Trtt

by Nexus Sannin

T

14. Hj

When You're Ahead, She's Coming After

by KingofShallowynd

Anarchy sweeps Japan. The war with the Paranormal Liberation Front and the subsequent mass breakout from Tartarus have left the country in ruins. Izuku strikes out on his own, dodging All For One's sinister agents and doing justice where he can, separated from those at UA he cares for most.

Meanwhile, Nejire and Tamaki graduate from UA and dive into the lawless streets as pro heroes for the first time. Izuku has no intention of getting close to his fellow students again anytime soon...but his two senpais represent a grey area, and when he and Nejire intersect, she proves to be hard to shake off.

Also, Camie is around too.

es

Into the Wasteland

When you're ahead, she's coming after...

And when you run, she's running faster...

And when she loves, you better hope her love is not a temporary high.

...

The young man stared down through the vent opening at the person he was going to kill.

The hideout was dingy and musty, with peeling walls and water stains on the carpet. A fuel lantern, like one might see in a campsite, was glowing sleepily on top of the torn-up couch.

Food wrappers scattered the floor. The person kicked these out of the way as they paced back and forth across the room, occasionally flashing glances to the narrow, dirty window facing north onto the city street. The sun was nearly set; and the light of the lantern was taking over.

The person was speaking loudly into a satellite phone. It had to be a satellite phone, thought the young man; there was no proper phone service left in this area of the city.

"They were spotted a few blocks from here just yesterday!" the person insisted into the phone, frantically.

" Where are you getting your local info from ?" Whoever was on the other end of the phone sounded rather gruff.

"That's none of your business. It's your business to get me out of here." The soon-to-be-dead person was having trouble controlling their breathing.

" That's what I'm trying to do, Kei, but if you don't cooperate..."

"You promised I would have an escort. Two of the bodyguards from the school."

" We can't get them to you. You're going to have to reach the station on your own. "

"That's seven blocks! I'll be totally exposed..." The person stared out the window onto the desolate, darkening city street. "I'll be assaulted. The clothes will be stolen off my body and I'll die."

" To get to safety, first you must go through danger. Kei, you're going to starve there if you don't get to us. I can promise you that. "

The young man had considered jumping down while they were on the phone. It might be easier that way. But no, the person on the other end of the line said they were from the school . He couldn't risk them even having an inkling as to what had happened.

They were shaking. The phone in their hand rattled. "I'm...I can't do this," they breathed.

" Yes you can. You CAN. "

"It's just all too much. Everything is falling apart."

" I know. But it's up to us to mend it. To mend this country before it's too late. Come on, Kei, we need your help here. No one knows security better. "

No response. The person just whimpered. The young man sneered in disgust, twitching, barely able to hold himself back from jumping down.

The gruff voice on the other end of the phone sighed. " What do you see in your vision right now ?" "Th-th...the Hayasaka accounting firm..." the person stammered.

" Just out the window ?" "Y-yes..."

" Okay. Okay, I know that area. Here's what you're going to do. You're going to cross the street and take the fire escape up onto that roof. "

"But th-that's the wrong way!"

" No, hold on, listen . The firm connects to the apartment buildings on the left. They're a connected complex with a covered bridge that goes over the street. You turn and go that way, staying on the rooftops. "

"That bridge was d-destroyed last week. Someone's got an exploding Quirk." " Completely ?"

"N-no...but there's a big gaping hole in it now..."

" Use your Quirk to jump it. We can mark this up as a certain form of self-defense, or we can just leave it off the books. The books hardly matter at this point. Kei, listen! Staying on those roofs should get you just over halfway there. Then it's just around three blocks to the station. You can sprint if you like, or you can hide by that pharmacy for a bit and take it slow. Block at a time. "

"Okay," they muttered. "Okay." Chest rose, chest fell. "I...okay. I can see the whole route. In my head. I see what you're saying."

" Right? See, it's going to work. Just use the area to your advantage. You make it to the station and you're home clear. You can do this, Kei. "

"I can do this. I can do this." Their head shook. "Alright. I'm going to hang up. And go for it now. Before it gets too dark."

" Good luck. I'll see you soon, okay? We'll see each other again. " "Right..."

The phone beeped. The person sighed and lowered it to their hip.

The young man let out a shriek and plummeted into the room of the hideout. The person was not a screamer, it seemed; all they did was turn in a panic and jump back...but it was far too late already. The moment the young man had found this place, they were done for.

When it was over, the young man opened the window a crack to let the bad air out.

Just outside, passing on the street where that covered bridge had been destroyed, was a gang of people. The young man noticed several monster mutants of above-average height, and their leader had flames dancing in his palms as he took them around the corner. They were patrolling.

A shame, the young man thought, sighing, retreating into the darkness of the room, away from the window. You'd have been dead with or without my input.

...

Yo Shindo, hero alias Grand, and Tatami Nakagame, hero alias Turtleneck, now graduates of Ketsubutsu Academy, entered the upper floor of the abandoned office building with some trepidation.

Tatami had more than a few doubts about this. First of all, they were up against the clock, since one of the most dangerous Tartarus escapees was known to be haunting this area. Secondly, the upper space of this building was all glass walls, making them easily seen from outside. And lastly...were all the people sitting, standing, watching the two young heroes, from the other end of the room.

It was a mix of people, some with ragged street clothes, some with dashes of strange color in headbands or skirts that made them look like they were wearing half-destroyed hero costumes. Some had body enhancements from their Quirks, but they were all noticeably human-looking, with no real monster mutants in sight. That was another troubling thing. All the reports Tatami had heard, either through official means, rumor, or conjecture, indicated that very few monster mutants

had made it back to any of the shelters. Either they were all joining the gangs, or they were out there alone, rejected from local groups like this, being hunted.

The last thing she noticed was how nearly all the men had long beards. They had been out here a while.

"Great!" the leader snorted. He had a short sword strapped to his back. "Now they send kids to pick us up? Turn around and go home."

"It's too dangerous here," Shindo insisted, stepping forward. Tatami sighed. Her boyfriend was smiling, but he'd always been too aggressive, and the smile just made it more off-putting. "You won't last long if you don't move. Please accompany us back to the designated shelter."

"Those shelters are barrels for fish," the leader scoffed. "The villains will bottleneck them in a heartbeat. Out here, we're free, and we're not weighed down by others who are weak and hiding."

"Those weak others are your countrymen, and they're smarter than you," Shindo said, testily.

"You haven't seen us work!" someone else spoke up. "We've done for some of this scum pretty quick! We can take care of ourselves!"

"We don't need you!" someone else agreed.

"I trust your ability to handle yourself when it comes to looters and thieves," said Shindo. "But Tartarus escapees are a different story. The reports we've received about the one near here...are worse than troublesome. This individual has little to no regard for human life. They have totally abandoned any kind of moral code. If they find you, you will not survive."

"And you would?" The leader got in Shindo's face. "You pompous heroes believe so highly in your abilities, when your failure is what got Japan into this mess in the first place. No, I think we're just fine taking care of ourselves, thank you. Our mind's made up. Get out, you kids. Of your own will. I don't want to have to hurt kids."

Shindo's smile tensed, and Tatami could tell he was grinding his teeth.

A few minutes later, they were back on the street, putting the glass building to their backs. Shindo walked ahead of her, slouching, clearly in a bad mood about all of it.

"What made Ms. Joke think they'd listen to us?" he muttered. "If they didn't listen to adults, then..."

"Maybe she thought they'd have a soft spot for young people," Tatami said. She intentionally didn't say kids. She certainly did not think of herself as a child anymore, and Shindo probably would have gotten mad at her too.

Looking around at the street, it was a desolate scene. Lamp posts were bent at unnatural angles. Trash rolled across the pavement. One of the pieces was a newspaper; the wind slammed it flat against the side of a bin and displayed the front page clearly: THE END OF JAPAN. One of the buildings up ahead was half-destroyed; a cascade of bricks spilled out into the street from its gaping maw.

"Well, they didn't attack us, at least," Shindo muttered, "though I would welcome a fight at this point." He rubbed his arm.

Tatami's phone rang. She pulled it out, and Makabe nearly screamed in her ear when she picked up the call.

"YOU TWO NEED TO GET OUT OF THERE NOW! I SAW THE VILLAIN WITH MY OWN EYES! HE'S COMING YOUR WAY!"

It was so loud that Shindo heard. His eyes widened. "But what about the civilia-" "THERE'S NO TIME! RUN!"

A shadow filled the sky.

Tatami and Shindo looked up in horror. The massive, looming hulk had leapt over the glass office building from behind, and slid down its wall, shattering and destroying the facade as he went. "JUST YOU TWO, THEN?" The villain laughed. "WELL, LET'S HAVE SOME FUN!"

Shindo flexed his arms and flattened his mouth. "I guess I gotta be careful what I wish for," he

croaked. There was a mix of fear and courage in his eyes.

The villain shook the ground when he landed across the street from them. Tatami could see behind him, up in the office building, the group of civilians they'd just confronted. Their walls now destroyed, they were looking down on the scene with panic and confusion.

"I'll get them!" Tatami told her boyfriend, pointing up.

"Understood." One of Shindo's fists slammed into the other. "I'll knock this guy down."

The villain had muscle fibers growing out of his arms and legs, swelling like nests of snakes. One of his eyes was mangled, and he had spiky blonde hair. He heard what Shindo said, and laughed. "SOUNDS LIKE A PLAN, HERO! COME ON AND TRY IT!"

As Tatami leapt up toward the building, Shindo and the villain ran at each other. Shindo slammed his palms into the ground and began to shake the street, causing an earthquake. The rumbling filled the air as pieces of concrete and brick ruptured and flew out from the battle. Clouds of dust kicked up. Tatami jumped through one and up onto the ledge.

The leader of the civilian gang was pulling out his sword as if preparing to join the battle. " No !" Tatami hissed. " Please follow me to safety! This is the man we were telling you about! He's going to..."

"He can't tread all over our town and destroy our buildings without justice from us!" the leader cried.

"You have no jurisdiction here, girl!"

"Yeah, get lost! This is no concern of yours!"

"We'll protect this town!"

"I won't let you kill yourselves out there!" Tatami insisted...

BOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

Everyone looked over at the scene on the neighboring building. Somehow, Shindo and the villain...

( Muscular, his alias is Muscular)

...had ended up on the roof, and Shindo was being smothered.

"HAHA HA!" Muscular cackled, his fibers wriggling over the young hero's bloodied form, shoving him further and further into the wreckage. "That's twelve thousand layers of muscle fibers weighing you down, little buddy! No matter how you shake things up, you can't withstand my sheer strength!"

Shindo grimaced through all of it, and forced his eyes open, pressing his hand against the fibers that were pushing against him. "There are certain things I don't do with my Quirk," he said, "because I don't like to hurt people. But you ...you have discarded your right to be called a person. "

He activated his Quirk, and suddenly, all the muscle fibers began to shake and writhe at once. "TREMORING EARTH!"

Muscular reared back, vibrating, his eyes widened in shock as the Quirk worked its way through his whole body. "I'll turn you into a muscle milkshake!" Shindo promised.

"Then I'll just...add more layers..." Muscular's arms and legs swelled even further up, suppressing Shindo's Quirk, covering it, making it less and less and less effective. Pushing him down again. "Better luck next time, kid! OH wait, there won't be a next time!"

"YO-KUN!" Tatami cried out.

Shindo began to disappear beneath all that. Cracks formed in the building beneath them. He was going to die.

"THIS is what real power looks like!" Muscular cackled.

A green streak zipped across Tatami's vision, so fast that she swayed in place, and wind buffeted her hair and clothes. Murmurs of confusion and interest swept through the crowd of civilians.

KA-POW!

