderer and a f*cking assassin who’d answered to All For One since he was a kid! The law, heroes even… they weren’t going to be kind to him, they couldn’t afford to be. He’d killed far too many people to expect to be redeemed at this point and he knew that. The best he could hope for was to do a little good as a Vigilante in the back alley’s people would just forget about and that was it. And now he’d ruined that for himself too.

He tugged at his hair and let out a strangled cry, as quiet as he could make it and as loud as he dared.

Heroes don’t f*cking care about you Izuku. You’ve known that since you were a kid.

He curled up tighter still, pressing his eyes deep into his palms just enough to make them ache.

You can’t trust them, not when you know you don’t deserve to be rescued from this.

God he just wanted this all to stop.

Why couldn’t he f*cking have even this much? Why couldn’t everything just stay in the past where it f*cking belonged? He was so, so scared. All the time, and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it because every time he tried it would just be delaying the inevitable.

Sensei could still find him, and he’d hurt him again and- and force him to kill in his stead so there’d be nothing left of him worth saving and-

f*ck… he just wanted to get better… he just wanted to help people.

He didn’t even know if he could help himself.

At some point his fingers ached so hard from clenching them he had to stop. Pull them away, flex them a little to get rid of the feeling before bringing them back up to wrap around himself.

He didn’t remember digging his nails into his arms, scratching dried blood and still healing wounds but the proof was there. Blood he didn’t stop from moving in small trails across his skin mixing with tears on his fingers in the sharp smell of iron and salt.

At some point he let the world tilt sideways, lied down and curled up in exhaustion not caring at the hard concrete he knew he’d regret in the morning.

And after another however long of letting out a few sporadic wet sobs as the night dragged on, he finally allowed himself to sleep.

He needed to leave this place. Go back to sleeping outside if he had to, take what little money he had maybe and just run.

So when he finally picked himself off the floor that next morning he cleaned himself up; coloured his hair and got changed; packed everything up as quickly as he could, stowed his whole life away-

Then, just like every other time before…he ran. He ran from it all and he didn’t once let himself look back.

It had been a week since that letter arrived, and he still hadn’t said anything. A whole week of lying away at night, scouring it for clues like it had anything new to offer when he already knew it didn’t. A week of wondering, sparse moments of dangerous hope bubbling up inside him until he shut himself down. A week of feeling like sh*t because he couldn’t bring himself to tell anyone about his folded secret, and he hadn’t once been able to get the thought of Deku out of his head.

And just like before, nothing had changed.

Maybe it was just selfishness. Maybe it was something noble like he kept telling himself, keeping it all to himself so as not to hurt anyone else more than they needed. Maybe it was just because he was still figuring everything out himself.

Maybe it was just that he couldn’t stand to see himself start to believe the detective when he said it wasn’t his fault.

He still remembered the day it finally hit him what he’d done. After days of arguments when he came clean about it all, days of his mother barely able to look him in the eye as she comforted Auntie. Days spent in anger, unbelieving stubbornness as he watched the world break around him because of something he did. And only after all that did he come to the realization that he couldn’t, or rather would never deserve to be a hero like this.

That was the part that broke him. His life, his whole world had been becoming a hero… and heroes didn’t hurt people like that. And how could he have let himself forget that?

He still remembered that stupid, devastating moment when he’d asked his mum if he still even had a chance. If there was anything a villain like him could do to make it better. He remembered crying in her arms, as she rocked him back and forth and cried with him, the ferocity of those last few days melting away to reveal an open wound in them both that neither would admit to even now. A simple fear that all was lost because of them, and them alone.

She was so, so angry with him for so long after she found out. He still didn’t know if she forgave him really, and it was fine like that. Some small part of him bitterly hoped she hadn’t, even if she did tell him he could still make it right.

Inko had been staying with them at the time, despite everything. His mom had said she’d needed support, and even if Katsuki couldn’t stand to be in the same room with her most days, she still said she’d liked to be around friends while they looked for her son.

And when he told her, promised her, he was sorry, and that he’d do anything to take it back and make it right she believed him. He still didn’t know how.

All she said, was that she just wanted him to promise her to be a real hero from then on, and just… be kinder next time.

She stayed for 3 weeks after Izuku went missing, and then things went back, almost to normal. Normal, save for the glaring, gaping hole Izuku had left in his life. A piece the police had assured them, would likely never return.

And only when Inko did say her goodbyes, seemingly for the last time, did he swear to her, and to everyone he’d let down, that he would be a hero. For the right reasons this time. He swore it to her and on everything he cared for that he wouldn’t let that happen to anyone else.

And to himself, he promised he’d make sure the villains who did this would never get to do that again.

Part of that meant making sure he never forgot he was one of them.

What disgusted him most when he came back to school though, was just how fine with it everyone was. He’d taken two weeks on break from school just trying to sort everything out in his own head, and only then had he finally learnt that everything he thought he knew about being a hero was wrong. That being a hero meant protecting the people who couldn’t protect themselves, not just winning the day no matter what.

Apparently no one else at school had ever seemed to learn that.

So when one of the extras who followed him around said he was glad Deku wasn’t going to follow them around anymore, he snapped. And he wasn’t ashamed of it in the slightest. Now there was no denying that this had changed him. Just not in the way anyone wanted or expected.

That was when he learned it wasn’t going to be easy.

Everyone in his class, hell, everyone he knew wanted to be a hero, and not all of them could be. Not just because so many of them hadn’t the quirks or even the drive to make it work, but because most wouldn’t even look twice if someone weaker was getting hurt. Like they thought being a hero was just something they deserved, something they wouldn’t even have to work for. Some prize that would just fall into their laps and they’d be set for life, like none of what heroes actually did mattered.

