A/n: So, this is another weird crossover. The honorifics, mostly for siblings, are probably going to be not very accurate because I confused myself while looking up how to use them. Let's just say that it's because Angel and Spike aren't Japanese and they definitely aren't leading by example.

Chapter 1: The Long Road

In the beginning, there were theories that attributed Quirks to magic. Those theories were quick to drop into obscurity. Most people wouldn't know that was because they were easy to disprove. Slayers, Watchers, witches and demons knew better. Quirks weren't magic.

That didn't mean magic couldn't be a Quirk.

Midoriya Izuku knew fire. He knew the moment when heat turned into burns. He knew which fabrics melted and which charred. He knew how long he had to save his notebooks before they were unreadable. In another world he could have come by this knowledge because of his Quirk. Maybe telekinetic control of fire or blasting flames from his hands or any of the other Quirks he'd supposed could be created from the combination of his mom's Pull and his father's Dragon Breath.

Midoriya Izuku was Quirkless. Fire wasn't his friend.

It wasn't Kacchan's explosions today. Kacchan was out sick with the flu that had been going around school. No, Izuku was dodging his father's flames, which had been roaring since he stepped inside. Something had gone wrong at work today and Midoriya Hisashi was angry.

Izuku ducked to avoid having his face burnt off and his father's fist rammed into his chest. He fell and his head bounced on the floor. The sound of the door slamming cut through the ringing in his ears.

"Izuku, you have to get up." Inko crawled over to her son. "Izuku!"

"Head hurts," Izuku said. He squeezed his eyes shut.

Inko sobbed as she tried to get Izuku to stand. He was eight now and had undergone a growth spurt that made him slightly difficult for her to carry under normal circumstances. Now, with Inko's arm broken and her leg not much better off, the most she'd be able to do was support him while he walked on his own.

Those thoughts were fleeting. They had to leave. They had to leave now. If Inko had to carry her son with a broken arm, she would.

Izuku pushed against the floor and found himself standing almost by default. Inko held him up with her unbroken (but not unburned) arm. Mitsuki's wasn't far. They'd be safe there for a time. And maybe there'd be a Hero patrolling on their way. Maybe they'd be lucky.

The door opened.

"Where do you think you're going?" Hisashi growled. "I'm not done with you."

Things moved quickly after that.

Inko let go of Izuku and dove at Hisashi, tackling him onto the floor and, more importantly, away from their son. Hisashi's head hit the wall hard.

"Izuku, go to Hino-san's," Inko said. Hino-san was a half-enenra who passed off their demon powers as part of their fireproofing Quirk. Izuku would be safe in their apartment even if Hisashi burnt down the whole building.

And if anything happened to Inko, Uncle would know where to find Izuku.

Inko pulled on the thread of magic running through her and raised a shield that blocked the flames Hisashi spit in Izuku's direction as he ran for the door on shaky legs. It had been a long time since she'd used this power, but she'd always been a natural at shielding, at protecting.

Hisashi made a sound of confusion when Izuku escaped without further burns. Inko punched him and he turned his attention on her.

It took a second and a tiny bit of magic for Inko to activate her panic button, the slim silver anklet she'd worn since her last year of high school. Then Hisashi blew a wave of fire into her face and the world went dark.

Izuku woke up in a hospital bed with an itching in his chest and a lurking headache. Hino-san was sitting next to him, their smoke hair spilling over their face and pooling on the floor. Izuku whimpered. His body felt too heavy to try for words that required his mouth to move.

"Are you awake, Midoriya-kun?" Hino-san asked.

Izuku forced a long, drawn-out "Yes" through his lips. Hino-san pressed the call button. Soon a nurse and then a doctor were fussing over Izuku.

"How does your head feel?" the doctor asked.

"Mom?" Izuku croaked.

The nurse and the doctor looked at each other over his head.

"Your uncles are here, Midoriya-san," the nurse said, completely skipping over Izuku's question. "I'll let them know you're awake."

Izuku, who just wanted his mom, said nothing.