A bright, sparkling impact of power slammed into Muscular's side, so hard and so fast that Tatami blinked and missed exactly what happened. The very next moment, the villain had been dumped onto the street, knocked right off the roof by whatever it was. There was an impossible amount of dust now, billowing up in clouds on the street, obscuring a glowing green silhouette.

No, not dust. Smoke. A ton of smoke.

"Muscular...no wonder my sense of danger was going so haywire." The new voice that spoke was warbled, as if put through a filter, and deep and hoarse and full of pain. Tatami's heart skipped a beat.

As Muscular got up, he was gasping for breath and grinning even more widely. "That Quirk... could it really be you at last?"

The smoke parted to reveal...well. Tatami didn't know how to describe the person. If they were a hero, their suit was incredibly damaged. It was patchy and frayed and could have once been called green, but it was so dirty it was hard to tell. They had big gloves and a filthy yellow cape around their neck. Their face was masked by some kind of grimacing mouthpiece, and a green cowl with pointy ear-like appendages that flapped in the wind. Visible through the dark eye openings were two glowing green points: their eyes.

They were holding Shindo in their arms. They had saved his life.

"I'll show you real power ," they promised Muscular, and from there, the fight was not even close. ...

The civilian gang helped Shindo onto a stretcher. "We found three of these in a dumpster," one of them told Tatami. "We take what we can get."

Tatami nodded. "Thank you. I..." She reached out, trying to carry the stretcher herself. Shindo. Her boyfriend. He'd nearly died.

"We'll take it, young lady." The leader's voice was softer now, his eyes sad. "Don't want him dying or anything. You can't carry him alone."

"But I..."

"Just respect our boundaries, and we'll cooperate with you."

Tatami looked to the sky. The mysterious boy had Muscular tied up with black tendrils, and was leaping in great bounds off into the distance, taking the unconscious villain somewhere. "I didn't get to thank him properly..." she muttered.

He asked questions about Tomura Shigaraki and All For One. Could that have been...?

...

The police all raised their guns at the same time. "Who are you? Explain yourself!"

Izuku supposed he had landed rather suddenly. He lifted his arms up to show he didn't mean them any harm. If they opened fire, I'd have to knock them all out, I guess. "Do you have a spare Iron Maiden?" he asked them.

A few minutes later, Muscular was safely contained once again. One more escapee off the streets. Many more to go. Izuku looked back at the police station again as he leapt from rooftop to rooftop, away from it. They were regaining their foothold in the precinct. As for the neighboring area, that civilian gang had been maintaining control...at least until Muscular had shown up.

I can't leave them to their own devices. I have to mark this area down. I'll loop back around to it

next week. He had a list now, of places in the major cities he checked up on. At least that police department was still intact. Even then, if it became targeted by a powerful villain... alright, I'll keep checking on the station too. It wasn't too much trouble. It gave him around forty minutes instead of fifty, per week, to linger in each spot, if he added these to the cycle. But that was plenty of time as long as he zoomed everywhere.

Izuku could not afford to leave even just one area unattended.

He looked around at the city as it became drenched in evening shadows. Husks of buildings leapt out at him, accusing him with their unseen eyes.

Failure. Fake. Good for NOTHING.

Muscular hadn't known anything. Not an inkling as to where Shigaraki or All For One were.

The wind threatened to pull Izuku's cowl off; he readjusted it as he made his next leap. His eyes scanned everywhere. Paranoia, paranoia. Shadows leapt across the streets. Was that a person, or an alleycat?

None of you would happen to have a Quirk that lets me see in all directions at the same time, would you? Izuku dryly asked the voices in his head.

Funny , they whispered. You used too much smoke in your fight with the hulking man. You could have obscured your own sightlines and slipped up.

I'll remember for next time , Izuku promised. Mistakes, mistakes. He made them constantly. Right now someone was probably dying within this square kilometer. Someone else was probably being sexually assaulted. Tints of Danger Sense were alarming the corners of his perception, but they were in all directions. Constant. It had been like that the whole time, since he'd set out from UA. Only when a huge flare-up happened, like earlier with Muscular, was he able to do anything.

Useless, useless. Deku. aGH! Do something! Go somewhere! He threatened to hit himself in the face, trying to continue to move, spinning around and looking around wildly at the city. He always got antsy and panicky if he went a few minutes without finding something to solve. There had to be something he could do. Anything.

Calm down, Ninth. Keep your cool.

Shut up. What good is One for All if the user of it is such an idiot? If All Might were... All Might operated in a time of societal stability. You are not.

Izuku refused to engage them in further conversation right now. Unless they had further notes on how he could improve his combat, he didn't want to hear it. Besides, the fact that society had collapsed...that was his fault too. For not stopping them when he had the chance.

Tomura Shigaraki's terrifying, gaunt, skeletal face, with half the skin sloughed off to reveal the grin of All For One, flashed through his head. Distant cackles, echoing on waves of the past...

They will kill everyone I care about in front of me if given the chance. I HAVE to find them.

Those other heroes back there...they had been students, too. Not UA students, though. Izuku had panicked for a moment when he'd seen them, but they were only from Ketsubutsu. He'd recognized them from the licensing exam, even.

I guess the other schools are letting their graduates go on patrol. He had not seen anyone from UA out here since his crusade had begun, teacher or student or otherwise. UA seemed to be maintaining its policies as a shelter first. Everyone who went there stayed there, behind the fortress walls, until further notice.

Where they'll hopefully be safe. Hopefully. Izuku wondered how many students from the other schools were even bothering to hit the streets, or if many of them were too scared, or perhaps disillusioned like many of the pros had been. In any case, those circumstances were at least lucky. Everyone he cared about was staying out of trouble. If he had to run into students, let them not be from Class A, at the very least...

His phone rang. He knew who it was without even looking. "I'll be right there, All Might." ...

Nezu slid the device across the desk. "This is the area you'll be responsible for," he told the two of them.

Tamaki reached for it, but Nejire swiped it up first. It was a little metal cylinder, smooth to the touch. She turned it over in her gloved hands, pursing her lips, eyes searching the object. She found the switch within a second and flicked it on.

A humming sound emitted from the device, and then it projected an image of a map out sideways. Nejire tilted her head, then realized she had the device oriented wrong, and flipped it over. Now the map was upright in the room, blue-lit, turning slowly as if on a microwave tray. That humming sound continued.

Nejire and Tamaki scanned the map. "Look, Amajiki-kun! There's the mini-golf course there! Down at the bottom is Kijimi Park! Oh, and there's a pizza place I went when I was a kid! I threw up, actually, it was..."

Tamaki gently lowered her pointing hand, which had been darting all over the map, and looked back at their furry principal, sitting across the desk in this bright office in the depths of the UA fortress. "This highlighted area is the patrol zone?" he asked.

"That's right," said Nezu. He slid two more devices across the desk. "These will be your communicators."

"They go in our ears?" Nejire asked.

"Yes..."

"What happens if we break them? What happens then?" Nejire asked.

"Then you come back here for a backup-"

"Why are you sending Amajiki-kun and me to patrol an entertainment district?" Nejire asked. Nezu sighed, and gave Tamaki a look. "Even I can't keep up with her, Suneater."

"I know. You just kind of learn to take it on the cuff after a while," the dark-haired young man muttered.

Nezu turned back to Nejire. "Miss Hado, that district is under the control of at least three different gangs. They're fighting each other, making alliances with each other, giving and taking territory, rooting out hiding civilians, burning buildings, and encroaching into other districts. To make matters worse, the district is almost completely surrounded by areas that are either gang-controlled, or unclaimed wastelands that probably have independent villains roaming them. There are likely agents of All For One tossed into the mix as well. Our drone intel indicates there are many people still stuck inside the area, including service and sex workers."

"Where's the nearest shelter?" Nejire asked, pointing at the map again.

"The yellow dot you see in the northeast. Another matter is that the gangs could be encroaching that way, and perform an attack on it. If All For One's agents are involved, you can bet they'll be looking to consolidate a powerful enough force."

"I see," said Nejire gravely, nodding. "So you're sending us to the most dangerous area of any of the third-years because we're the Big Three."

"Big Two," Mirio muttered, speaking up from his seat in the corner for the first time. "I should be going out there with you guys, but..."

Nezu gave him a gentle look. "You've only just gotten your Quirk back, Lemillion. Take some time to train."

"We don't have any more time. It's a war out there. It's the apocalypse- "

Tamaki had begun to shake. Nejire noticed. She had a reputation for being dense, but she did know

when poor Tamaki got worked up about something...

...But bad things had come from her taking direct action before. So instead, she chose to simply bowl over Mirio's doomings, which were clearly upsetting Tamaki, with her own loud interruption. Another question. It was what she was best at, after all. "Is the highlighted area more of a boundary, or a guideline?" she asked.

Nezu and Mirio cut off, and the principal gave her a funny look. "You have to protect the entire area that is highlighted, Miss Hado."

"That's not what I'm asking. I'm asking if we can protect areas outside the boundary if we want?"

"Nejire...there's only the two of you. Don't overwork yourself. You may have improved your stamina, but..." Mirio looked at her with a worried expression.

Nezu blinked. "You should listen to your friend, young lady. Focus on your objective. If it were up to me, with the injuries you sustained at Jakku, you wouldn't be going at all..."

"Please don't make me go alone," Tamaki squeaked.

"...But we need you graduates out there. You said 'third-years' earlier. You are graduates now. You are pro heroes. You have a duty."

I know that , Nejire thought. More than a little resentment crawled into her brain. But she'd gotten very good at keeping that off her face over the years. Even though her face now was...

Don't touch it. She kept her hand down. "We're pros, but we still have to report back here," she said out loud.

"UA is no longer your school, but it is no longer just a school. We are now one of the last bastions of civilization on the Japanese Archipelago. Speaking of which, I have to actually run and operate said bastion of civilization, so...please get to work." Nezu began to spin around in his chair, indicating their meeting was at an end. "If you have any further questions, take them up with your squad leader. I believe you two are designated Squad Gungan, meaning that would be Gang Orca."

Tamaki bowed before he left. "Thank you, Principal Nezu. W-we won't let you down."

"I believe you," the principal said, softly. It was the first time Nejire had ever heard that tone in his voice.

...

Mirio followed them out. Nejire and Tamaki wired the communication devices into their ears, Nejire struggling with hers a little. The skin on her right ear was still taut and tough from the...

Don't think about it. The three of them walked down the hallway and out into the hospital-like meeting space, where many civilians and students were milling about.

Nejire turned the projection map back off and handed it to Tamaki as they walked.

The dark-haired boy gave her a look. "You want me to hold onto it?"

She gestured down at herself. "You think a suit this skin-tight has pockets, dear?" Tamaki sighed, his eyebrows low, and he swiped it from her. "Don't call me dear, Hado."

Mirio's eyes looked around at the crowd as they shouldered past another group of students. This open space was in the middle of the UA fortress, and tables had been set up here and there, where people were eating rationed meals from metal trays. "You guys should get to Gang Orca," he said loudly.

"Mirio..." Tamaki's voice was gentle. "I'm sorry you can't come with us..."

"It's fine. It's fine." The blonde boy wasn't smiling, though. "Don't worry about it."

"If you were out there, I'm sure the people would be full of hope." Tamaki lifted his hood over his face. "As it stands, my ability to inspire hope in civilians is..."

"Don't sell yourself short, Suneater. You've got bright and shiny Nejire with ya, remember?" Mirio's eyes danced to her face, and then quickly away. Yeah, as if people aren't gonna look at me and run off, screaming.

"You could have been the next symbol after All Might. Everyone knows it. We always talked

about it in class. I don't know if I can be a symbol." Tamaki's hands trembled.

"We're all gonna have to be symbols before this mess is cleaned up. Everyone has to do their part. That's what you've been assigned. Your part. Just worry about that one area, and everything will turn out fine." Someone shouted at Mirio, waving him over. Mirio waved back at them to indicate he'd seen, forcing a smile (he waved over Nejire's head, which made her pout a little at the reminder of how much taller he was), and then turned back to the two of them and said, "I gotta go. Good luck, you two. I love you guys. Stay as safe as you can."

