At the Downpour Zone…
"Tokoyami-san! Everything will be alright! I won't let you come to harm! Don't worry! I'm here!"
Slowly, the blotches were diminishing again and so he could see the suppressed panic in Tokoyami's eyes. They told him that something terrible was out there, and that it wouldn't be long until it found them.
In that, at least, he had been right on the mark. They'd barely taken more than a few steps when another flash of heat sliced through their surroundings. It cast a blinding light on everything for a split second, then left them in darkness once more. They started running anyway. Izuku had to drag Tokoyami behind him as he went. His friend was barely responsive, movements sluggish as if walking through honey, but Izuku didn't exactly have the luxury to stop and talk sense into him. Not with an airborne opponent barraging them, forcing them to change course again and again, ducking behind corners and doubling back in the face of their beams. The most dangerous thing about the attacks wasn't actually the beams themselves – a brilliant sniper they were not – but the brightness. It kept his eyes from adjusting to the darkness, which could prove as lethal as the beams themselves in their present situation. He had no hope of making out their opponent, either. All he got was a silhouette of something big soaring over their heads… and he ran into a lamppost for his trouble, too. Not that the lamp had been lit. As was appropriate for a hero program as distinguished as U.A.'s, their simulations of natural disasters covered all effects they could have on structures, including power outages. Right now Izuku had difficulties not blaming them for this just a little – ah! Right right right! A beam cut through the street where he'd been standing just now. Literally. It cut about ten centimeters deep into the asphalt before the attacker broke away.
About half a second per beam, but with some variation to it. Meaning either they have control over the duration or it's randomized. The former is more likely and more problematic, so let's assume that. They don't – oh crap, please get a hold of yourself, Tokoyami-kun! – they don't seem to try to make them last long enough to slice at us. Repercussions? Or too little fine control?
On the other side, their aerial bombardment tactics were working just fine. Perhaps they just hadn't deemed it necessary.
At last, however, Izuku managed to throw them off by smashing holes through the walls of a building they'd hid in. When a beam sliced the front door in half, he threw a shelf through a window, waiting for the beam to hit the decoy before sneaking back through the holes. Staying in the attacker's blind spot they entered another building. They remained silent through the inreasingly confused flashes that followed, burning through the darkness at random, probing and irritated. Or maybe he was reading too much into it. Still, he watched them slowly receding in the distance until, after an eternity, they faded into the rain.
Some of the tension left Izuku's shoulders then. The same could not be said of Tokoyami, though. His friend's breath went heavy, with his beak pulled back over his teeth in a mildly disturbing display of heteromorphic biology and Dark Shadow coiled around him in agitation. He seemed entirely too small right now, almost drowning in his cloak – he'd folded his arms in an attempt at his usual pose, but his nails dug deeply into the flesh and it seemed like it was all he could do to keep them from hugging himself.
"T-tokoyami-san?" Izuku slowly, slowly approached his shivering friend. Dark Shadow lashed out, eyes an alarming shade of orange. Izuku tried to ignore the way it towered between the two of them, his mind conjuring decidedly unhelpful pictures of the destruction the Quirk could wreak if it escaped its leash. Please don't look at me like that! This is hard enough on my introvert nerves as it is… "Tokoyami-san, breathe. Just look at me, and breathe-"
"Go away! You're making Fumi feel like this! Stop it!" Dark Shadow's voice was equal parts fury and desperation, a roar that would be heard over the rain if he kept it up. "Everyone – looking at ME us like he's a VICTIM monster! GeT aWAy fROm uS Or I'll mAKe yOu!"
Tokoyami's head snapped up and his eyes were blown wide open, pupils prinpicks in a sea of crimson that was nothing like Katsuki's. "Dark Shadow! Desist this instant!" The shadowy beast paused with outstretched claws, hissing and twitching while Tokoyami stared it down, but after a few seconds it conceded and settled for looming behind him. It was very good at looming, some deranged part of Izuku's brain noted. It had the aura of "I could crush you without effort or hesitation, and I am going to do it the moment you give me a reasonto" down pat.
