Initial notes: Hiya! This story was originally posted on AO3 from November 4th to November 7th of 2020. It is complete on that website. Because this website has a less robust tagging system, I will include some warnings here:
This story contains manga spoilers and movie spoilers for Heroes Rising and Two Heroes. It also contains harsh language, some graphic depictions of violence, implied sexual content (fade to black), discussions of depressing thoughts and negative mental health, and the death or dismemberment of some major characters. Reader discretion is advised; this story is rated 'M' on AO3, though the violence depicted in it is not particularly more egregious than what is typical for canon in 'My Hero Academia.'
This story is set 'post-canon' to 'My Hero Academia,' and the characters are professional Heroes and adults here. There will be narrative elaboration as to how they got to where they are.
Prologue - The Chase by Moonlight (and the Stars as Witnesses)
It didn't used to be that his nights were so long.
Izuku Midoriya, Hero name 'Jade Rabbit,' pumped his legs hard, viridian lightning crackling around him like a tempest, as he bounded across the rooftops. He was quick in his leaps like his Hero namesake, and the night blazed bright green around him from One for All.
In front of him, several rooftops ahead, a figure wearing a dark bodysuit and motorcycle-style helmet was taking superhumanly long jumps from rooftop to rooftop. She was ahead of him only really by virtue of having had a head start, though that distance was quickly closing. One for All flared harder as he moved to catch up and the rooftops cracked under the force of his footfalls.
They were in an industrial district with mostly factories and warehouses around them, and he was determined to catch her while she was still on top of the smaller buildings. He always had a much greater advantage when they were outdoors, and he knew both of them knew that.
You won't get the best of me this time, he thought with great determination as he shot Blackwhip forward.
The greenish-black energy tendrils cracked through the air towards the escaping villain. She put her fingers together in a pink glow and fell suddenly as his attack would have landed, disappearing between the buildings and into an alleyway. He reached the ledge with a skidding stop and looked down, only for her to jump up and kick him right in the chin. He flew backwards, seeing stars, and hit the ground with a pathetic thud. By the time he got his bearings - and could see properly again - she was off again, and he muttered a curse as he scrambled back to his feet and One for All exploded even brighter than before.
He took off like a drag racer, and heard the sonic boom behind him as he cleared multiple rooftops per bound. Each time his feet hit the ground the rooftops shattered under the force, leaving concrete and brick flying in his wake. He was right on her when she flattened her body and went through a window into a dark warehouse, feet-first like a black and pink rocket. Izuku skidded to a stop at the window, the sheet metal of the roof groaning under his steel boots. He had to brace his hands against the wall to come to a complete stop, and the force dented the window frames and cracked the windows along the wall.
"Dammit," he muttered with a great deal of irritation. That was very bad, she always ambushed him if he tried to take her on in enclosed spaces.
He'd taken this damned case, chasing the gravity thief - police callsign 'Stratosphere' - more than a year ago, and he'd gotten ambushed or trapped in indoor environments often enough by now to know her games. She happily took advantage of his desire to minimize collateral damage when he could, and it irritated him to no end.
He cupped his hands up to the glass and peered through the window, looking for any signs of movement or indication of what kind of trap she'd set up.
Izuku saw containers and miscellaneous machinery he didn't recognize, and deduced that the warehouse was probably not in active use. He jumped up onto the raised portion of the roof and saw there was nowhere to go forward or to the left. Forward, there was a factory with a very high outer wall; higher than the warehouse he was on top of, and almost flush against the wall of the warehouse. To the left there was the curve of a freeway, with a fence that hugged the bottom of the road. He spun and didn't see any sign of her the way he'd come, and to the other direction was the sea.
"Dammit!" Izuku exclaimed. He knew if he went into that warehouse, he was going to have a bad time.
This was the sixth time in as many months he'd gotten close to catching her, after even more months of investigations, false starts, and collaboration with the police. Each time, she had somehow outsmarted or escaped him - and the worst part was that he'd volunteered for the damn case. He was particularly incensed still about the time she had tazed him so thoroughly he had dreams about it. It turned out, while his Kevlar weave bodysuit was extremely good at stopping small arms and absorbing blows, it performed very poorly in the face of high voltage electricity.