He turned away, but then paused, and said one more thing. "Also, if anyone was going to succeed All Might as the symbol, it would be Midoriya, remember? He's already out there."

Midoriya. Nejire looked down at her gloved hand, and opened and closed her fist. The skin underneath there was still sensitive, but flexing her fist regularly apparently helped. She still remembered Recovery Girl's words: it's too much for me to heal completely, dear. If I used my kiss on you now, your body would die from losing so much energy.

It all came back to her Quirk, didn't it? Her stupid Quirk and the way it affected her stamina.

Midoriya...

After the man who wielded the blue fire had nearly killed her, that boy had used his black tendrils to restrain him. Both of Midoriya's arms had been broken at that point, so he'd emitted a tendril from his mouth .

And even before that...at the yakuza raid, Overhaul had come to the surface and probably would have killed her, if he hadn't followed. Maybe she didn't have all the details right; her mind tended to rush everything in battle. But the facts stood. Midoriya was a real hero.

"Well, there's no time to mope!" she said out loud, brightly. "Let's go protect some pizza parlors, Amajiki-kun!"

"That's not all they have there," he muttered, but he followed her toward the edge of the space, where it opened up into a courtyard.

The UA fortress wall loomed far above them, partially blocking the sun, creating a huge shadow

that cast across the ground. A few construction robots zoomed by. Then, a moment later, a squad of policemen marched past in the opposite direction. Other groups milled about in the distance.

"Did you say goodbye to your mom?" Nejire asked her partner.

Tamaki nodded. "She was asking me almost as many questions as you would have."

She managed a smile. That was about as much banter as the boy was likely to make during this whole operation. "My folks wanted to know everything about where I was going. Maybe I should go find them now and tell them...oh, but there's no time." She clicked her tongue and pouted.

"Well, at least you get it from somewhere." "NEJIRE-SENPAI!"

Nejire turned. Running up to her, out of the shadow of the wall, were two people. Ochako and Tsuyu.

She immediately grew uneasy. Already knowing what they wanted. "You two should be back inside," she told them.

"You're going out, aren't you? Into the streets. Right now." "Don't try to lie to us, ribbit."

"I would never lie to you," she told them. Well, that wasn't strictly true. Nejire had a reputation for telling mischievous fibs. But that didn't apply here.

"I know you can't say any details," Ochako said. Her brown eyes were swimming with guilt and regret. Nejire knew exactly what it was about. "But...if you just happen to see Deku while you're out there..."

"Bring him back, ribbit," said Tsuyu. "Bring him back to us. Please. None of the adults will listen.

You guys are our only hope."

Nejire looked at them both in turn. They were very serious. If something doesn't change soon, their whole class will probably try to break out. It was well-known around the compound that Class A was antsy. It was only a matter of when.

Personally, Nejire thought that Midoriya would be the last thing they'd find. Out there in the wild? And yes, it was the wild now. Streets on fire, looters running the show, supply lines cut...she and Tamaki were heading into a land of cataclysm. They would run into many dangers before they'd ever find "Deku."

And yet... she remembered those fierce looks on his face that she'd seen in battle. He would never give up on something. Never ever. If it was Nejire lost out there, and Ochako had walked up to him and asked him to find her ...even though they had barely had five total conversations...

He wouldn't sleep until he'd tied me up with those black whips and dragged me back here.

"I will do what I can," promised Nejire Hado.

Chapter Summary

Darker Crimes

Izuku assists the police in regaining a foothold in a gang-controlled area, and they stumble upon a murder. Connections between it and a bombing at Shiketsu High quickly emerge, and Izuku decides to investigate further. Nejire and Tamaki conduct their first rescue in the entertainment district.

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

Your body was warm, when she was cold, you would long for love,

her storm was a temporary lie.

...

The police gathered along the narrow corridor, murmuring to each other. The sounds of a flashing camera could be heard, muffled, in the room at the end of the hall.

Naomasa Tsukauchi walked slowly through the crowd. The officers parted to let him through, and turned their heads to gape, but he knew they were looking at the person behind him.

Deku followed him close behind, a silent, masked figure. Looming. His head only slightly turned to look this way and that at the staring officers. Many of them paled and averted their glances, terrified of him.

The two of them sauntered on toward the end of the hallway, to the room where the corpse was. Camera flashes danced on the wall. Click, click, click. Murmur.

Tsukauchi turned to face Izuku. "I appreciate your help taking out the gang," he said, "but you don't need to see this."

Deku just stared back at him for a long moment. Those green eyes gave nothing away.

"Yes I do," was finally the short, deep answer.

I have to see every one , Izuku thought. They're all my responsibility.

He could have been at Shiketsu. He could have been there when it exploded. That news had come in before nightfall, right after they'd finished cleaning up this precinct...

...But he was here instead. He was here, so he had to finish this out. But if I had just managed to get close enough to the school for Danger Sense to activate, then maybe I could have stopped it...

You cannot be everywhere at once, Ninth, said En, the sixth user of One for All, inside his head.

Izuku followed the detective into the room.

It was a small hideout, but a dingy couch in the corner was the only thing taking up significant space, so there were a few investigators able to fit, circling the corpse sitting in the chair in the middle of the room. The woman's head was tilted up to look at the ceiling. Her face was white and sallow, decomposing.

"How long has she been here?" Izuku asked, doing his best to keep his voice level.

One of the investigators looked up. "Med scan says somewhere between eighty and ninety hours."

Tsukauchi hissed through his teeth. "Christ," he muttered. He turned on the flashlight on his phone and slowly circled around to the front of the body.

Izuku trudged around the opposite side. He inspected the couch. There were a few things in evidence bags, mostly empty food and drink cans, but there was also an extremely dim lamp, flickering on the floor. Whoever had last been in here, whoever living that is, had left it on.

"Not a meticulous killer," he muttered.

You fancy yourself a detective now? said Daigoro Banjo, user five.

I'm whatever the situation calls for , said Izuku.

That will not do . It was the voice of the fourth user, Hikage Shinomori, who'd gifted him with Danger Sense. You have one purpose. You cannot afford to spread yourself thin.

Why am I preparing to stop All For One, if not to prevent things like this? Izuku turned to look back at the dead woman's face. Her eyes and mouth were open. It was funny. If he'd seen something like this a year ago, he'd probably have vomited on the spot.

"How many more could there be?" he asked softly. The other men and women gave him strange, apprehensive looks. If she's been dead that long, how many other corpses might we find in these dark, hollow buildings? How long was this district under gang control? I've helped the police carve a foothold here for now, but...

Flashlight beams from the investigators crawled all over her. "Med scan revealed somethin' else, too," one of them told Tsukauchi. "She was unconscious when she died."

"Knocked out?" The dark-haired man asked. "There's no head wound. Just the puncture wounds in the chest..."

Izuku walked to the window and stared out of it. "Midnight," he murmured.

"Hmm? Deku, it's 3AM," Tsukauchi said, turning from the body to stare at the hero's back.

"No. Midnight the heroine. Her Quirk uses...used a gas to knock people unconscious. If you can do a scan of the air in the room for residuals, you should."

The investigators all exchanged glances with one another. Tsukauchi flattened his mouth. "Get someone on it," he muttered to one of the officers. The man nodded and left down the hallway.

Izuku turned back from the window and gazed at the body again. "Also means her eyes were likely pried open after the fact. By the killer." He got close. One of the investigators moved their light beam to her face again. Izuku tilted his head. "Not meticulous, but wanted to send a message for people to find..."

Wait. You know her.

He nearly jumped, so jarred by the abrupt interruption from Yoichi Shigaraki, the first user. "I told you to stop going through my memories," he muttered.

"What?" one of the detectives asked. "Speak up. What did you say?"

"Ah...nothing." Careful, fool. If they realize you have voices in your head...

They're already terrified of me. You can see it in their eyes.

But what about her eyes, Ninth? Look. They're magenta. I see a woman with those same eyes in your memory of the provisional licensing exam. Her face was fuller, yes...but it's her.

"Do we know who this is?" Tsukauchi was asking. "None. Nothing on her person to identify her."

"She worked for Shiketsu," said Izuku, loudly. His mouth had gone dry. "For their security. I think." He backed away from her face.

Gasps and murmurs filled the room and the hallway. "Shiketsu..."

"Security..."

"There's not a lot here, but maybe we need to focus on what we don't find. The fact that she has no ID or wallet...this wasn't just a murder." Tsukauchi stared at the corpse grimly. "It was a robbery. Likely a robbery of information or ID that could get someone into Shiketsu."

They'd all heard about the explosion, obviously. The school had been badly damaged. Several dozen people were killed. At least a hundred more were injured, including civilians who were using the school as a shelter.

If it could happen there, it could happen at UA...

No. Mustn't think about that.

"So we're dealing with a killer and a terrorist," Izuku muttered. "What do we know about them?"

"Well, there's no evidence from the school about the bomb or bomber or otherwise," said Tsukauchi. "And we did a scan of the hallway and found no recent footprints or disturbings of the floor. Before we arrived, no one had walked in the hallway for weeks."

Izuku stared at the woman's eyes again. They had been pried open on purpose, he was sure...and with her head tilted back like that, it was almost like she was looking even further than the ceiling...it was almost like she was looking at the top of the wall behind her...

He slowly tilted his head up, and pointed at the air vent. "The killer was small."

More gasps and murmurs from the detectives. Deku walked back across the small room, and reached the wall. He used Nana's Quirk to float himself up just a few inches, and unscrewed the vent cover slowly, deliberately.

"Hey, Tsukauchi, you lettin' this crazy guy do that? What about chain of evidence?" "Calm down, Ishigami, just let Deku do his thing."

Stab wounds. Of course, there were plenty of Quirks out there that allowed people to be small even as grownups. The yakuza had had that one guy who puppeteered himself around in a little masked sack that was barely a foot tall. Irinaka. And that was a grown man. Maybe it's just my inherent bias, thinking that a murderer and a bomber would have to be an adult male. But the stab wounds. Could Himiko Toga have fit in this air vent? Definitely, especially if she'd used someone else's blood who was smaller than herself.

If it's Toga... she would have no real motive to bomb Shiketsu; that wasn't her style. Which meant she had likely done it on orders from the big man himself.

"Is there a way you can scan to see if any blood was deliberately drained from her body?" Izuku asked behind him as he finished taking the vent cover off.

More stirrings from the detectives. Shuffled footsteps. "It might be too late in the process for that, Deku," Tsukauchi muttered.

You're jumping to conclusions, Ninth. Seeing the Paranormal Liberation Front everywhere, even things that are out of their hands.

This is all their hands. And my hands. It was the battle between us that allowed all this evil to emerge from the shadows.

There was a piece of paper inside the air vent. Izuku slowly procured it, and floated back to the ground.

Naomasa approached him carefully, with wary eyes. "What does it say? What does it say, Deku?" The ragged, masked hero slowly turned the piece of paper around to show him.

Taped to the bottom of it was a card, business-card sized, with a strange symbol of concentric circles connected to a triangle, gold on a green background. The paper itself was white, and had black text written on it in pen.

Deku read it aloud as Tsukauchi read it with his eyes. "Their future is in your past, pros."

"Pros," Naomasa muttered. "The pro heroes?"

Deku nodded. "And the future they're describing is the future of hero students." He turned the paper back over and read it again, looking down at it. To Naomasa, his voice was as husky and hard to place as ever. "Whether they're working for All For One or not, this person is targeting the hero schools."

...

Tsukauchi and Izuku emerged from the ground floor of the building and met All Might on the street. The tall, gaunt man was leaning against the driver's door of his armored black car, arms crossed, looking down the street with an uneasy expression.

