Chapter Three: Miruko Introduces A Friend And Makes An Offer

Izuku awoke to the feeling of being gently pushed. His eyes shot open and he say Miruko, who was holding three plastic bags full of all sorts of things. She said, "Time to wake up, sleepyhead. It's nearly noon already! But I guess it makes sense, you had a pretty busy day, huh?" Izuku sleepily nodded and stretched. Miruko said, "I took the liberty to go to the store while you were asleep. Bought some stuff for you, 'specially clothes. Wouldn't look right if you were walkin' around in rags. I kinda had to eyeball your size, so some of it might be a bit big."

Izuku rolled his way off the bed and landed to the ground with a thud. He always did that to wake himself up, might have been why he had some bruises along his entire body. "Don't do that! You'll hurt yourself," Miruko loudly said. I got to my feet and Miruko took all the clothing out of one bag. It was a variety of colors, but it was mostly white, and seemed to be merchandise of the heroine beside him. "They gave me a hefty discount since it was sorta my stuff," she explained.

Then, she took out all the items out of the second bag. He recognized some of the bottles, which were shampoo and body wash, but the others he didn't recognize. Miruko said, "Those can be used to change the color of your hair. I got those in case you ever wanted to experiment." There was white, black, maroon, cyan, and lavender. If he were to use them, he'd probably use cyan or lavender, as he thought those would look best on him.

Miruko said, "You better get dressed. We need to take you to a barber, you're hair is a mess." Izuku grabbed the shirt that had Miruko in big black lettering across the chest and a pair of jeans before walking to the bathroom. When he shut the door and looked at the mirror that covered the entirety of the wall above the sink, he saw what she meant. His hair was long and sticking up all over the place, mostly due to the fact that the Shie Hassaikai lacking a reliable barber.

Izuku did his best to straighten his hair out by dampening his hand with water from the faucet and sliding his hand across his hair, making it stick to his face but now it looked better, so he supposed it was alright. Then he put his clothes on and realized that he looked good in white.

When he walked out of the bathroom, he saw Miruko waiting for him at the door. "C'mon, she'll need all the time she can get to tame that beast you call hair." Izuku followed her out the door and down the stairs that were on the side of the building. They began to walk along the sidewalk.

Miruko pulled her phone out of her pocket while they were walking and called someone. It rang once before the person on the other line picked up, and she said, "Hey Keigo! I got this kid with me who you'd really like to meet!" The other person, 'Keigo', said something Izuku couldn't hear and she responded, "Great! I'll meet you at Musutafu Park around two!" Keigo said something else and Miruko said goodbye. She hung up and put the phone back in her pocket.

"That was my friend, Keigo Takami. He's a pro, but you might not have heard of him because he's pretty new to the scene." As they walked, she went into detail about him. His hero name, Hawks, his quirk, Fierce Wings, which sounded like a pretty powerful one based on how she described it.

His quirk grants him two large, red wings made up of feathers that he can freely manipulate. According to her, they were both stiff and flexible, and very in size and strength. But apparently they don't automatically restore themselves, and if he uses too many, his ability to fly worsens and limits his mobility. But, all in all, it was very strong.

By the time she had finished telling him every detail about his quirk, they had arrived at the barbershop. A big sign that had neon lights not currently active read: "Ms. Akako's Salon." Miruko pushed open the door and said, "Sorry I didn't make an appointment, Akako. I didn't expect to have to this little guy with me."

Akako, who was a woman with shoulder-length, straight brown hair and yellow eyes looked at Izuku and then said, "Don't worry about it! With all the hero work you do, it's the least I can do. Besides, he looks like he could use one!"

Miruko practically shouted, "Right!? That's what I said!" The both of them laughed for a little while before Izuku took his seat in front of her. She asked Miruko what she should do and said, "Just make it look as best as you can." She nodded and seemed to think for a while about what she could do to his hair before she began her work.

When she was finished, his hair looked amazing compared to what it had been before. Where his hair once had been wild and unruly, it was now relatively straight. If Izuku were to compare his hair to anything, it'd probably be to the head of broccoli. Izuku liked it.

Izuku stood up out of his seat and thanked Akako. She said, "It's nothing! Anything for Ms. Miruko!" Miruko laughed and also thanked her, despite her kind words and the two of them walked out of the barbershop, pleased with the results of the trip.

"Now, are you ready to meet Keigo?" Izuku nodded, excited to meet this strong pro hero friend of hers.

