Magnus: Here's the second special! Please remember it doesn't count toward the update ratio.
Disclaimer: This special takes place between the discovery of the Sports Festival's system hack and Present Mic's introduction of Izuku.
Cursed Blood
Chapter 29.5 – A Sinister Special II
Deep scars – For Lyruil
Shouta Aizawa, the Pro Hero codenamed Eraserhead, was having a rather worse day than he'd expected to have.
Not only had he been somehow saddled with being Hizashi's co-announcer for the Sports Festival, but he'd also had to deal with the machinations of the Board's more… amoral… members right from the start. Case and point, he was just now taking a breather after the discovery that the tournament's randomization placement program had been tempered with. And he'd be shocked if it didn't turn out to be one of those meddlesome idiots who'd done it.
And once the festival was over, the exhausted man just knew there was going to be terrible backlash when that particular tidbit came to light.
"At least they didn't fuck with the first match," Aizawa groused absently to himself as he took a small detour to a vending machine he knew had been recently installed in a nearby hallway. He had time; surely Hizashi was capable of opening the first match by himself, right? He needed the caffeine anyway. "For whatever that small mercy's worth…"
Despite the other changes made to the tournament's lineup, his problem child, one Izuku Midoriya, would still be going first. Just mulling over all of the negativity the cinnamon roll of a kid had faced so far in his short life, for all the wrong reasons, was depressing. Honestly, the underground pro wasn't sure what would be worse for his student at this point, losing here at the first round… or advancing further.
"Is that my favorite Eraserhead I see?"
The cheery, singsong voice froze the brooding homeroom teacher in his tracks, the pit of his stomach dropping out just as he was about to push the button on the vending machine for his beverage. God. Dammit.
"What a coincidence!"
Aizawa scowled, back still turned to the new arrival. If she made a point to say that right from the start, that meant only one thing…
This wasn't a coincidence at all.
"Are you stalking me?" The underground pro asked the intruder, refusing to turn around and face his fate. Why did it always have to be her, the one woman who would never respect his personal space? The one woman who'd never leave him alone. "Don't you have students to keep track of… Joke?"
"Ah, a co-worker of mine will take care of them," The Pro Heroine codenamed Ms. Joke replied, joviality dropping for a moment as the sea foam-haired woman almost sounded human for a moment. "Besides, they're probably at the stands getting junk food and drinks anyway. They don't need me for that."
Aizawa grunted at the casual dismissal. He reached out to select his beverage, but paused when his bubbly torturer slid up beside him with a wide grin on her face. It took an ungodly amount of effort for the underground hero to keep from looking at that world-brightening smile.
"But really, that's not important!" Ms. Joke continued, raising her hands up and interlacing her fingers in a faux-prayer position. She gave the gruff homeroom teacher a look. "This! This is! Meeting you like this, by complete chance, is clearly fate! Come on, whaddya say? You and I shou—"
"No." Aizawa snapped, cutting off the comedian before she could finish. He tried returning to the task at hand, of getting his beverage dammit, but…
Gods… why did it still have to hurt so much? Even after all these years, why was it so hard to leave the past behind?
"Oh come on!" Ms. Joke playfully bemoaned, collapsing into Eraserhead's side. Even as he knew that this was just one of the woman's gags, from the corner of his eye Aizawa could've sworn he saw an honest, pleading glint in hers. "At least let me finish the line!"
Aizawa grumbled in response, willing his focus away from the woman hanging onto him and back onto the vending machine. He just needed to finish what he was doing, before it was too late.
"Don't ignore me Shouta," Emi Fukukado whispered, nearly begging. The sea foam-haired pro heroine leaned into the gruff underground hero's, turning and burying her face into his side. "Please."
Lightly trailing a gauntleted hand up Shouta's side, Emi realized where she was touching and, after a moment of thought, poked a specific spot on the exhausted man's ribs. More precisely, she poked where an old scar should've been, a tender reminder of their past together.