So when his f*cker of a homeroom teacher said there was no point in doing a career test because he knew they’d all want to be in the hero course when he, of all people should have known they could succeed in doing literally anything else-

He didn’t regret raising his voice. Didn’t give a sh*t that he was going to have to be the one asshole in the room willing to make them all come up with at least a f*cking backup plan of all things, even if not by choice. Didn’t bat an eye at the glares, the protests, the threats.

The f*ckers were going to get themselves or someone else killed if they didn’t shut the f*ck up and move on. He wouldn’t let that happen again, especially now that Izuku had all but confirmed that this f*cked up system of no other option but heroism was the reason he was gone.

He didn’t mind being the bad guy just this once if it meant keeping those f*ckers safe from that.

Still, after everyone else was gone, some sh*thead extras had tried to corner him. Taken it personally and wanting to get back at him. Tear him down again and again for suggesting they weren’t going to be enough on their own.

He told them tough sh*t, that was just how the world worked. Not his fault they were too stupid to see it.

They changed their angle. He talked tough, they said, he liked to feel high and mighty with that quirk of his but he was full of sh*t. Only one plan with no option but to succeed, when they all knew he was going to fail, just like he said they would.

That was the part that made him snap. As much as he swore he was going to be better, that sure as hell didn’t mean he was going to be a pushover for it.

He was a hypocrite alright, but only because failure wasn’t an option anymore. He’d done everything to make sure of that, and compared to any of them he knew he had the best chance only because he’d worked for it. And it was only because he was an asshole, a bully and damn near verging on a villain if he didn’t give it his all that he would make this f*cking shot.

Besides, he thought, rubbing the light bruise on his face, he had more important things to worry about than middle school drama and f*ckers with no common sense.

UA or not, he would become a f*cking hero. He’d made a promise dammit, and he couldn’t let himself fail. He couldn’t do that to his f*cking family again.

He let out a small shout as he sent a kick through one of the bottles lying on the ground near him. Watching idly as it bounced off a nearby wall and bust somewhere behind him.

He grit his teeth and let out a breath. The letter, once more, nagged and jumped to the front of his mind.

He…. He couldn’t f*cking keep doing this.

Something else came to his attention then. Something new, a sound like a low wet gurgling. A thick vat of flowing, sticky something that shouldn’t have been there, and the whole alleyway smelt like dirty water mixed with wet garbage and…. Ugh, something like sewerage that made him wrinkle his nose as the smell pierced through and made him gag.

He stopped and turned to find the source.

Nothing there. Nothing but a kind of deep green sludge that was flowing oddly in the gutters and coming his way as the air turned colder, and the smell got worse. There wasn’t even much of it, there couldn’t have been. If this was some kind of quirk it was too weak to really do anything much on its own, no matter how awful the smell.

There had to have been something left to rot in the bottle he’d just burst or something, but even then… even with that reasoning the tension in him wouldn’t leave, and neither would the sinking feeling in his chest he couldn’t blame on the sick smell alone. Felt like a slow, ever persistent dread he couldn’t quite explain, couldn’t shake either no matter how unassuming it all seemed. The kind of feeling he’d get like something bad was going to happen, and he trusted his instincts enough now to know that, as the low wet sounds continued and echoed around him.

He had to leave.

He took a step back and turned, walking fast out of there but not running quite just yet.

A distorted, gurgling voice came from behind him.

“Oh, would you look at that, a medium sized skin suit just for the taking,”

That’s when it struck him that he was completely, and utterly alone.

He had no time to think. No way he could run as thick, slimy tendrils pulled at his ankles and climbed ups legs like he was sinking in wet sand. Trapped, and out of sight from the bright and busy street just a turn away.

So he did the only thing he could. He grit his teeth, turned and looked at demented eyes that rose out of the height of the moving pile of sludge coming his way, braced himself, and before he could think-

He let out the biggest explosion he could muster.

The hit connected, and threw him back. A wash of blistering heat he’d gotten used to hitting him smack in the face as fire took up his vision for just a moment while everything slowed. He shook his head and made to leave, a deep ache in his wrists and dull notes ringing in his ears.

But when he shook the dizziness from his fall out of his eyes, and tried to run away-

Even then, it still wasn’t enough.

Chapter 15: Breathless

Chapter Text

Chapter 16: A Moment to Breathe

Chapter Text

He couldn’t have had much time left, he knew that. He could feel it in the way his lungs seized and cramped in his chest, in the way the world at the edges of his vision grew darker and his jaw ached from trying to wrench it shut while the horrible grainy taste of sludge pushed itself again and again down his throat. He could feel it all slipping, the desperate fighting and persistent clawing that got weaker and weaker, slipping through his fingers no matter how much it hurt to keep pushing and fighting not to die like this. Drowning in sewerage and completely powerless no matter what he did, no matter how much he fought and no matter what he pushed himself to be.

He couldn’t stop himself from thinking with a finality that this would be it. Couldn’t stop those weak, pathetic tears that sprung forth through stinging eyes and in frenzied frustration, because this couldn’t be it. He couldn’t let this be over yet, not before he’d even started.

So he kept pushing. He kept fighting harder even as his lungs burned and his muscles felt like they were pulling themselves free from bone, begging him to stop for just a second for them to catch their breath, to brace themselves for one more round in a way he couldn’t give them. Instead, despite the recoil making already sore limbs want to scream, he set off another round of explosions in another pathetic attempt to throw it off.

He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t hold on. He could feel himself slipping.

Please… someone, anyone, help! I can’t- I can’t breathe. I can’t…

His eyes were cracked open just enough to see the brief darkened flashes of a face through the fog. Close enough to touch. Close enough to reach out and pull him out, close enough to save him.

And then there was air.

Just as the world had slowed to a stop it all came rushing back all at once. Too much, too loud in a way that made his eyes wrench tight and shut through the sound of blood rushing in his ears. And none of that mattered beyond that frantic instinct to pull in each dry, heaving and gasping breath like it would be his last. Greedily pulling in air and even thick and heavy it felt like he’d never breathed anything so clear until now. And he didn’t stop. Couldn’t bring himself to stop and he didn’t want to. Even as it felt like his lungs were going to burst and his body tried to lurch to free them from the heaviness that had forced its way inside.

