Chapter 11

Arrival

There was no news from any of the prisoners – not the one Hizashi had stopped from taking Chiyumi, not the four surviving guys from the hideout. But they'd only been in custody for a day or so – maybe Tenko was expecting things to change too quickly.

But he knew that, any day now, he was going to get another of the kind of call he hated most, and that hurt now, worse than ever.

Most people who'd been through the crushing emotional whiplash Tenko had been through in the last few days would have had several stiff drinks, but that had never really been his vice. Instead, he'd given himself a few hours of gaming and blaring heavy metal music as loudly as he could without disturbing his neighbors. There was certainly catharsis to be had in using a digital character to beat the crap out of other digital characters, the bloodier the better.

But of course, fate didn't seem to want to give him those hours. He paused his music to talk a friend through something hairy, but kept on playing, determined to make the most of the morning off before he had to put on a suit and go back to work. "Look, Kenji, it's your body, if he's going to be a dick about what you do with it, you should dump him," he said calmly into a phone held to his ear with his shoulder while hitting the right combo to annihilate the enemy, in this case played by a (probable) twelve-year-old who'd already typed a half dozen slurs in the chat which just added to the satisfaction of the victory.

And then, the morning off came to an end all together. Someone else was calling, and when he held off on starting the next fight to glance at the caller ID and saw Tensei Iida's number, he knew it couldn't wait. "Kenji, I'm sorry. I'm going to have to call you back. Ditch him, though."

There was a knock on the door – who could that be? Curiously, Inko stood on tiptoes to look through the peephole. Only to see two police officers? What on Earth?

She opened the door quickly. "Can I help you?" she asked, nervously thinking there must have been an accident with Izuku or Tamako.

"Ma'am, is your son Izuku Midoriya?" the older of the officers asked. Her heart hammered, there had been an accident, she knew it.

"Yes, that's my son, has something happened?"

"Is your son home right now?"

"No, he's at school … is everything okay?"

"Do you know this woman?" the younger officer asked, and held up a fuzzy picture of a European girl in her early twenties, unconscious. "Her passport has her as Leto Gianakos."

"No! No … his father works abroad but we've never met any of his coworkers," Inko offered, trying to make sense of why on Earth they'd be asking about a European girl.

"She was carrying a backpack with water and food as well as this picture of your son and a letter addressed to him," the older officer said and handed her a photocopy of an unfamiliar picture of Izuku and a letter. Inko read through the letter, and it was complete nonsense. It was an apology letter that mentioned Izuku's "quirk" – that's what the kids these days were calling metahuman powers – it mentioned a school she'd never heard of and people she'd never heard of and something about parallel worlds?

"This woman is crazy, Izuku doesn't have any powers, and that's not the school he attends, this is all gibberish!" she said, almost in tears. How had some unstable foreign woman gotten it into her head to find her son? If this was someone he'd met online, she was never letting him have a computer in his room again.

"It's all right ma'am, it didn't make any sense to us either. We were just hoping you might at least have heard of her. When your son gets home, will you speak to him about it?"

"Yes, of course!"

"Thank you. Give us a call back if he knows anything."

"Yes, thank you officers."

As soon as they were gone, she sent him a text. "Izuku, come straight home after school. We need to talk."

Deku had gotten a piece of large poster board from an office supply store the day before and pinned it up on the wall of his room, opposite the painting of All Might Emi had made.

After sleeping in, he'd drawn the rough outline of the city on it, then put pins in for all the cases he read about on the SDMR website of missing kids that provided enough geographical information to know what district they were taken from, and putting a pin on the edge of the board if it they were taken from another city, trying to figure out if there was a geographical pattern to the kids getting snatched. There didn't seem to be, which made sense, as it was probably based more on the priority at which All For One wanted their quirks based on information that had gotten out, so that wouldn't necessarily fit a convenient geographical pattern. So he had to figure out how the information was getting out and if he could intercept it – was it from people being careless on social media? The thought horrified Deku but … did he have schoolteachers that told him about children with quirks? Doctors, maybe?

Maybe he was going about this the wrong way. He knew All For One had his hand in other things – Mr. Aizawa had indicated as much. The night before, he'd started patrolling at night. Last night had been uneventful, but his hope was he could, at least, intervene on muggings and such, but was it possible he could somehow use those patrols to gather information too? He didn't know how feasible it was, but since he was going to be out there anyway …

His phone buzzed with a notification, breaking into his thoughts. "Midoriya, meet me in the lobby. I'm almost to your hotel," the text read. Why was Shimura demanding a meeting with no warning? Something must be wrong. Deku did as asked, making his way downstairs quickly.

