"Eraserhead? Are you there?"
Aizawa opened one eye, glaring at the speaker hooked into the security cameras, idly wondering if there was a way to pry it from the wall without electrocuting himself. "What."
Somehow the computerized voice sounded apologetic as if it knew that it was close to death for waking Aizawa at 3:42 am. "Well, Midoriya's ankle monitor is sending out more gibberish than usual and weeell, you really should watch this."
The computer monitor on Aizawa's desk lit up, playing dark and grainy security footage that make Aizawa want to climb back into his sleeping bag for another month. On the screen, he watched a very familiar figure in a green hoodie with a target on the back climb up a tree and shimmy across a branch before dropping out of the cameras view outside the wall. "...goddamnit." He sat up, dragging a hand over his face in a useless attempt to wake himself up before rolling out of his sleeping bag and climbing to his feet. "Alright, I'm going."
"Go get him before he starts making dramatic speeches or punches a civilian!"
"Yeah, yeah." Aizawa pulled the loops of his capture tool over his head before nearly knocking himself to the ground as he tried to put his boots on as fast of possible. "Stupid fucking computer. Hope you suffer from terminal application failure!"
"I heard that," the voice said snidely, somehow conveying a sense disappointed resentment. "You hurt my feelings, you mean man."
"I was trying to, you worthless pile of scrap," Aizawa snapped as he slammed the door behind him, grumbling as he jogged towards the last place Midoriya had been seen. He knew the kid wasn't trying to make a break for it, if he had he wouldn't have bothered with climbing the wall, he would have destroyed it with explosives he acquired from god knows where.
Aizawa continued to mutter expletives into the fabric of his capture tool as he looped the fabric into the branches of the same tree from the video and pulled himself up and over the wall, his capture tool looping around a telephone pole and giving Aizawa an even better vantage point in his unnecessary search.
He grumbled under his breath the entire way to the train station, his curses only growing in intensity and frequency as he realized Midoriya was taking the train out of the city. Where was he going now, what did he think he was doing out at this hour?
The realization hit Aizawa like a lightning bolt as he lurked in the very last train car, Midoriya only one train car away. Aizawa glanced through the glass on the doors between the cars and when he saw the hopeful yet yearning look on the teens face, the next of the puzzle pieces that made up Midoriya fell into place. The picture was almost complete.
Midoriya was going home, even if it was just for a little while. Aizawa could swear he felt the bottom of his stomach drop out when he thought of the excessive force he had planned on using to take the ex-vigilante back into custody.
All he wanted to do was go back home.
As soon as the train stopped, Aizawa was out of his seat back on his feet and on the move through the early morning crowd of those who worked the ungodly hours after everyone else had either gone home or had even woken up.
The only problem was Midoriya had managed to give him the slip in less than ten seconds, the teen knowing his way through the station and the streets outside it with the familiarity of an old friend.
"Damn it," Aizawa wiped at his eyes, his lack of sleep really not helping him right now as he jogged through the empty streets to try and find his quarry. With a quiet snap, Aizawa looped the fabric of his capture tool around the nearest utility pole, pulling himself up onto the crossbar to get a better view of the unfamiliar streets.
Besides, Midoriya would come back, right? He wasn't just going to ditch out like that, even Aizawa with his poor understanding of etiquette understood that. Midoriya might be rude and a pompous bastard of immeasurable magnitude, but he had his own honor code that he would never think about breaking.
And speak of the devil, Aizawa finally managed to locate Midoriya, the teenager leaning heavily against the wall of an unassuming office building, looking as tired as Aizawa felt. Almost as if he knew he was being followed, Midoriya straightened up, adjusting the dark blue sling he wore over his hoodie, before walking purposefully down the sidewalk, his shoulders hunched and his entire body lined with tension.
Landing quiet as a cat, Aizawa dropped down from the telephone pole, his capture tool still wrapped around the cross-arm, slowing his descent before he pulled them back down and moved closer to his target as quietly as he could, sticking to the shadows that clung to the city like a death shroud in the early hours of the morning.
When Aizawa was only five feet away, Midoriya stopped in his tracks, not turning around even as he asked loudly, "why are you following me?"
Aizawa tilted his head, finally stopping in his tracks just a foot behind the teen. He adjusted the loops of his capture tool, tightening them around his neck before asking his next question. "How long did you know I was following you?"
"Almost as soon as I got over the wall I knew they would send you after me. And I saw you get on the train after I did." Izuku slowly turned around, watching Aizawa while walking backward on the sidewalk, the metal spikes on his boots dragging and scraping across the damp asphalt. He smirked, pointing with a faux accusative gesture with his good hand before turning back around with a disinterested shrug. "But you," Izuku raised his hand, looking back over his shoulder, "you knew I wasn't really leaving, so why did you follow me?"
"Hmm." Aizawa nodded, slipping his hands into his pockets as he trudged behind Midoriya. He didn't really want to admit that it had taken him nearly ten minutes and a forty-minute train ride to figure it out."You're a smart kid," he added, watching as the body's immediate reaction was to shake his head and disagree.
"No," Izuku stared forward avoiding Aizawa's gaze, trying to shake off any sort of compliment before it could stick and crack the shield of his manufactured persona. But of course he let the words stoke his overinflated ego, he's only human, after all. "Not smart, just observant."
Aizawa raised an eyebrow at Midoriya's seemingly pathological need to downplay his own strengths outside of his public grandstanding. It seemed the more he learned about him, the less he really knew.
Izuku snapped his fingers to get Aizawa's attention, replacing his hand into his hoodie pocket almost immediately. "I already know you're there, you don't need to hang back."
Aizawa nodded, lengthening his stride until he was beside the teen, the two walking in the eerie quiet that hung in the streets with the early morning mist. But soon the sun would rise and burn that all away.
"Where are you going?" Aizawa looked over Midoriya as they passed under the next street lamp. His weapon filled belt was nowhere in sight, his nearly famous shotgun not strapped across his back, no tonfas, no knives. His only obvious method of attack his bare fists, one of them in a sling and almost completely out of commission.
Midoriya wasn't planning on taking on anything other than his own homesickness.
Izuku rolled his eyes, not sparing Aizawa a single glance before turning a seemingly random corner to cut through a dingy alleyway. "Taco Bell, where else?"
Aizawa rolled his eyes right back at the teen in return, not believing him for a second. "Why are you really leaving," he asked, hoping Midoriya would just admit to feeling homesick so Aizawa could go back to UA and get some more sleep.
Izuku all but snarled, raising his hackles like a wild dog faced with an unknown situation. "Fuck you, I don't need to tell you anything." He rounded his shoulders, trying to ignore the hero that walked silently beside him. He hated this, he hated the quiet but he didn't want to give the hero, the one hero he actually respected, the benefit of knowing it. A little nagging voice in the back of his mind wondered if he would be so irritated if UA had sent a hero he disliked after him instead.
Shaking his head, Izuku scattered those thoughts by saying something that he knew would make him not be taken seriously. "Oh, instead of Taco Bell, we could go to Denny's and get a grand slamwich."
Nearly stumbling over Midoriya's words like it was a rock in his path, Aizawa stared at the teen incredulously. "A what," he asked. He really hoped it wasn't what he thought it was.
"It's just a Grand Slam, but you need to add extra bacon and eggs. Then you soak the hashbrowns in syrup and put everything in between the pancakes and eat it all like a giant sandwich." Izuku just nodded once, not looking back even though he could nearly feel the disgust radiating from his unwanted companion. "It's amazing after a long patrol when you're exhausted. You should try one."
Oh, it was worse than what he thought it was. Aizawa felt his stomach ache with just the thought of that much grease and salt. "No, that's horrifying. You can't convince me it's good, and it's probably a human rights violation." But as much as it disgusted him, part of Aizawa is cracking up at the thought of the ex-vigilante eating the stuff of nightmares and traumatizing everyone who sees him.
After his struggle to control himself abided, Aizawa brushed his hair back from his face. "Why are you even awake right now," he asked, wishing he was still asleep himself.
It was obvious Midoriya wasn't going to start anything, he wasn't making any speeches, wasn't fighting any criminals. He was just hunting for terrible food and making his first mistakes of the day. And Aizawa knew what it was Midoriya was doing, he just wanted the boy to admit it and get this over with.
Izuku hunched his shoulders and stepped a little faster, "I need my fucking Baja Blast, that's why," he snapped defensively. He didn't owe anyone an explanation for anything. He ignored the hero walking beside him as he came up to the familiar grey and purple building of the Taco Bell and struggled with the door for a minute before he managed to finally pull it open with his good hand. "Damnit," he muttered, rubbing at his injured wrist while he checked over the menu.
Aizawa felt an unexpected flash of concern and he glanced at the boy "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine, don't pretend to care." Izuku pulled his hood off, squinting slightly in the change of light. He pulled his wallet from his pocket, thumbing through his money to figure out what he could afford right now. Pulling bills from his wallet, he approached the counter, his gaze bouncing between the countertop and the door on his left. "Hey, I need uh, twelve shredded chicken burritos and a medium drink?"
"Twelve shredded, hold on," the girl behind the counter paused in typing the order. She pointed to him with a shaking finger, three eyes wide with excitement. With a mouthful of fangs, she stuttered out her next words, "you, oh my god, you're Target!"
"Yeah, yep." Izuku rubbed the back of his neck nervously, half tempted to just turn around and run out the door without his burritos. But then he would have to actually talk to Aizawa about his problems instead of dodging them with this little ruse. With a twitch Izuku barely kept himself from jumping out the window, instead focussing his efforts on getting exact change from his wallet. Already knowing the answer, he asked, "so, how much?"
"Oh my god, you're an inspiration!" The girl, Izuku glanced at the nametag clipped to her hat, Suri. Suri clapped her hands together, nearly vibrating with excitement. "I love you so much!"
"Uh, so, the burritos," Izuku asked hesitantly, sliding his cash across the counter even as he knew where this was heading.
"Free for the Three!"
"Tch," Izuku barely suppressed a full body shudder from the disgust he felt at the nearly worshiping attitude of the girl behind the counter. He might act like fortune and fame was all he desired, but right about now he had just lost his appetite for the next week. "Uh, thanks," he muttered, pulling back his handful of cash.
"Can I get a picture with you?" Suri pulled a phone covered in stickers of the Terrible Three in chibi form and Izuku's target emblem. "Please, I want to rub it in my brothers face!"
"Yeah, alright." Izuku raised his good hand in a halfhearted victory v, almost unable to control his need to gag and lean away from his fan. He forced a crooked grin at the girls' phone, "say Terrible!"
With a click and a tiny flash, Suri saved the photo to her phone before stepping back behind the counter and handing Izuku a plastic cup. "Thank you so much! Your food will be ready in about five minutes."
"Great," Izuku took the cup, heading towards the soda machine where he immediately filled it with the drink he had been using as an excuse for ditching off campus. Turning, he raised the cup at Aizawa in a bit of a taunt, as if to prove that it was really what he had come out here for, even if both of them knew he was lying through his teeth.
Aizawa rolled his eyes, leaning against the frame of the door as he waited for this nonsense to be over and done with.
"Order for Target?"
Izuku looked up to behind the cashier, what looked like the entire restaurant staff was crowded behind the counter, phones out as the ex-vigilante took the bag of burritos. "Thank's," Izuku muttered, turning and passing Aizawa by the door and stepping back into the early morning darkness.
Aizawa fell into step behind the teen, his hands in his pockets as he followed, watching as Izuku began transferring the burritos from the bag to his pockets.
"You want a shame burrito," Izuku asked, offering a burrito to the undercover hero. He waved it at him, slowly getting closer and closer to the hero's face the longer the silence stretched on.
Once the burrito was less than an inch from his face, Aizawa all but snatched it from the boy's hand, getting the impression that if he didn't he would end up with intimate knowledge on how it feels to be beaten with a burrito. "...fine."
Aizawa glanced at Midoriya's face, the boy had pulled up his hood, casting his face in dark shadow. But the hero didn't need light to see the forlorn irritation the teenager was feeling. "Does that happen often," he asked, looking back at the fading light of the restaurant behind them.
