Uraraka's world ended when she got the call.
All for One was dead, and in his last moments he warped Izuku to somewhere unknown.
She was stone faced as she sat in the briefing room, listening to the representative from Tartarus giving them all the information they had.
They all watched the security footage with bated breath. It was both helpful and useless at the same time. They knew that he was given unknown quirks and teleported to an unknown location, and that whatever he'd done was particularly awful even by All for One's standards. Even with that information it didn't actually give them a lead.
The quirks could have been just about anything since there were so many detrimental quirks out there, and combining them could definitely create a personal hell. But it wouldn't be impossible to remove added quirks once they found him. The bigger question was where he got sent to.
Or more accurately, who he got sent to.
She couldn't think of a situation where All for One would be foolish enough to think he could hold Izuku without a guard. Even if he was severely weakened there were few things that could contain him. She didn't know if it was a silver lining or not, but the fact that All for One seemed to be going for 'a fate worse than death', that meant Izuku would be kept alive. And that meant loyal members were needed to keep him fed and locked up.
Plus, with what they knew about the quirk, it could only send people to a location he was familiar with. Best case scenario was that he was sent to a location he knew because it is associated with his criminal empire. Worst case is that he familiarized himself with the location for this specific purpose.
She had doubted Izuku when he brought up his concerns that there was more left of the villain's empire, but now she was starting to think he was right. Clearly the man had more associates, and in his final act harmed Deku in some undetermined way before sending him to these people.
The others at the meeting were discussing the intricacies of the warp quirk. For Uraraka though, everyone else's theories and strategies weren't important to her. He was trapped somewhere, that meant someone was holding him. That meant someone knew where he was.
And she would find him no matter the cost.
He'd been missing for a week now and she was standing in an alley with a crook pressed up against a brick wall.
"I know you don't know where Deku is, but I think your boss might. So here's what's going to happen, you're going to tell me how to find him, and you never find out what the upper atmosphere is like."
"Fuck you bitch, you're bluffing!"
She punched him hard across the jaw. "How sure of that are you? Because I'm pretty sure the endless vacuum of space is a great place to hide a body."
The man laughed and spat at her. "No way little miss perfect suddenly started killing gangsters."
"Maybe I'm trying something new." She wound her fist back "Now. Tell. Me. Where. He. Is." Punctuating each word with another hit.
He coughed out blood onto the ground. "Alright, I'll talk. But I can't promise he knows shit."
She smiled, that was good enough for her.
Later that night she cleaned her bloody hands. She'd put in a request for fingerless gloves with reinforced knuckles so she didn't injure her hands when punching people.
As she finished up wrapping her hands there was a knock at her door. "Oi! Round Face, I know you're in there."
She opened up the door halfway. "What do you want, Bakugou?"
"Maybe I want to know what the hell you think you're doing?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
He shoved his way into her apartment, "Really? You don't know about the smugglers from yesterday who had their ship thrown to land, two of them are still in a coma from what I've heard. How about a guy with a broken jaw, punctured lung, and who might not fucking live to see tomorrow? That doesn't ring any fucking bells?"
"Oh, like I'm the first hero to use force to get answers."
"Don't even try to give me that bullshit Round Face, you know this isn't about getting in trouble, it's about you not losing yourself to this. You think Deku would want us running around punching people to death because they might know someone who might know something?"
She spun around and threw her couch at him, which he easily dodged. "SHUT UP! You don't understand!"
Katsuki laughed hard in response, "That's fucking rich. You think I don't miss him? You think you're the only one who gets to feel hurt? You think you're the only person who's in a dark place right now? But I'm apparently the only person not afraid to call you out on your shit."
"Get out. I don't care what I have to do, I'm getting him back. That bastard made it clear he wasn't killing Deku, so I'm pulling him out of whatever hell he's in right now."
He turned and started walking out. "Goddamnit, you don't have to do everything alone you idiot. You're acting like this is some personal fucking crusade, but we all want him back."
After he left she laid down and cried on her bed that was too big for one person. Everything in the apartment was made for two people and it was killing her. She found herself sleeping in their guest room that night. It just hurt too much to be in the room that felt so empty without him in it with her.
It had been a month and Uraraka felt like she was losing her mind. Any group that had done even the slightest amount of business with the League of Villains faced her wrath. If there was any indication that a villain interacted with All for One or his subordinates at any point in time then you could expect to find Uravity on the scene tearing them apart looking for anyone who knew where Deku was.
But no one knew anything.
Not a single clue. Not even a hint. If they didn't know it was a warping quirk she would have thought he was erased from existence. But it was a warping quirk, he had to be somewhere. At this point she'd rather find a body than keep finding nothing. She just needed to know what happened.
She punched the bathroom mirror in anger and desperation. She hated herself for thinking that. She loved him with all her heart and would never want him to die. She just needed something, anything, to show her where she should be going.
Uraraka had run out of tears to cry as she looked at herself in the fractured mirror. She hadn't been eating or sleeping and it was definitely starting to show. But that didn't matter, she just had to keep going until he was found.
Within six months she had jumped from being a mid ranked rescue hero living in Deku's shadow to a top ten combat hero. Since she'd started patrolling and fighting at night more often, it made sense to change outfit from the old bright pink to nearly all black with green highlights. Her face had become gaunt from barely eating enough to survive, her hair was badly matted, and she had stopped taking the time to wash the bloodstains from her hero outfit. But her deathly appearance didn't change the fact that she was efficient and had been tearing apart the criminal underground in search of any hint of her loved one.
Anything official still had Uravity on it, but criminals had started referring to her by another name.