Izuku followed his gaze. The nearby buildings had officers streaming in and out of them, and some civilians had been gathered or herded. Men, women, children, families. Hardly any mutants once again.

"It's the same on the other blocks," All Might muttered. "Met some resistance. People saying the gang protected them better."

"Some?" Tsukauchi asked.

Toshinori Yagi shrugged. "Others were saying the gang killed as they pleased."

"Mixed messages again," Izuku muttered. He stared at one family that was going past. Their frightened eyes practically bugged out of their pale, emaciated faces. A young boy, no older than ten, was wearing a smudged, dirty blanket around his shoulders. Like a cape?

"If only we had more heroes," Toshinori sighed hollowly. "These people need some hope."

A few police officers and people stared at him and the car as they walked past, but no one said anything. Their faces were all empty. Some even looked apologetic, or accusing. When their gazes passed over Deku, they almost universally started, turned away quickly, and kept walking.

All Might nodded up at the building. "What's in there?"

"Murder victim," Tsukauchi muttered. "Connected to the Shiketsu bombing. She worked for security. Magenta eyes."

The skeletal man gasped. "That's Kei Mikuno. She's a major technician there...Principal Nezu was just telling me about her the other day."

Izuku leaned forward. "In what context?"

"Saying he wished he could collaborate with her on the potential UA-Shiketsu tunnel link...but Shiketsu kept saying she was unavailable on calls."

"Well," Tsukauchi commented, with a whistle and another glance back up to the second-floor window, "she was here."

"I have a bad feeling about this," Izuku muttered. "I'm gonna do a quick perimeter sweep of the district. Check for stragglers." He prepared to lift off, green lightning wreathing his feet.

"Wait! One moment please, young Midoriya." All Might gestured for him to stay down, and turned to open the car door.

Tsukauchi nodded to them both, realizing he was about to intrude on a One for All conversation, and took his leave. "I'll see you back at base, Toshinori."

All Might just inclined his head, and then went back to reaching inside the car. He pulled the tablet screen out sideways, attached to a robotic arm that could swivel it from its place in the dashboard to viewable from outside the car. "Hawks and Jeanist wanted to check in."

Deku shifted from side to side, antsily. "I have nothing to report at the moment." Eyes darted up to the sky, above the rooftops of this devastated stretch of town. Need to get moving. He could feel the refugees' frightened, accusing eyes upon him again.

"Yes you do. If this Mikuno-san is dead, then they need to know." All Might pressed a button, and

the tablet screen came to life.

Visible was something that looked like a hospital room. Near to the camera and to the left, close enough to be distorted, was the face of Keigo Takami, aka Hawks. He was still wrapped up in gauze, but at least he could actually speak now. A bit further back, sitting in a chair next to a tall potted plant, was Best Jeanist. They both turned to look at the screen, surprised. "All Might!" they exclaimed together.

"What are you doing in a hospital?" Toshinori asked. Behind them was an empty white bed with medical equipment next to it.

"This is the one they're bringing the Shiketsu survivors to." It was hard to tell if the connection was just bad or if Hawks' voice was still mangled from his burns. "Endeavor's been gone for an hour." His eyes were worried.

"It's bad, Yagi. He was totally panicked. The two civilian siblings made it out alright, but..." Jeanist put an anxious hand through his hair.

"Siblings?" Izuku perked up and got closer. "Are you talking about Natsuo and Fuyumi Todoroki?"

Hawks nodded. "Besides Shoto, the whole family was in the Shiketsu shelter. Was easier to extract them there from the postwar hospital. Faster."

Izuku felt his legs turn to jelly. He fought to stay upright, retreating into his own mind. The family. Todoroki's brother and sister and mom. No, Todoroki...I'm so sorry. I should have been there. I should have...

"Is there no word of Rei?" All Might asked.

"That's what Enji went to find out," said Hawks emptily. "He, umm...well. You can imagine. He kinda...blasted out of here in a fury."

Izuku cast his eyes back up at the window. "Whoever did this has to be stopped," he said, loud enough for Hawks and Jeanist to hear on the other end. "We've just found the corpse of a woman who worked for Shiketsu security. There was no ID on her, so the killer must have stolen it. And

then used it to plant the bomb."

Hawks gasped, leaning back in his seat, but Jeanist was all business. "You say stopped, Deku. Not arrested. This implies that you think they will do something else."

Izuku nodded. "There was a note left for whoever found the place. We have reason to believe this person is targeting hero schools."

"UA..." Hawks muttered.

"I really have to go," Izuku said, turning toward All Might. The other users were arguing in his head. He couldn't think about it much longer. I have to stop this person. I left UA to keep everyone I love safe, but if the school gets attacked...

"Listen, young Midoriya," All Might pleaded. "Kei Mikuno was very important to Shiketsu's security. It may be that the killer was able to plant the bomb undetected because she wasn't there to help with the re-enforcement effort of the shelter."

Jeanist nodded, jumping on the train. "UA has all of its best security staff and technicians in safe hands."

"And don't forget those asshole little robots," Hawks muttered.

"UA is the safest place for anyone to be right now, and it will remain that way," said Toshinori.

Izuku took a long, long time to respond. For the three pros, watching him, it was impossible to tell what he was thinking or feeling. He was masked, withdrawn, quiet.

"Changes nothing," he finally said. "They still need to be stopped. You all must think I need to stay on the hunt for Shigaraki and All For One. Well, it may be that they're behind this. That this person is working for them."

Hawks and Jeanist exchanged a glance. "Well, it's certainly possible..."

"But unless there's a concrete lead at that crime scene, then it's no better than we were before. None of the criminals we've apprehended have had any useful information."

"The police are investigating the place," said All Might. "In the meantime, Midoriya..." At that moment, Endeavor burst back into the hospital room. His wife was in his arms.

Hawks and Jeanist leapt to their feet. "Clear the way!" Enji Todoroki barked, sweeping over to the bed, flanked by doctors. Rei was unconscious, her clothes partially scalded.

"Endeavor! Is she..."

"No bones broken!" one of the doctors said. "But we need to check for internal damage..."

"Get her hooked up..."

"Go, go, come on..."

Noise flooded the tablet screen. Hawks turned back to it and said, "Sorry, Yagi-san. Gotta go." And things went dark.

Toshinori sighed again. "Perhaps it was this...Dabi. Touya Todoroki. Perhaps the family was the target."

"No," Deku muttered. "Planting a bomb and hiding the shadows? He wouldn't do it like that even if he was ordered to. He would show his face. He would make it public."

All Might had to admit his pupil was right. Too right, and too cynical.

Deku activated One for All again and took off into the sky, not bothering to say goodbye. All Might watched him disappear behind a rooftop. He tried not to weep.

...

The woman wouldn't stop speaking into her mind.

Nova clutched her ears again, legs pushed together, as the voice echoed like thunder. We are coming for you. You are not safe.

The voice itself had a kind, musical sort of lilt, even though the words were threatening. Nova remained in the corner of the burned-out hotel lobby, clutching herself, begging the woman to stop.

We're to the north. We're to the south. We're to the east.

Silhouettes appeared in the open doorway. Once that opening had contained a glass revolving door, which led into this once-grand lobby of red carpet and gold trim...one of the best hotels in the entertainment district. Nova had taken orders from many clients here over the years. Now it was just a husk. But it was nice and shadowy to hide in, this close to the twilight of dusk... unfortunately, there was no hiding from the Quirk that was causing this voice.

"NOVA!" one of the silhouettes who'd appeared in the doorway called. Oh, Jesus. It was the twins; she could tell by the accent. "NOv...oh for fuck's sake, there she is."

The two men jogged up to her and picked her up by the armpits to make her stand. Nova kicked and struggled.

"The...the woman!" she gasped. "She won't...go away..."

"We know," one of the twins said with an exasperated eyeroll. The two of them began half- escorting her, half-dragging her, out of the lobby and onto the boulevard.

"It's in everyone's head, Nova. You're not special."

"An intimidation tactic. Stupid heroes and their psychological warfare. They'll NEVER take Kijimi back from the outfit..."

Nova screwed her face up angrily as they dragged her onto the pavement of the boulevard. She was barefoot, and some of that nearby broken glass and rebar gathered up around collapsed building areas did not look friendly. They always call it the outfit. Call it what it is. The mob.

The battles that had taken place here in Kijimi had been really bad at first. Then things had sort of organized...personally, Nova had lived here for most of her adult life, and while she'd never been happy, this was by far the worst it had ever been. The mob had always been a presence, and she'd done work for many of them, but they'd never had such control. And now...

Nova looked around at the ruined boulevard street. Half-destroyed colored neon signs flickered in the twilight. A marquee hung vertically off the front facade of a theater. Abandoned luxury cars littered the side of the road. "I can walk by myself," she hissed, forcing her arms away from the twins' iron grips.

One of them chuckled. "Alright, sweetheart. Have it your way. Just stick close to us, eh?" The other one squeezed her thigh as he pulled away. She shuddered, and then the woman's voice came through again. Careful. That was the only word she said.

One of the twins started a little and looked around at the roofs, one hand on his weapon. "Do you think..." he asked in a hushed voice. "Do you think that was directed at us?"

"No, you idiot. She's only capable of sending general messages unless she's identified the exact person."

"She? Who's she?" Nova dared to ask.

"Mandalay. One of them stupid wild pussycats or whatever. It has to be her." The twin frowned. His brother smirked at him. "Some kinda fanboy, are you?"

"Shut the fuck up. Boss makes it his business to know some of the heroes, and it's good for us to know too. For situations just as this." He tapped his forehead knowingly.

"Nah. You must've seen her nudes or something." "I told you to shut the hell up."

Nova suppressed a giggle, and unfortunately they both heard it. They turned to look at her in sync as they walked down the sidewalk, now with equally annoyed, testy expressions.

"Something funny, dollface?"

"Something about nudes? We've seen more of you than that, you know." "That we have."

"Heh."

"Heh."

Nova slapped their hands away from her chest, which was only covered by a loose t-shirt she'd stolen from a hotel room with the door left open. Her legs were totally bare to the elements. "You have to pay for that."

"It seems to me we're paying by protecting ya. Boss didn't order us to do this, ya know. We're doing it out of the goodness of our hearts."

"Yep," said the other twin. "Seems to me like you owe us ."

"I don't owe you anything," Nova hissed, though on the inside, she was terrified. "Neither of you

have ever tipped me, and I don't need protection ."

"Ya sure, hon?" One of them leered closer to her. They had passed a gap between buildings, and now to Nova's right was a deep, narrow alleyway. She gulped, feeling sweat go down the back of

her neck.

Stupid fool. You opened your mouth. All these years you've known your place, and this horrible situation has made you too reckless and desperate. Gonna get yourself killed. Of course, they would do other things to her first, but that was nothing she hadn't endured before. Murder, though...it had never been such a problem before the war. Now the mob controlled everything, and henchmen like these scum...they could do anything and bury it away...

One of their hands brushed her hair from off the front of her face. The other twin moved his hand to squeeze her butt...Nova closed her eyes and prepared to just sit back and deal with it.

Get away from her , said the heroine in their heads.

The twins froze.

Nova dared to open one eye. M-Mandalay...? That was what they'd said her name was.

Look down the alley.

"Heh!" One of the men raised his weapon and spun to look the opposite way, down the street. "Like we're stupid enough to..."

"Well, isn't this curious!" said a bright, peppy female voice. Not the same voice that had been in their heads, and it was coming from above. From the sky .

Nova looked up, and gasped. A young woman was descending on bright spirals of yellow light, emerging from her hands and feet. She had a skin-tight teal costume with dark blue highlights, and while half her face was quite pretty, the other half bore some moderate burn scarring. Her hair was periwinkle colored, and cut close to her shoulders.