He had no intention of giving it that reason. So he crouched down before Tokoyami, who was still breathing irregularly. He seemed to forget he had to take in air for a second, then gasped for it as if drowning the next. Bloody rivulets went trickling down his arms from where his fingernails had pierced skin. His eyes had adopted a glassy sheen and he'd started muttering to himself. That… was rarely a good sign, much less right now (the irony of which was lost on the king of muttering). If Tokoyami were to have a panic attack in here, they might not survive it.
"She… here… no, please!" His words came out in bursts. As if he couldn't wait to be rid of them. "No, control… control… not again. It… it won't happen again. This is here. I am here. Yes… this is good. I am good. We are not you are not me. Evil. You are… that. I am. Not. You are evil. I am not evil am not. No. Stop it. I am better. I am better now. We will not go down. You will not win. I win. You lose. I WON'T LET YOU WIN!" The last part he screeched so loud it pierced the brain before his hand shot out and wrapped around Izuku's throat.
It had come fast and without warning and Izuku was so shocked that his thought processes completely shut down for a moment, as Tokoyami's fingers closed around his neck. Thin, but stronger than they appeared to be, slick with blood underneath his nails and still squeezing his windpipe shut, tightly like a collar he couldn't breathe he couldn't panic couldn't but this was making it hard not to – his instincts kicked in. He adapted teflon throughout his skin and Tokoyami lost purchase, then pried away his hands and gulped in air.
A flash lit up a crossroad two streets over, barely visible through the rain. Like a thunderstorm with all the lightning and none of the thunder. Tokoyami startled, stared at his hand, at Midoriya, at his hand. Comprehension dawned on his face, and with it, horror.
Izuku grabbed his hands and abandoned every notion of self-preservation in favor of focusing on one thing and one thing only – because here was someone in front of him, rigid with fear. Someone he'd promised friendship, someone at his breaking point, someone who needed him right now, even if he was struggling against his grip with all his strength.
"Tokoyami-san! I'm not scared of you!"
The struggling paused. The orange in Dark Shadow's eyes turned a shade paler, approaching yellow again. Suspicion and rage and fright warred in Tokoyami's expression, but he seemed unsure where to direct them, as if they slid off of Izuku like his hands had of his throat. And, despite the situation he found himself in – a hidden foe in the air, villains invading U.A., his classmate struggling to contain himself – Izuku, absurdly, despite his knowledge of how he should feel right now, despite seeing how upset Tokoyami was, upset and therefore unstable… despite all that…
…he really wasn't scared. Not of him.
Of the villain who was letting death rain from above, of course. Of the danger an unleashed Dark Shadow posed, maybe. But he stood by what he'd said to him two days ago. He wasn't afraid of Tokoyami, he wasn't afraid of him even after he'd tried to strangle him and oh Kacchan can't ever find out about this. He'd break Tokoyami's beak and then cuff Izuku's hands to his own; this time he really would. But somehow… somehow he was sure he wasn't going to hurt him. It was stupid, the bright-eyed notion of a child that didn't know anything about how the world worked yet. The mindset of someone who believed in fairy tales and wonders, not someone who'd come face-to-face with the casual cruelty of reality. It was naivety taken to its extreme, and Izuku didn't care.
"I trust you." He poured every ounce of honesty he could muster into that statement, willed him to see the truth, that he was here and not going away. "Remember what I said? Neither you nor Dark Shadow frighten me." Tokoyami's eyes were a little brighter than before. And Izuku had a feeling that if he said the wrong thing now, it would shatter whatever link he'd established with him, now and in the future. "Tokoyami-kun." A name and a change of honorifics, one to keep him tethered to reality, the other to keep him tethered to Izuku, neither going unnoticed by the avian teen by the way his hands twitched. "We are friends. Okay? We. Are. Friends. This is not going to change that. I won't go away, see? I'm…" But he didn't say "I'm here", then, because he needed more than a bigger man's copied catchphrase, "I'm going to help you."
It wasn't Tokoyami who spoke up, but Dark Shadow.