Izuku cursed under his breath, then took a running leap off the side of the warehouse, using Float to gently control his descent. He landed firmly in a half-kneeling stance, his arms raised out low and hands hovering over the ground, and looked carefully around him. He didn't hear anything besides the occasional car passing by on the freeway. It was late - probably well after midnight now - so there was no foot traffic, and he hadn't called for backup.
Shouto would never let him hear the end of it if he called for backup. As if on cue, his earpiece came to life.
"I can call the police if you'd like," Frostfire deadpanned in Izuku's ear, and Izuku swore he could hear his half-and-half best friend's smirk. Frostfire was a good partner in Hero work, and Izuku respected him immensely. That didn't mean Izuku didn't think Frostfire was a little shit when he wanted to be, though.
"I don't need them, Frostfire," Izuku said matter-of-factly. He continued to scan his surroundings, gently stretching out his neck and arms as he did so. Izuku was anticipating a fight by that point, so he readied himself accordingly.
Frostfire just hummed neutrally into his radio in response. He was providing remote support from the agency that night, rather than doing field work.
"Sure, whatever you say. I'm following you on the GPS scanner now, if you change your mind," Shouto said, eliciting an eye roll from Izuku. He grumbled and reached up to mute his earpiece, then he took it off and stuffed it in a pocket of his utility belt.
If I get my ass kicked again, I don't need running commentary for it, he thought ruefully. Truthfully, Stratosphere never really kicked his ass in direct combat; he was simply orders of magnitude stronger than her, so that was not a realistic outcome in most cases. She was quick on her feet and clever though, and he had a tendency to get surprised - and perhaps, distracted - by her.
Izuku finished stretching, then marched his way over to the door. There was a padlock and chain over it.
Is it abandoned…? That's even worse, he thought with great dismay. This was absolutely, without a doubt, a trap, and he was going to walk in through the front door.
Still, he technically had her cornered, and he was determined not to let her beat him again. His competitiveness was outweighing his better judgement, and he let it to his detriment. Izuku sighed, and green lightning crackled around his body again. He reached out and pulled the padlock right off, the chains shattering under his hands. Then he gripped the handle and turned it hard, and he heard the locking mechanism inside crunch and crumble under the force.
The door swung forwards slowly, and Izuku rolled his eyes.
Might as well get it over with, I guess.
He raised his hands into a simple close-range fighting stance and marched into the warehouse slowly. Unfortunately, it was dark as hell given the time of night, so he flicked his wrist and the flashlight on his right air-directing combat gauntlet turned on.
Thanks, Melissa, he thought; he needed to remember to buy her a Christmas present yet.
Izuku cautiously walked between the containers and machinery, stepping carefully over piles of chain or rope and the occasional loose pieces of what he assumed had been pallets. It was very quiet inside, and he didn't like that at all. His eyes weren't really adjusting to the dark, either, because of his flashlight.
He heard Stratosphere call out, her voice echoing across the warehouse, but he couldn't place the direction.
"You know, Superhero, if I wanted to I could've just walked out as soon as you decided to follow me in here!"
Izuku grumbled incoherently and raised his head to yell back.
"Yeah, but you don't operate that way! You want a confrontation, so come out already!" He called back indignantly. That much was true, at least. She enjoyed toying with him, and had developed a rather personal… vendetta, he supposed he would call it, against him. Not that she actively tried to hurt or maim him; more so that she liked to give him endless amounts of shit in the field.
He checked another corner, then stepped forward into an open area.
An arena? Izuku thought suspiciously to himself. That's not her style, she knows she can't fight me head on.
He let One for All spark around him at about half output, the soft green light of the crackling lightning reflecting off the objects around him. His scarf-like off-white cape whipped wildly in the disturbed air around him, as did his hair, and he slowly turned and looked for signs of movement.
