Irusu (A BNHA x IT AU)

by Seroyonin

It started in the winter of 2004, after the death of Midoriya Izuku's little sister Eri, and it would end almost 16 years later, after Kaminari Denki made his six phone calls. After all, they had all promised that they'd come back. (An "IT" AU with *that* part removed) (Cross posted from Ao3) (Every trigger warning imaginable applies- seriously, proceed with caution)

26. The Album

—1—

MAY 30TH, 2020 / IRUSU, JAPAN

As it turned out, Deku wasn't the only one; they all brought booze.

Deku had a bottle of Yamazaki bourbon sitting in a crinkly paper bag on his lap. Todoroki had everything necessary for a Gin and Tonic. Bakugo a six pack of coca-cola and a bottle of Rum; Nine Leaves: Clear. Sero Hanta brought a grocery bag, inside were two lemons, a bottle of whiskey, a bag of sugar, and a couple of beers. Kaminari disappeared into his office and came back with a pack of RedBull and a bottle of Cherry Schnapps.

Kirishima Ejirou showed up last, holding a small brown bag, identical to Deku's own.

"What've you got there, Shark-teeth?" Bakugo asked, pouring his Rum and Coke. "Ramune or Melon Soda?"

Smiling nervously, Kirishima removed first three bottles of Sapporo Premium beer and then a glittering bottle of Haku Vodka.

In the thunderstruck silence which followed, Bakugo said quietly: "Fuck... somebody call for the men in the white coats. Ole' shitty hair's finally lost it."

Kirishima rolled his eyes, and sat down next to Bakugo on the love seat: "Beep-Beep Katsuki."

Bakugo scrunched up his face, and shot Kirishima a dirty look- though it had no where near the power and intensity it had had in 2005. "I'd already finished talking, dumb ass... you can't beep me if I'm not-"

"-Beep Beep." Kirishima grinned, and Bakugo threw himself back against the love seat with a huff while several other of the losers laughed.

"Katsuki... I really did miss you, I think... even if I didn't realize it consciously," Todoroki said monotonically, but not unkind. "I missed all of you..."

Bakugo glanced up, startled, but with a hint of a smile. "Geez, half and half, don't emote to much- your face might get stuck that way."

"Never mind." Todoroki deadpanned, kicking Bakugo's shin lightly as he walked passed him and over to the couch, wriggling his way in between Deku and Kaminari. "I take it back. Fuck off."

Sero, who was sitting on the couch arm to Kaminari's left, right leg on the love seats arm, his left ankle crossed over the right, elbow propped up on the back of the couch, head in one hand, his newly made whiskey sour in the other, laughed- though he sounded a lot tireder than he had at lunch- in fact, they all did.

Todoroki took a drink of his gin and tonic, and looked around at each of their faces, his signature soft smile appearing, so subtle- yet still managing to light up his face brilliantly. "I really do love you all, though... truly, you're the best friends I ever had."

"W-We love you too, Shuh-Sho." Deku pulled him into a tight side hug as he spoke, Todoroki's smile widened just a little.

"Yes," Kaminari nodded, staring pointedly at the car battery still situated on the table in front of him. "...We love you, Roki..."

Sero's eyes widened a little then, and he turned towards the three of them, and then towards Bakugo and Kirishima, laughing. "Woah- we still all love each other, after all these years apart... Do you know how rare that must be?"

There was moment of silence, and in that silence Kaminari finally noticed Kirishima's hair. He had thought it looked a little off at the reunion lunch... but had simply dismissed it as a trick of the light... but now, sitting under the fluorescent lighting of his workshop garage, Kaminari knew that what he was seeing was true- was real.

The roots of Kirishima's hair, which had been a bright red when he'd arrived outside The House of Blue Leaves only a few hours before, were now an inky black- as if he hadn't redyed his hair in months.

Kaminari opened his mouth to say something, his throat feeling sticky and dry, but Bakugo cut him off before he could even choke out a syllable:

"Holy shit, Ejirou-" Bakugo gasped, sitting upright at once, eyes impossibly wide. "-Your hair... it's-"

"Huh?... oh!-" Kirishima, who had reached up to touch his hair instinctively, now sat gaping at his palm. "...how?..."

"What?" Sero asked, legs dropping to the floor with a 'thud!', leaning forward to get a look. Kaminari, Deku, and Todoroki followed suit soon after, and soon all six remaining members of the losers club felt their collective breaths get caught in their throats.

"T-that's..." Deku started, but he trailed off before he could finish the thought, completely flabbergasted.

"...gross." Todoroki breathed- his cheeks flushed a little when five pairs of eyes turned on him at once. "...I-I used gross... as a euphemism for 'scary' when I was a kid... sorry... habits and all..."

Kirishima Ejirou's palm had come back from his hair stained red with hair dye. It dripped down his wrist, his arm, and puddled shallowly onto Kaminari's concrete floor. Kirishima's eyes bulged, wanting, desperately, for his mind to shut down- to do what most people's minds did and refuse to let him believe what he was seeing- but alas, it did not... and worst of all, he found that he really wasn't all that surprised.

"It's dripping down the back of your neck, too." Sero commented hoarsely, rubbing hair dye that had begun soaking into the cushion's in between his thumb and forefinger. "I think you're, like... sweating it out?..."

"But why?" Kirishima asked, looking around frantically, feeling his throat starting to close up "what does my hair being dyed have to do with this?"

No one had an answer for him.

Finally, Bakugo broke the silence and said: "My contacts started to burn and I had to take them out," he had a grave expression on his face- and a look in his eyes that made it seem as if he almost had this figured out. No one really had enough time to process what any of that could mean, before Bakugo was talking again, "Let's just hurry up and get this whole thing over with."

They all looked at Deku then, as they had in the gravel-pit, and Kaminari thought to himself: 'They look at Deku when they need a leader, at Ejirou when they need a navigator, Roki when they need a light... Do I tell them that the bodies of the children that were found back then and now weren't sexually molested, not even precisely mutilated, but partially eaten? Do I tell them I've got seven miner's helmets, the kind with strong electric lights set into the front, stored back at my house, one of them for a guy named Iida Tenya who couldn't bring himself to face the horror again- not that I blame the guy, Tenya was always intuitive... hell, maybe he really did take the smart way out and got the hell out of dodge before shit really hit the fan... maybe it'd be enough to tell them to get a good nights sleep, because tomorrow or tomorrow night this all ends for good- either for It or for us?... '

'No... none of these things have to be said, and the reason why they don't has already been stated: we still love each other. Things have changed over the last fifteen years, but that, miraculously, hasn't. It is,' Kaminari thought, 'our only real hope.'

'The only thing that really remains is to finish going through it, to complete the job of catching up, to let things... to let things go back to how they used to be...' Yes, Kaminari thinks that's it. 'Tonight the job is to catch up; tomorrow we can see if it means anything... the way it did when we drove the big kids out of the gravel-pit and out of the Barrens.'

"Have you remembered the rest?" Kaminari asked Bakugo, glancing up at the other blonde.

Bakugo gulped his drink, before shaking his head no. "I remember you telling us about the bird... and about the smoke-hole." A cynical grin broke out over Bakugo's face. "I remembered about that walking over here tonight with half and half and Skelly. What a fucking horror-show that shit was-"

"-Beep-beep, Katsuki," Todoroki said, smiling tightly.

"Well, you know," he shrugged, still smiling himself, leaning back with his hands behind his head and propping his feet up on the table, eerily resembling that old Bakugo Katsuki that had existed in 2005. "You remember, don't you shortstack?"

Kaminari snorted laughter and nodded.

"Towards the end there," Bakugo started, his smile dropping, annoyance creeping into his tone "I really thought I was gonna suffocate in that goddamn smokehole."

Deku joked, "Another engineering and architectural triumph by Sero Hanta."

Bakugo kicked him, Deku gave him a teasing grin.

Todoroki nodded, remembering. "We were digging out the clubhouse when you brought your mother's photograph album to the Barrens, Denki."

"That's right!" Deku exclaimed, nearly jumping to his feet. "And the pictures-"

Bakugo nodded grimly, and pinched the bridge of his nose. "The same trick as in Eri's room. Only that time we all saw it."

Sero said, "I remembered what happened to the extra silver dollar."

They all turned to look at him.

"I gave the other three to a friend of mine before I came out here," Sero said quietly, flushing a bit. "For his kids. I remembered there had been a fourth, but I couldn't remember what happened to it. Now I do." He looked at Deku. "We made a silver slug out of it, didn't we? You, me, and Katsuki. At first we were going to make a silver bullet-"

"-You were pretty sure you could do it," Bakugo agreed. "But in the end-"

"-We got c-cold fuh-feet." Deku nodded slowly. The memory had fallen naturally into its place, and he heard that same low but distinct click! when it happened. 'We're getting closer,' he thought.

"We went back to Neibolt Street," Bakugo said. "All of us."

"You saved my life, Deku," Sero said suddenly but Deku shook his head. " You did, though," Sero persisted, and this time Deku didn't shake his head. He suspected that maybe he had done just that, although he could not remember how... and was it him? He thought maybe Todoroki... but that was not there. Not yet, anyway.

"Hold it," Kaminari stood, stretching. "I've got a sixpack in the back fridge."

"Have one of mine," Sero insisted, pushing him a bottle.

"Oh, I don't drink after straight people," Kaminari grinned. "I may be poor compared to you Bastards but I have standards."