"He only ever had DON'T GET COCKY, YOU one friend…" The Quirk's voice was distorted, strained, alternating between high and low. His form was flickering – fickle, throwing out tendrils and claws only to draw them back again, and it was then Izuku realized that Dark Shadow was also fighting. Not a demon, but a partner. "He only ever had me. And he I'LL PRO- Fumi, please, Fumi, keep it together! DeSToY I'll fiND hEr anD I'll And he acts all cool and aloof, but he totally… DESTROY GO AW-… he totally wanted friends BASTARDS YOU DON'T NEED THEM when he came here, and PROTECT! NO ONE WILL HARM he had it rough because of me mONsTER and the other-"
"Enough. My… my apologies. This is neither the time nor the place to debate such matters." Tokoyami's gaze was steady as he met Izuku's eyes and bowed, feathers ruffled in just a hint of embarrassment, but unwavering and determined and here. "We must make haste. I have hampered us for too long already."
Izuku might have cried in relief if not for the knowledge that Katsuki would strangle him with his own intestines if he caught him being "such a fucking spineless idiot crybaby" again.
Oh, and also the fact that the left wall was melting.
It happened so quickly he barely had any time to react. One moment they were talking and Tokoyami finally collected himself again, the next the wall – the one facing the road – started glowing, then cracking and finally breaking down into a puddle of molten concrete and glass. A woman stepped into the hole, pausing to snap off some sharp edges before entering the room. She was tall enough she had to crouch slightly and lean like an endurance runner, but there was little to be made out of her body beneath all the… feathers. Her body was covered from head to toe in them, yellow and orange bleeding into red at parts. They glowed slightly, like the afterimage of looking into the evening sun – but the most distinguishing feature by far was her eyes. They were blazing circles of magma, an incandescence that burned itself into his mind. But in them lay something that made him shudder. Not bloodlust, not evil, but something else. It was like looking into a mirror and seeing the image moving on its own accord. There was a quality to them that should have been mundane – positive, even – but it was warped just a little bit. Just enough for the uncanny valley to hit.
Affection. Affection that had twisted and turned onto itself until it was a smoldering mess, affection that was all-consuming and hungry in its claim, affection that had evolved into something else entirely. It was that which illuminated her irises, and Izuku saw Tokoyami quaver under that gaze that seemed to want nothing more than swallow him whole.
"Splendid. Kurogiri gets exactly one job, but no – trust him to cock it up like nobody's business." The woman's voice was… pleasant. The acoustic equivalent of silk, with a warbling undertone like some kind of songbird. Her beak barely moved as she spoke. It was her throat that did most of the work, moving up and down in rapid motions. "Apologies. This will take up only a moment of our time. Now then, how do they say it in that movie they're making another remake of next year? Ah, yes. Ahem. 'Kill the spare'!"
She moved fast, but Dark Shadow was faster. Izuku had barely comprehended the villain's words when the shadowy beast grabbed him with its claws and hurled him out of the line of fire.
An actual line of fire, as it turned out – a ray of light so bright it almost seemed like a physical object cast the room in ragged shadows for a second before dying down again. The woman closed her hand (she had talons) in annoyance. Izuku retreated a few steps and blinked the stars before his eyes away. A surreptitious glance at the ground revealed a deep cut with molten edges where the villain's beam had broken through into the basement below.
A heat-based Quirk then, and a powerful one. More likely to be a laser-type than a fire one, but this concentrated it makes little difference. So the first step is…
Luckily, he'd anticipated temperature Quirks when designing his costume. One thought and his body became tungsten, courtesy of the filaments at his left hip. One of the most refractory materials in the world. Should be enough of a protection against her energy beams, but I'll still have to be on guard in case she burns away the oxygen in the air. I, uh, still need to breathe.
The villain looked at the two of them in obvious dissatisfaction. "Seriously. Do you have to care for that one?" She sighed.
"Midoriya-san," Tokoyami said, slowly, his voice dangerously low, his eyes not leaving the woman for one second. "Allow me to introduce to you Yangwu. The villain I owe to the perdition of my life."
What? Izuku's eyes narrowed. He knows her? Of course he knows her; he wouldn't be so on edge if he didn't. But who is…
"You may know her under the name 'Yatagarasu'," Tokoyami added.