Keigo wasn't sure what to think of the kid Miruko let off of her back after they landed. The first thing he noticed was how skinny he was. Maybe he was just built that way or hadn't exercised at all. Then he noticed he was a lot shorter than the average kid his age, he couldn't have been taller than four feet. He couldn't have been taller than Must be a victim of neglectful parenting or something, which immediately made him feel sorry for the kid and hatred towards whoever the boy's original parents were.

In his opinion, the worst thing you could do, second only to murder, was to abuse a child. They never do anything to deserve it, even if they had, it wouldn't be right. It stunts their growth, makes them sick, and all other sorts of bad things.

He also seemed incredibly shy for someone his age. When he tried to introduce himself to the boy, he inched closer to Miruko. Miruko tried to get him to greet Keigo, but had no such luck. Instead, she had to introduce him herself. His name was Izuku, with seemingly no last name on record. She leaned in and whispered, "I tried to look for an Izuku in the database, and no one has ever been registered that looks like him. Everything related to him has been erased. It's all that damned Chisaki's fault."

That explained a lot. He had heard of Chisaki, leader of the Shie Hassaikai. Keigo had even tried to help the police along with other pro heroes to track down their base of operations at one point, but to no avail. He had been told stories of their crimes in the past, but he didn't think they had something that horrible in them. Keigo hoped that at least some of the thugs who couldn't do anything about it felt sick to their stomachs when thinking about what they were assisting in doing.

"They used him as some sort of weapon. They performed this horrible surgeries on him that extracted his blood and they used it to make these bullets that erase quirks. Kinda like Eraserhead's quirk, but permanent." Keigo listened to her every word, but he looked at the green haired boy beside her who nervously glanced around, as if fearing some monster would jump out from the shadows and take him back to that personal hell of his.

"Eraserhead asked us to help raid one of the bases that he recieved word from an anonymous source about the whereabouts of Chisaki. He asked us to take the chance and I said I would gladly, and Eraserhead found him there. He planned a rescue with us after that and that's when we attacked. He really cares about the kid. He's in the hospital now, took a concrete spike through his rib cage or something like that."

He really felt bad for him. It was at this moment that Keigo swore he would keep Izuku safe no matter what.

Miruko said, "He was really excited to meet you, but now he seems pretty shy. Must be because he's only really been around me and Eraserhead. It'll just take a while." That made since to him. After all, he'd only been around people who abused him for a while. Probably made him extra shy.

But Keigo had a plan to wow him. He took off flying into the air with a flap of his wings and grinned as Izuku's expression quickly turned to that of astonishment. He did a loop-de-loop as he flew into the sky and spiraled as he did. Keigo then thrust his wings out to either side of him, and used them to form a giant smiley face. From in the sky, he couldn't see what his expression said, but he could hope that it was exciting to him.

Keigo began to fall back to the ground, but he had planned for this. His feathers reattached themselves one at a time, slowly reforming his wings. Just before he hit the ground, the last feather returned and he swooped back up into the sky, flying right over Izuku's head.

The rest of the day had been amazing for Izuku. After the show that Keigo had put on brought something Miruko said was a smile to his face, and then he really got to know him. He was funny, and not in the bad way. He could tell the best jokes Izuku had ever heard of, maybe because he hadn't heard one before that, but they were still really funny.

He was also pretty laid back in comparison to Aizawa, although Miruko was as well, when she wasn't fighting. But Aizawa was also older than them, so he might have had some bad experiences during his tenure as a hero that led him to act that way.

When he was playing with the two, he realized something. When he had been so quick to return to Chisaki, if it meant sparing Aizawa, it wasn't because he was scared. No, it was because he cared for him. In the same way he cared for Miruko, and now Keigo. He wanted to protect them as best as he can, and what better way to stop bad things from happening then becoming a hero?

Which is why he declared loudly, "I wanna be a hero! Like you guys!" Keigo was slightly shocked at the sudden shouting, because Izuku hadn't really talked that loudly in front of him yet, but Miruko wasn't surprised in the slightest.

Keigo said, "Are you sure about that? Because it isn't easy, we didn't just get to this point because we have admittedly strong quirks."

Miruko nodded, "We got here mainly on hard work and exercise. If you want to be a hero, you'll need to train extra hard because of all the time you'll need to make up for. Any time not spent eating, drinking, or sleeping, will probably need to be used for training either your body or your quirk."

Izuku didn't waver in his determination. "I will become a hero," he said without a hint of doubt in his voice.

Keigo said, "Then we'll help you! We'll help you become the best hero you can be. I promise you this, Izuku Midoriya, you'll go far."