The nurse left the room and came back with two white men dressed mostly in black. They seemed old to Izuku, but every adult seems old to an eight-year-old. They looked to be in their early twenties. The slightly taller one was dark-haired and the slightly shorter one had hair so blond it was almost white. Izuku had never met them but he recognized them. They were in a photograph with his mom, the one his mom had hung up in his bedroom that showed her in her law school graduation gown while the two men carried her on their shoulders. It didn't cross Izuku's mind that they looked exactly the same as they did in a photo that had been taken before he was born.

"Ojisan?" Izuku asked.

The dark-haired man's eyes flashed yellow or gold, it was too quick to tell. A very small part of Izuku wondered how that was related to his Quirk.

"Could we have the room?" the dark-haired man asked.

"That should be alright," the doctor said.

The doctor and nurse filed out of the room. When Hino-san, who'd been keeping a silent watch from the corner, made to follow the dark-haired man stopped them and said something too quietly for Izuku to hear. Hino-san bowed their head and replied just as quietly before they left.

The three of them were silent for a moment.

"I'm sorry," the dark-haired man said. "Your mom didn't make it."

Izuku crumbled.

It turned out that the dark-haired man gave good hugs and the blond man didn't mind at all when Izuku cried into his shirt. They sat with the boy until his tears ran dry, careful to make sure that he didn't pop any stitches.

"You're in Mom's picture," Izuku said. "Why are you here?"

"We're family, kid," the blond man said gruffly. "We're going to take care of you, alright? We'll keep you safe."

Two days before Izuku was released from hospital, the body of Midoriya Hisashi was found behind the police station in Musutafu. In his hand was a flash drive with files full of information on the drug smuggling ring he ran, more than enough for the police and half a dozen underground Heroes to shut it all down.

His throat had been ripped out.

It took almost two months before Izuku started settling into life with his uncles. It took less than a day for him to realize something was up.

The first oddity that in hindsight Izuku should have noticed was when Detective Tsukauchi picked him up from the hospital alone. Izuku had met the detective twice before. Uncle Angel called him a friend. Uncle Spike spoke in English and called him a "good bloke", which Izuku though meant that he was smart. Izuku liked Tsukauchi, he was nice, but Uncle Angel or Uncle Spike had always been around before.

The sun shone brightly while Tsukauchi drove Izuku to his uncles' house. Izuku distracted himself from feeling nervous by asking Tsukauchi a million questions about his Quirk. Tsikauchi answered until Izuku fell into theorizing mutters. Then he kept listening and made a mental note to research Ocean Eye, who had a Quirk similar to his according to Izuku.

The house that Tsukauchi parked behind was three-stories of semi-traditional architecture held together by steel and stone. It was solid but more worn than the other buildings within sight, like it had been there long enough to watch the rest of the city spring up around it. If Izuku had been able to see the shining Fukuoka Tower in the skyline and if he'd had a better understanding of distance and the passage of time, his suspicion might have started right then when Tsukauchi helped him out of the car. Fukuoka was thirteen hours from Musutafu. They'd been in the car for less than three hours.

Uncle Angel opened the back door and smiled at them. "Izuku. Thank you for driving him, Tsukauchi."

"Any time," the detective said. "You take care of each other."

Izuku nodded. "We will!"

Inside, the house seemed quiet to Izuku but Uncle Angel turned towards the stairs that were mostly hidden behind a wall from the angle they were looking at.

"We're running a summer camp right now but everyone should be in their rooms until dinner," Uncle Angel said.

Izuku heard giggling and the sound of footsteps above them. Several people went scampering away from the stairs.

Uncle Angel sighed. "They're good kids, they just don't know what privacy means. Do you want to see your room or the rest of the house first?"

Izuku eyed the stairs. His room would be upstairs, wouldn't it? He didn't want to meet a lot of people right now. Uncle Angel noticed his hesitation.

"They'll all be in their rooms," he said.

"My room please," Izuku said.

Uncle Angel led him to the second floor and opened the second door on the left. Izuku took one look at the bedroom on the other side and burst into tears.

