It really was a beautiful evening, Amy mused, as she walked out of UA. The last rays of the sunset cut a gorgeous painting across the sky. Going home didn't sound all that appealing – it was lonely. It was odd, how nice domesticity had become in the two years since she'd found herself here. Seeing Taylor more than not, and then the growth of their family with Himiko – not that Amy had been well pleased that Taylor had brought the half-feral girl home, at first. But, then again, Taylor's softness towards children had always been something that Amy was attracted to. At any rate, she'd probably swing by a food stand, grab something, and maybe put on classic Disney – she was still working her way through the centuries-long backlog.
"Nightingale-san, a word if you would." A rough male voice interrupted her musings.
Amy turned, and saw Aizawa-san, the Homeroom teacher for 1-A, and Taylor's newfound nemesis/partner headed towards her. "Yes, Eraserhead? How may I help you?" She got a feeling in the back of her mind that this was going to get awkward, but decided to ignore it for the time being. The man gestured to a bench, and Amy got the hint and sat. Not a small matter then, if we're having to sit.
Aizawa stared out into the dusk, gathering his thoughts. "You're softballing your powers." The man's delivery was level, even. "At the very least, your time limit is a lot further than just six hours." He paused, looking at Amy out of the corner of his eye – she merely arched an eyebrow, waiting to see where he was taking this. "I also strongly suspect that you don't have a quirk."
Amy felt her eyes widen involuntarily – the man was supposed to be frighteningly intelligent, and this was solid proof. "I put your skull back together with a touch, Aizawa-san. I'm certainly not a baseline human being." Dry sarcasm had been a refuge for over half her life, and it made for a good place to make a stand in times of uncertainty. "I'm curious as to how you drew those conclusions." If he knew or guessed too much...well, the vindictive part of Amy took a measure of joy in imagining the mountains of NDAs the man was about to find himself facing.
With a nod, Eraserhead acknowledged her point. "Three things, really. Two solid pieces, and then a third, more circumstantial one." A pair of birds darted across the sky, their cries interrupting the conversation below. The two heroes watched them fly, before returning their attentions to the matter at hand. "Firstly – I caught Hebert-san in the effects of Erasure during the battle at the USJ, to no effect. Since she doesn't have a mutation quirk, I had questions. Secondly, when you healed me, you worked too well. My tear ducts and dry eye are significantly healthier than they were before." The man snorted in amusement. "Not that I'm not grateful, mind you."
Amy gave a half smile in response. "Well, given the state your face was in, you can hardly blame me for missing some things. Also," she leveled a look at him, "you fought and bled to protect my wife and daughter. Helping to undo the years of wear and tear you'd gone through is the least of what I'm willing to do to keep them safe." Oops, might have channeled a little too much Taylor there. Eraserhead gave her an unamused look, and Amy pouted internally. You know, for all that I'm considered a living apocalypse, you'd think I would be more threatening when I wanted to be.
"The third piece – well, it's really two, but they're almost certainly related – All Might's miraculous recovery, and his sudden friendship with you and Hebert-san." He turned to look at her fully, and Amy mirrored him. "All together, that tells me that you, Gloria-san, and Hebert-san are not only disguising the full extent of your powers, but also the source."
Oh, he is good. There were all kinds of explanations for any or all of the things Eraserhead had noticed, but the man had seen through all of the smoke and mirrors and gotten remarkably close to the truth. Amy again let the thought of the ocean of paperwork the man had just dived into warm her soul, before she formulated her response.
"I can't say more right now, Eraserhead, but I will say that you're a very good detective. Was this simply a warning that the clues were out there?" She said dryly, reaching into her purse and grabbing her phone to message Herr Schneider that Eraserhead needed to be read in on a few of IH's secrets. It chimed in her hand, and she looked down out of habit. She read the notification once – twice – three times before it finally sank in and she felt her body go tense. "Oh no."
"Nightingale?" Eraserhead's professional instincts had been awoken by her reaction – not that early hyperventilation was particularly hard to spot. "What's wrong?" The taller man was looking around, as though the danger was immediate and present.
Amy forced herself to speak levelly. "There's been a series of terrorist attacks in Hosu. I – I need to go there, now." She stood, trying desperately to keep her hands from shaking. Taylor had messaged that she was going dark, and now this was happening.
