Inko stepped out of the car, pushing the door shut with a click and walking towards the door of the house quietly. Isshin hadn't been at the clinic, and he hadn't told her about anything happening today…
"I'm home," Inko called, pushing off her shoes. She didn't really expect an answer, Karin and Yuzu were still at their clubs and-
"Welcome home," a voice she hadn't expected to hear today, or anytime soon said. Inko froze, halfway through kicking off her shoes, before doing it with redoubled effort and storming towards the living room. Stepping in, her eyes fell on Rukia Kuchiki sitting across from her husband. Laying with his head in her lap, eyes closed, wearing a bone white mask with green marks across half of the face and a rictus grin was Izuku. His black shihakusho was open to his chest, exposing a ball of scar tissue over his heart. Hanging from one hand was a sheathed wakizashi with an odd, knuckle duster tsuka.
"You're back then?" Inko asked, voice curt. The smile on Rukia's face faltered, "he has his powers back?"
"Yes," Rukia said, eyes drifting down to Izuku. Isshin put down his coffee, swallowing lightly.
"Dear…" he started, only to stop under the withering look Inko gave him. She wasn't in the mood today. Inko Midoriya wasn't one for wanton anger, but she, like her son, was fiercely protective of her family.
"I'm happy you're back in his life," Inko said, before taking a calming breath and continuing, "but don't think that means I'm happy with you, Rukia."
"I… I was busy," Rukia defended, "After the Winter War, we had to recover-
"You were too busy to put on a Gigai and come check on him?" Inko asked. Rukia had the decency, at least, to look ashamed.
"No," she admitted, before meeting Inko's eyes with steel in hers, "but I'm not leaving him aga-"
Before they could finish, a cold layer of Hollow Reiatsu, as thick as the sky and dark as an eclipse slammed into them, Izuku sat up, eyes flickering open to reveal yellow pinpricks in his black sclera. Reaching up, he grabbed the corner of the mask and ripped it off, letting it shatter as it fell and grinning wildly at them as his eyes returned to their natural color and his Reiatsu became a warm spring day.
"I got my powers back."
Sliding on the mask was like coming back to a home you never expected to miss after the longest day. Reishi gathered at the corner of his head before he tore at reality as harshly as possible. The energy warped and stretched in the wake of his hand, becoming a thick layer of bone over his face with a rictus grin while the scar tissue from the Hollow hole he had gained during the fight with Ulquiorra aches. It was as if White had mocked him, when making the mask. All Might would always smile, so too would they.
But the smile on the mask, he had been told by everyone who had seen it, wasn't the smile of a hero. It was a bloodthirsty, taunting thing.
"What else were you expecting, Hero?" Izuku's eyes flickered open to the UA classroom. Or, at least, what he imagined a thoroughly trashed UA classroom would look like. A long desk along one wall, the rest piled into a makeshift throne in the corner opposite it and a wall of windows at his back, chains covering the grounds of the school, "We ain't All Might, are we? We're a warrior."
"Has a point," sitting on the teacher's desk was a tall man in a long, open coat exposing his chest. A wide brimmed hat was pulled over his head, casting a perpetual shadow across his face where only a pair of glowing silver eyes could be seen, "Shinigami. Vizored. Fullbringer. But not hero, not yet."
"Damn near not ever," in the opposite corner, slouching on his throne of desks, a color inverted version of Gesshoku leaning on his lap, was an inverted Izuku. Skin as pale as snow, sclera pitch black and irises a sickly yellow. Even his hair had been bleached of all color, a Hollow hole in the center of his chest, "less than two weeks before the Entrance Exam. Rukia was cutting it close."
"Urahara couldn't do it any faster than he did," Izuku defended.
"They could have told us they were doing it though," White stood up, stretching and popping every bone in his spine as he walked forwards, "then maybe you wouldn't have done something so stupid while you couldn't hear us yellin' at you."
The next thing Izuku knew, he was moving on instinct, drawing Gesshoku from its sheath and blocking the attack from White's blade.
"Seventeen months," White snapped, leaning in in an attempt to get better leverage on Izuku. Izuku refused to give ground, leaning right back, "We made war on Soul Society for Rukia. We made war on Hueco Mundo for Orihime. When everyone forgot her, we were there to figure out why. And then we get thrown out like old garba-?"
Izuku slammed his forehead into White's nose, forcing him back, "They were working to get our powers back! We weren't thrown out-
"They could have TOLD US THAT!" White snapped, spinning his sword so it was facing the ground. Izuku wasted no time doing the same, and they each grabbed their blade with both hands.
"Penumbra, Gesshoku," Izuku and White said as one, pulling the blade in two. It transformed into pure Reishi, forming into a pair of knuckle duster trench knives, one pitch black and the other snow white. Izuku couldn't help the happy smirk that spread across his face as he span the blade in his left hand.
Oh, yeah. It was good to be bac-
Izuku dodged as White used sonido to appear in his guard, tipping out the window and landing on one of the chains. Kicking off in a shunpo as White burst out the window after him, he slammed one brass knuckle into the Hollow's gut, using the other arm to block a retaliatory strike. Both flew back, landing on their own chains for a second.
Then they took off as one.
- X Izuku X-
Knife ground against knife as Izuku met White in midair, a high pitched keening as blade ground against each other. Then White slacked his jaw and a ball of green-black energy began to gather, causing the hair on Izuku's neck to stand up. Flash stepping to clear out as fast as he could, which, while not as fast as Yoruichi or Soi Fon by any stretch of the imagination, was fast enough he could get the jump on Byakuya on a good day.