"Beep-beep, Denki," Sero laughed, shaking his head, and Kaminari went to get his beer on a warm wave of their laughter.

He snapped on the light in 'the break room'- which was just a walk in storage closet he'd filled with seedy chairs, a printer badly in need of an ink change, and a bulletin board covered with old notices, phone numbers he'd gotten from clients, and a few more childhood photos of himself, Sero, and his mother... they really had been a family back then... even if Sero, due to no fault of his own, couldn't remember it. He opened the little refrigerator and felt the shock sink into him, bone-deep and icewhite, the way February cold sank into you when February was here and it seemed that April never would be. Black and white balloons ('the Irusu High School colors,' Kaminari thought dimly) drifted out in a flood, dozens of them, a New Year's Eve bouquet of party-balloons. They wafted past his face, brushed against his cheeks, and rose toward the closets Water-stained ceiling. He was trying to scream, unable to scream, seeing what had been behind the balloons, what It had popped into the refrigerator beside his beer, as if for a late-night snack after his (worthless) friends had all told their (worthless) stories and gone back to their rented beds in this home town that was no longer home.

Kaminari took a step backward, his hands going to his face, shutting the vision out. He stumbled over one of the chairs, almost fell, and took his hands away. It is still there; Iida Tenya's severed head beside Kaminari's sixpack of Asahi Super Dry, the head not of a man but of an eleven-year-old boy. The mouth was open in a soundless scream but Kaminari could see neither teeth nor tongue because the mouth had been stuffed full of feathers. The feathers were a light brown and unspeakably huge. He knew well enough what bird those feathers came from. Oh yes. Of-fucking-cours he did. He had seen the bird in May of 2005, they had all seen it in early August of 2005, and again when he had coughed them up at the reunion luncheon earlier that day. Four years earlier, while visiting his mother, he had found out that Kaminari Kaori had seen It once, too, after she escaped with her older sister and her sister's girlfriend from the fire at the Hitosashi, the gay nightclub that had been burned down by 'traditionalists' at the peak of the 1989-1990 cycle...

...The blood from Iida's tattered neck had dripped down and formed a coagulated pool on the fridge's bottom shelf. It glittered dark ruby-red in the uncompromising glow shed by the fridge bulb.

"Ha...haha... hahaha..." Kaminari giggled insanely, no longer in control of his own body. Then the head opened its eyes, and they were the silver-bright eyes of Pennywise the Clown. Those eyes rolled in his direction and the head's lips began to squirm around the mouthful of feathers. It was trying to speak, perhaps trying to deliver prophecy like the oracle in a Greek play.

"Just thought I'd join you, Denki, because you can't win without me. You can't win without me and you know it, don't you? You might have had a chance if all of me had shown up, but I just couldn't stand the strain on my brain, if you see what I mean, jellybean. All the six of you can do on your own is hash over some old times and then get yourselves killed. So I thought I'd head you off at the pass. Head you off, get it, Denki? You were always so fond of jokes... so, do you get it, old pal? Do you get it, you fucking scumbag faggot?"

'You're not real!' he meant to scream, but no sound came out; he was like a TV with the volume turned all the way down.

Incredibly, grotesquely, the head winked at him. It's glasses shifted downward a little as It did so, causing light to bounce off the lenses into Kaminari's eyes.

"I'm real, alright. Real as raindrops. And you know what I'm talking about, Denki. What the six of you are planning to try is like taking off in a jet plane with no landing gear. There's no sense in going up if you can't get back down, is there? No sense in going down if you can't get back up, either. You'll never think of the right riddles and jokes. You'll never make me laugh, Denki. You've all forgotten how to turn your screams upside-down. Beep-beep, Denki, what do you say? Remember the bird? Nothing but a sparrow, but say- hey! it was lulu, wasn't it? Big as a barn, big as one of those silly Japanese movie monsters that used to scare you when you were a little kid. The days when you knew how to turn that bird away from your door are gone forever. Believe it, Denki. If you know how to use your head- which- who am I kidding? We both know you're as dumb as a rock, but... so you can't say I didn't warn you... get out of here, out of Irusu, right now. Otherwise, your empty noggin' will end up just like this one here. Today's guidepost along the great road of life is use it before you lose it, my good man."

The head rolled over on its face (the feathers in its mouth made a sickening crumpling sound) and fell out of the refrigerator. It 'thuk'ed to the floor, the lenses of the glasses popping out and clinking into opposite directions, and rolled toward him like a hideous bowling ball, its blood-matted hair changing places with its grinning face; it rolled toward him leaving a gluey trail of blood and dismembered bits of feather behind, its mouth working around its clot of feathers.

"Beep-beep, Denki!" It screamed as Kaminari scrambled madly away from it, hands held out in a warding-off gesture. "Beep-beep, beep-beep, beep-fucking-beep!"

Then there was a sudden loud pop- the sound of a plastic cork thumbed out of a bottle of cheap champagne. The head disappeared ('Real,' Kaminari thought sickly; 'there was nothing supernatural about that pop, anyway; that was the sound of air rushing back into a suddenly vacated space... real, oh shit, real'). A thin net of blood droplets floated up and then pattered back down. No need to clean, though, not a single one of his associates would see the blood, not even if they had to plow their way through the balloons to get to the fridge for a bottle of water. How handy. He found himself laughing madly once more.

He looked up and yes, the balloons were still there. The white ones said:

IRUSU FAGGOTS GET THE BIRD!

The black ones said:

THE LOSERS ARE STILL LOSING, BUT IIDA TENYA IS FINALLY AHEAD!

'No sense going up if you can't get back down,' the speaking head had assured him, 'no sense going down if you can't get back up.' This latter phrase made him think again of the stored miner's helmets. And was it true? Suddenly he was thinking about the first day he went down to the Barrens after the rockfight. July 6th, that had been, two days after he had marched in the Mayor's Birthday parade... two days after he had seen Pennywise the Clown in person for the first time. It had been after that day in the Barrens, after listening to their stories and then, hesitantly, telling his own, that he had gone home and asked his mother if he could look at her photograph album.

Why exactly had he gone down to the Barrens that July 6th? Had he known he would find them there? It seemed that he had- and not just that they would be there, but where they would be. They had been talking about a clubhouse of some sort, he remembered, but it had seemed to him that they had been talking about that because there was something else that they didn't know how to talk about.

Kaminari looked up at the balloons, not really seeing them now, trying to remember exactly how it had been that day, that hot hot day. Suddenly it seemed very important to remember just what had happened, what every nuance had been, what his state of mind had been...

...Because that was when everything began to happen. Before that the others had talked about killing It, but there had been no forward motion, no plan. When Kaminari had come the circle had closed, the wheel began to roll. It had been later that same day that Deku and Bakugo and Sero went down to the library and began to do serious research on an idea that Deku and Iida had had a day or a week or a month before. It had all begun to -

"Denki?" Bakugo called from the garage where the others were gathered. "did you die in there?"

'Almost,' Kaminari thought, looking at the balloons, the blood, the feathers inside the fridge.

He called back, fighting back more hysterical giggles: "heh... I think you guys better come in here..."

He heard the sound of their shoes against concrete, the mutter of their echoey voices; he heard Bakugo say "Goddammit, what now?" and another ear, this one in his memory, heard Bakugo saying something else, and suddenly he remembered what it was he had been searching for; even more, he understood why it had seemed so elusive. The reaction of the others when he stepped into the clearing in the darkest, deepest, and most overgrown part of the Barrens that day had been... nothing. No surprise, no questions about how he had found them, no big deal. Sero, his best friend in the world at the time, had been smoking with Todoroki Shouto, the love of his young life. He remembered Bakugo had been wading in the Shibui a ways back, yelling something at Deku, who had been lying on his back with his hands behind his head, listening to whatever Bakugo was saying. Kirishima and Iida had been looking curiously at a series of strings which had been pegged into the ground to form a square of about five feet on a side.

No surprise, no questions, no big deal. He had simply shown up and been accepted. It was as if, without even knowing it, they had been waiting for him. And in that third ear, memory's ear, he heard (and somewhat saw) Bakugo stopping in the middle of his sentence, turning in Kaminari's direction, and shouting: "I see Irusu's-

—2—

JULY 6TH, 2005 / IRUSU, JAPAN

-resident punching bag decided to emerge from isolation!"

Deku didn't even look in Kaminari's direction. Instead, he turned towards the sky, and looked at the cottony summer clouds marching across the sky. He was giving an important question his most careful consideration. Bakugo, miffed by the lack of attention, pushed onwords: "Never thought I'd see the fucking day, blondie! I thought for sure we'd have to communicate by passing notes through string bean!"

"Beep-beep, Katsuki!" Sero called, smoke crawling out of his mouth and nose as he did so. Bakugo looked confused, but it was effective, and he fell silent.

"Beep-beep..." Todoroki mumbled quietly, smiling to himself. "I like that... I might have to steal it from you, Hanta."

"By all means," Sero grinned, waving Kaminari over as he did so, "whatever it takes to get Katsuki to keep his mouth shut for longer than five second intervals."

"...Hi," Kaminari said to Todoroki uncertainly, and then again to the entire group. His heart was beating a little too hard, but he was determined to go on with this... He owed all of them there a thank you, and intended to pay what he owed.

Iida looked around. "Hi," he said warmly, and then looked back at the square of strings pegged into the center of the clearing. "Hanta, are you sure this is going to work?"