He felt a hand then. The only thing warm and solid besides him in this mess of thick drowning seas, and he gripped it tightly, in a white knuckled grip, like a lifeline. It was slick with much, and so warm and he clenched it tighter still as he felt it pull, and pull and keep pulling. And he didn’t let go, not even as the world sharply came into focus and things began to make sense. Not even after he felt more and more of that quicksand strong sludge that kept sucking him down give way.

Not even after he slipped, and dropped to his knees on the shattered remains of concrete and still tried to find himself enough to move beyond heaving in more dry tearing breaths.

He was shaking like hell, the warm hand was the only thing that grounded him and when it was gone he panicked. He tried to stand, begged them silently as his mind tried to think and he wrenched his eyes open but still couldn’t get himself to move in the way he knew he needed to.

In that brief moment, through the rushing and the blur of everything around him, he saw them. Surrounded by fires and covered in muck just like him. And he watched him come back, and he felt a tight painful grip on his wrist that forced him up. With a strength he couldn’t feel even in himself, on trembling feet and half-dragging him through the panicked haze of a warzone of rough stone and fires and sludge.

They were merciless pulling him along, jerking him into a run as he struggled to push himself to keep up even when every step felt like he was going to fall. They didn’t stop, didn’t hesitate to run with everything they had over slick ground. Him just trying to focus on the feeling of the hand that was too tight, too desperate, on his wrist.

When they stopped his legs gave out from under him, and a new wave of wet coughs and retches seized as his lungs again and again to try and clear that heavy tightness that still clung to the back of his throat.

It hurt. It hurt a lot. In a vicious cycle of gasping breath, pulling it in and then having it forced out in an explosion that seemed to rupture his chest and not being able to breathe again until the cycle began anew. He needed it to stop. He knew and could feel he needed to move, to do something other than tear up again and try not to collapse any further from here as the stabbing in his ribs chest continued to rage war and made the hurt worse with each lurching round.

It couldn’t have been too long, but even still it felt like hours before it passed. By the time it did he’d already missed the foggy impressions of a panicked voice that came from in front of him.

Between him, he realized, and the villain he couldn’t hope to defeat.

He shook out his head again, and his eyes wandered up as they cleared to see the face again, to take the time now that he had it to really see it. And when they did they widened so far it hurt, and air once again became so much harder to come by.

There’s no f*cking way that’s him.

There’s no f*cking way the biggest mistake of his life was standing there. Staring at him, right in the face. Here and alive and saving him just like had the last time anyone had ever seen him.

It was already too much, but it felt like so much more than just the pain of seeing him again. So many words left unsaid, the fact of a nail that hit him right through the chest with the realization that they’d all given up on him.

His hair was different. That was the first thing he noticed. A pale fluffy blond that betrayed dark patches of dark green at the roots. Hair too light to be his, still laden with sludge and brushing lightly at his nose and around wide green eyes he remembered all too well.

They were hard, staying firmly pinned on the villain in front of them as it continued to writhe and screamed and smashed blindly into walls as they tried to recover themselves. Grime and much spattered across his face with smudges of ash that still did nothing to take away from the vicious looking scar that ran the length of his cheek, and the smatter of dark freckles that accompanied it. It trailed in a line of darkened flesh down his neck and drew his eyes further still to more that stained his throat and bobbed up and down as he swallowed again.

Somehow there was no doubt in his mind.

“…Deku?”

The world just stopped.

Katsuki didn’t know what he’d thought he’d say then. He didn’t know if he could have expected anything at all since the world had practically upended itself the moment he’d realized who was standing there in front of him. Who’d brought down the villain that was going to kill him just moments before singlehandedly.

But he didn’t expect him to tear himself back in a jolt, stiff with eyes wide and tense enough to snap. He didn’t expect the look on his face when he actually turned around and met his eyes.

He… he was f*cking terrified.

A kind of horrible fear had set itself on his face and it spoke nothing short of absolute horror. The kind of awful fear that made every word he could have said freeze in his throat. The kind of look that made him so sure that Deku, honest to God, thought he was going to kill him right then and there, for saving his life.

“K...Kacchan?”

The moment shattered when a guttural roar erupted from the sludge forgotten in front of them, and Deku tore himself back from his momentary fear and braced himself. Snapping into a fighting stance, gritting his teeth and knife held out defensively in front of him like that would do anything against the force of nature they’d just pissed off, as it came barreling towards them both. Screaming in anger and cursing them out and swearing vengeance and violence on them both in a way that made tension in the air go all the more permeating as they waited for the ball to drop.

And Katsuki felt himself freeze again.

Even now, even after facing the biggest mistake he’s ever made in his life, his biggest regret, even after learning what it really meant to actually be a hero, Katsuki didn’t move. He didn’t try to pull him back, or jump in front of him or get ready to blast the villain to hell as he should have done. He just sat there, and watched like a coward. Scrunching his eyes tight while Deku, his stupid, quirkless and defenseless childhood friend, the one he was supposed to have protected, was going to fight tooth and nail just to protect him. Despite everything he’d done, despite making him feel more fear and pain than anyone should have had to feel alone, despite being the reason he’d-

The sludge was bearing over the both of them in a wave about to crash down when a flash of a white shirt jumped between them. A force like he’d never felt before pushing them both back with a powerfull gust of air as the villain shouted out a garbled scream in shock and scattered in the wind a million small pieces of dark green.

And then he heard his laugh, opened his eyes enough to see a wide smile and heard three words he’d never needed more than he had then.