"Hey, hey, why are you harassing that space lady? Could it be that you're both super lonely?" the heroine asked. She somehow maintained an expression of pure inquisitivity, even putting one gloved finger to her chin and tilting her head cutely.

The twins turned their guns up to the sky. "Crazy bitch-"

Something flew against the arm of one of the men, and knocked him backward against the wall of the alley, pinning him there, and forcing his hand to open and drop the gun. It was a giant snapping clam.

Then, a tentacle wrapped around the other twin's hand and squeezed the gun free. Nova whirled. There was a hooded boy in a white cloak coming their way. He had feet and wings like a bird's, and the tentacles were coming from the fingers on one of his hands. His other hand was entirely like a clam.

He used the tentacle to yank the twin toward him, and swung his clam-hand toward the twin's face. The mob guard, who had the ability to create miniature forcefields on pieces of his body, activated his Quirk on his own face, and the hooded hero's strike rebounded. The twin spun with practiced agility and kicked him aside...

...And the flying heroine descended on him from above, her yellow energy enveloping his body, and shoving him against the wall.

The other brother had gotten himself free, and fastened his arm around Nova's neck from behind. She gasped. "HELP-"

The periwinkle-haired heroine's eyes widened as she turned to that look, and Nova knew that brief expression all too well. A slight falling in the peppy personality. Revealing the woman within. I have to hide it, too, girl. Girl. Yes, it was a girl, really. She couldn't have been older than nineteen.

"Stay away, you scarred freak!" the man snarled at the heroine, "or else I snap the whore's neck-"

The hooded hero fired something from beneath his cloak. It moved impossibly fast, and struck the twin in the head, so hard he fell over unconscious. His arm fell away from Nova's throat. She looked down and saw a pineapple rolling at her feet.

"That's a funny Quirk," she said, weakly, then felt her legs begin to go.

"Hey, hey, whoa!" Suddenly the cloaked hero was holding her, keeping her up. "Oh, nice catch, Amajiki-kun."

The hero who was holding Nova took the white hood off his head. He was a dark-haired boy with pointy ears and a nervous face. "I tried my best..." he muttered.

"Thank you for saving me," Nova told him, managing a smile. "But maybe you should leave the tentacle and clam hands for later?"

The boy stared at her, not understanding, but then his eyes widened, and with a furiously red face, he turned his hands back to human hands. His female partner laughed, and he lowered his head, letting a shadow fall over it. "Sorry," he muttered. His hands were rigid and sweaty. "We should find you some clothes."

Oops. Nova had returned to the default way she acted around men, especially men who held her like the boy was holding her now. This guy was a hero. Of course he didn't hire girls like her, and had no idea how to react. And he seems like he could still be in high school.

"That was good work though, Suneater-san!" the peppy girl exclaimed, hopping around and inspecting the twins, who were both knocked out on the ground. "They seem to be out cold. Who were they, ma'am? Were they propositioning you? Oh, your eyes and skin are so cool, by the way!" She leaned in close to Nova's face, eyes glimmering with excitement. "Are those little stars in your eyes? Are those galaxies on your thighs? Is it actually your skin, or is it just really good body paint? Have you ever counted how many stars you've got on you? Oh, is that a nebula down there? What were your parents' Quirks? How did you..."

Nova found herself leaning back into the boy with the hood, overwhelmed. "Is she always like this?" she asked him.

The boy, Suneater, sighed. "Yeah. Quit off, Hado." "Ah, oh. I'm sorry." The girl backed away.

"That's alright. I know I must be funny looking." Nova had been born with skin that looked like a bright, vibrant night sky, complete with all kinds of stars and galaxies and celestial bodies on certain parts of her like tattoos. It was even in her eyes, and when she got emotional, her sky began to drift like a timelapse. "I never knew my parents, to answer one of your questions," she said to the girl. "But my unique look did help me, well...in the business I'm in. At least it made me pretty well off before the war."

"Ah." The girl's face twitched. "You are a sex worker, aren't you?"

"Well...yes." Nova could have sworn that the boy's grip on her faltered a little. She didn't dare look at his face, to see if he was surprised or disgusted.

"Well," said the girl, gently nudging one of the twins with her foot, "I won't ask questions about that. I'm Nejire-chan. That's Amajiki-kun behind you."

"Ah. I'm...Nova. How old are you two?"

"We're freshly graduated from UA. We've been put in charge of patrolling this entertainment district of Kijimi, along some of the pros like Mandalay, who spotted you from the roof over there!" Nejire pointed across the boulevard to the top of one of the casinos. "Well. This district certainly doesn't look very entertaining right now."

"Much of it is in disuse. In its heyday, it was...well, I..." Nova coughed. "Let's just say even a gal like me could make do. Lights and colors and elegance and a lot of money coming through. The mob always had a decent grip on the place, but with you heroes and the police pulling out after the war..."

"It's back under control of scum like this, huh?" muttered Amajiki, looking down at the twins.

"Don't you worry, ma'am. We're gonna get this place cleaned right up. Do you know of other places where innocent people could be hiding? We're trying to extract people to safety before we begin our operation against the mobs," said Nejire.

"Well, I could..." Nova cast a doubtful glance around. "But...they'd come after me if they knew I talked."

"Not to worry. We'll take you out of here for now. To a rally point. After that, you can come live at UA for a bit." It was the boy speaking. The young man, Amajiki.

"Huh?" Nova's starry eyes glimmered. "At...UA? But..." She felt her own voice crack. "No, it can't be true..."

"It's true," Amajiki insisted. He seemed to grow more earnest, less nervous, looking her in the eye. "You won't have to work for food and shelter there. They're providing it for all civilians who enter. We swear it. Hero's honor."

"Hero's honor!" Nejire echoed, with an imitation of a soldier's salute. "At least, if that means anything to you anymore. I understand that it doesn't for many people."

Nova had never put much stock in heroes. But these...these two were young. It felt different. "Well, alright," she said airily, weakly. "But I'd still only be comfortable to give you more info if I was there already. And...out of here. You two would be best to get moving quickly as well. The boss has eyes all over the place."

"Heard," said Nejire. She tapped a communication device in her ear. "Mandalay, come tie these clowns up and get 'em clear! Suneater and I are gonna get this woman somewhere safe."

There was a silhouette moving on the rooftop nearby. Nova winced, expecting the woman's voice to enter her head again, but it did not.

"Alright, let's go," Nejire intoned, biting her lip. Yellow light flared up around her feet, and she seemed to be preparing to lift off.

"I'm..." Nova blurted. "I'm sorry he said something about your scars."

Her face faltered for only a moment. Then it was back to that bright smile. "What do you expect from criminals?" And up she went into the sky.

"Hado, wait, I..." Amajiki hissed. But she was already going. "Carry her, Suneater!" her voice called back.

Nova looked back up at the boy. He was a good deal taller than her. "Can you fly too with those wings?" she asked him.

"Yeah...it's how we got out here from the rally point in the first place...but, I'm pretty new to it compared to Hado, so...sorry if the ride's bumpy. Maybe you should get on my back or

somethi..."

Nova threw her arms around his neck and kicked her legs up, forcing him to hold her bridal style. "I'm good like this," she said, starry eyes glimmering a little.

Suneater blushed deeply, but those great feathery wings began to flap, and up they went. He was trembling as he carried her, but Nova pretended not to notice. Soon, all she felt was the strength of his arms, and the sky's wind in her face. It felt like finally ascending out of hell.

...

Nejire waited for Tamaki outside the small shelter, rocking back and forth on her toes. He emerged only a minute later than she'd expected, rubbing his arm sheepishly, back to total human form. His eyes looked everywhere but her face as he joined her on the sidewalk.

Nejire whistled. "She safe and sound in there?"

"Yeah. She seemed reluctant to talk to Gang Orca until we get her to UA...but that won't be possible until we have an official civilian transport. Too many dangerous areas between here and there for people to traverse on foot." Tamaki stumbled sideways, appearing exhausted.

"That mob seems scary if she's that afraid to talk until she's behind the fortress walls," Nejire mused. "But that's what we're up against, I suppose!" She stared off down the street, where the boundaries of Kijimi lay in the distance. Their district. Their responsibility. "Mandalay said we did a good job."

"We saved one woman."

"One is better than none! And she'll lead us to more." Nejire looked back at her partner, smirking mischievously. "Hey. She seemed to like how you carried her."

"That was...! That was her idea. Besides, she didn't know how old we were." Tamaki rubbed his arm in discomfort again.

"We did tell her we'd graduated. She assumed you were eighteen or over, and she was right. Did she put pants on?"

"Yeah. I made sure that was the first thing that happened."

"Aww, c'mon Amajiki-kun. She was quite pretty, what with the space skin and all..."

"She worked as an escort!"

Nejire raised an eyebrow. "And they can't have aspirations of finding a nice dating partner like anyone else?"

"That's...eugh. You know that's not what I meant." His face reddened, and he stammered. "I just mean...she probably has a lot of trauma...trauma that I wouldn't want to resurface by...I don't know. Flirting with her, or something."

"Yeah. I can see why you attempting to flirt would surface deep-buried trauma in any woman." When he gave her a murder look, Nejire held her hands up. "Okay, sorry. I'm sorry, Amajiki-kun. I was just teasing."

"Yeah. Yeah, I know." He relaxed his shoulders again. "Sorry. It went too far."

"Don't worry about it."

The two of them stood in silence for a moment. Nejire half-expected Gang Orca to bark more orders into their ears from the comms, but he did not. Busy questioning Nova, she supposed. They should let me question people. I'd be great at it.

Tamaki noticed Mandalay approaching first, and stood up straight. Nejire saw her coming half a second later, and noticed her expression. Stricken.

Her mouth opened and could only form one question. "What happened, Mandalay-sensei?"

The auburn-haired heroine took her cat ears off her head and clenched them with white knuckles. "There was an attack at Shiketsu High. A bombing."

...

Izuku watched the building silently for over an hour.

From this spot on the roof of the neighboring apartment, he could see all possible ways someone might approach it. The only someones had been police officers, quite a few of them going in and out at the start of the hour, but the crowd had thinned as they moved most of the civilians out to the shelters.

The area was clear. It was safe and peaceful now. Danger Sense, for once, was quiet. Now he just watched. Watched and waited.

Killers like this...once they know they've been discovered, they can't help but go to stake out the reaction. Return to the scene. It's in their nature. He was making a gamble, a big one. Especially since he could already be patrolling some other area that was still unsafe by now, instead of lingering in this one that was now under police control. An area where he was needed.

But I may be needed here. I'm gonna wait just a little longer.

The One for All users were feeling some kind of emotion in his head. Something like disapproval. He ignored it.

The city was quiet. It was nearly five in the morning, and there were streaks of light in the east, extremely faint.

Izuku knelt on the edge of the rooftop, watching. Watching through his mask, his green eyes penetrating the area. Seeing everything.

...And just as he'd anticipated, expected, hoped, dreaded...a dark figure slipped out of the shadows

between two buildings. Slim, hourglass figure, black-clothed. Masked up like Izuku, but unquestionably female. And crept into the building.

Izuku stood up. Toga after all? He'd have to go down and see.

Green lightning sparked out from his feet, and he prepared to fight. Chapter End Notes

I've got a bunch of this fic's plot developments outlined now, and I'm really excited to work my way through it. Apologies to those who want to see Izuku in romantic situations right away, but I'm trying to take it slow and give everything proper development! Not to worry, things will somewhat kick off next time.

Chapter Summary

Left Behind

Izuku confronts the person he sees sneaking into the crime scene. Nejire and Tamaki conduct another rescue.

Chapter Notes

Thanks for the feedback y'all. Will tone down Izuku's edge going forward. Luckily, that is the arc I'm aiming at for the character anyway! Some people are going to enter his life to disrupt that comfy edginess he's keeping himself in, starting this very chapter in fact.

See the end of the chapter for more notes And I guess you froze,

When the storm blew away her clothes,

And you never got warm again.