"It'll work," Sero said, and turned back towards Kaminari, smiling. "What's up, Denki?"

"Want a cigarette?" Todoroki asked. "I got two left."

"No- I don't- that's more Hanta's... thing... um-" Kaminari took a deep breath, his cheeks flaring red, and said, "...I wanted to- to thank you guys... what you all did for me at the gravel pit was... amazing. Those guys meant to hurt me bad, because- well- ya know- and I'm sorry some of you guys got banged up."

Deku waved his hand, dismissing it. "D-D-Don't wuh-wuh-horry a-a-bout it. Th-they've h-had it i-i-in f-for us all y-y-year." He sat up and looked at Kaminari with sudden starry interest. "C-Can I a-ask you s-s-something?"

"You just did." Kaminari said, cracking an awkward smile. Deku didn't respond, continuing to stare at him with immense curiously- as if he were a scientist and Kaminari were his experiment.

"Ah... right... I guess so," Kaminari shrugged, feeling out of place. He sat down gingerly. He had heard such prefaces before. The Midoriya kid was going to ask him why he liked boys, and how his mother felt about it, and blah blah...

...But instead Deku said: "When K-K-Kaneko pitched the n-no-h-hitter in the Ch-Chuh-Championship Series two years ago, d-do you think that was just luh-luck?"

Bakugo, who had gotten out of the water and taken the cigarette offered to Kaminari a few moments ago for himself, dragged deep on it and started to cough. Todoroki and Sero pounded him good-naturedly on the back.

"You can't just drag, Katsuki." Todoroki sighed, "It takes practice."

"I think it's gonna fall in, man," Kirishima said worriedly, looking fist at the pegged square and then at Sero Hanta. "I don't know how cool I am on the idea of getting buried alive."

"You're not gonna get buried alive," Sero laughed, though it wasn't unkind. "And if you are, just suck your inhaler until someone pulls you out."

This struck Bakugo Katsuki as deliciously funny. He leaned back on his heels, still coughing and croaking, his head turned up to the sky, and laughed until a very embarrassed Kirishima told him to shut up.

"Luck," Kaminari said finally. "I think any no-hitter's more luck than skill."

"M-M-Me t-too," Deku smiled. Kaminari waited to see if there was more, but Deku seemed satisfied. He lay down again, laced his hands behind his head again, and went back to studying the clouds as they floated by.

"What are you guys up to?" Kaminari asked, looking at the square of strings pegged just above the ground

"Oh, this is your anorexic buddies big idea of the week," Bakugo said. "Last time he flooded out the Barrens and that was pretty good, but this one's a real winner. This is Dig Your Own Clubhouse Month. Next month-"

"Y-You don't nuh-nuh-need to put Huh-Huh-Hanta d-duh-hown," Deku said, still looking at the sky. "It's going to be guh-guh-good."

"For fuck's sake, Deku, I was just kidding."

"Suh-Sometimes you k-k-kid too much, Kah-Kacchan."

Bakugo stepped forward to argue some more, but Iida grabbed the back of his shirt gently, and kindly asked him to drop it. Bakugo yanked out of Iida's grasp, spun on his heel, angrily kicked an empty water bottle, and collapsed onto the ground next to Kirishima with a dramatic groan. "I hate all of you."

"We love you too." Sero smiled. Bakugo lifted his head to glare at him, but didn't say anything more.

Kaminari looked around, feeling both out of place and to entangled all at once. "I'm confused."

"You're always confused," Sero laughed. Kaminari smiled back.

"Well, you'd know better than anyone... so explain to me what's going on like I'm a five year old."

"It's honestly pretty simple." Sero said, tugging Kaminari closer to the job site. "They wanted a treehouse, and we could do that, but people have a bad habit of breaking their bones when they fall out of treehouses-"

"-I'm more concerned about Katsuki shoving someone out of it, really." Iida said, though he was smiling at the short-tempered blonde fondly.

"Why the hell are you all ganging up on me today?"

"Because you deserve it, Trashmouth." Todoroki said. "Also it's easy."

"-ANYWAY!" Sero interrupted, before another round of bickering could start up. "What we'll do is dig down about five feet in the square I pegged out here. We can't go much deeper than that or we'll hit groundwater, I guess. It's pretty close to the surface down here. Then we'll shore up the sides just to make sure they don't cave in." He looked significantly at Kirishima here, but Kirishima was still worried.

"Then what?" Kaminari asked, interested. He had always known that Sero had a knack for building things, just as he himself had a knack for fixing machines, but he'd never seen him try something this elaborate... it excited him greatly, and he found himself grinning.

"We'll cap off the top."

"Huh?" Kaminari cocked his head to the side like a confused puppy.

"Put boards over the top of the hole. We can put in a trapdoor or something so we can get in and out, even windows if we want-"

"We'll need some hih-hih-hinges," Deku said, almost dreamily, still looking at the clouds.

"We can get those at Kanazaki Hardware," Sero said.

"Y-You guh-guh-guys have your a-a-allowances?" Deku asked.

"I've got ¥500," Todoroki said. "Natsuo gave it to me."

Bakugo whistled: "we're in the presence of an heir, everyone bow at half and half's feet and beg."

"A what," Todoroki asked, while Kaminari watched the exchange with an odd mixture of amusement and confusion.

Instead of answering, Bakugo just rolled his eyes, and moved so his chin was resting on Kirishima's thigh. Kirishima's face went scarlet, and he looked away, awkwardly resting a hand on his back. Bakugo looked up at him curiously, but didn't say anything.

"...You're all idiots and I hate you." Bakugo addressed the group simply, after a long bought of silence.

"You already said that." Iida said, squinting at him with his glasses off, cleaning them with the end of his shirt.

"I didn't call you all idiots, though."

Iida slipped his glasses back on. "Beep-Beep Katsuki."

"-We sh-share the e-expenses," Deku said, before Bakugo could respond. "That's why we've got a club."

"-So after we cap the hole with boards," Sero went on, "we put down this heavy-duty glue- Tangle-Track, they call it- and put the sods back on. Maybe cover it with leaves?... We could be down there and people- people like Tomura- could walk right over us and not even know we were there."

"You thought of all that, Hanta?" Kaminari asked, eyes sparkling up at his friend. "All by yourself?"

Sero nodded humbly.

Kaminari grinned, and hugged his much taller best friend around the waist. "I always knew you were the coolest."

Sero smiled. It was his turn to blush.

Deku sat up then, suddenly very alert. He looked towards Kaminari, and Kaminari felt his smile drop instantly: there was something off in Deku's gaze... his eyes were a little to shiney, his pupils a little to large...

"You w-w-want to heh-help?"

"Well... sure..." Kaminari spoke, not even entirely sure it was of his own volition. He shook the feeling off, and smiled once more. "That'd be fun."

A look passed among the others- Kaminari felt it as well as saw it. 'There are seven of us here,' Kaminari thought randomly, and for no reason at all, he shivered.

"When are we starting?"

"P-P-hretty s-soon," Deku said, and Kaminari knew- knew that it wasn't just Sero's underground clubhouse Deku was talking about. Sero knew it, too. So did Bakugo, Todoroki, and Kirishima. Iida Tenya had stopped smiling; "W-We're g-gonna start this pruh-huh-hoject pretty suh-suh-soon."

There was a pause then, and Kaminari was suddenly aware of two things: they wanted to say something, tell him something... and he was not entirely sure he wanted to hear it. Sero had picked up a stick and was doodling aimlessly in the dirt, his hair hiding his face. Bakugo, his cheek now resting on Kirishima's thigh instead of his chin, was twirling a ¥5 coin between his fingers. Only Deku was looking directly at Kaminari.

"...Is something wrong?" Kaminari asked uneasily.

Speaking very slowly, Deku said: "W-W-We're a cluh-club. Y-You can be in the club if you w-w-want, but y-y-you have to kee-keep our see-see-secrets."

"You mean, like the clubhouse?" Kaminari asked, laughing a little and looking up at Sero, who still refused to meet his gaze. He was now more uneasy than ever, his stomach flipping. "Haha... Well, sure-"

"-We've got another secret, shortstack," Bakugo said, still not looking at Kaminari, still twirling that coin. "And Deku says we've got more important shit to do this summer than digging underground clubhouses."

"...He's right, too," Sero added. Kaminari had never heard Sero sound so serious before... he choked down more nervous giggles.

There was a sudden, whistling gasp. Kaminari jumped, a little cry escaping his throat. It was only Kirishima, blasting off. Kirishima looked at Kaminari apologetically, shrugged, and then nodded.

"Haha... Well..." Kaminari said finally, swallowing thickly, "... don't... don't leave me hanging guys... tell me."

Deku was looking at the others. "I-Is there a-a-anyone who d-doesn't want him in the cluh-club?"

No one spoke or raised a hand.

"W-Who wants to t-tell?" Deku asked.

There was another long pause, and this time Deku didn't break it... At last Todoroki sighed, blew his fringe out of his eyes prettily, cigarette hanging loosely out of his mouth. He shifted his eyes over to Kaminari lazily, his Irusu High School varsity jacket hanging loosely off his shoulders, and Kaminari was suddenly reminded of that moment they had shared under the bleachers the December before.

"We know who's killing the kids," It came out blunt, cold. Kaminari swallowed thickly. "And It's not human."

