Friendship
Izuku should have gone to bed after he got back into his room. Between more than a week of no sleep and the events of that night, he could feel himself tearing apart at the seams. His heart to heart with Momo had mentally drained him, and he wanted nothing more than to lay down and forget all about everything for a few hours.
Yet that was exactly why he couldn't lay down and fall asleep. He had too many things to think about, too many things to consider. Going to sleep on Momo's words left a bad taste in his mouth, and he had some serious self reflection to do. Thus, he refreshed his stock of pewter and revelled in the warm feeling in his stomach.
Izuku felt slightly uneasy on his walk to school the next morning. He constantly felt like turning around, as if there were someone watching him. Every time he looked over his shoulder, however, he saw nothing. Shaking off the unease, Izuku continued his walk to school.
As he sat alone on the bus, Izuku felt his thoughts drift to his conversation with Yaoyorozu the previous night, and the more he thought about it, the more he realized the truth to her words. The combination of stress and unease had gotten to his head, and he wasn't the only one that was having problems. Everyone had their demons, and he needed to tackle his own, just like everyone else. Still, part of him dreaded facing Yaoyorozu. The conversation they'd had was extremely personal, not a lot of people talked about those sorts of things, especially with people they hardly knew.
Izuku shook his thoughts clear once again, noticing how difficult it was to focus despite the pewter burning in his stomach. While he didn't feel physically tired, all of his mental processes were becoming more and more difficult. He found himself spacing out more, and focusing was an issue, especially when there was a lot going on. He could help himself focus a little at a time by flaring tin, but he couldn't keep that up, since the boost to his senses only served to overwhelm him.
Eventually, he made it to school, and he didn't even look up from the ground as he walked to the classroom. Izuku was so lost in thought that he didn't even notice someone sneak up behind him until there was a hand on his shoulder.
On instinct, Izuku reached inside his school jacket for his belt, where a pouch of coins was tied to his waist. At the same time, he jumped back, letting his pewter enhanced legs carry him a couple of meters away, whipping around to face the assailant...only to see a very confused Yaoyorozu, her hand held in the air where his shoulder had been moments earlier. Izuku let himself relax, taking his hand out of his jacket and relaxing his posture. She just stared at him for a second before breaking into laughter.
"A bit jumpy, huh?" she said. The students that had stopped to watch the whole situation unfold went back to whatever they'd been doing before, seemingly having lost interest.
"Sorry," Izuku mumbled, "You scared me."
"I can tell." she said. Izuku flushed, but walked over to Yaoyorozu, closing the gap between them. Izuku checked his phone for the time, seeing that they only had a few minutes before class started.
"You didn't sleep, did you?" Momo said, turning to walk next to Izuku towards the third-year classrooms. Izuku fell into stride next to her, scratching at the back of his neck nervously.
"How can you tell?"
"The bags under your eyes are darker than my hair," Momo said simply with a sigh.
They walked in relative silence to their classrooms, Izuku unsure how to clear the air about the discussion from the previous night, Yaoyorozu seemingly unbothered.
Eventually, they arrived at their destination, and Momo moved to open the door to her classroom.
"Wait!" Izuku said, and Momo froze, her hand on the handle, "about last night…"
Yaoyorozu just shook her head, "What we talked about last night is for you to think about on your own. As for whether you want to be friends or not...well, if your answer is yes then meet me for lunch on the roof," and with that she opened the door and disappeared into the classroom. Izuku stood in the hall, his mouth open as if he were frozen mid-sentence, looking at the door. Eventually, the warning bell rang, pulling Izuku from his shock.
As he speedwalked to his classroom as to avoid being late, Izuku cursed to himself under his breath.
She picked the roof on purpose! She knows I eat lunch up there, so she made it so that if I wanted to tell her no, I'd have to go out of my way to find another place to eat. Izuku sighed, well, it's not like I have any other plans…
Aizawa crashed into his bed for the first time in at least thirty-six hours. He'd gone straight from one patrol to the situation regarding the vigilante and Overhaul's Cleanser, only to go straight back onto patrol duty until morning to search for the vigilante. Of course, they hadn't been able to find the culprit in the area, and based on Shinsou Hitoshi's report, the vigilante had some sort of mobility Quirk.
Pulling one all nighter wouldn't have been an issue if he hadn't already been awake for nearly a day straight at that point. A patrol, then an entire day of meetings with Yuuei for what teaching duties he still had, and then right back to patrol.
Point was, Aizawa was exhausted. He fell straight onto his bed in his small studio apartment, not even bothering to take off his hero costume. He knew it would be mere moments before he passed out, so he decided to run over all the facts about the case that they knew.