And the final puzzle piece fell into place.
Yatagarasu?! T-the Shizuoka Seven murderer? That's her? B-but she's supposed to be in prison! How did she…? This is bad, really, really bad – wait.
The Shizuoka Seven. Tokoyami-kun is my age. If she was… and he knows her… that'd mean… he… oh my… so he was the one she tried to…
It was just a hunch. He could be mistaken. He hoped he was mistaken. But if he wasn't, the danger of the situation had just increased by several magnitudes.
She'll kill him. She'll kill him!
"Great." She sighed. "Just for the record, I'm okay with both. Yatagarasu or Yangwu, decide for yourself." Her feathers' glow became brighter. "Anyway, as Ole Smoky seems to have failed in bringing only you, be a dear and remain on the sidelines while I take care of the fodder."
With that she turned around to face Izuku. Light gathered in her left hand, filling the razor-sharp talons with yellow sunshine.
I probably won't be able to dodge. But if I use the moment of surprise when she fires at me and the tungsten absorbs it, I can…
The light erupted, a concentrated beam of light and heat and energy. Izuku parried it with his arm and-
"AAAAAAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHH!"
Pain. Pure, unadulterated, blazing, brain-melting pain. Nothing existed in the world except him and his arm, his arm out of tungsten that was incandescent. Through the agony he could see it glowing bright yellow, bursting like he'd put his hand into a deep fryer. He clutched his limb, and it hurt, it hurt his hand was burning up, he was melting hurting baking blazing. A thousand explosions from Katsuki's hands didn't hurt as much, acid injected in his arm didn't hurt as much; it was the most mind-breaking, singular pain Izuku had ever experienced.
And some tiny part of his brain that wasn't busy with firing pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain through his body was trying to think. And the results of that thinking was at least as horrifying as the pain itself, because…
I'm tungsten! Tungsten! The metal with the highest fusion point! This shouldn't hurt me! You'd need to heat it up to 1700 degrees to make it glow like this and then it still shouldn't… hurt…
But they'd never tested that, had they? Oh, sure, they'd played around with candles and cooktops, which had earned Katsuki second-degree burns once, but they'd simply looked at Izuku placing his hand on the hot metal without repercussions and concluded that he was resistant to heat in tungsten-form.
…Apparently not resistant enough to shrug off this. He'd never considered testing his upper limit with regards to temperature; they'd always sort of believed it was equal to the metal's respective melting point. How would they have been supposed to test it, anyway? Put his hand into a smelting furnace?
He heard something. Going up and down, a melody, passing through the veil of pain into his mind. But he couldn't really process it. Talking. Yes, someone was talking. Someone was responding, angrily. He tried to look up. It hurt. The talker stopped talking. Then started again, in his direction.
"Well, aren't you a tough one?"
"NO!"
Beam. Crash. Light. Pain.
Relief.
Izuku was disorientated; what had just…
He was outside the building. Rain was pouring down and hissing when it met the hot surface, but quenching it – blessed cooling, a relief equal to the agony that had preceded it. Steam escaped from his arm while the fog in his head cleared and the destructive hurt in his body receded.
Wait. Where was-
Tokoyami-kun!
"MIDORIYA-SAN! Run!"
The building in which he'd stood moments ago sported two holes. One clean, almost circular, where Yatagarasu had come in, blackened and melted from the heat. The other one sharp-edged and misshapen, where Tokoyami had hurled Izuku out, still crumbling with cracks crisscrossing through the material.
Then the front exploded.
A wave of debris, splintered glass, concrete and rebar, crashed into him like a meteorite shower and threw him into the building on the opposite side. He tried to breathe in, got a lungful of dust and went down coughing and wheezing as the cloud was being washed down by the rain. Something groaned and then a second explosion shook the street. Izuku's skin adapted diamond with an unpleasant tingling that warned him it didn't appreciate being changed again, seconds before the second charge of rubble knocked him over. A large chunk of debris landed on top of him and threatened to crush his torso – One for All, diamond form, he broke it into pieces – his ears rang violently and the taste of copper and floor was in his mouth.