The pale green walls were barely visible behind the dozens of Pro Hero posters that covered them. Every surface was covered with Hero merchandise, from the figurines on the desk and bookshelf to the plushies and All Might sheets on the bed. Most of it was Izuku's collection but there were a few new pieces. A Gang Orca plushie sat on the bed next to Izuku's six-year-old All Might. A pencil holder printed with the current top five Heroes was on the desk. The blanket folded at the end of the bed had Crimson Riot's face showing.

Izuku hiccupped a few times and then turned to cry into Uncle Angel's shirt. It had already hit him that his mom was gone—that was never going to stop hurting—but he hadn't realized that there were still people who cared about him. It had been only him and his mom for so long.

"You didn't have to do so much work for me," Izuku said between sobs.

"Yes, we did," Uncle Angel said. "We wanted your room to be ready for you. You're important to us, Izuku. Never forget that."

They didn't make it to the rest of the house before dinner.

When Uncle Spike came upstairs to ask Izuku if he felt up to eating with everyone, Izuku wiped his face and shrugged. He didn't know if he could handle more people right now but he didn't want to seem difficult.

"I can bring a plate upstairs for you," Uncle Spike said.

Izuku shook his head. That seemed difficult. There was no reason for him not to eat dinner normally.

Uncle Angel studied his face. "If you're sure. The girls can be pretty hectic. No one will be upset if you need to leave."

Izuku nodded.

There were six girls there for the summer camp. The youngest was a bubbly blonde around Izuku's age with golden eyes and a pair of fangs in both her upper and lower jaws. The eldest had a Mutant-type Quirk that gave her a head and horns like a bighorn sheep. There was a girl with white freckles, a girl without eyes, a girl who kept setting her fingernails on fire and a girl whose long hair moved like an extra limb. A woman in her thirties with black hair and a mouth full of shark-like teeth attempted to keep the chaos to a minimum but ended up joining in more often than not.

Izuku didn't have any luck learning names that night, with "Mimi", "Nako", "oneesan", "neesan" and "neechan" being thrown around and answered to by multiple people. He ended up sitting between Uncle Angel and one of the Mimis, the blonde-haired golden-eyed girl. Blonde Mimi, who also answered to Mimi-chan and neechan, called Izuku cute and offered to share the teapot she was pouring her dark red drink from when he ran out of water. Uncle Angel stopped her. Izuku talked to Mimi-chan a little, but mostly he sat in silence and ate his curry. There was so much conversation going on around him that it didn't seem to matter.

There was mochi ice cream for dessert. The woman (who was alternately oneesan or Nako-senpai) offered a box of each flavour to Izuku first and told him to take what he wanted. Izuku understood why when she placed the rest on the table and the girls swarmed them. All six boxes were empty before Izuku finished his first bite.

"This is why we only have you here once a year," Uncle Spike said. "You'd eat us out of house and home otherwise."

The girl with white freckles grinned. "You know you love us!" The other girls laughed.

The girls and Nako-senpai disappeared after the sun had set. Izuku didn't notice. He'd started yawning after dessert and nearly fallen asleep at the table. Uncle Spike picked him up and tucked him into bed.

"Goodnight, niblet," Uncle Spike said softly as he left the room.

Izuku was already asleep.

The end of summer came the day after Izuku arrived at his uncles' house. Izuku got to experience the total chaos of being in the same building as six people who had left packing their bags until the last minute. After nearly getting his head taken off by a suitcase, he decided that hiding in his room until it was over was the heroic thing to do.

The sounds of a stampede stopped after an hour, leaving the house almost eerily quiet. Izuku was gathering the courage to peek out into the hallway when there was a knock on the door.

"It's me," Uncle Angel said.

He pushed open the door. Izuku put down the notebook he was adding to. All of his notebooks had their own shelf on his bookcase. He was editing an older entry on Recovery Girl from his fourth notebook, but he had four more on Heroes plus two on the Quirks of his family and classmates.

Well, his former classmates...and his former family.

"Do you want to see the rest of the house now that the agents of chaos are gone?" Uncle Angel asked.

