Inko stepped out of her bedroom, glancing at the couch and heaved a sigh at the lump lying on it, arm draped across his face. Walking to the kitchen of the apartment, she started the electric kettle before walking back to him. Held in one hand, dangling from it and over the couch, was a perpetually bloodstained, curved hunting knife. Inko reached out, prying it from Izuku's hand and putting it on the table, "Coffee or Tea?"

"Coffee," Izuku groaned, the seventeen year old sitting up and running his hand across his face. His feet hit the floor as he stood up in one go, his back audibly cracking as he stretched. He shook his head wildly, green and black hair whipping around and letting her see his under shadowed eyes. They landed on her, and despite the bloodshot quality of them, he smiled widely, "Hi, mom! I'll put my stuff away!"

"And I'll get breakfast ready," Inko said with a small smile as Izuku walked down the hall and opened the door to his perpetually chilly room, pulling off the heavy, hooded ragged cowboy duster he was wearing as he went. Littered around the room was what Izuku called Mementos, artifacts of the dead.

They honestly, other than seeming to be the cause of the perpetual chill in the air of Izuku's room, seemed like junk to Inko. A tarnished silver flask, a battered heavy, clawed gauntlet, a waterlogged book he pulled out of his pocket and put next to his notes on the underworld, a motorcycle helmet with a cracked faceplate and dented frame and, deep in the back of the closet, hidden by joke T-shirts, like Izuku didn't want to see it but couldn't bring himself to throw it away, was a lock box with four masks in it. But to Izuku, each was a treasure without equal.

"Japanese or Western?" She called out as Izuku came out of the room with his Aldara uniform over one arm and a black towel over the other, a black turtleneck and jeans still on.

"Whatever's easier for you, Mom!" Izuku called, vanishing into the shower.

"What about you, Yo, any preferences?" Inko asked, and Izuku fell silent for a second, listening to the voice only he could hear.

"He'd like a bagel, if it's not too much trouble," Izuku said, sounding slightly sheepish.

"No trouble at all, dear," Inko said, "I'll get that made, and you can tell me what you did last night when you get out of the shower."

— X Izuku X—

Izuku stepped out of the shower and grabbed the towel, immediately going at the wet mop he called a head of hair as he did. Once it was sufficiently, but not entirely, dry, he dried off the rest of his body and changed into his school uniform. Reaching out with an emaciated hand, he gripped the door and blinked a couple of times, waiting for his hand to appear human again.

"Very funny, Yo," The boy marked by the Bastard's Key deadpanned.

The Geist scuttled over the mirror in the corner of Izuku's eye, the gaping, toothless hole where his mouth should have been twisting into a facsimile of a smile, the three acid green eyes covered by wispy, cracked hair crinkling the same. Izuku shot a smile up at Yo, taking his hand off the handle for a high-five. Even if Yo wasn't really "there", the point where one of them started and ended was mostly academic, Izuku felt the desicated hand clap against his own.

"We'll find them tonight," Izuku said, "We're close enough."

Izuku pulled open the door, quickly joining his mom at the table as Yo scuttled across the walls, where she put a pair of bagels in front of him, putting her own breakfast, eggs, across from him and sitting down. After a minute, she asked, conversationally, a question Izuku knew was going to bring a reckoning down around his ears.

"So, what time did you get back last night?"

Izuku grimaced, suddenly interested in literally anything other than his mom's face. Yo stopped his crawling, wringing two of his sixteen hands.

Trapped question.

Oh, yeah, partner, big trapped. Because Inko liked to stay up until Izuku got home, and her going to bed without him home made the question as trapped as a Cainite asking you who Cain was. They only cared about the answer so much as they wanted to know how screwed you were.

"Probably… after three?" Izuku ventured with the grace of the dead man he was, both figuratively and literally. You would think, after breaking his neck at age 4, he would have become inured to fear. And you'd be mostly right, but fear of disappointing Midoriya Inko was a different kind of fear.

Inko just gave him a disappointed look, and said, "You have to see this through to the end, don't you, Izuku?"