"Let me drive you – the trains may be down if there's terrorist activity. We can be there in two hours." Eraserhead took command of the situation immediately, and all Amy could feel was gratitude. "Will you be alright if Mic comes along?"
Amy nodded. "Yes, that's fine." She would have agreed to just about anything in that moment though. UA was supposed to be the quiet part of this assignment. Taylor...please be safe.
It was a good night to hunt. Bombs going off were sure to draw those glory hounds in, masking their shameful lust for glory in a thin veneer of heroism. Hopefully, he'd find Native – the false hero who had led him here in the first place, after being tossed into a lingerie store. His incompetence had led to embarrassing photos being shown on the internet, on something called a "livestream"?
It didn't, ultimately, matter – what mattered was that the man had brought great dishonor on heroism in general, and needed to pay for it. Stain wasn't going to be picky though – any of the leeches seeking to profit off of the suffering of others would be worthy targets for his wrath. He ran from rooftop to rooftop, keeping an eye out for any brightly colored fools. A distant part of his mind wondered if that "League of Villains" was behind these attacks – if so, well, he knew where they were in Hosu. No need for All Might to have to sully his hands dealing with such garbage – the white-haired brat of a leader was naught but a petulant child, though a dangerous one. Not like that girl in the alley so long ago, who simply needed guidance – but someone who knew right from wrong and merely didn't care.
He approached another ledge, and as he leaped across the gap, Stain noticed the strange haze, but he assumed it was from a vent. As he leapt through it, though, he learned the truth – it was a thin cloud of bugs. Spitting some of the gnats out, he debated wearing a scarf in the future. No time to stop though, there were false heroes to punish. He went to step forward, but his legs weren't obeying him! Falling forward, he tried to reach his arms out to catch his fall...but they weren't working either. Stain's face smacked into the roof. Distantly, he was glad that he'd amputated his nose years ago, because he'd definitely have broken it again there.
The sound of a small motor drew his attention. Turning his head to the side, he saw a figure fly up onto the roof. Recognition eluded him for a moment, then his eyes widened. "Weaver?" Her footsteps echoed on the roof. It was getting harder to hear.
"Stain. You got away from me eighteen months ago. I'm here to fix that mistake." Her voice, still bearing that odd accent, was level, seemingly unaffected by the chaos in the city, or by finding herself in close quarters with an assassin.
"Have you come here to kill me, then?" That wouldn't be so bad – dying to a true hero was acceptable, and Weaver had proven herself a relentless enemy of corruption, and someone who shunned personal glory. "Then do it, and be done with it."
Weaver crouched down and shook her head. "Kill you? No. I make it a habit not to kill those for whom death would be nothing before vindication. You'll be brought in, like any other criminal, and tried for your crimes." She stood up, hands reaching for Quirk-Suppressing handcuffs on her belt.
No! It can't end like this! Stain reached deep within himself, calling on this new form of Bloodcurdle he'd discovered a few months ago. With a great exertion of his will, he pushed his intent onto her, hoping he could freeze her long enough to start moving again. He saw her hands pause, and a feeling of elation swept through him. Less than a second later, though, and she was moving again. What? Impossible! Impossible or not, it was happening.
"You'll need to do better than cheap parlor tricks when a Manhunter decides you're their prey." After she moved his arms into position, cuffing him, she rolled him onto his back, like a sack of grain. "You're called the Hero-Killer – an impressive title, earned over years of butchery. But I have a title of my own, earned in a week of terror and shadow warfare. You may have killed Heroes, Stain, but to the Los Muertos Cartel...I was the City-Killer." She tilted her head. "This was never a fight you could win." She stood, and Stain saw her look off into the distance, away from the flames in the distance.
There was movement behind her, and two spiders the size of housecats came up on the roof. A large black bug landed on his face, and suddenly, Stain felt a painful sting, and a strange lassitude spreading across his body. He saw the spiders beginning to spin webs at his feet, and, just before the darkness finally took him, he thought he heard her speak again.
"Izuku?"
This has been one hell of a day. Shuichi cracked a beer and took a long pull. He'd just gotten home from talking to the League of Villains and deciding that they didn't sound much like a group that Stain would really support, and that meant that Spinner wouldn't either.
Shuichi KNEW Stain's ideology, he'd been following the man since that first letter to the Jakku Herald newspaper, after the death of the false Hero Whirlybird. Stain wanted Heroes to be worthy of the name, not for there to not be any heroes.