When he got there, Shimura was standing by the front desk, hands in the pockets of a gray hoodie. He'd never seen Shimura out of a suit. Seeing him in jeans and a hoodie brought back very bad memories of a day at the mall. Especially since as he got closer, he noticed some very familiar scars around his mouth as well – of course they were covered with make-up most of the time. He didn't know why that hadn't occurred to him before. Deku rallied his nerves. They weren't the same man, they weren't the same man …

"Yeah I know, gruesome right? My quirk sort of … bleached my skin. Made it pale and thin, so I was easy to cut and sometimes it just split for seemingly no reason. The only good thing about losing it was my skin got better, but I've still got some scars." Deku averted his eyes, sorry he'd been staring.

"It's not that bad, I just … never noticed before."

"It's okay. Come on. I've got good news and bad news."

Deku followed Shimura outside to a clearly old but well-polished red car and climbed in. "The girl that sent you here, she was Greek right?"

Deku's heart soared, then ached. "Leto! Is she here?!"

"Well that's the good news. She got here late last night. The bad news is she passed out cold after asking people to take her to the police station and showing them your picture so … that's a mess." Yeah, a mess was one way to put it. Was she okay? Had she overtaxed her power to come after him? And no, no, they did not want the police involved. "She's in a hospital under police guard right now. I've got a lawyer trying to get the police to back off. But my friend on the force says photocopies of a letter she wrote to you are making their way all over the force. Considering she is explaining everything about how you got here and mentions a lot of details of your reality, this is bad." The understatements sounded almost apologetic. "Thankfully the cops seem to think she's insane and we're going to try to play that off. But, among other things, your duplicate's family probably just got a very confusing police visit."

Deku was sorry to have made trouble for any version of his mother. "So where are we going?"

"We're going to headquarters, I want you safe there until we know more as long as the police are looking for people mentioned in her letter. I don't want any risk of the police finding both you and our Midoriya. We should collect Aizawa too, she mentioned him by name."

"I … don't think the police are going to bother him, since, you know …" Deku started.

"Don't be so sure. The guy he works for is just gray enough it's not like he's totally underground. It might take them some time, they're going to turn up his location eventually."

"But it will take time, maybe that's better."

Shimura thought about that for a second. "You're probably …"

Shimura's phone rang. His car's Bluetooth displayed the number, and he frowned. "Midoriya, shut your ears for a second. All though you probably know his counterpart." He pressed the call button. "Hello, I'm not alone right now."

"Can you get to somewhere private? Quickly?" It was the voice of Hawks, the number two hero in Deku's reality. Deku did the opposite of shutting his ears.

"I've got kind of a situation, just had a metahuman from another country have some kind of mishap that's liable to turn into an international incident …"

"That's what I'm calling about. The leak on the force, it works fast. He's interested."

Shimura swore harshly. "Thanks. I was afraid of that. I'll call back when I can."

Deku felt sick. "Shimura, does he mean …"

"Yes. We need to get both of you home, now. Phone, call Tensei Iida." Iida's older brother! He was the friend on the force! Of course!

The phone rang a few times, then Iida answered. "Iida," a voice answered cheerfully.

"Iida … thanks for the tip about the Greek girl. It's … about to get worse. I'm sorry to call in the favor you offered so soon, but I need you to get her."

"I think the lawyer you sent and the consulate are doing okay trying to get her …"

"No, Iida, I need you to physically get her, right now. Make whatever excuse you need to and bring her to – Midoriya, you know your benefactor's address?" Shimura was so squeamish about the organized crime connection he wouldn't repeat Chisaki's name, but he was going to have a police officer take Leto to his home? Of course … things had just gotten dire.

"No, but I'll ask. I'm not so sure he'll be happy about …"

"I'll text you the address. Just go get her."

"I know I said I'd do anything, but I can't just take a suspicious foreign national out of the hospital, I …"

"All For One is 'interested' in her. If we want to protect her, and protect dozens of other metahumans whose names she knows but won't realize how vital it is to protect them, you'd better get her now."

The other line was silent for a long moment. "Yeah. Text me the address. I'm leaving now."

"See you soon." Shimura hung up. "You better call Aizawa."

It was only training, so Shota didn't hit as hard as he would in real life. Even so, elbowing Chisaki in the solar plexus was cathartic as hell. Few people were blessed with the opportunity to hit their boss and get paid for it, but Chisaki had asked for combat training when he realized Shota was a blackbelt, so here they were. "Keep your guard up, even when you're striking. Especially when you're striking," he instructed as the younger man grunted and fell back.