Izuku span with the force as the blast of the Cero went off behind him. Chains around the blast zone shattered and whipped in the false breeze. Occasionally, links lashed too close and Izuku was forced to bob and weave like a boxer and even more rarely divert a strike with Gesshoku.
"Are you back to trying to kill me?" Izuku asked, incapable of keeping the exasperation out of his voice as the attack settled down. The Hollow vanished in a shriek of Sodino, and Izuku caught the attack with one knife.
"Two weeks," White repeated, before dodging the Getsuga Tenshou Izuku sent with the other knife and landing on a chain, "We have two weeks to sand the rust off and get you back into a state where you crush Bakugo and anyone else at the Entrance Exam, hero. So let's go. Here and now, till your Mom gets back from wherever she went so you can organize that thing. C'mon, let's go."
"You want to go?" Izuku said, heartbeat quickening. In the next, he launched forwards and landed on the same chain as the Hollow and swung the right hand knife for the throat. White dodged, and Izuku kept on the offense, knives in a hammer grip as they danced along the chain.
"You aren't taking this seriously," White snapped, before slacking his jaw for another Cero.
"Ye lord," Izuku incanted in a storm of mumbles, "Mask of Flesh and Blood. Flutter of wings, ye who bears the name of Man! Truth and temperance, upon this sinless wall of dreams unleash but slightly the wrath of your claws!"
Blue fire exploded from his hand, waring with the Cero before both Hollow and Shinigami were blasted off the disintegrating chain in an explosion of spiritual power. Both landed, glaring at each other.
"You're happy they're back though," Izuku said.
"Why wouldn't I be?" White asked, "I'm pissed we were cut outta her life, Izuku. But that's in the past. We-"
"Inko's home," Gesshoku said suddenly, standing on a rattling chain.
"We'll pick this up in the night," White said as the inner world faded. Izuku's eyes flickered open, aware he was laying on something soft.
He sat up, gripped the corner of his mask and taking it off before turning to his mom.
"I got my powers back. Can I have my friends over tomorrow?"
"Why don't we wait a couple of days?" Isshin said, "give everyone time to recover."
-X
Tatsuki stepped into the Midoriya house, pushing off her shoes and calling out, "Hey, sorry if I track some sand inside! I was just at the beach!"
"That's fine," Inko said, sticking her head out of the kitchen and smiling at Tatsuki, "You've been at the beach a lot recently."
"I keep trying to get Izuku to come along, but he's been busy moping around about not having his powers… speaking of which, he said he got them back?"
"Isshin, Rukia and Yoruichi are down in the basement with him now," Inko said as the door to the house swung open and shut to let Sado "Chad" Yasutora into the house. The giant of a teen blinked once, sharing a look with Tatsuki. They'd been coming over to the Midoriya house for years. While there was an abandoned subway station under it- "Kisuke, before you ask."
"Course it'd be Hat and Clogs," Tatsuki said, equal parts fondness and exasperation in her voice. Urahara Kisuke, no matter how much he might hide it under layers of messing with them, held a special fondness for the Ryoka, "How's he been doing, since he got them back?"
"Training nonstop," Karin said, the twelve year old walking in with a soccer ball under one arm, "I think he's been sleeping with the Hollow mask on."
"Knowing Midoriya," Ishada Uryu said, stepping into the house himself and adjusting the Aldera middle school uniform he was wearing, "he likely wants to get as close as he can to how he was before he lost his powers before the entrance exam."
"That sounds like Izuku," Orihime agreed.
"Well," Inko sighed, "it's still worrying, if you ask me. Can one of you go and get him, I could use some help putting everything out for the party."
"I'll go," Tatsuki said, nodding to a certain door, "Down there, I guess?"
"And then down a ladder in the right corner," Inko said.
The minute the door was opened, everyone heard a loud crash. Tatsuki shared a glance with Orihime, and they both rushed down the stairs, finding the ladder and climbing down it.
Izuku was kneeling in a crater on the rocky sand, gasping raggedly. His shihakusho was replaced with a ragged, pitch black cloak, black bandages wrapping around his sternum and green tribal marks spread across the entirety of his visible skin. Yellow eyes glowered out of a bone white mask. In the next second, he was gone as Shihouin Yoruichi slammed into the ground where Izuku had been. Izuku landed fighter away, body shaking.
"Alright," Yoruichi said, standing up, "That's-"
In the next second, she tilted her head to the side, dodging a punch from the black and green coated blade of Gesshoku, both blades pitch black. Her arm lashed out, grabbing Izuku, disarming him and driving him into the ground with a loud popping noise that caused Tatsuki to wince. The marks along Izuku's skin vanished as he rolled onto his back, gasping in pain.
And then threw the other, white knife at Yoruichi, who caught it before it got even close to its destination.
"That's enough, Izuku," Yoruichi said, reaching down and helping him sit up, "Your friends are here. We can continue after the party. Hold still. Isshin?"
"If you could not dislocate my son's arm next time," Isshin said, crouching next to Izuku, "It'd be appreciated. Ok, Izuku, this is gonna sting."
"Dad," Izuku said, winded, "I've had a hole blown in my chest before. I'll be fine, just get it done."
Tatsuki watched Mr. Midoriya slowly work the injury before it finally popped into place and Isshin helped Izuku stand.
"Tatsuki, Orihime, Rukia!" Isshin called, helping Izuku over to them, "make sure he doesn't put too much pressure on the arm for a couple of hours. His Reiryoku will do the rest."
"Of course," Rukia nodded, before smiling at them, "It's good to see you again."