Izuku thought for a moment and then nodded.

The rest of the house contained a library, a training hall and an infirmary among the more common kitchen, bathrooms and living room. The decorations of choice were bladed weapons mounted on the walls far above the height Izuku was able to reach. It took until they were stepping out of the infirmary for Izuku to question it.

"This isn't a normal house, is it?" the boy asked.

Uncle Angel was silent for several seconds. "No, it isn't," he said carefully.

Contrary to Uncle Angel's hopes, Izuku asked the question that was dreaded by every caregiver of a young child, "Why?"

The answer to that was a story that spanned all of time and had given grown adults nightmares. Izuku was eight.

"We're part of a school," Uncle Angel said eventually. "We have to be prepared."

"Prepared for what?" Izuku asked.

"Emergencies," Uncle Angel said.

The end of the world.

Kuran Kanako had been adopted by Angel and Spike three months after she'd been Called. She'd been fourteen and in an orphanage when she'd felt the rush of strength and ended up putting a table through the wall. That had been dismissed as a sudden Quirk mutation (thankfully). Then Angel and Hinako-neesan had shown up talking about demons and destiny.

Kanako had wanted to be a Hero since she was a kid. She'd been abandoned near Recovery Girl's agency when she was four and remembered the Pro Hero more clearly than she did her birth parents even though Recovery Girl had taken care of her for all of an hour. Her Pro Hero dreams had died a slow death in the orphanage, where most kids didn't make it to high school, let alone a Hero course. When Angel and Hinako-neesan had told her about what it meant to be a Slayer, she felt like she was five again, watching the video of All Might's debut and knowing that was going to be her someday. Slayers were a different kind of hero and she already was one.

It was odd to suddenly have a big sister. The closest thing Izuku had to a sibling before was Kacchan—brash, brilliant Kacchan who called him stupid, useless Deku and set off explosions in his face. Kana-nee wasn't like that.

"What was that?" Kanako asked.

Izuku snapped his mouth shut and cut off his muttering. He'd asked Kanako about the piercings in her ears because they looked so cool and it turned out that the bone spikes were from her Quirk, which she could use to make the little freckles of bone on her skin grow. She said she could only make spikes but Izuku thought she should be able to make other shapes and maybe she could create armour or tools or weapons and if the bones were detachable that gave her so many more options.

Was it any wonder that he'd been muttering?

"The armour?" Kanako asked.

"Oh," Izuku said. He wasn't used to people actually wanting to know what he was talking about. "I, um, thought that you could maybe make sort of overlapping plate shapes that would act like armour. Um, that would only be useful if Shell is strong enough to stop hits without, um, breaking."

Kanako stared at him. Then she stood so suddenly that half the homework she was supposed to be doing got up close and personal with the library floor. She told Izuku to forget about it when he bent to pick up the scattered notebooks and carried him out of the library when he wasn't fast enough for her liking. She put him down when they reached the kitchen, where Uncle Spike was cooking something that smelled like fish while Uncle Angel set the table.

"Dads! Dads! Izu-kun has a great idea," Kanako said. She looked at Izuku. "Tell them what you told me."

Izuku managed to get out another explanation of how he thought Kanako could use her Quirk to make armour. "But it was just an idea. I mean, you're not going to be a Pro Hero so you probably won't need it."

"I want to try it," Kanako said. "Please, dads? If I can make armour you won't worry so much when—"

Uncle Spike interrupted her. "After dinner. And no experimenting without supervision. We don't need you blowing a hole in the wall again."

"That was Sumi-nee's fault," Kanako said. "What's for dinner? Did Angel make you follow a recipe this time?"

"Yes," Uncle Angel said over Uncle Spike's protests.

Izuku ducked his head to hide a smile. Uncle Spike had tried experimenting with dinner last week. They'd ended up getting take-out.

The only reason Kanako didn't finish eating before Izuku was that she had three helpings of the spicy fish Uncle Spike had made. They went running to the training hall as soon as the table was cleared.