"I'm sorry to interrupt," Aiko said. As usual they hadn't heard her come outside. The way her eyes drank in her lover's body, half-dressed and gleaming with sweat, said that she wasn't that sorry. "But Shota, your phone's been ringing over and over. It must be important," she said, handing it to him. Sure enough, it started to ring again.

"Take five?"

Chisaki nodded, and reached for his towel and water bottle that had been set in a folding chair.

"Hello."

"Mr. Aizawa I'm so sorry but something bad just happenedwellnotnecessarilybadbutthewayithappenedwasbad I'm sorry to askdon'taskhimifhe'sgoingtobemadbutIneedtoaskafavorsolikeIsaidit'snotnecessarilybadbut …" Midoriya was in full mumble mode and even a lifetime of teaching shy kids had not prepared Shota to make out more than one word in ten.

"Midoriya, breathe." He heard someone, a young man from the sound of it, demanding the phone. Then the young man spoke more clearly.

"He's told you how he got here, right?" The voice was familiar, though Shota didn't quite place it.

"Yes," Shota said after a moment's calculation, hoping Midoriya hadn't been foolish with his trust but not adding any detail if he was.

"The girl is here, in this reality. And thanks to the police, All For One knows about it." For once, Shota couldn't keep his reaction entirely to himself – Chisaki and Aiko both shot him a concerned look, Aiko's more open. "I've already asked my one ally among the police to remove her from the situation. Given the corruption on the force and the fact they'll suspect my involvement, I suspect your boss is one of the safest people to send them to, assuming he won't kill a lawman on sight."

"No, not on sight. One moment." He repeated what the young man with Midoriya had said. Aiko gasped, Chisaki's face was stormy.

"Yes, bring her here," he said softly, his tone belying the fury he surely felt.

"Tell your officer he's free to do so. Do you need the address?"

"Yeah, Midoriya didn't remember." That would have been for the best, in any other circumstances. Shota gave the address and directions.

"We're on our way as well, I assume that's all right?"

"It should be. Watch your mirrors, make sure you're not followed."

There was a crunching sound as Chisaki punched a wall. Then he put his hand to the wall and repaired it – Shota had never seen him use his quirk that readily, and it was stupid to do in the open. "Kai …" Aiko said gently, stepping closer. He put a hand up, and she stopped.

"I'm sure we have time until either set of our guests gets here. Let's finish the fight," he said, his voice even, but he didn't turn to look at Shota.

"You need to focus on what's happening." Chisaki hadn't grasped the worst yet. He was off-balance just at the mention of All For One, and he didn't realize the crucial juncture they'd hit. No one else seemed to, though maybe the young man just hadn't mentioned it due to time.

"We can't do anything right at the moment. Fight me," Chisaki insisted.

"Hit the wall again if you need to work out your frustration. I need to think."

"About what? We get the kid home, we win this round."

"Do you think so? Do you think it's that easy? Do you think All For One will just forget, like a guard in a videogame?"

"I hope he doesn't, I hope he remembers that he wanted something that he didn't get, for once," Chisaki snapped. As if it would end so simply.

"You'd better at least let your guards know what to expect so they don't get spooked by the sudden arrival of four people including a police officer," Shota said evenly.

"You're right on that count."

It was a good thing Shota had reminded him to do that, because mere moments later, there was a knock on the door. "What the hell? That can't be them," Aiko's brother said quietly, reaching for his gun. So did his partner. As if in answer, the officer called through the door.

"I hope I didn't startle you. I thought it was best to get the young lady here as quickly as possible, I'd appreciate if you'd let us in, please." Namura relaxed, his partner didn't. Namura unbolted the door and opened it. The officer with the girl had a set of pipes embedded in his arms. He was holding up the girl, who was unconscious. He stepped in and Namura shut the door behind him.

"What the hell? How close were you?"

"Not too terribly far," the officer said. He checked his watch. "Well, that wasn't anywhere close to a record but, then, I couldn't take her most of the way on foot without attracting attention, I had to take a vehicle most of the way, and then be very careful choosing my route to avoid attracting attention, but we should be safe," he explained and helped the girl towards the sofa.

"She looks rough," Chisaki noted as Iida lowered himself onto the sofa with the girl laying next to him.

"Probably quirk exhaustion. That might be why it took so long for her to come after Midoriya," Shota said.

"I hope not. If it takes six weeks to recover enough to send him back …" Aiko started.