"Your quirk is so pretty you know, Superhero? It compliments your eyes nicely!" Stratosphere yelled cheekily. Izuku felt heat rise in his cheeks and scowled at his body's betrayal. Casual flirting was one of her preferred methods of throwing him off… and he did not like that it was very effective, too.
"You can't flatter your way out of this!" He called back, not feeling half as confident as he sounded.
Why couldn't she just be one of the silly villains with a brute force quirk who wanted to 'let the strong rule over the weak' or whatever ideological horseshit they were on about this week?
That had been the Meta Liberation Army's game, and they were easy villains to dislike and crush. Stratosphere reminded Izuku more of the League of Villains - people he'd felt a degree of sympathy for, though he knew he had to stop them from burning the world to the ground.
Izuku reached the 'center' of the clearing and looked around, turning in cautious circles as he moved. He raised his right arm straight and his air-directing cuff automatically unfolded into a cone, and he held a flicking stance like one might hold a rifle as he searched the area. At half output, One for All in his fingers might as well have been a cannon. The cone of his flashlight unfortunately wasn't very wide, but he didn't see any movement.
"You think too one-dimensionally, sometimes, for someone who is so smart!" Stratosphere called back, and although he still couldn't place where her voice was coming from she sounded an awful lot closer. He whirled around, expecting her to be sneaking up on him, but found empty air instead.
"Come on, I hate it when you do this! Just do whatever you're planning and let's get this over with!" Izuku called in reply, still scowling.
It was in these kinds of moments that Japan's number one Hero and the new Symbol of Hope was very glad that she almost always operated late at night, so that the press was not here to mock him for sounding so desperate. Though he was loath to admit it, part of him had almost given up on the whole 'catching her' thing and was more interested in understanding why she did what she did - and how she was so damn good at it, too.
That'd happen when he chased the same villain for eighteen months and comes up without anything to show for it… and found her attractive, to boot.
"Be careful what you wish for, Superhero!" Stratosphere called back teasingly.
Izuku heard the sound of… metal scraping against metal? Maybe a mechanism release? He stopped and tensed, and heard air rushing fast towards him. He felt the hairs on his neck stand up and looked up just in time to see a massive steel I-beam rushing towards him.
"Shit!" He exclaimed and reached up to catch it. He did, barely, and the force drove him to one knee.
Underneath the Kevlar weave outer parts of his costume he wore a more advanced version of Melissa's advanced armor prototype from back in the day on his arms, chest, and legs, which helped with the shock absorption. That said, even at half output of One for All it was no easy feat to catch the rushing metal due to the momentum and his surprise, and he grit his teeth as he shifted the weight to keep it in place.
I should've just dodged it, Izuku thought distantly, cursing his slow reaction times this late. He hadn't been sleeping so well recently, and it was costing him now.
He was about to toss the I-beam safely to the side when he saw a dark figure with a familiar silhouette plop down right in front of him. His flashlight pointed uselessly at the bottom of the I-beam now, so he could only see her by the light of One for All… and he saw that she was holding quirk-suppressing handcuffs. Izuku's mind immediately started racing, and he was so stunned and horrified at what she was planning that he didn't move at first.
"H-hey, wait a second, that'll kill-" Izuku tried to exclaim, stammering in his panic. Before he could really react properly, she deftly reached forward and, with her right hand, handcuffed his left wrist, while with her left hand, she placed five fingers on the I-beam and it started to float away harmlessly with a pink glow. He blinked as One-for All fizzled out.
It was very dark now, and he yelped in surprise as he was suddenly judo flipped, his cape ripping through the air as he flew. He landed on the ground on his stomach - he presumed behind her, though it was hard to tell in the dark when he was dizzy - with a heavy thud and the wind was knocked out of him. Before he could catch his breath, he felt his arms get painfully wrenched behind his back, and he was fully handcuffed.
At least my cape didn't land on my face, Izuku thought stupidly, thankful for small blessings all the same. Stratosphere tsked at him with immense amusement.