...

Izuku decided to deploy a smoke screen in advance of his entering the room again.

Toga had the instincts of a street cat. If it was her, Izuku bet she noticed someone else was here the instant his boot made the slightest creak in the floorboards. She would try to hide in the shadows to get the drop on him.

He had to turn the tables somehow. Give her a taste of her own medicine. If this was a cat-and- mouse game, then he would make whoever was in which role as ambiguous as he could. So in went the smoke, to obscure his own presence.

He then floated up off the floor and hovered down the hallway, doing his best to maintain control. Nana imbued some kind of emotion into the side of his head, something like pride. It was her Quirk that he'd been practicing the most besides Blackwhip, and he definitely wouldn't have been able to do this a month ago.

The smoke billowed up through the room where the Shiketsu woman had been murdered. Izuku figured that once Toga realized she was dealing with someone at least as intelligent as him, she might try to make a run for it. Thereby exposing herself by making for the window, door, or air vent. Though, if she thinks my only Quirk is the smoke...she might try to fight someone like that.

Her most dangerous aspect was her unpredictability. He had to close the gap now.

He floated down the hallway and right up to the doorway. The smoke obscured his vision, too, but he could somewhat sense movements within it as it poured from his body. And right now, he couldn't sense a thing. Shadows leapt out at him: police tape, the couch, abandoned tripods and equipment. Normally the force would have left someone behind to guard this, but they're so stretched thin tonight with trying to maintain their new order over the district...perfect time to return to the crime scene.

Izuku's heart raced something fierce as he fully entered the room, hovering over the floor and rotating in a circle, looking at the billowing smoke all around him, seeing nothing alive, sensing nothing alive. But how could that be? They had to be in here.

All his instincts were screaming at him to move, to take action, but he waited. Even with One for All, he had no durability Quirk against knives. If Toga came at him fast enough from an unexpected direction, he'd bleed out and die like anyone else. He had to be on top of it. So where...? Where...? Spinning around frantically.

His boots touched the floor. The smoke began to dissipate. The room began to clear. His heart was about to leap out of his throat. There was simply no one here. The window was closed, the vent was closed, they couldn't have gone out the door without him noticing, they...

Danger Sense.

It activated half a second before the dark feminine figure materialized next to the wall and swung a high kick toward his face. Izuku blocked it with his forearm, and ducked low, swooshing under the next kick which came almost as quickly after.

"Hyah! Hyah!" The girl spun at him, jabbing him with her dark heeled boots. Izuku weaved sideways and sent out Blackwhip to capture her. No knife.

The girl sank low against the floor under his attack, unfolding into a split with an absurd talent, and suddenly she vanished again, with a hint of strange sparkles being the only indication that she was using a Quirk to cloak herself.

Izuku pounced forward to where she'd disappeared, and suddenly he was leaping into space .

Oh, God! All the past users screamed in panicked unison inside his head as he windmilled his arms, surrounded by a black starry void. The room, with just another slight dashing of sparkles, had transformed around him. He stomped with his feet against what he knew was the floor, and felt it, but there was nothing there beneath him.

A blinding light shined from the left. Izuku lifted his arms up to shield his eyes, and felt a punch hit him from the right. "HYAH!" the girl screamed. Danger Sense was going haywire, confused. All the users were screaming in his ear. Updated intel indicated Toga could use the Quirks of whoever's blood she drank.

Izuku leapt sideways with a low percentage of One for All, accidentally hitting the couch, which was invisible in this space environment. So was the girl. He blindly shot Blackwhip out in front of him and brushed against something. He quickly refocused it, the tendril following where he thought the girl was moving. A banging sound. The space environment shimmered, as if glitching out, and then with another smattering of sparkles...

A new illusion. Izuku was inside some kind of weird fleshy tunnel, pulsating rubbery pink surfaces all around him. It looked like the inside of an intestine. He spun in place, raising his fists up, and then slammed them both down against the ground, sending out ten tendrils of Blackwhip out in all directions, probing for anything. He felt one of them wrap around the wooden leg of the couch, and anchored himself to that, yanking himself backwards through this freaky vessel of an environment.

The girl leapt down on him from above, and this time, Danger Sense prepared him in time. He felt her legs lock around his neck, and moved with her, rolling and letting her carry him round until he used the momentum and greater weight of himself to grab her and pin her against the ground. The illusions vanished with a dazzle; the dark room returned as the girl struggled beneath him, her legs tangling to kick him off as she cried out and spat.

Izuku laid his forearm across her torso and activated One for All lightly. Green lightning zapped through him, and the girl lost her breath, getting the wind knocked out of her from the subtle

increase in pressure application. She was in a dark, skintight black suit, with a ski mask over her face. He reached up and swept the mask off...

...And gasped, taking a staggering step back and slackening his grip. In that moment, she kicked herself free almost gracefully, and hopped backward away from him, crouching and staring at him with a mixture of fury and fear. Backing away.

Agh! It's the face from the license exam! I was so caught off guard that I... Izuku stepped forward, looming, making himself look intimidating. "So that's what her Quirk does, huh? Illusions. Clever. You still had a bit of her blood left, Himiko Toga?"

"Huh? Himi..." The girl's brown eyes widened, and she gasped angrily. "I'm not that crazy chick!" she snarled, circling around the chair, staying opposite to him. "You attack me like that again, and I'll show you a nightmare." Those sparkles danced around her full lips.

"Returning to the scene of the crime. I knew that if I waited around I'd catch you." Izuku matched her sideways movements around the central chair, which was now vacated of the body. He would not give her an out to the doorway; she was twitching, clearly ready to spring into an escape. "I'll bring you to justice."

"Justi...you think I did this? Hell to the no! I'm here to figure out the asshole that killed Mikuno- san and give them a taste of their own freakin' medicine-"

"Wait, huh?" Izuku stopped, his mind briefly going blank. Wait. Shiketsu. The license exam. Shiketsu. This is...

"Are you..." He coughed, muttering. For some reason, he thought he could feel Nana smirking at him in the mindscape. "Are you perhaps the real Camie Utsushimi?"

"Huh?" She suddenly stood up straight out of her crouch, relaxing her arms and legs a bit, but her eyes were still searching him, on edge. "I mean, uhh...yeah?"

"Well." Izuku sniffed. He didn't know what to say. "That's...ah. I'm s-sorry for assuming you were...ah! I'm sorry!" He felt himself grow red under the mask. Lovely. After all this, I ran into the most embarrassing person I could possibly run into.

Utsuhimi stepped forward and narrowed her eyes at him. "Why would you assume I was her? They told me she impersonated me at the licensing exam, which I was knocked out during...but you know my name...you can't be a student."

"Ah, well...actually I am. Or, I was, anyway. I'm, ah...Izuku Midoriya." For some reason, his mouth was going dry. In her slightly annoyed curiosity, she had taken several steps toward him. After being scared of me just a second before! Had his demeanor shattered that much from freaking out and apologizing?

"Oh. Huh? You're Bakugo and Todo's friend?" Utsushimi raised an eyebrow. "They told me about you at the remedial classes."

"They did? Ah...oh. Well, that's actually where I heard your name from, too, from th-them... because they mentioned that you were there, I mean, the real you...and Todoroki knew I had run into...well! It doesn't m-matter!" Izuku nearly unleashed his trademark nervous squeak at the end. Oh, Nana was giggling inside his mind now. Shut up , please ...he begged her.

Camie made an O face with her lips and tapped her chin. "Did that bitch attack you while wearing my skin or something, dude? You're like, bugging TF out. Is my face traumatizing to you? I can put the mask back on if you want."

"NO! I mean, that's not necessary! Well, if you want to, you can! It's just..." He waved his hands frantically, feeling himself plunge deeper and deeper into an inescapable mess. "Well. Yes. Toga attacked me. While impersonating you. I actually feel the need to apologize." May as well get it out of the way, and as sincerely and as straightforward as possible.

Izuku bowed low. "I technically saw you naked, Utsushimi-san, without your consent. Since she, well, umm..."

Utsushimi whistled. "She tried to seduce ya before killing ya or something, right? Using my body." "Well, I d-don't know if killing me was her g-goal, exactly..."

"I mean, it makes sense. This body I've got is pretty bangin'."

Izuku looked up from his bow. She had her hands on her hips, and was staring at him as if

expecting him to laugh. Under the mask, he was just growing more and more red. Thank God she can't see it.

"Okay, that joke was dumb," Utsushimi muttered. "Sorry 'bout that." She looked over at the empty chair. "I've basically tried to like, get over what happened to me. Get past it with jokes and stuff. And it's been mostly working. But now we're here, and...well." Her face twitched.

"Utsushimi-san..." Izuku took a step closer. "Were you at Shiketsu, when it...?"

"Ah...yeah." She nodded. "That's why I'm after whoever this MF is." She used the abbreviation, actually sounding out the letters themselves. "They killed some of my friends. I wasn't just gonna sit on my ass in the shelter and wait-"

"Utsushimi, did you sneak out? Actually, as a matter of fact, how did you even know that this murder happened? And that the murder and the bombing are connected? And that there was even something here at this random building to find?" Izuku looked down, and saw something dangling from a tight belt at her hip. A device.

Camie bit her lip, at least having the sense to look contrite. "Oh, don't give me that look, masked guy. Midoriya or whoever you are. Yeah, I've been listening in on the police frequencies. Trying to figure out anything. I got lucky I was even in the area to pick up the messages on the scanner, but...I also didn't expect some nutso like you to be here, so...you fight like you're possessed, dude. What the hell is your Quirk?"

"I have more than one," Izuku said plainly. Still weird to just be open about it. "Your illusions aren't half-bad either. But Utsushimi, Todoroki and Kacchan said you passed the remedial tests. What are you doing out here, eavesdropping on police, acting as a vigilante would?"

"Get off your high horse, Midoriya. I have my license on me." "Then you should be working with the people who..."

"No. Can't trust any of these morons." Camie knelt down and began to inspect some of the evidence bags that had been left behind. "You weren't at the bombing, my guy. Maybe everything's been sunshine and rainbows for you, but things are falling apart here. Can't trust anyone. Gotta act on my own."

"You don't know what things have been like for me at all," Izuku muttered. "Where'd you even learn to eavesdrop on police scanners? They teach you that at Shiketsu, or somewhere else?" He didn't know why, but something about her made him paranoid, even though he knew she was a hero student.

Utsushimi picked up a bag off the floor and swept back upward, stepping forward and getting close to his face, looking up at him with a sneer. "You wanna get into it again, buddy? Don't act like you're cleaner than me. At the very least the second years at Shiketsu had the authority to go out on patrols."

"But you're not on a patrol, you're on a path of revenge-"

"If you're Bakugo and Todo's classmate, then you're a first year. Or you're at the end of your first year, and you're not supposed to be out here, either."

Izuku looked down at her. Even with her teeth bared like that, it was quite dizzying to have a pretty girl in his face.

Camie tilted her head. "What? Nothing to say?" "You're quite close to me."

Her eye twitched, and she took a step back. Izuku was sure that the dashing of red he saw across her cheeks was just a trick of the low, shifting light in the room.

"I do have permission to be out here, for what it's worth," he said. "I'm the one Shigaraki and All For One are after."

Her eyes widened. "You're...multiple Quirks...you're him. Deku. All Might's successor."

So news of him had even spread to Shiketsu. "That's right. I'm on this case because I have reason to believe the culprit may attack other schools next. Even UA, where there are people I need to keep safe. Anyone who knows who I am could end up as a target for them. So you need to stay away from me, and stay away from this case."

Utsushimi had a sour, dry expression. "Caaaaaaap. The big kahunas aren't gonna come after me just because I had one interaction with your angsty ass. Get a grip. Besides, you can't keep me off this case."