"Far too often." Izuku shrugged, unwrapping a burrito with one hand while he tucked his soda in the crook of his sling. He spoke around a mouthful of shredded chicken and rice, "I just don't get it, I act like a jerk, a self-absorbed monster, and they still adore me. They reward my bad behavior."
"Then why do you do it?" Aizawa leaned away from the teen, not wanting to risk being spat on by accident. Actually, Aizawa was certain it wouldn't be an accident if he did get spat on, Midoriya did seem like the sort to spit on people if given the opportunity. "If you hate everyone, why do you keep going on?"
"Because All Might was the Symbol of Peace, but peace isn't enough anymore." Izuku sighed, the simple joy he usually got from cheap food twisting into something venomous that clenched around his heart. "I don't think it ever was."
Peace was a nice sentiment, but in his opinion, it was just a pretty lie told by those in power to try and keep people from questioning their reality.
Aizawa raised an eyebrow, he had thought that Midoriya was an optimist, an idealist who believed heroes needed to be better than they were. He shook his head, slipping his hands back into his pockets. "You're a real downer, kid."
"I do try." Izuku crumpled the wrapper of his demolished burrito and jammed it into his back pocket. He slowed down, checking street signs for a moment before picking his pace back up.
A few minutes of quiet passed, Aizawa was unsure if Midoriya actually had a plan of action here, or if he was just trying to convince him to back off and go back to UA without him. "Why did you really come out here?"
"There's somewhere I need to go. I just need to…" He paused, trying to find the words that best defined his purpose for this stop. "I need to revisit something."
Aizawa only raised an eyebrow in response, prompting Midoriya to elaborate with a tilt of his head.
Izuku sighed, not wanting to explain this, it was something personal after all. "You know how serial killers revisit the scene of a crime? 'sorta like that."
"Why is this place so important," Aizawa asked, almost fearful of what the answer might be.
"Because it's where my dream died. Was brutally murdered by All Might then I desecrated its corpse by stabbing someone on live television." Izuku laughed once, the sound harsh and barking in the early morning stillness.
Aizawa slowed his steps, putting some distance between himself and Midoriya. "That's some… vivid imagery you got there." He had let his guard down again, thinking Midoriya wasn't a terrifying force of violence simply because he cracked a few jokes and hated the attention he received.
"Yeah, well, whatever. Follow me." Izuku pointed at the small building ahead of them, walking towards the stairs that curled around the entire structure.
Aizawa looked around from their rooftop vantage point, empty streets beginning to slowly fill with the early risers of the city. Lights in office buildings began to snap on, the entire city blinking away as the sun rose. "So this is where All Might told you that you couldn't be a hero?"
It was so ordinary, nothing that hinted to its invisible cultural significance. This was where the entire hero society had been slated for destruction and nobody would ever know it unless they had been there.
Izuku laughed cynically, closing his eyes and letting the early morning sun warm his face even as the rays did nothing for the icy walls he had built around himself. But those too, would come down in time. "It's more mundane than you expected, isn't it?"
"It really is." Even though he had now it was a ridiculous expectation, Aizawa had expected the place where a heroic dream was killed and resurrected in blood to be more… desolate. Something filled with soot and the smell of chemicals and rot. Some stereotypical dark alley filled with bloody bones and discarded weapons, graffiti decorating the walls, smoke in the air and the sound of sirens in the distance.
But this plain and boring rooftop was strangely serene in the light yellows and pinks of the sunrise.
Aizawa turned to say something to Midoriya, but all words dropped from his mind at what he saw.
The smile on Midoriya's face was joyful, the brightest expression he had ever seen from the boy and it was directly countered by the tears rolling down his cheeks.
Bittersweet and joyful hope. He was almost jealous at how liberated the boy looked.
Quickly, Aizawa turned away once again, just watching the sun climb over the horizon instead of trying to understand what it was that Midoriya was feeling. He didn't want to like the kid, but it was too late for that now. The ex-vigilante had grown on him in the past hour and a half.
As the sun rose over the horizon and the awakening city, Izuku finally managed to pull back his emotions, wiping the drying tears from his cheeks and gripping the railing in an attempt to steady himself. "It's weird, this should have broken me, and I think it did, but I had to reforge myself from the pieces. And now I, the lowest common denominator or the entire system, I'm a hero?"
"Isn't that what you always wanted?"
Izuku tightened his grip on the railing, the rusted edges biting into his bandaged palm. "Not like this." He sighed, watching the pink and yellows spread over the sky. "But I guess I'll take this, even if I hate it."
"If you hate it so much, why don't you quit?"
"Because they," Izuku gestured over the city, his voice thick with something bitter and resentful. "They need me to be what heroes can' be." He chuckled, shaking his head. "They need me to be the villain among heroes. The worst of the best." He turned from the railing and the city he loved, heading back to the stairs that had brought him here. "Or the best of the worst, if I'm being honest."
Aizawa said nothing, following Midoriya quietly. He knew this little tour through the teen's life wasn't over, but he wasn't sure just how much more of it he wanted to see.
Izuku sighed, nostalgic as he walked the streets he had once walked in his day to day life. Familiar apartment buildings, familiar houses, even the damn cars were the same. "That's where Dabi and I met," he said, pointing to the alleyway that somehow smelled worse than it had when he had last gone down it. The quiet was filled with a sense of longing as the two continued to the location that had once been the center of his world. "Himiko and I met in that park," he pointed at the swingset, the same as it was when he had last seen it.
It was just as cold as it had been that late, late, night.
With a heavy heart, he pointed to his old apartment building, the windows of his once home dark and cold. "And that is where my mom and I used to live. God, I miss her." He sighed again, standing on the sidewalk across the street and letting the good times play through his head.
Even the bad times, few and far between, the before times when his father was still around, they seemed good through the thick rose hue of nostalgia.
Aizawa sighed, he really didn't want to feel for the kid, he truly didn't, but he just couldn't help himself. He was in this shit for the long haul now, wasn't he? He closed his eyes, making peace with the fact that he wasn't going to get any more sleep tonight, or possibly ever with this kid around. "Do you… do you know where she lives now?"
Izuku nodded, not taking his eyes off the apartment building in front of him. "Yes, but I know that if I go there I'll just bring trouble for her. She doesn't deserve that." He barely kept his next words in, even though he knew they were the truth. She's better off without me, was trapped in his throat, and Izuku swallowed the words back down, sharp tacks dragging down his throat.
He shook his head, regret seeping into his tone. "But I just want to see her, to know that she's okay."
Even though he already knew she was safe, all he wanted to do was see her just once. He didn't know when he would get a chance other than this.
"Doesn't she have a police guard?"
"Well, yeah. Of course she does." Izuku snickered into his bandaged hand, "it would be stupid if they hadn't set it up after that spectacle I made before the raid." That and the sheer amount of violent threats he had thrown around the police station after they had picked him up from the Burger King after the raid.
Aizawa didn't want to admit that he had been impressed with Midoriya's explosive behavior at the raid, but he would be a liar if he said he wasn't. "Tell me where she is and we can go, I won't drag you back to UA until after then."
"You would come with me?" Izuku scoffed, narrowing his eyes as he tried to figure what the heroes game was. It was obvious he wasn't messing with him, but Izuku just couldn't be sure why he would help him out. He wasn't used to anyone in authority positions being trustworthy. "For real?"
"Anything to keep you from breaking out again," Aizawa said, hands in his pockets as he found himself following the teenager once again through more nondescript alleyways and behind beige office buildings and grey apartment complexes stained with the smudges of soot and smog.
None of the glass and steel of the larger, more populated, cities. The more protected and wealthy cities with regular hero patrols and public outreach programs meant to deter possible crime and those that would perpetuate it.
Izuku was almost surprised that he didn't need a map to navigate his way through the streets, even though it had been such a long time, this was still his home. He wouldn't say he knew it like the back of his hand, but it was more like a well-worn sweater, comfortable and easy.
Not complicated.
He muttered to himself with almost every step, all the things he wanted to say being choked out before he could finish them and make an even bigger fool of himself. Feelings were something he struggled with and he knew that wouldn't change any time soon.
This area of the city was nicer, Izuku noticed, apartment complexes bigger and grander, but with the same number of units. It was more upscale without being too high class. As the two got closer to their destination, Izuku began to take stock of the cars, security camera sightlines, any place where the shadows were deeper than the overall darkness and the patrol car parked on the end of the street.
He stopped in the middle of the street, metal spikes on his boots gouging stripes of the paint between the two lanes. "This is it," he said softly, unable to tear his eyes away from the soft yellowed glow of lamplight in the window.
It was beautiful.
Izuku backed out of the street, stumbling and nearly dropping himself to the pavement as his boots caught on the curb of the sidewalk. He pointed to the lighted window and he swore his heart stopped in his chest when he saw his mother silhouetted against the curtains by the lamplight.
He didn't even need to see her face to know it was her. It was instinctual, the ability of family to recognize one another without hesitation.
Curiosity piqued by Midoriya's sudden silence, Aizawa looked up at the apartment in time to see the shadow of the kids' mother pass by the window. He could almost feel the anguish and regret rolling off the teen in waves. Aizawa pushed his hands deeper into his pockets, not equipped to deal with something like this. He wasn't like the heroes in the public eye, the ones who always knew what to say in these sort of situations.
He wanted to find comforting words, say something about faith and the human spirit or the need to trust that things would be alright, but all he could get out was, "...you will take your assessment after this, right?"
"Pfft," Izuku snorted, he wasn't sure what the hero had been trying to say, but he knew it wasn't that. He shrugged, "we'll see what happens."
"Kid, why are you like this," Aizawa shook his head, his bangs falling over his eyes and he did nothing to remove them, exhaustion slowing his movement and at this point, he honestly was considering curling up on the sidewalk and hopefully finding a soft patch of concrete until Midoriya was done here.
"I dunno, no real father figure, I guess." Izuku shrugged once again, the action halfhearted, all his attention was focused on not taking his eyes from the window while patting down his pockets until he found what he was looking for. He pulled his pair of binoculars, the casing scuffed and scraped from the harsh treatment they had been through. Wincing, he held them to his face, watching the window closely.
The address had taken Izuku hours to track down. Well, it hadn't actually taken him any real time to track down, but he really owed Power of Love quite a bit for this one. He owed the hacker for more than just this.
Izuku sniffed, pushing down any emotion that threatened to rise as he watched the curtains be pulled side as Inko started her daily routine, so heavily altered than what it once had been. "I know she's safe, but she'd be safer if I wasn't such a fuck up."
"You're not a fuckup," Aizawa said instinctively, immediately regretting letting himself get pulled back into this. His exhaustion had destroyed his sense of self-preservation.
Izuku shook his head, "you're wrong about that." He chuckled derisively, watching Inko through the apartments front window. Watched as she put two cups of coffee onto the table before disappearing from his view once again. "I'm a colossal screw-up and that's all I'll ever be."
Aizawa watched Midoriya from the corner of his eye, almost able to feel the radiating negative energy. "Do you regret it," he said, not asking because he didn't expect an answer.
"Not a single thing," Izuku muttered, watching his breath fog as he watched the steam rise from the two coffee mugs on the table. Wait, two coffee mugs? Izuku narrowed his eyes, seeing red as he watched a second figure pass by the window. A very familiar figure.
"Hold on, is that Detective Tsukauchi? What the fuck is he doing in my mother's apartment!?" Izuku's hands shook, and his grip tightened on the binoculars to the point where the casing creaked. "Is he drinking coffee? What is he doing drinking coffee with my mother!"
"..." Aizawa shook his head, instinctively backing up a few steps. He wasn't getting involved in this, he wasn't even getting paid for this!
"I'm gonna kick his ass if he thinks he's gonna be trying anything." Izuku tucked the binoculars into the crook of his elbow before he reached into his sling, grabbing the knife he had stashed there. He swung the butterfly open with a flick of his wrist, the black blade shining dully in the early light. "I refuse to accept this!'
"I don't know what's happening, but I am terrified right now." In all honesty, Aizawa wasn't sure why he was so surprised that Midoriya had a knife on his person. He just hadn't expected it to be inside of his sling.