It was over. In a moment of stunned, awe-filled silence the first drops of rain began to fall, and hundreds of eyes stood and marvelled as he forced himself up. Swaying on his feet and holding a firm hand gingerly to his still sore ribs as the sky darkened and the pattering of water on concrete filled the silence and washed away the fires and the slime on their faces.

For just a moment he turned back to look at Deku. Staring at him, eyes still wide and silently begging for him to make any kind of sense now more than ever. An unreadable expression had settled on his face just a few paces away, staring up at their idol before meeting desperate eyes once again. The rain making dark green once again bleed into his hair.

He sent him a pained look through the silence, when in there mind everything just disappeared so it was only the two of them, right before the heroes seemed to get over their collective stupor enough to pull them both back into the safety of the crowd.

The muffled sounds of sirens reached his ears and he didn’t utter a word or move his eyes once from his friend. The world rang far away as if just to spite the cheers of the crowd and the rushing of water and the flurry of uniforms that came forward to secure the scene. He just kept them there, eyes trained on Deku. Trained on his face through the crowd and holding onto that sight as tightly as the hand he’d felt moments before. Like a lifeline, when losing it for even a second meant losing it forever.

None of this felt real.

His eyes were taken off him for half a second as police started trying to separate them. Herding him toward the back of a van, and as soon as jerked back he saw him facing him in full, a pained look in his eyes. And his eyes widened just enough, and his voice barely seemed to work.

“…no”

He caught the tail end of him turning away as more people came between them, and he moved. Not sharply, not even strong. It came out slow but desperate, guided by nothing more than that simple, selfish need in himself when everything else felt a hundred miles away. No sense in his mind but this desperation. Nothing but the surety that if he lost him now, after all this time, he’d never see him again.

He couldn’t lose him again.

The voices that rushed by his ears didn’t get any clearer as the moments rushed by, and what they said didn’t matter. Not through renewed fighting through tiredness to reach him again. To have him back, and hold him there with him. To have him back because he couldn’t do this again.

He felt arms around him, keeping him there. He didn’t even register the tears that poured thick down his face until it set in his was too late. That even if he could move beyond these arms and the exhaustion and the fog of everything, he’s lost him. He’d failed, and he was gone.

He didn’t give up right away, he still squirmed in their arms even if it was sluggish and tired and pathetic. Face blank and eyes unseeing through hot tears as they dragged him despondently through a rushing world and set him down. Dropping a blanket around his shoulders as he folded in on himself, trying to find the strength to pull himself together. Exhaustion holding him down despite that echo of a need to get up and find him. To push himself up and call out and say something and do something to chase him down.

To try, to just try one more time… even when he knew deep down it was no use.

Nothing felt real anymore. Not the cold wet clothes that stuck to his skin, or the shivers that pulled at him in the rain. Not the painful lurch of retching, or the pain and heaviness in his chest as they tried to help him breathe again. Not the sight of his parents, crying when they dropped him off an hour later in his silence and let him go from the doorway. Not the quickened pace to his bedroom, lights off and wrapping himself in warm darkness as shouts echoed from downstairs.

He didn't respond when his mother came by silently to check on him, eyes red and puffy in a way he knew she'd never admit to before closing the door softly behind her. He didn't answer when his father knocked lightly on his door and told him softly that dinner was ready and waiting for him when he wanted it. He just lay there in silence, punctuated only by wet sniffling breaths. Empty eyes holding on and not daring to wander one second from the bookshelf in his room where he knew his remnant of the past lay hidden. Trying to remember the feeling of his hand on his, warm and solid, the one thing that told him for certain that this was real, when nothing felt real anymore.

Chapter 17: Expectations

Chapter Text

Chapter 18: Important Conversations

Chapter Text

At this rate both of them were probably tense enough to crack like hard concrete under All Might's fist. Tsukauchi having wordlessly stood from his desk after hardly taking a moment to process what Shouta had said before tearing his coat and hat from where they lay strewn over the couch and rushing out with all the speed and fury of a man on a mission. Barking clipped instructions to other officers and putting everything on hold as he marched them both with purpose to the first police car they could find. Tearing open the door alongside him before gripping the wheel like any moment he'd go through the windscreen if he didn't brace himself. Eyes hard as they passed near empty roads in a blur, neither saying a word to each other until the station was a far distant memory of what was to come.

"Go over it with me again," he said, eyes not once wavering from place, "What exactly did he say to you?"

"Just that he was ready to talk, and the address I just gave you asking me to meet him there later tonight for some answers," he pursed his lips, "and to come alone."

"And you are aware of how much this sounds like a set-up, right? We still don’t know if he's working alone."

"Yes, I'm not an idiot," he glared ahead, "but you are if you think I'm going to waste the first real lead we've had in months,"

The detective didn't once so much as glance his way, but his face said he heard him loud and clear.

"I didn't say that Eraserhead, besides I'd be hard pressed to give up the chance for some answers myself."

"Unless it's the possibility of a quirkless kid rising in the ranks you mean?"

He watched as his hands tightened on the wheel.

"That's not what this is about, and you know it," he grimaced, "and for what it's worth I am sorry I reacted the way I did."

"So, you're not going to explain yourself then?"

He pressed his lips into a firm line before answering.

"This first."

And god if he wasn't so preoccupied with whatever they were supposed to call the current situation with Midoriya, and maybe an ounce less self-restraint, he had no doubt he would have hit him upside the head.

The neighbourhood they came to was exactly what he'd come to expect from his time chasing the vigilante. Buildings and pavement barely patched together enough to be usable after what he could safely assume was one of the more public villain fights. The kind of place that had been pushed to the bottom of the barrel in terms of government spending on public repairs, left in the hands of people who likely barely made enough money to make sure their homes and businesses didn't fall in on top of them, let alone fix a street. The kind of place heroes would have liked to stay ignorant of until Viridian. The kind of place he'd seen on hundreds of nights like this before.