For Aizawa, it was a button that instantly hurled him back through memories and nightmares better left buried and forgotten.
In a flash, the underground pro was no longer in the Sports Festival stadium, but falling down a kaleidoscope-esque infinity of fragmented imagery, jumbled colors, and cacophonous sounds. Blinking furiously against the inevitable onslaught, Aizawa struggled to see through the phantasms, to move a single finger and push a button, any button, on the vending machine. But…
Then the smells hit him.
=Flashback= [REDACTED]…
"Ya shou'na falla'd us, ya Hero scum."
Everything had gone to shit so fast.
Of course, it had to have happened eventually. Two young and brash pros, no matter that one tried to be more mature and keep the duo grounded, would have eventually bit off more than they could've chew. The world was full of ugly places, and the greenhorns Eraserhead and Ms. Joke had just invited themselves into one.
It should've just been their first taste of taking down a pair of big fish. Instead, it had been a lesson in bad decisions, and the consequences they brought.
"Yea. Should'a jus' taken the civies and run. We'd'a got away an' ev'ryone'd 'ave been happy."
The Blade Brothers, a pair of high-level villains who'd spent their time plying their talents on low-level targets like stand-alone jewelry stores and mom-and-pop businesses. The two men were the worst of the worst, yet somehow kept out of the notice of most pro heroes in the areas they operated in.
Enter Ms. Joke, a rising star on the hero scene, and Eraserhead, her unknown counterpart who kept to the shadows of the underground. After a hard-fought year of trials and tribulations, the unlikely duo had slowly cleaned up the slums of their city, to the point that their agencies had considered re-posting them elsewhere.
And then the call had come in. The Blade Brothers had taken hostages in their most recent heist.
=Flashback ~ OUT= Present, UA's Sports Festival Stadium, Interior Hallway System…
Emi withdrew slightly, frowning as she realized Shouta hadn't made a grunt or rejected her since she'd prodded his old wound. Her dark green eyes widened, the pro heroine realizing too late that the gruff man was beginning to tremble, his own eyes staring forward yet unfocused.
Oh no.
=Flashback= [REDACTED]…
"Ah think it's time ya brats learned a lessin..."
They'd fucked up.
Turned out the brothers had, between them, basically been immune to their Quirks.
The elder, who'd squared off against Eraserhead, had been a mutant-type with tusks of all things growing from his forearms. The ivory additions had been filed to a razor's edge, and said edges had been kept purposefully filthy to ensure any injuries they caused would not only be agonizing but quickly fester and worsen.
The younger, who'd immediately faced off against Ms. Joke, had had extendable nails that were somehow long, jagged, and sharp all at the same time. For some reason, probably as a result of whatever had given him the large scar that wrapped around his head starting from his ear, across his forehead, to his other ear, the man couldn't laugh. It had been like that part of his brain just hadn't worked.
In retrospect, if they'd only swapped opponents, the entire outcome might've been different.
But they hadn't.
=Flashback ~ OUT= Present, UA's Sports Festival Stadium, Interior Hallway System…
Emi bit back a curse. This wasn't what she'd wanted. She'd just wanted some attention, even just a laugh. She'd long since accepted she'd probably never get the 'yes' she'd been aching for, but…
Dammit, she was an idiot.
=Flashback= [REDACTED]…
It hadn't even really been a fight, more a beat down with sharp edges.
By the time the elder brother had been satisfied with tearing into Eraserhead, the underground hero had been on the cusp of bleeding out. Internally, the damage had been just as severe, as an entire rib had been carved out and taken as a trophy by the older villain.
And Ms. Joke…
"Yer lucky ah hear the sirens ya piece of shit. If we weren't in a hurry now, I'd'a let my lil bro take his time with yer circus freak over there. 'E needs some stress relief… Well, seein' him gut 'er like a fish'll just have ta do!"