—3—

They told him, one by one: the clown on the ice, the leper under the porch, the blood and voices from the drain, the dead boys in the Standpipe. Bakugo told about what had happened when he and Deku went back to Neibolt Street, and Deku spoke last, telling about the school photo that had moved, and the picture he had stuck his hand into. He finished by explaining that It had killed his sister Eri, and that the Losers Club was dedicated to killing the monster... whatever the monster really was.

Kaminari thought later, going home that night, that he should have listened with disbelief mounting into horror and finally run away as fast as he could, not looking back, convinced either that he was being made fun of by a bunch of kids who didn't appreciate his wide variety of potential romantic partners... or that he was in the presence of six authentic lunatics who had in some way caught their lunacy from each other, the way everyone in the same class could catch a particularly virulent cold.

...but he didn't- partially because of Sero Hanta and Todoroki Shouto: it couldn't be the homophobic (would biphobic be the better term? He didn't really know) thing because he knew for a fact Sero didn't care, and that Todoroki himself was actually gay... (he hadn't quite yet known about 'internalized homophobia' and what it could do to an individual, but even if he had, he still would have known that wasn't the case) the viral lunacy was still on the table, he guessed... but... but he didn't run, because in spite of the horror, he felt a strange sense of comfort. Comfort and something else, something more elemental: a feeling of coming home. 'There are seven of us here,' he thought again as Deku finally finished speaking.

He opened his mouth, not sure of what he was going to say.

"I've seen the clown," he said.

"What?" Bakugo and Iida asked together, and Todoroki turned his head so quickly that his locks of winter fire and January embers seemed to float around his face.

"Haha... yeah... I saw him during the birthday parade," Kaminari said, bubbly, but nervous. He was speaking to Deku mostly. Deku's eyes, sharp and utterly concentrated, were on his, demanding that he go on. "Yeah... um..." He trailed off momentarily, thinking: 'But I knew him. I knew him because that wasn't the first time I saw him. And it wasn't the first time I noticed something... something odd... something wrong.'

...He thought of the bird then, the first time he'd really allowed himself to think of it-except in nightmares- since he found that stuff in Ukiyo park. He had thought he was going crazy. It was a relief to find out he wasn't crazy... but it was still a scary relief. He wet his lips.

"Go on," Todoroki said impatiently. "Hurry up."

"Well, the thing is, I was in the parade. I-"

"-I saw you," Kirishima said, nodding feverishly. "You were with the horses."

"Yes!" Kaminari nodded back, smiling despite himself. "They're mine- well- mine and my mom's- Anyway, I saw the clown. He was handing out balloons to kids on the three-way corner downtown. He was just like Hanta and Deku said. Silver suit, orange buttons, white makeup on his face, big red smile. I don't know if it was lipstick or make-up, but it looked like blood."

The others were nodding, excited now, but Deku only went on looking at Kaminari closely. "O-O-Orange tufts of h-h-hair?" he asked Kaminari, making them unconsciously over his own head with his fingers, Kaminari nodded.

"Uh-huh. Seeing him like that... it scared me. And while I was looking at him, he turned around and waved at me, like he'd read my mind, or my feelings, or whatever you call it. And that... like, scared me worse. I didn't know why, but he scared me so bad for a couple of seconds I actually dropped Nigiri's reigns... All the spit in my mouth dried up and I felt... " He glanced briefly at Todoroki, his cheeks coloring. He remembered it all so clearly now, how the sun had suddenly seemed intolerably dazzling on the metal bits in Nigiri and Temaki's mouths, the music too loud, the sky too blue. The clown had raised one white-gloved hand (the other was full of balloon strings) and had waved slowly back and forth, his bloody grin too red and too wide, a scream turned upside-down. He remembered how the flesh of his back had begun to crawl, how his bladder had suddenly felt all loose and hot, as if he might suddenly loose all function of it right there. But he couldn't say any of that in front of Todoroki. You didn't say stuff like that in front of the love of your adolescent life, "... I felt scared," he finished, feeling that was too weak, but not knowing how to say the rest. But they were nodding as if they understood, and he felt an indescribable relief wash through him. Somehow that clown looking at him, smiling his red smile, his white-gloved hand penduluming slowly back and forth... that had been worse than having Shigaraki Tomura and the rest after him. Ever so much worse.

"Then we walked past it," Kaminari went on. "We marched up Main Street. And I saw him again, handing out balloons to kids. Except a lot of them didn't want to take them. Some of the little ones were crying. I couldn't figure out how he could have gotten up there so fast. I thought to myself that there must be two of them, you know, both of them dressed the same way. A team. But then he turned around and waved to me again and I knew it was him. It was the same man."

"He's not a man," Bakugo said, eyes narrowed angrily. Todoroki shuddered a little. Deku put his arm around him for a moment and Todoroki looked at him gratefully. Kaminari fought back a pang of jealously.

"He waved to me... and then he winked. Like we had a secret. Or like... like maybe he knew I'd recognized him."

Deku dropped his arm from Todoroki's shoulders. "You reh-reh-rehrecognized him?"

"I think so," Kaminari said. "I have to check something before I say it's for sure. My mom's got some pictures... She collects them and stuff... Are you guys down here a lot?"

"Yeah," Sero said. "That's why we're building a clubhouse."

Kaminari nodded. "Lemme check, see if I'm right... If I am, I can bring the pictures."

"O-O-Old pic-pictures?" Deku asked.

"Yes."

"W-W-What else?" Deku asked.

Kaminari opened his mouth and then closed it again. He looked around at them uncertainly and then said, "You'd think I was crazy. Crazy or lying."

"D-Do y-y-you th-think we're cruh-cruh-crazy?"

Kaminari shook his head.

"You bet your shit we're not," Kirishima said. "I've got a lot wrong with me, but I'm not looney. I don't think."

"No," Kaminari said. "I don't think you're crazy."

"Well, we-we won't th-think you're cruh-cruh... " he scrunched up his nose in self-annoyance, and gave up. "-nuts, e-e-either," Deku said.

Kaminari looked them all over, before stopping on Sero, finding comfort in the familiarity of his grey eyes: "...I saw a bird. Three months ago. I saw a bird."

Iida Tenya looked at Kaminari, eyes glazing over just a little. "What kind of a bird?"

Giggling insanely, Kaminari said: "...It looked like a sparrow, sort of- ...but it also looked like a robin. It had an orange chest."

"Well, what's so special about a bird?" Sero asked. "There are lots of birds in Irusu." But he felt uneasy, and looking at Iida, he felt sure that Iida was remembering what had happened in the Standpipe, and how he had somehow stopped it from happening by shouting out the names of birds. But he forgot all about that and everything else when Kaminari spoke again.

"This bird was bigger than a house," he said.

He looked at their shocked, amazed faces. He waited for their laughter, but none came. Iida looked as if someone had clipped him with a brick. His face had gone so pale it was the color of muted November sunlight.

"I swear it's true," Kaminari said, becoming quite animated as he continued to talk. "It was a giant bird, like one of those birds in the monster-movies that are supposed to be prehistoric."

"Yeah, like in The Giant Claw," Bakugo said. He thought the bird in that had been sort of fake-looking, but by the time it got to New York City he had still been excited enough to spill his popcorn over the balcony railing at the Aladdin. He would have been kicked out, but the movie was over by then anyway. Sometimes you got the shit kicked out of you, but as Deku said, sometimes you won one, too.

"But it didn't look prehistoric!" Kaminari said, bouncing up and down on his heels, relief flooding through his veins as the six of them believed every word of his horrifying encounter. "And it didn't look like one of those whatdoyoucallums- the old guys in like- Greece- made up stories about-"

"-Rocs?" Iida suggested, his voice cracking a little.

"I dunno- maybe- you probably know better than me, since you look sorta smart and all- but- It wasn't like those, either. It was just like a combination robin and sparrow. The two most common birds you see." He laughed a little wildly.

"W-W-Where-" Deku began.

"-Tell us," Todoroki said simply, and after a moment to collect his thoughts, Kaminari did. And telling it, (quite animatedly and spastically) watching their faces grow concerned and scared but not disbelieving or derisive, he felt even more incredible weight lift from his chest. Like Sero with his heads or Kirishima with his leper and Iida with the drowned boys, he had seen a thing that would have driven an adult insane, not just with terror but with the walloping force of an unreality too great to be explained away or, lacking any rational explanation, simply ignored.

He had seen it and he had gone on with his life; he had integrated the memory into his view of the world. He was still young enough so that view was tremendously wide. But what had happened that day had nonetheless haunted his mind's darker corners, and sometimes in his dreams he ran from that grotesque bird as it printed its shadow on him from above. Some of these dreams he remembered and some he did not, but they were there, shadows which moved by themselves.

How little of it he had forgotten and how greatly it had troubled him (as he went about his daily routine: helping his mother, struggling through school work, riding his bike, doing errands, waiting for Sero to come around for dinner and video games) was perhaps measurable in only one way- the relief he felt in sharing it with the others. As he did, he realized it was the first time he had even allowed himself to think of it fully since that night by the Canal, when he had seen those odd grooves... and the blood.

When he had finished, the losers had studied him- looking for cracks in his armor, looking to see if he were just leading them on.

Eventually, Deku stood up.

"Welcome home, Denki," he said, holding out his hand.

Kaminari, not nearly as unnerved as he should have been by the wording, took his hand and shook it.

