"Brain-washing? You mean Shinso Hitoshi?"
"he's a year older older than me. I've never talked to him but I heard he was suspended for a week for unlicensed quirk usage..."
"Yeah, I know him. Gloomy kid with that villainous quirk always looming about..."
"What, was the thrashing I gave him last time not enough?"
"Quirks like that shouldn't exist."
"...A few weeks ago, some bullies muzzled him."
"-As if someone with a villainous quirk like him could ever be a hero."
Something snapped. It took Izuku a moment to realize the pencil in his hand had broken in half.
"Ah sorry, must have gripped it too tight," Izuku stuffed the broken pencil in his bag. "Thank you for telling me about Hitoshi-san. I really appreciate it."
The girl narrowed her eyes. She was the tenth person from Nabu Middle that Izuku was interviewing. "Hey, why are you going about asking about that kid anyways?"
Izuku considered this. "He did something to me and I wanted to know why. Only thing I knew was that he was wearing your school uniform so I figured this is where I could find out."
"Of course he did something. You want some advice? Stay away from him." The school bell rang, signaling the end of lunch break. Students started to disperse from the school ground. The girl turned on her heel, about to go back to her class. "He's bad news."
Izuku didn't reply.
When he left home, fully intending to skip school and finding the identity of his could-be-murderer, this wasn't what he expected. With a sigh, he sat on a bench right outside the school gates.
Everyone he asked had something to tell him, none of it any good. It was painting an ugly picture.
It was as if someone had painted his own portrait, coloring it with 'villainous quirk' instead of 'quirkless.' Hell, even the desire to be a hero was the same.
It was 1:00pm. Nabu Middle ended at 3pm, the same time as Aldera Middle. It was a 20min bus ride from one school to the other. Not very far but not a distance someone would cover just for leisure. Shinso Hitoshi had a purpose when he went to Izuku's school the day before.
That still didn't explain the attempted murder.
Shinso had been taken aback by Izuku's presence. Whatever his initial purpose was, it wasn't to kill Izuku. It was something he'd decided later.
Otherwise he would have done the deed the first time he used his quirk. Instead, he had asked Izuku if he was okay.
Maybe he was secretly a villain. Maybe someone was blackmailing him. Maybe his bullies attended Aldera Middle. There were so many possibilities, but he wouldn't find the truth unless he confirmed it from the source itself. He had to talk to Shinso Hitoshi.
It was 1:10pm. He had almost another 2 hours before Shinso would be done with school.
It was 3:00pm. The school bell rang. Students chattered, most cycling back to their homes. People walked by. Lives continued.
When it seemed like everybody including the teachers had exited the school, Shinso stepped out of Nabu Middle. His eye bags were darker and bigger than before and his eyes were darting in every direction. And a few steps away, right in front of him, stood the reason for his paranoia.
"Can we talk?"
Shinso only response was to run back towards the school.
Izuku sighed yet again. He had somewhat familiarized himself with the school grounds in the last 24 hours. It would have been the height of stupidity to encounter a hostile in an unfamiliar terrain.
Shinso ran through the school corridors, heading for what he knew to be the only other exit of the school. Hopefully, he'd have lost Midoriya somewhere in the school building. He opened the fire escape door.
"That was pointless."
HOLY SHIT-
"I'm not," The green haired demon panted, "used to running so much, you know? Now how about-"
BANG!
Izuku turned his head slightly. Next to his head, something was embedded in the wall beside him. He had witnessed enough villain fights to know that he would be dead if the shot had been 5cm off.
Izuku's brain short circuited.
"That was a warning," Shinso had a very real and very lethal gun in his hand, "Leave. Now."
"What the fuck." That was an actual gun. "You- you come to my school, try to kill me for no reason and dare to act like I'm the one who's about to kill you?!"
Shinso just gripped the gun tighter. He...was holding it properly, Izuku noted, the correct stance and the appropriate grip to minimize the recoil. Izuku knew of this from Sniper's gun safety videos but the way Shinso held it was practiced. He was trained.
Izuku had to be very careful with this. "I'm not leaving. And you're not gonna shoot me. Otherwise the recording I've compiled of yesterday's events using my school cameras will end up getting delivered to the police. And it makes pretty clear who'd be the first suspect if they find my corpse."