And when they inevitably could go no further thanks to torn open roads and tattered or tagged 'under construction' signs, Tsukauchi pulled them over by the edge of the shattered pavement and cut the engine. Both taking a moment in silence before they picked themselves up and everything they knew would change.

Shouta rubbed his eyes with one hand before he spoke, "You should stay here," he sighed, pushing open the door with a dull clunk of a lock, "I'll sound the alarm if I need backup, two hours max."

He heard the driver's side door open too and looked over the roof to see a tired glare meeting his.

"That's not how this works Eraser, and you know it," he said simply. "Formal or not we need to know if what he's saying is true."

He was dimly aware of how badly he was keeping his displeasure from being too obvious.

"So, you do think this is a trap then." It wasn't a question.

"I think whatever is going on is dangerous, and we need to be on our guard," he said pointedly.

Shouta said nothing, didn't think he needed to. He just kept walking.

"For what it's worth I do think you're right." he still didn't look at the detective as he spoke, "But even feeling in the dark as we are we can't afford to take any chances,"

"He's never going to trust us after this," he said bitterly.

Tsukauchi hummed an affirmative, loose rubble and shattered pieces of concrete crunching underfoot and sent skittering across the ground as they went.

All the same as they drew closer and that single minded drive to answer that call grew less intense, he couldn't ignore the dread that was rising inside him. The feeling that all this was out of place, no matter which part you got hung up about.

Plenty of things pushed people operating outside the law to turn themselves in or give semi-anonymous tips to anyone of authority they thought might listen. He had to remind himself of this again, even as his mind came back to the same conclusion he'd drawn from the moment he'd answered the phone. Maybe even so far as seeing the look on the kids face when he'd mentioned what was likely his real name.

He slowed and Tsukauchi turned back to face him.

"Eraserhead?"

"I'm worried," he said pointedly. "Trap or not whatever made him decide on meeting us has him pressed for time. We know he doesn't trust us yet, and it was more than just a risky move to get law enforcers to meet him privately like this," he clenched his jaw, "Something's pushed him."

Naomasa didn't respond right away.

"I figured as much too honestly," he let out a breath and looked back down to cracks snaking branches through their path, "From what we've seen it's out of character for him, but even running from the law as he is he trusted heroes once, and at least from what little we've found, it seems we have a lot to make up for."

"And that starts with breaking his one and only condition for this meeting," he grumbled, catching the way the left corner of Tsukauchi's lips twitched downward.

Because as much as he could acknowledge Tsukauchi was right, it didn't stop dread from piling up like wet earth inside his chest. It did nothing to do away with the guilt of going behind the kid's back like this when he was already scared, running from something they didn't even know the shape of yet, contacting him only a night after he'd seen so much fear in such young eyes.

He could try to justify it in his head, that it was for his own good, that the kid was more afraid than he ought to have been to trust them, that he was a vigilante and a kid and just like his students he didn't know how the world worked like he did. But none of that changed the fact that he was here, rushing in with something completely unexpected to shatter what little common ground they'd build like it wasn't going to look like one hell of a threat to someone like Viridian.

"We never really went over a plan for this, but you've met him before," Naomasa continued, "Do you really think it would be best to come out with all our cards on the table like this?"

He already knew there was no point arguing this any more than they had.

"His choice or not he's going to have a hard time trusting either of us no matter what we do," he grimaced, "And he's already shown he's got more than a knack for sniffing out hidden officers or heroes. We should just get that part out of the way sooner rather than later."

He nodded.

The both knew how you were supposed to treat victims like this, and even if there was nothing in what he'd been taught that told him upfront that this was practice, he knew deep down this wasn't a good idea. Hell, not even that deep down if he was honest with himself.

That want for answers, that stupid hope that he could just swoop in and save someone from whatever was making them so afraid was just far too strong to deny.

That, and they were out of options.

He put his hands in his pockets and walked up beside him.

"Come on. We've got a kid to save."

Most of the businesses around here were well passed closed by then, save for the occasional small bar or local 24/7 corner store. Save the occasional late-night wanderer the walk was silent, the two of them alone but only until spotting the familiar hunched and darkened form of their vigilante sitting on a park bench next to a too full bag clearly unequipped for its load. Wearing a ratty hoodie stained with dark green splotches and looking far more worse for wear than he'd seen him little more than 24 hours ago. His simple black mask pulled down under his jaw as he watched them come. Elbows resting on his knees and staring at them with red rimmed eyes holding deep bags of their own as the streetlight nearby highlighted just enough for them to see the scars on his far too pale and freckled face.

It occurred to him then that this was the first time he'd seen the kid fully unmasked, and even then, he couldn't bring himself to even pretend to hide the look of awful recognition in his eyes when they met his.

It still felt wrong… this kid, who was trusting him with something that terrified him, reaching out his hand and asking them to see him for just an hour as something more than just his enemy.

Izuku let out a small playful huff as they approached, the corner of a tired smile only barely reaching his eyes.

It felt hollow. And next to the image in his mind of the young boy he'd likely once been it felt awful.

"I don’t remember agreeing on him," he said, not even bothering to move save to move his eyes to gesture at Tsukauchi.

"Viridian, I'd like you to meet Detective Tsukauchi Naomasa. Since the very beginning he and I have been the only ones on your case."

"Can I trust him?"

All things considered the question caught him off guard.

Tsukauchi spoke first.

"I can't make that call for you, but all things considered I don’t plan on making any arrests tonight, if that's what you're asking. But if you want me to leave, I'll leave, all I can do is hope you may be willing to give me a chance."

The kid let out a sigh and dropped his gaze again, keeping a firm hand on the bag beside him as if reaching for any remaining comfort it could provide.

"Listen, I know you don’t know me, and I don’t know you, but all we want is for you to be safe. You don’t have to be alone in this."

"And you're not going to arrest me first chance you get? Or tell anyone who asks about me or anything I'm about to say?"