"I'll go keep an eye on them," Spike said, getting up from his seat and heading after the kids.

"We need to tell him," Angel said.

Spike stopped and turned around. Angel was looking down into the mug of blood he'd been drinking while the rest of them ate. Izuku hadn't commented on Angel not having food. He never did.

"I thought we were going to let him get used to us before we upend his world view," Spike said. "We've got a while till it's time for the next apocalypse."

"Izuku's smart," Angel said. "Have you seen his notebooks? Give him another month and he'll have found out enough to come to the wrong conclusion."

Spike winched. "And he could decide to run away."

That had happened before with Slayers and Potentials who didn't believe that the Watchers were telling them the truth about demons. They were usually found before they got killed, but Izuku would be in more danger than any of the girls if he left. He was a child, he wasn't wired to fight and there were old demons with long memories who would hunt him down mercilessly if they got a hint of who he was.

"There's a holiday next weekend, isn't there?" Spike said. "We can tell him Friday, give him a few days to process."

There was a crash from the direction of the training hall. The conversation was immediately put on hold to go stop Izuku and Kanako from bringing the building down.

On Friday, Uncle Angel took a photo album down from one of the upper shelves in the library and placed it on the table in front of Izuku. He opened it to a picture of a brunette Caucasian woman wearing a Western-style white wedding dress and a black-haired Japanese man in a traditional black montsuki standing under a flower arch with a red ribbon tying together their entwined hands. They were smiling at each other more than they were at the camera.

"These are your grandparents, about eight generations back," Uncle Angel said. "More than two hundred years ago. Dawn and Gorou."

Izuku studied the picture. "That's before Quirks."

"Yeah, it was," Uncle Angel said. He turned to another photo from Dawn and Gorou's wedding.

Izuku's eyes widened. "That's Uncle Spike!"

It was. Uncle Spike and a blonde woman each had an arm around the bride. He looked exactly the same as he did now down to the black leather jacket was wearing, though the jacket in the photo was a longer style than his current one.

"How?" Izuku asked. "He could have some sort of immortality Quirk, but that would mean Quirks emerged at least fifty years before the glowing baby and that would change the entire history of the world..."

Izuku fell into muttering. Uncle Angel let him go on for a few minutes before redirecting his attention.

"It's not a Quirk," Uncle Angel said. "Spike is nearing four hundred years old. I'm a few years past five hundred."

Hundreds of years old with no immortality Quirk? Izuku needed a few minutes to process that.

"If it's not your Quirks, then what is it?" Izuku asked.

Angel took a deep breath. He was going to need it for the explaining he had to do.

"At the beginning of time, Earth was ruled by demons. They didn't treat humans well, so the first humans banded together to drive them out. As humans became stronger, evil demons retreated to other dimensions. Some of the last evil demons to leave Earth gave their blood to humans and created the first vampires. Humans fought back by creating the first Vampire Slayer, a girl with the power of a demon but the soul of a human." Angel paused for a moment. "Kanako is a Slayer. Spike and I are vampires with human souls. We're the good guys."

Izuku was silent. "Oh," he said eventually. "Is that all?"

With the advent of Quirks the definition of "impossible" had become very flexible, but it still ruled out vampires, demons and magic. Children Izuku's age have little trouble believing impossible things.

Midoriya Izuku was the last living descendent of Dawn Summers, the Key who opens doors between worlds, and he was going to be a hero...if he ever managed to levitate a pencil.

The writing implement lying on the table in front of him refused to move. He glared at it. Making light objects float was supposed to be easy magic, Angel, Spike and Yaoyorozu-sensei had said so. So why couldn't he do it?

"Midoriya-kun?" Yaoyorozu-sensei's daughter Momo tapped Izuku's arm. "I'm sorry, I dropped my pencil. Could you move back so I can get it?"

Izuku looked under the table and saw that Momo's pencil was directly under his feet. "I'll get it, Momo-chan."

He ducked under the table and reached for the pencil without getting out of his chair. His fingers missed the pencil by a hair. He tried to reach further and then the pencil floated off the floor into the palm of his hand.