Deku's Revenant. Some kind vengeful ghost that was left behind when Deku died and that wouldn't stop until his death was avenged.
The issue was that she wasn't sure they were wrong.
She was just so frustrated and furious at herself for not finding him yet. There was nowhere else to look. No one left to fight. All the organizations were taken down, the only villains left were small fry that had nothing to do with All for One or his villainous empire.
Uraraka sighed as she walked into her old bedroom. She did so as infrequently as possible, but there was a formal event coming up and all of her nice clothes were in that room.
The layer of dust on top of everything was heart shattering. It had been so long. She just wanted some sort of closure or peace. She just wanted her boyfriend back. She was willing to do anything to get him back. But it didn't matter. There was nothing for her to do.
In a moment of frustration and rage at her helplessness she grabbed the nearest thing and threw it across the room. It had been one of the dressers, now shattered against the equally damaged wall, Izuku's clothes strewn across the floor. She immediately regretted damaging anything of Izuku's.
With shaking hands she slowly picked up and folded each piece of clothing and separated the chunks of wood. As she cleaned up the mess she'd made with tears on her face she found something that broke her heart more than she thought possible.
Hidden in the very back of his sock drawer, she found a small velvet box.
Uraraka hadn't cried in months, left in some sort of furious apathy, but now her tears spilled down her cheeks unchecked. Her crying turned to sobbing as she opened it and found an engagement ring. They had been dating for over five years, so it wasn't surprising time wise. But what was she supposed to do with this when her boyfriend was missing?
She laughed weakly to herself, knowing Deku, he probably had it for a while and had been overthinking and planning meticulously to find the perfect way to ask her.
She didn't know how long she layed on the floor, but it felt like everything was crashing down around her. All the anger that had been keeping her going had suddening shifted into unbearable sadness and a deep seated loneliness.
All she wanted in that moment were the friends she'd pushed away and ignored. Without really noticing what she was doing she finally reached out for help.
After barely two rings the phone picked up, her voice sounding a little confused and alarmed. "Ochako? -ribbit- Are you ok?"
She just cried into the phone for longer than acceptable before answering, "Can I stay with you tonight? I just can't be in this apartment right now."
"-Ribbit- Of course, I'll come pick you up."
Looking back, she realized that was the day she had started to accept that he was gone and that he wasn't coming back.
She wished she could say she kept searching after that, but she really couldn't. If there had been a single lead she'd have jumped to her feet and chased it without hesitation. But there weren't any. She was just left feeling hopeless and defeated.
She barely left Tsu's apartment for the next few weeks. She felt bad for imposing on her friend after months of silence, but she couldn't bring herself to go anywhere else. Without Uraraka there forcing it along, the investigation came to a halt. Which made sense, because he had started to accept she hadn't chased anything close to a possible lead in months, just going after hunches and anyone that might be connected to All for One in some way.
Tsu helped her fill out the proper time off requests so she wouldn't get in trouble for not showing up to work. Sometimes there was an overwhelming guilt at the idea of just laying around when she could be out there helping people, but getting out of bed was frequently too big of an obstacle for her to actually do that.
Eight months after Izuku suddenly disappeared, the hero Deku was officially marked down as assumed dead. That period of time was a blur at best. The funeral, the death certificate, the life insurance, the memorials, it all merged together into one foggy mess of sadness and grief.
There were statues put up in his honor, in recognition of a hero that died suddenly and mysteriously.
It was a very slow process, but she started to recover. She'd moved in with Tsu, coming to accept that living alone would do nothing but set her back. It took months and months of therapy and professional help, but she'd started looking like herself again. Not quite back to being 'round cheeks', but Tsu and her other friends made sure she was taking care of herself now.
Hero work brought up too many memories and put her in a bad mindset. She just couldn't handle the death and destruction anymore, so she had moved into a more administrative role in the agency. Sure, there were still bad days where it felt like those first few weeks all over again, days where she couldn't get out of bed, days where she cried at the sight of his memorial, but overall she got better.
They were coming up on the second anniversary of his disappearance when they got the alert. A powerful earthquake not too far off the coast threatening numerous cities. She was far enough inland that her agency wasn't in danger, but lots of other people were, so she immediately started mobilizing heroes and organizing the rescue effort.
But it didn't act like a normal earthquake. Usually the shaking stops after a couple of minutes. There might be aftershocks for a while, but the main event will be over pretty quickly and they can start the rescue effort. Not this one. This one lasted for hours, turning cities to rubble and causing one violent tsunami after another.
There was no way this was natural. But at the same time, she dreaded the concept of a quirk being able to do this. As she looked at the cities that had been washed away to the ocean and the number of dead being estimated in the hundreds of thousands, the idea of a person being responsible was a nightmare scenario.
A few days later they called a briefing of high ranked hero agencies. She sat there fiddling with the ring she always wore, a nervous tic for her nowadays. They were shown pictures of the decimated seascape where it had originated, and then shown the photos that had been gathered moments before the disaster.
It was a gray cloud with black tendrils coming out of it like some eldritch beast. But what nearly broke her down to hysterics were the flickers of green lightning. She would know those anywhere. Those were his quirks. She didn't know what had been done to him, maybe he was a noumu now, maybe he was brainwashed, maybe it was something so horrific she'd never consider it. It didn't matter. What mattered was they finally found him, but she feared they were too late, that he had been twisted to the point they wouldn't be able to pull him back.
Her words came out as a whisper without realizing it, silent tears running down her cheeks. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry we never found you."
Hope you all liked the quick pov switch so that we get to see how things are going with ochako. we'll be back to our regularly scheduled eldritch izuku next time, where i'm sure nothing will go wrong and everything will be good.