"C'mon, Superhero, I know you're a lot better than that," she said with a degree of sarcastic disappointment. He grumbled under his breath but didn't immediately, coherently reply.
These cuffs are meant to suppress one quirk, and I don't just have one quirk. If I can just keep her talking-
Izuku's train of thought was cut off by the sound of more cuffs shutting somewhere behind him. He couldn't quite feel it through his boots, but he realized she had cuffed his legs at the ankles, too. Now he was sitting there like a useless caterpillar on his stomach, his quirk(s) entirely suppressed. He gaped at her as she walked back into his view.
"How did… How did you know it would take more than one pair?" Izuku sputtered, absolutely stunned. There was no way she could possibly have known that for certain. Stratosphere giggled at him, a sound he often heard these days, and it was kinder than he would've thought for someone who just got the better of the Ninth Bearer of One for All.
"I didn't. I just know you're dangerous, Superhero. So I didn't take any chances. But thanks for letting me know I'll need two in the future."
"Dammit," Izuku muttered, and wished he could kick himself. He always got himself in trouble saying more than he meant to - or should have.
Stratosphere grabbed a chair he hadn't noticed in the dark and slid it over, the metal scraping unpleasantly against the concrete. Then she plopped down in it, facing backwards relative to the chair's back so that her legs were around the back and her arms were wrapped around the upper part. She rested her helmeted head on the top of the chair and fixed, he presumed, an amused expression towards him.
He couldn't tell for sure because she wore a full helmet. One would've been forgiven for thinking it was a normal motorcycle helmet, except that it had a glowing imprint of countless stars and nebulae on the front. Her costume was mostly black and made of a skin-tight bodysuit-like material, with thin, dark pink streaks down the sides of her legs and arms, and thick black boots made for impact absorption. She had heavy-looking wrist-guards, which Izuku knew from experience had things like pepper spray and tasers built in, and she wore black fingerless gloves.
Stratosphere looked very attractive in her costume, and Izuku would not admit that thought out loud on pain of death. He saw a pink glow from what he assumed were her hands, then he cringed as he heard the crash of the I-beam falling to the ground somewhere behind and to his right. She tilted her head at him; his eyes were adjusting a bit to the dark now, and the moon was giving at least some light, so he could mostly see her properly. The best he could, anyway, given that she mostly wore black.
"Nothing to say for yourself, Superhero? This is getting to be kind of sad. If you keep at it, I might start thinking you have a thing for me, y'know." She sounded much more self-satisfied than she should've been allowed to be. Izuku sputtered in response.
"Don't make fun of me, I'm trying to arrest you!"
He pointedly ignored that he kind of did have a thing for her; well, he found her attractive anyway. Izuku didn't actually know anything about her or what her face looked like, but he was nothing else if not a hopeless dork when it came to relating to other human beings. Stratosphere chuckled at him unapologetically.
"You're failing to arrest me," she noted, and he groaned in spite of himself.
"You must really enjoy this," Izuku said grumpily. It was what he actually thought, and he figured at that point there was no reason in pretending not to be as thoroughly irritated as he actually was.
"You're cute when you're mad," she replied immediately, and he rolled his eyes. Regardless of what he thought about her, she ultimately was still a villain, and he knew the banter back and forth they had was just an act - part of the game. He wasn't really sure if she could actually see him either, but he assumed that she could out of caution.
"Well, usually this is the part where you laugh at me and make some jokes at my expense and skip off, so why don't you get on with it?" Izuku retorted after a moment. He hoped she would leave and spare him the embarrassment of having to continue to answer for his own recklessness. Stratosphere hummed neutrally in response.
"I don't think I will, actually, but I'm glad you're so observant of my habits," she said, her tone a bit more serious than before. Izuku blinked a few times in confusion at that, then swallowed rather nervously.
"Well… usually, when villains don't run, they fight. And since I'm currently indisposed, does that mean you plan to uh… permanently disable my ability to chase you?" He asked, trying not to sound as concerned as he felt. Stratosphere didn't have any kind of strong history of overt violence or directly maiming or killing Heroes, but there were first times for everything. She shook her head in the dark.