"No."

He looked back to Shouta then with tired eyes and opened his mouth for just a second, before thinking better of it. Considering it, a troubled look crossing his face before he let out a sigh and stood up, swinging his bag onto his back.

"Good enough I guess," he said, walking a few steps away before gesturing with a hand for them to follow, ungloved and littered with yet more white lines shining under the lamplight that made Shouta frown. "Come on, this'll be easier if we're not out in the open."

Tsukauchi sent Aizawa a look before the hero shrugged and started following. Hands still tucked in his pockets and keeping pace just a few steps behind the kid as he led them down backstreet after backstreet, behind corners and overhangs and tall wire fences in relative silence save for gentle footfalls, to a place where no streetlights nor any wandering eyes could ever hope to reach them.

He knew what this was. He'd seen it or used it himself more than once in trade-offs like these. All the same he made note of every detail and every sharp corner they passed as the kid stayed silent and clutched the straps of his bag tighter still as they went.

By the 10-minute mark Aizawa asked him exactly where they were going.

The kid hesitated in his response.

"It's not ideal, but I want to make sure no one's following us before we stop, and I know a place back here that might be good for keeping us hidden, provided nobody's bugged or sends up any flares or signals or anything."

"You think this is an ambush?"

"I don’t know what to think, but it's not you I'm worried about. God knows I should be though. Here's probably far enough."

He'd stopped them in a larger dead end of sort tucked away behind some larger buildings. It looked like it would have been used as a form of fire escape or loading zone once but as of now the building above looked about as empty as you could get. He didn't think it mattered that much beyond the obvious escape routes and the way the kid positioned himself by the side wall. Hand still twisting anxiously at the straps of his bag and his eyes flicking between them both and the ground.

"Okay, just to clear things up, what exactly do you know about Midoriya Izuku?"

Tsukauchi gave Shouta a questioning look at that, but he didn't let it stop him.

"As far as we know he went missing when he was six, after he and some friends went wandering. No witnesses to speak of, nor any idea what happened, though friends and family were adamant that he wouldn't have run away."

The kid bit his lip.

"So, you would have known I was quirkless right?"

"Yes, we-" he stopped himself.

He'd long since passed the point of expectation but nonetheless he never thought he'd just come out and say it.

Tsukauchi spoke up before he could find his words.

"So that is your name then?"

Midoriya nodded, still not meeting their eyes.

"It's… there's not a lot I really can say without making things worse, but there's-" he brought a hand to wrap around his other arm, "There's someone looking for me," he said finally, "from what I can tell not a lot of people even know they exist but they gave me a quirk, kept me locked up for years and… and made me do a lot of things I regret."

And god how was anyone supposed to respond to that? To have very every horrible suspicion confirmed all at once by a kid who'd been failed at every opportunity by them and so many others.

It took a long time before Shouta managed to find the words.

"Alright that's- there's a lot to unpack there, so let's start small. Do you remember their name?"

"Yes. He never told me when it was there," he met his eyes, "had me call him Sensei,"

"And he gave you a quirk." It wasn't a question, not when Tsukauchi said it, but his skin was losing its pallor and he wasn't quite looking at the kid anymore, not really. All at once he was struck with the realization that something else was going on here. Something he couldn't put a name to just yet that had him darting his eyes back with a silent warning before returning to the kid. Something that looked like it might shatter whatever tense truce this was between the three of them.

"Tsukauchi?"

The words shot out before anyone could stop them as the detective took a firm step forward. "This man," the look on his face was edging on panic, "am I right in assuming he had white hair and red eyes?"

Aizawa snapped his head back to look at him.

Midoriya's eyes widened, just ever so slightly, and he took a small step back.

"You know about All For One."

It wasn't a question.

Everything happened all at once. Blades jerked up and surrounded them out of nowhere before anyone could do so much as blink as his hands darked to his scarf in reflexive defence as he did all he could to slam down on that urge to use his quirk to stop the standoff when things were already going south so quickly. Tsukauchi having raised his arms in surrender, not so much as shifting in place.

Nobody moved.

"Tsukauchi," he said lowly, carefully, through gritted teeth and air still ringing as moonlight glinted off the swarm of wickedly sharp blades that surrounded them both. Hands not moving an inch from their place by his neck as he moved his eyes to catch his, and before he could stop himself let out a low, "What the hell?"

"You," the kid said slowly, already in a defensive stance and staring down Tsukauchi like a caged animal backed into a corner and ready to lash out with one wrong move, "have one minute to explain how the hell you know that name before I make sure you can't tell him or anyone else where I am,"

His eyes flicked briefly to his before staying fixed on the detective.

"Midoriya, listen to me, I know how this must look but-"

Tsukauchi!" he snapped, eyes blazing and trained on his partner, fingers in a lock on his capture weapon and ready to spring out if need be. Torn as he was it wasn't an empty threat, even if he didn't entirely understand what was going on the fact that Tsukauchi had already neglected to tell him something as critical as a suspect behind Midoriya's kidnapping was more than he was willing to take, even if said child wasn't standing terrified and backed into a corner a few feet in front of them. "Who the hell is All For One?"

No one said anything for a long moment. Midoriya's hand was in his pocket with what he had no doubt was another knife in his hand, preparing himself should Aizawa opt to use his quirk and things somehow got worse than they already were.

After a few tense seconds Tsukauchi slowly lowered his hands by his sides, and the kid shifted and took another step towards their exit.

He watched them both like a hawk, as Tsukauchi took in a short breath, in and out, perhaps unsure of where to start but that hardly mattered because patience was wearing thin.

"From what I've been told he's been around since the dawn of quirks," he began, "preying on the chaos that ensued and leveraging his own quirk to take control in an attempt to bend society to his will. His quirk allows him to give and take quirks at will, and since then he's managed to amass a collection as far as we can tell no one can even know the full scope of, including, we can only guess, some kind of longevity quirk that has kept him going even after hundreds of years."