He got up and felt dizzy again. His senses seemed muffled as if he'd been wrapped in cotton wool. Was he concussed? He really hoped he wasn't concussed again. His eyes fell on the building – or what was left of it.
The whole foreside of the house was gone. Well, not necessarily gone… more like evenly distributed over most of the street. Izuku stared at a window frame next to him. The glass was partially molten, as was the frame itself.
Huh. 1700 degrees might be about right. Maybe a little higher. Then, if the blast was less concentrated and more conical, it'd fit the melting point of – no! Not now! Focus on the task at hand, Izuku! What are you doi-
Wait. Tokoyami-kun.
No.
Please no!
Izuku scrambled forward over bits of building and holes in the street. His vision was blurry, either from the rain or the concussion. "Tokoyami-kun!"
No answer.
He accelerated, his mind spiraling. He needed to get him. There was no way he wouldn't get him. He looked around, very deliberately not desperate. Find him. Find him find him find him. Nothing else was important right now. He had a job. He had to find him. Where is he? Tokoyami-kun! Come on! Answer! Please!
Then he saw them.
Yatagarasu was bent over Tokoyami, who was coughing up dust and grime… physically unharmed.
"Very good. Shall we be off then?"
Izuku swore he could feel the moment when Tokoyami's eyes become hard, as if someone flipped a switch and his whole posture straightened. He said something Izuku couldn't understand before trying to push her back. The villain just snorted and tightened her grasp on her shoulder, still that horrible, horrible desire in her eyes-
Diamond in the legs. One for All in the legs. Full power, nothing less here, just ignore the way your muscles scream. Get her!
Izuku jumped, no, he dashed forward, retracting his arm, letting the prickling power of One for All flow through it (only just remembering to adapt diamond in it, too) before punching Yatagarasu in the gut.
At least, that was the plan.
Instead, the avian villain twisted around and soared up into the air. The airstream made Izuku stumble back, which saved him from the first barrage of pointed, laser-like beams. Izuku cursed and jumped back, dodging and evading faster than he'd thought he could manage. The training with Katsuki had definitely paid off.
Yatagarasu. That's an A-class villain, right here! …Are the villains in the other areas as strong as her?
One beam grazed his shoulder; he'd adapted tungsten into it only moments before the pain erupted. It felt like a branding iron on his skin, but he just couldn't afford to give up now, he couldn't!
A giant, black shield suddenly slid between them, blocking out any further attacks.
"Midoriya-san."
Tokoyami was standing again, clutching his left arm. So he hadn't escaped fully unscathed. Nonetheless, Izuku was beyond relieved that the bird-headed teen was still alive, was still standing and breathing in front of him.
In the shield appeared two yellow eyes, hissing. "This won't work! She isn't stopping with the shots – I can't recharge!"
Tokoyami nodded. "I-it is of the utmost importance to devise a solution to this swiftly. As you are superior in matters of strategy, I shall follow your command."
Izuku looked at him, wide-eyed. "B-but you are great in strategizing, Tokoyami-kun! You don't need to get yourself…"
"Midoriya-san! We don't have much time left!"
Tokoyami's use of 'don't' snapped Izuku out of his stupor. "A-alright, my suggestion would be to…"
A couple of seconds later, Dark Shadow receded back into Tokoyami, making Yatagarasu hum in contentment. "About time. Now, you with the mask and the heat resistance, if you stop being such a nuisance, I'll let you live. You seem to be important to my 'prodigal son'."
The green-haired one's eyes were filled with fear as he turned around and tried to run away from the villain. Yatagarasu contemplated this for a moment, then shot him in the back. He fell and didn't stand up, his back a semi-molten mess.
Tokoyami looked at her, his expression darkening by the second, incomprehension mixing with fury and loathing. "Y-you!" Dark Shadow surrounded his body like a deadly wraith, his eyes glowing orange and promising a thousand gruesome deaths."Leave me! I want nothing to do with you, you deranged lunatic!"