"SHOUTA!"
=Flashback ~ END= Present, UA's Sports Festival Stadium, Interior Hallway System…
Aizawa gasped, the phantoms of the past dissipating at last. Looking to his side, the underground pro noticed the worried gaze of his old partner.
Ka-chink!
The vending machine depositing its prize hardly penetrated either pro's awareness as the two continued to stare at each other.
"Eraser… I'm so—"
"I have to go," Aizawa blurted, interrupting Ms. Joke while bending down to swipe the acquired beverage from the vending machine. He really did need to get out of there.
Now.
"L-Let me repay you!" Ms. Joke stuttered out, suddenly panicking. It was a desperate shot, she knew that, but she had to try. "We could go on a dat—"
"No!" Aizawa barked, sharply cutting off the distraught heroine. Without another word, the Erasure Hero turned and fled, rounding a corner and making his escape.
Walking as quickly as he could, the underground pro tried, and failed, to keep his thoughts away from all of the horrible things that had followed that failed mission.
That tragedy.
Him losing that rib had been nothing compared to what had happened to Emi… to what could've been. When he'd woken up in that nameless hospital, he'd frantically demanded to know what had happened to his partner. Before he'd succumbed to his injuries, he'd seen her.
And her insides that had painted the area around her.
He'd been beside himself, worried out of his mind. He'd been able to keep from losing any co-worker, friend or not, since his days at UA, but even there Emi had been special. They'd kept it beyond low-key, but they'd been dating for just over a year at that point.
When he'd finally bullied a nurse into giving him the answers he'd been looking for, he'd wished he hadn't.
She hadn't said anything to him, but she'd been pregnant at the time. Aizawa had never known if she hadn't known herself, been afraid to tell him, or had just wanted to announce it in some bombastic way befitting her hero persona, but in the end, it hadn't mattered.
The baby hadn't survived.
To make the nightmare worse, the injuries Emi had suffered had been deep, and far reaching. Half her cecum had been torn out, and her lower intestine had been shredded as if put through a blender. The worst was yet to come, however. The younger brother's jagged claws had penetrated so deeply, they had left her uterus in tatters. Any chance Emi had had of becoming pregnant again had gone down to nearly zero.
And even if she could've conceived again, her life would've then been put at constant risk for the entire pregnancy all for a slim five percent chance of being able to carry to term.
The two of them had been devastated. Emi had cried and been a mess for months, straight through her entire recovery period. And he'd been a coward, too afraid to approach her and talk about their future together. At the time, the only thing he'd known to do was one thing.
Hunt down the bastards that had taken their future from them.
Aizawa stopped, realizing he'd been aimlessly marching through the halls of the stadium. He needed to get back to the box before Hizashi said or did something stupid. But, he really needed a moment to rein in his emotions more.
Once again, memories assaulted the underground pro.
Having learned the extent of the brothers' abilities, and no longer in the mood to play by the rules of law, it hadn't taken Aizawa long to catch the two villains. In fact, it'd taken longer for him to leave them tied up hanging from a five-story building… after beating them nearly to death and breaking every bone of theirs he could.
While he'd stopped short of killing the Blade Brothers, it'd still been an unsanctioned operation that had smacked of vengeance instead of justice. Aizawa had been faced with a mark against his license, and it would've been the end of his career, if INTERPOL hadn't stepped in.
The international organization had spoken up on his behalf to the Hero Association, proposing he take time away from the Japanese hero scene while joining their own division of lawkeepers.
The Jaegers…
Aizawa took a sip of whatever beverage he'd ended up getting from the vending machine—
"Eck! Sweet!"
The gruff man normally avoided sweet things, they reminded him too much of the woman he'd just escaped, the one his own ineptitudes and hubris had left mutilated. That line of thinking led the underground pro to thoughts on another poor soul who'd suffered because of his failures, a certain nascent necromancer.