The blades lowered, if only slightly, just enough to make them a little less nervous if that and breath without cutting their throats open.

"You say that like he's gone for good," is what the kid says quietly, fingers pulling his sleeves down just a tad further to cover shaking fingers laid to rest by his side.

"Midoriya, I know it sounds hard to believe but All for one is gone," he pressed. "All Might killed him almost two years ago in another city entirely. There's still people working on dismantling what's left of his organization yes, but from him, at least, you have nothing to fear. I promise."

He sees the moment something clicks in the kid's head, blade's retreating and splitting off like schools of tiny silver fish into his bag and hiding in dark corners as Izuku let out a small, broken laugh.

They both don't say anything, can't say anything, as Izuku brings up a hand to comb through his hair and leaves his eyes resting on the lower wall by their feet.

"That… that's kind of what I wanted to talk to you about," he huffed another short stutter of a breath, "it was a longshot that any of you would know about him without being some kind of informant but… god, if you believe that, then it just means he's bought all the time he needs to get back on his feet again."

"Even so I was… I know he's dead Midoriya," he says again, "There's- I'm sorry but there's just no way anyone could go through what he did and survive,"

"You said that fight was around 2 years ago now?" Tsukauchi nodded, "That was probably only a few months before I escaped." His eyes hardened, boring into them and begging them to understand, "And I know for a fact that the only reason I even made it out at all was because everyone was too focused on keeping him alive to focus on any plans he may have had for me. It wasn't because they were disorganized or fraying at the edges without someone to guide them. All For One has more than enough quirks and resources to bring anyone back from the dead if he wanted to, and he knows how to keep people loyal to his cause even if it looks like he's losing."

Tsukauchi, he can tell, wants so badly to rebuke him. But the man is dead quiet as the implications sink in. If pressed, Shouta would probably say that was the smartest think the man had done all night.

"Listen, you don't have to believe me," the kid pressed, "You don’t even have to trust me. But I know All For One is still out there, and even if there's a chance he's not, someone has to do something to make sure he can't come back full force when All Might can't."

The statement made him frown. Looking back, he could see the detective open his mouth for just a second before thinking better of it, a troubled look crossing his face before he opened his mouth to speak again.

Shouta beat him to it.

"So what are you proposing exactly?"

The kid's eyes widened.

"I honestly don’t know… a truce maybe? For now, at least. I'll… I'll tell you everything I know about All For One, and if I find anything new on my end, I'll happily tell you that too, and when this is all over…" he hesitated, not long, not even a full second, "When this is all over, I'll turn myself in. And you can decide what to do with me from there."

"Midoriya-"

"But this can't get out." he pressed, eyes boring into them both but staring at him, begging him to listen to him. To believe him, to trust him on this if nothing else. "I don’t know who or where they are but I know he has people working with the law on his side, it's why they've always been able to hide any of the more important stuff before any of the heroes can get close." He took a breath, "I- I'm choosing to trust you with this, but if they get even the slightest hint of where I am it's all over and I can't-" he stressed, "I can't go back there. Not again."

"And you won't," he tells him firmly, "We'll make sure of it," and he believes it. He believes it with everything in him and despite every objection of logic or pessimism that had kept him safe after so many years of failures and battles only barely won.

The kid just shakes his head, a new shine to his eyes.

"You can't promise that."

The words make something ache inside him.

"I can promise you that you're not alone in this anymore," he tells him, and the look the kid shoots back makes his heart clench tighter still in his chest. Eyes shining with something hesitant, desperate but fearful all the same swimming amongst unshed tears, his lips pressed into a thin line.

They both know he doesn't believe him.

So Shouta takes another breath, and before he can think better of it, reaches out slowly, carefully, and gently rests a hand on the boy's shoulder. He flinches under his palm just slightly, tracking the movement before coming back to meet his eyes. Searching.

"And I can promise," he tells him, "that no matter what we're going to do everything we can to keep you safe."

Gently he feels one of the kid's scarred hands curl around his own where it lay on his shoulder, and despite the way his heart twists in his chest, lets him ease it off with trembling fingers eyes no longer meeting his own.

"It… it's not that simple," he hears him say.

"Maybe." he admits, because they both know he's probably right about that. That it's not going to be something they can beat in one go, that it's not as simple as wrapping him in a blanket and telling him it's all going to be okay, not when there's still so much work to do. So much to make up for.

But he knows, like it's the only truth he has left to hold onto in this mess, that it's not going to stop him from trying.

And then Tsukauchi speaks up.

"Regardless, if All For One is still a player in all this, then like you said we'll be needing all the help we can get, and so do you."

"You believe me then?" it's hardly spoken above a whisper, "You actually…"

"It doesn't matter what I want to believe, not right now at least," he says, and Aizawa feels himself frown at the look he gives him. "But you're right, we can't afford to assume that he's just going away, not with so much at stake."

"Regardless, our goal hasn't changed," Shouta says, turning back to him. "We're still going to do everything we can to make sure you're safe, so before anything else," he takes the leap, "Is there anyone else you're staying with? Someone you can trust?"

And something in Izuku seems to shift with those words.

He says nothing.

"We can discuss all of this somewhere you're a bit more comfortable if you'd like," he says, "get you a warm drink and a meal if you're feeling up to it,"

The kid only seemed to shift away even more at the offer, so he tried again.

"But we'll jump that bridge when we get to it," he tells him, carefully, trying to shift himself to be as non-threatening as he can be, gentle in a way he's not used to. Hand outstretched between the two of them but stopping short, waiting for him to take it at his own pace.

"We can just take it one step at a time for now,"

The kid was shaking now, collapsing in on himself, eyes glassing and staring into fog. There's something there he's not seeing, something he said that's setting him off. Even after all the truths spilled out between them that night he can't figure out what it is, what line he crossed that's pushing back into that fear again. Some hidden trigger maybe? A landmine of memory and association he couldn't see even as he poured over his own words desperately trying to make the connection.