Suddenly, in the distance, there were a series of explosions. After a quick glance out his window, Shuichi ran to the roof of his shitty apartment. Holy shit, that's where I was! For a minute, he wondered if the League had been found out, and were under attack by the heroes. On second thought, it was more likely that they were the cause of the explosions, since they were more into villainy for its own sake. He turned away to go back inside to his beer, when movement down below caught his attention.
Wow, it's Stain-sama! Shuichi hunkered down as his idol rooftop ran, making one jump, then another. The infamous assassin stopped, made some motion with his head, and then...just fell over. Stain-sama! No! Shuichi looked around, there had to be a way down, and he was pretty athletic... A second glance froze him. A dark figure had appeared on the rooftop, and seemed to be talking to Stain. Are they a hero? Has Stain-sama's luck run out? Maybe there's something I can do to help! While still attempting to decide how to actually get over to the other roof, he saw the hero handcuff his idol.
Then, everything started getting...darker, like the light on the roof had been...muted? The roof underneath him was moving, too. Oh fuck. No, it wasn't moving – it was crawling. A living carpet of bugs was surrounding him. It was a really bad time for him to develop a case of entomophobia. Then, on top of the seeing the massive, crawling carpet, there was that terrible sensation that he wasn't alone on the roof. Shuichi slowly turned around, and whimpered like a beaten animal.
From the overhang that shielded the door to the stairwell, a figure was forming. Hanging upside like the world's most awful bat, more and more bugs came together to create a disturbingly human body. Once it was formed from the head to the waist, a pair of terrible, glowing eyes opened. And then, worst of all...it started talking to him.
"Iguichi Shuichi. Spinner." Oh no, it knew his names. How did it know his names? "You stand at a crossroads. You can continue along the path you walk, setting yourself against civilization itself. This is the path you walk if you would choose to burn everything down rather than face the truth: that change takes time, that it takes work, that there is no easy solution." It spoke in an awful, buzzing voice, made from chirps and rubbing chitin, in a strange accent that only served to emphasize its alien nature.
"Or you can decide, if society is not to your liking, that you will take up the burden, to set yourself to the work needed to put the house to rights. It is not too late for you to wear the title of Hero." The terrible figure cocked its head, and Shuichi felt like a lab specimen under the eyes of the Universe's worst doctor. "That choice is yours, as it must be. But know this." An arm, built of beetles and wasps, reached out, a finger forming to point right at him.
"If you choose the path of Heroism, then you will never need to fear me. But if you choose villainy..." The figure paused, and the finger reached forward still more, till it was inches from Shuichi's nose, "then there is no place that you can hide that I cannot find you, no bolthole secure enough to shield you from my eyes, no fortress so strong I cannot touch you. Choose well."
Its terrible proclamation delivered, the figure dissipated into its constituent bugs, and Shuichi was finally freed enough from the grip of terror to sob. As soon as the bugs cleared a path, he ran into the relative safety of the apartment building. He bolted down the stairs, back to his shitty apartment, where he chugged down the last of the beer he'd opened...was it really just ten minutes ago? It felt like a lifetime. A small spider crawled across the ceiling, and he heard himself whimper again.
Maybe I'll look up how to be a hero outside of the schools. Anything to keep that...thing from ever wanting to see him again. Fuck Stain, man – if the heroes have that kind of monster on their side, I don't ever want to be on their bad side. He pulled out his phone, and before the screen lit up, he saw his reflection. A single streak of white was now present in his hair.
Why me!? Izuku's mental monologue was very unhappy. Which made sense, given that he had just been kidnapped by some kind of winged monster. What a way for my first real event to end. It hadn't started poorly either.
The Endeavor agency had gotten to Hosu, where the eastern part of the district was on fire. The pyrokinetics of the agency had immediately gotten to work pulling the flames away from the buildings, and either absorbing them or venting them off safely. Izuku, and the other non-flame quirk members had been put to work moving rubble and guiding civilians away from the scene.
Izuku had walked a little girl to the medic's tent, and had been jogging back when the screams started. He'd looked up, and then that weird, flying thing had picked him up in a fly-by. He'd heard Endeavor and Todoroki-san yell, and then he was gone.