"Well, you shouldn't be. But Detective Dumbass should!" Izuku's grip on his blade was too tight, the bare metal of the handle biting through his bandages. "You know what?"
Izuku took a deep breath, narrowly avoiding stabbing himself in the cheek when he tried to run his fingers through his hair, the knife still clasped tight in his grip. He shook his head, flipping the knife back closed, stowing it back in his sling. "You know what, whatever. If mom wants to do whatever it is they're doing, she can go ahead."
His hands were still shaking as he put the binoculars back to his eyes. "I'll just have to make sure Detective Jackass knows his place."
"..." Aizawa took another step back, considering calling Detective Tsukauchi and telling him to leave the city and possibly even the country before Midoriya murdered him with his bare hands. He should also probably warn him that Midoriya would also probably get away with it because there wouldn't be a body left once he was done.
But at the same time, he really wanted to watch this unfold, drama better than he could ever pay to see on tv.
His anger finally cooling to a low simmer, a level he was familiar with, Izuku shook his head, still watching his mother and Detective Tsukauchi drink coffee. He scowled when he saw Inko laugh and rest her hand on the detective's arm, the two far closer than he liked. Keeping his seething rage down, he sighed, pulling his binoculars from his face and stowing them in his hoodie pocket.
He hung his head, a wave of regret washing over him. He shouldn't have come here. "You shouldn't have let me come here. I shouldn't be anywhere near her."
Aizawa nodded, pulling one hand from his pocket to pat the kid on the shoulder, missing his target as Midoriya stepped back off the sidewalk and into the street. "We should be getting back to UA, kid."
Izuku pulled up his hood, casting his face into its shadow. "Yeah whatever, fuck you too."
Aizawa shook his head at the even colder shoulder he was being given now, subzero temperatures. "I'm trying to be nice to you."
"Nice is for suckers and idiots who don't know any better," Izuku fired back immediately, almost as if he had rehearsed the line over and over again in front of the mirror until it was reflex. And a convincing reflex at that.
And do what if he had? He didn't really believe it, but the rest of the world thought that he did. He couldn't afford to step out of the box he had been put in.
Falling back into step beside the teen, Aizawa shot him a sidelong glance, frowning at his words. "Is that the real reason you act like such a jerk all the time? You think being nice makes you weak?"
It didn't make sense to him, kindness was one of the few things that made humanity strong. Kindness and mercy, the ability to empathize, mankind did amazing things because of those traits.
Izuku rolled his eyes in the darkness under his hood, "Hey man, don't try to analyze me, I don't need that until after lunch. Tch, but, yeah. You're right." He glanced to the side, only seeing the underground here's feet past the fabric of his hood. "You know the… truth about me, right?
Aizawa nodded, watching as Midoriya's shoulders pulled tight with tension. "You mean your… quirk?"
With a nod, Izuku responded, "or lack thereof." He scoffed, "I was always the weirdo who didn't have a quirk, if I dared to think I was equal, I would get put back in my place with extreme prejudice. Until I stopped giving a fuck about social niceties, I would get my ass kicked on a weekly basis."
"So you think you have to be meaner than everyone else? You think you have to prove yourself?" Maybe he did get it, just a little bit.
"I don't think it, I know it. Cruelty is the only way to get ahead in the world, it's celebrated and praised." Izuku snorted his words and sounds cynical and sarcastic. "I think I'm the best example of humanities worst."
Aizawa raised an eyebrow, at his words and the almost flat way he said them. "You're a real cynic, aren't you," he asked, not expecting an answer.
Knowing it was a rhetorical question, Izuku still answered it. "Yep, I sure am. You are too, aren't you." Izuku sighed, forcing back a yawn as they continued down the streets towards the train station. "And if you aren't, you should be. You and me, we get to see the true face of humanity when we're working, yeah? See the way people treat each other when they think they're never going to see the consequences of their actions."
Fighting the urge to roll his eyes, Aizawa began counting the footsteps until the two of them would reach the train station. "I was wrong, you're not a cynic, you're a nihilist. A pessimist of the worst sort."
Walking a little faster as they approached the train station, the early morning crowd filing in behind them, Izuku shot back with a: "I like to call myself a realist." He shrugged, not bothering to take out his wallet, instead jumping the turnstile leading into the train station. "Let's get out of here."
"Whatever you say, kid." Aizawa shook his head, tapping his subway card and pushing his way through the turnstile after the teen. The two of them sat at a distance from the other, but still close enough to talk. Once Midoriya settled in, possibly even asleep as soon as he had leaned back in his seat, Aizawa leaned over, raising his voice slightly to be heard over the commotion of incoming passengers. "You know, I don't think you're crazy."
Izuku laughed, a harsh barking sound even in the crowded car. "That's where you're wrong, very, very, wrong." He chuckled again, leaning further into his seat and settling in for the ride back to UA. "Very wrong."
Izuku stretched his good arm above his head and shook himself to clear his mind before he went back into his shared room. He could hear the others in the dorms already waking and beginning their morning routines, the building coming alive as the sun crawled up over the horizon towards its zenith.
With a yawn, he opened the door and trudged inside, checking the time on his phone and stumbling over one of Dabi's boots and slamming into the floor with full force, smacking himself in the face with his phone as he went down. "Mother fucker," he hissed, rolling onto his back and just lying there for a moment before collecting himself and getting back onto his feet.
7:14 am, Himiko and Dabi should both be up by now even without Izuku there to wake them.
Even if they were still asleep, they had over forty minutes before Himiko needed to get to class and Izuku needed to hand over his lesson plan. Izuku might hate this place and wish he was on Murderers Row alongside megalo-manic supervillains than be teaching, but he did like the later start to the day.
"Wakey, wakey, Himiko," he said in a sing-song voice, kicking the side of the bed through the canvas of the tent with the side of his boot once he remembered he was still wearing his spiked soles and toecap.
From within the depths of the green fabric came a garbled, "Hrmmh. Fleh."
Izuku snorted, shoulders shaking with unrestrained laughter. He kicked the bed again before grabbing one of the tent poles and shaking it, the canvas wobbling. "Come on, up you get!"
Again came the indecipherable sound, muffled as if the person who was making it had their face smushed into someone's chest. "Eat, mrhs."
Izuku wasn't sure he wanted to know who was making the sound at this point, he would be traumatized either way. But against his better judgement, he leaned closer, peeking into the tents dark depths. "What?"
"I said, eat mergh, hmhnns." Izuku could tell now that it was Himiko making the incomprehensible sounds, but the noise of Dabi's snoring wasn't helping her out much.
"What?"
Sitting up and not even bothering to open his eyes, Dabi threw his pillow into Izuku's face, sending him stumbling back a few steps. "Oh my god, she said, 'eat my ass!'" Dabi's proclamation was followed by a heavy thwump as he flopped back onto the mattress.
Izuku shook his head, stopping once he realized Himiko couldn't see him. "Oh. No thanks. Now get up, you're getting into classes today." Izuku threw the pillow back as he pushed his way into the tent, bracing himself on the elbow of his bad arm as he used the other to try and snatch the blankets away from Himiko. "Up you get!"
Himiko just rolled over, pulling the covers up over her head. "Go away, I was awake earlier." But without Izuku already up and training, she had found it far too easy to simply lie back down and fall asleep again, lulled into dreams by Dabi's sleep-muttering and furnace-like heat.
A tugging at her feet made her sit up and Himiko looked down to see Izuku trying to pull her from the bed with just one hand only to step on the toe of his own boot and fall flat onto his ass. "Fiiine, I'm getting up." She sighed dramatically, cracking her back as she yanked her feet back and crawled out of the tent.
From the floor, as he tried to avoid getting stepped on by Himiko, Izuku called back quietly to Dabi, even though there was no point in trying to be quiet after all of that. "Dabi, you get back to sleep and I'll wake you in an hour."
"Mrngh," was the only sound he got in return, followed by Dabi pulling the blanket up over his head and cocooning himself into the tent, perhaps permanently this time.
Izuku pushed himself back to his feet once again, his bruises now throbbing with fresh waves of pain from their rough treatment. He turned to Himiko, watching as she selected her uniform from the cloths in the laughably small closet. Well, it hadn't seemed to be that small before the renovations, but now it was just comical. "So, you going to wear the full uniform," he asked with curiosity, knowing of Himiko's hatred for the fabric.
Himiko shrugged, "I hate the skirt, it's texture hell." She didn't have any other way to describe it, the skirt was neither smooth nor rough, but it felt as if it snagged between every skin cell and ridge of her fingerprints whenever she touched it.
"Well, just wear leggings under it. you can't borrow my pants again, they're still bloody."
Draping her uniform, skirt and all, over the back of the couch, Himiko stretched her arms above her head, her back cracking for the second time that morning. Her arms shook, but she kept them there, stretching her joints and removing the stiffness of sleep. "Maybe a different pair? How about the black jeans?"
"You're not even going to pretend to follow the uniform rule?" Izuku sighed and shook his head, knowing that he couldn't let her get away with it. He couldn't set that precedent because once he started teaching, he would be looked down on for preferential treatment. And if he was letting Himiko break the uniform rules, would have to let others do the same and he just knew it would turn into a huge mess resulting in someone getting a broken arm.
Probably himself.
"Maybe I'll wear the skirt, but I'll be Dabi. Or you!"
From the tent, Dabi called out, "you can't be me, I didn't give you any blood!"
"Didn't you?"
"No?" Dabi's eyebrows drew together in concern as he remembered what Himiko had said when his brain had been addled by painkillers and a concussion. Hadn't she said she had some of his blood? When had she taken it? Did she take it right from his veins? From his open wounds?
Dabi's eye went wide with horrifying possibilities dancing around his head. "What did you do?"
Izuku sighed dramatically, the sound undermined by the grin he wore. He rolled his eyes, "I'll give you some of my own blood if you quit scaring Dabi."
Himiko shook her head in refusal, "but I already have your blood."
"How did you get my blood," Izuku asked quietly, not sure if he wanted an answer. He was willing to accept that she had stolen Dabi's blood, but not his own!
Himiko just grinned evilly, but she said nothing.
Izuku shook as he resisted the urge to run over to the mirror and check himself for new bite marks or stab wounds. His voice wavered slightly and he nervously tugged on the strap of his sling, "well, that's terrifying."
Himiko somehow grinned wider, teeth shining in the morning sun, the sight chilling enough to inspire Izuku to pull up his hood for some sort of protection. Even with his hood up, a rogue chill ran down Izuku's spine and he muttered, "shut up," even though Himiko had said nothing.
Chuckling sinisterly, Himiko turned away and stripped off her sleep shirt, folding it and setting it aside before tugging on the straps of her sports bra. She turned back, "oh, Izuku-
"Oh my god, put your tits away!" Izuku all but shrieked, pulling his hood down to cover his eyes.
Himiko giggled, "what, like this?" She cackled as she tugged her sports bra off over her head, dropping it to the floor.
"Ak! No!" Izuku pulled the hood down again, having stupidly lifted it to look and see what Himiko had done. "That's the opposite of what I said!"
"What, they can't hurt you!"
"They can hurt my brain!"
From within the tent came a quiet, "...I really didn't want to hear any of that." Dabi was thankful he hadn't seen any of that, but maybe just hearing it had made it worse, somehow, his imagination doing its best to scar him for life.
Himiko crossed her arms over her chest, "Dabi, you're just jealous because you're flat!"
"What?" Dabi sat up, pressing his face against the tent canvass and scowling dramatically enough to be seen through the fabric. "I don't, that doesn't… go away!"
"Himiko, please put a shirt on!" Izuku kept his face hidden in his own shoulder as he shoved Himiko's undershirt into her hands. "You're mentally traumatizing Dabi," he added, saying nothing about the cherry red hue his face had turned.
"Hey, he was already like that before I took my shirt off." Himiko rolled her eyes, picking her sports bra back up from the floor with her foot, barely keeping herself from tossing it into Izuku's face. "Come on, let's get ready."
"That's what I've been telling you to do!" Izuku groaned, flopping himself down into his desk chair, keeping his face turned away from Himiko until he could be sure she had her shirt back on.