"You're too pretty to waste like that," she said. Izuku huffed air in irritation at that.
"I could do without the flirting, thank you." Izuku was already hopeless enough with women in his normal, civilian life; he didn't need the women in his professional life - that he was trying to arrest - to mock him too.
"Why? You get so flustered," she shot back quickly. He scowled at her in response, and she didn't immediately reply to his expression.
Maybe she can't see me…?
"I can, actually."
Izuku made a surprised peep in response, and was thoroughly mortified.
"I thought your quirk was gravity manipulation, not mind-reading."
"It is. You just have a bad habit of saying your thoughts out loud without realizing it," she observed dryly. Izuku really didn't need to be reminded of his bad habits by a criminal.
"Alright, so what do you want? If you aren't running and you aren't going to beat me up or kill me, you shouldn't still be sitting there." Izuku didn't really like where things were going at that point.
"Maybe I just wanted to have some fun with you," she said suggestively. He was taken aback by that, and unpleasantly embarrassed.
"Well, I don't want to have 'fun' with you, so unless you plan to force me, no thanks." That much was true, anyways. Izuku might still be flustered around women he found attractive five years after graduating from UA, but he still had standards. Stratosphere didn't reply immediately, but he got the distinct sense she rolled her eyes.
"That's only fun when the lack of consent is fake," she said flatly. Izuku gawked at her, utterly disbelieving.
"You don't actually like me, stop changing the subject."
"That hurts, Superhero," she said. Her tone was mocking but there was a surprising undertone of sincerity there. After a moment she relented when she realized she wouldn't get another rise out of him. "Fine. I want to ask you to help me on a job," Stratosphere admitted with a huff. Izuku continued to gawk, although his eyes narrowed a bit.
"And why the hell would I do that?"
"Because it would involve ruining the day of a bunch of mob assholes. You seem to really like doing that, don't you?"
Izuku didn't reply immediately. He was, in fact, well known for coming down hard on organized crime. Ever since… the raid to save Eri that went so poorly, it was a particular point of irritation for him whenever organized crime popped up again. It was something he worked hard to combat in their superhuman society: not the petty thieves and crooks, but the people who wanted to build empires and enact terrible cruelty on others.
Still, he wasn't about to help her get whatever it was she wanted out of it.
"I can do that on my own. Catching you is my case right now, and working with you would be a bad idea," he said. Stratosphere snorted in response, catching him off guard.
"If you could do it on your own, you'd be doing that instead of wasting the talents of the greatest Hero since All Might chasing a 'villain' who only steals from corporations and the rich." Stratosphere paused for a moment and mimed the action of checking her nails. "I guess you're too busy being a high-and-mighty Superhero to consider why villains do what they do, though, aren't you?"
Izuku didn't really know how to respond to that. He was, although he didn't want to admit it, flattered that she thought so… highly, of him? But he also got the distinct sense that she was angling for something else here, too, that he wasn't quite savvy enough to follow yet.
"A villain is a villain," he settled on, although that sounded much less convincing out loud than it did as a thought, and she was well aware of that.
"Uh huh, and that's why you're playing lapdog for the government to protect the poor, innocent multimillionaires, instead of putting down the gangs that fund those same politicians and corporations?" Stratosphere leaned forward, and Izuku was distracted by the stars on the front of her helmet. "You spend all your time playing nice and by the rules, and don't wonder why the weeds keep growing faster than you can pick 'em."
He didn't have a good answer to that. He was not… much for politics to be honest, outside of the narrow scope of Hero work. Izuku had been so overjoyed to achieve his dream of becoming a Hero that he never thought much about the nature of Hero society itself… or at least, not that he admitted to out loud. He was pretty sure she was bullshitting however, but he didn't have the right kind of vocabulary to counter her - nor did he want to have a philosophical debate with her.
