Chapter 1
Pulling Your Strings
The first time she meets him she thinks she's going to die.
His green hair is tucked into a black beanie, his eyes dull as they peruse the newspaper in front of him. It's something about the way he's positioned that tips Pro Hero Uravity off that he isn't just a civilian.
The man is anything but relaxed. Despite the cool autumn breeze and his sweatshirt and jeans combo that lets her know he's in shape, he's tense. There is a tightness to his body that isn't betrayed in his expression. It's just something she notices. How he moves. How he jerks slightly when the waitress walks by to refill his coffee. How his fingers flex so tight around the paper they might tear through when he notices her approaching. How they release just a little too slow to be from anything but relief when she walks away.
Or maybe it's the fact that all of his clothes are nondescript. No logos on any of it, his jeans just worn enough not to be new, and his sweatshirt black with gray paint stains. He could be anyone.
Anyone at all.
He glances up, eyes locking with hers behind the reading glasses he's wearing.
He freezes. Then he relaxes, blinking at her before turning his head down to consider his paper.
It's then that she sees it.
A black ear bud in his left ear.
A thin black metal wristlet on his right wrist- peeking out from his sleeve.
A handful of things that don't line up because he isn't listening to music- she hasn't seen him produce a phone in the fifteen minutes she's been eating lunch. And he isn't on the phone with anyone because he would have said something.
It's a comm.
But he's not a hero.
But she can't stop to consider it when her helmet lights up, the HUD pinging to life. She snatches it off the table, waving the server over. "Bill it to –" She starts as she slaps her helmet on to read the alert.
Toga Himiko.
"Of course Miss Uravity." Because the man, bless his heart, is used to the heroes that eat here having to leave mid lunch.
Toga Himiko is a name that has Uraraka sprinting down the sidewalk, hands ghosting up her side to negate her weight. It's a name that has her flexing her wrists, activating the support grappling hooks in her wrist bracers and using them to sling herself down the street as fast as she can retract them and sling them back out. It's a name that has her wishing she already had the rocket boosters Melissa and Mei talked about creating for her.
"Talk to me," she barks into the headset, feeling the flipping in her stomach as her Quirk's backlash reminds her that she did just eat a spicy tuna roll for lunch.
"She's cutting through the alley off 8th!" someone, Pinky perhaps, shouts into the comm.
"Cutting her off on 9th!" And that's Mo-Creati. "FrostFire and Ground Zero are on their way as well."
"Ten minutes out." Frostfire's voice is flat as usual, but that's just Shoto.
It sounds like they'll finally get her. Finally capture another one of the elusive League of Villains after their major defeat four years ago.
They'll finally manage to scrape another one of their members off the board!
She spins through the air, hand brushing the side of the building before hooking on the edge. She spins around it, pushing off it to move laterally around it and over the alley Toga was reported running into.
"Where is she?" she asks.
"Pushed onto 9-ugh!" Creati grunts, something cutting her off and the feedback from her comm turns to static before it's cut.
"Creati!?" Uraraka refocuses, grappling another line forward and throwing herself down into the alley. It's narrow and tight- even with her zinging through the air instead of along the trash strewn ground. Her helmet clips the wall, the visor fracturing but holding in the instant it takes her to clear the brickwork and burst into 9th street.
Her eyes meet with a pair of surprised green ones.
Then she zips past, boots scraping concrete as she cancels her Quirk to avoid flying off and turns to face the villain.
Only it's not Toga that's fighting her.
It's the man from before. His sweatshirt is ripped and torn, a slash mark on his exposed forearm. He meets her gaze, then glances away.
"You?" she asks, narrowing her eyes.
"Me," he agrees, stuffing his hands in his pockets to stare at her. Blood oozes down his forearm, a dozen other scars on it from similar cuts- and it makes her wonder how he keeps getting hurt like that.
"Me!"
Toga.
Her knife- already slick with blood- raised to claim her life.
Toga.
Her smile is dangerous and infernal on her lips as she slams it down towards her.
Toga.
The blood crazed villain that had taken to murdering for sport after losing her direction. Shigaraki had kept her tendencies in check, but with both him and the original All for One gone, she had gone off the deep end, and her targets ranged from political hits against people that spoke out against offensive Quirks, all the way to random civilians walking home from the grocery store.
And Uraraka would be just another of those murders.
She was so startled by the man being there she missed checking for Toga. And now she was going to pay the price.
Damn it.
But the knife doesn't land.
A boot does.
She feels it.