He busied himself by collecting his papers and pens for the day, tucking his lesson plan into a folder and folding his letter of regret in half and pocketing it. Tapping his fingers on the desk, he swayed from side to side, trying not to turn around too soon. He let more time pass, tapping his toe in his boot. "Are you dressed yet?"
"As much as I'm going to be." Himiko waited for Izuku to turn around, and she spun on her heel, her arms spread wide. "What do you think," she asked, gesturing to herself.
Her brown loafers, her knee-high black socks paired with a pair of skintight black shorts that ended just above her knee. She didn't wear the tie with her uniform, hating the way it was just on the side of too snug around her neck.
"...You look like a hero student," Izuku grumbled, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. He didn't know how to say this, but Himiko might actually be the only person to make that uniform look good.
"Thanks," Himiko grinned, all but sparkling cheerily. "So, while Dabi's sleeping, I'll make a pot of coffee," she said through a yawn as she picked up the coffee pot and switched on the hotplate, stumbling over the uneven florin where the walls had once been. The remaining tiny bathroom was her destination and she turned on the sink, filling the metal pot with cold water.
"Make it as black as my soul," Izuku yawned in return, muttering curses under his breath as he realized he had just caught Himiko's yawn. He stood, following her into the tiny bathroom and waiting for Himiko to finish filling the coffee pot. Once she was done, Izuku ran his hands under the sink and he splashed cold water on his face and shook it back off like a dog.
Himiko stopped, blinking at Izuku tiredly before turning off the faucet. "Sorry, I don't know how to make tar," she replied as she set the pot on the hotplate, the drips of water sliding down the metal and hissing on the heated surface.
"I'll make breakfast. Wait, hold on." He fumbled in his pockets, pulling out a burrito. "Want a pocket burrito?"
"Yeah, you can't screw that up," Himiko barely kept from rolling her eyes at the memories of Izuku's beyond awful cooking. She had never seen a pan of onions and carrots explode before she had seen Izuku try to cook.
"Just you watch me!" Izuku continued to pull wrapped burritos from his pockets, piling them on the coffee table in a neat pyramid.
Himiko just stared in her sleep addled haze, "...how many burritos are in your pockets?"
Izuku counted the ones on the coffee table, "about seven? There were more earlier." He waited patiently for Himiko to make a decision, his eyes flitting back to the coffee pot with every hiss and pop that came from it.
With a shrug, Himiko put out her hand, "okay, give me two." Himiko unwrapped the first one, pausing halfway through. "Why is it warm," she asked, not certain if she really wanted an answer.
"Keyword. Pocket."
"Gross," Himiko muttered seconds before biting into the 'gross' burrito. She spoke around a mouthful of chicken and rice, ignoring the look of horrified disgust on Izuku's face. "So, where did you go?"
Izuku froze while pulling another burrito from his pocket. "Ah, so you noticed?" He had hoped his absence wouldn't have been noticed until later at the least, or the best, not at all.
He avoided Himiko's gaze, busying himself with filing himself a cup of coffee as soon as the pot was done, the cup he had picked up was one that had needed to be desperately washed over a week ago, by now the beige ceramic was coated in a nearly impenetrable layer of grit and coffee residue.
Ignoring the way Izuku avoided her, Himiko continued on. "Only because Dabi woke up again, looked me dead in the eye and said, 'I'm sexually attracted to the Terminator,' and went back to sleep." Himiko shuddered, "I couldn't sleep after I heard that."
Ans she wasn't sure she even wanted to sleep after that, just out of the fear for what might invade her dreams.
"What." Alright, so maybe Izuku was glad he had missed… that. There were some things that were just too traumatic for him to handle. Unfortunately, he had questions, even though he wished he didn't. With a sigh, Izuku closed his eyes and asked, "like, is he interested in the Terminator when it has its fake skin?" He sipped the coffee, scowling as he felt his tongue burn from the heat. But even with his new injury, he had more questions and he really didn't want this one answered, but he had to ask. "Or when it doesn't?"
His cheeks heated, but he continued on. "And. What version? I for one like the second one, you know, living metal shapeshifter. Something hot about that."
"Yeah, those are two very different things." Himiko shook her head, chuckling. "Remember when he said he would fuck an alien?"
"...yes?" Izuku narrowed his eyes in suspicion, "why? What are you going to do?"
"...I'm just going to mess with him a little!"
"Himiko, what are you planning?"
"Subliminal messaging when he's asleep."
"No."
"I'm just going to make him think aliens won't think humans are sexy!"
Izuku nearly choked himself with his rush to say, "no," coffee trying to make its way into his lungs as he did so. He shook his head, coughing into his hand before proclaiming, "no way in hell, I don't need that drama in my life."
Himiko rolled her eyes, "fine, I'll just tell him his Jack the Ripper theory is baseless and built around heavily biased opinion instead of fact."
Izuku dropped his head onto the coffee table with a thud, sending a shockwave of pain through his bruises. "Oh god, not this again."
"He thinks it was the work of a few of the different suspects that were brought up after the fact, but I have a counter theory." Himiko snickered, barely keeping herself from bursting into laughter. "Now, I don't actually believe it, but it's damn good!"
"Oh no." Izuku groaned, dragging his hand over his face. As he pulled his hand away, Izuku glanced towards the window, debating whether it was worth it to just jump out and run away from this entire conversation. But seeing as the window was still locked and he didn't want glass all over the place, he just sighed dramatically and resigned himself to his fate. "Ugh, fine, what's the theory."
He grumbled under his breath as he poured himself a second cup of coffee, knowing it wasn't going to be his last one of the day. "It better be worth me getting dragged into this shit again." In all honesty, he was sick and tired of the Jack the Ripper Debate, Himiko always coming up with more and more wild theories while Dabi just stuck to his guns with his own. He was just so tired of it and he refused to join, no matter how tempting it could be.
Izuku sighed, taking another drink, one again singeing his tongue. He gestured vaguely with the cup, hoping to prompt Himiko to continue.
"Instead of Kelly or Kaminsky, or even Lechmere and Levy, I have a theory that will have him out of it for days while he tries to prove me wrong!" Himiko raised her fist and shook it in faux rage. She just wanted to win, one, just one, the debate on this. "Maybe, just maybe, it was a serial killer that went on to kill many more across only one ocean. A killer who had claimed to be in Whitechapel at the time of the murders and had a confirmed kill count of nine and confessed to over twenty once he was arrested!"
Oh no, Izuku thought, it was far too early for this. He didn't want to, but he found himself asking, "where are you going with this?"
"To an insane, highly improbable, but still possible conclusion!" Himiko brandished a hairbrush that Izuku hadn't even realized she had carried with her from the room. "Doctor H.H. Holmes, creator of the Murder Castle!"
Damnit, Izuku knew he should have jumped out the window. He closed his eyes, hoping when he opened them, he would see that this entire fucked up morning had been a long, weird, dream. But when he opened his eyes and saw Himiko just standing there with a grin on her face, he asked weakly, "...murder castle?"
"He built a two-story 'hotel,' refused to pay the builders and is rumored to have been used at an elaborate killing machine. Not true at all, but still, who doesn't love the idea of a murder house?" Himiko rolled her eyes, "acid pits and spikes in the walls. Pft."
"Most people other than you and me?" But really, he would love a murder castle of his own. Swinging blades and spinning saws, spike-filled pitfalls and secret passages and hatches filled with venomous snakes. He sighed, lost in fantasies of metal and glass.
"Point, but not my point." Himiko narrowed her eyes, seeing that Izuku wasn't paying any attention to her. She kicked him in the shin to get his attention, easily dodging his sloppily aimed flick of retaliation. "That, and the man would lie about everything, claiming to have killed people who were still alive and claiming that some people that he killed weren't dead at all. He claimed in his diaries, these were actually verified as his, but the contents? Eh," Himiko shrugged vaguely, attempting to convey how little faith she had in the accounts of the historical killer. "He claimed he was Jack the Ripper, but who knows if he was even in Whitechapel at the time?"
The man had also claimed he was possessed by Satan himself, so he obviously wasn't a reliable source of information. But she wasn't going to mention that unless she was directly asked.
Izuku finally shook himself from his thoughts once he realized those ideas were circling the drain that emptied into the sewer of super-villainy. "For fuck's sake, why are you doing this?" He pressed his good hand over his eyes, pushing until he saw white lights that burnt the last of his dark thoughts away. "And why are you putting so much effort into it."
"Because Dabi needs to be kept busy," Himiko said, brushing the curls pressed from sleep out of her hair. "His theories are probably right, lot of evidence pointing that way, but he needs to keep busy or he'll lose his shit and climb into the vents and set up a base of operations in there."
"Okay, good point." Izuku nodded, horrified by what Dabi would be capable off without any sort of supervision. "A good, if terrifying, point."
"Or he'll start a podcast chronicling his adventures in cryptid hunting."
"Oh," Izuku frowned, then shrugged as he turned that idea over in his mind. "I think I would actually listen to that."
Himiko nodded with agreement then immediately waved away her own admission of begrudging admiration. "I would too, but that's not the point."
"I do want to listen to any podcast he would create."
"Right?" Himiko set down her now empty coffee cup before pushing herself back to her feet, grabbing Izuku by the crook of his elbow and tugging him up after her. "Just the level of dedication he would bring to it, like damn."
"Help me with my hair then walk me to class."
"Okay." Izuku wasn't sure how well he could braid with just the one hand, but he was still going to try. "One braid, in buns, ponytail?"
"Surprise me," Himiko said, waving to him vaguely before stepping into the bathroom once again, picking her toothbrush from the glass beside the sink.
"Oho, bad decision!" Wrestling for a minute with the sling, Izuku managed to pull it over his head, dropping it to the back of the couch and stretching his injured arm up and over his head, elbow and shoulder crunching from the limited use. "Yowch, mother fucker," he hissed, rubbing his shoulder with his good hand as he worked on getting the feeling back into his arm.
Calling out from the bathroom, a slight echo distorting her words, Himiko asked, "should you really be taking your sling off?"
"It's just a sling," Izuku responded, nearly his entire body singing with relief from freeing himself from that blue trap of death of the sling. He planned on going to see if Recovery Girl would change her mind about healing him, but he already knew what her answer would be. It would be a swift smack to the shin with her cane and he would be lucky if that's all it was. If he was unlucky, it would be that and a smack to the head to go with it.
Thinking of ways he could try to convince the old woman to change her mind, bribery, blackmail and possible threats of bludgeoning, Izuku busied himself with tracking down Himiko's hairbrush and after a few minutes, he found it tucked in the bookshelf next to a heavily dog-eared copy of The Master and the Margarita.
Izuku wasn't sure where the book had come from, but he was pretty sure it was Dabi's. After all, nobody else had an obsession with pre-quirk literature that he did. Unless Himiko had an interest in russian satire that he didn't know about.
Then again, maybe it was his own, he had ended up with more than a few books that he had taken off of unconscious criminals. That and he had picked up quite a few knives and he now had more duct tape wallets than he knew what to do with.
Criminals around here really seemed to like their duct tape wallets.
Izuku pulled himself from his musings, taking the brush in hand and waiting behind the couch for Himiko to sit back down.
"So I'm thinking a french braid," Izuku said, beginning to run the brush through Himiko's blonde hair, slowly the pale strands into the two sections. With each stroke, his wrist twinged slightly, but he couldn't describe the mental relief that came with being able to move his hand again. "You nervous," he asked as he slowly began incorporating the next layer into the braid.
"I would be stupid not to be," Himiko shrugged, brushing her bangs out of her eyes. "I know I'm just going to be in Gen Ed, but I think I want to try and get into the heroics program by next year."
Izuku raised an eyebrow, patting down his pockets for a hair tie, only finding one bright pink tie in his back pocket. He didn't want to voice his dislike of the hero course, he knew how much Himiko wanted this and his own opinion didn't matter right now.
So he just listened as Himiko rambled on, nodding and making soft noises of confirmation at the appropriate places. Things were changing so quickly.
He felt almost as if he had come around full circle, back to the beginning of it all, just from a new perspective. A perspective he would never have even knew existed three years ago.