The vigilante had come across a Trigger drug deal, and whether it was coincidental or not was yet to be determined. Otherwise, the vigilante seemed to be a kid, most likely middle school or high school, and they had some sort of quirk that allowed them to move around quickly and easily. The only description they had to go off was their height and general stature, since they'd hidden their face with some sort of cloak.
Aizawa's agency was currently running the description through nearby school rosters, while cross referencing quirks to possibly narrow down the possibilities. Perhaps they'd come up with a few matches, and they'd just bring Shinsou Hitoshi in to verify their identity, and things would get squared away nice and quickly.
Odds are, though, it wasn't going to be that simple. Which meant less sleep for him. With a groan, Aizawa buried his head into his pillow, already feeling himself being pulled towards unconsciousness.
This wasn't the first young vigilante that he'd dealt with and they all tended to be one of three things. First, and most common, were those who, for whatever reason, couldn't quite make it as heroes, yet still wanted to try to do something , not knowing that that something usually threw a wrench in the gears of actual hero work. Those were the easiest to deal with, since usually all it took to correct the behavior was a hit on the knuckles.
The second type of vigilante was the most annoying, the kind that got in over their heads, or had some sort of twisted view of 'justice'. These are the ones that take themselves to be the judge, jury, and executioner. The types who use their abilities to act in what they see as 'right', usually ending up killing villains, or get too deep in an organized criminal organization, and stir up shit they shouldn't be. Stendhal, early in his career, was one of these.
Then, you had the third kind of vigilante. The kind where they happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, and just did what they saw as best in the situation they were dealt. They acted off of instinct, doing what they say as right in the moment. These types of vigilantes were...well, Aizawa had a soft spot. Most of them ended up going into the hero industry.
It was how he'd started off, after all.
Sunlight streamed through Aizawa's blinds as he drifted off to sleep.
Izuku weaved a coin between his fingers as he waited for the bell that signaled the end of the first half of the day. He wasn't sure if he was looking forward to lunch or dreading it. The more he thought about it, the more he realized it was a bit of both. On one hand, he'd made up his mind about the entire situation. He knew what he needed to do, not only to be fair to Yaoyorozu, but to help himself.
On the other, he was worrying about was taking that first step. The first step was always the hardest, and he couldn't help but feel a little uneasy about going to the roof at lunch.
Izuku noticed people fidgeting around the room, so he looked up at the clock to check the time, and sure enough, the bell was going to ring any second now. He barely cut off his tin in time to save himself from the sudden deafening noise. Izuku took his time gathering his things and putting them into his bag as the rest of his class funneled out of the room.
Then, he arduously pushed his way through the hallway to the staircase, heading up to the roof. With pewter's help, he could have made it up the stairs in moments, but he let himself take the steps slowly, as if he were giving himself time to turn back. Eventually, he made it to the top of the stairwell, to the door that led to the roof of the school.
Taking a deep breath, before he convince himself otherwise, before his arms could shake or his mind froze up, Izuku pushed open the door to the roof. Looking out onto the pavillion, he could see Yaoyorozu leaning up against the railing a few feet away, eating from a bento box.
She looked up from her meal, then smiled. For some reason, Izuku felt his unease wash away, and the emotional weight pushing down on him lessened. He even found himself standing up a bit straighter.
"You showed up!" She said, before turning back to her lunch. Izuku shut the door behind him and started to walk over to where she was standing.
"I couldn't exactly leave you hanging," he smirked, "Plus, I eat lunch here. As if I'd let the new kid steal my spot."
Momo just chuckled in response, reaching into her bento box and pulling something out. A moment later, she threw it right at Izuku.
On instinct, Izuku flared steel and reached out, a blue line shooting directly at the object. He hit it with a light push, and all of its forward momentum was nullified, causing whatever the object was to clatter straight to the ground, halfway between Izuku and Momo. Extinguishing steel, Izuku inspected the object.
It was a spoon, bent in multiple places, presumably caused by steel-pushes on multiple occasions. Momo spoke up. "You're jumpy, as always."
"Can you blame me?" Izuku sighed, leaning over to pick up the spoon, "what am I supposed to do with this?"
"Keep it as a commemoration of the start of our friendship."
Izuku just smiled and shoved the malformed utensil into his pocket, before finally joining Yaoyorozu at the railing, pulling out his own lunch, before sliding to the ground. He picked at the food for a bit, not exactly sure how to continue the conversation.
Eventually, Momo slid to the ground as well, sighing. "Thank you," a pause, "for coming up here, I mean. I was worried that you wouldn't show."
"I nearly didn't," he said, before pausing, realizing the implications of his words, "Not that I didn't want to or anything, it's just that, well...I've never really done the 'friends' thing before." Momo just giggled a little bit, before settling into a soft hum.
Then, for a little while, they just...talked. Momo let Izuku rant about a few recent hero fights, and she talked about some of the research she was doing in order to help use he quirk better, at which point Izuku promptly pulled out his notebook and started filling out a page for her.