But even so there was a still a part of him screaming at him that he couldn't let him disappear again, not like this. That regardless he had to try, he couldn't just leave him here like this, not when it's clear he was already so afraid.

"It doesn't have to be the station, just somewhere a bit less out in the open where we can make sure you're safe and get you the protection you need, is that alright?"

"No."

The kid's voice was firm. Harder than it had been all night. Harder than he'd ever heard it.

It made him faulter.

"Kid?"

"I'm not going with you." his face was hard, not quite looking at him but steadfast all the same. Clutching the straps of his bag in a white knuckled grip and stance shifted to run.

Something was wrong.

"Midoriya?" Tsukauchi's voice had always been softer than his, "Is everything-?"

"Stop."

And they did. For just a moment. But whatever it was it couldn't be left alone, there was something else there. Something they couldn't see. Something he wasn't going to talk about, a line he wasn't going to cross.

A line they might have to.

"Kid we just want you safe,"

The kid just shook his head again. That glassy look in his eyes clearing up as he did, looking back at them but that fear still holding strong. That much was clear, beyond the determination, beyond whatever strength was telling the kid to press on despite it all.

"It doesn't matter," he snapped again, "You know the most important parts now, that's… that's it. We're done."

"We can't in good conscience just-"

"Okay."

His head snapped back all at once to Tsukauchi, standing just behind him with his hat in his hands and looking back at the kid with solemn resignation.

It caught them both by surprise.

"You still have a way to contact us if you need it, we can… we'll let you reach out to us when you're ready, or if you need any help." he said, "Just know that the offer is always open."

He catches Midoriya's eyes flit between the two of them again.

"You're… you're not going to-?" his voice is just edging on shaking.

"I told you before I don’t plan on making any arrests tonight," he said, "And I'm not in the habit of lying. If you want to leave, we won't stop you. But if there's anything you need or feel we should know please don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We'll be ready to listen, no matter what."

Nobody said anything for a long moment.

And then Izuku eased off, and he nodded. Still tense, still afraid if only a little, but even just a little more at ease. Looking again between them both before starting back slowly the way they'd came.

"Thank you Midoriya," he said finally, sending him a small smile even as Shouta's stomach swirled and sank as he said it, "We'll make sure this gets to the right people."

The kid hesitated just a moment mid-step before continuing. He caught the tail end of a muttered "Thank you" amongst that pregnant silence.

They waited till long after he was out of sight before moving back to the car themselves. The both of them hardly able to look the other in the eye. Neither saying a thing until they were well on their way back to the station. There was nothing for him to say.

"I don’t like this either," Tsukauchi was the first to brave the silence, and he had to bite his lip a moment to keep a few choice words at bay. "But the kid might have more of a point than even he knows."

"You don’t think we can protect him?" he said incredulously, "We've had internal corruption cases before, even if this villain is as dangerous as the two of you seem to think we shouldn't have just let him leave on his own when he's being hunted."

He watched as the detective's hands tightened on the wheel.

"I'm not talking about All For One, Eraserhead."

And then it clicks.

It must show on his face because Tsukauchi continues.

"The HPSC is already invested in Viridian's case, and they're more afraid of All For One than either of us. Any connection to him is going to gain their full attention, and if they find out about Midoriya - about his past, about what he can do - he'll never see the light of day again, we both know that. Even if they do decide to give him a chance."

"It'll just be like going back to that bastard, wouldn't it?" Shouta said bitterly, "Damn it."

"Which is why we keep it off the books," he said firmly. Voice hard and eyes harder as he stared unwavering at the road in front of them, the station only just coming into view ahead of them. "They're already invested in Viridian's case, we can't change that, so keeping it confidential isn't going to do a thing to stop them."

"You're saying we should lie."

"It's a big risk, believe me I'm not ignoring that," he kept driving, taking a right after passing the station and continuing under the periodic washes of streetlights illuminating a main road. "If we're doing this," he paused, "we're going to have to commit."

They both knew he didn't have to ask.

"I made a promise Detective," was what he goes with, "I'm not going back on it as long as I can help it," because for all his pretending, he was a hero. And for f*cks sake that's what heroes were supposed to do.

The Naomasa hummed his affirmative, and they continued on in silence. Shouta didn't even need to ask where they were going before he pulled up across from his building and put the car in park by the curb.

"We might need Nedzu for this, if he'll agree to help, in case either of us slips up." The look on his face was troubled, "We're not going to be able to keep him a secret forever,"

"A kid running circles around heroes and villains alike? There's no way he won’t be interested," he grumbled, dragging a hand down his face, the streetlights blurring slightly as he stared out from between his fingers, the caffeine in his system just beginning to wear off. "That being said, things are already in motion to add All Might to the UA faculty this coming year," he sighed. "If what the kid says is true, he'll have bigger fish to fry so it'll have to wait."

"It's true as afar as he knows it," he responded, "Years of doing this and I still don’t know what to think."

Shouta just hummed in response. Another silence lapsing between them before he spoke up again.

"This might be a mistake."

"Sure," he acquiesced. No more than that.

"No one else can know about him, even All Might," he pressed, "You understand that right?"

"I do."

He let out a sigh as he popped open the door. The detective calling after him.

"I'll go ahead get our story straight on paper, but first I… I've got to make some calls." He said, leaning back in his seat, "I'll go over it with you tomorrow so for now just… just try and avoid talking to anyone about what happened until then."

He looked more tired than he'd ever seen him.

"Good Night, Detective."

A quiet nod was all he got in response. Neither of them had it in them to say any more than that as Shouta left him and made for home without once looking back. Letting himself soak in the silence and try not to wonder when another call would come through his phone again and why saving someone right in front of him could be so hard.