Softly, Izuku ran his fingers through Himiko's hair, his mind wandering back to the beginning.
Everything used to be so black and white, heroes and villains, good and evil. But it's all just shades of grey and the closest to white that anyone can come is a weird beige.
But he was getting off topic and he was coming close to ruining the braid he had just finished. Slowly, he pulled his hands away from Himiko's hair and instead set one hand on her shoulder. "So, that's… that?"
"Thank's Izuku," Himiko sighed, looking down at her folded hands on her lap. She closed her eyes for a moment, finding herself lost in the moment of impossible stillness. "I don't know if I'm ready for this. I'm scared that I'm going to screw things up and prove my parents right."
"No," Izuku said firmly, his grip on Himiko's shoulder tightening. "You're going to stand up," he walked around to stand in front of Himiko, taking her hand and pulling her to her feet. "You're going to go into that classroom and everyone is going to be jealous of how cool you are and how smart you are."
Himiko snorted, but she had to admit Izuku's words were working. She watched as he tugged his sling back over his head, picked up his folder from his desk and tucked it into his sling, filled up his third cup of coffee and took it in his injured hand before he took Himiko's hand into his own and pulled her behind him and out the door.
"You're going to go into that classroom," he said again as the two went down the hall. "And everyone is going to know that you are an amazing person with talent, intelligence, grace and an extraordinary ferocity and tenacity."
"Oh my god," Himiko hid her face in her hands, cheeks burning under Izuku's heavy praise. "Shut up!" She smacked Izuku in the shoulder, laughing freely at his look of indignation. "...thanks," she said, the two of them stepping into the elevator, the day official beginning. "Love you."
"Love you too, Himiko."
It wasn't supposed to be like this. But Himiko only had herself to blame for not paying attention to her surroundings while walking to class.
"Ha ha! Enjoy your new life in hellll!" Izuku pushed Himiko into the door of her new classroom before sprinting back down the hall, crashing into and spilling his coffee on people as he ran, cackling wildly the entire way. "You're a herooooo!"
"Izuku, you bastard!" Himiko gripped her bag in her hands tightly, turning back to the watching eyes of class 1-A. "Uh… Hu, hi? I guess I'm going to be in the hero course full time?"
"Really? I thought you were in General Studies." Shinsou didn't know why, but he liked the idea of the blood-obsessed girl being a member of his class. Maybe it was because the two of them had quirks more suited to villainy, but they were both desperate to prove the naysayers wrong.
Or maybe it was the way she happily beat people with a sledgehammer…
Either way, he was glad he had someone similar to himself. Shinsou turned and gestured to the empty seat behind his own where Mineta used to sit before Midoriya had flexed his authority muscles and expelled him.
Himiko made her way to the desk nervously, barely keeping her hands from shaking and her feet from tripping over themselves. "So did I, but since Mineta was expelled, I guess your class needed a twentieth." She just wished she hadn't been tricked into it. Finally, she sat in the offered seat, setting her bag on her desk.
"I'm glad it's you and not that crazy kid from 1-B," Shinsou said, leaning his elbow on Toga's desk. "You know who I mean, yeah?"
"You mean Monoma?" Himiko frowned, reminding herself to apologize to the blond later on. She had overreacted back at the camp, pulling out a knife that she wasn't even supposed to have and threatening to peel his face off and wear it like a mask.
Shinsou nodded, "yeah, he's terrifying but only because he's so completely nuts." Shinsou hadn't had as many interactions with Monoma as the others in 1-A, but what he had seen in that short time was enough to permanently sour his opinion.
Leaning over from his own seat beside Toga's, Tokoyami asked flatly, "are you two talking about Monoma?"
"Yes, he's crazy, isn't he," Himiko responded, wondering just what it was that Monoma had done to get him so universally disliked. She relaxed into her seat as she finally reined in her panic and worry.
Nobody here thought she was a monster or a future villain, everyone here thought she was someone that could work with and trust. And maybe befriend one day?
"Indeed, his mental state is a cause for concern," Tokoyami nodded sagely, discreetly taking a closer look at his new seat neighbor. He hadn't really spoken to her before this and hoped that the two of them could become friends.
And if what he had seen about her interests in the videos on HeroView, they had quite a bit in common. A shared love of gothic literature, vampiric poetry and the grim and macabre.
Unknowingly interrupting his thoughts, Himiko leaned closer to the bird-headed teen. "How do you keep your feathers so shiny?"
Tokoyami blinked rapidly, trying and failing to show his surprise. "Excuse me?"
"They're so pretty, how do you do it?"
"Uh, special grooming tools and lots of special order oil." Tokoyami chuckled nervously, glancing around him for any sort of assistance. "How did we get from Monoma to my personal grooming?"
"I lost interest in the conversation," Himiko said cheerily, waving away the rolled eyes and overdramatic sigh from Shinsou. She leaned even closer to Tokoyami, raising a hand. "Can I feel? They're so shiny! Like an oil spill, choking out all life and leaving toxic rainbows."
Shinsou backed away as much as his desk would let him, watching the girl in terror. "That's your idea of a compliment?" That sounded more like a threat!
"Yes?" Himiko wasn't sure what Shinsou's problem was, that was a completely normal thing to say, right?
"Thank you, that's the nicest thing anyone's said about my feathers for a long time." Tokoyami nodded, lowering his head and closing his eyes when he felt gentle brushing of the feathers covering what would be a forehead in any other human. He reopened his eyes, watching the look of wonder and delight on her face.
"So soft…" Himiko whispered, smoothing the feathers under her fingertips. "Wow."
"Seriously, you think it's a compliment too?" Shinsou sighed dramatically, dropping his head onto his folded arms and hiding his face from the nonsense. "Fucking goth weirdos."
Himiko snickered and finally took her hand back, grinning widely. The moment, strange as it was, was broken, both of them resettling in their chairs. Until Himiko turned around in her seat, sitting up on her knees as she leaned a little too close to the person behind her. "Yaoyorozu-chan, I wanted to thank you for the knife you made me!"
Yaoyorozu blushed under the praise, stammering out a reply. "Oh, I'm glad you like it. It was a more complicated blade, so I was a little worried I did a bad job. And making the leather grip along with the two different grades of steel-"
Himiko laughed, trying to wave away Yaoyorozu's concerns. "No, it's great, you did an amazing job!" She hadn't had much of a chance to test the blade side from threatening Monoma back at camp, but whenever she held it, she could just feel that it was a good blade.
"So, who's the Class President up in this joint?" Himiko physically cringed as soon as those words left her mouth, she sounded like Dabi, and she vowed that Dabi would never hear about what she had just said.
"I am," Yaoyorozu said meekly, raising one hand and smiling slightly.
"Best one I've ever know," Shinsou added, chuckling when he saw the blush blossom into being on her face. "Smartest too. There's a reason she's top of the class," he continued, laying on the praise just to see how red she could get.
"Oh, good. I thought it might be Iida-kun." Himiko raised both her hands in an attempt to fend off any misinterpretations. "Nothing against him, but he just seems very uptight!"
"You wouldn't be wrong," Shinsou interjected, trying and failing to keep his laughter quiet behind his hand. "He's also the class Vice President."
"Oh jeez." Himiko hissed through her teeth, a guilty look on her face. She sat back down, lowering her head before immediately perking back up. "So, I… have no idea what I'm supposed to say now. Don't tell him I think that he has a stick up his ass."
"Ooh," Shinsou glanced across the room, taking in the disappointed look on Iida's face and the poorly hidden giggling from Uraraka. "...I think he heard you."
Actually, he was pretty sure everyone had heard her.
"Kero, I have a question," Tsuyu said, suddenly appearing at the edge of Himiko's vision as if she had popped up out of nothingness.
"Gyah!" Himiko jerked in her seat, eyes going wide with surprise. She pressed both her hands to her chest, her heart pounding at her ribs from the shock. "Uh, okay?"
Bluntly, Tsuyu asked a question she had asked once before, certain the answer was exactly as she had assumed it to be the first time. "So, are the three of you dating yet?"
"Sort of," Himiko answered, gesturing vaguely with one hand, trying to convey the complex dynamic the Terrible Three shared.
If anyone else had asked her this, she wouldn't have answered, hiding her feelings behind a joke or a threat of blood. But she and Tsuyu had bonded in the forest along with the others that had been in their group.
"How can you 'sort of' be dating someone," Shinsou asked, brows drawn together in confusion.
"Uh, well, one time I used Dabi as a synonym for 'gross,' so I'm not interested on that end." Himiko pressed her hands to her cheeks, a furious blush burning her skin once she realized she was airing her personal life in front of everyone.
With her hands to her face, she couldn't see the expression of relief on Shouto's face, the teen thankful that his brother wasn't dating that one as well. Midoriya was bad enough in Shouto's opinion, and he didn't need or want, to be involved in his older brothers dramatic love life.
Tsuyu nodded, blinking slowly before asking, "and what about Midoriya?"
"Izuku? Uh, well. Of course, Izuku and I are…I don't know what we are," Himiko said, slumping in her seat slightly when she couldn't stop herself from answering.
Yaoyorozu leaned forward, invested in the conversation even if she didn't want to be. "What do you mean?"
"Well, Dabi and Izuku are… something. Something really weird. Lot's of sexual tension ever since I met them." Himiko shook her head, "they have a bond I can't ever touch. And they had a bit of a talk, but I don't think either of them knows what they're doing."
"And what about you?" Tsuyu leaned against the side of Himiko's desk, continuing her line of questioning. "Do you know what you're doing?"
Himiko shook her head again, "uh, no. I don't really know. I love Izuku, I really do. He's the greatest person I know, he's my hero!"
"Gay," Shinsou whispered under his breath, needing to say something to distance himself from the lovestruck looks of nearly everyone looking in the direction of the ex-vigilante.
"How sweet," Yaoyorozu said dreamily. She might not be looking for that sort of impossible love, but that didn't mean she didn't appreciate the fact that it existed.
Tempted to vomit from the sappy sweetness, Shinsou asked, "have you told him this?" He groaned once he realized he had been pulled into this, wishing he could take back what he had just said.
Himiko nodded once, casting her gaze to the desktop. "I just don't know how all three of us are going to work together. Like, we're a team, best friends. We're family, but it's more than that. Like soulmates, or something."
She kept her gaze downcast, not seeing the looks on the faces of those around her. "We all look out for each other, make sure nobody gets hurt. Keep each other on the right path."
"Wow, that's beautiful. It sounds so amazing," Yaoyorozu sighed, clasping her hands over her heart. "Like something out of a classic romance!"
Tsuyu smiled, her features not showing her slight sense of smugness, but it was still given away by her posture. "So I was right then." She did like being right every once in a while.
"Huh?" Himiko tilted her head, eyes going wide once she realized what Tsuyu was referring to.
Shinsou furrowed his brow, remembering the last time this conversation had been attempted. "Oh, yeah. Back at camp, remember?" He also recalled what had happened immediately after that conversation. The screaming, the poor attempts of misdirection, the implied violence.
It hadn't gone over very well.
"R-right, you were right then." She watched the other girl closely and asked, "how did you know?"
Even Himiko hadn't realized what was happening, it had just seemed so natural that she hadn't read into it at all.
Tsuyu glanced across the classroom, watching one person specifically, and said quietly, "some things you can just see when others can't. You were too close to the situation," she added before heading back to her desk.
Himiko nodded, wondering what else it was she might have missed by being to close. And who it was that was missing something because they were too close to Tsuyu.
Moments passed, filled with conversations being wrapped up before the first bell would ring. Almost at the same time as the bell, the classroom door opened once more, Aizawa strolling in, a thick manila folder in his hand which he immediately dumped onto his desk. "Everyone quiet down, class is in session." Aizawa stepped up to the lectern, exasperation rolling off of him in waves. "As you all can tell, we have a new student joining us, you all already know her so that's enough about that."
"And we will be resuming normal classes without hesitation, so if you have any questions, ask them now and ask them fast."
A flurry of movement and nearly half the class had their hands raised, but Himiko wasn't one of them, she was too busy reveling in the experience of being in a classroom where she wasn't feared but was accepted with open arms. It was nice, something she had never really had before.