Being grabbed by the upper arms meant that he was at a disadvantage for getting free – he couldn't move his arms enough to punch, and he couldn't get enough movement going to kick this thing either. He looked up at it – was this thing even alive? It looked down, and Izuku yelped in shock. The big eyes, the exposed brain – oh no, was this Nomu? But Nomu from the USJ was bigger, stronger, didn't have wings, and was purple instead of brown. That meant...that meant there was more than one Nomu. Oh no this is bad this is bad!
As Izuku furiously thought about how to get free, there was another noise, like the sound of a drone motor, but louder, and maybe...angrier? It was also really really close. Then it cut off. But the Nomu made a noise that sounded like confusion, followed rapidly by a wet, fleshy sound that Izuku could, frankly, go the rest of his life without ever hearing again. The Nomu's head slumped down, its eyes going glassy, and then they were descending. Oh boy, hitting the road at 30 miles an hour. Full Cowling might make him more durable, but maybe not that much more durable. Gonna have to push it! Going to 10% of One for All was going to strain his body immensely, but better that than road rash. He broke free, just in time to hit the road in a controlled roll – which was better than getting drug along by a dead, gliding Nomu.
Izuku stood up, his whole body hurting. Nightingale-sensei is going to kill me...and then Himiko-chan and Uraraka-san will as well, right after her. There were a few cars burning – this must be on the outside of the attacked area – as Izuku stood up. Then he heard that weird buzzing again. What is that noise? Then, he found out. A foot long wasp hovered a few feet away from him. Its stinger, at the base of its yellow and purple body, was unpleasantly long and looked very sharp. Izuku gulped – he didn't know much about bugs, but he knew that when there was one wasp, there were probably more. The bug hovered in the air for a moment, then flew off. Izuku tracked its motions, and then his night got worse.
From behind a burning car, a dark figure approached. Glowing eyes caught the firelight, and something in Izuku knew that this was not a fight he could win, especially when four of those massive, awful wasps bracketed the figure. The figure began moving faster, coming around the burned car. Izuku caught a better glimpse of them, and suddenly he felt a lot better.
"Weaver-sensei!" "Midoriya-kun!" They spoke at the same time, and Izuku fell on his butt, the pain from pushing Full Cowling catching up to him.
"Midoriya-kun, what are you doing here?" Weaver-san said as she knelt beside him, helping to support him as she stood again.
Izuku pointed towards where plumes of fire could still be seen pushing into the sky, and started to pull in that direction. Weaver-san picked up on his hint and started to walk with him. "Endeavor responded to the bombings, Weaver-sensei, and Todoroki-san and I came along to help." He looked behind him at the corpse of the Nomu. "Sensei...that was a Nomu. How many are there? Can...can we fight them all?"
Weaver nodded as they continued to walk. "Not only can we fight them, Midoriya-kun, but we must fight them."
The big bugs flew off just as Izuku and Weaver-sensei finally came back to the main response zone, and Izuku saw Burnin' point them out to Endeavor, who rushed over.
"Midoriya-san! Are you alright? What happened?" The Flame Hero looked over, and Izuku could read the confusion through the mask of embers. "Weaver-san? Why are you in Hosu?" Another glance, and Endeavor seemed to realize exactly the state Izuku was in. "Let me carry him, Weaver-san, we'll get him to the medical tents." Izuku soon found himself in Endeavor's arms as the large man turned toward the medical tent, Weaver-sensei keeping pace.
"There was an International Heroics operation I was involved with, but that just wrapped up." She looked around, then nodded decisively. "I don't detect any civilians in the buildings, Endeavor-san, so feel free to bring them down if that's the safest option going forward."
Izuku was set on a cot in the medic's tent, Endeavor rushing back out to work on saving as much of the city as he could. Weaver-san made several calls, including one that had her flinching away from her phone. Izuku was pretty sure that he could hear Nightingale-sensei's voice coming out of the phone when that happened.
The painkillers, and the bone-deep soreness they couldn't erase, finally pushed Izuku into unconsciousness. When he awoke, it would be to a world changed – for good and for ill.
A/N: Beta'd by RikaAltraz
Yes, Stain got taken out like the low-tier thug he is. Anyone who can fight Beyond Visual Range just trashes him like no tomorrow.
Skitter makes her debut in the story as well – unknown how much more we'll see of her, but it was fun to write.