If Iz—Midoriya… weren't able to heal the most grievous of injuries like he could… The thought still gave the normally stoic man shivers.
It was too bad his student's Quirk couldn't heal older, more severe—
Aizawa felt the breath leave his lungs as he touched his side, feeling for the missing rib that was his physical reminder of past failures.
It wasn't there. Or more accurately, the rib was no longer missing, it WAS there!
But the doctors had been clear, regrowing bones from nothing was next to impossible. Short of finding a person with a specific Quirk that allowed for bone manipulation in others, nothing in the medical world's current arsenal could've repaired his injury. It had been a trait shared by Emi's scarred uterus, something neither of them could ever recover...
Suddenly, a drop of hope rippled through Shouta Aizawa's soul. If Izuku had somehow given him is rib back… Could he…? Could Emi's…?
"Eraserhead! Do you copy?"
The sound of Nemuri's voice coming through his communication bead, in full Midnight persona, snapped Aizawa's back to reality.
"Eraserhead here," the underground pro replied, internally compartmentalizing his last train of thought for later. He couldn't afford for the possibility of a ray of hope to mar his performance here. "Did something happen?"
The gruff man called it a ray of hope, but if he were honest with himself, it now burned at his insides as if he were trying to hold the sun in his chest.
"Oh, nothing much…" Midnight drawled, causing Eraserhead to frown, "Just Mic calling your problem child a monster on air."
Aizawa didn't bother to respond or ask for more information. Problem child or not, budding necromancer or not, Izuku Midoriya was still a hero-in-training AND a student of UA… HIS student. He knew Hizashi had his reasons for disliking those with so-called 'dark' Quirks, but that was sure as hell no excuse to go after kids!
Magnus: And remember, if you want your own special chapter, either here or on Blessed With a Hero's Heart, you can visit our P-A-T-R-E-O-N page to learn how to request it!
Omake – Trying to Make Amends
In the bowls of UA's Sports Festival stadium, inside one of the many rooms dedicated to allowing participants a space to rest and focus, a pair of longtime friends could be found sitting across from each other. Eijiro Kirishima and Mina Ashido had known each other for what seemed like forever, even before their Quirks had come in, and in that expansive stretch of time, nothing had come between the two quite like this.
In her chair, Mina sat silently, curled into herself as she pouted fiercely. The pink-hued girl was visibly trembling, and it was clear to anyone who knew her, like Eijiro did, that she was a hair's trigger away from lashing out.
The redhead himself, though, was in no hurry to draw the ire of the girl across from him again. Already, he was sporting a swollen eye and glowing red handprints all along his face, chest, and arms. Instead, the manliest man of Class 1-A held an expression of deep shame upon his face as he looked down at the floor.
This was all his fault, Eijiro had concluded. Their fun had crossed the line because he'd been an idiot, and now Mina, his best and oldest friend, hated him. He'd spent the last who knew how long thinking about it, hard, but the 'Hardening'-user couldn't come up with any way of making up for his mistake, for what he'd done to her.
But he had to keep trying. He was a man, and a man didn't run away in a situation like this.
"Mina…" Eijiro whispered, standing up and hesitantly shuffling closer to the pinkette, "I'm so, so—"
"Don't!" Mina bit out, interrupting the redhead mid-apology without even looking up at his face. "Don't you dare say it."
The manliest man of Class 1-A grit his teeth against the groan that threatened to rise up from him, knowing that wouldn't solve anything. He also now knew that Mina was still in the midst of a moment of righteous feminine fury, and while he would never dream of begrudging the emotions she was feeling right now… he still had no clue on how to deal with them OR help her!
He'd given her the clothes that he'd left in his locker from before he'd changed into his PE uniform, which she was now wearing. He'd gone and bought her the brands of juice and sour snacks that she loved, which she'd grumpily drank and eaten. And as he could still feel and see on his skin, he'd even let her smack him around until she'd hopefully felt better.