Yatagarasu sighed. She'd really hoped he would be more understanding. "You know I cannot do that. It would be fully irresponsible by me – look at what your little stunt did to your teammate."
She did dislike the concept of psychological warfare, but seriously! Someone with his Quirk, a Hero? It would never happen. He would be ostracized, he would be singled out, and he would break, when his Quirk ran out of control and killed somebody. There was more to her appeal than just selfish motivations, and she begged him to see reason. Didn't he understand that what had happened to his friend was nothing in comparison to the horrors he'd experience if he pursued this path?
"Please see sense. This has been going on for too long. It's all well to dream, but if dreams become delusions, they do not help anyone. Be reasonable."
"You said it. So begone!"
"I tried," she said slowly. "I genuinely tried to solve this peacefully. I told you how it was. I let you choose. I did every bloody thing like the psychology books say. But… yes, there is no other option now, right? I tried it your way, and it didn't work. You didn't understand, so now there is no other option. There really isn't. One day, I hope, you'll understand."
The boy's eyes narrowed. His Quirk extended shadowy tendrils and spikes that penetrated the air behind him. He was obviously struggling to keep it under control as he backed away from her. Still looking to escape, as if he didn't know he had lost.
When he ran off into an alleyway anyway, Yatagarasu was… disappointed. He really bought into the ideals of 'Heroism', did he?
Why did he have to be so foolish?
Still, the prospect of finally putting an end to it all far outweighed her despondency as she gave chase one last time. For a brief moment she'd been afraid that all her work would be for naught thanks to Kurogiri's idiocy, but she'd been lucky enough to have disposed of the green-haired pain in the arse before he could throw a spanner in her works.
Or so she'd thought. So why was it then that he suddenly appeared in front of her, arms stretched out wide and shouting, "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!"?
Yatagarasu tried to slow down, but her momentum was too high. She crashed into him, beak first. Which was promptly encased by a liquid.
What…
Then it solidified. Her head was encased in something heavy, something that weighed her down, something that plugged her nostrils, suffocating her!
Reflexively, her head turned up the heat (she congratulated herself on that phrasing), but then-
HOT! BLAZING HOT, IN HER NOSE AND HER BEAK AND HER MOUTH AND BURNING, BURNING, BURNING AND INCINERATING AND SEARING AND SCORCHING!
She barely felt his punches as he hit her in the stomach and launched her up into the air. It all just hurt, her head burning and her intestines squashed and her whole body aching with painpainpain – then her back hit something and broke through it, pieces of broken glass piercing her skin. She came crashing down in a heap… and started skidding off the side of whatever angled surface she'd landed on.
"Kurogiri… you twat… couldn't get anything right… could you?" Her voice sounded strange to her ears. There was some hollow piping sound to it, as if she was speaking through metal. Probably because she was. Here was to hope the communication widget hadn't broken. "Get me… the hell… out of here…"
The portal opened and she slid through it. Great. At least that worked.
Down in the Downpour Zone…
Izuku collapsed, clutching his bright-orange fist. "Ah… my… aargh!"
"Shrub-kun!" Dark Shadow surrounded his arm, surprisingly cool to the touch. Izuku's jumbled brain somehow found the energy to ask itself why even a Quirk had to have a nickname for him.
"Phew! Well, that was something!" Dark Shadow quipped, though he couldn't mask the worried tone entirely. "I'm glad that bitch's gone."
Tokoyami looked at him, but didn't meet his eyes, his expression once more the steady, sharp one that masked his emotions so expertly. "Midoriya-san…," he said quietly while helping him up on his feet. "For all… for everything that happened, I am dreadfully sorry." His posture was slightly hunched and there was some murky pit behind his eyes, as if something had vanished from there in the last couple of minutes. "Though it will mean little to you, I owe you a debt of gratitude I may never be able to pay back. What just happened… I cannot say what fate might have befallen me if not for you."
Izuku frowned. "What do you mean by 'though it will mean little to you'? Why should your words mean little to me? If anything, you are a lot wiser than me, Tokoyami-kun." He chuckled sheepishly, but his expression didn't change. "So why are you saying that?"