Hard rubber against her side, force cutting through whatever padding her costume provides.
There's a crack.
A snap as bone submits to raw force.
And then momentum and kinetic energy win out over the friction of her boots on the asphalt.
The force is enough that it sends her spinning, off her feet and onto the hard asphalt, scraping her knees and elbows on it before she hits the curb, rolling onto the sidewalk across the street. She skids to a stop, heart thumping liquid pain through her veins as her eyes focus on the lazy clouds drifting through the sky.
It's hard to breathe.
That's the first thought that assures her she's still alive.
After the tumble and jumble of flashes of black concrete and hot pain in her side.
"Awww. You made me miss." There's a moment of pause, and then the sound of a knife cutting flesh. "You should know better than that bitch."
"My mistake." The man. Impassive. Resigned.
"If you weren't so damn useful, I'd kill you and your fucking mother too."
There isn't a reply.
And instead Uraraka is distinctly aware of the thump of boots moving closer.
And fear.
Cold hard fear bleeding into her bones. It makes her heart hammer in her chest. It makes the suffocating ache in her side all the more real because
She traded a knife in the throat for a boot in the side. And she couldn't breathe. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't breathe!
She had to move. She had to move. She had to move.
To activate her Quirk. Float up into the sky and escape at least the threat of Toga's knife.
At least that.
But that hope is faint and fleeting as a hand claps over her mouth and a shadow blocks the lazy clouds floating overhead.
Toga's smile hasn't shifted in the slightest. "Hello there Uravity," she greets.
She can't respond. Her lungs shutter and shake, unable to cope with the trauma the kick she'd received had caused. Was it really even a kick? She'd felt something crack.
Oh god. Was this a punctured lung?
Toga's expression morphs to a flat one. "I said hellooooooo."
"Cracked ribs." And Uraraka has the strength to tilt her head, wide eyed and fearful as her eyes fall upon the man.
There's a fresh cut on his arm, his expression tight as he considers her. But there's a glazed over look in his eyes. Like he can't see what he's seeing. Like he's anywhere but here.
A siren goes off in the distance.
"Toga. We need to go," the man says, and it's either the pain or the fear that makes her note how the man doesn't look at his comrade but at her. "Now."
"But I'm just starting to have fun!" Toga protests. Reaching her fingers out, swiping at something off Uraraka's lip.
Blood.
She feels it now.
Thick and heavy and warm of her lip. She must have coughed it up. Sometime in between sliding across the street and hitting the curb.
The man doesn't comment as Toga stands, her tongue licking the blood off her fingers. "Oooh. So tasty!"
"Toga," the man presses.
"Fine! Ugh!" Toga whines, standing and clasping the man's bloody forearm. She glances down at Uraraka, sticking her tongue out. "You're lucky the Bitch is here- or else I'd have really taken my time with you!"
She doesn't feel lucky. Not when her lungs are aching- struggling to remember how to breathe.
She doesn't feel lucky when the man exhales a cloud of black smoke and the two vanish in the middle of it.
She doesn't feel lucky when the ambulance arrives, paramedics hauling her onto a gurney.
She doesn't feel lucky.
Not when the look in that man's eyes looked so so far away.
And not when she should have been strong enough to save a man with eyes as sad as his.
The second time she meets him she should have died.
Then again, her dying doesn't exactly revolve around him. It's more because she, Froppy and Pinky are crammed against a marble statue trying to weather the firestorm that is Dabi.
"Frostfire, where are you!" Pinky screams into the comm.
"On my way- just a bit longer!" Is his reply.
"Froppy's drying out in here- so unless you want frog-legs for dinner you better hurt it up!" And the look Tsu gives Pinky is borderline murder.
Even sweating to death and jelly-legged from the heat the frog-girl is annoyed with that line. "I'm not that bad in the heat-Ribbit."
"Come out come out you little Heroes!" Dabi calls, his voice echoing through the museum. "Before I scorch another one of your precious civilians!"
Which is impossible, given the reason they're trapped right now is that they evacuated all the civilians and ran back in to confront him. Admittedly not their best idea. But here they were. Pressed up against a marble statue trying not to get crispy.
"Big talk coming from a guy with daddy issues!" Pinky shouts back, before either Ochaco or Tsuyu can stop her.
"Dammit Mina!" Ochaco hisses, slapping her hand over her friend's mouth and heaving her to the side.
The statue is engulfed in a blast of blue flames. The stone heats up and Ochaco hisses, feeling the fabric on the back of her costume threaten to either melt into her skin or burst into flames.