She could get used to this.
Manila folder tucked under his arm and his coffee cup now in his good hand, Izuku pushed his way into the staff room. Only pausing for a few moments to top off his cup, Izuku took a folded piece of paper out of his sling and dropped it on the table in front of Aizawa. "Here's my letter of regret."
Aizawa took the paper, unfolding it just to fold it once again and hand it right back to Midoriya. He sighed, his will to live steadily whittling away the longer he spent with the teenager. "This is just a paper that says "I'm not sorry." He slumped back in his seat, irritated but also admiring the kids' ability to frustrate and do the least amount of work he could. "So what is this. You know this isn't what I meant."
Izuku just put the paper back on the table, pushing it towards Aizawa with his middle finger, ignoring the look of exhausted frustration that was sent his way. Just stared until the hero picked the note back up before continuing. "I'm not sorry, though. That fight was brutal, but it was the last one Bakugou and I might ever have."
The thought of that conflict finally coming to an end triggered an emotion in Izuku that he couldn't identify and didn't really want to. No more fights with Bakugou? It was a strange thought.
He shrugged off those feelings he couldn't quite identify, turning towards the sound of the opening door. With only a moment's hesitation, he grinned and nodded at the Voice Hero. "Hey, Presentation Microphone! Sup!"
Present Mic nodded, his trademark headphones and sunglasses around his neck and tucked into his shirt collar, respectively. "Hey, Midoriya! You're looking terrifying today!"
"Thanks, bitch!"
"Don't encourage him," Aizawa whispered, knowing that even if he could be heard, he would have been ignored.
Instinctively knowing what his friend would say, Yamada turned to Aizawa with a small frown. "Why not, this kid's scary, but he's ratings gold!"
Straining his bad hand and mirroring the action with the good, Izuku shot a pair of finger guns the way of the Voice Hero. "Damn right I am."
"I don't know why, but when you do finger guns, it's actually threatening," Yamada said, his instincts screaming at him to back away from this kid and to do it now or he would never get another chance.
"Sweet, that was my intention."
Aizawa groaned, dropping his head into his arms and considering just taking the day off to sleep. "Kid, you have so much potential, why do you have to act like such an ass all the time."
Izuku leaned against the table, smacking Aizawa in the shoulder with his folder. "You know why, I told you while forcing you to eat burritos while we watched the sunrise. I thought we bonded! I told you about my father issues!"
"...shut up."
He didn't want to be reminded of this morning, hadn't he suffered enough?
Yamada raised his eyebrows, glancing between the two, giggling slightly at his friends' misery and the ex-vigilantes manic glee. That dynamic was so familiar, he just couldn't quite put his finger on why. "So, as I was saying. Ratings gold. When can I get you and your crew back on the show?"
He didn't want to say it, but the station had been getting letters, actual letters! requesting one of the Terrible Three specifically. He didn't know why, but the crazies were coming out in full force calling for Dabi's return to talk about conspiracy theories. One had even gone so far as to ask if he could have his own segment!
It was madness!
He leaned in a little closer to try and prompt an answer, immediately leaning back when he smelled the stench of burritos, coffee, blood, metal, horrifying body odor, gun oil and powder.
Izuku snickered at the look of disgust on the hero's face, he hasn't changed his clothes since the night before. He took a sip of coffee, scowling once he realized it was cheap swill. Couldn't UA afford better than this?
He rolled his eyes when he saw Present Mic still staring at him. "When I'm ready to drop my single!"
"What."
"Yes, what he just said." Aizawa looked up from the table, hoping, nearly praying that the kid was joking.
Izuku shrugged, "I want to be famous for both my music and my radical policies on heroics." He kept a straight face, wondering if they thought that he was joking right now.
Yamada laughed, smacking the kid in the shoulder playfully. "You want to have it all, don't you? I can respect that."
Aizawa dropped his head back to the table with a thunk. "...my brain hurts. I'm going to take a nap."
With a nod and a mocking salute with his coffee cup, Izuku wandered away from the table and towards his next victim. "A'ight, I'll be going over my lesson plan with Vlad King. I'm gonna terrorize 1-B on Monday."
Burdened with a naturally curious mind, Yamada couldn't help but have questions. "What are you going to do to them?"
Izuku grinned, the expression more of a leer with bared teeth and his top lip curled in a snarl. If he had both his hands free he would have rubbed them together menacingly before cackling loudly. "Oh, they're going to see what heroes don't deal with. Something much more terrifying than any villain."
Present Mic took a step back, glancing to Aizawa for some form of help, already knowing that help would never come. "What do you mean?"
"Real violence. Real crime. Real fear."
"Whoah, there, what do you mean?"
With a one-shouldered shrug, Izuku turned back around to face the Voice Hero fully. "I'm going to create a fairly common situation, but one that heroes are never trained for. Well, American heroes are, but you know how much of a hellscape that country is."
Yamada paused, thinking over the potential benefits from learning first hand about criminal behavior. "Okay, but don't kill anyone!"
Izuku spun on his heel, chuckling sinisterly. "Eh, heh. No promises!"
"What? No! Yes promises!"
"Later haters." He raised up a victory v high enough to be seen over his shoulder, prompting an exacerbated sigh from the hero he was snubbing. With a loud huff of breath, Izuku dropped himself onto the couch across from Vlad King, kicking his boots against the legs of the coffee table. "Sup, Kan? How's your dog?"
Kan didn't look up from the papers in front of him, still reading over essays and marking incorrect punctuation with a red pen. "How do you know I have a dog? And don't call me Kan."
Izuku pointed to the Blood Hero's boots and the few short hairs clinging to his pant leg. "You have hair on your boots, too short to be a cat, and there's mud caked into the seams of your boots, but uh, some of the mud on the sole? That's not mud."
"Damn it, gross." Kan grimaced and tried to avoid looking at the sole of his shoe and avoid touching in on anything. He sighed heavily, giving up and dropping his foot back down. "What do you want, Midoriya?"
"Here you go, Vladimir." Izuku dropped his folder on top of the stack of essays, doubling the height of the pile in one moment.
"Don't call me that, either." Kan opened the folder, immediately dropping it back onto the break room table once he got past the first line. "Midoriya, what is this?"
"Lesson plan. Advanced Team Tactics, class one."
Kan picked the folder back up, still unable to get past the first line. "...this is your plan? Are you insane?"
"If I say yes, will that keep me from teaching?
Suppressing the temptation to just stand up and walk out of the room, Kan shook his head. "No, but this is just crazy! This is too much, they can't be expected to-
"To what, deal with a situation that teenagers across the world who aren't training to be heroes deal with all the time?"
"They're not trained to-
Izuku snorted, rolling his eyes. He had planned for this argument, after all, there was no way he wouldn't get pushback on his plan. "To do the job of the police? Of underpaid security guards? Of civilians?"
"Fine, I see your point." Kan picked the folder back up, turning one of the pages and almost dropping it again once he says the list of requested equipment. "But do you have to use such an extreme method?"
"It's a common situation. Not all criminals are villains, yeah?" His words had caught the attention of Aizawa, the underground hero perking up and turning to watch what was happening.
"Alright, I just think this," the Blood Hero shook the stack of papers at Midoriya, the folder heavier than he had expected and far more detailed with diagrams and explanations and charts detailing velocity, entrance points, nearly every possible outcome for the extreme 'test' he had set up. "This is a bit much for a first lesson."
"Hey, no. They're just going to get crazier as time goes on. Besides, they have had more time to strengthen their quirks, but not team building skills. 1-A had the opposite, so they're getting something very different." Izuku kicked both of his feet up onto the table, holding back a laugh at the distressed look on the faces of both Aizawa and Kan. "This is going to be so fun!"
Kan just sighed heavily, "what did I do to deserve this?"
It was one minute past noon and Izuku braced his good arm on the door to Nedzu's office, working on affixing his game face. His scowl in place, Izuku barged into the room, all but throwing himself in the chair across from the principal's desk. "I need a snipers rifle."
Nedzu didn't let the impact of the teenagers' words sink in before immediately responding with an adamant, "no."
Izuku ignored the dismissal, kicking his foot onto the principal's desk and continued his 'request.' "It needs to be military grade, American of course." He shrugged, grinning slightly. "Those psychos really know their guns. Must have been the three civil wars that did it."
Nedzu's ears flicked back and if he had real whiskers, they would have been pressed flat against his face as well. He didn't want to hear what Midoriya had to say, and he certainly wasn't giving the teenager a rifle. "You can't have one."
Izuku continued to ignore the brush off, leaning back in his seat and trying, and failing, to put his arms behind his head, nearly strangling himself with the strap of his sling in the process. He growled at the strap, jerking his arm back down and jarring his wrist in the process. He growled again before shaking his head and continuing on. "I'll take the Barrett MRAD, it's a good gun. Bolt action, thirty-millimeter rounds, accurate up to one thousand and five hundred meters. Only ten rounds, but you don't need more." He sighed dreamily, his mind placing him on a dark rooftop, raining softly and aiming through a yellow-lit window with Endeavor in his crosshairs. He shook his head t clear it, taking his foot from the desk and sitting back up. "Or I'll take the Desert Tech SRS, it can't take as many rounds, not as much range, so that is a last resort sort of thing."
Aizawa spoke up from the corner, his voice rough with lack of sleep and frustration. "We're not going to get you a sniper rifle."
"Snipers rifle," Izuku corrected, even irritating himself with his need t always be right. He shrugged, "either you can give me one, or I go out on my own and get one."
Barely keeping himself from gnawing on his own desk out of sheer stressed irritation, Nedzu fidgeted with the end of his tie behind his desk. "I cannot in good conscience give you another gun, especially one that gives you such a great distance between yourself and whatever, or whoever, you might be aiming at."
"...you know that I'm going to get what I want, right?" Izuku nodded, "I always do."
Nedzu closed his eyes, nodding "I know, Midoriya."
"So don't get all horrified and upset when I show up with a shiny new rifle with no serial number."
Aizawa sighed dramatically, rubbing his temples in an attempt to relieve the stress that had been building since he had woken up that day. "Don't you have enough guns?" He kept up his attempts to relieve his tension, "I feel like two is enough."
Izuku raided his good hand in a defensive gesture, "hey, now. These are all for different situations and circumstances. Revolver for up close and personal, sawed shotgun for mid-range with maximum damage, and a rifle is for when I finally snap and start hunting Endeavor for sport."
With that, Present Mic broke the silence he had maintained since the moment Midoriya had sauntered into the room. Yamada tried to conceal the sound with his balled up fist, but still escaped a far too loud, "pft!"
Aizawa glared from his place in the corner. "Mic, no, don't laugh."
Yamada nodded, but his shoulders still shook with laughter. "But it's so funny!"
"I know it's funny, but you can't let him just joke about murdering Endeavor." Yes, the joke was in poor taste, but if Aizawa had been given the opportunity to joke about that, he would have taken it immediately.
Izuku chuckled, "...who said I was joking?"
Present Mic's eyes went wide behind the orange lenses of his sunglasses. "You can't just plan a murder in front of heroes!"
"Fine, I won't tell you when I'm going to do it, then."
"Oh, for fuck's sake." Aizawa stepped from his corner, grabbing Izuku by his hood and pulling him out of the chair. Once he was standing, Aizawa began pushing him towards the door. "Kid, just go in there and answer the questions the assessor asks you."
"Ugh, fine, I'm going." Izuku rolled his eyes, he had no faith in any sort of psychological assessment that was run by heroes. What were they going to do, ask if he ever felt as if life was confusing and meaningless? Ask if he preferred to give orders or take them?
This was some bullshit.
Aizawa still pushing him, Izuku was marched out the door and back down the hall, past the teachers' lounge and the designated nap room. Honestly, Izuku was sure he was going to get so much use out of that room. Past a few more rooms until they came to one last door, already open.
"Well," Aizawa patted Midoriya's shoulder before giving him one final push over the threshold. "Get in there."
Izuku stiffened, so rigid he nearly toppled over with that one push. The door closed behind him, but he was too busy looking over the room. A small coffee table in front of a reddish couch, which Izuku wanted to avoid sitting on at all costs. He wasn't going to just let this therapist walk all over him.
