Ah, I wanted to dust off my spooky-est wip in time for Halloween, but here I am a week late, and what was supposed to be a two or three chapter short fic has grown to twice the length I imagined. I wanted to post it all at once, but what are you gonna do? Halloween was a week ago, I can't keep putting it off.
I hope you all enjoy!
...
Izuku Midoriya, quirkless, thirteen, and full of dreams, was getting the shit beaten out of him by a few nameless classmates on the sidewalk outside the local beach dumping grounds, right as the sun was kissing the horizon.
Curled up on the ground, bruised and bleeding, struggling between protecting his head or his torso, counting down the seconds until the other boy's stamina gave out and the kicks stopped coming, Izuku dared lift his eyes, passed the jeering boys and piles of towering trash, to the sunset in the distance, where just for a moment, Izuku thought he saw a swirling flash of neon green over the water...
And then all he saw was a black boot flying at his face, and all thought of strange green lights disappeared.
None of the boys noticed a shadow pass over them, as if from some large bird passing by high overhead...
Though of course, no bird would pause to watch the spectacle down below, as the way this shadow lingered.
...
It was a long and lonely trudge home that day. Izuku passed several neighbors who at best pretended he wasn't there and at worst chucked a fast food wrapper at him. Izuku failed to react. Izuku didn't even flinch, though he did stop and stare down at the side walk for a good minuet longer than he usually did before he bent down to pick the trash up to shove in his pocket; he'd throw it away properly at home, as he always did.
It was a good thing his mother wasn't home-it was the millionth time Izuku had been thankful her work hours usually meant he had time to make himself look presentable.
Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, staring blankly at his reflection, the split lip and the black eye, a slumped posture held up by a rickety skeleton made of desperate and baseless hopes and dreams, Izuku felt tired.
The lights suddenly flickered. The hairs raised all down Izuku's back. A ripple of cold spread through his body, creeping and blooming out from his heart.
Izuku's reflection did not look like it felt as worn down as Izuku himself felt a moment ago. It grinned rictusly at him, eyes shining a touch brighter than they perhaps should be, head tilting slightly to the side.
"Well...you're a sorry sight, aren't you?" Izuku felt his lips push and pull and work as they spoke the words, the cut on his lip reopened and spilled blood down his chin. Whatever force puppeting his body held him there, smiling, as his heart stopped, stuttered, and restarted at a jackrabbit pace.
The being stood there a good long moment, smiling with Izuku's face, holding his body silently hostage, feeling Izuku's heart beat it's wings against his ribcage, like a butterfly caged in curled fingers, delighting in Izuku's helplessness.
And then Izuku was released, shoving himself back from the sink and falling on the floor, gasping, while he felt something cold and wiggling burrow into his heart and head like a wasp's nest, the cold buzzing making itself at home in his bones.
It was a long night.
...
Standing in front of his mirror the next morning, dressed and ready for school, dark shadows under his eyes, and hoping last night would turn out to be a dream or a nightmare, when something suddenly smiled at Izuku's reflection using his own face.
"What a disgusting insect." Izuku's body mused, dragging one finger slowly down the side of Izuku's face. "A nice color, I suppose..." the being said, lifting Izuku's eyelids and leaning forward to peer closer at his pine green irises. The being released Izuku's eyelids with a snap, especially stinging the black eye, and leaned back to tap thoughtfully at Izuku's bottom lip. "Kind of plain, though..."
Izuku struggled uselessly, pathetically in the back of his own mind, straining against an immovable object, while the body smiled so wrongly.
Izuku felt something pull his lips back from his teeth. "You'll do nicely." The thing in the mirror, in his head said, and then just like last night the cold receded from his skin and muscles and retreated back into his bones, and Izuku was himself again. He didn't fall this time, but his face drained of blood as his expression fell out of the being's delighted leer and into Izuku's usual anxiety cranked up to eleven.
...
After a minor panic attack but before Izuku left, he grabbed a new, unused notebook out of a drawer.
Izuku went to pull out the black pen he had stuck between the pages of his hero analysis notebook. A quick glance and shuffle through the pages of notes on Izuku's favorite heros pulled a burst of bravery and determination out of Izuku, and apparently his passenger was interested by something in it as well-the colorful doodles, perhaps-because the cold came over Izuku again and he found the thing going back and lingering over pages, eyes skimming things like 'Hero Name' and 'Quirk Name', the colorful scribbles of outlandish costumes, the detailed notes on special abilities. Izuku felt something in him curl up small at the sight of his precious work in someone else's hands, even if the hands themselves were technically his own-true as that may be, it wasn't Izuku tracing a curious finger over Ectoplasm's name and sketch, and in Izuku's experience, his notebooks were safe in nobody's hands but his own.
Luckily though, the villain didn't desecrate the notebook in any way, only lingered for an unusual time on Ectoplasm before snapping the book closed and returning Izuku to himself.
Izuku forced himself to breathe.
His face, though white and bloodless, shone with determination when he put his Hero notes aside and picked up the new book, put pen to cover and titled this new notebook, 'Villain Analysis for the Future, Vol 1'. The thing chuckled at the back of Izuku's head at the action.
...
Izuku was muttering, head buried in his notebook as he walked on the way to school, hair in disarray and shadows under his eyes from lack of sleep.
"...possible I'm being followed from a distance...only a few seconds at a time? That would be the best possible...could work if I could just get out of range, but what if..."
His mumbles cut off and his body stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. Izuku could feel a terrible smile coming over his face that he really wished he wasn't already familiar with. Izuku was suddenly acutely aware that he was positioned in a bit of a morning crowd, and if the villain controlling his body wanted to hurt the people around them, there was nothing Izuku could do about it. He watched through his own eyes, a bead of sweat rolling down the back of his neck, as the being directed his attention to the top of his page of notes, where was written, 'Villain Name: Blank' and 'Quirk: Blank'. Izuku's hand moved beyond his control, bringing his black pen to the blank space besides these questions, and in a jagged script that was very unlike Izuku's own neat handwriting, wrote in English, 'Villain Name: the Suicide Ghost' and 'Quirk: Overshadow'.
The villain slowly traced Izuku's tongue over his bottom lip, and then over his teeth and canines as it gazed with satisfaction down at Izuku's entry on it. Izuku's heart beat steadily faster the longer this went on, and Izuku found himself counting heartbeats breathlessly.
Literally breathlessly, as it turned out. Izuku almost hadn't noticed, but the villain would forget to make Izuku breathe while it had control. Izuku got to twenty three heartbeats before the thing seemed satisfied at how it had left Izuku, and then Izuku was sucking in air and then there were tears rolling down his face in fear. His bottom lip was wet where the villain had swiped Izuku's tongue over it, and it was absolutely disgusting and Izuku wanted to die.
The villan perked up at the thought, and Izuku blankly lingered his watery eyes over 'Suicide Ghost' while he pondered the fact that it could not only control his body but read his mind...could it control his mind as well...?
'Overshadow' was a very accurate name for this quirk.
Numbly, Izuku wrote, 'prefers English' in a bullet point at the end of the list. It was probably the least of the observations that Izuku could draw from that last possession, but he had to start somewhere.
...
Thanks for reading, and please review! Your comments give me life.
And hey, if you liked this fic, you might like some of my others, so check them out!