Izuku sat up so quickly that he hit his head on the table. "Momo-chan, did you make your pencil float?"

Momo shook her head. "Is your head alright?"

"It's fine. It's great!" Izuku grinned at her. "I did it!"

"You...Oh." Momo smiled back. "Congratulations."

Izuku handed over her pencil, still grinning. He'd done magic!

"Now see if you can do it again, Midoriya-kun," Yaoyorozu-sensei said from where she was seated surrounded by papers at one end of the long table.

Izuku nodded. "Yes, Yaoyorozu-sensei."

He focused on his pencil again. By the time Angel came to the dining room to tell him they were leaving, Izuku had managed to make it float a finger's width above the tabletop. He didn't stop smiling for the rest of the day.

Magic lessons with Yaoyorozu-sensei were alternated with self-defence lessons. Angel or Spike usually taught them, but some weeks one of the Yaoyorozu parents ran them through drills for breaking holds, picking locks and escaping vampires. Izuku was steadily catching up to Momo in those lessons. When there were really big problems, like the two apocalypse seasons Izuku had experienced, Kirishima-san would come to the Yaoyorozu house with her and Hinako-san's kids and play games with them until they fell asleep. Kirishima-san was good at keeping them distracted, even when Mimi-chan grumbled about not being allowed to fight.

Mimi-chan, Momo's adopted sister Himiko, was a Potential, not a Slayer. She had an amazing Quirk that let her shapeshift into any person whose blood she drank. Izuku might have thought that was kind of icky, but it wasn't any different from when Angel and Spike drank blood and it was such a useful Quirk.

The Kirishimas also had really cool Quirks. Kirishima Hinako could make her limbs as hard and sharp as a steel blade, which ensured that the Slayer was never without a weapon. Her wife Saki had flowers blooming in her hair and rainbow kaleidoscope eyes that swirled faster when she hypnotized people. Their oldest daughter Satomi was part demon and had ridges around her eyes and down the back of her neck that had nothing to do with her light-bending Quirk but looked so cool. Eijirou had a hardening Quirk that made his skin look like jagged rock and his teeth were the same as Hinako-san's. The five-year-old twins both had flowers growing on their heads. Tsubaki blew bubbles that smelled strongly of roses when they popped and Ume painted trails of rainbow colours on every surface she touched. Izuku had so many ideas about how they could use their Quirks even if they didn't want to go into Pro Heroics.

Eijirou was the only other Hero hopeful among the kids. Even Momo, with her amazingly versatile ability to make anything she knew the chemical composition of out of her body fat, was on the path to become a Watcher like her mother and everyone in her father's family.

Friendship between Izuku, Momo, Himiko and Eijirou grew in fits and starts. At first it was by the virtue of being children around the same age who spent a lot of time together. Then it was because Momo, Eijirou and Himiko didn't treat Izuku differently for being Quirkless, unlike the kids at school (there wasn't any bullying, Angel and Spike had stopped that before it could start, but he didn't have any friends). Soon, the four of them were meeting up outside of lessons to experiment with Quirks and magic under Yaoyorozu-sensei's watchful eye.

"But what if I did drink demon blood, Mom?" Himiko asked for the third or fourth time that day. "I could disguise myself as a demon."

Yaoyorozu-sensei raised an eyebrow. "You could make yourself sick."

"But Mom..." Himiko was hopping on her toes in front of her mom. She suddenly froze and an awed look crossed her face. "Mom, Mom, Mom!"

Yaoyorozu-sensei's eyes widened. "Himiko, is something wrong?"

Himiko shook her head. Then she nodded. Then she shook her head again. Tears ran down her cheeks. "Mom, I think I'm a Slayer now."

The dagger Izuku was levitating clattered to the floor. He also dropped the stopwatch he was using to time how long Eijirou could hold his hardened form but that didn't really matter since Eijirou yelped and stopped using his Quirk.

New Slayers were only Called when an active Slayer died. Kanako and Hinako were both patrolling tonight.