The girl stirred awake, staring at all of them with bleary, unfocused eyes. It was definitely quirk exhaustion, Shota had seen that often enough in his day. "Eímai ston Parádeiso?" she asked.

"Rest," he said gently, even though she was probably too tired to understand anything but her mother tongue, and not very much of that, and put a hand on her shoulder. She closed her eyes and seemed to fall back asleep.

"She's in and out, I don't know what she's said, it was all Greek to me," the officer said, clearly delighted at the unparalleled opportunity for a pun. Only Namura cracked a smile.

"She will be, for the next few hours at least. Maybe days. It probably won't take a full six weeks for her to recover, but it'll be days before she can send Midoriya home. And she might not be able to send herself simultaneously."

"Uncle Kai? Who's here?" Eri peeked out from her bedroom, and looked to the officer in fright.

"It's all right, Eri, we have some guests today, your friend Midoriya will be here soon too," Chisaki said, extending his hand towards her. She cautiously stepped from her room and forward to take his hand, then hid behind him.

"Who's the lady?" she asked.

"She's going to take Young Midoriya home. Eventually," her uncle said.

"Is she okay?" she asked, peeking out at the girl on the couch.

"She's just tired. She made a long journey today," Aiko said softly, reassuring.

The officer stood from the couch then kneeled down to her level. "Hi there, I'm Officer Iida. What's your name? Eri?"

"Who wants to know?" she asked, too frightened for the retort to come across as sassy.

"Eri, it's okay. He's here by permission," her uncle said, a little too brightly, putting a hand on her shoulder. It sounded unnatural for him. If Iida was worth anything as an investigator, he'd already picked up on the signs the household was not doing a good job at hiding and knew exactly where he was, but he wasn't giving that away.

"He has a quirk like you, see?" Aiko said gently. This prompted Eri to peek around her uncle one more time, and this time her eyes fell on Iida's arms.

"Oh! You have metal horns!" she said, stepping from behind Chisaki.

"Don't touch, they're still hot," Iida warned, but held out his arms so she could look at the exhaust pipes.

"Aren't you scared the shadow man will take you away? Since everyone can see your quirk?"

Iida gave her a very sad smile. "No, that's one thing I've never had to worry about. There's so many speedsters, I'm sure he already has enough of those." He didn't ask about her quirk, he knew better. "I'm trying to make sure no one else has to worry about the shadow man anymore either."

"Then you're a good guy," the little girl said confidently.

"I try to be."

"Shota, if she's exhausted, shouldn't she be on an IV to help her recovery?" Aiko asked, kneeling by the Greek girl who'd started all of this.

"Ideally."

"I'll call the doc," Chisaki said. Yes, that was a good call.

A half hour later, there was another knock on the door. Again, Namura was the one to open the door. Midoriya was there with Tenko Shimura. Well, that explained why the voice had been familiar. "Leto!" Midoriya shouted and rushed to her side, tears in his eyes.

Eri hushed him. "She's sleeping," she scolded in a soft voice.

"She'll be all right, she just needs to rest," Shota assured the boy.

"She had a letter for you, I have a copy," Iida said, removing a folded photocopy from his pocket.

Midoriya took the letter and started to read it, while Shimura dove right in. "So, what's our plan to keep them safe for at least the next few days until she recovers enough to get them home?"

"We have a safe house. I'll take them there, we can keep them safe until the girl's well enough to get them both home," Chisaki answered. Shimura inclined his head and folded his hands in gratitude.

Shota started to say his piece, and then Midoriya decided to speak. "I can't go home yet," he protested, wiping tears from his face.

"Midoriya …" Shimura said softly, rubbing his neck.

"What do you mean you can't go home?" Chisaki snapped.

"I have to stop All For One, I have …" the boy paused, obviously conflicted. "I have the only power that's ever defeated him."

Next Up: The Plan

Midoriya's secret is out! Can everyone come together to stop All For One?

Author's Note

When Leto is briefly awake, the question she asks is "Am I in Heaven?" which is certainly what I would ask if I woke up next to Tensei Iida with Chisaki and Aizawa nearby after doing something dangerous. With sincere apologies to the Greek language and any Greek readers, hopefully Google Translate did not do that sentence too dirty.

This week of work is another bear, and we are rapidly coming up on a small patch of the story (I wrote out of order so the ending is written) that is not currently written. It won't affect the posting for Saturday, but I may need to take a brief hiatus for a week or two after that. If I do go on hiatus, I'll write it on my profile, fingers crossed the muses are kind this weekend and it doesn't come to that.