"Floor. Floor. Floor." She commands.
And Mina- bless it- remembers they're on the third floor of the building and that at least is enough.
She slaps a foot down "Watch your toes kiddos!" She warns with a laugh as the concrete underneath them melts.
They slip through the opening, dropping into the exhibit below. Ochaco has the sense to slap both of her friends and then herself halfway to the floor, negating gravity and allowing them to float the rest of the way to the floor before she cancels her Quirk.
"Frostfire?" She asks
"What floor?" Is Shoto's no nonsense response.
"We're on the second. Left Dabi on third- Ribbit." Froppy groans, stretching out her legs for a moment before shaking her head. "I'm gonna have dry skin for days…"
Problems for later. Assuming they make it out of this alive.
"Oh Heroes?" Dabi calls.
Fuck.
"Found you!"
They all dive in different directions as the hole Mina melted through the ceiling explodes. The ceiling shakes and rocks as Dabi drops through, plumes of fire leading the way and reaching for them with hungry tongues.
"Touya!" Shoto arrives with a shout and a drop in temperature. The blue flames are countered with frigid ice and an unforgiving cold as the two brothers meet.
"Damn it." Dabi curses.
Ochaco rolls, coming to her feet and scouting the shift in power. Shoto can counter his flames, more or less, and would occupy most of Dabi's attention. But neither her Quirk, nor Froppy's would do much to restrain the man. Which left Mina's- and Dabi's tender-half-burnt skin.
"Acid Shower!" She shouts to Pinky, rushing across the open floor.
"Oh hell no!" Dabi is quick to cut them off, a gout of flames coming for her head.
"Your fight is with me brother!" Shoto again intercepts, one hand blocking the flames with ice while the other pours out a stream of flames to attack.
"PAGE GET THEM!" Dabi screams.
The walls shutter for a moment and before Ochaco can reach Pinky it's like the world is coming apart.
The ceiling crumbles overhead and the paintings hanging around the room- what isn't scorched beyond recognition- crumble in as the walls collapse all at once. The lights go out next, and whatever happens she can't be sure- only that she's tumbling through dust filled air and slamming into chunks of rock and sliding down slabs of concrete.
There's a half-second of free fall- too short for her to even realize she's free until she eats the dirt. Her head cracks into the new found floor and when she lifts it back up she can feel a line of blood spilling through her bangs and down the side of her face.
"Ah. Shit." She curses, allowing that one instance of pain to clip through the Hero that she needs to be.
But she can't focus on it, can't let herself worry about the fact that pockets in collapsed buildings are statistically unlikely. And that if she found one then that means it's so much more likely that Pinky or Froppy or someone else did not. She grits her teeth, wiping the blood off her forehead and using it to slick her hair out of the way.
"Hello? Is someone there? Are you okay?" Comes a voice in the darkness. Not one of her friends.
"Fine. You?" She replies on instinct, fumbling around in the dark.
The space they're in is low enough that she can't stand, but it at least allows her to get on her hands and knees and crawl towards the voice.
"I've got Pinky here." The voice is masculine and steady. "Unconscious. Hit her head from what I can tell. She's breathing."
"Good. Good." Her brain rushes into overdrive and she scrambles over the loose stone and dirt until her hands hit flesh and she fumbles her fingers along until she can feel the leopard print fluff Mina insists on keeping on every revision to her costume.
She glides her hands up and down the heroine's body, feeling for splotches of blood or rips in the fabric. Fortunately there are none, and she instead presses the back of her hand to her friends mouth.
A smooth exhale and inhale. Unconscious.
Stable. Steady.
She lets out a sigh of relief.
"Have you seen anyone else?" She asks the other person, then realizes how stupid that is. "Have you heard anyone else?"
There's a shuffle of movement, and then the realization that if this man has moved his head, she would be able to see it. "I uh- I. No. I haven't." He stutters slightly.
"Where do you think we are?" She asks, shuffling her way around Mina to survey the area they're in.
It's a flat slab of concrete, somehow flat and smooth despite a building collapsing on top of them. Maybe the ground floor, but it's stable and slick to the touch. Almost like it's been left untouched.
"Main floor I imagine. Everything collapsed, but the first floor was a solid slab. So I doubt it would break from just this." The man says.
Something in the rubble shift, and then a shaft of light rushes through, illuminating the inside of their rubble coffin.