"I could pick you up right now and fly you back to Shiketsu." God, but was that difficult to get out without stuttering, or blushing at the thought of it.

"Come off it, Deku . I don't think you walk what you talk, now that I take a closer look." She narrowed her eyes, as if staring deep into his own. "Besides, right now I have a lead, and you don't."

"A lead?" Izuku took a too-eager step forward.

Oh, Jesus , En groaned inside his head.

Kid, you're an idiot, Banjo echoed.

Camie's lips curled up into a smile. She was way too alluring when she smirked like that, he decided. It was a great effort not to punch himself in the head.

She lifted the plastic bag up tantalizingly. "Targeting other schools, huh? I read the message on this little note that the freak left." Inside was indeed the message that Izuku had found in the air vent earlier. "But...then there's this symbol. This wittle symbol on the bottom here." She poked at the business card-like object taped to the bottom of the paper. On it was the golden symbol with the two concentric circles connected to a triangle. "And you don't know what this means. Do you."

"I...it won't take long to f-find out," Izuku managed. The stutter again, of course.

"Yes, it will." Her smirk deepened. Her eyelids lowered, and he saw how long her lashes were. "Trust me, I know it will. Because I know what this is. They don't let this symbol slip out to just anywhere for anyone. And the fact that our culprit is connected to this lot..." She whistled again. "You're definitely gonna need some help on this case."

"I can get help from elsewhere. Our culprit? Utsushimi-san, I'm out here because I have to keep moving from place to place, since I'm a massive target, but that doesn't apply to other people our age. Including you. You shouldn't be out here."

"I will tell you what this symbol means if you promise to form an alliance with me." Her eyes glimmered victoriously. "And promise that we'll take the next step together. Because trust me. You will need my help. Mine specifically."

"An...alliance? Together?" Izuku's head spun. No, you can't keep up. If you come with me anywhere, if you stay with me for too long, you'll die. I can't. I can't let anyone from Class A die-

She's not from Class A. She's from a different school. Those were the other users.

Izuku shifted uncomfortably. He'd promised himself he would NOT involve any of his classmates

in any of this. But...Utsushimi wasn't his classmate.

He looked into her eyes again. Pretty , he mused, swallowing the lump in his throat with more than a little effort. A pretty girl wanted to form an alliance with him. Even after all this, he was incapable of acting like an adult!

Oh, you're so cute, Ninth , Nana teased. Go on, accept. I don't think she's lying. About her knowing what the symbol means or even about it being important to the case. We can see it in her eyes.

He opened his fist and closed it. "Fine," he muttered.

Camie's smirk expanded into a toothy grin. "Sweet. Anyway, this is the symbol of the Hojo crime family. They're a mob outfit based in the Kijimi entertainment district in the northern part of the metropolitan area."

"A mob outfi..." Izuku's jaw dropped. "So...that means..."

"Mmhmm. If they're backing this culprit of ours, it could be trouble." She pursed her lips, and seemed to stare off at nothing for a moment. "Plus, this was left behind on purpose, so if you say, went to Kijimi to have a little talk with the Hojos...you could be walking into a trap." Then, her eyes brightened again. "Which is why you need an illusionist."

...

The crop of homeless and junkies that were hiding in the karaoke bar all heard the voice at the same time.

Stay calm, all of you. We will be there in moments.

Some of them barely reacted. Some of them screeched with terror and cowered in the shadowy corners. Others just looked up and around in confusion.

Then, the doors burst open, and in came Nejire and Tamaki. "Agh! Wha...?"

"Heroes?"

"Heroes!"

"No, stay away!" "Are they here to..."

Nejire picked up snippets of conversations, as some of the squatters walked or crawled toward Tamaki and her. Others retreated further into hiding, terrified. There was a lot of incomprehensible babble.

Tamaki tightened his grip on his hood, eyes darting around nervously. "It's like turning over a muddy log in the forest and exposing the bugs to the sun," he muttered. Emaciated, raggedy- looking people swarming everywhere.

"Hello, everyone," Nejire announced, carefully trying to balance her peppy tone with a calming one. "We are here to help. We're going to get you all out of here, mmkay?"

"To prison, most likely!" someone snarled. Nejire shook her head. "No. To safety."

Mandalay entered behind them. The idea had been to let Nejire and Tamaki go in first, so as to maybe not scare all the junkies so much. It was possible they'd recognize Mandalay from TV, but not so much the teens fresh out of UA.

Indeed, when some of them laid eyes on the auburn-haired woman, they hissed and backed off. "It's her. It's the voice."

"She's been talking at me for weeks." "She's a pussycat ."

Shhh , Mandalay used her Quirk soothingly over the room. Nejire blinked her eyes sleepily, and goosebumps crawled over her body. Next to her, Tamaki shuddered and blushed. She noticed many of the squatters blushing, too.

Mandalay walked toward the center of the room, her brightly colored costume contrasting with the grey of the junkies' rags. We are here to help, she told them. She began leaning down in front of individual people and telepathing to them personally. This was also part of the plan.

Nejire and Tamaki got to work. Start with the easiest ones. "Hello!" Nejire said brightly to a man who was standing near the front. "If you would come with me, please?"

"W-w-w-w-e n-n-need..." Tamaki stammered out to another person nearby. The man eyed Nejire with some wariness. "No arrest?" he asked carefully. Nejire shook her head. "I promise!"

"And what's your promise worth?"

"Don't trust them!" a woman hissed. "We should call the Harbor..." "No. Wait. Wait."

"Pl-please comply," Tamaki finally got out, to the other person.

Mandalay stood up from an emaciated man, and looked down the hallway, away from the somewhat posh bar area and down toward the many private karaoke rooms. "This place might take a while to clear out," she said with a sigh. "Time we don't have. I'm calling in the backup."

"Huh?" Tamaki paled. "No, Mandalay-san, wai-"

Mandalay had already telepathed to the police outside, and when they came bursting in, everything turned to chaos.

The junkies scattered like ants, screaming and shouting. One kicked Mandalay in the shins to scramble away. She cursed and tried to transmit again, Please! We are not here to arrest you!For all the good that it did.

The police began to grab people and drag them or carry them outside. "Wait!" Nejire urged. She turned back to the man she'd been talking to, who was now backing away with a betrayed expression. "Wait, please come with me willingly, I promise that we're..." Dammit!

Tamaki had put his hood over his face and was backing off toward the exit, muttering under his breath.

Then, one of the squatters shouted, "I'm calling them! I'm doing it!" And pressed something on their wrist. A strange alarm sounded, from their wrist.

Nejire gasped. Some kind of alerting Quirk? But...

Mandalay whirled, her cat ears nearly falling off her head. Her narrow eyes bugged out. "Oh,

bloody hell," she said.

Men with guns burst into the building from behind, and the brawl began.

...

In the aftermath, Nejire blew feathers out of her hair. "Stupid chicken Quirk," she muttered, as police sirens bathed her face, and people were escorted past on stretchers.

They were not quite back to the shelter, but they were walking that way. Walking. It was nice to walk. They had managed to carve a foothold in Kijimi down three major streets, all the way up to that karaoke bar in question.

Mandalay walked up and stretched her arms behind her back. Nejire thought it looked so very catlike that she was almost motivated to assault the pro heroine with more questions, but managed to hold it back.

"Yeesh," Mandalay commented, relaxing and popping her neck. There was a bit of dried blood running down her leg. "You did well there, Nejire-chan. We got all the civilians out safely largely thanks to you."

"Carrying people with my Quirk is getting easier!" Nejire commented. "Though they're still pretty heavy. It's crazy that you fight with your legs bare like that, sensei. In that shallow skirt."

"Hmm? Ah." Mandalay looked down. "That's not my own blood."

Nejire paled. "Oh." She'd had Mandalay in her mind as something like a lynx or a puma, but perhaps she was more like a tiger. "But do you not get worried about people looking up your skirt at all?"

"Hmm, you mean like those guys in there? I'm capable of handling myself. And beauty and allure has its uses, Nejire-chan. As I'm sure you've discovered. You and I can use it to put people like that at ease. They're more likely to trust us."

"I...see." Mandalay was quite good at ignoring her scars. "So you think ugly people can't be as good at rescuing?"

Mandalay frowned. "I didn't say that , it's just..."

"Oh, I'm just teasing, sensei. I know what you mean. I think." Nejire tapped her chin. "Say, that

karaoke bar was pretty neat. I bet it was a cool place to visit in its heyday."

"Not when there's drugs from the Harbor running through it." The Harbor was the other major operation in Kijimi along with the Hojos, which Nejire had recently learned. The two outfits were in contention with each other for control of the territory.

"Hmm. Those guys we captured who gave us the hint. The ones who were harassing Nova-chan. They worked for the Hojos, right?" They'd had to question them instead of Nova herself, since she was refusing to talk until they got to UA. Questioning the twins was surprisingly easy, when you had Gang Orca on your side. He was scary!

"Yep. They probably sent us to a Harbor-controlled area on purpose. They want us and the Harbor to whittle each other's forces down so they can come out on top." Mandalay blew a strand of hair out of her face.

"Oh! I see! That's smart." Nejire looked at another stretcher go past. It had one of the gangsters on it. "Well, we didn't lose any people, did we? Only a couple of officers got injured. And we made like, a dozen arrests! Plus we saved a bunch of people!"

"And did that make it worth it?" Tamaki hissed, from her other side. Nejire whirled abruptly. She'd forgotten he was there.

Mandalay looked at the pointy-eared young man nervously. "Suneater, if you're going to be a pro, you have to learn to understand situations like tha..."

"We could have handled it," he muttered. "You had no right to bring the police in there. It freaked them out and caused that person to use their Quirk to call for the Harbor guys. Those guys were protecting them. Bringing them food and stuff."

"And we'll do the same, only we'll rehabilitate them as well."

"I don't believe it. I bet some of them will end up in prison anyway." Tamaki was furious ; Nejire had never seen him like this.

"Suneater. Sometimes you have to make hard decisions like that when you know that ultimately, the outcome will be..."

"We could have avoided the fight entirely. I don't want to hear it." He stormed off, getting ahead of the two women.

Mandalay looked at Nejire somewhat helplessly. "I'm sorry, sensei. I'll talk to him later," Nejire offered.

"No, that's alright..." Mandalay had a dark look on her face. "He has a point, I suppose. I think I'm just getting old..."

"Huh? No, sensei! You look great!"

The cat heroine chuckled lightly. "Thank you, Nejire. But I just mean...my attitude. That kind of stuff is what we were taught to do when I was your age. Call the police in once you've got the crowd calmed down. It made sense to me at the time. But now...with the state the country's in...I wonder how many villains we were creating by running the show like that." She looked up at the sky. "You kids are gonna have to do something else. And maybe you already understand that. Growing up in times like this. I'm sorry, Nejire."

Nejire's face twitched. Her scars felt itchy. She forced a smile. "Ah, don't worry about it, Mandalay-san. We're gonna get out of this crazy apocalypse thing. One street at a time."

"I hope so, dear." Mandalay's sigh was full of years. "Let's report back to Orca." ...

The sniper was back again.

Izuku sensed the first shot coming and decided to dodge downward, a direction he'd never gone in to avoid the attacks. The bullets were like missiles; sometimes they curved and followed him around corners.

I reckon they curve at the start of their trajectory, too , he thought, ricocheting around the side of a building using Blackwhip and One for All. The bullet struck the building's bricks, ka-pow .

Izuku bounced back and forth off the walls of a narrow alley, staying low and in the shadows. Waiting for the next shot. Maybe I got out of sight . Usually, he had to evade about three or four shots before he was in the clear.

The sniper had come several times since he'd set out from UA. He'd never once seen the actual person, so he suspected they had exact control over the bullet's trajectory. They always came from different directions, and Izuku was always so panicked with trying to dodge them that he had never quite managed to try and triangulate the person's position.