"So, why didn't you just make something really expensive like gold and then sell it to help your family when things were rough?" Izuku asked, scribbling down notes on the page as he talked.
"Well, first of all, it's illegal. Then, even if I wanted to mess up the economy like that, the quirk registry has me on record. If I even tried pulling a stunt like that, police would be at my door by the end of the day," Momo said, "Even commercial quirk use has to be regulated. I know a guy who runs an ice cream shop, and he had to get a certification saying he was allowed to use his ice quirk to keep the ice cream cold."
Izuku paused his writing, "I kind of forgot how strict quirk law is. I've never really had to worry about it."
A snort. "Well, you might want to get that 'quirk' of yours registered sometime soon. I'm pretty sure it's illegal to withhold information like that."
Izuku just nodded, turning back to the notebook.
Before they knew it, the bell rang, signaling the end of the lunch hour. "Already?" Izuku said, slapping his notebook shut and stuffing it in his bag.
"You know what they say," Momo said, putting her things away as well, "time flies when you're having fun."
Izuku just hummed, raising his eyebrows a little. He finished packing his bag and sprung to his feet, turning to Momo, who just looked at him in a slight moment of...not shock, but mild surprise?
"Are you burning something?" she said, resuming packing her bag up.
Izuku paused, caught off guard by the use of the term, before nodding. "Why?"
"You stood up with enough gracefulness to make a professional dancer swoon," she said simply, with a shrug, "You shouldn't burn so often, you might get addicted to it or something."
Izuku rolled his eyes, walking to the door leading from the roof and opening it, "It's not drugs."
Momo raised an eyebrow, but didn't say anything, stepping inside the door Izuku was holding open. They walked down the stairs, and eventually Izuku came across his classroom.
Before he left, he turned to Momo one last time. "I'll meet you by the front gate and we can walk home?"
Momo smiled, "I'll see you there!"
Izuku sat on his bed that night, looking out the window. He wasn't tired (though, that was probably pewter's fault), so he'd kind of just lounged around his room, not sure what to do. Over the last couple of weeks, going out at night had become such a staple to his nightly routine that not going outside felt...wrong somehow.
He couldn't exactly explain it, but part of him just wanted to throw on the tasseled cloak, throw open the window, and jump out of it with a pouch of coins at his hip and a stomach full of steel. Something about soaring through the mist just felt so...natural to him, like it was something that he'd been born to do.
Yet, here he sat, inside while the mists swirled outside of the window, as if taunting him, even though he knew it would be a bad idea to go out.
I need to lay low for a few days. He told himself. As important as practicing with his metals was, it hadn't even been a day since his...encounter at the warehouse. He knew how hero agencies worked, and so he knew that a variety of heroes, underground and otherwise, would be in the area, looking for a vigilante.
The Hero Association took vigilantes very seriously, and the last thing he wanted was to get rolled up with a vigilantism charge. He was sure that would definitely help his chances of getting into any hero program anywhere, especially one as important as Yuuei.
So, he just let out a sigh, falling back into his bed and looking over at the clock.
One in the morning, he thought, studying his ceiling, I COULD get some sleep, like what Yaoyorozu suggested.
He considered it for a moment, before quickly discarding the idea. He didn't feel tired, and he didn't feel like turning off his pewter, since he'd gotten used to the various benefits it gave him. Maybe it is a little like a drug
Izuku's eyes were drawn to the window once more, and the swirling fog that lied beyond. Once again, he felt a gravitation to it, as if the mists were calling to him. Sitting inside just didn't feel right. Izuku looked over at his closet, pondering.
I suppose that a walk could be fine. He thought, pulling himself off of the bed. He threw on a pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt. As much as he liked the tasseled cloak (another attachment he couldn't exactly explain), he knew it would be a dead giveaway. It would be much safer to just go in a sweatsuit.
Plus, he wasn't steel jumping tonight, he was just out for a leisurely stroll.
Despite the fact that he was just out for a walk, he still brought his metals, just to be safe. They sat in pouches, attached to his belt, hidden by his slightly-too-big sweatshirt, ready to be used at a moment's notice, in the case that he needed to defend himself or something.
Otherwise, the moment that he'd stepped out into the misty night, he'd felt better. The cool, damp mist swirled around him, licking off of his clothing, and he felt...safer. It was weird, he couldn't exactly explain the feeling, but when he was out in the mists, he felt shrouded from the outside world. The mists hid him, in a way. He'd spent years trying to make himself invisible, easily ignored, mostly due to his general aversion to other people, but also to help stop the bullying. If they couldn't find him, they couldn't pick on him, after all.
The mists helped in that regard. To most people, the mist was just a thick fog, limiting their vision to a few meters at best. Yet, with tin, he could see anyone else before they could see him, which was good for his peace of mind.