—4—

Later on that afternoon, three of the Losers- Sero, Bakugo, Deku- walked toward the Irusu Public Library. Sero and Bakugo were keeping a close watch for Shigaraki and Company, but Deku only looked at the sidewalk, frowning, lost in thought. About an hour after telling them his story Kaminari had left them, saying his mom wanted him home by four to pick cherries. Todoroki had to do some shopping and fix dinner for his father and brother, he said. Kirishima had an appointment with Dr. Sunada, and Iida (who had originally started out walking with them to the library) was tracked down by his older brother and was told he was needed home early, but before they broke up for the day they began digging what was to become- if Sero was right- their underground clubhouse. To Deku (and to all of them, he suspected), the groundbreaking had seemed an almost symbolic act. They had begun. Whatever it was they were supposed to do as a group, as a unit, they had begun.

Deku asked Sero if he believed Kaminari's story, considering the two's history. They were passing Irusu Community House and the library was just ahead, a stone oblong comfortably shaded by cherry-blossom trees a century old, their petals floating delicately through the air, clinging to people's hair, clothing, and bags.

"Yeah," Sero said. "Denki's a joker for sure... but he isn't a liar- if anything he's a little to honest... what about you, Katsuki? What do you think?"

Bakugo, shrugged, and then after a moment, nodded. "Yeah. I hate to believe it, if you know what I mean, but I guess I do. You remember what he said about the bird's tongue?"

Deku and Sero nodded. Silver with orange fluffs on it.

"That's the thing that connects all the encounters," Bakugo said, kicking a pebble into the road absentmindedly. "It's Like- a trademark or some shit."

Deku nodded thoughtfully. It was like a trademark. That's certainly how he'd describe it, anyway.

They made it to the pathway that lead to the libraries children's side.

"I a-a-asked Tuh-Tenya i-if he e-ever h-h-heard of a buh-bird l-like that," Deku said. "Nuh-nuh-not n-necessarily a b-b-big wuh-wuh-one, but j- just a-a-a-"

"A real one?" Bakugo suggested.

Deku nodded. "H-He suh-said there m-m-might be a buh-bird like that in Suh-houth America or A-A-A-Africa, but nuh-nuh-not a-around h-h-here."

"He didn't believe it, then?" Sero asked.

"H-H-He buh-believed i-i-it," Deku said. And then he told them something else Iida had suggested while Deku walked with him to the corner where his brother was waiting. Iida's idea was that nobody else could have seen that bird before Kaminari told them that story. Something else, maybe, but not that bird, because the bird was Kaminari Denki's personal monster. But now... why, now that bird was the property of the whole Loser's Club, wasn't it? Any of them might see it. It might not look exactly the same; Deku might see it as a crow, Bakugo as a hawk, Todoroki as a sparrowhead, for all Iida knew- but It could be a bird to all of them now. Deku told Iida that if that was true, then any of them might see the leper, the heads, or possibly the dead boys.

"Which means we ought to do something pretty soon if we're going to do anything at all," Iida had replied, thoughtfully sliding his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "It knows..."

"Wuh-What?" Deku had asked sharply. "Eh-Everything we nuh-know?"

"If It knows that, we're sunk," Iida had answered gravely "But you can bet It knows we know about It, I think It'll try to get us. Are you still thinking about what we talked about yesterday?"

"Yes."

"I wish I could go with you."

"Heh-Heh-Hanta and Ka-Kah-Kacchan w-w-will. and Kah-Kah-Kacchan is really smart when he isn't m-m-messing a-around, and Heh-Hanta is pruh-pretty ob-observant... he c-can see th-things tha-tha-that the rest of u-us can't, I thuh-think."

Now, standing outside the library, Bakugo asked Deku exactly what it was he had in mind. Deku told them, speaking slowly so he wouldn't stutter too badly. The idea had been circling in his mind for the last two weeks, but it had taken Kaminari's story of the bird to crystallize it.

What did you do if you wanted to get rid of a bird?

Well, shooting it was pretty goddam final.

What did you do if you wanted to get rid of a monster? Well, the movies suggested that shooting it with a silver bullet was pretty goddam final.

Sero and Bakugo listened to this respectfully enough. Then Bakugo asked, hands on his hips in a somewhat sassy stance. "And how the fuck are we supposed to get our hands on a silver bullet, idiot?"

"We'll have to m-m-make it."

"How?"

"I guess that's what we're at the library to find out," Sero shrugged, pushing open the door. Bakugo threw his eyebrows up, and followed him, his red eyes were sharp and thoughtful... but doubtful, Deku thought. He felt doubtful himself. At least there was no foolishness in Bakugo's eyes, that was a step in the right direction.

"You thinking about Yagi's rifle?" Bakugo asked. "The one we took to Neibolt Street?"

"Yes," Deku said.

"Even if we could really make silver bullets," Bakugo said, "where would we get the silver?"

"I can get it to you." Sero said.

"Well... okay," Bakugo said, somewhat confused. "We'll let Skeletor worry about that. Then what? Neibolt Street again?"

Deku nodded, and then said simply: "Nee-Nee-Neibolt Street a-a-again. And then we buh-blow its fucking h-h-head o-off."

Bakugo snorted a little, and Sero looked back out him, wide eyed.

"Why, do you kiss your mother with that mouth, freckles?" Bakugo asked, hand over his heart in feigned shock.

"Beep-Beep Katsuki." Deku said.

"I'm never gonna forgive you for that one, bean pole."

Sero laughed. "Oh no, what will I ever do without Bakugo Katsuki's good graces?"

Bakugo, barely holding back a smile, shoved him forward into a bookshelf, causing it to teeter a little. One of the teenage aides told them to knock off the rough housing before they were asked to leave.

The three of them stood there a moment longer, looking at each other solemnly, and then headed deeper into the library.

—5—

JULY 11TH, 2005 / IRUSU, JAPAN

"Oi! Legally Blonde's back!" Bakugo yelled, startling Kirishima, who he was leaning heavily against.

A few days had passed; it was nearly mid July and the underground clubhouse was almost finished.

Bakugo Katsuki was sitting in a shallow part of the Shibui, cooling off, a cold bottle of melon soda in his hand. His back was pressed against Kirishima's left side (Kirishima was sitting on a large stone, keeping himself bone dry, not wanting to hear it from his mother when he got home) Kaminari looked between the two boy's curiously, noting their closeness, and Kirishima's suddenly red face and reserved body language. The suspicion that the two might be a little more than friends crossed his mind briefly- but he pushed it down, thinking he was just reading into things.

(Though, he could have sworn the two of them had been holding hands.)

"Hi Denki." Sero grinned, popping up from the hole, "did you have fun cleaning up horse shit?" He (and Bakugo before he got to hot and had to take a break) had been putting in shoring around the sides of the hole. Sero had taken off his sweatshirt because the day was hot and the work was hard. His tee-shirt was gray with sweat and stuck to his thin chest, highlighting how underweight he truly was. He had athletic's tape wrapped around both arms, and two flower-covered band-aids Deku had brought him cross-crossed on his forehead from where Shigaraki had elbowed him during the Rockfight.

"You look like shit, Hanta." Kaminari grinned, and Sero stuck his tongue out at him playfully.

"Thanks. I'm going for a rat-boy look."

"Well- you've achieved it." Kaminari said cheekily, easily side-stepping the stick Sero chucked in his direction. "Where's Roki?"

Sero looked at him, a little confused, before his eyes lit up. "Oh! Shouto? I dunno... not here."

Kaminari frowned, he had his mother's photograph album under his arm. Todoroki wasn't the only one missing, Iida and Deku were gone as well... though he knew Deku had to be around there somewhere, because he had left his own bike parked under the bridge near Silver.

"Deku went down to the dump about half an hour ago to get some more boards," Kirishima said. "Tenya went down to Kanazaki Hardware to get hinges. I don't know what Shouto's doing though... like Hanta said, he isn't here."

"Oh."

Bakugo stood up, stretching. He was soaked from the waist down. "You owe us ¥10 if you want to be apart of the loser's club, shortstack. Your share of the hinges."

Kaminari switched the album from his right arm to his left and dug into his pocket. He handed ¥10 (leaving a whole lotta nothing in his own personal treasury) over to Bakugo. Then, leaning over on his tip-toes, he looked into the hole.

...Except it really wasn't a hole anymore. The sides had been neatly squared off. Each side had been shored up. The boards were all mongrels, but Sero, Deku, and Iida had done a good job of sizing them with tools from Toshinori Yagi's shop (and Deku had gone to great lengths to make sure every tool was returned every night, and in the same condition as when it was taken). Sero and Todoroki had nailed cross-pieces between the supports. The hole still made Kirishima a little nervous, but that was Kirishima's nature. Piled carefully to one side were squares of sod which would later be glued to the top.

"Looks like you guys know what you're doing," Kaminari said.

"Sure," Sero said, and pointed to the album. "Isn't that Kaori's?"

"Uh-huh," Kaminari said, holding it up a little. "Her Irusu photo album."

He addressed Bakugo and Kirishima more than Sero now: "She collects old pictures and clippings about the town. It's been her hobby since she was a kid. I was looking through it a couple of days ago- I told you I thought I'd seen that clown before. And I did. In here. So I brought it down." He was too ashamed to add that he had not dared to ask his mother's permission to do this. Afraid of the questions to which such a request might lead, he had taken it from the house like a thief while his mother fed the horses. "I thought you guys ought to take a look, too."

"Well, let's see," Bakugo said.