It was oddly silent for a while.
Then Shinso spoke, "You're bluffing. School cameras are not sanctioned by the state to record audio, nor are they authorized to record videos outside the school grounds themselves." His voice was trembling. "How did you even track me down?"
Izuku didn't bother replying, not when he knew how Shinso's quirk worked. It was very specific to questions, just talking wouldn't trigger it.
Purple Panda also realized this. He exhaled deeply, "I'm not asking a question now."
"Your school uniform. After that it was just a bit of asking around." Izuku relaxed slightly now that Shinso seemed less wary and more tired, "Even if I was bluffing about yesterday's recordings, I was asking about you today. They see my corpse here, the recording of you running inside the campus and the bullet lodged in the wall, it'd be very easy to put the piece together."
"Besides, if that's not enough I've been recording our conversation. You pretty much confessed while calling my bluff." Izuku brought out his phone from his pocket, "I just sent the recording to my laptop, which would be investigated for evidence. A murder on your record won't be a good thing for a student aspiring to be a hero, don't you think?" Izuku didn't know how he was not quaking in his shoes. Maybe he was too pissed to care about his life at this point.
Shinso tsk'ed, "You've blackmailed us every single time. I shouldn't even be surprised." Izuku was shaken by the hatred in his voice. It was strong enough for him to believe that this person truly wanted him dead.
But the sentence itself didn't make any sense.
"What do you mean 'every single time?' I met you for the first time yesterda-" This was the second time Izuku was interrupted. Sirens. The police must have heard the gunshot or someone else who heard it might have reported it.
Shinso frowned and hid the gun in in his clothes, "We can continue this elsewhere."
They headed down the road together. "You still owe me an explanation. Why on earth did you try to kill me?" The road was pretty much empty, so Izuku wasn't worried about eavesdroppers.
"For the sake of 15 million people."
"You're still not making sense. Start fro-" for the third time that day, Izuku was interrupted. It wasn't even the first life-threatening interruption.
"MUHAHAHA," The slime villain cackled evilly, "I see a guise for me!"
Within seconds, Shinso was covered in slime mucous and getting suffocated to death.
Shinso might've wanted Izuku dead, but Green Bunny didn't want Purple Panda dead.
"LET HIM GO!" Izuku clawed at the villain, but his hands passed right through the slime. This was worse than he thought, he couldn't harm the villain and Shinso couldn't breathe.
"HAHA No way!" The villain went off monologuing but Izuku filtered him out. There had to be some weakness! Think, think, think! Fire might help but it's more likely the villain would be just able to douse it. Would water melt him? Not enough water in his bottle to experiment nor enough time. How could he harm the villain without harming Shinso?
It was when it struck him, the eyes! He could still hit it's eyes! Izuku didn't waste anymore time and threw his bag at the slime.
Izuku had overestimated himself. His bag didn't go high enough to hit the villain in his eyes. However, books dropped out of his bag and that managed to hit the villain right where Izuku wanted.
"AGHHHH" The villain cried out, releasing Shinso. "MY EYE!"
Shinso breathed in a gasp. He was alive, thank goodness. But they weren't out of danger yet.
"OHOHO What's this?" The slime held something in itself. It looked small and metallic, like...a gun. Izuku cursed.
Now the slime's attention was on Izuku. From the corner of his eye, Izuku saw Shinso grasp his bag and shuffle its contents, searching for something. Izuku prayed it was another gun; let Shinso's paranoia save their lives please.
The slime villain aimed the gun at Izuku, "How dare you foil me! I'll get the kid again once I'm done with you."
Izuku saw a slimy finger pull at the trigger.
He braced for impact but the shot never came.
"Hey Slime," Shinso had a white scarf in his arms which was wrapped around the gun, now disarmed from the slime. He was still breathless from being suffocated, "What do- you call it when- a villain gets hit by a car?"
"I'LL KILL YOU!"
Shinso smirked, "Wrong." The Slime villain was now under his control, "It's Car-ma."
Izuku snorted.
Shinso took the gun from the scarf and used it to grab his water bottle. He dumped it's contents. "Go inside this." Once all of the slime was inside his bottle, he sealed it shut.