As he walked, he also noticed a few more things about the mists. He still had no idea what had brought on the phenomenon, as it had meteorologists bewildered, but for some reason, it felt...alive. It didn't enter buildings, though that could be due to the heat causing it to evaporate. At the same time, the mists moved. They swirled around him as he walked, as if they were reacting to his presence. Streams sometimes followed him inside after a night out, and it curled around him when he was actually out in it.
Despite all the things he still didn't know about the mists, he still felt at home. He'd rather spend a night out in the mist than a night in his own bed.
Izuku also liked walks because it gave him time to think. He could just focus on the rhythmic thudding of his feet against the pavement and allow his mind to drift to whatever topic was at hand. Tonight it was the mists, but sometimes it was school, sometimes hero news. Walks also allowed him to be alone, which was another plus.
When he took walks, he didn't set a route. He just picked a direction and...went. Eventually, when he wanted to go home, he'd just retrace his steps. Tonight was no different, and eventually he found himself at a park that wasn't too far from his house.
It was a big open space that had this little path that ran down the center that sat under a giant canopy of trees. The hills that surrounded the grove were popular places to go have a picnic, and it wasn't rare to see couples just lay on the grass and stare up at the skies. In general, a pretty nice area.
Izuku headed down the path, rolling a coin over in his hand, threading it between his fingers absentmindedly. He watched his feet for the most part, keeping mind to check the corner of his vision every once in a while, as well as his ears open. He'd gotten used to using tin to help him get a better feel for his surroundings.
Which is why he was completely caught off guard when he ran into something, falling to the ground.
"I-I'm sorry!" Izuku started, looking up to see what he'd run into.
Only to see nothing.
What the hell... Izuku checked behind him, then in front of him again. There was nobody around, it was like he'd run into solid air. Scrambling to his feet, Izuku took a few steps back, flaring tin and looking around.
Only then did he see it. He rubbed his eyes in disbelief, only to see the same thing when he opened them again. It was faint, only a person flaring tin would be able to see it clearly, but it was distinctly there.
An outline of a person in the mists. Izuku could hardly see it, and if he didn't focus on it, it blended into the background. Where most of the time, the mist moved and swirled, inside of the outline, the mist was like a solid object, and the mist swirled around the figure, much like it did for Izuku.
Izuku took a startled step back, "W-Who are you?" he stammered out. The outline didn't talk, instead it just stood for a moment, before perfectly mirroring the step back that Izuku had taken. Izuku frowned, tilting his head slightly. Half a second later, the mist-outline tilted its head.
Izuku, his heart beating slightly less fast, raised his left arm, and sure enough, a moment later, the figure followed suit. Izuku continued to move, and the misty being continued to mirror him.
What the hell Izuku repeated in his head, looking around for any other signs of life, when I ran into it, it was solid.
Izuku took a tentative step forwards, putting out his hand. The figure quickly followed suit, still mirroring his movements. Curiosity getting the better of him, Izuku inched forwards, bringing his hand towards the figure's.
A few inches, then a centimeter, half a centimeter, Izuku's heart was beating up into his throat. Then, he touched it, just for a moment. It was cold, like the mist around him, but solid, like a person's hand.
He only got to touch it for a split second, as a moment later, the figure dissolved into thin air, disappearing back into the mists. Izuku stood, completely dumbfounded as to what had just happened.
He knew something had been up with the mists, normal fog didn't act the way that the mists did, especially not coming so often and only at night. But this? This brought it to an entirely new level.
Izuku knew that he should be completely and utterly terrified at what had just happened. For all he knew, it could have been someone's quirk, an illusion meant to trick him in some way. Yet, just like everything else related to the mists, he felt...at ease. He wasn't scared of the apparition, as he knew he ought to have been. Curious, yes, but not scared. Even so, there was one thing running through his head, taking up almost all of his thoughts.
What the hell was that thing?
Edit: Changed some of my rampant grammar and spelling issues due to the fact that I wrote this chapter at 1 in the morning, about 3 hours before my flight left.
A/N: Hello I'm not dead. Sorry this one is both 1. short 2. took literally forever to come out and 3. maybe a bit non coherent in the last few paragraphs. I go off for vacation in 3 hours and I really wanted to get up an update for y'all before I can't write for YET AGAIN more time. As for why this one took so long, well, I needed some time as a break due to writer's block. I have some really fun plans for the next coming chapters, and it took me literally a month to figure out how I wanted to fill in the gap between where I was and where I want to go. It's a hard median to find, since I didn't want things seeming like filler, while also making it feel substantial enough to be entertaining and fill in the difference. Let me know how you think it went. Anyhow, I'll PROBABLY actually be able to get a normally timed update out, PROBABLY. Look forwards to it in like 2 weeks!