"Yeah," Izuku said quietly, "There's someone killing people on my territory, Mom. I have to do this."

"And you can't call that group you run with sometimes?"

"They got their own territory to police," Izuku said, "Maine's Krewe can't just pop over to Japan for a Slasher."

"But you can pop over to Coronado to help them?"

"...This is different," Izuku said, "He made it personal."

"You made it personal," Inko refuted, "Chisaki hasn't done anything to anyone you know. But you're obsessed with this, you haven't been coming home on time since the first Ghost showed up on your radar. I'm not trying to stop you, Izuku, but you need to acknowledge that this is your obsession."

Izuku fell silent for a moment, eyes trailing towards his room where the waterlogged, first edition of the Proverbs of Hell sat, calling him silently to ditch school and end the month long hunt that had taken him through Mustafu and Korisato, finding Ghosts and binding them so they could know when their murderer was brought to justice.

Chisaki. Chisaki. He couldn't sleep without that name rumbling through his skull and stomach and Corpus. These people were dead because of Chisaki, and the Hero and Police hadn't done anything. Might not even know he had done it. Chisaki. Chisaki. Chisaki. Murderer, Betrayer, glorified slug. Chisaki.

"One more night," Izuku said, mechanically, not denying what his mother was saying but not acknowledging it either, "One more night, and this will be over. I'll have enough information to root him out, I'm sure of it."

"...Fine, one more night. But then this stops," Inko insisted.

Izuku nodded, finishing the bagel that had suddenly turned to grave dirt (yes he knew what that tasted like and no, he didn't want to discuss why) in his mouth and stood up, pulling out his smartphone as he left the house and pulled up the Twilight Network app. To the average person, it was a niche group of spiritualists and occultists. To the Bound, it was so much more.

Can you meet me at the DMH in nine hours? Got a job to discuss.

— X Rebecca X—

The Underworld could, roughly, be divided into four layers. The Upper Reaches, the River Cities, The Dead Domains and the Ocean of Fragments. That was the "simple" way of thinking of things.

Was it actually that simple? Heh, that was a funny joke.

No. Not even close. The Underworld was like a shit sandwich. Every layer had some new type of bullshit to deal with.

More fancy, "Academic" Sin Eaters than Rebecca would argue that the first two were one layer, and didn't "technically" count as part of the Underworld. They would also argue the second pair were one layer. But to most of the Bound, there were four layers, and it all started with opening an Avernian Gate, or spending some Plasm on the Shroud if you knew how to, and entering the Upper Reaches.

The first was a fucked up parody of every place where dying would see you marked with the Key of Grave Dirt, all based on where you entered the underworld. Catacombs below a graveyard, subway tunnels below a city, yada yada yada. All sloping downwards, deeper, sometimes it was a cliff drop, other times, like the way they had come, it was a staircase.

They all ended at the brink of the Rivers. Too many to count, too many to learn the names of and what they did, you normally learned the ones 'near' where your Krewe hung, or you were gonna drink and piss your Geist off. The river they were currently walking along, getting closer to their destination, a disgusting mix of blood and slate that Rebecca actually had drunk from, was called Mictlan, after the Aztec Underworld. Which didn't even fucking make sense since she was pretty sure the Aztecs had never reached Coronado, but whatever.

And there close enough that they were in the slums of it, like an unbeating heart, was the Dead Man's Hand, halfway between River City and Dead Domain. It was close to three centuries old, which made it young as fuck by Underworld standards and old as shit by Rebecca's, and it was a place every Sin Eater, shit, every Bound, respected. A light shining in the darkness of the Underworld.

It was a place with two Laws. Don't Cheat the Dealers. All Deals Were Final If Shook Upon. And in return, you could find anything you wanted or needed in the Underworld. Barghest ectophagia? Most places could get you dog or cat, but the real preem places could always scrounge up a prized pig or cow to butcher and put on your plate. Alcohol? Mushroom beer was on every tap, and, once again, the real preem places ran real shit brought in by Bound.

She hoped Izuku had splurged on the preem.

"C'mon," Rebecca said to David, "Let's find our guy."