"You are…" Tokoyami shook his head. "Howsoever, I-"
"Fumi's scared you don't want anything to do with him anymore," Dark Shadow chimed in, to its user's profound displeasure.
"I would prefer if you restrained yourself and kept silent," the user said tartly.
And in this moment, Izuku's perspective shifted as if someone had decided to tilt it by ninety degrees, and he realized how the whole ordeal must have seemed from Tokoyami's perspective.
He promised me that the loss of control wouldn't be something that'd happen again – and then he just barely prevents it two days later, with my help on top of that. Of course he'd think I had enough of him. And if that wasn't enough, it's while we're attacked by Yatagarasu, who's had it out for him before and… oh.
Tokoyami-kun would've been Yatagarasu's eighth victim. And he's already encountered her once, with that encounter leading to… and now I find out about that… and he's afraid I'm going to turn my back on him. But why? Does he think this little of people? If Yatagarasu killed a family member of his, of course he wouldn't want to talk about it. That's completely understandable! Why would I blame him for that? He couldn't possibly have known she'd come back for him in here. But he's apologizing for it?
Though… Dark Shadow said Tokoyami-kun used to not have any friends. Then he comes into High School, gets a chance for a fresh start. But now Yatagarasu attacks again, and –
He thinks I'm going to tell everyone, doesn't he?
"Midoriya-san?"
Izuku startled up. "E-er, what, yes, I'm here!"
"You seem troubled. Which matters weigh on your mind so heavily?"
He might have laughed at the wording. Only it didn't seem the slightest bit funny right now. "Tokoyami, let's get this straight. You. Didn't. Do. Anything. Wrong. This was a horrible experience for you – you had every right to be scared. No one would have blamed you for freezing up. But you didn't! You managed to stay calm yourself in a situation like this!" He was neither lying nor embellishing here. It was just… honesty. "And I think you were really, really, really amazing, Tokoyami-kun! So", please, "I hope we can stay friends?"
Tokoyami blinked, as if Izuku's statement had been in some foreign language. Then he inclined his head. "Such a fountain of benevolence," he said, slowly, as if trying to discern Izuku's motives for showing kindness to him. "You truly are nothing short of a miracle, Midoriya Izuku-san." Then his beak curved up in a small smile. "Fate truly does work in strange ways. Who am I to judge it, then?"
Izuku didn't completely understand what that meant, but… it seemed things were all right between them.
The relief he felt at that didn't last long, as the gravity of the situation they were in finally stuck him. He didn't know why he hadn't given it any thoughts earlier (though the murderous lunatic trying to kill them might have had something to do with that) but U.A. was being attacked by villains.
"We have to get out of here," he said. The exhaustion, the Quirk fatigue, they all seemed irrelevant to him now. How could he possibly have forgotten that the others had to be in similar situations? The villain with the hands even had said it – "we assembled some serious AD carriers". Izuku knew enough about old video games to know what that meant.
Tokoyami looked at Izuku's arms, both of which admittedly weren't in the best shape after withstanding Yatagarasu's heat attacks. "…Do you really feel confident to-"
"Of course!" Izuku interrupted, his face a mask of fierce determination. "We need to check what's happening outside!"
Tokoyami nodded. Before they left, he said quietly, "Midoriya…kun? I would advise you to do away with the mask. This smile is something the world should see and draw strength from."
Midoriya smiled brightly, making Dark Shadow recoil from what seemed like the sun to him. "Thanks!"
A/N: And that's it for today! Yay, another OC! Applause!
*silence*
Well, rest assured that she'll be the last OC you'll see for a while. …Probably. Maybe.
Ah, who am I kidding. Anyway, I know jack shit about how Chinese accents sound in Japanese, so I'm using bad British English for her (and any future Chinese characters). Think American actor trying to sound British bad.
Anyway, next time: USJ concludes! Izuku faces off against Nomu! Will he be stand triumphant or will the author defy expectations and kill him off not even twenty chapters into the story? Read to find out…
If you've forgotten: Constructive criticism is welcome, flames aren't.
Remember to go beyond…
PLUS ULTRA!
Ramses, over and out.