Another one whizzed close. He leapt upward with twenty percent OFA, high above the rooftops, briefly spinning in a circle to see if he could see anything. Too fast. Nope. Nothing. It was all a blur, and the bullet was coming again.

He shot Blackwhip around a telephone pole near the ground and yanked himself toward it at high speed. The third user whispered, not gonna use my Quirk yet?

You said it was only for desperate situations , Izuku thought back. The bullet hit another building, neutralized.

Every time you encounter this person, they learn more about you. But you have learned nothing about them.

Izuku shook his head, muttering as he leapt in a random direction across town. There was not a third bullet. He must have cleared enough distance.

I don't have time to deal with a sniper. If they're so focused on me, then that means they're not attacking others. And it's others I'm worried about, because there are other villains out there who

DO intend to hurt them. It's those villains I have to fight right now, to save as many people as I can.

But if a villain is so fixated on you, like this sniper is, then don't you think that means they were sent by All For One?

Izuku swallowed. He flattened his mouth and kept looking forward. Well, I won't possibly find them now, he thought. Already got too far away. But next time. If there was a next time. If the sniper attacked him again...he would actually try to get close to them. Because user three had a point. They might know something about AFO or Shigaraki. And that info was invaluable.

A few minutes later, it began to rain. Izuku ignored it, continuing to patrol as the sky darkened and the precipitation intensified. He rescued twelve more people. He defeated a gang of hooligans and one standalone villain with some kind of velocity Quirk. Making his way through the city. Business as usual. One of the people he rescued gave him their umbrella, which was weird, but he just strapped it to his back and went on.

As he worked, he thought about Camie Utsushimi. As much as he was trying not think about her, she filled his mind. They had planned to do their operation in Kijimi next week. Izuku could get anywhere pretty easily, but he had no idea how she planned to meet him there. I suppose she has her ways.

Why did she know so much about an organized crime outfit? Yakuza by the sound of them, much like Overhaul's crew. And monitoring a police scanner, acting a vigilante? Even her hero costume looked like one a cat burglar might wear. What's her deal?

You're quite intrigued by her, aren't you? Nana teased.

Shut up . Izuku blushed. There was certainly no time to think about stuff like that. Which is why he

was so annoyed that every time his mind drifted, he thought of her.

He'd never been very good with girls. In middle school the idea of him even having a chance with one was unthinkable. Maybe things had been slightly different at UA...he had often felt strange about Uraraka, and Tsuyu, and even Jiro had caught his eye a couple of times from just acting as cool as she was. But there was no time for that at UA. And there's no time now!

Besides, no matter how much this girl or that girl from Class A made his heart flutter, the idea of

dating them, of growing to care for them too much, and then having them dragged into this conflict...he couldn't bear to think of it. That was part of why he'd made his promise.

But Utsushimi is not from Class A. Leave it alone.

A few hours after the sniper encounter...

Down below on the street, through the rain, he saw something that caught his eye. It was another little gang of dudes harassing someone. A woman. Izuku encountered many such cases, and usually dealt with them accordingly.

Only this one was different because the woman was a mutant. A massive one at that. She had to be over ten feet tall and maybe as many as fifteen. At a glance, Izuku thought she might be sort of like a fox. But no, that wasn't right. A dolphin ?

He descended, and as he did, he picked up the conversation.

"...stay away from us, monster!"

"Agh!" The mutant woman squeaked. "I'm sorry, I was just...I mean no harm!"

"Trying to let our guard down, huh?" One of the men had some kind of projectile Quirk that he was preparing to fire.

Izuku zoomed in.

"Please calm down!" he urged, holding his arms up between the mutant and the three men. He could see now that the men were scared of her. It was not the usual situation. He had to handle it differently.

"It's a rainy night, tensions are high, but this woman is not your enemy!" He told the men. "Please

deactivate your Quirks."

Slowly, they did so, backing away. "It's him..." one of them muttered.

"She should stop acting so suspicious, then..."

"Bloody mutant..."

They slinked off into the shadows, disappearing down the street past flickering lamplights. The rain made it hard to see where they went off to.

Izuku sighed. He was conflicted about letting them go. "Did they hurt you, ma'am?" he asked, turning to the mutant woman.

"No...they were just scared like me, I guess..." The woman's voice was weak and shaky. She was wearing a massive backpack, and clothes that seemed rather tight for her, showing a rather...curvy figure.

Izuku coughed, grateful once again for the mask. "Yeah, I'm sorry ma'am. I just...well. Usually when I see a group of guys harassing a girl while on patrol...it's for something else, so...I didn't really react great there. I just thought maintaining peace would be the best option. Maybe I shouldn't have let them go after all." He turned back to look at the place where they'd disappeared.

"N-no, that's okay. I thought you handled it well..." The woman tightened her grip on her backpack, and Izuku noticed she had little fangs that poked out over her lower lip. Or snout. Or something. "Are you...a hero?"

"Yes ma'am. I'm Deku. I don't see many mutants out and about anymore. It's sort of been an ongoing question with our operations, actually. Where they've all gone." He didn't want to mention to this woman that most of the mutants he had seen were acting as muscle for organized crime operations. "I'm sorry, this was actually the first time I've saved someone like you, from a situation like that...I didn't react very well. Again, I'm sorry." He decided to bow. He felt really bad.

The woman sniffled, but she also giggled a little, wiping her snout with a claw-like, furry hand. "It's alright, really. You're quite polite, Mr. Deku. Considering how scary your hero costume is."

"Oh...yeah..." Izuku looked down at himself. His costume was soaked. Well, that would be a problem for later. "What's your name, ma'am?"

"I'm...Kitsune. Iruka Kitsune. And you don't have to call me ma'am. I'm probably younger than you."

"I'm not yet seventeen, ma'am."

"Huh? Oh...well, you'd just be a couple of years behind me in school, then..." Iruka's eyes widened.

"Were you in school? Why didn't you make it to a shelter?"

"Ah..." Iruka seemed to retreat into herself a bit. "I felt safe in this town for a while, so I thought I could just sit it out until everything blew over...but then, the casualties began to get reported, and I...I don't know! I was too scared to move...but I tried to run for the evacuation center, but...now I'm stuck out here..." She fluttered her long eyelashes. She looked so sad with the rain soaking through her clothes. Izuku's heart skipped a beat, and he suddenly remembered the umbrella he had strapped to his back.

Agh. So distracted by her that I'm messing up left and right. Agh. Nana was smirking at him again, he just knew it.

Izuku opened the umbrella and floated up to get eye level with her. He pointedly ignored that he could see her bra through her shirt now. Wonder what size it is? Nana asked.

Get lost! He growled at her, and offered the umbrella to Iruka. "Here. Everyone else is scared, too. You're not alone, Kitsune-san."

She gasped, with slightly stunned eyes as she slowly took the umbrella from him. "Thank...you..." she mumbled. Was that a blush on her cheeks? It was hard to tell with how she looked. Izuku felt himself blushing too. First Utsushimi, now this girl?

He called All Might.

Just a few minutes later, the armored black car drove up, and Toshinori stepped out of it, using his own umbrella.

Izuku looked back at his mentor. "Take Kitsune-san here back to UA. She needs shelter as soon as possible."

All Might gaped at the woman. "Well...yes. I can do that. She might have to crouch a bit, though... my backseat is spacious, but..."

"That's alright," Iruka muttered, bowing. "Thank you for the ride. And...for everything." She looked back at Izuku, half-hopefully. "Are you...are you coming too?"

"No, I've got to keep moving. You'll be safe with All Might."

"Huh?" Iruka nearly jumped into the air with surprise. "All in the who now?" She looked frantically back at Toshinori's thin, gaunt form. He just grinned dryly back at her, and then turned to Izuku.

"I can't get her all the way to UA right now, Midoriya. There's some streets that are dangerous even for my car. I'll take her to a way station."

"A way station?"

"Yes. Some have been set up in a wide radius around the shelters." He turned back to Iruka. "You'll have to wait for an organized convoy to be set up for you and other civilians to actually make it all the way to UA, but the way station is reasonably safe. This particular one is under the charge of Gang Orca."

"Gang Orca? Oh, I like him." Iruka closed her eyes and smiled, pressing her hands together in front of her chest. "Another ocean mutant. That actually makes me feel quite relieved."

"Speaking of dangerous streets," Izuku said to All Might, "I encountered the sniper again."

"Lovely," Toshinori muttered. "Anything new?"

"No. But I think I'm going to try and capture her next time. She only tracks and targets me. It might be that All For One sent her."

"She?" All Might tilted his head. "You think it's a woman? How do you know?"

"I saw her. Once," Izuku lied. He didn't want to say that he'd recovered one of the bullets the time before last, and saw that it was made of hair. And the hair had smelled like women's shampoo. He was sure All Might would take such a thing in stride, but he felt weird bringing it up with Iruka standing there.

You know when your ears heat up and get all red, we can all feel it? Yoichi told him dryly. Sorry , Izuku thought back.

"Hmm," All Might was musing. "A female sniper. Something about that sounds...I don't know." Izuku tilted his head. "You have a suspicion."

"A memory is pulling at me. I'll have to look into it. Need to talk to Jeanist and Hawks." "Well, okay. I'm off, then."

"No, Midoriya, wait! I almost forgot." All Might reached back into his car, and pulled out a covered plastic box. "This is katsudon. When was the last time you ate?"

Izuku blinked. "Uh. Yesterday." His stomach, on cue, growled. Of course. He heard the past users all laughing.

Iruka gasped. "That's not good, Mr. Deku! You need to eat!"

All Might smiled, but there was a slight anxiety to his grin. "So I've been telling him, young lady." He handed the box over.

"Thank you for the food," Izuku said earnestly. He was quite hungry. It was just hard to find the time sometimes.

"Please take care of yourself, Midoriya." Something was glimmering in Toshinori's sunken blue eyes. "I'm serious. I'm very serious."

"I know. I will. I promise." He tucked the box under his arm and prepared to leap off into the night. "You be careful, too. Get her to the place, and ermm..." He turned to Iruka briefly. "It was nice to m-meet you, Kitsune-san. I'll keep working to make your town safe again. And then you can return, and live peacefully."

"Ah..." This time, she was clearly fully blushing, the red reaching the tips of her tall pointy ears. "Thank you...Mr. Deku...it was nice to meet you too..."

And then he was gone, a glowing green streak zooming away in the storm.

"Maybe we'll meet again..." she whispered, watching the green light wink out in the distance. Chapter End Notes

I made up my own name for "Ippan Josei" or Ordinary Girl just because. Something feels weird about just using Ippan Josei since it's not technically her name. Anyway, she'll be a recurring character.

Also, Lady Nagant somewhat enters the scene! I'm having her role and introduction be slightly different from canon. In canon, Hawks warns Izuku of her prior to Izuku striking out on his own, including how her Quirk works...so when Izuku gets shot at, he immediately knows who he's dealing with. I want her to be more like an ongoing villain who constantly harasses Izuku in a cat and mouse game, so let's just say that the increased chaos of Japan falling apart in the fic made Hawks too busy or otherwise to mention her to Izuku before he left.

End Notes

Things to expect from this fic: some action and fighting, but also a lot of thriller and detective elements. I was really inspired by The Batman movie and want to go for a vibe like that for some of the story. Also, romance. It will be an Izuku x Nejire endgame, but other relationships will be teased. I want to sort of lean into the Batman noir vibes and have a few women in Izuku's life pushing and pulling at him as he tries to do his hero work. A femme-fatale type vibe.

The fic will also not cover the final battle with Shigaraki and All For One that comes after this arc in the manga. It is ongoing and does not have a known conclusion. Whatever happens in canon, I will not cover it. Shiggy and AFO and most of the main villains will probably not appear at all, but they'll remain an offscreen menace that affects Izuku's mental state.

Please drop by the archive and comment to let the author know if you enjoyed their work!