Yaoyorozu-sensei was quick to realize what the boys were thinking. She got Eijirou on the phone with his mom and then looked for another phone for Izuku. Kanako answered after a few rings.

"What is it, Yaoyorozu-san?" Kanako asked.

Izuku burst into tears.

"Izu-kun? Izu-kun? What's wrong?" Kanako sounded panicked.

"Mimi-chan is a Slayer!" Izuku said.

"She's only eleven!" Kanako exclaimed. She paused and took a deep breath. "I'm fine, Izu-kun. Last I heard, we're all alive. Whoever died wasn't in Japan."

That was comforting, as horrible as it was to think so. A Slayer had died but they weren't anyone Izuku knew.

"Okay," Izuku said.

Spike's voice sounded inaudibly over the phone line. Kanako was muffled when she replied. She must have covered up the microphone.

"Spike's going to pick you up," Kanako said. "He'll be there in an hour."

"He doesn't have to rush," Izuku said. The drive from home to the Yaoyorozu estate was three hours with the normal distance-bending spells they used. Anything stronger, up to and including teleportation, was saved for emergencies and apocalypse season.

"Yes, he does," Kanako said. "You'll see when you get here."

The difference between Spike's driving on a normal day and Spike's driving during an apocalypse was negligible. When he was using an emergency level distance spell, Izuku had to keep his eyes closed so that he couldn't see the trees, buildings and people they missed hitting by a second. It was a lot like being in a car with a Slayer driving.

"What's going on?" Izuku asked. The car took a turn hard and he squeezed his eyes even more tightly shut.

"We're going to murder Endeavor," Spike said.

That probably meant that Endeavor was causing a problem, because Spike's method of problem-solving was to kill stuff until the problem went away, but it didn't really answer Izuku's question.

"Why are we killing the number two Hero?" Izuku asked.

"Because he set his son on fire and left him for dead," Spike said.

"WHAT?"

Somehow Izuku's exclamation didn't cause Spike to swerve into a tree.

Angel was burning a demon corpse in the backyard when they got home. Judging by the barbed tail he was holding in the fire with an iron poker, it was a venomous species.

"Kanako's sitting with the boy," Angel said.

"He still hallucinating?" Spike asked.

Angel shrugged. "He's sleeping. Poor kid's exhausted."

"That's fair," Spike said.

There was a loud crack and a hiss as the demon's tail broke in half. A shower of sparks leapt out of the fire pit.

"Should I go help Kana-nee?" Izuku asked. "I don't have school tomorrow."

Angel and Spike looked at each other.

"The kid could use a friendly face," Spike said.

Angel nodded and turned to Izuku. "Get one of us if he wakes up."

Izuku agreed.

When Izuku got to the infirmary, Kanako was pacing the room like a caged lion. She turned to him and raised the knife she was carrying when he entered. This was a Slayer on a hair-trigger. Endeavor really needed to die.

"It's just me," Izuku said.

It took a moment for Kanako to relax. Finally, she lowered the knife. "How's Mimi-chan?"

"She started crying again just before I left," Izuku said.

A small smile flashed across Kanako's face. "Obviously you're a good influence."

Izuku sputtered. "I don't cry that much!"

A whimper interrupted Kanako's response. They turned to the only occupied bed, where a boy wrapped in magic-saturated bandages was tossing and turning.

"You're okay," Kanako said softly. "You're safe."

She stepped closer to the bed and kept murmuring soothing nonsense. The boy slowly calmed down but didn't wake up.

"What happened to him?" Izuku asked, not daring to raise his voice above a whisper.

"He burnt himself fighting the Micon that stung him," Kanako said. "He's got a fire Quirk but the burns looked really bad. And the stupid hallucinogenic venom probably didn't help."

"Spike said...Is he Endeavor's son?" Izuku asked.

"It sounded like he is," Kanako said.

Izuku was silent for several minutes. He didn't look up to Endeavor as much as All Might, but Endeavor was still a Hero. The idea that he could hurt his own son was terrible.

"Angel and Spike are totally going to adopt him," Kanako said.

They totally were.