"Shouldn't we wait until everybody's here?..."

"Yeah, okay." Bakugo was, in truth, not that anxious to look at more pictures of Irusu, in this or any other album. Not after what had happened in Eri's room. "You want to help us with the rest of the shoring?"

"Sure." Kaminari put his mother's album down carefully, far enough from the hole so it wouldn't be pelted with flying dirt, and took Sero's shovel, which was nearly as tall as he was.

"Dig right here," Sero said, showing Kaminari the spot. "Go down about a foot. Then I'll put a board in and hold it against the side while you shovel the dirt back in."

"I still don't understand how you know how to do all this shit," Bakugo said sagely from where he sat on the edge of the excavation with his sneakers dangling down.

"What's wrong with you?" Kaminari asked, cocking his head.

Bakugo shrugged. "Dunno."

From the bank of the Shibui, Kirishima called: "I'm gonna go see what's taking Deku so long!"

"Don't die!" Bakugo called back, and though his tone was casual, his face was serious.

"Course not, Suki." Kirishima smiled. Soon after, he was disappearing into a mess of green, heading toward the dump.

"How's your thing with Deku going?" Kaminari asked once Kirishima had left, his hyperactive brain not liking the silence- even if it was comfortable. He stopped long enough to strip off his shirt and then began to dig. It was hot down here, even in the Barrens. Crickets hummed sleepily like summer clocks in the brush.

"It's going," Bakugo said, and Kaminari thought he flashed Sero a mildly warning look.

"Why don't you play some music, Katsuki?" Sero asked. He slipped a board into the hole Kaminari had dug and held it there. Bakugo's IPod was stuck in its custom place, on the thick branch of a nearby shrub.

"I think the heat fried it," Bakugo said, sounding annoyed- though there was something off about it- like his heart wasn't in it. "Goddamn piece of shit won't turn on anymore."

"Can you get it looked at?" Kaminari asked. "Like- at one of those electronics shops?"

Bakugo snorted: "That'd mean telling my parents it's broken, and I can't do that for like- another two months without a lecture."

"Why's that?" Kaminari asked.

"Because they'll kill him." Sero joked. "He broke his TV the other day."

"How do you even manage that?" Kaminari giggled.

"By being a spaz." Sero grinned.

Bakugo kicked a clod of dirt into Sero's face, making the skinnier boy sputter. Kaminari and Bakugo laughed quite hard at his expense.

"This is why I hate blondes." Sero said, wiping at his face.

"You're just jealous that you have the most common hair color in the world." Kaminari said, "You wish you could join me and Kats in the 2% elite."

"Yeah, okay." Sero said, rolling his eyes. "You say that now, but when you two start getting greys at thirty, I'll laugh my ass off."

"If you haven't keeled over from lung cancer first." Bakugo said, resting his head in his hands.

"Or starved to death." Kaminari added, not noticing Sero's flush or uncomfortable mannerisms as he squatted down to grab another board.

Bakugo snorted. "Ain't that the truth. You look like you're about to phase out of existence, Ana."

Sero frowned: "... I don't get why everyone calls me that... I'm not actually anorexic, you know..."

"Could've fooled me." Bakugo yawned. "What are you, forty pounds underweight? Shit's not healthy, stick-man."

Sero, still flushing, took a page from Todoroki Shouto's book and hid his face with one of the boards. "I'm not- if I was forty pounds underweight I'd be dead or something... I weigh 72 pounds... 94 is the lowest for someone my height... so I'm like... twenty-two pounds underweight... it's not- it's not that bad."

Kaminari frowned, all light-hearted fun in the atmosphere disappearing in an instant: "That... sounds pretty bad to me, dude..."

"Yeah, what the hell?" Bakugo muttered, his eyebrows raised. "I know your mom's shit, but I thought she, ya know- fed you."

"She- I eat fine."

"Clearly not."

Sero, looking absolutely miserable, pleaded: "Can we please just drop this? I really don't want to talk about it."

"Why?" Bakugo pressed, though there was the tiniest tinge of worry leaking through his tone- only those closest to him would have been able to catch it. "Are you actually anorexic or something?"

"No! I already told you, it's not-" he let out a frustrated sigh, and looked desperately over at Kaminari. "You know I'm not. Tell him- I eat loads at your house."

Kaminari, still frowning, nodded a little. "It's true... he does..."

"What about the other one then?" Bakugo asked, still refusing to let up. "The one where you throw up-"

"-Beep-Beep Katsuki." Sero interrupted, looking pointedly at the ground.

Bakugo's eyes widened a little, Kaminari felt his grip on the shovels handle slacken. Sero was picking at a scab on his arm, refusing to look at them, feeling absolutely humiliated.

"Dude-" Kaminari started.

"-Beep-Beep." Sero repeated "Both of you- just... Beep-Beep..."

As an uncomfortable and intense silence fell over the trio, something was tumbling, twirling, and bumping along with the dead leaves, twigs, and empty potatoe-chip bags through the drains at a steady pace. When the three members of the losers club began to work once more, the two-blondes glancing at one another out of the corner of their eyes every once and a while, the something spilled out of a wide concrete drain and into the upper Shibui. The previous afternoon there had been a sudden driving thunderstorm (the clubhouse-to-be had not been much affected-since digging operations had begun, Sero Hanta had covered the hole carefully each evening with a ragged piece of tarpaulin Kirishima had scrounged from behind The Shijima; it smelled painty but it did the job), and the stormdrains under Irusu had run with violent water for two or three hours. It was that spate of water that had pushed this unpleasant baggage into the sun for the flies to find.

It was the body of a six-year-old boy named Izumi Kota. Except for the nose, his face was gone. There was a churned and featureless mess where it had been. This raw meat was dotted with deep black marks that perhaps only Iida Tenya would have recognized for what they were: pecks. Pecks made by a very large beak.

Water rilled over Izumi Kota's muddy shorts. His little hands floated like dead fish. They had also been pecked, although not as badly. His button-up shirt ballooned out and collapsed back, ballooned out and collapsed back, like a bladder, the cap he so often wore on his head plopped grossly onto his ruined face a few moments later.

Deku and Kirishima, loaded down with boards scrounged from the dump, crossed the Shibui by stepping-stones less than forty yards from the body. They could sense the tense air between Bakugo, Kaminari, and Sero. The two boys looked at one another in confusion, and hurried past the unseen ruin of Kota to see what had happened in the time since Kirishima had left.

—6—

They were still silent when Deku and Kirishima came into the clearing, sweating under their load of lumber. They dropped the new boards on the almost depleted supply-pile. Sero practically jumped out of the hole to inspect them.

"Thanks guys." he said, adjusting the hood on his baggy sweatshirt. (It had twisted around sideways when he put it back on) He surveyed the boards, nodding. "I appreciate it."

Deku collapsed to the ground, exhausted. "Can I h-have my heart a-a-attack now or do I h-have to wuh-wait until luh-hater?"

"Have it later," Sero said absently. He had brought a few tools of his own down to the Barrens and was now going over the new boards carefully, pounding out nails and removing screws. He tossed one aside because it was splintered. Rapping on another returned a dull punky sound in at least three places, and he also tossed that one aside. Kirishima sat on a pile of dirt, watching him. He took a honk on his aspirator as Sero pulled a rusty nail from a board with the claw end of his hammer. The nail squealed like some small unpleasant animal that had been stepped on and he didn't like it.

"You can get tetanus if you cut yourself on a rusty nail," Kirishima informed Sero.

"Yeah?" Bakugo said, and Kirishima was surprised that it had taken him this long to start speaking. "What's titnuss? Sounds like a girl thing."

"And you call us dumb," Kirishima said, smiling at Bakugo fondly, his heart fluttering just a little. "It's tetanus, not titnuss, and it means lock jaw. There's these thingies that grow in rust and if you cut yourself they can get inside your body and, um, fuck up your nerves." Kirishima went an even darker red and took another fast honk on his aspirator.

"Lock jaw..." Bakugo said, impressed. "Fuck, that sounds mean."

"You bet. First your jaw locks up so tight you can't open your mouth, not even to eat. They have to cut a hole in your cheek and feed you liquids through a tube."

"Oh shit," Kaminari said, having to stand on a stack of boards to see over the edge of the hole, eyes wide. "Seriously?"

"My mom told me," Kirishima said. "Then your throat locks up and you can't eat anymore and you starve to death."

Sero flinched a little. Kaminari winced. Bakugo glowered at the ground. Deku contemplated the horror of lock jaw in silence.

"There's no cure," Kirishima amplified.

More silence.

"So," Kirishima said briskly, "I always watch out for rusty nails and shit like that. I had to have a tetanus shot once and it really hurt."

"So why'd you go to the dump with Deku and bring all this shit back?" Bakugo asked.

Kirishima glanced briefly at Deku, who was looking into the clubhouse, and there was all the love and hero-worship in that gaze needed to answer such a question but Kirishima said softly, "some stuff has to be done even if there is a risk. That's the first important thing I ever found out that I didn't find out from my mother."

A further silence, not quite uncomfortable, followed. Then Sero, still refusing to look anyone in eyes, went back to pounding out rusty nails, and after awhile Kaminari (tentatively) joined him.