Part of him was also a little worried she was not bullshitting and that scared him thoroughly. Izuku thought about it for more than a few moments, then tried for a retort.
"You steal a ton of money you know, they can't just look the other way on that. You've also destroyed a lot of people's stuff, and you've made fools out of powerful people," he said. Stratosphere just shrugged, to his great consternation.
"It's just money and things, Superhero. There are villains out there plotting the downfall of polite society. You shouldn't be wasting your time on me."
"And what if I want to be wasting my time on you?" He blurted out without thinking, much to his immediate dismay after the fact. Stratosphere was taken aback, as she leaned away in her chair, and he felt heat rising to his face at his stupid remark.
"Oh my, does the Superhero have a crush on his quarry? That's not allowed, y'know," she said coyly. He grimaced and cursed himself for his poor choice of words.
"That is not what I meant. I don't want to lose to you." That much was true too; Izuku was nothing if not a competitive person, and few villains had offered a meaningful challenge to him like she had. Her comeback was lightning fast.
"So you would rather let innocent people die than fail to catch a simple thief? I know you're a kind soul, Jade Rabbit, and I know you care more about saving people than whatever the government spoon feeds you," she said, now sounding a bit cross. Izuku didn't feel great about that. He tried to salvage his dignity, though.
"You're not just 'a simple thief,'" he said bitterly. Stratosphere tsked in response once more.
"I'll accept the compliment, even if you're still wrong."
She abruptly stood up and pushed the chair away, and in spite of her indicating earlier she didn't plan to harm him, he flinched reflexively. She walked over and leaned in close, and the blush he'd still been wearing crawled up to his ears. Then she put something in one of his utility belt pockets, but her helmeted face was right by his ear. She hummed absentmindedly as she did so, and he could hear her breathing softly.
"Just think about it, okay? This job is important to me, and I'd like your help. I think you would like to help me, too. If you change your mind, text me," Stratosphere whispered directly in his ear, and he shivered involuntarily.
Izuku tried to come up with a reply that didn't sound lame as hell, but before he could, she stood up and bounded off, laughing as she did. He tracked her movements with his eyes and couldn't help the hard breath of annoyance that escaped him. Then Izuku saw a soft pink glow and she was flying up towards the roof, to exit through the windows above.
"Hey, wait a minute! How the hell am I supposed to get out of these?!" Izuku called after her, realizing his predicament too late.
He jiggled his wrists against the cuffs and figured he could probably pull them apart, taking advantage of the armor under his bodysuit to protect his skin, but he might still pull muscles trying that. Stratosphere stopped at an open window near the roof, her black form backlit by the moon.
"I'll call the cops for you, Superhero!" She called back teasingly, and Izuku groaned to himself in annoyance.
"Dammit!" He exclaimed, not looking forward to explaining to Detective Tsukauchi how he'd managed to lose to the gravity thief again without a good excuse for himself. Never mind that he'd had close contact with her now, and Tsukauchi would probably want to know more about her plans - and her interest in him working with her, as a potential way to go after her employers.
Nothing could ever be simple for the Ninth Bearer of One for All.
Closing notes: There won't be a lot of author's notes for this story, because it is complete and I don't intend to transcribe the notes I have on AO3 here since they have to go in the body text here.
I will offer some clarification here as to our premise: this is a villain AU for Ochako Uraraka, as you have no doubt deduced from our first chapter. There's also a lot more going on as to why Izuku is struggling, and we will be discussing Nana Shimura and the metaphysical aspects of One for All in this story.
As this story was originally written in October/early November of 2020, it uses canon from the manga up to about chapter 290 or so, give or take. Some things (most prominently, Danger Sense) are implied, but were just guesses on my part and weren't something I knew when I was writing this story originally.
This story is complete, and I will be slowly uploading it from AO3. You are, naturally, free to leave feedback and thoughts, but just bear in mind that this isn't an ongoing thing where what you say is going to influence me to change what was written. It's done! I know some people like to try and give feedback in that vein, so just bear that in mind.
Thank you for reading!