And speaking of therapist, Izuku turned his perma-scowl towards the tan armchair where the specialist sat. He did a double take when he saw them, they… weren't what he had expected.
Really, he hadn't been sure what he had expected but this wasn't it. Even though they were seated, they were tall, even taller than All Might had been, but Izuku wasn't sure if he just thought that because of the massive spiked crest of horns, or the six-inch heels on their feet.
Well, he called them heels, he supposed they were more like a leather and metal harness with a heel attached behind the massive claws.
Izuku guessed he had an ingrained assumption that therapists were all unassuming and non-threatening, not over eight feet tall with horns and the most intense stare he had ever seen in his life. Weren't therapists supposed to either be middle-aged men and women, wearing tweed jackets, or young women with pantsuits and nice jewelry. Not huge and terrifying?
They stood, their clipboard deceptively tiny in their clawed hand. "Hello, you must be Midoriya Izuku." Their voice was surprisingly mellow, their Japanese lightly tinged with an unknown accent. They bowed, their empty hand clasped on their narrow chest and the clipboard held stiffly at their side. As they straightened up, they gestured to the couch, unfazed when Izuku ignored the gesture and instead sat himself on the edge of the coffee table.
As he thumbed through the magazines on the table, all the glossy covers scowling back up at him with his own face under the different headlines, Izuku watched the specialist closely as they sat back down.
They crossed their legs, grey slacks an odd juxtaposition to their nearly bare taloned feet. "My name is Xifias, and my quirk is called Mind Walker."
Izuku still said nothing, but he watched them closely as they spoke, curiosity for information on their quirk overruling his own need to posture and act like he was above it all. Based on the name, it was clearly a mental based quirk, so did that mean the claws, fangs, eyes, and horns were all secondary hereditary mutations? Passed through the family like hair color?
"I can tell you have a lot of questions, and I hope I can answer them for you."
"Uh, yeah, lotta questions." Izuku took a breath, not missing the way the specialist shifted in their seat expectantly.
"So, your horns… can you feel them? And what are they?" Izuku leaned forward, his questions coming faster now as he gained confidence. "Are they keratin? Calcium heavy bone protrusions? Plain old bone? Are they more like antlers and shed, or are the part of the skull?" He leaned back and forth, seeing just how thick the horns were, which brought him to his next question. "And how does all that weight impact your bone structure, is the density or the way your joints connect effected? Are you at a higher risk for bone spurs? Can they stain? Can they be engraved like scrimshaw?"
Xifias blanched, blinking their yellow eyes at him in surprise. "Well. Those weren't the questions I was expecting."
"They never really are." Izuku looked down at the heavy almost bird-like talons that jutted from the complex heel structure Xifias wore. "So, the bone structure in your feet, it's more of a digitigrade setup, including a dewclaw, so are you strictly bipedal?"
"No, I'm also capable of short sprints like a dog, or a very large and awkward cat. But anything sharper than packed dirt is hard on my hands." Realizing the game he was trying at here, Xifias raised an eyebrow, "you're more intelligent than you let on. Do you feel it necessary to downplay your capabilities?"
"It's easier if people underestimate me. Everyone expects you to fight them with a quirk, not to punch them in the face." Izuku snickered, ignoring the writing that accompanied his every word. "Which of your parents had a cat-related quirk?"
"My father, he had both the fangs and claws," Xifias answered, lowering their notepad to ask a question of their own. "Do you consider yourself an outsider?"
"Most people consider themselves an outsider, don't they? But I'm the real deal, not like the rest of those phonies." Izuku picked up a small stress ball from the table, tossing it up and catching it a few times over. "With the claws and horns, what's the impact to your dietary calcium and potassium needs?"
"It's nearly double that of a normal sized and mutation-free human." Xifias set their notepad on the arm of their chair, leaning forward and watching Izuku closely as they asked their next question. "Do you have a hard time rationalizing the things you've done?"
"No, it's just a matter of giving yourself a 'mental permission slip,' give yourself permission to go beyond the law and morals to help people and yourself. Concept came from america in the early two-thousands, it was used for those in active shooter situations, you know, give civilians what they needed to do what they needed." Xifias wrote something down as soon as he mentioned the words 'active shooter,' and once again, Izuku pretended not to notice. He felt he would be doing that a lot in the upcoming hour and a half. He tossed the ball back and forth between his hands before tossing it to the therapist. "Do you usually play question ping-pong with your patients?"
Xifias caught the ball without taking their eyes off the clipboard, throwing it back to Izuku softly. "No, I must say that I never have. But are you really a normal patient?"
"Guess I'm not, after all, I'm a celebrity." Izuku continued to pretend not to notice as Xifias wrote more on their clipboard, surely something about an over-inflated sense of importance, or something similar. After all, it wasn't anything he hadn't already thought about himself.
He set the ball down, picking up one of the magazines and skimming over a heavily dramatized retelling of the story of the Terrible Three. He scoffed at the romanticized figures the writers tried to paint of a life filled with hardship and strife for those who only wanted the world to be just, the sections of unknown facts filled with pathetic fantasy.
Izuku tossed the magazine over his shoulder, ignoring the small smack it made as it hit the wall. "So, is your quirk an emitter? It's obviously not mutation, but you do have inherent mutation qualities."
"Yes, it is an emitter quirk." Xifias raised an eyebrow, looking over the ex-vigilante as if he were a mildly interesting jigsaw puzzle. They steepled their fingers, resetting their index fingers against their chin. "You don't care much for appearances, do you?"
With a shrug, Izuku responded, "it's not important to me. I care more about actions, then pretty speeches. Even if that's all they want from me. You know, actions speak louder than words." He sighed, leaning back on the table and bracing himself on his elbow. He watched as Xifias picked back up and continued to write in their notepad, idly wondering what was being written. "What made you want to be a therapist?"
"What made you want to be a hero?"
"Hmm, touché." Izuku let his eyes run over the room again, avoiding the specialists level gaze. He went quiet, contemplating what he wanted to say next. "Do you ever wonder if your greatest defining moment, the thing you'll always be remembered for, is a giant mistake?" He turned his gaze to the ceiling, watching the blades of the ceiling fan circle lazily. "That every time you try to make things better, you're just digging your own grave?"
"Is that how you feel," Xifias asked, looking over their notepad.
"Hey, that's not the game we're playing here!" Izuku sat back upright, scowling at the breach in their unsaid understanding. "I ask a question, you answer it. Then you ask one, and I answer. Not whatever that just was."
"My apologies."
Izuku had a bad feeling that this was the easiest of this session. Just based on the name of the quirk, he knew it was going to be more intensive, he couldn't say hands on, but that seemed to be the closest parallel he could think of.
He picked the stress ball back up, crumpling it in his hand as he stood and walked over to the couch, sitting on the arm and falling back across the cushions, leaving his legs dangling over the arm. "Fine, let's get this over with."
"Wouldn't you like me to explain how my quirk functions before we begin?"
Izuku tossed the ball up, instinctively trying to catch it with his injured arm, instead almost choking himself with his sling and the ball fell on his face and bounced to the floor. "Probably a good idea."
"Mind Walker allows me to access your memories and revisit and relive the memory and experience the moment the way that you did at the time." But Xifias didn't mention was it was a full sensory experience. Sights, smells, tastes, touch, they could all of it. "My quirk allows me to make a full, unbiased, and informed diagnosis in much less time and with less room for errors of judgment."
"That doesn't quite sound like an emitter, though." Izuku clasped his hands over his chest, closing his eyes and letting himself finally relax where he lay. "Mental based quirks are strange in that way."
"Do you know a lot about mental quirks?"
"I've done some research into the topic." When he had told he was quirkless he had been desperate for a quirk. He had searched for anything that could be his, anything he could pretend he was. But nothing had fit. "Mind Walker sounds more like extrasensory perception. More specifically, one-way retro-cognitive telepathy."
"You really have looked into the subject." Xifias raised an eyebrow, impressed at the knowledge the teen had. They had never in their entire career had their quirk so perfectly defined by a fellow diagnostician, and certainly never by a patient. "So you should know that you will be the one in control of this session, you will choose which memories that will be visited and the interim room if you will."
"Interim room?"
"Yes, a sort of neutral space that you feel most comfortable and safe." Xifias had seen everything from family-friendly diners to children's bedrooms, nothing would surprise them at this point. "That's where we will begin." Xifias leaned back into their chair, taking a moment to clear their mind of any presumptions before they took their trip.
The diagnostician closed their eyes and opened them once more, their yellow eyes glowing with power. "Are you ready?"
"As I'll ever be," Izuku said, and the entirety of the world seemed to fall away.
Well, Xifias was surprised.
What hits them first is the smell. It's heavy, warm, acrid and cut through with the thickly deceptive sweetness of rotting flesh. Immediately, they began to gag, doubling over and dry heaving, bracing themselves with a clawed hand on a rusted out washing machine.
Next is the sounds, crashing of waves, cawing of seagulls, busy traffic and overlapping voices with laughter floating above it all.
Hand still clutching the washing machine, Xifias straightened up, looking around their surroundings.
It was a disgusting place, piles of garbage as far as the eye could see and even further. Long piles of plastic tangled in seaweed and filled with decaying marine life stretched out into the oceans. The foam on the waves wasn't the natural soft greens and whites but a thick and noxious black mottled with brown, algae and lichens coating the waters that reached up into the sand.
The sky was greyed in heavy streaks with industrial smoke and the air was so filthy it could nearly be chewed up and spat back out.
There were patches of bare sand, all less the ten feet in width, and narrow paths carved through the mess to a broken down and rotting wooden pier. At the end of the pier under a covered pavilion, sat a hooded figure, just as grungy as their surroundings.
Xifias carefully picked their way through the interim room, trying their best to avoid the sharp metal and broken glass hidden in the sand. They had never seen an interim room quite as dangerous and disgusting as this.
Even the pier was as dangerous, rotted wooden boards collapsing under foot, rusted nails and bolts protruding from wet wood.
What sort of person could take comfort from this place, desolate and derelict, unwanted by society. No, Xifias knew exactly what sort of person could take comfort here in the fringes of civilization.
After all, they were looking right at him.
"So I figured it out," the ragged figure said, Izuku looking out upon the filthy water that stretched out to and beyond the horizon. He lifted a hand, both his arms covered in ragged, filthy and bloodstained bandages. "My physical appearance in here is a direct reflection of my mental state." The edges of Izuku's form blurred and smoothed, masking his ragged appearance and masking it within a clean shirt and jeans before the illusion scattered apart. "I can try to hide it, but it always shows through."
Izuku tried not to read into what this form said about him, but he couldn't help it. He needed help, he was killing himself, but all he wanted to do, even when faced with his reflection in the dirty water below, was to deny that there was anything wrong at all.
"Again, quite intelligent." Xifias stood beside where the teen sat, hands clasped behind their back as they looked out upon the horizon, trying to see what it was he saw in this place. "But you don't like it when I call you that."
"No, I don't." Izuku didn't see any reason to lie anymore. "Because you wouldn't call a computer smart. Regurgitating information doesn't mean I'm intelligent."
"But doesn't connecting that information in a way that gives new insight a form of intelligence?"
"Any computer program could do the same, and far faster." Izuku pulled his legs up and back over the edge, getting to his feet and brushing down his ragged and dirty clothes with his bandage wrapped hands. "So where do you want to start? The day I was diagnosed?"
"Diagnosed?"
Izuku snickered, his posture relaxed as the scenery around them changed. "Buckle up, we're going for a wild ride."
"It's best you give up."
Xifias couldn't breathe, the icy grip of unwanteduselessfreak grasping at their heart and twisting. Their dreams, hopes, future was over before it could even begin!
"See here on this x-ray, the presence of the extra joint in the pinky toe?..."
The words faded as Xifias could only try to keep from crying unsuccessfully. They looked down at their hands, Izuku's hands and their heart sank even further when they saw how small they were.
The sound of talking drew them back to the moment only to be slapped back into a daze with the proclamation of "quirkless."
The moment, the memory, seemed to flash by in a haze of sorrow and disappointment, culminating in heartbreak beyond what any child should know.