Bakugo's IPod, robbed of its voice, sizzled from its low branch in the blearing heat. Deku had time to reflect upon how odd all this was, how odd and how perfect, that they should all be here this summer. There were kids he knew visiting relatives. Kids he knew who were off on vacations at Disney land in Tokyo or visiting the temples and shrines in Kyoto, or left the country to check out Gstaad. There were kids at day camp, kids at Scout camp, kids at rich-kid camps where you could learn to swim and play golf, camps where you learned to say "Hey, good one!" instead of "Screw you!" when your opponent got a killer serve past you at tennis; kids whose parents had simply taken them AWAY. Deku could understand that. He knew some kids who wanted to go AWAY, frightened by the boogeyman stalking Irusu this summer, but suspected there were more parents frightened by that boogeyman. People who had planned to take their vacations at home suddenly decided to go AWAY.

(Gstaad? was that in Sweden? Argentina? Spain?)

Instead, It was a little like that Cholera scare in 2003, when four kids who went swimming in the canal after a long week of rain got the bacterial disease. Grownups- a word absolutely synonymous in Deku's mind with mothers and fathers- had decided then, as now, that AWAY was better. Safer. Anyone able to clear out had cleared. Deku understood AWAY, and he could muse over a world of such fabulous wonder as Gstaad, but wonder was cold comfort compared with desire; Gstaad was AWAY; Irusu was desire.

'And none of us have gone AWAY,' he thought, watching as Sero and Kaminari pounded used nails out of used boards, as Kirishima strolled off into the bushes to take a whiz ('you had to go as soon as you could, in order to avoid seriously straining your bladder,' he told Deku once, 'but you also have to watch out for poison ivy').

'We're all here in Irusu. No camp, no relatives, no vacations, no AWAY. All right here. Present and accounted for. Not two or three of us- but seven. What are the odds of that?'

"There's a door down there," Kirishima said as he came back.

"Hope you shook off, Kiri," Bakugo said. "If you don't shake off each time, you can get cancer."

Kirishima looked startled, thinly worried, and then saw Bakugo's shit-eating grin. He withered him (or tried to) with a babies-must-play look and then said, "It was too big for us to carry. But Deku said if all of us went down we could get it up here."

"-Of course, you can never shake off completely," Bakugo went on. "You want to know what a wise man once told me, Shitty hair?"

"No," Kirishima said, "and I don't want you to call me shitty hair anymore, Katsuki. Especially since we're- we're best friends now."

"-This wise man," Bakugo said, sounding somewhat jokey, somewhat serious, "told me this: "No matter how much you squirm and dance, the last two drops go in your pants." And that's why there's so much cancer in the world, Ejirou my love."

"The reason there's so much cancer in the world is because nerds like Hanta and Shouto smoke cigarettes," Kirishima said, his cheeks flaring pink. "And you too, though I think we all know you only do it to seem cool."

"Roki is not a nerd," Kaminari said, standing on the stack of boards once more, his eyes sparkling. "He's awesome."

"Beep-beep, you g-guys," Deku said absently. "And speaking of Shuh-Shouto, he's pretty struh-struh-strong. He could h-h-help get that duh-door."

Sero asked what kind of door it was.

"Muh-Muh-hogany, I th-hink."

"Somebody threw out a mahogany door?" Sero asked, surprised but not unbelieving.

"People throw out everything," Kaminari said. "That's why I hate going down there."

"Yeah," Sero agreed, all reservation from earlier melting away in an instant.

"A lot of that stuff could be fixed up easy. And there are people in China and South America with nothing. That's what my mother says." Kirishima added.

"There's people with nothing right here in Irusu," Sero said grimly.

"W-W-What's th-this?" Deku asked, noticing the album Kaminari had brought. Kaminari told him, saying he would show them the picture of the clown when Iida got back with the hinges, and Todoroki decided to show up.

Deku and Bakugo exchanged a look.

"Wuh?... What's wrong?" Kaminari asked, looking back and forth between the two.

"It's about what happened in Eri's room, isn't it?" Kirishima asked quietly.

"Y-Yeah," Deku said, and would say no more.

They took turns working on the hole until Iida came back. Todoroki Shouto, now sporting a dark bruise across the bridge of his nose, was a few paces behind him. They each had a brown paper bag containing hinges. As Kaminari talked, Sero sat crosslegged, tailor-fashion, and made glassless windows that would swing open and shut in two of the long boards. Perhaps only Kaminari noticed how quickly and easily his fingers moved; how adept and knowing they were, like surgeon's fingers. Kaminari admired that.

"Some of these pictures go back a hundred years, my mom said," Kaminari told them, holding the album on his lap. "She gets them at those sales people have in their yards, and at secondhand shops. Sometimes she buys them or trades other collectors for them. Some of them are stereoscopes- there's two of them just the same on a long card, and when you look at them through this thing that looks like binoculars, it looks like one picture, only in 3-D."

"Why does she like all that stuff?" Todoroki asked. He was wearing ordinary Levi's but he had done something amusing to the cuffs and pockets, replacing the denim there with a bright paisley material so that they looked like pants out of some sailor's whimsy.

"Yeah," Kirishima said. "Most of the time, Irusu's pretty boring."

"Well, I don't know for sure, but I think it's because she wasn't born here," Kaminari said diffidently.

"What?" Bakugo asked, furrowing his eyebrows. "But- I thought that dumb farm has been in your family for forever?"

"It has." Kaminari nodded. "But it belonged to my great uncle or something. My grandfather left town after a really bad experience in 1961... he wont talk about it with anyone, but he won't come back here... so I guess it had to be pretty bad."

"So why'd your mom come then?" Todoroki asked.

Kaminari shrugged. "When I asked her, she said it felt like something was calling her here. So she came, bought the farm from my great uncle, and that was that... but- um- It's like-I don't know-like it's all new to her, or like, you know, if you came in during the middle of a movie-"

"Sh-sh-sure, you'd want to see the s-start," Deku said.

"Yeah," Kaminari said. "There's a lot of history stuff in Irusu. I kind of like it. And I think some of it has to do with this thing- this It."

He looked at Deku and Deku nodded, his eyes thoughtful.

"So I was looking through it after the Mayor's birthday parade because I knew I'd seen that clown before. I knew it. And look-"

He opened the book, thumbed through it, then handed it to Sero, who was sitting on his right.

"D-D-Don't t-t-touch the puh-puh-pages!" Deku cried, and there was such urgency in his voice that they all jumped. He had fisted the hand he had cut reaching into Eri's album, Bakugo saw. Fisted it into a tight, protective knot.

"Freckles is right," Bakugo said, and that subdued, totally un-Bakugolike voice was a powerful convincer. "Be careful. It's like Tenya said. If we saw it happen, you guys could see it happen, too."

"Feel it," Deku added grimly.

The album went from hand to hand, each of them holding the book gingerly, by the edges, as if it were old dynamite sweating big beads of nitro.

It came back to Kaminari. He opened it to one of the first pages.

"Mom says there's no way to date that one, but it's probably from the seventeen hundreds or something." Kaminari said, "She used our horses to pull some guy's truck out of a mud pit in exchange for a box of old books and pictures. That was one of 'em. She says it's probably worth a heck of a lot."

The picture was a woodcut, the size of a large postcard. When Deku's turn came to look at it, he was relieved to see that Kaminari's mother had the kind of album where the pictures were under a protective plastic sheet. He looked, fascinated, and he thought: 'There. I'm seeing him-or It. Really seeing. That's the face of the enemy.'

The picture showed a funny fellow juggling oversized bowling pins in the middle of a muddy street. There were a few houses on either side of the street, and a few huts that Deku guessed were stores, or trading posts, or whatever they called them back then. It didn't look like Irusu at all, except for the Canal. It was there, neatly cobbled on both sides. In the upper background, Deku could see a team of mules on a towpath, dragging a barge.

There was a group of maybe half a dozen kids gathered around the funny fellow. One had a hoop and a stick to roll it with. Not the sort of stick that would come with a hoop that you bought today in a toy store; it was a branch from a tree. Deku could see the bare knobs on it where smaller branches had been lopped off with a knife or a hatchet. That baby wasn't made in a factory, he thought, fascinated by this boy who could have been him if he'd been born seven or eight generations before.

The funny fellow had a huge grin on his face. He wore no makeup (except to Deku his whole face looked like make-up), but he was bald except for two tufts of hair that stuck up like horns over his ears, and Deku had no trouble recognizing their clown. Two hundred years ago or more, he thought, and felt a crazy surge of terror, anger, and excitement rush through him. Fifteen years later, sitting in a mechanic's garage owned by Kaminari Denki and remembering his first look into said mans mothers photo album, he realized he had felt the way a hunter might feel, coming upon the first fresh spoor of an old killer tiger. Two hundred years ago... that long, and only the universe knew how much longer. This led him to wonder just how long the spirit of Pennywise had been here in Irusu- but he found that was a thought he did not really want to pursue.

"Fucking- give it to me, Deku!" Bakugo was saying, but Deku held the album a moment longer, staring fixedly at the woodcut, sure it would begin to move: the bowling pins (if that's what they were) which the funny fellow was juggling would rise and fall, rise and fall, the kids would laugh and applaud (except maybe they wouldn't all laugh and applaud; some of them might scream and run instead), the mule-team pulling the barge would move beyond the borders of the picture.

It didn't happen, and he passed the book on to Bakugo.

When the album came back to Kaminari he turned some more pages, hunting. "Here," he said. "This one is from 1856."

"That's around the time the Tokugawa shogunate period was ending." Iida commented quietly, seemingly for no reason other than to fill space in the tense quiet.