— X David —

David walked through the city with Rebecca, eyes wandering the street stalls and rope bridges over their heads, hoping against hope that he would find her. If his Mom had come anywhere after she died, it had to be someplace like here, right?

David jerked as Rebecca elbowed him in the gut, the other hand keeping her modded UTS-15A propped over one shoulder, "Eyes front, Dimples, you don't want to get lossed in the Dead's Man Hand."

"Sorry, just… never expected a place like this in the Underworld. It's, like, a city you would see in the real world."

"Say it like this here isn't real, Dimples," the Vengeful Sin Eater said, popping her gum as she fished out a cracked smartphone, checking the Twilight Network, "Oh, nice, he managed to get us a table at Afterlife. C'mon, I know how to get there from here."

"It's just," David said, feeling the Clockwork Giant follow behind them as they made their way through the winding streets of the Dead Man's Hand. Slowly but surely, shacks made of junk gave way for deliberate buildings on metal, built high to poke out around the surrounding favela, "I never imagined something like this in the Underworld."

"You already said that," Rebecca teased, but shrugged, "It took a lot of goddamn effort to get this place the way it is, Dimples, damn near a Dead Domain, and can tank a fucking hurricane of Reapers coming after it, you gotta put some fucking respect on the name of the Krewe that did it… Well, you would if they had one, but you get what I mean. They're badasses."

The Bloated Woman, an ogre sized mass of meat that towered over her Sin Eater, nodded, hovering behind Rebecca. Dreadlocked hair sent flecks of ectoplasmic water flying through the air, even as more poured down from large, crushing hands on shriveled, vestigial arms, her breasts and dragging entrails. It opened its mouth, gargling something out through the torrent of water that made Rebecca nod.

"So, uh… this guy we're meeting, what can you tell me about him? Is he part of the Krewe?" David said uncomfortably. Here it was impossible to ignore that none of the people he had started running with, that he wasn't human anymore.

"Kinda, don't think he buys Maine's Faith," Rebecca said with a shrug, "He's solid, but not sold. Y'know what I mean?"

Not really, no.

—X Izuku X—

Izuku played with the complementary pack of cigarettes, flicking it open and closed as he waited for Rebecca to show up. He wasn't one for smoking, but other than Rebecca, he wasn't sure who was showing up.

Smiling at the server who put a glass of lemonade with real strawberries in front of him, he shook his head as she reached from the lighter on her hip, "No, thanks."

"Ok?" She said, blinking her one eye, the other gone with the skid mark that was half her face, before turning and walking away. Izuku leaned back, eyes scanning Afterlife and sipping his drink through a straw.

Unlike most places in inner city Dead Man's Hand, which tended towards the saloons of the North American Transcontinental Railway and Jazz clubs of the Second World War, Afterlife was built on a crude facsimile of a nightclub. A wall of speakers was hooked up to a trio of gas powered generators outside the building. You could almost always find a job running gas from the living to here.

It was here that, seven years ago, Izuku had bound his fate to Maine's Krewe with a handshake. Where he had run his first jobs between the Underworld and the Living World. Afterlife was part of who he was in the supernatural, part of a Krewe but not. Outside but Inside and everything that came with that.

The doors to Afterlife swung open to a storm of familiar cussing. Across the bar, hands reached towards the totally-empty-they-promised holsters, while Izuku just dryly sipped from his strawberry lemonade. Old game, long run out of humor, but too ingrained to not do.

Finally, after a minute of shit talking and gun waving, Rebecca stormed into the room and shoved her Model No. 1 back into its holster like she wasn't openly advertising she was carrying in a no carry zone, the Bloated Woman walking behind her. Then came a Latino boy with a quaff of hair, a yellow jacket and a bemused look on his face, followed by-

Well, shit, if it wasn't the Clockwork Giant. He had wondered where that particular Geist went after its last Bound Flatlined. An eight foot tall mass of grinding gears and metal, a demonic looking stretch of skin over his face and a heart merged with the machinery, pumping with every turn of the gear, was the only part of him that was flesh.

"Hey," Izuku said as they approached, "I need help on a job."

—