"That was so cool!"
"...Thanks," Shinso scratched his head in embarrassment, "You saved my life too. Why? Especially after what I did?"
"You looked like you needed help. And besides, you saved me too. You could have let him shoot me and my death would have been reported as a bystander casualty. Two shots with one stone. Why didn't you?"
"I'm not so shameless," Purple Panda put the white scarf back inside his bag and strapped it on, "He got the gun from me and it was a life-debt. We're even now, though."
"...You still haven't explained, why?"
For a while, it was only the sound of their footsteps.
"I recognize that scarf. It's the pro-hero Eraserhead's, isn't it?"
"..."
"Even the way you use it matches his. Are you his sidekick, a hero-in-training? I know you are aiming to be one."
"Not yet." Shinso stopped in his tracks. "Have you realized it yet?"
Izuku knew from the very start that something was off about this entire situation. A boy who knew him but who he didn't know. Who was afraid of him and tried to kill him. Who was aspiring to be a hero. Who was trained, in shooting a gun as well as wielding a pro-hero's equipment. Who was familiar with rules of what school cameras were authorized and record and what not. Who handled a villain encounter like a pro, subduing the villain with minimum effort and saving the bystander in the process.
"Is it a foresight quirk?"
"Close enough, but no." The purple haired boy was staring at him expectantly.
'For the sake of 15 million people,' he had said. Izuku shut his eyes.
"Am I a villain in the future you came from?"
"Yes."
Izuku's knees gave out. He felt like throwing up, How could something like that be possible?
"So I killed 15 million people," Izuku heard a hollow laugh, did it come from himself? "And that's why you decided to kill me, nip it in the bud, before I became a threat."
"Not really." What? "I came to find Bakugou. He was supposed to come back after me if he managed to survive your attack."
The "He didn't" was left unsaid, but it was there. Could Izuku even blame him? He must have lost friends, comrades and family at his hands to be shaken at the sight of him and to take the drastic measures he did.
Shinso continued, "I didn't even know you attended the same school, imagine my surprise. To be fair, the you I knew was a lot more merciless and terrifying. What happened to you to make you like that?"
"How would I know? It's not like the only thing I wanted in life was to become a hero." Izuku felt something wet on his cheeks. Oh, they were tears.
And just like that, a dam burst, "I only wanted to help people. Everyone's treated me as worthless, worse than trash even. The moment they find out I'm quirkless, its as if I could never amount to anything." The tears kept flowing, "I didn't want anyone else to be treated the same as me. I didn't want anyone else to suffer. I just want people to be able to smile, even if they think the situation is hopeless.
"Everybody told me I could never be a hero. Turns out they were right."
Izuku felt himself being enwrapped in a hug. Shinso was a lot taller than Izuku and he came up only till his collarbone, "Everybody told me the same thing." Izuku knew that. He'd heard it first hand from his schoolmates, in fact.
"You aren't the one whose future self is a villain."
"And you aren't your future self, not yet at least." Shinso was looking at him differently now. Izuku recognized sympathy. "No one told me I could be a hero, so I told myself I would be one.
"There's a five year old girl, being tortured right now by the yakuza for her quirk." Izuku froze. His eyes stopped watering, "There's a hero who was forced to kill and now believes herself far too gone for redemption. There's a kid who was orphaned and would go down the wrong road without guidance.
"There are so many others who can't be saved right now because heroes are limited in what they do."
"What do you say, Izuku Midoriya, do you want to save those people? Do you want to defy fate?"
"Do you want to be a hero?"
A/N: Aaaaaand That's a wrap. I'm not very satisfied with this so I might come back to this someday and edit it entirely to make it a lot more cohesive and engaging. What I have right now is basically word vomit. I know I said I would post next week coz of my exam but fuck exams. Might also add another chapter later on for specific scenes from Shinso's point of view. I didn't include them before because they'd give away the plot point of time travel but I did include one in between though I do think it interferes with the flow of the story. But this story is complete for now. Reviews are welcome, I'd love to know the general reception of my story and how I could improve. Also Title drop in the second last line because I'm really bad with titles and summaries and just rolled with this when I wrote down the draft.