The book went around again. This was a color picture- a sort of drawing- showing a group of men wearing rice hats, some pulling wagons filled with bags of the stuff behind them down a dirt path which Deku vaguely recognized as Kanazaki Drive. To the left, there was a small trio of women underneath a makeshift shack, hand washing clothes in a large basin.

Kaminari said: "Look in the corner."

None of them really needed Kaminari to point the clown out. Dressed in loud, traditional, attire, he was playing the incense game with a couple of military men. He was winking at uniformed man who hadn't, judging by the miffed look on his face, scored very high. The clown was holding up a slip of paper smugly.

"Him again," Sero said. "What... a hundred years later?"

"Just about," Kaminari said. "And here's one from 1886."

It was a clipping from the front page of the Irusu Weekly News. A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION! the headline proclaimed exuberantly. IRONWORKS OPENS! Just below this: "Town Turns Out for Gala Picnic." The picture showed a woodcut of the ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Kanazaki Ironworks; its style reminded Deku of the prints his mother had in the dining room, although this was nowhere near as polished. A man tricked out in a more european-esq. morning coat was holding a large pair of open-jawed scissors above the Ironworks ribbon while a crowd of perhaps five hundred watched. Off to the left was a clown- their clown- turning a handspring for a group of children. The artist had caught him upside down, turning his smile into a scream.

He passed the book on quickly to Bakugo.

The next picture was also taken from the Irusu Weekly News from the year 1931:

UNEMPLOYMENT RATE DOUBLES: REACHES 16.3%

The photo was of a locally owned car dealership in downtown Irusu. There were two large signs in the window: OUT OF BUSINESS and PROPERTY FOR SALE BY OWNER. The clown, dressed in the most western outfit out they'd seen so far (white shoes, slacks, button up), had his foot on a running board and was drinking champagne from a lady's high-heeled shoe.

"1945," Kaminari said.

The Irusu News again. The headline: 150,000 KILLED IN U.S ATOM BOMB ATTACK and then, underneath: DOCTOR'S FALL AS THEY WORK: FEAR POISONOUS GAS. And yet again. GOVERNMENT CONCEDES. The photo was of a large group of people, about a thousand or so, gathering in what was now dubbed 'Memorial Park' with their heads bowed, many were crying. The clown was right smack dab in the middle of the crowd, dressed in all black, with large painted black tears on his face- seeming to suggesting that nothing was over, and there would only be more suffering to come.

Deku felt cold and dry and scared.

Suddenly, the people in the photo began to move.

"That's what-" Kaminari began.

"L-L-Look," Deku said. The word dropped out of his mouth like a partially melted ice-cube. "A-A-All of you luh-look at th-this!"

They crowded around.

"Woah," Todoroki whispered, awed.

"That's IT!" Bakugo nearly screamed, pounding Deku on the back in his excitement. He looked around at Kirishima's terrified face and Iida Tenya's frozen one. "That's what we saw in Eri's room! That's exactly what we-"

"shhh," Sero said. "Listen." And, panicking: "You can hear them- holy shit, you can hear them in there."

And in the silence that was only broken by the mild stir of the summer breeze, they all realized they could. The shuffling of feet in the large group, the crying, the angry outbursts- they were high pitched, and almost tinny sounding... distant...

"Gross..." Todoroki whispered, and rubbed at his eyes with hands that shook. "This is so... gross..."

No one else added anything. They watched the picture, their eyes eating up their faces.

The crowd shuffled more, and the losers watched as things seemed to become to much for a group of women and children, who rushed towards the white boundary of the photo and disappeared passed the edge instead of dropping into a black void never to be seen again. The clown, still standing still in the middle of the photo with painted tears on his cheeks, looked up. Then, he smiled. And Deku noticed for the first time that people were turning from him- but not as if they saw him, exactly; it was more as if they felt a draft or smelled something bad.

Only the children really saw him, and they shrank away.

Sero stretched his hand out to the picture, as Deku had done in Eri's room.

"Nuh-Nuh-Nuh-NO!" Deku cried.

"I think it's all right, Deku," Sero said. "Look." And he laid his hand on the protective plastic over the picture for a moment and then took it back. "But if you stripped off that cover-"

Todoroki gasped. The clown had started cackling when Sero withdrew his hand. It rushed toward them, its paint-bloody mouth gibbering and laughing. Deku winced back but held onto the book all the same, thinking it would drop out of sight as the small group of women and children had done.

But the clown did not disappear along that curve that seemed to define the edge of that old existence. Instead, it leaped with a scary, nimble grace onto a lamppost that stood in the extreme left foreground of the picture. It shimmied up like a monkey on a stick-and suddenly its face was pressed against the tough plastic sheet Kaminari Kaori had put over each of the pages in her book. Todoroki began to back away and this time it was Kirishima who yelled- though it sounded faint and breathless. The plastic bulged out- later they would all agree they saw it. Deku saw the bulb of the clown's red nose flatten, the way your nose will flatten when you press it against a windowpane.

"Kill you all!" The clown was laughing and screaming. "Try to stop me and I'll kill you all! Drive you crazy and then kill you all! You can't stop me! I'm the Gingerbread Man! I'm the American Werewolf in Irusu!"

And for a moment It was the Werewolf, the moon-silvered face of the lycanthrope peering out at them from over the collar of the silver suit, white teeth bared.

"Can't stop me, I'm the leper!"

Now the leper's face, haunted and peeling, rotting with sores, stared at them with the eyes of the living dead.

"Can't stop me, I'm coming for you!"

The leper's face was ripped from its body with a large spirt of blood that splashed against the flimsy barrier of the plastic screening. The clown's body caught its own head in its hands, and began to juggle it. Sero turned away, looking like he was going to be sick.

"Can't stop me, I'm the dead boys!"

"No!" Iida Tenya screamed. His eyes bulged above braised-looking crescents of skin-'shockflesh,' Deku thought randomly, and it was a word he would use in his Manga twelve years later, with no idea where it had come from, simply taking it, as writers take the right word at the right time, as a simple gift from that outer space-

(otherspace)

-where the good words come from sometimes.

Iida snatched the album from his hands and slammed it shut. He held it closed with both hands, the tendons standing out along the inner surfaces of his wrists and forearms. He looked around at the others with eyes that were nearly insane. "No," he said rapidly. "No, no, no."

And suddenly Deku found he was more concerned with Iida's repeated denials than with the clown, and he understood that this was exactly the sort of reaction the clown had hoped to provoke, because...

'Because maybe It's scared of us... maybe it's really scared for the first time in Its long, long life.'

He grabbed Iida and shook him twice, hard, holding onto his shoulders. Iida's teeth clicked together, his glasses slid down so they were barely holding on around his neck, and he dropped the album. Kaminari picked it up and put it aside in a hurry, not liking to touch it after what he had seen. But it was still his mother's, and he understood intuitively that his mother would never see in it what he had just seen.

"No," Iida said softly, shaking his head.

"Yes," Deku said.

"No," Iida said again.

"Yes. We a-a-all-"

"No."

"-a-a-all suh-haw it, Tenya," Deku said. He looked at the others.

"Yes," Sero said.

"Yes," Bakugo said.

"Sadly." Kaminari said, smiling wildly. "And this things coming home with me... yay..."

"Yes," Todoroki said.

"Yes," Kirishima managed, gasping it out of his rapidly closing throat.

Deku looked at Iida, demanding with his eyes that Iida look back at him. "duh-don't let it g-g-get y-you, Tenya," Deku said. "Yuh-you suh-saw it, t-t-too."

"I didn't want to!" Iida wailed. Sweat stood out on his brow in an oily sheen.

"But y-y-you duh-duh-did."

Iida looked at the others, one by one. He ran his hands through his short hair and fetched up a great, shuddering sigh. His eyes seemed to clear of that lowering madness that had so disturbed Deku.

"Yes," he said, shakily sliding his glasses back on. "Yes. Okay. Yes. Is that what you want me to say? Yes."

Deku thought: 'We're still all together. It didn't stop us. We can still kill It. We can still kill It... if we're brave.'

Deku looked around at the others and saw in each pair of eyes some measure of Iida's hysteria. Not quite as bad, but there.

"Y-Y-Yeah," he said, and smiled at Iida. After a moment Iida smiled back and some of that horrible shocked look left his face. "That's what I wuh-wuh-wanted, f-four-eyes..."

"Beep-beep, Izuku," Iida said, and they almost all laughed. It was hysterical screaming laughter, but better than no laughter at all, Deku reckoned.

"C-C-Come on," he said, because someone had to say something. "Let's f-f-finish the clubhouse. What do you s-s-say?"

He saw the gratitude in their eyes and felt a measure of gladness for them... but their gratitude did little to heal his own horror. In fact, there was something in their gratitude which made him, deep, deep, down, want to hate them. Would he never be able to express his own terror, lest the fragile welds that made them into one thing should let go? And even to think such a thing wasn't really fair, was it? Because in some measure at least he was using them- using his friends, risking their lives- to settle the score for his dead sister. And was even that the bottom? No, because Eri was dead, and if revenge could be exacted at all, Deku suspected it could only be exacted on behalf of the living. And what did that make him? A selfish piece of shit waving a tin sword and trying to make himself look like King Arthur?

'Man, I hate this,' he groaned to himself, 'if this is the stuff adults have to think about I never want to grow up.'

His resolve was still strong, but it was a bitter resolve.

Bitter.