The floor is indeed slick, and she finds that the ceiling and walls of the pocket of space are Quirk-shaped and not the random jumble of rubble and cracked concrete she expects it to be. There are sections of smoothness in between the shattered pipes and shards of concrete.
Like someone trying to cover up the usage of a Quirk to create a safe space.
She spins around, finding the man still by Mina's side. His expression is tight, green eyes focused on her. Not the shuffle of movement behind her, or the crack of concrete being chipped away as someone works their way to them.
The shaft of light widens. "I see Uravity in here!"
"Pinky is here too!" The man calls, and the light widens and shifts as more rubble is cleared away.
He locks eyes with her, smiles and winks. "Time for me to go hero." But the smile doesn't reach his eyes.
The smile isn't real or genuine because she feels like if it was then his eyes would have lit up and his jaw wouldn't be so tight. His fingers wouldn't be curled into fists and he wouldn't look like he was in pain looking at her.
"Why?" She asks.
"Because I don't have a choice." He whispers back as black sludge slides off his lips.
He doesn't react to it. Doesn't freak out as it constricts around his body and continues to wrap around him and expand. She isn't sure what to do- other than to assume it a Quirk of some sort- and instead watches wide eyed and confused when it covers him completely.
And then drops to the ground in a puddle of ooze.
She stares at the spot he was in as she ponders that last sentence. Wonders and worries about what it might mean if he was the one that shaped this little pocket of space for her and Mina, and what it means if he had the ability to use that black goop to teleport as well.
The third time she meets him she knows he won't let her die.
That feeling might just be because he's sitting in the park feeding pigeons breadcrumbs from a bag though.
She thinks it has something to do with how he's sitting though. How he's curled his knees up close to his chest, hunching his lean frame around his legs and his arms over instead of around his knees.
It could also be how he looks.
Tired and dazed, only pausing in his mindless scattering of crumbs to reach up and run his thumb around the band of the beanie that's just barely managing to control his green locks curling at the hem of it. It could have been how he looked like he hadn't slept in three days, or how both of his hands were bandaged and dirty. It could have been a lot of different things about his appearance.
How she noticed his sweatshirt was the same as it was at that café all those weeks prior. The sleeve-still torn but stitched closed and slightly stained from blood at the cuff-gives it away.
How she noticed his jeans were frayed and creased and the holes in them weren't factory uniform but in points of actual wear and tear.
How when she walked over, pulling the sleeves of her crème sweater down, he froze and looked guilty instead of fearful or angry.
She opens her mouth to speak when suddenly he beats her to it, eyes focused on her and more than a little frantic as he blurts out, "I love how pigeons are just so quiet and thoughtful."
She hesitates, stares at him with her mouth still open.
He stares back; eyes wide and filled with fear, breath ragged and quick.
Scared.
But of who?
Of what?
Her eyes dance over his appearance again, and this time she notices it.
The earbud in his left ear.
The metal bracelet on his right wrist.
A comm.
And a tracking device.
Of course.
So she sits down next to him without another word and folds her fingers together so she doesn't fidget. And whether or not he understands, he allows her this- either not wanting to call her out and endanger her or himself- or deciding there was little he could do.
He scatters another handful of crumbs and the pigeons coo and warble their thanks.
She can see his lips quirking back and forth as he crinkles the bag. A dozen different thoughts no doubt going through that mind of his, but he remains quiet. Thinking. Either because he doesn't know how to say it, or because he's too scared that whoever is listening will realize he's talking to her and not the pigeons.
He empties the rest of the bag on the ground at his feet, leaning back on the bench and splaying his fingers out on the bench.
Taptap taptaptap tap.
She jerks, glancing over at him at the sudden rhythm on the bench. He doesn't return the expression, eyes focused ahead.
Taptap taptaptap taptaptap
She frowns, noticing the difference. He repeats it, the first series of taps echoing between them before he flexes his fingers and moves to the second.
Again and again he taps out those two rhythms, one after the other as he stares ahead of him.
He offers no explanation, only continues to tap it.
Unsure of what else to do, if this is some kind of communication that she doesn't know- she taps it back.
Taptap taptaptap tap. Taptap taptaptap taptaptap.
He still doesn't look at her, but he does nod. Suddenly getting up and looking at the bracelet.
It vibrates. Hard and angry on his wrist.
"Goodbye pigeons." The first two words he's spoken since she sat down. "Perhaps I'll feed you seeds next week." A casual addition, but a subtle hint to her.
He will be there next week.
And she would have to figure out what he meant with those strange taps in the meantime.