The only thing he apparently wasn't allowed to do, to his frustration, was actually apologize and say how sorry he was.
"Mina…" Eijiro said again, more firmly this time but just as pleading. As understanding as he wanted to be, the redhead had just about reached his limit. He refused to lose his best friend over this, not after everything they'd been through together. "What can I do? I'll do anything, anything at all. Please…"
Finally, finally, Mina looked up and locked eyes with the remorseful and begging boy who'd shuffled so closely to her. Gold in pools of black caught natural crimson in fields of bloodshot white.
No matter how closely he looked, Eijiro couldn't find the hidden mischief he'd always loved to see.
"Did… did you see them?"
The blurted question threw the redhead for a loop, but Mina's hard, unblinking gaze was proof enough she was being serious.
Eijiro felt his mind stutter, freezing for what felt like an entire minute as his natural chivalrousness stalled his thoughts in understanding what he'd just been asked. With each passing second of silence, the 'Hardening'-user could see his inability to answer was causing Mina to grow angrier and angrier… then, finally, it dawned on him. He knew what this was about!
His best friend was worried that he'd seen her naked upper body.
"Mina, no! Don't worry!" Eijiro said quickly, nearly stumbling over himself. He scratched the back of his head, butterflies from his stomach causing him to feel nervous all of a sudden. "I-I-I… I didn't see anything! I swear!"
Instead of the relief he'd expected to see, the manliest man of Class 1-A saw Mina only pout harder than ever. The glare alone was enough to cause him to flinch back.
But it was the truth! He hadn't seen anything! By the time he'd turned to see what the problem was, Mina had already covered herself with her arms and had started running out of the arena. Honestly, the redhead could, without a shadow of a doubt, say he hadn't seen Mina's naked chest since they were little kids playing around in the bath together.
And everyone knew that that didn't count.
Right?
Suddenly, Mina jumped to her feet, nearly head-butting Eijiro before leaning into his personal space, eyes blazing.
"Everyone. Everyone saw them…" the pinkette murmured, enraged, "Everyone… except you…"
As if he hadn't been feeling bad enough. Now Eijiro realized just how badly he'd truly fucked this whole thing up. It didn't matter if he hadn't seen anything. The Sports Festival was broadcast internationally. With one mistake, he'd basically forced his best friend to flash the whole world against her will.
What a piece of shit he was.
"I…" Eijiro trailed off, unable to continue. His heart was hurting worse now, it ached to fix this mess and make Mina feel better. But—
Mina once again interrupted the redhead.
"THEN LOOK AT THEM NOW KIRI!"
Closing her eyes in a fruitless attempt to lessen her embarrassment, the pink-hued girl lifted her borrowed shirt up as high as it would go.
There. She'd done it. She'd finally given the boy in front of her a full, unimpeded view of her breasts. Was she still pissed that basically anyone with a TV had seen them first? Hell yeah she was. Did that mean she didn't want the redhead she'd shared so much with to see the same, on her own terms, any less? Hell no.
Mina expected a lot of things to come from her rash decision; shouting. Kiri stumbling back into a chair in shock… maybe a little grope if she were honest with herself.
But silence…?
Oh fuck… did he not find her attractive? Had she worked up the nerve to do that for nothing?!
THUD!
Snapping her eyes open at the loud noise, the slightly panicking pinkette was greeted with a humorous sight. Eijiro had fallen to the floor, unconscious, with a massive nosebleed.
"…You idiot…"
Even as she crossly muttered the words, a gentle, loving smile softened Mina's face.
She was going to make sure Kiri never forgot what happened between them today. By sundown the pinkette swore to herself she'd have finally caught this boy, the prey she'd been hunting since she was a little girl who'd become enamored with the loud little boy who hadn't cared about her freaky appearance when her Quirk had come in.
Tsuyu wasn't the only one who'd be claiming a boyfriend this year!
Not by a long shot.