From inside Izuku's room, Xifias heard voices from the room across the hall.
"He's… quirkless?" The sound of pacing. "How can that be possible?"
"The doctor said it's rare, but more common if parents have… weak quirks."
"Are you trying to say this is my fault? Hah!" Loud scoffing. "This is your fault."
"Excuse me?" The voice had gone ice cold, barely held back anger and fury. "Hisashi, you take that back and I'll forget all about it."
The sounds of arguing faded only to pick back up again as soon as Xifias began drifting to sleep within the memory as it came closer to its end. But all they felt as they jolted awake was disappointment and frustration, and in the context of the memory, Xifias knew that Izuku's parents did this all the time.
If they weren't arguing about one thing, it was another. Money, choice in friends, the house they lived in, everything that could be an argument became one.
"Was it worth it?"
"Was what worth what?" An exasperated sigh. "You better not be thinking what I think you are, we've gone through this already."
"Whoever you cheated on me with. No child of mine is a useless fucking quirkless freak!" A derisive and disgusted scoff. "I told you you should have gotten that abortion."
"Get. Out." The sound of heavy breathing and of a small fist slamming into a wall. "This is the last straw, Hisashi. Now get out!"
"Who was it? Do I know him?" A stomp. "Huh?!" Another stomp and the sound of dresser drawers being yanked out and tossed across the room while the yelling kept on. "Are you happy with what you've done?"
"Get out of my house right now or I'm calling the police."
"Fine, but I'm calling a lawyer first thing in the morning." There was a slam of what sounded like a suitcase, but Xifias couldn't be sure. "You can keep the worthless kid."
"You're a damn monster, I should have listened to my mother and never married you!" The door across the hall flung open so quickly it slammed against the wall and rattled the building down to the foundations. "Now get the hell out."
"I'm leaving, you dumb bitch!"
"Get the fuck out, Hisashi!" The stomping and yelling continued out and down the hall. "I never want to see you again!"
There were the sounds of stomping and slamming doors, followed by an engine turning over and a squeal of rubber on pavement fading quickly.
The last thing Xifias heard from that memory before it faded out, was the sound of barely stifled sobs from across the hall.
"Gamóto," Xifias spat as they surfaced from the memory, gasping for air from the intensity as their knees buckled and sent them on all fours in the dirty sand. A memory like that was like drowning, something one should try and avoid, but Xifias was ready to dive into again and again. "What was that?"
"Does immersion in memories always affect you like that," Izuku asked, avoiding the question with one of his own. "Or is it only negative ones?" He frowned, looking up at the sun cutting a path through the clouds in the smog-filled sky. "And how the hell did you realize what your quirk was? It's a very specific and specialized ability, no kid would know to look for it. Unless one of your parents had it as well..."
"What was that," Xifias asked again, wiping their mouth with the back of their hand, only to begin coughing once again.
Negative and traumatic memories were always the worst. They hadn't been ready, their own personal bias letting them assume the teen hadn't faced such hardship in their past. A mistake, they knew that now.
"The day I found out I was quirkless," Izuku finally answered, leaning against a rusted refrigerator closer to the perimeter of the trashed beach. "First real bad memory I have."
Learning that being quirkless he would be hated by nearly half the world population, being the final blow to his parents' long-suffering marriage, being told he would never be a hero… it had been a bad memory that had taken a long time to recover from. But that was behind him now.
Too bad that wasn't the last traumatic moment in his childhood. They had so many more to get through, his parents' divorce, Bakugou finding out about his quirklessness, the rampant bullying, the inaction of the school only helping to make the bullying worse, and this was all before he turned twelve!
"And it just gets worse from there," Izuku laughed derisively at his own misfortune, slamming his head back into the fridge before raising his arms above his head in a mock cheer. "My life is like a rollercoaster that only goes down!"
While Xifias continued to try and catch their breath, Izuku began rambling on, altering his appearance in different ways while muttering under his breath. "Can I make myself into an animal," he wondered, hands blurring before the only thing that changed were his fingernails transforming into sharp black claws. He shook the illusion away almost as soon as it had appeared. "Ew, that is so not my look."
"Himiko would love it though," he murmured, lowering his hand as an idea slowly formed. Metal claws attached to some sort of gloves that would make opening bleeding wounds much easier for her. "I'm gonna have to make that now, aren't I?"
"You're quirkless," Xifias asked, still crouching on the sand on all fours. They straightened up, brushing the dirty sand from their clothes. It seemed they were also guilty of quirk bias, assuming that Midoriya must have a quirk to make it as far as he had. Xifias might not understand the struggles faced by the quirkless, but it seemed they would be getting a firsthand view into that life.
Ignoring the question, Izuku asked, "hey, can I eat in here?" Izuku narrowed his eyes, trying to concentrate on a recent memory of food, one hand out flat as he tried to bring the memory into existence. "Come onnnnn carrot cake. Come on," he muttered, closing his eyes before opening them and immediately glaring into his still empty palm. "Damn, I really wanted some cake. Memory cake. Brain cake. Mmm."
Xifias coughed one last time, their lungs finally stabilizing from the trip. "I need a few more childhood memories, moments that stand out for emotional intensity. Not just negative moments, I need a full spectrum before we can move on to more recent events." They drew themselves back up to their full height, turning to face Midoriya, their heart nearly stopping once they saw the expression on the teens face.
Izuku just grinned manically, tilting his head slightly as the ground fell out from under them again. "Look out trauma, here we come!"
Xifias has seen what feels like Midoriya, Izuku's, life. It doesn't feel right to call the boy by his last name now that they've seen so much of what troubles him. Felt every emotion that had caused such turmoil.
After what felt like days, but only two hours since they had begun, the two surfaced. Izuku all but unaffected by what had been an odd nearly dream-like state, and Xifias hunched over the garbage can in the corner of the room.
Izuku stood, stretching and yawning before sitting back on the couch normally. "So," he began, not looking at the corner where the diagnostician still crouched, bent over the garbage can. "You figure out what's wrong with me? Why I just fly off the handle at the littlest inconvenience?"
He looked down at his good hand, his fingers clawed across his thigh, bunching up the denim of his jeans. "Am I a monster," he asked quietly, almost too quiet to be heard. "You saw what I felt when I killed Stain, you felt it. How I liked it and craved that thrill." He sighed, trying and failing to relax his fingers from their vice-like grip. "How I hoped that when I killed Muscular I would feel it again. How disappointed I was when I didn't."
"What the hell is wrong with me," he whispered, blinking tears from his eyes. "I keep craving that feeling! Am I a monster," he asked again, desperation flooding his voice. "Please, tell me what I'm supposed to do!"
"Midoriya, listen to me," Xifias said through the coughs. "You're not a monster, you're human. But you're not a human in the world of heroes, but one in the real world."
"You see the horror of the world's underbelly and you want to fix it. You want to fix it so badly that you're destroying yourself in the process and it's blinding you to the good that remains in the world." "You're afraid that if you acknowledge that good, that you'll lose your purpose."
"But your purpose has changed, hasn't it?"
"It has, I just don't know what it is now." Izuku threw up his hand, slapping it back onto his thigh. "I used to be the rogue outsider! But now I'm a hero, license and all, and that limits me so much that I feel like I'm on a fucking leash!" He couldn't help the rising of his voice, the volume increasing with the escape of each word. "I'm being kept from what I need to do! I've been building a reputation as a man who will do whatever it takes to save lives, and now? Now I'm not even allowed to leave campus without being followed!"
"I can't do stakeouts, I can't follow leads, I can't do anything!" He kicked the leg of the table, the glossy magazines sliding off the smooth wooden surface and scattering to the floor. "I'm useless like this, what I am is a power hungry, greedy, controlling and manipulative murderer, and I like it!"
Xifias straightened up from the garbage can, "...you don't really want to know what it is that you've been suffering with, do you?" They stood, their breath coming a little too quickly as they limped over to their chair. "Because if you don't know, you don't have to try to get better. You don't have to change if you don't know what it is."
"Damnit," Izuku curled his hand into a fist, his fist shaking before he slammed it back into his thigh in an attempt to stop his shaking. But it didn't work, the tremor moving up to his shoulders as he desperately blinked back even more tears. "You've seen my life, just… tell me," he whispered, keeping his gaze locked on his knees, too afraid of what he might see if he looked elsewhere. "What's wrong with me?"
"Nothing is wrong with you," Xifias said before lapsing into another coughing fit where they sat. "You're not broken."
Izuku slapped his flat hand down on his thigh, the sound surprising even himself. "Cut the crap, don't act as if me having a disorder or something is normal, I know that it's not." Izuku stood, pacing back and forth in front of the couch before forcing himself to stop, leaning against the arm of the couch with his eyes closed. "Don't sugarcoat it, be straightforward."
Xifias raised an eyebrow, watching Izuku pace and kick the legs of the couch a few more times before coming to a halt. The teen hated liars and those who tried to use circular speak to avoid telling the truth. They waited a moment, making sure Midoriya wasn't going to begin pacing again. "To put it simply, you have issues with anger management, and an interesting case of bipolar disorder with episodes of acute hypomania."
"Bipolar?" Izuku shook his head, "but I've never even felt depressed," he muttered, eyebrows drawing together in confusion.
He would feel down once in a while, but never did he come close to what he would call depression. Really, the closest he had ever come was when he was told he was quirkless, and that had just angered him more than anything else.
"But you have felt manic," Xifias replied, slowly recomposing themselves after the strain they had been through. "I've felt your manic episodes, how they seem to come out of nowhere and disappear just as quickly."
"But bipolar disorder… it's just not what I was expecting," he admitted. Part of him was certain he had nothing that could be considered a disorder and he was just a piece of human garbage, but knowing this was just… baffling. "And what did you mean I have issues with anger management? Is it just impulse control? Or something else, something more serious."
If it was hormonal, it would just get worse, and he couldn't take that. He would lose his mind and he would rather die than let that happen.
"I believe it to be a classic, nearly textbook, example of Intermittent Explosive Disorder," Xifias answered, unwittingly brushing away Midoriya's worries. The two diagnoses were certainly connected, Bipolar Disorder and IED woven together and affecting nearly everything the teen thought and did. "It can be managed with various forms of therapy, anything from exercise to meditation, to visits with a licensed therapist."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever," Izuku waved away the idea of therapy, he could talk about that later when he spoke to Hound Dog. He sat back down, not making eye contact with the diagnostician. "What about the Bipolar Disorder?"
"Well, that can be managed with therapy, but I believe that your case would be managed the best with medication." Xifias leaned forward in their seat, picking their notepad back up to begin outlining the possible medications. "Now, there may be side effects-
"Side effects? No way." Izuku shook his head, immediately making up his mind.
"The chances of being affected in a negative way is nominal."
Izuku shook his head again, not willing to change his mind for anything. "What's the best possibility for those side effects?"
"The lesser of the side effects are nausea, tremors, muscle weakness-
"Well, that's right out." Izuku couldn't take a chance on those, he carried guns and knives and wasn't willing to risk a misfire or anything that would affect his aim.
"Excuse me?" Xifias blinked in surprise, lowering their notepad.
"If it even has the slightest chance to affect my physical health, I can't take that risk." Izuku stood, stepping around the table and heading towards the door.
"Well, that is your right, however, I must advise against this option," the diagnostician stood, following the teen to the door. They didn't really understand the idea of refusing medication, but the teen had relied on their physical strength to keep them alive for so long they might never risk their physical health.
"Then just right that down in the little notebook of yours and I'll get out of your… hair." Izuku froze with his hand on the doorknob, slowly turning it as he tried to work out a way to sound casual while leaving. "Oh, yeah, you don't have hair. Out of your horns? Is that better?"
He sighed, opening the door and stepping out. He turned back, watching Xifias closely. "I'll set up an appointment with Hound Dog and I'll up my workout regimen." He glanced down the empty halls, leaning in and whispering, "you won't tell anyone 'm quirkless, right?"
"Of course not, Midoriya." Xifias bowed slightly, watching as the teen nodded in return before he backed away before running back down the hall the same way he had come in. "Of course not."
